“So that’s something you practice a lot?”
“Hmm, well I used to. But these days I mostly just play games. It’s mindless. Practicing is hard work, and draining too.”
I think about Vic Blanchet and how he used his gift all the time, but never seemed to have expanded his capabilities. But then again, he never tried to. He was satisfied with the bare minimum—a touch to the skin and dead.
“Do you know who used to have your gift?” I ask.
“Sort of? I don’t know who exactly he was, like his name or anything, but I dream about him sometimes.”
So Darius has the dreams too.
The chair where Darius is scrapes back on the floor. I look over to see that he has shut down the computer.
“I’m gonna head to bed now,” he says. “Is there anything else you wanted to know about Madeline?”
Maybe Noah’s range wasn’t as good as Madeline’s, but it’s probably still likely that he can reach the dreams of anyone he knows from anywhere in the world. I shudder at the thought. That means that Carl can reach me too. And I won’t be able to get much sleep from now on, knowing that Carl is just waiting for me to dream.
“Did she have anything in her journals about how to block her gift?” I ask.
“Block it? I don’t think so. At least, it wasn’t in the entries I read. I was mostly interested in her range and how she improved since that’s what my paper was about. The website does have a search function though, so you might be able to find something. It’s madelinetaylordreams.com. You can call a number and ask for the password.”
“Okay, thanks,” I say.
After a moment, the door opens and then closes. He’s gone now, I assume.
I log into the computer and go to the website he told me about. The entire screen is black with a white box in the middle that says, “Please enter the password.” Below that is a small textbox, and below that is some tiny text that says, “To get one day access, please call us.”
I pull out my phone from my pocket and punch in the number. It rings until voicemail. I hang up.
It is still pretty early so whoever usually answers that phone probably isn’t up yet.
But just to be safe, I call again.
It rings a couple times and just before I think it’s going to go to voicemail again, a sleepy man’s voice says, “Hello?”
“Hi,” I say, sitting up straight. It’s been a long time since I’ve talked on the phone. “I’m, uh, looking for one day access to the Madeline Taylor Dreams website.”
A deep inhale and then exhale. I hear shuffling. Finally, the man says, “Is it usually possible for a gifted person to use their gift on themselves?”
“Uh, no.”
“Can you give me an example?”
“Like, if you can see the future, then you can’t see your own future or anything involving you in other people’s futures.”
“Are you gifted?”
“Yes…”
“What is your gift?”
I pause. Should I tell him the truth? I probably should, right?
“I can kill people?” I say.
“Are you asking me?” he says.
I sigh. “No. I can kill people with a touch.”
“Chrys?”
My stomach drops. This voice doesn’t sound familiar at all.
“Who is this?” I ask, a little bit of panic seeping into my voice.
“Your password is 875G4J.”
The line goes dead.
A ding. There’s a text message from that number saying, “875G4J.”
I consider calling back but decide not to. As much as I want to know who that person is, it’s also possible that I don’t know him, and it’s just his gift or something.
Looking at the text message, I enter the password on the website.
The webpage has a search bar at the top and then a long list of dates grouped by year and month, each date a link. I type into the search bar, “block” and press enter.
No results.
I rack my brain for alternatives. I search for “prevent.”
There are a lot of search results, each one showing a snippet of the text where the keyword was used. I scan through the first page. They’re all related to her patients, saying things like, “I wish I could prevent another episode,” or “It appears as though prevention will be difficult due to the seriousness of this case.”
I go back to the search bar and look up “prevent from enter.”
No results.
“Prevent dream.”
Nothing.
“Stop dream.”
A couple. These are about stopping one of her patient’s recurring nightmares.
I slump back in my chair, hands on my lap. She probably never tested that. It seemed like she was interested in seeing how much she can do, so maybe she wouldn’t have thought to develop a method to block her gift.
If I can’t block it, then what can I do? The only other way I’d be able to feel comfortable sleeping again is if Carl had no way to use Noah’s gift anymore or if Carl himself were somehow out of the picture.
The latter thing is very unlikely to happen so the next best way would be to get rid of that laptop or whatever he’s using. I should call Ron but I don’t want to get her involved anymore. Besides, she probably doesn’t even want to talk to me because of what I’ve done to Iris.
I sigh.
Maybe the next best thing is to just stop sleeping.
I spend hours and hours reading through Madeline’s journal entries. Not sure what exactly to look for, I decide to just read them in chronological order. All of her early entries discuss how she used dreams to treat her patients. She can manipulate any aspect of the dreamscape—changing the location or the characters in it or anything really. She can also request a specific dream and have the patient’s mind do the legwork. For example, one of her patients was agoraphobic and
