Christopher fell to his knees, then to his side. The urine soaking his long johns had turned to ice. Gradually, though, he realized that the weight of their presence was truly gone. There were no more beasts around. After several more minutes, Christopher pulled himself over to the rock on which it had been standing. He climbed it and took a look around. The forest was a puzzle of shadows and icicles, but there was no sign of life. No sign of anything.
Christopher huddled in the miserable cold and waited for the dream to end. Minutes passed. Eventually he began to feel tired. He wanted to sleep. His grandfather had told him that was a bad sign. Christopher climbed down off the rock and forced himself to start walking. Either move or freeze, his grandfather had said. Of course, his grandfather had been telling him what to do if he ever got lost outside on a snowy day. Not this. No one knew about this.
Christopher trudged through the trees, but the dream showed no signs of ending. The only sound was his own bare feet, crunching the frozen needles. He stubbed his toe on a rock, but he only knew he’d done so because it tripped him. He’d lost all feeling below his ankles. He put one foot in front of the other until he no longer knew he was doing it. He must have chosen the wrong way. It felt like the forest was getting even colder. The ice crusts thickened on the branches. Stretched down into icicles, but he kept going. He had to. It was more than just staying warm now, more than just motion. He needed to travel. He needed to go somewhere.
Maybe it took a mile, maybe it took ten, but eventually the forest began to look familiar. He’d been to this part of the wood before, in other dreams. As the familiarity grew stronger, so did the feeling of destination—there was a particular place he had to go. It was here, in this part of the forest. It was hard to find, nigh impossible, if you didn’t know what you were looking for. The cold was beginning to affect his mind, but he knew he had to find the place.
Keep moving. I have to.
The trees were still grey, but their trunks were thicker, and the icicles from their branches continued to lengthen the deeper he went. He made his aching body keep moving, and the temperature kept dropping. As the trees thickened and the rocks jutted higher, even the twilight began to fade.
The forest began to blur before his eyes. Presently, he realized he wasn’t standing up; he was lying down. A soft weight pressed over him. It was the weight of blankets, but they were colder than a slab of slate.
Christopher awoke, groggy, heart hammering. He wasn’t in the grey forest. He was in his grandparents’ little farm house. Outside the house there were no grey trees or ice, just hilly Appalachian farm land in the night. It wasn’t cold, it was warm outside. Neither was there any three-eyed white-furred death to pursue him, only the simple wooden walls of his bedroom.
The moon poured through the window over his bed, painting the edges of his furniture and the wooden floor in soft moonlight. Three of his mother’s drawings hung over his bed. Two of his grandmother’s needlepoints (birds and squirrels) hung by the door, and a Coca-Cola sign and a John-Deere advertisement with a ripped corner hung on the opposite wall. Knee-high stacks of newspapers lined the baseboards all the way around the room. A cracked glass fish sat in the windowsill, glowing a dull orange in the moonlight. My bedroom. It was a dream. Just a dream. I’m not going to die.
It was a moderate spring night, but Christopher’s body ached badly with cold. He pushed the covers back and they made a strange crackling sound. He stumbled out of bed. His legs and arms were stiff and so unresponsive that he fell against his chest of drawers.
Slumped there in the moonlight, he stared at his hands and feet. They were blue with cold, and the warm air was making them sting as they awoke. Every time Christopher dreamed about the grey forest, he awoke feeling cold. He’d always told himself it was his imagination, but this time, he’d stayed in the dream longer than before—much longer—and now it was undeniable.
Under the window, his blankets lay in a heap where he’d flung them back when he stumbled out of bed. They had crackled because they were stiffer than he was. And they were glittering. Christopher stared, wide-eyed. In the moonlight and the warm spring air, his blankets sparkled with frost.
They were frozen from the inside out.
Despite the grim nature of this particular book, Daniel is actually a pretty happy person. He believes that things worth having often come through tremendous struggle, that fictional stories tell the purest truth, and that monkeys are terrifying.
Or at least, that’s what his editor believes. And his editor is writing this info page, because Daniel is also the world’s worst procrastinator.
So when you find yourself waiting for the next book in one of Dan’s series, who do you have to thank for the fact that they’re actually going to be printed?
That’s right. Me.
Hope you’ve enjoyed the read.
All the best,
The Syntax Soviet
Brimstone Page 49