( crossfire! )¹ ─ ᵗʷᶤˡᶤᵍʰᵗ ✓

chapter eleven.

( CHAPTER ELEVEN )
WHEN IT'S REAL

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

14 MARCH 2008

CARTER DIDN'T KNOW WHAT TO FEEL. Shock, confusion, scared even? She didn't know. None of it seemed to add up. She had always known she was different from everyone else. She had known it ever since the fire. She spent so much time hiding away in the dark, under the protection of isolation and away from danger. After a while, when the night terrors stopped, she thought the only bad things that could happen were a product of reality and thus could only happen in reality. Carter no longer believed that bad things could get her in her dreams, not while she was sleeping in the comfort of her own bed and the safety of a locked house. Until, well... Until the poor man who was killed in her nightmare by the blond man, the fiery red-head, and the man with dreads came true.

Bella had called her not too long after she had found out what happened for herself. On her and Edward's way back to Forks, they were passing the police station. The parking lot was filled with the usual cop cars, their red and blue lights flashing. Bella had said that Edward's father, Carlisle, was there, too. The only reason they had pulled into the lot, though, was because Charlie Swan was still there and Bella wanted to know why. It turned out that the police lights were flashing and Carlisle was there because one of the policemen was found dead in a boat near his home. The other police officers were investigating Waylon's work desk for clues as to what could have happened to him while Carlisle had been examining his corpse.

Hearing about the boat is what had sent Carter into a small panic, but it only increased when she learned the man's name: Waylon Forge. Carter knew Waylon because of her mother. They were old friends and Carter was still very young when she had met him for the first―and last―time before the fire took place. It was then that she figured out why the man in the boat had seemed so familiar to her and why she wasn't able to put a name to his face.

Though his death was shocking, it wasn't what had made Carter so scared. It was the fact that she had dreamt of his death over and over and over again before it actually happened. It was the fact that she saw who had killed him and could do nothing about it. If she told anyone, especially the police, about the three murderers and how fast they had moved and that they had killed Waylon because they were "hungry," she would surely be sent away to a mental institution. When Bella had asked about Waylon's cause of death, he answered by simply stating it was an animal attack. Of course, Carter knew instantly that it was bullshit. But she couldn't very well tell Bella that without sounding strange, now could she? Carter didn't even know where she would begin to explain how she knew the truth to her friend if she ever told her.

Bella had apparently inquired further, asking the doctor if the "animal" that had killed Waylon was the same one that had killed a security guard at the Grisham Mill in Mason County over a week prior. Carlisle had lied (quite successfully since Bella seemed to believe him) by saying that, yes, it most likely was the same animal. Carter wasn't told much else about the situation, seeing as that was the same extent Bella knew of it herself.

Since then, the two hadn't spoken too terribly much. Only two days had passed and in those two days Bella was busy comforting her father over the death of his close friend while Carter had locked herself away in her room, staying up, refusing to sleep, only leaving the safety of her room to use the bathroom and to get some snacks and drinks when she grew hungry. She avoided Robyn at all costs, afraid something unwanted would blurt right out of her mouth if she stopped long enough to talk. Carter spent hours upon hours doing research, ignoring the vibrating of her phone whenever she got a text or a call until the sound grew too annoying for her to concentrate and she answered it. But all those hours of research added up to nothing since she barely had anything to go off of in the first place.