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The arms of the one she loved held her close. Together they flew through shimmering colour. Perhaps this was Heaven. Was he an angel? Above them, light bloomed, growing brighter. Closer. Her heart hurt. Wait, she tried to say, stop. But her words wouldn’t come. On he sped, up, until they burst out into blinding light. His scream cut a jagged hole through her chest as he dissolved, mist drifting from her icy grip.
“Skye? Everything all right in there?”
Skye jolted awake, her heart pounding.
Uncle Mike’s voice sounded through her bedroom door again, “Skye? You okay?”
She touched her wet cheeks and scrubbed away the evidence of tears. “Uh... Yes, I’m okay.”
“Well, are you up yet?”
She squinted at early morning light streaming through the imperfect glass of old sash windows. She’d forgotten to close the blinds when she crept in late last night. “Yep.” Making it true, she sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed, dragging twisted sheets with them. “I’m up.”
“Uh huh,” she heard his muffled chuckle. “Coffee’s on downstairs.”
“Thanks,” she called after his descending footfalls, “be down in a minute.” She kicked free of the tangling sheets. The same dream. Again. Ironic that her brain devoted the tiny amount of sleep she got these days to that dream. That nightmare.
Despite the horror of it, she wished she could close her eyes and crawl back into it, stop her dream-companion from reaching the light this time. Maybe see his face. Perhaps then she would understand why she was clearly going insane. She pressed a hand to her chest, where a hollow sensation mimicked the jagged ache of her dream.
Skye wrenched her thoughts away from the dissolving angel’s agonised scream. Dust motes floated in the clear light slanting across pale lemon walls and the bare wood floor of her bedroom in the two-story cottage she now shared with Mike. For an instant she felt she’d stepped back into her seven-year-old self. Relatively unchanged by years of careful tenants, it had been her bedroom when she was little. With perfect timing, the tenants had vacated just before Mike returned to Bannimor.
Her dad was still in the rest care facility, but if he joined them here soon, would their old house really be home again? Or would he go back to the city? Make her go too?
Inexplicable panic surged at the thought of leaving Bannimor. She stumbled out of the crumpled sheets, reaching the window where the sea was just visible. Seeing it, her agitation eased. The merest glimpse of the sea was like a drug she needed. All her life she’d yearned for the ocean, but this was something else. Something...more.
A briny whiff rose from clothes she’d left lying on the floor the night before. Their tang and the scattered sand around them were evidence of her strange new compulsion: a daily pilgrimage to the water’s edge. Another symptom of her crazy state of mind. For about the millionth time, she wondered if these changes were connected with the blanks in her memory. If only someone had the guts to fill her in.
Voices sounded downstairs, and she recognised her best friend Morgan’s playful banter. With the distinct sense of hiding a guilty secret, Skye snatched up the damp clothes and dumped them in her laundry basket. She turned towards Morgan’s tread running up the stairs, then staggered. From somewhere deep within her, a sensation like simmering fog billowed and surged, swelling to fill her chest, her throat, seeping into her mouth, her skin, and she fell, half against the bed, half on the floor as the door opened.
Terrified, Skye looked through transparent eyes of a presence shifting and undulating on the surface of her body; of her soul. A pageant of unfamiliar scenes tumbled transparently across Skye’s vision. Places and people she didn’t know streamed like a disjointed playback connected to the other within her.
The spectre’s terror was a mirror of Skye’s, both gripped by uncomprehending fear. Through the spinning scenes, Skye knew that the other saw Morgan appear in the doorway. It saw the lemon-coloured walls, and the glimpse of sky through the window as Skye staggered up and away from Morgan’s horrified gaze. As if summoned, Skye sensed the other’s attention caught; sensed an uplift, like light, or hope, and the presence shuddered and surged, lifted and vanished.
Morgan dropped her bag and crossed to Skye, helping her onto the bed.
“What is happening to me?” Trying not to retch, Skye drew her knees up into a protective huddle. “Why does this keep happening?”
When Morgan didn’t speak, Skye looked up at her. Their eyes met, and Skye’s skin prickled with the sudden awareness that Morgan recognised what had just happened. Were these inexplicable, horrific hauntings part of her lost summer? What was Morgan and everyone else not telling her? Pain teased at the edges of her temples and she tried to let the questions go. The pain receded. She swallowed. “I haven’t told Mike about this. Should I?”
“I don’t think so,” Morgan shook her head. “Not yet. Maybe wait for -” she broke off.
“Wait for what?” Skye searched Morgan’s face, noting her compressed lips, and silently cursed the Doctor’s instructions to everyone not to fill in any of her blanks for her. “Supposed to let me remember it all by myself, right?” Skye didn’t bother to mask her bitterness.
Morgan shrugged, looking away, straightening Skye’s pillow and smoothing the pillowcase. Her hand paused as it encountered damp patches. “More nightmares?”
“Nightmares. Dreams.” Beautiful dreams that ended up breaking her heart each morning. She used to fight to break free of the angel in her nightmares. Now she just wanted to stay there. The hole in her chest flexed and throbbed. She pressed the heel of her hand hard against her ribcage to grind away the void. The face she couldn’t see in her dream... Had she asked Morgan the wrong question? Should it have been ‘wait for who’? Would Morgan know?
Morgan took in the gesture. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered.
“Hardly your fault, Mags.” Skye hated making everyone around her so uncomfortable. “Don’t mind me, I’m just completely losing my mind.”
“You aren’t, Skye. It’s probably...stuff that happened to you this summer. Maybe it’s coming back to you?”
Or still happening. Skye shuddered again at whatever the hell that had been. She covered her face with her hands, then quickly dropped them as it reminded her of the smothering presence.
“Do you really not remember anything that happened when you were missing those three days at sea?” Morgan sounded tense. “Or... or why you were there?”
Skye looked at her, hoping this was a confidence beginning. “No. Nothing. Unless my dreams have something to do with it.”
Morgan’s eyelids flickered. “Ethan says you were in a small boat. It broke against the rocks when they reached it, and he found you...in the water.” Her gaze became probing. “None of that mean anything?”
“Should it?” Her attention sharpened at Morgan’s expression. She knew that look. Morgan needed to talk. “Can’t you tell me something to fill in the gaps?” she pressed. “Or at least tell me what’s going on with you? You’re allowed to talk about that, aren’t you?”
“In case you’ve forgotten, Skye-bear, last time anyone tried to help you remember, you passed out from the pain in your head. Why do you think we won’t tell you anything? You have to remember by yourself.”
But Skye saw that while Morgan’s words said ‘No, Doctor’s Orders,’ her eyes said differently. Skye pushed harder. “That’s what friends are for, right? We tell each other everything. Telling me your stuff isn’t telling me mine. And you never know, it might jog my memories, shake them out of my crazy brain.” She tilted her head sideways and shook it like she’d been swimming and won a smile from Morgan. “At the very least, it’ll help you, right?”
Morgan’s expression closed in again. “Skye–” she broke off as if measuring her words, then shook her head, her green eyes dark, her voice low and fierce, “How can you help me when you can’t even help yourself?” She turned and walked to the door, stooping to collect her bag. She stared at her bag. Then, unzipping it, she pulled something from it. When she turned back to Skye, Skye’s eye’s widened.
“That’s mine!” It wasn’t an accusation, just surprise. Her mother’s teal blue sketchbook. A familiar, bittersweet pang throbbed in her chest.
Morgan nodded, “Yeah. You sort of loaned it to me. You wanted me to know something.” She paced slowly back to Skye and held the book out. “I can’t tell you anything, but... I think you should start here.” She carefully placed the book in Skye’s outstretched hands, her face strangely impassive.
Skye stared at the sketchbook her mother had filled with stories for her. Its edges were soft and thick with use, the pages full of her mother. It felt as precious to her as if it was her mum’s embrace. She frowned. How could this possibly be relevant?
Morgan turned away, her cheerful tone forced as she left the room, “Come on, you better hustle, school can’t start without you. Don’t want to disappoint all those eager students.”
Any other time Skye would have laughed at her deliberately inaccurate statement. But she felt awful. Whatever had fallen out of her memory, or was so deeply hidden she couldn’t even find a thread to tug, had stalemated her and her best friend. Separated them. How could she fix this when she didn’t know what had broken?
Anger at Morgan for holding out on her flared, but quickly vanished. She knew something was haunting Morgan, but she couldn’t help her. She pushed her mother’s sketchbook under her pillow, blinking back the fresh sting in her eyes. Whatever Morgan intended by the cryptic clue, as much as she loved it, it was no help.
Her missing summer was wreaking havoc with her life. Like a great rock flung into a small pond, its ripples constantly threatened to wash out her little raft of sanity. And now it was hurting Morgan, too. A horrible weight of worry for Morgan settled on Skye’s already aching heart. Skye tugged a robe on over her sleepwear and followed Morgan downstairs, feet heavy as wet sand, feeling like she hadn’t woken from her nightmare at all.
