“Look,” I said. “Can we just—” Thumping, from the trunk.
The hunters immediately tensed and reached for their weapons. Fitz sped up briefly, turned into the next side road, and parked the car under the shade of a willow tree. It looked like we were on a private lane that probably led to someone’s property some distance away.
Everyone fell silent. Thumping, again.
Everyone but Fitz filtered out of the car. I hung my head briefly before stepping out as well, standing off a ways to the side, my heart hammering in my chest. I really didn’t want to see them shoot anything, even if it was a werewolf.
The three of them were pointing handguns at the trunk.
“Now?” Fitz said out the window, his hand on the driver’s side trunk latch.
“Do it,” Booker said.
Then a voice, muffled, from within. “Dudes! Dudes? Hey! Oh, man, this sucks.”
They lowered their weapons, all sighing with relief.
“Trunk of a car? I guess. Dark in here,” the voice continued strangely.
“Hang on there, Fitz,” Booker said. “Don’t open it yet.”
“Yo! Out there! Hey, it’s Pete. Is anybody out there?”
“It’s Booker,” he said. “Pete? We’re going to open the trunk now. Okay?”
“Go for it, man,” Pete said. Booker made a motion to Fitz, who reached for the trunk latch.
I heard Pete speak as the trunk unlatched. “Wait—what was that?”
The trunk popped open.
A split second later, Barton lay on the ground with his throat ripped out. The snarling beast had launched out of the trunk, claws and fangs at the ready, growling and biting and tearing at anything in its path. Fitz leapt out of the car and fired at the beast just as Staley did. Both of them appeared to miss—but Staley’s miss was fatal. The beast’s claws were in his chest moments later, tearing him apart.
Fitz aimed again. “C’mon, you fucker!” He fired once, twice, three times. The creature was obviously hit, its body responding to each bullet. It turned to face Fitz. I noticed that Booker had fallen by the beast, half of his face torn off.
As the creature howled with glee, leaping toward Fitz, I unfroze and dove into the driver’s seat of the car.
A second or two later, I was on the main road again, pedal to the floor, the haunting howl of Pete the “Werewolf” fading off in the distance.
I finally had to pull over to close the goddamned trunk.
As terrifying as the situation was, I felt I had gained sufficient distance from the corpses of my “saviors” to merit the action—not to mention the fact that I had no desire to attract the equivalently unwelcome attention of the Golem Creek police force.
After slowing to a stop on the shoulder of the road, I waited for a few moments, straining my ears listening for any trace of demonic growling or howling or whatever over the low rumble of the Pontiac 6000’s engine. At last, I risked turning off the car and stepping out.
I felt lucky, at least, that most of the blood and gore from the monster hunters seemed to have missed the car. What little there was had been obscured by dust and dirt from the road during my frantic escape.
Reluctantly, I removed my jacket, shoved the book and the key into my pants pocket, and buffed all the areas of the car that I was certain I had touched. Once again, there were motivations other than the supernatural that I had to address; I would need to ditch the car before getting back to the city proper, but I could at least try to avoid the brunt of any murder charges that went along with grand theft auto, should it come to that.
I could hear some cars up ahead at the highway turnoff. Thankfully, this direction remained obscured in darkness, at least for the moment, but my luck couldn’t possibly hold out for long—against civilians, cops, or creatures of the night.
I made my way back to the trunk and was about to slam it shut when I heard, very distinctly, something unexpected.
“Led Zeppelin?” I said aloud.
Car headlights suddenly illuminated the road from behind me. I slammed shut the trunk.
Julie Evergreen pulled up.
“Julie!” I shouted the instant I saw her.
She reached across to roll down the passengerside window.
“You should probably wipe your prints off that car,” she yelled. “I mean, if you stole it. Like you obviously did.”
I nodded excitedly. “Holy shit, Julie!” I exclaimed. “My God you’re not going to believe a single fucking thing I tell you in the next five minutes!” I took one more quick glance into the Pontiac and noted two backpacks in the backseat, which I extracted.
“The bags!” Julie shouted. “Give ’em here!” I obliged her. She handed me a stack of Taco Bell napkins in exchange.
“For old times’ sake,” she said. I looked at her questioningly. “Never mind,” she said. “Hurry up.” “Oh!” I said. “Prints. No—I already did it. See?”
I held up my filthy jacket and tossed it into the Honda.
“Wonderful.” Julie wrinkled her nose. I hopped into the passenger seat of the Honda, unable to hide my joy at seeing her.
“Let’s drive!” I said. “Wolfman on the loose!”
Julie didn’t need to be told twice. We were out on the road again in minutes.
“Thank the gods you found me!” I felt a small victory for the coincidence. “Where the hell is Steve? Where’s Molly?”
“What do you mean?” Julie said. “Steve’s back at the fucking Dreamkeeper’s place. And I hate to break it to you again, but Molly’s probably fucking wolfmeat, man.”
I was stunned. “What—Dreamkeeper? What the hell?”
Julie let out a moan. “Oh, man, please don’t tell me this is the scene where you’ve lost your fucking memory.”
I opened and shut my mouth. Several times. “It’s—not?”
“Argh!” Julie slammed a fist against the steering wheel. “What’s the last thing that happened? Or maybe even back up a little bit.”
I told her. She groaned at regular intervals. Then she told me.
“Oh,” I finally said. As she told me things, I somehow eerily “remembered” them, as if I had been dreaming them while doing other things here, awake. “So—I’m a little out of the loop,” I concluded for her. “But not really.”
Julie nodded. We ended up in the parking lot of an all-night Lots-a-Burger near Golem Creek’s modest downtown.
“Gods be damned,” she said. “I should have known. Wolfman, check. Demons, check. Two goddamned Steve Chernowskis?” She let out a long breath. “Should have just stayed in that little room with the Sherlock Holmes pipe.”
“What room?” I asked. “Never mind,” she said.
In addition to telling Julie about the very few things she did not already know, I made sure to tell her what the encrypted message in the book actually said.
“The book!” she exclaimed. “You have it?” “Yeah, right here,” I said, extracting it from
the pocket of my jeans. “And this key.”
Julie gasped. “Then we’ve got everything! Or, at least, copies of stuff.” She proceeded to inform me of the unlikelihood that this book and this key had any sort of real powers associated with them. At least according to her appraisal of the situation.
“But we don’t know for sure,” I said.
Julie shook her head. “I’m willing to bet,” she said. “But that message. That’s something. That’s something we can use.”
“How is that?” I asked. “It tells me there’s a key—I’ve already got one of those—behind ‘this’ message. Behind what message? There’s no university here in Golem Creek! So where do we find the ‘trap’ door?”
Julie smiled, starting the car. “There’s no university here in Golem Creek,” she said. “But back there” —she jerked her thumb behind her, pointing down t
he road we’d been on— “I bet there is.”
Julie pulled out of the Lots-a-Burger parking lot and headed back the direction we came.
“What the hell are you doing?” I practically screamed. “You’re heading right back to where all the problems are!”
“Calm down!” she said. “We drive back through that spot where the ‘portal’ or whatever it is kicked me out. We can find our way back to the Dreamkeeper’s Emporium from there.”
I was shaking my head. “I don’t think this is going to work,” I said.
“And why the hell not?” she asked. “Because—I don’t know,” I said. “I mean, I
drove from that direction. And I wasn’t in fucking dreamland.”
Julie was silent. I shut up. We passed the Pontiac 6000. We kept driving. I gazed up at the moon starting its descent to the other horizon.
We kept driving. Julie turned onto a side road and drove past a pair of stone posts flanking it. Our driving continued without interruption, although my nervousness increased as we passed the spot where the monster hunters had been massacred. Something’s wrong here...
I finally spoke up.
“Is something supposed to let us know if we’re there?” I asked.
Julie was clearly miffed. “I thought so,” she said. “I guess not.”
“Okay, that didn’t work,” I said. “How about going back to the Brake Street house? We try kicking the box again, like you told me. That definitely worked, right?”
Julie nodded. “Fine,” she said. She slowed and proceeded to turn the car around.
“Wait a second,” I said. “Hang on.” “What is it?” she asked.
“The bodies!” I exclaimed, realizing the source of the problem I’d noticed earlier. “I saw those monster hunters get practically shredded right in front of me! Where are the bodies?”
part four
THE SILENT GOBLIN GANG
“Jesus Christ, dude!” I yelled out, clutching my hands to my face. “I think you broke my nose!”
We were in the hovel behind the Brake Street house. Steve shook out his fist in front of me.
“Fuck!” he said. “I’m sorry, man! How the hell was I supposed to know—”
“Maybe pay attention?” Julie said. “You know, if you’re going to attack someone—”
“Calm down, hotpants!” Steve said. “I had to be sure.”
I leaned up against the wall. There was the box, in the center of the room, open.
“Sure of what, exactly?” Julie asked.
“He could have been Mike!” Steve said, pointing at me. “I had to take him out!”
I tried to take in a breath, and coughed. Blood spewed out of my mouth onto the floor.
“Gross,” Julie said. She turned back to Steve. “Sorry to ask such a basic question, but: which Steve are you?”
Steve stepped back a pace. “Excuse me?” he said. “What?”
“I mean,” Julie continued, “did ‘I’ just drop you off here, and take Molly home?”
“Yeah,” he said. “That was the plan. Right?”
I tried breathing again. A little less blood this time. That seemed good.
Julie sighed. “Right,” she said. “Okay, Steve. Here’s what you need to know: there’s two of you at this moment. One of you slid into an alternate dimension after kicking that box. I’m pretty sure he’s still there, right now, playing D & D with some old guy.”
Steve smiled. “All right,” he said. “I can’t blame you for wanting to get double-teamed by the coolest guy in town, Jules, but—”
Julie made a sound of disgust. “Oh, shut up, Steve,” she said. Steve was laughing. “Look, we do need to find Mike. And I’m guessing the other me will be here pretty soon. Since I can’t think of anything much better than having at least two intelligent, capable people trying to find him, we’re going to wait for her. Me. Her.”
She pulled out a cigarette. Steve was still laughing. He came over to me and held out a hand to help me up.
“Sorry, dude,” he said. “I guess I meant that punch for the ol’ ball-and-chain there.”
Julie stomped over to the back window of the shed and glared at it.
“STEVE! ” Two Julies sang out in unison, their combined irritation flowing over him like blood from a wound.
Steve could barely contain himself, a torrent of potentially suicidal commentary bubbling up in his mental cauldron. I gazed at him pleadingly—not now, I mouthed.
My sinuses still ached from the unpracticed punch given earlier, and my voice rose hollowly. “Can we please get on with this?”
Steve shrugged. It had taken some time to calm down the initial shock of the arrival of Julie Two, at least for me and Steve. I found it eerie—yet somehow fitting—that they seemed to acknowledge one another’s presence without feeling the need to even introduce themselves. Julie One had insisted— and her “twin” had agreed—that they ought to spend some little while making sure that everyone knew what was going on before taking any specific actions. The opinion of Julie Two, and the wise counsel of Julie One, both accorded that, in this timeline, kicking the box ought still to send us back to the Dreamkeeper’s Emporium, since it hadn’t technically happened yet.
“And since it happened the last time—” Julie One said.
“—we can bet on it happening again,” Julie Two finished.
It was remarkable seeing the two of them, both dressed identically in jeans and dark shirts, both in the same black hoodie. I even noted that both Julies’ Converse seemed knotted identically, a single bunny ear flopping over to the right.
“But before you kick it—” Julie Two continued. “—let’s make sure we have the stuff with us,” said Julie One. “Since—”
“—we ended up with everything we were wearing, at least—”
“—the first time.” “Okay?”
They didn’t even seem fazed by each others’ presence, nor by their telepathic link. I supposed it would be like having your mirror image suddenly externalize...but did she—
“Hey,” Steve said, “if I pinched one of you” — both Julies scowled at him simultaneously— “no, seriously! If I pinched one of you, would the other one feel it, too? And I haven’t seen you guys shake hands yet!”
Both Julies conveniently ignored him, seeming intent to avoid touching each other, perhaps specifically because Steve had suggested it.
“Can I have one of your Hondas?” Steve asked smirking.
“No,” both Julies responded. “But you can” — Julie Two started— “go get the bags out of mine,” Julie One said.
He looked to both of them once more. “A gain and a loss,” he said as he strode out the door. “It’s like having exactly one Julie, just twice as hot!”
“All right,” I said. “I guess I’m ready for this.” Both Julies nodded. “By the way,” began Julie One as soon as Steve was out the door, “both of
us can feel what happens to one of us.”
They smiled at me. “But don’t tell Steve,” Julie Two said.
I smiled back. “You’re great, Julie,” I said. “Honestly, I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
Their grins widened as Julie Two offered Julie One a smoke.
No one quite understood the mechanism by which we were “teleported” into that Other Place. Steve insisted that it was top-secret ultra-dimensional trip wire attached to the bottom of the box. Whatever it was, it worked just as it had the first time.
When I awoke in the hotel room, I remembered it instantly. The sensation was one of having been asleep before I arrived; somehow, here, in the “dream” place, I was “awake” again. Access to my memories of when I had last been here seemed complete—along with everything else in the other “time streams” I had experienced.
I instantly felt some anxiety about returning to Golem
Creek in this regard, as I assumed I eventually would. Would it all fade away again? Would my waking mind just forget it all again? Or was it only traversing that particular EXIT from the Christmas-themed department store which would delete it?
I heard voices in the lobby area. Quickly, I got dressed (again, I thought), noting as I did so that my nose no longer seemed “broken” (if, indeed, it ever had been). I gazed out the window of the room, and there it was: the pyramid, standing aloof from the whole scene, secure in its own obscurity. When I entered the lobby area, it was to one Steve, one Julie, and Roland the Dreamkeeper, all sitting around a circular table with coffee, gourmet donuts, and a large drawing of a pyramid splayed out on it.
“Hey,” I said. “How is it that everyone else wakes up before me?”
“She’s ready to head into that pyramid,” Steve said, ignoring my question.
“Okay,” I said, unsure how to proceed. “Before I ask why we’d do that, what happened to the other Julie? And the other Steve, for that matter?”
Steve grimaced. “I never got to meet me, dude,” he said fretfully. “Apparently, you’ve got to be out there” —he pointed in a few random directions— “in order to split like that.”
“Seems more likely you would be able to split
in a dream, right?” I said.
I noticed Roland raise his eyebrows and wink at me before Julie turned and spoke.
“Roland’s pretty sure that the key you’ve got ought to get us at least into the grounds of Golem Creek University,” she said.
“The university’s here?” I said.
“Well, kind of,” she said. “We’ll be a little bit on our own once we’re in there, since that particular dream isn’t entirely in Roland’s head.”
I was a little baffled. “I’m not—um—” I said, looking at Roland. He smiled at me.
“This place is Roland,” Steve said. “I mean, it’s not his dream—but he is the dream. Get it?”
I didn’t, exactly, but I decided not to argue. “Some places overlap,” Julie said. “Dreams with
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