Dreamonologist

by Gregory Pettit

  Understanding the situation, I spun around, ducking low but sweeping my gladius in a high arc. My arm jarred, but the razor-sharp blade did its job, and a ruined head, fanged mouth gaping, went rolling across the floor. It was one of Badger’s cops—I didn’t know his name, but I recognized him. Then I realized what I’d just done and felt ashamed. Then I realized how I’d done it, and my eyebrows arched in surprise—I’d practiced with swords in the real world for the past six months, but that was the kind of move that I’d mastered in the Dreamscape. There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch, and I knew for sure that there were going to be some serious repercussions from incorporating so much dream-stuff into myself. But for now, I was enjoying the fringe benefits.

  “Destroy the Sigilum, or she dies.” The words were thick but recognizable. I turned slowly, letting the gladius dip toward the ground. Ahh…the words were thick because Sloane was still regrowing his tongue. But he had two good hands, and they were wrapped around Dana’s neck. I felt a frisson run up my spine, and in a flash of insight I understood that Sloane hadn’t ever been afraid of me. It was the Sigilum that he’d feared—and he feared it because he’d attuned the artifact to control vampires, but, before he could complete the ritual, he’d become one! All I needed to do was apply a few drops of Coopers blood, and I could have Sloane. That observation was nothing more than me distracting myself, though. The important thing was that he had Dana, and I couldn’t get to the Sigilum to use it against him quickly enough to make a difference.

  “You’re bluffing,” I said. My fist tightened on the sword hilt. I felt the anger that I’d tamped down blossoming again in my breast. Sloane had made my last few weeks hell, he had unleashed an evil that was going to cost untold lives, and now he wanted to take away my wife and unborn child. That wasn’t going to happen.

  “I’m a gentleman of my word, Julian. Say good-bye.” Sloane said, his voice noticeably clearer already. I summoned all of my anger, all of my rage at injustice, all of my righteous fury, and I focused it through the prism of my will, honed by years of Dreamwalking and months of training. I formed an image of blue-white light. A blast of concentrated sunshine that would purge the vampire from the universe like bleach poured on a stain.

  “I’m Team Jacob,” I said, and pushed. Light exploded out from the tip of my sword and lanced across the room; a roiling coruscation of photons leapt at Sloane—and I missed.

  It wasn’t by much, but Sloane was just too damned fast, and my pointless quip had given him the warning that he’d needed to spin away from my attack. The beam had still been made of light, though, and as I blinked, I saw that Sloane’s face was flash-burned crimson like a redhead that had gone to the beach without sunscreen. I also saw that he still had Dana.

  “Now your bitch dies.” Sloane opened his mouth wide and leaned toward Dana’s neck. I desperately tried to reach out to the Dreamscape again, but when I did, there was a tearing sensation, and I felt my torso start bleeding again. It didn’t matter; I pushed through the pain. Time seemed to slow down. I saw Dana’s lips moving, presumably in prayer; I watched Sloane’s fangs approaching her neck; I felt my connection sliding around in my mind, a greasy rope that wanted to slip through my fingers. Then I remembered what I was, what I had done, who I had saved, and I heaved on my connection to the Dreamscape, dragging forth one of the most common dreams, one that took almost no effort to bring forth, one that I’d dealt with hundreds of times.

  Time resumed its normal pace, and Sloane’s mouth slammed down on Dana’s neck, her prayers never stopping—and the vampire brought his hands up to his face and reeled back. Sloane looked up in horror, small, white objects trickling through his fingers to tinkle on the floor. Sloane lowered his hands in confusion, revealing his empty, impotent maw.

  I laughed hysterically as my head spun and blood trickled freely down my side, but I forced one foot in front of the other, pulled my gladius back, and swung for Sloane’s neck—

  “Ai Phtagn Tsoggutha hai!” Dana screamed, and a sphere of darkness blossomed around her right hand as she lunged at Sloane. Distracted, he was just a fraction of a second too slow, and Dana’s fist struck him in the chest and exploded out the other side. Sloane’s mouth opened in a gaping O, and his arms came up to paw feebly at the air. Dana pulled back her fist. Toothless, heartless, and dead, dead, dead, Sloane slumped to the ground.

  “Gentlemen don’t refer to women as bitches,” Dana said, and spat on Sloane’s rapidly dissolving corpse. Then she doubled over, a hand across her swollen abdomen. “Oh, sugar. My water…” she gasped, and looked up at me with wide, imploring eyes.

  The gladius dropped from my suddenly numb fingers and clattered onto the stone floor as I rushed to Dana’s side. I put my arms around her. “I’ll get you to the hospital,” I promised. As I lifted her up, a new sound mixed in with the pounding of the rain and the crash of thunder—the unmistakable whup, whup, whup of helicopters passing low overhead. A second later, I heard a jet scream above us. It sounded like someone had decided that the incident in Highgate warranted a serious response. I began to drag Dana toward the entrance.

  “No. You have to finish the ritual. You have to get the taint out of our baby. Please,” she begged, her mouth set in a line of agony. I nodded, and she pointed toward the back of the chapel. I supported her as we limped over to a cleared area behind the altar, where intricate patterns were scribed upon the floor. Dana leaned on the altar so that I could take off the backpack containing the Sigilum.

  “Okay, I’ll—” I started to say, but suddenly every muscle in my body felt like it had turned to pudding, and I slumped down to the floor. Not now, I thought, desperate to have a few more moments before the rent came due on Casa de Bending the Laws of Physics—but no, that bastard Mr. Newton repossessed my consciousness. Lights out.

  ◆◆◆

  I opened my eyes. Rain was pounding down, but over the noise of the storm, people were shouting for help as things that were not people anymore tore them to pieces. Things with fangs and burning red eyes. A helicopter crested the top of the hill, hovering only a couple dozen feet over the tree line. A lance of fire ignited from a pod under its belly, and suddenly there was an explosion thirty yards to my right. Body parts, gravestones, and dirt flew everywhere. I flinched—or at least I tried to—but I realized that I didn’t actually have a body. With all of the destruction, it took a moment, but I recognized my surroundings. My consciousness had been drawn back to the spot in Highgate where I’d physically crossed into the Dreamscape. In fact, I could see it glowing in front of me, a shimmering outline, like a door.

  I floated toward the door. As I got closer, I spotted the peaceful field that I’d been in before. It looked so inviting. I took another step.

  “Not yet, Julian,” a familiar voice said.

  I paused, confused. Then a shape moved into the doorway. It was only a gangling, gaunt silhouette, but I recognized Randolph Carter.

  “But I’m tired,” I said without thinking, and I realized just how weary I was. I didn’t want to go back to my battered body, to unending nights of toil, to a wife that could suddenly wield the powers of oblivion and had hidden it from me, to a fruitless search for my missing daughter, stolen by a treacherous mother.

  “There’s work for you to do yet, son,” Carter replied in the tone of a stern but kindly teacher.

  “I want to help our baby,” I said. I’d been sure before I’d seen Dana that I’d use the Sigilum to stop the vampires, but the sight of my wife in labor had weakened my resolve. Behind me, or at least behind my point of view, the tour guide that had argued with me earlier in the night was crawling on the ground, one leg bent at an unnatural angle, his face pale in the light of the fires that burned here and there. A man in an old-fashioned denim jacket appeared and stalked over to the tour guide.

  “No! No! Leave me alone. Help! Help! He—” The man’s screaming was cut off by incisors that pierced his carotid artery, sending a spray of blood onto the ground before his ass
ailant could fully latch on. The guide twitched and thrashed for thirty seconds, his feet beat a staccato rhythm on the ground for a moment, and he went still.

  “You goatfucker, you murdered my son!” Another of the tourists, a white woman in her early thirties, appeared out of the shadows, a big chunk of concrete in her hands. She charged Bloodsucking Shakin’ Stevens and swung her makeshift weapon in a deadly arc. There was a sickening crunch, and the woman shouted a primal yawp of triumph—which lasted all of two seconds before the vampire turned on her.

  The just-fed monster was faster than Sonic the Hedgehog on meth, and it lashed out with a chopping motion. I heard a thunk and glanced down. The woman’s hand lay on the ground, twitching. Her mouth started working soundlessly as she gaped at her missing appendage, but only for a few seconds. The vampire stood and grabbed her by the stump, forcing her toward a pool of burning oil. She tried to fight back, but it was like a toddler struggling with a grown man, and the creature casually pinched her shoulder. I heard a crunch as her clavicle shattered, and her bleeding arm was forced into the flames. Blessedly, the poor, brave woman passed out. The vampire proceeded to throw her over his shoulder.

  “You’ll be a lovely snack later…” the vampire said as he walked away, and then it was just me and Carter again.

  “I can’t use the Sigilum to help my baby, can I?” I said.

  “The choice is yours. I’d tell you that you’ll have to live with your nightmares, but we both know that isn’t true for people like us.” Carter paused to wipe his brow, and then continued: “I can’t tell you what to do. I can’t even step through this door. I can’t do anything except cause you to pause long enough to think about what you really need to do.”

  “The baby…if there’s something wrong, if it’s different, and I could have helped it…”

  “If that happens, you’ll love it all the same. You love Olivia, don’t you?”

  “Of course!”

  Carter was still just a silhouette, but I could tell that he was smiling as he replied to my outburst, “Then you know what you have to do.” The little boy who’d been ripped apart could so easily have been Olivia. I imagined her life’s blood being slurped up by a bloated, ravening parasite. I pictured her eyes going glassy, Dana flinging herself, futilely, at the vampire; I pictured my wife, broken on the ground.

  “I do.” But I thought to myself: If Dana will let me.

  “Then you’d best WAKE UP.”

  ◆◆◆

  I awoke. Damn, Carter was good. I was still on the floor of the chapel, blood was pooled under me, and I could hear sirens approaching. The cops, and presumably the Sons, could arrive any moment to take the Sigilum, and neither Dana nor I were in any shape for a fight. I looked up and spotted Dana.

  “Goddamn it. Not yet…” she said as she lit candles around the outside of the diagram, grimacing as a contraction flattened her abdomen.

  I pried myself off the floor, my side burning and my myriad cuts and abrasions telling me to just stay down. “Let me help,” I said, grabbing the Sigilum from the table.

  Dana’s eyes went wide. “How are you awake?”

  “Magic,” I said flatly, raising my eyebrows. If she wasn’t going to tell me about being able to disintegrate people, I wasn’t going to tell her about Carter.

  As I crossed the perimeter, careful not to smudge any of the lines, the Sigilum flared blue in my hands, and I almost dropped it. Dana continued to prepare, and I mentally ran through the mystical formula that Senior Auditor John Brown had given me in another dimension.

  After lighting all of the candles, Dana paused, sweating, hands on her hips. “No, seriously, how are you awake?” Did I detect suspicion in her tone? I couldn’t be sure—my head was still spinning, and my side throbbed.

  “I’m the Joe Cocker of Dreamwalkers—I get by with a little help from my friends. But, Dana, we need to talk—”

  She shook her head and interrupted me. “I’m sorry, Julian. I should have told you. I’ve been practicing. I’ve been sneaking off to learn from Father O. Being gone…wherever, with the puca, it changed me. Combining what I can do with what Father O. could teach me, and what I picked up helping you study, I’ve learned how to defend myself. I’ve seen how you look at yourself. I didn’t want you to look at me like that—”

  All of Dana’s absences, all of the nights that she’d pushed me to read just one more page with her finally clicked into place. I had the sinking feeling that my marriage might be over no matter what I said next, but I was pretty sure that this was going to do it. “Dana, that’s not what we need to talk about,” I counter-interrupted her, making her eyes go wide with surprise. “I know that we swore to use the Sigilum to help our baby.” Dana nodded but squinted at me, distress replacing her surprise. “But when I was out, I saw what was going on in the city. Dana, it’s a bloodbath. We can’t let these monsters loose. If we can stop them, if we can put them back to sleep, then we’ll save hundreds, thousands, hell, maybe even hundreds of thousands of lives,” I said.

  By the time I finished, Dana’s eyes were leaking big, fat tears. “I’ve stuck by you, Julian Adler. You hid your past from me, and that got me banished to some kind of limbo, but I stuck with you. You lost your mind, and our daughter, trying to get me back, but I stuck with you. You’ve been working for the men who caused all of this suffering, but I’ve stuck with you. I’ve stuck with you because I believed that you were a fundamentally good man put in impossible situations. If you didn’t always put us first, it was for good reasons. Now I’m begging you: please don’t put your family second again. I’m a good wife. If you demand it, I’ll do what you tell me, but please, please don’t make me,” Dana said. Her lip quivered, and her whole body trembled in the summer heat.

  I stared into my wife’s eyes. I’d stared into those eyes on the day that we’d gotten married, seen the tears of happiness glistening in them as we said, “I do.” I’d thought that I would never, could never intentionally do anything to harm her. And, so far, I hadn’t. I tried to speak, but there was a lump in my throat, and I fought to force it down. If I just didn’t speak, then my world wouldn’t end. I could do what Dana asked, grow old with my wife, and keep my vows. I knew that this was one of those rare moments in life where my next words would change everything. Lightning crashed and rain pelted down harder outside, shutting away all of the rest of the sounds of the city. It was just me, Dana, and a decision. I couldn’t be a monster.

  “Dana, I’m sorry.”

  “Ooooh, Julian,” she sobbed, her lip trembling, her face flushed and snot running down her nose, but she held out her hand. I fumbled in the inside pocket of my trench coat and retrieved the precious vial of blood that Cooper had given me.

  “You can hold the blood. When I finish the incantation, pour it onto the Sigilum,” I said, holding the container out to her. My wife nodded, and when she’d taken the thaumaturgic link, I started to chant. The invocation that I’d gotten from John Brown wasn’t long, but as I called out the strange, alien syllables, the Sigilum brightened in intensity until I had to look away and began to vibrate in my grip so that I needed all of my strength and concentration to carry on. Finally, as exhaustion nibbled at the edges of my consciousness, I reached the final words.

  “Ftaghu ph’llll fm’latgh athg kn’a orr’e fhtagn hupadgh Yoggoth! Now!” I screamed, as the Sigilum went still, the light concentrating down to make the inscriptions shine with an almost-divine clarity.

  Dana met my gaze. Her eyes were bone dry, her face expressionless. Oh shit. She extended her hand with the blood. I tried to scream, to tell her not to do what I knew she was going to do, but I couldn’t move, locked in place by the mystical energies that were searching for an outlet. That’s when I learned that Dana’s three words were going to change my life—again.

  “Baby, I’m sorry,” Dana said, tossing the vial to shatter on the floor. Then she held up a blood-covered hand and slapped it down on top of the Sigilum. There was a flash of light, a fe
eling of intense pressure, like the future was being forced into an ill-fitting mold—then darkness.

  Epilogue – ?????

  “…and then I woke up here,” I finished. Again. I raised my head to look at the flat, featureless wall that I guessed held a one-way mirror. The man staring back at me had filthy hair, a matted red beard, and blood oozing from a scabbed, dirty-looking wound on his side. It turns out that using a magical power that causes you to pass out without being sure that you have someone friendly around to scoop you up isn’t a good idea. Go figure.

  I had no way of knowing the time for sure, but I’d been here…a long, long time. And it had been days since I’d been allowed to sleep. Smart. But probably killing me. At least it seemed that way from the wound on my side that had refused to stop oozing blood and was slowly growing larger instead of healing. It itched like the devil too, but I couldn’t reach it. My arms were suspended from the ceiling; I wasn’t dangling, but close to it. My legs were chained together too, and I was only wearing my birthday suit—slightly soiled. I shivered. The room was a concrete cube twenty feet on a side; too big for my body heat to warm. I couldn’t help but think about how Gerald Cooper had been held, and I shivered again, though whether it was from the cold room, or the loss of blood, or the possibility that I’d be stuck here forever, I wasn’t sure.

  Now that I was done with my story, I probably had half an hour until the questions started again. The same robotic voice grilling me on the same points for the millionth time. I had questions of my own, though, and even though I knew it wouldn’t make a difference, I kept asking.

  “Who are you?”