Moonlight Mist: A Limited Edition Collection of Fantasy & Paranormal)

by Nicole Morgan

  “But aren’t you Ben?” I said.

  “Sure,” he said. “But not yet.” He looked at me earnestly. “that’s how it works here.”

  “I know,” I said. “People often dream about their younger selves. My sister wrote a paper on it.”

  “Which one?”

  That was an odd question. How would Ebenezer’s younger self even know about my sisters?

  “Mira,” I said. “She’s the one with the shorter hair.”

  He digested that.

  “Your sisters are pretty,” he said, “but you’re the prettiest.”

  I blushed.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Neezer.”

  “Great name,” I said. “Very cool. Like you’re an Olympic snow boarder or something.”

  He smiled at that. “You think it’s a cool name? I think it’s cool. I mean, who names a kid after Ebenezer Scrooge?”

  “I wondered that myself,” I said. “And I can relate. My name is Reve and either people can’t pronounce it or they can’t spell it and either way, it’s just annoying.”

  “Reve is French for ‘dream,’” he said, pronouncing it correctly.

  “I know.”

  “I have a French nanny,” he said. “We speak French all the time.”

  “It’s a beautiful language,” I said. “My father says it’s the true language of dreams.”

  Neezer looked thoughtful. “I think I met your father. When I first came here.”

  “It’s possible,” I said. “What did he look like?”

  “Kind of scary.” Neezer looked at me to see if he’d hurt my feelings.

  Interesting, I thought. Morpheus must have had a reason for not bothering with his human guise and an even better reason for dropping in on a mortal dream. Did it mean he didn’t think Ebenezer was never leaving the dream world?

  “He is scary looking,” I agreed, which was actually an understatement. When Morpheus appears as himself in his full-on, winged demon god getup, which Kitta refers to as “morphing out,” it’s pretty intimidating. Experiencing that can be the stuff of nightmares, even for an adult. “You must be pretty brave,” I added. “He doesn’t show his true self to just anybody.”

  The boy shrugged. “My dad’s scary too.”

  I bet he is, I thought.

  I looked around the dream neighborhood. At the end of the street, the Eiffel Tower stood sentinel. At the other, the street abruptly turned into a winding path leading up a hill to a medieval castle made of dark green stone that looked like malachite.

  I refocused on the boy.

  “It’s beautiful here,” I said.

  “That’s because Ben is an artist,” Neezer said, “and he put all his favorite things in here.”

  His, not ours. That was interesting.

  “Is that what you want to be,” I asked. “An artist?”

  “I like coloring,” he said. “But what I really like is trucks.”

  “What kind of trucks?” I asked.

  “Big ones,” he said. “The ones with ginormous tires taller than a house.”

  “So if you were driving one, you could see the entire world.”

  His whole face smiled.

  “Yes,” he said, pleased that I understood.

  “What about trains? Do you like trains?”

  “They’re okay, but they can only run on tracks, they can’t just go wherever they want to.”

  “They could here,” I suggested. “In your dreams you can do anything you want.”

  His face clouded up. “I’m not allowed to make things here.”

  “Who says?” I asked.

  “My dad. He says we’re here for a reason and not to mess around.” Neezer looked around as if his father was hovering just out of sight. “but he doesn’t say ‘mess.’”

  I knew Alexander had something to do with this.

  “That doesn’t seem fair,” I said.

  “I know,” he said, sounding aggrieved as only a little kid can. “It’s our dream, isn’t it? I should be allowed to do what I want.”

  “I don’t see Ebenezer around,” I said.

  “No, he’s in the castle,” Neezer said.

  Of course he’s in the castle, I thought. Because really, what’s a dark fairy tale without a castle?

  I looked at the castle again. It looked like something out of a kid’s book of fairy tales, something illustrated by Kinuko Craft or Edmund Dulac with lots of beautiful detail.

  I remembered idly that Dulac had once illustrated a fairy tale collection called Dreamer of Dreams. I wondered if that’s where Ebenezer had gotten his inspiration.

  And I wondered for the thousandth time, what quirk of dream geography had thrown us into each other’s path seven years ago.

  Reve?” Neezer said, bringing me back to myself.

  It wasn’t good that my thoughts were scattering. That happened sometimes when my conscious brain broke through the construct and started thinking random thoughts.

  “Can Ebenezer see you from the castle?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” he whispered.

  I looked around.

  “Do you want to go to see him?” I asked.

  “Dad doesn’t want me to.”

  Well your dad isn’t here is he? The feeling I had that Alexander was responsible for whatever this situation got even stronger. And there was Neezer’s line about “having a job to do.” What did that mean?

  “I won’t tell,” I said, thinking of just how much my mother would disapprove of what I was about to do. I was curious. Grown-up Ebenezer seemed to be missing in action, so I was going to have to wing it.

  The boy was looking at me expectantly.

  “Go ahead,” I said. “Make something.”

  “Really?”

  I nodded.

  He thought for a minute. Then suddenly metal parts started appearing out of nowhere, flying in from every direction as they began putting themselves together.

  Not everything slotted together in a logical fashion but the whole machine seemed to be held together by the dream itself.

  What Neezer was building wasn’t quite a train and not really a truck, either. It looked more like a gigantic tank that had mated with an elephant. It was fire-engine read with caterpillar treads as large as a house.

  As odd projections sprouted from its body, I realized it looked like something from…

  “Dr. Seuss,” I said. “He would love this truck.”

  I wondered if Neezer even knew who Dr. Seuss was.

  Neezer grinned and suddenly a star-bellied sneetch and a cat in a red-striped hat appeared in the window of the vehicle’s cab.

  That made me happy, so I grinned too.

  More parts whirled in like a cyclone and even though I knew it probably wasn’t possible, I could feel the wind they generated.

  Finally he was finished and the massive truck/train/tank was complete. I started to say something but Neezer turned to me and cut me off. “Watch this!”

  He waved his hand and the machine knelt like a camel so that we could clamber aboard. The Seuss characters had gone and now it was just us in the little driver’s cabin atop the machine.

  “You know what would be really great?” I said. “If this machine could fly.”

  And as soon as I said the words, the impossible machine lifted off and soared toward the castle.

  Okay, I said to myself. You’re in the dream but you’re in control.

  We could see for miles in every direction. The dreamscape was laid out in grids with each section separated from the other by perfectly straight rivers that intersected in sparkling lines.

  As we neared the castle, I suddenly wondered if there was some sort of dream creature guarding it.

  “Why is Ben in the castle?” I asked.

  “He’s Sleeping Beauty,” Neezer said. “Are you going to wake him with a kiss?”

  Chapter 6

  “The answer is dreams. Dreaming on and on. Entering the world of dreams and ne
ver coming out. Living in dreams for the rest of time.” –Haruki Murakami

  “He’s asleep?” I asked, to cover my surprise at what the boy had said. Neezer nodded. “But you aren’t?” I said.

  “This is a dream Reve. You should know how it works.”

  “I should,” I admitted, “but I’ve never been in a dream like this one.”

  That made him smile. “We’re special,” he said and there was a tinge of entitlement to the statement that hit me wrong.

  “How are you special?” I asked. “You seem like a nice person and you did an awesome job creating this vehicle, but what makes you special in the daylight world?”

  He looked confused. “Everybody says we’re special,” he said. He looked down for a minute. “Except Dad.”

  I suddenly felt really bad for pressing the boy. “Dad thinks we’re weak and useless,” Neezer said. “He thinks he’s not really our real dad, so he’s mean to us.”

  Now that was interesting. I didn’t think it was true. Alexander’s features were sharper than his son’s but even as a young boy, I could see the strong resemblance. There was nothing of his mother in Neezer’s face. Like me, his father’s DNA had engulfed his mother’s.

  “That’s a terrible thing for your dad to say,” I said.

  He shrugged. “Mom says when we grow up everybody will love us and it won’t matter that he didn’t.”

  What a stupid lie, I thought. But it also explained a lot about what I’d heard of Ben’s behavior since we first met. Could it really be as simple as him looking for love in all the wrong places? Was he a jerk because he was imitation his father? Had he been doing it so long that he had taken on Alexander’s personality? I hated to think that was so.

  We were approaching the castle now and as we got closer, I couldn’t help but be impressed. I’ve seen a lot of magical things in patients’ dreams, but this was possibly the most spectacular dream castle I’d ever seen.

  We circled around until we came to a flat place between two walls and settled as lightly as a firefly.

  “Do you know which room he’s in?” I asked Neezer as we got out of the machine.

  “Follow me,” he said and held out his small hand.

  Follow me if you want to live, I thought, flashing onto a bit of dialogue from an old movie. I took his hand and let him lead me to a door that opened as we approached.

  Inside it was dark and smelled of roses.

  Neezer seemed to know exactly where he was going. “You’ve been in the castle before?” I asked.

  “Lots of times,” he said. “Ben built it when he was in college; said it was our Fortress of Solitude.”

  “But you haven’t been to see him since he’s been—” I cast around for a euphemism. “Asleep?”

  “No,” he said. “Dad told us Ben had something to do and didn’t need any distractions.” He looked like he might cry. “I’m not a distraction,” he said.

  I was about to say something comforting when Neezer added, “He said he wasn’t going to let us come out until the job was done.”

  That was the second time the boy had mentioned “a job” and I started to get a tingle at the back of my neck. “What job Neezer?”

  He stopped in his tracks. “I’m not supposed to say,” he said with his back to me.

  “Neezer?”

  “Don’t be mad at us Reve.”

  I turned to look for the door back into my construct and it wasn’t there. I tried not to panic. “What did you do Neezer?”

  “We didn’t do anything. It was dad’s idea and he paid the Dr. Elbaz to put us here,” he said.

  “Dr. Elbaz?” I said, horrified. But how?

  “He’s scary,” Neezer said.

  “Yes, I know,” I said. “But why?”

  “To meet you,”’ Neezer said. “The doctor said you wouldn’t do what dad wanted if he just asked so he told us that Ben was going to have to ask.”

  “Does he know I’ve—

  How do I put this?

  --met you before?” I asked.

  “No,” Neezer said. “Ben told me he knew you and showed me what you looked like but I wasn’t there for that dream where you met and neither was Dad, so he doesn’t know.”

  That was a relief.

  “But how did your father meet the Dr. Elbaz?” I asked

  “He said he met him in a dream.”

  “That shouldn’t have been possible,” I said, thinking, how could this possibly be?

  “He—the doctor—said to tell you he’s missed you.

  That really did send an electric jolt up my spine. How could Morpheus let this happen?

  “Why?” I asked, but I already had a sinking feeling I knew the answer to that question.

  “Dad says you can go into anybody’s dreams and bring stuff out into the real world. Can you?”

  “Yes,” I said. “What does he want?”

  “Everything.”

  “Everything like money?” I asked.

  “Everything,” he repeated. “I don’t really know what he means. Maybe Ben does.”

  I suspect Ben does.

  “But why did he put you guys in here?” I said, feeling weird about addressing Neezer as if he was a separate person from his older self.

  “He wanted to see if it was true. So if you can get us out, he’ll know you really can steal dreams.” He looked at me expectantly. “And he said you’d want to help Ben.”

  So, meeting Ebenezer wasn’t a coincidence, I thought, but a harbinger of things to come? My mother has done some research on prophetic dreams with a bunch of psychics she lured to the clinic with promises of first-rate cuisine and spa treatments. She came away with some startling conclusions that no one in the sleep science arena was ready to accept. But she’s been quietly doing work in that area for years. She says she’s discussed precognitive dreams with Carl Jung—who died ten years before she was born—many times. He spoke English apparently. Jung would have said what was happening was synchronicity or meaningful coincidence.

  I wish Jung would turn up so I could ask him to explicate further.

  And if Dr. Elbaz orchestrated this whole chain of events, how did he and why?

  Neezer shifted his weight impatiently.

  “But why would I help your father do anything? If he locks his own son…sons…away, what do you think he would do to me?”

  “Something bad,” Neezer said.

  I don’t doubt that. “And what does he think he can threaten me with?”

  “Never getting out of here?” Neezer said. And he had me there. Somehow, from the prison of his own dreamworld, Dr. Elbaz had trapped me here, just as he had locked me away when I was a little kid. He would know how terrifying the possibility of being trapped would be for me.

  “We’re getting out of here,” I said.

  “All of us?” Neezer said. “You promise?”

  I didn’t know exactly how it was going to work with both versions of Ebenezer but I said, as confidently as I could, “Yes.” I peered into the rose-scented darkness. “Now where’s your…brother?”

  Chapter 7

  “I have spread my dreams beneath your feet; tread softly because you tread on my dreams.”—William Butler Yeats

  Neezer took me to a room that looked like a suite in a really nice bed and breakfast. “Where are we?” I asked.

  “This is our bedroom in our nana’s house. Mom’s mother,” he added before I could ask.

  Now that I looked closely, I could see some old lady touches—what looked like a handmade quilt on the comfy-looking bed, mid-century furniture that was well-cared for but showing its age. The room was bright and clean and cheery and if Ebenezer had used it as the basis for his dreamworld safe place, it had been somewhere he’d been happy.

  He lay across the bed as if he’d just flopped down there, on his back with his arms akimbo. His breathing was shallow, so very shallow.

  “What did your father do to you?” I asked.

  “He poisoned us while we wer
e sleeping,” Neezer said and showed me an injection mark on his arm. “I can’t leave without him but Ben took all the poison himself so I wouldn’t get sick.”

  I didn’t understand exactly how that would have been done but Neezer looked healthy enough, if anxious. We stood there and looked at the sleeping man.

  “You can wake him up can’t you?” the boy asked.

  I don’t know. But what really worried me was what would happen if I did wake Ebenezer up. Back in the waking world, his body was in the clinic’s most private room and his father was banished from the premises, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have someone working for him on the inside. Mother paid her people well, but you never know what’s going on inside people’s lives, what stresses they’re under, what needs they had. I might deliver Ebenezer straight into the hands of one of Alexander’s minions.

  All I knew was that the exit through my bedroom construct was blocked and I was going to have to find another way out. And there was no way I was leaving either Ben or Neezer behind.

  I went over to the bed and touched Ebenezer lightly on the shoulder. He shuddered at my touch and I heard Neezer trying to stifle a giggle. “Ben likes you,” he said gleefully. I looked down and sure enough, there was a tent in the sheet. I could feel myself blush.

  And it was suddenly way too weird having the kid in the room with us.

  I turned to ask him if he would mind leaving me alone with his other self but to my surprise, he was already gone. I turned back to the bed and saw that Ebenezer was awake, his dark blue yes wide open, fringed with midnight black lashes that looked even darker against his pallor.

  No wonder they hadn’t been able to help him at Cornell. Ben wasn’t in a coma, he was trapped in his dream. I was suddenly so angry with his father that I felt my fists curling. What a monster he was.

  “Thirsty,” Ebenezer said, and his voice sounded nothing like his usual sexy growl. I visualized a big sippy cup filled with water and ice chips and when it appeared in my hand, I gave it to him.

  He drank off the liquid, then started chewing the ice.

  “I can get you more,” he said.

  “No,” he said. “Dream magic wakes Dr. Elbaz. It’ll summon him.”