Little Drummer Boy

Chapter 8: The Shattering of a Silent Night

Chapter 8: The Shattering of a Silent Night

That night, I didn’t hear any drums at 3 in the morning.

I was sound asleep, dreaming about something I can’t remember.

That was until I heard him scream.

I always was a heavy sleeper. I even once slept through Julia playing a trumpet in my ear. Apparently I mumbled something in my sleep about killer penguins taking over the world and then rolled over.

So the fact that I could be broken out of my sleep by that scream startled me. In my sleep induced daze, I looked around the room, until I heard it again. It was so loud it seemed to shake the house. I knew it was Jace, even if I wasn’t fully awake, I knew it was him.  

I got out of bed as quickly as I could, untangling my foot from the blanket that had somehow wrapped around it. Then I went to the door and ran across the hall from Jace’s room, throwing open the door. What I saw next…well I’m not sure how to describe it.

Jace was on the floor on his knees, his mattress off his bed, on the other side of the room leaning against the closet door. The blankets were thrown all over the place, one covered his dresser, and another had wrapped around two blades of the ceiling fan.

I turned the lights on so I could get a better view of the room, and that’s when I saw him. He was kneeling on the floor, at least until he noticed the lights. This caused Jace to shoot up, his eyes darting around the room, until he made eye contact with me. As he stared at me, I saw his eyes were blood shot, dazed over. I didn’t know what had happened to him, but before I had a chance to ask, he rushed at me.

Before I knew what had happened he had kicked me in the back of the shin forcing me to fall over before ramming his elbow into my stomach and pressing me against the wall. “Kill them all,” Jace said a whisper flowing out of him.

I didn’t want to think about the meaning of those words, and at the time I was more worried about the fact that the wind was knocked out of me. I throw Jace off of me, which caused him to bang his hand really hard against his dresser. Some blood came out of his hand, but he didn’t seem to notice, coming at me again.

With a thousand questions running through my mind, I did the only thing I could, brace myself for his attack. Leaning against the wall for support, I caught his wrist as he tried punching me. However, despite him being quite a bit smaller than me, he was able to overpower me, forcing me onto the ground. I tried getting up, but he was stronger than me. “Jace, snap out of it!” I started to say, but he instantly covered my mouth with his hand.

“Wake and kill. Come the nightmare.”

I tried shaking him off me again, he had me pinned so I couldn’t move

And then, he fell asleep. Well, that’s not entirely accurate, he was already asleep, but collapsed on top of me, and was sleeping as if he was in his own bed.

“Um, Jace,” I said shaking him, hoping to wake him up…or something like that anyway. Maybe I should have tried getting away from him, thankful that he wasn’t trying to hurt me. But, I guess late at night, when you’ve had something so crazy happen, you really don’t know what the right thing to do is.

“Huh, um,” he said, starting to wake up. He looked me in the eye, noticed he was laying on top of me, and then looked around in shock. Once his mind processed what was going on, he got off me and took in the mess he had made of his room.

“What…did I do this?”

“Yeah, you did,” I said as I got up. He walked over to his mattress that was still against the closet door. He pressed his hand against it, starting to learn over it, and as I walked over to him, I noticed Jace crying.

“Let’s get that back to your bed.”

“Oh…okay.”

It was a pretty big mattress, but between the two of us, it wasn’t too hard to get back. It made me wonder how he was able to get it over there by himself, but that wasn’t the biggest question on my mind. “You’re not going to ask?” Jace asked as I tried to get his sheets untangled from the fan.

“I do wonder what happened here.”

He sat down on his bed that we had put back together. “I didn’t think this would happen again.”

“Something like this has happened before?”

“Yeah. Back where I used to live. With Ren.” He looked down at his hand that had some blood on dripping from it. I saw a couple spots of blood on the floor, though with the dark shade of the carpet, I guessed it wouldn’t make a big difference.

“Let’s get a bandage on your hand. There’s a first aid kit in the bathroom. You can tell me about it there.”

We walked across the hallway, and I went through the first aid kit that my mom had prepared with as much paranoia as possible. Seriously, she even had rattle snake anti-venom in there. But I found a bandage soon enough, put some disinfectant on the cut, and covered it. “So, what happened?”

“I get like that sometimes. Go crazy in my sleep.”

“Does it happen often?”

Jace didn’t say anything for a couple seconds, and he looked away from me, before looking me in the eyes. “No, it hadn’t happened for a year.”

I’m not always the best at telling when someone is lying. But Jace isn’t the best at lying. Half-truths he’s told more than once, something we all knew and accepted. But never before had the truth been so obviously the opposite of what he said. I knew it then, and I know it even more now.

But I accepted it at the time, led him back to his room. He was my brother after all, and I wanted to believe him. I helped him get everything back together, however as I was about to leave, I noticed a paper on the floor. At first glance, it looked like some doodles, but then I noticed that it had words on it. When Jace wasn’t looking, I took the paper, put it in my pajama pocket. Maybe that wasn’t right, but I was curious. I’ve also been a little bit nosey, too curious for my own good. If there’s a secret, I want to know it, especially when it’s something so close to me.

And well, I’m glad I did. I read that paper multiple times, so I thought I’d include it here. What follows are Jace’s words, not mine, transcribed as best as I can. Read them and maybe you’ll understand the torrent running through his mind. I know I didn’t understand it at the time, I don’t think anyone could understand it. On the side here…that’s a picture of the page. A picture is worth a thousand words they say, and I think that picture says more than my attempt to copy it here.

…

Sleep they sly they want me!!

They want me…. Nono b--- me Caleb ‘!

Not n-vev—pile—mosic

Voc6s!!!!

Awake and sleep and dream awdk!!

No! GoGoGo away away awvay

Ren…you stop no

Aream

They cdlbut no more no I don’t want again

EITE me

Jacee

AWAKE O SLEEPER YOUR TIME HAS COME

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