In the City of the Nightmare King

by V. S. Santoni

  Twenty minutes later, we found an old camper sitting on weathered cinderblocks. Its tightly sealed and blacked-out windows kept out any light. A portable awning partially attached to the entrance—its other half partway posted into the ground—shielded the front. It began to pour. We rushed under the tarp and knocked on the shaky door. The kids at school painted Old Man Johnson as a loose cannon. For all I knew he’d greet us with a shotgun blast to the face. Or maybe he’d scream and throw mangy cats at us. The cats scared me only slightly less than being shot. Slightly. The door flew open and revealed a burly old man in thick flannel. He scanned Blake and me through some foggy spectacles. “What do you want?” he grumbled through a wiry beard.

  “Are you Brian Johnson?” I asked.

  “What’s it to you?”

  “My name’s Johnny. I’m looking for Brian Johnson. I need to talk to him.”

  “Who sent you? Are you with the feds?”

  “N-No I’m not with the feds. I go to school at Misthaven High.”

  He waited at his door, examining us. Then, a familiar sensation: eyes on my nape. The feeling triggered a memory—whenever a wizard infiltrated your thoughts, your magical senses registered the intrusion. Your instincts also revealed the intruder’s identity. My weak wizard sense pointed to Brian Johnson. To block out a nosy wizard, you needed to envision a barrier in your mind. I didn’t know if the trick still worked, but I promptly imagined a brick wall. He studied me a little longer before his face grew softer, more confident. The uncomfortable feeling lifted.

  “You,” he said with certainty. Old Man Johnson stepped outside and peered around the canopy. He regarded our environs suspiciously. “Hurry inside. Quickly!”

  Blake and I scurried into the trailer without hesitation. The small camper stretched back about ten feet before terminating at a bunk under an aluminum foil-covered window. Clear plastic containers filled with dirt, water, and leaves sat on a dinette to our right. Baked beans steamed in a saucepan on a stove nearby, filling the air with a sugary scent. The old man rushed in after us and slammed the door. “We’ve met before.”

  “We . . . have?”

  “I’m Luther Dorian. The librarian from Misthaven.” I remembered then why the library had seemed familiar—Linh had taken me there to meet Luther Dorian. He worked with the Defectors, a rebel group that helped wizards escape the Institute. That this batshit crazy old guy knew my name, or anything about Luther Dorian, lent credence to his bizarre claim. If this was Luther Dorian, then he’d used magic to disguise himself. And if that were true, then he couldn’t be a prisoner here like we were. It also suggested he knew a way in and out of the Dreamhaven.

  “Why do you look like that?” I asked. Though the flannel mountain didn’t resemble Luther—Luther, as I remembered him, measured five feet, four inches, wore sweater vests, walked stiffly on one foot, and spoke with a high-pitched whine—he still conveyed Luther’s idiosyncrasies.

  “First: Who led you to me?”

  I told Luther about the strange radio broadcasts, Mikey, and the rumors swirling around the high school.

  “Do you know this Mikey?” he asked.

  “We think it may be another one of the Institute’s prisoners.”

  “Speaking to you through a shortwave radio? I’ve been here a long time and that’s a new one.”

  “Do you think it could be a Mara, or the Institute?”

  “No telling. If it were the Institute, they would’ve sent copies instead of bothering with another prisoner.”

  “Copies?”

  “Some of the people out there are real,” Luther said, “and the rest are just copies made to look like real people. As that Mikey fellow said, you are in a prison the Institute calls ‘the Dreamhaven.’ It was built in Everywhen to contain difficult prisoners. The Institute scans wizards’ memories then constructs a semi-idyllic life for them in the Dreamhaven. They populate this semi-idyllic life with copies of people from the wizards’ memories. As an added warning: the Institute can also control those copies. The purpose of all this is to pacify the wizard, so they don’t go digging into Misthaven’s peculiarities. I believe integrating a new wizard into the Dreamhaven takes some time, though. You may have experienced a time-loss.”

  That explained the missing three months. The Institute had used that time to scrape out our memories, then harnessed that information to recreate a new life for us.

  Our families, Misthaven, the high school—all parts in a pernicious dollhouse the Institute had fabricated to mollify us. But my friends felt different from everything else. Their realness triumphed over all the illusions. Luther didn’t scan our thoughts earlier merely to uncover secrets; his intrusion had helped him determine our authenticity. Still, I wondered why Hunter’s memories had vanished completely while ours survived only partially affected.

  “Are you going to tell us why you look like that?” Blake asked.

  “I’m using a spell to disguise my appearance. The Institute ransacked Misthaven looking for Defectors. Although they didn’t capture me, I worried that they’d identify me if I didn’t don some other form.” His words loosened another memory: Melchior had scoured our thoughts after recapturing us at Gaspar’s hideout. His investigation undraped Luther’s entire operation in Misthaven. Guilt pinched my conscience, but my mental shield didn’t hold a candle to Melchior’s boundless magic.

  “Can you help us get out?” I asked.

  “Maybe,” Luther said, “but if we’re to leave, we’ll need to do it quickly.”

  “When?”

  “This evening.”

  “This evening?” I said, shocked at Luther’s declaration. “We’ll have to go get our friends.”

  “There’re more of you in here?”

  “Two more.”

  Luther rubbed his face pensively. “Then you’ll have to fetch them quickly. I can’t give you any more time. The Cave of Miracles only appears once a month. Tonight is our only chance to escape for a long while.”

  “Cave of Miracles?” Blake asked.

  Luther stared at the trees outside through the small window in the front door. The rain had slowed to a sleepy drizzle. “The residents of Misthaven aren’t completely unaware of the strangeness surrounding them. Local legends speak of a cave in Darkwood Forest that leads to other worlds. The locals call this place the Cave of Miracles.”

  “Are the legends true?” I asked.

  “Yes, but the cave is not quite a cave, per se.” Luther checked my face to confirm I understood. “It’s a passage, a world between worlds, leading from one to another. I use the passage to reach the Dreamhaven so I can study it. Hence all the samples.” He waved his hand at the table.

  When I first met Luther, his duties included conducting research in Everywhen. I never imagined he physically journeyed there using a tunnel between worlds. Until now, I’d believed dream travel provided the only path into Everywhen. That magic gave us the ability to transform our corporeal bodies into dream stuff then back again didn’t surprise me, though—Maras used that trick all the time. The Cave of Miracles boasted the power to rejoin our minds and bodies, and move them from under the Heka Building to wherever the cave led.

  “I’ve tried to convince others to escape, but you’re the first prisoners I’ve encountered who are self-aware,” Luther said.

  “So, you’re not even sure this will work?” Blake asked.

  “Would you rather stay here?”

  “Do we need to bring anything?” I asked.

  “No. You’ll need to travel light.” Luther ushered us out the door. “Now, quickly, go get your friends and return before the mist rises.”

  The bus ran for another few hours, until about six. That gave me plenty of time to grab Alison. But I didn’t know what to do about Hunter. Somehow, we’d have to convince him to come with us, memories or not. I hid that detail from Luther because I di
dn’t want a lecture on time constraints.

  Blake stepped outside first. “Where are you going?”

  I joined him and we walked. “I’m going to get Alison.”

  “What’re we going to do about Hunter?”

  “We’ve got to get him to come with us.”

  “What about his memories?”

  “We can figure out all that once we’re out of here.”

  “I can’t leave—I convinced my foster parent I’m sick. That’s why he’s let me stay home all week. But I’ll go with you to the bus stop.”

  On our way to the bus stop, I watched rivulets run between the rocks in the gravel, making them shift and churn underfoot. Thunder growled in the skies overhead. My chest ached—this place had proven itself a lie after all.

  The rain died, and the air got so muggy it felt like a soggy towel wrapped around my head. “Blake, does Alison know how you were extracted?”

  Blake didn’t show any feelings. His stoic nature made him tough as hell to read. Going from home to home for years left him justifiably stiff in the emotions department. He seemed well-adjusted, charming, but sometimes his eyes revealed the pain bubbling just under the surface.

  “Never mind,” I said.

  “No, it’s fine. She doesn’t know about my extraction. I don’t really like talking about it.”

  We reached the bus stop. The heat vaporized the moisture on the empty road. I didn’t expect the bus back any time soon. “We don’t have to, then.”

  “We’re friends, right?” Blake asked.

  “Friends?” I laughed. “I pretty much idolize you.”

  He scanned the turbulent clouds. Blue patches emerged through the gray, at first only a few, but as the storm moved on, the sky went cerulean. “I’ll tell you how I was extracted,” he said. “I’m going to warn you, though: it’s kind of a messed-up story.”

  Blake started his story in Chico, California, where he and his best friend, Gerald, fashioned themselves leaders over six foster kids, all living in the same double-wide trailer. One kid, Mikey, kept to himself mostly, but his snowy-white hair inspired morbid curiosity among the others. Their caregiver, a boozy forty-something, collected children for the middling state checks she used to buy liquor. Her trailer was occluded off a country road, with a sizeable backyard and a forest behind it. She divided the children’s rooms into one for boys and one for girls. Although she let the kids play in the backyard, she demanded they stay away from the forest because she said monsters lurked there. They didn’t really—she just wanted to keep them off missing-child posters at Walmart. The first time Blake’s wizard senses kicked in, a dreadful feeling—like a cold, dead thing tip-toeing up his spine—led him into the girl’s room. There he found a slight girl with pigtails lying on her bottom bunk and crying.

  “Hey, what’s wrong?” he asked, approaching slowly.

  The girl buried her face in a pillow, to hide it from Blake. As Blake neared, he spied a meshwork of cuts crawling up her arm. “Hey!” Blake yanked the girl up by her arm and forced her to look at him. “What happened to your arms? Are you cutting yourself?”

  “You wouldn’t believe me!”

  Blake demanded she explain the cuts. She pointed to a rag doll sitting on a rocking chair in the corner. The ratty old thing rose to a little under two feet and wore a faded pink floral dress. Two graying pigtails fell around its lifeless face. Their foster parent said the doll had belonged to her family for generations and warned the children not to mess with it. Blake found the tale ridiculous and demanded she stop hurting herself, but the girl stuck to her story and told Blake she knew not to trust him. A short time later, their foster parent discovered the girl’s cuts and called Child Protective Services to take her away.

  The uneasy feeling plaguing Blake didn’t go away, though, and a few weeks later, he came across another kid, a boy with short brown hair in a rattail, covered in what resembled self-inflicted cuts. Blake confronted him about it, and they got into a heated argument before the boy stormed off. Later, Blake told Gerald about the boy and asked him to help keep an eye out.

  After their foster parent fell asleep that night, Blake caught the boy with the rattail sneaking into the backyard with the creepy doll. Blake and Gerald followed him into the woods and watched as the boy set the doll on a tree stump and brandished a butcher knife. They watched in horror as the boy begged the doll to leave him alone before he sliced into his arm. Gerald ran to stop the boy, but Blake’s wizard senses detected a disturbing presence that drew his attention. He tracked the feeling to behind a nearby oak tree where he found Mikey, a sinister smile stretched across his face and glowing red eyes. Blake’s instincts told him that, somehow, like a puppeteer, Mikey was making the rattailed boy cut himself.

  Gerald wrestled the knife from the boy’s hand. The boy cried and raved that the doll made him do it, so Gerald burned the doll. He then cobbled together a story about the doll going missing. Blake thought about confronting Mikey, but he needed to interrogate him privately.

  Blake paused briefly before continuing his story. Just like Blake, the heavens rumbled but shed no tears. I waited breathlessly for him to start talking again, and when he did, he told me the day after he caught the rattailed boy in the woods, he set out to find and confront Mikey. Blake searched all over the house and found Mikey lurking in the backyard. Mikey gave Blake a menacing look before he disappeared behind the tree line. Blake followed him through the forest until he popped out on the other side, near an old road. There, he spotted the boy with the rattail standing in the street as a freight truck barreled for him. Blake ran to save the boy, but Gerald popped up and pushed the boy off the road first. For Blake, time slithered as he watched Gerald stand helplessly in the road without enough time to dodge the speeding vehicle.

  Blake blamed himself for Gerald’s death and vowed to never fail anyone like that again. That’s why he protected us. I wanted to allay his concerns, remind him that the forces we faced loomed over us like unstoppable giants. But I didn’t want to trivialize his feelings. He had made his pain into a prison, its walls higher and sturdier than the Institute’s.

  Blake continued: He found Mikey lurking near the crash site, the same horrifying delight spread across his face; the same red glow in his eyes. Mikey retreated into the forest. Blake gave chase, cornering Mikey at a riverbank. The unsettling tingle that ran through Blake’s body as he approached made his stomach tight. Something twisted occupied Mikey’s body, joyously using him to bring suffering into the world.

  “I’m not letting you hurt anybody else,” Blake said.

  In a deep, inhuman voice, Mikey said, “What will you do to stop me?” He moved forward. Frightened, Blake took a few steps back and stumbled over a rock. Blake’s fear excited the strange creature inside Mikey.

  “Stop!” Blake said, inching back as Mikey came closer. Mikey paused midstep, like an unseen force had frozen him. Blake didn’t know it then, but that’s when his magic emerged. With will alone, he paralyzed Mikey.

  “This body is stronger than yours,” Mikey said.

  “What’s wrong with you, Mikey? What’s going on?”

  A searing pain burned in Blake’s head. He dropped to his knees and covered his ears as the agony sharpened. That terrible creature residing in Mikey’s body burrowed deep into Blake’s mind. It sought to control his body. Blake grabbed his head, fell on his side, and curled into a ball as everything went black.

  “And when I opened my eyes,” Blake said to me, “I was in the white room with Melchior.”

  The bus turned down Pine Street, heading toward us. “What happened?” I asked, confused by the ending to Blake’s story.

  “Mikey was a somnambulist, and apparently, some psycho Mara had taken over his body. Even though Mikey was stronger, it wanted my body because I was older. Right when it tried to possess me, the agents came in and extracted me.”

&n
bsp; “Where’d they take Mikey?”

  “Under the Heka Building, like they do with all somnambulists.”

  “You think the Mikey that spoke to me over the radio is the same person?”

  “I don’t know. Luther did say this place was for the Institute’s highest security risks. My only question is: Why haven’t we seen him in here? Why did he have to speak to you through a radio?”

  “You think it’s a Mara trying to trick us?” I asked.

  “I don’t know, but if it’s the same Mikey, I doubt the Institute would’ve left him possessed. And even if it is Mikey and he’s still possessed, he just told us we were trapped here. He didn’t tell you about Luther or anything.”

  “What if he’s manipulating us. Like the black cat Mara did with Gaspar?”

  “We don’t have many choices, Johnny. We either stay here, or trust Mikey and Luther.”

  The bus pulled up then. I said goodbye to Blake and boarded. I didn’t doubt that the Mikey from Blake’s story and the Mikey who spoke to me over the radio might be the same person, but if that was the case, where was he and why was he helping us?

  Chapter 7

  The bus stopped between the high school and the library. I didn’t need to get caught, so I hurried to my house and stole inside before anyone saw me. Dad’s copy skulking around, waiting to eavesdrop, threatened to complicate things. “Dad,” I called as I walked in. No one said anything back, so I decided to wait for Alison. Not even one text dinged my phone all day. Even the copy spared me the obligatory, “Hey, son, how are you?” Alison’s silence made me nervous, though. I messaged her: Where are you?

  Alison texted back, I’ll be there in a while.

  Probably out with Tiffany again, I thought. After everything we’d talked about, Alison still just wanted to play pretend, a willing prisoner in a jail of enticing lies. The living room’s drawn curtain cast everything in darkness. I parted it a bit and checked outside. Cottony gray clouds still dressed the sky, but the rain had ceased some time ago. Hopefully, the weather stayed that way. Looking for Luther’s cave during a downpour sounded like a nightmare. Two neighbors—a burly man with white hair and a bald spot, and a middle-aged woman with a red bob and a minidress—talked near a mailbox across the street. Their conversation didn’t look too lively. The man sorted through the mail in his hands while the woman spoke. Paranoia arose in me. In any other circumstance these innocuous neighbors didn’t warrant a second glance, but here they could be wizards or copies. They turned and stared simultaneously, and I shut the curtains. I stretched across the couch and waited for Alison to show up.