Violent Sleep Walker
That night, Tessa tossed and turned on the lumpy top bunk in the dorm room of the Belcher International School. Rolling onto her stomach, the thought of Cade, no Aiden, drove her to more maddening questions than her brain could deal with. Her eyes burned with the pressure of Hypnos luring her to sleep, but then again there was Aiden and this school. Although Madame Dubois didn’t say what kind of school it was, Aiden’s fighting skills probably came from the same institution that sent him to Amesbron, NY.
Across the hall, Aiden was not in the bottom bunk. No, he could smell the dirt and grime of steel. The floor sucked the heat out of his body as rebar protruded from the concrete forming a cage that he could barely sit up in. Breathing faster, Aiden felt the confines, both the cage and darkness closing in on him crushing his rib cage. He shook the bars, but they held fast bringing his heart to an excruciating thunder.
Switching his body’s orientation, Aiden braced his bare feet against one wall of rebar while his back met the other side. The muscles in his neck bulged and strained as he thrust his weight into breaking out. Back burning, a sharp crack resounded throughout the room with Aiden crashing to the floor, but he knew they, his family, were coming for him.
Scrambling, Aiden leapt to his feet searching for a way to escape. The blackness morphed from a void to room lit by a single light bulb dangling from the ceiling. There were no doors, windows, vents, or other signs of an exit. His knees shook under him as his stomach dropped. It was a test; it was always a test.
Instead of giving into to his weak legs, Aiden gauged the floor. Yep, still cold, hard concrete. Then, he ran his hand along the wall feeling the invisible, grainy texture and tapped it lightly. The sound echoed back, hollow, and he backed away from the wall knowing what to do.
Tessa was just beginning to give into her burning eyes and numb brain when a sharp crack followed by a thud came from outside her door. A part of her was overwhelmed with curiosity to see the source of the noise, yet the other half was frozen with the thought of Mason and masked men. Thud, thud each getting louder from across the hall. Throwing off her blankets, Tessa clambered down the bunk bed gingerly opening the door.
The dark hallway was lit only by the moonlight refracted off the snowcaps outside a window at the end of the hall. As Tessa’s eyes adjusted, she picked out a small hunched figure with a walkie-talkie blinking a green light in one hand and a hair brush in the other.
Crash, in a shower of splinters, Aiden and his door slammed into the wall inches from Tessa’s face. The lights downstairs came on, Aiden’s eyes wide open, unfocused. Heaving, Mr. Falk appeared at the top of the stairs in a pair of striped pajamas covered by a burgundy robe.
Flicking on the hallway light-switch Mr. Falk said, “Where are you going, Aiden?”
Aiden stepped back, spun around, and started running for the other end of the hall. He was almost to the window before Tessa could eke out a no. Mr. Falk thundered down the hall and tackled Aiden to the ground.
Madame Dubois rested a hand on Tessa’s shoulder mumbling something in French, but it was all too much. Tessa ran, Ceilí’s oversized shorts swishing. She stopped a meter away from the chaos, Mr. Falk violently shaking Aiden yelling for him to wake up.
Something clicked in Aiden’s dream brain as he grabbed a handful of Mr. Falk’s black hair slamming the head into the wall. Dazed, Mr. Falk didn’t stop Aiden from getting up and going for the enormous pane of glass.
Most sane people get out of the way of violent sleepwalkers, but Tessa stood in front of Aiden, whose nose had been leaking blood down his face and chin for a while now. It wasn’t long before Aiden’s mass met Tessa’s with a painful amount of velocity, and for a split second Tessa considered his robotic green eyes to be the most frightening harbingers of death that she’d ever seen.
Before Aiden could toss away the next barrier to his escape, gentle appendages entangled themselves in the hair at the nape of his neck. A humid yet pleasant gust of air whispered, quivering, “Stop, you’re hurting yourself. Aiden, wake up.”
Tessa felt the muscles in Aiden’s back, tensed, ready to harm her, relax. Aiden blinked looking at the carnage around him. He didn’t remember what in his dream had caused half the door of his dorm to lay slanted on the bottom hinge and the rest scattered in a trail across the hall. Madame Dubois was examining the head of Mr. Falk, sitting, slouched against the wall. Then, he noticed that blood was dripping from his nose into Tessa’s long brown hair. He also had no idea why she was hugging him, but that was just the way of his nightmares.
Tessa quickly disengaged herself from Aiden after she realized he was no longer planning on free-falling outside the window. Madame Dubois seemed to have her hands full giving Mr. Falk a concussion test. Tessa’s second move involved guiding Aiden back down the hall, through the splintered door frame, and onto his bed. Underneath fragments of a wooden ladder that used to allow access to the top bunk was a t-shirt. Tipping Aiden’s head back, Tessa stuck the wad under his nose to stanch the bleeding. The whole situation made Tessa quite uncomfortable, after all, Aiden’s unbearably intoxicating scent hung in that room. However, the humanitarian in her made it impossible to leave.
So she dared to ask him, “What the hell were you dreaming about?”
He replied, “I don’t know,” trying in vain to grab a solid object from the fog in his mind.
“Was that sleepwalking? And if it was are you always so… violent?”
Aiden didn’t move a muscle hunched over holding the shirt to his face with Tessa beside him on the bed.
Since he hadn't denied that he was a sleepwalker, Tessa pressed on, “Is it always like this?”
Aiden shook his head slowly, “I thought I got over it two years ago.” He glanced at the shattered ladder. “They’ve tried hypnotherapy. Mr. Falk even thought that I was a Manchurian candidate, but nothing was found.”
“What’s a Manchurian candidate?”
Aiden let out a long low breath, “It’s a person that’s been brainwashed, but my family thought those tactics were barbaric.” The sentence hung in the air for awhile, before Aiden realized the implications of what he said. Tessa was trying to form a question from that odd little sentence, but Aiden got up pulling Tessa with him. Giving her a little push out the door frame, Aiden’s stomach formed a little pit where he put her confused face. Knowing too much about him was dangerous. Also, his eyes burned needing sleep.
Communists were on a long list of things Aiden hated and he was positive this came from his father. Anyway, what’s important is what Aiden hated more than Communists: sleeping and a stuffy nose. Well, in this case it was a stuffed nose, throbbing from its second injury in 72 hours, but what really frustrated and disgusted Aiden was the fact that this made him into a mouth breather.
Excerpt from Chapter Non Bonne Nuit Aiden in A Figure Skater and a Secret Agent.