Adam was laser-focused on Dylan all through the bizarre evening at the Volkhvovs’ mansion. He needed to get him alone, away from Jesse’s snippy banter and probing questions of Nastya Volkhvova, so he could slowly work on tearing down those insurmountable walls Dylan had raised around himself and get to the bottom of this.
Ever since he joined them at Adam’s house, he had been uncharacteristically quiet. All through the extended argument with the very obvious mob driver, the long and silent ride over and even the dinner. He barely ate a thing. Adam was sceptical about the Russian cuisine at first, but to his surprise there were no strange pickled, boiled or jellied creatures on the menu. It was hearty and welcoming. Just like their host’s apparent demeanour.
Well, hostess. Nikolai was also acting strange, looking on the verge of an angry outburst and quietly seething in his corner seat, glaring at Ian. Whatever was going on there, Adam was glad it kept them both away from meddling in his and Dylan’s business.
When Nastya ordered the staff to clear the table, he bolted upright, pulling Dylan up by his shoulder and leading him into one of the side rooms. He expected some resistance, either verbal or otherwise, but Dylan followed him meekly and kept his unnerving silence even when Adam figured out how to use the ancient-looking door lock to give them some privacy.
The room appeared to be some sort of waiting reception area, with two comfortable armchairs, a coffee table, a floor-length lamp by the single window and nothing else. Dylan stood, head bowed in the middle of the room, waiting for whatever Adam was going to do next.
“Are you ok with this?”
“Ok with what?”
Adam leaned his back against the door, giving Dylan some space but not letting him run away from this conversation.
“With this test she is suggesting.”
He refused to turn around. Why wouldn’t Dylan look at him? He could see the tension in his shoulders, the exhaustion seeping deep into his bones. He tried to keep his bruised wrist hidden by the oversized hoodie, but all it did was make him look fragile.
He was always radiant in his demeanour. His unique eyes sparkled with excitement and joy when he was talking about theatre and his unending, quirky parade of fashion styles that made him stand out from the gloomy suburban masses, a beacon of wonder striding through the grey. It broke Adam’s heart to see him like this. Hurt, silent and terrified.
The molten coil of anger inside him wanted to flare up, but he had no target to aim it at. As things stood, all he could do was be there for Dylan, a shoulder to lean on, an impregnable castle wall to protect him. If only he would let him.
“Do I have a choice?”
The barely suppressed rage in Dylan’s voice took Adam by surprise.
“What? Of course, you do…”
“Really? Because it hasn’t felt so lately!” Dylan turned towards him abruptly, his pale face flushed with an effort to keep his voice from rising.
“Dylan.”
“NO, Adam. It’s my turn to speak.” He ran his fingers through his messy curls, huffing a breath out to calm himself.
“You need to cut this shit out.”
“…What…”
“Whatever crawled up your ass and is making you snap at people like a rabid dog!”
Adam flinched at the visceral imagery, unused to Dylan directing such viciousness at him. He opened his mouth to say something, but the look on Dylan’s face made him shut it promptly and keep it that way.
“I get it. You’re mad that Jesse and I haven’t told you our deepest, darkest secrets that we ourselves don’t want to remember. I tried to be understanding of that and give you your space to throw this childish tantrum. But enough is enough!”
He was pacing the tiny room now, like a rapidly speeding up pendulum.
“First you threaten Spencer with suspension, then you corner me in the damn car, and now you’re trying to bite Nastya’s head off?! What the hell is wrong with you?!”
“I’m worried about you!” Adam blurted out, louder than he wanted. “None of you seem to be concerned about how crazy that thing in the shed was!”
“We ARE worried!” Dylan’s voice was rising in response. “We just don’t call the fucking Spanish Inquisition on our friends and act all alpha male about every little thing!”
“You were POSSESSED, Dylan!” He was shouting now, panic making his heart race, and the crystal chandelier above them rattled alongside the window panels.
“Come on, Adam. We both know it was my sleepwalking getting worse.”
“You were possessed,” Adam said it as a fact, no longer trying to find a reasonable explanation for the feeling of wrongness in his chest. “That evil thing used your body as a mouthpiece, and I just don’t understand why you won’t admit that and let me help!”
“How the FUCK would you help in that case?!”
“Come with me to the church!”
Dylan groaned and collapsed into one of the armchairs, hands pulling at his hair. Adam hated this. Specifically, he hated himself when he was like this, not in control of his emotions, his volatile rage taking over his body. He just couldn’t understand why he and Dylan couldn’t see eye to eye on this, like they normally did on all things.
He kept quiet with an enormous burst of willpower, clutching the door handle behind him until his joints cracked. At last Dylan spoke.
“Screw this. Let’s do it.”
“Erm… do what?” Adam felt that from the morning of this never-ending day, his brain had been steadily losing brain cells.
“The sleepover experiment. I’ll prove to you it’s not ‘demonic possession’, for God’s sake. It’s purely medical.”
He got up abruptly and marched towards Adam. He stopped inches apart from him, arms crossed and face determined. He was very much like Jesse in that way, not that Adam would ever dare tell either of them that. Anger pulled them both out of the pit of wallowing, and if he had to be the cause of that anger, then so be it.
“When we wake up tomorrow, and everything is fine, you will let this go for good. Understood?”
Adam nodded, knowing that pushing the matter any further would simply make Dylan retreat from him even more. Patience was a virtue he sorely lacked, but needed to nurture from now on.
“Let’s get this over with.”
***
The preparations for the sleepover were like a blur. Nastya, probably channelling a generalissimo from the bygone Russian eras, was commandeering the staff to rearrange the dining room to fit six mattresses in. When she said, ‘We sleep in here, together,’ she meant it quite literally.
Adam tried to position himself next to Dylan, but after a pointed glare from the boy, he ended up in the furthest area, next to Ian. Jesse was already lounging on a mattress by the door, flipping through an old-looking book she must have swiped from one of the shelves. She was acting nonchalant, but Adam knew that she was terrified as well. They all were.
He could almost feel it in the air. A physical tension underlying their relaxed conversations and body language. As he was trying to fall asleep, amidst the unfamiliar sounds of five other people trying to do the same thing unsuccessfully, he finally had the space to think.
What the hell was he doing?! When going over his behaviour from earlier that day, he realised that Jesse and Dylan’s irrational frustration with him was fully justified. He was acting like a rabid dog, and he had no idea why. It was as if a dam broke inside him and all the anger, fear, and, he had to admit, selfishness poured out onto everyone around him indiscriminately. As if years of suppressing these bad thoughts and feelings and being a good person, a good Christian, had created an invisible backlog that he could no longer sweep under the rug.
He groaned, shame roiling through him like a current, and rolled over to face the wall. He had to get his shit together. This was not the time to have his teenage rebellion, not when his friends needed him most. He needed to go back to being his calm and reliable self soon. For their sake.
He was clueless. So instead of making assumptions, he was going to listen. He was volatile. So he was going to count to ten, as they did in the movies, and breathe before speaking, especially with Dylan. The last thing he needed was to have Adam all up in his face. He burrowed into the pillow, recalling with horror how much he had manhandled Dylan today. Exactly like those cliché domineering alpha male stereotypes on his mom’s YouTube feed that she tried to hide from him once.
Left in the darkness with himself and no one else to blame, he felt the creeping dread of this new self looming over, oppressing and terrifying. Maybe he was the one possessed after all.
***
He woke up with a jolt to cold hands shaking his shoulder. He rolled over to see Ian, looking nervous and confused, which was a rare sight indeed, desperately trying to wake him up quietly and gesturing for him to follow.
When they were alone, Ian let go of his iron grip on Adam’s wrist and turned, voice shaking.
“Adam, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry! I didn’t see it coming! You have to go!”
“Wait, wait! Calm down. Start from the beginning. What’s going on?”
“I was uncertain. There were so many possibilities. There was such a low chance of this happening that I dismissed it at first, but I was wrong, Adam!”
Ian gripped his arms with desperation, making absolutely no sense. He was rambling and unfocused, and it was making Adam’s head hurt.
“Ian. What is it?”
He took a deep breath.
“Dylan’s gone. He slipped out and left towards the woods. You have to go find him.”
“What…” Adam was plunged into an icy cold bath of shock, his muscles seizing in place as the words’ meaning settled in his waking mind.
“We have to wake the others.”
“We have no time!” Ian almost yelped, pushing Adam out the front door. “I’ll do that! You have to go NOW! It’ll be too late otherwise!”
“What the hell do you mean, Ian!” Adam felt the panic rise again, just as he vowed to keep it under control. Apparently, God had other plans.
“You are the only one who can find him! He is obscured from my sight! Go to the woods. Call for him. You’ll know where he is! Hurry!”
This was madness. Running in the middle of the night, barefoot, into the woods after his sleepwalking best friend instead of calling their parents or the police was insane. But it was Dylan. There was never any choice when it came to Dylan.
He bolted across the driveway, out of the fancy gates to the mansion and into the treeline. The moon barely penetrated the canopy above him, but he knew where to go, through sheer divine providence. He called Dylan’s name over and over in his heart at first and with his voice after, weaving through the trees at full speed, as if he were about to score a touchdown.
In his mindless haze, the panic was doing something to that dangerous thing coiled in his belly. It was as if he was a beast, navigating the woods through sheer instinct and scent, seeing a broken branch here, a piece of blue cloth from Dylan’s pyjamas there. Or maybe it was all in his head, and he was going insane.
After what felt like hours doing this mad dash, he saw him. A slowly moving figure in the distance, waist-deep in the creek and moving deeper into the water. Adam’s breath caught in his throat, horror seizing his weak flesh while his mind screamed at him to move.
“DYLAN! STOP!” He yelled, putting all the authority he had into his voice to compel the boy to turn back, to wake up. His voice shook the trees around him, dislodging small twigs and pebbles around his bleeding feet, but doing nothing to stop Dylan’s descent into oblivion.
His muscles finally woke up, and he bolted down the hill into the ravine where the creek was getting deeper. The water was like razors on his unprepared flesh, cold and biting, waking him up completely and sending shivers down his whole body, rattling his teeth. How Dylan did not wake up from stepping into this, he had no idea.
He splashed forward and grabbed Dylan’s shoulder just as the boy was about to fully submerge into the deepest part of the creek. The moment his hand came into contact with Dylan, the boy crumpled and went under the surface. Adam floundered to pull him out, checking that he was still breathing and not actually drowning. He dragged him onto the bank, now coughing up water and eyes blearily searching his surroundings in confusion. Adam gripped him for dear life, thanking God with a murmured prayer that he made it in time.
He refused to let go even when he heard the rushed footsteps of the others approaching them at the bank. If he hesitated even for a moment or took the wrong turn, he would have been too late.
Adam began to weep.
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