Christopher MacRae woke up with a jolt, sweating and out of breath. He sat up in bed and peered into the darkness until he had assured himself that he was in a safe place. The glow of his alarm clock illuminated nothing out of the ordinary. But, as always, the numbers angered him. He had used them to count the minutes—hours—of wasted time far too often.
He shivered and felt the hairs on his arms lift. A howling wind seeped in at the edges of his bedroom window, but the room was otherwise secure. He convinced himself to lie back down and hoped to find enough inner calm to go back to sleep.
Alana, his wife, rolled over and tucked her arm around him. "You okay?"
"It's nothing."
"Then why are you shaking?"
"It's cold in here, that's all," he lied.
"You sure?"
"Yup."
They both closed their eyes and he began stroking her silky hair. Deep down, he wanted to tell her about his recurring nightmares, getting worse by the night. She would offer sympathy and support even if she could never truly understand. Then again, he didn't want to scare her or make her worry more than usual. He had already begun to feel discouraged by the way she looked at him. Her eyes would fill more with pity than anything else.
Chris fell into a state of light sleep, but the battle in his mind raged on.
He was a soldier again, wandering around a war-torn wasteland. It was sand and destruction as far as he could see in any direction. The sun was a fiery sliver on the horizon. In what remained of the light, nothing was what it should have been. What he knew, what he'd been through, it was all useless here.
An eerie dusk settled in. And he had the sneaking suspicion he was going in circles.
A hooded figure emerged from behind the twisted remains of a car he swore he had passed before. Chris reached for his gun, but his holster was empty. Dropping to his knees, he scrambled to find some object he could use as a weapon.
He came across . . . a sword? It was smaller than the length and width of his pinkie finger. What good would that do?
He dropped it. He didn't even get a good look.
Embrace it. It's who you are.
It was a woman's whisper. A girl's, perhaps. He had this sense he had heard her before, but he couldn't place the when or why. Or recall what was said from dream to reality or dream to dream.
She didn't mean him harm. That's all he knew. She was trying to help. But she was never outright about anything. Didn't she know he was just a fool?
I am a lowly soldier and I am nothing without a gun.
He kept looking for one. Digging. He couldn't find anything, not even the miniature sword he had dismissed.
The sand swooshed though his fingers. The more he moved it, the faster it fell back in his way. With it came the slow and unmistakable sound of boots approaching.
Chris's head lifted. As the hooded figure closed in upon him, he had the sensation he was shrinking. Its eyes—molten red and possessed—kept getting bigger and angrier.
Did evil have a face?
He wasn't ready to find out. His eyes tore open and he was looking at the ceiling of his bedroom once again.
Believing sleep was a lost cause, he sat up, moved to the side of the bed, and grabbed his sweatshirt from the floor. He sorted front from back, in from out, and threw the sweatshirt over his head. Just as his head popped through the neck hole, he heard something whiz by his ear. "What the . . . ?" He struggled to free his hands through the arms of the garment.
"What's wrong now?" Alana groaned.
"Did you hear that?"
"Hear what?"
"Never mind."
"You were probably dreaming again."
"This time I know I was already awake," Chris replied, slightly agitated.
Then he heard another sound, a vibration followed by a familiar ping. Alana reached across the bed and picked up his phone from the nightstand.
"There's a text, which is weird. Don't you usually silence it at night?"
He was optimizing a few things on his phone when he was having trouble falling asleep . . . the first time. It wasn't like him to be that careless. But it was possible he had an off moment and hit something wrong. Life seemed to be full of those lately.
She shrugged and used her thumb to bring it up. "It's from Joe." She leaned over and held out the phone for him.
Chris wasn't convinced that the first noise he'd heard had been his phone. The timing was off, and the high-pitched buzz had been like a bullet in motion, but without the initial bang.
He scanned the room hesitantly. Then he took the phone out of his wife's hand.
Merry Xmas! Hope the kids liked the package.
The message was uniquely Joe for two reasons. First, the odd timing. It was four in the morning in Massachusetts, three hours earlier in Joe's time zone—and Christmas had been the day before. Second, the disconnect. Chris and Alana's two children—girl and boy twins, Morgan and Ryan, four years old—had received no package from their uncle.
Chris rubbed his tired eyes. "Yeah, Merry Christmas," he mumbled. The text wasn't an ideal holiday greeting, but Chris did give his brother a little credit for trying. Maybe by next Christmas, Joe would call or perhaps Chris would be ready to call him.
After ensuring the phone wouldn't disrupt them again, he returned it to the nightstand.
While he took one more look around the room, he toyed with the wedding ring on his finger. His room was as unspectacular as it had always been. With a sigh, he decided to give sleep one last chance.
"What did he want?" Alana asked.
Chris settled into a side position and placed his arm around her. "Nothing that can't wait till it's light out."
"Okay. Love you." She nestled her back against him.
And he kissed her neck underneath her ear. "You too."
⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Fray. Over My Head.
~
"I never knew that everything was falling through.
That everyone I knew was waiting on a cue,
To turn and run when all I needed was the truth. . ."