Side Effects: An FBI Psychological Thriller by Jeff Menapace Page B

downward, almost as if crumbling away. And maybe it had; only the prison of my mind obeyed the rules of the waking world, the illogical and the bizarre and the fantastically cruel were as uninhibited as they wanted to be.
    This time was no different.
    The field had crumbled away. I now stood at its edge. Below was a graveyard. The man and the boy were there. Though it defined futility, I called to them a final time.
    “ I know who you are! I know what you’re doing!”
    Do you?
    I dropped my head into my chest and closed my eyes. “I just want to wake up…”
    I opened my eyes and found myself standing in the graveyard. I was alone. Somehow I knew it without having to look around.
    I began to wander. All of the tombstones were blank. Even in the teasing light of the moon I could see they were all blank.
    Except for one.
    I was maybe ten feet away; close enough to see that the stone had been engraved, yet too far to make it out.
    But you know whose grave it is, don’t you?
    Yes.
    Again my legs betrayed my will and made me approach. The grave was freshly dug, the rectangular hole six feet down into the earth. The tombstone…was not Christopher’s?
     
    I AM NUMBER SIX.
     
    That’s what the tombstone read.
    “I am number six,” I said aloud. What did that mean? An Ebenezer Scrooge kind of thing maybe? Seeing my own tombstone? I’m killing myself with the drug, and Mike and Christopher are like Ghosts of Christmas Future trying to warn me, was that it?
    Then wouldn’t that make you number three ?
    I looked around the graveyard. Now I wanted to find Mike and Christopher. To have them appear and explain it all.
    “ Hello!? ” I called in all directions.
    Say their names.
    I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. My tone was soft and hesitant; I couldn’t manage anything else.
    “Mike…? Christopher…?”
    “Mom?”
    My eyes popped open. I whirled on the spot. “ Christopher? ”
    “Mom?”
    It was coming from below. From the grave.
    I approached the grave’s edge. Christopher was there, looking up at me. He did not look as he had when he died. He was youthful and vibrant looking. He could have been a healthy boy fooling about in a cemetery who happened to tumble into an open grave, now hoping his mother would fish him out of such a scary spot.
    I did not crawl or climb but jumped into the grave. I expected the earth to be solid, the jump to punish my knees and ankles, but the earth was soft. Unnaturally soft. It swallowed my legs up to the knee. I immediately braced my hands on either side of me and went to push myself out, but my hands merely sank into the earth, affording me no leverage. I needed Christopher’s help.
    Of course he was gone now.
    I was alone in the open grave, stuck up to my knees. I began a frantic dig. If I couldn’t push myself to the surface, I would have to dig my way out.
    I dug furiously around my knees, scooping up handfuls of dirt in both hands and tossing them into the farthest corner of the grave. All I needed was to clear my ankles; from there I felt certain I could pull one foot free, and then from there the other free. Except with each scoop tossed, it seemed as if the divot I’d created would regenerate, produce more soil. The faster I dug and tossed, the quicker the soil would replace itself. I was a woman making a futile attempt at bailing out a boat destined to sink. However if there was one saving grace, it was that I was not sinking. I remained no deeper than up to my knees; the soil around me was not rising.
    And then Mike appeared at the base of the grave with shovel in hand, eager to change that.

CHAPTER 16
    Mike lobbed a shovel of dirt into the grave, hitting me in the face. I wiped and spat it away and then looked up at him in disbelief.
    “ What are you doing!? ”
    Mike continued lobbing shovelfuls of soil into the grave as he spoke. His tone was conversational and airy. “You want to die, right? So you can be with Christopher again?” He then threw another