by Megan Hart
The boy stared at her with vivid blue eyes half-hidden by a shock of unruly dark hair. “Why? Why does everything good have to go away?”
“I don’t know.”
In the face of his tears her resolve weakened. Tovah had little experience with children. She’d been the youngest child. She’d never babysat. She’d never had a child of her own.
“Hey,” she said. “Don’t.”
The boy sat on a large black rock and put his face in his hands. The knobs of his shoulders punched up through the thin denim of his shirt. His fingernails were bitten down, his fingers dirty in the creases. His sobs rent her. She touched his shoulder tentatively.
“What’s your name?”
He shook his head and looked up at her with streaming eyes. She thought he might be about eight years old, and small for his age. His lashes, dark and thick, swept over cheeks as smooth as milk.
“Only bad things stay!” he cried.
She took her hand back at the sudden shout. The force of his will was like a thousand tiny plucking hands. Like the skittering touch of an insect, or the unexpected prick of a pin left in a garment.
Tovah shaped green grass, but the black sand pushed it away. She shaped blue sky, but midnight swallowed it. Things were getting beyond her control. She didn’t want to be caught in this child’s nightmare. She wasn’t a guide.
“I’m sorry.” She backed up. “You’ll find your ball. If you want to.”
She closed her eyes. When she opened them, she would be away from this place and this child. She would be in the club, where she could find something to distract her. Or in the meadow, shaping flowers. Anyplace but here.
She opened her eyes.
There wasn’t time to scream; there hadn’t been then, either. One moment she’d been drifting into sleep, the next the shriek of tires on pavement and the blaring of the car horn had flung her eyes wide open. The seat belt had bitten her shoulder. The sound of metal on metal and shattering glass filled her head.
No time to scream, or block her sight. No time to brace herself before the car slid under the back end of the tractor-trailer and everything went black.
Black.
And blue.
And red and blue.
Red and blue and yellow. The sound of sirens. Smell of smoke. A vague sensation of pressure against her thigh. No pain. The pain would come later, the angry stinging of a hundred thousand wasps, the burn of molten wax. But for now, no pain.
She looked to her left at Kevin in the driver’s seat. Blood dripped from a small cut on his forehead. He’d cracked the windshield. His eyes were closed, mouth slack.
Outside his window, an alien rapped. No, not an alien. A firefighter in a suit, masked, hands made thick by gloves. He had an ax. He swung against the back window. More glass shattered.
More red and blue, more yellow, the droning blare of a siren and the rumble-mutter of megaphones. A policeman appeared at her side, the door open and gone. A man in white. A woman in a blue jacket.
Then nothing.
She knew this was a dream, each detail crisp and clear and unwanted, accurate but not real. Not this time. A dream she could control. Shape. She didn’t need to be here, didn’t need to live through this, no matter what Spider said. She didn’t need this.
“No,” she said aloud, voice thick, throat raw. “No.”
“Relax, honey,” said the woman in the blue coat. It had been a jumpsuit back then, now a coat, more proof this wasn’t the waking world. “Relax. We’re going to have to cut you out of there.”
“No,” Tovah said, struggling. “No! Please—”
Pain shredded her. The wail of the sirens grew, stabbing her ears. The shriek of metal gave way to the whine of the chainsaw the woman in blue sported instead of her left hand.
“Just a minute, sweetheart, and we’ll cut you free.”
“I’m not free!” Tovah screamed. “I’m not free!”
She wanted Spider. Needed a guide. Anyone. Someone.
Spider didn’t come. She cried for him as she struggled against the shoulder belt that had locked her tight into the crumpled remains of the car.
“Don’t worry so much. It’s just a little…prick.”
The woman’s teeth had become hypodermic needles.
“You should get out of there.”
The familiar voice was soothing. Calm. Beneath it, Tovah heard the soft tick-tock of a clock. Behind the scary woman, a figure loomed. She wept with relief.
“Ben?”
“I’m here. You can make this go away. You know you can.”
The woman began to blur and shift. She became a stone angel. The car, however, stayed around Tovah, tighter than the embrace of a lover.
“I’m trying.”
“You’re scared. Let it go.”
“I can’t! I can’t let it go!”
Tovah struggled in the prison of metal and leather. The stench of smoke burned her throat and nose. All her limbs were leaden. And then, terror so fierce it hurt like a blow leaped up inside her. Not leaden.
Gone.
“You can do it.” Ben’s voice smoothed over her. “Shape it away. Shape your exit, Tovah.”
She could do it. Had done it, dozens of times. She’d forgotten until Ben reminded her.
The blinking red letters swirled in the air, fixing themselves into solidity.
EXIT.
And she pushed herself toward it.
For fully three seconds after she sat up in bed, the exit light hovered in front of her before she blinked and it dissolved. Sickness roiled in her stomach. Her nightshirt clung to her body.
Shaking, Tovah sat up and swung her leg over the bed. The other, the stump, stuck out just past the edge of the bed. She rubbed it. It didn’t hurt anymore, and the lumps and runnels of the scar tissue had become as familiar to her as any other part of her body. Nothing to fear, or to hate. She was more than one limb, more even than the sum of all her body. There was more to her than a physical imperfection, always had been more. Always would be.
She put her face in her hands and wept, anyway, for what had been and what was left.
Chapter Twenty-One
The witchwoman was hunting a Spider.
She didn’t have to tell this to the boy; he just knew, the same way he knew where she was and what horrors she committed even when they were hidden from him. The way he knew what the dogman did when he wasn’t looking.
She hunted the Spider Ben had told her about. A guide. Someone more powerful than she. It infuriated her, and the boy knew this, too.
The boy had found the Spider, but he kept this discovery shielded from the woman and the dogman as best he could. He wanted to talk to this Spider alone, before they found him.
They always found him.
The Spider watched him, and the boy wondered how different he looked through eight eyes instead of two.
“My mom says if you kill a spider, it’ll rain.”
The Spider’s head moved a little, from side to side. “Do you like to kill spiders?”
The boy shook his head. “Billy Morris in my class used to pull the legs off of Daddy Long Legs. But I never did.”
The Spider said nothing, but though the dogman often said nothing because it couldn’t, and the witchwoman often used her silence as a distraction, the boy didn’t think the Spider meant to harm him.
“You’re strong, aren’t you?” the boy asked.
The Spider managed a nod. “Been here a long time. Yes.”
“So have I.”
“I know you have, son.”
Nobody had called him son in a very long time. Not since he’d been with his mom and dad, and not often then. Tears welled in the boy’s eyes, and he didn’t have the power to hold them back.
“I have a ball,” he said, showing it desperately. “Do you want to play with me?”
“I wish I could, son. But…”
“But you’re afraid of me?” The boy immediately knew this to be true, the same way he knew t
he witchwoman hated him, no matter how many times she told him otherwise. “You hate me!”
The Spider said nothing. It bounced lightly on its nasty, jointed legs. It turned the boy’s stomach, and he looked away.
“I don’t hate you, son. But I’m worried about what you’re doing.”
“I’m not doing anything! It’s the witchwoman! And the man with the dog face! It’s them!” The boy’s voice rose, high and hysterical. It hurt his throat like a necklace of barbed wire. It made him bleed, and he wept, tugging at the sharp metal but unable to keep it from digging into his throat.
“Stop it! You’re hurting me.”
The Spider said nothing. It grew larger. Scarier. Hair sprouted along its legs and back. Its legs got longer. Bright, shining drops of venom dripped from its jaws.
The boy tried to scream, but the wire bound his mouth. He shook his head, pulling. “Stop,” he whispered. “Please.”
The Spider moved forward, turning its back. Spinnerets glinted, and the boy saw the first threads of sticky silk protrude.
“Stop!” he cried out past the bulging muzzle of barbed wire. He took a little of the witchwoman’s anger for himself. “You stop, right now. Or I’ll—”
“This is my home,” that nasty Spider said. “And I can’t let you ruin it, son. I’m sorry. I know that maybe you don’t mean to. But you’ve got to stop what you’re doing before you lose control of it. Before you break something. Or someone.”
“No!”
“You have to wake up, son. That’s all you have to do.”
The boy struggled from his place on his knees. Tears of acid traced rivers down his cheeks, and sobs brought the taste of blood to his lips. They put him here, the witchwoman and the dogman, on his knees. On the cold floor, hunger in his belly like a knife. They kept him in the dark, they didn’t close the closet door, they took away his ball and gave him the bad dreams. The witchwoman and the dogman did this.
The Spider was doing it too.
The boy cried out again. “But I’m not asleep! I’m never asleep!”
Somewhere: a mother slapped her child.
Somewhere: a husband raised his hand to his wife.
Somewhere and everywhere, there were very, very bad dreams.
And the rain came down.
Chapter Twenty-Two
In the first days home after her accident, Tovah had avoided sleep. Every time she’d closed her eyes, she’d relived the crash in vivid detail, made worse by knowing it was a dream. No matter how many times she’d fought it, each night had sent her back to that car, the shriek of metal on metal and the fear.
Now she knew she’d dreamed it over and over as a way of releasing herself from the horror. Working through it. Now she understood the people who’d appeared had been guides, there to help her survive the horrid event, but back then she’d been so desperate to avoid it she’d kept herself from sleep by any method she could.
Cold showers, lots of coffee and soft drinks, forgoing pain medication. She’d set her alarm to ring every twenty minutes, just before she’d start to drift into dreams. And it had worked for a while.
Sleep is as vital to human existence as food, water and air. A sleep-deprived person might suffer lack of judgment, poor coordination. Mood swings. In severe cases, even hallucinations as the dream world tries to connect with the waking. The Ephemeros had its way of making itself noticed even to those most determined to ignore it.
It had started, for her, with simple things. The changing numbers on the clock and the inability to read even the most basic texts because the letters refused to stay in place on the page. The sound of voices had come next, along with seeing things from the corners of her vision that disappeared when she faced them head-on.
She’d thought she was being haunted.
The more the real world dissolved around her, the more virulently Tovah had fought sleep. Kevin had gone at her bequest, their marriage ruined, and she had nobody there to notice if she sat up night after night pressing the buttons on her remote control to find something to keep her awake.
Tovah didn’t remember the breakdown and had never been brave enough to ask anyone the full story. All she remembered was stumbling into the health-and-beauty aisle of a local discount store. She’d swept handfuls of boxes off the shelves, looking for sleeping pills.
“I can’t take it any longer,” she’d said over and over. “I can’t stay awake any longer.”
In the hospital with drugs and therapy trying to “fix” her, Tovah had met Henry Tuckens one day. Spider the next. It had been weeks before she realized they were the same. Months before she could do the things Spider had told her she could.
She’d been crazy. She never wanted to do that again. Yet now, with the nightmare still fresh in her mind, Tovah once again was trying to stop herself from going to sleep.
Her computer offered distraction in the form of more Justin Ross interviews and movie clips. Email, celebrity gossip sites, some online shopping. The night wasted away and her eyes got heavy, but she couldn’t bear to risk finding herself back in that car.
From her window she could look across to Martin’s house. The light in the kitchen was on. She saw his shadow shifting behind the curtains. Martin was awake, too.
Soft music tickled her eardrums. She wanted to dance. With a partner, yes, a tall man with eyes that shifted color and a face that always changed…
Tovah sat up straight. The keyboard had imprinted its buttons on her cheek, and she rubbed the numb skin. She’d been dreaming, almost, of Edward.
Not even he was a comfort she wanted to risk.
Soft meadow grass tickled her bare feet as she ran, laughing, after a butterfly. A man stood waiting for her at the meadow’s other side. He reached for her. She reached for him as she ran, still too far to see his face.
“Shit!” Tovah jerked in her chair and slapped her face lightly.
She couldn’t stay awake. She simply couldn’t. She was drifting too much. Without thinking too hard, so she didn’t lose courage, she grabbed her phone and dialed a number.
“Hello?”
“Martin,” Tovah said. “I hope I didn’t wake you.”
“No.”
She could hear a smile in his voice. “Are you sure?”
“I’m sure. What’s wrong?”
Nothing was wrong now, nothing at all. The conversation started off a bit slow but something about the night and the distance provided by the phone made it easier to be honest. To flirt, a little. To share.
She moved to her bedroom, still talking. Took care of her bedtime routine, still talking. Slipped into bed between soft sheets and cradled her head on the pillow.
Still talking to Martin.
“I think you’re lovely,” he told her in a voice like warmed honey. “You’re smart and brave and lovely, Tovah.”
His words moved over her like hot chocolate on a cold day, like a cool breeze on an August night. “I like you, too, Martin. A lot.”
“I’m glad.” His small, deep laugh prompted one from her. “Because I don’t have many people in my life. I’m glad you’re in mine.”
This touched her. “I’m glad to be in it, too.”
“Tovah?”
“Yes, Martin?”
“It’s morning.”
So it was. Smiling and stretching without getting up, she cupped the phone closer to her ear as she rolled onto her side. “We talked all night long. Martin?”
But Martin’s only answer was the hum of the dial tone.
Startled, Tovah disconnected the call and sat up. Her eyes no longer felt heavy. Had she slept? Had they talked?
Or had she dreamed it all?
Chapter Twenty-Three
“You look lousy.” Kelly didn’t pull any punches.
Tovah didn’t mind. It was true. “I’m having a hard time sleeping lately.”
Kelly gave a low noise. “You and me both, hon. I told you, it’s something in the water.”
Tovah swigged water and loo
ked at her friend. “Bad dreams?”
“Hell, yes. I’d go back to chasing Justin Ross with a vibrating penis any day.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad to me, either.” Tovah gripped the treadmill’s handles tighter. “I don’t know how he’d feel about it, but…yeah.”
Kelly stepped up her pace a bit and wiped some sweat from her brow. “Frank says it’s because I worry that he’s not home. That maybe we should get a dog or something, but I told him I don’t dream about someone breaking in. I dream about the whole damned world falling apart around my ears. Like I’m in an earthquake but worse. Pieces fall away and they’re just…gone. And then I wake up and I’m so damned tired I’m afraid I’ll drive off the road on the way to work or something.”
Tovah looked at her friend. “No. Oh, you have to be careful!”
Kelly laughed a little. “Yes, I know. Frank said the same thing. But I’m okay, Tovah, really. It’s just these damn dreams.”
Tovah shuddered at the thought of Kelly in a car accident. “Just be careful, Kelly. Promise me.”
“I promise.” Kelly looked at her. “Hey, are you all right?”
“Yes. I just need some sugar.” Tovah forced a smile.
She wasn’t all right. Something bad was happening and not just to her. Avoiding it wasn’t going to make it go away. She had a responsibility to do what she could.
Even if that meant facing her own nightmares.
Tovah shaped another mountain in front of her. A higher one, this time, with fewer places to grab. Spitting into her palms, she rubbed them together. She flexed her fingers.
She wasn’t paying attention to anything but the gray stone in front of her. Grass beneath her feet, the sound of waves, the scent of salt. The beach had nothing to do with her urge to shape herself away from whoever wanted it. She was going to get to the top of this mountain before she woke up.
“Did you know an octopus has no bones?”
She turned at the sound of the voice beside her, automatically testing to see if it belonged to a sleeper or a shaper. She took her hands away from the rocks when she saw who’d spoken. “Oh. It’s you.”