Where Nightmares Ride

by R A Baxter

  The earth shook, and Jack covered his ears against the deafening roar of hundreds of trees being wrenched from their roots. Countless tons of rock, soil, and trees flew right and left, landing hundreds of yards beyond the town and leaving massive dust clouds behind them.

  The smell of moist soil again blanketed the town and the sky darkened.

  “They’re destroying the whole town!” Clara ran to Katie.

  Three drab-green armored personnel carriers floated out of haze at the end of the town, hovering in the center of the newly made clearing. Twenty light armored vehicles rolled past them on both sides, each packed with camouflaged Sleeper soldiers with assault rifles hanging over their shoulders.

  Two men in dark suits stood in the lead vehicle, their faces sour and resolute.

  “It’s the Murdocks,” Jack said.

  “We’ve waited too long,” Jeb ran to the door and opened it, the frog nestled on his shoulder. “Get upstairs! Now!”

  Jack set out to tackle the first step of Jeb’s porch, but almost collapsed from the searing pain that shot through his right leg. He couldn’t move to the next step until both feet rested on the first one. “I may be awhile. You guys run ahead. I’ll catch up as fast as I can.”

  “We’re not leaving without you, dummy.” Katie ran to his side and Clara darted to the other. They pulled his arms around their shoulders and heaved to lift him to the next step.

  Another thunderous rumble shook the house and Jack looked down the street. A fountain of water shot up from an enormous hole in the ground where the pink clapboard house had been. He saw no sign of the woman with the broom, nor of any other dreamers in the streets.

  One of the giants held the little home against his bare belly, and a section of wooden flooring cracked and dropped from below the house, along with a wooden table, three wooden chairs, and an old flowery blue sofa. The furniture tumbled down the giant’s tan loin cloth and bounced off a bare right foot twice the size of the Murdocks’ flat-topped armored vehicle.

  The giant raised the house over his head and launched it into the woods where it crashed and crumbled to pieces among the distant pine trees. The Sleeper soldiers swerved their vehicles to a stop in front of six other homes and businesses, jumped from their vehicles with rifles in their hands, and swarmed all over the street, making their way into each structure.

  Clara and Katie eased Jack to the level of the porch, then helped him to the screen door Jeb held open. Clara started to cross the threshold but stopped and stepped back when a cheerful young girl in a yellow dress skipped out the door.

  The frog hopped down from Jeb’s shoulder and stood in front of the girl, staring at her and grinning larger than should’ve been possible.

  The girl pointed at him, smiled, and laughed. “Mr. Toad! Are you back from another adventure?”

  The frog opened his mouth to speak but didn’t get a word out before Jeb rushed to the girl’s side and shoved her into the door frame. She disappeared.

  “Jeb!” Clara glared at him, her eyes showing shock.

  Jeb shook his head “Had to wake her, miss. We can’t waste a second.”

  Rumbles, cracks, and explosions of another home being destroyed reached their ears and Clara nodded. She and Katie helped Jack through the doorway and walked him across the ornate Oriental rug in the foyer. They arrived at a set of white-painted stairs.

  Jack pushed the girls’ arms away and took hold of the decorative newel at the base of the baluster. “Go ahead of me. I can make it up the stairs pretty quick holding onto these rails.” He looked at Katie and Clara in turn.

  “Okay, but you better be right behind us.” Katie placed a hand on Clara’s back to urge her up the stairs, then followed her up. Jeb darted up the stairs behind them.

  Jack encountered the frog standing outside the doorway, folding his arms, frowning and staring at him.

  “You can’t come with us, Mr. Toad, “Jack said. “You better go hide somewhere.”

  The frog firmed his resolve. “That little girl Mr. Colton so rudely woke up was my originator! She dreamed me into this world. This insult will never be forgiven. Tell your crazy old miner friend that our friendship is heretofore terminated!”

  The square wood-shingled roof of a flower shop bounded and rolled along the street behind the frog and crashed into another building down the street out of Jack’s view. Unintelligible voices of distant soldiers yelled things at each other. Gunshots sounded. Doors slammed and Jack winced at the sound of another home being torn from its foundation and tossed into an adjacent neighborhood.

  “I’ll be going now.” The frog hopped along the porch and away from the mayhem.

  Jack turned to the rickety stairs and grabbed hold of the wooden rails on both sides of the stairway. He put all his weight into his arms and swung his feet from step to step, passing photos on the wall of the little girl and her mother. Halfway up the stairs, he gained a clear view out a window across the room and watched a burly Sleeper soldier kick down the door of a house two doors down. Eight other soldiers invaded the home, hands on their rifles. Seconds later, they charged out the door and headed for the house next door.

  The massive palm of one of the giants slapped against the side wall of the home two-doors down and it started to rise. A window crashed into shards and boards splintered from the walls. Water flew up and dripped from the house’s foundation. Jack looked away and swung his legs to the next step and the next. Katie stood at the attic door with her arms out. She grabbed his hands and helped him through the attic door the moment he reached the landing.

  Katie wrapped Jack’s arm around her shoulder and helped him limp across the dusty wood-slat attic floor. Jeb shut the door and locked it.

  Stacks of boxes of various sizes and shapes lined two of the walls, and a rack of dresses hung on a rod along the far wall. A black chest with chrome studs sat at the foot of a small brass, four-poster bed to Jack’s right. Light entered the room through a single octagonal window, adding to the light from a single incandescent light bulb hanging from the steep rafters on a frayed black wire in the center of the room.

  An earsplitting crack, followed by a rumbling noise, shook the house, and it creaked and swayed back and forth with such force that Jack braced for the structure to collapse.

  “That was the house next door,” Jack said.

  “Where’s the haunt? I don’t see anything,” Clara said.

  “’Tisn’t visible, only but a shadow.” Jeb pointed to the floorboards. “Me haunt is the area in front of this old chest. Tis a space that exists in both worlds at once. To pass through it, ye must forget this world and think on Materia. If luck be with us, ye’ll be walkin’ into Materia.”

  The stomping of many boots echoed from the porch outside, followed by a loud crack at the front door. Clara darted to the area where Jeb had pointed, and Katie helped Jack limp to the spot.

  Jeb pulled two silver-barreled flintlocks from the holsters at his waste. “I may have to create a diversion.”

  Jack smiled, but his smile quickly faded—he could see the row of dresses on the other side of the room through Jeb’s body. The black bag no longer hung from Jeb’s belt.

  “You’re fading!” Clara ran to Jeb, but he held his hands up to stop her.

  Boots clomped on the wooden stairs and Jeb turned and waved his fingers at the paneled door. A dark mist formed in front of it and densified into a twenty-four-inch-thick block of black iron matching the size of the door and settling snug against it. Jack could barely hear the rattling of the doorknob, or the subsequent pounding of rifle butts against the door.

  “That should hold ’em fer a minute’r two. Stay in the haunt and close ye eyes. Think o’ the things that ye find only in Materia. Maybe a hot sun under a bright blue sky.”

  “It probably isn’t daytime,” Jack said. “There were people dreaming in the town.”

  “People may be dreamin’ here from all over the world, and at any time o’ day, but ye may be right. The lass w
e met at the door is a local gal. So, close ye eyes and think on starry nights and cold air. When ye feel the cool night on yer skin, you’ll know ye be there.”

  Thumping continued against the wood door, but the iron block didn’t budge. Jeb kept a gun ready in each hand and watched the walls near the stairs.

  Katie placed a hand on Clara’s shoulder, but she wiggled free and ran to Jeb.

  “You have to come with us.” Clara grabbed his arm.

  “’Taint nothin’ that’ll stop them fer long, Miss Clara. They’ll find a way into this room. Do as I says.”

  The butt of a rifle broke through a wall next to the door.

  “Ye helped me find peace, Clara. I want nothing now except to save ye. Close ye eyes, me friend, and know that me soul will forever be grateful to ye. That be certain’.”

  The walls beyond Jeb grew clearer, his body more difficult to see. Clara’s eyes welled up and she nodded but didn’t move. Jeb smiled at her and wiggled his right hand. The floorboards in front of Clara heaved upward and she fell backward against Katie.

  “Close your eyes,” Katie said.

  Clara frowned and closed her teary eyes. Jack waited for Katie to close hers before closing his own. He thought about the cool night air against his face and visualized a clear, starry night, for the first time realizing how much he longed to experience them again.

  Pounding through the wallboard continued with blasts of gunfire.

  “Stay out o’ me house, ye vermin!” Jeb’s voice faded into silence.

  Jack’s arms shivered against a sudden chill in the air and he opened his eyes.

  Jack drank in cool air and wondered how he’d survived without it. He opened his eyes to a room he hardly recognized. A half dozen brown boxes lay stacked against two of the walls, but the black chest was gone. There was no dangling light bulb, and a tall table now stood snug against the wall where the bed had been seconds ago. Drawings, a short stack of paper, and a square lamp on a flexible metal shaft sat on the sloped table surface, along with two small canisters of paint brushes and a flat box of colored pencils. On the opposite side of the room, stacks of books and magazines covered an old brown sofa where the row of dresses had been. A large, round, beige rug hid most of the glossy, refinished, wood-slat floor.

  Jack looked at Katie and Clara and found them gazing back at him in the glow of the moonlight shining through the window. He stared at them, trying to come to terms with what had just happened. He wanted to believe what his mind kept telling him, that he’d just awoken from a bad dream, but such thoughts couldn’t account for the bruises, the dull pain in his legs and back, and the fact that he now stood in the attic of a perfect stranger.

  “What do we do now?” Katie broke the silence.

  Jack looked down and shook his head. “You heard what Lynch said. They’ll be watching our families and hunting for us everywhere, even in our dreams. How do we run from that?”

  Katie’s shoulders dropped, and she leaned against the drawing table. “There’s no one I can trust. My whole life has been one big delusion.”

  Clara sauntered over to the octagonal window and glanced down at the quiet street. Her eyes widened, and she gripped the dusty window frame. “That looks like Taylor!” She stepped aside and waved for Katie and Jack to take a look.

  Jack limped to the window and became excited. The tall lanky blonde stood in front of a chain-link fence, staring up at the window with wide eyes and a big smile. Taylor glanced at the front of the house and his smile vanished. He tilted his head and pointed both his index fingers toward the back of the house, then ran that direction.

  “Someone’s here. He wants us to escape out the back door. Let’s go.” Jack started to move, but Katie grabbed his shoulder and looked him in the eyes.

  “I hate to say it, but what if it’s a trap? What if they got to Taylor?”

  Jack felt sickened by the thought, but after pondering it a few seconds he shook his head. “He’s my best friend. If they have him, they might as well take me, too.” Jack limped to the door and swung it open. Katie and Clara followed behind him.

  “Need any help?” Katie took his hand.

  “I can make it down the stairs.” Jack held the rails tight and swung his feet down two steps at a time. He cringed every time the old boards creaked but held onto the hope that he’d be out of the house before anyone came to investigate the noise. He landed on the bottom step and froze when someone pounded hard on the nearby front door.

  Light flickered on to his left, emerging from below a paneled door. Jack looked back at Katie for a second, saw the fear in her eyes, and turned back around and swung his feet to the floor. He turned back down the hallway when his legs gave out and he fell forward a step. Katie darted to his side, caught him, and wrapped an arm around him. Clara ran to his other side and did the same.

  “Who do they think they are, waking people in the middle of the night?” a woman said from the room to the left. The door handle shook.

  Jack hugged the girls’ necks and limped with them four steps down the carpeted hallway. The light from the adjacent room flooded the foyer. He leaned to his left and pulled the girls with him into a wide, open closet below the stairs. They pressed their backs against a line of fluffy coats and thick sweaters. Jack caught a glimpse of a robust woman with messy, light-brown hair and a cozy white bathrobe entering the foyer from the side room. She held a rifle under her right arm.

  A row of framed photographs of the woman and a young girl hung on the hallway wall, one of which reflected a partial view of the front door to Jack’s eyes. It didn’t escape him that the people at the front door might be afforded a similar view of him hiding in the closet. He pulled a bright blue coat in front of himself.

  Someone pounded on the door again.

  “Give me a second!” The woman snarled, looked down, then smiled at someone outside of Jack’s view. “Get back to bed, Sweetie. Nothing to be afraid of.”

  “I dreamed about Mr. Toad again, but I woke up,” a little girl said.

  “That’s nice. Now back to bed. Hurry up now.” The woman waited for the girl to close a door to her right, then unlocked the front door and opened it six inches. She leveled the gun barrel out the door. “What’s the meaning of this? It’s the middle of the night! You’re scaring my daughter to death.”

  “We hate to bother you, ma’am,” a gruff voice said. “We received a report that someone spotted some kids from the camp in your attic. We just need to check it out.”

  Jack recognized the gruff voice of one of the soldiers who’d taken Taylor away. He still couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman.

  “Not those rumors again.” The woman opened the door and stepped aside, her rifle still raised. “People in this town are always going on about my house being haunted. I don’t see how anyone could’ve broken in. I keep my doors locked twenty-four seven. But you got me nervous now. Go ahead and check out my attic, but if you’re still here in five minutes, I start shooting.”

  “No need to worry about us,” the agent said. The soldier rushed up the stairs with a companion, and the woman followed them up at a leisurely pace.

  Jack leaned out the closet door, pulled Katie and Clara with him, and limped down the hallway with the girls on either side of him. Furniture scraped along the attic floor above. He found a paneled back door on the far side of a small room on his left at the end of the hallway, opposite the kitchen area. Jack stepped past a pile of clothing on top of a washing machine. Katie turned the brass deadlock on the door and twisted the knob, opening the door.

  “Sandy, are you out of bed again?” The woman called from the attic.

  Jack rushed out the door, still sandwiched between Clara and Kate.

  Taylor ran up the back steps and stood in front of him, looking him and the girls up and down. “Man, what did they do to you guys? You look like you stepped out of a zombie movie.”

  “Not far from the truth,” Katie said.

  “I’m so glad to see you
,” Clara gave Taylor a hug.

  “You’re telling me! Come on, the car’s hidden down this back road a ways.” Taylor pointed off to their right beyond a row of rose bushes and several tall sycamores. “Sorry I couldn’t park any closer. Lynch’s people have been wandering around.”

  Taylor motioned for Clara and Katie to move away from Jack, then he pulled Jack’s arm over his shoulder and wrapped a strong right arm around his waist. Jack hopped down the steps, leaning heavily on Taylor, and limped with Taylor’s help across the back lawn toward an open gate in the chain link fence.

  “You have no idea how glad I am to see you,” Jack said.

  “Dude, my head’s been on a roller coaster wondering what was going on with you. I totally meant to pick you up south of camp the other night, but those stupid guards wouldn’t leave me alone. They followed me all the way to Kalispell and wouldn’t leave even when I spent like fifteen minutes at the gas station down the street. I heard that huge explosion at the camp. It lit up the whole sky. I thought you died, man. I tried to head back to camp, but those guards wouldn’t let me pass. I could’ve killed them.”

  They funneled through the back gate, turned to their right, and started walking as fast as Jack could limp down a dark narrow road canopied by tall, lush trees.

  Taylor smiled at Clara. “I tried to ditch those stupid guards at the motel in Kalispell, but the jerks stole my keys. They didn’t give them back until the next morning. I outsmarted them, though. I messed with their Humvee during the night, so when they gave me back the keys, I took off. The expression on their stupid faces was priceless.”

  Taylor laughed and directed Jack and the girls up a narrow unpaved side road. The moonlight reflecting off Jack’s silver Ford Fiesta a few hundred yards up the path.

  “Wish I’d been there, dude,” Jack said.

  “My life was all mental torture after I escaped from them,” Taylor said. “Man, I didn’t know if you were ever going to show up. I recognized a few guards from camp casing out the area yesterday, but that was good because it told me they were still looking for you guys.”