Jonathan: Prince of Dreams Chapter Four

Chapter Four: The Monsters Move in the Shadows


I sat up in a flash to pale sunlight streaming through my window, examining every corner of the room for intruders. I found none, and jumped up to see my back, expecting to find a burn mark, sticky residue, poison, or whatever had been poured into my wound.
There was nothing. Just the raw-looking crimson stab wound. It had already closed nicely. Had I just imagined the intruders? That didn't seem possible—it had all been so fresh, so tactile! Frowning in consternation, I started to get dressed, formulating a plan as I went.
The nightmare, the strange visit, the weird, random vision, not to mention Garrett losing his mind and shanking me…nothing made sense. Why me? What had I done? Something was going on, and I had to tell someone I trusted about it before I exploded. Should I call the police? What would I say? That a group of robed intruders had broken in, held me down, poured something on my back, then left? Even if they humored me and looked into it, they would discover the stab wound, interrogate me about my fight with Garrett, and start poking into my life where I didn't want anybody poking.
After a moment's hesitation in which I eyed the dark space beneath my bed with uncertainty, I darted underneath it to grab the scarlet griffin book and the blue bestiary.
The stairs creaked in protest beneath my hurried footfalls, but I didn't care whether dad was sober or drunk enough to see sound. I trotted through the kitchen, glancing at my watch to see what time it was, and turned right in the hall for the front door.
“Jonathan,” a distracted voice beckoned from the living room.
I backtracked with some impatience to find my mysteriously sober father staring at the television, which was on the news. He was standing with a hand on his chin. His cleanly shaven chin. I could now make out his angular face and more of his feminine lips. He was a pretty handsome guy when he took the time to care for himself.
There wasn't a beer can in sight, and there were no empty chip bags or crumbs littering our small living room. All of the furniture, the flower-print couch that mom had forced dad to buy and the two ragged but rugged brown recliners, were vacuumed and still smelled like freshly aroused dust.
“Yes?” I mumbled, tapping my fingers against the wall.
“Come look at this.” Dad's eyes remained fixed on the screen.
I inched around toward him, still maintaining a comfortable distance, and rested the book against my hip.
A woman reporter was speaking in dramatic tones, standing before the White House. At first, I thought it was something political and felt a groan building up in my throat until the story's scrolling headline caught my eye: “Country’s Defense System Unable to Defend Against Mass Mayhem Nationwide.”
Yeah, and it started in my bedroom last night.
The woman went on gravely, and the image of the White House flashed instead to a map of the United States. Red dots were scattered all over the place.
Dad took a shaky breath and slipped around the back of his recliner to sit, still facing the TV, unblinking.
I felt a queer tingle of fear run up my spine. It was an almost wild and inexplicable type of fear, like something big was happening, but I couldn't comprehend it because I didn't understand it. I leaned forward, putting my weight on the back of dad's chair. It tilted back a bit, but neither of us noticed. We were both raptly listening to the report. I'd even half forgotten my goal—it was an obnoxious prickle in the back of my brain, but I ignored it.
“Swings of violence have, in recent days, soared in occurrence, as you can see on this map, eliciting concern in our nation's capital. It seems that gangs have abandoned secrecy and struck out in mass movements across the world. States that were relatively shy of violence before now face kidnappings and murders in the shadows of the night. But the government hasn't called any gangs to accountability, claiming to have no evidence.”
The camera cut to some cranky white-haired guy from the FBI who was saying, “Gangs aren't involved in spying on the affairs of the government. And we must remember that America isn't the only one suffering from these attacks. Israel and Africa and Russia…they're all taking it with us. These aren't gangsters; these are terrorists.” He dodged a dozen microphones and ducked inside a shiny black car.
The reporter returned and concluded her story, her voice grim. “The question on everyone's mind nationwide is whether or not these are indications of the threat of war. This is Teresa Sullivan, the nine o'clock news.”
The story went to the newsroom where the facts turned to some violent, mysterious robbery in Wisconsin.
After a few seconds worth of stunned silence, I was able to say, “Weird.” I was sincere, but darned if I knew why dad had called me in to have me watch. It wasn't like anything had happened in Firestone.
“Spooky,” Dad added.
I began inching down the hallway. “Well, I'm going to a friend's.”
Dad twisted around to watch me, a genuine, worried crease on his forehead. “Didn't you hear the report? I don't know if you should go out.”
I frowned and continued inching. “Nothing's happened locally. Whatever is happening.”
Dad stood up, and I cringed out of reflex. He saw and recoiled, shame making his face redden and his shoulders slump.
“Just…be careful,” he muttered, shifting his weight and avoiding my gaze.
“Um…yeah. Thanks,” I said, and left as fast as I could.


I raised my fist and knocked on the door of Nikki's house. After waiting anxiously, I heard padding footsteps approaching and the door opened.
“Oh, hey, Jonathan,” Nikki said in a slow, measured tone of voice, looking me up and down. She hadn't seen me since before the fight on Friday. “How are you…feeling?”
I tilted my head towards her and hissed, “We need to talk, okay? Garrett is certifiable.”
“So you did fight him,” she said, stepping onto her front porch and closing the door behind her a little. The disappointment in her eyes stung, but I wasn’t there to be lectured.
I took her arms and said, “I got stabbed,” as if this would help matters. Nikki's eyes widened, her eyebrows creased, and her lips tightened with worry. She struggled to regain her composure, gave up, and stood aside to allow me entry. I flashed her a grateful half smile and entered, looking around with curiosity.
Nikki's quaint house was large, paid for by her father, an engineer. Her mother was a stay-at-home mom, and as loco as a Jack Russell on caffeine. The house was rather lacy and warm, stuffed with Victorian furniture inherited from English ancestors.
Nikki's Mom was always doing bizarre things to the décor. One day, cute rows of porcelain cats would be lined up on the mantelpiece; the next, photos of deceased relatives. Today, there wasn't anything on the mantel, but gooey ladybug stickers adorned the windows, and a blanket depicting an exotic flower hung on the wall behind an armoire.
“Mom's in the kitchen baking scones,” Nikki said, explaining the delicious scent on the air. She fiddled with the ends of her hair, still looking me up and down like she expected me to faint. “Dad's at work.”
I took a deep, relieved breath. Whenever he was home when I came over, he'd take me into the living room and engage me in conversation that reminded me more of a high-stakes interrogation. Probably because he kept glancing pointedly around me whenever I said something less than stellar—toward his open bedroom door where his hunting rifle was propped in full sight. He didn't think I was good enough for his daughter, but in my defense, the guy had pretty high expectations.
Nikki led me upstairs to her room and sat on her bed. She waited, expectant, chewing on her bottom lip, her hands folded in her lap, and I made a show of sitting on the plush carpeted floor below her, laying my book out to one side and massaging my back. It worked; Nikki rolled her eyes but fell to her knees on the ground and shuffled behind me. She peeled up my shirt and studied the knife wound.
After a while, she said in a tone that was equal parts critical and relieved, “It must’ve been a little knife. Looks like it's healing really well…”
I twisted to see, lifting my arm and peering beneath it. It was true. What had just that morning been a healing red gash was now a thin, puffy scar.
“Weird,” I murmured. “It was so bad yesterday.”
“I can’t believe this,” she muttered. An angry blush was creeping across her cheekbones. “What was he thinking?”
I remembered my main reason for coming and shuffled around to face her.
“It gets crazier! Check this out.” I told her more about the fight, the way Garrett had spoken like he had more in store for me, and I described the weird nightmare about Mom.
When I recounted the struggle with my night visitors, Nikki's brows popped up, elevated by skepticism, and when I reached the vision of the eagle thing, she joked in a tone laden with sarcasm, “Was this immediately after Garrett knocked your brains loose?” I frowned. She scoffed, exasperated. “Jon, come on, think, how real do you think this sounds?” She gestured wildly with her hands, and I had to lean back to avoid a black eye. “You were full of adrenaline, you probably just dreamt the whole thing.”
“Well, how do you explain this?” I shot back, sliding the books her way. “I came home to find three of ’em.”
Nikki touched one of the soft feathers on the griffin book’s cover as if it were made of the most delicate lace, then flipped through the old pages, stopping on the illustration of a hatching griffin chick. She smiled tenderly, a finger on her lip. “Sweet,” she said. “Maybe your dad got them for you.”
I had been expecting this explanation and was already shaking my head. “My pop has never gotten me anything. Why would he start with some dinky books on mythological crud?”
“Maybe he's trying…” Nikki offered, choosing her words in a careful way, as if approaching a street dog she was afraid might bite.
I looked away. Dad had been sober this morning…since yesterday after school. A horrible thought struck me: Had he met someone? The image of a hairy, bubblegum-chewing bartender girl came to mind. I fought to delete it.
In the next ten or so minutes, Nikki's mother came in and lay a tray of scones before us, wearing a blue checkered dress like Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz. I greeted her, and she fondly ruffled my hair.
“How have you been, honey?” she asked. “Did you pass that algebra test you were worried about?”
“I did, thank you. I've been”—I shot Nikki a furtive glance—“fine.”
Nikki's mom tilted her head at me, and I could see that she knew I was hiding something. Her husband probably would have assumed I'd done something improper with Nikki and gutted me right there, but she respected my privacy and gave her daughter a secret smile—the kind that meant she knew I needed Nikki's support at the moment.
She left us, and then Nikki and I lay side by side, alternating between eating and looking through the book, our legs resting against each other's, commenting every now and then on the detailed drawings. Whoever this Peter guy was, he was talented.
Nikki perused the griffin book while I browsed through the book on mythical creatures, stopping on the sketch of a mermaid. She had abnormally large but beautiful eyes without eyelashes and bushy hair flowing back over her slight figure. Her long and smooth dolphin-like tail was out behind her, and her webbed hands were pressed against her sides to streamline her shape.
The mermaid was looking straight ahead at a ship sinking beneath the water, bubbles twisting from the gash in its hull. The ship was old-fashioned like something out of a pirate movie, and a bearded king was carved as the figurehead, his sightless eyes staring up at the water's dwindling surface, morose and wistful.
I found the beginning of the page (the first letter of which was surrounded by a school of mackerels) and speed-read.

“Mermaid” is generally the term for both genders of merpeople, just as “Man” is used to reference humankind at large. Female mermaids are more commonly seen than males, due to the fact that they are the friendlier of the species, though both genders have been observed most commonly at the sight of shipwrecks, being extremely compassionate and empathetic. They willingly assist the stranded sailor as dolphins do.

I nudged Nikki and tapped the picture, and she leaned over to read with a murmur of admiration. I was studying the sketch of a baby Loch Ness Monster—mermaids kept them as pets—and Nikki said, “Jon,” in a marveling tone of voice. She had turned to a page in the griffin book that was all taken up by a collage of faces. Young kids, around my age, shadowed and unsmiling. Nikki went to turn the page, but I held it down and raised a finger in a wait gesture. I read silently:
Many youthful hearts, uncorrupted as of yet by the world, come to be shown as griffins from the inside to the outside. But only the wise and strong maintain that form throughout…
I stopped reading and let Nikki go on, reaching for another scone. Those kids' faces had just been so real and forlorn, as if they had somehow aged into early adulthood. I fluttered through the pages in my book, wondering who those kids had been, and just happened to land on the Ranker page that had caught my interest the previous night.
“What are those?” Nikki asked with distaste. “They look like grim reapers or something.”
“Rankers,” I murmured.
“I guess not all creatures are as good as mermaids, huh?” Nikki chortled. Thinking of the sirens I'd read about, I cleared my throat and muttered, “Nope, not all of ’em.”
“So, did you hear the news on TV?” Nikki asked. I nodded, and she said, “It’s like the world’s gone crazy. Spooky, huh?”
“Yeah…” I mumbled, my mind on Rankers and griffins and sad children. “Spooky…”

All that evening and into the next day, Sunday, I strained my brain, trying to figure out all of the random goings-on now peppering my life. I'd had a comfortable night of no spooks, but that didn't erase any of my blossoming worries. A part of me felt like I was missing something—like I was looking too close at a string, not realizing that it was connected to a bunch of others, forming a web. I started taking more of an interest in eavesdropping on the news dad had on all the time. More weird things were happening across the world—and not just crimes but catastrophes too: an earthquake had leveled a town in Texas; floods were obliterating villages in South America; a freak lightning storm had taken out some Russian farmer's entire herd of cattle.
There were no explanations, of course. Some reporters made weak half jokes about it being the end of the world, but most everyone seemed convinced it was global warming, or just a freaky coincidence that all these things were happening at once. I wasn't so sure, but there wasn't much I was sure about these days.

Of all of my friends, Vince was the one who looked after the group’s emotional wellbeing. He was a big guy from Mexico who couldn’t claim a spare ounce of fat, and he was a beast on the football field, but his eyes were as gentle and warm as those of the horses he and his family raised. It was Vince who had been the one to drag me to football tryouts my freshman year, and in all honesty, it had probably saved my life.
Everyone needs an outlet, some way to vent, to get away from their stress. Between Garrett at school and Dad at home, I didn’t have that. In middle school I had started getting edgier, shorter-tempered, picking fights with Garrett’s stupid friends, blowing off homework. High school didn’t look too bright for me. But after I’d made the team, a combination of Vince’s encouragement, the coaches’ strict rules about maintaining grades, and falling for Nikki a few months later, turned me around.
I owed my every smile to Vince, and whenever I tried to thank him for being so selfless, for having been so patient with the jackass I used to be, for showing me that I could make a different future for myself, he would just roll his shoulders bashfully and change the subject.
The week before, perhaps scenting the rising tension between myself and Garrett, Vince had made plans for us all to hang out and see a movie—a new scary one had come out about the usual: blood, death, screaming, and more death. I wasn't really in the mood to see it anymore, but I did want to get out of the house, away from my books, away from dad, the news, away from it all, to maybe find some clarity in the company of my best friends.
For the rest of the afternoon, I pretty much chilled in my room and read from my new books about dragons, unicorns, the wingspans and types of griffins, and Union Town, a wealthy city. Wherever that was. I’d never heard of it. The books didn't give me any answers, but they helped to distract me from my anxiety. I did some homework too, fighting to close my new books and redirect my attention. Yes, I guess I was becoming attached. They were kind of interesting.
When six p.m. rolled around, I began the long walk toward town and the theater. The air was biting and crisp, and it was just starting to get dark. I knew I would have to accept a ride home from someone, but I’d brought my license, so maybe they would let me drive.
I reached the theater red-faced from the cold and saw, with already uplifting spirits, my friends.
Tyson leaned close to me and said under his breath, “I could’ve picked you up.” I shook my head and hugged Nikki.
Including me, there were seven kids waiting on the sidewalk. Tyson, Ben, and I had brought our girlfriends, and Vince was still in his Cesar’s Grill uniform, looking all sorts of relieved to get a break. We bought our tickets and some candy and popcorn and entered our row.
The movie was about a young kid who goes to a friend’s house and comes to find out that the house is haunted by demons that chase them around and try to hurt them in the most violent of ways. It turns out that the friend and his family were demons too.
The demons wore black robes that reminded me of the men who'd stood around my bed, and at the movie’s calm points, I found myself biting my nails, all curled up in my seat. Nikki kept looking over at me, as if worried. This was a bad idea, this was a bad idea, I kept thinking to myself.
After the movie, I was all too happy to leave. Standing outside in the fresh air, I stared at the stars and listened to my friends chatting as they joined my side at a more laid-back pace.
Nikki’s hand looped around my arm, and she put her lips to my ear. “Are you alright, Jonathan?”
I chuckled and just as quietly answered, “That movie was just a bit scary for me. You know, when Alex looked in the mirror and that demon was beside him? I mean, I’ve had days where––”
“No,” Nikki interrupted my rambling and said, “I mean, are you sick?” A revelation seemed to strike her. “Or did you get contacts?”
“Why?” I gave her a confused look.
Vince joined the conversation. “Yeah, dude, your eyes were really creepy looking. They were, like, all white.”
I smiled, still taking deep breaths to de-escalate from the movie's more poignant jump scares. “Cool. It was probably just the screen reflecting off my face.”
Everyone mumbled agreement, returning to their animated discussions about the film's highlights. I accepted a ride from Nikki, who said I could drive, and we went home.


Later that night, I couldn't sleep, so I opened the griffin book and read about the griffin's body structure:
The griffin is, of course, half lion and half eagle. It is not a mythical creature but a creation born entirely of a pure heart. When someone is brave and wise enough, as worthy as a knight of old, they take on the form of a body indicative of that spirit in their dreams.
The eyes change color to match emotions, and the wings can reach a span of twenty-two feet and greater...
The eye color thing jolted me. I set the book aside and crossed to the window, sticking my head out and staring into the shadows…wondering.
What if those men in cloaks around my bed had been friends of the man who had murdered my mom? Criminals were shady—maybe he had been a part of a cult, or maybe his friends upset at him having been locked up and they were looking to take revenge. Maybe they were out to kill me next, and the poison coursing through me from their concoction had side effects such as eye color variations? I had seen so much in the last few days that it didn't seem too far-fetched an idea. The scary movie I'd watched, the monsters I'd read about, that was all make-believe. But this, what was happening to me now, what was happening all over the planet now—this was real. Monsters didn't just exist in films and fairy tales; they walked among us. Somehow, for reasons still unknown to me, I'd gotten myself caught up in something far beyond my understanding. I was now a part of whatever weird catastrophe was rending my world—the whole world, according to the news—apart. And I did not like it.
I closed my eyes and shouted into the night, “Come and get me! I’m not afraid of you!”
When nothing happened other than a cool breeze caressing my face, I backed away and turned off the light.


“So, where's Garrett the Ghoul?” I asked, plopping into the bus seat Monday morning next to Nikki. “I was kind of hoping to have a chat with him about comeuppance.”
She looked around at the seats, like maybe as soon as I arrived Garrett would too.
“I don't know. When we came to his stop, it looked like his whole house was empty. Maybe you clobbered him worse than you thought.” She gave me a grudging look.
I guess I had broken his nose, but he hadn't seemed too bothered by it.
Throughout the whole day, I did my work and sometimes pulled out the mythical beast book to read about ancient tree spirits and the labyrinth-trapped Minotaur, but when I searched through the crowded halls in between classes, Garrett was nowhere to be seen.