by Bill Ransom
“That’s not the way we are at all,” Eddie told her one day in disgust. “I thought he was smart.”
During that summer and the next year, Dr. Mark set up experiments, trying to get them to dream the way he wanted. He gave one of them a week’s worth of envelopes, dated, stamped and sealed. Before going to sleep, the other opened an envelope and concentrated on the card inside, then tried to dream that picture for the receiver.
When a design appeared in a dream, the person with the stamped envelopes sketched the design, placed it inside an envelope and mailed it to Dr. Mark. On Saturdays they met for results, and for more tests. The first week they scored a hundred percent. The second week they scored a hundred percent. The third week he gave them twenty random passages from the Encyclopedia Americana, and they scored a hundred percent. Their migraine management counselor got Dr. Mark’s files; a staff member interested in clairvoyance copied them for a friend, and word was out.
Maryellen’s stepmother accused them of cheating to get attention. She forbade Maryellen to have any contact at all with Eddie Reyes. She tried to get Eddie removed from the school before fall term.
“Look what he’s done to our little girl,” she shouted.”
Eddie and Maryellen listened outside Dr. Mark’s office while her stepmother raged.
“He showed up and now half the school’s loony. She’s not crazy or psychic. She’s . . . influenced, that’s all. He’s like a little Hitler. Get him up on the Hill where he belongs, but keep him away from Maryellen.”
“Shit,” Eddie whispered.
“Never mind,” Maryellen said. “She’s drinking again. She hates everybody.”
“Especially me.”
“Especially herself. She won’t get you kicked out of school, don’t worry.”
“I know. Dr. Mark told me already. I’m glad we’re getting skipped next year. You know, I think something big’s going to happen.”
“Something big? How big?”
“Like the earthquake. Like meeting Rafferty. I just have that feeling.”
Eddie felt closer to Rafferty than he did to anyone except Maryellen Thompkins. Rafferty and the Roam were in danger from a power that Eddie couldn’t identify. He tried the other side as often as possible, but headaches were tremendous and the fabric didn’t always allow him through. Dreaming other peoples’ dreams on this side was dangerous to other people. Eddie had to find out how he could help Rafferty.
The next year his absences from school got worse. He and Maryellen skipped to ninth grade and still their scores hugged the high end of the scale. Maryellen took up photography and buried herself in her darkroom out in the shed. Eddie buried himself in dreams. The counselors saw that getting after Eddie for missing school didn’t do any good, so they went after his Uncle Bert.
“It’s not right, Eddie,” Bert said. “You stay here, I don’t ask anything except you stay out of trouble.”
“I know. . . .”
“Listen.” Bert put a finger to the end of Eddie’s nose. “It’s simple.” Tap the nose. “They get money from the state when you’re in school” tap “they get nothing when you’re not.” Bert dropped his hand onto Eddie’s shoulder. “Now, they can take you away, they can put you back on The Hill, or in a foster home where nobody will leave you alone for a minute. Is that what you want?”
“No.”
Uncle Bert pulled a new pack of Luckies out of his shirt pocket and cracked the cellophane.
“Then get ahold of yourself. I don’t know what to think about this ‘other world’ you talk about, except it’s bringing the law down on my head.” He tap-tap-tapped the top of the pack against his fist. “You daydream so much you forget to eat, forget to go to school. You sleep sometimes for a day, two days and years of doctors hasn’t done a thing.” He offered Eddie a smoke.
“No.”
“Smart boy.” A flick of his wrist flipped a cigarette from pack to lips. He lit the smoke and coughed. “They won’t send you to no foster home; they’ll send you straight back to The Hill. Permanent. People in this town are out to get you. I can’t be here every minute. You get a grip.”
“Uncle Bert, people are dying. . . .”
“Don’t give me that crap,” Bert snapped. “I don’t see no bodies. You see the bodies. And that’s the problem. Boys your age should be dreaming of warm bodies, with tits.”
Eddie’s uncle took a long swallow of cold coffee and tossed the dregs out the front door.
“Listen,” he said. “Look at it this way. If you go down the tubes, so do your dream people. Take care of yourself, and you can take care of them. Get it? And it’ll make life easier on me. I hate it when the state takes up snooping. Your dad and I fought a war over that shit. Look what it got him.”
“What did it get him?” Eddie asked. “My mom never talked about him, nobody talks about him. . . .”
“Maybe when you’re older,” Bert said. He wouldn’t look Eddie in the eye. “But you take after him, boy, you sure do.”
“How? How do I take after him?”
His uncle stalked out the door for town.
Maryellen had her photography for focus, so Eddie took up archery because he’d read that zen monks did it. He became the youngest member of the valley archery club, where he was still known as a loner. He got a job at the club repairing targets and equipment. By the time he was fifteen he fletched his own arrows and took up restoring guns of all kinds. By the time he was sixteen, he was making a wage at it. Maryellen’s father was a drunk, but he was also a gunsmith who owned a sporting goods store, and Eddie thought this might help keep him closer to Maryellen.
Maryellen’s father took an interest in Eddie at first, in spite of his wife’s opinions. But the bond between Eddie and Maryellen became too much for him. He shut Eddie out of his life, and out of his shop.
“You two spend all of your time together,” he told her. “That’s not healthy at your age.”
“It’s the dream study, Dad,” she said. “Dr. Mark explained it to you. If we can understand more. . . .”
“If you can understand that I know what’s best for you, that’s fine,” Mel said. “If you can’t understand it, tough. You will when you get older. He’s out of the shop. Socially, he’s out of your life. Period.”
“But, Dad. . . .”
“And I can take you out of that study, too. Some of that stuff you’re doing, it’s voodoo stuff. Sometimes you’re sick for days. . . .”
“But we’re way ahead in school, they’re talking about skipping us again. Here at home . . . we’re helping other people, too.”
“Don’t talk to me about those imaginary people of yours. That’s baby talk, and I don’t see why that doctor lets you keep it up. Hell, Eddie’s almost a grown man and he still believes that crap. How’s he going to make it thinking that way?”
“Dad, I meant, it’s helping other people, real people, who have personality problems, nightmares and stuff. You know that. And we’ve . . . I’ve studied up on it a lot and written papers for school. . . .”
“That’s why I let you do it. I’m not blind, you know. I just don’t want to see you throw your life away on some dreamer. . . .”
“Dad, you forget. I’m ‘some dreamer.’”
He dismissed that with a wave of his hand.
“You’re a photographer,” he said, over his shoulder. “Stick to that.”
Maryellen met Eddie at their usual spot down at the river. He was drawing squares in a sandbar.
“It’s her doing, you know that,” Maryellen told him. “My dad has to drink to put up with her, that’s the problem. I can’t believe he married that woman. . . .”
She cried, something she didn’t do easily. In her struggle not to cry she displayed the bitter struggle that light has always fought for souls in darkness. The twin furrows between her brows deepened, and Eddie realized they were a sign of age, of physical age. Life on the dreamways tossed out fate like dice. He hoped if it tossed them age that they would get
wisdom, as well.
Eddie knew that Maryellen’s father didn’t just start drinking because of his new wife. Maryellen’s mother had been killed years ago, while Eddie was in Montana. Maryellen’s father had been drunk then, and drove the car off the levee road and into the river. She got halfway out the window before the river rolled the car. Maryellen had been at the babysitter’s and wasn’t told until after the funeral.
She stopped crying and fished in her pocket for a tissue to blow her nose.
“Something’s keeping us from the other side,” Eddie said. “I think the Jaguar’s onto us, blocking our moves before we make them.”
“Or maybe we are crazy,” she said. “Do you know how crazy it sounds for you to say that. Do you?”
“Does that mean you won’t help me anymore?”
Maryellen blew into her wet tissue. She wore one of those pink, fuzzy sweaters that shed like a dyed cat. Clumps of the stuff clung to the arms of his plaid shirt, a flannel material that he liked more for the feel than for the looks.
“Well?”
Eddie thought that the intimacy of the dreamways made them like an old married couple. Familiarity, a kind of intimacy, but without the benefit of romance.
Romance was something Eddie didn’t understand, but he knew he had no time for it. Still, when she blew her nose so unselfconsciously in front of him, Eddie had to admit to himself that he loved Maryellen Thompkins. Love was the kind of thing that could ruin everything.
“I’ll help you,” Maryellen said.
Her voice was husky from all the crying.
“I’ll help you because it’ll help me figure all this out. And because I don’t know what else to do.”
“I don’t, either,” he said. “But we’re not supposed to. We’re just kids.”
Maryellen looked at Eddie one of those long looks that was a cross between accusation and pity. The red rim around her eyes did not diminish their beauty, their fire.
“Kids!” she snorted. “Whatever we are, it’s not kids. Have you looked in a mirror, lately?”
Eddie swallowed. He’d had a hard look in the mirror just this morning, and the person who looked back had been a stranger. His eyes were still blue, but the mirror wasn’t deep enough to hold them.
Even the damned love.
—Stephen King, The Drawing of the Three
The Jaguar loved to pry. When he was young and lived in the world, his hobby was burglary. The young Jaguar had not been a big-time burglar of diamonds and cash, though when he saw them for the taking, he took. He was after the simple thrill of lifting a pair of lace panties from the floor beside a snoring couple, a watch from their bedside table, a comb from the vanity.
Sometimes the young Jaguar became excited, standing over their sleep, and unzipped his pants to release his excitement in hot spurts atop their covers. Then, savoring the freedom of the nighttime streets, he ran wild down the sidewalks, and laughed.
Young Jaguar, hitched to the world by his need. The Jaguar still felt the need to pry. He no longer ran wild down the streets, but oh, how he loved to pry!
The Agency changed hands. The Jaguar no longer faced their inquisition when he woke. He still woke to the rock-faced, unamused, cold-eyed Max, but Max didn’t hurt him anymore. He understood that it was nothing personal, and that policies change, and that he should make the best of it while he could.
The new administration considered him a valuable national treasure, and never did they use the word “spy.” The old boys operated on greed and fear, they sent Max to punish him for his distractions. The young bucks understood that money meant nothing to him, that he was not good to them dead, that he was not good to them unless he woke up willingly. They let him play.
His cattle offered him thrills beyond limit. At first he had been content to rummage their memories, sort through the back drawers of their minds. He played and replayed their most private experiences. The memories belonged to the cattle, yes, but the orgasms were his own.
Once, through the white pain of awakening, he felt his sheets being changed under him and the voice of an orderly muttered, “I don’t know where this guy goes when he’s out, but he must come a half-dozen times a day.”
Later, when the Jaguar perfected his tinkering, he thrilled to initiating action instead of memories. He directed his cattle in little dramas that played out in their lives to satisfy his boredom. He was merciless.
He changed the part of a husband’s brain that housed his wife’s name. “Thelma” suddenly became “Louise” to him, and the Jaguar sat back to watch the fireworks.
He created fireworks, that was the point. But one night his mind-fireworks exploded in a shooting, and the Jaguar escaped just as the brains that housed him were blown into a set of venetian blinds.
Adrenalin!
Gods, how he loved that surge, but death had been too close that time. He wasn’t sure that he would have died inside that brain, but he wasn’t sure that he wouldn’t, either. He did not want to conduct that experiment on himself.
From that day on he entered only healthy cattle, and he tried to keep them out of trouble while they had him along. Getting them killed might be entertainment, but getting himself killed was out of the question. For the first time in his life, he became considerate of the well-being of others, even if only while he used their bodies.
He’d had a close one with Belitnikov, too, by whipping the man into a sexual frenzy that left his portly wife raw, his mistress limp and his heart in a tachycardia that took the Russian doctors a week to control. He’d very nearly lost a treasure for a little cheap sex, and he wanted to believe that he wouldn’t do it again.
While he played, his priests pursued disturbances in the curtain. One young priest had been bested. Though he branded this wolf among his cattle, the wolf had not become cattle, and this disturbed the Jaguar.
Does he cover his trail? the Jaguar wondered. If so, I will uncover it. The greater fear poked at his belly.
What if he’s immune?
This had not occurred to the Jaguar before. The natural extension of that fear became: If he’s immune to my detection, there might be others.
He didn’t like that thought at all, because it felt so simple, so possible, so right. The thought didn’t stop there, it wouldn’t leave him be. The thought had to nag him into: What about others on this side?
A wolf among his cattle, and he didn’t know enough about wolves. He would have to learn, and learn quickly. The wolf fact that he did know iced his spine: Wolves hunt in packs; they work together.
If he couldn’t track the wolves, at least he could identify and destroy his contaminated cattle. The Agency wouldn’t be a help in this. He didn’t trust them because he trusted no one. They would not destroy these wolves, they would cultivate them, corral them into cattle of their own. This the Jaguar could not abide.
Relationships with his most significant persons
interfere with forward movement, create hopelessness
and often terror, and initiate regression. . . .
He is of the polar type who suffer acute disorganization
under extremely stressful conditions, such as combat.
—Theodore Lidz, Origins and Treatment of Schizophrenic Disorders
Rafferty watched the woman and the girl from behind a jumble of rocks beside the trail. They worked their way along the base of the cliff, and the woman kept her gaze on the rough footing. The girl clung to her mother’s hand and plodded on behind, the mother doing most of the work. They approached a butterfly-shaped discoloration in the cliff face that grew more distinct in Rafferty’s eyes as the setting sun reddened the rock.
The girl let out a weak shriek and dug her heels in, sobbing.
“Stop it, now!” the mother snapped. “I’m tired, too.”
“I’m scared.”
“There’s nothing to be scared of,” the mother said. “It’s not even dark yet. . . .”
Rafferty’s crow flapped up from the rocks and pulled
for altitude. The girl shrieked again, and the mother shook her by the shoulders.
“It’s just a bird, Anna. You scared it up by your racket.”
“No, something else. . . .”
The mother gave her another hard shake, and Rafferty checked his urge to step forward.
Maybe she felt me here, he thought. She might be one of the sensitive ones, like Afriqua Lee.
A very large man walked out of the discoloration in the cliff behind the woman. Rafferty caught his breath and reached for his weapon. The man wore a uniform jacket with a lot of ribbons and medals on the front, and while the little girl blubbered he quietly took it off, still standing behind the mother who was unsuspecting.
The man placed his coat about the mother’s shoulders, and she did not move. The child screamed and tried to pull loose of her mother’s grip but was too exhausted to get away. Her shrieks and struggles quieted to a whimper in a few moments.
Rafferty noticed now that, though he wanted to move, he could not. He knew he should be alarmed at this, but his mind remained absolutely calm. He heard faint calls of protest from his crow high overhead.
The man spoke quietly to the girl, but Rafferty couldn’t hear what was said. The woman remained frozen in her hunched posture over her daughter and the man removed a small tin from his back pocket.
The tin flashed in his palm as he flipped open the lid. Rafferty’s crow squawked once more, louder this time, from somewhere behind him.
The man dipped a forefinger into the tin and brought out a dab of blue. Against the girl’s feeble keening, he rubbed it gently onto the center of her forehead, in a sideways figure-eight. He did the same for the girl’s mother, who then dropped her daughter’s shoulders, pulled the coat tighter around her, and turned back up the trail.
Rafferty saw her brown eyes clearly as she turned; sleepwalker eyes. She and the daughter waited beside the cliff face as the man turned his attention toward Rafferty.