Chapter 5: The Nightmare and the Watcher
The scream tore itself from her throat, a raw, animal sound that shredded the quiet of her bedroom. Delaney bolted upright, the sheets tangled around her legs like restraints. Her heart was a frantic bird slamming against her ribs. Sweat plastered her hair to her temples, her thin camisole to her skin, cold and clinging.
The dream clung to her, vivid and tactile.
The rough-hewn wood of the cabin wall against her back. The cold bite of the knife hilts against her wrists, pinning her not through flesh, but through the sleeves of her dress, immobilizing her. His body caging hers, his breath warm against her ear as he whispered, the words not angry, but matter-of-fact, a simple statement of law: You already belong to me.
She scrambled for her phone on the nightstand, knocking over an empty water glass. Its dull thud on the rug was too loud. The screen flared to life, 3:17 AM, painting the room in a sickly blue. Her breathing was the only sound, ragged and too fast.
Then she heard it.
A slow, rhythmic thump from outside. A footstep on the damp earth below her first-floor window. Then another. Not on the sidewalk. On the grass. Close.
She froze, the phone’s light casting her own horrified reflection in the dark window. She saw the pale oval of her face, her wide eyes. Behind that reflection, in the deeper black of the night, a shadow seemed to detach itself from the larger darkness near the fence line. It paused. It was formless, man-sized. Watching.
Her thumb hovered over Sera’s contact. Her lungs burned. She couldn’t draw a breath to scream.
The shadow shifted, melted sideways, and was gone.
Gone. Or never there.
The old radio on her bookshelf, a vintage thrift store find that only picked up static, hummed to life. No station, just a low, guttural white noise that seemed to shape itself, for a second, into something like a whispered vowel. Then it faded back to a dull hiss.
It was the dream. Just the dream. She chanted it in her head, forcing air into her lungs. The shadow was a trick of light, of panic-fed imagination. The radio was broken, it always emitted faint static. It was nothing.
It took an hour for her limbs to unlock. She didn’t sleep again. She watched the window until the black turned to gray, then to the milky, innocent light of a cloudy dawn.
The campus felt different the next day. The Gothic lecture halls, usually quaint, now seemed crouched and watchful. Every shaded path between buildings felt like the mouth of the forest from her painting. Her ankle, tightly wrapped, offered a dull, grounding throb with every step. A reminder of his clinical care. A reminder of the root.
She was leaving the art building, her bag heavy with the twisted forest painting she couldn’t bear to look at in her apartment anymore, when she literally walked into him.
“Oh, God, sorry—” she stammered, stumbling back. The familiar, clean scent hit her before she even looked up.
Colson steadied her, his hands on her shoulders. Just for a second. His touch was warm through her sweater. “You seem to make a habit of unstable footing,” he said, his voice even. He was dressed casually, a dark grey crewneck sweater, looking for all the world like a graduate student or a young professor. He released her.
“What are you doing here?” The question came out sharper than she intended.
“I have a meeting with the philosophy department head. A discussion on Schopenhauer’s influence on contemporary aesthetics.” He said it lightly, as if bumping into her was the most natural coincidence in the world. His eyes dropped to her bag. “Moving the masterpiece?”
She hugged the bag closer. “It’s not a masterpiece.”
“I’ll be the judge of that. Later.” He fell into step beside her as she moved toward the quad. “This is a sprawling campus. Easy to get lost. Where do you spend most of your time? The library? The studio halls?”
The question was casual. Too casual. It dripped into her mind like cold water, mingling with the memory of the missing psychology student. Where do you go to school? wasn’t the question. Where can you be found? was.
She stopped walking. “Why?”
He stopped too, turning to face her. A slight, patient smile touched his lips. “Curiosity. Context. If I’m going to understand an artist, I need to understand her environment. The pressures, the inspirations, the daily grind. It all feeds the work.” He tilted his head. “It’s a simple question, Delaney.”
It was. And by making it seem like she was hiding something by not answering, he was steering her exactly where he wanted. She felt the manipulation like a subtle shift in the air pressure. If she refused, she was paranoid, childish. If she answered…
“The North Studio. Building C. Third floor,” she said, the words feeling like a surrender.
“Thank you.” He nodded, as if she’d given him a useful piece of trivia. “The light is good there in the afternoons.” He glanced at his watch. “My meeting awaits. Remember, elevate the ankle. You’re still favoring the left side.”
He walked away, blending into the stream of students. She stood there, feeling exposed, as if she’d just drawn a map on her skin for him.
The North Studio was usually a sanctuary. That afternoon, it felt like a cage. The high windows let in the flat, gray afternoon light, illuminating dust motes dancing over half-finished sculptures and canvases. Delaney’s new canvas was blank. She’d primed it white, a glaring, empty field.
She tried to sketch. Flowers. A bowl of fruit. Simple, safe forms. Her charcoal snapped under the pressure. The lines came out aggressive, jagged. She rubbed them out, the paper tearing slightly.
Her mind was a spiral. The nightmare knives. The shadow. His calm, probing question. Where do you spend most of your time? The radio static. The way he’d recited care instructions in the car, his voice so rational as he described his test.
She grabbed a tube of phthalo blue, squeezing it violently onto her palette. She didn’t mix. She loaded a brush and attacked the white. Great, slashing strokes of blue, like wounds. Then black, cutting through the blue. Then a furious, sour yellow. It was chaos. It was anger. It was fear.
She painted until her shoulder ached, until the canvas was a chaotic, tumultuous mess with no center, no meaning. It was uglier than the forest. It was pure noise. She threw her brush into the jar of murky water, breathing hard.
The studio door opened.
She expected a classmate. A professor doing rounds.
Colson stood in the doorway, his leather jacket back, his hands in his pockets. He looked at her, then at the raging canvas on her easel. His expression didn’t change.
“You’re finished,” he said. It wasn’t a question.
“How did you get in? This building is keycard access after four.”
“A philosophy professor has many friends.” He walked in, his footsteps echoing on the linoleum. He stopped before her painting. Studied it for a long moment. “Interesting. It lacks the focus of the previous piece. This is pure id. Unfiltered distress.” He turned to her. “You needed to get that out. Now you’re empty. Good.”
He picked up her bag, slinging it over his shoulder. He took her jacket from the back of her chair and held it out for her.
“What are you doing?” she asked, numb.
“We’re leaving. You’re done here.”
“Where are we going?”
He helped her into her jacket, his hands lingering on her shoulders for a beat too long. He leaned close, his voice a low, calm murmur by her ear.
“Somewhere secluded. Where the screams don’t carry.”