Grey Haven (Book 1: The Dreamer Chronicles)

The streets were deserted. Those who were not in Sweetbriar were focused on the two women and the fight. I fought against a mixture of fear and adrenaline as I held on to Carrie. It had frightened me to see that woman so out of control and so animalistic. There had been something decidedly shade-like about her attack. I wasn’t the only one who thought so.

When we reached the large front doors of the school, Tommy found his voice. “What the hell was that?” he asked.

“She was possessed. Reminded me of the shade I fought,” I said.

Carrie stopped walking abruptly, forcing me to stop with her. Her eyes widened. The blood on her face made her expression look more somber and infinitely more serious. The fear in my chest tightened. Carrie only used that expression when something was wrong.

“What?” I asked.

“You know how there are classifications of shades, right?” Carrie asked.

“Maybe?” I said.

Carrie shook her head at my obvious disregard for knowledge but didn’t nag. “There are four classifications,” she said. “Simple, complex, minor, and major. The simple shades are the ones we usually fight. They’re about emotion and primal urges. They burrow into people’s subconscious and can cause a lot of turmoil, but they don’t really plot or plan. When the simple shades get powerful enough, they become complex shades. Complex shades are still quite primal, but their powers are stronger. The shade that snuck into your dream the first time was complex…A minor shade can plan, manipulate. They’re more human-like. When they possess a person, it’s usually too late. They squash the person until there is nothing left but the body.”

“What about a major shade?” Tommy asked. “What do they do?”

Carrie started walking again. She put her hand back to her nose and didn’t reply. It was proof that we didn’t want to know what a major shade could do. We were silent as we made our way upstairs.

“What are you saying?” I finally asked.

“What if the shade that ambushed you was working for a minor shade and what if the minor shade had another shade take over that guardian? It would explain someone at Grey Haven betraying us. They couldn’t help it.”

“But a guardian is trained,” Tommy pointed out. “They’re trained enough to see through the lies and promises.”

“Maybe she was taken over without knowing the shade was there,” I said. “Could a shade do that?”

“It’s possible,” Carrie said. “Guardians have flaws just like the rest of us. A shade could have taken advantage of that. She might not even know what she’s doing.”

“Or someone here helped the shade take her over,” I said.

“Is that possible?” Tommy asked.

“Yeah, maybe,” Carrie said.

“Mrs. Z. knows something,” Tommy said. “Did you see her face?”

“You should ask her,” I suggested dryly. “I’m sure she’d answer.”

Tommy swallowed heavily and shuddered.

Mrs. Z.’s door was unlocked. Carrie and Tommy hesitated. Neither of them wanted to go inside first. I was forced to take the first step into the deserted room. It felt a lot like trespassing. I sat Carrie in a chair by the desk and retreated to the window to look out. Tommy paced in circles around the desk.

“If that woman is being controlled by a shade, does that mean she’s responsible for killing the others?” Tommy asked.

“I don’t know,” Carrie said. “A guardian would know how to get around unseen, but that doesn’t mean she’s guilty. We don’t know what we just saw.”

“But what’s the purpose?” I asked, thinking of a question that had bothered me since my conversation with Mrs. Z. “Why would someone try to kill newer dreamers? Where’s the logic? They’ll just find new dreamers to take their place.”

“Maybe it was the beginning of a larger plan,” Carrie said. “Maybe their aim is higher.”

“Like Mrs. Z.?” I asked.

“Or the guardians,” Carrie said. “Without the guardians, we would be crippled. And if Grey Haven were crippled, it would be a serious blow to dreamers. Our school is the largest. It trains more dreamers in a year than others can in two. Without it…”

Her words hung over us like a weight. We didn’t want to contemplate what she had just suggested, but it was impossible to escape the truth. Grey Haven wasn’t a permanent stop for me, but I didn’t want to see the school crumble. Its mission was too important. I would protect it for as long as I was here.

‡

It felt as if it took Mrs. Z. forever to come back to her office. Tommy stopped pacing and I turned away from the window when we heard her hand on the door. By unspoken agreement, we shuffled over to stand behind Carrie.

Mrs. Z. walked inside, her step full of purpose. Behind her was Dr. James, the school’s doctor. She was a middle-aged woman with silver-blonde hair and a round body. She mainly treated the severe injuries the guardians couldn’t heal, the injuries that went beyond their expertise. She stayed busy.

Dr. James knelt in front of Carrie and gazed at her kindly. “Let me take a look, dear,” she said.

Carrie removed the hand from her nose. Blood covered her upper lip and chin, and her nose was twice its normal size. Dr. James inspected her with gentle hands. “Don’t think it’s broken, dear, but she got you good. There will be some bruising, and you’ll have some trouble breathing through your nose until everything heals, but you should be fine.”

Dr. James reached into a bag she had been carrying and pulled out a cloth, cotton balls, and a small bottle of pills. She cleaned the blood off Carrie’s face and gave her the pills and the cotton balls for the bleeding. Her work finished, she gathered her things and left the room.

When she was gone, Mrs. Z. circled to her side of the desk but didn’t sit down. She contemplated each of us for a minute. Her eyes lingered on Tommy, who had invited himself along to this meeting. Tommy shifted uncomfortably, but he kept her gaze stubbornly. Mrs. Z. finally sat and leaned forward, mimicking her posture from our first meeting. “What happened?” she asked.

Tommy told the story. His memory of the fight was immaculate. He stuck to the facts, leaving out the guesses we had made.

When he stopped talking, Mrs. Z. leaned back in her chair. “I see,” she said.

“Ma’am, what’s going on…really?” Carrie asked.

“I have suspicions,” Mrs. Z. said, not answering the question.

“Which means you don’t really know?” Tommy asked.

“Tommy!” Carrie chastised him.

Mrs. Z. smiled at Tommy. “It means that someone is playing a subtle game,” Mrs. Z. said.

With Carrie’s explanation of shades in my head, and the woman’s strange attack on her colleague, I thought I understood what Mrs. Z. meant. It was suspicion backed up by the conversation I had overheard in the woods. It was the feeling that the woman’s attack was a little too convenient.

“You think someone is trying to make that woman look guilty of being the traitor,” I said. “When the attack on me failed, they tried to cover their tracks by possessing that woman. They’re trying to fix their mistake, so they can keep doing whatever they have planned.”

“It is one theory I have,” Mrs. Z. said with a small nod. “Though it is foolish to jump to conclusions.”

“How would someone forcibly possess a trained guardian, ma’am?” Carrie asked.

“Any number of ways,” Mrs. Z. said. “There is no way to know without hearing it directly from her.”

“What happens now?” I asked.

“We find out the truth,” Mrs. Z. said.

“That doesn’t sound easy,” I said.

“I’m afraid it’s not,” Mrs. Z. said. “But it must be done.”

“What can we do?” I asked.

“You need to stop digging for answers,” Mrs. Z. said. She took in our surprised expressions with a small smile. “I know you care about your classmates, but your questions draw attention. Please trust that I am investigating this. I will not rest until the guilty party is made to stand for their crimes. In the meantime, I need all three of you to keep your heads down, act normal, and trust me.”

“But-” I tried to protest.

“If I need your help, I will not hesitate to ask,” Mrs. Z. said. “Now, please, go home and rest. If anyone asks you about the woman, explain what you saw without mentioning your suspicions. We do not need the others to panic.”

“What if they should panic?” I asked archly.

Mrs. Z. stood and moved to the door. Her expression was stern. “They’ll hear it from me,” she replied.

There was no arguing with her. Her words were final. We filed out of her office silently. She closed her door with a firm snap behind us.

When we were alone again, Carrie opened the pill bottle and poured out two pills. Her shoulders were tense as she started down the hall. Tommy was equally as disturbed by the idea of doing nothing. I felt drained. Our efforts had been noticed, but they were not appreciated. Mrs. Z. wanted us to let it go. It was like a kick to the head.

“I guess that’s the end of that,” I said.

“I guess so,” Tommy said, subdued.

Carrie’s silence said more than Tommy’s agreement.

“What are you thinking?” I asked her.

“We should do what Mrs. Z. says,” Carrie said reluctantly.

“But?” I asked.

“It sucks,” Carrie said.

“If you want to misbehave, we can misbehave,” I told her with an indifferent shrug.

Carrie’s expression was conflicted. Two urges were at war. The first was to obey her elders and not get in trouble, and the second was to find the truth. She wanted to do both at the same time. “I’ll think about it,” she said.

“About what?” a new voice asked playfully.

We turned as one to Ben. We hadn’t heard him walking behind us. Carrie’s expression turned sheepish at being caught contemplating misbehaving, while I shrugged.

Tommy was more focused on the attack and any answers he could find. “Did you help take the guardians to the infirmary?” Tommy asked.

Ben stepped closer, moving so that he was part of our group, instead of the focus of it. “Yeah,” Ben said.

“How are they?” Tommy asked.

“The woman who was attacked is critical. I think Dr. James can save her, but it’s gonna be tough. A friend of mine works with her, and he said that the other guardian tore into her. She lost a lot of blood,” Ben said.

“And…the other one?” Tommy asked.

“She’s still out cold,” Ben said. “Your kick put her down good,” he added to me.

“Well, if there’s one thing that Julie is good at, it’s getting in fights she shouldn’t be able to win,” Tommy said.

“And then winning them,” Carrie added.

Ben grinned. “Yeah, I’m starting to notice that about you three. Speaking of fights, Dana is out for blood. I think you made her a little jealous with the attention you’re bound to get, and after seeing you with the sandwich guy…”

“Sully,” I interrupted.

“Sully,” Ben repeated. “She doesn’t do well with competition. It makes her vicious.”

“I’m not competing with her,” I said.

“She is with you,” Ben said. “I would accept that before things get messy.”

“Maybe if you didn’t come to my defense when I don’t need you to, she wouldn’t feel the need to compete with me,” I pointed out.

Ben made a face. “You heard about that?” he asked.

“Mm-hmm,” I agreed.

“Should I just say nothing then?” Ben asked.

I shrugged. “If you feel compelled to play hero, keep her from taunting and spreading gossip about other people who are actually afraid of her. They need your help, not me.”

Ben was silent for a moment. His eyes swept the staircase as he thought over my words. Finally, he smiled. I didn’t know if he was impressed or irritated by my dislike of his attempt to protect me from Dana. “Your choice,” he said.

He glanced at Carrie and Tommy again. His eyes lingered on Carrie’s nose, which was still red and swollen. I knew he hadn’t seen the whole fight, but he had seen enough to know that they had saved my life and done their best to stop the woman without killing her.

“Nice work today, anyways,” Ben said.

“Thanks,” Carrie and Tommy said in unison.

Ben waved goodbye, then marched down the stairs at a fast pace. He was gone in a matter of seconds. Carrie stared after him, her expression wistful.

“Why don’t you just talk to him?” I asked. “Here’s how you start the conversation: ‘Hi, how are you?’”

Carrie clomped down the stairs without answering. I shared a grin with Tommy and followed her out of the school. The rain had started again. It came down in a thin, cold mist. I adjusted my jacket, so that the rain wasn’t running down my neck and back and followed the others to Tommy’s house. Our books were still on the yard. Carrie ran to hers and hurriedly stuffed them into her bag.

“Do you want to come over for breakfast tomorrow?” Carrie asked Tommy, doing her best to return us to the neighborhood of normal. “We can finish up your homework.”

“Sure,” Tommy agreed, though I was sure his agreement was only for breakfast, not homework.

Carrie waved a goodbye, then took off on her bike, headed for home.

“What do you think?” Tommy asked, putting his arms across my shoulders.

“I think you should be careful tonight,” I said, poking him in the ribs.

“I’ll do my best,” Tommy said with a playful smile.

“See you tomorrow,” I said, ruffling his hair, which made him stumble away from me. He flipped me off when he had recovered, and I laughed by way of goodbye.

Carrie was already home by the time I made it back. Her bike was neatly parked on the front lawn, next to the porch where it belonged. I threw my bike on the grass next to hers and took a minute to prepare myself. Dana and the others were inside. Their conversation was muted by the barrier of the wall, but her venom seeped through the space between us. She had seen Carrie come home. She was prepared for me.

When I opened the door, they stopped talking. They were in the living room, taking up the sofa and one of the chairs. Dana smiled when she saw me, an ominous sign. She didn’t say anything, however, and I knew she was saving what she had seen in town for the right moment. She was smart enough to realize that no one would be in the mood to hear gossip about me with the fight so fresh in everyone’s minds. They were too caught up in the drama of a guardian attacking another guardian. It wasn’t a reprieve. It was strategy. I thought about Ben’s words and decided that a confession to Harry now would stop her from doing a lot of damage later.

Harry’s door was closed, which wasn’t unusual during the day. Guardians slept during the day to better watch over us at night, but there was no way he was sleeping now, not after that fight.

I knocked twice.

“What?” he barked.

“It’s me,” I said.

There was a pause. Then the door opened, and he appeared in its place. He stared down at me with shadowed eyes. His body blocked most of his room from view, but I saw an open whiskey bottle sitting near his bed. The flicker of monitors lit up the dark room.

“Can I talk to you for a minute?” I asked.

“Go ahead,” Harry said.

“Inside,” I said.

“I’m not good at heart-to-hearts. If you want that, go see a counselor,” Harry said, starting to close the door.

I blocked the door with my foot. “Harry, let me the hell in,” I said.

Harry sighed wearily and finally shifted out of my way. I stepped to the center of the room as Harry shut the door behind me. I surveyed the monitors and equipment curiously. Dreams were playing out on the screen. I wasn’t sure if they were recordings he was re-watching for clues or if they were live feeds. I knew better than to ask.

“You’re lucky I’m a tolerant man,” Harry said.

“Be serious, Harry,” I said, not threatened in the least.

“Are you here to talk about the attack?” he asked.

I hesitated. I hadn’t meant to talk about that, but if Harry knew something, I wanted to know about it as well. Harry was able to read between the lines of my silence.

“Mrs. Z. told you to mind your own business, didn’t she?” Harry asked.

“Yeah,” I agreed.

“Pretty foolish of her,” Harry said. “She doesn’t know how focused you and Carrie can get when you want answers. Doesn’t realize you’ll keep digging for information until you get caught digging where you shouldn’t.”

“I guess not,” I said.

“The truth is that Mrs. Z. is keeping me out of the loop as well,” Harry said. “I’ve made a couple of guesses, but that’s it. I tried to tell her we should be hunting the traitor at Grey Haven, but she got cryptic on me, told me to worry about my dreamers instead of hunting down ghosts.”

“What guesses have you made?” I asked.

“Someone at Grey Haven is helping a shade kill dreamers, and it’s not the woman you fought,” Harry said. “This shade, whoever he is, has other shades working for him, I guess you could say. He’s beyond dangerous and is only getting more dangerous by the minute. Possessing and attacking a guardian is serious, and I have a feeling he’s only getting warmed up. It’s personal, for whatever reason. If this keeps up, students are going to panic. They’ll start leaving. The school will get harder to maintain. Once we’re weak, it’ll be easy to end us forever.”

“We sort of guessed most of that,” I said.

I was frustrated that Harry didn’t seem to know any more than I did. I had hoped he would know something else, something that would help us in our search. It was just proof that Mrs. Z. and the others were hunting for a shade in a stack of shades without the benefit of a compass to get them to the proper stack.

“Have you guessed that the shade might be stronger than Mrs. Z. is letting on?” Harry asked.

“A minor shade, right?” I asked.

Harry didn’t answer my question directly. His eyes caught on the bottle of whiskey on the floor wistfully. At the look, chills erupted on my arms. His reaction was worrying.

“I heard she called in Chris. She wouldn’t have done that unless she was worried,” Harry said in a carefully neutral voice.

“Who’s Chris?” I asked.

“He’s a shade hunter,” Harry said. “And someone you should steer clear of.”

“We all hunt shades,” I pointed out, confused.

“He hunts shades that have possessed people already. The ones who have slipped through the cracks,” Harry clarified. “Mostly.”

“Oh,” I said. “What about the woman that attacked us? Do you know how she was possessed?”

“Someone who knew what they were doing arranged it so that the shade had a direct line into her brain,” Harry replied.

“How?” I asked.

“Someone made the normal link we keep between your body and conscious mind do the opposite of what it was intended. They made it easy for a shade to find its way in. It’s likely the guardian is fighting her own battle right now to keep from ending up a slave forever.”

“Who could do that?” I asked.

“Anyone with the proper training,” Harry said. “A thousand people, at least.”

“So where does this leave us?” I asked.

Harry sighed again. His eyes drifted to the monitors behind me. “We keep looking for answers,” he said.

A thought occurred to me. It was a thought I didn’t take lightly. It scared me more than I would have admitted to anyone, even Tommy and Carrie.

“If the woman is trapped, does that mean she might not wake up?” I asked.

“Maybe,” Harry said. “Depends.”

“So why doesn’t someone go in and help her out?” I asked. “Someone can find the shade, kill it, and get her back.”

“It’s not so easy,” Harry said. “The shade we’re hunting might be in her dreams, or it might be somewhere else. If the shade isn’t in the woman’s dreams, if it took her out of her dreamscape, she’ll have to find her own way back to her body. Killing the shade won’t give her an instant way back. It’s more difficult than you think to find your body again when you’re lost.”

“How did dreamers find their way back before the sensors?” I asked.

“Ask Carrie,” Harry said. “She’ll know. Now, get out of my room. I’m busy.”

Harry opened the door for me and gestured me to leave. I didn’t argue with his dismissal. He shut his door again, closing me out of his world of dreams and whiskey. I stood in the hall for a minute, thinking over what he had said. I had the nagging feeling he knew more than he was letting on, but he had let on plenty. At least he had confirmed our suspicion that the woman had been possessed. We certainly hadn’t gotten that much out of Mrs. Z.

With my distraction, it took me a minute to realize I had forgotten to tell him about Sully. I thought about turning around, but it was stupid to bother him twice in one night. He would yell, and I wasn’t interested in seeing how many creative insults he could come up with about me. Instead, I went to Carrie’s room. She was on her stomach, reading from three books spread out in front of her. There was a sense of urgency to her reading, worry that our time before the next attack was limited. She knew I was in the doorway without having to look up. “What is it?” she asked.

“How did dreamers get in and out of dreams before the sensors?” I asked.

“I thought you hated history,” Carrie said.

“Raging disinterest and hate are not the same,” I said.

“Why do you want to know?” she asked.

“I don’t know if you want to know,” I said.

Carrie finally looked up. Her blue eyes were cautious, but fire was behind the cautiousness. “Are you misbehaving?” she asked.

“I never learned to behave in the first place,” I said.

Carrie sighed. “Just tell me the truth.”

I filled her in on what Harry had said. By the end of the story, Carrie was sitting on the edge of the bed. Her eyes were bright as she thought over his words. No matter how much she wanted to obey Mrs. Z., she couldn’t disobey her curiosity. She digested the information, then answered my original question.

“Before the technology was created, dreamers had to find shades the old-fashioned way. They had to hunt them down by following their path through the dreams, like a bloodhound. It took time and skill. It would take months sometimes to find the shade. Many dreamers had to have a natural ability to walk across dreams, to see where one dream bumps up against the next and make a door. Finding a way into a dream once you’re in the dreamworld is not as difficult as leaving. There are certain doorways back to our world but finding the one that belongs to your body can be challenging. The toughest shades usually guard those doors. Many dreamers died simply because they couldn’t find a way out and their bodies gave out on them in our world.”

“So, it was just about training to see the ways in and out?” I asked.

“And being able to use the grey space to travel between the two without getting lost in it,” Carrie said.

“Do you think that woman will be able to find her way out?” I asked.

Carrie started playing with the hem of her sleeve. She avoided my eyes, which was answer enough. She didn’t think she would. “I don’t know,” she said. “If she’s really possessed…it’ll be harder.”

“Maybe we could…”

“Could what?” Carrie snapped. “Help her? Don’t you think Mrs. Z. will do everything in her power to get her out? Don’t you think she’s already thought of a dozen things to help that we can’t even begin to comprehend right now?”

“I suppose,” I agreed reluctantly.

“We have to trust her and not get in her way. I don’t want to be responsible for someone else getting hurt because I thought I could do things better,” Carrie said.

I saw her point. I didn’t like it, but I still saw it. “You’re right. I’m sorry,” I said.

Carrie shook her head to get rid of irritation. She smiled at me in an apology. “I’m sorry for snapping. It’s just…” Her hands fluttered in a way meant to explain her feelings.

“I know. It’s okay,” I said, forgiving her easily. “I’m going on a run,” I added.

“It’s raining,” Carrie pointed out.

“I either go for a run or I get myself worked up over this situation. Which would you prefer?” I asked.

“I’ll see you in a little while,” Carrie said, turning back to her books.

It was raining harder now. A thin mist swirled across the pavement, adding to the darkness that covered the mountain. My feet threw up the water from the road on to my running pants as I ran. I listened to the steady, muffled beat of my feet as I ran, enjoying the solitude. People occasionally passed me on their way home from town. Most of them didn’t look at me. They hadn’t heard the story of the guardians yet. But soon, my name would be on thousands of people’s minds. I couldn’t escape them then.

Eager for solitude, I abandoned the main roads for a deserted one, where the houses on the street hadn’t been filled yet, and the forest stopped right at the cement curb. The road was long and hilly and ended at a cul-de-sac.

I ran to the end, circled the loop, and started back up the road. It was then I noticed a different mist swirling against the mist from the road. It took me a second to realize it wasn’t mist – it was smoke. It carried the strong smell of burnt wood.

I paused, curious for multiple reasons. No one at Grey Haven would make a fire on a day like this. And there certainly weren’t any campers nearby. People knew better.

I followed the smell cautiously, knowing how stupid it was to isolate myself even as I walked toward the source. I had just lived through two attacks in a week. Searching out a mysterious fire at the end of a deserted cul-de-sac was asking for trouble. But I was already in too deep and definitely too curious to back away. My feet made no sound on the slick leaves, and I took deeper breaths to keep the chilly air from giving me away. I scoured the woods for signs of another person, but the thick forest provided no answers.

Twenty feet inside the woods, I saw the source of the smoke. A space had been cleared away to prevent the fire from spreading, and a small fire fought to stay alive against the clingy, mist-like rain that was falling. Burnt paper was in the center of the flames. I did a quick scan of the woods, searching for the fire starter, before kneeling to look closer. The forest was still empty. The person had left.

I picked up a stick and poked at the papers, noticing that the center of the stack wasn’t as burnt as the exterior. The papers were fused together, but I finally managed to pull the top away from the center. The first thing I saw was a cover. The edges were burnt but there was no mistaking the title. It was the book Carrie had been searching for in the library and at Madam George’s bookshop.

Under the front cover was more paper full of strange pictures, sketches, and pages of text. It was difficult to pull a cohesive story around the burnt parts, but it was enough to know that someone was covering their tracks. I shifted my weight to stand, determined to bring Harry or even Mrs. Z. to the site, so they could see for themselves.

Something heavy and hard hit me in the back of my head, forcing me back to the ground. I stared blankly at the smoldering fire, confused and disoriented, and then the world turned fuzzy as I passed out.