CHAPTER 27
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Thump-thump-thump.The sound reverberated through the house as I padded quietly down the hall to the kitchen, my nightgown swishing around my ankles. I passed Father Jordan’s bedroom, and could hear the animalistic groans and growls coming from within. I winced as the bed hit the wall with a particularly aggressive whack, and hurried away from the noises. I needed to get a class of cold water to soothe my dry, parched throat.
“Tabitha?” The voice of a little boy greeted me, and I nearly jumped out of my skin with as quiet of a yelp as I could manage and whirled around to the source of the voice.
“Jamie, you scared me!” I scolded the blonde boy who was sitting at the kitchen table in the dark. Despite being thirteen years old, his legs were still too short to reach the floor, and swung back and forth underneath him as he watched me with dark eyes.
Instead of apologizing for nearly giving me a heart attack, the little boy’s head tilted sideways and he said, “You’re all grown up now.”
His words confused me, what did he mean that I was all grown up? We were the same age! But when I looked down I saw the swell of breasts and the curve of my hips. My hair was also longer than normal, and I realized with surprise that I had, indeed, grown up.
At that moment I realized that I wasn’t awake at all, and I was dreaming. I wasn’t actually standing in Hezekiah Jordan’s kitchen, talking to Jamie.
“You’re just a figment of my imagination,” I told the boy, willing myself to wake up and failing miserably.
Jamie seemed to think about my words for a moment, “That’s probably true. Why are you dreaming about me anyway?”
Was it crazy of me to converse with my own consciousness like this? Yeah, completely. But was it really any different than talking out loud to myself?
I couldn’t help myself and sat down at the table, facing the little boy who had been one of the only friends when I was growing up. “I’m worried that you are doing things. Bad things that aren’t like you.”
It was still insane that Cobb and Theo were looking at Jamie as a suspect in murders of four people. All of my memories of him were of a kind, little boy who laughed easily, and was kind to everyone around him.
“Why isn’t it like me?” He asked, “Do you know me as an adult?”
“Well, no....”
“Then why wouldn’t I do the things you are worried about? Are you the same girl that you were in the compound?” Suddenly it was no longer Jamie sitting in front of me, but Gary, dressed in a pair of khaki shorts and a tie-dyed t-shirt.
“Kiddo, you put too much stock into your memories of others. People change. Jamie Jordan has had ten years to become a terrible person, just like you’ve had ten years to become someone strong.”
“I know....” I placed my hands flat on the uneven surface of the kitchen table, “I just....”
The sound of a slamming door echoed through the house, and Gary’s smile left his face, “It seems like the rational part of your consciousness is about to be pushed away. Remember: you are safe.”
And with that he just disappeared, leaving me alone at the kitchen table.
“WHO IS OUT OF BED?” Hezekiah Jordan’s voice boomed through the house. Fear tickled its way up my spine as the sounds of stomping footsteps rattled the floor beneath the table. Each step sounded like an explosion as my own personal boogeyman took over my dream, and turned it into a nightmare.
