It was impossible to return to her normal life after a night spent in the glass house. There was a cliché in that, but Kathy knew, even as the cuts on her skin healed into barely-visible scars and her skin turned smooth and brown again, that her life would never be the same.

It wasn't that things changed significantly. She and her father and Bobby moved into a bigger apartment, financed by the sale of the land the house was built on and the few valuables that had survived intact. Maggie returned to New York, leaving Bobby even more morbidly depressed than usual (his talk show, always macabre and now recorded on a brand new microphone, had expanded to include speculation about whether or not the recently departed had become ectoplasm), but Kathy had always suspected that Maggie would go, sooner rather than later. No, life hadn't changed, but now every aspect of it was viewed through the filter of after what happened in the house, her experience that night coloring her world as surely as her mother's death had six months earlier.

Kathy had run track and field since her sophomore year, the rush of adrenaline in her veins a pure joy. After mom had died, running had become an escape. Now, she would close her eyes and imagine running through clear, narrow corridors, spells in Latin scrawled on either side of her. The team placed second in the state finals and, afterward, she pulled her street clothes on slowly, barely noticing the ever-present locker-room smell of sweat or the quiet hiss of showers running. She thought about why she had so easily outstripped her competition that day, and tried not to think about the sideways glances that the girls around her sent (still, four months after she had returned to school) at the thin tracery of pale scars where her thighs peaked out from under her running shorts.

Dating had always been fun, and she had been seeing a boy for a few months when Uncle Cyrus had left them the house. A week before her family had driven out to Willows Creek, she had let him screw her in the back of his SUV, the radio playing softly and the heater running full blast to stave off the early spring chill in the air, and that had been fun too. The first time that he kissed her after her return, his hand resting lightly on her breast, Kathy had pushed him away and demanded to be driven home. Touching, and being touched, was no longer fun. After that, he refused to speak with her at school, awkward because he wasn't sure of her, angry because he was awkward. She didn't know how to tell him, how to bridge the distance when it was painfully clear that she no longer saw things the same way he did.

"I'm worried about you, Kathy," her dad said one evening, his voice softer than it had been since before mom died. He looked at her with eyes like the ones she used to give him, knowing something was wrong, knowing what was wrong, but unable to do anything to fix it. And, because he knew, because he had been there, too, and because he was her father and he was worried, she told him some of it. But she did it with a careless smile, so that the worry, at least, would stop.

"It just doesn't fit anymore," Kathy said. "I'll be fine. I guess I just need to adjust. Having a bigger apartment helps. My own bathroom. And no Maggie."

Her father accepted that. Most days, it was even true. It wasn't like she was ruined – she had been through hard times, and wasn't stupid enough, or dramatic enough, to think that one experience could make or break her. It was just that sometimes she would be caught in a moment, entirely unexpected, where her everyday life would take on the feeling of unreality, as distant and as strange to her as the concept of ghosts had once been.

Kathy went back to the remnants of the house only once. Already, construction crews were tearing up what remained of the building, trucks towing away loads of shattered, diamond-hard glass. She sort of expected it to help, to magically put things into perspective. It didn't, not really. It was just the ruined remains of a house, nothing special, a burnt-out husk of the place that she remembered. Kind of a dump, really.

It wasn't until months later, when she was in the process of flunking out of her first semester of college, that the dreams started.

Sometimes she would be pressed up against the glass wall of the house again, her legs dangling uselessly beneath her as she fought against the monster, the thing, pinning her there. Only, this time, she wouldn't be able to escape.

Sometimes she would be in the middle of a crowd, on campus, or at the theater, or behind the counter at the little coffee shop where she worked. It always came out of nowhere, shattering the peace of an otherwise normal routine. Grabbed from behind, held down against a bistro table or the soft green grass of the quad, the people around her smiling and talking pleasantly as she was torn apart by something that no one but she could see.

Sometimes she would be in her own bed, and those were the worst, because going into the dream felt just the same as waking up. She would open her eyes, and find herself staring into the pale, darting eyes of the Jackal, who she had later learned was named Ryan Kuhn. He would crouch above her, swollen gums and vicious teeth pulled back into a rictus grin behind the metal bars of his cage as hands heavy with curling yellow nails pushed her shoulders hard against the softness of her mattress. He would lean in to her until she could taste the iron of his cage, and smell the sickly sweet scent of decay on his breath. It didn't matter if she fought, or screamed, because no one came and it always ended with him in her, on top of her, nails and the sharp edges of his cage laying her flesh open to the bone as he pushed himself against her and dyed his dirty-pale coat red with her blood.

Those were the worst, because she always woke up in the same bed. After a while, Kathy took to sleeping on the couch, although it didn't really help. Bobby, always an early riser, would rouse her long before their father got up so that she could creep back to her bedroom, a surprisingly helpful little coconspirator even though he didn't understand anything, except that she was trying not to upset their daddy. He had always been so quick to tattle before, but the trust forged between them in the house was enough to keep him quiet now, even to the father who had, almost literally, leapt through fire in order to save them.

She went to see a doctor, but the pills he gave her didn't really help, and they always left her groggy the next day. She would nap in class, or doze off behind the counter at the coffee shop during the afternoon lull. Sometimes, she would wake up, her entire body thrumming with the imagined terror of fighting off yet another invisible attacker.

Then there was another dream, and that one held no terror at all.

The house was standing again, intact and as coolly impenetrable as it had been that night, but with a peculiar sense of emptiness and peace to it; no one home, no ghosts haunting the basement or the halls. The library that she had never seen was just as her father had described it, an unlikely sanctuary at the core of what had once been a nightmare, the wooden table that dominated the room solid and reassuring beneath the palms of her hands.

Warm fingers stroked Kathy's back through her shirt and, with the fuzzy logic of a dream, she was neither surprised nor disturbed by the suddenness of the touch. Warm breath stirred the fine hairs at the nape of her neck, and an equally warm mouth settled there, a kiss that was so brief and soft that it might not have happened at all. She turned.

They had barely known each other, she foggily recalled. To her, he had just been... some weird guy in really gross coveralls who worked for the power company. That impression had never really reversed itself, even after he had led them into the basement to find her brother, even after everything that had happened. He had still been Some Weird Guy, except he didn't really work for the power company and he was much, much weirder than even the coveralls had suggested. Only after the house had been destroyed had her opinion shifted, but she couldn't say that she had dwelled on him overmuch, other than a vague sense of regret and sadness stemming from what her father had told her about the last hours of Dennis Rafkin's life, and pity when she thought about all the hours that had come before it. It couldn't, she reflected, have been easy, living the way he had, or dying the way he had.

Kathy reached up and touched his cheek, and there was an easy familiarity there. Even if he was just a figment of her own overstressed imagination, he was someone who, like her dad, and Bobby, and even Maggie, could understand what it was like to be set apart from everyone by events that no one else would really understand, or even believe. She suspected that he understood it better, even, than she did. At least she could maintain the pretense of normalcy.

"You were pretty weird," she said, after a moment, her words echoing her thoughts. "Any advice?"

His mouth quirked into a smile, wry and self-deprecating, and a little sarcastic. "Please. I sort of failed at the whole life thing, if you didn't notice." He reached up, and pulled her hand away from his cheek, wrapping it in his own long fingers. "I couldn't even do this while I was alive." He held up their joined hands.

"So that would be a no?"

"Pretty much." Dennis snorted rudely. "Time helps, or so I hear. Whatever. You're pretty, you don't see dead people, Bruce Willis isn't hanging out at your house, and you're, you know, alive. It can't be that bad."

"That's not very helpful," she replied. Then, as an afterthought, she added, "And I don't think I'd mind if Bruce Willis was hanging out at my house."

It was, she thought, remarkably hard to take her problems seriously while discussing them with a completely unimpressed dead guy. Especially when he seemed set on reminding her that, no matter how bad she had it, other people had it worse.

Jerk.

It really wasn't helpful, but she smiled anyway. The expression came easier and more naturally to her face, like it had in the months before mom had died. She dropped her gaze to their hands, freeing her thumb from his grasp to run it over the back of Dennis's knuckles. She remembered, in spite of his rudeness, how he had greeted her in this dream world, and watched as a muscle in his jaw jumped a little at even this simple touch. "You've really never had this?"

"No. Believe it or not, people tend to get a little put off if you have spine-breaking seizures when they try to give you a cuddle. Not too much fun from where I was standing, either, mind you."

Kathy imagined not. That, more than anything else he had said, made her realize how easy it was to take certain things for granted. She reached up with her free hand, sliding it over the sharp bones of his shoulder until she could cup the back of his neck. He turned his head slightly, watching her warily out of the corner of his eye rather than looking at her directly, like he wasn't sure what she was about. He was frozen, as stiff as a statue beneath her hand, but he yielded easily when she used her grasp on the back of his neck to pull his mouth down to hers.

For a moment it was awkward, their mouths and bodies clumsy as they tried to figure out how to fit. Dennis released her hand, moving his own to tentatively touch her waist, his palms light on her sides as if he was expecting her to slap them away. When she flicked her tongue against his lower lip, he opened his mouth, more from surprise than as an invitation, she thought. All the same, Kathy took it as such, slipping her tongue into his mouth, exploring him with an interest that she hadn't really expected to feel.

The hands on her waist became firmer, more sure, sliding around to her back as he stepped forward. She was left trapped between the edge of the table and Dennis, and was suddenly intimately aware of all the places where their bodies touched; his hands lying large and flat against her back, his mouth on hers, his thighs pressed tight against the bones of her hips. She moved those hips, an experimental little squirm, and he made a rough, involuntary noise somewhere in the back of his throat.

There was hunger in the kiss now. His tongue slid against hers, and their teeth clicked together at one point when he moved forward too quickly, but she was beyond caring. It wasn't until she let go of his neck to inch her fingers under his black blazer that he broke the kiss, resting his forehead against hers. His breathing was harsh, feathering against her cheek, and his eyes looked a little wild.

"Kathy?"

She didn't answer, too intent on catching her own breath. The earlier fog of the dream had cleared, leaving her hyperaware of their surrounding, and of him, still standing far too close for rational thought.

"Only good dreams," Dennis said, and pressed his mouth against hers again, this time soft and sweet.

A rude elbow in her side woke her up, and she blinked groggily. One of her coworkers at the coffee shop, a pretty henna-haired sophomore who was in one of Kathy's classes and had so far been remarkably understanding when Kathy napped during work hours, frowned down at her.

"Afternoon rush," the girl said shortly, "and you were starting to drool on the espresso machine." As Kathy checked the corner of her mouth and found this statement to be categorically not true, the girl continued. "I understand that freshmen year is hard, but jeez. You're dead on your feet, and when you're asleep, you twitch like you're having some kind of fit. Bad dreams? Professors chasing you across campus with machetes, demanding appropriate MLA citation form? Cafeteria food containing some deadly, flesh-eating virus?"

Since that sounded a bit too much like the bitter voice of experience, Kathy decided not to ask.

"No bad dreams," she said instead, a hint of a smile tugging on her lips. "Only good ones."