Dreamwalker

by C. S. Friedman

  Sirens were approaching now; their piercing wail made my head feel like it was splitting open. The whole world was full of spotlights and crackling flames and doors slamming open and fire trucks wailing, all of it pounded in my head in fearsome chaos, too bright and terrible for any sane mind to absorb. I could see people leaving their houses and gathering in the street, some of them with pets or possessions clutched in their arms. Terrified that the fire would spread to their houses as well. I saw the faces of my neighbors, and they looked like the faces of demons, with the burning house reflected in their eyes. And then I saw her.

  I froze in place, and something about my expression must have frightened Rita. “What?” she demanded hoarsely. “What is it?”

  I pointed.

  The goth woman stood across from our driveway, her demon-eyes taking in the whole scene. Her long black hair shimmered with sparks of reflected fire as she turned her head from side to side, not staring at the house like everyone else, but studying the neighborhood around it. As if she was looking for something in the shadows. Or for someone.

  For a moment my heart forgot how to beat.

  “Is that her?” Rita asked.

  I nodded.

  A strong hand gripped my shoulder. “We need to get out of here,” she said. “Fast.” I wanted to argue with her, to tell her that we couldn’t leave yet, but no words would come. I wanted to explain to her that my mother needed me, that this fire had been my fault, and I needed to go to her and apologize and make it all better. Mom was waiting for me, didn’t Rita realize that? But the words wouldn’t come out of my mouth. Because they were wrong, all wrong. Suddenly I started crying about words I didn’t understand, and a terrible loss I couldn’t put a name to. While the whole earth swayed beneath my feet, and the world I had lived in for sixteen years came crashing down around my head in a rain of hot embers.

  “Come on,” Rita urged gently. With a steady hand she encouraged me to move further into the woods with her. There were shadows there, I knew, deep enough and dark enough for two girls to hide in, even with the fire nearby. “I saw a place where you can wait by the road without being seen. I’ll go get the car and bring it around. No one will know you’re there.” And she added, as an afterthought, “You’ll be okay.”

  I wondered if she really believed that.

  As we left, I looked back one last time. There were flashing lights coming up the road, and the sirens were so loud they made my ears hurt. The bonfire that had once been my house was as bright as the sun. Numbed by grief and confusion, I let Rita lead me into the shadowy depths of the park.

  8

  BLUE RIDGE MOUNTAINS

  VIRGINIA

  IN MY DREAMS I saw my house consumed in flames again, and its heat was a personal accusation. I embraced the guilt and walked into the fire until my clothing and my hair began to burn. I deserved to burn. I deserved far worse than burning. Our house was gone because of me. My mother had died because of me. My little brother was missing—perhaps also dead—because of me.

  Then a door opened somewhere, and I could hear a wooden floorboard creak as someone approached me. I cracked open my eyes with effort, blinking away the crust of dried tears.

  It was Devon. He crouched down by the side of my bed and waited until my eyes focused on him before speaking.

  “She got out,” he said. He touched me gently on the cheek; the tenderness of it made me want to cry. “Your mom. She got out in time. It was on the news. She’s in the hospital now, in stable condition.”

  I trembled, and I wept, and he waited silently by my bedside, allowing the tears to flow. I wanted to ask him where I was now, what had happened after the fire, but I couldn’t gather my thoughts enough to form words. One thing mattered more than everything else, though, and finally I managed, “Tommy. Is he … ?”

  He hesitated. “No one’s seen him since the fire, Jesse. I’m so sorry.” He eased himself to his feet once more. “We can talk more about it when you get up.”

  “His computer,” I pressed. “Did it have any clues on it? So we can find him?”

  He shook his head. “We’ll talk about it when you get up.”

  I wanted to ask more questions, but I didn’t have the strength for it. My body ached from a thousand small wounds; my soul had been bled dry of all vitality. But at least the serpent of guilt that had been crushing my heart was finally easing its death-grip. My mother had survived the fire, and as soon as I got on my feet again I would find my brother. Wherever he was, whatever had happened to him, I would find him, and I would bring him safely home.

  Somewhere in the middle of that thought, sleep claimed me again.

  • • •

  When I next awoke, I was alone. I wiped a crusted layer of dried tears from my eyes and looked around the room. It was a small but well-appointed space, with neat modern furniture and a few pieces of tasteful but impersonal art on the walls. Totally unfamiliar. The thin bars of sunlight streaming in between the blinds were low-angled, which could have meant it was late afternoon or early morning. I had no sense of time.

  As I got out of the narrow bed—which took an amazing amount of effort—I struggled to get my physical and emotional bearings. The events of the night before were now a blur of fear and exhaustion, and judging from the way the room wavered around the edges, I must have hit my head pretty hard. One thing I remembered clearly: Devon telling me that my mother had survived the fire. The rest was a chaos of fragmentary memories: sharp rocks, broken glass, a barefoot flight through the woods, tears shed in the back seat of a car while we sped through the mountains, heading … where? My skin throbbed from a thousand small cuts, my body ached from a thousand bruises. Never run through a forest barefoot. And never climb through a broken window with nothing but a tank top and sleep shorts to protect you.

  Lessons to be remembered for the next time someone tried to burn me to death.

  A pile of clothing lay neatly folded on a chair by the door. I figured it had been left for me, but I didn’t feel coordinated enough to manage the task of dressing. Or perhaps it just didn’t seem as important as other things. I needed to know what had happened since the fire more than I needed clean clothing.

  I approached the door and waited until the room stopped swaying and my legs felt reasonably steady, then I opened it.

  Outside was a long, L-shaped room, with a half-circle of couches and chairs surrounding a fireplace at the near end and a combination kitchen and dining area at the other. The furniture was crisp and neat, straight off the showroom floor, with glass-topped tables like you see in home decorating magazines. Except for one end table with half-eaten fast food items on it, the whole place was spotlessly clean, which made me acutely aware of my current sooty state. One wall of the room was made of glass, and it looked out over a steep green hillside. No other houses were in sight.

  Where the hell was I?

  Devon and Rita were sitting next to the messy table; they jumped up as soon as I entered. Both looked like they hadn’t slept in days. “Jesse!”

  “Where are we?” I whispered hoarsely. “What time is it?”

  “Sunday afternoon,” Devon said. “You’re in my family’s cabin. Rita brought you here last night. We figured it was the safest place to hide out while we figured out what to do next.”

  A place to hide out. Because there were people trying to kill us, I thought. That’s what the fire had been about. Someone tried to burn me to death. I swallowed back hard on a rising tide of fear. Stay focused, girl.

  “We got you food,” Rita said, indicating the messy end table.

  Hunger growled in my stomach, but I didn’t feel up to eating just yet, so I waved the offer aside. “What happened after we left?” I asked. My voice was so dry I could barely force words out.

  My house was completely gone, they told me. It had burned so quickly that by the time the fire department managed to put the flames out there was pretty much nothing left. Mom had gotten out through a window in time to save herself,
but barely. She was in Manassas Hospital, her condition serious but stable. Devon had tried to get more information on her, but the hospital said they would only give that out to family members, and he thought that pretending to be related to me was a bad idea. I totally understood. Whoever had tried to kill me and my family might target anyone claiming to be my relative.

  Assuming Devon and Rita weren’t in their crosshairs already.

  I fought back a sick wave of fear that accompanied that thought and asked hoarsely, “What about Tommy?”

  “MIA,” Devon said. “Local news says they’re searching the woods for both of you.”

  So much for hoping that Tommy would magically show up after the fire died down. Not that I’d really expected him to. The minute I’d seen the broken glass in his room I’d known that something was seriously wrong, though I still couldn’t put my finger on what gave it away. But I knew deep in my gut that this was about something far more complicated than little kid escapes a house fire.

  “What about his computer?” I asked. I’d grabbed it that night without really thinking, but now that my brain cells were starting to function again I realized just how important it might turn out to be. If Tommy had been online when the fire started—playing a game, chatting with his friends, whatever—he might have said something to someone that would give us a clue to his whereabouts. That was, assuming we could track down whoever he’d been talking to, and drag them back to reality long enough to get intelligible answers from them… .

  “Locked up tight.” Devon’s response scattered my thoughts. “We were hoping you knew his password.”

  “Shouldn’t need one. It was on when I grabbed it.”

  “Except that somewhere between Manassas and Front Royal it ran out of power. And when we finally plugged it in again, it rebooted. Hence …” He spread his hands in the universal gesture of helplessness.

  Did I know Tommy’s password? Good question. He had told it to me once, while he was off visiting relatives, so that I could post something for him, but it was a good bet he changed it as soon as he got home. What thirteen-year-old wouldn’t? But that did give me an idea about what kind of password he preferred, so I might have a shot at guessing the new one. “Where is it? I’ll see what I can do.”

  Evidently the laptop was charging in the kitchen. While Devon went to fetch it I picked up a lukewarm hamburger and tried to eat it. It had been sitting around way too long to be appetizing, but at least it filled the void in my stomach. Rita handed me a can of soda, and I downed half of it without pausing to see what it was. My body soaked up the moisture with painful desperation, though I tasted nothing.

  “Maybe he just got spooked,” Rita offered. “Ran scared when the fire started, and is just too shaken to come out of hiding now. When things calm down, he’ll show up again.”

  I wanted so much to believe that! But even as she spoke I could see his room again, the way it had looked that night. Glass shards littering the floor. Blankets a tangled mass on the bed. I had sensed at the time that something about the arrangement was wrong—terribly wrong—but I hadn’t known what it was. Now, suddenly, it came to me, and the revelation shook me to my core. “Someone took him,” I muttered.

  Devon was on his way back with the laptop, its power cord trailing behind like a forgotten dog leash. “How do you know that?”

  “The broken glass. It was all inside the room.” I wiped my eyes dry with the back of my hand. Everything about me felt gritty. Filthy. “If he’d broken the window himself it would have shattered outward, not inward. And he wouldn’t have to do that, anyway; he could just open it from the inside.” I paused. “Which means someone broke it coming in.”

  “Jesus.” Rita shook her head in amazement. “I would never have thought of that.”

  “Saw it on Law and Order once.” I almost added: My whole damn life looks like one of their episodes right now.

  “But why would they want him?” Devon put down the computer in front of me and looked for a place to plug it in. Apparently there was no outlet close enough, so he coiled the cord and set it on the glass table. “He’s not one of us, is he?”

  Us. Changelings. Fugitives.

  I shook my head. “Maybe they broke in upstairs to avoid the alarm system on the first floor. Then when they found him there they had to do something to keep him quiet.”

  But even as I said that, I knew it wasn’t the right answer. If all they had wanted was to keep Tommy quiet, wouldn’t they have just killed him on the spot? Count on the fire to destroy the evidence? No, there was something more than that going on, something way more complicated than simple arson.

  His body hasn’t been found yet, I comforted myself. So he’s not necessarily dead. I knew it was a slim hope, but I clung to it with all my might. The thought of Tommy being kidnapped was something I could almost deal with. The thought of Tommy lying dead in a ditch somewhere, his body being picked over by wild animals, wasn’t.

  Shutting all those thoughts out of my mind, I sat down in front of the laptop. In the back of my mind I was aware that I was leaving sooty streaks all over the pristine couch, but it was a distant fact, without the power to move me. All that mattered now was the data on this computer, and what it might reveal.

  The password he’d given me previously was the name of one of his favorite gaming characters. God knows I’d heard enough stories about Tommy’s online adventures to fill a phone book, so one by one I entered all the fantasy names I could remember him ever mentioning, my heart skipping a beat each time I hit the “enter” key. But no matter how many I tried, nothing worked. Character names, quest locations, guild titles, you name it. I even tried three or four versions of a few names, just to make sure I had the spelling right, and substituted numbers for letters in every variation I could think of. But still nothing worked.

  Leaning back on the couch, I wiped a film of sweat from my brow as I struggled to come up with a new idea. I had to get into my brother’s head, to sort out all the crazy gaming stuff that must be swimming around in there. What was he proudest of? Which tidbit of data would matter the most to him? I started to enter stuff from his Australian game—not only names this time, but every combination of elements I could think of. It was a long shot, since that game had only taken place a few days before, and I couldn’t imagine he’d changed his password since then. But either Seyer’s visit to our house had really spooked him, or else maybe he’d known those players longer than I thought. When I finally typed AUSSIE25 and hit enter, the system let me in.

  Trembling with anticipation, I watched as the desktop loaded, colorful gaming icons popping into existence one by one. Given that his wallpaper was an illustration of two dragons spouting neon fire at each other, it was hard to see anything. I focused on each icon as it appeared, searching for anything that would give me a clue as to what Tommy had been doing that night. But I wasn’t a computer person and really didn’t have a clue how to look for that kind of information. When the desktop finished loading I was no closer to an answer than when it had started.

  Tears of frustration welled up in my eyes, making them sting. I wiped them away with the back of a sooty hand. Which made them sting worse.

  “Here,” Devon said gently. “Let me try.”

  He came around the couch, and I moved over to let him have the driver’s seat. You could tell immediately that he knew what he was doing. His typing was lightning fast, pure geek style, and screen after screen flashed by, some of it stuff I’d never seen before. While he worked, his expression was so intense you’d think it was his little brother at risk. I would have hugged him for that, if I hadn’t been afraid it would screw with his concentration.

  Finally he saw something on the screen that seemed to be of particular interest to him. He hit a few more keys, watched as a few more pages of data flashed by, then asked, “Your brother was into video?”

  “He uploaded things to YouTube, if that’s what you mean. Clips from his games, mostly. Sometimes speeches. Every time
one of his games changed something in its design he uploaded hours of bitching. Which his friends responded to with videos of them bitching.” Suddenly it sank in why Devon would ask me that. “You think he might have been recording something when all this went down?”

  “Looks that way.” He started typing again. “Let me see if anything was saved when the power went out.”

  I think we were all holding our breath in that moment. I know that I was.

  After a few seconds a video box appeared on the screen, and we saw Tommy’s face. The room behind him was achingly familiar, books and toys and posters on the wall that now were no more than ash. I took another swallow of soda, trying to wash down the lump in my throat. His computer hadn’t been facing the window, which was frustrating, but you could see most of the room clearly enough. A small desk lamp had been turned on, but not the ceiling light; Tommy hadn’t wanted anyone to realize he was awake.

  With an expression so solemn you’d think he was speaking at a funeral, my little brother addressed the camera. “I’m sorry, I just can’t agree with that review. Yeah, the new module is really flashy. Lots of bells and whistles. But at its heart it’s just the same old story line, and there comes to a point where new graphics can’t save—oh, crap!” A wave of his hand had hit something off screen; I heard a thunk and a splash as it struck the floor. “Hell,” he muttered, as he slid out of his chair. I could see him looking around the room, probably searching for something to wipe up the mess with. Finally he scurried out of camera range, presumably to go fetch a towel or something. We heard the door to his room open, then close.

  And we watched the screen in silence. I was so intent on listening that I hardly dared breathe; I didn’t want some subtle clue to be drowned out by the sound of my respiration. But when the clue finally came, it wasn’t subtle. Glass shattered loudly somewhere off-camera, and I found myself leaning forward, as if getting closer to the screen would somehow bring the cause of it into view. Then there was the sound of glass crunching underfoot as someone walked across the room, louder and louder as it approached the computer … and just when I thought I was going to scream from sheer frustration, a shadowy figure appeared on the screen. He was wearing some kind of hood, so we couldn’t see his face, and he crossed the camera’s field and disappeared on the other side without turning.