The Waking Dreamer (7 page)

“She’s a witch, and firewood is being handed out to the town’s children as party favors,” Emmett added as he saw Keiran already nodding.

“It’s an unfortunate reality we contend with: this need to wrap the truth in fanciful stories, when the truth is so plainly evident,” Keiran said.

“You say that like this wouldn’t be all-new information to most people.”

“If you know what you’re looking for, it shouldn’t be.” Keiran set the knife down and sipped from his tea, his eyes dancing over the cup’s rim. “You just don’t know it.”

Emmett shook his head dismissively. “Nah, I’m as tin-foil-hat as anyone else, but even I know you couldn’t keep this off the Interwebs.”

Keiran chuckled as if Emmett had just insisted that babies came from storks. “Do you watch the news? Even if you remove your everyday murders, kidnappings, and rapes—some of which
are
Revenant in origin, mind you—there are still other things.”

“Such as?”

“Cattle killings, their sexual organs removed with surgical precision and all bodily fluids drained. Bodies left in unnatural positions with unknown odors and markings in the area. And normal scavengers refuse to approach the corpses?”

“Aliens, bro. Always always always aliens,” Emmett snarked.

“Human combustion? People inexplicably incinerated from within with no evidence of chemicals or a source of ignition and their surroundings undamaged?”

“Not so much, no.”

“You’ve never seen anything that you couldn’t explain? Never experienced something that you wouldn’t admit to others for fear they wouldn’t believe you?”

“Any six-year-old with a phone and free app can turn you into a werewolf.”

“Then look to stories and art. Human history is riddled with stories of Underdwellers, but—and this is critical, of course—you must know what it is you are looking for. Most fairy tales are based on some historical truth that people have otherwise forgotten.”

“Straight-to-DVD films,” Emmett dismissed.

“Haven’t you ever wondered why in nearly every culture throughout human history, death is associated with a place
underground
? Why the bad people always go
down
?”

“You bury the dead so you don’t have to deal with decomposition.”

Keiran’s eyes danced with enjoyment at their back-and-forth, irritating Emmett all the more. “Don’t you wonder why most monsters fit what you have already seen of the Underdwellers? Rises from the earth, feasts on human flesh, impossibly strong with bone-white skin, and is destroyed by impalement or returns to the earth before sunrise? Cultures separated by languages and isolated by oceans all share the same common stories.”

Emmett crossed his arms. “There’s a reason most directors wisely edit info-dumps out of the first act, bro. Why? Because no matter how real this may all seem to you, no one else cares. No one
believes
anymore. Life shines with a green-screen glow.”

A serious look passed between them, and without breaking eye contact, Keiran pointed over Emmett’s shoulder toward a mirror hanging on the far wall behind him. Emmett hesitated for a moment before turning in his chair and, seeing his reflection, blanched noticeably in response.

In the natural sunlight pouring through the windows, the color of his skin along his neckline had darkened considerably around the Rot, as if it were already spreading. Emmett’s eyes met his reflection, his floppy black hair matted with the greasiness of two days’ worth of travel. But his hazel eyes staring back at him, fatigued from the travel, tired perhaps from too much sleep, looked insignificant and frightened by the diseased flesh around his neck. His mind fumbled with half-hearted assurances that if he could just get to a hospital, someone could fix him. Yet he knew that no story he could tell could do anything but have him, at best, humored by a disbelieving physician and sent home with some topical cream, or worse, committed to a psychiatric ward. No, he knew there was no other way.

“Doubt if it comforts you. But people who require evidence before believing are often disappointed in the answers they receive to their questions,” Keiran said.

Emmett bristled at what at first felt like an empty platitude. He wanted to respond with something equally banal. Yet when he saw the Rot in his flesh, he realized that there was nothing he could do but trust people he did not know to help him.

Emmett recognized how small and helpless he truly was. It was a disconcerting, if humbling, realization.

“Okay,” Emmett began. “Let’s say I’m convinced. That still leaves the unanswered question.”

“And that would be?”

“Who all of you are.”

Keiran’s only answer was his Cheshire cat grin.

Vagueness, much?

“Why don’t we head outside where you can see the answer for yourself?”

CHAPTER 6

They exited through a series of hallways and oak doors out onto a sweeping mountain vista. The compound was built on the ridge of a high mountainside whose face featured a flat, wide ledge. Emmett stumbled as he struggled to take in the entire panorama, struck by the vista’s scope and feeling dwarfed by the endless mountains. He was irritated by having to use Keiran’s offered hand to balance himself, momentarily dizzy from the extreme heights.

Keiran took a satisfied breath. “Welcome to Silvan Dea, the Archivist’s Grove.”

Emmett kept his gaze aloft to steady himself. “Where are we?”

“About an hour outside Portland.”

“I suppose I won’t find a signal up here,” he said, seeing no signs of development, power lines, or towers.

“Our Groves always intersect powerful telluric currents. Electronics never function well.”

Emmett followed Keiran down a winding cobblestone path away from the compound. Ensconced in stacked rock and cut stone, the compound’s central, circular tower raised high like a ziggurat. Its stone walls seemed to flow out of the rugged earth itself as if it were carved directly from the mountains, and over time, the fir trees and ambling paths simply grew around it.

“Silvan Dea, you said, right? How old is it?”

“It was built by our Elder, the Archivist, before the Spanish began exploring the region in the seventeenth century. Well, not built.
Grown
. Semantics.”

Emmett’s memory flashed with the name “Archivist,” remembering what Keiran had said to Amala in Florida. “That’s the person you said could heal the Rot, right? A librarian is going to heal this?”

“There are nine Elders worldwide, and the Archivist is the wisest and most powerful of them all.”

“Elders of what, exactly? What do you people belong to?”

The cobblestone path they had followed along the hill dove into the ravine, ending at the darkened entrance to a cave. Keiran paused before the cave as if waiting for Emmett to enter.

Emmett shook his head with a nervous laugh. “Yeah right, not happening. I enjoy enclosed spaces even less than great heights. There’s a reason
The Descent
is the only horror film to scare the piss out of me. No cave for Emmett. Thanks.”

“Given everything that has happened to you, I can understand your doubting.”

“I’m doubting you mean that,” Emmett scoffed. “See what I did there?”

“This can all be too much to bear,” Keiran said. He raised his arms out slightly with hands open at his sides, a gesture of openness offered with a smile. “For what it’s worth, I am sorry.”

Emmett wasn’t sure if it was the lingering headache or the low pain in his neck, but hearing Keiran apologize was enough to ignite the frustration he had been withholding since waking.

“Then tell me who the hell you people are, John Steed. Try straight answers!”

“Welsh,” he corrected.

Emmett blinked. “What?”

“Mr. Steed from
The Avengers
? He was English. I’m Welsh. And I don’t fancy bowler hats.”

Emmett lowered his head, succumbing to how overwhelmed he felt.

“Druids and Bards,” a voice said.

Emmett looked up at the new voice. Feminine. Familiar. From Florida and so many countless dreams.

“I am a Druid, and Keiran is a Bard.” Amala emerged from the shadows of the cave. Emmett could not hide the flush that reddened his face at seeing Amala’s tapered, bronze-skinned form or his embarrassment at being disoriented and confused in front of her. “We are the Children of the Earth, servants of the Song of Creation.”

Emmett rushed to hide his embarrassment. “If we’re doing cosplay, I get to be the Pale Man from
Pan’s Labyrinth
. Don’t have the costume for it, but who cares?”

Amala’s face was a blank, unreadable expression.

Always impressing the ladies, Emmett. Tell her about your favorite movies. Girls love it when you do that.

“We are the sentinels that defend the world from the darkness,” Amala said.

Emmett had prepared himself for any kind of ridiculous or improbable explanation for the whole affair: a government conspiracy; a drug-induced hallucination; a medically induced coma. He thought he could tolerate any answer … other than that.

“So where’s your oaken staff? Or am I confusing you with wizards? I may not be up-to-date on current fashion trends in magic.”

“Druid staves are crafted from iron, not wood,” Keiran said. “Iron drawn from the stars and shaped in cold waters beneath a full moon. We don’t use staves. Bards, I mean.”

“Oh, of course. Who needs a staff when you can whistle people into the air? Sorry. Stave. Not staff. Finally, a non-comic book convention setting where the staff-staffs-stave-staves debate can be settled. And linguists everywhere fist-bump the air.”

Emmett looked away from them and out across the mountains. The sarcasm felt comfortable to him. Yet having said it, Emmett had to admit to himself that he had, in fact, seen Keiran do just that. Right before his eyes. And Amala had wielded twin serpents as she fought the Underdweller. Right after it had cursed him with the Rot.

He bit down on his lip, forcing himself to face the situation. He felt his knees grow weak with the inward acknowledgement. Silent and guarded, Emmett expected Amala or Keiran to say something. He was relieved when neither did, seemingly respecting the moment’s acceptance with a reverence that comes from understanding the scope of the experience. Emmett felt himself recognizing the truth of everything and beginning the slow ascent toward belief. He was in
this
now: the grand compound, the stalking monsters, the silent guardians who stood against the encroaching darkness.

“Time is of the essence, Emmett. I am going to take you into the mountain to a place set aside for contacting the Archivist. Follow me,” she said, turning her back to him and returning into the cave before he could protest.

Emmett stared dumbly after her, looking at Keiran, who only smiled. “I wouldn’t make a habit of keeping her waiting. She doesn’t fancy that. Believe you me.”

Keiran had only made some sense of the situation for him. When Emmett looked at Amala, he was reminded again of a lifetime of dreams where a mysterious, dark-skinned woman with amber eyes explained the significance of a strange painting in a stranger apartment.

Fine. Red pill it is.

Reticently entering the cave, Emmett steadied himself with outstretched arms and permitted himself several moments for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. He felt the narrowness close around him. The crisp winter air was swallowed in a humid, sticky embrace the farther he walked in. Blind in the darkness, his ears sought sounds to guide him: whispers, faint yet persistent, echoing down long, unseen corridors.

His hands felt crumbling rock in front of him, and he turned to his right around a bend in the tunnel. He nearly cried out in panic, feeling the ground slope up underneath his feet just as his head grazed the ceiling overhead. But another wall ahead signaled a turn in the tunnel, and his path bent suddenly left.

Emmett’s eyes quickly focused on soft light sources that gently eased him from the darkness. The tunnel had opened into a large cavern twenty feet high overhead and three times that size around. The cave walls were gray with visible veins of sparkling mineral. Water dripped somewhere in the distance, bounding along the echoing walls.

With a moment’s worth of focus, he began to see obscure, foreign symbols and glyphs traced in dark colors along the uneven, hewn surfaces. Emmett ran a finger along the rough rock walls, tracing a symbol with his finger. He followed the symbols with his eyes as they traveled from the floor up to the ceiling, from which in the shadows stirred some motion. Emmett focused on the motion and finally saw the outlines of hundreds of dark shadows hanging, some crawling over each other. Bats. Hundreds of bats.

It would be bats.

“The Underdweller has marked you. The Rot will continue spreading until it consumes you,” Amala said. She wore a dark sleeveless shirt tucked into fitted black slacks. In the soft light from the candles strewn throughout the vault, Emmett could see that her waves of long brown hair were bound tightly back in several overlapping braids that draped down over a developed chest that slowly rose and fell.

In the darkness, her glowing eyes were like stardust. Emmett could not help but be mesmerized by how they drew any light around them and reflected it with an untamed brilliance. Just as they had in his dreams; a fact Emmett was uncertain if he had the energy left to attempt unraveling in his mind.

The woman of your dreams. Try not to make an ass of yourself.

Amala stepped down into the depression in the floor in the room’s center.

“The Archivist is not like other Elders. She is often struck with wanderlust, traveling far outside her Grove and away from civilization for many years. She requires that we seek her out, proving ourselves capable in the search. We will make contact with her today, and when she responds, Keiran and I will escort you to her.”

“I don’t mean to offend you,” Emmett began, glancing up once with frustration at the scratching sounds, “but there has to be a quicker method for dealing with this. I mean, what do you do with all of the people who must have this Rot?”

Amala stared directly at him without a hint of anything but total seriousness in her expression. “Most don’t survive the initial attack, Emmett.”

She knelt with a single, fluid motion at a point in the center of the chamber where nine irregular symbols danced around a ring of concentric circles. Placing the backs of her hands on each knee, she closed her eyes.

“Come and sit with me. This cave is a sacred place.”

Of course it’s a magic cave.
He took a step forward and awkwardly knelt.

Emmett fell back onto the ground clumsily and crossed his legs. Compared to Amala’s liquid movements, Emmett was aware of how ungainly his body was: tall, lanky, and often at odds with any center of gravity.

“Take my hands and close your eyes.”

Embarrassed, he wiped his clammy hands on his jeans. Reluctantly, he took her delicate hands into his. They were soft and yielding to the touch, but held his own firmly with determination.

He sighed pointedly, bobbing his head. “What’s next? Peyote and heavy sweating?”

“Close your eyes and focus on your breathing,” she began with a measured tone, her volume lowered with each word. “Too often we focus on the external world, both hurried and harried outside of our core beings. The noise of living drowns our ears, and we grow deaf to silence.”

There’s truth in that.

“I want you to withdraw from the world and fold into your body. With each breath, exhale the world’s noise. Release the chaos from your mind. Inhale the clarity that comes from the silence within.”

His mind was pulled in a dozen directions, from the faint trickle of water to the itch along his arm. Yet with each breath, the sounds grew smaller, farther away. The sensations nagging at his consciousness quieted as if mollified solely by his breathing. Thoughts about his situation, the Rot, and each individual narrative withdrew until they were distant echoes. Without sensation or feeling, the world melted away around him.

“Our minds are letting go of the false world,” Amala’s soft voice began, seemingly timed to the rhythm of Emmett’s breathing. “We give ourselves permission to leave everything behind and enter a quieter place. Call to her in the quiet place.”

Emmett felt his lips murmur the name. His breathing slowed, drawing calm into his body and releasing disorder with each deliberate breath. He saw nothing in his mind’s eye, felt no change in his presence, and so he called out to her again.

As his lips formed soundless words, he felt a hint of a breeze stroke the back of his neck. It was feathery like a whisper in his ear. In the darkness, his awareness focused on each individual hair that stood aloft along his arms, the tingling attentiveness of another presence near him.

He felt himself slipping back. It was the only way he could describe the sensation of leaving his body without having actually left it before. His consciousness eased out of his body and backward into a void empty of sensation. Emmett no longer felt Amala’s hands, no longer heard her quiet yet persistent urgings. He did not feel the cave’s warmth or closeness. Time passed without counting, and Emmett soon was unaware of his own limbs. His mind sharpened, focused without the burdens or boundaries of his body, concentrating on each minute detail as it manifested.

In the emptiness, Emmett did not have eyes, and yet his mind stretched beyond the limits of normal vision. Colors differentiated themselves from the blackness, birthing substance. Shapes took form. Sensation returned to his mind like tingling along the skin of his consciousness. Sound soon found ears that he no longer had.

An image of a woman took form, twice his age and petite with black hair. She held her hand underneath her stomach, the slight bump of pregnancy just beginning to appear on her small body. She exited from a bus onto a busy sidewalk and walked past a storefront owner unlocking his doors. Emmett felt the image expand into three dimensions, and he felt himself moving along the street behind her. He watched the images of cars and people pass, clouds sweeping across a bright sky in the early afternoon. The images gained depth and richness. He felt the brush of dry wind sweep through his being, heard the calls of children playing in the schoolyard she walked by.

The vision suddenly altered, the street and cars replaced by rows of books along high shelves. The sun’s afternoon warmth became cool, and the dry breeze transformed into a stale, musty stillness. She was still walking, though her clothes had changed from a brown walking coat to a tweed sweater and dress. The silence of the surrounding library enveloped his senses, focused his awareness on her. She stopped to identify a book. When she would stop, Emmett’s consciousness stopped as well, and when she would resume, he would feel himself drawn forward with her.