The boy stopped following her. Cheeks flushed with indignation, he shouted, “Do whatever the hell you please, then. No matter what happens, your precious Hunter’s not coming for you!” And then he turned his back on her.
Nan stopped in her tracks. Once the young man had vanished down the road, she turned around. She looked worried. She looked sorry, as well. Standing on tiptoe, she was about to go after him, but she soon abandoned that idea and settled back down on the ground. With the back of her right hand, she rubbed both her eyes. If silent tears could be called crying, then that’s just what she was doing.
Waiting for her to finish dabbing at her eyes, D came out of the grass. When he was about fifteen or twenty feet away, Nan casually turned in his direction, and then finally she noticed him. Her eyes opened wide and her cheeks flushed instantly. “Oh, no!” she gasped. “How long have you been here?”
“I just arrived.”
Nan seemed relieved. No one liked to be seen crying by other people. “But you saw us, didn’t you?” she asked bashfully. Voice dipping lower, she said, “And I suppose you . . .” She wanted to ask if he’d overheard the boy mentioning a certain Hunter, too, but caught herself and never finished.
“You shouldn’t fight like that.”
“Stop it. You sound just like one of my teachers at school. It really doesn’t suit you. And it wasn’t even anything worth fighting about.”
D said nothing.
“When I said I’d dreamt about you a few times, he said that was really strange because he’d only had the one dream. That irritated me, so I went ahead and told him I’d gone to see you and talk about it. And that’s where the argument started . . .”
What would D make of this little dispute that centered on him?
“One of your childhood friends?” the Hunter asked.
Nan nodded. “The boy next door. His name’s Kane.”
After answering, Nan noticed that D had turned his back to her, and she went off after him. The same boy was coming back down the road. D was ready to move away.
“Don’t. Stay here,” Nan said, clinging to his arm. Perhaps she was just being obstinate.
Kane froze in his tracks and stayed that way for a while. It was hard to tell whether he was angry or amazed. “Asshole!” he shouted.
Nan hollered back, “Too bad. Looks like I already have a date!”
“The night creatures can eat you for all I care. Hop in a grave with the Nobility, why don’t you?” And with those typical Frontier curses, the young man ran off.
“He’s worried about you,” D said, his voice calm. For some reason, the young man’s voice got like that when he looked at a youthful, lively figure.
“What, that little bastard?” Nan sulked. She tried to act like an adult, but that unbelievable bit of childishness made her expression run the full gamut.
“Why did you come out here?”
“No reason. It’s close by, and I’ve been playing here since
I was little.”
“Apparently Sybille used to come here a lot, too,” said D.
“How do you know that?”
“Do you want to go to dance parties, too?”
“You don’t talk about yourself at all, do you?” Nan said angrily. The Hunter was the cause of her quarrel earlier. She felt like since he knew it, the very least he could do was be a little kinder when he talked with her. But he was far too distant for her to ever say such a thing to him. After all, he was from another world. So, why did she have to dream about him three times? All of a sudden, Nan felt a sense of hatred toward someone, but she didn’t know who—a fact that only further churned the emotions inside of her.
“You said you were in the bed next to hers, didn’t you?”
“The room next to hers,” Nan corrected him. “I spent two years in the hospital with foam worms eating through my chest. You know what happens when you get a case of those buggers?”
“I hear it hurts.”
“Yeah,” Nan said, holding her left hand over the soft swell of her bosom.
The worms were a favorite food of spear-carrying sprites, but the girl didn’t realize they were part of the air that filled her lungs until the damage was done. If even one of the thousandth-of-a-millimeter-long creatures was allowed into the body, the toxins it contained could turn the victim’s every breath into flames. Yet they actually hardened the lining of the lungs, so their host went through an agonizing hell before their body was completely burnt. When treatment came too late, the flaming breath could spread throughout the entire body, eventually serving up a corpse that had a glossy sheen on the outside, but was charred and crumbling on the inside.
A case of the foam worms was only treatable if caught during the first four weeks in the body—Nan had barely made it in time. Strapped down to her bed, she was pushed to the brink of madness by the pain, begging more than once for them to kill her. What saved her was the encouragement she got from her parents and Kane, and the wisdom the hospital director showed in the decision to move her bed.
Dr. Allen had used these words when he introduced the quietly slumbering girl in the next room to the agonized Nan: “You’re going to get well someday. I know it hurts, but that’s just proof that your condition is improving. If you just bear with it another year or two, you’ll be able to race around under the blue sky again, free as you please. You’ll be able to kiss boys, too, I suppose. But that girl won’t. Chances are she’ll never awaken again as long as she lives. All the things you’re going to go on to experience ended for Sybille thirty years ago. And now she just sleeps, never aging. Is that any kind of life?”
“So, I just suffered through it,” Nan said, gazing at D with sparkling eyes. “Knowing I’d get well someday—that someday, I could get out of bed, run across the ground, pick apples in the fall, go skating in winter, and swim in the lake in summer. And listen to Kane play his guitar again. That’s what I thought about.”
Having said all of this in a single breath, Nan suddenly looked down bashfully and played with her hair. The dusky light painted her profile a rosy hue as D remained silent and gazed at the eighteen-year-old girl. “What you said earlier . . . ” Nan ventured in a tiny voice, still looking at the ground.
“Yes?”
“About the dance party—I heard about it from the sheriff. He said it was Sybille’s dream—that he was sure every night she was throwing a dance party.”
“Do you envy her?” D asked.
“Sure I do.”
“This is a peaceful village.”
“I still envy her. A lot more, recently.” Nan stopped herself then. Frightened by D’s eyes as he watched her, she froze. What was going to happen? The thrill that accompanied her shudders made her very pores open.
What actually happened was unexpectedly simple.
“How recently?” the Hunter asked her.
She didn’t answer right away, but when she did speak, her voice was husky. “Since you . . . since you appeared in my dreams.”
.
II
.
Did you get them?” Dr. Allen asked.
In lieu of a reply, Sheriff Krutz removed a thick wad of papers from the chest pocket of his coat and held them out. “Which one?” he said, teasing Dr. Allen by casually moving the mass of papers away from the older man as he reached for them with his blotchy fingertips. Suddenly, there was a sharp crack. The sheriff’s eyes shifted from the papers he’d just smacked into the palm of his otherhand and looked up at the hospital director. Krutz’s eyes were ablaze, kindled by grief and an intense hatred.
The director took his gaze impassively. His iron will ruthlessly deflected the sheriff’s arrows of fiery sentiment. An incredibly powerful sense of duty was supporting him. “You know what happened to Clements?” the director asked.
They were in Dr. Allen’s private office. While flames fed by petroleum and a light that was a complex arrangement of lenses kept the dark at bay, the two of them were like darkness in human form.
The sheriff gave no reply.
Folding his hands on the table, Dr. Allen said, “He’s in serious condition—broken ribs punctured both his lungs. Even after he heals, he’s never going to be very spry again. Makes you wonder if he wouldn’t have been better off dead. If nothing else, he was a fair bit more adventuresome than you.”
“You think he knew what’s going on here?” the sheriff asked in a hoarse voice.
“He doesn’t seem to be aware of the situation. But from here on out, there’ll be a lot more like him. We won’t be able to say this is a peaceful village anymore.”
The sheriff once again smacked the bundle of papers into the palm of his hand.
With the pile of papers now tossed down before the director’s stormy eyes, Allen picked them up and began reading them. He pored over the pages with a prudent gaze, as if he were studying a patient’s charts. “Alexis Piper: at least seven counts of murder, uses an electric whip . . . Belle Coldite: seventeen counts, trained in demon kempo . . . Maddox Ho: twelve counts of murder, uses a knife . . . I don’t think any of them could stand up to the Hunter,” Dr. Allen mused. “Hmm . . . The Bio Brothers . . .”
Eyes shining brightly, the director went on scanning through the rest of the papers. While he was doing so, the sheriff seated himself in a chair by the wall and gazed out at the darkness massing beyond the windows, never moving a muscle.
An hour later, the hospital director came to a decision, saying, “These guys are it.”
“Can you get them?” the sheriff asked.
“I’ll manage something. It may take some time, but time isn’t a problem.”
“You mean because he can’t leave?”
“Precisely.”
“Killing that Hunter’s not gonna be easy,” Sheriff Krutz stated. “Not even in this world.”
“I realize that. That’s precisely why Sybille called him here. But now that he’s in here, there has to be some way he can be killed. Just as we can die, so can he.”
“Well, I saw him a little while ago, and there wasn’t a scratch on him.”
“That’s just because our preparations were inadequate,” said Dr. Allen. “But I’ve continued to make improvements to the machine. This world and everything in it is on our side.”
“For all the good it’ll do us.” The sheriff’s words were
accompanied by a metallic squeak—the sound of a trigger being pulled tight.
The hospital director gazed disdainfully at the muzzle of the missile gun that Krutz leveled at him. “Traded up for something to use against a Hunter who can chop down a laser beam, did you? You’d certainly be better off using that against him, but you really can’t do that, either. You’d still have to worry about him coming back to life. Have you thought about blasting someone else with that thing?” His tone was inflammatory.
“You talking about Sybille?” Sheriff Krutz said, spitting the words.
“At the very least, it would settle matters here. Though I don’t know exactly how everything would wind up,” the director said, leaning back in his chair. “I was born in this village. It was a good village. Ever since I was a little boy, I thought there couldn’t possibly be a more wonderful world anywhere. Every child eventually gets the urge to leave their birthplace, but the thought never even occurred to me. It was my sincerest wish to live my whole life here—to grow old and die in this village.”
“Me too.”
“But,” the elderly physician began, his eyes colored as never before by weariness and despair, “I never would’ve guessed the whole thing was a sham . . .”
“Don’t start that!” the sheriff moaned. The finger he had around the trigger was white from the strain.
“I believe I showed you proof of that not long ago. This world and everything in it is just Sybille’s—”
Dr. Allen may have actually caught himself at the very end. The instant the ultra-compact missile flew from the twenty-millimeter-wide barrel it reached maximum velocity, slamming into the elderly physician’s chest at a speed of fifteen hundred miles per hour before exploding. The detonation was the work of an impact fuse. A half ounce of explosive gel blew open the hospital director’s chest and his left shoulder, killing him instantaneously.
“The Bio Brothers?” the sheriff muttered as he caught the foul stench of burning flesh and fat. Getting to his feet, he looked down at Dr. Allen with a touch of sadness in his eyes. “I was born here in the village, too, and swore to the people that I’d be their sheriff. And I can’t be a party to murder, no matter what the reason.”
Holstering the weapon at his waist, the sheriff grabbed the list of criminals and walked out of the room. There was no sign of anyone in the hall. Normally, he’d pass a few nurses at this hour. Come to mention it, there wasn’t the smell that was unique to this time, either—the aroma of supper.
Sheriff Krutz went down into the basement. In front of the room where Sybille slept he came to a halt briefly. He tried to think about what he was doing, but couldn’t get his thoughts to come together. He went in.
The machine, the feeble darkness, and Sybille were all sleeping.
There ought to be a few nurses around, the sheriff thought. It was like an empty hospital. He stared at Sybille’s face, propped up on the pillow like a pale moonflower. Her serene breathing served to lessen, at least a bit, the burden of the darkness crushing down on his heart.
“Is it true, Sybille?” he called out to her. “Are all our memories just made-up stories? Was all that stuff about you and me just a dream? Is me being here now a dream? Hell, are the things I’m thinking now not even my own will? Is it all really just some dream you’re having? Or something the other you dreams?!”
The sheriff slowly brushed his hand against the missile gun on his hip. He hesitated when his fingertips met the grip, but, after repeating this gesture a number of times, he finally grabbed the grip firmly and drew the weapon, pointing the barrel at Sybille. All part of a single action. That the barrel of the weapon shook was completely natural.
And then, a pale hand gently came to rest on the sheriff’s.
“Ai-Ling?!” Open wide with amazement, Sheriff Krutz’s eyes reflected the quietly smiling image of his wife. “But how . . . ? When did you get here?”
“Please, stop already,” Ai-Ling said. She sounded so sad.
For a second, the sheriff got the impression that for the longest time he hadn’t seen his wife wearing any other expression but sadness.
“It’s already begun,” Ai-Ling said. “No matter what you do, it won’t help anything. The Sybille we have here isn’t the real Sybille, you know.”
“No. She is. I know she is.”
“No, you don’t. You don’t know anything at all. Not even about yourself. Probably not even who you love.”
“But I . . . You’re the one I . . .”
“That’s a lie,” Ai-Ling said with a thin smile as she shook her head. “You’re just trying to love me. But even that’s just because Sybille makes you do it. The same goes for me hating you. Don’t you see? I’m very happy now. Of course, that’s due
to Sybille’s control, too . . .”
“No,” Sheriff Krutz said, shaking his head. The sweat that had seeped from him, while he was unaware of it, now did a sparkling dance through the air. “That’s not true. I’m me. I love you with all my heart. And you hate me with every inch of your body.”
Ai-Ling was speechless. Something began to glisten in her eyes as they watched her husband.
The sheriff was pierced by a near-indescribable fear. That fear spoke to him.
What exactly are you?
I’m the sheriff. My name is Krutz Bogen. Age: forty-eight. Weight: one hundred and fifty-seven pounds. Height: six feet three inches. My favorite food is . . .
What are you? Why are you here? How did you come to exist?
I was born. I came from my mother’s womb.
Where is your mother? What do you mean by “mother”?
T
he woman who gave birth to me. Her grave’s in the cemetery on the outskirts of the village.
“Krutz! Darling!” his wife called to him. “Give up already. Let’s just accept our fate. That’s the best thing we can do.”
“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” the sheriff moaned. His hair was standing on end. But this phenomenon was more the result of anger than fear. “I don’t care what my fate may be—if it’s something someone else would assign me, then I’ll be damned if I’m gonna submit to it. I’m me. I’ll live by my own thoughts.”
“Yes, that’s it. It’s all about living,” Ai-Ling whispered gently. “Even if we are just part of some other Sybille’s dream, we still have a right to live. This whole world does. Please, you’ve got to help me with this.”
Sheriff Krutz shut his eyes. His wife’s request overflowed with the sincerest passion . . . but even that wasn’t her own doing. He recalled what the hospital director had revealed to him just before he’d gone back to the jail to visit D.
This village, this world, even we ourselves are a dream—a dream Sybille has. All of this will vanish like a popped bubble if she awakens even once—that’s what we all are. And that includes the Sybille who sleeps in our world, too.
When Krutz still refused to believe, Dr. Allen manipulated the machine connected to Sybille’s head to give substance to her image so the lawman might see. The image was a copy of the girl as she made herself appear in her dreams, a copy that disappeared less than two seconds later, but even after that the sheriff was a tangle of doubts, standing still as a statue. And now—
“It’s a lie,” he groaned.
“Please, help me with this,” Ai-Ling begged him. “So we can continue to exist . . .”
“And do what? What’s the point? Suppose we are just the dream of the other Sybille . . .”
The words of the hospital director came back to him: Since we are dreams, in order to continue to exist, we must see to it Sybille continues to dream. That Hunter came to disturb everything.
How do you know that? Krutz had asked.
Because . . .
“Sybille!” the sheriff screamed. The frantic cry gave him the determination to stick to what he believed. His thumb cocked the hammer of the missile gun.
The Stuff of Dreams Page 12
