Somewhere in his dreams, he could hear Charlie calling out to him.  It was distant, hard to reach for, but it had a potent and sudden effect on the images spiraling through his sleep.  The young man he’d taken in was different.  At first he was only a little off, a little creepy with the way he moved across the floor of the empty room Val’s mind conjured up for the scene.  Then came the smile, which was not at all Charlie’s, and a darkness that consumed blank, pale walls until everything was black.  The new space was an unsettling void with Charlie at its focus.  But it wasn’t Charlie at all.  Something twisted and evil was inside of him, and the realization came too slowly.  He saw the knife in the young man’s hand, but instead of moving to stop it, Val found himself frozen in place, wondering where the weapon had come from.  Had it been there a moment ago?  The knife was plunged deep into Charlie’s torso, just below the ribs.  The demon seemed all too pleased and laughed.  And then all those scars that lined Charlie’s body were no longer scars, but cracks, and the single knife wound seemed to revive them, skin splitting like dry porcelain.<br/><br/>Thankfully, it ended there.  Val’s eyes snapped open, and he drew in a sharp breath.  He was tense, but somewhat calm as he surveyed the room and quickly pieced the night before all together to form a coherent memory.  Charlie had been dying in the cold, he’d brought him home, everything was going to be fine.  That was the hope, at least.  It still was not clear whether the homeless man could make a recovery at all, let alone a full one with limbs and digits intact.  The ending of that more real nightmare would only be revealed in time.<br/><br/>As for his own dream, Val dismissed it easily enough.  It wasn’t exactly a rare thing to dream of demons, spirits, monsters, or other dark things.  It was his entire life, after all.  Aside from that, his strong suspicion that Charlie had been a victim of demonic attacks could have easily contributed to it, along with fighting to save the man from the brink of death and feeling more or less helpless as he sat aside and waited.<br/><br/>He reached up to rub at his eyes, then the rest of his face to eliminate the exhaustion he was sure showed all too obviously there.  The reports he’d dropped at some point between sleep and waking, so he reached down to pick them up and put them on a side table.<br/><br/>“Good morning,” he greeted, his voice low and rough from sleep.  He wanted to rest there in the chair some more, or at least stretch out some of the kinks he’d been awarded for his impromptu nap, but there were more important things to take care of.  “How are you feeling?”