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This is the third time he’s had this dream. He can never remember it when he wakes, fortunately, but when he’s in the dream he knows he’s been there before. He knows what is happening. He knows what happens next.
Just like the first two times, he’s walking calmly through snow. It’s unbroken all around him, but for the footprints before and behind him. He’s following someone. The first time, he didn’t know who. Now, it’s all too obvious.
As he walks, the snow melts away. Slowly, the pure, smooth surface begins to become jagged, sharp and organic. His shoes stop crunching through snow and begin to crunch through bones. They’re the same white as the snow, bleached by god knows what. He keeps his eyes directly in front of his feet. He can’t stop walking, but he knows what he’ll see if he looks ahead.
In a few meters, he sees it anyway.
The bones become fresher, blood and marrow spilling from where they break. The white is stained with red, the ground becoming soft and beginning to shift beneath his feet. The bones become covered in flesh. The flesh pieces together.
Slowly, the parts knit themselves together before his eyes. He knows who it will be. He knows who it is.
He knows who put him there.
See, he’s used to playing the part of the killer in his dreams. He’s not used to being the person killed as well.
He watches his body stand, follows him again to the ornate table in the clearing in the forest. He sits across from himself, watches himself as he stares pleadingly across the table, silently begging for something. Perhaps it is mercy. Perhaps it is death. He feels the heat and hears the rustling behind him.
He stands, lets the prongs at his back guide him around the table, lets the stag lead him to himself. He knows he can’t stop it. He watches himself die on its antlers. He can’t control how he turns to look into the forest and sees the people he knows in the trees.
Honestly, this fucking forest needs a better decorator, he thinks, staring at the body of someone whose face he recognises but whose name he has forgotten, a branch through their forso. He thinks that’s an odd thought to have. Then again, most of his thoughts were what people would consider odd.
He follows the stag into the trees.
This time, though, the dream is cut short. Pulling himself from sleep, he sits up and shudders at things he can’t remember. Things he doesn’t want to remember. As he begins to take in the room around him, however, he finds something he’s not expecting. It’s 4:48 AM and someone is lying next to his bed, on the ground.
The amount of blood around them is a pretty good indication that they’re dead.
Will Graham hopes fervently that he’s still asleep.
He isn’t.