Nightmare’s Edge (22 page)

Francesca touched Solomon’s hand. “Honey, Nathan and Kelly grew really close during their search for us. They’re . . . well, let’s say they’re like brother and sister now.”

Solomon looked at Nathan, his brow bent. “I’m sorry for my lack of sympathy. I didn’t know.”

“It’s okay.” Nathan shifted his feet on the dark floor. “After I saw her in the dream, it made me realize she’s alive somewhere.

So I wasn’t so worried anymore. We just need to find her.”

“I have watched many dreams disappear, and, as you mentioned, they often get swept into a cyclone that funnels into a hole of some kind. But if dreams go back into the minds of dreamers, where could Kelly have gone?”

“This sounds like a job for the logic queen,” Daryl said. “Look, dreams are color-coded, right? Red people dream in the red zone, Yellow in yellow, and Blue in blue, but this Felicity chick showed up in both the yellow and the blue dream worlds. And now Kelly’s showing up in Earth Red, so I’m guessing they’re both snoozing where there’s access to all three. And there’s only one logical place for that.”

“Sarah’s Womb?” Nathan asked.

“Bingo! Time to search through infinite darkness with a flashlight, a few candles, and nothing to walk on.” She picked up the bag and hung it from her shoulder. “Sounds like we’d better get started.”

Touching his father’s arm, Nathan stared into the darkness. “Amber stretched a vine from a spider tree to Sarah’s Womb, so all we have to do is find the tree again.”

“Right,” Daryl said. “And then we follow the yellow brick, uh, vine, I guess.”

Solomon narrowed his eyes as he surveyed the area. “Sounds like a good plan. Maybe we can figure out a way to get to the violin that spans the top of the Womb. If we can play it, we might be able to buy a little more time.”

“We’ll need it,” Nathan said. “According to Gordon Yellow we only have two of their days before interfinity hits.”

Solomon looked at Amber and bowed his head. “Does our supplicant know the way to the tree?”

“I do. If you will please follow.” Amber lifted her candle and glided ahead as if floating above the dark floor.

As they walked, the entire area brightened. The sun appeared overhead in the midst of a cloudless, deep-blue sky. The black ground brightened to a lush green lawn. Warm, pleasant air blew gently all around, and an amusement park materialized, filled with the typical attractions — a merry-go-round, a Ferris wheel, various thrill rides, and carnival barkers yelling from game booths. Dozens of adults and children milled about, some munching cotton candy, others standing in line for the rides. One male teenager, short and bespectacled and carrying a slide rule, seemed different from the rest. Dressed in throwback schoolboy knickers and a button-down shirt, he stood rather stiffly and looked at the other children, but he didn’t take part in the fun.

Nathan called ahead to Amber. “Can you tell whose dream this is? The guy with the slide rule?”

“I think so, but it is another blended dream. If you look carefully, you will see that there are tombstones scattered among the amusements.”

Nathan scanned the littered fairgrounds. Next to a trash can spilling over with popcorn boxes, soft drink bottles, and hypodermic needles, a small tombstone leaned at a slight angle.

“Felicity again?” he asked. “Is she around somewhere?”

“I think that’s likely.”

Nathan gave the boy another quick glance. He looked very familiar, like a younger version of Dr. Simon. Could Simon Yellow be taking a nap? Could this be his dream?

As a hand slid into his, a feminine voice sounded at his side. “I thought I smelled the aroma of courage.”

Tapping her walking stick, Felicity faced straight ahead, dark glasses no longer masking her vacant eye sockets. “May I walk with you a while?” she asked. “I was getting pushed around in the crowds.”

Nathan held his candle toward her and stopped. “Of course you can, but I’d like to ask you a few questions, if you don’t mind.”

A pleasant smile eased across her face, revealing white, yet crooked teeth. “Of course. I will answer what I can.”

As the others gathered around, Nathan looked into her sockets. A tiny spark of blue light pulsed deep within. “When I first saw you, you were sucked into a sandbox by a swirling wind, and Kelly, a friend of mine, went with you. Have you noticed her presence around you anywhere?”

She shook her head. “I knew she was with me in the wind, but when it settled, I was alone in my usual nightmare.”

“When you’re alone, what’s around you? Can you hear anything? Smell anything?”

“It’s cool and dry and dark. Until recently I heard and smelled nothing. But during the most recent nightmare, I finally smelled something.” She paused, then whispered, “Blood.”

“Blood?” Nathan repeated. “Are you sure?”

“I know the odor well. I have smelled my own.”

“So, what do you do when you’re in that place?”

“In my nightmare?” She shrugged. “Nothing. Nothing at all. I can’t walk, so it’s worse than just being blind. I just wait until I wake up, then I try to find someone friendly to talk to.”

“So you think you’re awake now?” Nathan asked.

“Of course I’m awake.” Her smile seemed to add a new light to the dream world. “I’m talking to you, aren’t I?”

“Nathan,” Solomon said. “We need to press on. Let her tag along, and we’ll see what we can do to help her when we get each other up to speed.”

Felicity stopped and tugged on Nathan’s hand. “I smell him again.”

“Who?” Nathan asked.

“Death.”

Nathan drilled his stare into the crowd, but with so many people flitting about from place to place, Mictar could be hiding anywhere. “How far away is he?”

“Close,” she said. “But not real close. I will tell you if he comes closer.”

Daryl touched Felicity’s head. “Cool. A stalker alarm. She’ll come in handy.”

As Nathan turned to Amber, her glow brightened. With eyes narrowed and piercing, she seemed ready for battle. He gave her a nod, knowing that all was well. Mictar wouldn’t dare approach while she was on guard. “Okay, Amber,” he said. “We’re ready.”

Glancing both ways, Amber pressed through the crowd. Following less than a step behind, Solomon spoke loudly enough for all to hear. “Nathan, I’m not sure how much you’ve learned about the three worlds and the dream worlds. They are actually all in the same planes of existence, but invisible to each other. Where we stand right now is level ground somewhere in Earth Yellow. And it sounds like you know about Sarah’s Womb. It’s visible in the dream world, but not in the awakened realm.”

They passed a barker who invited them to throw rings over the heads of live ducks that swam in a small pond, but the rings were no bigger than doughnuts, and the ducks were the size of geese. A wayward ring rolled their way. When Francesca picked it up and tossed it toward the pond, one of the ducks grabbed it and swallowed it whole.

“Since I’ve been here,” Solomon continued, “I have been able to tell how people are reacting to the cosmic wounds by how nightmarish their dreams are. I get the impression that perceptions on Earth Yellow are much better now.”

Nathan dodged a small boy and then another who chased after the first. “They are better. Your counterpart invented a way for people to dream peacefully.”

“Is that so?” Solomon rubbed his chin stubble. “I hope that was the right decision. Sometimes it’s better to face reality, even if it’s frightening. I know how hard it can be, but if people would learn to overcome their fears, they would be able to move mountains.”

“Can’t argue with that,” Nathan said. “It’s worked for me.” As soon as the words spilled from his lips, he lowered his head. Sure, he had faced many fears, but he hadn’t faced them all. With a silent sigh, he looked at his wounded hand. It was a good time to change the subject.

“Hold up a minute.” Nathan reached into his pocket and withdrew the card and the report page. “Check these out. I took the card from a guy who tried to kill me. He had connections with a group that wanted to protect the Quattro secrets.

The paper was in an Interfinity Labs report I picked up in their conference room.”

Solomon took the paper and tried to focus on it in the bright sunshine. “It’s hard to read.”

“I see the vine,” Amber said.

The wind kicked up. Clouds rolled in and blocked the sun, sending baseball-sized raindrops splattering to the grass. One hit Nathan’s head and splashed all around. It felt cold and wet, but it didn’t soak in. Somehow his clothes stayed completely dry.

The people scattered, vanishing as they ran. The breeze swirled into a cyclone that wrapped around Felicity and began pulling her body. “Help me, Nathan! I don’t want to go back to my nightmare!”

Nathan held on with his pain-wrenched hand. “Felicity! Keep listening and sniffing. I want to find you in your nightmare, but I need more clues.”

With a sudden gust, Felicity jerked out of his grip. Her body spinning wildly, she plunged into a grave and disappeared. A small tombstone, etched with letters too small to read, crumbled and melted away in the torrential downpour.

The cyclone slurped the rain and clouds and everything else in sight. Then, like a high-speed corkscrew, it drilled into the ground and vanished.

Silence fell and with it a cold chill. Nathan shivered. That girl needed help, but how could he find her in a completely dark, infinitely deep place?

Amber lifted her candle, revealing a nearby tree. “The barrier is very close, only a few paces away.”

Solomon drew close to Amber’s candle. “Let me read this before we go on.” As his eyes darted back and forth, he nodded. “Hmm. I know about these people. They call themselves Sarah’s Covenant, a cult of sorts. They’re the ones who infiltrated Interfinity’s technology, inciting Dr. Gordon to get in touch with Dr. Simon and me. While Simon worked with Gordon to install security features, he became engrossed in the communications with the other worlds, while I used the mirror technology and a bit of undercover work to track down the cult. I snooped around their headquarters and found a transport room that sent me to a world inhabited by white-haired men and women who made up the worst choir any world has ever known.”

Nathan laughed. “You’re not kidding. I’ve heard them.”

“Well, you’ll have to tell me about that experience. In any case, while I was there, I met Patar, one of the white-haired men, a vision stalker, as he called himself. He was quite sober, and truly frustrating, but he also seemed very wise. After telling me about Mictar’s plot to steal a Quattro mirror and to kill all the gifted ones, he explained the cosmic environment — the three Earths, the dream worlds, and Sarah’s Womb — and allowed me to speak to the supplicants. Cerulean, since he watched over Nathan Blue, alerted me to the deaths of Solomon and Francesca Blue. Scarlet thought that Francesca and I should switch places with them in order to put Mictar off our trail.”

“So that’s why so many of them called me ‘Son of Solomon.’ They already knew you.”

“It’s also why Dr. Gordon and company decided to label the three Earths by their colors. I suggested it, though I didn’t tell him all the reasons. I wasn’t sure whom to trust, so Dr. Simon and I arranged our deaths. You were supposed to come with us, but it didn’t work out the way we had hoped, so your mother and I hid my camera and her violin in the trunk in order to give you clues to what happened to us. We knew between you and Clara, you’d eventually figure it all out.”

“But it was Kelly who helped the most. She has a gift, too.

She can get messages from musical notes.”

“Yes,” Francesca said. “Scarlet told us God would lead you to an interpreter. And now, it seems, we must ask him to lead us to her again.”

“So” — Nathan nodded at the page — “do you know what it means?”

Solomon pointed at the numbers and letters. “These represent GPS coordinates that give the locations of the latest foundation points of Sarah’s Womb in the real worlds. The cult members guard those spots, because they are the most vulnerable places in the cosmos. If Mictar found them, he could place a stalker at each location, and if they sang their foul songs, with the weaknesses already in place, they could rip the cosmic fabric to shreds.”

“Then why print them on a piece of paper that someone like me can pick up?” Nathan asked. “That’s not secure.”

“It’s secure enough. First, you would have to know you’re looking for GPS coordinates. Second, they only
represent
the coordinates. They’re musical codes, and only an interpreter can decode the music.” He pointed at the first line. “Each symbol is a musical note, zero through eleven in a middle C chromatic circle. It’s base twelve, so
A
represents the number ten, and
B
represents the number eleven. As you can see, there are three lines, one for each Earth.”

“Can I take a look?” Daryl asked.

Solomon handed her the sheet. “Sure.”

While Daryl studied the numbers, Nathan looked at his father. “Do you know where those places are?”

“I had a few ideas and visited some possible sites. I even conducted experiments, asking your mother to play her violin at those spots. But if we were off even by a fraction of a minute on those coordinates . . .” He shrugged. “A miss is as good as a mile.”

“That makes sense, but how can so few notes do the job?” Nathan asked. “I mean, how does the interpreter figure out that they’re coordinate numbers instead of a message in words?”

“That’s where the other codes come in.” He took the card from him and ran a finger along the embossed symbols on the front. “It’s a setup string of notes. An interpreter listens to this and it shifts her brain to a kind of numerical listening mode. This code never changes, but the cosmic shifts can cause Sarah’s Womb’s location to shift with reference to our worlds, so the cult updates their members with the new coordinates. That’s why the updated numbers were in that report.”

“It’s been a while since I picked it up. Maybe the numbers have changed again.”

“It’s possible, but this is all we have to work with.” Solomon squinted at the card. “Strange, though. There’s room for another line of code, but it’s blank. I’m not sure what to make of that.”