Total pages in book: 133
Estimated words: 124341 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 622(@200wpm)___ 497(@250wpm)___ 414(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 124341 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 622(@200wpm)___ 497(@250wpm)___ 414(@300wpm)
It was in this very spot where she’d told him about the first fourteen years of her life and then later haltingly confided in him about waking in the woods, about the dream that was no dream, and about the boy made of moonlight. She’d expected Bill’s disbelief. But he had believed her. He’d asked questions, tried to puzzle it out with her, and though she hadn’t cried in that instance, she almost had. It was the first time she’d put her experience to words. And talking about it had brought it back to life. She’d needed time to adjust to her new life, her new home, her newfound health, and in that time, she’d almost begun to believe that the experience had been a dream…or…something misty and inexplicable, brought on by the medication. But telling Bill had brought back the feeling of what had happened while she’d supposedly slept in her bed and of him, the specifics of his eyes, the silken shine of his hair, and the particular scent of his skin. He was real. And though easier, though far away and removed from her current life, she would not forget him.
There hadn’t even been time for an inquiry. The Mercy Hospital for Children had mysteriously closed a year after she’d arrived on Bill’s doorstep, two months before she’d worked up the nerve to spill all her secrets to him. She’d been crushed when she’d found out, not only because she had no idea how to find her friends or potentially the boy from the woods but because there was now no way to prove what she’d experienced had been very real.
She’d seen doctors every few weeks at first, and they’d done extensive testing that showed she was generally healthy if underweight, anemic, and deficient in several vitamins and minerals. They’d given her instructions on how to wean off the pharmaceuticals she was on, which was easy considering she’d already gone off those medications. Her health hadn’t only remained stable, it’d improved vastly, so she’d been cleared for checkups every month, then every six months, and finally once a year like any other ordinary person. Ordinary. One of the most beautiful words in the English language to Autumn. She was ordinary. Not only of body but of mind. She’d told her doctor about the dreams she’d once had, though not all the particulars—not about the dirt under her fingernail or the singular pale hair hidden under her tongue—and he’d nodded and said, yes, that was very typical for those prescribed the medications she’d taken.
She’d had a life to live, classes to attend, goals to achieve. Still, she hadn’t given up. She’d spent her spare hours attempting to track down the kids she’d once lived with and the nurses too, particularly Salma. But she’d run into one dead end after another. And she’d been an hour and a half out of the city, only able to do her investigative work by phone.
Bill had done what he could, but he too had been brushed off by social workers, blatantly told to cease encouraging Autumn that her dreams were reality or that the hallucinations she’d experienced had been real. Side effects. Merely side effects, and common ones at that. It wasn’t helpful to humor her, they said. He owed it to his new charge to make it possible for her to settle into her new life, and she could see in his eyes that though he believed Autumn, he also didn’t disagree with that part of their advice. There was really no tangible proof of what she’d told him, only the claims of a once highly medicated girl. There might be other explanations, right? There was plentiful information on the internet about not only the dreams that came along with the medication Autumn had been on all her life but the fact that in some children, it also caused the hallucinations the doctors had spoken of. What if she’d sleepwalked? What if her experience was something other than what it seemed? Not nefarious but…explainable? Was it likely, or even possible, that the hospital where she’d once lived had been purposely putting their patients in danger…offering them up as…what? Prey to be hunted by…human monsters? The more Autumn tried to make sense of it and the further away in years she moved, the more it felt like a hallucination…a fever dream…distant and separate from reality. She didn’t even have her journal anymore, the chronicle of her time at Mercy Hospital and the whisperings of her soul as she’d trudged through a valley of shadows toward what she assumed was an almost certain death.
Yet despite the somewhat bleary nature of the first part of her life, and even though her new existence was filled with stability, with friends, with ordinary problems and mundane days, she couldn’t escape the vision of him that still filled her mind when she closed her eyes. Her moonlight boy.