If Souls Can Sleep

by David Michael Williams

  Milton stumbled backwards and rammed the back of one leg into the low-standing coffee table. He fell onto it and stared up at Daniel, who looked like to his old self again.

  “How are you doing that?” Milton asked.

  Scoff. “You know how. You’re one of the pioneers of dream drifting. You just have to remember.”

  Milton shook his head. “I told you before…I can’t remember.”

  “That was before, Milton, and it was my fault. Partially my fault. I didn’t want you to remember everything too soon, or you’d figure out that you’ve just been asleep this whole time. But you have been remembering…through dreams…dreams within a dream.”

  Milton started to argue, but when he went back to the door in his mind, he found it wide open. The scenes from the dreams—his memories—poured out: meeting with the Lucid Dreaming Society officers about the ethics of dream drifting; his last encounter with William Marlowe before he, Milton, and his protégé Earl Boden agreed to work for the CIA; draping their top-secret research in a Norse theme; talking Boden into injecting him with the serum so he would have the strength to confront William and his allies.

  Only it wasn’t enough. They were waiting for me…

  Milton launched himself at Daniel, grabbing him by the front of his sweatshirt. “You ambushed me!”

  “Whoa, take it easy. I wasn’t even there,” Daniel protested. “I got dragged into this after they’d already monkeyed with your memories. They said all I had to do was keep an eye on you and make sure your friends from Project Valhalla never reached you.”

  Daniel tried to pull away, but Milton tighten his grip on the sweatshirt. “How long have I been asleep?”

  Daniel’s shoulders raised in a clumsy shrug. “You were here before me. As best as I can tell, I’ve been in a coma for seven months.”

  Milton, suddenly numb, let go of the boy. “Seven months? I’ve been in this dream for more than seven months?”

  Anger surged through him, but he suppressed the startling urge to tackle Daniel.

  I need answers, and once I get them, I will wake up and report back to Boden.

  He swallowed the lump in his throat and asked, “Why have you done this to me?”

  “At first, to save my own skin,” Daniel said matter-of-factly. “I would have died…should have died…except a dream drifter made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. And since I had some unfinished business of my own, I agreed to be your babysitter.”

  “Who made you the offer?”

  Scoff. “You’re thinking it was your old chum, William Marlowe? Could be. But who knows? Anybody can be anybody in the dreamscape.”

  Clementine lashed out violently and then was still once more.

  Daniel looked at her and gave a lopsided frown. “My niece told me it was a woman who’d been bugging her. When Clementine found me, that’s when I knew I had to do something. It’s bad enough that dream drifters can fuck with the living, but to harass a dead little girl? Talk about despicable.”

  Milton’s breath caught in his throat. “You can’t mean…Clementine is dead?” he whispered.

  If souls can sleep, then why not dream?

  Daniel nodded. “Milton, what exactly did you see that made you want to confront Marlowe in the dreamscape? What are they doing to the dead?”

  “Not the dead, the dying.” Milton took a steadying breath, as the memory surfaced without any resistance whatsoever. “I saw members of COPE following the soul of someone dying en route to his eternal rest. I believe COPE is searching for a way to circumvent death…to go on living here instead of succumbing to soul sleep. Or, more precisely, if dream drifters can roam the collective unconscious while alive, then perhaps they can do the same, lucidly, after they have passed.”

  “Hmm,” Daniel said. “So they want to live forever. If you call this living.”

  Milton’s thoughts raced in a hundred different directions. Question upon question assailed him, but he pushed them aside except for the most immediate among them. “Daniel, why did you choose to end this charade now?”

  Daniel smiled mischievously. “Plato said, ‘The virtuous man is content to dream what a wicked man really does.’ Maybe he meant that while everyone has a dark side, they should be judged by their actions, not their thoughts. Or maybe it means deep down, even the best of us is capable of doing some really shitty things when we think we can get away with it. No one should have the power to pick through someone else’s thoughts.

  “The more I learned about what you and your friends can do…what I can do, the more I knew I had to stop you. All of you. So I’ve been playing one side against the other in hopes that you’d destroy each other…or at least be too busy duking it out to mess with innocent people.”

  Daniel reached into the waistband of his pants and pulled out his silver pistol. Milton tensed. Before he could decide whether to fight back—even though it was Daniel’s dream, Milton was confident he could overpower the boy in a one-on-one battle of wills, Daniel reversed his hold on the weapon and handed the gun, handle first, to Milton.

  “You’re letting me go?” Milton asked.

  “After I watched your memories, I realized you’re one of the good guys, Milton. You tried to keep the Lucid Dreaming Society in check back in the day, and I’m guessing the only reason you joined the CIA was because you knew they were going to investigate dream drifting anyway and you wanted keep an eye on them and make sure they didn’t abuse it. Hell, you probably even use your turn signal when nobody else is around. Take the gun.”

  Milton did so, albeit reluctantly. The gun felt heavy and awkward in his hand.

  “I’m letting you go because you have to stop the people who actually believe they’re gods.” Daniel bent down and kissed Clementine on the top of her head. “I’ve tried to keep this place hidden from both Project Valhalla and COPE, but once my old friends realize I betrayed them, it won’t take them long to find me. We’d better go.”

  “Shouldn’t we just wake up?” Milton asked.

  Scoff. “I wish I could. Maybe you could, but I have a much more interesting destination in mind.”

  “Where?”

  Daniel let out a full-blown laugh. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

  ***

  The stillness of the sleepy house was shattered by a cacophony of screams and the shriek of metal splitting metal. Milton fell into a crouching position, covering his ears while staring, agog, at the war raging around him.

  A man with pointed ears crashed to the ground beside him, his bronze helmet cleaved cleanly in half and his face obscured in thick red blood. The creature’s horror-stricken eyes met Milton’s. Then he said something in a language that sounded like Old Norse and promptly died.

  All around him, the elves—at least Milton assumed that was what they were supposed to be—were falling back, shields raised to fend off the blows of the hundreds of half-naked brutes that towered nearly twice the height of an average man. The elves ignored him as they retreated to the safety of a massive bastion made of white stone.

  Out of desperation and fear, Milton raised Daniel’s gun, only to find that it had become a shiny silver dagger.

  What the hell is happening?

  Milton scrambled after the fleeing elves, but something big and solid clipped him in the shoulder, jarring every bone in his body.

  He hit the ground and rolled uncontrollably for a several yards. When the world stopped spinning, he saw a giant standing over him, club raised. He tried to tell himself it was only a dream, but reason alone couldn’t quell the instinctual terror gripping him.

  The club came down quickly.

  Milton closed his eyes. An instant later, a horrible, gurgling noise made him open them again. The point of a long blade disappeared back into the giant’s gut. The behemoth fell first to its knees and then onto its face. Behind the giant, a knight with a bloody sword and a long mustache stared quizzically at him.

  “Who art thou and what are thy intentions?” barked
the knight.

  Not a real person…just a mannequin…

  “My name is Milton Baerwald, and I haven’t the faintest idea why I...look out!”

  The knight reacted instantly, bringing his sword up to block the barbed spearhead speeding toward his spine. Milton barely breathed as he watched the knight square off against the giant, swinging his sword in wide arcs. After a few narrow escapes—the spear passed perilously close to the knight’s unprotected face on one exchange—the knight drove his blade into the giant’s knee. The beast howled and fell forward.

  With a final swing of the sword, the giant’s head flew from its shoulders.

  But two giants were there to take its place. As the knight struggled against the newcomers, Milton noticed for the first time that two other men in suits of armor fought nearby. At some point, Milton must have risen to his feet again because he felt his knees go weak when one of the other knights collapsed under a club the size of a small tree trunk. A moment later, the one was cut down by a giant’s ax.

  None of them are real…but whose dream is this?

  The knight closest to him cried out. Milton noted the newly dead giant at his feet, but one of the beast’s companions let out a roar of sadistic delight as the knight staggered backward. His breastplate was crumpled, as, presumably, were the bones beneath. To his credit, the knight still clutched his sword. The red-strained tip jerked erratically as he tried to maintain his balance.

  Suddenly, the knight shouted, “Gods, receive my soul this day!” and flung himself blade-first at the giant.

  The humungous club struck with a hollow thud, launching the knight into the air. The man hit the ground twenty feet away.

  The giant turned its attention to Milton.

  This is a dream. I can do anything.

  Milton held out the gun-turned-dagger and concentrated. The blade stretched out until reaching what he supposed was a respectable length for a sword. At the same time, his 21st century clothes faded to gray and grew as hard as steel. Though the strain was enormous—greater than any battle of wills he had ever waged—he produced a shield for his other hand.

  The giant’s jaw dropped.

  “I don’t know whose nightmare this is, but I’m taking over,” Milton said.

  The giant continued to gape, but Milton realized it wasn’t looking at him but beyond him. The scene went silent, as giants and elves ceased fighting and, one by one, turned to look in the same direction. Milton turned around slowly.

  Perhaps a mile away, an enormous tree burned with bright golden flames. He had to shield his eyes when a beam of light shot from the topmost branches straight up into the sky. Thunder shook the earth. The clouds hanging over the valley turned gold, then red.

  “Ragnarök,” said a guttural voice from behind him.

  Milton shot the giant a skeptical look. “You’re joking, right?”

  An ear-splitting keen swallowed his last word and made the hairs on his neck stand up. Spectral figures soared down from where the golden light had pierced the clouds. Many of the phantoms looked like people, but others resembled animals boasting exaggerated fangs and claws as well as extra appendages.

  He stood there, staring, for what seemed like days.

  Ragnarök…literally “the destiny of the gods.” Daniel, you have one twisted sense of humor.

  “Milton!”

  Hearing the familiar voice in such a foreign place made the situation seem even more surreal. Milton tore his eyes away from the heavenly host and found the speaker. The knight who had spoken to him earlier—the man who had sped like a golf ball across the battlefield—ran toward him. While the blood-spattered armor remained, the mustache was gone. The man’s gray-green eyes were unmistakable.

  “Is it really you, Earl?” Milton asked.

  Boden, an astonished smile on his face, said, “I was about to ask you the same thing.”

  Milton laughed, unable and unwilling to hide his relief. “I suppose this makes you my knight in shining armor.”

  The other man’s smile faded, and his eyes made a quick sweep of their surroundings. “To be honest, we weren’t expecting to find you here. But since you are…and you remember who we are…I advise a hasty retreat. The enemy might be close by.”

  “William?” Milton asked.

  Pause. “We’re not entirely certain who is in charge.”

  Beyond Odin—and never had Boden’s code name seemed more appropriate—the two other fallen knights climbed to their feet and hurried over to them. One of them was noticeably taller than he had been before. The other had grown long hot-pink hair and breasts.

  “Heimdall! Syn!” Milton exclaimed.

  Syn wrapped him in a hug. Their armor made the embrace more than a little awkward. “It’s about friggin’ time you recognize us!”

  Odin, a long spear in hand, cleared his throat. “You have to wake up, Borr, before Daniel Pierce and his cohorts return.”

  Milton shook his head. “Daniel isn’t a threat. He’s the one who let me go.”

  Before he could say more, the ground began to rumble, and a giant crack zigzagged across the valley. Hundreds of hunched, dark-skinned monsters poured up from the hole.

  The black elves.

  “This really is Ragnarök,” Milton said. “But whose dream are we in?”

  “It’s not a dream at all.” Syn pulled a stiletto out of a sheath in her high-heeled boot and sent it spinning at a charging black elf. The improvised dart buried itself hilt-deep in the creature’s throat. “We’re in a novel.”

  “What?”

  Odin stretched out his hand, and five lightning bolts shot from his fingertips, scattering a group of the dark, misshapen creatures. “There is a lot to explain, but this is not the place for a debriefing.”

  “To Valhalla then?” Heimdall suggested.

  “No!” Milton shouted, surprising even himself by the intensity behind the word. “The mastermind behind all of this must be here somewhere.”

  The three of them ducked as a dragon covered in iridescent green scales swooped low over the battlefield. The wyrm belched a ball of swirling flame at the castle, melting the alabaster walls. Some of the elves fell from the parapets. Those that didn’t escape in time were reduced to ash that rained down on the combatants below.

  Odin dispatched a giant with the long, barbed spear. “We must retreat and regroup!”

  Milton could barely hear him over the latest peal of thunder—a growl not from the sky, but from somewhere deep beneath their feet.

  “No,” Milton yelled back. “I want answers!”

  Where are you, William?

  Something humungous and white shot out from a pit near the castle. Taller and taller it grew, looking almost like an albino beanstalk. When it reached the height of the tallest tower, the rounded tip wrapped itself around the crenellations. Two cold black eyes looked down at Milton.

  “What the hell is that?” Syn asked.

  “Jörmungandr,” Milton gasped. “The Midgard serpent. It’s long enough to encircle the world, and it kills Thor at Ragnarök, according to the legend.”

  Syn drew another short blade from her boot. “Speaking of Thor, where is Vin—?”

  “Heimdall, stay with Borr,” Odin ordered. “I will return to Valhalla and summon the valkyries.”

  The deep voice of Jörmungandr shook the air. “Milton Baerwald is here! Stop him, Fenrir!”

  The biggest wolf Milton had ever seen emerged from the fog-like shadow that had washed over the valley. Claws bared, jaws slavering, it leaped at Milton.

  “No!” Odin shoved him aside, taking the full brunt of the wolf’s attack.

  Fenrisúlfr slays Odin during Ragnarök. But this isn’t real. Fenrir and Jörmungandr might be dream drifters, but none of us can die here.

  A small voice in the back of Milton’s mind reminded him that he had been ambushed once before. Could the wolf and serpent render his friends comatose as well?

  Heimdall, suddenly clad in armor of the purest white an
d clutching a rod with the head of ram, maneuvered himself between Milton and the wolf, which pinned Odin to the ground. “We’re not prepared for this, Borr,” Heimdall said. “Might revenge wait for another day?”

  “This isn’t about revenge!” Milton snapped.

  Syn tried to close in on the wolf’s flank, but the beast lashed out with its hind legs and sent the woman tumbling into a band of black elves, which immediately started slashing her with cleavers and knives.

  Meanwhile, Odin had managed to heave Fenrir off of him, but not before one of the wolf’s immense paws scored a hit. Claws ripped through the armor and flesh beneath. Odin swore but brought his spear to the ready, preparing for the next attack.

  The wolf let out a growl that sounded too much like a man’s laugh.

  “Heimdall, you get the reinforcements!” Odin ordered.

  “Wait!” Milton shouted.

  “The virtuous man is content to dream what the wicked man really does.”

  Is this a test of my moral fiber, Daniel? Or were you hoping we dream drifters would fight this battle through to the end?

  Milton let his weapon, which had shrunk back down to the size of a dagger, fall to the ground. “Everyone, retreat to Valhalla!”

  “No arguments here!” Syn said, rejoining them.

  The relief was clear in Odin’s expression. He and Heimdall had forced Fenrir back, but the wolf circled them, waiting to strike. If they were going to flee, it was now or never.

  Milton concentrated on the image of Yggdrasil. The tapestries lining the wide corridors. The way the flickering light from the torches made the shadows dance around the Great Hall. The flagstone floors. The faces of his friends.

  “Nooooo!” Jörmungandr’s deafening cry was underscored by Fenrir’s howl.

  As the apocalypse began to disintegrate all around him, Milton caught a glimpse of a small Asian child standing alone on the battlefield, witnessing the pandemonium without expression.

  William?

  Chapter 35

  Vincent struggled against the darkness, frantically trying to orient himself. The sensation was much like falling, as though a vortex had appeared in Suzanne’s living room and sucked him into a vacuum.