The November Project - Part 1

TITLE:	The November Project (1/10)
AUTHOR:	-Andy- see2go4me@yahoo.com)
STATUS:	4,567 words.
RATING:	18/R
DISCLAIMER:	This is a derivative work. All characters belong to Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, Fox Television, Panzer/Davis and others. I don't own any of this, just the words gluing my story together.
SUMMARY:	A Third Slayer Tale
SPOILERS:	All seasons of BtVS and Highlander.
DISTRIBUTION:	My blog fanfic pages. TtH eventually. Anyone else, e-mail me please.
AUTHOR'S NOTES:	This is my NaNoWriMo entry. Quantity over quality. Don't expect anything better than a rough draft until the whole thing is done. Then I'll revise it.

It was a bright, sunny, windswept day. A warm breeze joyfully played with the fallen leaves along the shoreline, throwing them around in swirling movements. A bright rainbow hung above the gurgling brook, dew glistening on the fine black sand where the running water met the lake, and butterflies floated above the goldenrod in a nearby meadow. The tall, slim figure rose slowly from the water, long raven hair hanging down below her waist, covering her naked form like shimmering cloth. Water dripped from the ends like small diamonds towards the ground. As she stepped gracefully, almost nymph like, out of the water, the sky turned dark, crackling with electricity, black clouds covered the sun, and a sudden cold rain poured down.

With a muffled gasp, Fann sat up in her bed in the darkened room. She'd been having vaguely disturbing dreams since her grandmother had died a month ago, but this wasn't the same one she'd been having. In those she was always running, her feet pounding against some hard surface, being chased by something she couldn't see. Something she was too frightened of to turn around and face. Huddled under her blankets, staring blindly into the darkness, she could feel her heart beating faster than normal as she took deep breaths and tried to slow it down. After she'd calmed her heart and breathing, she lay back down, pulling her pillow over her face and attempted to go back to sleep.

Some time later, in the middle of the night, she fell back into an exhausted asleep and dreamed again. This time she was just an observer. She watched from a long distance as a small blonde girl dove off the end of an impossibly tall tower, falling towards a brilliant pool of pulsating light in a graceful swan dive. Fann could feel something happening to herself when the girl passed through the light. Something intensely painful and horrifying engulfed her body. She was driven awake by the pain and her high pitched screams woke the entire house.

A month after she first dreamed of the falling blonde she was finding it impossible to sleep for more than an hour or two every night. When she did fall asleep the other dreams of being chased came back, waking her and leaving her shaking and hoarse from the involuntary moans and screams she made. She could feel the patience of her grandmother's friends, the Boreaus sisters, wearing thin as her nightmares continued. They'd gladly taken her in when her gran had died. Her gran had wanted them to be her guardians but she knew they hadn't really been prepared for the reality of her being thrust into their quiet lives. And as a result they gave her almost complete freedom because they didn't know how to deal with her grief.

When the dreams and nightmares had started they'd tried to help. Tried to find a way for her to get over the nightmares with little success. Nothing anyone said seemed to help. The doctors and councilors they consulted said it was a delayed reaction to her grandmother's death but Fann knew better. She could feel something tugging at her every night. Something in her wanted to be outside, in the dark and there were times she was unable to resist it. Between the nightmares and the occasional nightly excursion she could feel herself wearing out from the lack of sleep.

And she had a secret. Something had changed when the nightmares had started. She felt different. Stronger. More aware of things around her. She could hear a lot better. She could feel the presence of people and animals in her head before she saw them. It was very confusing and she knew she needed to talk with someone about it but from the beginning something told her to keep it to herself.

In inspired desperation, unable to think of anything else, the school psychiatrist gave her a journal and told her writing out her nightmares and dreams would help them go away. They didn't. But over the long summer they became more manageable. Still there but less intense. She would still occasionally wake up a worried Alice or Willa with her moans but the screams had mostly stopped.

Shy and solitary, she'd never had many friends, and none of them were ever very close. After the nightmares started she stopped spending any time with even the ones not frightened away by the rumours about her problems. There were times when she felt that she was walking in a dark dream. Numb to the other people around her. During the day that summer she spent all of her time at her grandmother's house packing her possessions so they could go into storage. She'd been convinced to sell it and use the money to help pay for her keep. Anything left over after she finished high school in two years would help with college expenses.

She spent the time alone, adjusting to losing her grandmother and to the sudden increase in her strength and enhancement of her senses. She struggled to not break any of her favorite dishes or her gran's nicknacks. On the days she couldn't control her bewildering new abilities she worked in the gardens. Her gran had always kept a vegetable garden that kept them in food all winter and an herb garden that provided a little extra income. Even though everyone in town knew better, she tried to keep up the fiction that her gran was just away and would soon be back. Every day Fann would collect orders for fresh herbs from her gran's friends and the local restaurants and shops and deliver them at least once a week.

Fann kept herself going for most of the summer in this fashion. Up early, off to the house, and return to the Boreaus' in the evening for dinner after a day of packing or gardening. On several occasions she found herself carving pointed sticks like the ones she would sometimes see in her dreams being wielded by some girl her age. These she hid in the garage in the saddlebags of her mother's motorcycle.

Some days at her gran's house were better than others. The day she came across an album full of pictures of her mother and father wasn't one of them. She could barely remember them. They'd died in an accident when she was ten and she had to concentrate hard to bring their images back. Until she found the album. She looked at it with tears in her eyes. It was full of happy pictures. Of her parents with her and with others she didn't recognize. Of them smiling at each other and her. Of places that seemed to be right out of a travel book.

There was one picture that seemed out of place among the others. It appeared to be very old, scratched and almost sepia in color. In it stood a tall, thin woman with an almost dainty face and long hair so blonde it was almost a silver white. Fann felt she should know her from somewhere. Carefully packing away the album and other pictures she'd found that week in a heavy waterproof envelope, she kept out that picture, another one of her parents together, and one of her gran.

At dinner that night she pulled out the picture and asked the Boreaus, who'd known her grandmother for a very long time, if they recognized the woman.

"Willa? Alice? Do you know who this is?" she asked them placing it without fanfare on the table.

"It sort of looks like you." murmured Willa, after taking the photograph from Fann. She passed it to Alice across the table. "Doesn't it."

Alice took it and pursed her lips for a moment. "Different hair color and a little taller but yes, it does. Hmmm." She thought for a moment. "I believe I've seen her before." the elder of the two sisters commented.

"Really?" Fann straightened up in her chair excitedly. "Where?"

"I think she's your other grandmother." The slight, round woman told her. "She wasn't around that often."

Fann couldn't remember ever hearing anything about another grandmother. "What happened to her?" she asked Alice curiously.

"I think she died the summer before you were born." She frowned as she looked at the photo. "I think she lived a long ways away. In some foreign country. Your parents were gone for a month after it happened."

"Oh." Subdued, Fann took the picture back, placing it in a pocket. "Thanks."

"How are you doing with the packing?" Willa asked her, giving her a concerned look. "Are you ready for us to help you?"

"Not yet." she told them. "Soon. For now I need to do it alone." She told them sadly, surprising herself at how grown up she sounded.

"Let us know." Willa told her gently, Alice nodding in agreement.

"Thanks. I think I'll go up to bed now." Fann picked up her plate and silverware and took them into the kitchen before heading to bed for another night of doing her homework and then staring at the ceiling until she could escape into the night for an hour or two.

By August, she felt like she'd accomplished a lot. While she still wasn't getting much uninterrupted sleep at night, it was getting better. She was actually starting to see patterns in her dreams. Several nights of following different girls fighting for their lives against frightening creatures would be followed by several nights of dreams of that small blonde girl diving into that light. She wasn't sure but she had the feeling that none of these girls actually survived the things she saw them doing. She'd gone through several slim journal volumes recording the dreams. She kept the filled journals hidden in a box at her gran's house. She felt very protective of the girls she dreamed about and didn't want to share them with anyone

She was almost done with the packing. Everything that she'd decided to keep was now securely boxed up, ready to be stored away. Everything else would be auctioned off before the house was put up for sale.

By late August, Fann was feeling confident enough in her increased strength and the improvements in her senses that she felt comfortable enough to give in to the incessant pressure in her mind to start venturing outside every night, not just occasionally. She wasn't sure what she was doing but something in the night called to her. And while the creatures she dreamed about in her nightmares seemed just that, nightmare creatures, she tensed at every sound when she was out at night. She had yet to run into anything more dangerous other than the occasional fox or wild cat but she felt that she would run into something more dangerous eventually.

The summer was almost over and the dreams continued. The Boreaus had adapted to her sleeping problems but she was starting to sense that time was running out. She needed the dreams to stop. School was starting soon and there was no way for her to survive both school and her restless nocturnal wanderings on so little sleep. But she had no idea of anything she could do about it.

The auction occurred as planned, just before Labour Day. She watched silently as piece by piece her life with her gran was sold to neighbors and strangers in the crowded yard. The dining room table she remembered eating many Sunday dinners at; the large cherry china cabinet her gran had been so proud of; the four poster bed she'd spent many nights dreaming on. These and many other physical memories now gone forever. She had no room for the larger furniture and just barely enough room in the small corner of the storage loft they'd rented for her for the things she could keep like her gran's rocking chair. Last to go were the contents of the garage.

The tools in the garden shed would remain with the house when it was sold, hopefully after she finished with the gardens for the year, after the Fall harvest. She'd spent so much time on them over the summer that she was reluctant to let them go. And she'd managed to convince the Boreaus to let her keep her mother's motorcycle. They didn't believe she could use it, they thought she was too young, but her gran had promised to let her learn when she was old enough. She didn't bother telling them that she'd taught herself to ride it and take care of over the summer. She didn't think they would be too happy with her.

The school year started out in its usual lonely fashion for Fann and things didn't improve as time went on. She'd already been seen as different before her gran died. In the past that hadn't matter much and she'd managed to find a few students with similar interests to spend time with. But after the nightmares had started and now that she was living with her gran's older friends her former acquaintances left her alone and her isolation became even worse. Keeping to herself she became more withdrawn than before.

Classes that Fall were as difficult as she'd expected. But it wasn't just the work itself, it was the caring. With her dreams being flooded with constant violence and death Fann just couldn't bring herself to care about the things being taught. Math couldn't erase visions of girls dying horrible deaths or the horrible creatures they fought as she watched. And the books they were reading in her English classes seemed too tame and not really relevant.

The only bright spot in her week was the hour or two she spent in the school councilor's office. She didn't have to talk. The councilor made no demands and had no expectations. She could just sit there and relax in the calm silence of the sound proofed office, away from her classmates and their constant staring.

The relative calm that had enveloped her since the auction ended on a cool evening late in October. Fann had just finished her homework for the evening and she'd joined Alice and Willa out on the porch for a few minutes before planning to head to bed. They weren't doing anything special, just enjoying the unseasonably warm Fall weather and talking about different things they'd done or seen that day.

She was sitting on the steps, her back against the handrail when she suddenly had the strange feeling that something bad was about to happen. Pulling herself hesitantly to her feel, she interrupted Willa's description of a particularly annoying person she'd talked to that day at work.

"Did you feel that?" She asked.

"Feel what?" Willa asked and Alice echoed.

"I don't know." Fann said in an agonized tone. "Something's wrong." She looked around but didn't see anything to explain her feeling. She could feel herself starting to panic and hyperventilate, a very unpleasant feeling as she stood on the edge of the porch feeling slightly unbalanced. Willa looked at her worriedly.

The feeling was followed by a screeching sound, like a thousand owls crying at once. She moaned and desperately tried to cover her ears with her hands to protect herself from the intense noise. She didn't know what Willa and Alice were doing; she couldn't think; she couldn't look. "Make it stop. Make it stop! Make... it... stop!" she moaned, stumbling backwards.

She could hear Willa calling to her but she didn't have the strength to answer. All of her attention was on the sound and getting away from it. She kept unconsciously backing away from where it seemed to be coming from. She heard her name called again and that and the sudden feeling of falling were the last things she remembered as she tumbled backwards off of the porch onto the front walkway and hit her head on the ground.

The nightmare that woke her up was a new one. Lying in bed she was consumed by a horrifyingly claustrophobic feeling. For the first time since they'd started she wasn't awoken by the sound of her own moaning or screaming. Groaning in pain, she rolled over in her bed, trying to remember how she'd ended up there. She could feel something on her head but her room was too dark for her to see what it was. Reaching towards her bedside table, she flicked on the light and cautiously looked around. Looking in her mirror she could see a large white bandage on the back of her head. Although her head seemed to hurt, the spot where the bandage was seemed to be fine.

Not seeing anything else, she dug in the night-stand next to her bed for her journal; to write down the dream before she forgot any of it. Frowning, she recorded the images and feeling she'd had of waking up in a small rectangular box, unable to breath. In her dream she'd known she was in a coffin but not how she'd gotten there. Her dream persona had clawed upward, digging and punching to get out. The dream had ended when she'd reached freedom, taking a shaky breath in the cold crisp air, and looked around, only seeing vague shapes, one of which resembled a tombstone. The writing hadn't been clear enough to read and before she could examine it closer she'd woken up.

As soon as she'd finished writing down the details of her dream, she lay back, exhausted, onto her bed. Someone must have heard her moving about. A few minutes later, Alice appeared with a tray containing a glass of water and a small bottle of something.

Rubbing her aching head, Fann asked her "What happened?"

"You fell off the porch and hit your head." she told her.

"And before that?" Fann asked, trying to remember the hazy events from earlier.

"We don't know." Alice looked at her closely. "You said something I couldn't understand and screamed at us to 'make it stop' and then you fainted."

"Oh." Fann rubbed her eyes in frustration at the lack of memory.

"We promised the ambulance person that we would take you to the emergency room or your doctor tomorrow." Alice told her.

"Oh." Fann looked at her in surprise. "Ambulance?"

"You were unconscious. We were worried." Willa told her, coming into her room. "Fann, this needs to stop. Whatever the school councilor is doing to help you with this isn't working."

"I'm okay." Fann protested. "I've gotten used to it. I sleep more now, don't I?"

"Yes. You sleep three hours instead of one every night." Alice acknowledged. "But you're still wasting away. A strong breath could knock you over."

"And when we told your gran we would be your guardians if something happened to her, we promised her we would take care of you." Willa added. "And this isn't taking care of you enough."

"And, besides that, Social Services won't let you stay here any more if they think you're having problems living with us." Alice told her, rubbing Fann's hand lightly. "We had to do some fast talking to get them to let you stay here in the first place."

"I know. I'm really sorry you got dragged into whatever this is." Fann apologized as she pulled her knees up to her chest, resting her chin on them. "I really miss my gran." She mumbled, trying not to sound as pathetic as she knew she must look. "She would have known how to fix this."

"I know dear. We aren't her but we'll figure it out." Alice told her with a sad smile. "Why don't you drink this and take these for your head." She handed a glass of water and several pills to Fann. "It'll help you sleep. I'll call your doctor in the morning. Hopefully we can see her tomorrow."

"Thanks." Fann mumbled, taking the pills and quickly washing them down. The two older women left her room and she curled up around her favorite pillow and tried to sleep.

Willa had accompanied Fann to her doctor right after school. "How did it go?" she asked, as Fann emerged back into the waiting room with a sigh of relief.

"I'm okay." She noticed the other people in the waiting room looking at her curiously. "She wants to talk with you. Can I go outside?" she asked, feeling nervous in the small room and wanting to escape.

"Sure. Why don't we meet at the Coffee Haven?" Willa picked up her purse, stopping to ask "Do you need any money?"

"No, I'm okay. Thanks." Fann gave her a small smile and hurried out of the doctor's office.

She normally tried not to drink a lot of coffee. Since she'd started having the nightmares anything with caffeine in it tended to make her overly jumpy. But today she felt she deserved the comfort it offered. The doctor had spent an hour poking and prodding her in an attempt to find an explanation for her collapse the previous day with little success.

Lost in thought, occasionally taking a sip from her steaming coffee, she was startled when Alice sat down across from her.

"It's been a long time since I was a teenager myself." Alice commented absently. "Dr. Olsen seems to think you behave very maturely for your age."

"What'd she say?" Fann asked nervously.

"She says you are actually in very good health. She thinks you need to eat more but other than that she couldn't find anything wrong. She was surprised that the bump on your head was gone already." Alice sighed. "She has to send your blood off for some tests but she doesn't think they'll find anything. She thinks it was just stress."

"Stress?" Fann squeaked loudly. She blushed at the sudden attention the other Coffee Haven patrons briefly gave her at her outburst.

Alice raised an eyebrow at her reaction. "She's upset with Willa and me for letting you pack up your gran's stuff and dealing with her house on your own." She reached over and squeezed Fann's hand. "I'm sorry. You act so grown up I think we forgot you are really only sixteen."

"I'm okay." Fann told her gruffly, trying to keep her emotions in check. "I needed to do it. She was my gran. It would have been like you letting someone else go through Willa's things if she had died."

"Let's get you home. Willa probably has dinner all ready for us." Alice got up from the table and headed for the door.

For the next week dinner every night was a very subdued event. Fann spent each meal nervously picking at her heavily laden plate, trying to pretend she didn't notice that the sisters kept looking at her like she was going to explode any minute. She would then spend the evening doing her homework before pretending to sleep for a couple hours and then she would spend an hour or two wandering around the town attempting to satisfy the part of her that now craved the darkness. Eventually she would end up back in her room tired enough to sleep until she had to get up for school in the morning.

The dreams had taken on a distinctly different tone since her fainting episode. While she couldn't really remember them as clearly as the earlier nightmares, they were no longer so scary that she was afraid to go to sleep. But she woke up every morning feeling more and more depressed and sad. It was like she was having to relive the day her gran died over and over again. She knew Alice and Willa had noticed how out of it she was becoming. They seemed to becoming more concerned and watched her closer every day.

It was on Halloween that she finally broke free. She'd always loved dressing up, becoming someone else for a little while. Going from house to house with her small group of schoolmates. But her few friends had drifted away and she couldn't find any enthusiasm for the idea of watching others having fun when she wasn't. She sat in her room, staring at her homework and listening as Alice and Willa took turns answering the door to hand out candy to the costumed children.

She fell asleep at her desk, waking up several hours later with the intense desire to go somewhere. To get away from her life. There was something out there that she desperately needed. She wasn't sure what it was but it was pulling her away from home. It was much more intense than the feelings that drove her into the darkness every night. A pressure, a feeling in her head. And she couldn't deny it.

She sat for a few minutes gathering her thoughts. This was a big step, away from the safety of home. She didn't know where she was going to go or even why. She just had to do it.

It only took several minutes to pack the few things she wasn't willing to leave behind. She had just enough room in the small bags she packed for a week's worth of clothes and a few personal possessions. And that was the easy part. The harder one was leaving a note for Willa and Alice. She knew they would be upset but she hoped they would forgive her and not try to send someone after her.

She looked at the brief note, rereading it one last time before sealing it in an envelope, memorizing the brief message, knowing that it really wasn't enough:

Alice and Willa,

I'm sorry. I can't take it anymore. Something is wrong with my head. I need to get away from here. I need to think things through. I'll be back when I work it out. Do whatever you think needs to be done with gran's house. Please don't look for me.

Fann

Placing the envelope in a prominent place where they couldn't miss it, Fann walked out of the house and down the street to her gran's house, stopping only to remove as much money as she could from her bank account at the first ATM she passed. She didn't have a lot in it. Most of her money from the auction was put away in an account she couldn't touch until she was older. Hopefully they wouldn't close her account and she would have enough to live on for the next few months but she couldn't be sure of that.

Silently opening the garage door, she went over to her mother's motorcycle. After checking for the knife and stakes she'd hidden there, Fann stuffed her two bags into its saddlebags, grabbed her mother's helmet and pushed the bike out of the garage and down into the street, glad for her increased strength.

Once in the street she settled herself onto the bike, helmet on her head. Starting it up, she put it into gear and without looking back headed down the quiet street away from her home in the early morning dawn. She wasn't sure where she was going but she knew that as long as she kept the sun at her back, heading west, that eventually she would end up where she needed to be at the end of her journey.

© Copyright 2009 Andy Stoffel. Last update: 7/19/09; 10:53:55 PM. This theme is based on the SoundWaves (blue) Manila theme.