Dreamwalk

11

He rang the doorbell once again.

Kyle waited outside the Evans home hoping that Isabel would answer. He had experienced his first night of uninterrupted sleep in the longest time and it was all thanks to her generously spending the entire day with him yesterday-as well as a large part of the night. Sure, he still had troublesome dreams, but they did not rouse him from his precious slumber. He knew that he hadn't caught up with all the sleep that he had lost, but it was certainly a start.

Tired of waiting, Kyle started to walk back to his car not knowing what he would do with the rest of his day. He knew that Mr. and Mrs. Evans weren't home, but he hadn't expected Isabel to be out so early since she had stayed up late with him. Then again, maybe she's not up yet.

Since he had come over to thank her in person, Kyle figured he should at least confirm that she was, in fact, not in the house. Making his way around the Evans residence, he decided to try what unofficially had become the primary way of entering homes for him and his friends. Peering into

Isabel's window, he confirmed that she, indeed, was still asleep.

Hope no one thinks I'm a Peeping Tom.

Kyle checked around to make sure he wasn't being watched as he was watching Isabel. She looked so peaceful that he decided not to disturb her since he was the reason she was sleeping late that morning. He was about to leave when the inherited detective traits he had received from his father and grandfather kicked in and he noticed several things wrong with what he was seeing.

Isabel was still wearing the same clothes from yesterday, which he did not think to be all that odd considering that she might have been too tired to change when she got home last night. But, as he looked further into the room he also noticed that she must have been too tired to turn off her desk lamp as well. Then there were other bothersome clues that something was wrong, like the fact that she was lying on top of the covers on what Kyle knew had been an exceptionally chilly summer night. Not to mention that her body was sitting up and twisted in what looked to be a very uncomfortable angle for sleeping.

Concerned, Kyle pushed open the window and stepped inside. «Isabel?» he whispered so he could wake her gently. That didn't work. «Isabel?» he tried more loudly, «Isabel!» Moving in, he progressed to shaking her-first gently, then roughly. «Isabel, wake up. Come on, you're scaring me!»

Her head rolled to the side, but her eyes did not open.

Kyle laid Isabel down in a more comfortable pose and frantically searched the room for clues as to why she wouldn't wake up, but found nothing. What's going on? He

thought of the myriad of reasons why she would not be responding to him. Alien disease? Body snatchers? Are we under attack? Do these things hibernate?

Grabbing a hand mirror off her dresser, he tried a trick that he had learned when taking care of his grandfather. Holding the mirror above her lips, he held his breath as he waited for proof of hers. The «mirror fogged as Isabel exhaled, confirming that she was alive. With that done, he had no idea what to do next.

Liz.

Seeing Isabel's cordless phone lying on the nightstand, he picked it up and started to dial Liz's home number, but then he remembered that she was out of town and she had taken Max with her. He considered trying her cell phone, but with Artesia an hour away, he was hoping for some more immediate help since he wasn't sure that now was a good time to be alone.

Michael.

But he didn't know that phone number.

Continuing his frenzied search through the room, he tried to find Isabel's phone book, but it wasn't by the phone and he had no idea where she could have put it, if she even had one at all. He gave up on that search, figuring that she probably knew Michael's number by heart and didn't have it written anywhere.

With his father pulling yet another disappearing act and going out before Kyle had even gotten up, there was no reason for him to even try his own home for help. Suddenly, his small group of friends seemed to be considerably smaller.

«Isabel, get up!» he tried again, yelling and shaking her.

He checked her pulse and found it a little slow, but nothing to add to his already growing concern. Her skin felt cool to the touch, indicating that she probably didn't have a fever. «Isabel!»

Nothing.

As he wondered what to do, Kyle thought he heard a noise coming from another part of the house. He was struck with the sudden fear that whatever, or whoever, had done this to Isabel could still be in the house. However, he resisted the temptation to call Sheriff Hanson for help, knowing that if he brought the police to the Evans home he could be asking for more trouble than he was currently facing. Besides, he wasn't even sure if he had heard a noise or if it was just his imagination acting up.

Searching the room again, Kyle grabbed a tennis racket, as it was the only weapon he could find. Peeking out Isabel's door, he began his search of the house, silently cursing himself for not going to get some kind of help first.

Kyle confirmed that the hall was empty before stepping out and crossing into Max's room. Luckily, the door was open, so he could tell there didn't seem to be any surprises in there waiting for him. The room appeared empty, but he searched it anyway since it was the most likely place someone would be hiding if they were looking for something alien related. Exchanging Isabel's tennis racket for Max's baseball bat, he tried the closet but happily found it to be empty. Keeping the bat in his hands, he moved on to the rest of the house.

Making his way through Mr. and Mrs. Evans's bedroom, he continued to find nothing out of the ordinary.

Glad to have the weapon for protection, he took his search through the rest of the house, going from room to room, checking doors and windows as he went. The doors were all locked, but most of the windows were not. However, all of them were closed except for the one Kyle had come through.

Ending his search back in Isabel's room, Kyle let some of the tension release from his body, content to believe he had only been hearing things. He put the bat down in a corner, making sure it was easily accessible in case he needed it later.

Michael.

«I'll be right back," he promised Isabel's prone form, «with help.»

Back out the window, Kyle hopped into his car and pointed it in the direction of Michael's apartment. He hated to leave Isabel alone as she was, but he had no choice. If he had been thinking clearly, he would have tried to call Maria. Even if she wasn't home, her mother probably could have given him Michael's number. But Kyle wasn't thinking clearly. He was thinking of the myriad of things that could have put Isabel in her comatose state.

Zooming through the streets of Roswell, he was afraid he might get pulled over by the police. True, he could probably talk any of the deputies out of giving him a ticket, since he had grown up around most of them. But he didn't want to have to waste the time being lectured, since they all still thought of him as a little kid. He silently prayed to Buddha to keep fortune on his side as he headed for Michael's place with his tires screeching at every highspeed turn.

Deep within the recesses of Kyle's mind, Isabel sat in an exact re-creation of his bedroom. She was no longer alone. A boy sat beside her who appeared to be around six years old-and seemed to be Kyle.

Isabel had known Kyle for years, although they had not been close friends until recent events had thrown them together. She remembered how he had looked the first time she had seen him at school. The small boy who sat beside her on Kyle's bed seemed slightly younger than the Kyle she had met on the playground that fateful day when her friends and she had actually noticed the boys on the junior league football team for the very first time. There was no doubt in her mind that this boy was one and the same.

He sat there silently swinging his feet back and forth. The bed actually squeaked slightly with each swing of the leg, impressing Isabel by the sheer realism of the dream. Other than that, the room was deathly silent. He had not said a word since his cryptic acceptance of the blame.

It's all my fault.

Isabel had lost track of time, but she knew that she must have been in this dreamwalk longer than in any other she had ever experienced. This concerned her on two levels. First, she worried about her own body since her subconscious had never been gone for so long. And second, she worried about what she could be doing to Kyle's already fragile mind. I was just supposed to look around, she reminded herself. «Are you sure you don't want to talk?» she asked the boy yet again.

He shook his head.

«Kyle," she said, deciding to take the chance and use his name.

He looked up at her, confirming her suspicions, but remained silent.

«I understand that you might not want to say anything to me right now," she said gently. «But if that's the case, I'm going to have to leave.»

Young Kyle Valenti had a momentary flash of fright cross his face, but it was quickly replaced by a firm look of resolve. He seemed determined about something, but it remained a secret known only to him.

His feet continued to kick against the bed in a familiar rhythm.

Tap, tap tap. Tap, tap.

«I'm sorry," she said. «But I'm afraid if I stay any longer I might hurt you.»

Hoping to calm the child, Isabel realized that she was only explaining her motivation for leaving to a shadow projected by Kyle's mind, but this was uncharted territory for her. She was even more concerned that she was doing permanent damage with each passing minute she spent in Kyle's subconscious.

Reaching back into herself, Isabel consciously willed her subconscious to return to her body. Closing her eyes, she prepared for the journey, but when she reopened them, instead of finding herself back in her room, she was still in Kyle's bedroom-or, more specifically, in the dream image of Kyle's bedroom.

She tried once again, closing her eyes and welcoming the sensations that she had grown so familiar with in her many past dreamwalks. She reached out for the floating

feeling usually associated with the freedom of traveling outside of her own body and sought the safety and recon-nection of her return. However, she felt none of those things as her mind remained locked inside Kyle's.

«Why can't I leave?» she asked the boy, trying not to panic both for his sake and her own. Kyle could wake up soon, she thought, incorrectly assuming that she was trapped in a nightmare when in reality it had already become a waking dream.

«I don't want you to go.» He finally spoke, with childlike innocence typical of his age.

«But I have to," she calmly pleaded. «I've been here too long. It isn't safe. I could be hurting you.»

He just stared resolutely.

«Please, Kyle," she begged with a little more agitation creeping up within her. «I promise I'll come back tomorrow night if you want to talk. And every night after that until you feel better.»

«No," he said firmly. «I don't want you to go… ever.»