text: Prom night, 2012, the attending students and faculty of Mooretown High School fall asleep, never to wake again. They don’t age, or stir. When cut off from life support, they persist, not needing food, or water. Cassandra Blake, twin sister to one of the victims, takes a sip of her coffee. We’re in a diner, eating the lightest breakfast they serve. Cassandra Blake is, and appears as, a woman entering her thirties. She stares wistfully out the diner window. “Mr. Alvarez,” she says, “I don’t understand what you hope to do here.” “Help, if I can,” I say, and it’s true. “Document if I can’t.” She shoots me an angry look. She doesn’t believe me. My name is Fernando Alvarez, I dance with the weird that goes bump in the night. I told her that much, but she thinks I’m some kind of sensationalist media or quack “scientist”. “How do you intend to help?” “Let’s start with your sister. You claim to have contacted her.” She eyeballed me, really tried to suss out my intentions. Was I a ghost-hunter style sensationalist? A journalist wackadoodle? Or was I genuinely trying to help? She scrutinized me with her gaze, but I guess my sincerity came through. “I did,” she admitted. “Elaborate, please. How did you talk to her?” “I didn’t. Not really. It was when they were still in the hospital. I spent every hour I could with her, hoping that she would wake up. I ended up sleeping nights there. One night, I fell asleep in a chair next to her, and the moment my eyes closed I felt my heart jump inside my chest. I woke up, but it wasn’t me, and I wasn’t in the hospital anymore. I was my sister. She was in this horrible hot tunnel. There were broken pipes, and steam. It looked nothing like the school, but it was like a dream, I just knew that it was. I... she was hungry, so hungry. The only food had been the stuff set out on tables in the gym, and that was gone. She- I... She slinked around the warped version of our high school. She was trying not to be seen. She did that for a couple hungry days. Until she ran into another student. I recognized them, it was her date, had been her date. He was weak, and emaciated. Oh god. Mr. Alvarez, her mouth was watering. I could feel her thoughts. She was hungry, and so, so sorry. He would have done the same to her, had done the same to her. When she finished eating, she found a crawlspace in the pipe tunnels to sleep in. When she woke up again, she was in a different part of the school. It was a reset. She was back in her prom dress. The first thing she did was tear it up, and take off her heels. She was getting ready to swipe the food in the gym, when she heard something. I saw what was coming, I tried to warn her, and she heard me! I saw through her eyes, she tried looking for my voice. She called my name, but she- I- she couldn’t find me. I only distracted her. Her prom date appeared from somewhere, and that was it. She woke up in another reset, and I woke up back at the hospital.” It was a lot to take in. “It felt so real,” she said. Her voice was hoarse with tears. “You probably think I’m just making this up.” “Cassandra?” I said, pulling her attention away from the floor, “I believe you.” She blinked at me. Now I was the crazy one. “Your twin sister,” I continued, “she was moved into your mother’s home when it was found out that the victims did not require life support. You were still attending high school at the time. Did you ever try sleeping beside her again? To reconnect with her?” “Yes.” “Did you learn anything else?” I wasn’t questioning her experience, I was asking if she had been able to gather any more information. An important distinction. I saw an emotional wall crumble in her. I wasn’t a probing sensationalist or quack scientist anymore, I was a co-conspirator. “Hannah Hert.” I mentally flipped through some notes. “The troubled girl?” Hannah Hert was one of the slumbering students. A dark haired girl, terribly thin, and awfully pale. She was a ward of the state. Her father had been her only family, and he had died of a heart attack on the night of the prom. It was doubly tragic, as he was apparently a healthy man still in his prime. Of the victims afflicted, hers was probably the saddest story. Poor, bullied, never fit it. She had a habit of coming up in my interviews for this case. “If that’s what you want to call her,” said Cassandra, “Hannah was a sweet girl. Emphasis on the ‘was’ I guess.” I raised an inquisitive eyebrow. “During one of the resets I was able to see my sister sneak into the gym again. There were bodies on the dance floor, arranged in a circle. I recognized pretty much all of them. My sister’s body was in there too. In the center of it all was Hannah. She was floating. The air around her was moving the way it does near the road on a really hot day, and it was dark. She was like the opposite of a lightbulb.” “What was she doing?” “Besides the floating? Nothing I guess. She looked like she was sleeping. All the bodies looked like that.” Noted. It became immediately apparent to me that Hannah Hert was the source of the nightmare. A very obvious solution presented itself. End Hannah, end the nightmare, and I made a solemn vow to avoid that if possible. Call me soft or naive, but I don’t think Hannah Hert meant to hurt anyone. She trapped her peers, sure, but she also trapped herself. According to Cassandra her sister saw a sleeping body double of all trapped individuals in the gymnasium, meaning floating Hannah wasn't the actual Hannah. I wrapped up my interview with Cassandra, gathering more details about the nightmare world. There was the warped school, with its dimly lit hallways and pipe ways. There was also the neighborhood, with its neighbors. Of all the places, Cassandra said, the neighborhood was to be avoided at all costs. Once you entered, you didn’t get out until reset. “Thank you, er... detective... agent...?” I shrugged. “Detective works. What for?” “For taking me seriously. I’ve never opened up about what I saw before. Thanks for making me feel like I could, I guess.” “Thanks for being cooperative.” “What do you plan on doing now?” “Well, I’ve got an idea, but I’ll need your help.” “Wait really? Yeah, anything! What's your plan?” “Have you ever tried lucid dreaming?” After explaining my plan, we paid our bill at the diner and hopped into our cars. I followed Cassandra Blake back to her mom’s house, where we would find her sister. We still needed to get Cassandra’s mother on board, but thankfully that wasn’t too difficult. Watching one of your twin daughters cease to age while trapped in a magic coma could open you up to a lot of unconventional ideas. From there, it was only the waiting. Time ticked at a crawl. Cassandra and I sat around in the cozy light of her mother’s kitchen. It would be a nice night, if not for the planned endeavor. “Explain it to me again,” she said. “Magic is sympathetic. Twins share stronger bonds than other siblings. Oftentimes they view each other as other pieces of themselves. The same thing can happen with two people in love. It's actually exceptionally rare to see that kind of bond in a non-romantic relationship." “And that’s why I can connect to her in the nightmare?” she said, then yawned. I nodded, and yawned back. “Looks like it's time.” Momma Blake had graciously allowed us to use her room for the plan. It had a king sized bed, which wasn’t absolutely necessary, but very welcomed. Cassandra and I entered. Her sister was laid on one end, carried over earlier by us. It was strange, seeing her sister lying there. I’m stating the obvious here, but the resemblance to Cassandra was uncanny. She was Cassandra, scrubbed clean of ten years. “Okay,” I said, setting an alarm for five hours from now. “Sweet dreams Cass.” I was sandwiched between the two sisters, holding their hands. Cassandra and I were taking advantage of the “wake back to bed” method of lucid dreaming. Five hours from now a soothing alarm would wake us up, and we’d stay up for about thirty minutes before going back to sleep. Once we reentered sleep, it would hopefully be as lucid dreamers, which would then give us agency in the nightmare. If this idea worked, then Cassandra was a shoe in. My hope was that I could use her connection to her sister as a bridge, and tag along. Sleep came surprisingly easy. Five hours later I was woken up from a very dark nightmare.I couldn’t confirm if anything I saw had been in tune with Cassandra. We needed to stay quiet, and calm. We couldn’t accidentally “wake” ourselves up anymore than necessary. Thirty minutes passed. I squeezed Cassandra’s hand to let her know, and we tried going back to bed. Soon I was back in that dark nightmare, and so was someone else. I could feel Cassandra’s presence. For a moment I experienced some mild dysmorphia, as I was, for a split second, a teenage girl. Then, just like that, I was staring at a chain link fence that bordered a nightmare version of Mooretown High School. I was back in my body, thankfully not in my sleeping clothes. I was suited up in my usual leather jacket and jeans. No gun though. Cassandra appeared beside me a moment later. She was wearing a hoodie and sweatpants. She was also eighteen. She noticed the age change, but didn’t comment on it. “She’s not too far away,” said Cassandra. She made for the school, and I followed. The fact that I was with her here meant the first experimental part of the plan had worked. Actually the whole plan was experimental. This was just especially crucial. If I could cross over with her, then someone could cross back. We entered the school. The first thing that hit me wasn’t the twisted hallways, or the walls with the lockers that stretched at odd angles. It was this creeping paranoia. This place wanted to let you know that you weren’t safe. Likely this was a reflection of the nightmare’s creator. Nothing else could explain the sudden onslaught of negative emotions. I felt fatigued, lonely, hopeless, ugly. It was all I could do to not give myself a hug. “That was something,” she said. “It felt like hitting a wall,” I said. I ended up giving myself that hug. There there me, it’s gonna be okay. “I saw desks and a chalkboard before I appeared,” said Cassandra. “So she’s in a classroom.” “Yeah, but I think I know which one. It didn’t look exactly the same, but I bet it was our old math class.” “Lead the way.” We ran through stretched out and twisted hallways before hearing a commotion. Someone was trying to break into a classroom just around the corner. Cassandra and I stopped at the turn. We were silent for a moment, and wondered if whoever was working the door had heard us. A moment more and we were sure they hadn’t. “They’re trying to break into our old math room,” said Cassandra, after having a peek around the corner. “I bet Claire’s hold up inside trying not to get eaten.” “Right,” I said, much calmer than I actually was. I was unarmed, and the guy around the corner looked like his college financials hinged on a football scholarship. “Get his attention and come back this way. I’ll jump him and put him to sleep.” “Okay.” Cassandra jumped out and shouted at the big guy around the corner. She lured him back our way, and just as planned I jumped him. I got my arms around his thick neck and started choking him out. The only hiccup was that he was much stronger than I was, and armed. We hadn’t noticed the shiv he was carrying. The big guy tried to stab my face, but settled for my forearm. I almost let go, but didn’t, so he slammed me into a set of lockers with his back. I held tight. I was slowly bringing him down. Too slowly. At this pace I was worried that I would give out before he did. Cassandra saved us both the anticipation of who would finish off who when she managed to pry the shiv out from his increasingly tired hands, and gave it to him good in the eye. He was down a minute later. “Christ,” I said. “Yeah...” Cassandra was shaking. “It’s alright, follow me to the room and call out to your sister.” Simple instructions. Easy does it. I couldn’t let Cassandra freeze up on me. Cassandra followed me, and did as I asked. She stood in front of the classroom door, and called out to her sister. There was a rummaging sound, then click. Another Cassandra poked her head out of the classroom. There was a lot of initial shock, followed by a lot of disbelief. When Cassandra’s sister, Claire, finally settled down, we were able to explain the situation. “So you can get me out of here?” said Claire. It broke something in me. She sounded so much like her sister did when she started crying back at the diner. “I...” don’t want to get your hopes up, “can’t say with any certainty. For now just hold on to Cassandra, and hopefully when she and I wake back up in the real world you’ll have crossed over with us.” Claire had to undo her barricade to let us in. So I spent the remainder of our time in the nightmare rebuilding it. Somewhere in between stacking desks in front of the door, I blinked, and found myself staring at the ceiling of momma Blake’s bed room. I heard stirring on my right, as well as my left. Bingo. Claire Blake woke up into reality for the first time in over a decade. When she saw me, and an older looking Cassandra, she blinked. “So it was all real,” she said. “Afraid so,” I said. We’d already given her the rundown in the nightmare, but now that she was awake it was fuzzy. The past decade trapped in the nightmare was just a passing dream for her now. I left the Blake home, promising to return in a little while. I wanted to give them some time alone. The family was reunited for the first time in decades. Well... most of the family. Pappa Blake had passed some years ago. Another reason I wanted to get out for a while. I came back a few hours later to find the twins sitting together at the small kitchen table, mamma Blake let me in on her way out. “How do you feel?” asked Cassandra. “Tired actually,” said her sister, Claire. “But sleeping is the last thing I want to do right now. Thanks for the coffee.” “Hey,” I said, cutting into their banter. “Greetings detective,” said the younger looking twin, Claire. “Cassandra told me you’re the reason I’m out of that nightmare.” Don’t thank me yet, kid. I cleared my throat. “Yeah, no problem. I have some questions if you don’t mind.” A flash of protest appeared on Cassandra’s face. She wanted to give her sister more rest before talking about the nightmare again, but I couldn’t say how long we had. I had told her when explaining the plan that getting her sister out would probably not be a permanent solution. “Sure, anything, detective,” said Claire. “What can you tell me about Hannah Hert?” Claire tightened her grip on the coffee mug. She narrowed her eyes, but not at me, more like at something past me. She was recalling a very unpleasant memory. “Why do you want to know about that whore?” Okay... not what I expected. “I think she may be the source of the nightmare. It might be hard for you to remember, but she was a central figure in the pile of bodies that manifested in the nightmare’s gymnasium. “Hmmph.” She took a sip of her coffee. “It would be Hannah fucking Hert. That little homewrecker was always a trash bag like that.” Whoa. “What?” interjected Cassandra. “You didn’t know? I thought everyone knew. I guess I never told you.” “Told me what? It’s been a long time, but I remember Hannah, she was a sweet girl.” “Oh yeah, super sweet. Cassandra, she was fucking our dad.” Cassandra and I were both agasp. “Hannah harlot is what we used to call her. Slutty Hannah used to get into everyone’s bed, the older the better I guess. Shit, I heard she shacked up with her own dad too.” Her dad? My instincts told me that Claire only had half the story. “Is that why Hannah was treated so poorly at school?” “What do you think, detective? She had her lips wrapped around half the dads in Mooretown.” Cassandra interjected again. “And you just never thought to tell mom?” “And ruin their marriage?” I took that cue to leave. I got more than I needed. I stepped outside the Blake home. I had myself a sit down on the curb, sipping on a cup of coffee stolen from the kitchen. I was thinking about Hannah Hert. I didn’t have much to go on, but I thought it was much more likely that Hannah was abused. Much more likely that a father would force himself on his daughter. With that assumption, I don’t think any of Hannah’s relations would have been consensual. Meaning there wasn’t anywhere that Hannah must have felt safe, hence the neighborhood in the nightmare, and the onslaught of negative emotions inside the school. My interviews before Cassandra had told me just enough about Hanna’s school life to know that she was a barely tolerated presence there. That brings to mind an interesting question. If Hannah was so vilified, then why had she been at prom? I can’t imagine wanting to spend a whole night surrounded by people that I knew hated my guts. I went back inside after finishing my coffee. When I reentered the Blake home, things had cooled down. The twin’s weren’t talking. “Claire, would you mind if I asked you something else?” She gave her twin sister the side eye. “Go ahead detective.” “Why did Hannah bother going to prom? From what I understand the student body was pretty clear about how they felt about her.” “Pffft. Hannah harlot got around, but she always had eyes for my boyfriend. I guess she wasn’t completely happy just sleeping with older men.” “You don’t mean...” said Cassandra. We were probably thinking the same thing. “We all agreed it would be funny. I had my boyfriend play around with her for like a week. That’s really all it took to get her to come. When she got there he pretended not to know and we all had a good laugh. Like anyone could ever love that whore.” So there it was. A perfect storm of abuse and broken trust. Combined with Hannah’s latent talent for magic, and you get this decade long nightmare. Fuck me. “That will be all Claire, thank you.” I wanted to step back out again, but Claire stopped me. “Detective, wait. Cass told me. Me being awake is only temporary right?” I turned around. “Yeah.” “Do you have a permanent solution?” “Working on it.” Claire wasn’t happy with my answers to her followup questions. I let her be mad. I excused myself from the Blake home just as momma Blake returned from her outing. I went out for a drive to mull some things over, then came back to the Blake house. This time we entered the nightmare much later. Claire did not want to go back to the nightmare. She understood what she was being sent back to. It was most of the way toward sunrise when she finally hit the hay. Cassandra and I followed her, employing the “wake back to bed” method again. This time I focused my thoughts on Hanna, hoping that like Cass and her sister, I would gain insight into her location in the nightmare. I entered the nightmare with flashes of the outside. A field with a thick mist settled on it. I appeared beside Cassandra. This was the final step of the plan. Find Hannah Hert, and bring her back out of the nightmare, thus ending it. At the very least we would have to see if she was in a state to want to leave. As far as Hannah knows, outside this nightmare is just another bigger one waiting for her. Mooretown had not been kind to her, so why would the rest of the world. “She’s in a field somewhere,” I said. “It’s not a big school, there’s only one field. C’mon.” I followed Cassandra, rounding the school. The outside was lit by bright fluorescent lights. Here and there I noticed Cassandra tilt her head toward the school. She was worried about her sister. “Thanks,” I told her. “It must be hard knowing she’s in there somewhere.” “Yeah.” She didn’t turn back to look at me. We came to the field. There was a set of bleachers, and hidden underneath the seats, Hannah. She saw us too. I approached her slowly. “We don’t mean you any harm,” I said. The frail looking girl slinked further back into the darkness of the bleachers. In another life, I wondered, would this have been where she’d have run off to cry that night? “Hannah,” said Cassandra, “It’s true. This is detective Alvarez, he wants to help you.” “Fernando Alvarez, at your service. I just want to talk to you about what you’ve been going through.” Cassandra had been unaware of the rumors surrounding Hannah. Maybe she was a friendly face for Hannah, a rarity in this town. I was a total stranger, but one with Cassandra’s endorsement. That probably already put me at the top of Hannah’s list relative to the rest of the people she’d known in her regular life. Wide eyed, Hannah stared at me. She dared to inch closer. Bit by bit she came out into the open. She took a couple tentative steps toward me. Then there was a crash behind us. A set of double doors was thrown open. Out came Claire and a coterie of students she’d apparently gathered to her side. “Claire?” said Cassandra. “How... why are you here?” “Sympathetic magic. Just like the detective said. I thought about you all night, and knew where you two were heading the moment you arrived. It was like a rapid fire slide show in my head, but I figured out where you were going.” “But why?” “Cass, the only way to end this is to end her, if he doesn’t want to do that then maybe we can do the job here, and set everyone free.” “Claire, this is psycho.” “It’s necessary.” Claire and her new goons started running at us. Hannah bolted, and I chased after her. Cassandra threw herself in front of Claire and her goons, allowing us some precious distance. Hannah ran like mad through the misty field. The further we went in, the heavier the mist became, until it was dense fog. We were losing Claire and her goons, but I was also losing Hannah. Eventually I lost sight of her, and when I exited the fog, it was at the entrance to a neighborhood. I recognized it as the one that had the Blake house. Hannah must have gone in. There was a sinister energy coming from inside. The hair on my neck stood up as I entered. The neighborhood was dark, darker than the eternal night of the rest of the nightmare. I wondered how I was able to see anything at all, but I reminded myself that this was a dream. Nothing had to exactly make sense in here. From the windows of the houses I could see shadows. I knew without knowing that they were staring at me. *Whore. Slut. Mistake.* This place was unsafe. It didn’t offer any solace, it was just a much more manageable danger than the field at the moment. I hurried along. I didn’t like the way the shadows were looking at me. I could feel their eyes going up and down my body. *They knew what I looked like naked.* I saw Hannah. She was watching me from the end of the street, but ran off, deeper into the neighborhood. More windows, more shadowy neighbors. *Stop looking. He made me do it. Please don’t touch me*. I felt sick, but I had to keep going. At last I made it to what had to be the deepest, darkest part of the neighborhood. The only light here was coming from a house at the end, the door was wide open. *I felt a hand crawl under my skirt.* “Get the fuck off me!” I turned around, but there was no one there, and I wasn’t wearing a skirt. Fuck me. I finished my trek, entering the threshold of the door. Inside was a living room with flickering lights and electronics. Hannah was in her baby blue prom dress, a white gloved hand outstretched. Opposite her, her father. In the flickering light of the television, I saw her father clutch his chest. I saw life escape from his wide terror stricken eyes. The lights in the living room flicked hard once more, and the scene was gone. “I don’t regret it one bit. Does that make me a bad person?” It was Hannah. Suddenly she was stepping past me to enter the house. “No. I don’t think so,” I told her, following her in. She sat down on her couch, in front of the now off TV. “I think I’m a bad person. It’s why I’m in hell. Dad always said I’d end up here.” “Your father was wrong. This isn’t hell Hannah, this is just a bad dream, a really, really bad dream.” She gave me a quick glance, then cast her eyes to the floor. I heard her sniffle. “Why do you feel like you’re a bad person Hannah?” “I have to be. Why else would he hurt me? Then he got bored and let...” she choked on her tears. “No one would want me now. I’m... I... I thought that boy did but...” “Hannah... none of what happened to you was your fault, it was always your father and some shitty people. They hurt you, because they were bad people. You didn’t deserve any of this.” “Then why did he do it?” she managed to say between sobs. “Because he’s evil. What he did had nothing to do with who you are as a person or what you did. You have to believe me, you did nothing wrong Hannah, you still haven’t. You wiped one bad person off the face of the planet that night. Sometimes that’s just tuesday for me, and you did it because you had to. For your own safety. This,” I said, gesturing vaguely at the nightmare world, “I wasn’t lying, it's just a dream and once you choose to leave, no harm no foul.” She sniffled. “And after this, what? You’ll leave me alone, let me fend for myself? What’s waiting for me out there? I’m a monster.” “If that’s what you want, I can leave you alone. You tell me what you need, but I won’t leave you alone in this world unless you want me to. You’re a gifted girl Hannah, and I can help you get in touch with people that know how to teach you about your gifts.” She was just on the edge of wanting something more. The crying had stopped. She was looking at me. “There’s a way forward, you don’t have to wallow in here if you don’t want to.” I stretched out my hand, and she stood up to take it. “How do I move forward?” “I had a plan in mind with Cassandra. It might have to wait though. But after we get you out of here, you’ll wake up in an assisted living facility far away from the town. From there I’ll come pick you up, or if you don’t feel safe coming with me, then I can bring those people I was talking about to meet you instead.” “Okay,” she said. “Things are going to be better from here on out Hannah, I-” I was awake. Cassandra was shaking me awake. “Christ!” “Holy shit, you’re awake.” “Why wouldn’t I be?” “I’ve been up for half an hour. I don’t know how this dream magic stuff works, I thought I left you behind.” “Half an hour?” I looked around the room. “Where’s your sister?” “She’s in the kitchen. She’s pissed.” “Yeah, well, I don’t have anything nice to say to her either.” Just then momma Blake burst into the room. “Honey!” “What is it?” said Cassandra. “Is it Claire? Did she do something?” “No! Look!” Cassandra’s mom showed us a picture. It was from a support group hosted on an old social media site. The caption read: *After more than a decade, my beautiful boy finally woke up*. “Is that...?” “One of my old classmates,” said Cassandra. I made my field report shortly after seeing that picture. Turns out I didn’t need Cassandra to be a bridge for Hannah, which made sense, I suppose. Hannah was the source of the nightmare. I just didn’t suspect that she would have had the magical talent to undo the nightmare on her own. Speaking of Hannah, I did keep my promise. The assisted living facility was surprised to see her wake up. I was able to visit her that same day. She only barely remembered who I was. The nightmare was as fuzzy to her as it had been for Claire when she first woke up. It didn’t happen overnight, but Hannah got better. She was placed in a loving coven of honest to god spell casting, broom riding witches. Last I heard from them, Hannah was excelling in her studies. Another case, closed.