14 - Murder, She Dreamt

'Chad...'

He groaned inwardly. He had gone to bed well after 3am, after showing his sister around her new computer. As expected, she had taken to it almost immediately, and had demanded that he show her more and more. As happy as he was with her newfound passion for all things Linux, he had to first ask, then demand, then insist that she go to bed. When that failed, he threatened to take her laptop away for the rest of the week, and that did the trick. And now, a mere moment after he had finally hit the sack, she was there, waking him up.

He analysed her voice - she was oddly calm. Actually, it was unsettling to hear her being so calm. On the upside, however, she hadn't had of her worse kind of nightmares - she would have woken up yelling bloody murder and...

'Whatever it is, kid,' he grumbled, eyes still closed in an attempt to grab at the sleep that was now leaving him, 'it's not real.'

'But...'

'No Russian guy will get you tonight. Please, go back to bed.'

'It wasn't a dream, Chad,' she insisted. 'It was real.'

He gave up trying to keep sleep within reach and sat up. She sat beside him, clutching her teddy bear.

'Ok,' he said. 'What was it this time?'

She took a deep breath.

'I saw a woman die. It was like I was standing there and watching it happen. She turned around, looked at someone, and dropped dead. Then the room started burning for no reason.'

Chad started shaking his head, and her expression turned from worried to outraged.

'You don't believe me!'

'It didn't happen, kid. It was just another dream.'

She stood up and began pacing.

'It wasn't. It felt different. I know it happened, and it happened just now.'

'Calm down, Jay,' he said calmly.

'No... we should call the police.'

She started walking towards the door, and he jumped out of bed and grabbed her hand.

'And tell them what? Oh, hi, I had a dream about a woman being killed, thought you might want to know. Also, yeah, I'm Big Rock, Montana's resident weird kid, but that's beside the point. That would work really well.'

Her mouth opened, then closed, and she fixed him with her best glare.

'It was real!' she growled. 'That woman is dead now. I saw it happen.'

'Listen...' he sighed, pushing her into his chair and crouching to her level. 'It might have happened, it might not have happened. If it did happen, you don't know where it happened, or who that woman was.'

She opened her mouth to speak, and he anticipated her words.

'Yes, you can find out where a fire was tonight, and who died, but kid, you can't draw that kind of attention to yourself. You can't step forward just to be viewed as a psychic - at best -, as a freak, or as an accesory to the supposed murder. Your hands are tied, you can't do anything about it. Do you understand?'

She considered his words for a moment, then nodded, eyes still shooting daggers.

'Good. Now, could you please go to bed?'

She looked at her lap and tightened her grip on her bear.

'I won't be able to sleep,' she replied in a small voice.

'Try. Please. If you don't sleep, you're not going to school. I don't want any repeats of... of that episode, and I doubt you do.'

He saw her grip on her bear tighten even more, and he knew she remembered the day.

'Ok,' he said quickly, grabbing her hand and snapping her out of the memory before it upset her even more. 'Off to bed.'

She stood reluctantly and dragged her feet out of his room and down the hall to her own. Chad followed her, and stood in her doorway until she reluctantly crawled under the covers. He flicked her night light on and turned away.

'I still say it happened,' he heard her grumble.

'Sleep, kid,' he called back. 'Or no school tomorrow.'

She grumbled some more, but he ignored her. He walked back to his room, closed the door, and grabbed his phone. He had some research to do.