Overheard in a Dream

by Torey Hayden

  James had always been a stickler for honesty because it was such a basic component of trust and trust was so essential to his work. Consequently, he’d always assumed he’d be the sort of person who would fail miserably at deception, if only because he’d had so little practice. But he found it surprisingly easy to sound as if this were the most natural thing to be doing on the South Dakota plains in March. A cookout, he explained: hot dogs on sticks, fire-roasted potatoes, marshmallows. And the more the merrier, so, of course, he wanted Conor to join them. James kept a studied levity in his voice, hoping that after all the minor breaches of professionalism their relationship had enjoyed, Laura wouldn’t think too carefully about this one.

  James had never been out to the McLachlan ranch before. After the wastes of the Badlands, the rich, forested reaches of the Black Hills were a stark contrast. The ranch buildings lay in a secluded valley of open grassland protected by a ponderosa forest. The road to the house wended its way through a series of wooden-fenced corrals and neatly kept barns.

  When the Jeep pulled up, Morgana came running out of the front door. “Hi! Hi!” she cried. Laura appeared in the doorway, herding Conor gently in front of her.

  “Guess what!” Becky said to Morgana, as she leaped out of the car. “This is going to be our second picnic today. We had a picnic lunch too.”

  “See my new shoes?” Mikey piped up.

  Conor clutched his toy cat closely against his chest.

  “Why don’t you get in the car,” James said, extending a friendly hand to him. “You can sit up front with me.” He opened the passenger door to the Jeep.

  “You’re being very brave to take this whole crowd on an outing,” Laura said in a gently mocking voice.

  “We’re going to the Badlands,” Becky chimed in.

  “Come on, Becky. We haven’t got much time. Get in the car,” James said.

  Laura frowned. “The Badlands? That’s a long way. There are some excellent campgrounds very nearby, James. I can give you a map.”

  “Daddy likes the Badlands,” Becky said. “Don’t you, Daddy? Because, you know what? We’ve already been out there once today, and Daddy likes it so much there he wants to go again.”

  Laura’s brow furrowed more deeply.

  James grinned sheepishly. “Yes, silly Daddy, eh? But it’s very beautiful in the evening. So come on, Becky, get in the car.”

  “Yeah, look at my new shoes!” Mikey said cheerfully and lifted a foot up. “Becky threw one of my other ones down the hillside at the Badlands and Daddy couldn’t reach it, so he had to buy me new ones. These got flashers on the bottom.”

  “Becky, Mikey, get in the car. Now.”

  Laura caught James’s eye. He looked away, leaning in to check the kids’ seatbelts. Then he bid a cheery goodbye, climbed into the driver’s seat, started the engine and left.

  “Things are going to be a little different than we’d planned,” James said, as they approached the interstate turn-off for the Badlands. “By the time we go to the supermarket and get stuff for a cookout, there won’t be enough time to make a fire and cook it before it gets too dark.”

  “But you said …” Mikey cried.

  “I know and I’m sorry. I made a mistake about how much time driving to Morgana’s house would take. So instead, we’re going to stop at the Dairy Queen and get hamburgers.”

  There was a moment’s silence in the back and then Becky leaned forward until James could feel her breath on his neck. “Daddy?” she whispered.

  “Yes, sweetheart?”

  “Can you tell me yet what’s going on?”

  Conor appeared much less normal at the Dairy Queen than he did in the playroom. He wouldn’t speak at all and he wouldn’t make eye contact. He only ate his hamburger after pulling it entirely apart and separating the food into little piles. He then consumed each item individually, starting with the patty of meat, then the ketchup-covered pickles, then the bun. When not occupied with eating, he faintly flapped the fingers of his right hand over his food. Kitty remained tightly clutched to Conor’s chest throughout the meal.

  They were soon all in the car again, speeding out over the prairie towards the Badlands. The Black Hills, far distant, stood silhouetted against the western horizon by the dying colours of the day. The moon, a few days past full, peered out of the east like a heavy-lidded eye.

  “Where are we going anyway?” Mikey queried.

  “To the picnic area where we were at lunch,” James said.

  “How come back there?” Becky asked.

  “I want to show Conor something. That’s why we’re coming out here. Because Conor’s been telling me about a place and I think no one believed him. We all thought it was just something in his dreams. But at lunchtime when I was helping Mikey get back up the path, I think I saw the place Conor’s been talking about. So I wanted him to see it.”

  “Why?” Becky asked.

  “Because if people keep telling you that the things you experience aren’t real, it can make your life very scary and unsettled.”

  “What are me and Mikey and Morgana supposed do while you’re showing him this place?” Becky asked.

  “You can just play in the viewpoint area. We won’t be there very long.”

  “We’re supposed to play in the dark?” Mikey asked incredulously.

  “Your Uncle Jack and I used to do that all the time when we were little,” James replied. “We played hide and seek and kick the can and lots of other great games outside after dark.”

  “I don’t think kids play like that anymore,” Becky said doubtfully.

  They passed through the entrance to the park and approached the first viewpoint. The Badlands themselves weren’t yet fully visible because of the way erosion had formed them from the level of the plains, but the moonlight was beginning to illuminate changes in the landscape.

  Conor sat abruptly upright. He leaned close to the windshield and peered out. “Where’s this?” he murmured and turned to look at James.

  James pulled into the car park at the first viewpoint and let the children out. Conor gazed in amazement at the bizarre splendour unfolding as they walked down the steps to the overlook. Pressing his stuffed cat tight to his chest, he turned, looked at James and then looked back at the landscape.

  “I wanted you to see this place,” James said gently to him. “When I was here earlier and saw it, I thought, ‘This is what Conor is telling me about.’ I thought you should come and see it too.”

  Bewilderment suffused Conor’s expression. “There’s the moon,” he said softly and pointed up at the pale, uneven orb bright in the dusky sky. He turned back to the jagged landscape. “But here’s the moon too. Terria. This is terria. Everywhere is terria. Or is it?”

  “Does Conor think this is the moon?” Morgana asked.

  “Probably the moon does look like this,” Becky said.

  “Where are the trees?” Conor asked.

  “There’s lots of trees down there, Conor,” Becky said and pointed into the abyss below them. “If you kind of stretch yourself out over the rail, you can see lots of trees at the bottom.”

  Leaning far over the guardrail, Conor stared into the dusk of the deep basin.

  “Why did you want to show Conor this, Daddy?” Becky asked.

  “I know,” Morgana replied. “’Cause this is where the man under the rug lives, isn’t it? Huh, Dr Innes? This is the place Conor always talks about.”

  Before James could answer, Conor nodded. “Yes,” he said.

  James heard the car engine from a long way off. At first it hardly penetrated the antediluvian silence that lay over the vast landscape. It was just a faint drone, like a fly trapped beyond a window pane.

  Then Becky said, “Someone else is coming to see this place at night.”

  “Hey! That’s our truck,” Morgana shouted.

  James’s blood ran cold.

  Before the car had even pulled into the car park, Morgana was charging up the steps from the viewpoint with
Becky and Mikey in hot pursuit.

  “Becky! Kids! Stop! Come back here.” Grabbing Conor’s hand, James bolted up the steps two at a time to catch the children. James could see Laura at the wheel of the truck and two rifles in the gun rack on the rear window of the pick-up cab. “Kids, get in my car. Now. All of you.” He pushed Becky in the direction of the Jeep. “I mean it. Get in and lock the doors until I say.”

  “No, it’s just my mum,” Morgana replied.

  “Yes, I know it is. But do as I say. All right? Just for now. Conor, you too. Get into the car, lock the doors and stay there until I tell you.”

  “Why?” Becky cried

  “Do it.”

  Laura turned the engine off but left the headlights on. For several moments she remained in the cab and didn’t get out. James, trapped in the glare of the headlights, stood staring at the guns silhouetted in the rear window of the cab.

  Finally the truck door opened and Laura descended onto the asphalt. “What the hell is going on?” she asked, her voice tense. “What are you doing out here with these kids?”

  She didn’t have anything in her hands from what he could tell but she wasn’t moving away from the open door of the truck, so James put himself between Laura and the children in his Jeep.

  “Laura, I know,” he said as quietly as he could manage.

  “Know what?”

  “About Fergus. It is Fergus, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t have a fucking clue what you’re talking about.”

  “The man under the rug. The ghost man.”

  “Don’t get crazy on me, James.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Morgana?” she called out. “Can you hear me, sweetie? Get out of the car. Get Conor and come here. It’s time to go home.”

  Behind him, James heard a door of the Jeep open and then a second door.

  “Morgana, don’t move. Kids? Everyone. Just stay there a moment,” James said. “Get back in the car.”

  A numbing calm overtook him. It made all his senses more acute. He could hear birds – owls maybe? – calling far distant across the darkness. He could smell the sharp, cold, sagebrush-scented evening air mingled with the lingering odour of petrol fumes from the pickup’s engine. He was aware of his feet growing cold. Everything felt detached and unreal.

  Around them a most terrible silence grew. Although he couldn’t see them because his back was still to the Jeep, James could sense the children were out of the car, but no one moved and the moment felt eternal.

  Then abruptly a shriek from one of the children. “Conor!”

  James whirled around to see Conor disappear over the guard rail and down the steep embankment.

  Becky screamed.

  Laura tore past James and around the Jeep to the railing.

  Morgana flapped her hands in fright. “It was his cardboard thing,” she wailed, “that cat he keeps in his pocket. He took it out and it came out of his hands and –”

  His mechanical cat. The small drawing that Conor had made in the playroom drifted gracefully on an updraft from the chasm below.

  Beyond the guard rail Conor had slipped almost immediately on the soft, crumbly soil and then slid about fifty feet down the steep side of the ravine before catching himself on the slope. He remained there, spreadeagled, crying in fright.

  Laura vaulted the rail in a single, smooth motion and began sliding down the unstable soil.

  “Laura! Wait! We need to get help.”

  “I know these hills,” she shouted up. “I’ve been up and down them a million times.”

  Before Laura could reach Conor, however, his grip gave way. He slid and then tumbled, disappearing over the edge of the outcrop below the viewpoint. To James’s horror, Laura started to slip too and before he could react, she too had disappeared down the steep gully.

  “Mummy!” Morgana started screaming.

  James had seen the rope coiled up with Lars’s other hunting equipment in the back of the Jeep. It was just ordinary nylon rope meant for tying deer to the vehicle, but it was rope.

  With trembling hands he fastened it around one of the posts holding the guard railing. He tugged at it several times to make sure it was secure and then climbed through. Knotting it every few feet so he’d have something to grip, he said to the children, “Okay, you three, you stay right here. I mean it. Don’t move from right here. Becky, you’re the oldest. You take care of Morgana and Mikey for me, all right? No fooling around. You’re the grown-up now.”

  Cautiously he lowered himself down the steep slope. Clearing the jagged ledge of soil abutting the viewpoint area, James could just make out Laura below him in the wan, moonlit darkness. She was about a hundred feet further down into the ravine, but still far above the floor of the basin.

  “Laura?” he called.

  She moved. Despite the moonlight, it was too dark for him to be able to tell if she was injured or not.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Conor’s hurt,” she called up. “Can you get to us?”

  James lowered himself to the full extent of the rope but it wasn’t nearly long enough. He remained at least seventy feet above them on the crumbly soil, his weight held by the rope. He’d long since gone from fear into a kind of numbness that left his mind detached and his limbs not feeling wholly like his own, so he hung there over the ledge and contemplated how to get the rest of the way down. In the end, he just opened his hands and let go.

  There was an eerie loneliness to being caught without support on the steep hillside. He could no longer hear the children above, and all around him was the alien landscape, illuminated only by hazy moonlight. James grappled at the crumbling white soil. To his surprise, he didn’t fall when he let go of the rope but remained just where he was.

  Immediately, this felt worse because he realized he would actually have to launch himself to get down to where Laura was. He took a long, deep breath, which made him aware he had not been breathing properly for ages. Taking in a second deep breath, he expelled it slowly.

  To his surprise, what came to his mind was Torgon. For a fleeting moment Laura’s descriptions of the high holy place in the Forest, of Torgon standing at the edge of the white cliff and looking out over her world filled James’s mind brightly, and he had a momentary sense of being somewhere else. It helped. Briefly distracted, he felt calmer. Gently he pushed against the loose soil and let himself slide downwards.

  Laura’s fall had been stopped by a flat ledge and with careful effort James was able to reach her with nothing worse than scrapes on his knees. Laura hadn’t been as lucky. She had removed her shoe and sock from one foot and was using the sock to bind her other foot.

  “I’ve done something to my ankle,” she said. Her voice was hoarse with annoyance.

  “Where’s Conor?”

  “There.”

  James peered over the edge of the outcropping to see Conor directly below them. “Is he hurt? Conor? Can you hear me?”

  The boy looked up but he didn’t respond.

  “Do you have a belt or something?” Laura asked. “Something I can hang onto so I can let myself down over this ledge?”

  “No, Laura, don’t. You’re injured already.”

  “If I can get him, I can lift him up to you.”

  “And what if you can’t? Then you’re both trapped there. Instead, we need to get you back up and then go for help.”

  “And leave him here? No. This is my son.” She looked at James. “And it’s my fault he’s down there on that ledge. Because yes. The man under the rug was Fergus.”

  A brief moment of surreal awareness flooded James. She was a murderess. She had killed a man. He’d expected everything to change with that confirmation. It didn’t. He didn’t hate her. He didn’t fear her. He didn’t perceive her as evil. All he felt was sadness.

  Laura had bits of debris from the fall in her hair. Gently James reached across and pulled a broken stalk of prairie grass out. He flung it away and it fluttered downwards into the basin.


  “On that last night, when Alan was gone and I was alone, he raped me. But when it happened, I knew it wasn’t going to stop there. Sooner or later, he was going to kill my child. Maybe me.

  “I knew where Alan’s hunting knife was. So I thought, Fergus, I’ve passed up greater destinies than yours. I’m not going to let it come to this … So I did what Torgon did.”

  “Then Conor appeared at the top of the stairs and suddenly what I’d just done became very real. I felt utter panic. I screamed at him to go back to bed, to get out of there so he wouldn’t see. All I could think to do was wrap Fergus’s body up in the rug by the fireplace. I got it out to the truck, but I had to take Conor with me. I couldn’t leave him in the house alone. The only place I could think to go was here, to the Badlands. I’d come to know this land so well when I was working on the Pine Ridge reservation. I knew no one can see into the bottom of most of these ravines.”

  “And you thought none of this would affect Conor?”

  “He was hardly two. I hoped it would be nothing but a bad dream to him.”

  There was silence. Confusion flooded over James, as he considered her plight alone on the isolated ranch, fending off Fergus, trying to protect her small son set against the years of trauma in the aftermath of murder.

  “Give me your belt,” she said, her voice soft. “I’m going down.”

  James hesitated.

  “I mean it. Whether you help me or not, I’m going to get him.”

  James took off his belt. “All right.”

  Laura leaned over the ledge. “Are you ready, Conor? Mummy’s coming for you now.”

  Chapter Forty-Six

  The roar of helicopter blades sliced through the chilly stillness. Spotlights parted the darkness and within moments the steep slope was swarming with rescuers. Lifted carefully onto a stretcher, Conor was winched up into the helicopter hovering above. James watched the paramedics examine Laura’s injuries and prepare her to be moved. Then finally they came up the slope to him and he was helped into a safety harness too and lifted from the hillside.