by Gareth Otton
The giant covered the ground with ridiculous speed and headed straight for Tad.
Scrambling backwards, Tad climbed out of his chair an instant before it was destroyed. The giant struck it with the blade of his hand, easily cutting through the lawn furniture like an axe through fire wood.
There was another flash of white to accompany his strike, like that strange design on his chest was a camera flash.
Tad nearly overbalanced as he tried to get out of the way, staggering back even as he sobered up fast. His movements felt sluggish and slow, not nearly enough to deal with this giant. But Tad wasn’t alone. Out the corner of his eye he saw Jacob staring at the giant’s back and felt him pull on Dream. Jacob stepped forward with an arm raised to strike when suddenly he disappeared in a streak of light.
“Jacob,” Joseph shouted in terror as Tad glanced to where that streak of light ended, surprised to find his friend crushed against the side of his house by a slender, young woman. He only had a second to glance at her, but he saw she was wearing a vest that left her shoulders bare and revealed a design similar to that of the giant’s on her right shoulder.
He didn’t have time to study it as the giant swung for him again, and Tad didn’t have any illusions about his ability to survive that punch. After seeing what happened to the chair and the bench, Tad knew a blow from this man would hurt more than a blow from that purple-haired monster in Bristol.
He reached for the doorway in his mind, ready to dreamwalk away from danger and regroup somewhere nearby. However, still not clear of his drunken haze, he struggled on his decision on where to go too long and there was a fist already on its way.
The only non-drinking dreamwalker saved Tad as a tiny grey creature came from nowhere and pounced at the giant. It was a comical sight seeing something so small attack someone so large, but Dream was the great equaliser.
The puppy barked so loud the sound had a physical impact, making the giant flinch and pull back his hands to cover his ears. The dog used Dream to aid its forward momentum and rocketed at the giant, striking an over-muscled shoulder and amazingly knocking the giant aside hard enough that he staggered away. A look of surprise and pain crossed his face even as the puppy bounced off in Tad’s direction.
Slow as his mind was moving, he was quick enough to snatch the puppy out of the air and finally complete his thought to change the channel.
The world shifted and Tad was on the other side of the garden by the broken fence, better able to take in what was happening. The giant was recovering from being knocked aside and the slender woman standing over Jacob was no longer paying attention to him as she was hunched over, protecting her ears from the puppy’s bark.
Joseph sprinted at her back to defend his brother whereas Tony stood near the giant looking around, trying to find Tad. Neither the giant nor the woman paid either ghost attention, and Tad realised they couldn’t see them. He’d grown too used to being in the Borderlands.
However, that also meant that neither ghost could interact with the world and sure enough Joseph was ineffective when he tried to knock the woman away.
“Tad, make us solid,” Tony shouted, his mind working quicker than Tad’s. However, not that much quicker as Tad’s trip through Dream had finally got his gears working. He did exactly as Tony asked to help Joseph, but for Tony he simply extended a hand and sent out a mental call.
Tony didn’t fight it, recognising the benefit straight away and collapsing into a mist that flowed across the garden like a bullet before being absorbed by Tad.
The effect was instant and surprising as always. The darkness of the night faded away and colour returned to the world. The haze of drunkenness vanished, and Tad felt strong like he hadn’t in months. For the first time, he finally felt fit to react to this new threat.
There was a tug on his powers as Joseph finally made contact with the woman, jumping on her back and clumsily trying to wrap her in a headlock. He wasn’t much use as neither of the twins were even close to being fighters, but he was distracting enough that Tad turned his attention to the bigger threat, the quickly recovering giant.
Nostrils flaring as his wide eyes searched the garden for his prey, Tad had no doubt as to the mindset of this monster. Considering his raw power, Tad would have to deal with him from afar. The best way to do that would be to hold him over that side of the garden. The method of doing so became clear all too soon.
The guy was huge, his booted feet crushing the ground upon which he stood. Jacob’s once pristine lawn was struggling under that pressure, and it didn’t take much imagination or Dream to manipulate that struggle. Rather than enhance the ground’s strength, Tad removed it, imagining the soil giving way to the pressure atop it. It was such a small idea that it took mere moments to conceive it and pull over Dream, making it real.
The giant, having finally spotted Tad again, was about to step forward when he sank into the ground like he was standing on quicksand. He barely had time to yelp before he was buried up to his knees and was still sinking. He wobbled like a giant tree about to fall and struggled to stay upright. When he was stuck at mid-thigh, Tad felt he had gone far enough and pulled Dream back.
The quicksand turned back to heavy earth and the giant lost all ability to move his legs. Thinking him dealt with for now, Tad turned back to Joseph’s struggle with the woman in time to see that it wasn’t going so well.
She had thrown Joseph off her shoulder and even though she couldn’t see him, she wasn’t letting him get the upper hand. Tad needn’t worry though as Jacob had finally recovered enough to come to the same realisation as Tad. Soon enough Joseph dematerialised and Jacob pulled himself away from the wall, standing straight with new vitality in his eyes. To give her credit, the woman didn’t wait for Jacob to absorb his ghost before attacking, but she wasn’t quick enough. That was really saying something because to Tad she moved like lightning, but Jacob was ready. He reacted almost as fast and knocked her strike aside.
Tad wanted to watch more, but the giant wasn’t giving in just yet.
There was another flare of light, brighter than anything yet, and a primal roar accompanied it. Tad looked over just in time to see the furious man tear his legs free from the ground, destroying Jacob’s lawn. Mud and stone flew everywhere as first his right, then left leg broke free from the earth.
Snorting like an enraged bull, he stared at Tad with fury. Hatred dripped from that gaze and despite having Tony as back up, Tad couldn’t help but feel intimidated in the face of it.
He reacted fast as the giant rushed forward, again covering the ground far too quickly. Tad let the dog go and waved his good hand through the air in front of him, using Dream to augment the stirred up air until it became a gale rushing toward the giant with the kind of speed to push vehicles aside. It wasn’t enough.
That symbol flared brightly again, there was another roar from the giant, more a scream this time, and he dipped his shoulder and powered through the wind like it wasn’t even there. His jeans flapped around his legs, the ruins of the fence and Tad’s chair were blown into the wall of Jacobs house, and the grass rippled outward as each blade struggled to stay routed, but the giant showed no signs of slowing.
Tad wasn’t nearly quick enough to try another attack and was left on the defensive. A giant fist tried to knock his face clean off and all Tad could do was raise his damaged left hand to ward off the blow and reach for Dream one last time.
The impact of the fist was every bit as painful as Tad imagined as it hit with the kind of force trains could only dream of. However, instead of shattering bones and continuing on to wreak havoc on Tad’s face, it met something more immovable than concrete as amazingly Tad’s damaged hand caught the fist.
It was less catching as it was blocking with an open hand and Tad’s ruined fingers folding onto the fist as an automatic result. What saved Tad’s life was his call to Dream to augment the strength in his bones. Having underestimated his opponent twice already he pulled hard from Dream this time,
making his bones stronger than steel-reinforced concrete and augmenting the strength in his arm so it was as strong as a hundred-year-old oak.
It almost wasn’t strong enough as the giant’s punch knocked it back a full foot. The impact on the giant, however, was considerably more severe.
His fist wasn’t tough enough to deal with the impact. Tad felt the mans knuckles shift aside as it hit his hand and then heard the impossibly loud crack as the giant’s forearm snapped like a twig. He couldn’t stop his forward momentum so his arm broke in a second place, then a third, until it barely resembled an arm so much as the branch of a tree, twisted and gnarled with age.
The snapping bones were so loud they could be heard by the neighbours, but Tad barely noticed as even the severely damaged nerves in his left hand felt the overwhelming agony of being struck by anything so hard. This was coupled with a headache like he hadn’t felt in months as he pulled over too much Dream to decisively deal with the giant’s attack.
It left Tad stunned and momentarily unable to act. The puppy had no such trouble.
Even as the giant registered that his attack had failed and felt the agony of his arm shattering, the puppy was once again using Dream to attack with strength and speed far beyond the abilities of a creature its size. It had a six foot vertical leap to get to the chest of the giant, but it covered that distance easily, using its forepaws to aid its momentum and carry it up to the giant’s face where it instantly bit down.
As someone who’d been on the playful end of puppy nips more times than he could count, Tad could testify to how sharp those teeth were. Coupled with Dream augmented strength, the dog was rewarded with a shower of blood and a panicked scream as Kuruk scrambled backward, using his good hand to claw at the attacking puppy and knock it away.
The puppy yelped in pain as the giant brushed it from his face, and that sound more than anything tonight struck at Tad like he would never believe.
The adorable puppy who was so loving with everyone had just done the impossible to come to Tad’s defence. To hear its pained cry awoke something primal in Tad and suddenly he could ignore his own pain, could ignore the fact that he already called on too much Dream tonight and that he should be using his power to augment what was already there rather than create something from scratch. In his fury, his mind went to a new place and he once again reached for Dream.
Tad pushed that mental door aside as hard as he could and pulled over more of Dream than he could ever remember pulling before. Then, he used Dream to make the impossible real.
With his good hand he made a sweeping gesture at the giant, never meaning to touch him, but to instead direct the power inside him. He swept his arm across the giant and then as fast as he could he motioned at Jacob’s house.
Suddenly the giant vanished.
It was like the god of all baseball batters was invisibly standing behind the giant and had taken an almighty swing. Dream hurled the man across the garden at such speed that there was no arc to his motion as he was lifted from his feet. He travelled in a direct line to collide with the wall of the house and then through it. There was an explosion of light, the brightest yet from the design on his chest, as he collided with the wall, but it quickly went out as the darkness within Jacob’s house swallowed him. It was hard to tell for sure considering how loud the sound of him going through the wall had been, but Tad thought he heard the distant thud of a giant body bouncing off an internal wall.
It was the last thing he was consciously aware of before the mother of all headaches struck.
Even with Tony fighting valiantly within Tad, his vision went white, and he lost connection with his senses. It could have been minutes or hours, but Tad’s entire world was consumed with white hot agony that felt as though it would never end.
His sense of smell returned first as strangely his nose picked up the aroma of cooking meat. This was not the barbecue Jacob served earlier, but something charred and burnt beyond recognition.
Sounds came next. The distant wailing of sirens, the grunts and thuds of combat, and a frustrated cry of agony that Tad instantly recognised as Jacob.
Finally, his vision swam into focus and after blinking a few times to reset his eyes, Tad could see Jacob had been knocked to the ground and the woman was climbing through the hole in the house towards her fallen partner. Impossibly, Tad saw a silhouette moving slowly within as though the giant had somehow survived the impact.
He wanted to figure out if what he saw was real, but he had a more pressing concern. He looked around frantically, trying to find the little dog whose growl had first warned them of this attack. He’d done so much to help and if he was dead then…
Tad didn’t finish his thought, unable to bear it. Luckily, he didn’t need to.
Almost as if Tad’s thoughts had called him, he suddenly felt a cold nose against his leg and he looked down to see that the puppy had wandered over, tail wagging and looking unbothered. Before he could stop himself Tad scooped it up and was checking for injuries. He was more than a little relieved when he found little and got a lot of face licks for his effort.
However, soon enough the dog’s sloppy kisses stopped and a growl returned, not as loud as the first but loud enough. Tad followed its line of sight to see the giant back on his feet. Somehow he was not only alive, but was standing under his own power. His arm was a ruin and he swayed on his feet, but Tad was sure such a thing was impossible.
Like everything else he’s done tonight was so normal, Tony’s sarcastic voice echoed around Tad’s mind.
He was right. From the second the dog started growling, the word normal had no sway. However, in one way there was less strangeness than before. There was no longer a glowing light on the man’s chest. Instead Tad could dimly make out a painful-looking injury that almost looked to be smoking in the darkness of the house.
You need to finish this, Tony’s voice spoke again, this time accompanied with the thought process that led to that decision.
Tad was treated to the image of the giant recovering only to attack again, maybe next time when Tad’s little growler wasn’t there to warn him, maybe even when Jen or Stella was there to take the brunt of this attack. Though reluctant to kill anything, Tad was in total agreement with Tony this time. He needed to end this.
Putting the puppy on the floor, Tad climbed to his feet and reached for Dream.
Then suddenly the woman was there, zipping into the opening of the house and blocking Tad’s view of the giant like somehow she had just appeared there. She moved so fast she was like something from a superhero movie. She’d been fast every time Tad had seen her, but somehow this was different. That tattoo on her shoulder was glowing brighter than ever before and suddenly she vanished in a blur of light that streaked right for Jacob, then back again.
“You deal with us, or you can save your friend,” she said, her voice surprisingly normal considering what she’d done tonight. However, she then did the most surprising thing of the night to Tad’s mind; she vanished along with her partner.
There was an instant where the light on one shoulder went out and a second light sprung to life on the other. It was only there a second, but while it was active Tad felt an instinctive familiarity to it. The moment they vanished, he recognised it for what it was. She was dreamwalking, only somehow she used that light to do it.
Looking down at the little dog who was still growling, Tad was sure he could use its talent for following people through Dream to catch them both and deal with them once and for all. But then he realised what she’d meant with her parting words.
Jacob was looking at his stomach with an expression of surprise, or more accurately, he was looking at the large knife sticking out of his stomach and the growing red stain around it. Then he looked up at Tad for half a second before collapsing to his knees.
There was no thought on Tad’s part. One moment he was on one side of the garden, then the world shifted and he was next to his friend, arriving in time to catch him before he fell any fu
rther. The moment Jacob fell into his arms, Tad changed the channel again and Jacob’s home was replaced with the emergency room at the same hospital Jen had gone to with her back injuries.
There were several yelps and screams as Tad appeared, but they vanished a moment later when a puppy appeared right behind him, surprising everyone into silence.
“Help,” Tad called and then he turned his attention back to his injured friend.
10
Friday, 08th July 2016
13:11
“You couldn’t have picked somewhere more public?” Stella deadpanned as she looked at the startled faces.
“I came straight from Jacob’s hospital room, I didn’t have time to browse,” Tad answered, ignoring the stares and looking for clues of where to go.
They had appeared on the path outside a large building used for student housing at Harvard University. It was a warm day so the grassy area to their left was littered with students, some reading books, others talking with friends, and others just enjoying the sunshine. It was a college-photographer’s dream image, or it had been until Tad and Stella arrived and everyone stopped acting natural.
Their stillness only lasted until Freckles and Growler, as Tad had finally named him, appeared. The puppies distracted the college students and set them talking again, which only attracted the puppies’ interest and made them wander off to meet new friends.
“How is Jacob?” Stella asked as though only now remembering.
Tad wouldn’t hold it against her. She had stayed with Jen all night despite being desperate to check Tad was okay with her own eyes and to give him a lecture about getting into trouble again. Since then she’d been swamped with work. That she agreed to accompany him here on her lunch break was a testament to his doggedness in asking for help rather than any indication she had five seconds to spare. She didn’t mean to be rude by not asking about Jacob before.