Dreamwalker (5 page)

Pete winced and pulled his arm back. Blood seeped from the wound. The pain should have awakened him, but it didn't.

Rayna ducked back through the hole in the wall and into the first brownstone. Across the street sat the passage back to the mansion. The street still looked clear.

But she said to leave a reflection…

Suddenly it was obvious. The feeling was quite bizarre. It was as if he had been turning a radio tuning dial, getting nothing but static, and then — POW— a station came in loud and clear. He knew exactly how to leave a reflection.

He pulled off his T-shirt. He held it up waist high in both hands by the shoulder seams and threw the shirt straight up in the air. It hung motionless about four feet from the ground. He cupped his hands together like he was making a snowball. He raised them over his head and opened them toward the hovering shirt. A ball of light flew from his fingers and hit the shirt in the chest. The light passed through the cotton weave. Golden illumination crept down to the ground and out of the neck and arms. It morphed into the outline of a man, features vague and indistinct. Pete sensed something in the shimmering mass, like an inaudible echo, a ricochet of his own essence, a reflection of his soul.

“Go back now!” Rayna's voice called in his head.

Pete turned from his radiant alter ego and ran through the front door. At either end of the boulevard, screaming Jeeps barreled down the road. Snarling exhaust reverberated between the buildings. He sprinted across the street and dove over the boulders that concealed the tunnel back to the mansion. He glanced back at the shattered brownstone.

The two Jeeps ground to a halt on either side. Two decaying zombies manned the machine guns mounted in the rear, weapons trained on the brownstone. In one Jeep, a tall, thin, black man with long dreadlocks and a goatee stood in the passenger seat, hands locked on the top of the windshield. His long, leather duster flapped around his knees.

The man wore a peaked officer's cap, like something off a Nazi uniform. A clenched skeletal fist crest topped the cap. From his neck hung a medallion hung in the shape of two crossed snakes, one black, and one white. Pete flashed back to the shadow creature that attacked the mansion last night.

That insight filled Pete with dread. This wasn't a dream arc he wanted to continue.

Simultaneously, both Jeep gunners fired. The muzzle flashes lit the street in blinding white. Bullets crashed in and through the building's façade. The staccato crack of another weapon came from the rear as the third Jeep opened up. Bricks began to disintegrate under the hail of flying lead.

My cue to exit,
Pete thought.

He ran down the tunnel and remembered Rayna said to close it up behind him. Without thinking, he reached behind him and snapped his fingers twice. The walls and floor at the exit of the tunnel began to converge. The light at the other end winked out. The collapsing walls moved forward, gaining on Pete, extinguishing the candles in the walls as they advanced. The shrinking space in the tunnel sent forward an increasing rush of air. Pete teetered as the wind pressed against his back. Feet from the trap door steps, he slipped. He went airborne and the wind blew him up the stairs.

He awoke instantly in his bed over DiStephano's and sat straight up. The room was still dark, lit only by streetlights coming through the one dingy window. He looked at his watch. 2:30 a.m. An hour of sleep?

His arm brushed the sheets. It felt like he scraped it on sandpaper. He clicked on the light.

Blood seeped from a red slice on his arm, just like the one from his dream.

He remembered Rayna's words, “What happens here doesn't stay here.”

He was a hell of a dreamer, but nothing from a dream ever manifested itself in the real world.

But that was no normal dream. He hadn't been omniscient and detached. Near the end, the soul echo trick and the magic collapsing tunnel came to him without thinking, but he would have been lost without Rayna's help. And Rayna, why did she have to tell him her name? He created her.

But this dream's biggest difference was that he had been afraid, and his injured arm said justifiably so.

He wiped some dripping blood. The flow had stopped. If he'd been caught in those machine gunner's sights…

Pete reached over and flipped off the light. He stared up at the shadows on the ceiling.

None of this could be good.

Cauquemere slammed his hand against the wall.

“How could this happen?” he yelled.

He stood in the devastated brownstone with the bullet-riddled shirt of the unknown dreamwalker in his hands. He wadded it up and threw it against the wall in frustration. He had been cheated out of a good execution.

“I sensed him here,” he said. “His spirit was strong and clear. I could not have been mistaken.”

He looked back at the shirt on the floor.

“Unless he left a reflection. A cheap trick that won't fool me again. But how could he learn to leave a reflection? This was the dreamwalker's first trip to Twin Moon City. I am certain of that. I feel every soul that crosses the border. How could he learn complex magic so quickly?”

A zombie gunner beside him looked at his master in blank confusion. Its jaw ratcheted up and down.

“He must have had help!” Cauquemere said.

He marched to the back of the brownstone. His long, leather duster trailed like a cape. He looked out the missing rear window at the combat Jeep idling beyond. The gunner in the rear moved the machine gun barrel to one side, keeping Cauquemere out of the line of fire. He averted his eyes from his master, more a gesture of fear than respect.

Cauquemere placed his hands on the edge of the window sill, closed his eyes, and opened his senses. The soul trace came through. He smiled in recognition.

Waikiki Simon,
he thought. He could sense what was left of Simon's energy on the window. To Cauquemere, it was still warm.

There was no way Waikiki Simon would have been any help to the dreamwalker. Simon was down to three cards in his hand and was about to fold for the last time. While he couldn't have taught the dreamwalker, perhaps he'd seen who did. Cauquemere needed to question him before Simon tossed in those last few cards and turned full zombie. After that, Simon would be able to follow commands, but independent thought and long-term memory would be history.

The driver of the Jeep in the back yard wore full motorcycle leathers. The left leg and arm were worn through where the gunner had used them to sand a road at seventy-five miles per hour. One large scab covered the left side of his face where his left ear was missing. The rest of his face was a pallid lifeless gray, but his eyes burned bright with a fire only psychosis could keep blazing.

“Get me Simon,” Cauquemere commanded the driver. “Alive. Bring him to the palace.”

Both the driver and the gunner turned to Cauquemere to acknowledge the command. They exploded in rabid laughter. The Jeep pulled away in a flash of whirling wheel blades.

Cauquemere wanted no dangling loose ends while his deal in the tactile world went down, and the seer named the dreamwalker a loose end. Better to catch the dreamwalker here on his own turf, where he would have all the advantages.

Cauquemere first sensed the dreamwalker the day before yesterday. He searched the worlds outside of Twin Moon City and caught the scent of a dreamwalker in some ridiculous image of a Southern plantation house. However, the vision was unclear and the spirit he sensed vanished. That experience sent him to Prosperidad. She had confirmed his fears, though he was certain that the untrustworthy bitch held something back. A dreamwalker who could leave soul reflections could be a serious problem.

He pulled his peaked cap down lower on his forehead and headed back to his Jeep. He had business back at the palace to complete this evening. Whatever was planned for the tactile world, Twin Moon City still needed to be ruled and new citizens recruited. He would find the dreamwalker, here or in Atlantic City. It would make no difference. Either way, the dreamwalker would die.

Chapter Nine

The two Gothic spires of Cauquemere's palace rose like daggers into the empty sky. Perpetually lit circular windows at each tower's peak looked down on the buildings of Twin Moon City, artificial irises that reminded the residents there was no sanctuary from the
petra loa's
view. The granite-sheathed palace at the base of the towers filled a city block. Crenellated turrets anchored each corner and battlements ran across the top of the wall. Thick iron bars covered the few windows. The palace's first line of defense stood a hundred feet from the building, a ten-foot iron rail fence. The tips of the fence were sharpened to lance points, with human heads impaled upon them. The heads were in varying states of decay, some reduced to bare skulls.

Yellow, zombie-driven Jeeps stampeded the barren streets outside the main gate. The combined blat of the engines roared like a symphony of chain saws. Some Jeeps careened in wild circles around the palace. With each pass, the vehicles leaned up on two wheels as they drifted around a corner, gunner hiked out in the cargo area, gripping the machine gun. Others idled by the fence. Those drivers' heads bounced and nodded, their hands fiddled with the steering wheel, until, as if that expenditure of energy was not enough to relieve the rising pressure behind it, the crew screamed with laughter. Then the Jeep would join the feral melee whirling around the central den, often grazing another clan member as it found its place in the pack.

The palace's thick stone walls blocked the sounds of the chaos outside the gates from an enormous room within. Oak beams supported a cathedral ceiling that stretched up into the darkness. Burning torches on the walls cast a flickering amber light throughout the windowless space. Dusty tapestries depicting torture and murder decorated the walls.

Dwarfed by the vast expanse around them, one man and three women sat at the center of the room around a circular mahogany table. Each wore a simple, white, ankle-length tunic. Though all had yet to reach age twenty-five, each had coarse, gray, shoulder-length hair. A sparse silver beard hung down from the man's chin. Their hollowed cheekbones and sunken eyes testified to devoured youth, one not slowly erased by the tides of time, but scoured away by a single storm surge. Each had the vacant stare of one who had seen a lifetime of horror.

The room pulsed with a spectral force. Thousands of rivulets of it flowed in from far beyond these walls, each with the faint signature of the soul that bled it. The streams coalesced into a river of energy with a hypnotic thrum and surge. The power gave the nightmare city beyond the castle walls cohesion and strength to the damned who shared the table.

Bulky shackles bound their ankles to the chair legs, which were bolted to the planks of the wooden floor. Thick leather straps girded their waists and buckled behind the chair, leaving only the captives' arms free.

All performed the same ritual, though out of sync with each other. Small translucent spheres floated in a clockwise swirl above the table. The prisoner reached out with one pale, withered arm and plucked a sphere from the air. Each sphere held a different tiny image within it. Some were innocuous, just a view of a house or a person's face. Others were still life pictures of terror. A knife coated in blood, a rabid dog, a horned demon.

One by one, the four placed the retrieved visions in the center of the table. Spheres rolled closer and joined, like two soap bubbles becoming one. The two visions inside melded and gave birth to a new combined image. A third, fourth, and fifth sphere joined and the resulting orb, and its image grew more complex and complete.

When finished, the vision in the sphere came alive, a small horrific holographic movie. Acts of awful brutality and torment played themselves out. Horrible creatures stalked the defenseless. Plagues and catastrophes swallowed innocent lives. At each terrifying tale's conclusion, the picture skipped, reset to the start, and played again.

With the sphere complete, the four captives lowered their heads in unison and returned their hands to their armrests. Their fatigued chests sagged against the restraint belts. Long, labored breaths tried to renew their depleted bodies. The completed sphere rose from the table and joined the others that floated in slow orbits around the edge of the room. The four creators recharged. Then one lifted her eyes from the table, reached into the air, and with the impassive look of one forlorn of hope, began the exhaustive process again.

So ran Cauquemere's nightmare factory, where captive dreamwalkers created new visions of the unspeakable, new invitations to Twin Moon City for those in the tactile world.

Cauquemere swept in through the main entrance, black leather duster marking his wake. His boot heels pounded the floor planking with each long, powerful stride.

“Hard at work!” he announced. “Splendid, splendid.”

The four did not acknowledge his arrival, all their focus on the orbs.

Cauquemere expected nothing more. He let slip a lupine smile as he passed the table. He ran a pointed, polished fingernail through the strands of one woman's hair.

He much preferred this last decade's arrangement. For thousands of years before St. Croix released him, he had created and delivered nightmares to the corporeal world whenever anyone with a mirror and a bag of salt commanded, and he had no choice in the selection of the victim. Those souls he terrified to death crossed over to his reality, a source of energy to drain.

Once St. Croix freed him to target people at will, he searched the world for those who shared a version of his gift for jumping between the tactile world and his own. Tapped into his power, these dreamwalkers could fashion personal terrors as horrifying as his own. Targeted with a stream of endless nightmares, their sanity broke. Blackmailed with threats of their loved ones joining them in Twin Moon City, the dreamwalkers spent their servitude summoning visions Cauquemere delivered to unsuspecting victims.

With evil imaginings spun at four times the
petra loa's
rate, souls no longer entered his palace solo. They arrived wholesale. His dark spot in this reality grew into a personal city, a city where he made all the rules, a city that continued to expand.

He reached up and plucked one nightmare from its orbit around the room. As soon as it touched his fingertips, he saw the nightmare in its entirety. The dreamwalkers' work never disappointed.

Bernie Ganzer hiked the waist of his pajama bottoms up across his rotund midsection. He sat on the edge of his bed and without thought placed his glasses in its accustomed nightstand location. He swept the strands of his comb over back in place and settled in beneath the covers.

His wife of fifteen years dozed on her side. He sidled up behind her and wrapped an arm around her waist. He parted the hair at her neck with his nose and gave her a light kiss.

“Good night, Jennifer,” he whispered.

“Good night?” replied an unfamiliar thick, raspy voice.

Bernie's eyes snapped wide open. She grabbed his wrist with an iron grip. His heart went into overdrive.

The covers flew from the bed like they were pulled by wires. In one swift move, Jennifer flipped Bernie on his back and straddled him. Bernie looked up at a creature that was not his wife.

Jennifer's eyes were wider, with upturned edges and a snake's slit pupils. Red cilia flickered at the entrance of her flared nose. Her mis-shapened dog snout sprouted an uneven array of needle-like teeth. A black, forked tongue slithered around her lips.

“The night has just started,” she growled.

An uncontrolled stream of warm urine soaked the lower half of Bernie's pajamas. He opened his mouth but could not scream. He flailed in panic to dislodge the creature. It didn't flinch.

The mattress shifted beneath him. The sheets rolled in waves, a pulsating, irregular set of peaks and valleys.

The head of a brown pit viper ripped through the sheet at his side. It hissed like a steam vent. The snake slithered out and wrapped itself around his wrist. The cool, sleek scales passed over his skin and chills raced up his arm. Another round of silent screams. White foam formed on Bernie's lips.

More holes opened in the sheet. A dozen snakes writhed through the tattered cotton. They wrapped his arms and legs like ivy. Their heartbeats pulsed against his skin.

“Nighty night, darling,” the creature said.

Its jaws opened wide. The needle teeth ran all the way down its throat. Its breath stank of rotted fish.

The creature struck. Rows of teeth clamped Bernie's pudgy cheeks and tore his face from his skull.

Then the story repeated.

“Bernie, Bernie, Bernie,” Cauquemere said as he stared at the globe. “This just may be our last visit in your world.”

He'd been delivering nightmares to Roosevelt Street in Wichita for months now. Bernie had boarded the Insanity Express. Next stop, Twin Moon City.

Cauquemere's maniac drones wouldn't capture Waikiki Simon for a while. Plenty of time to make this delivery. Cauquemere closed his hand around the luminous sphere and vanished from the palace.

He reappeared in the darkened bedroom of Bernie Ganzer. The glowing orb in his right hand bathed the room in a soft, rose light. With silent steps, he glided to Bernie's bedside. Bernie's round outline lay under the covers inches from his wife. He made a low rumbling noise as he slept.

Cauquemere opened the drawer of the nightstand. He removed a black .38 Special revolver, Bernie's sad attempt to defend against home invasion. He slid it into his victim's hand. Bernie's fingers reflexively tightened around the grip. Bernie snorted and then settled back into a comfortable drone.

Cauquemere tossed the orb of nightmares in the air and caught it with his inverted palm. He rested it on Bernie's forehead. He released the sphere and it melted away. Bernie's eyes twitched rapidly beneath his eyelids. A thin whimper escaped his lips. He gripped the pistol.

“So wish I could stay,” Cauquemere said. Bernie would be primed for a murder/suicide as he awoke next to what he thought was his wife-turned-creature. Cauquemere would be ready to pull him to Twin Moon City as his soul was released. The Prince of Nightmares never lost.

“Other orbs beckon for delivery,” Cauquemere said in overwrought apology. “Twin Moon City doesn't populate itself.”

Cauquemere stepped back from the bed and returned to the land without dawn.