I’m running towards him now, my strides sluggish through the sludge. Rain batters my skin as the lights disappear along with the invisible people, and a wind whips around my legs.
Unsure as to why he looks so afraid of me, I pull my arms up to wave, but the heavy object in my right hand makes my arm shake.
Feet sinking, I stop, taking in the object I’m holding.
Sleek, cold, and brutal, the gun rests in my palm as if it were made to fit.
Trembling now, whether from the weight of the gun or the weight of its significance, I’m unsure, but my hand isn’t steady, isn’t trained.
Rope binds Ed across his torso as if by invisible hands, his body bucking against unseen captors. I need to get to him, need to save him, but my feet are fully submerged in the thick clay.
His face is frantic, his mouth forming words that get caught in the wind and the lashing of ropes before they reach me. A wall appears around him, but it isn’t finished. Ed stands in the gaping hole as if the wall has devoured him.
The viscous coating in my throat lurches its way up into my mouth as an orangutan-like creature hauls over a crate filled with bricks. Another ape arrives, pushing a wheelbarrow laden with cement.
“Ed!” I call out, but no one appears to hear me. All I can see are the whites of Ed’s eyes as he stares at the bricks and mortar.
“No!” Lifting the gun, I point it at no one, my hand too unsteady to aim.
Tearing his eyes from the bricks, Ed stares at me before they close. His mouth doesn’t move, but I hear his words in my head.
“Do it.”
One of the apes takes up a trowel, digs deep into the cement, and slaps it onto the unfinished brickwork in front of Ed’s legs.
“No!” I repeat, waving the gun like it’s a flare.
Ed struggles against his bindings, his hair flopping in front of his eyes. The bricks continue to be stacked, the builders fast and efficient and the cement already drying. The wall gains height with every second.
His eyes find mine, and they beg me.
“Do it.”
But my finger slips on the trigger, my hand still shaking, the gun so fucking heavy. Tears drench my face along with the relentless rain, blurring my vision and obscuring my target.
I want to pull the trigger, need to pull it now, but my hands betray me. My heart is weak.
Ed’s mouth opens wide in a mute scream as the wall engulfs him. He silently screams, and I scream with him.
I scream and scream and scream.
“Wake up, angel. Wake up, now!”
My scream pierces the air, my lungs in overdrive, my body shaking.
I’m in my bed. In my room. Alone.
There’s no rain, no bricks, no gun, and no Ed.
And no Valdemar.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Sittingin the chair that has become so familiar to me in the prison visiting room, I wait for Valdemar to be brought in. This is our last visit before he’s released, and I wonder what he’ll have to say.
After the experiment with the sedative on Monday night and the horrendous nightmare, I’ve refrained from using them again. Instead, I’ve opted to try and stay awake, which, given the copious amounts of caffeine I’ve been consuming and my insomnia rearing its head like it’d been on holiday these last few weeks, hasn’t been as hard as I thought. Working on the hunch that Valdemar must be asleep for him to infiltrate my dreams, I returned home from work on Tuesday and Wednesday and caught a few hours of sleep from five until ten, which seemed to work.
But I’m paying for it today. My body feels sluggish, not conforming to what my addled brain wants it to do. My limbs are heavy, my eyes stinging, and no amount of make-up could hide the dark circles.
