Dreamwalker (22 page)

Chapter Forty-Six

Standing in the plane of former Twin Moon City, Rayna shook her head in denial.

“No, Estella,” she pleaded. “You have to come with me. This was all for you. Everything I've done, even my…” The word “suicide” stuck in her throat. “…was to get you free.”

“No, Little Sis,” Estella said. “It's not like that. I'll cross over. It's you who have the choice.”

“Why would I stay here?”

“It isn't the way you think,” Estella said. “You took all those pills to follow me here, to save me. But you didn't die.”

“But the pills,” Rayna said. “I took every one I could find, enough to kill a horse.”

“Luckily, you're not a horse. The doctors saved you. Your body is in a coma.”

Rayna imagined herself in a hospital bed, feeding tubes and ventilators violating her body. She shuddered. Dead would be better.

“So I can't follow you?” she asked.

“You can,” Estella said. “But you don't have to.” She pointed to the sun. “That's my next destination, no other options, but not necessarily yours. This place is a crossroads for you, not a way station.
You
can go home.”

“How do you know?” Rayna asked. “You were already dead when I took the pills.”

“Pete told me in the message from the Antelope.”

Rayna's heart skipped a beat. Pete knew.

“My body?” she said. “I can jump back in and go back to normal?”

“There may be some damage,” Estella said. “You put a wild mix of chemicals into your system. There could be organ issues. And any oxygen loss, even for a short time…there could be brain damage, Sis. I can't say what'll happen if you go back.”

Two awful options. A frustrating lifetime in a body so damaged she couldn't function on her own, or worse, the living death of waking locked in an unresponsive, breathing corpse. Both were as bad as life in Twin Moon City.

But then there was Option Three. Recovery. And Pete.

Her pulse raced at the thought. She'd have real time in the real world with Pete, the world where the colors were bright and the focus sharp, where the smells reached up through your sinus to tickle your brain, far from the washed out world of dreams. She imagined being with Pete, feeling the electricity of his kiss, the tingle of his touch. She'd experience that wonderful completeness of each dream they shared, without the nagging reminder that it was all just temporary.

She would have to find him, wherever he was. Real Rayna would have to fit into his world the way Phantom Rayna fit into his dreams. All provided of course that she returned whole.

No obstacle mattered. Every problem paled compared to the potential payoff. She'd bet it all to save Estella and won. She'd double down for Pete.

“You can send me home?” she asked Estella.

“I drained the last amp out of Cauquemere to do it.”

“Afterwards,” Rayna asked, “you will have the energy follow the others into the sun?”

“All it takes to cross over is to let go.”

Rayna smiled.

“Take me home, Big Sister.”

“I knew you'd go.”

Estella reached over and cupped her hands over Rayna's forehead. An orb appeared between her fingertips. Rayna closed her eyes and a tiny sparkle lit within the globe. Rayna's body began to fade. More twinkling points of light appeared in the sphere. Rayna became transparent.

“I love you,” she said.

“I love you, Little Sis,” Estella said. “When it's your time, I'll be waiting.”

Rayna evaporated and the orb became a mass of glittering lights. Estella cradled the sphere to her breast and the two of them disappeared from Twin Moon City.

The horizon began to contract. The sky and surface shrank in an ever tightening circle, until a small ring enclosed the mindless worm that was Cauquemere's remaining essence. The plane that held Twin Moon City shriveled and wrapped the worm like a black silk stocking. The worm wiggled within its solitary, skintight reality, devoid of power and purpose.

Estella rematerialized in Legacy Hospice at Rayna's bedside, the flashing orb cupped in her hands. She looked down at her still sister with adoration. What a gift she had to save her sister's life twice.

She touched Rayna's temple. With no life force within, she couldn't make contact with whatever remained inside. But from the outside, she looked perfect. Like a sleeping angel.

She laid the orb on Rayna's forehead. Her sister's body flinched, as if a breeze passed over it. Then with both hands, Estella massaged the orb into Rayna's head. The sparkling lights lit Rayna's face as they vanished beneath her skin.

Estella held her sister's cheeks with her fingertips. She felt Rayna back within her body.

Estella's face went white. She felt the damage. Extensive damage. Neurons fired into voids without response. Dead gaps appeared where Rayna's atrophied brain had collapsed away from the skull.

Estella shattered inside. She hadn't freed Rayna from Twin Moon City. She just imprisoned her somewhere else.

“I love you,” she whispered. Tears streamed down her face. “I'm so sorry.”

She faded from the hospice room to continue her trip to the reality beyond all others.

Chapter Forty-Seven

Rayna awoke alone in the dark. A silent abyss stretched out forever in all directions, a terrifying, complete isolation. All perception had disappeared, nothing physical, visual, auditory. Not even a sense of self in this infinite, yet claustrophobic space.

“Estella?”

She spoke but made no sound. The endless void engulfed her.

There was a familiarity to this place. She remembered being here before, years ago, after the sand and waves in Tahiti. The tempting shell, the blinding crush of the water, the taste of salt. Then she was here in the darkness, alone. Until Estella…

The scene shifted.

Rayna appeared in a cruise ship pilothouse. The polished wooden ship's wheel stood on a shaft in the center of the room. Banks of light and dials spread out on either side. To her right stood the ship's engine telegraph, the twin brass handles both straight up in the ALL STOP position. A blank, gray steel wall finished the pilothouse aft. Reinforced watertight doors to the far right and left lead to the deck outside. At least she assumed there was a deck outside. Impenetrable fog swirled against the three bow-facing windows.

She tried opening the door to the right. The handle would not budge. She crossed the bridge and tried the one on the left. No difference. On closer inspection, it wasn't a door at all. The edges were just painted on the wall, the central handle bolted to the bulkhead.

She turned back to the controls under the windows. The displays confirmed that the engines were idling. Gauge readings for water pressure and ventilation pulsed regularly back and forth between the low and high ends of their green ranges. She tried throwing a few switches. No response. She gave the wheel a sharp turn. The compass heading remained unchanged. She yanked on the engine telegraph. The handles were frozen at ALL STOP.

She shaded her eyes and peered out the window. Shadows flickered at the fog's edges and evaporated. Vague, muffled noises floated outside the window, moving closer only to retreat before recognition.

She paced the narrow bridge. None of this made sense. She was back in the real world, she could feel it, but had been sidetracked. The clarity of her sensations, even though some of what she saw was indistinct, proved that this was no dream. How could she be conscious, and awake, and here?

You put a lot of drugs in your system,
she remembered her sister saying.

Panic rushed in.

There could be brain damage, Sis.

She recognized the regular rhythm of the dancing water and air pressure needles on the console. Bump bump. Bump bump. She felt her pulse at her carotid artery. The two beats were in perfect sync.

“Oh no.”

She was damaged. Her autonomic body still functioned. Lungs inhaled, blood flowed, but her mind was wounded. She had no control over her body and no sensations from the outside world.

She remembered reading once how the mind connects images to memories in order to facilitate recognition. When someone saw an unfamiliar object, the mind quickly found the closest approximation from memory and inserted it as the identification. That was why shapes in the dark often seemed like something else.

This vision was her mind's interpretation, trapped and powerless on the bridge while the ship idled beneath her, ready to respond to commands she could not give. The outside world registered as shadows and murmurs as her senses' signals distorted across damaged synapses. The bridge doors, only painted in place, were her mind's acceptance of what feared to face. She would not get better.

Rayna backed up against the rear bulkhead and slid to the floor. She bet it all, and this time, she lost. She didn't make it back to Pete. Now she couldn't follow her sister either. Not until her imprisoning body passed on. From the readings on the console, that would be a long time from now. This low mileage model had a lot of life left in it.

She buried her face in her hands. A tear rolled down her cheek.

Chapter Forty-Eight

Physically, Pete recovered. The gray grew out of his hair, which made his mother quite jealous. Balanced meals and a return to running did combat with his cadaverous appearance and won the fight. The family doctor had given him some sleeping pills Pete couldn't pronounce and Pete had knocked out ten hours per night that first week.

But he ditched the pills the second week. They had an unadvertised side effect. When he took them, he didn't dream.

And he had to dream, because his psychological recovery didn't match the physical. He'd experienced waking and sleeping nightmares he could never share with anyone. He'd killed a man with his bare hands and a bit of magic, and while St. Croix deserved his fate, knowing he had the capability to kill made Pete fear what else lurked undiscovered within him. But the cloud that darkened the sky above all others was his loss of Rayna. He hadn't even known how big a hole he had in his life, until she filled it and then left it empty again.

Some nights he rebuilt the mansion. Room by room and wall by wall he did the work by hand, leaving nothing for his subconscious to complete. He wanted the therapeutic satisfaction of re-creating that part of his life.

But the driving reason to dream was to contact her. Rayna was gone, crossed over with her sister to a place far better than this. But if there was somewhere they might reconnect, it would be in his dreams, where they had first met. So on non-mansion nights, while whatever adventure unfurled around him, he kept one eye out for his golden-haired girl with the smile like a sunburst.

But fall decayed into winter, and winter gave birth to spring, and Rayna never appeared. His dream girl never joined him on safari, never went skydiving, and never hiked the trail to the summit of Mount Rainier. Each night as he drifted off to sleep, he wished for her return, if only to know that she was all right and share one final, wonderful moment with her. Each morning he awakened with the same widening sense of loss.

As his nights turned into a routine of disappointment, his days began a backward slide. The calling began again. The same pensive feelings he had in Ithaca came back in force. Random word selection soon wound up to full speed. This time Pete could read it. This time he knew where to go and why.

So on a beautiful spring day, when he was supposed to be registering for summer semester classes, Pete stuffed two suitcases with most of the clothes he owned. He left a note on the kitchen table for his parents. It was as specific as he could be without sounding crazy. He locked the front door behind him and headed for his car.

This time, no buses.

Chapter Forty-Nine

Rayna had every nuance of the ship's bridge memorized. Her mind had rewarded her and overlooked mounting a chronometer on the console. Marking the passage of time only had value if some welcome event approached.

She no longer tried to discern the shadows in the mist, no longer tugged at the fake door handles on the walls. Only the mental discipline she forged in Twin Moon City saved her sanity. She was here by choice, knew the risks, knew the rewards. She'd gambled. She lost.

As she walked the edge of the bridge, the beat of her heart registered on the gauges. The numbers were blurry. She wiped the face of the gauge with no effect. Even the edges of the console were indistinct. She looked around and the whole bridge lost detail. The room shimmered into a grainy tapestry of blacks and grays.

The world snapped back into focus in brilliant color. White sand stretched down to a turquoise sea flecked with whitecaps. A light, warm breeze blew her hair back from her face and basked her in bright, invigorating sunlight. The branches of nearby palm trees waved hello in the wind. Two white wooden chairs faced the water. She recognized this strip of beach and sighed. It was the place Pete had conjured up as Key West a lifetime ago.

“It's about time you got here.”

She spun around. That could only be one person's voice.

“Pete!”

He was really there, in a blue T-shirt and tan shorts, looking more wonderful than she remembered. She fell into his warm embrace and knew this was no illusion. He radiated life, the same way he had in Twin Moon City, and all the other places they'd been between there and the tactile world.

“How did you get here?” she asked.

“I'm a dreamwalker,” he said. “It is no big deal for me to be here, remember? I've been waiting for you.”

“How long?” she asked.

Pete pulled away, slipped his arm around her waist, and led her to the lounge chairs. They shared one, side by side, and faced the sea. He pulled her close.

“I assumed you crossed over with Estella,” he said.

“I could have. I wanted to follow her, but I had to come back. For you. For us.”

Pete leaned over and caressed her cheek with a kiss.

“So you know where you are?”

“I'm in my body but something's wrong. I can't control it. None of my senses work. I'm trapped in there.” She squeezed Peter's waist. “Until now.” She took in the beautiful clouds on the horizon. “What's going on?”

“You're dreaming,” Pete said. “Your conscious mind went to sleep and you're dreaming.”

“Dreaming?” she said. “I'm sleeping in a coma?”

“Your consciousness needs to rest, even if your body is inactive. You've been sleeping all along, on and off. You just haven't been dreaming. So, each interval asleep seems like the blink of an eye.”

“I just started dreaming?” she said.

“Well,” Pete said, “I may have coaxed your subconscious just a tad.” He ran his fingers through her, hair. “I might have missed you.”

Rayna leaned toward him and they kissed with the passion accumulated since their goodbye in Cauquemere's palace. In the solitary days on the ship's bridge, she'd forgotten how spectacular it felt. She sank her head to his chest.

“Pete,” she said. “It is so hard in there. It's like…”

Pete put his finger to her lips.

“Don't,” he said. “It's all right now. Whenever you sleep, I'll spin us a wonderful place to go, fantastic things for us to experience.”

A sad thought crossed her mind.

“Pete, I'm not getting better.”

“We have to grow old together somewhere. Might as well be here.” Pete stood up, grabbed Rayna's hands, and raised her up. “Let me show you where we'll start, okay?”

Rayna looked around at the perfect beach.

“We haven't already?”

“Nah, this was just to say hello,” he said. “Let me give you someplace we'll call our own. Ready?”

Rayna smiled and shrugged.

“Now,” Pete said with a mischievous smile, “I'm only going to do the finger thing for effect.” He bent and whispered in her ear. “It makes me look
so
cool.”

Pete raised his hand and snapped his fingers. From the top down, the scene changed as if the old one crumpled away like a dropped curtain. They stood on the porch of Pete's mansion.

“Welcome home, Miss Scarlet,” Pete drawled as he opened the front door.

The polished hardwood floors stretched out from the foyer, into the sitting rooms and down an apparently endless hallway. The elegant staircase again swept up to the second floor. Large oil paintings hung on the gleaming white walls. She recognized the scenes. She and Pete petting the bear at the zoo. She and Pete looking over the Grand Canyon. The two of them in the apartment in Twin Moon City, her with a can of ravioli between her knees. The final painting was of the two of them sitting on the lounge chair on the beach moments ago.

“The pictures…” she said.

Pete wrapped both arms around her waist from behind.

“And look at all the empty wall space we still have to fill,” he said. “Adventures await.”

He led her up the staircase to the second floor. Behind the main wall, a forest of unfinished studs outlined future rooms.

“Up here,” he said, “create what you want. Finish, decorate, rearrange. This house, our house, is equally yours.” Pete gave her a sly smile. “Use your imagination.”

Rayna was awash in joy. Pete had somehow come through again, just like liberating her from the palace prison. She couldn't be any more in love with him than she was right now.

Something tugged at her. The mansion went wavy.

“Pete!” she said. “I think I'm waking up.”

Pete held her face in his hands and kissed her lips.

“It's all right here waiting for you. I'll be sitting on the porch, counting the minutes.”

He kissed her again.

“I love you,” he said.

The mansion went out of focus. She reached up to hold Pete's hands against her face, to stretch the moment just a second longer. He vanished. Her fingertips touched her own cheeks. The mansion was gone.

Nurse Davies peered into room 18 at the Legacy Hospice. The lights were dim. Pete sat up in a chair beside Rayna's bed. He'd slept sitting up, as he did all the nights he stayed with her. Somehow, he held her hand throughout the night each time. Pete rubbed his eyes awake.

“It's six o'clock, Pete.”

“Thanks,” he said. “I've got to get back and get ready for work.” He stood and gave Rayna a loving look, the same one he'd given her every day over the past few months.

No, the others had a more wistful quality. This one looked more…satisfied.

“She appreciates you staying her with her,” Nurse Davies said. She knew it made visitors feel better if someone else believed.

Pete smiled as if the joke was on her.

“I know she does. Have a good morning, Nurse Davies.”

Pete walked down the hallway to the front door. Nurse Davies entered the room and turned the lights up full. She straightened Rayna's sheets and tucked her in. She pulled a stray hair from across her face and placed it behind her ear.

She looks so good,
she thought.
Even better this morning somehow. Now there's my imagination working overtime.

Rayna awoke standing on the ship's grayscale bridge again. She felt glorious. She could make it through this trial. Most people lived while they were awake and then slept with their life on hold. She'd just do the opposite. While awake, she'd plan the life she lived when she slept. Best of all, that life was with Pete.

She looked out into the impenetrable mist outside the window and imagined the adventures they would share. Behind her, an inch of the door seam painted on the wall transformed into the real thing.