The Night Shifters (4 page)

Surrender, young
woman. You don’t know what you’re doing.

It probably
should have frightened me. Instead I got an excited fluttering in
my stomach. Because she was wrong, in a way I
did
know what I was doing. Dreams can be wild rides, but
I was a good dreamer. You could even call me a professional. My
instincts told me something was about to change again. Dreams
usually have to go
some
where. Either that
or you just wake up.

When I came to the
chest of drawers, I pushed it, on a whim. Behind it I found a small
window, boarded up and painted the same pink as the walls.

I hadn’t remembered
the walls being pink before. Details seemed to be filling
themselves in as I went along. The room was looking more familiar
by the moment, which only made me more anxious to be out of it. I
didn’t know why, it wasn’t that different from the house I lived in
now. Did I really have such a disappointing childhood? Maybe it was
a good thing I couldn’t remember much, after all.

I worked patiently
at the boards until I had exposed the pane. When I gave the window
a shove, it opened easily, so I climbed through. I was getting to
be a champion at climbing through windows.

Outside I found a
plain backyard with a neatly trimmed lawn. Dew soaked my Nikes as
soon as I set my feet on the grass. The yard was completely empty –
except for me – and enclosed by a tall redwood fence. I walked
around the near corner of the house, hoping to find a gate. But it
must have been on the other side. I would have to pass the entire
back of the house, including windows and an arcadia door, in order
to get to it. The Girl-killer might see me.

As I stood
there and tried to work up the nerve to dash for the gate, I heard
a soft
whooshk,
the sound of
the arcadia door opening. Then men’s voices.

“She must be around
here somewhere,” said one.

“She can’t have
gotten far,” said another.

They were moving
toward me. I turned and scrambled onto the cross beams of the
fence, and stood on the upper beam. From there I made my way to the
house next door. Its roof was just low enough for me to climb. I
jumped up and flattened myself, hoping I was safely out of
view.

Silence for a few
moments.

“She’s gone,” said
voice number two. I risked a peek over the edge of the roof.

I saw two men. They
were dark, slender, and very handsome. They wore tight jeans and
black t-shirts. But their good looks only increased my
misgivings.

One of them
climbed onto the lower crossbeam of the fence and looked into the
front yard. I ducked down and backed slowly away from the edge of
the roof, feeling like a little girl who’s being chased around a
playground by boys she secretly likes, chanting
You can’t catch me! You can’t catch
me!
But the woman in me was
wiser. I continued to back away.

“What now?” I heard
one ask.

“Keep looking,”
said the other.

If they were going
to keep looking, I was going to keep hiding. I scuttled to the far
edge of the roof to look for another fence that might lead me to
the next roof. But I didn’t even need one. The next roof loomed
only a short distance from mine and a little higher up.

In fact, the
character of all the houses had changed, and continued to change as
I leaped and climbed and crawled along, becoming more eccentric and
individual, less like the tract houses I knew so well. I climbed to
a roof that had gargoyles and gables, then climbed the next roof
after that. It was a rooftop stairway. The houses underneath must
have been squished together just to accommodate me. Finally, things
were going my way!

I climbed the
highest roof of all, to a little tower that had room for just one
person: me. I leaned against the railing and closed my eyes.

“Okay,” I said.
“Dream’s over. The end. I win.” And I opened my eyes again.

I was still in the
tower. The houses around me busily shifted into bizarre and
wonderful shapes. I thought it was too bad houses couldn’t really
be this way. Living in them would be much more interesting.

“Very nice. It’s
been fun, really. But the dream is over. Time to wake up. I’m going
to count to three. One, two, three.”

The roofs grew
gigantic wings and dragon’s heads, which grinned at me before
melting into other shapes.

How did I usually
wake up when I wanted to? I took a deep breath – that would give my
muscles oxygen, get my heart pumping, brush the cobwebs out of my
head. I took another deep breath.

And another. And
another. It didn’t wake me up, but it made me feel very alert.

“Sir John?” I
called cautiously. “Mr. Gielgud? Why can’t I wake up now?”

No one answered.
But for all I knew, that wasn’t even his name. After all, Bernard
Clifton wasn’t who he appeared to be, either. And none of them were
real, anyway, so what was the point? I had to face facts. This was
probably my own fault. For years, I had cared more about what I
dreamed than my real life. This was what came from that kind of
thinking. And I had to admit, if I ever got out of this dream, I
would turn right around and do it all over again, sleep-walk my way
through life, do the bare minimum to get by – look forward to
night, and sleep, and what dreams may come. Because I liked this
stuff. I was a dream junky. So shouldn’t I just go with the
flow?

Not if I wanted to
survive. Much as I loved to dream, this was something different,
something more. This was the Major Leagues, and I needed to get a
handle on it – somehow.

I sagged against
the railing, and my hand encountered something that crackled. I
grabbed it before it could fall over the side.

A pink
envelope rested in my hand, with
Hazel
looped
across the front.

“Ah hah.” I opened
it.

“Dear Hazel,” said
the lovely handwriting, “I’m terribly sorry about the
misunderstanding. If you had accepted the black manna from Bernard,
everything would be back to normal. I know it wasn’t very appealing
to accept black manna from him – that’s why I didn’t tell you about
it – but it was necessary. Now I’m afraid we’ll have to think of
something else.”

“Oh yeah?” I said.
“What about the Crystal Heart, you rotten bitch?”

“If you meet a
pleasant, elderly man in Egyptian robes, don’t trust him,” the
letter continued. “I know Bernard is a little gross, but you’re
better off depending on him than on anyone else. I recommend that
you avoid the Car King and the Masked Man at all costs.

“I suppose the best
thing for you at this point would be to return to Bernard’s
swimming pool. It’s full of black manna now. If you swim in it, you
should get your memory back and wake up. Take the rooftop
stairway.

“
Good luck!”
And of course it was signed,
Serena.

“
Good luck
my ass,” I
grumbled. “Like I’m really going to pick Bernard over Sir John.” I
crumpled the letter and tossed it over the edge of the
tower.

But I did feel
uneasy when I thought back to the incident with the Crystal Heart.
After all, the first letter hadn’t mentioned anything about it, so
I couldn’t necessarily assume Serena had anything to do with my
near-death experience. The Crystal Heart thing could have been a
complete accident. And what did I really know about Sir John?
Nothing.

But I knew Bernard
was a first-class creep. Or Nostradamus, rather. Why was she still
calling him Bernard?

“I may be crazy,
but I’m not stupid.” I leaned out of the tower to scan my world
from all sides, like a dog hanging out of a car window. It seemed
to go on for miles, until I looked directly behind me.

That’s where it all
came to an end.

I saw a yard
far below, enclosed by a cement-block wall. Beyond the wall
stretched a field of tangled weeds and broken bottles. I recognized
it. It was the field that had sprawled behind my own house for so
many years, the one I’d been warned not to go into because strange
men might molest and/or kill me. Naturally, my friends and I dared
each other to sneak into it as often as we could. Along its eastern
border there should have been – yes! Seventy-fifth avenue, with the
stop light at Seventy-fifth and Indian School Road. And beyond sat
the convenience store at the corner. The Super Gulp! I used to buy
comic books there,
Superman, Spider-Man, House Of
Mystery
– not to mention that timeless classic,
Swamp Thing
.

There
were
artificial
lights
beyond the Super
Gulp, the lights of the real world cutting along the edge of my
starlit dreamland like a neon scar. If I could get there, would my
memory return? Would it be like waking up, or like stepping out of
the crazy part of my brain and into the sane part?

What was my
other option? Go back to Nostradamus’s pool and swim in some yucky
goop. No thank
you
.

A black convertible
drove along Seventy-fifth Avenue and stopped at the red light. One
of the white-haired drivers sat at the wheel, his arm draped lazily
over the back of the seat. He waited for the light to turn green,
then proceeded up the street and into the darkness.

So the road wasn’t
safe. The field probably wasn’t, either, though from where I stood
it looked innocent enough. As I grappled with my indecision, my
tower began to flatten. The house sank to one story, until I
couldn’t see over the rooftops anymore. I climbed from the roof
onto the block fence and made my way along its top, my arms
stretched out on either side for balance. I had done that a
thousand times when I was a kid – this memory seemed like a reward
for pursuing the right choice.

From there I could
see a border between the field and the road, a dirt path. I
wondered how long it would take me to reach it if I ran. Maybe two
seconds? Assuming I didn’t get dream-lag again.

“What the hell.” I
jumped from the fence into the field and ran directly for my border
of safety, my crystal heart pumping as hard as if it were
flesh.

It didn’t occur to
me to wonder why I’d been so certain the dirt path would be safe
until I had almost reached it, and by then it was too late.

* * * * *

You know that
feeling you get when you realize you’ve done something impossibly
stupid, the kind of stupid you can only be when you’ve had major
brain damage? What I hate most is that first second of
self-knowledge, when all you can possibly say for yourself
is
DUH
.

Say
, I wondered as my
feet were about to meet the beaten dirt of the pathway,
is this a good
idea?

DUH...
? came the
answer.

I had one split
second of indecision where I actually tried to turn and run the
other way, and then changed my mind back again. My feet tangled and
I went sprawling in the dirt, scraping my elbows in the process. I
lay frozen for several moments and waited for doom to descend upon
me.

It didn’t. I lifted
my head and looked around. Nothing moved in the field – not a
tumbleweed, or a rock, or a broken bottle. The road was dark and
quiet, and the supermarket across the street seemed little more
than an empty facade. I could still see the lights from the Super
Gulp at the intersection, shining like a beacon, but everything
else looked kind of dull and lifeless. The stars didn’t even
sparkle as much as they had.

“Oh well,” I said
with phony bravado. “Too late to stop now.” So I got up, dusted
myself off, and started down the path.

After several
minutes had passed and nothing bad happened, I congratulated myself
on my instincts. I made good time – already I had walked a quarter
of the way there. Obviously I was Doing The Right Thing, after
all.

But as I continued
through the unnatural silence, a feeling crept upon me. It was a
sneaky, quiet feeling, one that very gradually claimed my attention
from my unmoving (yet somehow watchful) surroundings.

“Why are you
leaving?” it asked me.

“Because I want to
wake up.”

“Are you asleep?” I
thought its voice sounded very young.

“Yes,” I told it
patiently. “I must be. The real world isn’t like this.”

“What is it
like?”

“It’s like – um –
say! Who are you?”

The voice had come
from the field, a child’s voice. “I’m me. Are you going where the
lights are?”

“Why do you want to
know? Show yourself!”

I stopped and
studied the field, waiting for an answer or a sign of movement, but
none came. After a little while I began to doubt I’d heard any
voice at all. I looked back the way I had come, then toward my
destination. I was halfway there.

I started
walking again, perhaps a little faster. Another feeling nagged me,
one that said
nothing will happen until you’re almost there, until you’re
overconfident and not paying attention.

“Do you remember
the boys’ fort you found in the field?” asked the child’s voice,
making me twitch. I quickened my pace.

“No,” I lied.

“You found pictures
from a girly magazine inside. You saw naked breasts for the first
time. You were excited about it, remember?”

“
Yeah. I
thought I was going to grow some just like those. Boy, what a pipe
dream
that
turned out to be.”