As I slept, I dreamed that I was in a pitch-black hallway. I could smell the death and the shit and the piss all around me. I walked with my hands out in front of me, stretched as far as they would go, hoping they hit something before it could hit me.

“Granny?” I said. “Grandma?”

Nobody answered, and I just kept walking forward in that blackness. It was like nighttime like I’d never seen. They say, and I don’t know if it’s true because I’ve never been far out of the city, but they say that walking in the woods on a night with no moon is that black. But even a few nights prior, when Jaden and I had walked in the dark, it hadn’t been as black as that dream was. It was a black night, and I was in a windowless space that made it even blacker. Something brushed my hands, something soft and light and almost not even there, like a spiderweb. I shuddered.

“Granny?” I called again. I didn’t know why I was jawing like that, drawing attention to myself from whatever else was in that blackness.

A red light flashed on briefly. In it, I saw a man with a huge snake, like the guy who, when I was a kid and Coney Island was still there, was always posing for pictures down at the boardwalk. But the snake was wrapped tight around his neck and must have been choking him. It was wrapped around his arms and torso, squeezing. He had a wide smile on his face, as if he was actually enjoying the checking he was doing. It was a phrenic kind of smile, with hell in it. The light went back out.

“Granny?”

I heard her moaning off to my left. Her or someone that sounded just like her. I couldn’t tell in all the blackness. I went down on my hands and knees and started feeling the ground. I felt nothing, just the cold floor, for the longest time. And then my hands hit something.

I felt her face, wet and slick with blood. The light went on just in time for me to see a hole in her head from a gunshot, and my hands right on top of it. I woke up moaning and making a lot of noise.

“Shut up, you phrenic bitch!” someone in the corner said.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing waking everyone up? I’ll fucking cut you.”

“You shut the fuck up,” Jaden said. He put all of the strength I knew he had into those words. “You come near her and you’re going to regret it.”

Jaden wrapped his arms around me tighter, his hands resting on my shoulders and pulling me close to him.

“I have to get to Gravesend,” I whispered to him. I was shaking.