by Gareth Otton
“So it’s my fault you’re dead?”
“What? No. That’s not what I meant. I just… Fuck. I don’t know. I suppose I wanted you to know how I felt. It’s only fair after… well, you know.”
Again there was a pregnant pause before she added, “You could have told me. I didn’t feel that way about you, but if you’d told me it might have been different. You were the most important person in my life. If you said something I’m sure I could have learned to—”
“That’s just it. I didn’t want you to learn to do anything. Having to learn to like me isn’t the start of a good relationship. I’d rather we kept things the way they were.”
Just as Miriam was coming out of the house, Maggie asked, “Do you want me to find another Proxy? I know how hard this is for you and I will if you—”
“No. Don’t. I’m past the worst of it. You know now and we can move on. I can get past this, I promise. Besides, you were right last night. I was letting our last argument get in the way of helping a friend. It’s not right.”
“So long as you’re sure.”
Just then Miriam slipped into the back seat of the car. “Come on, lets go.” She was always eager to leave after a visit with Kate. It was almost as though she thought a hasty exit could save her from the inevitable heartache.
For once, Tad was happy to comply.
7
Tuesday, 17th November 2015
02:39
As always Tad was blind within the entry room to his dreams. Yet there was no way he could miss it.
There was a new door in his mind.
Strangely, it felt familiar. It wasn’t a door into memories, but somewhere else.
For four years Tad’s strength as a Proxy had increased. The benefits gained from merging with his ghosts were lasting longer, as was his impact on them. Beyond that he could do new things like making the dead visible and walking through walls. The rate at which these strengths developed increased with every passing year.
It should be a comfort. Surely it was never a bad sign to get better at what you do. But, as he examined this new door, Tad couldn’t help but think yet again that things were not right with the world.
Considering curiosity had always been his downfall, he reached out and turned the handle.
He stepped into an all consuming grey space that stretched on forever. It was the epitome of the word empty and was easily the most terrifying thing he had ever encountered. His mind recoiled in horror and only instinct protected him as he turned his mind inward to escape this reality. He thought of home.
Just imagining his home made it real. He both recognised and didn't recognise the room he stood in. It was an odd sensation. He knew in his heart that it was his bedroom but it looked nothing like his bedroom. It was too big and he had never had a large glass wall that overlooked a tropical beach.
Yet, it was his bedroom. He was sure of it.
It took a while to recognise the sensation. When he figured it out, he had to fight back tears.
He was dreaming.
He hadn’t dreamt since he first joined with Charles. Tad’s nights were spent either in his memories or his ghost’s. He never came to this place where anything within imagination was possible.
The few dreams he remembered as a child were like this. Fantastic places that were familiar while he slept, but when he woke he wondered how he ever thought they were like anywhere he had ever been.
Unlike when he dreamed as a child, he was aware he was dreaming. Being aware you’re asleep was much like being a ghost, you became the master of your reality.
Tad was suddenly grinning and eager to explore this dream. He didn’t know what to expect and didn’t care so long as he was somewhere new.
He opened the door to his bedroom and looked out. The corridor beyond was endless with thousands of doors lining each side. The idea of walking it was uncomfortable, but when he turned back his bedroom was no longer there. Instead there was just the other end of the hallway stretching off to nowhere.
A sense of unease gripped him but he forced a laugh. “Freaky,” he said out loud.
“What?”
He turned and was surprised to find Jen stood in an open doorway, dressed for bed and rubbing her eyes. The rubbing stopped when she saw Tad.
“You’re not supposed to be here.”
He laughed. “I think it’s the other way around. This is my head.”
She frowned and took another step out the door. “What do you mean it’s your head? This is my dream. The one with the endless corridor and…” Her words trailed off and her eyes widened. “I know I’m dreaming.”
“What?”
“I know I’m dreaming,” she repeated, amazed. “It’s like when mum and dad were still with me. I know I’m dreaming. I mean, I know I’m asleep but I feel awake.”
A suspicion formed in Tad’s mind.
“Jen. I want you to tell me something about what you’ve done with Kate since we left. Something I couldn’t know.”
Surprisingly quick on the uptake, Jen understood instantly and looked even more amazed. Tad enjoyed seeing the expression of childish wonder on her face, it had been too long.
“You think you’re not part of my dream. You think you’re actually Tad and our minds have merged, just like with the ghosts.”
“Not like with the ghosts,” he disagreed. “But yes, that’s close enough. I don’t know how this happened, but I think the new door lead me to—”
“New door?”
“The one in my mind that normally leads to my ghost’s memories.”
She frowned. “I don’t remember that. Maybe it was different for me. I was in a sweet shop, but there were only three jars on the shelf. When I opened one and tasted a sweet, I would see a memory of either my mum, my dad or me.”
He blinked. “You never told me that.”
Her good humour slipped. “You never let me talk about Proxy stuff. I like my way better. A load of doors sound boring. Kind of like this.”
She nodded to the long corridor. He had to agree and wished he was somewhere more open. Instantly the walls sank into the floor, the ceiling vanished, and they were left standing in a carpeted corridor that ran down the centre of an open field. He sensed nothing but rolling hills covered in lush, green grass and daisies for miles around. The sun that beat down on him felt all too real.
When he turned his attention back to Jen, he found her wearing a pale blue summer dress and sandals. Her hair, which she normally tied back for bed, was loose and curled about her shoulders.
“Wow. How’d you do that?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I wished I was somewhere more open, a field was the first thing that came to mind and then… this.”
She laughed, tugging her new clothes as if testing how real they were. “That. Is. Awesome.”
For once they were in agreement.
“What else can we do?” she asked. “You think we can fly?”
No sooner had she said it when suddenly her feet left the floor. She wobbled and let out a startled yelp, but then she was laughing and she floated up higher.
“This is awesome!”
With a thought, Tad rose beside her. “You already said that.”
She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye and he didn’t trust her crooked grin. “Race you back to the city.”
She didn’t wait for his response before she zipped away. It was like watching a Road Runner cartoon. One minute she was there and next there was only a cloud shaped like her and a blur leading off to the distance.
“Awesome,” Tad agreed before suddenly there was his own Tad shaped cloud and another blur chasing after Jen.
He didn’t catch sight of her right away, but the sound of her giggling came back over the vast distance between them. Again he thought of the Road Runner cartoons and he had a plan to close the distance.
No sooner had he thought it when suddenly the giggling stopped and he heard a startled grunt.
He zipped
by Jen who was now tangled in a large net that appeared from nowhere and it was his turn to laugh as he flew by.
“Not fair,” Jen said, and the words were audible even though she was already miles behind. “Two can play that game.”
The impact was staggering.
He saw the shadow first, but not in time to react. It was the size of a mountain and came down on him with such force that he had no choice but to let it crush him against the ground.
Just a thought made that ground marshmallow, and he sank into it. Another thought and he was standing beside the object that had crushed him. He was covered in pink marshmallow gunk and standing beside the world's largest, wooden mallet. It was taken right from a cartoon.
Jen was only a few feet away, and she was crying with laughter.
“A mallet, Jen. You could have killed me?”
She just laughed harder. He tried to remain stern but there was no way he was keeping his frown with her laughing like that.
“It’s like that, is it?”
It took her a moment to understand his meaning, but she wasn’t quick enough to react to the steam train that came from nowhere to wipe her out.
A giant fly swatter was her retaliation. He dropped a squid on her head. That got him a hive of bees dropped on him from a height which in turn got her blown up with Wile E. Coyote’s famous Acme dynamite.
It was a constant game of escalation that continued to be fun until she sent the shadows after him.
Everything to that point had been the brightly coloured fun of a cartoon. Just dreams that weren’t harming anyone. The shadow creatures were not bright, and he had felt that kind of cold before.
With their appearance the sky turned black as night, while the grass at his feet withered and died. For once he was glad he didn’t have eyesight. He had a feeling that with sight alone he would have thought Jen was channelling the darker parts of her imagination. With that other sense, an instinctive knowledge of the world, he knew she had gone to a much more terrifying place.
“Enough Jen,” he called as the shadow creature came closer. It was a long billowing cloud of smokey shadow that coalesced in places into the vision of a skeletal hand that reached for him. He flashed back to the ghost of the other night and at once the shadowy creature twisted into the same scary visage.
“It’s not me,” Jen cried, and he turned in time to see a second shadow approaching her.
Panic and fury gripped him at once. He was overcome with the need to fight them, to save himself and, more importantly, Jen.
He imagined the destruction he had dealt to the final ghost the other night and applied it to these spectres. In his panic he made it much more powerful and the ghost in front of him burst into radiant light that washed away the shadows and brought back the warmth, before being quickly overcome again.
Tad ran toward where Jen was backing away from another ghost. This one had twin heads that were shaped like her dead parents. He didn’t hesitate before destroying it as well. He scooped Jen into his arms and she clung tight, burying her face against his chest and crying hard.
“What’s happening?” Jen asked between sobs. “Why did they come for me like that?”
The answer, like everything in that place, came by instinct.
“They’re nightmares,” he said. “They’re taking your deepest fears and turning them against us.” Even as he said it he saw another shadow descend. He destroyed it as quick as he could.
“I want them to go,” she said. “Why won’t they go?”
That he had no answer for.
He instinctively knew the rules of the place. It was a dream, they were its masters. They should be in charge here and they should be able to banish the nightmares by thinking more pleasant thoughts. But it wasn’t working.
As easy as Tad was finding it to destroy the creatures, he could feel the true power of nightmare sinking into him. Despair.
“Come on. Let's try to leave. Maybe they won’t follow.”
“Oh, they always follow.” The voice that answered was every bit as despairing as Tad felt.
Tad sensed the appearance of a new figure behind him and suddenly knew why the nightmares were here. They had come for this man.
“Who are you?” Tad asked.
“It doesn’t matter. It’ll be over soon enough.”
He was old, maybe seventy, and wore a cardigan with corduroy trousers, the hems of which were baggy over his slippers. Everything about him said retiree, comfortable in his own home save for the knife that protruded from his chest.
Blood poured from the wound far too freely to be real or he would already be dead. Who knew, in this place maybe he was dead.
“Tad? I want to go home,” Jen whispered from her position against his chest. He wanted nothing more than to take her home, but he needed answers first. He had the sense that whatever was happening was important and he couldn’t go yet.
“Who are you?” Tad repeated.
The man sighed and said, “James Tanner.”
“You’re a Proxy?”
The man looked surprised to be recognised, but nodded.
“I’m Tad. This is my daughter, Jen. We’re Proxies too. What’s happening here?”
“She got me. Took me too him. There was nothing I could do.”
“What are you talking about? You’re not making sense.”
The world was growing colder and darker with every passing second. Anything living had long since died away and all that was left was an empty wasteland of blackened dirt and clouds of dust. Overhead thousands of shadows spiralled like some great tornado of circling vultures.
“My ghosts kept spotting a dark haired woman following me. They said she had the Cleopatra look, whatever that means. We were all keeping an eye out for her, but it didn’t help. Last night I was getting ready for bed, turned around and there she is. Came from nowhere without any of my ghosts seeing.
“Next thing I know I’m waking up in a place that’s looking a lot like this. Only there was a great, stone table and… him.” He must have been catholic as his hand made the sign of the cross. “He’s the devil. You’ll understand if you ever see him.”
“I still don’t understand what you mean,” Tad said in frustration. It was in vain. He had lost the old man’s attention. James was looking into the distance and all his strength had left him.
“He’s coming,” he said. “I can feel it.” Turning back to Tad and Jen he said, “Go. Wake yourselves and run. Don’t stop until you have half the planet between you and this nightmare. Who knows, maybe that will keep you safe. I doubt it. But maybe.”
Tad was shaking his head. “What are you—”
He didn’t finish his sentence. Suddenly there was another presence pressing against his senses, another Proxy. The power he felt from this Proxy was like nothing he had felt before and suddenly he was terrified.
“Go,” the man whispered, a look of resignation on his face. “Get out of here before he comes.”
“Come with us.”
He shook his head and smiled sadly. “It’s too late for me. Go.”
With his final word the last of Tad’s resolve left. That thing was coming closer, and he knew that above all else he did not want to be here when it arrived.
He took one last look at the man and then willed himself to safety. It was as simple as anything else in the dream. One minute he was in a deserted wasteland and the next he was in his round room with the six doors. It felt as though they hadn’t even moved, that the walls had grown around them. Even so Tad knew they were far from that place. Whatever nightmare came for James would not find them.
“I want to wake up,” Jen said. He could sense the panic radiating off her in waves.
“I know. I’ll show you how in a second. First, say that man’s name for me.”
“What?”
“Humour me. Please.”
She pulled away and looked up at him with tear filled eyes. “James Tanner,” she said. “I’ll never forget it.”
“Nor I,” Tad agreed. “Tomorrow, when we see each other, I’ll ask you for that name. If you can tell me—”
Her eyes widened in understanding and she finished his sentence. “Then we’ll know this wasn’t just a dream.”
He smiled at her. “Exactly. Now, time to wake up. All you have to do is say, Excitare. It means awaken in Latin. It’s like a magic word. When you say it, imagine waking up and you’ll wake up.”
She stared at him, her hazel eyes round and filled with tears. In a stage whisper she said, “Excitare.”
She vanished.
It was all rubbish. Another of his tricks like giving clothes to Maggie. All he had to do to wake up was imagine himself awake. He knew other Proxies who had trouble with it though, so he made up that nonsense for them to try. The truth was much like it was for ghosts. All they had to do was realise they were in charge and they could wake up. He just gave them a way to do that.
Knowing that Jen was safely gone, he too opened his eyes.
Twenty-five past seven found Tad in the kitchen with a steaming coffee and a racing mind.
His ghosts woke with him, confused by the lack of his presence in their memories. Tad decided not to tell them what happened. He needed proof before he bothered them with another worry.
It was no good. They knew him well enough to see through his deception, but had the grace to leave him be.
He was lost in thought when the silhouette grew against the window of the back door. When he heard the handle turn he was out of his seat in a second. Jen was just as fast, rushing through the door into his arms.
“There he is. Happy now?” asked an irritated Kate. “If you two can’t spend one night apart then you’ve got problems.”
Tad ignored her. Instead, he pushed Jen away and asked, “What was his name?”
“James Tanner.”
It had been real.
After a morning of consideration, he was certain they had witnessed the end of a Proxy last night.
“Don’t worry,” he said in response to her rising panic. “We don’t know it was real yet.”
“We just proved it.”