Nightmare by Robin Parrish Page B

they'd lost a fight with a bear. I
hoped whatever it was Carrie needed to tell me would at least be
quick. Class time was soon approaching and I didn't like being
late. It made a very poor first impression.
    Carrie opened the door wearing a bathrobe. Her eyes were
puffy, her cheeks moist and red. The sight of her this way stopped me in my tracks. I couldn't quite believe this was the same girl
I'd met yesterday.

    "What's going on?" I asked as she stepped aside to let me in,
closing the door behind me.
    Carrie walked around me to sit up at the head of her bed,
leaning back on pillows. I wasn't sure whether I was supposed
to join her by sitting down or what, so I stood awkwardly at the
foot of the bed, trying to ignore the pain all over my body and
wishing I'd taken up the doctor on his offer to prescribe some
quality painkillers. I had been thinking that I didn't want anything in my system that might dull my senses just now, but the
nagging pain turned out to be equally distracting.
    "I've been having nightmares," Carrie said, her voice an emotional squeak. "For about a week now."
    "What kind of nightmares?" I asked, more out of an impatient
desire to get to the point than to express sympathy.
    "I'm in this empty, dark place ... and I'm lost ... I'm being
chased by a dark figure. It's so vivid, so real. Sometimes it's hard
to think during the day because it keeps coming back to me."
    I glanced at my watch. "I'm sorry to hear that, but I don't
understand why you called me."
    Carrie had been staring far away as she recalled her dream,
but now her weary eyes, filled with fear, came into focus.
    She stood from the bed and walked so close to me that she
violated my personal space. I was about to take a step back when
she turned her back to me.
    "When I got out of the shower this morning, I found this."
She tugged at the back of her bathrobe until the collar fell down
a few inches.

    A small, dark black symbol was on her skin right at the spot
where her head met her neck.
    My heart skipped a beat and then returned with a heavy thud
against my rib cage.
    "It's not a tattoo," Carrie whispered, barely able to choke the
words out through sobs. "And it won't come off."
    I had never seen anything like it. It was complex for such
a small mark, with intricate shapes extending in labyrinthine
directions, crisscrossing over one another like a very complicated
knot.
    It was a long minute before I could think of something
to say.
    "You're sure you have no idea how it got onto your neck?"
    Carrie just shook her head, trembling with the effort of trying to keep calm. Finally she spun back around to look me in
the eye. "Is what happened to Jordin ... happening to me? Am I
going to disappear or be abducted or something?"
    "I don't know," I answered honestly. All thoughts of my first
class had just been shoved far out of my mind. "Come here. Sit
down."
    I guided her unsteadily to the edge of the bed, where we sat
down side by side. My mind was racing through possibilities,
scenarios, all thoughts centered around a forensic analysis of
what was happening here, and I couldn't stop glancing at the
mark on Carrie's neck.
    "Do you think someone could have broken into your room in
the night and put that on you while you were asleep?" I asked.
    She wiped the tears from her eyes. "I'm a really light sleeper.
I would have heard someone breaking the lock long before they
ever touched me. Besides, the door's fine." She pointed at the door I had walked through just minutes ago. It was true; the door and
the lock were perfectly intact, with no sign of tampering.

    "Why didn't you tell me about this yesterday?" I asked, thinking of how she had been the one to first reveal to me thatJordin
was having nightmares the entire week before she disappeared.
Didn't Carrie think it might be relevant that she herself had been
having nightmares for a week?
    "I don't know. I guess I didn't want to believe that Jordin's
nightmares