Chapter 3: Between Pages and Dreams

The dinner dishes took just a few minutes to complete. Allison popped the leftovers into the fridge. She let Spud out, stood in the doorway, and leaned against it with her arms crossed, enjoying the breeze while he sniffed each blade of grass like he was studying for an exam. Finally, she locked up the house with methodical precision, checking the deadbolt twice, just like her dad taught her.

She was done. Her daily social battery was down to a trickle. The only option left was to drag herself upstairs, let the shower wash her clean, and collapse. Surrender, finally.

"Come on, potato," she called softly, patting her thigh. Spud trotted toward her and the stairs, eager. He'd been waiting for this exact invitation for what felt like hours. He bounded up the steps ahead of her with his stubby but determined legs. By the time she reached the top, he was already beside the bed, waiting as patiently as he could be lifted.

She bent down and kissed his scruffy head, squishing his soft fur between her fingers, as she always did. "My love, I'm just going to go wash off the day. I won't be too long—ten minutes, maybe?" One more kiss on that fuzzy head as he turned a few times before flopping down into a cozy, cuddly croissant shape. She grabbed her towels from the linen closet and pajamas from the guest room dresser on her way to the bathroom.

She turned the shower to just below scalding—that glorious deluge of near-unbearable liquid heat that hovered somewhere between summer sun and mild sunburn, just enough to feel pain on the outside for a change. She tested it with her hand, nodded once in satisfaction, and stepped under the stream.

"Ah, just right. Lobster time!” She sang aloud with enthusiasm.

The water hit her head, back, and shoulders; she gasped, closed her eyes, and smiled, willing the day to dissolve and drain away with the steam. That was the plan, at least. Let it go. Let the heat unknot the tension. Let the water's white noise drown out everything else.

Her brain had other ideas. It had decided, as it always does, that it was the perfect time to start a lovely rumination session.

It started as a thread of memory that arrived uninvited and refused to leave. This time, however, it wasn’t some random event from 25 years ago that was utterly embarrassing and made her feel horrible for the next couple of hours. Instead, it was more recent: the wind on her face from the bike ride, the smell of moss at the creek, the way the light had shifted through the trees from white to amber while she sat in the hollow, writing in her notebook.

Then, in a barely intelligible whisper, a little raccoon named Thimble sneaked into those thoughts. The same raccoon who had opened her mouth and spoken in full, articulate sentences, like a person, as if that were a perfectly ordinary thing to do on a Tuesday afternoon in Pennsylvania.

Thimble. Yes, that was her name. She remembered, finally.

"She said she was something like my escort or guide to Dreamspace... Like I actually need a guide," She scoffed. "Dreamspace is mine. It's in my head. Completely imaginary. It's not a real place. Why do I need a guide to some plane of dissociation?" Allison murmured as the water ran over her face. She tried to figure out what all this meant.

She tipped her head back, letting the stream of water run over her hair and face. Dreamspace. The word sat in her mind like mulch in her shoe—persistent and impossible to ignore. She turned it over, examining it from every angle. It was stress. It had to be. She was sure of it. It made perfect sense. She’d been working way too hard, with too few days off and not enough sleep. She couldn’t, however, shake the feeling that there was more. What about that android thing? What about the glimpse beyond her world? And then Thimble. It was hard to dismiss and even harder to explain. None of it made any sense.

Her mind felt like a whirlpool on a lake, swirling and swirling without end. She shook her head to clear her mind, water beads flying from her hair and hitting the shower walls with little thuds. "I'm losing it," she announced to the tiled walls. "Full-on, certifiably, undeniably losing it."

The fiberglass shower surround, unhelpfully, did not respond.

She finished up. Her thoughts were otherwise occupied, and she was on autopilot. She rinsed her face one last time and turned off the water. Steam drifted out in curls as she opened the curtain and reached for the towel. Her glasses, propped in the corner of the shower caddy, were well washed. She dried them on a paper towel she left on the sink and slid them onto her nose, the fogged lenses clearing as the cool air hit her skin.

The light above the mirror flickered. Just once. A quick blip, barely a second.

Allison paused, towel in hand.

“Hm, that’s weird,” she muttered.

A moment passed. Then another. The fan purred on, sucking up the last of the steam. The light held steady.

"Oh, great. Just great," she mumbled dryly. "The power company's having issues again this week. How long will the power flicker tonight? It's been like this all week. I'm going to have to set all the blinking clocks yet again."

She dried off, bent over to wrap the towel around her hair into a makeshift terricloth crown, mumbling to herself that everything was fine and perfectly normal: the power grid was glitching out again; cute woodland creatures don’t just hold conversations with people. What she just needed was a really good, uninterrupted night’s sleep.

Then the unmistakable ding of her phone vibrating on her nightstand echoed from the quiet bedroom and into the hallway. She froze and cocked an eyebrow. Her phone hadn't dinged in years. She kept the sound and ringer off and set it to vibrate only. 

Why would it be dinging?

Her stomach clenched, and she stood there for a moment, the cool air in the hall breezing past her still-wet legs as she stared at the bedroom doorway. Her pulse quickened. She could feel it in her throat.

It's just a text. Calm down. People get notifications. Phones buzz and ding. That’s all it is. Don’t jump at shadows that aren’t there.

She padded across her bedroom, careful not to wake her dog, and picked up the phone from the nightstand where she'd left it face down. She flipped it over.

Screen lit. No new messages. No missed calls. No notifications at all.

Her brows furrowed. She checked the missed notification pull-down. Nothing. Checked the messaging app. Nothing. Checked the DM with Lyra. Nothing.

"Okay, weird. This whole day is just forking weird," she said softly.

She picked up the phone from her nightstand and stared at the empty screen for a long moment, thumb hovering, waiting for something to happen. Nothing did. No buzzes. No dings. No screens lit up. A whole crap load of nothing. She set it back on the nightstand, face down. 

Allison dropped the towel into the nearby hamper. She pulled on her favorite pajamas—the ones washed so many times they felt like a cloud—and crawled into bed. Spud shifted, making room with the grudging generosity of a small dog who had somehow already claimed the entire mattress by sprawling out with his absurdly long body, fluffy tail, limbs and all. She snuggled under the covers, pulling his scruffy body into hers as the little spoon, with the comforter's help. He sighed contentedly as they relaxed in the room's refreshing silence.

Her mind couldn't settle. Her thoughts circled, catching on unanswered questions and refusing to let her rest.

She clicked off the room light and switched on the bedside lamp. She picked up Go Tell the Bees that I am Gone again, just as she did that morning, opened it to the bookmark—three-quarters through, the good part; she loved this book—propped it on her pillow stand, then leaned back against her wedge pillow. She stared at the page. She read the same paragraph twice. She put it down with a huff; she really wanted to read, but her mind still wouldn't relax, so she reached for her phone instead.

She couldn't explain what she was doing. Her thumb moved before thought caught up, chasing another loose thread in her brain. She tapped, opened the Yarns app, and tapped onto the in-app messages. She read through all the messages from that day, still baffled at the whole Lyra/Thimble thing. She just wanted her friend. She didn't trust the DMs, but she had to try. 

"Ly," Allison typed.

After about a minute, someone started responding—but who was it?

(...)

"You remembered my name."

Allison's breath caught. Her fingers tightened around the phone. She was disappointed and annoyed. She wanted to talk to her best friend, not the Raccoon. It was far too late, and she was too tired for this kind of foolishness. Suddenly, the lamplight felt a little too warm, the shadows grew too deep, and the silence between Spud's soft snoring grew loud indeed.

"Really? Again. Stop. Let Lyra have her messages back. I want to talk to her. And yes, I remembered your name. Why wouldn't I? What do you mean?" she typed, hoping every ounce of irritation she felt made it through the internet like a brick.

The reliper wrote, "You remembered my name. That means it's starting to take hold."

"Take hold?" Allison's tension rose, sharp with confusion and anger, wishing she could scream through the phone, but it was a simple text DM, so she wrote, "Why are you… What's taking hold? Is it late, dude? Can you confuddle my brain later? Please? Holy cat!"

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, giving her tired brain time to catch up and calm down. Getting upset before bedtime won't help anyone.

Her voice steadier, though her heart hammered, she asked, "Ok. Thimble? What is it you want?" halfway between confusion and curiosity. "I... I thought I had imagined all of that. The creek, the shimmer, you. This can't be real. It's impossible."

"… And yet, here we are," a familiar voice responded.

The app hadn't visually changed. It was still the same interface. It was the same dark mode that was easy on her eyes. The same chat bubbles. It felt just as real as a conversation with her friends.

"I didn't open this to talk to you," Allison wrote, sitting up straighter in bed. "I opened it because I wanted to… because I thought I was going to talk to Lyra. I have so much on my mind; I just needed to talk to my BFF and get things off my chest so I could sleep. It's often what we do together at night."

A pause. Then Thimble typed back, "I'm using her account as a vessel. Like a coat or a bridge, if you’d rather. I needed to get through to you, get your attention. I saw an opening, and I had to take it. She'll get it back."

Allison didn't know what to say; she was flabbergasted that Thimble thought she had the right to take over her chat with her friend. It all felt so wrong and invasive. All she wanted was her friend—not whatever the heck this was. Nothing was making any sense. It was all just so frustrating and confusing. Then, suddenly, she felt a light buzzing in her head, like a malfunctioning radio crackling and popping. The phone's screen flickered, then went dark. 

Thimble's voice cut through the noise, leaving only her words. "Allison. It was time for me to come find you."

The words hung in the air for a moment, simple and clear.

Thimble continued, her voice warm as wool. "Your memory barrier is breaking open because you are ready to see, ready to know. That's not a mistake. That is by design. Do you understand? You didn't break anything. You didn't hurt anything. I'm sorry I fooled you in your chat with your friend.  I invaded your private conversation and betrayed the trust I'm trying to build with you. I shouldn't have done that. I should have found another way. This is my first time, and I messed up badly. I'm learning how to do this, just like you are. I'm sorry."

Allison swallowed. The tightness in her chest loosened slowly. She took a breath. Then another. Her shoulders straightened, just slightly.

"Okay," she said. Still quiet, but steadier. "No, wait. It wasn't okay. That was just plain mean. How am I supposed to trust you now?"

"I know," Thimble said simply. "I'm upset at myself for it, and I understand you're upset at me, rightly so. I will reinforce, re-explain, and reassure whenever you need it. I'll make it right. The important thing is that we've made contact and you're still talking to me. That means there is hope and we have a chance.”

Allison exhaled a long, shaky breath that carried more relief than she cared to admit. She felt herself returning to baseline, though still a bit shaky from adrenaline. Her spine straightened. Her grip on the phone loosened from a clench to a hold.

"Okay," she said again, and this time it sounded like her. "So. You're in my phone. Using this thread to communicate with me, right? And somehow, something that has kept me from long-lost memory is starting to collapse? Yes? What does that have to do with my Dreamspace?"

"Yes." Thimble's voice was tender now, unhurried, as if she had all the time in the world. "Oh, Allison... You felt it. You know. The empty spaces you felt in your mind earlier, when you couldn’t remember but felt you should have? Yep, those. That’s what I mean. That’s the barrier breaking, and now you can sense those open spots, whereas before you couldn't.

Her breath hitched. She had known—somewhere under the surface. Those odd flickers of déjà vu she had all day, and the voids in her memory. Something was reaching toward her from Dreamspace, offering a hand, trying to pull her from the churning waters to dry land whenever she daydreamed.

"What do you want?" she asked, but it felt more like, "What's happening to me?"

"Not want. Need." Thimble's voice held no humor now, but it was certain and direct. "I need to show you what's next. I can’t show you everything. Not yet. The veil is thinner when you're like this—half-tucked into sleep, swaddled in routine. Your mind is still open. Still listening."

"Am I dreaming already?" Allison said, stifling a yawn.

"Not quite. But close. Do you trust me enough to follow?"

She hesitated. She looked over at Spud as she lay back on her pillow. She envied that little dog. Nothing had ever made Spud question reality. His world was food, walks, naps, and Allison—and that was enough.

The phone was still in her hand. She slowly drifted toward sleep, too tired to fight or even to answer. The now-familiar, yet still strange, voice waited.

"Then I'll meet you on the other side."

Allison was turning the words over in her mind. Finally, she mumbled, "The other side of what?"

The screen shimmered, then went dark as she fell asleep, her body going slack, her arm dropping to her side as she released her phone.

With a final deep breath, she relaxed fully into a deep slumber, and everything finally went quiet as she sank deeply into a dream. At least she thought it was a dream.