Chapter 44: Welcome to My World

The scene at the door was as emotional as you would expect. Mom and Dad barely made it in the door before Shannon and Allison hit them both. Tears flowed freely as the pent up emotion of the last few days was finally able to dissipate. There wasn't a dry eye in the house. At first Tom, Karen, and myself were just responding to the scene, but when it was my turn to finally hug and hold the parents I had almost lost... well, use your imagination.

Finally Tom stepped in and took Shannon's arm. "Sweetie, why don't you get your things and we'll leave our friends to catch up and get re-attached okay?"

"Sure thing, Dad." She gathered her bags from Allison's room, and I noticed that she left it ajar as she came back out. She caught me watching and held my eye for just long enough to acknowledge that I knew what she had done. A final round of hugs was exchanged and they were gone.

I took my parents' bags to their room and as I was coming back I heard Allison telling them pizza should be there any time.

I caught my dad off guard when I shook his hand as I came back into the living room. "Thanks for trusting me and waiting. We have a lot to discuss. Do you want to get started or wait for food?" I asked. "As this is going to take a while, I would suggest maybe starting on the salad now and then the pizza won't get cold."

They looked at each other for a second then we all moved to the table. Mom noticed that we had set a fifth place at the table. I think she was about to ask when the doorbell rang. Allison answered it. It was the pizza guy showing up early. Any other day that would have been a good thing. She paid him and when she came back she was escorting Bob, who was carrying the hot boxes, into the dining room. I saw Dad start to ask a question but Mom put her hand on his and we all sat down. Once everyone was settled and eating Allison nodded at me and I started.

"Okay, the first thing that you need to know is that there is a lot going on and it will take time to bring you up to speed on all of it. Please, if you will be patient, I think that a lot of the questions will answer themselves. Bob is here to help answer questions as they arise. He has been a valuable resource for me this year as I've tried to get a grip on everything that has been happening. We'll start simple. You know how close Allison and I have always been?"

"Of course, dear," Mom answered. "We've talked about it many times."

"Well, actually you don't," I responded. "Not fully anyway. Exactly when this all started I don't know. Allison realized the truth long before I did. I didn't figure out what was happening until the first day of school. That's this year, and what has been happening is that for a long time, years in fact, I've been visiting Allison's dreams."

"You've been what?" Dad asked, puzzled.

Allison clarified, "What he means is that for as long as I can remember Jimmy has been in my dreams. We've played, had adventures, all the normal stuff you do in dreams but in this case, Jimmy was actually there. It was probably three or four years ago that I figured out the difference between when it was just me dreaming about Jimmy, or if it was actually 'him' in the dream."

Dad turned to Bob and asked, "Is this even possible?"

"Hold that thought for a second," I said. "The first day of school things changed. That night, for the first time, I was in someone else's dream. Someone else besides Allison, that is. Things happened in that dream that I knew could not possibly happen. You may have noticed that I've been studying dream stuff on and off over the years. I never really knew why but it always interested me as a subject. What happened in that dream was not possible based on what I knew from even my limited research. The only possible explanation was that it wasn't my dream; that somehow I had actually been 'in' someone else's dream. That someone was Shannon."

"Shannon?" Mom said.

I nodded and continued, "Shannon naturally told Allison all about this amazing dream she'd had. As soon as she started Allison realized what must have happened. She confronted me as soon as I came home from school that day. That's when I found out that she already knew about it. At first I tried to deny it, but she quickly convinced me that she not only knew about it, but knew a lot more about it than I did. The first thing she made clear to me is the importance of making sure no one else knows about it."

"What do you mean? Why would that matter?" Mom asked.

Bob popped up, "My turn. Jimmy approached me with questions about dreams in general and a few specific questions relating to them. We talked about some things but as a professional, it was obvious to me that he was holding something back. I tried to reassure him that as a school counselor just about anything he could talk to me about was confidential. That wasn't good enough. In my infinite wisdom, I suggested that maybe he consider letting me take him on as a patient. That way whatever he said was actually protected by law. He discussed it with Allison, and they decided that this was satisfactory. Jimmy paid me my agreed price, one dollar," my dad sniggered, and Bob continued. "Yes, my thoughts exactly, one dollar, a price for which I've been kicking myself ever since. Anyway, he then went on to tell me what was happening. I was just as floored as I'm sure you are. Before I met him my answer to that question would have been, "No, it's not possible." I now know different. All I could see was the Nobel Prize I would surely get for the research paper I could write. Jimmy stepped on that idea immediately.

"It didn't take long for me to realize that he was right, not only can nothing be said; very few questions can even be asked. If the wrong people found out about what Jimmy can do, and, I'm sorry to say that many of those people are in our own government, Jimmy would most likely spend the rest of his life in a closely guarded research facility with no visitors. They would do whatever they had to in order to make it look like a normal disappearance, or maybe even a tragic accident, complete with a body close enough to the right size, weight, etc to pass casual inspection. Which they would control all access to and make sure that everyone drew the right conclusion. No one wants to admit that this sort of thing is even possible, or that our own government would be party to it, but I don't think anyone actually believes that all of those stories are fiction either. I certainly don't.

"I believe, strongly, that Allison is right on the money, and that if word ever got out, Jimmy would most likely never be seen again. Our government would do whatever it took to make sure, if nothing else, that no other government would ever be able to get him, among other things."

My parents' faces had gone white as the truth of Bob's words sank in. I continued.

"Up until this weekend, the truth was known by 5 people in the world. As of tonight that number is up to eight. You two are the last that we think will ever have to know. We told Shannon Friday night because of some things that were happening that we were uncomfortable hiding from her. And we really didn't like doing that. Allison and I talked about it and we trust Shannon. The basics are that I bridged into Shannon's dream because she had a crush on me and it somehow drew me in. Since then, Shannon and I have been getting closer. Being in her dreams gives me a kind of unfair advantage and I felt that I would be deceiving her to continue on without her knowing the truth. She was just as shocked at all this as you are, and as you will be when you've heard it all."

"You mean there's more?" asked my dad. Allison and I both nodded and I continued.

"Since she now knew the truth we told her everything. It turns out that this was a good move as she has already had some very helpful insights. But we'll get to that later. Back to this weekend, I knew that neither of you would believe that it was Allison's dream. And I'm sure you knew the truth as soon as someone told you that. Late Saturday night, I had a dream in which Sunday morning the police and social services showed up to tell us that you were dead. Right after they explained how you had 'died' I realized that it was a dream, I'll explain that later. But I woke up in bed and immediately called the hotel. Hotel security got you out and you know pretty much what happened after that. And that brings us to the attorney." I looked at Bob.

"Jimmy contacted me first thing Sunday morning about what to do to keep this quiet. This was exactly the kind of attention he most needed to avoid. "Girl's dream saves parents" on the front page of a newspaper and the story behind it would be the worst sort of disaster. Even though it would focus on Allison as the source, it's just too close for comfort. And most attorneys would push for all the publicity available. I have an acquaintance that I trusted to handle it with the level of discretion necessary. As I told Jimmy, he's not an ambulance chaser; he would do what we told him and not be worried about the money. As I'm sure you know, that's rare for the breed.

"I had him contact the hotel; he assured me they would already have someone assigned from their legal department to handle damage control. The key was to offer them a deal that would allow them to keep it quiet, which he assured me they would jump at. You should get a response very quickly as the longer they take the greater the chances that word of what almost happened to you would get out. Any settlement must include a gag order and the gag order is contingent on your acceptance of the settlement offer. And they were instructed that they only get one shot at a settlement. After that, everything goes public. It's a hollow threat from our end but they don't know that. I think you will receive a good offer very quickly."

"Actually," my dad said, "I think I have it already. I was given a sealed package before we left the hospital. I was waiting until we got home to look at it." He glanced at me, then Allison, then back to Bob. "So this is all really happening? Or did happen?"

"Yes," Bob answered. "Even I was skeptical. The real clincher was Jimmy visiting me in my own dreams." He shook his head. "It's not that I didn't believe him, but your mind simply won't allow for this sort of thing. Especially since I know through years of study and training that it is not possible. But he really is moving around in other people's dreams."

My mom asked, "Then why has he never done it with us? I mean he was apparently with Allison all those years but I don't think he's ever dropped in on one of us. Wouldn't he have come to us before 'going' somewhere else?"

"Actually, I asked myself that very same question the first night. The answer is so obvious it's almost ridiculous." I smiled. "I'm not allowed in your room when the door is closed."

My dad just burst out laughing at that. My mom blushed and then smiled. "Well, there is that. I'm just surprised that that stopped you."

"I'm not," Bob said. "Early childhood lessons and restrictions are the most deeply etched most of us will ever have. Did you know that getting someone to break training and wet themselves is one of the basic steps in breaking down most captured intelligence people? Anyway, that's another subject. Now that we've covered the basics we can tell you the really weird part."

They just looked at us like we had all suddenly sprouted antennae. "You mean it gets weirder?" Dad asked.

"Oh yeah," Allison said.

"A short while ago, someone started "hijacking" me for lack of a better term. I 'woke up' if you will, in a dream one night to find a door in my room. I went through it and found myself in a freeze frame of another person's dream. I was the only thing moving, and there was only one other person in the dream, a woman. I checked her out and figured her for some kind of cop as she was carrying a gun. The scene suddenly came to life and I followed her onto a bus, only instead of a bus, I found myself in a bank. There was a hold-up in progress. The woman I had followed was there, in different clothes. I watched as she tricked the leader into taking her to a back office where she took him out, then came back out and took out the other two, one of them permanently. During all this, I found out she was an FBI agent.

"The next night it happened again. This time I found myself in the balcony of a church, at her wedding. The second scene that night was of her husband, a fellow agent, dying. Allison and I discussed it and I went to Bob with what I had seen. He determined that what I was seeing was not actually a dream, but rather a recreation of someone's memories, in a dream. This was totally new and it explained a few things that had happened. He also agreed with Allison that someone wanted me to meet this agent.

"Allison and I were scared because all of this pointed to the fact that someone we knew nothing about, knew about me. Knew about what I could do and could apparently move me around. Bob pointed out that someone with bad intentions was not very likely to be trying to introduce me to an FBI agent.

"Now we come to the strangest part of the whole thing. The next time I went through one of the doors it was on my own initiative. I found myself in her office watching her work. The scene froze and I met the person who had been doing all of this. Her name is Amy, and she is Rebecca's little sister. I'm sorry; Rebecca Hampton is the name of the FBI agent. In my dreams, Amy appears as an eight-year-old girl. I recognized her as someone I had seen once before in an earlier dream.

"She said she had been watching me to make sure I was the right one. I asked her what I was the right one for, and she said I had to stop 'the bad man, ' and that I needed her sister's help to do it. I know, it sounds bizarre, and it is, believe me. She told me some other things. She has, thankfully, no actual knowledge of what this guy has done. Just that he was a bad man and that he was going to hurt some girls. At first we didn't know either. Then, when I asked Amy if she could tell me more, she said no, but that maybe she could show me. Well, she showed me. This bastard, sorry, Mom; kidnapped, raped and tortured a girl. I relived the whole thing, well bits and pieces of it anyway, through his memory. It made me sick. That was the morning I collapsed after my run.

"I woke up that morning right after seeing, and, worse, feeling, him do all of this. After I finally stopped crying, I went out for my run and I don't know what happened, but it seemed like I was trying to run away from the memory of what I had seen. I finally stopped about a mile from here, I still have no idea how far I actually ran but I was exhausted. I barely made it back. As soon as I was 'safe' at home, my whole body just shut down. I talked to Bob at lunch to let him know what had happened, what Amy had 'shown' me.

"We then had to figure out what we could do with the information. He helped me kind of zoom in on one scene and this allowed me to get the girl's name. That night I 'bridged', that's what we call it, into one of Rebecca's dreams and asked her to check on the name. I gave her some other hints. Of course she didn't believe a word of it, but she is too much of a professional not to at least run the name."

A voice from the hall interrupted, "What I found confirmed what he had seen. Three years ago, the girl he described was kidnapped, raped, tortured and eventually killed up in the Bay Area. Hello, Mr. & Mrs. Matthews. My name is Rebecca; officially Special Agent Rebecca Hampton, United States Federal Bureau of Investigation."