by James Sperl
Clarissa tried not to think about how long it had been since she enjoyed a piece of sweet, crisp, fresh fruit. Her mouth watered in support of Rachel and Andrew's argument.
“I say we take advantage of the situation,” Rachel went on. “Worse case scenario, we double back to that traffic jam and get more gas.”
“Which,” Andrew interjected, “I don't believe we'll have to do. But if you're not comfortable with doing this, Clarissa, let's figure out a compromise or move on.”
Holding on to gas instead of delighting in some fresh, delicious food? Was there really an argument to be made? They were living a day-to-day existence. Anything could happen at any moment. Rachel was right. If they had an opportunity to enjoy a culinary respite, why shouldn't they?
“Of course we should trade,” she said. “But no more than twenty gallons.”
“Agreed,” Andrew said.
Rachel beamed. “Agreed. Oh my God, I can already taste a veggie stew.”
Andrew looked at the young man, who had returned to his apple-sorting duties.
“Is the eight ounces a flat rate?”
“Flat rate. Pick anything you like up to eight ounces. It doesn't matter what.”
“Okay. We'll take twenty gallons worth.”
“Twenty?” the young man said. He stood from the stool where he had been sitting and gave Corrine an approving nod. “All right. Ten pounds it is. Corrine can set you up with some bags if you need them, and there's a vegetable cart around the corner if you'd like to use it for hauling.”
Andrew bobbed his head. “Appreciate that. Well,” he said to Clarissa and Rachel, “shall we?”
Clarissa sighed and mentally prepared herself for the exhaustive job of hauling fuel, but her intentions derailed when she glimpsed the couple's little girl or, more specifically, her drawings, which she thumb-tacked to the booth walls behind her. The discovery changed everything.
“Um, you guys?” she said. “I know this is going to sound like I'm trying to get out of doing physical labor, but do you think maybe it'd be better if I hung back and picked things out? That way when you got back, we could just go.”
Andrew frowned while Rachel folded her arms suspiciously.
“What? I'm serious. We don't need three people to carry gas. We have a cart. Two could handle the gas part while someone stays and shops.”
“Okay. But why should you be the one to stay and shop?” Rachel asked pointedly.
“I don't know. Because I thought of it?” Clarissa's response came off sounding like a question even though it wasn't.
Andrew considered her proposal.
“No. It makes sense,” he said. “It's a good, economical use of time. I've got no problem with it.”
“But what if I have a problem with it?” Rachel said, teasing.
Clarissa smiled and bugged out her eyes playfully. “Then you can stay here by yourself and pick out everything.”
Rachel squinted, the prospect of having to remain alone throwing her counter-proposal into turmoil.
“Fine,” she said, conjuring a hint of a smile, “but you better get some berries. And lots of salad stuff.”
Clarissa bobbed her head sharply. “Absolutely. Andrew? Any requests?”
Andrew shook his head. “Just try and get a little bit of everything. Maybe focus on some of the things that'll be out of season soon.”
“Will do.”
“You know what those are?”
“I think I'll be able to figure it out.”
Clarissa was no gardener, and the only success she ever had with growing something at home was a succulent garden she received as a Christmas gift four years ago. But she saw what came through Aunt Mae's kitchen on a regular basis. Terrance was a stickler for quality and a big believer in using what was in season. Thanks to him, Clarissa felt she could adequately select the best from what the couple offered.
“Okay,” Andrew said. He gave Rachel a friendly nudge. “Looks like it's just you and me, kid.”
Rachel chuckled. “All right, let's go then.” She turned to Clarissa and sneered, “Have fun shopping.” She followed this by sticking out her tongue.
Clarissa made a goofy face at her friend, but that was all. Rachel had made great strides in the past few months. It filled Clarissa with pride to see her friend transform from a scared rabbit to what she now considered a cowardly lion. She didn't mean it as an insult. Rachel had always had an unhealthy fear of the things she couldn't control, and she abhorred loneliness. Since the Sound, she had managed to get a stranglehold on the former. Able now to allow situations to happen as they happened and roll with the punches, Rachel had relinquished her fear to fate and chance. It wasn't always easy, but she had prospered, and Clarissa thought she was a better person for it.
“Here you go,” Corrine said. She leaned over the counter and held out a clutch of used plastic bags to Clarissa. “Take as many as you need.”
Clarissa took four. “Thanks.” She smiled and looked past Corrine to the little girl. “Is that your daughter?”
Corrine beamed with parental pride. “She is. Name's Julia.” She turned to her daughter. “Julia, honey, can you come and say hello?”
Julie set down a crayon stub and snatched up her drawing before she walked up beside her mother. She looked at Clarissa and grinned.
“Hi.”
“Hi, there,” Clarissa said. She shot Corrine and her husband an envious look. “Oh my God, she's just precious.”
And she was. A perfect blend of mother and father, Julia had inherited her mother's luscious locks while having been blessed to see the world through her father's bright green eyes. Her face was cherubic and unblemished, and her gifted smile set rooms alight. Clarissa's level of jealousy was unquantifiable.
“Thank you,” Corrine replied. She laid an arm around Julia's slender shoulders. “We're very fortunate.”
“I'd feel the same way if she were my daughter.” She smiled at Julia then looked at Corrine again. “Can I ask you a question, though? Aren't you worried about, you know...” She cast a glance behind her into the streets and the unsavory characters who wandered them. “...the sorts of people that pass through here? I'm not judging, and I don't want to generalize, but you all seem like, I don't know, you're cut from a different cloth than many of the other folks around here.” Corrine shifted curiously, which caused Clarissa to hold up her hands in defense. “I hope that doesn't offend you. It's just that you've been so friendly while so many others here have come off cold and, if I'm being honest, a little scary. I guess I was just wondering how you managed it.”
The husband, whose name Clarissa still hadn't learned, stepped over. He looked at his wife knowingly, as if this topic had come up a time or two.
“At first, we felt the same way,” he began. “But after a time—”
“A short time,” Corrine interjected.
The husband smiled. “—a short time, we just fit in. It helps that we have some of the best food around, so many of the vendors trade with us. And because of that, they also tend to look out for us.”
Clarissa scowled. “Look out for you?”
The husband nodded as if he understood this deserved an explanation. “We're a large provider to a lot of folks around here. People recognize our value. If something happens to our farm or us, there goes their food supply. We've even had offers from people with nothing to barter wanting to trade protection services for food. You know, patrol and watch over the farm in exchange for produce.”
Clarissa's eyes darted between Corrine and her husband. “Have you taken anyone up on that?”
“No,” Corrine said. “Not yet. My father-in-law wants to keep everything in the family. He fears that the more people are allowed onto the property, the more they'll feel they can help themselves to whatever they want when no one's looking.”
“Which is already a small problem,” the husband added.
“I can imagine,” said Clarissa. “I would think keeping hungry, desperate people off
your land would be a job in and of itself.”
“You don't know the half of it. But, you know...” He glanced at Corrine again. “Things have a way of working themselves out.”
Clarissa cocked her head. “What does that mean?”
The husband shrugged. “Believe it or not, theft—even these days—is still not looked upon favorably, at least around here. When we discover a crop's been raided, it's not long before the people that stole it are found out. And when they are...well, let's just say justice has a way of finding them.”
Clarissa swallowed. She hoped the warmth in her cheeks didn't register as color.
The husband read her discomfort. “Like I said, people look out for us, which is another way of saying they're looking out for themselves.”
The only thing Clarissa could think to do was give a nod of understanding, though she didn't think she would ever understand the rules of this brutal, new world. She desperately wanted to change the subject. She glanced at Julia and found the girl staring up at her with those innocent jewel eyes. Based on the conversation Clarissa had just had, however, she wondered just how innocent those young eyes were. She leaned forward and nudged her chin in the direction of the paper Julia held.
“What're you drawing?”
Julia held up her picture and displayed it. “A windmill. And here's a bunch of flowers, a stream, a bird, and the sun.”
Clarissa acknowledged each item with interest, as Julia gleefully pointed them out. It looked like every child's drawing she had ever seen.
“You like windmills?”
Julie nodded enthusiastically. “Yeah. But they don't have 'em over here. Mama says they're over the ocean. With Mark.”
Corrine smiled at Clarissa's amused frown. “It's across the ocean,” she said to Julia. “In countries like Denmark. And where else did we talk about?”
Julia pinched her face into a concentrated grimace before she popped her eyes open in remembrance. “Holland!”
“Very good.”
“That's my smart girl,” said her father.
“Wow,” Clarissa said. “That's pretty impressive.” Julia smiled proudly. Clarissa moved down the counter and pointed to the other drawings pinned to the wall behind her. “I see you've got some more over there. Can you tell me about those?”
Julia ran back over to her artist's station, delighted to have someone new with whom she could share her creations.
“This one's of the ocean,” she said, indicating it with a poker-straight arm. “I like whales, too. And fishes. And this one's the mountains with trees and a lake. I drew a moose here.” She looked at Clarissa for confirmation that she understood it was a moose.
“It's a beautiful moose.”
“Yeah. I was gonna draw some deers, but they're kind of boring. And these two up here,” Julia said, shifting her focus to the topmost pair of drawings, “are of space. I love planets and rockets.”
Clarissa angled her head to get a better view. She enjoyed seeing the imagination of a child expressed through art, and Julia was quite the talented artist, but she had yet to talk about the one drawing that had captured Clarissa's attention. The one that had compelled her to lie to Andrew and Rachel. The one placed well away from the others but on display nonetheless.
The frightening one.
“And, uh...that one way over there?”
Julia twisted to follow Clarissa's pointing finger. Her grin morphed into a wrinkled nose of discontent when she discovered which drawing Clarissa singled out.
“Oh,” she said, facing away from it. “That's just a dream monster.”
Clarissa searched the faces of Julia's parents. “A dream monster?”
Corrine moved beside her daughter. “From a nightmare she had. She was screaming in her sleep, completely out. We had to shake her to wake her up.”
“Do you dream of it often?” Clarissa asked Julia.
Julia shook her head. “No, it was just the one time. That was enough.”
“I would think so.” Clarissa tried a smile, but it didn't stay long on her lips. She couldn't tear herself away from the drawing. It was different in every way from all of the others: color palette, tone, subject matter, but most of all, detail. Every one of Julia's other pieces embodied a child's whimsy, simple shapes and backgrounds rendered hastily with a variety of single colors as if Julia couldn't wait to move on to the next image bursting to life in her mind.
The drawing of the dream monster was a contradiction. The use of monochromatic grays replaced the rainbow assortment of the other pieces. Odd shapes and strange architecture were completed using nondescript forms, black featured prominently in the areas where nothing existed. Julia had successfully captured depth with her shading, something she hadn't even attempted in any other piece. The image was striking, but what was most striking of all was the monster itself.
It was terrifying yet not wholly seen. The creature had been drawn suggestively as something that lurked in the shadows. A claw-like, sinewy arm emerged from the pitch just visible. An inexplicable torso lingered in the blackness, the sparse highlights given to it just enough to suggest the horrific thing it was.
Had Clarissa been shown the drawing independently, she would have sworn the dream monster had been done by somebody much older.
The reason for the disparity hit Clarissa like a sledgehammer to the chest: This wasn't something Julia had dreamed—this was something she had seen. It was probably as real to her as Clarissa was right now. The longer Clarissa stared at it, the more she understood why it had drawn her to it in the first place.
She had seen it too.
Though not entirely. It was more of a feeling, a hunch, that the creature Julia had put to paper was the same one that had plagued Clarissa's dreams back in that campground garage. She would never forget it. The skulking monster was preternaturally evasive, like trying to glimpse a ghost. It was as if it had awareness. But that was impossible, wasn't it? How could the elements of a dream be so outside the limits of control that a person was helpless to affect it?
Though by definition, Clarissa supposed that's what made nightmares. Helplessness and fear were often at the core of a terror dream's genesis. That unseen monsters manifested themselves so effectively in dream consciousness was a common byproduct. And yet, Clarissa's dream of the Nothing Place felt decidedly uncommon.
The nightmare had happened when she was left alone. Though Valentina had returned and shaken her awake, it was, to her knowledge, the only time since she had joined forces with Andrew that she slept without someone watching over her. A nauseating theory leaped into her mind.
“Can I ask you another question?” she said, moving down the counter to stand before Corrine's husband. “When it happened, was Julia with you?”
Corrine looked at her feet before finding Clarissa's eyes.
“No,” Corrine said. “She wasn't. We...” She took a moment to gather herself. Her husband moved to her and took her hand then hung his head guiltily. “We'd set her down in the back room to, you know, have some alone time. It's just hard with so many people around. There's no place to grow a relationship. Everyone's always there. So we...she fell asleep on my lap one evening, so I moved her into the spare room. A few minutes later she was screaming bloody murder.”
“We're together all the time now,” the husband added.
Tears welled in Corrine's eyes. “We heard the stories. About not letting people be alone. But we didn't think, I mean...there were lots of theories back then. How were we supposed to know?”
Clarissa looked at the couple with deep sympathy. “You weren't. You were just doing the best you could. Like all of us.”
Corrine palmed a runner from her face. “We take turns now. Watching over each other.”
“And Julia hasn't had the dream since?” Clarissa asked.
“No.”
Clarissa turned her attention to Julia. “Well, that's news worth celebrating.”
Julia grinned then sat back down and continued to dr
aw.
“Do you know,” Corrine said, stepping up to the counter, her hands balled together in front of her stomach, “or have you heard anything about what's happening. Why it's happening? We ask everyone we see, but no one seems to know anything. Still, even after all this time.”
Clarissa debated whether she should mention her group's quest to locate Ashland and what they hoped to learn there, but what would be the point? They've hit one brick wall after another since they started, each Ashland revealing bupkis about where or what Rosenstein was and how it could help. It seemed cruel to spread false hope.
“No,” she said, “I'm afraid I don't know anything either.”
“Oh,” Corrine said through a forced smile. “I didn't think so. Well...” she turned that same disappointed smile to her husband before returning to Clarissa. “...we'll leave you to it.”
Clarissa looked at the baskets and bins of produce on display behind her, as if she had forgotten they were there. “Oh, okay. Thanks.”
She grinned at Julia, who paused to watch her. Clarissa had all but forgotten what she promised Andrew and Rachel. Once she learned the origin behind Julia's drawing—the origin someplace Clarissa had personally experienced—her mind reduced everything around her to white noise.
How could it be?
How could two people half a country apart share the same dream down to the last detail? Why did the dream seem to happen only when a person was alone? And what did the dream mean? More than that, why did Clarissa feel down to the pit of her stomach that she and Julia represented only the tip of the iceberg?
CHAPTER 35
Arlin's trailer was a dump. Clothes were strewn everywhere. Garbage littered the floor. Dried herbs hung in bunches from unlit Christmas lights, which crisscrossed the room, and dishes crusted with days old food had been piled high in a tiny sink. If a head shop combined with a dollar store then exploded, Valentina thought it would look like this place.
What the hell was she doing here?
When she followed Arlin out the back of his mother's pharmacy, she thought he would lead her to someplace nearby. Instead, he skulked along the side “avenues” of Orion until he reached a cluster of parked trailers located an uncomfortable distance away from the marketplace. Awnings and picnic tables were set up in front of most of them, a telltale sign of a permanent address.