Dreamfire (16 page)

Josh held her breath. She could tell that Will was overwhelmed from his shallow breathing, but she could also tell that it was important to Deloise that he liked the space she'd created for him.

“It's … great,” Will managed, making Josh wince. But then he reached out and put a hand on Deloise's shoulder. “I'm just feeling a bit like Alice in Wonderland right now.”

Deloise smiled forgivingly at him. “I know it's a change. I'm sure you're used to a more … minimalist decor style. But most of this stuff you really did need—like sheets and blankets and a trash can—and there's nothing wrong with having it all match if you're going to buy it anyway.”

Will nodded, still gazing around like he was afraid to touch anything. Then he gave Deloise a smile. “It's really, really nice, Del. You did an amazing job. I don't know how to thank you. If the guys at the home saw this, they'd probably be so jealous they'd beat me up.”

Deloise laughed. “I wish we could do this for everybody there. But since we can't, I'm glad you like it. Oh—wait, there's one more thing.” She opened the closet and dragged out a very thin, four-by-five-foot package.

“Go ahead,” she said, propping the wrapped gift against the bed and stepping back.

“Is it a billboard?” Will guessed.

“
Open
it.”

Carefully, he found the taped corner on the back and pried it up. He managed to get the paper off in one piece—Josh would have ended up with just shreds in her hands—to reveal the quilt Dustine had given him, expertly pinned against a red background in a solid wood frame.

“Bet you were wondering what that nail in the wall was for, weren't you?” Deloise asked, but Josh and Will were both speechless. “Help me lift it up.”

After a few minutes of maneuvering, they got the frame to hang on the appointed nail.

“It looks perfect,” Deloise said, gathering up the wrapping paper.

And it did. Suddenly, the room had an identity—a focal point.

The phone in the other room rang and Deloise theatrically clapped a hand to her forehead. “
That's
what I forgot to buy,” she cried. “A phone for in here.” She darted into her own bedroom.

The overwhelmed expression began to return to Will's face; a vertical line appeared between his eyebrows. Josh stood next to him and they stared at the quilt on the wall until she finally said, “So, Del went a little overboard, but this will work, right?”

Will shook his head instead of nodding, saying, “This is … I hate accepting charity, but—”

“This isn't charity,” Josh said, turning to him.

“But thank you.”

They looked at each other. “Thank you for all of this,” Will said, glancing around the room and swallowing.

“You're welcome,” Josh told him.

She didn't realize what her arms were doing until she was already hugging him. He hesitated, stiffening before allowing himself to step closer to her. He smelled like cheap detergent and some deodorant, original scent, not unpleasant or too strong.

Without thinking, she tilted her head back. She didn't even understand why she did so until she saw the surprise on Will's face: Ian would have kissed her then. But Will didn't know what to do, and Josh pulled away before he gave her what she'd instinctively asked for.

She put a few feet between them and jammed her hands in her pockets. Will was
looking
at her again, trying to make sense of that moment, and then Deloise blew in the door and the moment was gone.

“Hey,” she said. “Winsor and I are going to walk a nightmare before dinner. You two want to come?”

“Yes,” Josh and Will said at the same time.

*   *   *

“How do we know who the dreamer is when there are this many people around?” Will asked as they reached the top of the wooden waterslide tower. He tried not to look down; he, Josh, Deloise, and Winsor were nearly a hundred feet off the ground.

“It's not always easy,” Josh replied. “That's why I usually take you into less crowded dreams.”

They were standing a few feet from the launchpad for a waterslide that began eight stories off the ground. The air whipping around them reeked of chlorine. Below, an amusement park stretched for miles in every direction, punctuated by more giant waterslide towers. Some of them soared twenty, thirty stories high.

The platform was peopled by families and couples in bathing suits, a few children. As was common in the Dream, some of the people were faceless, indistinct figures made when the dreamer's mind ran out of ideas.

They creeped Will out.

“What's the dreamer afraid of?” Josh asked. “It's an amusement park. Everybody's having a good time.”

“So we should look for something upsetting,” Will said. “Maybe a haunted house.”

“Mirror mansion,” Deloise put in.

“Guess-Your-Weight,” Winsor suggested.

“If the dreamer is afraid of heights,” Deloise added, “we should get down now.”

“And why is Deloise suggesting that?” Josh asked Will, but it was an easy test.

“Because the worst always happens in people's nightmares,” he recited. “If the dreamer comes up here and is terrified that he'll fall, he probably will.”

“Or the tower might collapse, taking all of us with it,” Josh concluded.

“Are you in line?” a girl around fourteen asked Deloise. She wore a bright pink-and-yellow bikini, but tears streaked her sunburned face.

“No,” Deloise said, at the same time Josh said, “That's her.”

Will blinked. How could Josh know that?

“So it's my turn,” the girl said miserably, and sat down in the shallow pool of water at the top of the slide.

Suddenly three men in Army fatigues charged up the staircase carrying preposterously oversized guns in their arms. Each soldier stood more than seven feet tall.

“Don't shoot me!” the girl screamed.

“Josh?” Will asked, fighting the urge to drop to his belly on the platform.

“Please don't make me go down,” the girl begged. One of the men fired and the bullet sank into the wood next to her head with a sharp thud.

That cemented it—she was definitely the dreamer. However Josh had known, she had been exactly right, just as she always was. Will opened his mouth to ask what to do, but Josh shouted, “Meet me at the bottom!” and threw herself on top of the girl.

They vanished down the slide.

Will looked at Deloise and Winsor. He'd never been in-Dream with anyone besides Josh, and he felt her absence like a sort of nakedness. “Who's next?” he asked.

“We should go after the military guys,” Winsor said.

“Wait, what?” Will asked. “Why?”

The military guys were, at that moment, starting to rappel down the side of the tower.

“They're the villains. We just need a knife and we can cut their lines,” Winsor said.

“But we don't have a knife,” Deloise pointed out.

“Wait!” Will cried, accidentally raising his voice. He couldn't believe how much time they were wasting; no wonder Josh's resolution rate was 24 percent higher than anyone else's. “You're forgetting Distay's Brocard:
A letter unopened is a message unsent.
”

He couldn't quite believe he had just repeated one of Josh's stupid mantras, especially when Deloise said, “I have no idea what that means!”

“It means that if you somehow find a knife and cut the military guys down, and they splat on the concrete but the dreamer doesn't see it because she's in the slide tunnel, she might not acknowledge that it happened and will just re-dream them.”

Winsor laughed, but with scorn in her voice. “Oh my god—Josh really is teaching you to think like her.” Still chuckling, she sat down on the launchpad and pushed herself into the blue tube.

Deloise followed her. “I love slides!” she cried.

That was nice for her, but Will had never been down a waterslide, and he hadn't been lying the day he'd told Josh he was afraid of drowning. He wasn't a terrific swimmer.

“A whole day of firsts,” he muttered.

As he stepped onto the slide's launchpad, awkward in his tennis shoes, a flash of silver-white on the ground below caught his eye and he hesitated.

He squinted through the sunlight.
Is somebody down there wearing a gas tank?
he wondered.
That's weird.

But weird was the norm in the Dream, so he ignored the uneasy feeling the figure gave him. As he turned away from the sight, his tennis shoes slipped in the water, and before he had time to get nervous, he was whirling down the slide.

*   *   *

Josh's left side was soaking wet, and her Zippo dug into her hip. She and the dreamer slipped and slid, flying up against the walls on the corkscrew turns and then soaring through the straight passages.

The girl cried and clawed Josh's arms. “We're going to be fine,” Josh told her, although she suspected just the opposite. She was worried that the slide might end in a drop-off.

“Look!” she shouted, although there was really little sound besides the rushing of the water and the air whipping past. “When the slide ends, let go of me. Keep your body straight—”

The girl screamed, “The slide's gonna
end
?”

Josh swore mentally.
Yet another example of the dangers of staging,
she thought,
and now my only option is to keep staging.
If she could influence what the dreamer was thinking, the dreamer might unconsciously influence the Dream. “The water at the bottom of the slide is very deep!” Josh hollered. “At least thirty-five feet. If you just keep your body straight and hold your breath, you'll be fine.”

“But what about the man in the trench coat?” the girl sobbed.

Josh looked at her, stunned, and the slide dropped them into the air.

They only fell about ten feet. Josh didn't even have time to wrestle free of the dreamer before she hit the water on her back. Shock ran through her rib cage and shook her heart and lungs roughly. Her mouth, nose, and throat filled with foul chemical water.

The girl thrashed as she tried to reach the surface. One thing had gone right: The water was at least thirty-five feet deep. Josh saw it in the moment before the sun went out.

Black water surrounded them. The dreamer kicked Josh in the stomach, causing her to exhale all the water she'd just sucked in. Josh fought the panic, fought her need to breathe.
Patience,
she reminded herself.
Patience will keep you from drowning.

Siglau's Postulate:
Panic can only decrease one's chances of survival.

But when Josh kicked toward where she thought the surface should be, her shoulder cracked against the bottom of the pool, and it became very hard not to panic. Blackness above, blackness below, blackness all around. She saw a vision of the last two minutes of her life: thrashing in the water, looking for some indication of light, of air, always hitting a wall or a floor, never finding an exit, and slowly suffocating in the silence underwater.

It could happen. In the Dream, there could be a pool without a surface.

But the dreamer isn't afraid of drowning; she's afraid of the soldiers. There has to be a way out.

Using every ounce of self-control she had, Josh stilled herself and let gravity show her which way was up. The meager breath of air in her lungs was enough to draw her toward the surface, feet first.

I'm upside down.

The blood rushed down from her head as she flipped over, planted one foot on the floor of the pool, and shot upward. Her head broke the surface and her ears filled with the sounds of splashing and people shouting to one another.

The pool became suddenly shallow, only three feet deep, and the depth changed so fast that Josh managed to kick the cement. She coughed violently, spraying water from her nose and mouth. If she'd thought her chest hurt when she couldn't breathe, she had no concept of pain. She felt as if the air were full of splinters. She had definitely taken in a lot of water.

The dreamer stood a few feet away, waist-deep in water and crying. The sky had turned to nighttime darkness but the park glowed with blue and red carnival lights, and the Ferris wheel turned slowly in a ragged circle of yellow bulbs.

Behind her, a splash rose up, followed by the sound of swearing. Josh turned to see Will shaking the water from his hair. He grinned at her.

“That was awesome!” he said. Deloise swam up next to him, and they high-fived. Nearby, Winsor stood with her long shirt billowing around her.

“Everybody in one piece?” Josh asked.

Winsor nodded.

The dreamer screamed, and Josh looked toward the sound. A diving board extended off the side of the pool opposite the deposit from the slide. It was completely out of place, since anyone who jumped off it would break their neck in three feet of water.

Looming over them at the end of the diving board stood the man in the green-black trench coat. The purple lights of a game booth reflected off the giant canister on his back.

Josh had seen the same man in the sewer dream on her birthday.

And not just the same man, but
exactly
the same man.

Thanks to popular culture and mass media, lots of people had nightmares about the same things, but no two people ever remembered characters exactly as they had appeared on television or in a movie. Everyone forgot a detail here or there, and their subconscious minds filled in the blanks, producing a multitude of variations on a theme.

The man in the trench coat was not a variation. Josh remembered those needy, grasping hands that he extended over the water, the wide belt that fit around him like the straps of a straitjacket, and the strange gas tank on his back that was neither white nor silver. Even those empty, glistening eyes. The details were too perfect.