Cursefell Read Free Page A

for either of us to retreat to.  Nowhere for either of us to hide.
     "I saw Dad."
     "What?" she asked, snapping her head around.
     "When I passed out.  I saw him and we talked."
     "Oh Thera, it was just a dream." She refocused on the road.  "It has been a hard year.  For both of us."
     "It wasn't a dream, Mom.  Not a normal dream," I mumbled.  "He said you were right and he was wrong."
     The car swerved and for a minute I thought we would run off the road and crash right into one of those old trees.  But she corrected our course and blamed it on a squirrel I hadn't seen.  She had lied about that.  What I had said meant something to her.  I could read it in the way she pursed her lips together and the grinding grip she had on the wheel.  And in her eyes when they flicked in my direction.  I could see the truth in her eyes.
     "What did he mean, Mom?  And don't tell me it was just a dream.  Even if it was a dream you always say dreams can hold the truth we do not want to see."
     "Sometimes," she replied cautiously.  "But sometimes dreams are just an outlet for our imagination.  I can only imagine he was talking about moving here.  It was something I wanted us to do long ago.  Your father didn't.  If it was more than just a hallucination or a dream, which I doubt."
     She was telling the truth.  Partially.  Her voice was hiding something behind the words however.  She would not be moved from what she had said without more.  I had to know.
     "He said you would protect me.  You would see me through what is coming."
     The brakes screamed with the heavy foot slammed down on the pedal.  The car skidded nearly sideways on the deserted highway before jerking to a stop.  Beyond us the trees opened up to the abandoned hills of the original Stonecrest settlers.  Next to my side the old unused lighthouse sat a short ways off in the distance, its bottom half swallowed by the slowly spreading blanket of marine fog.
     "Tell me everything about what happened today."
     I had only driven this way a few times during my short stay in Stonecrest.  It had always been during daylight.  I didn't like it then and I absolutely hated it by night.  The area felt wrong.  Cold and haunted.  I wanted to drive away, to get back to the city proper right now.  But my Mother stared at me with the familiar emerald eyes I had inherited from her, framed by the same blonde hair that crowned my head.  Well nearly the same.  Her hair lacked the natural ringlet curl that lately afflicted my ends.  I knew we would not be going anywhere until she had an answer.
     The words tumbled out in the most serious tone I could manage.  I wanted to be believed.  I wanted her to give me some kernel of the parental comfort I had lacked for the past few months.  And I wanted to be gone from the vulnerable position surrounded by fog, hills, trees, and sea.  I don't think I had said so much to my Mother for many months before today.  Nor had she paid me so much attention as she did now.
     When I had finished telling her my story, she had eyes full of unshed tears.  She blinked them away before remembering we sat in the middle of the road with our engine running and the fog making us invisible to the lonely driver as it swallowed everything from view.  There would be few other vehicles this time of night most likely, but why press fate.
     "It was only a dream, Thera." She spoke flatly and threw the car back into drive.  "Don't let it trouble you any further, dearheart."
     We drove the rest of the way home in silence.  I didn't believe a word she said.  So there was nothing left for us to say.
     I shut down after that.  The landscape gave way to a few outer homes, which gave way to the slowly expanding downtown, still trying to look quaint in the face of modernity.  We drove past the new clothing store