the sad angel and peter's surprise

this one is a LOT longer than the other posts, so i apologize for the ridiculousness. i couldn't figure out where to seperate it and the two sections connect so closely that i decided to just present it this way so that you can get the full effect. this scene comes literally right after the last except for one exchange in between where Dakota argues with Peter because he insists upon sleeping only on the couch. the moment they all fall asleep, this is what they see. enjoy:

It was the first night we dreamed about him.
From the darkness of my unconscious mind, I could hear the digging before anything else. It was a heavy, consistent sound that chilled my bones even while I was perfectly aware that I was dreaming. The grind of metal against hard earth, the drag of a shovel, the thud scrape of effort and toil. Then the dream lightened and I could finally make him out. The boy was bent over the dark earth, shovel in hand, undertaking his task of digging a very deep hole. He paused for a moment, resting his shovel on a small mound of earth next to the hole that he stood in. He wiped his forearm across his face and held his hands out in front of him. Even in the darkness I could see the bleeding calluses throbbing against his tan skin. He had a mat of tangled hair that fell halfway down his cheeks. His hair was most visible in the half light; nearly white blonde it stood out against the darkness, catching the moonlight. He pushed the locks away with his hands, streaking the bright strands with trails of blood. He rose, pushing himself from the ground and disappearing from view. I waited anxiously for his return, my heart throbbing strangely in my chest with a strong mixture of pity and borrowed grief. Finally, he stumbled slowly to the edge of the hole again, laboring under the weight of a large sack in his arms. Somehow, I knew this was the body of his father. He lowered his burden gently into the dark hole and fell to his knees beside it. His brown arms trembled and his bright hair fell to cover his face. He sobbed loudly, strong waves of emotion rocking through his broad frame, making him appear almost childlike with weakness and vulnerability. He took his head in his hands and cried out like a wounded animal. My heart burst with suffering as I tried to call to him, willing myself into his existence to cradle him in my arms and slow his ragged breathing. He turned his twisted face to me, tightening my chest with the sadness that reflected in his crystal blue eyes.
Dakota, he whispered desperately into my ear, help me.
I woke up to several sounds at once. First I heard a sharp intake of breath as my own lungs gasped into consciousness. I sprang out of bed, the face of the blonde boy pounding in my memory, the sound of his painful plea screaming in my soul. Then, almost immediately after, I heard Haylee cry, "NO!" from the end of the hall, the pain in her voice cutting through the darkness. Then a crash sounded and thundering footsteps rang out as Peter leapt the stairs three at a time and flew past me to Haylee's room at the end of the hall. I followed after him with shaking legs.
Peter was on his knees on the floor in front of her where she sat with her trembling hands covering her face. Slowly, she looked at him with tears spilling down her cheeks. I could tell that all three of us were shaking, my teeth actually chattering with the effort to calm myself. After a long, silent moment, Haylee spoke in a raw voice.
"I... I had... a n-nightmare," she choked.
"So did I," I whispered. Her eyes searched my face.
"You saw him too?" she whispered. All I could do was nod.
Peter looked back and forth between us for several seconds, a hard, strained look on his face. I noticed for the first time how deeply etched the circles beneath his eyes were. I suddenly saw him very clearly in my mind, propped up on the couch each night listening hard for any sound of disturbance, barely sleeping at all. Then he rose to his feet and walked out into the hall without a word.
In the morning, none of us mentioned the episode from the previous night. Haylee busied herself silently over pancakes while Peter stared out the window at the still visitor in the backyard. We ate in silence and when Haylee cleared the plates, Peter collapsed onto the couch and snored softly. The day passed in much the same way. I sat at the kitchen table for most of the afternoon, reading through a few old magazines that I had found. Peter tossed in his sleep, now and then mumbled a few incoherent words. Haylee sat silently in the armchair in the living room, staring out at nothing.
As the room grew darker with dusk, Haylee rose from her chair, climbed the stairs, and slammed her bedroom door shut. Peter jerked awake on the couch and stared up after her. Several minutes passed until he came into the kitchen and pulled the fridge open. He threw a package of sandwich meat and a loaf of bread onto the table in front of me, making me jump. "We only have turkey," he muttered. He ate his dinner in the other room. Silent hours later, I made my way up to Peter's bedroom again. Haylee's door was still closed, an uneaten turkey sandwich on a paper plate lay outside on the floor. I left my door open and slid under the covers. A long time later, I let myself drift off to sleep. As soon as I was unconscious, he was waiting for me.
In the bright florescent light of the bathroom, his white blonde hair didn't look so shocking. It was still matted and dirty, caked blood clinging to it, but it flowed sweetly across his sunburned cheekbones, framing his light blue eyes. He looked like a forlorn depiction of an angel bearing some piece of sad news. I watched him hunched over a sink in the tiny bathroom, light soaking brightly into flowered wallpaper. His brown hands clutched the sides of the sink, pulling his skin white across the knuckles. He stared into the cracked mirror, fresh tears spilling endlessly into the basin. He took deep, slow breaths. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a long, gleaming butcher's knife. My heart accelerated in my ribcage, leaping into my throat.
He brought the knife slowly toward his left arm, stretched out in front of him. He pressed the sharp point to the soft skin in the crook of his elbow. He closed his eyes, tears clinging to his blonde eyelashes. I'm going to die today, he whispered into my ear. I screamed and screamed at him but no sound echoed into the tiny room. Under the pressure from his right hand, blood pooled around the point of the knife, dripping down his elbow and splattering on the white tiles. He held his breath and pushed the knife point further down. I felt his pain in the base of my stomach, pulsing through my own veins. And then suddenly, the knife was gone, and he held his empty fist hovering over his left arm, eyes wide with surprise. He collapsed onto the bathroom floor, sobbing and clutching his head in his hands.
My vision pulled away from him slowly as if I were backing out of the house. Soon I was standing in the little front yard next to a mound of freshly disturbed dirt. I could hear him crying through the open bathroom window. The house was yellow with white shutters, a wide corn field stretched out in the darkness behind the house and a water tower rose into the sky. I know this place, I thought to myself. I could suddenly remember a time when I had come down this street, not far outside the city, looking for a road that led back to the highway. Was the boy really so close? My heart ached again at the thought of his pain and I listened to his sobs in the darkness.
Dakota, he whispered, please come find me.
When I woke up in the morning, I could hear Haylee crying through the walls. I walked out into the hall to find Peter sitting on the floor outside of the closed bedroom door, looking miserable.
"Is she alright?" I asked quietly.
"What does it sound like?" he snapped, not meeting my eyes. I took a deep breath and rapped sharply on the door. Peter jumped to his feet and lingered close behind my shoulder.
"Haylee?" I said, hard and loud, "open the door." I had been expecting a fight, so I was stunned when the lock click and the door swung open. I was even more shocked when Haylee ran from the dark bedroom and threw herself into my arms. I patted her hair awkwardly, feeling her tears already soaking through my shirt.
"He n-needs me!" she wailed desperately. I continued to pat her back, at a loss for what to say. All my built up courage faded quickly from my mind. I was thankful when Peter took her gently into his arms and led her down into the kitchen.
With a blanket around her shoulders and a tall glass of water on the table in front of her, Haylee momentarily suppressed her sobs. Peter and I stood across from her, our arms folded across our chests.
"I'm going to go find him," Haylee said stubbornly. Peter snorted with cruel laughter at this idea.
"I have to go find him, Peter."
"You don't even know where he is!" he shouted.
"I do," I said quietly. They both stared at me, one pair of wondering eyes filled with tears and one pair of burning eyes filled with suspicion.
"Oh, Dakota," Haylee whispered gratefully, standing from the chair and letting the blanket fall to the ground, "thank you. We'll leave right away." She turned toward the stairs.
"Absolutely not!" Peter yelled again. It was staggering to hear him speak to his sister with such anger.
"Peter, you saw him!" Haylee yelled, matching him, "He needs our help, we have to go find him."
"You're not going anywhere!"
"I can't leave him."
"We don't even know that this guy exists!"
"Yes we do.”
“How?”
“Because we dreamed of Dakota!” she shouted. I sat heavily in the chair across the table. They fumed at each other for a moment and then looked over at me.
“I’m sorry we didn’t tell you,” she pleaded, “we didn’t want you to think we were crazy.” Peter snorted again and she looked back at her brother. “These dreams are the same.”
"So what?!" Peter screamed.
"So what?" Haylee widened her eyes in disbelief. "You saw him, Pete. He's lost everything. We know what that's like. I can't leave him. He's in so much pain, I just can't..." her voice trailed away, tears filling her eyes again. I was overcome with the memory of the blonde boy's face as he pushed the knife point deeper into his skin.
"Well, he's going to have to kick the bucket after all, because you can’t be his mommy." Haylee looked like she'd been slapped and I heard the air rush out of my lungs. The silence that followed hung heavily in the small room.
"I'm sorry, Peter," Haylee said with sad eyes and a tone of finality in her voice, "Dakota and I will be back as soon as we can." She turned again toward the door. Peter was across the remaining space in two strides. He grabbed her upper arms firmly in an iron grip and shook her slightly. His whole body was trembling, his face growing redder every second.
"Listen!" he bellowed, "I'm not losing you to some figment of our imaginations!"
"Peter, you know this is real," Haylee said, still calm.
"NO!" he shrieked, his face inches from hers, "we got hit by some freak nuclear blast and now we're out of our minds with crazy dreams and hallucinations! But we're not going out there with those things to chase some side effect of this shit!" The glass on the table began to shiver.
"I have to go find him."
"I'M NOT LETTING YOU OUT OF MY SIGHT!" he screamed. From the trembling glass, a thin spout of water rose from the surface. It stretched itself toward the ceiling, climbing a foot out of the cup and into the air. Peter stood there seething, breathing deeply, and the spout of water wound itself into a funnel, rotating in silence. It looked like the tiny cyclones that appear in the drain while the water runs out, except this was hanging in midair, spinning the glass in slow rotations on the table. It bent and flexed, rising higher and higher through the air.
"Guys?" was all I could manage to choke out. They must have heard the alarm in my voice because they both snapped their heads in my direction, their eyes slowly drawing to the water spout spinning on the kitchen table. We stared at in silence for one fleeting moment, Peter blinked hard, and the funnel collapsed into the glass sending water splashing out over the sides. We continued to stare as the silence stretched on, the water running in streams over the sides of the table and dripping loudly onto the floor. After a long time, Peter spoke in a broken whisper,
"Did I do that?"