Dream Job (The Dreamwalker Chronicles Book 1)

by Pettit, Gregory

  Startled and confused, I ducked into a room, putting my back to the wall, and paused to think. I’d hoped that this evening would be a normal night of bashing bogeymen or vanquishing vampires, but it was hardly a coincidence to find the dream world misbehaving on the same day that I’d fought, in the waking world, a creature that could have been one of its denizens. A chill ran down my spine; it probably wasn’t a coincidence either that this was the same hospital Phil was in.

  I remembered that Nick had mentioned his employee being in critical condition, and I decided that was my best lead. Looking around, I quickly located signs pointing me toward the intensive care wing. Anyone who’s tried to follow the signs in a big hospital, let alone a big Victorian hospital, won’t be surprised to know that I was lost after a few minutes. I didn’t ask for directions either, but I’d attribute this more to the people I passed not being real than any sense of machismo on my part. Dana might have disagreed.

  Then the screaming started. I took off at a fast trot in its direction down the slippery corridor. After careening around a few turns, I could hear shouting and the crash of metal coming from around the corner, through a set of doors. I didn’t want to run unprepared directly into whatever awaited me, so I stopped to put together a plan. I checked once again to see if I could locate the dreamer, to no avail, and then took notice of the hospital staff that was running past me and away from the commotion ahead. I decided to go with a technique that I liked to call “the cattle drive.” Reaching out with my willpower, I thrust my gladius into the air and shouted for attention.

  “By the power of Grayskull, I have the power!” A half dozen pairs of eyes snapped onto me as I forced the imaginary inhabitants, who would normally have ignored me, to acknowledge my existence. The reaction was what I had hoped for: with the dreamer’s subconscious instinctively shying away from the odd, sword-wielding man that had appeared, a flock of quavering nurses and orderlies turned around, sobbing in quite convincing approximations of fear as they scurried back the way that they’d come.

  Following immediately behind the herd, I rounded the corner and spotted the cause of the commotion. Phil was about twenty yards away, with a bloody scalpel clutched in his right hand, gesticulating wildly at a crowd of cringing victims. He was positioned in a T-junction where a main hallway branched off to two wings of rooms, with a nursing station on either side. Blood trickled from the wound in his side that I’d caused, but the amount was dwarfed into insignificance by the arterial spray that coated his front, the floor, ceiling, and walls. The source of the blood, and presumably of the scream that I’d heard, was being held up by Phil’s left hand: a thirtysomething female doctor with her throat slit ear to ear.

  Unfortunately, I’d spent too many nights painting the walls with ichor and peeling viscera out of trees to be shocked by the sight. What was shocking was the red-eyed shadow that bulked behind Phil. Whereas the creature that had attacked me at the office had been roughly man-sized or perhaps slightly larger, this thing brushed the ceiling. Its form seemed to hunch forward like an ape, with hands dangling toward the ground. One hand rested on Phil’s shoulder, simultaneously supporting him and urging him forward.

  “Are more of you coming to tell me that I’m going to die!” Phil roared at the throng I’d pushed before me, and they skidded to a stop. Besides that group, there were a pair of older nurses leading a couple of elderly patients toward the end of the other hall, and a large black orderly pressed himself up against the back corner of a nurses’ station. Just as the echoes of Phil’s shout receded, an alarm started to blare, and I heard the audible thunk of the doors locking.

  I thought that I understood part of what was going on now. If Phil was in critical condition in this hospital, this must be his nightmare: he was afraid of dying from his injuries, and the creature had goaded him into hallowing this hallway with a baptism of blood. I wondered if this was how the creature drove people to madness, murder, and death. Did it invade their dreams and urge them to terrible acts night after night until eventually, like breaking a horse to the saddle, it could impose its will upon their waking actions?

  If that was so, was my presence like someone unlatching the barn door? My rather poorly timed pondering was interrupted as an Asian nurse grabbed the front of my coat and, with tears in her eyes, begged me to help. That kind of behavior seemed pretty odd for someone that was basically scenery. Perhaps this was all a part of Phil’s sick attempt to control a situation where he felt powerless?

  I once again exerted a bit of willpower, picturing myself as a kid in school keeping my head down to avoid bullying (you’ll be surprised to know I was a slightly weird kid). The woman’s eyes unfocused, and she let go of my jacket, forgetting that I was there. It wouldn’t do to have any of the staff getting in the way for what I had to do next. It was clear to me now that if Phil was going to have any chance of real recovery, I had to free him from the thing that urged him onward. Phil had been a good man.

  “Hey, Phildo! Over here,” I yelled, but I didn’t get Phil’s attention. Instead, I got the regard of the demonic thing looming over him. Lucky me. Its vaguely equine head swung incongruously until eyes that sat too far forward to be on any horse bored into me. It shoved Phil unceremoniously forward so that he went over the counter of the nurses’ station, waving his scalpel wildly at the cowering orderly taking refuge there.

  Three times before, the horror had tried to incapacitate me with some form of earsplitting shriek. Anticipating another attack, I focused on a memory from school: sitting in a quiet library, holding tight to the texture of the book under my hand, the cool air, and the utter, complete silence. Concentrating intensely, I watched the creature pause after the shove, swelling obscenely, like it was taking in sustenance from the gore-misted air around it. Then, its jaw dropped open like the grate on a furnace, and it shrieked.

  Of the half-dozen people that I’d forced back around the corner as a distraction, all but one were still clustered with me. One man, perhaps an administrator based on his pinstriped suit, had thought to sneak over to the unoccupied nurses’ station and had covered around half of the twenty-yard distance to his hoped-for refuge when the attack hit him. My bubble of quiet took most of the edge off of the monstrosity’s initial assault; the dream people next to me reached up to protect their ears from a noise that again approximated a horse with a broken leg crossed with fingernails on a chalkboard. The unfortunate administrator was closer and unprotected.

  The sonic assault struck him, and he pinwheeled through the air back toward my little knot of people. Fluids sprayed hot and sticky across the group, and a couple of the women shrieked. My stomach turned as I saw the remains that skidded to a stop in front of me: burst eyes running down his cheeks, blood pouring from every hole in his face, and lips pulled back over teeth that had shattered in their sockets. None of that would have been quite so disturbing, but something in Phil’s sickened mind decided that it wasn’t enough. To my horror, I realized that the man wasn’t dead; a pitiful keening that sounded more like what you’d expect to hear from a sick dog than a grown man issued from the ruin in front of me, and his heels drummed on the floor in agony.

  I had long ago learned to compartmentalize scenes like this, but even as I tore my attention away from the wreck of a person on the floor to focus on the hulking darkness lumbering down the hallway toward me, I registered that, true to whatever training Phil imagined that they had, the people who had been trying to flee now rushed forward to help the injured man. Somehow, none of them paid any attention to the nightmare thing closing in on them, but I didn’t have any time for noticing peripheral details as I reached for the next tool in my arsenal.

  I’d been caught off guard at the office, but now the thing was on my turf, and I had every trick, stratagem, and ability that I’d developed during a lifetime of combating the worst fears of the sleepers of the world. Rationalizing that the terror bearing down on me—only a couple dozen feet away—seemed to be made of darkness, I thoug
ht of the opposite. I didn’t think that I could get enough sunlight in from the rooms lining the hallway to make a difference, so I went for the next best thing, calling forth my memory of going deer spotting as a teenager—using a ten-million-candlepower UV spotlight. I’ve probably created this thing a hundred times to blast vampires, especially back before they sparkled, and the device leapt into existence at my call.

  The floor shook and a ceiling panel went flying as the hulking creature hurtled toward me like an elephant on PCP. When it was five feet away, I pressed the trigger and cackled with glee as a beam of light swept out in front of me, like God throwing a switch, lancing into the blackness and making the hall brighter than a field under the noon sun.

  It did sweet fuck-all.

  Only confidence in my ability as a Dreamwatcher and years of faith in my trusty trench coat saved me when the reeking mass of the creature plowed into my dumb ass. Whereas the broken man behind me had pinwheeled down the hall, I was launched like a cannonball. The light shattered as I hit the security door so hard that the locking mechanism gave and the door flew open. I landed in a heap, shuddering. I still held the gladius in my right hand, but my back ached and I couldn’t feel my legs. I probably should have been more concerned by that, but the room wouldn’t stop spinning long enough for me to really think about what had happened.

  I sat in a heap, waiting for death. However, running into me had thrown the bastard thing off balance and it collided with the side of an open hospital room doorway, losing most of its momentum and knocking a chunk out of the wall. The dream people still seemed unperturbed by the mountain of blackness looming only a few feet away from them and, seeing the door open, they took care to gently lift the injured man, slowly backing away from Phil. Meanwhile, my former colleague was loudly swearing and slashing at the orderly in the corner, who was trying to protect himself with an office chair. Distantly, I heard someone shouting about the police.

  As I watched Phil, my mouth twisted into a rictus of anger, and I shook with the effort of getting up to my elbows. My heart pounded as I dragged myself away from the open doorway, trying to break line of sight with the creature, and I’d only managed to heave my shattered body a few feet when the screaming began.

  The five people, four women and a man, who were trying to drag their injured colleague through the door had finally noticed the stygian horror looming over them and simultaneously cried out in abject terror. There was a crunching noise, and one of the screams cut off sharply. I heard a body hit the floor and further cries of pain, so I knew that the meat shield that I’d interposed between me and the monster had been breached.

  I tried desperately to find a memory or technique that would give me a chance against the creature, or at least get me back on my feet. I felt the ground rumble beneath me, and I trembled as the thing loomed over me. I decided to go down swinging.

  “Your mother was a hamster, and your father smelt of elderberries,” I wheezed. Apparently, the thing facing me wasn’t a fan, and a foot the size of a bicycle wheel came toward my head. I couldn’t roll, and I was in too much pain to think. Luckily for me, I didn’t have to think; instead, I stole a page out of another nerd favorite. Focusing my raw willpower, I took the gladius in both hands and thrust upward; the creature’s strength would have caused a normal man’s arms to snap like twigs, but my will held, and the nightmare stumbled backward in pain, dragging my weapon with it, and leaving a Julian-shaped dent in the floor. The short sword vanished almost the instant that it lost contact with my hand.

  From the direction of the nursing station, I heard shots ring out, which didn’t make any sense to me. I didn’t have time to ponder the issue; a moment later, I was grabbed by the front of my shirt and yanked high into the air, my useless legs dangling bonelessly. The creature had previously seemed to be treating me as a particularly nasty bug that it wanted to dispose of, but now I’d clearly pissed it off.

  It started by shaking me, and if my back weren’t already broken I think that would have accomplished the feat anyhow as my neck whiplashed back and forth. Next, I felt my head bounce off the wall—one, two, three times—and a couple of teeth come loose. Stars blossomed in front of my eyes; at this rate, I was well on my way to being an astronomer I thought, inappropriately.

  I’d never been injured this badly in a dream, and I didn’t know what consequences that would have, but I instinctively felt that it wouldn’t be anything good. Clinging to consciousness, I decided to do something I’d never tried before: to intentionally wake up through force of will alone. Usually to wake up, I would find something high in a dream and jump, but I wasn’t doing any jumping now. I pictured myself skydiving, closed my eyes, and pushed.

  Once again—sweet fuck-all. This was not a good night.

  I opened my eyes, and my heart sank as the monstrosity in front of me opened its maw wide; my viscera turned to jelly as I stared into the blaze of fury emanating from it. I feebly tried to resummon my gladius, but nothing happened. Talons dug cruelly into my back as the creature shoved me into its tooth-filled maw, and I thought of my family, muttered a prayer to any deity watching, and screamed my defiance into the void.

  CHAPTER 29 2230, Monday, August 3–0001, Tuesday August 4, 2015

  ***Julian***

  BEEP BEEP.

  My grandmother was born when a horse and buggy was more common than a car, and she always thought that mobile phones were miraculous. I’d never quite agreed with her on that point, until now. I sat bolt upright, still screaming. Heart hammering and without thinking, I swiveled off the couch and dropped into a defensive crouch, reaching for a weapon that wasn’t there. My confusion lasted only a few seconds before I noticed the illuminated screen and blinking light that indicated that I’d received a text message.

  Grabbing the phone, I wondered which god had decided to answer my prayers, and I almost sobbed with relief at being able to feel my feet against the cold wooden living room floor. The feeling didn’t last long, however, as I read the single message that had woken me.

  Kelly here, stuck in Pdngtn Grn nick Book NOT destroyed. Critical information. Come soon. Fix is in. IM4 jail 2morrow. Bware Redngtn private dick

  I’d had front-row seats to the depravity that the shadow monster could perpetrate, so I felt cold chills run up and down my spine as I considered that this thing had tried to kill me, had succeeded in killing or driving mad dozens of people, and was still on the loose. Even worse, it was personally interested in me.

  Quickly I threw on my clothes, reflecting that being put on administrative leave meant that it didn’t matter whether or not I was out late. I tried to leave the house quietly, but before I could get off the front walk, Dana stuck her head out of the window. “Where are you going?”

  My head whipped around, and I expected to see anger on her face. Instead, backlit by a bedside lamp, her face was contorted, on the edge of breaking into tears. My defensive retort melted away, and I sagged with guilt at not being able to tell her the truth, thinking for the thousandth time about telling her everything.

  For the thousandth time, I knew that there was no way that she’d believe me.

  “I need to go to Paddington Green police station. Detective Badger has asked me to come in,” I lied smoothly, and she frowned, shaking her head. We stared at each other for long moments.

  “Julian.” She paused. “I love you,” she finished. The words came out somewhere between a question and a statement, and I couldn’t look away. She didn’t wait for an answer before turning from the window, and I was grateful because I didn’t know what I would have said in reply. Thinking hard, I eventually turned and limped to the train station. If I hurried, I could catch the last service into central London.

  As I walked, I considered Dana’s words and the look on her face, and I decided that I needed to talk to someone about our situation. I had hoped that our upcoming vacation would let us patch up the growing distance between us, but I wondered now if perhaps the intrusion of my dreaming life
into the waking world meant that I had been wrong to keep this from her for so long. These thoughts swirled around my head as I walked through the steamy evening.

  I once again heard couples screaming at each other, this time in Punjabi, as I pounded through the sticky night, and a mixed group of “youths,” sporting bottles of cheap cider, argued loudly outside of Greenford Station. I didn’t pay them much attention and hurried up the stairs, catching the last train into London.

  Kelly had warned me to watch out for a detective and, using my powers of deduction, I savvied out that she was referring to the nice chap who had beaten the crap out of me already. A little late there, Kel. I spent a few minutes searching on my phone and found out about the Redderton private investigation firm, based in Canada Waters. Their web page wasn’t much more than a brief overview, which stated their long history and provided basic contact details, and I didn’t get any bright ideas from looking at it. In the end, I decided that I just needed to keep my eyes peeled.

  Arriving at Brunel’s most famous station, Paddington, I took an intentionally circuitous route to the local jail. The police station contained London’s most secure holding facilities, built to provide special accommodation for terrorist suspects between 2003 and 2011, for the twenty-eight days that they could be held without charge. I had a special hatred of terrorists, as I’d spent more than one dream digging people out of destroyed buildings or defusing bombs, but even I shuddered to think of someone being held that long without charge.

  Banishing that distraction from my mind, I peered around the corner at the massive pile of 1960s-era bad taste that masqueraded as a police station. I couldn’t see the Redderton detective anywhere, so I cautiously slunk to the station. Going through the doors, I put on my best Irish accent (which still happened to be the worst in the world) and asked to see Kelly; I immediately knew that something was wrong from the look on the desk sergeant’s face.