Grey Haven (Book 1: The Dreamer Chronicles)

When I opened my eyes, the pain in my back doubled. The sensors that were always attached to my temples when I slept throbbed with the headache that had formed between dreaming and wakefulness. I put a hand to my head and thought about the fight and the shade. It made me angry enough to set aside my pain.

With a yank, I pulled the sensors off my head and rolled out of bed. It was then that I noticed my sheets were soaked with blood. The injuries I had gotten from the crawler were not limited to the dream, though I hadn’t noticed the blood before. It was part of being a dreamer. We didn’t wake up with only a racing heart after an outlandish nightmare. We felt the effects of the dreams we walked in as if we were there in person. It made dreaming deadlier and infinitely more exciting.

I started to gather the sheets up, determined to keep my injuries to myself, but I wasn’t fast enough. Harry opened my bedroom door without knocking and stepped inside.

Harry was thirty, though the hard lines on his face made him look older. I had heard stories of his time as a dreamer, but the stories were all I had to go on. Harry wasn’t one to share his personal life with anyone, especially people under his supervision. Even around his reluctance to talk, everyone knew he had been one of the best dreamers of his age, until a mission had gone wrong. I didn’t know what he had done, but it had been enough to sideline him from fighting permanently. The most Harry saw of his past life was watching me and the other four girls I lived with fight shades in the dreamworld. It was his job to make sure the shades we faced were not above our ability. It was his fault I had nearly died.

I glared at him, demanding an explanation. He ignored my unspoken question. He didn’t care that I was angry; he turned me to look at my back instead. I slid away from his touch and crossed my arms in stubborn determination. Harry sighed once, acknowledging in that sigh that I wouldn’t let him look at my injuries until he spoke. He pulled out a silver flask from his coat pocket and took a drink. He screwed the top back on slowly, taking his time to find his words.

“I don’t know what happened,” he admitted.

“That makes it worse,” I said.

“I’ve been monitoring that man for a while,” Harry said. “There was no hint the shade was that strong. I would have known.”

“Maybe you should have looked harder,” I said. “Or at least not so much in the bottom of your flask.”

He didn’t like my accusation any more than he liked my tone but a flash of anger in his eyes was the only outward sign of it. “Kid, I do my job,” Harry said. “Now turn the hell around and let me patch you up.”

I considered refusing his help, my anger white-hot, but the pain was getting worse. Too, I didn’t want to be late to my first class of the day. Mr. Vimer didn’t appreciate tardiness or excuses, even if I was injured. The last time I had been late to class I had been forced to do an obstacle course known only as the gauntlet. Twice. I wasn’t eager to face the course again.

Reluctantly, I turned and allowed Harry to look at the wounds the crawler had left in my back. He inspected me with efficient touches, then left the room. A minute later, he came back with antiseptic and a bandage. The swipe of the antiseptic was sharp and bitter. I forced myself to stand as still as possible as he worked, though it took a lot of effort to keep from crying out.

In my six months at Grey Haven, it was only the second time I had been injured. It was two times too many. I vowed not to let it happen again. Not warning me about the shade was Harry’s fault, but turning my back on the crawler was mine. I knew better, and the shame was almost as bitter as the antiseptic.

When Harry finished, I turned away to search out breakfast and shower. I didn’t want to look at him. It would only make me angrier. He stopped me at the door. “Julie…” he said. “I’ll find out what happened. I promise.”

That made me look at him. His eyes appeared to be as indifferent as ever, but I knew he meant what he said. Harry took the rules of guardianship and our safety seriously.

“I know,” I said, reluctant in my anger.

As I left the room, he sat down on my bed and took another swig from his flask. His eyes were thoughtful, though, and I sensed him trying to figure out how he would keep his promise.

There were five rooms in addition to mine off the main hall. Four of the rooms were identical to mine. They each held a bed, dresser, bathroom, and a monitor connected to the sensors we wore at night. They were the rooms of the other four dreamers I lived with. The last room closest to the living room was Harry’s room. I had never been in there, but I had heard enough from the others to know that two of the walls were covered with monitors. There were always dreams playing out on the screens and new missions being downloaded to his computer for us to do.

I didn’t understand what technology helped them stay tapped into people’s dreams, but I didn’t really care. I just cared about doing what I was supposed to and staying out of trouble. Dreaming meant I had a roof over my head, money to spend, and food in my belly. That’s all I really needed to know. It was good enough for now.

The hall opened out to a living room that had a sofa, a loveseat, and a chair. A flat-screen television was on the wall next to the front door. Beyond the living room was another smaller room that held a table and six chairs. It was where we were supposed to do our homework. It was a room that didn’t see much use from me.

To the right of the living room was the kitchen. Another table for six was tucked by a wall to the right of the doorway. Countertops, the stove, refrigerator, and microwave were to the left. My roommates and fellow dreamers, Dana, Jen, and Lisa, were at the table.

Dana had black hair and dark features that stood out sharply from the artificially blonde hair of her best friends, Lisa and Jen. They had been at Grey Haven for six years, though we were all eighteen. Those years of fighting shades had brought age to their faces but not a lot of maturity. They had the personalities of fishes, which may have been unfair to fishes.

They were talking about the fights they had faced in the night, trying their best to one-up each other. Dana’s voice filled up the space more than the others did. She was winning the competition. Their conversation broke off when they saw me. I felt them judging me, rightly concluding at the blood on my clothes that I had made a mistake and had paid the usual price.

My other roommate, Carrie, was leaning against the counter, removed from the others as she read from one of her textbooks with laser focus. She had bright red hair, blue eyes, was tall and lanky, and had a warm tan that was proof of her summer spent in Florida. She didn’t notice me as I joined her.

“Jesus, what happened?” Dana asked me. “You lose a fight with a pillow?”

Jen and Lisa snickered, and Carrie finally looked up from her book. Carrie noticed the faint scratches on my arms and the bandage under my shirt. She also saw the others staring at me with a mixture of fascination and hate. They wanted the truth to have gossip to tell their friends. I knew the story would spread like wildfire. Carrie was also curious, but it was different, focused in love and concern rather than maliciousness.

Carrie eyed Dana contemptuously. “How about you mind your business?”

“And stop being an asshole,” I added.

Dana’s face twisted with rage. “I would watch your mouth,” she said.

“Or what?” I asked. “You’ll beat me up? We can all fight, Dana. It’s sort of the point.”

Dana’s expression turned mocking as she sized me up again. “Some of us better than others,” she said.

“Would you like to try me?” I asked.

I stepped closer to the table, daring her to stand. Jen and Lisa watched Dana for what to do, while Carrie shifted positions behind me, no longer casual. She disapproved of fighting over such a trivial insult, but she also had my back. She always did. Dana and I stared at each other, daring the other to attack first. Dana’s brown eyes burned with anger.

“No, she wouldn’t,” Harry said in his emotionless voice as he walked into the kitchen.

Dana’s mouth closed over her retort. She thought extraordinarily little of Harry, but she was never rude to his face. She knew better than to insult her guardian. It was only practical. What we thought of Harry didn’t matter. What mattered was that he made sure we stayed safe while dreaming. That meant doing what he said.

“You’re right, Harry. Unlike the orphan, I have nothing to prove,” Dana said. “Come on,” she added to Jen and Lisa.

Jen, Lisa, and Dana glared icily as they left the kitchen. Dana passed as close to me as she could get without touching me. I returned their glares with one just as fierce. When they were gone, I leaned against the counter next to Carrie, feeling the weight of Dana’s insult more than I normally would have if I hadn’t been hurt and aching. Harry sat down at the table and started eating the breakfast that was laid out on the table. Carrie and I ignored him. He preferred it that way.

“Don’t worry about it,” Carrie said when they were gone.

“Yeah, sure,” I said.

“What did happen?” she pressed.

I told her about my mistake with the crawler and the unexpected shade. Her eyes went wide with surprise. She glanced at Harry several times throughout the story, a part of her blaming him as I blamed him.

When I finished talking, she set aside her surprise and did her best to be encouraging. “Hey, at least you won,” she said.

“I guess,” I said.

Carrie shut her textbook and glanced at the clock over the kitchen door. “I know what will cheer you up…”

“Tommy?” I asked.

Carrie nodded with a smile on her face. It wasn’t just the fact that he was typically cheerful, full of conversation, and always knew the right thing to say when I was too inside my own head that made Tommy amazing. No matter how bad of a night I had, his was always worse. Every morning he had a comic story of how he had come inches away from death. It was a strange way to be cheered, but it always put things into perspective.

“Yeah,” I agreed.

I poured a glass of orange juice, grabbed a granola bar from the cupboard, and walked back down the hall behind Carrie. Carrie retreated behind the first door after Harry’s and I went back to my room to get ready for the day. I ate the granola bar in a rush and took a hurried shower. I was eager to get out of the house and put distance between my room, the blood-soaked sheets Harry had finished taking off my bed, and the mistake I had made.

When I was dressed, I met Carrie in the hall. She immediately went into a monologue about homework, worrying about the assignments we had to turn in during the day. I let her talk, not as interested in homework as I was the real work we did at night. To me, homework was nothing more than a continuation of the illusion of normalcy Grey Haven portrayed to the outside world.

The people in the nearby town of Sweetbriar thought we were a school for the academically gifted. While there were plenty of classes on the typical subjects – math, science, English, ad nauseum – there were also unusual subjects, such as self-defense, weapons training, shade history and dream manipulation techniques. Those were the subjects we were not allowed to mention to someone who wasn’t part of the school. Most of the younger dreamers took the normal subjects alongside introductory courses on shades, until they could fight the more difficult shades.

My classes focused solely on fighting shades, but that was only because I had a lot of catching up to do. It wasn’t unusual for someone my age and Carrie’s to be brought to the school, but that didn’t mean they went easy on us. We were expected to learn quickly. We weren’t kicked out if we didn’t learn – the consequences were harsher than that. Those who didn’t adapt quickly ended up dead. It was a simple, effective reminder to be the best we could. Though, sometimes, our best wasn’t always good enough.

The wind outside the house was cool and crisp. With the wind came the sense of autumn closing in on the mountains. The green of summer was slowly starting to fade to the golden tones of fall. The sun was doing its gentle best to warm the mountains, but it couldn’t stop the chill from permeating the morning and my bones.

At first glance, our house looked like it belonged in suburbia. A small street ran in front of a square, grassy yard. Houses identical to ours in color and design lined the street. The neat rows went on for acres. Not every house on the thirty acres of land that made up the school were occupied, but most of them were. Mrs. Z, the manager of Grey Haven, was always searching out new recruits. I didn’t know how she tracked us down, but there was never a lack of new bodies to join the fight against the shades.

The streets were hilly and curvy, reflecting the mountain terrain. Though the roads were mostly circular, and many ended in cul-de-sacs, the main roads ended up in two places – the exit, where a large gate separated us from the dirt road to town, and the large castle-like building that was the school proper.

The streets were already full of people headed to the school. Some of them waved at Carrie and me as we walked outside, though no one stopped to chat. Everyone was eager to get out of the chilly air and talk with their friends before they were forced into classes for the day.

A bicycle rack was outside the front door. Dana, Lisa, and Jen’s bicycles were already gone. My bike was straight from the sixties, complete with a basket on the front. I had bought it in town, not long after my arrival at Grey Haven when it was clear that the younger students weren’t allowed to have cars on campus. It was better than walking the two miles to school.

Dana’s words were still on my mind as I threw my bag into the basket and followed Carrie up the steep incline toward the school. I had told the others about being an orphan before I had known Dana’s character. I had never met someone so eager to use my lack of family as an insult; where I had come from, no one cared about your past or even your name. To Dana, your family’s history in the dreamer community was everything. It was a mistake she had yet to let me live down. Her words about my parentage didn’t bother me as much as the idea that she thought I had something to prove. It was possible she was right. And all I had proven by my injury was that I wasn’t as trained as I thought I was. I wasn’t learning as quickly as I needed to. I was weak. Weakness meant death.

Carrie and I were two streets over from our house when we noticed a large crowd gathered around a house. I hadn’t learned all the street names or who lived where, but I did know what the crowd meant. Someone had lost a fight. Someone had died. It happened more often than we liked to talk about, but it was always big news when it did. It was a sober reminder that our task wasn’t an easy one.

People were talking in low voices, and their faces were somber, scared. Several dreamers wove through the crowd, sharing what had happened, as if they knew more than the rest of us. Carrie and I came to a rolling stop without having to discuss our intentions.

A boy of fourteen or fifteen was standing near us, eyeing the house with grave seriousness. Carrie tapped him on the shoulder. “Who was it?” she asked. “Do you know?”

“Yeah, a girl in my class,” he said.

“Do you know what…?”

Carrie’s words were cut off as Mrs. Z. walked out of the house. The crowd went silent. We watched her, hoping for news, reluctant to ask for it.

Mrs. Z,’s face was smooth and unlined. She was one of the few I had met so far that showed no age from dreaming. She didn’t say how she was though, and no one was stupid enough to ask. She had black hair, touched with grey, which she always kept up in a bun. She wore a pantsuit and had a purse in her hand. It was easy to mistake her for a principal of a school for the academically gifted. Until she got angry.

Behind Mrs. Z. was a woman who was close to Harry’s age and who was also a guardian. The girl who had died had been her responsibility. The woman’s eyes were red, and tears had yet to dry on her face. Her hair was wild, a symptom of running her hands through it repeatedly in agitation.

Behind the pair was a man. He had black glasses, black hair, and mahogany brown eyes. He was older than I was, though maybe twenty at the most. He was someone I always associated with Mrs. Z., though he didn’t generate the same level of respect and fear that Mrs. Z. did. His name was Bernard and he was Mrs. Z’s assistant. His normally smug expression was overly somber as he walked through the door.

Mrs. Z. gestured the woman forward, to a car that was waiting at the curb. The crowd parted obligingly, and the woman stumbled forward without looking at us. Mrs. Z. followed her, while Bernard hurried ahead to open their doors before they reached the car. Mrs. Z. paused when she reached the car and turned back to face us. “Services for your classmates will be held tomorrow,” she said. “More information will be posted in the hall later today. Counselors will be available to anyone who needs one.”

She slid into the back seat next to the woman, slammed her door shut, and Bernard pulled away from the curb with careful precision. I knew the woman would have to face a week of questions and evaluation, to be certain she wasn’t at fault. It was typical when someone died. I couldn’t imagine being in her place.

Carrie’s thoughts were on the girl who had died. My thoughts were on how close I had come to joining her. After the night I’d had, it was easy to imagine a similar crowd gathered outside my house and Harry being led off to face questioning.

“Damn,” Carrie said.

“Yeah,” I agreed.

“This is a house for fourteen-year-olds,” Carrie added.

Fourteen was impossibly young. It was rare for the younger students to die; those over seventeen were responsible for fighting the more difficult shades. It made the news worse.

Carrie frowned at me, considering. “Did she say classmates? Plural?”

“I think so,” I said.

“Who else died?” Carrie asked nervously.

I didn’t want to contemplate that question yet. I needed something good. “Tommy will be waiting,” I said instead.

Carrie blinked to clear the question from her mind. We would have to wait for news, though waiting was relative. The rumors would move fast.

“Right,” Carrie agreed.

We walked away from the crowd, where people had started talking again with the departure of Mrs. Z. Their words were full of speculation and doubt. They wanted to understand what had happened. They needed to know if it was a mistake of the guardian or the dreamer. Others had caught on to Mrs. Z.’s words and were buzzing with fear and uncertainty.

Everyone knew the cost of failing. It wasn’t just the person on the other end of the nightmare we could lose to the shades. It was our lives. It was something we had to consider every night before we went to bed. No matter what had brought us to the school, we were all determined not to have a similar crowd gathered around our door. But sometimes all the determination in the world couldn’t help you if your enemy was too strong or if you made even the simplest mistake. The reminder was bitter.

Tommy was waiting at a roundabout for us. He was riding in circles, bored and eager to exercise his excess energy off, reluctant to stay in one place. He had shaggy light-brown hair, brown eyes, and darker skin that hinted at his mixed Latino heritage. He was our age, but his lean frame and boyish features gave the impression of youth. The first thing I noticed about him as we rode up was the bandage on his face. It covered his cheek. Despite proof of what had to be a painful injury, he smiled and waved brightly when he saw us. His happiness was quickly tempered by the news that was already circling the school. “Did you hear about the deaths?” he asked, somber.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Sad,” he said, eyes full of pain.

“What happened to your face?” Carrie asked.

“He was born,” I replied.

“Ha. Ha,” Tommy said dryly. “Negative five hundred points for lack of originality, Jules.”

“A shade?” Carrie pressed.

Tommy held up a hand to prepare us for his story. His expression was already full of drama. “All right, get this…it’s not even funny,” he said.

He told us about his night and his injury. A shade hadn’t caused it, as I had assumed. He had done it by running into a mirror in a funhouse. The glass had shattered and cut into his face. His guardian had been extremely disappointed. By the end of the story, Carrie and I were laughing so hard that it was difficult to stay on our bikes.

“It’s not funny!” Tommy cried, though he laughed as well. “Seriously, that glass was out to get me. I think I’m cursed.”

“I think you’re clumsy,” Carrie said.

“I am not,” Tommy said.

“Last week you almost got killed by a crawler because you tripped over your own feet,” Carrie pointed out.

“The ground was uneven,” Tommy said.

“Your feet are uneven,” Carrie said.

They continued to argue over Tommy’s clumsiness as we rode to school. They bickered back and forth with comfortable, friendly familiarity. It was how they started most mornings. I listened to them with a small smile, forgetting my unexpected fight and the shame I carried over the crawler.

As they argued, the school came into view. It was at the top of the mountain, so that you could look in any direction and have an excellent view of the valleys below. Reds, oranges, and golden yellows were spread out like a sea, broken only by patches of evergreens. Large pine trees lined the road leading up to the school, creating a natural tunnel that dimmed the sun.

The school was massive, large enough to house all the students, faculty, and guardians at Grey Haven at once. It had towers and uneven, exaggerated levels that made it appear larger than it was. The uneven design and the strange mixture of stone and brick on the exterior made me think the structure had grown from need rather than planned design. There was an overall chaotic feel to the structure, chaos that reflected the darker purpose of the school.

People were milling around on the front lawn while they waited for their first class to start, shoulders hunched against the chilly air. Couples were pressed close and groups were being extra loud to attract the notice of anyone willing to look. Others, who had gotten old enough to see Grey Haven as the work they were paid to do, were inside, in another part of the school. They had been in class before the rest of us had even thought about waking up. They were the dreamers who would be leaving the school soon, to go out and protect people all over the country. They dealt with shades far stronger and far tougher than the one I had unintentionally faced.

Dana, Lisa, and Jen were near the steps to the front door, holding court, when we arrived. Dana was the loudest in the group. When she saw me, she started whispering to the others. I had no doubt she was talking about my injuries, making up lies about what had happened. The stories that would spread wouldn’t be flattering. It would have been powerful ammunition had I cared what the others thought of me.

Jen and Lisa were hanging onto their boyfriends, displaying them as normal people would display new clothes or a car. Their boyfriends were cut from the same cloth. The group was full of rising stars at Grey Haven; they didn’t have nearly as far to go as Carrie, Tommy, and I did before they joined the others at the back of the school.

Dana’s boyfriend, Ben, walked up as Carrie, Tommy, and I got off our bikes. Dana’s gossipy whispers cut off abruptly. She kissed him, beaming brightly up at him when he pulled back. Carrie’s face turned red and she became fixated on her handlebars.

Ben and Dana had been dating for as long as anyone at Grey Haven could remember, and Carrie had liked Ben from the instant she had laid eyes on him, not that they had spoken yet. Out of Dana’s group, Ben’s star was the brightest. Everyone knew he was the best fighter in our age group, probably the best fighter in the school. For me, his star was dimmed by the fact that he had chosen Dana as a girlfriend. Carrie was better than someone who would willingly choose Dana. I had tried to tell Carrie that several times, but it was no use. She was as stubborn as I was.

Mrs. Z.’s car was at the front entrance of the school. The car was empty, but their arrival had started a whirlwind of gossip. As Tommy, Carrie, and I secured our bikes on the rack we heard a group of girls talking. They were neighbors to the girl who had died and had heard the story first.

As we passed them, I heard one of them say, “…said she met up with a shade too powerful for her last night. Her guardian should have known better. Why didn’t she do something to stop it?”

Her words startled me. Shockwaves of doubt and confusion rippled through my mind, whispering that there was more than I had assumed in the attack of the shade. Carrie eyes narrowed thoughtfully as she contemplated the implications of the girl’s words against the story I had told her.

How strange was it that I had the same situation during the night? How many other people had also run into an unexpectedly powerful shade? Were the shades getting more powerful, or was something else going on?

The answers felt deadly important.