“Oh, as if us both dreaming about each other at the same time isn’t weird enough, you expect me to feel happy that some little detail was different? Like that makes this any less freaky?” His voice cracked on the last word.
“Wait, tell me your dream. Tell me what happened, what was in it,” I said, feeling that ball of dread form in my stomach.
“You, me, some retro convertible with Italian leather seats that you could never afford. Driving down the highway at night, really fast, a thunderstorm in the distance. Lily in the back seat wearing pasties and telling you to change the music to a song she liked.”
“What song was playing?”
“That old one… Tainted Love?”
I tallied it together – it was indeed similar enough to be freaky. “Mine was almost exactly the same, except Melody was in the back seat instead of Lily, and she was asleep and wouldn’t wake up. I tried to wake her, and you grabbed the steering wheel from me so that we wouldn’t go off the road.”
“Man – in mine, I grabbed the steering wheel from you so we wouldn’t hit a semi–the lights were so bright, we could barely see.”
“Shit.”
“What?”
“When I have dreams like this, they have this sort of quality to them that makes me pay attention – because…” I tailed off, not sure I wanted to admit this to anyone other than Melody.
“Because what?”
“Because sometimes they come true.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah, that’s what I just said. But they’re different… yours with Lily, mine with Melody. And it’s kind of like the other ones I’ve had of her recently.”
“What do you mean?” The tension in G.’s voice was palpable. I think he could sense something too.
“The others all had these inky black tentacles and they were trying to pull Mel down and suffocate her, or take her away or …”
“Hang up with me. Call her. Now.”
“I think I should.”
“Dude, now. I don’t have a good feeling.”
I hung up and called Melody. Usually I would just text her, but there was something that made me just push the talk button. The phone rang. And rang. It went to voicemail. I dialed it again.
On the third attempt, I was pulling on my pants and shoes, the phone wedged into my shoulder. There was a rap at the bedroom window, and I jumped, nearly dropping the phone. A dark shadow loomed outside. It was G. He must have run straight over. I waved to him and met him at the front door.
“How far does she live from here?”
“About six blocks, toward the back of the neighborhood.”
“Let’s go.”
And he took off like a freaking track star. I did my best to keep up, but it was really no contest. G. was taller and in better shape. Maybe it wasn’t like that the first time we met, but it was now. Damn, could he move.
G. was already at the front door, banging on it and ringing the doorbell. I just hoofed it around back to where her bedroom window was; I would just hoist myself up and crawl in.
When I got there though, I pulled up short. There was a dim light on in Melody’s room, but she wasn’t in her bed. I finally saw her on the floor, huddled in the farthest corner, staring up at the ceiling. She looked terrified. I followed her gaze and felt a wave of cold flow over me. There was a dark mass above her; writhing tentacles and claws, eyes and beaks, ichor and gore. I had never seen anything so evil, but I knew that’s what it was. It was evil made flesh. And I had to get her out of there.
I jimmied the window but couldn’t get it open. The damned thing was stuck and Melody was about to be… be eaten alive and I couldn’t get the goddamned window open! I looked around, frantic, looking for anything that would help me get into the house and saw a big, fat, chunk of Texas Limestone. It would do.
41. MELODY
Why can’t I move?
I could see them swarming above me. They were in the dream, and in the dream I couldn’t move either. I was paralyzed. I fought to move, to scream, to shout but I could do nothing but lie there.
They had started out just as shadows, but as my fear grew so did their forms, as if they were feeding off of my fear, off my energy. There was a dim light in the room, over near the wall, I couldn’t see what made the light since I couldn’t move my head, but the entities gave it a wide berth. And then I realized what it was that made the light… the positive orgone generator that Esme had given me – it was there on the floor, where I had thrown it right before I went to bed.
Hope flared in me, tiny and bright, and this made the creatures chitter and snarl and loom closer to frighten the hope away. If I could somehow get myself to move, get to the pog, I could hold it, wear it, use it to protect myself. Maybe I could even get the creatures to leave.
Having some goal to focus on gave me purpose, and purpose gave me strength. I struggled, willing myself to lunge from the bed and grab the pog, and finally I felt a snap and a staticky zap that started in my brain and cascaded through my body as if I had been blanketed with a net of electricity. I could move again; it was uncomfortable and I was still terrified, but I could move. I flopped off the bed, onto the floor, and army crawled over to the wall where the pog still lay, chain wrapped around it in a small pile. I reached my right hand out to grab it, and I felt the warm buzz envelop my hand and shoot up my arm. The creatures retreated the smallest amount. It wasn’t far enough for my taste, but at least their beaks weren’t threatening to pick my brains out through my eye sockets anymore. That tiny kernel of hope fluttered in my chest. What was it Esme had said? Was it about hope? No… something about joy. They cannot tolerate joy. How on earth was I supposed to be joyful at a time like this?
I heard a sharp rap on my window. Sam was outside, trying to get in. But there was a hiss overhead as one of the larger creatures lunged at me, causing my heartbeat to skip and my stomach to plunge to my knees. It seemed to grin as it lapped up my fear. Its tentacles extended toward me and this made the rest of the creatures even more bold.
I slipped the pog over my finger and waved my hand through the air, hoping that it’s meager light would cause the parasites to disperse, and although they avoided it, there were too many of them and my fear was too great. They began to close in, and a sob welled up from the base of my throat. They force-fed me wave after wave of menace, and I repaid them with the fear they were after. I clenched my fist and tried to concentrate on Sam. Sam was here. Sam knew I was in trouble. Sam was going to save me.
And then the door to my room burst open, G. charging through like a linebacker, turning from one side to the other looking for the threat. Then he saw me, our eyes met, and I looked up to mass on the ceiling. He followed my gaze. And then he roared.
It wasn’t a roar a boy makes when he’s playing games with his friends. It wasn’t the roar a ball player makes when he’s going out onto the field. It wasn’t even the roar of one beast challenging another. This was deep, it was primal, and it was the roar of a warrior descending into battle. I had never heard such a sound before, but I knew what it was. It was unmistakable.
The creatures knew what it was too, and suddenly they swirled and curdled on the ceiling above, rearranging so that the fiercest could turn to face their attacker. And then as a unit, they lunged, swarming G. like a school of piranha.
And that wail that was building in the pit of my stomach, it finally came up out of my mouth. I screamed.
The bedroom window burst, shards of glass flying inward and peppering the carpet, my desk. I thought that my scream had done it, but then Sam was there, pulling me up by the hand and pulling me close. He protected me with his body, but it wasn’t necessary. The creatures were not after me anymore – they had fresh meat.
I huddled against Sam. On the other side of the room, I couldn’t even see G. anymore, buried under that writhing mass.
But then he tore himself free and roared again, his right arm coming up as if to strike the nearest parasite. A force seemed to extend
from his arm, and the parasites flew back. So many shadowy bowling pins, they fled to the far corners of the room.
G. staggered, spent. I tried to reach out to him, but Sam would not let me go and G. caught himself from stumbling by grabbing my dresser. The creatures could sense his weakness and began moving in again…
Until a burst of light shone forth from the bedroom door. Gram appeared, carrying a handful of hockey-puck sized pogs that she tossed into the corners of the room. As each one landed, it shone a line of light that connected it to the one before, until all four corners of the room were connected – a barrier of light that the creatures could not abide. They faded, and fizzled, each of them, like plastic wrappers thrown on a flame, and finally Sam let me go.
I fell to the floor, too numb to weep.
42. G.
I had a hard time meeting people’s eyes in the brightness of the kitchen. Melody’s grandmother was pouring us each a mug of hot chocolate, and her grandfather, roused from sleep, was wheeling across the kitchen in his wheelchair with a sack of cookies in his lap. He stopped next to me and deposited a large handful on the plate in front of me.
“Eat them, even if you don’t want to,” he said. “You expended a lot of energy and you need it.”
I looked at the cookies, and my stomach lurched in rebellion. “I don’t think I can.”
“Here, drink this first. It will help more than the cookies,” said Melody’s grandmother, plunking a sports drink down on the table next to me. “Electrolytes. Very important for the energy system of your body to be tip-top. You might want to consider adding some magnesium and potassium supplements to your workout regimen.”
I looked at her, my eyes slightly glazed over with fatigue, and tried to figure out how she knew what I needed. She just smiled at me, and turned around to grab another couple of mugs of hot chocolate to pass to the others.
I took a swig of the sports drink, and after a moment or two, I really did feel a little bit better.
“Hey, Tara, are you okay?” Melody had her phone on speaker in the middle of the table, and she and Sam were leaning over it.
The sound of Tara rolling over in bed, and her sleepy voice made me feel a little more solid. She didn’t sound like she was in danger.
“Yeah, I’m asleep. Weird dream though,” she said, slowly waking up. “What time is it?”
“It’s 3:46 a.m.”, Sam said. “Sorry, we just had a sort of collective nightmare thing going on over here and wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“What was your dream about?” Melody said before Tara could respond.
There was a long pause before Tara started speaking again. “It was more like pictures than a dream. Like I was being shown something. A golden crown, an old crossroads, an arrow in the ground, a heavy metal door opening – like the door on a dungeon. Like I said, it was weird.”
“Tell her she should write down everything she remembers,” Melody’s grandfather said, nodding at the phone before he popped a cookie in his mouth.
“Gramps says you should write it all down,” Melody said. “Everything that you remember.”
“I’ll do it when I wake up in the morning.”
Gramps made a decisive gesture with his hand and Melody said, “No, he says do it now before you forget.”
There was a rummaging sound on the other end of the phone. “Okay,” she sounded a little irritated, “I’ve got some paper and a pen. Give me a second. You guys know it’s going to be impossible for me to get back to sleep after this, right?”
“Tell me about it,” said Sam.
“Also dear,” said Gram, leaning over the edge of the table, “we need you to come over tomorrow around lunch time. Can you do that? We have a group project to do. It’ll be fun. And I’ll make Frito pie for lunch.”
“Okay, got it. Tomorrow at lunch. Frito pie. Dream recorded. Can I go back to sleep now?”
Melody looked at her grandparents for confirmation. “Yeah, sleep tight. And if you have any more dreams, write them down.”
Tara mumbled and the phone line went dead.
I took another swig of my sports drink and followed Gramps’s lead by crunching down a few cookies.
Melody’s grandparents shared a long look. “Another Quarrel,” he said to her.
“I’m afraid so,” she said softly.
I could be mistaken, but I thought I saw the glimmer of sorrow in her eyes.
“What’s that?” Melody asked, who clearly hadn’t been paying attention.
“Nothing dear. Drink your cocoa. Tomorrow’s going to be a big day. And if you think rejecting the idea of magic as Science is upsetting, then you’re really going to be irritated in a few hours.”
#
Melody walked us to the door. It was well past four in the morning, and while the initial jitters and nausea were past, the bone-crushing fatigue had set in. I needed sleep.
“Thanks for… saving me,” she said, looking at Sam, and then looking at me for a long moment. She reached out and put a hand on my arm. “I don’t know what would have happened. I don’t know what you did, but I am pretty sure it saved me.”
I wasn’t sure what I did either. The whole episode was a blur of righteous anger, adrenaline, and shadows. I shrugged, not knowing what to say, so I just filled the silence with meaningless crap. “Sure, see you in a few hours?”
Melody smiled. She gave Sam a short hug and then, hesitantly, gave me one, too. I was surprised, but returned it. “See you at lunchtime,” she said and ushered us out the door.
Sam and I stood on the front stoop for a moment longer before walking down the sidewalk to the street.
“What you did back there, that was… amazing,” Sam said. The expression on his face was troubled. “How did you do it?”
“I don’t know, man. I’m not even sure I remember it clearly. It’s like a blur.”
“You blasted those shadows away. And you didn’t even touch them.”
“Really? Is that what it looked like, because…” because I wasn’t sure, but I thought I remembered having a sword… made of light.
“Because what?”
“Nothing. Like I said, it’s mostly a blur. See you later, okay? I’m going to jog home. Maybe it will help me sleep when I get there, cuz even though I am dead tired, I still feel really jumpy.”
Sam nodded and waved and I ran off, but two miles didn’t cut it, so I ran ten.
43. TARA
The weather was beautiful; sun dappled the shade and a light breeze wafted over the patio table. The scent of pears sweetened the air and birds chirped in the trees. Surrounded by friends, bellies full of frito pie, how could the day get much better than this?
The mood wasn’t as light as it could have been, each of us lost in our own thoughts for the moment. Melody and G. seemed to be the most unsettled, whereas Sam looked wound as tight as a spring. He was watching what Gram was doing intently. Since I had missed out on the night’s events, I just sat back on my heels and watched everyone else. The group was different than it had been, even last week. We had all changed, and according to G. and Sam, it wasn’t necessarily a change for the better.
Gram handed out particle respirator masks to each of us, and we put them on. According to her, making positive orgone generators was a smelly, sticky job, and if we didn’t want to kill brain cells, the respirator was a must. I had a pretty acute sense of smell, so I made sure mine was nice and snug, even though I felt slightly claustrophobic.
“These cupcake pans are what we will use to mold the pucks. The resin and the metal shavings together slow down the flow of energy and accumulate it. However, the resin-metal matrix is not particular about what kind of energy it accumulates – could be positive or negative. So to turn this matrix from an accumulator to a generator, we add a quartz crystal in the center.”
“Why quartz?” I asked, leaning in to watch what Gramps was doing. He used silicon spray to coat the cupcake depressions, added a shallow layer of aluminum pieces across the bottom o
f each cup, quartz chunks as big as the first digit of my thumb, more aluminum pieces, and then a ladle full of resin in each. The resin made big air bubbles that expanded and popped as they settled down into the depressions; Gramps poked them with a bamboo skewer to eliminate any smaller bubbles, too.
“Because it produces electricity?” Sam asked as he sorted through the piles of quartz for pieces of the appropriate size.
Gramps nodded. “Indeed, quartz is piezo-electric. The resin matrix compresses the quartz, causing it to pulse. The metal bounces that pulse of energy around. As the deadly orgone energy encounters the pulses, it is converted to positive orgone. There’s something else about negative ions and quantum mechanics... I never did understand everything about why it does what it does; Matthew was the one who was good at that kind of thing.” He fell silent as Gram ladled another small dollop. The resin settled in to form a smooth surface, this time with no bubbles.
Piezo-electric… I wonder if that’s why Melody and I could feel the buzz of a piece of quartz? Speaking of Melody, I glanced over at her. She was very quiet. The mention of Matthew had made her forehead wrinkled above her respirator and she looked down at her hands where they lay clasped in her lap. I moved closer.
“You okay?” I asked her, my voice muffled through my mask.
She looked up at me. “Yeah. Maybe. This is all-- I’m just...” she fluttered her hands. “You know. It’s just going to take me a little bit to feel normal.”
“Part of that is the energy loss you are experiencing from last night’s attack,” Gram said. “It was very traumatic for you in more ways than one. Your batteries are plumb drained, that’s what.”
G. looked up. “Should I get her a sports drink?” he asked, about ready to get up from the table.
She gave him a small smile. “That wouldn’t hurt, but her issue is a little deeper than just some missing electrolytes. They were feeding off of her fear, and the parasites literally bled the emotion from her. It will be a day or two before she gets some of that back. Sleep will help a lot, as will spending time outside with her feet in the grass, getting grounded.”
A Quarrel Called: Stewards Of The Plane Book 1 Page 14
