Dreamlander

by K.M. Weiland

  Chapter Three

  Thanks to the Midwest’s heat wave, sweat soaked Chris’s shirt by the time he reached the L-train depot. He joined the end of the line and waited, ignoring the jostle of the crowd and trying not to think too hard about this morning’s onslaught.

  That was the trick to surviving life. Think too hard, and the stress and the pain would bludgeon you to your knees. But if you could block it out, if you could keep it all at arm’s distance, it all began to seem less important and more manageable. If there really were people who somehow managed to care about each and every bit of it and still stay sane, he had yet to find their secret.

  The overdue articles, his dad, and Mike he could put into the back of his mind, but this crank caller was a different matter. How did the guy know he was dreaming? Everyone dreamed, of course, but not like Chris dreamed. Did his stalker know that, or was it all just a coincidence?

  The back of his neck started crawling again. Whatever the guy wanted, which, apparently, was victory over this Mactalde character, he was obviously accelerating his game. First the letter, then the phone call. Next thing Chris knew, the guy would be confronting him in person.

  He was almost to the train’s entrance when someone rattled his arm. The touch was harder, more insistent than the accustomed jostling of the crowd. He looked over his shoulder into the face of a lantern-jawed old man. The man’s mouth twitched, almost as if he were trying to hold back a smile.

  Goosebumps pinched Chris’s skin under his sweat-damp T-shirt. No way. Could this be the guy?

  The crowd behind squeezed him forward and forced him to turn around and step into the train.

  The man’s hand closed around his arm. “Do you think the shrink will be able to explain your dreams of the girl on the horse?” His voice was the creak of worn-out bedsprings.

  Definitely the guy. Chris whipped around.

  The man released his arm and stepped back. He was lean almost to the point of emaciation. His shoulders jutted against the gray flannel of a knee-length trench coat, and his long white hands and three inches of wrist hung below his sleeves.

  A warning bell chimed, and the train’s doors clanked shut. On the other side of the windows, the man grinned. He would have looked better with the hockey mask.

  The train lurched.

  Chris slammed his hand against the doors. “Wait, pull the brake! Stop the train!”

  On the other side of the window, the man walked away, his stride hitching as if he wanted to break into a run but wouldn’t let himself. He was here. He knew about the dreams. And he was getting away.

  Chris shot a look at the far end of the car. “Somebody, pull the brake!”

  After a moment’s confused flurry, the brake got pulled, and the car screeched to a stop. Passengers scrambled to keep their balance, and, on the other side of the train station, the old man rounded a corner and disappeared.

  Chris squeezed through the opening and broke into a run. At the far end of the station, where the apron ended and the curb began, he stopped to look both ways. Through the clutter of passing traffic, he caught a glimpse of gray flannel one block down. The streetlight turned red, and traffic came to a halt.

  He sprinted, pushing past startled pedestrians. “Hey!”

  The old man kept walking, his back straight beneath his coat. In this humidity, the air felt like steam. But this guy, dressed for January, didn’t even look damp.

  “Stop a minute!” He reached to grab the man’s shoulder. One more stride, and he’d have him.

  The stranger spun around.

  Chris caught a handful of coat. “Who are you? How do you know me?”

  “We shouldn’t be seen together. It’s too dangerous.” Lank, greasy hair fell just past his collar.

  Chris hung onto the coat. “How do you know about the woman on the black horse? Who are you?”

  The man’s shoulders drew back, and his chin came up in a vaguely military stance. “My name is Harrison Garnett. But—” His attention seemed to wander. “Don’t tell anyone. Until it happens.”

  “Until what happens?”

  Harrison’s eyes flicked back. “I told you not here. Leave.”

  “You’re the one who came looking for me.”

  Harrison turned half away, then swung back and slammed his fist into Chris’s face. “I said leave now!”

  Chris tripped backwards. He caught his balance against the brick building behind him and touched the blood oozing from his lip. “You crazy old man—”

  On the sidewalk ahead, Harrison ran, already halfway to the next intersection. Chris righted himself and started after him. Harrison crossed the street, the light changed behind him, and the street clogged with traffic.

  Chris scrambled to a halt. Seriously? This old coot had tracked him down just to whisper threats and smack him in the face?

  __________

  Chris walked into the commotion of the police station and threaded his way to the queue at the front counter. He’d done this so many times, he could probably fill out the bail forms sleepwalking.

  In a few minutes, his father shuffled across the room. Near the door, he stopped and waited. His eyes flitted away from Chris’s, and he fingered a bruise on his cheekbone.

  Once upon a time, Paul Redston had been a handsome man. Blond, broad-shouldered, brilliant. He had worked as a beat cop by day and moonlighted as a mystery writer during the evenings. Now, his hair had thinned to little more than a ragged skullcap. His shoulders were hunched, his stride a shuffle. The brains Chris had so admired as a kid were spent, drowned in a drunkard’s obsession.

  “Disturbing the peace?” Chris asked.

  “Yeah. A brawl, I guess. That’s what they told me, anyway.”

  “You don’t remember?”

  “Must have been deep into it.”

  “You usually are.”

  Exhaustion overwhelmed him, as though someone somewhere had spun a dial and quadrupled the gravitational pull. For twenty years, this was the way things had been. When his family’s Pontiac had rolled over on a snowy road, killing his mother and his younger sister Jenifer, it had effectively killed his father as well. Paul had disappeared into the bottle and never come up for air.

  His dad scratched his whiskered cheek. “I’m sorry about this. Thanks for coming.”

  “I don’t come here to be thanked.” Chris brushed past.

  Behind him, Paul’s steps shambled. “Wait a minute, Slow down—”

  Chris pushed through the door into the golden day. Noon-hour traffic hummed along the street, and somewhere far away a horn blared, urging everyone to pick up the pace and just go, to put a foot down on the accelerator and drive as far and as fast as they could.

  At the curb, he stopped. People packed the sidewalks despite the heat, but the crowd opened up around him and flowed on past. If they noticed the old man coming up behind him, they wouldn’t much care. What was one more drunk in a city this size?

  Paul stopped beside him, wheezing. “I’m sorry. It’s the last time, I promise. I promise you.”

  “Don’t promise. We both know you can’t keep it.”

  “No, I mean it.” Paul’s rumbling voice had once been a powerful bass. Now, it cracked at the end of every word. “I know you give up a lot to come down here and help me out. You’ve got your own life and everything. You’re a smart kid. Smarter than your old man.”

  “Lisa was the smart one. She stopped bailing you out a long time ago.” His older sister had married an investment broker and moved to Los Angeles, probably as much to evade Chris’s well-meaning attempts to take care of her as to escape their father. She had twin daughters and a swimming pool in her backyard. Chris hadn’t talked to her in months.

  He turned to go.

  Behind him, his father’s footsteps slapped the sidewalk. “Wait a minute. Chris, wait.”

  They passed a sandwich stall, and the smell of old grease clogged in the back of Chris’s throat. He didn’t know what he meant anymore. If his dreams
were anything to judge by, he was going crazy anyhow, so what did it matter? At least crazy people had an excuse for their messed-up lives.

  “I’m sorry I had to call you,” Paul persisted. “I am sorry. But I couldn’t get anybody else to come for me. Maybe you don’t believe me, but I’ve tried to stop. I just—” His voice cracked a little. “I just can’t quite bury the past.”

  Chris turned back. People behind him hesitated, altered their courses, and flowed on by.

  “Bury the past.” He tamped down on his anger and willed it to stay locked away, deep inside its dark hole. “Why don’t we bury it alongside Mom and Jenifer.”

  Paul leaned away. His heavy eyebrows knit together, his eyes deep with—what? Was it pain and regret, or just the latest hangover?

  “I know you still blame me—” he began.

  “I don’t want your apologies, and I don’t want your thanks.” Chris clamped his hands on his hips as he blew out a long breath. “If you really cared about me and my life, you’d just . . . stop calling me.”

  Paul’s head dropped. After a moment, his eyes came back up to look at the traffic. “I would never have hurt you on purpose.”

  Chris raked his hand through his hair. “Never mind. I shouldn’t have said that. Look, I’m tired, you’re tired. Why don’t you go home, and we can talk about this later.”

  But they wouldn’t talk. They never talked. And maybe that was just as well.

  He took a step away. “I’ll see you.” He started down the sidewalk, made it five steps, then looked back.

  His dad stood where he had left him, arms at his sides, shoulders hunched. His button-up shirt and carpenter jeans hung on his body, two sizes too large.

  Chris’s breath fizzed out between his teeth. He crossed back to his father, dug into his pocket, and came out with a handful of loose papers, a folded-up envelope, and a couple ten-dollar bills.

  “Here. Take the bus home.” The money would undoubtedly see the inside of a liquor-store cash register sooner than it would the bus till. But did it even really matter anymore? One more bottle wasn’t going to change the course of Paul’s life.

  “Chris, I—” His dad looked into his face, focusing for the first time today. “What happened to your lip?” For a moment, he almost might have been the concerned cop he had been so long ago. “You in a fight, son?”

  Chris touched his tongue to the cut. “Just a misunderstanding, of sorts.”

  “You want to tell me about it?”

  He hesitated. Every now and then, his father would give him a glimpse of what might have been between them. They might have had a relationship. They might have talked. Paul might have been the one guiding Chris. Chris might even have told him about the dreams. Paul wouldn’t have had an answer for that, but at least Chris could have had the satisfaction of trusting someone else with the burden.

  But that was only might-have-been. Reality didn’t include such things as second chances. This relationship wasn’t father and son. This was a drunk and the poor sucker who paid his bail.

  “No,” Chris said. “There’s nothing to talk about.”

  His father looked down at the bills. “I’m not the only one who can ask for help. If you ever want to call me, if I can be there and help, whatever it is, you know I will. I’m still your father.”

  “Yeah, you’re still my father.” He managed a smile. “Goodbye, Dad. Go home and sleep it off, okay?”

  The corner of his father’s mouth tilted up. He turned and shuffled off. With any luck, he was headed to the bus station and not the nearest bar.

  Chris watched until his dad disappeared around the corner, then looked at the envelope he had dug out of his pocket along with the money. It was sealed and addressed to him. The black scrawl was Harrison’s.

  He frowned and ripped off the end. How had that old man managed to stuff an envelope into his pocket without his knowing? A sheet of notebook paper, just like the other one, fell into his hand. Its message was a single handwritten sentence in black ink:

  Everything can be explained at 11 E. Hunter St.