by Gareth Otton
Less than an hour later, Kuruk had a new design on his shoulder, a thick circle with an intricate twisting web woven within it that was more angular than normal, almost geometric. She didn’t need to check with Kuruk to know it was right, she just had to sit back and admire her work.
“You can stop imagining now,” she told her brother.
Kuruk sighed in relief and slumped into the chair.
“Did it work?” he asked.
“You tell me. In a minute I want you to imagine being back home and then flip that switch you’ve been thinking of. Go to my room and get what’s in the bedside drawer and then imagine being back here and flip the switch again.”
“Flip it from the real world?” he asked doubtfully.
“Concentrate on the tattoo when you do,” she agreed.
“What’s in the drawer?”
“I won't tell you, that way we know for sure you made it back to the real world and didn’t just imagine being there in Dream.”
“Okay,” Kuruk said as he climbed to his feet. “Well, here goes nothing.”
For a minute he just stood there and nothing happened, long enough that Mitena thought it hadn’t worked.
Then he vanished.
The next three minutes were the longest of her life. She had no idea if it worked or if she had doomed them both to be stuck here until they faded into nothing. However, suddenly he was back, and he had a huge grin on his face.
“Was this what you were looking for?” he asked, holding out a battered leather-bound book that was instantly familiar.
“Gran’s journal,” she said with a grin, accepting the book that taught her everything she knew of dreamcatchers. By the sounds of it, though, she had just taken the first major steps beyond its content. “It worked.”
“Oh yeah it did. I just thought about that switch and my tattoo at the same time, and the whole thing glows like your dreamcatchers do when we’re on a hunt. It gets hot quickly, but once it was active, I knew it would work. I just imagined being back here and here I am.” He could barely finish his sentence he was grinning so hard. “So what next?”
“Next I do the same tattoo on myself. Then we go home, get your shoulder seen to before you get infected, and then we start thinking of what super powers we want next.”
Kuruk burst out laughing and Mitena couldn’t help but join in. It was so surreal, but it had worked. Finally, they could face the dreamwalkers on their own level.
Still grinning, she sat herself in the chair and imagined her own super power.
8
Thursday, 07th July 2016
21:06
“I’m not sure I get it. This seems boring to me.”
Tony jumped, startled by the voice that tried to pull him from bad memories that weren’t so easily pushed aside. He vividly remembered a feeling of being pulled apart piece by piece, of frantically trying to hold himself together while knowing the very effort of doing so was costing him his sanity. He remembered what it’s like to be a bundle of instincts desiring only to stay on Earth and hold itself together.
Tad saved him from that fate and he was Tony once more, but how could that memory not haunt him?
He focused on the moment, looking around for details, reminding himself where he was and pulling himself back to the present. He was in a large room filled with tables and chairs. He sat in one of the booths lining the walls, in the far right corner where he could see the whole club including the bar and stage. There was no one on stage, just an empty pole. It was early for this place. The women he’d come to see were huddled in a corner, talking to each other while they waited for their first customers of the night.
They were scantily dressed which was reason enough to visit, but he wasn’t seeing any more than he might at a fashion show. The clothes wouldn’t come off until the first customers entered and he couldn’t pretend to be that because he looked like a fourteen-year-old boy.
Instead, he practiced his invisibility and tried a new power that let him touch things while invisible.
“I get that guys like the visual stimulation, but they’re just standing there doing nothing.”
Tony was surprised to find he wasn’t alone at his booth. He was still invisible, which meant that this person was either a Proxy or another ghost.
She looked barely older than him, maybe sixteen at most, and sat close enough that he could see the jeans she wore under the table had more holes than actual material. Coupled with the black t-shirt that didn’t reach her belly button and the dyed red hair, she looked like a lot of teenagers Tony saw today, so he suspected she was a new ghost, and a cute one at that.
She wouldn’t win any beauty contests, especially compared to women like Stella or even those who worked at this club, but there was something about those wide green eyes that appealed to Tony. However, if she was a new ghost that made her sixteen or so, and while he still looked and felt like a teenager, he was thirty.
Disgusted with himself, he looked away.
“Well?” she asked, still pressing for an answer. “What’s so interesting about this place?”
“Why are you here if you don’t already know?” Tony responded.
“I’ve always wondered. They feel seedy to me, yet they never go out of business so people must come here. I wondered why.”
“And you couldn’t wonder from your own booth?” Tony asked.
The girl smiled a pretty smile that would have made the living version of Tony sweat.
“But if I sat on my own, how could I ask you about it?”
“Maybe I want to be alone and don’t want to answer questions.”
“You never objected when I sat down,” she pointed out.
Tony was about to tell her he never saw her sit down, but changed his mind. Instead he asked, “So you’re invisible right now?”
She rolled her eyes in a way that reminded him of Jen.
“Obviously.”
“I’m surprised you can do that. Most new ghosts find it difficult.”
“Maybe I’m not like most new ghosts,” she teased.
“But you are new?” he asked, for the first time eliciting real emotion from her. It only lasted a second, a flicker of something dark across her otherwise happy expression.
“You haven’t told me what’s so interesting,” she pressed.
“If you’re here for an introduction to Tad, think again. He’s not Proxying at the moment. Trust me, I’ve tried to change that, but he’s being stubborn. You’ll have to find another Proxy.”
“Proxy?” she asked. “What’s that?”
He frowned, trying to figure out if she was joking. “You don’t know what a Proxy is?”
Again there was a flicker of emotion, annoyance this time, but it lasted only a little longer.
“I already said that, didn’t I?”
“Then what are you doing here if you don’t want to talk to Tad?”
“I already said, I’ve always been curious about these places. When I saw you come in, I figured who better to explain the appeal than the most famous ghost in the world.”
“Wait. You’re here to see me? Just me?”
This time when her expression slipped, it didn’t recover.
“I already said that. If I say something, I usually mean it.”
“Whoa, sorry. I’m just surprised, no need to bite my head off.”
Embarrassed, the girl turned away and looked at the dancers who were finally getting animated as actual paying customers walked through the door. She blushed, proving just how new a ghost she was. It took a lot for Tony to blush these days as he was comfortable enough with being dead to recognise he didn’t have blood left to make him blush.
She didn’t speak for a minute as she composed herself, and in that minute a dancer strode onto the stage and started her routine. She gyrated to the beat of the music and her hands became busy pulling at her scant clothing to flash yet more flesh.
“Oh,” Amber said like she’d just realised something. “Ok
ay, that’s more like what I expected. It’s still not quite… Oh wait, there it is.” Again she turned away from something that made her uncomfortable, and again she was blushing. The woman on the stage wasn’t wasting time and already her top was on the floor. Now her dance changed to a game of hide and seek, teasing and rewarding her audience as she hid and revealed herself.
“So this is why you like it?” the girl asked, glancing only briefly at the young woman’s routine.
“I thought that would be obvious,” Tony replied a little defensively.
“Maybe it was too obvious, if that makes sense. Is that it, though? You just come here and watch. Isn’t that—”
“What’s with the questions?” Tony snapped, suddenly done with this.
“I’m cur—”
“Yeah, you’re curious, you’ve already said that. It doesn’t explain why you decided I was the one who had to answer for you. I’ve never met you before, I don’t even know your name, and you’re asking me questions like that.”
Tony was finally getting control of himself. He’d come here to escape awkward thoughts and conversation, not to be drawn into even more awkwardness.
“I’m Amber,” she said as though that made things better.
“And what the hell do you want, Amber?” he asked.
“I just wanted to see why you come here… Uh… I mean, why do guys like this—”
“No, you meant me specifically,” Tony said, ignoring the dancer to concentrate on the girl. “You’re not curious. You’re here for me. Why? What the hell do you want?”
“No. I am just here to—”
“Yeah, whatever,” Tony said, done with the conversation and this place. Her questions were bad enough, but now her presence made him uncomfortable being here. He felt judged, and though people thought he didn’t care about such things, it never felt good. These places were his escape, not a place to feel worse about himself.
He stood and stepped through the table like it wasn’t there, then hurried toward the exit. He caught sight of her in the many mirrors around the club and was pleased to see she was shuffling around the table rather than walking through it. She wasn’t as up on being a ghost as she tried to portray and he’d be able to lose her.
Not wasting time he rushed out of the room using the nearest wall rather than the door, and once on the quiet city-centre street, he picked a direction and walked and a brisk pace. He didn’t care where he went, just so long as he was alone.
What the hell was that?
When with Tad, it was easy to forget that he was famous the world over. People focused on the Dreamwalker, but Stella, Jen and Tony got their share of recognition. However, this was the first time someone sought him out. He wasn’t sure he liked it. He also doubted it was the reason she’d sat at his booth. There was something she wasn’t telling him and he wasn’t sure he wanted to know.
Even though he was just walking, a ghost can move at speed when it has a mind to. Therefore, it wasn’t long before Tony was out of the city centre and was winding his way through rows of houses, seemingly at random. He wasn’t worried about getting lost. Like everything else in the Borderlands, his bond with Tad had evolved and now Tony always knew where Tad was. It meant he could walk in random directions and was more likely to lose any chance of pursuit.
Or so he hoped.
Those hopes were dashed as he turned the next corner and caught a flash of ruby red hair as someone sprinted after him.
Tony considered running, then changed his mind. It was better to face this head on and leave it here.
So he stopped, waiting for her to catch up. She almost collided with him as she shot around the corner, panting hard. She yelped and skidded to a stop, almost falling but catching herself at the last second.
“What the hell do you want?” he demanded as she struggled to catch her breath. “And stop that. You’re a ghost. You don’t have to breathe.”
She looked up at him like he was crazy.
“I… Wanted to say… I’m sorry,” she said between pants. “I didn’t mean… to make you uncomfortable.”
“So you chased me all the way out here like a crazy stalker just to tell me that.”
She frowned. “I’m not a stalker. I just wanted…”
Her words trailed off as she struggled to think of a reason and Tony decided he didn’t want to hear whatever she was making up.
“Forget it, I don’t want to know. Just leave me alone.”
He started walking away, then swore as she fell into step beside him.
“What’s wrong with you? Why can’t you leave me alone?”
“I have questions,” she answered, finally sounding in control of her breathing.
“I don’t want to answer them,” Tony said.
“It’s nothing personal, I promise. I shouldn’t have asked that at the club, I get that now. I’ll keep it more simple.”
“I don’t care what questions you have. I don’t even want to talk to you, just leave me alone.”
“How did you walk through that table?” she asked like he hadn’t spoken. “I didn’t think we could do that here.”
“If I answer, will you go away?”
“It’s more likely than if you don’t,” she agreed.
“It’s simple. Practice.”
“But practice what?” she asked when he didn’t elaborate.
They turned onto another street, their ghostly strides eating up the distance quickly.
“Practice being a ghost. Practice doing the things you want to do.”
“But how?” Amber pressed.
“Look, I don’t know. It’s different for everyone. Just remember the first rule of being a ghost and you’ll be fine.”
“First rule? There are rules?” Amber asked.
“You don’t even know about the rules? Just how long have you been a ghost?”
Blushing again, Amber reluctantly answered. “A little over a month.”
“Wow, you are new. Still, that means you were alive after the Merging. Surely you saw a TV at some point. I’m sure Tad made this clear in one of his bungled interviews.”
Amber blushed a little deeper. “I’m not allowed to watch those. Daddy says they’re dangerous lies.”
“Okay. So daddy is a nut job.”
Amber didn’t fell silent, just walking beside him with her eyes focused at the ground and a pained expression on her face.
He really didn’t want to, especially with this girl, but Tony suddenly felt horrible. He hadn’t meant to upset her. He tried to fight it, let her become as uncomfortable as she’d made him, but it ate at him until he couldn’t take it anymore. Just a few simple words and suddenly she was less a crazy stalker and more a scared girl trying to find her way in the world.
“Your reality is what you perceive it to be,” he said in a begrudging tone. “That’s the first rule. The rules of reality that bound us as living people no longer apply to ghosts, and the sooner you accept that, the sooner you become the master of your reality. I can do this…”
He passed his hand through a wall that separated the street from a garden beside him as though it wasn’t there.
“…because I’m not really part of this world. I know that though I can see that wall, it’ll only be there for me if I want it to be there.”
“That doesn’t make sense. If I touch that wall it’ll be there,” she insisted.
“Because this is the Borderlands and you’ve told yourself that you can touch things here. But this is a dream to us, it’s only as real as you let it be.”
“I can barely remember dreaming,” Amber said and Tony burst out laughing. “What? I really can’t.”
“You’ve only been a ghost for a month. Try it for fifteen years then get back to me with the self pity,” he said.
Again her face clouded with anger and hurt, a far cry from the unflappable persona she’d adopted in the club. It only made Tony even more uncomfortable.
What the hell does that matter? I never invite
d her to ask those stupid questions.
No matter what he told himself, he couldn’t escape his conscience and though he hated himself for doing it, he caved again.
“Look, trust me. We’re not really a part of this world anymore. Us being here is an illusion. Before the Merging that would have been easier to grasp, now you’ve got to take it on faith. I mean, you’ve figured out how to be invisible, that’s a start. Apply the same logic to everything else. It really isn’t that…”
His words trailed off mid-sentence, and his step faltered. They had turned the corner onto yet another street and Tony found himself outside a home he recognised. He hesitated only a second, wondering whether it was sheer coincidence that brought him here, then he was moving again, quicker than before and in a hurry to get away.
“Whose house is that?” Amber asked, too perceptive for her own good.
“No one’s. I just realised I was late and need to hurry.”
“No, you didn’t, you saw that house and stopped like you were about to step in front of a bus. Did you live there when you were alive or something?”
“No,” Tony snapped, suddenly angry again. What was it with this girl and personal questions?
“You know who lives there then?” she asked. He didn’t get chance to answer before her eyes widened. “That’s your parents’ house, isn’t it? I saw on the news that you’ve recently reunited with them and—”
“What the hell is your problem?” he snapped as she nailed her guess and pushed his irritation over the edge. “You got no filter or something? I don’t get why you’re still following me when I told you to leave me alone.”
“Maybe it’s just interesting to find out more about the most famous ghost on the planet.”
“Yeah, well, maybe I’m not some animal in a zoo to be stared at for your amusement. Why don’t you fuck off back to wherever you came from?”
She was back to being unflappable again, a quirky smile on her face like she’d figured something out about him that gave her some kind of power over him. Suddenly he wanted nothing more than to have Tad’s power to change the channel, because anywhere would be better than here.