Dreamfire (18 page)

“It's all right,” Josh said, relieved to be back in safe territory. She knew the feeling he meant; she'd had it too, when her gut was screaming like a tornado siren. The difference was that she'd run away from the danger and Will had run toward it.

He'd made a bad choice, but he'd done it for the right reasons.

“It's not all right,” he said. “You're in the hospital because of me.”

“I'm in the hospital because a slide fell on top of me. Even if you hadn't gone after the man in the trench coat, the slide still would have fallen.”

“Next time I'll listen.”

“I know.”

Will put one elbow on the mattress and laid his chin in his hand. “Don't fall asleep,” Josh reminded him, dangerously close to sleep herself.

He smiled weakly. “I won't. And I'll get out of here so that you can rest, but before I go … I'm sorry. I just want to tell you that again.”

His voice was full of defeat. She used her leaden hand to tug his out from under his chin and then wrapped her fingers around his, willing to take the risk of touching him if it meant bringing him some comfort. “I know. Stop worrying.”

His hand was cold and dry, hospitalized, but his grip was reassuring.
We almost died together tonight,
she thought.

“You hear me?” Josh asked.

“Yes.”

“Good.” As she closed her eyes she heard him stand up. His fingers whispered across the grainy wallpaper as he shuffled to the door.

“Josh?” he asked.

“Yeah?”

With no small awareness of the irony, he said, “Sweet dreams.”

She smiled at the stained ceiling. “You too.”

 

Fourteen

Will was released
from the hospital just before lunch, and Laurentius picked him up in a Mercedes that made the candy stripers swoon. The ride to the house was the first time Will had been alone with his adoptive father. He and Lauren didn't have much to talk about besides Josh, and ended up discussing every parent's favorite subject—college—which was okay until Will realized that Lauren was happy to pay for Will to go to any school he got into, which freaked him out and made him clam up.

At the house, Will wasn't sure what to do with himself. Josh was still in the hospital, and he felt like he needed her silent, unspoken permission to be here. He didn't live here; he had yet to spend one night in the bedroom Kerstel and Dustine had so carefully prepared for him.

He wandered down the hallway until he heard laughter coming from the office. Through the open door, he saw Winsor sitting in front of the computer and Deloise on the futon beside Whim, who was sprawled out like a lazy giraffe.

“Will,” Whim said. “You're an eyewitness! Come in here and give us your two cents!”

Whimarian Travarres Nikolaas Avishara was very tall and very thin, with his sister's blue eyes and his father's sociability. He had little in the way of either muscle or fat, but he was both coordinated and nimble, and he smiled easily. In the eighteen hours Will had known him, he'd discovered that Whim also talked easily, and quickly, and constantly.

“My two cents on what?” Will asked, joining them.

“Deloise says that one of the trench-coat men in the amusement park controlled the Dream,” Winsor explained. “She says he made a cotton-candy machine explode just by looking at it.”

Whim proceeded to act this out, playing the parts of both the trench-coat man and the cotton-candy machine.

“I was trying to get to Winsor to help her,” Deloise explained, ignoring Whim, “and when the guy saw me, he looked at the cotton-candy machine, like, really
hard
. Like he was mad at it. And then it just exploded and completely blocked my way.”

“I thought nobody could alter the Dream except dreamers,” Will said.

“Absolutely true,” Winsor said.

“
Not
absolutely true!” Whim cried. “How quickly thou hast forgotten the learnings of thine childhood.” He held up a single finger in point. “The True Dream Walker could have altered the Dream.”

Winsor groaned. “All right: discounting the presence of imaginary people, no one can alter the Dream. Besides which, the park was already starting to fall apart by then, so the machine could have exploded on its own.”

“However, we are anxious to hear your testimony before deciding the case,” Whim added.

Will rubbed the back of his neck to stall for time. Everyone was talking so quickly, the way people who had known each other for a long time often did. He was having a hard time keeping up. “Ah, who's the True Dream Walker?”

“Your teacher, who wears his symbol around her neck at all times, hasn't told you about the TDW?” Whim asked with a laugh.

“The True Dream Walker opened the first archway to the Dream,” Deloise explained to Will. Winsor's eyes narrowed, and Deloise quickly continued. “According to legend. And supposedly someday he'll return to bring permanent balance to the three universes.”

“And Josh believes in him? That's what the flower charm is about?”

“Well,” Deloise said, “I don't know if she really
believes
in him.”

“He's more like her idol,” Whim put in. “He's her guiding light.”

The picture felt somehow incomplete to Will. He wondered if he would ever get the opportunity to talk to Josh about it; personal beliefs weren't at the top of the list of things she liked to discuss with him.

“So, about the cotton-candy machine,” Deloise said.

Will shrugged. “I didn't see it happen, so I can't really vouch one way or the other.”

Whim lifted Winsor's right hand—which was in a cast—into the air. “Sister, I declare you the winner of this debate. Would you like to make a victory speech?”

“No, I would not.” Winsor carefully tugged her hand away. “Where is this drawing you were going to show me?”

Whim produced a very thin, very sleek laptop. “One of my many faithful readers says she saw the trench-coat men in a nightmare, and she did these drawings of them.”

The first image showed a sinister man in a green-black trench coat. His shoulders were massive, hulking, and he reached out with hands that looked like rakes made of flesh. Black boots leaked green sewage water. The whole picture was overblown, a sort of caricature drawn with colored pencils. But the green hat with its black band and the overall feel were right.

The second image showed the man's rubber gas mask and the canister peeking over his shoulder. The artist hadn't gotten the tank's color quite right—it was too silver—but she'd included both gas masks.

“That's them!” Deloise cried. “Look at the eyes!”

The eyes were the clincher. No white, no irises, no pupils. Just a shining black expanse.

“It's the same guys,” Winsor agreed.

“What does this mean?” Will asked.

Whim stabbed the trench-coat man's face decisively with one finger, causing the laptop's screen to blur. “I think they're connected to the sick people.”

“Don't start with that again,” Winsor snapped. “It's absurd.”

“Not if you connect the dates—”

Ignoring them, Deloise said, “So, the trench-coat guys must be getting publicity from somewhere. Maybe comic books.” She tilted the laptop's screen to get a better look at the images. “He looks like a comic-book character.”

“What happens when we find out who he is?” Will asked.

“Then we know how to fight him,” Winsor said. “He has to have a weak spot.”

“So, you don't think there's any chance he's…” Will hesitated and then decided to admit what he'd been thinking. “That he's a real guy walking around in there?”

Deloise's eyes moved quickly from Will to Winsor, as if she, too, had wondered. Winsor didn't laugh, but she didn't seem to take the idea very seriously, either. “Highly unlikely.”

“But definitely possible,” Whim said. When Winsor shot him a look, he added, “According to modern dream theory.”

“Don't be condescending,” Winsor said tartly.

Whim sighed. “I'm not.”

“You are! That's your Ha-Ha-Winsor-Can't-Take-a-Joke voice.”

Whim sighed again, letting his head fall back on the futon's arm and his eyes roll at the same time. “Okay, Winsor, I'm sorry.”

He's not sorry at all,
Will thought, just as Winsor spun the desk chair to face Whim. Her nostrils flared, and she said, “You know what, Whim? My tolerance for taking crap from you is zero right now, because I've been taking crap from you for the last six straight months, so don't you—”

“Is that what this is about?” Whim asked, not bothering to sit up. “I sent letters—”

“You sent
postcards
. And now you show up with
Haley
?”

Will must have missed something. What did Haley have to do with this?

“Oh, I get it,” Whim said with a morose smile. “You wanted me to drop him on the side of the highway before I came home.”

“You could have called to say he was coming here. You know things are weird between us.”

Whim chuckled. “Winsor, look, it's not my fault you cheated on him with Ian, okay?”

Will felt like he'd just walked onto the set of a soap opera. Winsor had dated
Haley
? And cheated on him with
Ian
?

“Golly,” Deloise said, shoving Whim's legs off her lap and rising from the futon. “I don't think Will and I need to stick around for this. We probably have homework to do, or spaceships to build, or…”

“Baby seals to club,” Will put in, although he was tempted to stay and see how much more he could find out.

“You're a jackass,” Winsor told her brother, who laughed. Neither of them was paying Will or Deloise any attention as they escaped into the hallway.

Deloise yanked the office door shut behind them and blew out an exaggerated breath of relief. “I think I need my aura cleansed.” She shook her head. “Before you came in, Whim admitted that he and Haley had been traveling around since last summer. Whim graduated last year, but Haley's missed more than half his junior year! I don't even think his mom knows—she probably thought he was living here and going to school with us.”

Living here?
Will wondered, and then remembered the empty second-floor apartment. “His apartment's still empty, isn't it?”

“Yeah. He slept in Josh's room last night.” Deloise made a face that suggested she knew how Josh would feel about that. “Don't tell her, okay? 'Cause it would just upset her, and he's already acting, like … strange.”

Will hadn't met Haley yet, so he couldn't help asking, “Strange how?”

Deloise glanced up and down the hall as if making sure no one would overhear them, then dragged Will into Kerstel's office. A desk with a towering hutch, an overburdened bookcase, and two filing cabinets were crammed into the tiny space.

Deloise pulled her cell phone out of her pocket, and a moment later she was showing Will a series of photographs. “Look at these,” she said, holding the phone out to Will.

The similarities—and differences—between the twins were astonishing. They both had curly black hair and hazel eyes; they shared the same tall, slim frames. But Ian's hair was trimmed into a cap close around his skull, there were smile lines at the corners of his eyes, he carried a decent amount of muscle, and he was dressed in slightly preppy clothes that Will was sure Deloise appreciated. Ian jumped off the page, making Haley look like a pale afterimage left in his brother's wake. Aside from his greasy hair, Haley seemed to be wearing a black or navy-blue T-shirt and stained jeans in every picture, and he slouched so badly that he was more than an inch shorter than Ian. It was obvious from his uncertain and panicky expression that the camera made him nervous.

“You can see how different they looked, right? They always looked like that. I mean, nobody ever had trouble telling who was Haley and who was Ian.” She stuck the phone back in her pocket. In a half whisper, she continued, “But when Haley showed up yesterday, he had his hair cut just like Ian's used to be, and he was wearing Ian's clothes. He was even standing like Ian. And Josh kept calling him Ian in the hospital, because she hit her head when the slide fell on her, and she called him Ian, like, ten times, and he didn't correct her once. One time he even answered her. Like, what
is
that? You're into psychology, right? That's not normal, is it?”

Hell, no!
Will thought. Aloud, he said, “Well, grieving is its own thing, and twins have their own kind of bond, and maybe this is just how Haley is grieving. Everybody does it differently.” Feeling that his answer was somehow insufficient, he added, “But no, frankly, it doesn't sound normal to me. Answering to Ian's name doesn't sound at all normal.”

Deloise let out a long, theatrical sigh. “I'm so glad you said that. I was feeling kind of guilty for being so creeped out by it. Thanks for letting me vent.”

She hugged him, and Will couldn't help smiling. She was such a sweetheart.

“Hey,” she said, releasing him, “let's go do something fun.”

“You got a plan?”

“Let's make brownies and take them to Josh in the hospital.”

Will grinned. “She'll probably eat them for breakfast tomorrow.”

Deloise's jaw dropped and she smacked his arm. “She will! How did you know that?”

He opened the door to the hallway and then followed Deloise out. “Oh, I've learned a thing or two about her.”

Through a Veil Darkly

I've been getting a ton of e-mails about the mystery illness that strikes sleeping victims. I ignored the first half dozen that suggested the illness had something to do with the trench-coat men, but then I noticed something interesting. The date of the first reported sighting of the TCM is only four days before the first victim fell ill of CSAD (that's what the CDC is calling it—catatonic sinoatrial dysfunction).