Dream Keeper

by Amber R. Duell

  He tossed the rigid thread, and it exploded midair in a cloud of black powder. A deep rumble tore across the beach a moment before a hairless, human-like creature with jagged fingers stood beside the Weaver. Grey skin clung to its ribs. The nightmare stared hungrily at Nora through hollow slits, and brown saliva dripped down its chin from between pointed, yellow teeth.

  There wasn’t time to think, no time to reason with Nora. I couldn’t fight this thing and protect her at the same time. There was a chance I wasn’t going to be able to protect myself. Sand whirled around us, and I jerked her close, trapping us in the center. “Don’t be angry,” I whispered. Then I did something I knew I would always regret; I dismissed her decision to stay, and shoved her, hard, from the dream.

  Dagger-like fingers dug into my shoulder the moment she was gone, sending me to my knees. I swiped my free hand across the ground. A spray of sand swooped upward toward the nightmare as a blade. The metal sliced through the air with a piercing shriek and the gleaming edge severed its wrist. The hand fell to the ground with a soft thud. The sand faltered around me as the taint of the nightmare’s presence grew. The infection crept deeper, the blood seeping beyond the surface of the beach.

  I stood on unsteady feet and stumbled backward, away from the creature. Foam fell from its mouth in globs. The Weaver was no longer behind him—his presence registering far away. Anxious. Annoyed. He had left me alone with this thing to do his dirty work.

  “What?” I snapped. “Is that all it takes to stop you?”

  It roared, and spit rained across my face. My fingers twitched, rushing to turn the sand into something useful. But I wasn’t fast enough, or maybe it was too fast, because in the next instant, razor sharp pain seared up my torso. Blood spilled from vertical claw marks on my chest. I barely drew breath before it raised its remaining hand for a second strike.

  I leaned back to avoid the blow and fell, landing flat on my back. A whiff of decay hit me instead of claws. They passed through empty air and impaled the nightmare’s own thigh. Its slit-eyes constricted in shock.

  I tossed a handful of sand in its face and scrambled to my feet. My cuts screamed in protest when I raised a fist above my head. A curtain of sand rose up behind the creature. The shadow fell first, a grey blanket coating the beach. When I brought my arm down in one violent jerk, the wounds wailed, and the curtain fell. The sand encased the shrieking nightmare in a cyclone. Pulling it. Crushing it. Tearing it. I hated that move. Hated the screams mixing with cracks and crunches. Hated the soft clink of sand against sand that echoed through the pain.

  Footsteps beat in my ears, a strange new note to the wretchedness before me. Baku skidded to a halt on the other side of the smaller dead nightmare. His eyes lifted to mine with a flash of hope, and I nodded once. Let him eat it. Let him eat the second one too, as soon as it was dead. It was one less mess I needed to clean.

  My knees buckled, my arms falling limp at my sides. I looked away from the disaster playing out on my beach, blocked out the sounds, and pried the torn fabric from the middle gash. It had almost—almost—nicked the edge of the crescent moon there. It was hard to look at the wound and consider myself lucky, but I was. There wasn’t time to heal from something like that. Not now. It would take months, at least.

  I rolled my sleeves up and started the tedious task of drawing out each grain of contaminated sand. Baku swished his cow tail and made his way to my side. He lifted the severed hand with his trunk on his way by, and I cringed. “I hope you found something,” I said.

  The cyclone narrowed, and the screams reduced to tortured mewls. Baku flopped down beside me with a disgruntled huff, his side pressing against my leg. Then he unhinged his jaw and stuffed the entire hand into his mouth. I slammed my eyes shut. The sound of crunching bones set my nerves on edge.

  “Nothing, then,” I said, more to myself than him.

  My energy faded, leaving me feeling empty and dull. I cracked my eyes open in time to see the sand fall around a mangled corpse. Baku lunged for it while I dug into my reserves again—so soon after stealing dreams.

  Too soon.

  15

  Nora

  I wrenched out of bed, gasping for air, and clutched the leather string around my neck. Those things... The nightmares... That was what the Weaver wanted to unleash on the world. That’s what I was protecting humankind from. Not just the people I loved—but everyone. The Weaver could rot in his realm—there was no way was I giving him the dream. Not now, not ever. I still felt the creature’s dead gaze crawling over my skin and the scent of rotting flesh lingered in my nostrils.

  And I left the Sandman there alone. No. I didn’t leave him. He kicked me out. Ejected me somehow. My blood fizzled in my veins. It was my dream—I held the power. I could have done something. Helped.

  Don’t be angry.

  Well, I was. I crossed the room in two steps and yanked the top dresser drawer open. The white pills glared up at me from the bottom. They promised sleep. Sleep I couldn’t wake from until morning, at least. There would be no shoving me out again. The Sandman and I were in this—all of this—together, and I needed to pull my own weight.

  “Keeper.” The voice came in a rushed hiss, hot against my ear.

  I slammed the drawer shut and spun on my heel. “You.” I advanced one step for each one the Weaver took backward. He cocked his head and smirked. “I swear, if anything happens to him, I’ll—”

  “You’ll what?” he drawled. “Boil me in oil? Dream Keeper, I turned torture into a fine art long before you were a twinkle in your father’s eye.”

  I grabbed my hairbrush off the displaced dresser and threw it at him. Then a pen. A tube of mascara. A hand-mirror. It all bounced off his semi-solid form; the mirror shattered into a dozen pieces. I froze, panting, waiting to hear my mother’s hurried footsteps in the hall, but there was only silence.

  “Ouch,” the Weaver deadpanned.

  “Is he alive?” I growled.

  “Naturally.”

  I balled my hands into fists. “If you’re lying...”

  “What reason do I have to lie? Do stop wasting my time; it grows irksome.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “I’m going to kill you.”

  “Yes, yes. Very scary.” He smiled as if he was genuinely amused, and the beauty of it made me sick to my stomach. “At least one of you has the courage to try.”

  I opened my mouth to defend the Sandman, but the words stuck in my throat. He hadn’t tried before? Never? Not even when the Weaver was letting nightmares loose? The binding had to be Plan B. Weakening himself to keep the wards up, constantly fearing the day they broke. It had to be a last resort. But he’d only ever mentioned trapping the Weaver again. Not once had he said anything about a more permanent solution. About delivering the punishment the Weaver deserved.

  “Even if he wanted to, the Sandman will never kill me,” the Weaver said as if he knew where my thoughts had wandered. “Why do you think I’m here now? Do you think it’s because he was incapable of bringing about my death five years ago? No. My life was in his hands when he did this to me, but we have a history, he and I.” He casually waved a hand through the air as if it didn’t matter, but the way his voice pitched betrayed him. “Besides, he believes in balance—a darkness to the light.” He leaned closer, the amused glint fading from his features. “But I’m tired of being bound, Dream Keeper. Do you understand? We did something that needs undoing. This isn’t how things are supposed to be.”

  I squared my shoulders. The Sandman said the balance always rights itself so what was stopping him? I shifted under the Weaver’s scrutiny. “Sucks to be you.”

  “Give me the dream,” he growled. “Enough games.”

  I folded my arms across my chest, my heart hammering against them. Yes. Enough games, indeed. “You might as well kill me because you’re not getting it.”

  The Weaver rose to loom over me, blocking the moonlight from the window. His golden eyes glowed in the darkness, but I held my ground. He co
uldn’t scare me anymore. There wasn’t enough left in me to be afraid, and what did remain was too busy being pissed off.

  “I’ve come to offer one last deal,” he said after a long silence. “Give me what I want or everyone you know, everything you care about, will be swallowed by fear.”

  “Wow.” I rolled my eyes, but a metallic tang coated my mouth. Blood. The only thing telling me that I chomped down on the inside of my cheek. “What an offer, Weaver. It’s almost as if it isn’t an offer at all.”

  His top lip lifted in disgust.

  “I want Katie back, safe and sound,” I said.

  “I gathered as much.”

  Goosebumps dotted my arms at his tone, but I wasn’t backing down. He had my mother smother me in my own bed, sent a nightmare straight for me on the beach, and created the most vulgar thing I’d ever seen to hurt the Sandman. No. I was finished letting people walk all over me. It got me nowhere. It got me here. To this place with him.

  “I want to see her first,” I said.

  He narrowed his eyes. “I see trust is not your forte.”

  “Call me crazy.” I glared at him, waiting, too nervous to breathe.

  “I’ll show you your sister.” If trust wasn’t my forte, bargaining wasn’t his. “Then you’ll give me the dream.”

  “If Katie is okay,” I answered. She had to be. She had to.

  “Tomorrow at dusk,” he said slowly. “52 Maple Street. I’ll know if you go looking before that. If you try anything, if you drive by or I see a single police officer near that address, I’ll let my Blood Army devour your sister piece-by-piece.”

  Blood Army? I forced myself not to shiver. “I believe you.”

  Not that he should believe me. If there was ever the tiniest chance of me giving up the secret, seeing the threat he carried with my own eyes had crushed it. But I was tired of waiting for someone else to find Katie. Tired of fruitlessly searching. The Sandman didn’t want me to help him fight nightmares—fine. He was probably right. That didn’t mean I was going to sit around while there were things that needed to be done.

  “A temporary truce, then. Do not think to cross me.” The Weaver backed away, fading into the shadows.

  I scrambled back into bed. Of course, I was going to cross the Weaver. He had to know I was.

  The carcass of the nightmare that rushed me was gone from the beach, and blissfully, there was no sign of the other one. But the normally smooth sand was covered in divots. Blood so dark it was almost black filled the small pits, and a trail of it led away from the water, following deep drag marks.

  Alive suddenly didn’t feel as comforting as it did a moment ago. The Sandman could be unconscious. Bleeding out. Tortured. Alive meant nothing except that I wasn’t too late yet.

  The blood led past a tall hill to a part of the beach I had never seen before—and I had explored every nook and cranny over the years. My face fell, taking the color with it, and I ran. My bare feet dug into packed sand, and I scrambled up a foreign dune.

  “Sandman,” I whisper-yelled. It was lost in the endless stretch of sand. The ground was nearly untouched, the drag marks the only thing disturbing the smooth, glimmering grains. Drag marks and footprints. My feet slid back the way I came. Whatever did the dragging was distinctly not human. Four oval toes were spaced above the pad of an animal’s foot—a foot nearly as big as my head.

  My heart pounded. The open terrain suddenly felt too defenseless, like something would fall from the sky and leave me with nowhere to hide. A soft thump froze me in place. My muscles tightened until they ached. A tiny, familiar voice whispered doubts in the back of my mind, telling me I wasn’t brave enough. Strong enough. Smart enough. It was probably right. I knew I was about to cross the Nightmare Lord, but I had no idea what exactly I was walking into. My plan sounded good in theory. Katie’s life depended on my finding the Sandman though—I couldn’t do this without his cooperation.

  I jumped when another thump echoed off the invisible barrier. A stout creature appeared in the distance. It was too far away to see, but I knew it was watching me as closely as I was watching it. Then it moved. I locked my knees, bracing myself. Each footstep was another thump. My hands shook at my sides. I wouldn’t run. Wouldn’t. My right foot slid back a step. Traitor.

  As the creature neared, he studied me through beady eyes. I fought against a scream, my breath rapid and shallow. He stopped in front of me and his elephant trunk reached out, sniffing my hair. A musk emanated from the thick, furry hide, not entirely disgusting but not something I wanted in my face. The black and yellow brindle fur at the base of his neck rose. If he was anything like a dog, that was a horrible sign. I stared at his curved tusks, tinged pink with what I only hoped wasn’t blood, and my stomach dropped.

  “Um.” I took an involuntary step back and cringed. “Hey, there. Nice...nightmare.”

  He dropped his trunk and glared. I glared back, not daring to breathe. I could’ve sworn it frowned before scooping up a bit of sand and tossing it at my ankles. Then he turned and lumbered away. His skinny cow-like tail swished angrily back-and-forth as he followed the drag trail.

  “Wait,” I called. “Where is—”

  He paused and glanced back at me. It was a look of understanding so deep I thought only humans were capable of. It shook my core, tethering me in place. When he moved again, I hurried after him, stepping carefully over each of his gigantic paw prints.

  It could have been a trap, but what choice was there? I needed to make sure the Sandman was in one piece. So, I followed him and followed him. And followed him some more until the water was far behind us, endless glittering sand the only thing in sight. Then, finally, he stopped in front of an open structure. Two walls held a thatched roof over a wooden platform almost completely hidden under an array of pillows. On one wall was a series of built-in drawers, and on the other… I blinked to make sure it wasn’t a mirage. But the three drawings I’d gifted him over the last six months didn’t disappear. My self-portrait—the only one I’d ever done, per his request—and two landscapes of his world hung, evenly spaced, across the second interior wall. I swallowed hard.

  The Sandman hid himself from me for five years; he hid this even longer. My visits were regulated to a one mile stretch of beach when there was so much more. My pulse roared, an angry thing. This... this was a secret. There weren’t supposed to be any left. What else didn’t I know?

  The creature dug at the sand just outside the structure with his tiger paws until a groan came from beneath the ground. I slapped a hand over my mouth.

  “Not yet,” the Sandman croaked as his face appeared from under the sand. “I need more time.”

  “Sandman?” I asked, louder than I intended. “What are you doing?”

  His eyes flew open. Silver flecks swirled around his violet pupils. “Nora? What are you doing here?”

  “Looking for you.”

  “You shouldn’t have.” He closed his eyes again and sighed. “Things might not have ended well. It was dangerous for you to come back this soon.”

  “Apparently things didn’t end very well, regardless,” I said. “Are you okay?”

  The creature huffed. I shot him a deadly look, and he strode away.

  “Don’t mind him,” the Sandman said, and the footsteps thumped away.

  I eyed the creature cresting a nearby dune. “What is that thing?”

  “Baku.”

  I gaped. “That is your associate?”

  He cracked his eyes open to look up at me. “He’s going back out right now to look for Katie.”

  I bit my tongue, instantly sorry I called him a thing. He wasn’t just the Sandman’s associate anymore—he was mine. By default, as the Sandman had said, but helpful nonetheless. I squinted at him, following his movements, and he waltzed straight through the barrier.

  My face fell. “The barriers are down?”

  “Baku has been here as long as I have, perhaps longer, but he belongs to neither the Nightmare nor the Dream Realm. He g
oes where he pleases.” His voice was low and tired.

  I faced him again and repeated, “Are you okay?”

  He paused. “I will be.”

  I kneeled beside him. His face was the only thing visible while the rest of him lay hidden, perfectly camouflaged, in the sand. I tucked my feet beneath me, then untucked them, and tucked them again. “Are you sure? Do you need help getting out of there?”

  His lips quirked. “It’s healing me.”

  “What?”

  He sat up with a quiet grunt and ran a hand through his hair. His tunic was gone, and three long, jagged rips ran up the abdomen of his second shirt. I ran my eyes over him for other injuries before stopping at the gaping holes dotting his shoulder.

  “The sand. It’s—”

  “Yes, yes.” I waved my hand at him. “The sand heals you, but you never mentioned being buried in it.” I dropped my gaze to scowl at the ground where his waist disappeared. Even after all the explanations, what did I really know about the Sandman? About his life or his abilities? I knew he could conjure up pretty illusions. I knew he could travel into my world and break into houses, but not the how. Maybe magic was one of those things that had no explanation, but for all the time I spent here, it felt like I knew absolutely nothing.

  “Hey.” The Sandman ran his thumb down my cheek. “It’s faster this way. I’ll be fine.”

  Of course, he would. Because the sand was healing him. My nostrils flared. Later. Later we would talk about this hidden oasis and everything I still didn’t know. But right now, I was working on a deadline. “I need your help figuring out something specific.”

  The weight of his eyes made me twitch. I refused to look up. He said nothing for what felt like forever, but it couldn’t have been more than thirty seconds. “I’m not going to like this, am I?”

  I gave him a quick, fake smile. “That’s a pretty safe assumption.”

  He released a breath. “All right, but first, would you mind?”