Sweet Dreams
TRY AS HE MIGHT, ANDERS SIMPLY COULD NOT GET PUCK OFF HIS MIND.
What Puck had said--about "UFOs" and "aliens"--was really getting to him. Give me a break!, his mind said. How can somebody so educated believe that stuff?
It wasn't that he didn't believe in aliens and UFOs; it was just that he didn't believe they were visiting. Sure, aliens could be living out there somewhere, most probably too far away to be able to reach Earth, no matter how sophisticated they were. And even if they could, why would they be? He knew that he most certainly wouldn't bother with Earth. Why not go check out those Klingons first? I hear they're pretty good at martial arts.
He laughed to himself again. He was lying in bed, Dino already asleep and snoring lightly at the other side of the room; he'd been lying in bed awake at night for the past few days, with just his desk lamp on (it wasn't quite a nightstand lamp, so he called it a desk lamp), shining in his face. Well, maybe not exactly in his face, but just below it; for some reason he didn't think he'd be able to stand that.
From outdoors there came a faint grumble. Anders tilted his head back slightly to look out the window. The leaves on the nearby trees were fluttering, and there were no stars. He sighed and turned back again; thunderstorm on the way. He didn't exactly like thunderstorms; the thunder and lightning were too unnerving for him, no matter how many times he'd gone through one. And Michigan had plenty to offer, especially around this time of year. He sighed again, staring at the ceiling; when he'd enrolled in the exchange student program, he hadn't counted on being sent to Michigan; the only things he knew about it were that it exported a lot of cereal, cherries, and cars, and that it had Detroit. He'd never even heard of Charlevoix, and had had to look it up on a map. Moreover he'd never heard of LRU; but then again, neither did anybody else, it was so small.
It was better than a big, bustling, noisy college though, he thought; although nothing could be as noisy as the thunder. As if to punctuate this thought there was a bright flash outside, followed by a loud boom. Anders jumped. Dino snorted in his sleep, muttered something, and drifted off again.
Anders wished he could sleep so peacefully, if that could be called peaceful. He got up and stretched, though he didn't really feel as if he needed to, and went to look out the window. It was really dark, so he couldn't see much except for the trees swaying; as he watched the ground, though, the lightning flashed again, with a thunderous crack, and he saw something making its way across the lawn far below.
He stiffened automatically. What--? He peered into the darkness, trying in vain to see if there had really been someone down there or not. There was another flash, and then he knew he wasn't just seeing things; there was someone walking across the lawn. Moreover, he could swear it looked like Puck. Now why on Earth would Puck be wandering around in the middle of the night in weather like this? It must be pouring by now. He could even be hit by lightning. Who knows, it had happened before. His curiosity was burning now; he simply had to find out what Puck was doing. He strode over to the other side of the room, grabbed his coat from its hanger, and threw it on as he went out into the hallway and down the stairs.
Cool, wet air blasted in his face as soon as he opened the dorm's front door; he flinched and held his hand to his eyes, stepping outside and pulling it shut, with some effort, behind him. There was no real curfew on campus, though the guys in charge didn't like students wandering around at night; once in a while some strange cases would pop up in the area. None so strange as Puck, though, he thought to himself. He started jogging across the lawn to where he'd last seen Puck, still shielding his eyes from the lash of the rain. It wasn't exactly cold; the humidity of summer had prevented that. He stopped in the middle of the green and looked around. Up above he could see where his window was; a dim light still shone from it, and he realized he'd left his lamp on. All the better. He glanced off to his right. Nobody to be seen. He bent over and squinted at the ground, searching for footprints; in the brief flashes of lightning he could see the grass slightly trampled. He looked off in the direction he'd last seen the figure going in; it was towards the woods behind the college campus, where he knew there was a wooden fort of some kind located. He started running, spitting out water once in a while as the rain was so hard he felt he could even drown in it.
The run there was longer than he'd thought, and by the time he reached the old fort he was panting and exhausted. He stopped and leaned against the wooden planking for a moment to catch his breath, then darted inside to escape the rain. As soon as he got in, a hand closed over his mouth and pulled him behind the door. He tried to shout but it was muffled; then all of a sudden he was let go and fell to the dirt floor. Sputtering, he looked up. Lightning flashed again, and he could see a figure advancing towards him, all dark and shadows and holding out its hand. He squeaked and jumped back, and the figure pulled its hand back as well. There was another flash, and Anders felt stupid as soon as he recognized Puck.
"What are you trying to do?" he hissed.
"I thought you were following me," Puck shot back defensively. "And you were."
"I wasn't trying to kill you or anything!" Anders said, standing up and attempting to brush himself off. It was useless; the dust was now sticking to his wet clothing like mud. "Though I can't exactly say the same for you."
One more flash, only this one was tiny and dim compared to the others. Puck held up a match and lit an old candle set in the wall. They were instantly surrounded by a soft warm glow. He shook out the match, dropped it, and stepped on it, rubbing it into the dirt for safe measure.
"What the hell are you doing out here, anyway?" Anders asked. "I hope you know you're a virtual lightning magnet right now. I read about this guy once, Roy Sullivan or something, and he was hit by lightning about a dozen times--"
"Seven."
"Huh?"
"Seven times, last I heard." Puck sat down on a wooden crate, throwing an old blanket lying nearby over his shoulders with a sneeze. Anders followed suit, choosing the floor as his seat. It didn't really matter if he got dirty; he already was, anyway.
"That doesn't answer my question."
"Was it supposed to?"
"Yes, it was."
"All right then. I couldn't sleep. How's that?"
Anders shook his head. "Uh-uh. Not good enough."
"Okay. I couldn't sleep again. How about that?"
Anders was silent. That, as far as he could tell, was most probably as close to the truth as he wished to get. He finally nodded. "All right. Excuse taken."
"Thank you."
"But when I can't sleep, I don't go walking around in the middle of a storm."
"Neither do most people I know of. As far as I know I'm the only one. Hm, let's try to explain that." He leaned back against the wooden bars. "I don't know... Call it the call of the wild. Getting in touch with nature. Out here I may be crazy but at least I'm not surrounded by any other crazy people."
"Except maybe me."
"Yes, except maybe you."
Anders smiled. He felt himself slowly--very slowly--warming to Puck. He shifted his uncomfortable position on the hard dirt floor and peered up through the wooden planking at the top of the fort. "How old is this place?"
"I'm not sure." Anders was relieved to learn that Puck didn't, in fact, know everything. "Some people've told me it's been here since around the time of the fort on Mackinac Island--you know, when the Indians were still around."
Anders nodded.
"And then I've heard it's rather recent--from the past several decades or so. I tend to go for the second story. I don't think a historical site would just be sitting here of all places."
"Then how old's the college?"
"It was founded in 1955. Before that there was another college here and LRU was built over it so in my mind it's older than that."
Another smile from Anders. The wind was subsiding slightly, not so violent. "Got any weird stories surrounding the school?"
Puck snorted lightly. "Of course. All kinds. There's this haunted streetlight on the corner of Longview and Main."
Anders laughed. "Come on!"
"No, really. It flickers all the time and sometimes it even changes color--from white to blood red to blue and back."
"Maybe it's patriotic."
A shrug. "And then there's the dorm ghost. Everybody says they've felt it around one time or another. This 'presence,' if you will. Frankly I've never felt it."
Anders had to agree, though he was pretty sure he'd been feeling some kind of presence a lot lately.
"They say there was a student here who was murdered right under that streetlight, and that's why it's haunted. They say it was really bloody so that's why the light turns red."
"Then why the blue?"
"I don't know. Maybe she was really blue-blooded."
They burst out laughing together, in the dark.
"And what about the other one?" Anders finally managed to ask.
"A suicide. He jumped out his window." Puck made a falling motion with his hand and whistled like a bomb falling. "Ssssssssssssseeeeeeeeeeeiiiiiiiooooooouuuuuu. Right smack into the ground." He clapped his hand [sic] together to represent a body hitting the pavement. Anders flinched. "It was so messy they could never completely clean it up. And that's why the pavement's stained out front of the dorm."
"I was wondering about that."
They laughed again; it was a pretty morbid subject but they had to laugh about something. Finally Puck sighed and glanced at his watch.
"You should get going back," he said. "Don't you have class in the morning?"
"Don't you?"
"Sure. But I don't sleep much."
Anders nodded; he knew of that already, and he wasn't a nightowl himself. So he got up and tried to dust himself off as best as he could. Outside the rain had mostly subsided, only a small trickle by now. He stiffly held out his hand.
"Nice to have talked with you again, Mr. Benteen," he said formally.
Puck took his hand and shook it with a faint smile. "Same here, Sweden."
Anders left the fort, and Puck, behind; it was only as he was more than halfway to the dorm that he wondered just how he knew Puck was a nightowl. [Note--there should probably be a "soon as" following "only as," or, better yet, it should be "it was only when he was more than halfway..."] He shrugged it off and went back inside, closing the door softly behind him.
He was jogging alongside the highway, trying to get somewhere; there was a meeting he had to go to. He was running pretty fast and not getting tired at all, making good time, but it seemed it would still be quite a while before he reached his destination. There was a roar behind him. He stopped to see a school bus coming his way. It pulled up beside him and stopped, and the door opened. Al Goodwin, the hypnotist, was the driver.
"I'm supposed to take you to a meeting," he announced.
Anders knew this was correct, so he boarded the bus and sat in the front seat, behind Al; they started off again and in no time he was at the meeting site, a big old house surrounded on all sides by tall trees, set back from a long driveway in the middle of the woods. He got out to join several others who were streaming up the wide front steps, also attending the meeting. There were no signs proclaiming just what it was about, though he already knew. That's why he was here.
Inside there was no porch, just a huge room, all old and in grays--it reminded him of what the den of a big game hunter would look like, only without the stuffed animals. If it were fancier there would be a chandelier hanging from the ceiling, it was so big. There were assorted chairs and couches, some padded, some fold-up, none matching because they had all been haphazardly gathered for the meeting. There were about a dozen or so people there, all milling around, trying to find the kind of seat that suited them best. Anders chose a comfortable spot by the back wall in a padded chair, which sat solitary, so he wouldn't be surrounded by people. He noticed Puck wandering around, and motioned him to sit nearby. However, there was no room available, so Puck chose a folding chair near the side of the room, off to Anders's front right. Soon everybody was taking their seats, their already quiet chatter subsiding to a dull murmur.
There was to be no main presenter; they were all there to share their experiences. And they'd all had the same experience. Someone got up and started telling a strange story about how he'd been captain of the Enterprise on Star Trek and how he'd been intercepted by an unknown spacecraft and shot full of holes; his memory had been wiped, and when he'd woken up he was perfectly fine. Anders's interest wavered and he started looking around the room. The weirdness of the situation didn't strike him at all; it was perfectly natural. It was as if the only color in the room came from the clothing of the speakers and the dark red padding of the chairs; the whole house was a study in gray. Nearby was a small coffeetable with a big photograph of a flying saucer; it was huge and detailed, and hovering right outside a window, where whoever had taken the picture had been standing. He was impressed; it was quite good. And he knew it was real; somehow, this fact didn't puzzle him, either. It just was.
The speaker who'd been captain of the Enterprise was being removed; the memory he was reliving had gotten to him so much that he'd fainted, so several other presenters were carrying him out of the room to, Anders knew, a bedroom. The murmur of people talking had started again in the lull; he glanced back at the photograph beside him, and stared at it a very, very long time until the flying saucer, which was on a slight tilt away from him, tilted even more of its own accord.
He felt a sudden pressure in his chest, as if a hand were squeezing his heart; anxiety welled up within him as he felt a familiar flood of emotions take over. It welled up into his throat, and he felt his head begin to spin. He tried to stand up, and put a hand to his head to steady himself.
"Oh, God," he managed to get out. Puck stood up and put his hand on his arm. But it was too late; the world was swirling around him and there was no way to make it stop. The few colors in the room, the grays, the reds, the color of the people's clothing, mixed and broke apart and mixed again into one big lifeless gray, and he felt everything finally disappear as he passed into oblivion. [Note--this dream is vaguely based on one I myself had long ago. I did not take note of it, so I can't remember how close this was to it, exactly. All I recall for certain is the big grayish house, the meeting, something to do with Star Trek, seeing the UFO/flying saucer picture, the UFO tilting, and me suddenly getting all dizzy and afraid.]
He sat up with a start and a gasp in his throat; he was drenched with sweat. Judging from the pale light filtering into the room it was morning already. What a weird dream! He put a hand to his face to try to clear his head--and it came away sticky and wet. He rubbed his fingers together, amazed that he'd been sweating so much, and looked at his hand.
His fingers were covered with blood.
He began to shake; turning wildly, he saw his pillow was stained dark red with blood, and he could feel it dripping down his face, smeared on his cheek. His chest started heaving; he'd never seen so much blood before. And, before he could stop it, a scream welled up in his throat and burst out, shattering the stillness of the room.
Dino sat up in bed immediately, his eyes wide and his mouth open. He glanced over at Anders and all he could see was his roommate jumping up from the bed, blood all over his face and down the front of his shirt, staring at his hands and screaming. He jumped out of bed himself and, tripping over some clothes discarded on the floor, grabbed up an abandoned shirt and dashed over to Anders.
Of course Anders wouldn't stand still long enough for him to effectively wipe the blood from his face; Dino kept trying to reach him but Anders was flailing around in a panic.
"Anders! Hey, Anders!" he shouted. "It's just a nosebleed, Anders--stand still and I'll clean it up. Stand still, Anders!"
By now he could hear doors slamming out in the hallway, and other voices shouting to each other; his own door opened and several people looked in to see what the matter was. Sidras was one of the first to see what was going on; she screamed herself and, pushing people out of the way, ran off. Some others came in and tried to catch Anders in the tumult. The room had turned into a circus.
Puck appeared, shoving his way through the crowd; he managed to catch Anders by the arm and haul him out of the melee.
"Anders! It's just blood!" he shouted in Anders's face. Anders made no show of hearing him, instead continuing to shriek at his hands. Puck hauled off and smacked him across the face, hard. Instantly there was silence. Everybody else shut up, and Anders stopped screaming, staring at Puck.
There was an uncomfortable pause.
Finally Dino smiled sickly and waved his hands. "It's okay, guys. It's just a nosebleed. That's all. A. C. here, he's kinda hemophobic or whatever, y'know?" He laughed weakly. "That's all it is. You can go now."
There was a muttering; the students drifted out of the room one by one, back to their own apartments. The door shut behind the last one, leaving Puck, Dino, and Anders alone.
The long pause again.
Dino broke it by sighing and wiping his forehead, sitting down on the edge of his bed. "Now what was that?" he asked.
Neither answered for a while. Finally Puck turned to him and said, "Dino--I know it's your room, but could we have a minute?"
"Sure," Dino said, amiably enough. "Just try not to get blood all over my half of the room, okay?" He smiled at the half-joke and left. The door clicked shut, and the ever-present silence settled in again. But before it could make itself at home, Puck broke it by picking up the shirt and wiping at Anders's face, as if he were a baby that had thrown up. For a moment Anders tolerated it, then took the shirt himself and continued cleaning up the blood. Puck brought him the water pitcher and he washed himself off, then looked at his pillow. In the dim light it was dark with half-dried blood.
"What happened?" he asked.
"A nosebleed," Puck replied. "Haven't you ever had a nosebleed before?"
"No. Not like that."
"Well, that's what happens."
Anders shuddered and, picking up the pillow, tossed it in the dirty clothes basket. He peeled off his shirt and threw it in as well, substituting it with another lying nearby. "But is it normal for there to be so much blood?"
Puck said nothing; in his mind it most certainly wasn't normal, but then again, this whole situation wasn't exactly commonplace, either. However, he decided not to alarm Anders and just shrugged.
"Sometimes. It's different for everybody. Don't worry, I used to get them all the time. You've got several quarts to spare."
Anders managed to smile a little at that, though Puck noticed he was a little green around the gills as he attempted to pull the sheets from his bed, which had also been bloodied. "Here, let me do that before you throw up," he offered, taking the sheets from Anders, who smiled again gratefully and sat down on Dino's vacated bed, watching while Puck cleaned up around the room, throwing everything in the basket and then covering it up so Anders wouldn't have to look at it. "I'll have Dino take that down to the laundry room," he said, putting his hands on his hips and looking over his shoulder at it, then turning back to Anders. "You sure you're okay?" he asked, with just the faintest touch of concern in his voice.
Anders smiled again--now it was sickly, like Dino's had been--and nodded. "Yeah," he said. "Like you said, I'll live."
Puck smiled now. "Well, you'd better get down to the shower rooms and clean off better. It's going to be a long day. Would you mind coming over to the Hub after school today?"
Anders frowned a moment, thinking, then shrugged. "No, why?"
"I want to show you something. Now you get ready for class. See you later." He opened the door and left, Dino coming in after him and shutting the door.
"What was that all about?" he asked, dying from curiosity. It seemed to him that now everybody was in the midst of some medical drama.
"Nothing," Anders replied with a sigh, running his fingers through his hair as he straightened out his bed as best he could, considering it had no sheets, and studying the bloodstained mattress with a slightly queasy feeling. "Nothing at all."
And his mind said to him, That's a lie.
He did as Puck had asked, and came by the Hub after the three o'clock classes had ended. He already had a vague idea of what Puck wanted to show him; it probably had to do with UFOs, the [sic] thought with an inside laugh. Of course. He didn't know Damon Barrymore too well, but he knew of his reputation well enough, and decided the two had probably been hanging around each other too long. Is UFOria contagious? He laughed again at the joke.
Puck sat outside, waiting for him; as Anders strode across the lawn he could see him glancing at his watch as if impatient. Puck looked up and, seeing him coming, stood up and walked over to meet him.
"Do you have a car?" he asked.
Anders frowned. "Yes."
"Well, mind to take a little ride?"
"Where to?"
"An address I know. There's someone I want you to meet."
Anders snorted. "Why are you being so secretive? Just tell me about him!"
"You have to meet him first. Now about that car?"
"Oh, all right," Anders muttered. He hated being pressed. "Follow me. I hope you've got good directions."
"Don't worry, I do," Puck replied, and they walked away again for Anders's car.
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