A Discovery

I have a headache. My face is all scrunched up in confusion. I don't understand.

I've stopped taking the medicine.

That new friend of mine showed me some drawings today. He's a pretty good artist.

I'm afraid to take risks like this, but I have to have a clear head to find out what's going on. I think that Voice might be helping me after all.

To my surprise, the drawings looked just like the man and woman from that first dream about the dog I told you about. He says being one of the Gifted means that Grandfather took your childhood, but gave you the childhood memories of someone else.

I have to get out of here.

He remembers the childhood of someone named Christopher (the same name as me) Niven, who was an only child. His parents loved him and spent as much time as possible with him. They spoiled him. He was the center of their lives.

Until the day he ran away. The boy ran because he wanted to see what the rest of the world was like. He was adventurous and curious and didn't think or care about how this affected his parents. He wandered around for some days or weeks (my friend says the memories have faded a bit) and was finally picked up by a police car. The boy had been in the woods the whole time.

He couldn't go back to his parents--they were dead. While looking for him, his mother had tripped and fallen, landing where a sharp branch was sticking up, impaling her eye and going into her brain. She died instantly.

The father was at home at the time, working to fix his chainsaw which could be used to clear a lot of the fallen trees and branches and brush and undergrowth to move through the woods more easily. However, there was an accident. Somehow the thing was turned on and bounced up, severing his left arm. By the time paramedics arrived and rushed him to the ER, he had lost too much blood.

I think it's obvious at this point that the people in that nightmare were my parents. I ran away. Their deaths were my fault. Which means that dream meant something. It had truth to it. It could be some long suppressed memory working its way up, but I don't think so. This man has my memories. My childhood. It was stolen and given to someone else. It is clear something out of the ordinary is going on. I'm confused and scared. This proves that at least some of the stuff I've gone through is real. Why does Dr. Beakman want to keep me here, thinking it's all in my head?

And now I have to cope with the knowledge that I signed away my own childhood.

Tonight I'm going to sneak around the place and figure out a route of escape.