Out of Time 01 - Out of Time

about it?”
    “No.” Quick, terse, definitive.
    “Maybe talking about it’ll help.”
    “I doubt that.”
    She couldn’t let it rest. “You’ve been having them since we first got here, haven’t you?”
    He ran a hand through his hair. “Please...” She could feel the tension in his body even from across the room. “Some things are better left to the darkness,” he whispered.
    The silence pressed down between them until she couldn’t stand the weight of it. “Are they about this? Being here? Me?”
    His head snapped up and she knew she’d hit a nerve. The fierceness of his expression surprised her, frightened her. Before she could learn more, he tore his eyes away and clenched his long fingers tightly against the muscles of his leg, digging in against her, against the truth. His chest heaved with frustration as he pushed himself out of the chair and stared out the window. “Don’t ask me about them.”
    The harshness of his voice triggered something inside her, and she felt the unstoppable need to make him talk about them. His tension was catching and her growing unease blossomed into anger. “If you think pretending nothing’s wrong is best,” she said coolly.
    He turned back to face her, his eyes glinting in the cold moonlight. “You don’t know what you’re asking.”
    “Because you won’t tell me.” She knew her rising anger was unreasonable, but he was pushing her away again. With every passing second, he pulled further inside himself. If he wouldn’t be drawn out, then she’d get behind him and shove. “Don’t shut me out.”
    “I’m not. I just...”
    “Just what? You open up only when it’s convenient?”
    “That’s not fair.”
    “And neither is this.”
    “You don’t understand.”
    “Then explain it to me.”
    He moved toward her, but stopped in the middle of the room. He started to say something, but clamped his jaw shut and shook his head. His hands, always so still and sure, hovered nervously in front of him. Finally, they dropped to his side, and his expression moved from frustration to loss. His eyes, which had been looking everywhere but at her, fell on her face. When he spoke, his voice was barely a whisper. “You die.”
    The hairs on her arms stood up. It wasn’t just the words, although “You die” would have been enough. It was the way he said them. Like a confession.
    “But it’s only a dream,” she said, trying to comfort him, or was it herself?
    He moved back the chair and slumped into it. Relieved or defeated, she couldn’t tell. She ran her hands over her arms trying to smooth out the gooseflesh.
    When he began, his voice was a crumbling whisper. “Thirty years ago, when I was barely ten years old...” he began, his eyes flicked to hers, sensing her confusion. “Everything begins before we think it does.”
    She could feel him ebbing away like the tide, but after a brief pause, he continued, “I was spending the summer at my grandfather’s home in Sussex. He told me stories of amazing, impossible things well into the night. Just the two of us,” he added with a brief, wistful smile. “I’d had nightmares all that week, but they were vague. That night, he had an appointment, or so he told me. I went to bed, but I knew something was wrong.” He closed his eyes and replayed the scene in his mind. “I finally managed to fall asleep and then the nightmare came. Formless, forbidding images, punctuated with one final horror. I remember waking suddenly, my heart bursting through my chest. One thing, and only one thing was clear to me. My grandfather was going to die.”
    He paused and she could see his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed and tried to control himself.
    “This wasn’t like any other dream, it was a vision, a moment in time that would play out, no matter what I did, it would come to pass. I knew that as surely as I knew anything.”
    She could picture young Simon, as he’d been in the photograph on his mantle, full of the fear and helplessness of being so young and afraid.
    He sighed heavily and ran a shaking hand through his hair. “That’s when I heard a sound coming from downstairs, like someone falling. I tried to convince myself it was one of the servants, but I knew it wasn’t. I knew it was him. There was no reason, no logic in it. And I ran. Stumbled down the stairs and... there he was.” His voice began to quiver and the words came out in a rush. “Just like in my dream. I saw him, lying on the