Zac pulled his pillow underneathe his chin to prop himself up. He curled the phone under his cheek and laid his head on it so he didn't have to hold it anymore. He'd been on the phone with Katie for three hours and was starting to feel like he was going to fall asleep.
"Are you still awake?" She asked, feeling groggy herself. It was two a.m. and she had taken nyquil for her cold an hour earlier. They hadn't said anything for a couple minutes and were instead just listening to eachother breathing.
"I'm wide awake." He whispered through a yawn and Katie laughed.
"Right. Sure you are. You're a bad liar."
"I never claimed to be otherwise." He took a deep breath. "So are you going to tell me how you do it?"
"How I do what?"
"See stuff."
"Uhm, you just open your eyes and..."
Zac sounded serious for a moment. "No. You know what I mean."
Katie sighed and adjusted her phone. "You just have to be open to it I guess. I only ever really see stuff in my dreams. Usually. I've been doing it since I was really little but it used to scare me. Then I decided I wasn't going to be scared anymore and stuff just started showing up."
"So you're saying if I wanted to see the things you see, all I have to do is tell myself I can see it and I will?"
"Maybe. I don't know." She thought she heard Zac chuckle and she sighed. "Are you making fun of me?"
"No! Not at all. It still scares me a little I guess. So I just have to make light of it."
"It's really not that scary. If you just tell yourself that you're an open minded person before you go to bed, and take a few minutes to relax, things will come to you. It's just a matter of believing them when you wake up. All those scary dreams you have all the time that you tell me about, if you'd open yourself up to the fact that maybe there's more to it than that, maybe you'd understand."
"Maybe."
Katie sneezes for the three hundredth time and wiped her nose on her sleeve. "Ew... you know what I just did?"
"Wipe your nose on yourself?"
"Yeah."
"Again?"
"Yup."
"Classy." Zac laughed. "Are you ready to sleep yet or do you wanna stay up another three hours talking?"
"I think I might be ready for bed. You tired?"
He yawned. "Very. Well, you go to sleep and you can call me in the middle of the night if you still feel like shit ok?"
"Ok. Thanks, Zac."
"No problem, sweetie. I'll talk to you in the morning."
"Goodnight."
"Night." Zac hesitated a minute before hanging up the phone. Then, he slid it under his pillow and rolled over onto his back to stare at the ceiling. He liked talking to Katie every night before he went to bed. It helped him to relax. She was an amazing person that had a very soothing effect on him. His temper was outrageous sometimes and Katie always had a way of soothing it.
He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. "I... am an open minded person." He opened one eye and looked around the room almost as if he was making sure he was alone. "I am very open minded..." He took a few more deep breaths and tried very hard to relax before opening his eyes again. "And I... am a dork." He rolled his eyes at himself and sighed again before finally falling asleep.
Two hours later, although it seemed to him like it had been five minutes, Zac's eyes opened slowly. He looked around the room and waited for his eyes to adjust, but everything seemed cloudy. For a moment he thought about putting his glasses on, but then he remembered he didn't wear glasses. He sniffled to himself and then sat up slowly.
The room seemed to be spinning slowly and he felt as if he was going to fall down. He felt like he had just hit his head and then he realized that the reason the room was so cloudy, was because it was filled with smoke. He jumped up out of his bed but then stumbled back onto the floor. He was so dizzy he could barely move. He thought to himself that he must have been asleep, breathing in smoke for a long time before he woke up.
He crawled to his end table and grabbed his walkie talkie. There was no crackle from the other side, no sound of Carter breathing. But he could hear Taylor. He seemed to be stumbling around his room as well. Zac instinctively crawled to the wall and thumped his fist against it, hoping to wake up Carter. He was having a hard time thinking. All he could hear in his head was, "Carter... Carter... Carter." He knocked on the wall a few more times before feeling completely drained. He stopped and rested the side of his face on the wall and closed his eyes. It was hot.
Tears came to Zac's eyes when he realized what that meant. He had completely lost his ability to think at that moment and began dragging himself across the floor to his bedroom door. When he got there, he reached for the doornob and somehow managed to pull himself up. He felt like he weighed a thousand pounds. Everything hurt, and he could barely breathe anymore.
He pulled the door open to see Taylor reaching for it. Taylor's eyes widened. "Come on, we have to get downstairs and out."
Zac shook his head. "Where's Isaac? Mom... dad... Carter... Carter."
Taylor coughed and pulled Zac out of his room. "Isaac wasn't home tonight. Mom and dad aren't in their room. I think they were downstairs. They must be out already."
"Carter."
Taylor nodded and frowned. "Come on." He grabbed Zac's arm and practically dragged him down the stairs. They made their way outside as fast as they could and left the front door open behind them.
For a moment Zac expected to see everybody outside, waiting for them to come out of the house. It hadn't occurred to him that they might be the first ones out. He looked back to see a bright orange glow coming from the attic of Carter's side of the house. His heart jumped into his throat and he wiped the layer of black away from his face. He was still dizzy and tired but completely scared out of his mind. He and Taylor stopped when they heard a loud cracking noise, followed by a loud crash coming from Carter's house. It sounded as if the floor of the attic fell down into the rest of the house. Right on top of Carter and Melissa's bedroom.
"NO! NO NO NO!" Zac jumped and tried to run into the house but Taylor grabbed hold of his arms and pulled him back.
"You're NOT going in there! Don't try to be some stupid movie hero! You're staying out here." He heard the sound of sirens in the background and it calmed him slightly. "See... somebody is coming. I doubt they're even in there. Didn't Carter say she was going out with friends tonight? And Melissa is away at school... And..."
Zac shoved Taylor away from him. "FUCK!" It was all he could think of to say. He ran as fast as he could up the stairs and into Carter's house. When he pushed past the door, everything was black inside. There was so much smoke he the tip of his nose in front of his face. He squinted and waved his arms in front of him, trying to see where he was going. But before he got very far, he heard another crash, and he knew in that very second, that it was over... he couldn't save Carter...
He woke up feeling more panicked than he ever had in his life. He looked around the room with tears in his eyes, half expected to see smoke and fire everywhere. But there was nothing. Everything was silent, the rest of the house was fast asleep. He took a deep breath and reached under his pillow for the phone. He dialed Katie's phone number before he even thought about it.
He listened to three rings before her voice appeared on the other end. "Hello?" She sounded like she had been asleep for ten days.
"Hey."
"Hi." He could hear her smile. "What's up?"
"Can you come over?"
"Huh? What time is it?" Katie sat up and looked at her clock. It was four in the morning. "Zac... what's up?"
"Sorry. You don't have to come here. I just had this... freakin bad dream and I can't stop thinking about what you said about dreams not being just dreams..."
"What was the dream?"
"Nothing. It was nothing."
"Zac..." Katie coughed lightly. "Do you want me to come over?"
"Can you?"
"I'll be there in twenty minutes."
Zac smiled. "Thank you."
Katie hung up her phone and Zac clicked the talk button to finish the conversation. Then, before he did anything else, he dialed Carter's phone number. He could hear her bedroom phone ringing through the wall. He heard a loud thud, followed by a "DAMMIT" and then she answered her phone. "Dammit, hello?"
"Are you ok?"
"You just made me fall out of my bed."
"Well, I know that. I mean, are you ok? Like, in general?"
"Uhm. Yeah?" Carter blinked hard and stared at her phone to make sure it was real. "Zac?"
"Yo."
"Have you been drinking bong water?"
"No."
"Ok then. Goodnight?"
"Night." Zac smiled and put his phone down. Then he took a deep breath and waited for Katie, very glad that what he just experienced had only been a dream.