Here Be Dragons

by Bill Fawcett

  “An interesting concept,” said Perry with genuine interest.

  “Brian and Amy are the live-action part of the work—some of the settings I took around here, just went out and shot exteriors with my videocam. One of the guys I work with—Theo Westin—plays the live-action Brian, and Jenny Chin, who lives two doors down from Ma and me, plays the live-action Amy. We use the media lab at school for the most part to shoot the live-action. We have a green-screen and everything.” He got up and fetched his beer. “They could be better. In time, they will be better.”

  “You told me you’ve posted them on the Internet,” said Perry, encouraging Dylan to tell him more.

  “Just the first one. I got some good feedback, and I sent a copy of the second one to DragonCon after they contacted me about the first.” He returned to the chair and sank down into it. “That’s when they said they wanted to have me on the program. I’ve got enough money for the ticket, and the b&b where I’m staying isn’t as expensive as the convention hotels are.”

  “I can see why you’d want to go,” said Perry.

  “Could you explain it to Ma?” Dylan asked. “She says she gets it, but she doesn’t, not really.”

  Perry didn’t answer the question, and instead asked one of his own. “What kind of adventures does Brian McKay have? Tell me about the best one you did.”

  Dylan hesitated, but he couldn’t keep from blurting out the whole thing. “It’s kind of ... Brian is called out to pick up some burn victims near a forest fire. He goes in a helicopter—there’s a couple of news ’copters covering it—and they drop into a clearing where the burned guys are in big tents, and a bunch of fire-fighters and rescue workers are all over the place. The media lab has some pretty good stock footage of rescue units and forest fires. While Brian’s working at loading some of the victims into the ’copter, Ivray, one of his ghosts, who’s kind of like one of those northern barbarians who attacked Rome back in the Dark Ages, starts materializing and telling him there could be trouble because the wind is shifting. Brian doesn’t pay much attention, but then there’s an alarm, and everyone starts to panic. Ivray comes back and orders Brian to get the ’copter —which he calls a levitating machine—out of there or risk getting killed. Brian does what Ivray tells him, and as he starts to climb into the ’copter, he’s almost brained by Yash Quoatl, who’s kind of like a Mayan priest, and who thinks the ’copter is dangerous to Brian and seems to think that he can save him. Brian gets dragged into a fight with the priest as the fire comes nearer and nearer, and then pop! he’s in Yash Quoatl’s world, where only Yash Quoatl can see him. It’s a really whacked place, with some creatures that don’t exist, and a bunch of strange-looking people. Oh, and a green sky. Then the priest does something, and Brian’s back at the ’copter, being pulled into it as it starts to rise. They get out as the flames get to the edge of the clearing—Mister Guardini, my communications teacher, says that the montage-work I did was really good—and the ’copter reaches the hospital and Brian knocks off for the day. While he’s getting a beer at his favorite bar, Amy arrives, annoyed at him for having put himself in danger again. She works for a TV station, and saw footage of the fire, and got to see Brian almost fall out of the ’copter. She tries to make him promise not to do anything so dangerous again. About then, Valtor, a magician who always materializes out of a whirlwind, shows up and gives Brian a stern warning that there’s more trouble ahead, and he better get back to work because there’s a forty-car pileup on the freeway, and lots of people are hurt. Amy gets upset when Brian says he has to go. To calm her down, he suggests that there’s going to be a big story breaking any minute. She asks him how he knows, and just then the bar TV shows the first raw pictures of the mess. She and Brian leave the bar together, going their separate ways.” He stopped and hitched his shoulders up. “And that’s the end of the best video.”

  “Sounds exciting,” said Perry. “How long does it run?”

  “Just under eighteen minutes.”

  “How’s that for video length?” Perry appeared to be eager to learn.

  Dylan shrugged. “The next ones will be better.”

  “That’s to be expected,” Perry said as if he hadn’t noticed that Dylan had failed to answer his question. “The ones you do after you go to DragonCon ought to be better still.”

  “Yeah. I hope so.” He sounded miles away, and Perry scowled in worry.

  “Are you all right, Dylan?”

  Dylan sat, fidgeting, finished his beer, then said distantly, “I sometimes wonder if my condition is what people had back when everyone believed in werewolves.”

  “There are no such things as werewolves,” said Perry sharply, and in a way that suggested he had said it before.

  “No, but there may have been something like werewolves. People who acted like wolves, or went crazy and howled at the moon. Think about it, Uncle Perry. I fall asleep without warning, I sometimes act out while I’m asleep, and I can’t remember it afterward.” He thought about the episode he’d had the week before; he still could only recall flashes, mainly of him running in the park, and someone screaming.

  “Werewolves sometimes remember what they do, according to the legends,” said Perry. “Your condition is neurological, not folkloric.”

  Dylan remained still a short while, then suddenly got to his feet. “Well, I should get on home. Ma’s probably nervous.”

  “Don’t blame her for that,” Perry said.

  “Yeah. First my Dad and then me: genetics, right? I’d probably be edgy, too.” He took a turn about Perry’s study. “Do you find all these books are really worthwhile?”

  “Yes, I do. Reading relaxes me.”

  “Huh.” Dylan considered his uncle’s answer. “Must be a generational thing.”

  Perry’s smile was mordant. “Must be,” he agreed.

  * * *

  The images on his computer screen enthralled Dylan. This was his last project before summer vacation began, and he had until the end of May to turn it in; just another week. He wanted to show Mister Guardini how much he had improved, so he threw himself into his vision. It was late on Friday night, and he was working on his new video, grinning. His eyes had a glazed look; he was dressed in jeans and a tee-shirt, though his room was chilly enough for a sweatshirt, for though the days were getting warm, the nights were still cool. He waved one hand at the manipulated images of a very old city street. The point of view was that of a man running, so the screen’s vision rocked with each virtual step, and the sound of panting accompanied the movement. It wasn’t yet clear if the man was pursuing or being pursued. The video stopped abruptly and Dylan clicked onto his files of stock footage. He scrolled through the files, selecting one called By the River, and began to search through it for the section with the arched wooden bridge, adapting his interface with the previous, more complete video, so that it soon appeared that the point-of-view runner had turned away from the street and was now moving beside the river toward the arched bridge. It took Dylan longer than he had anticipated to finesse the two sections of video into a believable whole, and when he was finally done, he felt a little giddy, and that was not a good sign. He wanted to ignore it, to go on working, but it was already past midnight and he was very tired.

  “Sorry, Brian,” he said to the figure on the screen, and put his computer on hibernate. He got up and stretched, looking toward the door of his computer room, and decided to get a bite to eat in the kitchen before he took his meds.

  He woke up shortly after dawn on the floor of the mud-room at the back of the house. His clothes were a mess, stained and torn, and his head ached along with many other assorted pains from all parts of his body. As he touched his forehead, he felt an oblong, painful lump over his left eye. Without doubt he would be sporting a black eye for several days. He made an inspection of his face, moving his fingers gingerly, discovering scratches and some sore regions that he suspected were bruises.
He managed to get to his feet and stumble in the direction of the bathroom where he gathered up his courage and stared in the mirror in the dim light from the window, appalled at what he saw.

  “What the fu—?” he asked his reflection. Where had he gone? What could he have done to make him look like he had been in a fight and then thrown into a thorn-bush? Trying not to panic, he skinned out of his clothes, finding more scrapes and bruises on his legs and arms, and one spectacular livid mark the size of a sheet of paper on the side of his hip. His knuckles were skinned, and when he stepped into the shower, a host of small and large hurts revealed themselves as the water struck them. He washed himself thoroughly and carefully, thinking as he did that he would have to come up with some explanation for his appearance, since there was no way to pass it off as a minor fall or a fight with their bad-tempered Pekinese, Ming the Merciless. If he admitted to a serious episode, Arian might change her mind about letting him go to Atlanta, and maybe even about college in L.A.. Whatever story he came up with, it would have to be the most convincing one of his whole life.

  Once he had toweled himself off, he searched the medicine chest for some antibiotic ointment and daubed it on any cut or scrape he could see. He opened the sink-cabinet drawer and took out the green vial of his medication and gulped down two tablets with a handful of water. Then he gathered up his ruined clothes, tightened the towel around himself and headed off to his bedroom as quietly as he could. He’d put the ruined clothes in a plastic bag and planned to stuff it in the trash-bin at school. Carefully he selected his clothes for the day, making sure the long sleeves of his shirt covered up most of the damage on his arms; his hands would have to be bandaged. By the time he was ready for breakfast, he had the beginnings of an explanation forming in his mind. In an hour or so he would flesh it out, the same way he worked out the story lines for his videos.

  * * *

  “What the devil happened to you?” Dylan’s mother asked him when she caught sight of him in the kitchen; she was more frightened than angry, and it came out in the unusually high pitch of her voice. “Don’t tell me you were out on Friday night, Dylan. I thought we agreed you’d stay in on Friday and Saturday nights, as a precaution.”

  “I had a fall.” He reached for the coffee pot and a mug, which he filled. “I went out last night to shoot some new video near the river.” He held up his hand to keep his Ma from protesting. “I stayed away from the busy places, and I didn’t plan to be gone long. The trouble is, I wasn’t paying attention to where I was walking and I fell into the bushes—you know the ones that line the bank to help control erosion? —I almost slid into the river. I had to grab hold of some of the bushes to keep from getting wet.” He came toward the table in the breakfast nook to put his cup down, then went back to the kitchen. “I dropped my videocam. It took me almost an hour to find it.” It sounded so sensible he almost believed it himself.

  Arian looked skeptical. “But you’re okay?” There were layers of meaning in her question.

  “I’m okay. No episode. Nothing like that.” He hated lying, but he knew he had to, or he would have to stay home. “It was a pretty bad fall and I’m feeling a little rocky. Nothing important is damaged, except maybe my ego. I’ve already taken my meds, so I’ll call Theo and tell him I’m coming in at noon, just as a safeguard, in case I fall asleep. My hands are stiff, and that’ll slow down my work, anyway. If I rest up, I’ll work better. I’m going to soak them in Epsom salts. Saturday mornings tend to be a little slow. He won’t ask many questions when he sees me if I tell him what happened on the phone.”

  She got up from her seat and came to give him a close inspection, her face showing more than worry. “You slid through the bushes at the edge of the river?”

  “I hadn’t planned on it, it happened. It was a dumb thing to do, Ma. I know it. I wasn’t paying enough attention.” He opened the cupboard and took out a box of what he thought of as health-nut cereal, then retrieved a bowl from the drying rack next to the sink and measured out his breakfast into it. Going to the refrigerator, he removed the milk carton and went back to the table.

  “Dumb is right. What if you’d fallen into the river? What then?” She returned to her place at the table.

  Dylan paused in pouring milk onto the cereal. “I know, Ma. It wouldn’t have been good.”

  “You told me you would always have a second person with you when you go after background video, to scout for you. What happened this time?” She frowned at her plate of thin pancakes with butter and blueberry syrup on them and three bites missing as if they had turned to oozey mud topped with purple slime. “You shouldn’t have gone alone.”

  “I know,” he said again with heavy emphasis. “But I figured it would only take me about twenty minutes, and it being so late ...”

  She sighed. “Couldn’t you find background footage on the Internet?”

  “I had a certain look in mind: the arched bridge. It’s part of the last four minutes of my class project.” He set the milk down, took a spoon from the container of utensils in the center of the table, and began eating.

  “How long were you out?”

  He looked up abruptly, then realized she meant not how long had he been in his narcoleptic state, but how long had he been gone from the house. “A little under an hour, I think. Maybe a little over an hour.”

  “That’s a long time for the middle of the night, and not just because of the risk of an episode.” She shook her head, every line of her face showing worry and disappointment. “Do I need to reconsider your trip to DragonCon? I have to know you’re not going to do anything irresponsible while you’re away from Toronto. I have to be able to trust your judgment. It’s too important, Dylan. You could end up blowing everything. You could hurt yourself.”

  “I didn’t want to fall, Ma,” he said, knowing he would be more convincing if he had been telling the truth. “It was an accident, is all. The kind of thing someone like me would be a real idiot to—”

  “How can I be sure?” Now she looked troubled. “If you were sleepwalking, you might have wandered into a busy street.”

  “I wasn’t sleepwalking, Ma,” he said, doing his best to conceal his mendacity with a glare of impatience.

  “I trust not.”

  “Hey, I don’t want to go through anything like that again, especially while I’m in Atlanta. I mean, look at my face. Do you think I’d want to make a public presentation all banged up like this? I did something impulsive and I paid for it. I get it. I won’t do it again.” Dylan found it an effort to be indignant because he was being deceptive, and he strove to appear affronted by her question.

  “I would hope that’s all it was,” she replied dubiously, pushing her plate away, her appetite gone and her stomach queasy.

  “You know I wouldn’t take a chance like that.” That statement was true enough.

  “I know you wouldn’t if you were awake,” she said pointedly.

  “It wasn’t like that, Ma,” he said, a flush coming over his face, because it was just like that.

  Arian got up from the table and went to open the porch door in order to let Ming the Merciless into the house; the little dog bounded in, his claws scrabbling noisily on the floor, his tongue lolling. “Who’s the good dog, eh? Who’s the good dog?”

  Ming obliged by standing on his hind legs, one paw on her shin, panting in anticipation of affection and breakfast. He gave a pair of friendly yaps, then suddenly he stopped his enthusiastic display and turned toward Dylan, growling protectively, moving in front of Arian. The growl grew louder and ended in three loud, challenging barks.

  “Ming! Mind your manners!”

  “It’s okay, Ma,” said Dylan, trying not to feel too disconcerted; he almost supposed that Ming was aware of his prevarications and was upbraiding him for them. What else could that ferocious little dog picking up on? he asked himself.

  “No, it’s not,” she said. “D
own, Ming! Down! You know you aren’t supposed to growl at people.”

  Reluctantly, the Pekinese put all four paws on the floor and toddled over to Dylan’s Ma and sat at her feet, head cocked as if trying to explain himself. Arian reached down and scratched the dog’s ears, making an apology for her sharp words. “Good Ming. Lie down.”

  “He probably smells the ointment I put on the scrapes. You know how he doesn’t like medicinal odors,” said Dylan, tasting his coffee and finding it too hot—he drank it anyway while Ming glowered at him.

  “I want you to see Doctor Hastings as soon as possible. I’ll call his office and leave a message to set you an appointment this coming week. Tell him about your fall, and that episode you had three weeks ago.” When Arian spoke so decisively, Dylan knew it was useless to refuse. “You need to have a physical, anyway. We can kill two birds with one appointment.”

  “Do you think it’s necessary?” he asked.

  “You may need some adjustment in your meds.” Arian looked at Dylan intently. “It’s a good idea to tend to that now, so you’ll have adapted to the difference by the time you head off to Atlanta.”

  He almost choked on his coffee. He was still going to DragonCon! He hadn’t wrecked his chance! Beaming, he looked around at his Ma. “Thanks. Really, Ma, thanks.” He reached out and put his hand on her shoulder, ignoring the hint of a growl from Ming.

  “You should tell Doctor Hastings about your travels, too, so he’ll know that you may need a little more flexibility in your prescriptions.” She pressed her lips together, then said, “I know how much you want to go, and I know it can mean many things to you, more of them good than bad. I just want to be certain you’re prepared.”

  “Okay. You’re probably right about the meds,” he said by way of concession, and resumed his breakfast.

  * * *