The Waking Dreamer (19 page)

The sooty black and white cover page featured the same litany of days-old news: orange juice futures affected by the heavy frost moving through Florida; a pair of double homicides in Fuller Park; the controversy surrounding a contentious call made during last weekend’s sports game that had most of the nation still arguing and two famous radio commentators calling on Congress for legislative action; and a small, bleak photograph of a wreck of charred metal hiding in the small bottom-right corner of the page.

Emmett flipped through the pages to B-15 to read the story, as there simply had been no room on the front page for the story itself.

“I saw it on the news earlier but didn’t think twice about it. That business with the train catching on fire and all of the people killed. That was
them
, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” Keiran said as Emmett found the page and ran his finger over the article.

The article was less than a narrow, three-inch strip of emotionless data: the date of the accident, the number of people dead, the lack of survivors, and the controversy surrounding the politicians who had taken up the cause of the train explosion to push for additional industry oversight.

“You go for months without hearing anything and start to believe that maybe they don’t exist,” Derrick was saying as Emmett stared at the article in an obvious state of disbelief. “Then something like this happens, and you remember how the Revenants killed your wife and daughter. All they said was that it looked like a short in one of the electrical wires, but that it would be months before they knew for certain.”

“Unfortunately, Revenant cabals cover their tracks rather well,” Keiran sighed. “And in several weeks, everyone will have forgotten.”

“There’s nothing here,” Emmett mumbled as he pushed the newspaper away in disgust. “Nothing. No hint that anything out of the ordinary happened. They couldn’t even be bothered to write two paragraphs. They expect people to believe this? No wonder print is dead.”

“There was barely a mention of it on the network news, Emmett. Everyone is talking about last weekend’s game,” Derrick said as he looked down at his own hands and shook his head.

Emmett couldn’t stop staring at the article, noting how small it was compared to the full-page ad opposite it advertising next month’s concert. “It’s not even about who’s
behind
the curtain. It’s like no one realizes there even
is
a curtain! Status quo and we’re good to go!” Emmett cleared his throat, fixing his attention on the wall behind Derrick’s head. Too much had happened for him to let go of his carefully maintained control over himself.

Not now.

“I know that look in your eyes, son. I see it in the mirror everyday. People just don’t
want
to know the truth. Then one day someone they love dies, and they wake up.”

Derrick pushed himself away from the table and rounded back to the kitchenette, his fists clenched tightly at his sides. Emmett felt his face flush with frustration, and yet his words were mute in his mouth when he reminded himself that while his anger was on behalf of people he did not know, Derrick’s was understandably justified by his wife and daughter’s deaths.

Perhaps to comfort Derrick by sharing in his anger, Emmett wanted to say something. But he saw Keiran shaking his head silently at him with a small gesture of his hand to remain silent.

“I’m getting too old, Keiran,” Derrick said heavily, keeping his back to them as he gripped the counter in front of him. “You could be killed in broad daylight, and people walking by couldn’t be bothered to notice except to take a picture. Babies go missing, children are sold around the world, and people just sit at home and watch it all on television like it’s a movie of the week.”

“There are bright spots,” Keiran offered tentatively with a soft voice. Emmett watched the expression Keiran tried to affect: that calm, hopeful understanding he offered people who just needed to tell someone that they had had enough. It was an expression that Emmett knew well.

That’s Keiran
, Emmett realized
.

Derrick turned around with an anguished look tearing at his face. “Oh, really? What would those be?”

“People like you, Derrick,” Keiran smiled warmly as if he were telling a worried parent that their sick child was going to recover. “You’re so devastated by your loss that you’ve built a new living area underneath your home so you can avoid disturbing the memories that you have above you. Your life was robbed from you, and the people responsible are still free, likely hurting others the same way that they hurt you. You have no way to ever have justice or experience some semblance of closure.”

“What’s your point, son?” Derrick asked, resignation in his voice.

“Yet here you are, fighting the only monsters that you can: hunger, poverty, hopelessness. You’re using what I happen to know is a meager monthly benefits stipend to feed people the world has forgotten, never once touching the money your daughter left because of the honor you have for her memory. That makes you the bravest man I know, Derrick. If I came here for no other reason than this, it was to remind myself why I fight.”

Derrick’s anger seemed to diffuse as he collapsed back into his chair. He cast his eyes down with the look of a man who had bore too heavy a weight for too long. Keiran made no move to speak further, but he gripped Derrick by the shoulder firmly for several silent moments.

“I can still remember Mabel’s funeral. It was a Sunday morning in February. She’d always wanted to be buried in her Sunday best. No one here knew what had happened to her, and we couldn’t have an open casket.” Derrick turned away for a moment with his hand to his mouth, but clearing his throat he continued.

“My goodness, it was a beautiful service. Emmett, I don’t know how many funerals you’ve been to, but this one was the finest, with flowers from all over the city. She was loved by so many people. We had the service at her family’s old church across town, and then we all left for the cemetery to see her buried. I’ll never forget it: the weather was rainy and the funeral home had brought a tent out. They had those awful metal folding chairs next to the site. Nothing you could sit on for more than a few minutes without feeling sore.”

Emmett sat rapt, reminding himself to blink even as he watched Derrick’s eyes.

“The minister came over and said a final prayer when they walked the casket down. They began lowering her into the ground, and I’m sitting there holding my little girl, Annie, holding onto her so tight with all the strength I could, because she was the only reason I had left to live. And this sweet melody just appeared then in the air. The sweetest, most beautiful singing you’ve ever heard.”

Derrick shifted in his chair to look at Emmett with directness that he was surprised did not make him uncomfortable. Not knowing Derrick, something of his despair rang so true for Emmett that he felt like he knew the man almost as well as he knew Keiran. Perhaps, in some ways, even more.

“You see, Emmett, I didn’t know it at the time, but the Druid and Bard who had saved Annie, and who had tried but were unable to save Mabel, had come to her funeral. They had been there all along, way in the back by the trees. The Bard was this handsome young man.” Saying this, Derrick looked at Keiran like an admiring father, and as Keiran nodded respectfully, Emmett realized who that Druid and Bard were.

“He was singing the most beautiful song for my Mabel. A paean, Annie later told me. A song praising Mabel’s life and the lives that she touched. There were no words. None that I recognized, anyway. And just as the casket was lowered into the earth, a flock of snow-white doves
─
Mabel loved doves
─
flew from the trees, over her grave, and into the sky.”

Derrick was weeping, smiling at Emmett with eyes filled with appreciation. “They came to honor her, Emmett. They didn’t have to, but they did. In their own way.”

Emmett was not certain if Derrick was reliving the memories for Emmett’s sake or if he believed that Emmett needed to understand that the emotions he was experiencing were valid and true. Or, Emmett wondered, perhaps Derrick was unable to live without those memories anymore.

“Two days later, Annie left with them to learn what she needed to. I don’t think I had any choice in the matter, and for years after I asked myself if I made the wrong decision in letting her go. But she needed to do it. She saw for herself what those things did to her mother, and she couldn’t live not being part of it. She was always special, talking to animals even as a girl. But she never left her mama’s side until they took her from her. I close my eyes at night and see her face crying over Mabel’s grave. Then I hear that beautiful song they sang for Mabel, and I know Annie is with her right now.”

Derrick saw the confusion in Emmett’s face. “I don’t think Annie could ever let go of Mabel’s death. She was supposed to let go of it all when she became a Druid, and even though she hid it from all of us, I know she never did. About a year later, Annie came to me to tell me that she was certain that she knew who had killed her mother. She had that same look in her eye when we buried Mabel, that same mixture of anguish and revenge. She said she was going to finish it, track them down and bring an end to those who were responsible for so much death.

“I would have gone with her, but I was too old and worth nothing to her. These old knees can barely walk up and down those stairs anymore,” he said, wiping the tears out of his eyes. “I tried everything I could to stop her. I tried to reach Amala and Keiran but couldn’t find them. Annie said good-bye, and I never saw her again. A few weeks later, Amala came to see me. She had found my baby,” Derrick’s voice broke.

Emmett felt Derrick’s pain as brilliantly as if it were his own. He saw the faces of the doomed train’s passengers in Derrick’s eyes. He saw the Druids and Bards who had risen to defend Silvan Dea. He promised himself they would never leave his mind’s eye. He saw in Derrick’s eyes his own broken reflection, and the guilt that he was certain he could never fully let go of.

For perhaps the first time in his life, Emmett’s mind was entirely silent as he spoke from his heart. “Your daughter would be proud of you. You help people now, honoring her life. Others would give up, but you live for them.” And as Emmett said this, he looked from Derrick to Keiran and understood he was speaking more to himself than to either of them.

Derrick nodded. “I try my best. I don’t know if it’s good enough, but it’s all I can do. Someday soon, I’ll be going home to be with my wife and daughter, and if I can measure up halfway to the lives they led, I’ll feel okay about standing in their shadow.”

Emmett didn’t know how to respond. Keiran, of course, allowed silence to convey his respect, and so they sat quietly as Derrick wept.

“Thank you, son,” he said, putting a hand on Keiran’s shoulder after several moments of silence had passed. “Thank you both for listening to an old man who can’t quite manage to let go,” he said as he patted Emmett’s hand with his own.

Emmett did not wish to burden the man with the horror he had seen, for he knew that Derrick was someone like Emmett who would be too wounded to know how evil was continuing to infect so many people’s lives. Emmett wished he could tell Derrick what his words meant to him and how they had given him the freedom
─
the distance, as Keiran said at the bus depot
─
from things he had struggled to reconcile in his mind.

“Each of us must find our own way. Some lead, others fight, or heal, or even comfort. The only crime is to know and do nothing,” Keiran said.

“Emmett, hear these words from an old man who has seen enough in this world to know what he’s saying. These are good people. Don’t ever lose them.”

Thinking of Mrs. Carmichael, Emmett nodded and said goodnight to Derrick. Steadying himself, arthritis in his knees, the widower began the slow walk up the stairs to the bedroom he had once shared with his wife.

CHAPTER 18

With a comfortable bed and Keiran’s repeated assurances that they were safe from immediate danger, Emmett permitted himself to succumb fully to his own fatigue. He welcomed the opportunity to not dwell on the murders aboard the train as the heavy dinner slowly settled in his stomach, bringing with it the blissful dreariness of approaching sleep.

Keiran had bathed first, admitting to Emmett that the strain of the past day had been the lack of clean clothes. A wardrobe along the far wall was filled with several suitable outfits, all of which Keiran said that he and Amala kept at Derrick’s should they ever have need.

“I’ll tell you this much, there’s nothing that can raise one’s spirits more perfectly than a well-tailored outfit,” Keiran had admitted to Emmett. Emmett lay on the bed watching with heavy eyes as Keiran pulled various clothes from the wardrobe for the two of them, nodding occasionally or absently mumbling agreement to something Keiran would say as he felt himself giving over to a deep sleep.

At some point between Keiran matching pants to socks and billowing steam pouring from the bathroom’s slightly ajar door, Emmett’s eyes closed. Too often restless when his body was tired, his mind acquiesced to a swollen presence of silence and quieted itself for sleep. As the previous day’s events effortlessly fell away, Emmett rolled onto his side and tucked one hand underneath his head. He relaxed as Keiran disappeared behind the bathroom door.

Some time passed as Emmett relaxed, the room dark save for a narrow beam of light coming from the slightly ajar bathroom door. The room was empty, and assuming Keiran had gone upstairs for something, Emmett rose for his turn in the bathroom. He sighed with a long stretch, pushing himself upright and plodding across the room.

His eyes narrowed even to the small blue nightlight behind a fake clamshell on the bathroom’s sole outlet. It was just enough light to see the tiny white square tiles along the floor. He felt a prickling all along his skin, a reminder of how horribly filthy the past two days had been and everything he had experienced.

Closing the bathroom door, he peeled his clothes off into a pile at his feet and turned the shower knob. The shower responded soon with warm water. Stepping in and closing the beige curtain, he allowed himself the simple luxury of water pouring down and over his face, slowly washing away the layers of blood and gore that, though long since gone, he felt still coating his skin.

Emmett stood leaning against the wall for some time, his mind drawing blissfully blank as he rinsed his hair and body clean. When at last he finally turned the water off and drew the shower liner back, he smiled when he saw a pair of thick towels sitting atop a stack of fresh pajamas laid along the rim of the sink.

They’re still warm from the dryer
, he thought, feeling the thick towels in his hands. He loved the feeling of a heated towel after stepping from a shower into the chilling cold of a home in winter.

The thought formed somewhere distant and unbidden in his mind as he ran the warm towel over his face.
He’s going to spoil me
.

After drying himself off, he pulled a pair of comfortable wool pajama bottoms on and snaked himself into a long thermal shirt that snugly clung to his lanky frame. He ran his towel over his floppy hair again, wringing out the moisture before draping the towel over the sink. Lifting one edge up, he wiped a broad swath of fog from the mirror and looking up felt his mind jump with such a start that he thought he might scream.

A pale, narrow face framed by wet, blond hair stared back at him from the mirror. It was Ellie’s face: flush with life and blinking as if seeing her reflection for the first time. He looked down at himself, feeling with his hands his own skin. He saw his own naked body beneath him, the Rot spreading across the white flesh of his chest, the small birthmark just above his hipbone. It was a young man’s body. It was
his
body.

He looked again into the mirror, and the billowing steam had clouded its image once again. Drawing the towel across the mirror
─
slower and more deliberate this time, as if hesitant yet curious of the reveal
─
he saw Ellie’s face staring back at him with an expression he knew could only be his … with eyes of both horror and wonder and lips that barely moved as he slowly mouthed words of confusion.

What the hell?
Am I dreaming?

Emmett looked around the bathroom and pushed himself into the acuteness of his own senses. It couldn’t possibly be a dream, he kept telling himself. His dreams were always the same: a young woman who he now knew had been Amala speaking to him of a portrait he now knew had once hung in his mother’s apartment.

This moment, though, was contiguous. Grounded. Emmett felt the steam from the shower still moistening his skin; he heard the faintest buzz from the nightlight as its bulb struggled not to burn out; even in the air he breathed, he tasted the soap that remained on his lips; and he felt his own presence within his body, conscious of his own physicality and the boundaries of his arms, hands, and even fingers.

This is not a dream
.

Someone coughed loudly, and Emmett jumped with a start. The bathroom door swung open, and Emmett recoiled with a start as he lifted his hand to defend himself.

“What’s the matter with you?” an unfamiliar voice said to him.

Over his raised fist and tense, half-closed eyes, Emmett saw a young man standing framed in the doorway, a curious expression on his face. He was probably several years older than Emmett, with short golden-brown hair that was flattened along his forehead over a pair of dark eyes. He stood naked, casual, and with a playful grin raised both hands up above his head.

“I’m unarmed,” he laughed as he put his hands back down. “I just came in to get a glass,” he said as he pointed first and then picked up a small glass on the sink.

With alarming recognition, Emmett imagined clothes covering his athletic, nude form, and with suddenness he recognized Troy Brooks, Ellie’s brother, standing in front of him.

When Emmett did not immediately lower his fist, the young man narrowed his eyes with a grin and tilted his head. “You still on edge, Elle?” he motioned with a hand at Emmett’s raised fist, and with a gentle motion lowered Emmett’s hand with his own. Emmett felt his body refusing to relax, though there was unmistakable softness in the young man’s touch.

My God, what the hell is going on?
Emmett screamed into his mind.

When Emmett said nothing, the young man stepped closer into the space separating them. Immediately, Emmett recoiled from their naked awkwardness and, casting a glance in the mirror, saw Ellie’s nude form folding itself inward as her arm came over to cover the front of her body.

The young man stopped within inches of him and placed his hand on the back of his neck. It was an intimate expression that set the hairs along his arms on edge. There was unsettling closeness between their bodies, and Emmett wasn’t certain what he found more troubling: that two siblings embraced naked, or that each time he looked in the mirror he saw Ellie’s reflection as his own.

“Hey, we don’t have to do this, okay? If you don’t want to, we can walk away. We’re only here right now because
you
wanted to be here. But we can leave. If that’s what you’re afraid of, don’t be.”

Without realizing that it was happening, Emmett felt words form in his mind as if a separate consciousness shared the space with him. The words came fully formed and unbidden as if an aspect of himself were conversing wholly and separately apart from him, yet using his body to do so.

“What about Kellner?” he heard himself ask in response with a feminine voice that he immediately realized was not his own. “We need his resources.” It was Ellie’s voice, though it sounded so unlike what Emmett had heard before, with a calm, straightforward manner.

“To hell with him, okay?” Troy said as he reached his other arm around and tried to pull them together in embrace. “He’s a fool. He doesn’t have your ambitions. Just kill Kellner and take his place. No one has the power to challenge you. And you’ve got me.”

Ellie pushed away and took another step back as Emmett’s mind raced with confusion, this time his heels touching against the shower stall.

“Fine, whatever,” Troy said with frustration. “I don’t get you sometimes. You’re afraid of Kellner, yet you’re the one who was saying just two days ago how you were going to kill him and take control! So which is it with you?” Troy’s body tensed noticeably as his hands motioned in the air with his raised voice.

The firm seat of Emmett’s mind felt only confusion and an overwhelming need to run, yet that second aspect within his mind, the odd, separate consciousness that seemed to speak on its own with Ellie’s voice, suddenly felt a hot flush of anger. Pure, raw anger.

“Shut up!” she spat as she stepped forward. His hand—Ellie’s hand—flew out with a stinging, loud slap across Troy’s face. “He’ll never let us in if he knew what I had planned! He’d never allow us to move against the Children!”

When the second awareness within his mind spoke and acted, it did so independently as if Emmett were in the audience of a theatrical production, both watching as a scene played out before him yet feeling the full emotion of the experience from the actors’ performances.

“We proceed as planned,” Ellie said through his gritted teeth, as if to quell the racing pulse that pounded within his chest. “We need Kellner. For now. Once our contact within the Grove is secure, we move against Silvan Dea. And I won’t hear of your fear again.”

Emmett watched as Troy’s face changed from frustration to bitterness. The slap had done nothing to his jaw, yet his eyes seemed to glass over with a wounded expression. Perhaps not that the slap itself hurt, but rather what it had symbolized. Emmett had not sensed fear in him when he had been speaking, but instead some kind of concern and a willingness to abandon their plans for Ellie’s sake.

“Fine,” he said heavily, turning away and walking out of the bathroom.

Emmett allowed himself to catch his own breath as his mind reeled: What was Ellie’s relationship to Troy? Who was this Kellner? They spoke of him as if he was the leader of the Revenant sect. And their plans to attack Silvan Dea—did that mean he was watching something from the past play out before him? Some kind of vision of what preceded the attack?

Then Ellie’s words resounded again in his mind.
Once our contact within the Grove is secure, we move against Silvan Dea.
The words echoed with shocking clarity, and Emmett stared back at the sullen face in the mirror.

Who the hell are you?

“Emmett?” a distant, hazy voice called out. Turning his head toward the door, he felt a wave of disorientation as the bathroom shifted around him, jerking itself in strange contortions as his vision blurred.

“Emmett?” Again, a voice called out his name. It was closer now and warmly familiar. It was Keiran. In the darkness, he heard Keiran calling his name. His consciousness
─
alone again without the second aspect
─
emerged from beneath the gelatinous surface of sleep and opened his eyes, light and sound rushing in all at once.

“All right, seven sleeper? Time for a spot of breakfast, then,” Keiran’s voice sounded as Emmett struggled to open his eyes. The room was fully awash in light, and Emmett squinted against the spots in his vision.

“Bright,” he felt himself croaking with a dry mouth, recognizing through his own muddled senses that he spoke once again with his own voice.

“Aye, apologies,” he heard Keiran saying as he switched off the overhead lights above the bed. “I’ve been trying to wake you for several minutes now, actually. I never knew you were such a heavy sleeper. Sleep through the end of the world, I daresay.”

“I’m not,” Emmett said, licking his lips and swallowing as he struggled to wake.

“Could have fooled me, mate,” Keiran responded. “It’s half past seven. I’d like to get on the road within the hour. There are towels and toiletries on the sink, and I hung the clothes I thought might fit you on the right side of the wardrobe. I have some things to discuss with Derrick upstairs, so take your time. But let’s try to get a move on,” Keiran said just before leaving the room, his voice bouncing with an irritating cheeriness that Emmett found ill-suited for the early morning.

In his grogginess, Emmett rolled over onto his stomach and buried his face in his pillow. Already, his mind was attempting to make sense of his dream. It was, indeed, a dream, Emmett reasoned.

What about anything that happens to me is normal?

Peeling his shirt off in the bathroom, he winced as the fabric tugged at the Rot. He traced his finger around its perimeter, which was now crawling down toward his abdomen. Turning around, he looked back over his shoulder and found that the Rot was spreading along his back, too, at an alarming rate.

For only the briefest moment, he wondered if he was still dreaming. That his dream had seemed so convincingly real earlier made him second-guess himself now. Yet Keiran had spoken to him as Emmett, and staring into the mirror now, he saw his tousled, floppy black hair and the decaying stretch of the Rot crawling down his body.

Showering was both uncomfortable and dully painful. He attempted hot water, which produced throbbing discomfort deep in his chest; cooler water sent shocks of brittleness along the edges of the Rot. No matter what he did, the pain was becoming increasingly unavoidable, and though he showered for ten minutes, the pain itself never grew tolerable. It was all he could do to grind his teeth against the soreness as he rinsed and then carefully toweled himself dry.

Ascending the stairs a short time later, he followed the distant sound of discussion back to the upstairs kitchen.

“Good morning, son,” Derrick said brightly as he motioned for Emmett to join them at the small table. “Coffee?”

“No, thank you,” Emmett said as he sat down.

Keiran sat in the chair next to him, obviously refreshed from a full sleep and impeccably dressed once again. His face was cleanly groomed, and he was wearing a pair of gray, tailored pants with a well-fitted, long-sleeve dress shirt the color of soft pink tulips tucked in underneath a black belt whose flat silver buckle matched his diamond-shaped silver cufflinks.