AS TERRIBLE AS THE RUN-UP to bedtime was, what happened to me that night was worse than anything I’d ever been through. And I had no idea where it came from.
No idea at all.
I know this: I was lying on my back when my eyes opened. And even though all the covers had been kicked off my bed, I wasn’t cold or anything. I knew the television was still on—someone was saying something about blanching fava beans—and across the room the Abernathy had clearly fallen asleep.
But something was terribly wrong with me, with getting air into my lungs, with the tilt of the earth, with pretty much everything. I couldn’t move. I felt dizzy, like I was disconnecting from my body, and everything looked fuzzy and swirling. I was simultaneously sicker than I’d ever been in my life, and so terrified of everything that I felt absolutely certain I was going to die—I was having some kind of heart attack, and if I said anything, or made any sound at all, I was sure it would kill me.
Then I started shaking, and I couldn’t do anything to control it. And although it was undoubtedly cold in the room, the shaking wasn’t from the temperature, it was from fear. I had never shaken in fright before in my life, and this made me even more convinced that I was about to die, and I’d be lying there dead in the room, and Sam Abernathy wasn’t even going to know it until he woke up. Outside, the wind screamed through the trees.
And the fear got worse and worse and worse.
Oh, God, I need to get out of here.
I can’t say I remember trying to get up. The next thing I knew, I was sitting down on the carpet in the hallway in nothing but my underwear and Mr. Bream was standing over me, saying something that I couldn’t understand at all.
“Ryan Dean? Ryan Dean? Hey. Can you hear me?”
Mr. Bream shook my shoulder. When he did that, it made me even more terrified, and I thought I was going to throw up, so I slid along the wall and lay on my side.
“Ryan Dean!”
I waved him away from me.
“I’ll be okay. Just let me lie here for a minute.”
I did not think I was going to be okay. I just needed Mr. Bream to shut up and leave me alone. Then he was knocking on my door, jiggling the knob, telling Sam to let him inside. Finally, Mr. Bream just let himself in with his pass key, then he came back out and covered me with my blanket and top sheet.
It was the worst thing I’d ever been through.