Chapter Seventeen
I jolted awake into the next day, fleeing a dream that had turned nightmarish. It had started off pleasant: wandering the ship, which in my dream state seemed more in its elegance and mystery to be a fairy castle. Rooms of secrets, rooms of wonder, with beautiful, shifting hallways running between them like veins.
Then coming to a plain room, very small, very square, with Del right in the middle. He stood with his head bowed, looking—not gaunt exactly, someone of his physique could never look gaunt, but… diminished. Desolate. And with the clarity dreams allow, it was clear that the space around him teemed with invisible monsters, crawling over the walls, slinking up from behind.
But that was all I knew. My dreams always leave me quickly.
Six a.m., my phone told me, af
