Shattered - By Sophia Sharp Page 0,25
heat and layers of cold, and the frost from all the world’s glacier’s froze her body as the heat of a thousand suns coursed through her veins. She fell… and was ripped back into her body, on top of Logan’s gray Volvo in front of the lake.
Her eyes popped open. A light rain had begun to fall while they were asleep, and her clothing was slightly damp. She felt Logan’s hard body at her side, and looked up. He was blinking, coming to as she had. He looked down, and his eyes met hers momentarily. Then he pushed her aside and leapt off the car. He started to pace back and forth in front of her, and he looked troubled.
“Logan, what’s wrong?” Laura worriedly. “What happened back there?”
Logan looked at her, but didn’t answer. He kept pacing back and forth in front of her.
“Logan, tell me what’s going on!” Laura demanded.
“I’m not supposed to bring you there,” he said, half to himself. Then he spoke louder, “Get in the car.”
Precipitating his own words, he had unlocked the door and climbed in before Laura even had a chance to get off the hood. She opened the door and sat inside, and looked at Logan. He looked worried, uncertain, troubled, and conflicted all in one. Without speaking, he started the engine, and backed the car up in reverse.
“Where are we going?” Laura asked.
“I need to get you home.”
“Why? Logan, what’s going on?”
“I need time to think,” he answered. He turned the car around, and sped down the dirt road, away from the lake.
“Does it have to do with that man I saw?” Laura asked.
“Maybe,” he said quietly. “I’m not sure.”
“Logan, look at me!” Laura practically screamed the words. His behavior had her on edge, and she wasn’t getting any answers. He hit the brakes hard, causing her to fly forward and hit the dashboard. She grunted on impact. “Why did you do that?” she demanded angrily.
“You told me to look at you.” Logan turned his head to stare right at her.
“I didn’t mean it literally,” Laura said under her breath, but returned his stare. “Logan, you have to tell me. Is this… any of this… dangerous?”
“I’m not sure.” He sighed. “I can’t say.”
“Well, what can you say?” she said furiously. “You brought me into this, and if there’s any danger, I need to know!”
“What can I say?” he repeated. “Not much. Not much that would make sense to you. But… this might. There are others… like me. My kind. They’re dream walkers. Where we just went, Laura, that was your dream. To access it, I needed your touch. To bring you into it. Everybody has their own dreams. Most occur in the safety of their own imagination, but from time to time, people access the same place we went to. That place is the same for everyone, and yet everyone has their own version of it. I…” he paused, struggling, “… I know I’m not making much sense. Think of… of a movie DVD. If you have a movie on a disk, and I have another disk of the same movie, the two disks exist as separate objects. But if you put them into a player, they’ll both output the same thing. They’ll play the same movie. But one of the disks is mine, and the other is yours. It’s the same thing with the dream world. A person can’t access another person’s dream world like we just did… not consciously, anyway, and not at all most of the time.
“But there are some… that can transcend that limitation. They don’t need the touch. I wouldn’t think they’d notice, if we went into your dreams. But they jump from people’s to people’s dreams like a frog jumps from lily to lily over a pond. In between the dreams… an abyss exists. We touched it briefly when we left. But that’s the only time we reach that abyss. To go to it consciously, to jump from dream to dream…” he shivered. “To go to it consciously means you might lose yourself forever. But the dream walkers can do that.”
“Wait,” Laura said, “are you telling me that somebody else was in my dream?”
“Maybe. I can’t be sure. But I need time to think. I don’t know what attracted his attention. I was sure that our trip was going to be inconspicuous. I was sure, dammit!” Then he started the car again, and continued driving forward. But something he said stuck out in Laura’s mind.
“What did