Night: Colbie and Her First Kiss
Once (Scenes 1-5)
Let none of earth inherit
That vision on my spirit;
Those thoughts I would controul,
As a spell upon his soul: . . .
—Edgar Allan Poe,
“Imitation”
1
After Colbie’s mother finished talking with Kendra’s stepfather, Detective Dolan, Colbie and her mother waved Kendra and her stepfather goodbye and left the Police Station at around 5:00 p.m. just after sunset, which left a civil twilight lingering in a sky of fading reds and blues. The songs on the radio occupied the drive back home, but in Colbie’s thoughts were replays of Mara in last night’s dream dive and of Colbie’s misadventure with her friends at the Rancaster district, while everything else in between was just filler.
She glanced every so often at her mother’s face as she drove, and her stern expression spiked her heart with a momentary blip. So she said, “Are you angry?”
At this, her mother turned the volume down on the radio and said, “Not as much as earlier, but you scared me. When I got that phone call from Mr. Dolan, I nearly had a panic attack, and I had to drop everything I was doing. And I’m gonna have to call your father and let him know, and he might have to cancel part of his book tour. Do you have anything to say for yourself?”
“Sorry about that,” she said.
“‘Sorry’ won’t cut it, and you know it!” her mother said, squeezing the steering wheel before relaxing her grip again, and sighed. “I’m just glad nothing else happened to you or your friends, but . . .”
“But what?”
Her mother looked over at her with eyes softened with worry, saying, “Why did you do it?”
Colbie stayed silent.
“Why didn’t you let the police handle it?”
Colbie paused, then said, “Because we had to.”
Her mother glanced at her, saying, “You just barged in there and endangered your lives for a total stranger?”
Colbie couldn’t just say the truth, that they were honoring a promise to a ghost to save her sister, that they got Connie Davis involved just to get medical records, that they had just barely escaped the Rancaster district with their lives intact along with God knows how much in property damage, maybe a heavy fine or even probation.
So she opted for the short version, saying, “We had to, Mom. We just had to.”
After that, neither of them spoke for the rest of the drive.
So for the rest of the drive, Colbie looked through the passenger window at the blur of passing residential scenery, at the walls enclosing individual homes and backyards, then at occasional loners on the dimly lighted sidewalk, at gated entrances to gated communities, and at the houses near her own residence when her mother took a left turn into Grimwald Cove. She spied her house at the corner of the cul-de-sac, over which loomed the darkening hues of nautical twilight blurring the skyline of rooftops into a street-lit night.
2
Upon arrival at the house, Mrs. Amame called her husband on her smartphone and informed him of what happened. He wanted to speak to Colbie over the phone, so she called Colbie to get out of her room and come over. When Colbie did, she gave her the phone, saying, “It’s your father.”
Colbie pressed the phone to her ear and said, “Dad?”
“Honey, are you okay?” her father said amidst the hum of a crowd in the speaker, possibly before or after an event. “Your mother told me everything. No scrapes, scratches, or anything like that?”
“I’m fine, Dad. Don’t worry,” she said, looking over her shoulder to find her mother looking intently on her face. “How’s your book tour going?”
“No, no, don’t change the subject on me,” he said. “This is pretty serious, you know that, right?”
“Yeah,” she said.
“Tell me what happened.”
“Dad, come on,” she said, seemingly for the umpteenth time, “I’ve been answering questions all afternoon, and I’m tired. Can this wait?”
“Nope. Not for something like this,” he said, and the noise of the crowd over the line grew quieter as if he had walked into a room or hallway out of the ruckus. “Tell me now, or I’ll cancel my tour and catch a plane back there, and you’ll tell me then.”
“Okay, okay, geez!”
And so, for the next fifteen minutes, Colbie retold the events of her misadventure with her friends at the Rancaster district, answering his questions and expanding on details, while keeping the masons why she and her friends did what they did. In this way, Colbie became the unwitting storyteller, and her father and her mother became the listeners and readers of her story.
All the while, Colbie felt something fluttering in her stomach and gripping at her chest, and she gleaned the cause. She had this weird connection with her mother, in which she could sense her mother’s intentions. Sometimes this connection proved useful to her when she pretended to be studying or doing something productive instead of texting her friends on her own smartphone, or watching online videos of conspiracy theories and creepypastas and true scary stories, or writing her own stuff that she wouldn’t dare let her parents read. But now this connection stifled her and made her anxious, even paranoid.
By the end of her storytelling, Colbie was sweating and a bit hoarse, but she managed, saying, “Geez, Dad. Are you gonna use that for one of your stories?”
And for the first time in fifteen minutes, her father chuckled and said, “No, thank you. I don’t want to make my life any more complicated than it has to be. Okay, is that all?”
“Yes, that’s all.”
“Are you sure?”
“Dad, really? Come on,” she said, exasperated to the last extremity of her plight, “we went over this already!”
“All right, all right. I’ll get out of your hair,” he said, and the crowded noise became louder over the line. “It’s almost time. Love you, Honey. Bye.”
“Love you, too, Dad,” she said, then added, “Oh, and good luck on your talk.”
“Ha! Thanks.” Her father hung up.
She handed the phone back to her mother, who took it and said, “Now you’re officially grounded for a month.”
“Mom!”
“Don’t ‘Mom’ me,” Mrs. Amame said, her arms akimbo. “I talked to Mr. Dolan, okay? You’re lucky you didn’t get charged with destruction of property, let alone get probation.”
”Really?”
“Yep,” her mother said. “Mr. Roy Dolan really stuck his neck out for you and your friends, so you should count yourself lucky. Be grateful, got that?”
Colbie sighed. “Got it.”
3
Dinner was uneventful. Just mother and daughter sitting at the dining table and eating microwaved leftovers, because Mrs. Amame was too stressed out over the day’s events to cook dinner. Right across from where they were eating was the television, turned on and playing a movie about Sleeping Beauty (not the animated kid-friendly Disney version, but a dark fantasy version), in which a painter sees and awakens the title character with dark consequences for himself, his friends, and his family.
In between bites, Colbie’s mother viewed the movie without much interest, letting the images and sounds slip through her mind like a tonic cleansing her worries away. To her mother, television was just a means to an end, and that end was to ease her mind of built-up tensions over the pressures of her work and the events of today, in particular.
Colbie was different, though. She followed the protagonist of the movie with open eyes, from his first dream of Sleeping Beauty to subsequent encounters with other characters who have encountered her, most of whom exhibited symptoms of mania or depression, sometimes accompanied with other symptoms like PTSD or schizophrenia or suicidal thoughts.
She looked at her mother, who had finished her plate and was now taking long swallows of juice, spiked with vodka. Even with juice mixed in, Colbie could still smell the scent of vodka on her breath, and a stab of guilt spiked through her heart.
When did you start drinking again? Colbie thought. Is it because of me? The more she thought about it, though, the more she wondered if it was something or someone else. Maybe it was her father. Or maybe it was something else entirely. Whatever it was, it’s got its hooks in her mother again, and it seemed to fester inside her like a cancer of the emotional kind, where all the good feelings have faded away and only the bad feelings stayed.
When her mother got up from the table, Colbie said, “Leave it there. I’ll clean the dishes.”
Her mother smiled and slurred out, “Thank you,” and made her way on unsteady feet towards the sofa facing the television and plopped herself on the sofa and yawned. “Colbie.”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t turn the TV off. Just keep it on for me.”
“Will do,” Colbie said and continued eating. When she finished, she downed her juice in one gulp, collected both cups and plates and forks, put them in the sink, and turned on the faucet. Rinsing, scrubbing, rinsing again, then placing the plates in the plate rack, cups right next to the plates, forks in the utensil rack inside the drawer beneath the kitchen counter.
After washing her hands and drying off, she came over to her mother fast asleep on the sofa. She lingered over her for a time and noticed slight wrinkles under her eyes and worry-lines between her brows. Her mother still held on to her beauty, but time was beginning to show her true age. If the face really can reflect one’s inner strength, her mother’s showed cracks as if she was losing her will to keep going.
“I’m really sorry, Mom,” she said and bent down and kissed her mother’s forehead.
4
5:35 p.m. was way too early for Colbie to go to bed, so she had time to spend but hadn’t the slightest clue how to spend it. So she just plopped herself onto her bed, stretching herself, relieving any residual aches and sprains from her latest misadventure, then just lay there looking up at the ceiling fan, thinking of nothing in particular, just letting her thoughts drift and make connections on their own.
On impulse, Colbie turned over and reached for her smartphone that was recharging on the side drawer next to her bed, snatched it up and flipped it open before punching in her access code and checking for messages. All the messages from Kendra and Celia were from last night, so she forwarded them her message:
What’s up? Hope you’re doing well.
—C. A.
Not the most inspiring thing to send, but she sent it, anyway, not really expecting an answer any time soon. For all she knew, Kendra was already grounded, and Celia . . . Well, she’d have her hands full dealing with her sisters, especially Madison. As for herself, Colbie put her smartphone back on the drawer and went to her laptop atop a low bookshelf that was also charging.
She sat, cross-legged, on her bed and opened her laptop and accessed the internet browser full of recommendations from conspiracy theory podcasts, power metal playlists, and podcast readings of various weird and scary encounters. Tonight, though, none of these carried her interest, and after clicking through a handful of videos and listening to theories and stories, she opened another tab and accessed her online dream journal, opened a fresh entry and typed out the contents of her collective dream dive with her friends on the previous night, then added her friends’ account about what happened after she had ‘DIED in their dreams’ (Celia’s words and Kendra’s emphasis). She then saved and uploaded it to her dream journal, closed the browser tab and set her laptop aside, and flopped back onto her bed in thought, thinking . . . and thinking . . .
Wondering at something she couldn’t pinpoint, since she had no memory of it happening, yet the feeling persisted even now after she had cleared her thoughts with meditation and writing. She felt it—whatever it was—fluttering through her stomach where Mara had stabbed her, yet she felt no pain or discomfort. And she felt something else tingling from the touch of human warmth upon her lips, although she had no recollection of it during her dream dive that night.
Colbie turned over and reached for her smartphone atop the side drawer, snatched it up and flipped it open, and typed out another message to send to Kendra and Celia, but she stopped herself from sending it. She was close enough to her friends for her to ask without either of them writing her off as creepy, but it might not be appropriate at this time.
She put her smartphone back on the side drawer, put her laptop back on the low bookshelf, and plopped herself on her bed in thought, thinking . . . and thinking . . .
She kept thinking till her eyes swam with sexy possibilities, lewd thoughts connecting with even racier thoughts about Kendra or Celia or both sharing that kind of intimacy with her, wondering if they really did swing that way or if it only seemed that way through Colbie’s own fantasies about them. And amidst that heady cocktail of curiosity and embarrassment and excitement, she fell—
5
Into her dorm bedroom where all things were possible, where love between friends could flourish without boundaries or limits on how to love or why. Here in Colbie’s little corner of the Phantom Realms, all was permitted, all of it at her beck and call once she awoke from the stupor of slow-wave sleep.
Here Colbie lay inert on her mattress, looking at the colored lights on the ceiling and walls around her and watching for the red glow of the lamplight on her dresser drawer to throw a purple light up on the ceiling. Her dream cue never changed or varied in the slightest.
That is, until tonight.
When she broke through the trance, she reached for the lamp and turned it on, throwing a spectral light throughout the room. Yet when she reached for her watch right next to the lamp, she found it missing atop the dresser drawer.
She got off the bed and knelt to the floor and looked for the watch underneath the bed, and then underneath the dress drawer, but came up empty and cursed, saying, “You’re kidding. Of all the times it has to be missing, it has to be now? Damn, this sucks!”
So she pulled out the top drawer to look inside and, lo and behold, she saw an object there—not her watch, though.
A key.
She picked it up and looked at it under the lamplight. It was a small and unassuming key, probably a house key or even a trunk key, if they still made traveler’s trunks like that anymore.
“What are you doing here?” Colbie said, as though the key could talk to her, but she knew better. Keys never talked, even in her weirdest dreams, but she also knew that keys never appeared in dreams at random. Keys opened things, so when she finds a key in her dream, she was meant to find something like her missing watch, or find out something like an answer to a nagging question.
She walked towards her door, holding onto the key in one hand and placing her other hand on the door knob, thinking of the key and her watch, connecting both objects in her mind, letting her subconscious guide her to the destination.
And spectral waves billowed through her room, fluttering her hair in long wavy peals and wrinkling her pajamas. And when she opened the door into the wine-dark night of her subconscious, she stepped across the threshold—
