Chapter Text
The vast, unobstructed sky was dark and stormy, strong gusts of wind rippling through acres of tall grass, setting windmill blades whirling madly. Cattle left to graze lowed moodily and horses shied from the oncoming storm, and old, sun-bleached barns creaked and groaned in protest to the wind.
Courtney stood near the edge of a rocky precipice near a humble little farm, long skirts and apron whipping in the wind, hair working its way free of a bun beneath her dark bonnet, her lovely face creased with worry. She cried out as a man on a horse approached, halting his steed several feet from her. She ran to him and placed her hands, one gripping a crisp handkerchief, to the horse's shoulder.
"Please don't go!"
The man looked down at her, his face tan and weathered, a few days' worth of stubble sanding his cheeks.
"I'm sorry, Courtney, but I have to. It's for your own good; you'll understand someday."
Courtney trembled, one tear dripping from either baby blue eye.
"Please! I... I love you!"
The man shook his head, directing his steely gaze off towards the setting sun. The light glinted in his eyes, and off the handles of the twin pistols on his belt.
"Courtney, don't say that. I cannot bear to leave you... but I must!"
The man urged his steed forward, but the Courtney grabbed the reins, halting it in its tracks.
"But what about the children? What shall I tell them?"
The man touched her alabaster hand with his own gloved one.
"Tell them... that their father died a hero."
Courtney shook her head, loosening her hair even more from beneath her bonnet.
"Please, no! Don't talk like that! You can always come back to me, to the farm! I'll make pumpkin pie, your favorite! Just say you'll stay, say you'll come back to me safely!"
The man pulled the reins from her grip and gathered them up, preparing to kick his horse into a gallop. His face was hard and unmoved as he stared straight ahead.
"I can't promise you that, Courtney. There's a whole world out there, and you and me... we're just living in it. You'll make it. you always do."
He kicked, and the horse trotted forward.
"No, please, no - !"
The man didn't turn back as he picked up speed, but his words came back to her clearly.
"Goodbye, Courtney. Maybe we'll meet again in another life. Until then, this is adieu, my darling."
Courtney fell to the ground, weeping. Dabbing at her tears, she cried out, but he was already too far away to hear her. She watched him go, tears streaming down her face, until a particularly strong gust of wind sent his horse - and him along with it - tumbling off a cliff.
His scream echoed as he fell.
Courtney awoke with a start, shivering in a cold sweat, blinking in confusion. Disoriented, the room spun around her, and it was a moment before she realized she was on the couch in the living room of her home. It was after dark; the curtains were drawn and the windows were black, the room only illuminated by the glow of the TV screen, a sepia-tone Western drama playing out an eerily familiar scene. The air was a confusion of noise, and her heart hammered in her chest, adrenaline pumping through her. It was a moment before she realized the screaming she was hearing was real, not just a product of her mind, and was coming from upstairs. It was a moment more before she realized the only other person in the house was her brother.
Her heart leapt with a sudden lurch of fear as she got clumsily to her feet, scattering notebooks and loose leaves of paper to the floor and upsetting a bowl of popcorn, still a third of the way full. It was unmistakably Norman screaming, a horrible, panicked sound that rent the air, making it impossible for Courtney to think. It sounded less like he had spotted a spider and more as though there were an axe murderer standing over his bed, and, knowing her brother, the latter was entirely possible.
Without pausing to collect herself, Courtney hurried to and up the stairs, feeling her way as her vision went completely black for a moment, a sudden head rush seizing her. Once at the top, she shook the spots away and sprinted down the darkened hall to her brother's room, slamming the door open without hesitation.
He was there, in the darkness, huddled at the end of his bed, arms clamped over his head. The room was dimly lit by a variety of nightlights and illuminated clocks and glow-in-the-dark posters, but they each only gave off a dim, sickly, neon glow, and did little in the way of lending actual light to the room.
He continued to scream.
"Norman!" Courtney called out to him, but he didn't react. He coughed, his voice broke, and he let out a terrified wail. Courtney felt along the wall for the light switch and flicked it on, and what she saw made her chest grow even tighter, something around her lungs pinching horribly.
She wasn't sure what she had expected to see, but rather than blood or monsters or evil creatures or horrible apparitions, she only saw... Norman. Curled up tightly into himself, his blankets kicked to the floor in a heap, tears streaming down his face and eyelids bruised a deep, sleepless purple.
In the sudden illumination, he raised his head, but rather than look at her, he lifted his gaze higher, as though he could see the starry night sky through the ceiling. He choked, whimpered, his fingers knotted in his hair.
Courtney paused in the doorway, suddenly unsure of what to do. She had run to him on instinct, since, before leaving the house earlier that evening, their parents had reminded her to look after her brother, that she was responsible for him while they were out. She had sent him to bed some time ago; it had been a couple of hours at least between then and when she must have fallen asleep in front of the TV. He had gone without complaint, and hadn't made too much noise after disappearing upstairs, so she had counted herself lucky to have a largely uneventful night of babysitting.
But now... Courtney bit her lip anxiously, watching her little brother cry and stare with wide, strangely unfocused eyes at something that wasn't there. She felt certain that, despite his open eyes, he was still asleep. He had been doing things like this irregularly for months, now, waking up and running around his room and yelling things, but, according to their mother, who had always before been home to handle it, he was never aware of his actions. It was as though he were having some sort of nightmare that involved sleepwalking, and, for whatever reason, speaking and opening his eyes, too. It was kind of silly, really, or so Courtney had thought, upon hearing her mother talk about it. Now, with it before her, all she felt was black fear.
Because Courtney hadn't much liked the thought of a waking nightmare, she hadn't paid her mother much attention in the past, when she'd spoken about things like this happening. Now she wished she had; she had no idea what her mother usually did whenever he woke them all up screaming, how she snapped him out of it or whatever, and so wasn't sure how to proceed.
"Norman, wake up," she said in her best I'm-Your-Big-Sister-And-You'd-Damn-Well-Better-Listen-To-Me voice, hesitatingly taking a step forward. His vacant stare turned to her, and his expression turned abruptly from one of fear to outright terror.
"St - stay away," he said, voice tremulous and desperate and tear-choked. He watched her slowly come closer, trembling with every step she took, shaking his head and clamping his hands over both ears. Slowly, cautiously, she put one hand out towards him as she inched closer, though she wasn't sure what she meant to do with it. Shake him? Comfort him? Slap him awake?
"Norman, it's just me," she said softly, almost halfway to his bedside, now, hand hovering uncertainly somewhere between them. His eyes, unblinking and red-rimmed, pupils blown, were locked on that hand, staring as if it were a deadly snake coming towards him. The closer she came, the more he moved himself slowly backwards, though reluctant to uncurl too much from himself. She came closer, and reached out to touch his shoulder, and he shrieked, kicking out to move himself away.
"No - no, please, don't - " his hands came to hover in front of his face, fingers splayed, as though to act as a wall between him and whatever horrible entity he saw her as. She shuffled forward, and his whole body shook. He screamed again, the high-pitched, terrified screech of a young child, and she numbly lowered her hand, though he acted as though she hadn't moved at all.
"O’dao ykiejc," he said, closing his eyes tightly and pressing himself tighter into a ball, palms coming to rest over each eye. "O’dao ykiejc, o’dao hkkgejc bkn w swu fj - " Courtney's blood ran cold as his mouth produced alien sounds and syllables, fingers curling and shoulders shaking. She felt faint, her legs going numb, and for a moment thought she was going to pass out. Anything to remove her from this moment, which was only getting worse by the second. With each word he spoke, Norman's voice rose, until he was nearly shouting nonsense. "O’dao ykiejk, o’da - o’dao kejc pk - "
"Norman, you're scaring me, stop it!" Courtney snapped, doing her best not to let her voice betray just how scared she really was, how her hands were cold and clammy, her head swimming, her pulse pounding. What was she supposed to do, wait until he snapped out of it? He was going to wake up the whole neighborhood at this rate, and the way his eyes looked at her with such horror... she was surprised to find it hurt, a little. Something inside her was offended he would think she would ever hurt him, even in whatever dream realm he was trapped in.
"No, no no no no no, please, no," he moaned, suddenly uncoiling to claw desperately at his arms, his face, the air around him. Courtney lunged forward, gripping him firmly by the shoulders, and his breath caught for a moment in a terrified gasp before he started to fight her, feebly pawing at her arms and crying out, screaming in fear before his voice suddenly gave with a sound not unlike that of a vacuum choking on a sock, and he fell limp in her hands.
Suddenly fearful she had somehow hurt him, Courtney released her brother, backing off. He blinked up at her, his mouth open in shock, before doubling over on himself and pressing his hands back to his eyes, breathing as heavily as though he had just run a marathon.
"Norman...?" Courtney stood, uncertain. After a beat or two, during which he heaved breath after shuddering breath, he looked up at her, face blotchy and eyes puffy, and sniffled.
He just looked at her, and opened his mouth as though to say something, but burst suddenly into tears, instead. Courtney, in a moment of numb shock, sat heavily on the end of the bed, at a terrible, terrible loss. Sure, babysitters were supposed to help with things like nightmares, but shouldn't Norman have grown out of those, like, six years ago? And that... whatever that was that had just happened, that was no nightmare. That was more like... she had no idea what to call it. Something horrible, certainly. Those were clearly beyond the capabilities of a simple stand-in babysitter. That was Mom-tier caretaking, stuff way too advanced for Courtney. She hadn't been certified for this. She had never signed up for this.
She pressed one hand over her eyes and the other to her chest, feeling her heart pound with residual adrenaline and fear. She wasn't cut out for this stuff. A little bedtime story or housecleaning she could handle, but no one had ever prepared her for something like this. Was there some handbook out there for dealing with brothers with ghost friends? Was there some psychic she could go to to learn some incantation that would make everything better? There was no way Norman was alone in this, right? There had to be others out there, right?
On the bed behind her, Norman's insubstantial weight shifted, and she was shocked out of her impromptu reverie by the weight of her brother pressing against her side, wrapping both his arms around one of hers, pushing his face into the fabric of her red plaid pajamas, the ones from three Christmases ago, the year they'd all worn matching pajama sets all day like the families in the movies. He curled up against her, getting her sleeve all damp with his tears, and she was at a complete loss for what to do.
What would Mom do?
A thousand thoughts ran through her mind, everything from singing a lullaby to patting him on the head, but she couldn't move an inch. This was foreign territory, all of this completely new to her. She hadn't seen Norman cry in years, and hadn't had this much physical contact with him since... she didn't even know when. The only time she could think of was when she had been forced to hug him for a family picture, but she had to have been at least ten at the time, and he four.
Had it really been so long since she'd hugged her own brother?
The thought made her stomach churn guiltily, but before she could make any move to rectify it, Norman began to speak, muffled into her arm.
His words were mumbled into her arm, but she caught syllables here and there. She pulled her arm out of his grasp, settling it around his hunched shoulders after a moment's uneasy hesitation. He leaned into her, sighing a little, and then repeated himself more clearly.
"I don't know exactly what," he said, his words watered down and somber, "but something bad is going to happen soon. Somewhere with trees. And... fire, I think. I think someone is going to die."
Courtney frowned at this. "Did... did you see that in your dream? Or did a ghost tell you? Or - " She still wasn't sure how his whole "talking to ghosts" thing worked, but prophetic dreams usually came with the package in the movies.
"I don't know, I can't remember," he said, pressing both hands flat to his forehead. "I think I saw... something. I don't know. Something about... circles, I think. Or spots. Or holes, I don't know! I can't - " he shook his head, hands curling frustratedly into fists. "It's right there but I can't - I can't remember..."
Courtney chewed her lip for a moment, silent. It had been a couple of years since the last time he had said anything about premonitions of danger, but since then Courtney had learned to trust his instincts. If he said someone was going to die, she believed it, but, knowing him, he was going to want to do everything in his power to save them, whoever the unlucky victim might be.
She owed it to him to help.
"You spoke," she said, and he stopped chewing on his sleeve cuffs to listen. "When I came in here. You said some stuff - it wasn't English, whatever it was, but you kept repeating the same thing. Oda... something. Oda... o? Does that sound right?"
His eyes had widened at the mention of a foreign language, but by the time Courtney finished speaking, he was shaking his head. "No, I don't know. But I think..." he paused, screwing up his face as he thought back to what was no doubt an absolute slurry of nonsense in the waking world, though it had probably made perfect sense to his sleeping mind. "I remember... your fingers were... too long, or something. The joints were all messed up, and there were... stars? Maybe? Or teeth, or something. Something about... someone I knew, I think. But I don't know who."
Well, that narrows it down. Courtney frowned, patting his shoulder awkwardly. Suddenly, she remembered something their mother used to do for her, when she had nightmares as a kid. She remembered, vaguely, crying out for her mom after dreaming of whatever six-year-olds dream about, and her mother always coming to her, no matter the time. She remembered midnight cups of whatever was in the fridge, and her mother telling her stories at the kitchen table while the room the dream had occurred in stood alone, empty and with the door open. To air out the ghosts, her mother had said.
Courtney remembered putting her ear to her mother's stomach, to see if she could hear her baby brother moving around. Sometimes he would kick, and Courtney wondered if he were having nightmares, too.
"Come on," Courtney said suddenly, getting to her feet and starting for the door, inviting Norman to follow with a silent look. He frowned at her questioningly, but she said nothing, only flicking off his light and leaving the door open before leading the way downstairs.
In the kitchen, she directed him to sit at the table with a pointed finger before turning to rummage in the fridge. He uttered not a word, only watching her with tired curiosity, drying his eyes with his pajama sleeve cuffs in a way reminiscent of a child much younger than himself. Courtney had noticed things like sleeplessness and nightmares seemed to have that sort of effect, turning back the clock on even the bravest of twelve-year-olds.
She found a half-gallon of milk in the fridge, and went about fixing up two mugs of hot chocolate. The clock over the sink proclaimed it to be past midnight, but, Courtney decided, this was a special occasion. Norman had clearly been through the emotional wringer tonight, what with the screaming and all, and her own dream had been no picnic, either. A shiver touched her spine at the very memory of her dream-cowboy tumbling over that cliff.
She shuddered and added marshmallows and whipped cream to both mugs, then brought them to the table, sitting across from Norman.
He muttered something that could have been thanks, or it could have just been him telling some wayward ghost to stop bothering him. Courtney could never tell the difference between his normal, preteen mumbling and his don't-talk-too-loudly-or-people-will-start-throwing-things mumbling, but she had decided a while back that it probably didn't matter too much, either way.
It had been a real adjustment for everyone, getting used to accepting Norman for what he was - for who he was. Not just for the immediate family, but for the entire town, as well. Some took to him far faster than others, and there were still those that preferred to treat him like the town pariah, rather than an actual human being, but for the most part, things had become surprisingly normal. He would greet people on the street that no one could see, sometimes holding entire conversations with them, and passers-by would usually just look the other way, or suddenly remember some errand they had forgotten that was both far away and very urgent. There were still whispers, of course, and there would always be bullies, but people no longer stared, nor did they mock him. Sometimes, every once in a while, someone might even approach him for help, wanting to know if he had seen their cat or dog - or, once, best friend - wandering the streets as a phantom. Courtney had been shocked to discover that he would always agree to help them look, no matter who the person in question was, or how they had treated him in the past.
It certainly had thrown her for a loop when she'd heard whispers around town about how sweet of a boy he was. All she'd ever seen him as was a nuisance, a horrible little beast sent to embarrass and inconvenience her at every opportunity. But, as it turned out, she had been so completely wrong, she hated to think about it. Norman was, at heart, one of the sweetest people she had ever known, and probably one of the smartest, too.
She watched him wrap his hands around his mug, blowing the steam tendrils away only for them to rise again. His eyes were puffy and red, his nose still running a little, and she wondered how she had ever disliked her little brother, even a little bit.
He glanced up at her, and she averted her gaze quickly, but not quickly enough. She took to blowing on her own drink, hoping to cool it enough that it couldn't scald her, pretending she couldn't see him watching her in her peripherals. Or maybe there was a ghost over her shoulder, whatever. She took a sip and burned her tongue.
⁂
Hours later, Courtney blinked herself awake. She had been dozing at the table, her drink finished long ago. One glance at her brother in the dim light of the lamp over the stove proved he had been sleeping, too, or, at least, trying to. His arms were folded before him on the table, his cheek resting on one elbow, but his eyes weren't shut. He was staring dully at the wall, blinking slowly every once in a while. He looked, somehow, even worse than before, his eyes dark and ringed with bad dreams.
Wordlessly, Courtney stretched herself awake, collecting both their mugs to take to the sink, but discovered Norman's was still mostly full, and stone cold. She put it in the microwave, but just as she turned to rinse out her own cup, she heard a car pull into the driveway.
She froze, shooting a panicked glance at Norman, who was shooting a glance of his own back. As one, they broke away to check the clock. It was almost two - their parents would kill them both if they found out Courtney had even let him stay up past eight, especially on a school night.
Courtney met his gaze again and nodded firmly; she'd cover for him. He gave her a half-smile and got up to head upstairs.
"Norman - "
She called him back, hesitating only after she'd spoken. She regretted, now, having spent so many years resenting him for being himself. He had been telling the truth all along, and she... well, she'd treated him unfairly. She now knew he could be actually pretty cool, for a brother, but she'd let enough time pass before finally realizing it that now, two years later, she still wasn't quite sure how to go about befriending him.
He was staring at her. She wasn't quite sure what she'd meant to say. I love you? Sweet dreams? Good luck on that pacer test tomorrow?
The microwave went off, and she handed over his newly-warmed drink. He took it, though they both knew he probably wasn't going to drink it this time, either.
"Use one of my pillows, okay?" She said suddenly. That had been another of their mom's tricks. The theory was that the pillow the nightmare had occurred on could soak up all the scary stuff, and you could wash the bad dreams right out of it. But if you slept on it again before washing it, the dreams could come back into your head. Courtney was sure their mother had probably only made this up to convince her to go to bed after having such a dream, but she stood by it, nonetheless.
Norman nodded slowly. He was probably confused; for whatever reason, their mother had never used any of the tricks Courtney had gotten used to on him. Maybe she thought he wouldn't believe in them, or maybe she just forgot all about them. Or maybe she didn't think they would work on a kid who could see ghosts, who knew?
"It'll help," Courtney assured him, gesturing for him to hurry back upstairs before their parents came in. "Trust me, okay?"
He went, and not a moment too soon. Seconds after she heard her door close (but not his - she imagined he might not be ready to shut himself back in yet), the side door in the kitchen opened, and their parents stepped into the house.
"...Was so nice of them, I mean a donation of that - oh, Courtney!" her mother paused mid-sentence upon spotting her daughter, fingers slipping on her coat buttons. "Why are you still up? Is everything okay?"
"Everything's fine, yeah, just fine," Courtney shrugged, snatching up the sponge from the sink after a moment's blind panic. "I just couldn't sleep knowing there were dishes in the sink! So did you guys have a nice time?"
As her father took their coats to the front closet, her mother sat at the kitchen table, in the same place Norman had been sitting only minutes earlier, and prepared to break into an endless description of her night. Before she even got past her review of the movie they'd seen, however, her father's voice, raised from the living room, interrupted.
"What happened in here?!" he called, in a tone just below that of his normal shout. Abruptly, Courtney remembered scattering popcorn and homework papers to the floor before racing to her brother's aid.
Her father stomped into the kitchen, eyeing her. "Well?"
"I'll get it," she said, quickly drying her hands before throwing down the hand towel and scurrying off to the living room. She turned off the long-forgotten TV before beginning to gather up papers and throw crushed popcorn kernels back into the bowl. In the other room, she could hear her parents' voices, and the mention of Norman's name. They spoke for a few minutes, then the sound of footsteps heading up the stairs sounded, and their voices hushed. As she shuffled her disorganized homework assignments and notebooks into one general stack, Courtney hoped Norman had managed to fall asleep, or would at least have the presence of mind to pretend to be sleeping when their mother inevitably poked her head in to check on him.
She finished cleaning up the floor, then folded the blankets she'd been snuggled up in while doing her homework earlier in the evening. Satisfied with the state of the room, she turned to head upstairs and to bed, but something stopped her.
Norman's dream was still hanging around her, like cobwebs hanging off her clothes. She hadn't even experienced the dream, and yet she couldn't stop thinking about it. How horrible it had been, watching him look straight at her and fear for his life. Listening to him spout nonsense words. Watching him cower and cry in the presence of some nonexistent thing... or, at least, she hoped it was nonexistent.
With a frown, she turned away from the stairs and instead headed down the front hall, entering the computer room, which doubled as her father's office. She slipped inside and shut the door behind her before turning on the lights, sitting down at the creaky old chair at the desk and booting up the computer.
She bit her nails as it slowly groaned to life, logging onto the Internet and quickly tapping out a few different keywords into the search bar of the browser. She looked first for a name to put to whatever it was her brother was going through, and soon came up with the term night terror. Then she searched for such fits coupled with premonitions, which led her down a whole path of psychics and death-signs and bone castings and fortune telling that threw her off the scent quite a bit. It wasn't until she gave up completely and tried searching for more specific things, like my brother can see ghosts, that she got anything of use at all.
She found a link that looked promising, though she had spent enough time hopelessly clicking link after link that she didn't have the energy to get her hopes up. She found herself on the homepage of a cheery-looking site, with a hand-drawn background of a forest scene, a rainbow rising over the treeline. The banner introduced it as a "mystery and fashion advice" site, claiming there was no case too big to solve, nor was there any boy too unattainable to catch.
These, to Courtney, seemed like very unusually specific, yet radically different, subjects for a single website to be dedicated to, but she was much too exhausted to be skeptical. The homepage asked her if she wanted help with mysteries or fashion, and she chose the former, thinking to herself that if the site proved useful, she might just come back for the latter sometime.
The link sent her to a new page, which seemed to be more of an internet-diary than anything. Along the bottom were entries written out like the pages of a journal, each one long and rambling, some illustrated with drawings, others not, and along the top were links that promised to take her to see photographs and testimonials and event calendars, plus one suspicious one that was labeled only "evidence".
She read the top few entries of the diary, the most recent ones, judging by the dates attached, and was shocked by what she read. Most of it was complete nonsense to her, but all of it had a definitive running theme: the paranatural. The first log spoke of an experience with a copycat goblin, the second, a strange species of mutated fish that had somehow evolved lungs and feet, the third, an update on an ongoing investigation into the life-sustaining properties of peanut brittle.
Courtney had been staring at the screen so long her eyes ached, and her tear ducts felt as though they had dried up long ago. Still, with only a few moments' deliberation, she clicked on the "contact us!" link in the corner and started typing.
Carefully, mindful of the fact that she had no idea who was running the site, she introduced herself and her brother as vaguely as possible, and wrote a little about Norman, both his past and present condition, making sure to clarify that though he had always been able to see ghosts, and had had accurate visions of the future before, the nightmares were a new development. She explained that he had spoken in a language she had never heard before, but, upon waking, couldn't translate it, nor could he remember saying anything, at all. She asked for any suggestions, especially for help in stopping the nightmares, and, blinking back tears as her ducts started working overtime to keep themselves hydrated, thanked the site's owner in advance and sent the message.
After powering down the computer, she snuck out of the room and turned out all the lights downstairs, then made her way back upstairs, face beginning to feel stiff and masklike with fatigue. She paused at the doorway of her bedroom and saw, by the light of the early dawn beginning to rose-tint the morning, that one of her pink downy pillows had been replaced by one in a green cover decorated with little brains and disembodied hands. She glanced across the hall to Norman's room, noticing the door was shut.
As silently as she could, she opened it slowly. There, bathed in the sickly light of his glowing posters and nightlights, was Norman, curled up on his bed, blankets kicked to the floor, arms tucked securely around her pillow.
"I'll leave your door open," she whispered, half to herself.
He didn't move, but she heard him whisper back his thanks. She smiled and returned to her own room, leaving her door open, as well. The house was silent as she finally slipped into bed, but not before depositing the undead-themed pillow on her vanity chair, in case the old rumor about bad dreams really was true. She soon slipped into a quiet, dreamless sleep, only for her alarm clock to rouse her for school an hour and a half later.