Chapter 3: The Dreamer's Toll

Chapter 3: The Dreamer's Toll

The drive back from Black Ridge was a study in contrasts. Nate was at the wheel, blasting some upbeat, obnoxious indie rock and complaining about a spectacular hangover. In the back, Isaiah and Sam were engaged in a low-energy debate about the historical inaccuracies of a new fantasy show. James, beside Leo in the passenger seat, was mostly silent, scrolling through photos from the weekend on his phone. They were all tired, grubby, and content.

All except Leo.

For him, the silence in his head was louder than the rattling speakers. The memory of the dream was a shard of ice in his gut, a cold, sharp certainty that refused to melt. The vibrant greens and browns of the passing forest looked menacing, the shadows between the trees deeper than they should be. He kept touching the crucifix under his shirt, the metal a cold, useless comfort against his clammy skin.

He waited until they were back at their shared off-campus apartment, the air thick with the smell of stale pizza and unwashed laundry. He cornered them in the living room before they could scatter to their rooms.

"We need to talk," Leo said, his voice strained. "About last night. About the ritual."

Nate rolled his eyes, dropping his duffel bag by the door. "Dude, are you still on that? I already told you, my wallet is still here, so your spooky landlord didn't take it."

"This isn't a joke," Leo snapped, his usual patience worn to a thread. He looked at Sam, who was carefully placing the old leather book on a shelf as if it were a holy text. "Sam, you have to reverse it. Whatever you did, undo it."

Sam turned, a frown creasing his brow. "Reverse what? Nothing happened. It was a dud."

"No, it wasn't!" Leo’s voice rose, bordering on frantic. "I had a dream. After the ritual. It showed me… it showed me things. Horrible things."

He forced himself to recount it, the words tumbling out in a panicked rush. He described the formless shadow, the gnarled hand with its obsidian claws. He described the silent, bloody tableau of Sam's death—the gouged eyes, the slit throat. He was desperate for them to see the terror he saw, to feel the cold dread that had taken root in his soul.

When he finished, the room was silent.

Isaiah was the first to break it, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose with an air of clinical detachment. "Leo, what you're describing is a textbook night terror. Our brains process stimuli and anxieties during REM sleep. We were in a spooky forest, we performed a mock-ritual that involved blood—your subconscious just cobbled together a narrative from classic horror tropes. It’s fascinating, really."

"It didn't feel like a dream! It felt real. It felt like a promise," Leo insisted, his gaze pleading.

"It's your Catholic guilt, man," Sam said, a little defensively. "You thought it was wrong from the start, so your brain punished you for it. It's just a manifestation of your own fear."

"So you're not going to do anything?" Leo asked, his hope beginning to crumble.

"What is there to do?" Nate asked, grabbing a soda from the fridge. "Perform an exorcism on your pillow? It was a dream, Leo. Let it go."

James put a hand on his shoulder, his expression sympathetic but dismissive. "Hey, it's okay. It sounds like it was really scary. But it's over now. We're all here, we're all fine."

But they weren't. Leo knew they weren't. His warning was dismissed as a bad dream, his terror as a psychological quirk. He was the boy crying wolf, and the wolf was something they couldn't even begin to comprehend.

The following week was the longest of Leo’s life. Every passing day felt like a stone dropping into a deep well, the splash unheard. He tried to act normal, to go to class, to study. But the dream was a constant, looping horror film in his mind. He found himself watching Sam, a morbid and terrifying vigil. He’d flinch when Sam got a papercut, his heart would seize when Sam complained of a headache. He was a man watching a death row inmate eat his last meal, day after day.

His friends grew tired of his paranoia. His constant texts—'Where are you?' 'Are you okay?' 'Is your door locked?'—went from being answered with jokes to being met with annoyed silence. By the sixth day, they were actively avoiding him. He was the buzzkill, the harbinger of a doom they refused to believe in. He had never felt so utterly alone.

On the evening of the seventh day, a Tuesday, Leo sat in the university library, staring at a page of macroeconomic theory that might as well have been written in Sanskrit. He hadn't slept more than an hour at a time all week. Every shadow in his periphery seemed to coalesce, every distant sound was a footstep in the hall. He was waiting for the axe to fall.

His phone buzzed on the table, the vibration unnaturally loud in the cavernous silence of the library. It was James. Leo’s hand trembled as he answered, a cold premonition washing over him.

"Leo?" James's voice was a choked, broken thing, laced with a static of pure panic.

"James? What is it? What's wrong?"

"It's… it's Sam," he stammered. "His roommate found him. He wasn't answering his phone all day, so he got the RA to open the door."

Leo's blood ran cold. The library, the books, the students around him all faded into an indistinct blur. There was only James's voice and the roaring in his own ears. "James… is he…?"

"He's dead, Leo." The words were followed by a gut-wrenching sob. "Someone broke in. The police are here. They said… God, Leo, it's a nightmare."

Leo closed his eyes, the dream-image of Sam's death flashing behind them, sharp and clear. He already knew the answer to his next question, but he had to ask. He had to hear it. His voice was a dead, hollow whisper.

"How? James, how did it happen?"

There was a pause, filled with the sound of James trying to control his breathing. "The police… they don't know who did it. Or why. It was… brutal. They said it looks ritualistic." He took a ragged breath. "Leo… someone… someone gouged out his eyes. And they slit his throat."

The phone slipped from Leo’s numb fingers and clattered onto the table. The words echoed in the void of his mind, a perfect, horrific match to the prophecy he had tried to share. Eyes gouged out. Throat slit.

He wasn't a dreamer. He was a witness.

The first toll had been paid, exactly as scheduled. And the ticking of the clock had just grown terrifyingly real.