Waking Nightmares (5 page)

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Authors: Christopher Golden

BOOK: Waking Nightmares
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No one liked getting up for an early class, but Amber couldn’t go out without putting at least the minimum effort into her appearance. This morning she’d showered, pushed her coppery red hair back with a clip, and pulled on a clean, fitted cream top and a pair of jeans. She never managed even the slightest touch of makeup this early in the morning, but her face would have to do.
As she walked along one of the tree-lined paths on Hawthorne University’s main academic quadrangle, she inhaled deeply of the September air. It had been warm yesterday, but now it felt more like mid-September—no longer summer, but not quite autumn yet. The morning felt good, though she would never have admitted it. She took a sip of her coffee, and all was right with the world.
Hawthorne had not been her first choice of colleges. She loved her family, but going to the university in her hometown felt a lot like settling. There was no question that it was a great school, and it was the best of the universities to which she had been accepted. But for the first couple of years, it had almost felt as if she were still in high school. Too many of her childhood friends had not gone to college at all, or were attending the community college in Jameson, just a couple of towns away.
Then, this past summer, she had spent a month in a study-abroad program in Talloires, France, and had barely seen any of her old friends before she’d left or after she had returned. Now she only ever heard from them if they got in touch on Facebook. She didn’t want to leave them behind completely—they would always mean something to her—but she was starting her junior year in college, and she had a new life, with new friends, and a future to start living.
“Morning, Amber,” a voice said.
She glanced over to see Ben Draper cutting across the grass to join up with her. He was a sweet guy whose tufted mess of hair, big hands, and goofy grin always made her think of him as a sort of giant puppy-boy. Amber always wanted to hug him, but she had a feeling that Ben hoped there were other things she wanted from him as well.
“Hey, Ben.”
“You forgot my coffee again, I see,” he joked.
Amber feigned regret. “I’d give you mine but, y’know, cooties.”
Ben grinned. He teased her about bringing him coffee nearly every time they had this class together. She was never without a cup, and happily endured the envious gazes of others in the class who hadn’t had the foresight to fortify themselves with caffeine before trudging onto the quad.
“No one should have to get up this early on a Wednesday morning,” Ben said, falling in beside her as they approached Baker Hall, where the history department was headquartered.
“It’s almost nine A.M.,” Amber said. “Most people with regular jobs are already at them.”
“I know,” Ben replied. “Obviously I need to be independently wealthy, so I can sleep as late as I want.”
Amber nodded, letting the sarcasm flow. “Yeah. So many history majors become independently wealthy.”
He laughed and bumped her as they went up the front steps into the old brick academic building.
“Hey! Watch the coffee,” she warned him.
Properly chided, Ben stood aside and let her precede him through the inner door. Baker Hall had a musty, old-book smell that never went away, but Amber loved it. It was one of the oldest buildings on the Hawthorne campus, and she knew if she had the opportunity to search its closets and basements and eaves, she would probably find generations of history of the students and professors who had passed through these halls.
“All right,” Ben whispered, taking a breath. “Ninety minutes of Professor Varick. I can make it.”
“Stop. He’s not that bad,” Amber said.
Ben rolled his eyes. They had this argument at least once a week. Professor Miles Varick had a reputation for being acerbic, impatient, unsympathetic, and overall a merciless bastard. But he also had a reputation as a fantastic lecturer, from whom a great deal could be learned by a student willing to pay attention. Amber had found all of those things to be true. Professor Varick began his Byzantine History lecture at precisely 8:50 A.M., the scheduled class time, and he took his time, investing the stories of Byzantium with suspense and humor and a vibrancy that dusty books could rarely muster. When he finished his lecture, he would glance up, breaking the spell he had cast over the class, and the second hand would be ticking toward the final moments of the period.
Varick’s Byzantine History was the one class Amber never minded waking up for.
She drained the last of her coffee and dumped it the trash bin outside the women’s bathroom. Ben waited for her, then gestured for her to enter the classroom before him.
“Go on. He likes you. Maybe he won’t notice me.”
“I’m not sure he likes anyone,” Amber whispered. “But he likes people who take his classes seriously.”
“How could you take them any other way?” Ben said.
Smiling, Amber preceded him into the room. More than half the class had already arrived. Professor Varick perched on the edge of the desk at the front of the classroom, leafing through a thick leather-bound volume with ragged-edged pages like a priest searching for just the right prayer. The priestly analogy was one that popped up in Amber’s mind frequently. Something about Miles Varick’s lean shape and stern countenance brought her back to her Catholic school days. The man had haunted blue eyes and graying hair cropped close, likely so that he could pay as little attention to it as possible.
As Amber and Ben found a pair of seats by the tall, drafty windows, bathed in the warm morning sunlight, Professor Varick glanced at the clock on the wall and then confirmed the time with a glance at his watch. Stragglers hurried through the door. Professor Varick set the leather book on the corner of the desk and picked up his lecture notebook. Some teachers used laptops to aid them during lectures, but Amber thought Professor Varick would be using paper notebooks for as long as he had students to teach.
A Middle Eastern girl darted into the classroom—Amber thought her name was Priya, but the semester was only a couple of weeks old and she didn’t know everyone in the class yet. The girl went up to Professor Varick and muttered something, practically under her breath.
Professor Varick gave her an irked look. “I’m not your father. Go if you need to. Class begins in”—he glanced at the clock again—“about a minute and a half.”
For a second, Amber thought the girl would argue, but she seemed to think better of it and hustled from the room, making a beeline for the women’s bathroom down the hall. Professor Varick did not try to hide his disdain, though whether it was because the girl had bothered to ask permission to go to the bathroom or because she would now miss the beginning of his lecture, Amber didn’t know.
He made his way to the lectern and opened his notebook, glancing casually at the clock. The second hand ticked away the last thirty seconds and then 8:50 rolled around.
“Today,” Professor Varick began, “we’re going to discuss the strange dynamic of the relationship between the Eastern Roman Empire—the core of Byzantium—and the Huns, beginning with the ascent to the throne of Emperor Theodosius II in A.D. 408, at the age of seven. Theodosius II, also called ‘the Calligrapher,’ built upon the achievements of his predecessors in several ways you will want and need to remember, but in order to firmly lodge him into your brain, I will first tell you the story of how he paid Attila the Hun not to kick his ass.”
A ripple of laughter went through the room.
Professor Varick smiled thinly, letting them enjoy their own amusement for a moment. Amber understood that it was all choreographed; it was a show to him, and one he had performed many times over. But that was what she appreciated the most about Professor Varick—his showmanship. It was what made his lectures so memorable, and memorable lectures were invaluable when it came time for midterms and finals.
“If any of you did the reading, you might be able to tell me who served as regent for the child emperor,” he said, surveying the room with a dismissive glance, a challenge. “Anyone?”
Amber waited to see if anyone else would answer, then raised a tentative hand.
“Miss Morrissey?” Professor Varick said.
“It’s a trick question, Professor.”
“Is it? Would I do that?” he asked, arching an eyebrow.
“Constantly,” Amber said, and the class rewarded her with a cascade of chuckles. “There were two regents before Theodosius was old enough to rule. I don’t remember the first guy’s name, but the second regent was his older sister.”
Professor Varick frowned, always surprised when his students actually did their homework.
“Not bad, Amber. It may be that some of you aren’t complete airheads after all,” Professor Varick said, turning to write the name
Pulcheria
on the board. “Much like ‘Augustus’ for Octavian in Rome, they called her Augusta. Probably because her actual name sounded like some kind of sexually transmitted disease. Or maybe as a sign of respect. I’ll let you all logic that one out.”
The whole class scribbled in their notebooks. Amber wrote
Pulcheria = Augusta
and kept her pen flying, trying to keep up with the stories of ancient Byzantium. As she wrote, her hand began to tremble, and she frowned at the strange markings on the page where she knew she had written words. Her writing had become a trail of swoops and scratches.
She frowned, blinking, and looked up at Professor Varick, who was gesturing to the class, almost acting out the lecture. But Amber couldn’t hear him anymore, just a muffled drone, as though she had her ear pressed against the wall, desperately trying to eavesdrop on a conversation in the next room.
The aftertaste of her morning coffee turned bitter on her tongue.
“Professor?” someone slurred. And maybe it had been her, because now blurred faces were starting to turn her way.
Her arms flailed and her legs shot out as she began to shake violently. Her chair toppled over and she hit her head on the floor, a murmur of warped monster voices around her. Her whole body jittered, her teeth clacking together, and she tasted blood in her mouth, coppery and warm.
 
. . . AND
she stands on the beach, her feet sinking into the sand as the surf foams and ripples around her ankles. She feels a moment of peace before it is shattered. The golden sunset darkens too quickly, the sky turning bruise-purple, indigo clouds beginning to gather, low-hanging and pregnant with brutal storm. It is as though the storm and the angry night chase the sun out of the sky, drowning it in the ocean on the horizon.
“Why?” she asks, though there is no one to answer, and she isn’t even certain of the meaning of the question.
Car horns blare and tires screech and she tenses, waiting for the crash that must follow, but instead that scream turns into another . . . a human scream. She glances up the beach and finds that she is standing in the center of Hawthorne, though the tiny waves still ripple around her and the street is still giving way beneath her feet like sand. Glass shatters and there are more screams as it begins to rain.
Hot rain. The drops are painful, searing her flesh.
Dark things flit in the storm. A man and woman—she knows their faces but not their names—run down the street, water splashing around them. Their terror is carved upon their faces, and suddenly they have a child with them, a little girl with a long ponytail who is crying—Amber can see her tears, even in the rain. The little girl’s mouth is open, but her little-girl screams are drowned out by other shrieking, like the whistle of fireworks just before they explode, but so much louder and filled with such anguish that at last Amber screams, too.
The Reaper stands in the street, swirling from nothing to solidity as though sculpted from and by the storm. Black ribbons of fabric whip in the wind and hot rain, dragging against its body so that she can see it is anything but human. Its limbs and torso are thin as iron piping, and the wind wails as it passes through the gaps where its eyes should be. Yet it turns and looks at her, and there is a kind of ice-blue light that gleams deep down in those pits like distant stars. In each of its hands it holds a thin, curved blade, black as pitch but gleaming in the rain.

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