When Lorna and Frank get back to her house it's raining a light mist of sticky drizzle that dampens everything down like a cold sauna. Her dad is snoring on the couch in the living room and they sneak past him up to her room and sit down on the bed. Shrugging off the thought that he shouldn’t be here when he technically still has a girlfriend back in Jersey, Frank opens his bag and tips the mysterious metal box onto the sheets. It bounces lightly and he hopes to god that it isn’t empty and he just committed a criminal offence for nothing.

“Okay,” Lorna grins victoriously, still buzzing from the break-in, “I’d usually be delicate with this kind of thing but I get the feeling time is of the essence.” Opening a small draw in her desk, she pulls out a dinky hammer and slams it into the box’s padlock. The lock shatters and the lid springs open to reveal a small tangle of wires, metal scraps and batteries that look like a homemade security device and underneath them something small and white. Lorna pulls the plug on the batteries to avoid the kind of electric shock that stung Frank's hand before and fishes out the object beneath. It is a single piece of folded white paper.
“Oh,” she mutters in disappointment, “Well that’s...something.”
“Yeah,” Frank says, taking the paper from her and unfolding its smooth edges, “This is what Anna was talking about. The list.”
“A list of what?”
“Names,” Frank whispers, reading quickly in the dim light. The list is a carefully typed single column of about a dozen names, some male and some female, and all typed last name first like in a telephone directory. Underneath each name is an address. He only recognizes two of them. “Fletcher, Anna and Ortiz, Sam. The address under Anna's name is her Sorority house.”
“They’re on there?” Lorna asks in confusion, “Why would Anna include her own name?”
“Maybe she didn't type this thing herself,” Frank sighs, a small headache niggling in his temples, “The real question is what do all these people have in common? These addresses are scattered all over the US. One's even in Canada.”

He hands the paper to Lorna and glances out the window at the setting winter sun. “Do you recognize anyone?”
“Er... ohmygod, yes my cousin's on here! What the hell? Look, see, Greg Patterson. He was killed a few months ago in a drive-by shooting but they never caught the guy who did it. I dreamed about his death the week before but the images were vague and the dreams were more abstract back then. I didn’t warn him.”
“I'm sorry,” Frank says sympathetically, reaching for Lorna's hand to try and comfort her but she flinches away and goes to stand by the window, looking out at the sky. “Maybe Anna dreamt about Greg's death too,” she says quietly, wiping a hand across her eyes, “And maybe that’s why Sammy’s name is on there. This could be a list of people Anna dreamt about before she died.”

Frank frowns and massages his aching forehead with tattooed fingers, “That still doesn’t explain her own name being there unless she had a vision her own death too... Fuck, that must have been horrible. But how did she know the names and addresses of all the victims she dreamt about? There's no way she knew ALL of them personally. She didn't know your cousin right?”
Lorna shakes her head. “I doubt it. Greg was in his thirties and lived in Philly all his life. He never came to California.”
“Exactly. She can't have known them all personally and our dreams are just random images so how did she get their personal details? Ugh, this is so fucking confusing.”
Lorna shrugs, “You hallucinated Anna's name in a hotel mirror didn't you?”
“Fair point, but besides that I don’t understand why she would want us to have this stupid list anyway. I mean, if her ghost or soul or consciousness or whatever really is speaking to me through my nightmares how does this help us? Are we meant to write to these people? It’s just a piece of paper, it can’t help us get rid of the visions or even tell us why we have them...” Trailing off with a heavy sigh, Frank shuts his eyes and cups his chin in his hands, tired of all this guess-work and feeling homesick for his band mates again. His stomach hurts and he vaguely remembers that he forgot to eat lunch.
“At least our names aren’t on there,” Lorna says, sitting down beside him and kicking off her shoes, “It’s probably not a good thing for us to appear in each other’s dreams.”

Frank nods slowly and shivers as the pain of being stabbed in his nightmare resurfaces, spreading through his ribs. Staring uneasily at Lorna’s closet he half-expects a knife-wielding maniac in a motorcycle helmet to leap out at any second and his blood runs cold. “There's a computer at the place where I'm staying,” he says hesitantly, “We could go back there and Google all these names, see what we can find out.”
“Oh yeah, I’m sure your friend will love a random stranger hanging out in her home,” Lorna says, “She'll probably think I'm encouraging your fantasies or something. It's alright Frankie, you go and I’ll stay here. Call me if you find anything interesting but I guess you're gonna be leaving town soon huh? To go back to your band.”
“I guess so.”
She gives his hand a little pat and looks away, slipping a pair of fluffy slippers onto her bare feet, “If you find some clues about our nightmares or who killed Anna or Greg then let me know. If you don’t... maybe you should try to forget that today ever happened and get on with your life. If I could leave LA I'd be gone in a second.”

***
After leaving Lorna's depressing house, Frank wanders miserably through town and buys some painkillers and whiskey then locks himself in a public toilet to swallow four strong pills and half a bottle of the throat-burning liquor before he feels ready to go outside again. Every man he sees wearing black and every motorcycle roaring down the street makes him flinch and his head is spinning with unsolved questions and angry dead eyes. The alcohol isn't enough to numb the sting of fear creeping through his guts and he's so anxious he chain-smokes five cigarettes on the walk back to Stacey's. He doesn't want to die. He doesn't want to fucking die! But if he goes to sleep death is all he's going to see. And what if it's his OWN death again?

The sun goes down and a cold dark night smothers the smoggy sky. When he gets back Stacey is slouched on the sofa in the den reading a magazine. “Hey Frankie. Did you have a good day?”
“Uh huh,” he slurs under his breath, trying not to act as drunk as he feels. He should have grabbed something to eat. Shit. “But I'm wiped, Stace, I'm gonna go take a nap.”
“Are you okay?” she persists, getting up with a worried frown, “You look a little pale. Have you eaten? Do you want me to order some food or do you still feel sick?”
“No, jeez stop acting like my mom!” Frank blurts in exasperation, booze and anxiety making his voice shake as he backs away towards the stairs, “I'm FINE! I'm fucking perfect! So when you next call Brian or Gerard to give them another Frank Report you can fucking tell them that!”

***
Lorna sits alone in her room for a long time watching the daylight fade as the winter sun dips lower and lower on the dusky horizon. Darkness falls and is half-erased by the electric fire of the streetlamps which blots out the hazy, distant stars over the city of angels. Shuddering at the thought of going to sleep, she pulls on her shabby dressing gown and wanders downstairs to the grimy grey basement. Switching on the single light-bulb, she breathes in the musty scent of oil and washing powder and listens blankly to the hum of the freezer and the muted rush of cars racing through the streets above. Padding over to the ice box in her slippers, she digs out a large frost-encrusted tub of creamy coffee ice-cream and wonders if there's anything good on TV tonight. Nothing like frozen sugar and reality shows about bickering idiots to keep the Sandman away. A floorboard creaks ominously over her head and she frowns and looks up, suddenly alert. Her father's footsteps are heavier than that. Maybe it's just the wind making the house settle. Sighing softly, she slams the ice box shut and retreats upstairs.

***
Sick with anxiety and misery, Frank flees to his room and burrows under the covers with his knees bunched up to his chest and the door locked against Stacey's apologies and kind words. None of it can make a difference now. Desperately sucking down leftover whiskey until his body stops trembling and grows heavy and numb, he listens to the murmur of her gentle voice downstairs as she talks on the phone to one of their mutual friends and spills her worry and concern about him down the line. He has to bite his tongue to keep from calling out and letting her know he can hear everything. The realization that he's upset her floods his eyes with tears. She's his friend and it isn't her fault he's acting this way but how can he tell her the truth about what's making him so frustrated and scared when she won't believe a single word he says? Silent teardrops run down his cheeks and he angrily wipes them away, wanting to slam his head into a wall. Screwing his eyes shut as his body shivers with smothered sobs, he can still see the murdered ghosts from his nightmares looming darkly over him like statues in the darkness. “Go away,” he whimpers, scrubbing at his eyes until they hurt, “Just leave me alone!”

But the dead faces remain and when he opens his eyes again and turns on the bedroom light he can see them reflected in every polished surface and every window. People he doesn't even know covered in blood and glaring hatefully at him with empty eyes from their glass prisons and secret graves. “What do you want from me?” he cries desperately, “What the fuck do you WANT?” Nobody answers of course. He's just a crazy man shouting at imaginary monsters.

Grabbing the pill bottle Brian gave him last week with trembling hands, he cracks open the lid and groans when he finds it's empty inside. No more sleeping pills to smother his nightmares into oblivion. No more escape from this hell. With a rush of icy wind, Anna Fletcher's corpse appears next to him and starts to whisper the names of everyone on her list and in the back of his mind he can hear Lorna's voice screaming his name as a dozen brutal knives slash her body to pieces and he can't make it stop!

Sitting up with his heart racing and his face wet with sweat and tears, Frank roughly wipes his eyes on his shirt and staggers out of bed, grabbing his coat and wallet and climbing drunkenly out of the window to avoid Stacey, sliding down the drainpipe and landing clumsily on the soft lawn below. With a dizzying haze of ghosts still swirling madly in his head, he lights up a fresh cigarette and heads back into town.

The city is dark and wet and inbetween the shining clusters of shops and neon lights the stink of sodden garbage streams from every alleyway. Frank walks until he's half-sober, rain soaking his hair and skin and running down his coat collar and into his sneakers, but the ghosts in his mind won’t leave and Anna Fletcher has become a constant presence walking the dirty streets beside him. She is as fragile as a spider’s web and invisible to everyone but him and Frank tries his best to ignore her but she’s there whether he looks at her or not. His head throbs behind his bloodshot eyes and he’s so hungry and wasted he can barely see straight until a flash of silver brightens the sidewalk and he's surprised to find himself outside the internet café he visited yesterday. It’s still open and he wanders blindly inside, shivering in the permanent chill of the building's souped-up air conditioning and wishing he had the company of somebody alive.

Sitting down wearily by a computer, he orders and forces down a bagel and some black coffee and then pulls Anna’s crinkled paper list out of his jeans pocket. In high school he once had a friend who got expelled for violating internet guidelines - aka illegal hacking – and he'd learned a thing or two from that guy about breaking into restricted databases. Within an hour he manages to find newspaper reports, medical records or police data for everyone on the list and the results aren't exactly encouraging. Every single one of these people has died violently within the last year – most recently Sammy and Anna - and the exact circumstances of their deaths are still unresolved. And it gets worse: several of them were on medication for insomnia or anxiety and the youngest ones wrote online blogs or MySpace posts before they died about intense nightmares, fear of going to sleep and the knowledge of future disasters before they happened. It all sounds horribly familiar and Frank's heart sinks with every word he reads:

‘...I know it sounds ridiculous and everyone thinks I’m lying but I KNEW that building was going to collapse, I knew it and that's why I left you douchebags to die. Fuck you all...’

‘...My mom says it’s only bad dreams but it feels so real. I’m bleeding in the street, dying in a cold, dark place and I don’t know where I am! It’s so real…’

‘...I had another episode today, right in the middle of Science class. It was so humiliating. Simon will never look at me twice now. I'm such a freak! It was a bad one this time. I saw a man in black putting a gun to my head and then everything went dark. Dr. Weissman wants to increase my medication but it isn’t helping and I don't know what else to do...’

The blogs go on and on like this and Frank reads them all with increasing panic. All of these people were like him and Lorna and Anna. It turns out that even Sammy had trouble sleeping. Maybe Anna was dating him because he was a kindred spirit.

Sinking back in his seat, Frank runs shaking hands through his hair and swallows the rising panic in his throat. His chest is so tight with dread he can barely breathe. All of these people had premonitions about world disasters and murders and now all of them are dead. Someone is hunting them down and killing them! How? Why?

The dream-memory of the masked attacker’s knife slicing through his chest replays again and again in his mind and his heart hammers faster and faster as a strange hot wetness begins to spread across his skin under his shirt. Looking down he sees a river of crimson blood seeping through his clothes and jumps out of his chair with a hoarse cry of terror, knocking a tray out of a passing waitress’s hands. Two glasses of vanilla milkshake shatters on the tiled floor and Frank automatically opens his mouth to apologize but he can’t find enough air in his lungs to speak. His vision is starting to black out at the edges.

An ocean of blood oozes from his chest, dripping onto the floor and mixing in dark swirls with the milkshake but the waitress barely reacts to the gore, sighing softly and bending down to pick up the broken glass. Frank stares at her in shock as she sifts slowly through the puddle on the floor, looking in confusion at her bored, passive face until he realizes that she can’t see the blood. All she sees is broken glass and spilled shakes. People all over the café are glancing over with the same bored expressions. None of them can see the blood!

Anna suddenly reaches out and strokes Frank’s face, her thin corpse fingers like ice, and he screams and runs out into the street, panting desperate gulps of cool night air into his aching lungs as the hallucinated blood dries up and disappears. The list is crumpled into a sweaty paper ball in his trembling hand. Whoever killed all those people will probably come for him and Lorna too and Anna’s death means that the murderer is already in L.A. “Fuck!” he gasps, staggering to the edge of the curb and raising his hand to hail a cab. That waking nightmare he had in Lorna’s bedroom was real - she’s going to die and so is he if he can’t stop this. He has to warn her! When a taxi finally stops, he jumps in and chokes out the name of Lorna’s street, shivers of dread and fear rattling his skinny body. The driver speeds carelessly through the night and Frank sits on the edge of his seat surrounded by weeping ghosts, hoping and praying that he's not too late.

Notes

((Hi guys! Sorry for the delay. I went to Europe for a week on holiday but I'm back now and I'll try not to ever leave it this long between updates again. Hope you're still liking. I'm going to bring Gerard back soon. Comment what you want to happen next if you like :) ... xx))