IF: Bad Dreams

by Clayton Smith

  Because the dragon sounded big.

  She climbed slowly to the top of the incline, and more of the outside world came into view. She could see sand now, and low brush, and even some cacti scattered across the landscape. She climbed cautiously to the edge of the opening and saw the land sloping away toward a dusty path through the brush that led off to a town in the distance. She could see the sun, and the clouds, and birds hopping around on the desert floor. What she could not see, however, was the dragon.

  But his breathing was louder than ever.

  She took one cautious step out of the cave, holding her wand at the ready. She looked to the left, then to the right. There was no dragon in sight. She took a second step, then a third. She had a whole panoramic view now, and there was no monster anywhere.

  So why could she hear it so clearly?

  A warm breeze blew across the desert and riffled her hair. Even though it was warm, it gave her goose bumps. She swatted at the nape of her neck, rubbing away the chills as the warm breeze blew again. “Stop it, wind!” she said. She spun around, wand held high, ready to wreak some sort of magical havoc on the breeze.

  And when she did, she came face-to-face with the dragon.

  It was perched above the entrance to the cave, and it was massive. Each claw was as big as Polly, and the dragon itself was ten times the size of her house. It had scaly black skin that looked tough as leather. It crouched on four heavily-muscled legs, each one the size of a grain silo. It had a long, thick tail with great barbs running the entire length of it. But it wasn’t its size, or its claws, or its scales, or its tail with razor-sharp spikes that made the blood drain from Polly’s face and left her sick with fear.

  It was the fact that this immense beast had seven heads.

  And all of them were glaring down at her with fury.

  One head opened its mouth and screamed an ear-splitting screech that made Polly fall to her knees and cover both of her ears. Then the other six heads joined in, and the screaming became unbearable. The dragon unfurled its wings; they seemed to stretch on forever, blocking out the sun. Polly turned her terrified eyes to the magnificent beast as those wings began to flap, moving slowly at first, then gaining speed, flapping faster and faster until the wind uprooted the scrub brush and sent it tumbling out into the desert. The seven heads screamed again; three of them filled with fire that flared up from deep within their throats.

  Polly screeched and threw herself back into the cave just as three balls of white-hot fire exploded on the sand where she had been standing just moments earlier. The dragon hovered, wheeled around, and crashed down onto the ground in front of the cave. The earth shook as if it would split in half. Huge chunks of stone cracked away from the top of the cavern and smashed onto the floor below.

  Polly covered her head with her hands and waved her wand wildly in the air to ward off the impending danger. It seemed to work—when she opened her eyes and peeked through her fingers, the earth had stopped moving, stones had stopped falling, and the vicious beast outside was no longer screaming. It just breathed its loud, long, labored breaths, and its seven sets of angry eyes glared at her through the mouth of the cave. The dragon belched one more fireball into the air, as a warning. Then it settled down onto its stomach and cozied up against the opening, shutting off the sunlight and returning Polly to a word of complete darkness.

  She didn’t dare move for almost ten full minutes. When she finally worked up the nerve, she clicked on her light and backed away from the dragon, moving deeper into the cave. Somehow, she didn’t think slayifus dragonious was going to be sufficient.

  She decided to take her chances with the blue-faced creatures instead.

  Chapter 5:

  “This Contract is Legally and Physically Binding”

  Cole crashed to the ground, landing in a heap on top of the other children. “Get offa me!” Willy cried from the bottom of the pile, trying to scrabble his way out. The weight of the other three kids kept him pinned. “Lemme out, you nerds!”

  The Stranger dropped to the ground next to them, landing on his feet with one hand on the butt of his gun. He looked around, cautiously drinking in this new imagining through careful, squinting eyes. “Get up,” he instructed. “We’ve got company.”

  The children struggled to their feet. They stood on a low, grassy hill on the edge of a field that stretched for nearly twenty acres before it got lost in a line of old maple trees on the far horizon. Close to them, near the bottom of the hill, stood a strange tent constructed of patchwork sheets and mismatched quilts draped over some sort of frame. On the far side of the tent was a line of barbed wire that ran from the left side of the field all the way to the horizon on the right, effectively creating a fence between the children and the field beyond.

  And in that field sat a whole bunch of…what were they, exactly? Cole squinted into the morning sun. His eyes were tired, and he was exhausted. The things on the far side kept swimming in and out of focus. Were those desks? They sure looked like it—an entire platoon of Formica desks, carefully laid out in neat, orderly rows. There were hundreds of them, filling the field from end to end, starting just on the other side of the barbed wire. And behind each desk sat women and men in what looked like brightly-colored pajamas.

  One flap of the tent fell open, and two pairs of eyes peered out at the children from inside. There was a quick discussion before two men burst out of the tent, striding purposefully up the hill toward the visitors. They were dressed in World War II army gear, olive drab wool serge trousers and matching flannel shirts. One of the men wore a stiff garrison cap on his head; the other man carried his hat folded under his arm. The one wearing the cap held an M1 carbine rifle in his hands, and he looked like he knew how to use it. Cole instinctively put his hands in the air.

  “What’s your allegiance?” barked the soldier with the rifle when the two men had closed in on the group.

  “Our allegiance is to ourselves,” the Stranger said gruffly. He raised his right hand to his hat, and the soldier with the gun brought it quickly to his shoulder, aiming it straight at the cowboy’s heart. “Easy, kid,” the Stranger grumbled. He plucked the ever-present cheroot from behind his ear and stuck it into his mouth. “We ain’t got no quarrel with you.”

  “Lower the gun, Johnson,” the other soldier commanded. The one called Johnson followed the order, slowly drawing the bead away from the Stranger’s chest. “A neutral party’s a rare thing these days,” the first soldier continued, squinting suspiciously at the children. “How do we know you’re telling the truth?”

  The Stranger chomped on his cigar. “If I was against you, you’d already be on the ground,” he said simply, his cool, blue eyes sharp and steady. He pulled out a match, struck it on his boot, and casually lit the cigar.

  The soldiers exchanged glances. The older one—the one with the hat tucked under his arm—gave Johnson a slight nod. Johnson raised the butt of the gun back to his shoulder. The older one shook his head tiredly and said, “Look, don’t play cute. I don’t—”

  But the Stranger didn’t wait for him to finish. He dropped his right hand to his revolver, flipped it out of the holster, fired from his hip, and spun the gun back into its holster, all before the soldier finished his next word. “Freeze right there!” yelled the younger soldier, raising the barrel to the Stranger’s chest once more. But the cowboy’s hands were empty again.

  “What did you–?” the older soldier started. Then they heard a sharp SNAP! from the bottom of the hill. The soldiers turned just as one of the ropes holding up the corner of the tent snapped in two. The Stranger’s bullet had sliced through the hemp, and the weight of the tent had done the rest of the job. The rope launched into the air, and the corner of the tent buckled inward, the colored sheets billowing toward the ground.

  “Like I said,” spat the Stranger. “If I wanted you dead, you would be.”

  The older
soldier considered this. Finally, he placed his hand on Johnson’s rifle and gently pushed it down. “All right.” He nodded back toward the tent. “Let’s go talk in the fort.”

  Dr. Mandrill sipped his steaming cup of coffee as the sky opened up on the horizon and spat out a child onto the cold, hard ground. He snuffled with amusement as three more children tumbled after, each one piling up on the one before. Then, of course, came their guide, the quiet cowboy with the dangerous trigger finger. He was an interesting specimen, that one. With a bit of an attitude adjustment, he could turn out to be rather useful. Of course, his kind could rarely be tamed. Too many misguided values and loyalties.

  Dr. Mandrill sighed.

  He’d just have to kill him off.

  “Judy,” he beckoned, blowing away the steam that rose from his mug. A heavyset woman in violently purple and red medical scrubs jogged over to the dentist.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Our guests have arrived.” He nodded toward the horizon, where the children were brushing themselves off. “Is everything ready?”

  “Yep! Everyone has a fresh stack of forms.”

  “And pens?”

  “Six each,” she confirmed. “Seems like overkill to me, but–”

  Mandrill turned his cold, blue eyes on her, and she caught herself in mid-sentence. But the dentist only smiled. “I am the lord of overkill,” he said.

  Judy nodded uneasily. “Well, at any rate, everyone’s ready.”

  “Good. I have preparations to make back at the office. Need to get ready for four new patients.” He took one last sip of coffee, then pitched the remainder onto the grass. He tossed the empty mug to Judy. “I trust you understand your purpose?”

  Judy nodded. She’d been a medical receptionist for several eons now. She knew the drill. “Detain the patients until you’re ready.”

  “However long it takes.”

  “Yes, sir. We added new insurance forms, just in case. We could hold them here for days,” she said proudly.

  Dr. Mandrill nodded. “Good. I can’t overstate the importance of these children becoming our next patients, Judy, but in case it’s lost on you, let me be blunt: when I’ve made the preparations, either they’ll be in my chair, or you will. Understand?”

  Judy’s face assumed an awful pallor as her blood plummeted to a level somewhere below her knees. “Y-yes,” she stammered, forcing a smile. “Of course. We won’t let you down.”

  “It’d be best if you didn’t,” Mandrill agreed. He rubbed his shining head and gave the children in the distance one last look. There were two soldiers climbing the hill toward his guests. “What’s the story on the circus brigade?”

  Judy bit her lip and bobbed her head from side to side, wondering how best to proceed. “We’re not exactly sure where they came from,” she finally admitted. “But one of my girls is working on it.” She pointed to a desk four rows over, where a young woman in pink scrubs sat describing the complexities of dental paperwork to a confused, miserable-looking soldier. “They won’t try anything while we’ve got him.”

  “Don’t be so sure,” Mandrill sighed. The soldiers were an inconvenience he hadn’t planned for. Not like there would have been time to make preparations anyway. The Royal had barely given him enough advance warning time to set up the signfield as it was.

  The soldiers were a child’s imaginary army—that much was obvious by the look of their fort. It meant that tactically, they wouldn’t pose much threat. Mandrill had run up against enough war fiction to know he should count his blessings that this army wasn’t the product of an adult scholar’s mind, or a former military strategist’s. Still, children’s imaginings were unpredictable. It made the dentist uneasy.

  “Keep an eye on them,” he warned. “They’re likely to give aid to our juvenile friends, especially since we’re keeping one of their own detained. You know what to do if they start to act up.”

  Judy nodded. “The nitrous oxide canisters are prepped,” she confirmed.

  “Good. I’ll send word when I’m ready.” He flashed her a wide, easy smile. “Do try to have the children in hand by then, hmm?”

  Judy gulped. She nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  Dr. Mandrill reached into his white coat pocket and pulled out a piece of chalk. He drew a square on the ground. Blue light flashed into the center of the square, and the grass became a wooden plank. He smashed his foot down into it, breaking it off its hinges. “Toodle loo,” he said, and he dropped through the hole, down into his office on the other side of the Boundary.

  The soldiers struggled with the tent, hoisting it back up and re-tying the rope that the Stranger had shot through. When they were satisfied, they ushered the group into the tent. “Welcome to Fort Billy,” Johnson said proudly.

  Fort Billy wasn’t like the army forts in the movies. It was constructed entirely of blankets, pillows, and couch cushions. It didn’t look like it could withstand a stiff wind, much less a military assault. The walls were surprisingly high, consisting largely of big cushions lashed together with wide ropes made of bed sheets and propped up against the blankets draped on the outside of the fort. From the outside, the blankets looked like they were stitched together, but from up close, Cole could clearly see that they’d simply been laid over the cushions without so much as a single thread to bind them. The edge of each blanket drooped down overhead. Cole kept his legs loose and ready to dive out of the way, in case the whole structure came loose and tumbled to the ground.

  The fort was sparsely furnished. The sole table, if it could be called that, was a stack of couch cushions piled three high and four across. It was littered with papers and unfurled maps, held open by small stones placed at the corners. Six pillows spaced out around the table served as chairs.

  “This place is awesome!” Willy said. He threw himself onto the table, scattering papers and knocking over cushions.

  “Willy, stop!” Emma gasped. “You’re smashing all the maps!” She hustled over to the mess of cushions and pushed Willy off. He tumbled to the floor as Emma patted the papers gently, smoothing them out.

  The soldiers seemed unconcerned with Willy’s disruption. “You said you’re not against us, but you’re not for us, either,” said the older one, taking up a post along the wall across from the entrance flaps. The stitching on his shirt read Pepper. “Just passing through?”

  The Stranger nodded. “Only here long enough to find the nearest lintel.”

  Johnson snorted. Pepper shot him a look that clearly told him to be quiet. “You’ll have some trouble there,” Pepper said. “Nearest lintel’s on the far side of the signfield.”

  Cole cocked his head. “Did you say signfield…or minefield?”

  “Signfield. Take a look.” The soldier reached back, grabbed an edge of the blanket, and pulled it aside. Through the opening, Cole could see the army of desks lining the field on the other side of the barbed wire fence.

  “I don’t understand,” Cole frowned.

  The soldier pointed out at the desks. “Those secretaries are the tools of the dentist. You ever been to the dentist, son?” Cole nodded. “What’s the first thing you do when you get to the office?”

  Cole tried to remember. “Read the magazines?” he guessed. The soldier closed his eyes and rolled his neck on his shoulders.

  “No, son, no. You fill out paperwork. Well, maybe you don’t, but your mama does, or your daddy. Right?” Cole nodded. “Okay. So that’s called ‘insurance.’ You know what insurance is?”

  Now that question, Cole could answer. “Insurance is when you make a monthly payment in exchange for financial coverage if you end up getting sick and needing a larger lump sum of money to meet your medical expenses.”

  The soldier looked at him blankly. “Insurance is paperwork,” he corrected the boy. “Mountains and mountains of paperwork. And you have to sign your name to every page. You sign your app
roval, you sign your agreement, you sign this, you sign that. You sign, and you sign, and you sign. And what you have out there is a whole army of receptionists ready with fresh papers and full pens, just itching to make you sign every piece of paper in the stack. Just try winding your way through that field, son. You get too close to a desk, and—snap!” He snapped his fingers, making Cole jump. “They’ve got you. And you’re theirs until you sign every piece of paper on the desk. That’s what a signfield is.”

  “How long can they keep you?” the Stranger asked suspiciously.

  “How long you got?” Johnson asked with a laugh.

  Pepper silenced him with a look once again. “It’s no laughing matter. One of our own is caught in their web right now. He went in on a recon mission and stepped too close to a desk. That was almost six hours ago.” The soldier’s face fell into a miserable grimace. “He hasn’t left the chair since.”

  “Maybe there’s another lintel,” Cole said hopefully.

  The Stranger plucked the map from under his hat and opened it on the cushion table. The children gathered around it as the cowboy shook his head. “Nope. Looks like we’re on an edge. Back that way is nothing but Void. The lintel over there’s our only way out.”

  “Out to where?” Etherie asked. “And how do we find Polly?”

  The Stranger frowned. “We ain’t got the means to cross over to Reaper’s Gulch.”

  “We can’t just leave her there!” Cole protested.

  “I don’t mean to do anything of the sort,” said the Stranger. “But we can’t go there straight away.”

  “Then where do we go?” Emma asked.

  “To the Pinch. Same as before. The Royal can tell us how to get to her. We get to the Pinch, we kill two horses with one shot.”

  “I don’t want to kill a horse,” Emma whispered.