CHAPTER TWENTY ONE - DOUBLE NIGHTMARES
Drowning… slowly drowning and dying and disappearing into a deep, dark pool of oblivion. He couldn’t move, he couldn’t breathe. He felt the liquid rising through his mouth. He gasped and tried to swallow, but although the horrid substance disappeared it left him with a bitter, sickening aftertaste as well as a tearing, burning pain in the back of his throat.
B’s eyes snapped open as he groaned and spluttered in his sleep. He felt the vomit rising in his mouth and he clasped a hand to his lips.
He stumbled out of bed and rushed to the bathroom, managing to crouch over the lavatory just in time to avoid spilling the contents of his stomach out onto the carpet.
He pressed a hand against his clammy, sweaty forehead and felt the heat radiating through his fingers as his heart hammered painfully hard inside of his chest. He shook and trembled and suddenly his skin was cold and freezing. He waited for a few more moments, but his body did not seem to want to eject anything else.
He slowly stood up and placed a cloth in the sink to soak it with water which he then used to wipe the sticky perspiration from his brow. He used tissue to wipe his mouth and then flushed all evidence away. He did not want Brian to know about this, it would only worry him.
All the same, B was shaking as he stumbled back to bed, not wanting to think about his illness. He was fine. He was fine. There was nothing wrong with him except for a cold…
… even if he was vomiting blood.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
“You are not taking him!” Brian screamed hatefully as the cloaked stranger slowly walked towards his house.
“Why do you treat me as an enemy? We both care for B.” His voice was calm and reasonable, but it filled him with hatred. “I’m like you, remember? You know who I am and it’s only natural for you to feel like this! It only happens now because I’m so close to you!”
“He’s mine! He belongs with me!” Brian screamed, ignoring the thoughts that were pulling at his brain. He knew who this person was… he just didn’t believe it.
“He’s in the wrong time! I must take him home!”
“No! I want to keep him here! Please I want him to stay!”
“And I want him to come home!” The speaker was close to tears now. “He thinks I hate him but I don’t1 You’ll understand one day, just please let me take him home!”
“You’re not taking him… Not taking him!”
Brian was sitting up in bed, his heart racing hard inside of him as he almost shouted the words. He gasped and wildly stared about him as if expecting to see his opponent watching him, but there was nothing and no one there. His eyes spun about him crazily before his brain registered that it had been a dream. No one was coming to take B away from him.
He wiped his forehead free from the perspiration that had gathered there from the dream as he stared about him, the room now lit with the glow of morning. The dreams were getting more realistic every time and new information was revealed to him about the stranger. His mind seemed to already know who it was, but it was refusing to tell him. If he could only figure it out… Maybe B might know if he thought carefully about it. It was somebody who knew him after all.
He glanced down and found that his hand was still tightly wrapped about his cell phone, just as it had been last night when he had fallen asleep. He brought the phone to his face, his heart hammering hard as he prayed he would see something there, but there was nothing. No message.
After B had gone to bed last night he had sent another text message to their friend, the one who had been in contact with Brian before. He had sent another message asking where Sammy was. Why where they not replying? Brian knew that they still had their phone because they had sent a message to him yesterday to warn him of the Gerai. It had been the same cell number that the other messages had been sent from, so he must have been receiving Brian’s messages about Sammy.
Why would they not send him a reply?
He was beginning to feel uneasy with the entire situation. He had believed that B and Sammy were safe in their time but everything had turned into a disaster where there was nothing but danger for them. B was unable to live a normal life because of the Gerai’s brutal virus that they had embedded in his arm… why had everything turned out like this?
Having B with him had begun as a treat, but now he was going to have to fight to project him and Brian was frightened that he wouldn’t be able to…
He stared hard at the phone and then typed in a new message.
WHY WON’TYOU ANSWER ME?
With the tap of a button it was gone and Brian glumly placed the phone down on the bedside table. Maybe they hated Brian as much as he hated them. Maybe they wanted him to suffer… and the uncertainty about Sammy was certainly a way to make him suffer.
He clambered from bed, wide-awake after the dream where he had argued so frantically with the other man. He pulled on a pair of jeans and a pullover before heading over to B’s room. Lightly he tapped his fingers against the door and waited.
“I’m awake,” B said faintly from within.
Brian smiled and gently pushed the door open to the third bedroom of his house. B was sat up in bed flicking through some Backstreet Boys scrap books that fans had made for Brian. He looked u as his father entered and tried to smile, but Brian could see the paleness of his cheeks and the dark circles which ringed his green eyes.
“How long have you been awake for?” Brian asked.
B yawned. “Quite a while. I couldn’t sleep.” He looked away from Brian back down at the scrapbook.
Brian tilted his head, disliking the pale cheeks that reminded him of death. “You don’t look well. How do you feel?”
B gave up trying to look healthy and dropped the book down beside the bed as he fell back. “Like crap.” He sniffled slightly as he fumbled for a tissue.
“That day really didn’t do you much good did it?” Brian sighed.
“I had fun though,” B protested. “I’m glad you took me out, even though we saw the Gerai.” He suddenly pulled the strange blue thing Brian had won him from under the covers and patted it on its bulbous head. “I had a good day. I never go out back home.”
‘Home, where a person belongs.’
But this wasn’t B’s home…
And he didn’t belong here.
Brian slowly sat down on the bed beside B, pushing away all thoughts of ever losing him again. “But look at you now. You’re sick as a puppy dog.” He pressed a hand against B’s head, but there was no temperature like there had been when he first arrived.
“It’s not so bad. It’s flu,” B insisted stubbornly.
Brian was beginning to doubt that B had flu. B’s symptoms were slightly different. One minute he was fine, but the next he was ill and it just didn’t feel right… This was something more than flu.
He jumped at his own alarming thoughts and quickly pushed them away. B couldn’t get ill now! Not here! Brian had contemplated taking him to a doctor but if it did turn out to be anything serious then there would be too many questions and too much paper work. The last thing he needed was for people to find out about B.
He stared down at the pale, weak face and frowned. There was something not right about all of this.
“Why don’t we keep you in bed today?” Brian suggested. “I think you need some long rest.”
“I feel okay now. Can’t I come downstairs?”
“No, stay here in bed. If you really want there’s a portable TV in my room I can bring in here for you if you get bored. I can hook the Nintendo or the Playstation up as well.”
“I’d prefer to be downstairs with you,” B complained. “All I ever do is sleep and be ill. I want to spend time with you.”
“Well I can stay up here with you then!” Brian said in a teasing voice. B was not getting his own way this time. He was staying in bed where he could better.
“Okay, I’ll give up,” B said as he began to sneeze.
Brian handed him another tissue and then picked up the scrapbook from the floor. “What did you think of this?” he asked as he flicked through the cut out articles of him and the other boys.
“Pretty cool. We don’t have anything like this in my time,” B said as he peered down at the glossy photographs. He flicked through a few pages while coughing and then paused at one where Brian had his arms wrapped tightly about Nick. “I’m sorry, but you two look gay in that picture.”
“Excuse me?” Brian asked, laughing slightly. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I’m just saying!”
“Geez, we already have fans saying that and I do not need it from my own son thank you!” Brian said giving B a friendly nudge in the arm.
“The fans think you two are gay?” B sniggered slightly.
Brian rolled his eyes. “Let’s just say that Nick and I found some very interesting fan stories on line. Some girls really have the most bizarre fantasies.”
B cringed and placed a hand to his mouth. “Okay, I don’t wanna hear any more! We stop this conversation right here!”
Despite Brian’s attempts, B did manage to sneak out of his room and ended up curled up on the couch for over an hour watching cartoons before Brian shooed him back to bed. He seemed to be okay, but he definitely had trouble walking very far as if he was too weak. Brian had asked him if his hurt ankle was hurting but B said it was fine. He just seemed to be devoid of strength. A perfect target for the Gerai if they ever ran into him again, but he believed that B would keep his promise and not run away again. He had sounded sincere and he was already guilty after running from Sammy.
“Is this Sammy’s room?” B asked curiously as Brian helped him back to his own room with the promise of the Nintendo after if B went to sleep for an hour or so.
Brian nodded. “Yep.”
“Can I have a look?”
“Sure.”
He watched as B pushed open the door and peered into Sammy’s beautifully decorated beach room. The carpet was a sandy brown and the walls had been painted by Nick and Brian to resemble a beach beside the sea.
He smiled at the room, remembering the first time that Sammy had seen it and the way his eyes had lit up with joy at having something so special done for him. Sammy had never been had a decorated room before and he had been overjoyed with this one. His smile soon vanished as he saw they way B glanced about the room and a great sadness descended upon him.
B stared about him with wide, melancholy eyes and he gently ran a hand over the walls that had been painted like the sea with the sunlight sparkling from the waves.
“It’s so pretty,” he whispered. “Sammy’s so lucky.”
B had missed all of this because b had never had a proper family or even grown up in an ordinary time. B had never had anything like this as a little boy and now he was able to see the world his bother had grown up in. Sammy not only had a perfect bedroom but piles of toys, clean clothes, books and pictures. He had everything and yet B had had nothing… not even a father.
B smiled weakly as he picked up a stuffed spider from Sammy’s desk. “Hairy, I had this when I was a kid.”
“Sammy’s favourite after Rocky.”
B gazed about him, still holding the spider. “I didn’t have much else. Just Hairy and Rocky…” He laughed slightly. “Sammy used to scare the hell out of me with Hairy by dangling him over my head. Then one day it started to fall to bits and the legs came off. Not nearly so scary then.” He placed the toy down and then backed away from the fairytale childhood he had never thought was anything more than a story. He had never had anything like this and it must have hurt him more than Brian could have imagined to see how his adopted brother had been treated.
If only everything played out how Brian wanted it to, then B would have had all this when he was a kid. He should have had all this… instead he’d had the terrors of losing his mother and then the incident in the Gerai base where brutal experiments had been performed on him. Eventually the rest of his life had been ruined by the computer chip in his arm.
B sneezed and Brian placed an arm over his shoulder, although for some reason he suddenly felt isolated from B. B had now seen with his own eyes exactly what he was missing. Sammy had the perfect childhood and Sammy was the one Brian would die for…
He led B back to his own room and watched as he climbed into bed. Here was an unsettling wave of shame drifting over him as he realised how hard B’s childhood had been and Brian had never been there to help him through it.
He rushed forward and suddenly set about tucking B in, just like he did with Sammy when he went to bed. He made sure B was comfortable and then kissed him on the head.
“I would have done the same for you,” he whispered.
B’s eyes did not open but he did give a reply. “I know.”