Storms of Future Past Books One through Four

Chapter 5-2

Anne sat straight up in bed, gasping for air. That awful dream, the same one as before? Barely a week had gone by since the first one. She’d finally started falling asleep without being afraid of it coming back. As soon as she’d let her guard down, she was right back there.

“You sound as crazy as Gemaw,” she whispered, rubbing her eyes. “Talking to yourself isn’t much better.”

She dumped her pajamas in the hamper again on her way to the shower. Getting up two hours early had gotten her through the day the first time, but she didn’t want this to become a habit.

She’d heard about recurring dreams somewhere, but she’d never had one. Why did it have to be a nightmare coming back? Why not a good dream?

Anne thought about her grandmother as she scrubbed and tried to steam the awful scenes and smells away. Calling her Gemaw crazy made Anne feel guilty, but it didn’t feel far from the truth.

Her dad’s mother was very sweet and very kind, just as when she’d lived here and comforted Anne after her ordinary bad dreams. Gemaw also didn’t seem to understand what was real and what wasn’t. Gemaw’s mind ranged through time, like everything was happening at once. She was eight years old, she was in her thirties, she was her current age in her late sixties, she was twenty.

All of that in just one short visit.

Anne’s dad said Gemaw had always been different, kind of unusual, but this had gotten worse as she got older. Anne had heard her mother talking about it to her Uncle Walt once though, and she’d told a very different story. More than any of the other times Anne had listened in to her parents and their grownup conversations, she regretted hearing what her mother said about Gemaw the most.

Her mother said Gemaw had always been nuts, that she’d never been right in the head. That the worst decision she’d ever made was to let someone like that move in where she could affect Anne. And the best had been when she agreed with the old woman that it was time for her to go.

Anne couldn’t remember Gemaw living anywhere besides with them before she’d moved into her group home, though Anne’s dad said she’d lived in her own house about an hour away until Grandpa died. Anne didn’t really remember her grandfather either.

She didn’t mind visiting Gemaw at all. It was like watching an actress play out different roles all in one movie scene. The thought of a movie made her shudder as she turned the water off.

That dream had been bad enough the first time, when the people looked like drawings. It had been creepier that way, really. More eerie than gory.

Seeing real-looking flesh and blood people was so much worse.

Anne got dressed for school, deciding to start writing down what she did before she went to sleep. She was still too afraid writing the dreams down would make things worse somehow, and she’d never tell her Gemaw about such awful things, anyway.

If something she was doing made those dreams happen, she might be able to change her habits. Her father had warned her about eating weird things or watching scary movies before bedtime. Her mother didn’t want her reading too much before bed, either.

Anne hoped her parents were right. She was afraid of never getting free of the end of the world library, and of what that might mean for her mind and her sanity.