The walk from the strip club took him down a grungy stretch of road rife with pawn shops and shady little stores advertising for loans and check cashing. The Saturday morning traffic was sparse, and the cars that did pass by were shabby, and driven by dudes that looked just as weary as Joe felt. He knew he could just use his phone to call a ride—that would be the fastest way to get home. But he didn’t really want to. He didn’t want to look at it. He wasn’t ready to. He’d avoided it all night, and he didn’t feel like breaking that streak. Anyways, on his dreary march down the street, as dawn broke and the heat of the day began to rise, he saw the occasional cab pass by. He’d flag one down momentarily. But first he took a moment to consider the day ahead of him. Sometimes he felt strangely lucid at the tail-end of a night of drinking, when he’d ceased the intake, and managed to make the journey home. There was an unfettered perspective he could attain, and despite everything, he felt a glimmer of that now as a new morning came to the city.

His intent was to get home, to sleep, and to dream—because it was his only way to find her. But there was a problem with that. Did the dreams actually count? He was dubious. The dreams—they offered a little window to visit her, but that was it. He couldn’t save her that way. They just weren’t the right medium. The settings were… incorrect. He had to change the equation somehow. He thought again of the glass ball, which triggered a spell of utter dismay that he’d lost it.

Someone else has a glass ball, he thought to himself. The knowledge scared him, but it was an unabashed truth that he had to admit—Eddie Morrow also possessed one. A glass ball. An orb. But Eddie’s was a red one—an evil one. Joe had seen it. It meant that Eddie truly was his adversary in whatever game this was. Eddie Morrow, and his bizarre sidekick, Chrissy Adkins, the bully cheerleader turned Goth chick.

The thought of Chrissy made him freeze, as he wondered… what exactly was her deal in all of this? Perhaps she too was adrift, in the same way Jennifer was. Perhaps Eddie had found her. He wondered then if she was complicit in whatever was going on between the two of them, or if…

It was a disturbing thought that Chrissy was trapped, held, or otherwise manipulated in some way. He felt naïve for not having considered this earlier. But then came an even worse thought: look in the fuckin’ mirror, Joe. Perhaps he was trying to do the very same thing with Jennifer.

No, he thought firmly. No way. Deep down, to the very depths of his soul, he knew that he only wanted the best for Jennifer. He wasn’t sure of much, but he was sure of that. Even if that meant a future without him—if that’s what was best for her, then that’s what he wanted. The certainty of this thought put him at ease, as he gave a smooth exhale.

With that, he reached a hand out and flagged down one of the cabs passing by.

The traffic was stop-and-go as they cut their way across the city. A TV screen was visible facing the back seat of the cab, and on it Joe saw the news anchors cut away to a reporter who stood on a city block right near his apartment. There was no sound, but Joe saw the words in the news headline on the screen about a gunman opening fire with an assault rifle on a downtown street in the middle of the night.

Joe ignored it. He literally looked away from it, pretending it wasn’t even on. News reports and reactions were part of his old world. Maybe sometime in the future he could take stock of them, but for the time being, it didn’t apply to him. He couldn’t let it distract him.

The cab dropped him a block away from his building, and after looking about carefully, Joe walked straight inside the front entrance rather brazenly. He didn’t care who might be watching. After all, Landon it seemed was just a figment of his fucking imagination. And in some capacity—Danielle was too.

Joe unlocked the door to his apartment and marched inside. The place was an absolute mess. It even looked like someone had dug through all his things. But ultimately he couldn’t conclude this for certain—had someone really ransacked his place, or had he just left it that messy? That fact that he couldn’t tell for sure let him know how far out of orbit he was. There was also a hole in his bedroom wall, he noticed, clearly where someone had punched into the drywall. But that was his fault, he knew. That one he vaguely remembered doing.

Undeterred, Joe paced quickly over to the refrigerator and opened it. Dropping down to a crouch, he looked inside, with one hand sweeping away the bottles of condiments, which made up most of the contents within. And there it was—he laid eyes on it.

Joe felt the sweetest of relief fall upon him.

The glass ball, the perfectly blue sphere, sat at the back of his refrigerator, having rolled back behind everything else. Probably while Joe had been in the midst of attempting a drunken, late night snack, he had dropped it in there unintentionally. There’s no way it had been purposeful—but in retrospect, it had been an incredible hiding place, unbeknownst even to him. He plucked the orb quickly from where it sat in the fridge, on top of the unused vegetable crisper. He felt the chilled glass in his hand. He both cursed and praised himself for being the drunken savant he was, almost crying in relief.

The feeling passed quickly, and while holding the orb a new one took over. He’d felt the strange knowledge flow into him once before, that night at the bar when he’d grasped the object in anger. And so it happened again, while standing there in his kitchen. This time it told him that each time he held the orb, he revealed himself. He could understand how possessing it was like carrying a beacon—it put him on some kind of map. From the second he grasped it, they all knew. The sect, surely, and perhaps others. They each looked up from wherever they were, and whatever it was they were doing, and they could sense him—some might even see him.

See him indeed. Because Joe looked down at the orb and with astonishment he saw Eddie Morrow looking back at him. Again.

The disorienting, fisheye view within the orb was centered right on Eddie’s grimacing face, and he glared back at Joe, who surely was front and center in his red orb, with the same fisheye distortion. This time Eddie had lost any patience he might have had previously. Clearly he tired of whatever kind of duel they were engaged in.

Eddie spoke first. “My God,” he said, in disgust. “You.”

Joe wanted nothing to do with this duel—he’d never asked for it. So he tried jumping to a new tactic right away.

“Eddie! You want to just meet up and talk this out, man?” Joe kept his voice as pleasant as possible. “We can figure out what’s going on. We can work through it together.”

Eddie shook his head immediately. “There’s nothing to talk about, Joe.”

“How do you figure?”

“Because I already know exactly what’s in front of me. The only question is… do you?” His voice was clear and decisive.

Joe shifted rapidly. “Yeah,” he replied, hoping his poker face would hold up. “And it’s a dangerous game, Eddie. I already had someone try to gun me down last night.” Joe felt like he laid down some cards with that comment. He waited with bated breath for the response.

Eddie gave a snarky laugh. “I saw about that on the news. Congrats, you’re the first of us to make any headlines.”

“Well, someone might be coming for you next. The nightmares… they always follow, you know.”

His comment hung in the air, as did the strangeness of having repeated what Roy had said almost exactly. Joe prayed it would work, and that the words would get through to Eddie.

But no. Eddie just rolled his eyes. “Joe. You don’t know anything yet. Stop pretending like you do.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re swinging a hammer right now, when you could be using a bulldozer.”

“Like you, huh?” Joe asked, feeling annoyed, but playing along.

Eddie didn’t answer, but instead he just offered another smug grin that gave Joe chills.

“Eddie, what are you doing with Chrissy?” Joe asked, the words popping out of him uncontrollably. As the conversation had gone on he’d felt his anger and disgust building up. Eddie’s condescension was glaring. He clearly thought he was more powerful and more capable than anyone else, and the scary part was the possibility that he wasn’t wrong. But for the moment, superseding everything was the bothersome image from Joe’s dream of Chrissy Adkins, how she’d plodded along with Eddie, while wearing that deceitful but detached stare—it continued to haunt him. Something wasn’t right about it.

“What are you trying to ask, Joe?”

“Chrissy… why is she always with you? Are you… controlling her in some way?”

Eddie’s stare was piercing, even coming from his strange visage within the orb. His voice was monotone, his words calculated.

“Joe. Don’t fuck with me. It’s the only time I’ll say this. If you fuck with me, I’ll kill you.”

Joe felt his disgust grow. He thought about Jennifer, and how she was somewhere out there, lost and vulnerable. Chrissy was likely in a similar situation. Maybe there were monsters out there too, monsters that could prey upon them while they drifted. While they dreamt. Maybe Eddie was one of them. A monster in their dreams—like a real-life Freddy Krueger.

He took a deep breath, forcing calm onto him. “Eddie. Seriously. Let’s just talk this out, man.”

Eddie’s response was delayed. Joe could sense his contemplation, like he was choosing his words carefully. Finally he spoke. “Keep swinging the hammer, Joe. Get your fuckin’ chisel. Get your sandpaper.” He shook his head in disgust, and then added, “You’re fuckin’ scared.”

“Eddie… you sound like a psycho. I’m serious. You sound like a straight-up psycho.”

The words only seemed to make Eddie more incensed. “I know where you are, Joe,” he said, his voice scarily steady. “I’m gonna come after you.”

“Listen to yourself, man. That’s what I mean.”

“Swat you like a gnat, and just be done with it. Just to ensure that you’re not going to become a pain in my ass. You’re already breaching into that territory pretty quickly.”

“Are you done?” Joe asked.

“I’ll find our mutual friend while I’m at. Take her for a spin also. Tell me, Joe. How does she like it?”

“Fuck you,” Joe barked.

Eddie smiled. “No, really, Joe. Tell me. How does Jennifer Carter like it? You should know, right?”