Around town, whispers were saying different things.
He knew something was not right but something felt like it was a love-is-blind type of thing. He was not sure if it was platonic or it was some other type.
The once peaceful town felt off now. The baker that once greeted him every morning to give out samples of bread now made only a limited amount and then closed early more frequently.
The librarian who made sure there was quiet and the books were always organized only put books away and then retreated to allow anyone to go over volume levels that she always thought were extra loud on the scale.
Little things kept piling up and together making it feel just off enough to cast a greyness around heads.
More and more this went on and his headaches became more frequent making it feel stranger and numb to the changes.
That night he had a very vivid dream involving "himself" crying over a woman and "William standing over him just smiling. It felt so off and a mixture of rage, sadness, and even strangely enough joy filled the scene. He wanted to lash out, cry at the top of his lungs, and laugh with bitterness.
When he woke up he could still feel the smoke tickle his nose, the heat of the rage, and the slight smile he had when facing in the dream. It did not make him feel better at all instead he felt so tired and numb to what was happening around him.
He thought about it all and tried to think of why he felt like that and why it was him and William.
As weeks went by he hung around William more and more and he felt that as that happened he would slip more into the vivid dreams when he was asleep. It scared him and he could not stop what was happening. It felt like a repressed dream he had when he was younger.
He remembered that when he was younger that dream was as vivid as it was now, but only now he could see more of it and knew about what things could be.
"I knew I would find you here, Jonas" A large hand reached out.
Jonas was taken back after gaining clarity it went back to feeling like deja vu, "Yeah, I am always here on Mondays." His smile tried to reach bigger than he wanted.
"Well, I wanted to show you something you wanted to know" his smile seemed off like an I got you and you don't know it yet.
"Yeah, I think I have almost all of what I wanted to find anyway" he could feel his chest tense up slightly with anxiety.
That night his dream took a slightly different route and instead of being this scene, he continued to see more and more clearly it was a darkened room with candles showing just enough on the floor and symbols all over.
He felt like he wrote them and he is not sure why since he had never seen them before and would not know anything about occult teachings.
He felt his body move one after the other a symbol looking like a t and another looking like a and so on. He wanted to do this but was not sure why in the end. The spontaneous calligraphy ended and he ended up with 100 symbols of different sizes all around the floor and four on each wall. He felt proud of the work he did but was not sure why in his conscious mind.
Over and over things felt like they added up and one night the dream became so much that he chained his leg to his bed because he thought he was going to run away in the middle of the night into the woods.
It started like any other part of it, "I am surrounded by a burning small house on the side and I feel the sting of the heat all around, but strangely that is not my focus it is the person I am holding. They are not moving and anxiety is filling as I hold onto the person. I am not sure what to do; my body does not move and tears flow not cooling anything down from the external or internal heat.
I feel it is my fault they are like this, but also not so much. I feel like I am not alone and a set of eyes are watching with a bittersweet smile. I can't hate the person since I know why they did it but I also can't overlook what they have done. My head hurts and it feels like it is trying to clear up what is happening. Making sense although nothing here makes sense. The house is burning, the person in my arms is not moving or showing any signs of life and the being coming closer is giving me butterflies that are making me sick with happiness and dread. Feeling numb would be a blessing right now."
"Have you come to accept all of this yet?" the voice was hallow with slight mocking tones as if the person wanted to make a statement where they did not care much with the response."