Original art by Matti Halmevuo - Deviant Art Site • Used with permission.
Chapter 1
I woke in my poorly-appointed slum apartment, screaming and dripping with sweat. The clock blinked 12:00 at me as if it was laughing, so I grabbed it and threw it through the window.
That was the fourth or fifth night of nightmares in a row, and they weren't getting any easier to deal with. I swung my legs out of the bed and sat there for a while, holding my temples and wishing the headache on someone else. Not anyone in particular, just someone that wasn't me.
I got up and went to my kitchen, checking the fridge. It was bare, as it had been the night before, and the night before that. And the night before that. I sensed a pattern. The time on the microwave was also blinking, but it was blinking 3:33. I cocked my head . . . was that the default, or how long it had been since power came back?
Shrugging, I pulled open a kitchen drawer and dug out a red cell phone. It always worked, no matter where I was or what the weather. It hadn't rang in quite a while, which made me happy. The people that gave it to me were horrible, their missions dangerous, and I always felt a little less myself after doing something for them. Anyway, I checked the time and reprogrammed my microwave. I went to fix my alarm clock, but then I remembered that it was outside.
Sigh.
I wasn't going back to sleep, so I pulled on a pair of cargo shorts and a tank top, strapped on some sandals and grabbed my wallet.
I was going to eat something.
I'd used some of the money I got from a shadowy organization (for whom I perform dark and dangerous deeds) to fix my car, an old Buick monster. Earlier in the year I'd used it to run down a shape-changing vampire prince and did a bunch of damage to it which I then exacerbated by driving cross country. Twice. Or both ways, whichever. They gave me a lot of money, so I fixed it up well; put in a sound system, beefed up the engine, got a leather guy to make me some holsters for the doors so that on hot nights like this one, I wouldn't have my shorts being dragged down by my firearms.
But I wasn't on my way to commit any felonies. Well, it wasn't the plan. You never know when a crime is about to happen, right?
As I sat at a red light, I looked around, down a smaller side street. A TV repair shop caught my attention, and without thinking about it too much, I flipped my blinker on. When the light turned, I turned with it, pulling into the empty parking lot.
It had just rained, and the whole night-time world glistened like a black crystal. This TV repair shop was its multi-colored center. I gripped the steering wheel, staring at the splash of neon at the door, the glowing red CLOSED sign in the window in front of a row of televisions. This shop, I'd driven past it literally dozens of times on my way to the Dairy Queen down the block, but never gave it a second glance. I didn't own a TV. Never have. Might, someday.
So, confused, I sat in the parking lot at oh-dark-thirty in the morning and looked at the closed shop.
One of the televisions winked on, an older model. One of those deals with the big cathode ray tube. It was all snow, just static patterns.
"Weird."
I got out of the car and walked over to the big window, watching the shifting bits of nothing flitter about on the screen. The pattern changed a bit, from a swirling to a rolling. As I watched a white dot appeared in the very center of the screen and the snow gathered around it in a spiral.
Then came the knocking. A hollow sound, just like rapping knuckles on an old TV like this one. Coming from . . .
"What?"
The sound was coming from inside the TV shop, and it was loud enough to make it outside. The picture shifted, the spiral winking out, replaced by a figure in white, banging on the screen.
"Help me! Help me!" Screams came out, shrill and panicked. The figure beat faster, alternating fists on the screen.
"HELP ME!"
The television exploded in a shower of sparks and fire, and I sat up at my steering wheel, hands in front of my face.
I looked at the shop. Everything was dark.
Rubbing my face, I pulled back onto the street and aimed at a Jack in the Box. This sleeping thing was going to be a pain.
The next morning I sat in my shabby office, reading the stack of newspapers on my shabby desk and hoping for some shabby client to walk through the door. I was bored. And tired. And I wanted some windmill to tilt at to take my mind off of both.
An article in the paper caught my eye. No, it was as if it jumped out at me. Missing person.
SUNDERVILLE WOMAN STILL MISSINGTim Wright
Mar 15
The investigation into the disappearance of
Alice Lyons has come to a standstill amidst
outlandish reports of family and neighbors.
One source (who requested to remain anonymous)
stated that Alice's voice has been heard in the
now-empty house coming from the television.
Poltergeist, anyone?
The lead investigator was unavailable for comment.
Sunderville, Texas. I knew where that was, more or less. Io and I did a job in Brenham, and that wasn't too far away from there. Small town, too. I dug a map out of my drawer and looked for it. Not bad, maybe two hours away?
Yeah. It was a dinky little town on a farm-to-market road, less than two thousand people. I slapped the map, glad to have something to do.
An hour later, gassed up and loaded for bear, I was headed east on US-290, Taj Mahal cranked up on my new stereo system as I rolled the miles under me. The sun was shining and it was a hot Spring day in Central Texas. My special revolvers sat in their custom holsters on my door and a big bag of beef jerky sat next to me on the seat. Everything was right with the world, finally.
Then the cell phone rang.
I thought about just letting it ring, but there was no voicemail, and the people that call me on that phone will let it ring and ring and ring and ring and ring and ring. I thought about just chucking it out the window, but I knew that if I did that, it would just show back up in the glove compartment or my pocket or someplace else. Ringing.
Fine.
"What it is?"
"About time you answered," a female voice said. Not the female voice I was expecting, though. This was Anita, a girl I met in the course of my job. "What are you up to?"
"How do you keep getting my number?" I'd yet to give it to her.
"I called your apartment. And what, you don't want me to call?"
"No, that's not it. I just . . . I'm headed out of town on a job. Did you need help with something?"
I was hoping she'd say no. I owed her pretty big, and so far I'd been repaying her by staying out of her life. She was a nice girl, and things happen to people close to me.
"Kind of. It's hard to explain."
"I can almost guarantee I've heard weirder."
A breath. "Okay. But don't . . . overreact."
I snorted.
"I don't think you should sleep anymore."
Three hours later, she was meeting me in Brenham for a late lunch and some explanation.
I sat in a fast food joint, waiting for her. We'd only met once or twice before after she did me a really big favor, and she was a fox. Black hair with red tips, flashing black eyes and a smile that hurt. And she was very . . . womanly. Harrumph.
She came through the glass doors and I just watched her sashay in. A lady like that would make a man do crazy things if she took a mind to it. She saw me and waved, hurrying over to the table. I had her food sitting across from me.
"Silly," she said, bumping me over in the booth and sitting next to me instead. "You never call me."
I smiled. "I don't. Talk later, food now. I'm starving."
She tore open her burger wrapper and started eating with a tiny "om nom nom," which was adorable. Then she noticed me watching and stopped in mid-chew. Shaking my head, I turned to my own food.
Mopping up the last of my ketchup with a French fry, I nudged her with my elbow. "So tell me why I shouldn't sleep."
Anita put her food down and pushed it away. "Kay. Um, it started about a year ago." She sipped her drink, looking like she was trying to figure out how to say what she had to say.
"A year ago," I said. "That's when we had that showdown in the Dreamlands, that fire from which you pulled my fat."
She nodded. "Yeah. Well, ever since then, things have started to change."
"Change how?"
"Things started moving around, more than usual. Cracks appeared in the Great Ice Wall. Dreamers were losing their way, just one or two at first, mostly the novices. But now . . . well, it's not safe anymore."
She gripped my left hand in both of hers. "I'm not saying it's your fault, or anything . . . but tell me you're not having bad dreams."
I crumpled up my food wrapper. "I wish it was just bad dreams. These nightmares are intense. And I think I had a dream while I was awake last night."
She nodded her head. "I thought so. Tell you what," she dug into her bright yellow purse. "Call this doctor, tell him I referred you. If he plays hard to get, tell him I said the cats vouch for you."
"The cats?"
"Just . . . trust me. He should be able to help you stay awake. Or to stop the nightmares."
I abandoned my trip to Sunderville for the time being, driving back to Austin. I called the doctor on my way.
"Doctor Spencer's office."
"Hey, howdy. I've been recommended to the doc by a friend, she said he could help me with my sleeping problems."
"Okay. Can I have your name, please?"
We danced on the phone for a bit, and eventually I had an appointment for two days from then. I thought about this while I drove . . . did that mean he wasn't very busy, or he knew I'd be calling? Obviously, Anita had talked to him at some point, paving the way. Maybe not for just me. Hmm.
I picked the phone back up and called my cousin, Io. He was all about magic and the spirit world, so I figured he'd be able to give me some background.
"What are you into now?"
"I missed you, too. Tell me something, why would it matter to someone if cats vouch for me?"
"Cats?"
"Cats."
"I don't think—no."
"No? You're getting more cryptic as you go."
"I said, no. You're headed into the Dreamlands again, and it is not a good idea."
I looked at the phone.
"No, I am not headed into the Dreamlands again. I believe I've had enough of that place, thank you very much. And secondly . . . why shouldn't I?"
"Goddamn it. Let me tell you a little about that place. First, the cats. They're important in a place called Ulthar, and they are organized. Do not fuck with the cats."
"Check. No catfoolery."
A sigh. "Next, do you know anything about the Gods of the Dreamlands?"
"Two things. Jack and shit."
"I thought so. Forget them. Just know that they are watched over by an aspect of Nyarlathotep. You are not popular with any of his Faces."
"Io, I'm not popular with the Mayor, either. That doesn't mean cops pull me over all the time."
"Well, it's your head," he said, hanging up.
The phone immediately rang again.
"Hello?"
"One other thing," Io said. "Or two. Stay off the Moon. And keep an eye out for flying things that have horse-heads. Bye."
I looked at the phone again.
Cryptic.
Chapter 2
"Tell me about dreams, doc."
Doctor W. Spencer was an elderly gentleman, standing about five feet, six inches tall, and he wore an expression on his face somewhere between amusement and confusion, as if he didn't quite know what to do with me. Anita had made introductions, so he was kind of at-ease, but he was well aware of what I'd done last time in the Dreamlands. He was probably right to be ill at ease.
"We don't know a lot about dreams," he said, crossing his legs and putting his fingertips together. "Well, 'we' as in the medical community. I'm a dreamer. Not as powerful a dreamer as our Miss Kitka, but—"
"Miss who?"
The amusement fell out of his face and was immediately replaced by abashment. "Oh. I shouldn't have. That's not my place to—"
"Well you did," I said, my face tightening. I wasn't sure why I was so immediately . . . incensed because this man knew more about Anita than I did. I hardly knew her, really. Not that I didn't want to get to know her. But that was for later. "You did. She goes by Kitka?"
The doctor sighed. "When a dreamer gets there, to the Dreamlands . . . you're not who you are here. You're more yourself, in a way, than you've ever been. Most of us take new names. Her name is Kitayna Ireyna Tatanya Kerenska Alisoff. Don't ask me. She shortens it to Kitka."
Something about that name made my brain itch, but I ignored it for the moment.
"I didn't feel any different when I was there."
"Your journey," he said slowly, "your journey was . . . I don't know if I have the words for it. Listen, to get there, a dreamer must find his or her way. The journey there starts out differently for everyone, but every journey comes to a point where it becomes the same for everyone. You must be judged, and if you are found unworthy, you will never make it into the Dreamlands.
"You, however, were thrust into it, bypassing all controls and procedures. Your psyche never adjusted itself from the waking-you to the dream-you. Some might say the real you. It is, of course, unheard of and unprecedented. No one really knows what the far-reaching consequences or after-effects will be, but we do know this: the Dreamlands are becoming unstable. After thousands of years of unchange, things now are shifting and the repercussions could spell disaster for all of us."
"All the dreamers?"
Doctor Spencer shook his head. "All of us. Even though the whole of humanity doesn't venture to the Dreamlands, that place is hooked inextricably to the collective unconscious. And we all tap into that when we sleep."
I sat back in the chair.
"Like I said," the doctor continued, "we don't truly understand sleep or dreams or the need for either. Why do we enjoy sleeping so much if we never experience it? We look forward to it, if we're healthy. We revel in hitting the snooze button. Some days, it's all we want to do. But why?
"There was a sleep study conducted by someone's military, I forget whose, where they experimented with different things to keep soldiers awake, to keep pilots awake. They came up with a thing built into pilots' visors that broadcast light at a similar spectrum as that of a sunrise. A bright white light shined at the back of soldiers' knees, their knees, served to restore wakefulness. Does any of that make any sense to you?"
I sighed. "Hardly anything does anymore, doc. Can you break it? Can you break whatever it is that makes me dream?"
Doctor Spencer got up and walked over to a locked cabinet. "You won't get a refill for this anywhere. And you shouldn't need one . . . by the time you've taken all of these, if you follow the directions, we will have found whatever it is that's happening while you dream and stopped it. If not, well, more drastic measure may have to be taken."
I took the bottle from him. "If you think you can."
"Yeah, it's something with a lot of letters, bunches of consonants all together. I don't know how to say it."
Kinder, a magic man I knew in Vegas, made a non-committal sound. He was a mage, like Io, so I expected no less. I waited for him to make up his mind about helping me while I repacked the trunk of my car. I was still headed for Sunderville.
"Spell it out for me," he said, and I did. He grunted, or maybe it was a laugh. "I see. He is stopping up your dreams, is he?"
I blinked. "Yeah, he is. What does this stuff do?"
"You mean you do not know? You are going to take something from a doctor you do not know, and you do not know what it does. Interesting. There must be a woman involved."
I slammed shut my trunk. "Insightful. What does it do?"
"What I understand, this chemical will radically slow the operation of your pineal gland. It will also attach riders to the neurotransmitters the gland emits so that the brain will ignore them."
"And that's where dreams come from?"
"It is a popular theory."
"This pill, it's like, what, Hypnocil?"
"That was the brand name attached to the trial version of it, yes. Those trials, you should know, ended in madness, coma and death."
I nodded. "Wonderful. Always illuminating talking to you, Kinder."
"Ciao."
I sat behind the wheel of my car and looked at the vast wasteland outside my windshield. As it wasn't there before, this disconcerted me somewhat. The ground stretched out in all directions, dry and cracked and devoid of life. The few trees that were still upright were bent and misshapen, arms stabbing in all directions, black trunks like cracked tar.
I got out of the car and looked around me. The sky and ground was the same shade of ugly, a dusty brown that went on and on, world without end. From the south (I don't know how I knew it was the south) a wind kicked up, blowing dust and dead plant life past me and the car. I turned that way, shielding my eyes and something shook the earth. Wobbling, I grabbed for the car to keep my balance only to find the Buick missing.
"My guns are in there," I said.
Another boom, and the land vibrated so much that this time I did loose my footing. I fell to my knees, looking south and reasoning that there was some trouble that way. I looked north . . . could go that way.
That's not really me, though, is it?
I scrambled to my feet and headed south, towards the trouble. Every minute or so, the earth shook and I fell, but doggedly, I picked myself up and continued that way. Finally, there on the horizon, I saw something. A man. Holding a . . . I couldn't make it out. But it might have been the biggest crucifix in the world. Big.
He brought it down, stabbing it into the earth, and everything shook. Twisting, the man turned the giant cross, prying it loose from the world.
"Hey!" I called out.
He stood, looking up at me, and I wasn't sure I could make out a face.
I could make out a sneer, though. "Go back," he said, waving his hand. "You shouldn't be here." Then he looked up at the giant crucifix.
"Not yet, anyway." He made a sharp gesture with his hand and I sucked in a giant breath, waking up at the wheel of my car.
I took two pills.
My cell rang just as I finished setting the room up. It was Io again.
"What's up?"
"Where are you?"
"I'm looking into something. Small town south of Houston. You remember Sunderville?"
"Yeah, I do. Gonna be there for a while?"
"Won't know until I've looked into that something. Why, what's up?"
He sighed. "I'm just outside of New Orleans, digging through the rubble of the Dreamlands Worldwide building, and—"
"Hold up a tick. New Orleans? That building's in Austin."
"One of them. It appears when Simon blew that one, he blew them all. They were connected somehow. I was going to ask you to sift through the Austin site again, see if you can find anything."
I sat on the bed. "Why now? Why not a year ago when it all came down?"
"A year ago it was part of an ongoing investigation and you wouldn't have made it in."
"Please. You think some yellow crime scene tape would have stopped me?"
"Not that. A Century investigation."
Hunh. The Century is an organization of mages and wizards that Io belongs to. And Kinder.
"Why is the Century looking into Dreamlands Worldwide? I thought that kind of thing was a little out of your jurisdiction, or whatever. Your mandate."
"It was. Then Simon disappeared and left all this shit in our laps. I'll get a veil thrown over it, keep people away until you get back. Let me know when you're in town again."
"I—" he'd hung up. "Well, since you put it that way."
It was hot out. Oppressively hot. I hated blundering about in an unfamiliar town packing a pair of unregistered guns, so for the first day I dressed in something light and cottony and bland. I popped on a polo shirt and gelled my hair and pulled it into one of the more detestable recent fashions. Flip-flops and cargo shorts completed my frat-boy disguise. Almost. I made sure there was a bottle-opener on my keychain and I knew there was a Guinness Stout ball cap in my bag. Now. Disguise complete.
I left the hotel when the sun went away and sauntered around town, stopping by the few college-age hangouts there were. Three or four pool games later, people stopped being guarded around the quiet new guy and talked like I wasn't there. Tongues wagged even more after I bought a round or two. Deep into a fourth game of darts I was some drunk guy's confident and he told me all about the weird shit going on in town.
After some time I disentangled myself from the twenty-somethings in the sports bar and went back to the hotel. I hadn't drank much (just enough to make it look like I was keeping up) and had no problem getting up early enough the next morning to hit the public library.
As I pawed through shiny and locally-published copies of the town's history, I thought about some of the things I'd heard the night before. I knew Sunderville was bouncing around in my subconscious for a reason, but couldn't remember quite what it was until one of the guys last night said something.
"Shit's getting weird around here. 'Specially at night. It's like the Snakeskin Killer is back, or something."
Had I a laptop, I'd have just looked it up, but I had yet to buy one at that point, even though I was hardly hurting for money. So there I was, at the library. Looking it up.
The Snakeskin Killer was a serial murderer around the turn of the century previous. Around the same time H.H. Holmes was torturing people in his Murder Castle, the Snakeskin Killer was making people disappear deep in the heart of Texas. The death toll sounds wildly exaggerated at three figures (over six hundred) but the evidence was there. It's possible that some of those were copy-cat killings by men that wanted rid of their wives (or the other way around) but I'd seen the case files and photos; there was an eerie realism to most of the crime scenes.
I digress. The Snakeskin Killer was thought to be a native of Sunderville, as that's where the killings started. Each victim was found strangled, mutilated, violated, tattooed and wrapped in snakeskin. And the first one.
Oh, hah. The first one was found in the hotel room I was staying in.
The cool veil of night came down and once again I donned my disguise. I was pretty sure that the well was tapped, but now armed with townie info, I could ask questions and steer the conversation a little bit. What I really wanted to know was, had there been any bodies showing up with the Snakeskin Killer's M.O., but that was difficult to work into conversation. Awkward to ask just walking into the police station, too. I would have to be smooth.
I chose a different bar than the night before and began again, loosening local vocal cords with liberal amounts of alcohol. Eventually, conversation turned to the disappearances and one of the guys (with eyes the size of saucers) said he had something to show me if I promised not to tell.
That was a hook I could not say no to.
After paying for a last round and two more pool games, I slipped out the back with my newfound informant, who promptly turned and shot me in the belly.
"Outsiders," he said, leveling the gun at my face, the end of the barrel looming large as the moon, "you people will never understand our ways."
Chapter 3
Almost immediately after the gunshot, somebody started yelling from the mouth of the alley. The man with the big eyes looked that way, then back at me. With a look of regret clear on his face, he lowered the revolver and put the hammer down.
"I hope you die," he said, "but if you don't, stay out of our town."
He turned and went back inside, leaving me bleeding in the alley. The shot had thrown me back against the brick exterior of the bar, but I'd managed to stay on my feet.
"Ooh," I groaned. "I never get used to this part."
Blood dripped . . . no, blood poured from my midsection, and I pushed down, trying to keep some of the red stuff inside. With my other hand, I felt around my back to see if there was a gaping fucking hole there. There was not.
"Good news," I said to the alley. "Come to town with nothin', leave with a free bullet. Courtesy of your friendly neighborhood . . ."
I drifted off for a second and when I opened my eyes again, it was because someone was using his (or her) thumb to pry my eyelid open. Bright light. Blecch. He (or she) was babbling something about blood loss and internal damage or something, and the world got very bumpy for a minute there. Something in my head had enough of it and passed me back out.
I came to again at the hospital and I reached out, snagging the nearest white coat. "If you're going to put me out," I said, "you'd better force-feed me some of the pills I have in my pocket."
"Sir, we threw those out. The Hypno—"
"Fucker!" I yelled, swinging at his head with whatever I had left before the cold black of the other side grabbed by head and pulled me under.
I opened my eyes to look up at a slate-grey sky. Around my head was some pretty tall and green, green grass. And cats.
Lots of cats.
I sat straight up and checked my midsection. Of course, there was no bullet hole there, because it really wasn't my body. From what I could see of it, it looked like my body. But it wasn't. Couldn't have been. No way my nails were that clean.
"Mwrrr," the largest of the cats said to me, a calico with eerie eyes. It turned and walked off, and the rest of the cats got up to follow. About a minute later, the cat turned back and repeated itself, except louder, and all its buddies chimed in.
"Okay, okay," I said, getting to my feet to follow. What I saw next was . . . disheartening.
My last trip to the Dreamlands (because that's where I had to be) ended in fire and ashes. But we mostly bagged the bad guy, got the big monster on its butt so that the Forces of Good (or whatever passes for them) could put it back in its cage. I was in pretty bad shape, the pretty lady for whom I'd just bought lunch had saved my bacon. Since then, I hadn't given too much thought to the Dreamlands, the agents of Nyarlathotep, the crystal prison the Beast resided in or any of that crap.
The wastes before me brought it all back.
I barely recognized the area. The Gates stood before me, but everything around them had changed. Instead of the rich and green vegetation, everywhere was large brown piles of slush, as if the forest had given up and decided that compost was a better way to go. There was a spot or two where the Beast and I had struggled, and it looked like the decay spread from there.
I turned and jogged a ways. I remembered something from the last time I was here. Behind me, the cats yowled and fussed, but I kept on going. There was a thing . . . there. Beside a pit in the ground was a mound of molded and rotting bones and cartilage. I kicked around the uneven surface until something caught my ear, a tinkle of metal. Bending down, I swept away some of the nastiness and pulled free a necklace. On the chain was a pendant, a stylized and rough-looking rhino horn. I slipped it over my head and turned back towards the cats. The first one that had spoken to me when I woke was there, behind me, looking up at me as disapprovingly as a cat could.
"Just in case," I said. "Lead on."
With something that sounded like a feline "harrumph," the cat turned away and walked back to the Gates, its tail twitching. I followed close on, even though I was sure I didn't want to go through the Gates. Not really. No, thank you.
The cat went through, all of its buddies behind it.
"Hold on," I said, and one or two of the cats at the rear turned my way. "Isn't that the way out?" I had a fear, or notion, that if I passed through the Gates, somebody would notice it. Who? Fuck if I knew.
The black one hisses and scurried to catch up, and the other one, a spotted tabby, laughed at me. I think. Then it too turned and sprang away.
"Oh, hell."
I followed.
I stepped through the Gates and looked back at them; they weren't there. Blinking, I turned back to examine the spot where they'd just stood, but the spotted tabby was there before me, his hackles up and hissing.
"Alright, alright. Lead the way, then."
Satisfied that I wouldn't go back, the cat pranced ahead of me. As we walked, I looked around. We were headed west (I knew this) and there came to me a sound of running water to the south. We walked for a while. As we did, I took a chance to look myself over again. I was dressed as I normally am, like someone that does his shopping at either Goodwill or the Salvation Army, with the occasional stop at an Army/Navy surplus store. Grey BDU pants and faded blue t-shirt, with black-and-white Chuck Taylors on my feet. My seven-dollar watch sat on my wrist, and the reassuring weight of a butterfly knife sat in my right-hand pants pocket.
Not what I expected, really.
I think of the Dreamlands, I think of people running around in robes and scarves and loincloths and armor or something, swinging tulwars and toting around longbows. I wore a Pepsi shirt. On a whim, I checked the knife in my pocket, twirling it about once. The handles were grey and uniquely-shaped, the blade of a leaf-style spearpoint type.
"Whaaat?"
I'd had one of these before, a couple of years ago. It was a Spyderco Spyderfly. I loved that knife and lost it down a storm drain in Lake Charles, Louisiana. It felt just right in my hand, and it figured that if I was to be armed in the Dreamlands, it would be with my dream knife.
Ahead, a cat yowled and I looked up. Coming towards me was a man, dressed how I figured. He wore a rough brown tunic over puffy white MC Hammer pants. On his head was a turban.
"Welcome to Ulthar," he said, his hands together in front of him. "I am Zed."
Immediately, I thought of Police Academy 2, but kept my mouth shut. Little by little, I'm getting better at that.
"We had hoped against your arrival," he continued, "but as you can see, the cats knew you were coming. No offense."
I shrugged. "None taken. It's very seldom that my arrival is greeted with cheers."
Zed cocked his head. "Ah. Well. Come with me, then." He turned and walked away, immediately flanked by a column of cats on each side. They set a brisk pace through a crumbling city. Several times I skirted huts and houses that looked as if they might just slump over on me as we walked past. The cobblestones were loose under my shoes, with weeds and grasses sticking up through the mortar, forcing the rocks apart. Even these plants were yellowing.
He kept looking over at me as we walked, Zed did. "Lines of flux," he finally said, "they sure do like to converge around you. You're an agent of change." He looked ahead and indicated the entirety of the Dreamlands with spread arms. "All this, we think it's because when you left the last time, you may have left some part of you behind, and it's forcing change on everything."
"Me?" I shook my head. "Nah. I'm a nobody. Don't even use my own name, half the time."
"Oh, that doesn't matter," Zed said. "Things happen around you. We think that's why Simon latched onto you in the first place. He is also an agent of change."
Whatever. The loony dream people could think what they liked. As long as I was here, I would do what I could to undo whatever it was I did.
"Have you found anything? That might be me, I mean?"
With a mournful sigh, Zed said, "No. We've looked. All of us. The cats, too, and if there's something to be found, they'd have found it."
"There he is!" a woman shouted from behind a tree. "The destroyer has come!" She stood, ramrod straight and pointing at me. "Abaddon! Mammon! Gozer!"
Zed put his hands up, trying to calm the woman, but it was no good. And we were drawing a crowd. She continued to point and hurl epithets at me; I took it. Who knows? I may have deserved all of it. On the other hand, Zed's calming influence wasn't having much effect on the crowd. They began to mutter and scowl and point on their own, and a few of them spat in my direction.
Out of nowhere, a rock bounced off the side of my skull and I took a step sideways, right into the woman. When I touched her, I knew her name: Marion.
"See! He assaults me!" she cried, and the largest of the men surged forwards, intent on doing some bodily harm.
Fuck.
I let him get close, and when he reached for me I ducked under the beefy arm and whipped my knife out of my pocket. Gripping it (closed) in my fist, I jabbed the hinge of the knife into his ribs as hard as I could, then got around him and got an arm around his thick neck.
With everyone suddenly still, I flicked the knife around, flashing it in the wan sun, and held the naked blade to the big guy's temple. (His name was Guff.) "Just hold on," I said, trying to sound calm and probably failing.
Guff tried to shake me off, and I tightened my forearm on his throat. He reddened and the struggles ceased.
"That does not help us," Zed told me.
I shrugged. "I hardly ever start these things."
Marion was having none of it. "You see? He threatens the life of our men! He wants to leave Ulthar defenseless!"
Heaving a sigh, I thrust Guff away from me and danced out towards Marion, landing a quick but hard chop on the side of her neck. Her eyes rolled back and she fell into Zed's arms.
I turned, surveying the crowd and making sure they could see the still-open knife in my hand. Still sullen, but no longer actively hostile. With a flick, I shut the knife and put it back in my pocket.
"See there? Not a monster."
One of the women in the rear of the crowd hawked something up and spat it at Marion. "She always was a troublemaker." She turned and left, and the spell was broken. The crowd dispersed.
"Alright," I said. "Lead on."
Zed pointed at Marion. "What about her? You want to just leave her in the street?"
"Yes."
"No. That would not strengthen your image with the people."
"Well, whatever. You want to stick around until she wakes up? I don't know how long that could be. Can't you ask the cats to watch her?"
Zed looked down at her. "Maybe. Hmm. Alright, but only on one condition."
"What?"
Zed smiled and made a chopping motion. "Teach me how to do that."
Chapter 4
Zed and I continued our walk through the dilapidated cobblestone streets of Ulthar. He very clearly had something on his mind, and he looked nervous. He kept darting glances at me and wetting his lips, as if he was about to say something, but he never did.
"I said I would show you that chop," I said. "A lot of people think it's a blood thing, but I'm convinced it has more to do with nerves."
He smiled, a thin-lipped thing that was unnatural and forced, and refused the bait. Shit.
I put my hands in my pocket and looked around us. We got deeper into town and there had been no letup in cats that I could see. The feline presence was a constant, and I was suddenly happy that dander wasn't one of my allergies.
Wordlessly, Zed gestured to a windmill off the main road. It was an old thing, the canvas of the blades flapping in the breeze, so many useless tatters.
"We belong dead," I said, and Zed snapped a sharp glance at me. I continued to ignore him; he wouldn't talk to me when I opened up, so I was hoping that the (relatively) silent treatment would do the job. It was looking a lot like I was wrong. Again. That was okay, I was used to it.
Taking a simple key from his rope belt, he unlocked the windmill's door and ushered me inside. The windmill's frosted-over windows only let in a small portion of light, and I couldn't see much, except the place was a fucking mess. And it was full of books. And cats. Librarians would have run screaming.
I looked around. "This isn't the inn," I said. "Or a tavern." I crinkled my nose. There was a smell, tickling my nostrils. "Is that High Karate? Nobody wears that anymore."
Sighing, as if finally realizing that I was as great an annoyance as he'd been warned, Zed took my elbow and guided me through the stacks of books and scrolls. The smell got stronger as the light got weaker. It was right about then I noticed that the expected windmill innards weren't there. Either Army of Darkness had gotten it wrong, or . . .
"That's why the canvas out there is still all shitty," I said. "This isn't a windmill anymore. What is it?"
Zed's only response was to pull me along faster and sweat a bit.
"Zed," I said, digging my heels in, "is there something we need to talk about? Maybe before we get wherever you're pulling me?"
He ignored me. Fine.
I put my hand over his and dug my thumb between the bones on the back of his hand, wrapped my middle and ring fingers around the inside of his wrist, and twisted stuff the wrong way around. Zed stopped walking and make a sound like a carrion bird might.
"Zed. Talk to me."
"Fine, fine! Leave off!"
The torque on his wrist eased up a bit, and he blew out a big breath.
"I may have lied to you, just a little," he said, and the torque returned. "Gah!" he said.
"I believe that. Why'd you lie to me, Zed?"
He was coming up on his toes, trying to alleviate the pain in his arm, but I wasn't having any of it. I turned it some more and forced him down instead.
"You know, this doesn't take any strength at all to hold onto. I can do it all day. All. Day."
"GAH, it wasn't my idea!" he said, tears springing into his eyes. "I swear, it wasn't?"
My head cocked to one side. "Whose was it?"
"It was my idea," a voice said from the doorway up ahead.
I raised my face to look and thought I was looking at a mirror for a second. It was a short second.
"Ah," I said, releasing Zed. "Well, this weird."
"It is," I agreed from the doorway.
For several seconds after releasing Zed, the world around me strobed as the scene jamming itself through my eyes flip-flopped, perspective changing at sixty Hertz from my eyes to my eyes. Every sound was in super-stereo. Then it was over and I felt wrung-out and about to vomit.
"Ug," I said to my doppelganger. "What is that taste in my mouth?"
I smiled at me from the doorway. He was dressed much as I was, except he wore a Royal Crown shirt over faded blue jeans, some kind of carpenter pants. He wore battered black boots that had the steel-toe look. I approved. "You don't want to know. You have questions?"
"Oh, you know. The usual."
I nodded at me. "What the fuck?"
"That one," I said. "It's good for most things."
Zed looked back and forth at us from the floor. "You're taking this very well."
I looked down at him, and so did I.
I spit, trying to clear the taste from my mouth. "This ain't my first rodeo, Zed. You," I said to me. "Me. Whatever. What do they call you here?"
Smiling, I shrugged. "No one will say it loud enough for me to hear."
Zed mumbled something from the floor.
"What?"
"Maggotmouth," Zed said, and I looked up at me in horror.
"I told you, you didn't want to know," I said. Maggotmouth, I mean.
" . . . " I said.
"I know, I know. When you left back to The World, I was all by myself in the forest, surrounded by the dead and the dying. I wasn't eating them. But soon enough, there was maggots." Maggotmouth shrugged. "It's an acquired taste."
I helped Zed to his feet. "Alright. Maybe lying was the best way to go." I walked over to Maggotmouth. "What was that, then? The . . . you know." I flapped my hands like paddles. "That stuff?"
"No idea," Maggotmouth said. "And stay back, will you? I don't know what'll happen if we touch."
I had a brief recollection of the end of Timecop, where the Bad Guy Present touched Bad Guy Past and they both turned into a puddle of goo.
"That was a terrible movie," Maggotmouth said.
I sighed. This was going to get old, fast.
Zed pushed past us into the dining room, clearing the table with a look on his face that I understood pretty well. "What matters now is getting you two back into the same body. Nobody here knows what to do, so we'll have to do some traveling." He looked from me to Maggotmouth and back. "You're twins."
"No we're not," we both said. We looked at each other.
"Stop that," we both said.
Very old. Very fast.
"Shut up," Zed said, much braver now that he was out of range. "That's our story. You're twins. We're going to stay clear of every place we can except to buy what supplies we can't get from the woods. It would be helpful if you both could manage to keep quiet."
"Why?" I asked. "We're twins, right? So what if we sound alike?"
"And finish each other's sentences?"
Zed looked very tired. "I meant it would be helpful to me. Gods below, I wish Simon was here."
"Me, too," Maggotmouth said. Then he looked at me, startled.
"What?"
He pointed at me. "We just had a difference of opinion."
Zed stopped what he was doing and set down the satchel he had just picked up. "Perhaps we just found our starting point."
Zed, Maggotmouth and I sat on the walkaround at the top of the windmill, looking out over the slowly-collapsing city of Ulthar.
"This seems improbable," I said, gesturing at the skinny porch we were on. "Why is this even here?"
"Maintenance," Zed said, taking a sip from his flagon. He'd restricted himself to one-word answers since we came up, and nothing that Maggotmouth or I said could get more than that out of him. Already used to partners that didn't tell me everything when I needed to know it (or until they thought I needed to know it) I gave up pretty early. My doppelganger did, as well.
I turned to talk to him instead.
"So how does this work? When I go to sleep, do I . . . like, become you?" I made a face. "Have you been feeding me maggots?"
He smiled and I relaxed. I knew that smile. It said, "I'm about to feed you a line." And it was right.
"Okay," Maggotmouth said, "I don't understand the big deal. It's just an insect, like any other. What do fire ants taste like?"
"Cherry limeade," I said.
"Right. And that doesn't gross you out. So why should—"
"Hold on," I said, holding up a hand. "When people see ants on a picnic table, they brush them off and go about their picnic. When they see maggots, they say, 'My goodness. Maggots! Perhaps we should eat somewhere else.' And they do. Because maggots are disgusting."
He looked down his nose at me and the sight of that gave me sudden empathy for Io, my cousin who I pissed off on a regular basis.
"You'll never understand."
I shook my head. "I don't want to understand that. I want to understand this." I waved my hand between us. "This. So, I don't cease to exist or anything when I fall asleep. But what, then? It's got to be something."
Maggotmouth plucked at his RC Cola shirt. "I can feel you, riding around in my head. And sometimes it feels like I know more, but not a lot more." He turned to me. "What happened between you and Simon? That's like, blocked off, or something."
At this, Zed poked his beak out from his flagon and paid attention.
"Simon and I . . . well, after Anita pulled me out of here," I gestured at the world around us, "he kind of lost his shit on me. We fell out. Well, he let go of me." I looked out at Ulthar. "I did all the falling. He took his daughter away, which was really a good idea, and then he just up and went." I flicked all of my fingers off my thumbs. "Disappeared. Io says there's no trace of him anywhere."
Maggotmouth grunted. "Well, that makes sense. I don't know how we couldn't have seen that coming."
"Thank you."
Zed made a non-committal noise, peering into his flagon. "And this was a while ago."
"Two years," I said. "Why? How long have you been here?"
Maggotmouth raised his eyebrows. "I, uh. Two months, maybe?"
"Three," Zed said, and took a big drink. "Three long, very long months."
"Oh, fuck you, Zed," we said together.
"Einstein was wrong," Zed said. "It's not traveling near the speed of light that makes time go slower. It's spending time with you." He raised his large cup. "And now there are two of you. I may never die."
Zed directed us to packing some stuff for the back of his wagon, and Maggotmouth and I did a slow dance around each other, being careful not to touch. As stupid as That Movie was, the idea was ingrained in both our brains. "Turned into a puddle of anachronistic goo" was not high on my list of Ways to Die. Double-M agreed with me.
"Hey," he said as we loaded a trunk in the wagon. "You're a lot bleaker than I thought you'd be. What the hell have you been up to?"
I sighed, thinking that this would probably be a wonderful therapy tool, having to explain yourself to yourself. But I didn't want therapy. I just wanted things to go back to normal.
Maybe not "normal," whatever. My normal.
He was me. I decided not to bullshit him.
"I've been working on stuff, maybe taking on jobs that are a little too much. I work for some people now; they're not exactly normal. Or nice. But they pay well."
Maggotmouth looked at me steadily. "Have you sold our soul?"
The temptation to make a Black Sabbath joke passed. Instead, I said, "No. I don't think so. I've yet to do anything I'm uncomfortable with."
He looked at me. "You're not all you. Right?"
I thought back to what Kinder had said, back in Vegas. He hadn't been approached by the Temhota Group because he had lines he wouldn't cross that they found unacceptable in an operative. At the time, I didn't think much on it.
With my own eyes boring into me, I thought more about it.
"Twins," Zed said, breaking the spell. "Remember that. And where are you from?"
"Here," we said together. "Our parents owned the Windmill of Ulthar."
"And your names?"
"Frick," Double-M said.
"Frack," I followed.
"No," Zed said, and we tittered.
"Zeno," Maggotmouth said. Zed looked at me.
"Planck," I said. "These should probably be reversed."
"Too late now," Zed said. "I have it one way in my head, and you two changing would just confuse things. And what is your profession?"
I flipped open my butterfly knife and Zeno clicked a front-opening switchblade. I liked it.
"We sharpen things," I said. "Watching the grinding wheel of the windmill for so long gave us an idea."
"We developed a device that will sharpen a knife or sword or axe between a turning set of stones." Zeno looked at me.
"And all we need now is some funding," I finished, spinning the knife about with a flourish.
Zed nodded. "Good. We don't have that far to go, but it will be through hostile territory. Your previous exploits have changed the face of the Dreamlands, Planck. Let us hope the changes aren't enough to undo us."
I waved Zeno to sit up front with Zed. "He knows you better," I said.
I just wanted to watch Ulthar shrink behind us.