Ruby sighed under the weight of the ornate silver platter, overflowing breakfast foods and sympathy cards, and started up the stairs. It was the fourth day since the Garnt nephew had appeared, bruised and battered on the back porch, and he hadn’t woken from his slumber since then. As the only maid in the house who didn’t have any experience in first aid, Ruby had been assigned to carrying meals up and down the stairs, keeping the bedroom spotless, and watching the nephew for any curious behavior (which was then to be reported to both Mr. Garnt and one of the older maids on duty). So far, the only curious thing the boy had done was to remain still for four days straight.
The bedroom the Garnts had chosen for their nephew to occupy was on the third floor of the large house, which was usually the quietest and darkest floor. It sat between the normal bedrooms on the second story, and the library on the fourth. The third floor was full of guest rooms and studies that were rarely used, so the maids usually left the lights off while they neglected it. The only source of life on the third floor was now in the first bedroom to the left of the staircase; a high ceiling, windows that spanned the entire altitude of the wall on the far side, and old fashioned furniture that cast eerie shadows in the candlelight. And while the room was illuminated by nearly forty candles on the walls, dressers, and desks, shadows still dominated a majority of the space.
Ruby set the platter on the bedside table, then moved the cards over to the larger collection on the closest desk. Several relatives and family friends had sent the boy their sympathies, although nobody had told Ruby what they were sorry for. As far as she could tell, he had been in some sort of accident, and had just barely survived the journey to his uncle’s house. Other than that, the only thing obvious was that he was very tired.
“I wonder why he hasn’t woken up yet.” Ruby watched him as she rearranged the cards. He was definitely alive, because Mrs. Garnt had called for a nurse to check on him every night, and she declared he was simply sleeping. While his cuts weren’t pretty, they weren’t deep enough to seriously injure him and none of them had become infected. Besides one purple scratch running across his left temple, the boy’s face looked healthy enough. Or it would have, if he hadn’t been wearing such a disturbed, confused expression since he had arrived.
Crossing the room to the bed, Ruby sat down beside the boy. The clipboard with notes taken by the nurse was still on the table from the previous visit, and Ruby quickly read over them. Various cuts and marks were recorded, along with a note that all vital signs seemed normal, breathing was steady, and he seemed to be a perpetual state of REM. Ruby gently pulled back on the feathery comforter to get a better view of the boy’s face, and saw that his eyelids were fluttering lightly.
“At least he’s dreaming.” she thought, but then noticed again his grim appearance. Whatever he was dreaming about, it wasn’t causing him much comfort. “What’s so bad that you can’t get away even in sleep?”
An idea forming in her head with enough betrayed trust and overstepped boundaries to get her fired, Ruby slipped over to the door and checked the hallway. It was silent, as if frozen in time; the only sounds were the distant echoes from people moving around downstairs. Ruby shut the door and returned to the bed, pushing up her sleeves as she prepared to do something she had promised the Garnts never to use in their household. For two years, Ruby had kept her word to Lissie and Maria (the oldest Garnt daughters) about keeping her powers to herself while she worked for them. But the curiosity about the mysterious nephew was too overpowering, and Ruby couldn’t help herself. She lightly placed her fingertips against each of the boy’s temples, and took a deep breath as she retreated into her mind. Closing her eyes tightly, Ruby felt a surge of energy surround her brain as her consciousness began to dislodge itself from her body. With the last control she had over her mind, she pushed down on her thoughts, forcing them to travel down through her arms, through her fingers, and with a scorching zap on her fingertips, into the boy’s own head.
Ruby descended through darkness until she came upon the dream. She slowly dropped between black clouds, full of ice and fog, shivering as she passed them. Despite the countless dreams she had invaded, Ruby had never encountered a black lining to a dream before. Down she continued, until she landed softly in the dust of an endless terrain.
The ground was bare brown in most spots, dry and choked, save for a few patches of withered grass here and there. There were tall trees with few branches and fewer leaves, which rocked menacingly in the warm breeze. A wooden house sat lonely between the trees, dark and dilapidated, obviously long vacant. The scene hinted at a nightmare cliché, especially when Ruby had seen her share of original settings and characters in the minds of her younger siblings, yet the eerie silence in the boy’s thoughts was plenty disturbing on its own.
There was a loud crash in the distance, caused by something invisible to Ruby, and she edged closer to the side of the old house where she could hide herself.
“Emmanuel…” someone close by was calling, but the owner of the voice was nowhere to be seen. Ruby didn’t think much of it; dreamers often encountered disembodied voices in their sleep, she had come to realize. All the same, the voices usually did have a name attached to them by the dreamers, and she wondered who the boy was listening to.
The door of the house swung open with a slow groan, and the boy ran out. He stopped abruptly at the edge of the front porch, looking around in confusion. Ruby could only see him from her hiding place behind him, but she knew he had been expecting to see someone.
“Mom!” he called, starting onto the steps off the porch.
“She’s gone now.” answered another ethereal voice, but this one was different. It was deeper and heavier, and louder. The boy shook and glanced at the sky.
“No she’s not.” He replied, his voice firm, but Ruby could hear a slight quaver that gave away his fear. “She’s coming back.”
“You’re a silly child. She’s dead, and people can’t come back from the dead.” the heavy voice sneered.
“Emmanuel…” the first voice whispered again; flimsy and frail across the arid ground. The boy leapt down the last two steps and landed easily on the dust, staring into the horizon.
“Mom, where are you?”
From behind one of the dying trees stepped a massive black shadow, in the form of a tattered and emaciated wolf. Emmanuel froze in place, as if paralyzed. The wolf turned glowing yellow eyes on him, glaring over a snarling muzzle.
“You want to see her? Fine. Let me show you.” It growled, giving the heavy voice a body. The wolf pawed at the ground next to it and seemed to choke on its own tongue, barking out terrible coughs. With a powerful heaving motion, the wolf spat out red phlegm, which splattered and spread like blood on the ground. When the puddle of blood had grown until it was large enough for the wolf to lie in, a red shape rose out of it. It was a body thrown on its side, limbs broken and neck bent down at an uncomfortable angle. The blood dripped down the body until the person underneath could be clearly seen. Emmanuel’s body didn’t move, but Ruby saw his ears turn snow white.
The person in the blood was a pretty young woman, delicate in her bone structure and bearing an almost identical resemblance to her son.
