Tomorrow Was Written

Chapter 4: "The Dream"

"The Dream"

The bus finally arrived at Blackwood University, and Elena stepped off with the rest of the morning crowd, the campus unfolding in the same ordinary way it always did: students with backpacks, coffee cups, the low hum of conversations. Everything looked normal. Elena did not.

She walked with her shoulders tight, her thumb hovering over Adrian’s last messages as if the screen might offer more than words.

There was a door I’d never seen before.

Someone was calling my name from the other side.

The sentences sat on her phone like a bruise. She kept rereading them, trying to find a c***k in the logic, a reason to breathe easier.

“Elena!” Sophie’s voice cut through the fog. Sophie was already waving, bright and impatient, the kind of person who could make a lecture feel like an adventure. Elena forced a smile and hurried over.

“There you are,” Sophie said. “You look like you saw a ghost.”

“I barely slept,” Elena said, which was true and also not the whole truth.

Sophie’s eyes narrowed. “You’ve been ignoring my messages.”

“I was busy,” Elena lied, because the truth, a notebook that wrote itself, a name that matched a faded newspaper clipping—sounded like the start of a bad joke.

Sophie didn’t let it go. “What’s wrong?”

Elena tried to keep her voice steady. “Can we not talk about this now?”

Sophie followed her gaze. “Is this about Adrian?”

Elena flinched. Everyone seemed to notice his name now, as if it had become a small, dangerous thing. “Why does everyone keep asking me about Adrian?”

“Because you act weird whenever his name is mentioned,” Sophie said bluntly. “You left my last two messages on read.”

“I was busy,” Elena repeated, and the words felt thinner than before.

Sophie studied her for a long second, then softened. “Okay. Tell me later.”

They walked into the history building together, but Elena’s attention kept slipping back to her phone. No new messages. No explanation. Just the memory of the notebook’s neat, dark handwriting and the way the page had turned as if by its own will.

Class done fast. Professor Wells spoke about revolutions and treaties, but Elena’s notes dissolved into half-sentences and doodles. Every few minutes she glanced at the clock, as if time itself might offer a clue. When the bell finally rang, she exhaled like someone who’d been holding their breath for too long.

She called Adrian. The first time it went to voicemail. The second time, too. On the third try, it rang once and then cut off. Her stomach dropped. She tried again and again until her fingers cramped and the hallway blurred.

Sophie fell into step beside her. “Still no answer?”

“No,” Elena said. “He’s not picking up.”

Sophie’s face shifted from teasing to worried in a heartbeat. “Elena, you’re scaring me.”

“I know,” Elena said. “I’m scaring me.”

They ducked into a quieter corridor. Elena lowered her voice. “I found something last night. It's a notebook.”

Sophie blinked. “A notebook?”

Elena’s mouth went dry. “Yes. It had my name on it. It knew I’d go into the west wing. It said—” She swallowed. “It said Adrian Cross will disappear.”

Sophie’s expression changed in a way Elena couldn’t read at first—skepticism, then concern, then the slow dawning of belief. “Okay,” Sophie whispered. “I take back the stupid comment.”

Elena felt a small, ridiculous relief at that. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Tell someone,” Sophie said immediately.

“Who?” Elena asked. “The police? And say what? ‘A notebook told me my classmate will vanish tomorrow’?”

Sophie opened her mouth, then closed it. “Yeah. That does sound bad.”

Elena’s phone buzzed. Both of them looked down.

Unknown number.

Unknown: You told someone.

Elena’s face went pale. Sophie reached for the phone, but Elena locked the screen and shoved it into her pocket.

“I need to go to the library,” Elena said. “Now.”

Sophie grabbed her bag. “I’m coming.”

“No,” Elena said before she could think. “You can’t.”

Sophie’s jaw tightened. “That is exactly what someone says before doing something incredibly stupid.”

“I need to do this alone,” Elena said, and the words felt like a plea.

Sophie hesitated, then nodded. “Fine. But call me. And if you don’t—”

“I will,” Elena promised.

The main library looked the same as always: tall windows, rows of shelves, the soft, constant murmur of pages and footsteps. But the ordinary noises felt like a thin film over something else, a memory of smoke and a photograph of a clock frozen at 11:47. Mrs. Harris was behind the desk, and when Elena approached, the older woman’s face closed like a book.

“You’re early,” Mrs. Harris said.

“I need to ask you something,” Elena said, trying to keep her voice steady.

Mrs. Harris’s smile faded. “That usually means trouble.”

Elena swallowed. “Do you remember what happened in the west wing in 1968?”

Mrs. Harris’s hands stilled. “Why?”

“Because I found something last night,” Elena said. “A notebook. It—” She stopped. How did she explain a thing that wrote itself? How did she explain a sentence that named a person who had vanished decades ago?

Mrs. Harris’s eyes went distant. “You went inside.”

Elena nodded. “I did.”

“I told you not to,” Mrs. Harris said, not unkindly.

“Did you know about the notebook?” Elena asked.

Mrs. Harris didn’t answer right away. When she did, her voice was small. “You need to stop looking into this.”

“Why?” Elena demanded.

“Because it doesn’t end well,” Mrs. Harris said.

Elena’s phone buzzed. She looked down.

Unknown: Ask her about February 17, 1968.

Elena’s breath hitched. “February 17, 1968?”

Mrs. Harris’s face lost color. “Who told you that?”

“I received a message,” Elena said.

Mrs. Harris’s hands trembled. “There was a student. Adrian Cross.”

Elena’s heart lurched. “How do you know his name?”

“I don’t know everything,” Mrs. Harris said. “But he disappeared that night. We never found him.”

Elena sat down hard on a nearby chair. The library seemed to tilt. “What happened?”

“There was a fire,” Mrs. Harris said. “The west wing burned. People left. We thought everyone was accounted for. But Adrian was gone.”

Elena’s phone buzzed again. Unknown number.

Unknown: He’s already inside.

She stood so quickly the chair scraped. “Where is Adrian?”

Mrs. Harris’s voice was a whisper. “I don’t know.”

Elena called him. This time someone answered. For a few seconds there was only breathing, shallow and quick. Then Adrian’s voice, thin and shaky: “Elena?”

“Where are you?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I found the door.”

“The door from your dream?” Elena asked.

“Yes,” he said. “It’s in the library.”

“Are you alone?” she demanded.

There was a pause. “No.”

“Who is with you?” she asked.

He didn’t answer. The line filled with a sound like paper being handled—soft, intimate, and wrong.

“Adrian!” Elena shouted.

The call went dead.

She called again. Nothing. Again. Nothing.

Mrs. Harris’s face had gone ashen. “You shouldn’t have brought him into this,” she whispered.

“I didn’t,” Elena said, though the words felt thin and inadequate.

From somewhere beyond the chained entrance came a sound that made the blood in Elena’s ears go cold: a page turning. Then another. The noise was patient, deliberate, as if someone were reading a book that contained everything and nothing at once.

Elena and Mrs. Harris looked at each other. The old woman’s eyes were full of a grief Elena had seen in the faded photographs lining the west wing—faces that had been frozen in time, eyes that had watched something terrible and never stopped watching.

“It found him,” Mrs. Harris said.

Elena’s hands were fists at her sides. She felt the world narrow to the sound of pages and the memory of a sentence that had named a disappearance. She had until tomorrow night. The words in her head were a drumbeat: Tomorrow, Adrian Cross will disappear.

She swallowed and forced herself to breathe. She would not let the notebook write the end of someone she cared about. She would not be a passive character in a story someone else had penned.

She pulled out her phone and typed, hands shaking: Where are you? No reply. The screen stayed stubbornly blank.

Sophie’s name flashed in her mind—loud, insistent. She thought of her mother’s toast, of Noah’s laugh, of the ordinary things that made up a life. She thought of the photograph of the clock, hands frozen at 11:47, and of the way the notebook had looked so ordinary on the desk, like any other book, until it wasn’t.

Elena squared her shoulders. “We have to find him,” she said to Mrs. Harris, and the older woman’s eyes met hers with something like resignation and a sliver of hope.

Outside, the rain had started again, tapping the library windows in a steady, indifferent rhythm. Inside, the pages kept turning.