The Nothing: A Book of the Between (11 page)

“There have been one hundred more sleep deaths in Spokane since yesterday morning,” he was saying. “Authorities decline to give an opinion on the cause. Here’s Jim Simons, on site at Sacred Heart Hospital. Jim?”

Weston stared at the screen while the reporter interviewed a doctor. No, there was no known cause or cure. No virus or bacteria had been isolated. Was it contagious? That was difficult to say, but it couldn’t be ruled out. People should not come to the hospital now unless they were gravely ill. There were no beds, and no staff to care for them.

The camera shifted to scenes from downtown Spokane. Grocery stores with empty shelves. Looting in the streets. Other cities then, across the country. Seattle, Chicago, New York. Then Europe. The death counts were rising. People were rioting. In the US, the President had deployed the National Guard to help keep order. Problem was, the troops were dying just as fast as everybody else.

“Shit.” Weston dropped the remains of his pizza pocket back onto his plate. “Well, that does it, then.”

Flynne had given him a cell phone number to keep him from bothering the secretary, already threatening to quit under the weight of alarm calls coming in. Now he picked up on the first ring.

“I want to see the kid,” Weston said.

“I can’t give you the address—”

“Yes, you can.”

“There are rules for foster care.” There was doubt in the deputy’s voice.

“I think we’ve moved beyond the usual rules. Let me see her. She’s got to be terrified.” Weston moved around the store and the upstairs apartment as he talked, turning off lights and closing doors.

“Are you sure there’s nothing you can do about this—outbreak or whatever it is?” Flynne asked.

“Tell people to put dream catchers up.”

“Be serious.”

“I am, actually. It might make a difference. They won’t listen to you, but you could tell them. How do I get to this address? Don’t forget I’m walking.”

Downstairs, Weston took a long look around, then went out the back door, letting it lock behind him. He didn’t plan on coming back.

Krebston was a small town and it wasn’t much of a walk to the address Flynne had given him. The streets were empty. No lights on in the downtown, but the houses were lit up with lights in nearly every window. Apparently, Lyssa wasn’t the only child afraid to sleep.

He started out at a walk, the raven flitting ahead from tree to tree. It croaked once, then flew on ahead. Probably a waste of time getting the address from Flynne. The infernal bird most likely knew the way. Even as he walked, he heard a scream from a house across the street. A dark shadow raced across the room, highlighted behind the drawn drapes.

Weston picked up his pace and then broke into a run.

He’d let the child go, knowing what this was. Yeah, he’d given her the pendant, but he had no real reason to believe it would actually protect her. The memory of her trust, the way she’d clung to him against the detaching hands, made him run faster. Jenn had died because he was too slow. Grace had died because he was too slow.

Not this time. He reached the intersection of Pine and Lincoln and turned right. There, it would be the big house on the right, third from the corner. Lights blazed in all the windows. The raven waited on the metal railing at the top of the three steps that led to the front porch.

Weston rang the doorbell, then, not content to wait, pounded on the door with a fist.

A dog barked. Little yappy thing. A ceramic angel stood in the corner. One of its hands was missing. A hand-painted sign above the door read, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”

He knocked again. The barking erupted into a frenzy.

“Quiet!” a woman’s voice ordered. The dog carried on without diminishing its volume at all. Footsteps now. The door opened, revealing a middle-aged woman, softly curved, wearing stretch jeans and a sweat shirt. Her face looked weary but she smiled.

“Weston?”

He nodded, too out of breath to speak.

“I’m Andrea. Brett said you’d be coming. Lyssa is waiting for you. Come on in.”

Weston would have preferred infinitely to have the child come out, but he knew this wasn’t reasonable. So, he wiped his feet on the doormat and stepped inside.

It was cluttered in a comfortable sort of way that narrowly avoided chaos. A living room was visible to the right. Two boys sat on a sofa, playing some sort of video game, so engrossed in trying to kill robots on screen that they didn’t even turn around.

The woman led him away from the living room, down a short hallway. He caught a glimpse of a kitchen, where two teenage girls and a boy sat at the table with schoolbooks open. They were talking, not working, and drinking something out of mugs. A picture hung on the wall of a pale-faced, blue-robed Jesus with children in his lap.

“All of them are scared,” his guide said. “Lyssa’s the only one who has lost somebody in her own family, but they all know somebody who knows somebody. None of the kids wants to sleep.”

“Dream catchers,” Weston said.

“Pardon?”

“Put dream catchers in their rooms. Tell them it will stop whatever it is from coming in.”

Her pleasant smile disappeared. “I think bedtime prayers are a much better idea, don’t you?”

“I don’t see that the two things are mutually exclusive.” Weston knew there was no point in talking further but had to try. “Double up. Lots and lots of prayers and the dream catchers.”

Andrea stopped and turned to face him, blocking a bedroom door with her body. “I’d thank you not to fill her head full of heathen nonsense. There will be no dream catchers in this house. Understood?”

Weston nodded. He understood all right. Far too well. Which didn’t mean for an instant that he was making any promises.

She pursed her lips, ams folded across her chest, thinking. But at last she turned, opened a door for him, and stepped aside. Before he could get more than a general impression of a child’s bedroom, a small body hurled itself at him so hard, he nearly toppled. Arms wrapped around his legs and squeezed.

“You came back!” Lyssa said, not letting go.

“I said I would.” He bent down and picked her up.

She transferred her stranglehold to his neck. “I thought the Nothing might get you.”

“You still have the pendant?”

Lyssa shook her head, no, and he eased her away from him a little so he could see her face. “Mrs. Aylford took it. She said this was better.” With one hand, she pulled on a chain around her neck to show him a small silver cross.

“Hellfire and damnation!”

Lyssa’s lower lip quivered, her eyes flooded with tears. “Don’t be mad.”

“Sweetheart, I’m not mad at you. Not in all the worlds.” Weston tried to compose his face to hide a rush of anger and fear. Funny how the world went around. All the years he’d spent trying to get rid of that damned pendant, and now when he needed it, this well-meaning, totally misguided idiot of a woman had taken it. And that was the positive spin. He wasn’t likely to forget that the apparently frail old woman who had stolen Vivian’s Dreamshifter pendant had turned out to be Aidan.

“Lyssa, this is important. Do you know what she did with it?”

“Maybe she threw it away.”

“Damn it.” He paced the room, still holding the little girl, trying to think of a plan. He couldn’t leave her here, that was certain. And the Between was dangerous, the Dreamworlds unthinkable. Venturing off without the pendant just made it worse. But he didn’t see that there was an alternative.

Sure, he could call Flynne and insist that the child be moved. Ask for help getting back the pendant. Flynne would probably listen. But it wouldn’t happen fast or easily, not with the way things were going.

A thudding came at the window. Lyssa squeaked and buried her face in his chest. Weston spun around, adrenaline pumping, only to see a big black bird on the window ledge. Crossing the room, he opened the window and the raven stepped in, the pendant dangling in his beak.

“Bob!” Lyssa squealed. She struggled to get down from Weston’s arms and ran to stroke the raven’s feathers.

Weston grabbed the pendant and nearly dropped it, his fingers encountering a disgusting coating of grease and what he hoped was egg white. “I guess you’re good for something after all,” he said to the bird grudgingly as he wiped goo onto his pant leg before hanging the pendant back around the little girl’s neck. A moment of hesitation, and he left the cross alone. God would have no objection to the pendant, and the child could use all the protection she could get.

“There. Now, you trust me, yes?”

She nodded. Her eyes were disconcerting, luminous and deep. Weston tried to smile, failed, and went on.

“All right, then. I’m going to take you somewhere where you’ll be safe from the Nothing, okay?”

“Your house?”

“No, not exactly. I’m not supposed to take you, though, so we have to be very quiet and secret, all right?”

She nodded, pressing the back of her hand to her lips as if to keep the words in.

“We’re going to play a little game,” he said. “Come over here.” He sat down on the bed, and she came to sit beside him, Bob the raven riding on her shoulder.

“What kind of game?”

“We’re going to make a door.”

Her eyes went to the door of the room. “There already is a door.”

“A different kind of door.”

“Don’t you need a hammer and nails?”

“We’re going to use magic. What do you think will be on the other side?”

She giggled. “Fairies.”

“No, no, no, no. Fairies are tricky and sly and they pinch you and steal your hair ribbons.”

“I don’t have any hair ribbons.”

“Your shoelaces, then. Or your teeth. Think of something gentle or something that will protect you. Okay?”

“Okay, how about...”

“Shhhh.” He laid a finger over her lips. “Just think about it, nice and clear, while I make the door. And then we’ll see. That’s your job, to be quiet and to think.”

He set her down, making sure to hold onto her hand, and closed his eyes. Let her be busy thinking about fairies or whatever; it wouldn’t make any difference. What was in his mind was a different story, because whatever he was thinking about was precisely what they were likely to run into in the Between. So, no thoughts of the Nothing, or of fairies, or any of the other million and one creatures he did not want to encounter.

In fact, he didn’t want critters at all.

So, he focused instead on peaceful and safe. A pool of clear water for drinking. A few small (and harmless) creatures for a food source. Maybe there could be a shotgun waiting for him in the Between, along with a pack containing all of his camping equipment. He ran through it in his mind: matches, cooking utensils, knife, power bars, canteen, tent, sleeping bag—make that two sleeping bags. His mind focused now on the Between, he created a door.

Lyssa’s little gasp let him know he’d succeeded, although he would have known anyway; he could feel its shape and solidity before he even looked.

It looked at first exactly like the door he’d made in A to Zee, roughhewn wood, unpainted. A door that fit the memories of his frontier childhood. Only, this one also had a small cat door at the bottom.

Weston frowned. The doors of a Dreamshifter all looked the same, his father had said. Weston had only made a precious few in his lifetime, and they’d all been uniform. Useful. Strong.

Maybe the old man was wrong.

Lyssa looked unimpressed and excited both. “It isn’t very pretty.”

“Nope. But we don’t need pretty.” He looked at her again. “Lyssa, do you have a kitty at home?”

“Two.”

He looked from her to the door, half expecting a kitten to stick its head through. Nothing happened, though. The door looked like any ordinary door.

“You ready?”

She nodded but reached up and took his hand. When he opened the door, she squealed with glee while he stood glowering at what he’d somehow manifested. There was his pool of water, all right. Trees for shelter. All of the other supplies he’d specified, including the shotgun.

Each and every one of them hanging out of reach on the back of a very large elephant. The creature had tusks, the ends of which had been dipped in gold. It was draped in fringes of gold and purple and equipped with a little riding platform on its back. Very high up.

Lyssa clapped her hands, then whispered, loudly, “I love elephants.”

“You did this?”

“You said think of something gentle that would protect me.”

She took advantage of his unsettled state to slip her hand from his and scamper toward the towering beast.

“Wait!” Weston ran after her. “You don’t know if it’s friendly.” She eluded his outstretched hands and wrapped her arms around the massive front leg of the elephant. It flapped its ears, exploring her face with its trunk. She giggled and squealed.

“It tickles.”

“Lyssa,” Weston said, making his voice as firm and authoritative as he could. “You must come here. Now.”

The elephant turned its head, just enough to focus one eye on Weston. And then the trunk came his way, wrapping around his waist and picking him up off the ground even as he kicked and struggled.

“Put him down,” Lyssa commanded, then softened her voice. “Please. He’s grouchy, but he’s my friend.”

A moment of hesitation, and then the elephant did exactly as she said, setting Weston gently back onto his feet and releasing him. A strong desire to drop to his knees and kiss the ground lasted for about ten seconds, driven out of him by a distant bleating sound. The sound came again, closer, accompanied by a tinkling bell.

A flock of sheep, he thought. Harmless. Possibly useful. But then he took a second look and his heart dropped into his boots. The critters were sheep-sized and woolly. That part was all right. But their legs ended in clawed feet, not hooves. Their lips were drawn back over teeth that were never meant for eating grass. Their ears were pricked forward, tongues lolling out. Wolf ears, he had time to think. Wolf tongues, wolf teeth.

The flock broke into a trot, and then a gallop, headed directly for the door still open into Wakeworld. There wasn’t time to get through and close it behind him. He couldn’t let those creatures loose on a house full of kids. Slamming the door, he scooped up Lyssa in one arm, picking up a stick in the other.