"Ahh!! Not again!!" John screamed as he sat up. "Paul!! That's two bloody nightmares...two! Dammit, where are you! Jeez, maybe I should go see Rings and Geo before I do anything else..." his sentence trailed off.

"No! I'm not going back until I find Paul! That's final! The two of them can sit there and wait like a bunch of lousy tossers. What time is it, anyway?"

He glanced at his watch.

The hands read 6:30 a.m.

"It's six in the morning!!!! What the hell?? Where did the time go! I thought it was shot! Damn, I'm in trouble...wait, who cares, screw it, I'm going to find Paul!! He's been out here since yesterday evening!!"

John cursed some more as he got up on his feet and started looking for Paul again. He knew Paul didn't have much longer, but he just didn't know specifically, how many days, hours or minutes he had left. He just knew he had to find him...and fast. John searched everywhere he could for the rest of the morning.

No luck was with him. He became even more desperate, like an ice sculpter trying to sculpt a statue outside in a hundred degree weather.

12:30 pm...six more hours until sunset.

As the spirit left the night before, she told Paul that he could only survive if someone saved him before the sun sank below the horizon tomorrow.

That tomorrow is now today.

John and his mates didn't know it...they only had six hours to save Paul and so far, they had no progress.

John sighed to himself. Maybe he'd get more done if he joined the other lads and they worked together as a team. Also, the vision that he had remained and wouldn't go away. It stuck in his mind and wouldn't let go. It had such an impact on him...the more and more he thought about it, the more and more he felt red creeping up all around him. He shivered with fear as he hiked back to George and Ringo. The nightmare gripped his mind tightly; no matter how many times John tired to erase it, ignore it, use other thoughts like crowbars to pry it away, the nightmare stayed.

The Beatle then ran, attempting to flee from his terrifying vision. He wondered why he felt all right at first, and just all of a sudden, this had to spring up on him. Why now? Why now? John nervously and angrily thought. Once again, he had no idea where his feet were taking him, riding along for the trip, images of his surroundings fleeting by him, slowly turning red...slowly the red was growing like a cancer all around him...he couldn't escape it...

...John hit himself in the head with his hand. He was awake. His traitorous eyes no longer showed what he wanted to see; they unkindly showed him exactly what he didn't want to see.

His nightmare of crimson was coming true...was it??

He continued to flee, his tormenting vision pursuing him with passion...more red?? John thought. Suddenly, he closed his eyes as he stumbled onto the snow. Still wanting to flee, he opened his eyes to get up again.

He fell on blood, he swore he did. The snowy landscape is full of blood, he thought. No sign of white snow anywhere...just blood. He looked up at the sky, could it save him?? Just a little blue streak of sky was all he wanted. Blue, or any other color besides blood; he couldn't stand it anymore.

The sky died...it bled to death. Not one single spot of the sky was blue any longer.

Red was what the sky reflected back onto John's eyes.

John screamed. This was really freaking him out. He wasn't dreaming either...was he?? He pinched himself hard.

He was awake.

Who was playing the evil trick on him??

"Ok! Ok! I've had it!! Who cares if I die, right! Right here, right now?? How about now, huh?? Maybe I just need some help in finding Paul, ok?? I can't find him anywhere!!! Dammit, I want to find him! I have to find him! If I don't, then I don't know if I can continue on living!! Am I not looking hard enough??

I'm trying, I'm trying! I don't care what it takes!!" John fell to his knees and broke down, crying. Large, blue tears showered his clothes, his hands, the ground, the snow.

The tears wiped the red blood away, restoring everything to its natural beauty. The blood was defeated; the sky came back to life, bluer than ever. Red was no longer a threat to John's sanity. The nightmare reliquinshed its death grip on John's mind and disintegrated.

John opened his eyes...everything was normal. Was his promise to search for Paul until death was what someone was waiting for? A sincere promise that Paul would be saved no matter what the cost?

"Even my sanity??" John thought. "At least the nightmare is over..."

Perhaps I went a little too far with too many visions...he is too good a friend to just leave the innocent one to die...thought a female observer, a female spirit.

~~~***~~~

2:30 pm...the countdown...four more hours until sunset.

John struggled to stay sane until he met up with Ringo and George. He had to truly concentrate and focus, but he knew that the vision would never return, and he was thankful for that. He walked and walked, and finally he found his two mates.

Ringo was playing Solitare, and George was asleep; loyally obeying their leader, they stayed there at that spot where John told them to meet until he would return.

Ringo didn't notice John until John fell to his knees besides the youngest Beatle.

"John!!!!! You're here! What happened? Where were you!"

"Ringo, I made a promise to meself that I'd find Paul, and was not going to come back here until I did. Apparently, that wasn't good enough...I had to promise and swear that I'd find Paul no matter what the price was...even my sanity...even my life..."

"John, promise to who?"

"Promise to whoever!! I got another vision, Ringo, another vision, two more actually! Like the one at home..."

"You had like, um, a dream?"

"Ringo! Do I have to spell it out for you?? I had a nightmare where I saw Paul, and he was alive! He even kicked me! Oh, to be able to have him kick me again! He was alive, man, alive! Then I had to chase him down and I caught him after he fell...and he just disappeared! Then everything went red...red!!"

"Paul was alive?? And red?? You hate that color!"

"I know! It was like I was living in an ocean of blood! It was horrible..." John moaned.

"What's going on?" George got up sleepily. He rubbed his eyes.

"John just had another vision."

"Oh no, that was just the first one!!"

"First one???"

"Do you remember if Paul said anything?" George asked, playing the role of detective.

"Um...God...something about not being able to catch him...and that we had to save him!!"

"I hate these things! These signs! Of course we know we have to save him!"

"You hate them?? You're not the one that has to see them! Then the second vision was real, man, I was awake. I was trying to find Paul again, and everything was going red. But I wasn't dreaming, I swear it! I pinched myself, and hit myself in the head, and I was awake! Red all over the place...it was driving me insane!!"

"Are you sure you're ok John? Can you go on?" Ringo asked.

"Dammit Ringo, can't you understand that I have to go on no matter what it takes?! Paul's dead if I don't do something! Let's go! What are we waiting for!!"

"Ringo, I don't want to douse John with glass of water again cos I don't have one, ok?" George pleaded. "I say that we go find Paul now...these visions are just too prophetic. But you're sane enough to search right?" George asked cautiously, trying not to provoke John's anger or frustration even further.

"Yeah, yeah...I think I'm ok now..." John said as he breathed in and out slowly to calm himself down. A white light flashed in the back of his mind, taming his anxiety, anger, rage, and filling it with tranquility as if the vision had never occurred. He was now in his normal state of mind, the normal John Lennon both George and Ringo remembered.

"All right, let's go, we wouldn't want to keep his holiness waiting, right?" John said slyly smiling.

"Yeah! Let's go and take him home!" George said.

~~~***~~~

4:30 pm...two more hours and counting...

"More Deja vu? Except we're not on skis this time," John said. "And still no Paul! I think he's just doing this to spite me, just to watch me slowly go insane."

"John, we're going to find him. You caught him in your dream, didn'tcha?" George asked.

"Yeah, you're right. Maybe that's the one good thing that came out of those bloody visions."

"Are you sure we checked everywhere that we could?" Ringo inquired.

"Yeah, you know how many times we wandered all over the place looking for a Beatle?" George asked back.

"Maybe we overlooked something? You never know, and I don't think Paul would go and hide himself on purpose. He wants to be seen so he could be rescued," John concluded.

"All right, that kinda helps us 'ere, but we even checked obvious locations, like the ski lift, and he's not around anywhere," Ringo added sadly.

"But remember...whatever it takes, Ringo. Whatever it takes."

"We are willing to do anything for Paul, correct? Then we should all just stop talking and keep searching."

"I'm with you George, things are too serious at the moment to digress any further," John finished.

They continued to search and search. Why can't we find Paul after searching all this time? the triumvirate thought.

~~~***~~~

5:00 pm...an hour and a half to go...time ticks away when you're not paying attention...

"It's getting too dark for our own good, lads. We're gonna get lost ourselves!" Ringo said. "I can barely see the back of me hands!"

"That's cos they're covered with black gloves, softhead," John retorted. "It's not too dark. The sun's not even setting yet."

"Yeh, but it will soon, so we better get a move on!" George demanded.

"We are! That's what we're doing right now!" Ringo said, shielding his eyes with his hand from the deep orange sun rays, trying to look for Paul.

"*Sigh*...we're trying so hard, but Paul's not turing up. We shoulda seen 'im by now, don't you think?" George asked.

"Well, we have to keep on trying, maybe we're not trying hard enough!" John said, walking around several trees to see if Paul was behind any of them, and he wasn't.

"Well, what if we split up?" George asked.

"No no no! We are not doing that again! Don't be daft Geo, remember what happened to John??"

"I know I know! But wouldn't it go faster then? Instead of us walking together and not finding anything, it would be smarter to have the three of us search three different areas like last time. It's not hard."

"Ok, then when John starts getting more visions, you can take care of it!!"

"John can take perfect care of himself! Didn't you see him come back to us at the meeting spot?! He turned out ok after a little break!"

"I don't want to risk having our John-John go nuts and not have anyone around to help him out. He can't get by without his friends!"

"He won't go nuts! He said he was all right already! Don't you have any faith in him??" George asked angrily.

"I'm just worried that he won't be all right then, ok if he's all right now, but what about then??"

"What, are you saying that John isn't good enough to go it alone or something??"

"I'm not saying that!"

"Then what are you sayin' then??"

"I'm saying that, what if some vision just comes to him, and he gets all delusional and does something drastic?? Remember when you had to douse him with water as a reality check? If you didn't, then what would have happened?"

"That was then and this is now! John's perfectly all right!"

"Yeh, like you said, this is now! Sure, now he's all right, but what if something happens then, like in the future! We don't know how he'll react, it's too spontaneous to keep track!"

"Then maybe we should just ask him if he can do it or not, huh? Just to prove and see who's right and who's wrong."

"All right then, I'll take you on your offer. John?"

"John?? Arrrggh, now look what you've done!!"

"What?? What did I do! You were the one who started this!"

"It's all yer fault!"

"Not my fault, blame something on yerself for a change!"

"Now look what else you've caused, we have to look for two Beatles now!!"

"Me?? You did it too!"

"I think we should split up, just like I said before."

"Fine with me, George!!" The two quarrelling Beatles tried to walk away from each other...

...but both tripped and fell, blaming each other for the accident.

They looked at their feet.

Their laces were tied together, just like before.

"I don't think that we're allowed to go it alone anymore George...with John gone now, and Paul still out there...it's for our own good."

The time is now...6:00 pm...half an hour to go...

Onward Chapter 8

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