Page 10 of Middle of the Night

“Why?”

“Because it’s private property and it would be trespassing, which is illegal.”

“But what’s there?” Ethan asked.

“Nothing you’d be interested in.”

Ethan took her word for it and continues to stay away. Unlike other kids his age, he doesn’t find the forbidden tantalizing. He suspects the institute is just like where his dad works, only stuffier.

A noise sounds behind them, startling Ethan and Barkley both. They whirl around in unison, the empty woods suddenly forgotten,focusing now on the emerald lawn stretching between them and the house.

Sitting in the grass a few yards from the hedge that separates Ethan’s lawn from Billy’s is a baseball.

Ethan picks it up, noting the grass stains and Barkley’s bite marks from dozens of previous times the ball has been thrown into his yard. So far this summer, it’s been an everyday occurrence. A secret code, passed between Ethan and his neighbor.

And the message is always the same.

Billy wants to play.

THREE

Scriiiiiiiitch.

I bolt awake at eight a.m., breathless from The Dream.

Twice in one night.

Not a good sign.

At least The Dream isn’t echoing through the bedroom like it did hours earlier. That’s due to both the sunlight pouring through the windows and the roar of a lawn mower tearing across the front yard.

Most suburbs run with the precision of a Rolex, and Hemlock Circle is no different. Mondays are trash day, during which everyone wheels their hulking bins of garbage to the curb in the morning and drags them back to the garage in the evening. The same is done with the recycling every other Friday.

Tuesdays are when the landscaping crews arrive, swarming the cul-de-sac in ear-splitting cacophony. Lawn mowers, weed whackers, leaf blowers. Especially leaf blowers. If suburbia had an official sound, it would be the agitated whir of compressed air blasting across patios and driveways, clearing them of any cut grass blades or stray leaves that dare to rest on their surfaces. When the leaf blowers cease, the resulting silence feels momentarily unnerving. Too quiet. Too abrupt.

For now, though, the lawn mower keeps on trucking, moving from the front yard to the back as I shower, dress, and head downstairs to the kitchen to make coffee. As it brews, I try to shake off my latest encounter with The Dream, which has haunted me since the day after Billy’s disappearance.

It’s always the same, beginning in darkness that’s just starting to recede. My surroundings soon grow clearer. Enough for me to see that I’m inside my old tent. The one Billy was snatched from when I was ten.

But Billy’s still there, asleep beside me.

Above him, running the height of the tent, is a long gash.

Sensing the presence of someone just outside, I peer into the slash, finding only darkness beyond. Whoever it is, I can’t see them, despite knowing they’reright there.

Then I hear it.

Scriiiiiiiitch.

The sound of the tent being sliced, even though that part’s already happened. It’s a delayed noise, just like the way you see the lightning before you hear its accompanying thunder.

That’s when I wake up. Every damn time. The horriblescriiiiiiiitchlingering a moment in whatever room I happen to be in.

Why I keep having The Dream and what any of it means is a mystery I’d love to solve. At first, I assumed it meant that when the tent was slashed, I was at least conscious of it happening, if not fully awake. But I have no memory of hearing it happen. No vague recollection of opening my eyes and seeing the gash in the fabric.

I honestly still don’t know what to make of that. A stranger enteredmyyard, sliced throughmytent, tookmybest friend. Is it possible I could sleep through all of that, noticing nothing, remembering absolutely nothing? The insomnia-racked me of today would say no, but ten-year-old me was a different story. Back then, I slept like the dead.

So the question is: Did I really hear something, see something? Or is The Dream imagined memory, formed by things I know? The tear in the tent. Billy gone. An unknown person responsible for both.

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