by Troy McCombs
"—maybe you weren't a threat to it, or its cause—"
"Or maybe it is limited to some sort of physics, no matter how obscure or bizarre."
"It saw what my mother said to me when she rocked me as a baby—"
"It could see that because it's linked to you, not to me. Not to everyone on earth, either. Somehow it has a direct connection to you. But it can't see everything about you. It doesn't have dibs on you twenty-four seven. The dream catcher proved it! It can see what happened to you long ago because that memory of yours is something that remains dear to you. Things you've forgotten or don't care about, I don't think it can see."
John stared her down. Shook his head. "How could you know this? Seriously?"
She smiled. "I wish I knew. I do believe that it is most afraid of what it isn't able to see in you. That's the downfall of every enemy. I think it's sending you the dreams to purposely shield your eyes from the truth."
John sighed. "Well, if it isn't remote viewing, how can you know what it does have?"
Jennifer looked past him, off into space. "I've had a reoccurring dream of somebody cutting someone else's hair at a barber shop. Seems so unimportant, and yet I feel that there's vital importance in finding out what it means. There's a big answer there. The power is in the details, John."
He, for a moment, almost felt outshined by this young woman. She knew as much as, if not more than, he did, without having entered the Mayberry House. And here he thought he was the most elite psychic in Chester County. Was she right? Was he being tracked by D'kourikai instead of being stalked by it? Could it only see certain bits and pieces of his life and not the whole package? It was certainly feasible, and perhaps even more likely. He, too, had seen the scissors cut the strands of hair off a human's head in his last dream, but how could some unknowing barber be responsible for matching him with an otherworldly monster?
It didn't make sense.
"You see? How could I know all this and it be one big coincidence?" Jennifer offered. Her tone of voice was becoming less unsteady and more certain, more pronounced. "You can act like you know more than me, which you probably do, and shun me away...or you can open up and let another lonely psychic help you. The choice is yours, John. You will not fail me."
John's eyes widened, turned glossy. Did she know about Sarah Pouster, too?
Very slowly, a look of acceptance developed on his once-doubtful face. This girl was a natural intuitive. She had a protective instinct about her, a look of power behind her black eyes.
John finally nodded. "I know we already know each other's names, but we've never really met yet. Name's John. Rollings." He offered her a hand.
"Jennifer Stockwell." She gratefully grabbed and shook it. Upon skin contact, John immediately saw into the broken past of his new companion. She had lost both her parents at a young age, and had never completely healed from their untimely deaths. She had had six siblings until 2003, when four died in a boating accident. She was ridiculed by the majority of her family for having unusual abilities she could not control. All she really had now was an aunt, uncle, brother and sister, all of whom she visited regularly. She relied on medication to help her through each day.
Was this his additional physical spirit guide besides Lucky? A young woman with a damaged heart? How could she help?
Then he saw her potential. He saw briefly into her future. He saw how powerful and happy she would become when she got married and had five children. John saw a man with a burned hand dressed in a blue flannel shirt slip an engagement ring onto her finger. John could not see his blurred face, nor recognize or distinguish his voice, but he heard her say I do and start to weep.
The vision was over.
They released their grips. John felt the cold metal of the engagement ring on her finger against his own as she pulled away. She was wearing one now.
Obviously not all of the second vision had been ahead of time.
"Thank you for believing me." She smiled thoughtfully. "I will not break into your room anymore."
"Hey, as long as you keep the monsters out, I guess it's fine. I don't mean to kick you out now, but I've had a long day and I am exhausted."
"That's okay. Will you take me to the Mayberry House tomorrow?"
"Not tomorrow, but soon. I need a break from there. Good-night."
"Good-night."
She left and closed the door behind her. John jumped into bed, laced his hands behind his head, and tried—successfully—to clear his jumbled mind. It was always nice meeting another psychic who carried the same burden with them wherever they went—a burden that required more responsibility than having kids. Intuitives were too few anymore, a dying breed. A hundred years ago they were thriving. Now, in the new millennium, there were hardly any left.
***
A little later, John went outside and found Lucky lying beside a fire hydrant near Stover Street. He fed him a few treats and sneaked him back into his room. Making sure the lock was not broken; John turned it, securing it as best he could. He shut off the bedside lamp and the cell phone, opened the window from which the new dream catcher hung, got into bed, and pet Lucky on his belly. He eased into sleep, the previous thoughts of the day scattering away. In no time he left the conscious world behind.
The night passed slowly, calmly, unheedingly, and neither John nor Lucky changed position in bed. A soothing wind blew in through the window with a dull, bassy roar. Jennifer's dream catcher swayed from side to side. Through the webbing, a full moon hung low over the rolling hills in the near distance. Serenity had come to Bellsville. John was entering R.E.M. sleep. Dreams began to surface...
A woman's small, wrinkled hands snipped off strands of hair with a pair of scissors. Her blurred face shifted in the background in slow motion. The hair fibers feathered to the floor.
"Find. Help—Mary..." The foreign female voice echoed through John's ears.
A dust pan dropped to a black and white checkerboard floor and a small broom swept the hair up into it. The person doing the cleaning entered the light, and finally became visible in John's eyes. It was an older woman with serious, almond shaped eyes, and a face riddled with trench-like acne scars. A very familiar face, the psychic thought, even though he could not place it. He didn't know her, but he had seen her before...as a child?
Then, another voice echoed through his ears, its tone louder and more critical. His mother's.
The visual composition of the barber shop scene changed. The floor, the hair, and the hairdresser were replaced by clouds, a golden light, and a pretty blue sky. Tamera floated forward across thin air without moving a single foot. She was dressed like an angel again, clad in white clothes, her face, in contrast, weighed with concern.
Suddenly, she vanished.
Standing on a cloud and afraid to glance down, John looked around for her. She was nowhere to be seen.
"Get a haircut, kid! Tomorrow. Do not wait," she demanded, reappearing right before him. The psychic stumbled backward, startled. Her message resounded over and over, its tone infused with utmost urgency.
Again, she vanished, along with her the clouds, the golden light, the pretty blue sky. Darkness blinded John's vision. Soon, small specs of light burned to life in the distance, filling the void. He was staring up at the night sky, still asleep. He could not move, could not speak when he tried. He was bound to the earth, granted only the ability to watch and listen.
It was the feeling he felt that really caught his attention. Something was burrowing through the heavens, coming for him, after him. It was infuriated with his constant attempt to shield It away. It didn't exactly fly. It didn't exactly float. It used the earth's atmosphere as a ground to walk on. It was hungry, and had been so for many years. It was coming for him tonight, now, to break down the object that shunned it away.
The dream catcher fluttered amidst the increasingly cool wind. John licked his lips as he slept, swallowed. Lucky's ears rose and his eyes opened. He looked up at the Native American relic hanging from
the window as it undulated in a strange manner, as if something more than just the wind was affecting it.
The dog whimpered. Scratched at John's arm. Barked.
Nothing.
Like twigs being snapped apart by heavy machinery, the webs of the dream catcher broke apart one by one. The feathers on its outside edges fell off and fluttered to the windowsill below. The wooden frame blackened, smoked, and burst into flames.
It went up as if it had been doused in gasoline and set ablaze by a blowtorch. D'kourikai had come to shatter John's mental blockade:
The dream catcher.
It was not about to submit to such an artifact, especially made from some vile human—the same race who was long ago indirectly responsible for imprisoning Cthulhu.
Not only did the dream catcher go up in flames, but the whole windowsill did as well...along with the curtain, the walls, the ceiling. D'kourikai breathed fire from its mouth. Lucky could see the outline of the entity, but that was all. He began barking violently at it and at the flames and at his owner, trying to wake him.
John slept through everything, immersed in darkness and imprisoned mentally by the fire-breathing monster, which had locked him out of consciousness. He had no way of waking up for the time being—even as the upper apartments caught fire or as people in the other rooms began screaming and panicking. The fire department had arrived before John had any idea what was going on.
By some miracle, the lack of oxygen had not killed him. Yet.
John's room was clouded in blackness, soot filling every crevice and corner. Lucky could not breathe, but tried persistently and relentlessly to wake his master by barking in his ear or by biting his arm. Still, he wouldn't wake, even though he was beginning to asphyxiate.
Standing at the very back of his mind was his mother. She was trying to say something to him, but he could not make out the faint mumble of her words.
"J--ohn. Wa—p. Get ou—before it's t—late."
"Mom? Moooom! I can't hear you!" he shouted, clouded in a murky gray fog.
"John!" she said, trying to get closer, trying to speak louder. It wasn't happening.
All of a sudden, the rough, unrecognizable shape of a young girl materialized from out of the vortex of fog, and shouted, "John, leave now! The building's on fire!"
The voice bounced around in his ears, his head, a million times.
He was up in a flash, enshrouded by carbon monoxide smoke and unable to see so much as his hand in front of his face. The walloping sound of fire truck sirens filled his sensitive ears, reviving him completely from his slumber. John didn't know from where he heard the subsequent male voice, but he heard the word as clear as day— "Fire!"
He jumped to his feet, Lucky by his side, and went to where he thought the door was. He slipped twice, once on a magazine and once on a remote control. His hand managed to find the doorknob almost by itself, but he yanked it away from the scorching brass before it had a chance to burn. The metal was glowing, a red hot, semitransparent knob John could not see. It was being bombarded by flames from the opposite side.
"Shit!"
Panicked, Lucky began to spin around in circles and howl desperately. He was losing oxygen more quickly than John and was on the verge of falling over. John, starting to grow dizzy from lack of air, too, turned and looked for the opened window. It was useless. The pitch black smoke masked everything in view. He did not have time to search for it without passing out. So, instead, he kicked at the door with the heel of his foot, over and over, hoping he had the time to jump aside before the backdraft crashed into the room.
"Breeeeaaak!"
Thigh muscles throbbing, John quickly realized that his attempt at kicking the door wasn't working, despite its fragility to the fire. Lucky stopped circling, lay down, and whimpered, his lungs filled with foreign matter. The crackling of flames now accompanied the whaling of the trucks outside. Both, man and beast thought he was done for, probably left to be found with singed airways and third-degree burns. Where were the firemen? Who were they saving that was more important on the Richter scale than John and Lucky?
One second later, they thought the end had come...
Something happened, to say the least. There was an enormous crash, and much of the smoke fanned out of the room, long enough for John and Lucky to take in a few deep breaths of purer air. John could suddenly see. He realized that he and his dog were actually still alive. His room had changed. His ceiling was gone, and was now just a gaping hole. The floor above had weakened and gave out, toppling down to his level. The sight he saw, however, was one he would have traded in for anything.
Atop his bigger bed lie a smaller bed, in which an elderly woman lay, engulfed in flames. Her once-gray hair was either gone, singed down to the roots, or supporting tiny red coals. The majority of her skin was already black, the white remainder quickly being eaten by unremitting shifting glowing orange shards. John couldn't bear the smell of her burned form, which wiggled in anguish in response to the searing pain. But worse than the smell was the expression on her desperate, horrified face as she lay there, powerless and desperate, her eyes melting away. It was obvious she knew she was going to die an agonizing death. All the woman could do was whimper quietly.
John had to help her. He could not stand watching an innocent elderly woman die, especially this way. He felt like he was at fault yet again for another person's unnecessary death. First it was Sarah Pouster, a young child; now it was an old woman, who was about to meet her maker because of his connection to an entity she had nothing to do with.
John stepped forward to help the woman. As he did, he heard the voice of his mother say No, John, there's no time. You cannot help her.
He stepped forward again, anyway. Lucky lunged down, bit his pant leg, and tugged him back toward the door, which was now beginning to bulge inwardly.
"I have to save her!” John shouted.
"No, son, you got to go now!"
John reached for the woman. More flames engulfed her. She reached for him, too, mouthing the words Help me.
Just then, an explosion burst through the room, and fragments of the door scattered everywhere: through the open window, into the bathroom, into the wall, and against John's body, knocking him aside but not down. Lucky scratched at his leg. Barked. Nodded his head to the door, telling him to follow.
I have to help this woman first.
"John!" His mother raised her voice.
"I have to help—" He looked back at the old woman. She was no longer struggling or whimpering. She was dead.
I failed again.
A tear welled in his eye, but before it fell, he, along with Lucky, darted out of the room.
The psychic wasn't as much focused on escape as he was knowing he had wasted too much time letting the woman perish. He followed Lucky through the dense, choking black smoke in the hall and past the intense, unbearable heat, neither of which registered in his preoccupied mind. He hurried toward the exit—or where he thought the exit was—hardly concerned with his own mortality at all. He wanted to go back and rescue the old lady, even though he knew her spirit was no longer trapped in that charred body.
Solid hard objects obstructed the path, and there was no visibility whatsoever. People screamed. Fire crackled. Sirens echoed through the hall. John stumbled forward, coughing. Lucky guided him over the rubble. Still, he almost tripped a dozen times in only a few strides. To better support himself, he reached out with his hand and leaned against a wall. Slowly, he edged his way along, wondering if his best friend was going the right way. All of the man's senses were swiftly depleting. He could barely breathe, he could not see, and his body was beading with sweat in response to the extreme heat. He had never been so hot. In fact, this inferno was unique to even the firefighters battling the blaze from outside. Some of the flames were red, yellow and orange, while others were purple, green, and blue—clear indicators that some highly toxic chemical compounds were involved in its start. The water from the hydrants wasn't workin
g well, either. It seemed to be fueling its hunger.
"Lucky, hold on, I can't go so fast!" John pleaded, his trembling hand losing contact with the wall. Lucky let go of his pant leg and howled, as if in pain.
"Jesus, are you all right?"
Lucky howled again. He was okay for the time being, but the mutt knew that time was their great enemy right now. The smoke was killing them both. They had to hurry. And John was taking his good old time.
The problem was this: he relied too heavily on his lesser senses. He had only his sixth one left. But with his eyes burning and his lungs filling with soot, he could not access it. His body was spasming without his realizing it. He was panicking and growing light-headed. Oxygen seemed like a thing of the past. A tingling sensation flowed through his veins. If that wasn't bad enough, something worse happened. John felt a dull, hard pain on the crown of his head and momentarily forget about everything.
A board from an upper room had fallen on him. Not only did it knock him senseless, but it now had him pinned against the floor. The bulky 4X8 lay across his chest like a barbell stacked with four-hundred pounds of weight. He was not going anywhere on his own.
Lucky tried pushing the beam off John's body with his snout. It did not work, and Lucky did not continue. He yelped, turned, and ran toward the exit, toward safety.
"That's it, Lucky, save yourself." He meant it.
He thought these were his last few moments alive, a mortal man overtaken by a Cthulhu-spawned entity. Slowly, the black smoke cleared. Sharp beams of light shined in from different angles. There was peace, and a golden tunnel of swirling fog. The words Game Over blinked on and off from within, a bleak symbol of self-defeat.
I can't give up now!
A warm chill boiled through his body. His eyes sprang open. He no longer thought throw in the towel; he now thought fuck you, D'kourikai.
With all the strength he could muster, John pushed on the board, using every muscle in his arms and back. His head trembled. His face turned almost as red as some of the flames in the nearby rooms. Teeth clinched, the psychic gave it all he had. Slowly, the beam came up off his chest, its timbers smoldering. But before he could move it aside, it slammed back against his body with great force, and more weight...