The old woman shook her head. “It was an old ritual to keep the dream goblins out. I thought it would help.”
“Enough with the dream goblin shit!”
“Mrs. Shepard, you and your husband are in grave danger.”
“Yeah, so you’ve said.”
“I’ve been trying to warn you. Reach you. You need to stay away from that house. You need to stay away from Red River altogether. Your son…”
Angela’s eyes grew with rage. “Watch your tongue, woman…” she said venomously.
“Your son. He isn’t dead.”
Angela’s heart stopped. The air in the room instantly died. For a second, the world around her did not exist. She recalled the pharmacist’s assistant and what Angela thought she’d heard her say: He’s still alive… in your heart. She got the sense that that wasn’t what she’d meant, that the second half of her uninvited opinion was only a cover-up for the first.
“How dare you say that to me.”
“Mrs. Shepard, please. It’s holding him. The dream goblin has him in the Everywhere and it won’t let go until he has you… and the life inside your belly.”
Angela felt her heart skip, stop, and take a full five seconds to start pumping again. “What the hell did you just say to me?”
“You don’t know?”
Her mouth went dry. She could barely speak the word, “No.”
“You’re pregnant. Only a few weeks. Haven’t you been feeling unwell?”
She recalled the three barf sessions on the way up here. “I thought…” Her eyes fluttered. The room began to slide like a carnival funhouse trick. She thought she might be sick again. “I thought that was…”
“You’re pregnant, Mrs. Shepard. It’s the other thing the dream goblin wants. Your unborn child.”
“But how?” She swallowed what felt like a pebble. “I’m on the pill.”
“Hardly a miracle, I’m guessing. Something tells me someone has been messing with your medication.”
Angela shook her head. Medication. The pharmacist’s assistant.
She immediately went for her purse and rummaged around for the prescription bottle. Once she located it, she removed it and quickly scanned the label for its litany of warnings. “May render birth control pills ineffective,” she read, and with the words, her heart plummeted. “Son of a bitch.”
“The dream goblin’s reach extends beyond the dream world, I’m afraid.” The old woman’s eyes narrowed. “It may exist in the Everywhere, but it has agents. Right now, it’s trapped there. But it’s chosen you, marked you, to be its carrier.”
“Carrier?”
“It wants to become you, Mrs. Shepard. That’s all these creatures ever want—a way out of their world and into ours.”
Angela closed her eyes. “Why me?”
“Maybe because you lost him.”
Seething, Angela shot her a warning glance.
“Maybe because you lost yourself,” Rosalyn added. “I know what I say angers you. And it should. But know this—I am not filling your head with falsehoods. What I say is the truth. All of it. And deep down, I know you believe what I am telling you.”
The old woman’s confidence in her story made a compelling argument. As she stood there, Angela couldn’t help but buy into at least a small portion of what she was claiming.
You’re pregnant. It wasn’t like the thought hadn’t crossed her mind while puking roadside. Impossible as the two words sounded to her ears, she knew they held some truth. She felt it. Inside her, grew life. New life. A child. [we do not speak his name]’s brother or sister.
The thought of having a baby, a new responsibility to look after, filled her chest with a familiar sense of comfort.
“I know this is all a lot to take in,” Rosalyn said. “And I want to tell you more. I want you to know everything.” She scooted her chair closer to Angela. At first, she seemed hesitant to reach out and place a calming hand on Angela’s shoulder, but once it was there, she squeezed, a gentle way of letting her know she wouldn’t have to face the maleficent spirit alone. “Let me run up to my room. I have books there. With incantations inscribed in them. They will help us. Together, we can battle this incubus. Send the daemon back to the Everywhere, for good this time. Where it belongs.”
“And…”
“Your boy?”
Angela nodded.
“We will see. The Everywhere is a dark, nasty place. It’s a place that exists between the living and the dead, a place that is and isn’t. When a lost soul travels into the Everywhere, it’s very hard to find its way back. The longer a soul resides in that dismal environment, the less chance it has of returning the same way it left. Once we locate the dream goblin—”
“Locate it?”
“Yes. We have to find it.”
“And how do we do that?”
The old woman shrugged. “It could be anybody. We’ll have to draw it out of hiding.”
Angela shook her head. “Hold up. What do you mean it could be anybody? What are you saying? It’s a person?”
“It very well could be. Someone you know or have met.”
He’s still alive, you know? The pharmacist’s assistant. Not only had the pills she had given her messed with her birth control, but she had said those words with such… knowledge. Like she knew he was alive, and not figuratively. Angela recalled her wry smile as the words had left the girl’s mouth.
“The girl in the pharmacy. She knew. She said exactly what you did. That he’s alive. And my prescription. She gave me the wrong one. Abbie—Dr. Wilson—knew I was on birth control and how important not being pregnant was to me. She wouldn’t have given me something to tamper with that.”
“It could be, Mrs. Shepard. It could be the girl. These creatures usually enjoy influencing someone close to you. It could literally be anyone. But don’t lose sight of who it wants.” Keeping her eyes trained on Angela, Rosalyn tilted her head down. “That person is you.”
Again, she found herself doubting the words falling from the woman’s lips, but she couldn’t find the strength to argue. She needed more from her. She needed to see this thing through, however bat-shit-crazy her ideas sounded. “Okay, what do we do next?”
“Wait here a second. I’ll go get my favorite grimoire.”
Angela sat on the couch and waited for Rosalyn to return. For what seemed like a lifetime, she stared out the bay window, down the cul-de-sac, at her car. She found herself trapped in a daydream of nothing in particular, transfixed by the white cloud of blank thoughts before her. In that moment, she felt weightless. Untethered from gravity. Free from whatever fate that kept her grounded.
About thirty minutes later, she snapped out of her divine reverie. Her vision zoomed out, back into the dim lighting of Rosalyn Jeffries’s living room. She checked her watch and realized how much time had passed. Didn’t she say she’d only be gone a minute? Glancing up the stairs, she listened for movement, rustling from the old woman who seemed to still be digging through her massive collection of spells and books on the occult. Thirty minutes was a long time, massive collection or not.
“Rosalyn?” she called up the stairs.
Angela rose from the couch and padded over to the foot of the stairs. She peered up, staring into the still shadows above. “Rosalyn?” she asked the dark of the hallway, and for a second time she received no answer.
Oh Christ, she thought as she began her ascent. She wondered if she had been so trapped in her empty reveries that she had missed the woman walking back down the stairs. Maybe she had left to retrieve the necessary ingredients to ward off these supposed dream goblins. She hadn’t remembered seeing the Oldsmobile in the driveway, and she debated whether to go back and check that first before going any farther. Screw it, she thought, making her way to the top of the stairs and staring down the hall.