Everything felt too real—
"Where am I?"
"What the hell happened?"
Evan was shocked, scrambling to his feet in a panic, trying to understand the situation.
But Tommy didn't give him a chance. He swung the wooden stick in his hand upward, hitting Evan's chin hard enough to send him flying.
Dazed, blood pouring down his face.
Tommy wasn't finished; he kept punching and kicking Evan.
Lanny took the opportunity to run over and try to untie the burlap sack trapping Crocket.
But in his fear, he couldn't undo the knots and began to cry out.
"I can't untie it."
Tommy heard him and, like a harbinger of doom, turned slowly to look.
"Let go. Or I'll slit your mother's throat while she sleeps."
Lanny froze, stood up, and carefully backed away.
Although Evan, barely regaining some sense through the dizziness, clung to Tommy's legs, trying to give Lanny a chance to save Crocket—
Tommy kept kicking Evan's chest, breaking free from his grip. He stepped forward menacingly and grabbed a burning torch from the fire.
"Listen, Evan, you better hear this."
"Out of all the women in the world, why did you have to choose my sister?"
Tommy's face twisted as he pushed the flaming torch toward the struggling burlap sack.
"No!"
A cry from the depths of his soul, Evan jolted awake, his hands flailing to stop Tommy, only to grab at thin air.
He was back. He was twenty years old again.
But he was drenched in sweat, as if he had just been pulled from a lake.
Evan couldn't understand what was happening. Though the girl he'd had a date with tonight talked about dreams—that it must have been a dream—sometimes dreams felt so vivid that it was hard to tell if they were real. Yet Evan remained skeptical.
The pain had been too real. He could still feel the throb in his head and chest, a heavy, suffocating ache.
Could pain be that real in a dream?
Evan decided he needed answers.
Seven years later, Evan returned to the small town and found Lanny.
Lanny—more withdrawn and silent than ever. He seemed to have never fully escaped the terror of those years.
So when Evan asked if he remembered that afternoon, the day Tommy killed Crocket, the normally quiet Lanny transformed, as if possessed by Tommy's spirit, displaying a demonic intensity.
Word for word, Lanny repeated what Evan had heard in his "dream" the previous night. He even turned violent, grabbing Evan by the collar and shoving him against the wall, re-enacting Tommy's actions from that fateful day.
Evan didn't get any answers. Instead, he became even more confused.
Back at school, Evan pulled out a dusty box from under his bed and started flipping through his old journals.
He picked one at random. It was from the day they put the detonator in the mailbox. The memory of that afternoon flooded back as he read.
Then, something incredible happened—
Evan opened his eyes and found himself standing in the forest. Keller, Tommy, and Lanny were there, across from the neighbor's house, waiting for the detonator to explode.
What was going on?
Evan glanced around, bewildered. His mind reeled. He was so shocked and confused that even the cigarette burning into his t-shirt didn't register. He was just trying to make sense of it all:
Was this a dream? Was this what had happened during one of his memory gaps?
This time, Evan finally "saw" the mailbox explosion play out.
The detonator had delayed, seemingly malfunctioning. Just as Tommy shoved Lanny forward to check it, the neighbor's wife drove up. Tommy yanked Lanny back.
The woman got out, lifted a baby from the car seat, and headed toward the house. But then she remembered the mail and turned back.
Evan only felt the searing pain when he realized the cigarette had burned through his shirt and left a mark on his skin.
But he had no time to react—across the street—
The woman with the baby opened the mailbox.
A hum.
The whole world was drowned in a roaring noise that seemed to stretch out over his eardrums.
Evan, Keller, and Tommy took off running, but Lanny was paralyzed, frozen in place as if his soul had left his body.
Gasp.
Evan woke up from the "dream" again, heart pounding uncontrollably.
His stomach churned.
Evan leaned over the bed and vomited violently, unable to tell if he was terrified or anxious, even retching up bile.
He didn't understand.
Turning over, Evan lay back on the bed and lifted his shirt to look at his stomach—
A burn scar.
He was absolutely sure that scar hadn't been there before.
But the real question was, Evan didn't trust himself. Or rather, he didn't trust his own memory.
But then, how could he explain this?
Evan tried calling Lanny again to confirm some details. But he was rejected.
Apparently, after Evan's visit, Lanny had also been thrown into turmoil. His parents, after much distress, refused to let Evan contact him again.
After the call ended, Evan thought of another option: his mother.
He invited Andrea out for dinner and began to cautiously bring up his father.
From scattered details, Evan could tell that many of his symptoms were inherited from Jason.
Back then, Jason had also experienced memory gaps. But Jason was a smart man, an excellent student, so Evan wondered if he'd found a way to recover his memories.
Andrea hesitated, as if there was something from that time she didn't want to discuss. She thought Jason had lost his mind because not long after, he was admitted to a mental institution. She could never tell if the memories were real events or just Jason's imagination.
So she held back, swallowing the words she was about to say.
Evan kept pressing, but Andrea deflected by dragging him into a fortune-teller's shop across the street from the restaurant.
At first, it was amusing because Evan didn't believe any of it and joked around. Andrea's laughter lit up her face. But soon, the fun disappeared.
"He has no soul."
"He shouldn't have been born."
The fortune-teller's words.
Andrea's face turned pale, and she stormed out. Evan, baffled, quickly followed.
From a distance, Evan saw his mother—who had quit smoking long ago—asking a stranger for a cigarette, lighting it up, and taking deep drags.
Evan couldn't understand. He didn't believe in fortune-telling and thought they only used scare tactics to make money. Andrea didn't need to let some nonsense ruin the entire day.
But he hadn't expected Andrea to reveal a secret he'd never known.