"Can you describe it for me again?" Doctor Waters asked.
"Do we have to do this?" Timothy protested. "We do this every goddamn time."
"I would like you to," The doctor replied calmly.
"Fine," Timothy barked, crossing his arms like a petulant child. "If you insist."
"Whenever you're ready," Doctor Waters continued, mechanical pencil at the ready.
"It starts in the bedroom. I don't know why, but it always starts in the bedroom. I just suddenly recognize that I'm in the house and have a set amount of lucidity to search before the dream world takes it from me again."
"Can you describe the room?"
"It's old, splintery wood. You know, like a cabin in the woods. There's a bed..,"
"Is it made?" The doctor interjected.
"Yeah, it's made, and there's a thick layer of dust across the top of it. There's also an old rocking chair in a corner next to a bedside stand. There's an old Tiffany lamp sitting on it."
"Is it on or off?"
"What the fuck does that matter?" Timothy blurted, clearly enraged by the doctor's incessant prodding.
"On or off?"
"On, okay? For fuck's sake."
"Go on," the doctor said.
"I always go for the closet first. It's closed, and I try to rip open the wooden slat doors, but I suddenly find myself in the den. I know it's the same house because the wood is the same, but I don't know how I left the bedroom."
"Can you describe this den?"
"It's like a time capsule of the late eighties. My childhood, really. There's a television console and a VHS player. There are even some tapes in those plastic clamshell cases that Disney movies used to come in. There's a fireplace, a couch with a flowery fabric, and a broken-down recliner. The walls have a bunch of wood carvings hanging off of them."
"What kind of wood carvings?" The doctor asked, his interest piqued.
"Old men's faces carved into sticks. Folk art kind of shit."
"Interesting," The doctor muttered, almost to himself, while writing rapidly.
"What's so interesting about that?" Timothy asked.
"Nothing," the doctor replied. "Please, go on."
"Well, I try to search the den, but just like the bedroom, I get no further than the mantle above the fireplace before being moved outside."
"Moved?"
"Yeah. I just suddenly realize I'm outside. It's a dream, doc. None of this is logical. It's like snapshots."
"Describe the outside."
"That's the image that's most vivid in my mind. That's the one I can't stop thinking about. It's like a painting by Monet or Manet or whoever the fuck painted those squiggly lillie pads. The house is dark because of the tree cover. There's a rickety wooden fence and a rusty bike rack. But that's not what sticks with me. It's that beautiful lake, shimmering gray under the clouds. Almost like a black and white movie, it's so gray. Only then do I see her, sitting atop a rock jutting up from the shoreline. Her back is turned to me, her hair blowing in the wind. She turns to look at me, but never finishes. I always wake up in a panic. It happens every time, as you of all people are well aware."
"You're not the first person to come to me with haunted dreams of past trauma. What your family experienced was truly horrible, and it may take decades for the effects to wane."
"It'll never wane until I know," Timothy said through clenched teeth. "It'll never go away as long as she is lost."
"You can't put that burden upon yourself. It will kill you, too."
"I didn't put it there. He did!"
"Timothy," Doctor Waters said, putting down his clipboard and leaning towards the couch upon which his patient lay. "Your sister's killer was apprehended and put to death three years ago. There is no need to hold on to this crusade any longer. Your sister would not want that for you."
"Richard Crandall may have killed those girls in Arkansas, but he did not kill my sister. I know that deep in my soul. That's why I'm having these dreams, doctor. That's what I keep trying to tell you. She's begging me to find her. She's begging, doc. And that house.., that fucking house, is the key to it all. I just know it."
"Richard Crandall admitted to murdering your sister, as well as another girl, in Georgia before he went to Arkansas."
"He also took credit for killing girls in Arizona and Nebraska. None of which he did."
"Let this go, Timothy," Doctor Waters said, trying to redirect the conversation.
"I can't," Timothy said, sitting up on the couch. "I just can't."
"And you believe this house that you've only ever seen in a dream is the key to solving it all?" The doctor asked incredulously.
"Yes," Timothy replied matter-of-factly.
"How do you expect to find a place that probably doesn't exist?"
"Now you're just mocking me," Timothy shot back angrily.
"No," Doctor Waters replied calmly. "I'm trying to get you to see reason. You've described this house to me on five different occasions, each time a little different from the last. You've added embellishments or sometimes removed them. Today, there were carvings on the wall. That was new. Where did that come from?"
"There are always carvings on the wall," Timothy replied.
"You've never mentioned it before today."
"That's not true! I..,"
"Have an overactive imagination? Yes, you certainly do. But are you precognitive? Doubtful. You need to see reason, Timothy."
"Oh, I see it clearly," he said, standing from the couch.
"Timothy..,"
"Thank you, doctor."
Timothy left Doctor Waters's office in a daze, his head spinning in a whirlpool of emotion and memory. He knew the doctor would bring up Richard Crandall. He knew his sister's pleas would be ignored by all but him. Timothy had hoped the doctor would finally see reason in the senselessness of her disappearance and supposed death, but he refused to see it. Doctor Waters only saw psychosis where Timothy wanted him to see prescience. He did not know how his sister was communicating with him, but he could not be unconvinced of its reality. The house on the lake was not a figment of his imagination but a real place. It was the key to everything. Timothy just had to find it.
As he drove through the familiar confines of his sleepy south Georgia hometown, Timothy thought more and more about the dream. He'd analyzed it for months, ever since it first occurred, yet he felt no closer to solving its riddles. Why did it always begin in the bedroom? Why the sudden shift to the living room? Why just the two rooms and not the whole house? Timothy had hoped Doctor Waters might be able to divine a meaning from the scraps of information the dream was giving him, but he was now convinced the doctor was a lost cause. How could an outsider understand the bond that tied him to his sister? That connection was never understood by anyone but them. It made sense to Timothy that he must be the one to solve it, but he was woefully unprepared to tackle such a lofty goal.
He pulled into the driveway of his modest duplex home but did not exit his vehicle. His reminiscences had gathered around the revelation of the wood carvings. Previous trips into the dream had not revealed that element to him. Doctor Waters picked up on it, and now Timothy was stuck on it. He couldn't understand its importance but knew it had to be something. It was enough of a revelation to open a small path in the gridlock of his investigation and allow the wheels of critical thinking to once again spin golden threads.
He left his vehicle and stormed into his modest duplex. Timothy lived alone, allowing not even the smallest pet to share his domicile. It was modestly furnished and bare of everything except the essentials. No books or shelves of knick-knacks occupied his walls. No dining or cooking ware occupied his kitchen. No trinkets or novelty items littered his floors. He lived minimalistic and preferred it that way. His only indulgences were an outdated flatscreen and a top-of-the-line laptop with thousands of dollars in upgrades.
Once he cleared his pockets of his keys and wallet, Timothy plopped onto his less-than-comfortable couch and flipped open his laptop. Reaching into his pocket, he removed an electronic cigarette and began puffing clouds of mint-flavored vapor skyward. When his energy and anxiety were up, he always grabbed his device and nervously dragged upon it, becoming his own fog machine in the process. After one particularly long and deep drag, he clicked on a folder on his desktop labeled Allison. Inside was a jumble of files in an array of formats, all pertaining to the disappearance of his sister. Any bit of information, from newspaper articles and blog posts to pages of his own research, was gathered into that folder. Timothy scrolled through the mass of files before stopping at a .rtf file titled "Timeline." He took another long drag and clicked on the file.
The document was a crudely assembled timeline of events concerning Allison's whereabouts before her disappearance. It was taken mostly from social media posts, remembered and half-remembered conversations, and what little of the police report was made public. To Timothy, it was woefully incomplete. From February 4th until early on the 7th, Allison's whereabouts are mostly accounted for. From the 7th onward, she slips into darkness. There is nothing on the timeline until the apprehension of Richard Crandall ten months later. Allison was believed to be one of his earliest victims. When questioned, he admitted to 'strangling her like all the rest.' It made sense to detectives and allowed them to close the case, despite the lack of a corpse. Crandall had only admitted to the killing once he knew there were dead girls to claim. Timothy knew Crandall was a dead end, a political scapegoat to make yet another unsolved murder go away. Feeling particularly flushed with rage, he highlighted everything passed the 7th and then slammed his finger down on the delete button.
This left the last entry on the timeline at ten A.M. the morning of the 7th. She had eaten breakfast with her ex-boyfriend, Marshall, at a local diner. It had been an innocuous meeting, one between former lovers making a go at continued friendship. Timothy had talked to Marshall at length about that meeting. He had grilled him over every word his sister might have spoken. Nothing Marshall said in reply led anywhere beyond the scope of normality. She had simply left that diner, never to be seen or heard from again.
Timothy ran through their conversation in his head, remembering all the details. He had jotted them down into their own file, but his memory of their talk was vivid. Timothy had always liked Marshall and was saddened by his breakup with Allison. When they talked, he knew that Marshall held nothing back. Neither suspected the other of foul play, leading to a confluence of information that raced their hearts for a short moment before it fizzled away into despair, disillusionment, and ultimately a fracture. Marshall had helped Timothy on his quest for justice as long as his heart could stand, but after a while, he lost faith and pushed away. He needed distance from everything associated with Allison. Though he hated losing an ally, Timothy understood Marshall's need for space.
But now there was a new clue, one quelled from deep inside a dream. He felt an intense urge to talk to Marshall again, to question him about the carvings and dislodge a clue from their collective memory. Timothy reached for his phone but stopped himself. It had been months since he last attempted to contact Marshall, back when the dreams first began. That time, he had been solidly rebuffed. He knew that another attempt would most likely meet with the same fate. Yet the urge was too strong. Before he knew it, he was dialing the number.
"Please don't tell me this is about Allison," Marshall groaned from the phone speaker after two rings.
"It's nice to hear from you, too," Timothy replied.
"Is it about her or isn't it?" Marshall insisted.
"It is, but..,"
"I thought I told you, Tim," Marshall barked. "I don't want anything to do with it anymore. I've wiped my hands and moved on!"
"Please, Marshall," Timothy begged. "I need to talk to someone about this, someone who doesn't already think I'm crazy."
"Too late for that."
"Please! I wouldn't ask if it wasn't important."
There was a long silence on the other end of the line. Timothy wondered if Marshall had hung up on him.
"Ok," Marshall said finally, a slight break in his voice. "I'll listen, but don't drag me back into this. It hurts too much."
"I just need you to listen," Timothy said. "Can you meet at the Mayfield?"
"Now?" Marshall replied incredulously.
"In an hour?"
"Fine," Marshall agreed with a groan.