dumbly.
“I-I don’t—”
“Tell him!”
Tears stream down my cheeks.
Everything freezes. And then Fear is gone. One second he was on the floor, bleeding and dying, and the next Nightmare is standing in his place, looking down at me with an unfathomable glint in his eye.
I recoil, landing on my bottom painfully. Nightmare sighs. “Let’s try this another way, shall we?” he asks blandly, straightening his shirt cuffs.
My lip lifts in a snarl and I struggle to my feet so I can launch myself at him, claw his eyes out. But before I can, I lose myself in swirling, cackling shadows once again.
“It’s simple. All I want to know is where your father is. Please,
Another shock jerks through my body, and I cry out.
The light bulb above us flickers some more. It hangs on a wire, which is nailed to a wooden ceiling. No rays of light burst through the cracks, leading me to believe it’s night. I can’t see much, because my vision is still blurred and it’s dark in here, but from what I can tell he’s brought me to some sort of shack in the woods. I can hear the trees rustling outside, smell the richness of the earth, barely feel the breeze slipping past. There are no animals, no Elements, no Emotions of any kind. None of them dare tangle with this creature.
Which means no one will be coming to rescue me. I’m on my own.
And this is the ultimate truth. Because here, I’ve realized, is where I’m going to die.
Nightmare circles the table I’m lying on, sighing. “You’ll have to forgive the decor. My powers of persuasion seem to be lost on you.” When I still say nothing, he bends so his face is level with mine. His voice is kind as he adds, “You have to give up at some point, my dear. I’ve already won. You’re just prolonging your own pain.”
Snot runs down my mouth, and I try to spit it out. It only clogs my throat, and I gag for a few moments. Nightmare’s expression twists into one of disgust. His pupils are slits, like a cat’s. “Give me your father’s location and I’ll let you go,” he says gently, brushing some of my hair out of my face with his sharp fingernails. He draws little pinpricks of blood. I can’t even move away from his touch.
Nightmare toys with my earlobe, then, without warning, he digs his nails into the side of my head. I scream. He leans down and growls through his teeth, “Tell me where he is right now, or I swear I’ll put a knife into your stomach so many times that it’ll look like Swiss cheese.”
His fingers dig even deeper into my skull, and I whimper. My fingers twitch a little—the closest to moving I can get.
When still I don’t speak—I’ve already told him dozens of times I have no idea who he’s talking about, because he can’t possibly mean Tim—Nightmare straightens, pulling his fingers out. Tears slide down my cheeks, soundless rivers. He circles me some more, his footsteps thunder in the tiny space.
“I don’t mean to be so vulgar. Come, now,” he coaxes. He’s playing nice again. “The fool can’t mean that much to you. Honestly, I watched your family all those years ago, waiting for him, and I never saw him once. Doesn’t seem like he cared, otherwise he would visit, wouldn’t he? Wouldn’t
he show up now to save you? Is he really worth dying for?” When I still don’t reply, he sighs. “Such a slippery fellow. Every time I waited at a birth, he didn’t make an appearance. The others know about me now, and this is getting harder.”
I barely hear this last part.
Electricity sizzles through my body again, and I rock the table from side to side, coming dangerously close to tipping it as I convulse. Now spit, combined with the snot, runs down the side of my neck, pooling on the surface by my cheek. My fingers grip the edge of the table in desperation and a weird sound manages to escape from my mouth, a half-shriek, half-sob. Nightmare instantly flicks the switch back off when he hears it, and his eyes are alert.
“What?” He strides back to my side, cupping my cheek in a tender way. “What did you say, little one?”
I wait a beat. Then, summoning up what energy I have left, I hack the slimy glob from the back of my throat into his leering face. It hits his eye with a satisfying squirt.
The Element jerks back, freezes for an instant. Slowly, he wipes the mess away with the back of his hand, revealing dangerous, scorching eyes. Lumps of coal with depths of perilous fire. “You really shouldn’t have done that,” he informs me. He goes to another table at the side of the room, where he has an assortment of knives and tools stacked against the wall.
As he runs his fingers over every one of them, taunting me, Nightmare gives me accounts of all the Emotions and Elements he’s hunted, tortured, killed. The manner is very similar to how Fear had once told me his own tales, but there wasn’t such malevolence in his eyes.
I can barely see Nightmare now. His elbow moves. When he turns around to face me, I can finally see what he’s holding in his hands. One of the shorter knives. He approaches, surprising me when he just plays with the blade, doing a trick by balancing it on the tip of his finger. Instead of more pain or more talk, the Element gets an old-looking chair from the corner of the shack, pulling it across the dirt to the table. He sits on the edge of it, almost primly, and crosses his legs.
“You know, you’re the only one that got away,” Nightmare says. The light bulb above illuminates the harsh angles and planes of his face. “I’d given up on you. Then, a month ago, I happened to eavesdrop on a couple of Emotions. They were talking about a girl who could withstand their touch and not feel a thing. Curious, I began to investigate. When I got here, I soon stumbled upon you and your dreams. That’s when I put two and two together. Your new face didn’t throw me—that’s easy for one of us to do if we have enough power. But I’ll admit, I began to doubt after watching you for a while. My nightly games didn’t ruffle you a bit. You were quite dull, even for a human. But just as I was about to leave I saw you save the boy from being run down at that party, and I knew.”
Nightmare jerks, and suddenly the tip of the knife is buried in my hand. I try not to scream, try not to give him the satisfaction, but it’s impossible. My screech fills every corner of the shack, a deafening sound. Nightmare kisses my temple. His lips are dry.
“You know, besides Landon, you’re the longest to ever last in my clutches,” he whispers.
Time slows until it stops completely. The world around us disappears. What did he just say?
My insides heat up and up until my blood is lava inside of me. There’s a loud rushing in my ears, like a wave or a billow of wind before the tornado hits.
Nightmare moves out of my line of vision and I see a flash of his hand as he goes back to his torture instruments. That hand touched Landon. That hand hurt Landon. That hand
I want to make Nightmare feel the same pain he caused Landon. I want to watch him die. I want him to regret what he did to that sweet boy who loved his books and his family with limitless, quiet devotion.
From the dreams and the flashes, I remember the way he turned the page of a book. Such reverence, such concentration. For the first time, the memory causes pain. Because of this creature, that boy is gone. Ripped away from this world forever. Destined to haunt my dreams.
“I’m going to kill you,” I whisper. The words burn up my throat and blood is pooling on the table; the gunshots haven’t healed and my hand is screaming. My strength—what pathetic little there is left—is almost gone. I won’t last much longer now. No more time to seek out the deeper answers.
Nightmare turns to face me again, a different knife in his hand. This one has a crooked end. “What was
