Dream Forever

by Kit Alloway

  “She’s in a coma,” Haley said. His voice shook.

  “A coma?” Ian stopped walking to stare at him, and for a moment, a genuine purple concern broke through the dark spots in his aura.

  Haley told him about Winsor, who had been in a coma the last time he saw her. Remembering how still she had been, how her aura had collapsed around her to a faint, still green cloud, he felt a deep sadness, but Ian’s face split into a grin.

  “So she’ll probably die soon,” he said. “I mean, it sounds like she doesn’t have much time left.” He nodded. “That’ll be good. Things will be a lot better with her around here.”

  Astonished, Haley said nothing. He stared at Ian, at the terrible, ashen patches in his energy field, and thought, This is not my brother.

  Years before, Whim had said something about Ian that had stuck in Haley’s mind. “Ian is equal parts asshole and hero,” Whim had said. “And on any given day, one part wins out over the other.”

  Haley had always thought that because he was Ian’s brother, he ended up seeing more of the asshole part, but he couldn’t count the number of times Ian had stood up for other people. He’d once confronted a man in a coffee shop who said something cruel to his girlfriend. The guy must have weighed twice what Ian did. When his English teacher got breast cancer, Ian had secretly organized the student body to cook dinner for her family three times a week.

  Ian had been a study in contradictions. He’d confronted bullies while bullying his own twin. He’d defended a stranger’s girlfriend while dismissing his own girlfriend’s tireless efforts to balance the three universes. He’d worried about his English teacher’s family while completely ignoring his own mother. But Haley had never stopped believing that Ian had the hero half inside him, waiting to be embraced.

  Now he felt like he couldn’t find that part at all.

  “Winsor’s not going to die,” Haley said desperately. “I’m sure Josh made Feodor put her soul back in her body.”

  “Yeah, but you said her brain was dying. Even if she wakes up, she’ll be a vegetable.”

  Haley rarely felt offended; he’d always thought that somehow he had no right. But he was offended on Winsor’s behalf then. Yes, the coma would change her. No, her brain might never be the magnificent intellectual machine it had been before. But her life would still be worth living. One day, years away, she would be grateful—not for what she had suffered, but for what she had learned from suffering.

  “She’s better off here with me,” Ian said. When Haley didn’t agree, he said, “Oh, what, you still want her for yourself? She’s out of your league, Haley. She always was.”

  The words stung. Family poison stings the worst, Dustine had always said, and Haley believed it. In his life, no one had hurt him more than his brother.

  The sting made him do something stupid. “I have a girlfriend,” he said.

  “Yeah, right.” Ian laughed. “Have you actually managed to talk to her?”

  Haley blushed. “Yes.”

  “Who is she? Do I know her?”

  “No. She’s … She’s the lost dream-walker princess.”

  Letting out a whoop of laughter, Ian said, “Yeah, right.” He punched Haley in the arm, hard enough to hurt. “You’re a terrible liar, Haley.”

  “I’m not lying. She’s the last Rousellario.”

  “You’re so full of crap.”

  “I mean it.”

  Ian stopped walking again so that he could give Haley the look, the one that said he was appalled by Haley’s immaturity. “Stop it. You’re talking about a real person, who’s dead. It’s disrespectful.”

  Haley wrapped his arms around himself, longing for a cardigan. “I’m not lying.”

  “Haley, stop it. You and I both know you’re lying. You made her up. Admit it.” Then he said, “Haley,” in a sharp tone that was a warning he was about to lose his temper.

  Staring at his feet but seeing Mirren’s face, Haley said, “I made her up.”

  “Don’t do that again. It isn’t cute. It just makes you look more pathetic.”

  “Sorry,” Haley whispered.

  They started walking again. Haley’s face was hot. Part of him was furious, part of him wanted to hit Ian in the face, and part of him was just relieved that he didn’t have to hold Mirren up to Ian’s inevitable scorn. He could keep her memory to himself, beautiful and intact, like an apple with no brown spots.

  They rounded the top of a hill, and in the valley below sat what appeared to be a medieval village. A stone wall enclosed the village, but there were no gates to bar the entrance, just a wooden bridge to carry them over the moat.

  The building at the heart of the village wasn’t large or grand enough to be called a castle, but it was too large and too grand to be anything else. Wooden doors hung wide open to allow them inside, and sweet-smelling hay covered the stone floors. A hallway led them into an open, airy hall where the dead were dressing and undressing.

  “What the hell’s going on here?” Ian asked.

  In the center of the hall, another bonfire burned. The dead would enter, undress, and throw their clothing in the fire. A part of their sense of “self,” their idea of themselves as a particular, singular person, burned up with the clothing. Haley watched the burdens of that personhood leave them, and afterward they seemed lighter, the colors of their auras purer and brighter than ever.

  When their clothes and their sense of self burned away, they would turn and put on one of the garments hanging on the walls. Haley saw robes, kimonos, saris, and numerous other pieces of clothing he couldn’t name, many of them in white or black, but some in gray or purple or even pink.

  “This is the gayest thing ever,” Ian said.

  Haley saw the poppy red burst into Ian’s aura before he saw the anger in his brother’s face. Alongside the red, streaks of neon yellow tore through his base chakra.

  He knows what’s going on here, Haley thought. And he’s terrified.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Ian said and began stomping across the hall. Haley followed, smiling apologetically at the dead who turned to watch.

  Before they reached the door on the far side of the hall, a woman in a white kimono stepped in front of Ian. Her aura was sky blue with edges of gold, as beautiful an aura as Haley had ever seen.

  She reached out to touch Ian’s cheek.

  “Let go,” she told him.

  Ian began to tremble visibly. Black tentacles of rage burst from his gut, but they couldn’t touch the woman’s aura, the golden edges of which protected her.

  “She’s just trying to help,” Haley told his brother. “The purpose of Death is—”

  “You think I don’t know what the purpose is?” Ian barked at him. “I know why you brought me here.” Furious, Ian grabbed a rack of robes and knocked it over.

  “I know what you’re trying to do!” Ian shouted. “You’re trying to turn me into one of them! You’re trying to make me disappear!”

  “No,” Haley said weakly. “I’m not…”

  “You’re jealous of me, just like you always were!” Ian ranted. “You want to destroy me! Why, so that you can have my life? So you can be the cool, smart brother with the perfect girl and the perfect life?”

  The charred places in his aura had become dark, swirling eddies of gray with red centers, like live coals, and they were burning away larger and larger areas.

  This is what happens when you fight letting go, Haley thought. He’s going to destroy himself.

  Ian had always been volatile, but not like this. He hit Haley in the chest with both hands, knocking him back a step. “You want to be me?” He hit Haley again, energetic sparks flying from his hands, stinging Haley’s skin. “You want my life? Try to take it!”

  “No,” Haley tried to say, but the final shove sent him sprawling onto the floor. He rolled into a ball, pinched his eyes shut, and covered his hands with his ears.

  Help, help, help, he thought.

  He heard Ian’s footsteps slamming aga
inst stone as he ran out of the castle. Then a gentle touch on his arm, and when he opened his eyes, the woman with the sky-blue aura was kneeling beside him. She gave him a luminous smile, and the love that radiated from her extended to surround Haley, the golden edges of her aura encompassing his own, like a cloak she had thrown over him.

  Haley released a deep breath. Neither he nor the woman spoke, but they communicated in a silent, energetic exchange.

  Thank you, Haley told her.

  I love you beyond measure, the woman told him.

  Returning her love felt effortless. Haley trusted her completely.

  Your brother is unwell, she warned Haley. He could hurt you.

  Can he be healed? Haley asked as the woman helped him up.

  Only by the one who set him on this path.

  Haley wasn’t certain who that was. Feodor? Gloves? Ian himself?

  Again, he wondered if Dustine could help. Holding an image of her in his mind, he asked the woman if she’d seen her.

  She came this way long ago. Keep going and you will find her.

  Eventually, they said farewell, both grateful for the love that had passed between them, and the woman moved away, her aura more beautiful than ever.

  Haley left the castle and followed the road on the other side of it. A quarter mile farther, and he found Ian, sitting on a fallen tree and hurling stones at a tree trunk. His aura had retreated to its usual reds and blue.

  Haley sat down on a log, leaving a few feet between himself and Ian. He knew better than to say anything.

  Ian threw another stone. He’d hit the tree trunk in the same place so many times that the bark had crumbled away.

  “I used to be somebody,” he said. “I mattered. The World was a better place with me in it. I wasn’t ready to die.”

  He got up from the log to hunt around for another rock, finally finding one at the edge of the road. Clenching his jaw, he lobbed it at the tree trunk hard enough to rattle the branches above.

  “And no offense,” he said to Haley, “but what did you ever do with your life that was so important?”

  Haley didn’t reply. Ian didn’t really want him to, and besides, he had no argument. He hadn’t done anything important with his life. He hadn’t even graduated from high school. He’d let Winsor use him to manipulate his brother. Sure, he’d fallen in love with Mirren, but she was probably better off without him, truth be told. No politician needed a partner so shy that people thought he was a deaf mute.

  “I mean, people probably don’t even notice you’re gone,” Ian said.

  “Probably not,” Haley echoed. What would they have noticed? That there was one less body in the room with them? That Whim’s bad jokes fell against a little less silence? That there was more pizza to go around?

  “Don’t take this the wrong way, but they were more my friends than yours.”

  “I know,” Haley whispered.

  Ian was the one they had invited places; Haley had always been an afterthought. Not to Deloise, but her kindness had been closer to pity. He’d always wanted to be close to Josh, but between his awkwardness and hers, they had a hard time having a conversation.

  “Remember that time they forgot you at the amusement park?”

  “Yeah.”

  He’d been too embarrassed to call and tell them, had taken a cab home instead and hoped no one would realize he hadn’t been in either car. But he’d admitted it to Ian, and Ian had told everyone. He felt his cheeks flush just remembering it.

  Ian dropped back onto the log. “I just think … if one of us had to die, I don’t know why it should have been me.”

  Haley turned his head so Ian wouldn’t see the tears in his eyes. He felt ashamed of how pathetic he was, what a waste he’d made of his life, and maybe Ian was right and it should have been him—

  “I’d be really surprised if they actually come back for you.”

  Ian was probably right about that, too.

  I love you, Mirren said in his mind.

  He remembered standing within the branches of the willow tree on the front lawn, holding her while the rain came down around them. She’d never seen a thunderstorm before, and she’d been so excited and so sad at once.

  Don’t let me lose myself, she’d said, and the memory of how soft and real she had been, how tightly she had hugged him, weakened Ian’s arguments. Haley believed she had loved him, truly he did, because he had watched, amazed, as the love grew in her aura, like a seed blossoming.

  He sent the prayer back to her. Don’t let me lose myself, Mirren.

  And please, please, please, come back for me.

  Ian had fallen into a depressed silence, and he seemed startled when Haley stood up and said, “Let’s keep going.”

  “No,” Ian said. “I’m done.”

  Haley began walking. “Then I’ll go alone.”

  “No you won’t.”

  He walked for half a mile before Ian caught up with him.

  Eleven

  A few days later, Kerstel asked Josh to help Whim and Alex cook Sunday dinner. “I’ve got work—” Josh tried to say, but her father was shaking his head.

  “We barely see you. You’re coming to Sunday dinner. And you’re going to help cook.”

  Cooking was not on Josh’s priority list. Neither was pleasing her father. But she didn’t feel like arguing, and—if she was truthful with herself—she was tired of living off snack cakes and beef jerky. When she went down to the kitchen on Sunday afternoon, she offered her services to Whim and his father.

  “Wonderful,” Whim said. “I need someone who can chop.”

  “That would be me.”

  Josh was very good with knives, and she sat down at the table beside Winsor, who was slowly but diligently slicing cheese into cubes with a fairly dull blade. Even though she’d been partly responsible for restoring Winsor’s soul, Josh was ashamed of how little time she’d spent with her former best friend. She just didn’t know how to avoid being painfully awkward, and Winsor barely resembled the smart, witty, angry girl Josh had grown up with.

  “How’s it going, Winsor?” Josh asked.

  Winsor shrugged. “I can’t get these right. They all come out lop-eared.” She frowned. “Lop-eared?”

  “Lopsided,” Whim told her.

  “Right. Or … No, I think it’s lop-eared.”

  “That’s bunnies.”

  “And cheese!” Winsor insisted, and her face darkened.

  “Okay, okay,” Whim said, his tone light. “Bunnies and cheese.” He leaned down to kiss the top of Winsor’s head.

  “Sorry,” Winsor said. She pushed her new glasses up her nose with frustration. “I’m always embarrassing myself,” she told Josh. “I can’t stop … I get so upset and I know it’s over nothing, but…”

  Josh was deeply grateful then that Whim had passed out copies of articles about traumatic brain injuries. “That’s normal with TBI.”

  “Who cares?” Winsor replied tartly. “It sucks.”

  Josh didn’t have an answer to that. Or to Winsor’s next question.

  The dark-haired girl leaned close to Josh and, after casting a glance at Whim and her father, whispered, “Where’s Haley? Where’s he really?”

  Josh looked down at the carrots she was chopping. They’d all agreed not to tell Winsor that Haley was trapped in the Death universe until she was stronger, but Josh didn’t know when she would be strong enough, and Winsor had started pushing the issue.

  “He went away,” Josh said finally. “He’s traveling again, like he did before. But he’ll come back.”

  For a moment, Winsor’s gaze was as sharp and perceptive as it used to be. “I don’t believe you,” she said.

  Josh wanted to blurt everything out then, but she bit her tongue. “He’s all right,” she said instead. “You don’t have to worry about him.”

  Winsor threw her knife down on the table and said, “Everyone’s lying to me! Why is everyone lying to me? Is he dead? Is that it? Do you think I can’t hand
le knowing he’s dead? I can handle it!”

  “He’s not dead,” Josh insisted. “He isn’t.”

  “Winsor, sweetie, you’re shouting,” her father said, and came over to hug her. She pushed him away.

  “Tell me the truth.”

  The house phone rang. Alex answered it and held it out to Josh, who put a hand over her other ear to block out Winsor’s continued protests.

  “It’s Zorie. We’ve got another tear. It isn’t a big one, but it’s in your neck of the woods, so I thought I’d call.”

  Josh, who was happy to bail on the situation, said, “Great. Where is it?”

  “You’re not going to believe this—it’s in the Greenville Opera House. Right onstage.”

  * * *

  The Greenville Opera House was less than twenty minutes’ drive from Josh’s home. It was a run-down 1920s-style opera palace full of threadbare red velvet and ornate carvings covered in chipped gold paint. In addition to the occasional opera, it provided a home for numerous mediocre theater troupes, the spring and fall Tanith High School plays, and a men’s barbershop quartet called the Pony Boys. Half its income came from an annual summer showing of Ghostbusters.

  Nine police cars sat in the parking lot, all parked at crooked angles and with their lights on. Nearby was Zorie’s truck and a van marked FBI. Josh pulled up between them and hopped out, her VHAG and gas mask in a backpack. The cop at the door started to shoo her away before she even reached the steps to the entrance, and he looked skeptical when she said she was with Agent Abernaughton, but Zorie shouted to let Josh in, and the cop stepped aside.

  “You’re awfully young to be FBI,” he said.

  “I’m a consultant,” Josh replied.

  She passed through the lobby and into the theater itself, where she got a good look at the tear. Vertical, it began onstage, then cut through the floor and down into the orchestra pit. Josh couldn’t see where it ended, but she bet it wasn’t more than twenty feet long, and it was only a foot wide. Veil dust spurted into the room like a special effect, coating everything in glitter.