Chapter Text
Breathe in. Breathe out.
In.
Out.
The rhythm was steady. Calming. Today, it appeared to be working again. Thank God. Perhaps he’d have to put in another hour of meditation to catch up.
In.
No matter. As long as his mind returned to its calm state - with no need to go anywhere near REM.
Out.
A cackle stabbed into his mind. Who the hell do you think you’re fooling?
Beau jerked out of his meditative state with a gasp and slapped a hand on the dirt floor beside him. “Damn it!”
“Dad? Are you okay?” Zoey stood in the doorway to the ramshackle wooden hut in the middle of the park that had somehow escaped the notice of the relevant authorities, clutching a bag of groceries and frowning down at him.
Beau rubbed at one eye and forced a smile. “Sorry, kiddo. You just startled me.”
Zoey blinked at him, then shrugged and plonked the groceries down on the wooden counter. “You are usually waay more out of it when you meditate. Like at one stage I was worried you’d eaten a fungus you shouldn’t, or something.”
Beau pushed himself to his feet. “I’m not ‘out of it’ because I’m not asleep. I’m fully awake, just… meditating. I usually choose to ignore you when you stomp in here.”
Zoey raised an eyebrow.
“Sorry.”
“You’re usually way less grumpy too.” Zoey turned to him, arms folded. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Yeaaah…”
“You haven’t even tried to offer me tree bark jerky yet.”
“Maybe I want to try new things.” Beau pushed past her to get to the grocery bag on the counter and began digging through it. It usually annoyed him when she brought something processed into the house, or one of her friends brought a chocolate bar or something, because he could smell the damn thing. It may have perked him up quickly, but Beau had quickly learned that stuff like chocolate, or coffee, or anything people usually used to keep themselves awake, wasn’t really effective in the long term. Meditation had proven far more reliable. At least until recently.
There was… something in that grocery bag. The smell was overpowering, sweet, mixed in with the warm smell of bread and tangy cheese. He pushed aside the cheese to find a chocolate bar nestled at the bottom. He wasn’t even sure how he was smelling it through the packet. Maybe a quick boost of energy wasn’t out of the question at this point in time. He snatched it out, ripped off the wrapper, and bit off an entire half of the bar.
Zoey stared at him with her jaw hanging open. “Er… I was going to offer you a loaf of bread or something, but my treat for finishing work early works too.”
Beau lowered the half-eaten chocolate bar. “Oh…” He held it out to her.
“Dad, it’s fine. You can take anything. Please. You’ve literally been eating bark. I just… worry, you know,” Zoey rubbed at her arm. “You haven’t slept for nearly two months. You’re living in a park, admittedly, in some pretty decent digs considering, but you do something weird and I’m… well, I’m going to get worried.”
“If me being weird is the benchmark, you’re going to be worried a lot.”
“Dad…”
The chocolate bar had cleared some of the fuzz out of his head, at least enough that he felt the cogs turning faster up there. Enough that he heard the note of tension under the exasperation in Zoey’s voice. “Hey…” He took her hands. “I’m okay. It’s just… you know I need to keep out of the Dream World, right?”
“Do you?”
“Of course! I… I don’t know what I’ll…” Beau swallowed, hanging his head. “I can’t take the risk of hurting you again. Or anyone else.”
“Mr Oz said staying awake for so long was dangerous.”
Despite thoughts of how badly he’d failed bubbling up in his head, Beau snorted. “The look on that man’s face, every time I tell him that yes, I am still awake, and I have been for nearly two months… you’d think he’d be able to accept that fact blows out of the water any of his ‘scientific literature’.”
She was glaring at him again.
“Zoey, I’m fine. I have replaced sleep with meditation. It’s working great… well, as much as sleep does, anyway. I mean, you have nights when you don’t sleep well, right? I’m just… I think maybe I just haven’t got my full eight hours of meditation or whatever. So, I’ll have a cup of coffee or a snack to make me feel better, and it’ll sort itself out, same as sleep usually does, yeah?” He popped the rest of the chocolate bar into his mouth.
Damn, but that did taste good.
Zoey sighed. “Okay. At least you’re eating something other than bark. But you can’t just eat nothing but chocolate on top of… whatever you’ve been eating I don’t need to know. Here.” She dug in the grocery bag and slammed a loaf of bread down on the counter, followed by a block of cheese. Hard. “If you’re going to start eating real food again, at least start with something basic and…” She turned to him suddenly, grabbing his arm, fingers digging in. “Dad, listen, okay? If ever something happens like the meditation really isn’t working, or you feel sick, or you eat the wrong mushroom…”
“I haven’t been eating mushrooms.”
“Dad!”
“Zoey, hey.” Beau wrapped his arms around her, and she grabbed onto him. Far too tight. Damn it, what was he doing? “I’m okay.”
Zoey sniffed, then pushed him back, looking him dead in the eye. “If you’re not, you got to promise that you’ll tell me. Okay?”
“I…” He couldn’t hold her gaze.
Zoey squeezed his hand, voice softening. “I know you’re scared of what you might do if you go back to the dream world. And that’s okay. But you can’t hurt yourself either. Promise you’ll let me know if you need help?”
Beau forced himself to meet her eyes and smiled. “Of course, sweetheart.”
Zoey hugged him, and he hugged her back, ignoring the shadows that laughed at him from the corner of his eyes.
Liar.
That night was his worst in months. Beau almost fell asleep meditating, jerking ‘awake’ with his heart pounding in his chest. He hadn’t gone deep or long enough to reach the Dream World, but shadows danced in the corner of his vision, so that for a moment he thought he had. Shadows that looked like grimspawn, that cackled softly at him like crinkling paper, but that dissipated as soon as he looked at them.
No, still the waking world. Beau drew deep breaths, trying to calm his heart.
“Don’t be an idiot,” Oswald had yelled at him when he’d first told him his plans. “You can’t not sleep. Do you have any idea what that will do to you? If your body even allows it! Paranoia, hallucinations…”
Hallucinations.
Beau drew a deep breath and stood, glaring at the darkest corner and daring the shadows to reappear. When he’d first given up sleep, he’d seen flickers of things in the corner of his vision. But once he’d got a handle on his meditation technique, they’d disappeared, along with the fatigue. But now, it seemed all the meditation was doing was lulling his body towards sleep.
He could deal with a few funky shadows.
Beau picked up Zoey’s loaf of bread, tearing a chunk off the end, and walked outside under the washed out stars. The cool air cleared his head a little. Had bread always tasted this good? He ripped off another chunk, digging his hand past the crust and into the loaf.
“Bread? Bread won’t keep you awake. Then I’ll be back.” That voice. His voice.
“No!” Beau jabbed the bread at the shadow framed by the leather duster jacket and torn cowboy hat. “You’re not real! Not here!”
The shadow faded with a tinkle of chains the second he looked at it. Beau glared at the spot. Don’t break eye contact, even if what you were trying to cow didn’t have eyes. He’d learned that in the Nightmare Realm. Most of the darkest creatures fed on fear; you couldn’t show it, nor anything that could be mistaken for subservience. Unless it was the Nightmare King.
After a dozen or more seconds, Beau lowered his trembling hand. There was nothing there, but still his heart pounded. He had not been afraid of the dark for a very, very long time, but he moved back into the soft radius of the lantern hung in the doorway to his hut.
Not real. But concerning. His body wanted to sleep. Despite laughing at Oswald’s concerns, he’d listened enough to understand that. He needed help. But if he told Zoey he was hallucinating, even mildly, she’d freak out. He couldn’t scare her like that.
Beau pulled out his phone, and the bright light flooded his eyes. Blue light. Good. He focused on that, and the text he hated to send. He obsessed over it for the next hour or so, until the sky had grown a faint pink and the cries of birds pierced the dawn air.
Eventually, he simply sent:
Oz, I need to talk urgently. Please call me.
Then, still clutching the half shredded loaf of bread, he strode out across the park. The rest of the world was finally waking, and that, along with the growing daylight, always made things easier. There were also fewer shadows to play tricks on his eyes.
All that bread wasn’t sitting right in his belly. He’d practically hollowed out the entire crust whilst he’d been messing around with the phone. Or maybe it was the chocolate bar, or he was just anxious. Why did Zoey always have to bring food she knew he didn’t really want to eat?
“Seriously. I have plenty of my own perfectly good food! Bread is… for ducks.” And he hurled the hollowed out crust into the middle of the nearest pond. It landed with a loud slap, sending ducks scattering in a flurry of wings and disgruntled quacks.
Beau snickered, but his smile quickly faded. They were just dumb birds, but the laugh sounded too much like the man who saw humour in terrifying and messing with kids. Including his own daughter. “I need to sort this out.” Or risk going back to that.
The smell of coffee filled Beau’s nostrils. Like the chocolate bar, it was enticing. Without really intentionally deciding, he’d been heading to the coffee van that always sat at the park entrance nearest to the school from early. He really shouldn’t be depending on coffee to keep him awake. But this would keep him going until he could talk to Oswald.
Beau ordered a coffee, paying with change he scrummaged out of his pockets. He didn’t have the energy to make small talk, but it didn’t bother the barista, who was probably used to her patrons being half asleep and uncommunicative. He stood outside the gates, leaning against the wall. The coffee was burnt and bitter and flooded him with warmth. Beau gulped it down, feeling it jolt through him like electricity. Much more effective than Zoey’s chocolate bar or an entire loaf of bread.
He stared at the empty cup, suddenly mad at himself. “So much for avoiding stimulants.”
“All it takes is a little lack of sleep, and you can’t even control what you put in your own body? Pathetic.” No shadows lurked, but the Nightmare King’s voice whispered in his ear, clear as day.
“Shut up!” Beau jumped at his own hastily barked retort, more so than the voice that wasn’t there, dropping his cup and spilling the hot dregs of coffee over his hand. He couldn’t speak to the Nightmare King like that! Only he wasn’t here. He gulped breaths of air, then wiped the coffee from his hand and rubbed at one eye. “Damn it.”
“How did we ever put up with that?” The brim of a cowboy hat peeked into the corner of his vision. The apparition slouched against the wall, in the same position Beau had held a moment before. This time, Beau didn’t look, and the Night Hunter didn’t vanish. In the corner of his vision he remained, a presence felt rather than seen.
“What do you want?” Beau couldn’t keep the waver from his voice. He tensed, waiting. He was hearing things, seeing things. You couldn’t have a conversation with a hallucination. Could you?
Night Hunter laughed, a derisive chuckle. How many times had he done that in the Dream Realm, laughing at his daughter, at scared dreamers, a laugh that said how small, how naïve, how little a threat you are to me. And then the Hunter replied: “I want you to fall asleep.”
Beau shuddered, squeezing his eyes shut. “No,” he said, voice barely a whisper. “No. I can’t.”
And, despite the early hour, he snatched out his phone and dialed Oswald.