Five Nights at Freddy's Fazbear Frights Collection, page 86
A little after six, Nole’s stomach came unclenched enough to remind him that he hadn’t eaten since before he’d gone to the shooting studio. He needed food.
So he headed to the cafeteria. Not much of what was served there could be called “food,” but he was hungry enough to eat pretty much anything at this point.
The cafeteria was only half-full, as was usual on Sundays. A lot of students went away for the weekends, and even more ate out. Usually only the nerds were around about now.
“Hey.”
Nole didn’t have to turn to identify the speaker. It was Amber. He wasn’t sure what to say to her—their last exchange felt like years ago. She must have come looking for an update about Sam.
Nole turned. “Hey …”
“I, um, never see you here on Sundays.”
Nole let out a sigh of relief at the slight hint of sarcasm she managed to slide into pretty much everything that came out of her mouth … even when sarcasm wasn’t required. He wasn’t sure he could talk about Sam right now.
“That’s because I’m never here on Sundays.”
“So you’re not here now?”
“Obviously.”
Amber rolled her eyes. “So is your clone going to get in line or just stand there getting in the way?”
Nole couldn’t help himself. He grinned. “He’ll get in line, just so he doesn’t put you out.”
“Nice of him.”
“He’s actually a pretty nice guy.” Nole stepped back and motioned for Amber to go ahead of him.
“He should give you lessons.” Amber winked at Nole as she passed him.
Nole followed Amber through the line, grabbing some of this and some of that. He had no idea what he was putting on his tray. He was already distracted by what had happened to Sam, plus he was trying to puzzle out what he’d seen by the trees. And now Amber was befuddling him. He’d only recently figured out he might like her, and they’d gone on their first date the night before. It had been good, but today had kind of wiped the date from his mind. Should I have called her by now?
“It would have been nice,” Amber said.
“What?”
“You just said, ‘Should I have called her by now?’ ”
“I did?”
“You did.” She gave him a sideways glance.
That had to be evidence of his whacked-out mental state. Nole decided maybe he should stop thinking completely.
Finding himself at a big round table covered in crumbs and smeared with something red, Nole sat down. He stared at the red smear. Surely not blood. Must have been ketchup.
Why did he have blood on the brain?
Nole glanced at Amber to be sure he hadn’t said that out loud. Apparently not. She was putting blue cheese dressing on a big salad.
The cafeteria was about a third full. Conversations were muted, and silverware/dish face-offs were intermittent. Outside the wall-to-wall windows, the quad was emptying. The sun was dipping behind the tops of the trees where Nole thought he’d seen—
Nothing. I saw nothing, he told himself.
Nole looked at his tray. He blinked. Somehow he’d managed to get sauerkraut, beets, mashed potatoes, three dinner rolls without butter, two dill pickles, and three kinds of pie.
“Are you pregnant?” Amber was eyeing his tray, too.
“Apparently.” Nole picked up a spoon, realizing he hadn’t gotten a fork. He dug into the mashed potatoes as if all was right in the world. He noticed that the cafeteria smelled like beef stew. Was that the entrée he’d missed?
Amber chewed and then put down her fork. “I’m sorry about earlier.” For once, her words were free of sarcasm.
“Earlier?”
“When I told you about Sam. I shouldn’t have dropped it on you the way I did.”
Nole grabbed his glass and took a drink of what was in it to wash down the gluey mashed potatoes. He discovered he’d gotten sweet iced tea. He hated sweet iced tea.
“It’s okay.”
Amber put her hand on Nole’s arm. “No, it’s not. I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you two were so close.”
Nole shot a look at her. Was she being sarcastic again? No, judging from the little crimp between her brows, she was concerned.
“We’re not that … ,” Nole began. Then he realized that, yeah, he was pretty close to Sam. They’d started out as a complete mismatch, assigned to work with each other. Nole was rushing his fraternity. Sam lived with his parents. Nole was cool. Sam seemed to go out of his way not to be cool—so screamed his almost military haircut, his crisply ironed shirts (thanks to Molly), and that legal briefcase he usually carried instead of a backpack.
“You’re not?” Amber asked.
Nole shook his head. “Yeah, I guess we’ve gotten sort of close. He’s kind of a strange dude, but he’s smart and he’s funny. He’s a nice guy.”
“Like you,” Amber said.
Nole frowned at her. He stood up so abruptly his knee hit the table, and all the dishes rattled on the trays. His tea sloshed.
“I’ve gotta go.”
Amber looked up at him. “It’s like déjà vu.”
“Huh?”
She waved him away. “Call me when you find your brain.”
“Okay.”
Nole strode away from the table and dumped his tray in the return area. The uneaten food earned him a stern glance from one of the round women with the hairnets who worked in the cafeteria. He didn’t care.
He just had to—
What was that?
Nole stopped just outside the doors of the cafeteria and stared down the hall. He looked the other way, too. And then he turned to look behind him. He rubbed his eyes and checked the area again. Nothing was out of the ordinary. Dirty beige floor, pale yellow walls, posters vying for space on an overcrowded bulletin board that ran along the wall, a few students strolling in and out of the cafeteria—nothing to see here, folks. Yeah? So why was Nole sure he’d just spotted something big and black flutter around the corner at the end of the hall?
And what was that noise? Nole tilted his head and listened. It sounded like a rhythmic rustling, a sort of whispery sound like … well, like wet feathers being dragged along the floor.
Nole trotted out of the cafeteria building, stopped, bent over, and took a couple big breaths of fresh air outside.
“You okay, No?”
Nole looked up. One of his frat brothers, Steve, stood at the bottom of the stairs, his arm draped around a pretty, redheaded girl.
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
“You say so,” Steve said.
Nole lifted a hand, and Steve and the girl wandered off. Nole headed for the frat house.
* * *
Nole sat on his bed, his legs spread out and his hands loosely in his lap. He rolled his head around, listening to his neck crack, and he took several deep breaths.
When you’re tense, adopt a relaxed posture, loosen your muscles, and breathe deeply, his mother taught him when he was little and was really worked up about something. Tell your body how you feel, and it will come along for the ride.
Usually that worked pretty well. But not this time. For good reason.
This situation was a little beyond old-school relaxation techniques. Between leaving the cafeteria and getting into this room, Nole had seen something—not someone, but something—following him four times. Four times!
Something. But what?
Four times, Sam heard that weird sound, a cross between the sound of the wind and a fluttering noise combined with regularly spaced airy thumps. No matter how many times he tried to tell himself he was hearing some kind of mechanical contraption or some sort of air-conditioning or fan unit attached to one of the buildings on campus, he couldn’t convince himself of the lie. The truth was that he was hearing the sound of feathers, lots of them, brushing over the ground and grazing the edges of trees and buildings.
It might have been easier to believe his lies about the sound if he hadn’t also seen a mammoth lurching swell of feathers rippling just at the edge of his peripheral vision. Four times, he’d seen these sinister forms billowing in and out between the trees and the buildings.
Well, seen was a bit of an overstatement. He actually wasn’t sure about what his eyes had told him. The word seen implied a direct vision of something. Nole hadn’t had that. He’d had this idea of seeing something. But the more he kicked around the idea, the more he became convinced he had seen something. Something had toyed with his senses, something just beyond the reach of confident visual surety. That something had been massive, black, and feathery.
And there it was again.
A large shape darkened Nole’s small west-facing window, blotting out the sinking sun for just an instant. Nole only caught it out of the corner of his eye again, but it was there.
Nole bent over and put his head in his hands. “Oh man, oh man, oh man, oh man.”
He straightened up. “Get a grip,” he ordered himself.
Taking a deep breath, he looked around his room. Nole might have looked just sloppy enough to be cool, but he liked order in his surroundings. He was a minimalist. His room was soothingly white. The maple furniture had clean lines, though it was lightly stained. The small fridge he used for bottled water and the occasional leftover pizza (if he left it in the main kitchen, it was sure to get stolen) was white, with sleek lines. The bed was made, if a bit messily, and covered with a plain tan comforter. The rug under the bed was sisal. The floor and all furniture surfaces were clutter-free. The only things on his walls were a few black-and-white still shots from old movies. Nole’s frat brothers kept trying to get him to hang the frat’s Greek letters in his room. Nole said he didn’t need them to know what frat he was in.
That refusal was just one of many that had earned him the nickname “No.”
The black shape passed his window again.
Nole ran to the window and pulled the white room-darkening shade. A shadow flitted behind the shade, and Nole turned his back on the window.
“This is just stupid.” He crossed to the bed and sat again.
Was it?
Nole liked to think he was a pretty reasonable guy, but he knew what was going on here, and it wasn’t reasonable at all. It was very unreasonable.
It was unreasonable, but he was sure it was true: Nole was seeing Sam, in the Blackbird costume. And Sam was stalking Nole.
Why was Sam stalking Nole?
It was obvious, wasn’t it? Sam was stalking Nole because he was now the Blackbird, and the Blackbird tortured those who confessed their dirty secrets.
So first Sam was going to toy with Nole the same way a bully toyed with his victim, and then Sam was going to kill Nole for being such a horrible person. Nole was sure of it.
And the worst part was that Nole deserved it.
* * *
Sunday nights in the frat house were movie nights, and normally, Nole didn’t miss that—not just because he helped organize the events, but because he enjoyed them. But tonight’s movie was a horror flick—with blood—and Nole wasn’t up for it. He begged off, earning himself a shower of popcorn and a chorus of boos and hisses.
After a half hour of trying to study and another half hour of staring at the ceiling, Nole wished he had joined in movie night, but he didn’t want to go down now. He was too edgy.
Nole’s phone rang, and he snatched it up, hoping it was news about Sam. Sam’s all right. He is, he thought before he said, “Hello.”
“He is?” It was Amber.
“Who is?”
“You said, ‘He is,’ ” Amber said.
He did it again? He really needed to stop saying his thoughts out loud.
“Wasn’t I supposed to call you?” Nole asked.
“You didn’t.”
“I know.”
“Jerk.”
Nole’s heart tried to strangle him. He swallowed to push it back into place.
“Maybe I had a reason,” he said.
“I’m listening.”
My friend has turned into a big blackbird and he’s going to come and kill me, Nole thought. Then he gritted his teeth, waiting for Amber to tell him he’d said it out loud.
“Are you going for the obscene-phone-call technique?” she asked.
“What?”
“You’re breathing heavily in my ear. It’s not turning me on.”
“Are you sure? Maybe there’s a delayed reaction.”
Amber laughed. “I’ll let you know.”
Nole grinned. In spite of how shaken he was, talking to Amber put him a little more at ease.
“I called because you seemed kind of freaked at the caf,” Amber said.
“Um, I was just …” Just what?
“Is it about Sam?”
Nole gripped the phone so hard his fingers hurt.
“Uh, yeah.”
Amber’s voice softened. “I’m sorry.”
“Thanks.”
For a few seconds, they were both silent.
“Maybe you’ll find it in your sleep,” Amber said.
“Find what?”
“Your brain.”
Nole grinned again. “I’ll give it a go and let you know what happens.”
“Be sure you do.”
When Nole hung up the phone, he tried to convince himself that his thoughts about Sam were just some kind of craziness caused by shock. Maybe Amber was right. Maybe he could go to sleep and find his brain, the sane version of his brain, the one that wasn’t being stalked by a friend in a bird suit.
It was worth a try. Nole stood and stripped out of his clothes.
Like the body-proud Ian, Nole slept in his underwear, but he wore boxer briefs, white. No rubber ducks.
Sliding in under wrinkled sheets that desperately needed a trip to the laundry, Nole took one last look around his room to be sure all was as it should be. It was. He closed his eyes.
At first, sleep wouldn’t come. Nole’s muscles wouldn’t let go. They were so taut they could have been strung on a guitar and plucked, and if they’d been plucked, Nole was sure they’d sound dissonant. There was no question he was out of tune.
Nole tried closing his eyes. Sleep began to take him, and as soon as it did, images of implausibly huge wings scraped against his lids. Then he felt gigantic feathers battering against his entire body. He was being pummeled by stiff, elbow-length feathers. He could feel them drub against his skin in an eerie contrast of soft versus hard. How could something as light as a feather beat him with such power and force?
Fear pushed sleep from his consciousness. His eyes shot open.
Flailing for the switch on his nightstand lamp, Nole listened to the thundering pace of his heart.
Okay, that was alarming. Was that a dream?
No. It couldn’t have been a dream because Nole had never fallen asleep. He’d just started falling asleep.
Nole stood up and got a bottle of water from his fridge. Downing half of it, he sat on the edge of the bed and steadied his breathing. It took several minutes, and he tried not to notice his hand was shaking when he took another sip of water.
Nole set down the water bottle, then said, “Get a grip.”
He lay down once more.
“Let’s try this again,” Nole said to the room.
He reached over and turned off the light. He closed his eyes.
And someone, or something, opened the door to his room.
Nole catapulted from the bed and knocked over his lamp, trying to turn it on. The bulb hit the wood floor and broke, so Nole ran across the room and flipped the wall switch.
He was alone. The door to his room was closed. And it was locked.
Nole stared at his door.
What had just happened?
Nole looked around. In spite of how ordinary it looked, his room was suddenly threatening.
He needed a weapon.
Keeping one eye on the door, Nole crossed to his closet and picked up his aluminum softball bat. Holding it like a club, he sidestepped to the door. He got a tighter grip on the bat, then unlocked the door and threw it open.
The hallway was empty.
Ominous music wafted up from the first floor. Lots of bass and percussion. Nole looked at his watch. The movie was probably still going.
Nole backed into his room and closed the door. Locking it, he leaned against it and ran a hand through his hair. What was going on with him?
He looked at his bed. Then he stared at the doorknob. No way was he going to sleep unless he secured his door better.
Feeling a little like the idiot Sam used to say he was, Nole stepped over to his desk, grabbed his chair, and wedged the top of the back under the doorknob. Good thing he’d opted for a wooden chair instead of the plush one on wheels his mother thought he should get.
Once the chair was in place, Nole looked at the shade over the window. The window was locked, right?
Still clutching his softball bat, Nole checked the window. Yes, it was locked.
Good.
“Now can you stop acting like a paranoid mental patient?” he asked himself.
He didn’t answer himself because he had no idea if he could stop. It didn’t seem to be in his control.
Nole stood in the middle of his room for several more minutes. Then he decided there was no way he was going to sleep. So he righted his lamp and went into his closet for a broom, a dustpan, and a new bulb. After he cleaned up the broken bulb and put a new one in the lamp, he grabbed his laptop and got in bed with it. He might as well work on the new screenplay he was writing. He’d hoped it would be the script he and Sam would use for their midterm project. Now? Nole shrugged. Who knew what would become of it? But working on it might take his mind off his insanity. Or make him sleepy. Whichever came first would be fine with him.
It only took an hour for Nole to start nodding off. Encouraged by the silence, not just in his room but in the frat house as a whole, Nole set aside his laptop, made sure his baseball bat was leaning handily against the side of his bed, and switched off his lamp.
He immediately switched it back on.
Was that a shadow he saw right as the light was going out?
He scanned the room. Nothing. Of course.
Nole decided he needed a flashlight. His lamp might not survive the night if he kept lunging for it.
Opening his nightstand drawer, Nole got out the flashlight he kept there for power outages. It was amazing how often one of his frat brothers overloaded the circuits and blew the breaker. Setting the flashlight on the nightstand, Nole looked around one more time and then gingerly laid his head on the pillow. He remained there a few minutes, about as relaxed as the wooden Indian he’d accused Sam of being.
So he headed to the cafeteria. Not much of what was served there could be called “food,” but he was hungry enough to eat pretty much anything at this point.
The cafeteria was only half-full, as was usual on Sundays. A lot of students went away for the weekends, and even more ate out. Usually only the nerds were around about now.
“Hey.”
Nole didn’t have to turn to identify the speaker. It was Amber. He wasn’t sure what to say to her—their last exchange felt like years ago. She must have come looking for an update about Sam.
Nole turned. “Hey …”
“I, um, never see you here on Sundays.”
Nole let out a sigh of relief at the slight hint of sarcasm she managed to slide into pretty much everything that came out of her mouth … even when sarcasm wasn’t required. He wasn’t sure he could talk about Sam right now.
“That’s because I’m never here on Sundays.”
“So you’re not here now?”
“Obviously.”
Amber rolled her eyes. “So is your clone going to get in line or just stand there getting in the way?”
Nole couldn’t help himself. He grinned. “He’ll get in line, just so he doesn’t put you out.”
“Nice of him.”
“He’s actually a pretty nice guy.” Nole stepped back and motioned for Amber to go ahead of him.
“He should give you lessons.” Amber winked at Nole as she passed him.
Nole followed Amber through the line, grabbing some of this and some of that. He had no idea what he was putting on his tray. He was already distracted by what had happened to Sam, plus he was trying to puzzle out what he’d seen by the trees. And now Amber was befuddling him. He’d only recently figured out he might like her, and they’d gone on their first date the night before. It had been good, but today had kind of wiped the date from his mind. Should I have called her by now?
“It would have been nice,” Amber said.
“What?”
“You just said, ‘Should I have called her by now?’ ”
“I did?”
“You did.” She gave him a sideways glance.
That had to be evidence of his whacked-out mental state. Nole decided maybe he should stop thinking completely.
Finding himself at a big round table covered in crumbs and smeared with something red, Nole sat down. He stared at the red smear. Surely not blood. Must have been ketchup.
Why did he have blood on the brain?
Nole glanced at Amber to be sure he hadn’t said that out loud. Apparently not. She was putting blue cheese dressing on a big salad.
The cafeteria was about a third full. Conversations were muted, and silverware/dish face-offs were intermittent. Outside the wall-to-wall windows, the quad was emptying. The sun was dipping behind the tops of the trees where Nole thought he’d seen—
Nothing. I saw nothing, he told himself.
Nole looked at his tray. He blinked. Somehow he’d managed to get sauerkraut, beets, mashed potatoes, three dinner rolls without butter, two dill pickles, and three kinds of pie.
“Are you pregnant?” Amber was eyeing his tray, too.
“Apparently.” Nole picked up a spoon, realizing he hadn’t gotten a fork. He dug into the mashed potatoes as if all was right in the world. He noticed that the cafeteria smelled like beef stew. Was that the entrée he’d missed?
Amber chewed and then put down her fork. “I’m sorry about earlier.” For once, her words were free of sarcasm.
“Earlier?”
“When I told you about Sam. I shouldn’t have dropped it on you the way I did.”
Nole grabbed his glass and took a drink of what was in it to wash down the gluey mashed potatoes. He discovered he’d gotten sweet iced tea. He hated sweet iced tea.
“It’s okay.”
Amber put her hand on Nole’s arm. “No, it’s not. I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you two were so close.”
Nole shot a look at her. Was she being sarcastic again? No, judging from the little crimp between her brows, she was concerned.
“We’re not that … ,” Nole began. Then he realized that, yeah, he was pretty close to Sam. They’d started out as a complete mismatch, assigned to work with each other. Nole was rushing his fraternity. Sam lived with his parents. Nole was cool. Sam seemed to go out of his way not to be cool—so screamed his almost military haircut, his crisply ironed shirts (thanks to Molly), and that legal briefcase he usually carried instead of a backpack.
“You’re not?” Amber asked.
Nole shook his head. “Yeah, I guess we’ve gotten sort of close. He’s kind of a strange dude, but he’s smart and he’s funny. He’s a nice guy.”
“Like you,” Amber said.
Nole frowned at her. He stood up so abruptly his knee hit the table, and all the dishes rattled on the trays. His tea sloshed.
“I’ve gotta go.”
Amber looked up at him. “It’s like déjà vu.”
“Huh?”
She waved him away. “Call me when you find your brain.”
“Okay.”
Nole strode away from the table and dumped his tray in the return area. The uneaten food earned him a stern glance from one of the round women with the hairnets who worked in the cafeteria. He didn’t care.
He just had to—
What was that?
Nole stopped just outside the doors of the cafeteria and stared down the hall. He looked the other way, too. And then he turned to look behind him. He rubbed his eyes and checked the area again. Nothing was out of the ordinary. Dirty beige floor, pale yellow walls, posters vying for space on an overcrowded bulletin board that ran along the wall, a few students strolling in and out of the cafeteria—nothing to see here, folks. Yeah? So why was Nole sure he’d just spotted something big and black flutter around the corner at the end of the hall?
And what was that noise? Nole tilted his head and listened. It sounded like a rhythmic rustling, a sort of whispery sound like … well, like wet feathers being dragged along the floor.
Nole trotted out of the cafeteria building, stopped, bent over, and took a couple big breaths of fresh air outside.
“You okay, No?”
Nole looked up. One of his frat brothers, Steve, stood at the bottom of the stairs, his arm draped around a pretty, redheaded girl.
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
“You say so,” Steve said.
Nole lifted a hand, and Steve and the girl wandered off. Nole headed for the frat house.
* * *
Nole sat on his bed, his legs spread out and his hands loosely in his lap. He rolled his head around, listening to his neck crack, and he took several deep breaths.
When you’re tense, adopt a relaxed posture, loosen your muscles, and breathe deeply, his mother taught him when he was little and was really worked up about something. Tell your body how you feel, and it will come along for the ride.
Usually that worked pretty well. But not this time. For good reason.
This situation was a little beyond old-school relaxation techniques. Between leaving the cafeteria and getting into this room, Nole had seen something—not someone, but something—following him four times. Four times!
Something. But what?
Four times, Sam heard that weird sound, a cross between the sound of the wind and a fluttering noise combined with regularly spaced airy thumps. No matter how many times he tried to tell himself he was hearing some kind of mechanical contraption or some sort of air-conditioning or fan unit attached to one of the buildings on campus, he couldn’t convince himself of the lie. The truth was that he was hearing the sound of feathers, lots of them, brushing over the ground and grazing the edges of trees and buildings.
It might have been easier to believe his lies about the sound if he hadn’t also seen a mammoth lurching swell of feathers rippling just at the edge of his peripheral vision. Four times, he’d seen these sinister forms billowing in and out between the trees and the buildings.
Well, seen was a bit of an overstatement. He actually wasn’t sure about what his eyes had told him. The word seen implied a direct vision of something. Nole hadn’t had that. He’d had this idea of seeing something. But the more he kicked around the idea, the more he became convinced he had seen something. Something had toyed with his senses, something just beyond the reach of confident visual surety. That something had been massive, black, and feathery.
And there it was again.
A large shape darkened Nole’s small west-facing window, blotting out the sinking sun for just an instant. Nole only caught it out of the corner of his eye again, but it was there.
Nole bent over and put his head in his hands. “Oh man, oh man, oh man, oh man.”
He straightened up. “Get a grip,” he ordered himself.
Taking a deep breath, he looked around his room. Nole might have looked just sloppy enough to be cool, but he liked order in his surroundings. He was a minimalist. His room was soothingly white. The maple furniture had clean lines, though it was lightly stained. The small fridge he used for bottled water and the occasional leftover pizza (if he left it in the main kitchen, it was sure to get stolen) was white, with sleek lines. The bed was made, if a bit messily, and covered with a plain tan comforter. The rug under the bed was sisal. The floor and all furniture surfaces were clutter-free. The only things on his walls were a few black-and-white still shots from old movies. Nole’s frat brothers kept trying to get him to hang the frat’s Greek letters in his room. Nole said he didn’t need them to know what frat he was in.
That refusal was just one of many that had earned him the nickname “No.”
The black shape passed his window again.
Nole ran to the window and pulled the white room-darkening shade. A shadow flitted behind the shade, and Nole turned his back on the window.
“This is just stupid.” He crossed to the bed and sat again.
Was it?
Nole liked to think he was a pretty reasonable guy, but he knew what was going on here, and it wasn’t reasonable at all. It was very unreasonable.
It was unreasonable, but he was sure it was true: Nole was seeing Sam, in the Blackbird costume. And Sam was stalking Nole.
Why was Sam stalking Nole?
It was obvious, wasn’t it? Sam was stalking Nole because he was now the Blackbird, and the Blackbird tortured those who confessed their dirty secrets.
So first Sam was going to toy with Nole the same way a bully toyed with his victim, and then Sam was going to kill Nole for being such a horrible person. Nole was sure of it.
And the worst part was that Nole deserved it.
* * *
Sunday nights in the frat house were movie nights, and normally, Nole didn’t miss that—not just because he helped organize the events, but because he enjoyed them. But tonight’s movie was a horror flick—with blood—and Nole wasn’t up for it. He begged off, earning himself a shower of popcorn and a chorus of boos and hisses.
After a half hour of trying to study and another half hour of staring at the ceiling, Nole wished he had joined in movie night, but he didn’t want to go down now. He was too edgy.
Nole’s phone rang, and he snatched it up, hoping it was news about Sam. Sam’s all right. He is, he thought before he said, “Hello.”
“He is?” It was Amber.
“Who is?”
“You said, ‘He is,’ ” Amber said.
He did it again? He really needed to stop saying his thoughts out loud.
“Wasn’t I supposed to call you?” Nole asked.
“You didn’t.”
“I know.”
“Jerk.”
Nole’s heart tried to strangle him. He swallowed to push it back into place.
“Maybe I had a reason,” he said.
“I’m listening.”
My friend has turned into a big blackbird and he’s going to come and kill me, Nole thought. Then he gritted his teeth, waiting for Amber to tell him he’d said it out loud.
“Are you going for the obscene-phone-call technique?” she asked.
“What?”
“You’re breathing heavily in my ear. It’s not turning me on.”
“Are you sure? Maybe there’s a delayed reaction.”
Amber laughed. “I’ll let you know.”
Nole grinned. In spite of how shaken he was, talking to Amber put him a little more at ease.
“I called because you seemed kind of freaked at the caf,” Amber said.
“Um, I was just …” Just what?
“Is it about Sam?”
Nole gripped the phone so hard his fingers hurt.
“Uh, yeah.”
Amber’s voice softened. “I’m sorry.”
“Thanks.”
For a few seconds, they were both silent.
“Maybe you’ll find it in your sleep,” Amber said.
“Find what?”
“Your brain.”
Nole grinned again. “I’ll give it a go and let you know what happens.”
“Be sure you do.”
When Nole hung up the phone, he tried to convince himself that his thoughts about Sam were just some kind of craziness caused by shock. Maybe Amber was right. Maybe he could go to sleep and find his brain, the sane version of his brain, the one that wasn’t being stalked by a friend in a bird suit.
It was worth a try. Nole stood and stripped out of his clothes.
Like the body-proud Ian, Nole slept in his underwear, but he wore boxer briefs, white. No rubber ducks.
Sliding in under wrinkled sheets that desperately needed a trip to the laundry, Nole took one last look around his room to be sure all was as it should be. It was. He closed his eyes.
At first, sleep wouldn’t come. Nole’s muscles wouldn’t let go. They were so taut they could have been strung on a guitar and plucked, and if they’d been plucked, Nole was sure they’d sound dissonant. There was no question he was out of tune.
Nole tried closing his eyes. Sleep began to take him, and as soon as it did, images of implausibly huge wings scraped against his lids. Then he felt gigantic feathers battering against his entire body. He was being pummeled by stiff, elbow-length feathers. He could feel them drub against his skin in an eerie contrast of soft versus hard. How could something as light as a feather beat him with such power and force?
Fear pushed sleep from his consciousness. His eyes shot open.
Flailing for the switch on his nightstand lamp, Nole listened to the thundering pace of his heart.
Okay, that was alarming. Was that a dream?
No. It couldn’t have been a dream because Nole had never fallen asleep. He’d just started falling asleep.
Nole stood up and got a bottle of water from his fridge. Downing half of it, he sat on the edge of the bed and steadied his breathing. It took several minutes, and he tried not to notice his hand was shaking when he took another sip of water.
Nole set down the water bottle, then said, “Get a grip.”
He lay down once more.
“Let’s try this again,” Nole said to the room.
He reached over and turned off the light. He closed his eyes.
And someone, or something, opened the door to his room.
Nole catapulted from the bed and knocked over his lamp, trying to turn it on. The bulb hit the wood floor and broke, so Nole ran across the room and flipped the wall switch.
He was alone. The door to his room was closed. And it was locked.
Nole stared at his door.
What had just happened?
Nole looked around. In spite of how ordinary it looked, his room was suddenly threatening.
He needed a weapon.
Keeping one eye on the door, Nole crossed to his closet and picked up his aluminum softball bat. Holding it like a club, he sidestepped to the door. He got a tighter grip on the bat, then unlocked the door and threw it open.
The hallway was empty.
Ominous music wafted up from the first floor. Lots of bass and percussion. Nole looked at his watch. The movie was probably still going.
Nole backed into his room and closed the door. Locking it, he leaned against it and ran a hand through his hair. What was going on with him?
He looked at his bed. Then he stared at the doorknob. No way was he going to sleep unless he secured his door better.
Feeling a little like the idiot Sam used to say he was, Nole stepped over to his desk, grabbed his chair, and wedged the top of the back under the doorknob. Good thing he’d opted for a wooden chair instead of the plush one on wheels his mother thought he should get.
Once the chair was in place, Nole looked at the shade over the window. The window was locked, right?
Still clutching his softball bat, Nole checked the window. Yes, it was locked.
Good.
“Now can you stop acting like a paranoid mental patient?” he asked himself.
He didn’t answer himself because he had no idea if he could stop. It didn’t seem to be in his control.
Nole stood in the middle of his room for several more minutes. Then he decided there was no way he was going to sleep. So he righted his lamp and went into his closet for a broom, a dustpan, and a new bulb. After he cleaned up the broken bulb and put a new one in the lamp, he grabbed his laptop and got in bed with it. He might as well work on the new screenplay he was writing. He’d hoped it would be the script he and Sam would use for their midterm project. Now? Nole shrugged. Who knew what would become of it? But working on it might take his mind off his insanity. Or make him sleepy. Whichever came first would be fine with him.
It only took an hour for Nole to start nodding off. Encouraged by the silence, not just in his room but in the frat house as a whole, Nole set aside his laptop, made sure his baseball bat was leaning handily against the side of his bed, and switched off his lamp.
He immediately switched it back on.
Was that a shadow he saw right as the light was going out?
He scanned the room. Nothing. Of course.
Nole decided he needed a flashlight. His lamp might not survive the night if he kept lunging for it.
Opening his nightstand drawer, Nole got out the flashlight he kept there for power outages. It was amazing how often one of his frat brothers overloaded the circuits and blew the breaker. Setting the flashlight on the nightstand, Nole looked around one more time and then gingerly laid his head on the pillow. He remained there a few minutes, about as relaxed as the wooden Indian he’d accused Sam of being.
