Walkers (29 page)

Kasyx raised the visor of his
helmet, and said, ‘I’m going to continue, thanks. I didn’t spend the whole
evening staring at a bottle to back out now.’

Samena said, ‘I want to go on.’

There was a pause. They all turned
and looked at Tebulot. ‘You have the most to lose, Tebulot,’ said Springer,
gently.

‘Yes,’ replied Tebulot. ‘But also
the most to gain. I’m coming.’

They stood close together and
clasped hands. Only Springer stayed apart. He looked at the three of them, one
by one; his eyes were frightening and remarkable, as dark as windows which
looked out into infinite space. Beyond his eyes there were galaxies, and
spinning star systems, and light-years of impossible distance.

‘Follow me,’ Springer said, simply.
‘Be wary, trust nothing – for nothing will be as it seems.’

Springer began to rise into the air
and to fade. For a moment, the three Night Warriors hesitated, uncertain how
they were going to follow him. But then Kasyx heard the clear words inside his
head, words as bright and sharp as slices of fresh-cut lemon:
Rise up, Kasyx! Use your power and rise up!

Kasyx closed his eyes, and
concentrated on rising up. His concentration was far more intense than it
needed to be; the Night Warriors rocketed up through the roof of the house and
soared high into the night, hundreds of feet up above Del Mar, spinning off to
the right as they did so because Samena was so much lighter than the other two.

Springer came looping up to join
them. Kasyx noticed that as Springer passed through the air he seemed to leave
behind him a trail of absolute darkness, which took several seconds to
dissipate. The thought occurred to him for one jagged half-second that they had
not yet been given any proof that Springer was actually what he or she claimed
to be; that for all they knew, Ashapola could be the Lord of Darkness, instead
of the Lord of Light. Quite innocently, all three of them could have been
recruited to help the Devil, instead of fighting against him.

But the words of Springer cut into
his mind again, this time speaking in the lighter tones of a woman. You will
always question; you will always doubt. Ashapola expects you to. Faith should
never be blind, as it is in Christianity and so many other religions. Faith
should come through questioning and criticism, through the proof of intellect
and the proof of experience. Gods should be tested, as well as men. The moment
of religious ecstasy comes when you know for certain that your God is
infallible.

They hung high in the air, like four
dark kites. Below them, traffic twinkled, surf gleamed, and Southern California
edged closer to midnight.

Springer said, ‘To enter a dream,
you must first encounter the dreamer. Follow close behind me. I am going down
now to that apartment block on 101. You see it? The one with the roof-garden.
On the fourth floor of that apartment block, a man is sleeping. He is
exhausted. He has been working hard to keep his business from bankruptcy. Two
years ago, his wife divorced him because of his adultery with his secretary. He
has a son, whom he sees only twice a month. He is haunted again and again by
guilt and by responsibilities which are not even his.’

They sank slowly through the warm
evening wind. Kasyx found that he was able to control the movements of all
three of them quite easily, with only a minimal consumption of power. Together,
they soared and circled, descending all the time, until at last they faded
through the walls of the apartment block, and into the bedroom of the man whose
dreams they were going to penetrate.

His room was in darkness. The
windows were closed and the air-conditioning was set to sixty-five degrees, so
that after the warmth of the night outside, it felt distinctly chilly. The man
lay on his back on a crumpled and twisted sheet, wearing nothing but jockey
shorts. He was dark, with a bald patch that shone white in the darkness, and a
dark hairy body. By the side of the bed there was a copy of
Reader’s Digest,
a bottle of Nytol
sleeping tablets and a glass of mineral water.

Springer leaned over the man and
touched his eyelids with his fingertips.’ He is experiencing the worst of his
nightmares even now. You can see by his eye movements that he is dreaming. This
is what they call REM sleep – for Rapid Eye Movement. ‘How do we get into his
nightmare?’ asked Tebulot, shifting the weight of his weapon.

‘More important, what do we do once
we get in there?’ Kasyx wanted to know.

Samena said, ‘Will he know that
we’re there – will he be able to see us in his dream?’

Springer said,’ He will see you in
his nightmare as clearly as everything else that he can see. As for what you
may and may not do, once you have penetrated his sleeping mind, the rules are
quite simple. You may explore the dream in the same way that you can explore
the waking world. If you are threatened in the dream, you may defend yourselves
and fight back. There are virtually no limitations, except one, and that is
that you may not and must not hurt the dreamer himself, if he happens to appear
in his own dream as a separate personality. You must be very wary of this, for
sometimes the dreamer will appear in his own dream as a child, or as somebody
of the opposite sex, or in some kind of disguise.’

‘What happens if we hurt the
dreamer?’ asked Tebulot.

Springer looked at him through the
darkness of the bedroom. For a moment, Springer was neither he nor she, but
something quite ethereal. ‘If you hurt or kill the dreamer, then the dream will
collapse in on itself – with you inside it. In the early days, before the
symbolism of dreams was fully understood, many inexperienced Night Warriors
were lost that way. Today, of course, even untrained people like yourselves are
aware that much of what appears in dreams and nightmares is metaphorical,
rather than literal.’

They looked down at the sleeping
man. He groaned, and turned, and whispered to himself.

‘Shall we go?’ asked Kasyx.

Springer nodded.

‘You, Kasyx, will use your power now
to create a nexus, between your dream and his. All you have to do is draw an
octagon in the air, with both hands, the hands separating at the top of the
octagon and joining at the bottom. Then, place your hands back to back in front
of you, and slowly prize them apart.’ Kasyx did as Springer instructed.
Allowing a steady current of power to flow out of his hands, he described a
large eight-sided figure in the darkness. His fingers crackled and danced with
bright blue sparks, and as he drew the octagon it remained suspended in the
middle of the room, flickering like illuminated barbed-wire.

Then, he held his arms out in front
of him, thrusting his hands into the centre of the octagon, and gradually
parting them. He felt extraordinary resistance, and he had to use almost double
the power, just to keep his hands from being pushed back together again. As he
opened them out, however, he suddenly saw what he was doing. He was tugging the
substance of the waking world apart, as if it were a heavy but invisible
curtain; because beyond the octagon, where his hands had drawn the molecules of
reality aside, he could glimpse a grim rainy landscape of rocks and mountains,
and wind-lashed trees.

‘Now,’ said Springer, ‘you must
enter. I shall not be coming with you; I am forbidden.

But I shall follow you with my
thoughts, and I shall advise you and instruct you whenever it is necessary.
Remember – all you are doing now is familiarising yourselves with the world of
nightmares. Take no risks, and use no weaponry unless you are forced to do so
for your own protection.’

Kasyx and Tebulot and Samena now
linked arms again, and stood in front of the glimmering octagon.

‘By the will of Ashapola, enter the
world of dreams,’ Springer intoned. The octagon rose slowly and turned itself
sideways, until it was over their heads. Then it gradually sank down towards
the floor, encircling them, as if a conjuror had passed a hoop over them, to
show that there were no strings, no mirrors, no tricks whatsoever.

The instant the octagon touched the
floor, the screaming of the wind exploded in their ears and they were hit by a
solid wall of pelting rain. Still clinging together, ducking their heads, they
looked around them, trying to orient themselves. The rain drummed against their
armour, and the wind blew the plumes of Samena’s hat into a fury of boiling
feathers. Above their heads, the sky was the colour of rusted iron, and clouds
tumbled and rolled across it helplessly. The ground beneath their feet was bare
brown granite, slick with rain and riven with cracks. In the distance, there
were broken crags and louring mountains, with a whitish building that looked
like some kind of fortress or monastery standing just to the right of them, at
the head of a valley.

‘What do we do?’ Susan shouted,
against the wind.

‘Head for that building, if you ask
me,’ Kasyx shouted back. ‘That seems to be the core of what he’s dreaming
about.’

They released each other’s hands,
but stayed as close together as they could.

Slowly, trying to acclimatise
themselves to walking through the uncompromising terrain of somebody else’s
nightmare, they made their way across the sharply sloping granite foothills,
until they reached a wind-blasted promontory, from which they could look down
at the wide valley which led up to the building. They could distinctly hear a
bell tolling from the building’s tower, a soulful, melancholy bell, which
uncomfortably reminded Kasyx of Edgar Allan Poe’s lines on ‘iron bells – what a
world of solemn thought their monody compels – for every sound that floats –
from within their rusted throats – is a groan’.

Tebulot touched Kasyx’s shoulder,
and shouted. ‘Look, down there!’

Kasyx wiped the rain away from his
visor, and strained his eyes to see down into the valley. In the shadows, in
the slanting sheets of rain, he could make out a slow procession of figures.
They were dressed in long white robes, and hooded; ten or eleven of them,
gradually climbing the valley floor. The two leading figures dragged behind
them a large wooden cross, and on the cross a naked man was spreadeagled.

Kasyx held his left hand against the
side of his helmet, and his vision was altered immediately to close-up. He
could now see the hooded figures as clearly as if he were standing only a few
feet away from them. They seemed tall, much taller than ordinary men; and no
matter how narrowly Kasyx adjusted his vision, he was unable to see anything
inside their hoods except absolute blackness. He thought once that he caught
sight of something like a black curling lock of hair, or tentacle, but as
quickly as he adjusted his focus on it, it disappeared.

Now he turned his attention to the
wooden crucifix, and the man who was stretched across it. The two leading
figures were dragging the crucifix with its top bumping on the ground so that
the man’s head was lower than his feet. He had been nailed to the cross through
his forearms and through his feet, and there were diagonal marks on his body,
as if he had been whipped. His eyes stared wide in agony. Every jolt along the
rocky ground must have been a punishment in itself. Kasyx recognised him at
once as the dreamer himself.

Samena said, ‘They seem like they’re
heading towards that building, too.’

‘They’ll reach it before we do,’
Tebulot commented.

‘Are we supposed to save him, or
something?’ Samena asked. ‘I mean, it seems as if Springer’s put us into this
dream for a reason, to see what we do.’

Kasyx shook his head. ‘We’re not
supposed to intervene unless our own safety is threatened.’

‘Sure,’ argued Tebulot. ‘But what
are the Night Warriors for? Isn’t their whole reason for existence to go into
dreams and save people?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Kasyx. ‘That
man down there on the cross, he’s the man who’s dreaming this dream. Maybe he
needs
to have dreams like this, to
express his sense of guilt. Maybe if he didn’t have them, he’d wind up a
head-case. Look at what’s happening to him down there: he’s being punished. You
heard what Springer said, things in dreams aren’t always what they appear to
be. Maybe those hooded figure are nothing more than his feelings of guilt.’

‘So meanwhile we stay here and let
them drag him across those rocks? Is that it?’

‘We’re not supposed to interfere,’
Kasyx insisted. ‘Well, I still think the whole
purpose
of our being here is to interfere,’ Tebulot told him.

‘Let’s get to the building first,’
Samena suggested. ‘Then we can make up our minds what we’re going to do next,
whether we’re going to help him or not.’

‘They’re going to get to the
building way ahead of us,’ said Kasyx. ‘Supposing they don’t let us in?’

Tebulot lifted his heavy weapon.
‘You heard what Springer said. This thing can vaporise the walls of a fortress.
We can get in there, whether they want us to or not.’

Bent against the wind and the rain,
they scrambled noisily down from the rocky promontory, and headed towards the
building along a narrow spine of grey granite.

Below them, and to their left, the
procession with the crucifix was now quite close to the head of the valley, and
when the wind dropped from time to time the Night Warriors could hear them
chanting in Latin. The bell still tolled from the building’s tower, dolorously,
over and over and over again.