Episode 11: Nachos and Supernatural Messages

Aubrey Lance, S.S. (Supernatural Sleuth) -- Season 1, Episode 11: Nachos & Supernatural Messages

I’d planned to spend time alone while I sorted through my thoughts, but when Collin dropped me off, he offered to stay… and I decided it actually might help to talk through things with someone who already knew what was going on.

Even if the someone was Collin. 

My parents looked surprised when we walked in, but when I explained I’d abandoned the attempt to do school before even stepping inside the building, they both came over and gave me a hug. I was suddenly wrapped in the familiar combination of Dad’s woodsy cologne and Mom’s citrus perfume.

“Understandable, kiddo,” Dad said, pressing a kiss to my head. “We’ll call the school and let them know you won’t be there today. Mom and I were about to make a mid-morning snack. Want anything?” 

I shook my head. “Not right now.” 

“Collin, you staying?” Dad asked. He didn’t insist Collin return to school, which was odd, since my parents couldn’t exactly call in an absence for Collin. But Dad just smiled and offered him a snack, too. 

“I could eat,” Collin said with a shrug.

How could he be hungry after what had just happened? I shot him a sideways glance. 

He either didn’t notice or he ignored me.

Mom and Dad moved back to the kitchen counter. 

“We’re going to head up to my room,” I said, hoping my parents wouldn’t make a big deal of that. Collin and I couldn’t exactly talk through things right in front of them.

Dad looked over at me. “Door stays open.” 

“Of course.” I nodded. I knew I wasn’t allowed to be alone with a boy with the door closed… not that I’d ever tried to. 

Dad smiled. “I’ll bring Collin’s snack up in a few minutes.” 

Collin smiled back at him. “No worries, I’ll just wait down here until it’s ready and save you the trouble. That okay, Aubrey?” He cut me a glance with raised eyebrows.

I was fairly sure he was intentionally giving me a few minutes to be alone, even though he was staying, and I kinda loved him for it. 

“Yeah, sure. I’ll be in my room.” I hurried up the stairs.

Once in my room, I ran to my desk and pulled Emery’s notebook out of the drawer. It was easy to flip to the page I wanted—it was just after the little clump of pages that had been torn out, plus I’d turned to it so many times, the top corner of the page was starting to fray.

I sank into my desk chair and scanned the page again. I’d looked at this page thousands of times in the past two years, but even before what the cheerleader hawks said, I’d been unable to shed the feeling that I was missing something…  

I’d been poring over the sketches and quotes for several minutes when Collin knocked on my open door frame

When I looked up at him, he smiled. “Your dad made nachos, so I brought extra for you. I know you said you weren’t hungry… but it’s nachos. I thought that might make a difference.” He held out two plates piled with chips covered in cheesy goodness and a plethora of toppings. 

My dad knew how to make great nachos. 

I offered Collin a smile, then gestured to the end of my desk. “You can set it there. Thank you. That was really thoughtful.”

Collin set my plate down, then looked back at me, still holding his own plate. “You’re welcome.” 

I glanced around for where to tell him to sit. Besides my desk and its chair, the only place to sit in my room was on the bed, and I didn’t want nachos on my bed. 

Collin saved me the trouble of figuring it out and plopped right down on the floor with the plate of nachos in his lap. He fixed those gorgeous green eyes on me, a chicken-and-jalapeno-laden chip in hand. “Find anything that helps?” 

I sighed. “No. None of this makes any more sense than it ever has. Probably even less.” 

He set the chip back down and wiped his hands on his pants. “Can I see?” 

I wasn’t keen on handing Emery’s journal to anyone—especially not someone with nacho hands—but Collin seemed to catch that quickly. 

“You can just hold it up for me,” he said.

I did.

He spent several moments reading the page, then looked up at me. “So, if what the cheerleaders said is true, these are some kind of coded messages from Emery to you?” 

“Yeah, maybe? But I have no idea how they would know that.” I kept my voice low, not wanting my parents to overhear.

Collin shrugged, but lowered his voice, too. “I have no idea how what we saw today is even possible, but here we are. The cheer hawks said there was no need to pay them because they were ‘on the case’—as in, already on it. I’m not sure if they meant Chloe’s case or Emery’s or both, but I’m guessing they know even more about all this than they said.” 

Cheer hawks. The fact that was even a phrase uttered unironically was crazy enough. The possibility that they might know more about what was going on with Chloe, or even what had happened to Emery… I couldn’t decide if that was comforting or disturbing.

I stood and paced in front of my desk, thinking out loud. “They said Chloe might have been taken because she resembled Emery. They do look a bit alike, but I hadn’t thought much of that.” Chloe did have the same color hair as Emery, and a similar build, but to me she was just Chloe. “That would mean whoever took Chloe didn’t know about what had already happened to Emery, though, right? That seems to contradict their other theory that Chloe was taken to target me, doesn’t it?” 

Not to mention that anyone targeting me made zero sense. I was no threat to anyone—I could barely keep track of my own socks.

Collin looked up at me. “Maybe. I mean, if you were the target all along, then I suppose even what happened to Emery could be—” He stopped, seeming to realize how that sounded. “Or maybe they’re wrong, and whatever’s going on with Chloe has nothing to do with you or Emery at all.” 

I appreciated his pivot to spare my feelings, but what if it was all connected? As much as it hurt to think that any of this—or all of this—might somehow be my fault, ignoring that possibility wouldn’t get us any closer to the truth. 

Collin’s eyes sparked with an idea. “You know what we need? A crime board. One of those crazy boards with the pictures and strings and push pins and all that.” 

“We don’t have anything to put on it, yet,” I said, though I did like the idea. “We know Chloe is missing, and that she didn’t run away. I’m sure of that. And we know Emery drowned—or if we’re to believe the cheer hawks, then maybe she didn’t?” I was right on the edge of allowing myself to grasp the possibility that Emery was still alive, but it felt like staring over the edge of a mile-high cliff hoping there was an invisible bridge to catch me. If I leaped, and I was wrong, the fall would kill me. I hurried on. “Either way, we have no evidence, not even any clues. Except…” 

Except for my weird dreams. And the notebook I was still holding. 

Were the cheer hawks right? Had my dreams about Emery and the water been warnings? Could there be more to the notebook page Emery left for me, like I’d always felt there was? And if the dreams about Emery were more than just dreams, then were my recent dreams about Chloe more than just dreams, too?

Three days ago, I would’ve slammed the mental door shut on those possibilities immediately. But then, three days ago, I hadn’t just seen three cheerleaders turn into hawks and fly away.

They had asked me about gossamer webs….

I set the notebook back on my desk and ran to my bookshelf. 

It took me no time to locate my Poe short story collection. I flipped to “The Pit and the Pendulum” and scanned it until I found the quote:

In the deepest slumber — no! In delirium — no! In a swoon — no! In death — no! even in the grave all is not lost. Else there is no immortality for man. Arousing from the most profound of slumbers, we break the gossamer web of some dream. Yet in a second afterward, (so frail may that web have been) we remember not that we have dreamed.

“Even in the grave, all is not lost.” My heart raced as I looked up at Collin. “This was a message for me.” I was suddenly certain. “Emery quoted the line about the gossamer web in one of my dreams. She was whispering it as she stared out at the waves. It’s too much of a coincidence for the cheerleaders to ask me about that exact phrase. Isn’t it?” 

“I’d think so,” Collin said, looking up at me with a stunned expression. “It does seem awfully specific.” 

I turned back to the quote. “The whole quote is about dreams, but also death. It’s about the barrier between sleeping and waking, and how the dreams are so fragile, they just slip away…. We may not even remember them.” My heart was pounding now. How much might I have forgotten, and not even remembered I dreamed? “But the other point is that life might be the same way—just a gossamer web, so frail it breaks and even the memory of it drifts away, or even that there’s a possibility of moving back and forth between life and death, like we move between waking and sleeping, else there is no immortality for man. In the context of the story, the character was facing death, and at that moment, everything felt so surreal to the character that he truly wasn’t sure if he was awake or dreaming.” 

“That’s a lot to get from one paragraph of a story,” Collin said. 

I looked at him. “I think Emery was telling me she’s still alive, Collin.” I paused, knowing the rest of what I was about to say sounded absolutely crazy. “I—I think she was talking to me through my dreams.” To even think it might be true felt insane. My heart was pounding.

Collin stared at me. “I’d ask if that was possible, but I feel like we’re probably beyond that question after today.” 

I stared back. “Is it possible, though? I mean, I know we’ve redefined the term possible today, but—” I swallowed, clenching the book to my chest. “Collin, I feel like I’m losing my mind.” The quiver in my voice betrayed my fear; I couldn’t help it. 

He set the nachos aside and stood, then wrapped his arms around me. 

I wasn’t sure what cologne he was wearing, but he smelled like spicy trees. It was nice.

I leaned into his chest, desperate for the sense of stability his hug gave. Yes, it was Collin—Collin, and it’s not like I was entertaining romantic thoughts toward him or anything—but he and I had seen some stuff today, and right now, he was the only person who could understand what I was going through. 

“Listen,” he said softly after a moment. “Are you willing to reconsider the crime board? Because I love me some crime shows, and sure, maybe those detectives aren’t usually dealing with dream-omens or shapeshifting cheerleaders, but the boards do seem to help them figure things out.” 

He said it so softly and yet so seriously, I couldn’t help but chuckle. Just like that, he’d shifted me back to something solid. How did he keep doing that? 

I stepped out of his arms and looked up at him. “I don’t have crime photos or a corkboard or push pins, but I’ve got a tri-fold poster, a printer, and some tape.”

He grinned at me. “That’s perfect.”

***

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