Light as a Feather, Cold as Marble

Chapter 10

Trey had suffered from terrible dreams throughout his whole life. As a child, he'd experienced night terrors, waking up in the middle of the night screaming to be saved. When his mother would ask him what the dreams were about, her assumption was that he dreamt of things typical of little boys: monsters and bullies and fights. But what Trey dreamt about were mean faceless, nameless little girls. They assured him nightly that he was in danger, and that he belonged not with his mother in his safe house on Martha Road, but instead in their dark world, with them.

"When I was really little, I don't exactly remember the dreams specifically, but they were recurring and always kind of the same thing. Darkness, voices," Trey remembered, looking off across the yard at the snow. "As soon as one would begin, I'd know what it was and start tossing and turning. My kindergarten teacher was convinced I was autistic or something, because it took me so long to learn how to read. It wasn't that I didn't understand, I was just so tired during the day that I'd fall asleep in the middle of reading time."

"Then, as I got older, the dreams started getting more specific," he continued. "When I'd wake up, I could remember what the voices had been telling me, and what they'd asked me to do."

My feet felt like ice blocks in my boots and I was sure Mom was wondering what was taking me so long, but I dared not budge. I'd always been a year behind Trey in school, and never before knew what he'd gone through as a child, although I did remember his mother and my mother conferring over coffee about his problems at school.  "What would they say to you?" I asked.

Trey shrugged, quite obviously uncomfortable with the memory. "Just... you know, that I belonged with them, and it was only a matter of time until I'd be with them. That it was all up to me to join them when I was ready. I'd have dreams in which I'd just, like, you know, walk right out into the middle of a busy street and get hit by a car. Dreams in which I'd jam a knife into an electrical socket. They were always about my killing myself, but I was too little to understand what suicide was. All I remember was that in those dreams, if I did what they told me to do, there was this amazing feeling of... relief."

I breathed slowly, feeling sickened. "Trey, that's... just awful."

"It is, but it was weird then, you know? Because in the dreams, I wouldn't be scared. It would always feel like I knew what I was doing, and I was doing the right thing. The voices were very reassuring. Only when I started to wake up would I realize what they were asking me to do. Then I'd get scared."

I was so cold that my teeth were chattering, and yet still, I yearned to hear more. Listening to him reveal this history of dreams, I felt a little off-put that we'd been so close all autumn and he'd not shared this with me before. He still hadn't explained what those dreams had to do with his presence in Green Bay the day Olivia died. "Do you have any idea what any of that meant, or who the girls were supposed to be?"

He shook his head. "No idea. I made the mistake of telling my mom about it and that's when I started having to talk to a shrink. They put me on meds for ADHD and still, the dreams didn't stop."

"Trey," I said softly, "Mischa found out that Violet's mother had stillborn daughters in addition to Violet. It kind of matches up with this image of little girl stick figures that I think Jennie left in my window the night we drove up to Route 32."

Trey's face reacted with interest to my mention of the stillborn daughters, but then we both heard my mother open the sliding doors at my house, and step out onto the deck. "McKenna. Come on back inside. It's too cold out there."

I sighed, both annoyed and appreciative to be summoned back into the warmth of my house. "When can we meet again?" I asked Trey, sounding a little desperate.