The Nightmare Within

by Glen Krisch

  The car's engine continued to sputter, stuck in idle, smashed against the brick wall of the bakery. Otherwise, the rainy dusk was peaceful. Blissfully quiet. The Freak leapt into the air, glancing over his shoulder at his glorious wings. He flexed the muscles in his back, pumping his wings, and gained distance from the ground, the rain beating down on his face, feeling cold against his deadman-blue skin. He flew higher; passing the roofs of buildings, passing the antennae towers and ventilation grates spilling plumes of white smoke to the sky.

  Mr. Freakshow glided on the thermals given off by the humans. Their heat cast off like waste, like some kind of fecal matter. The limitless sky spread before him, an uncharted map for him to explore.

  But the boy… How could he have forgotten the boy?

  As he flew higher into the heavens, the rain freezing pinpricks into his skin, Mr. Freakshow reached out to Kevin. With the tenuous strand of energy connecting them, he reached out, finding a confused and addled mass of raw misery. Kevin was on the move again. He had been with Sophie, there was no doubt. But afterwards, when he left the old bitch-whore's welcoming embrace… ah, Mr. Freakshow knew the answer, his destination.

  He changed directions, finding joy in every motion of his flight. He pumped his wings, launching toward the horizon, a pale blue streak. He knew where Kevin wanted to hide out, and he would make sure he was there when Kevin arrived.

  Chapter 22

  While Kevin was riding the greyhound to Warren Cove, and while his mother and Maury were driving to intercept him, the city of Chicago was suffering under the weight of uncertainty and fear.

  A fender bender brought a section of mid afternoon traffic to a standstill as drivers gawked at a group of four dream-children flying through the concrete and steel skyscraper valleys, chasing one another in a spirited game of tag. Most people stared, some shouted. Even the policewoman directing traffic had to stop and stare at the sight. Drivers climbed from cars, shouting, taunting, soon punching and gouging. Anger welled to the brink of anarchy, then quickly flooded its banks…

  A small percentage of the citizenry, bound to slip a bearing at the slightest provocation, took up arms against their fellow man. Shameful displays of violence and exploitation spread throughout the city. Humans attacking humans, using the dreams running amuck to leverage their own advantage. They raided, pilfered, smashed to bits convenience stores, pawn shops, delicatessens. Thieves were filmed in broad daylight by security and tourist cameras alike, carrying armloads of snack food, old worn guitars, foot-long hoagies, anything worth a penny's worth of their spite. These thieves, rioters, no-good, take-it-when-you-can-get-it parasites wore smiles, snubbed their noses at the confused and overworked police force.

  The mayor--his beady eyes stinging with sweat, and sporting the expression of a querulous brat--read from a prepared statement during a press conference:

  "As you already know, the city of Chicago has instituted a citywide 8 p.m. curfew. All businesses will be closed by the indicated time, including restaurants and taverns, and the streets will remain vacated until 4 a.m." The mayor stopped reading from the slip of paper and spoke directly to the camera, "Let me stress, this is a short term thing. Until we can assess the nature of this situation, until we can mobilize and stabilize this situation, it is in the best interest of the city to move forward in this fashion…"

  The mayor mopped his brow with his omnipresent kerchief, and spoke to an advisor off to the side. He addressed the crowd of reporters again, the small conference room awash in cascading camera flashes, "Now, we have a job to do. I will speak again when we learn anything more." He bunched his lips in a way the seasoned reporters knew to be his punctuation at the end of a press conference. It meant, don't mess with me. You all love me because you know my name, you vote for me, even though I'm as charismatic as a weeklong flu.

  He might have underestimated the reporters' vehemence on the subject. It's not every day a major city has dozens of embodied dreams wreaking havoc. They clamored after the mayor, even as he mopped his brow with his kerchief, sighing the sigh of relief of a man who doesn't feel comfortable speaking in public. Before he could reach the door of the conference room and the security blanket of his awaiting staff of advisors, one reporter's pleading questions rang truer and louder than all the others:

  "Mr. Mayor, Mr. Mayor! Will this change how we live, as Chicagoans, can we expect this to change how others think of us?"

  The mayor stopped in his tracks, without turning around, thinking about what the young reporter said. He turned and received a face full of flash bulbs. He waited for the room to quiet down. "What's your name, son?"

  "Quentin de la Santa, sir."

  "Mr. Santo… say, are you related to Ron? No? Well anyway, all I can say is we're working on it. We're setting up a communications network throughout the city… it'll be like a web. We'll have full-blown communications… I'm talking the police and fire departments, local F.B.I., neighborhood watch programs, everything, and we won't stop until this thing is contained. You want to know how this effects how others see us? I can't say for certain Mr. Santo, but I know Chicagoans. We work hard. We're blue collar people, and we do whatever it takes."

  The mayor turned and exited into the arms of his advisors. The conference room erupted in shouts and flashbulbs. The room quickly cleared, and the reporters took to the street, intent on making or maintaining their status in the local and national media. They took to the streets ready to cover one of the most unimaginable and perplexing stories anyone could ever remember.

  The mayor called upon the chief of police who called upon all of his reserve officers… no one was permitted even an hour off from work. The overtime budget was thrown out the window. Shortly after the press conference, the mayor received a phone call on a secure line. The president's dry tone was a welcome sound. The mayor was assured of national resources to help clear up the mayor's little local problem.

  The hub of the communication network was a hastily thrown together office in a closed down cooling shelter. During the wicked heat of summer, the large, open ground floor of the centrally located office building had been a place for people to recoup from the draining summer sun. The ground floor was vacated a week prior, the worst of the heat gone for the year. In no time at all, the dimly lit vastness of the space was buzzing with people trying to figure out this little local problem.

  All they had to do was figure out how the dreams could have escaped in the first place, and figure out who was responsible. A couple of names surfaced in their initial investigations as possible people of interest: a local businessman named Nolan Gage, and a psychiatrist named Maury Bennett. An extensively detailed list of the dreams, including their descriptions and tendencies, was circulating throughout the police force and other law enforcement assets.

  A handful of dream-creatures had already been rounded up, and were being held in secure cells under armed guard. No one knew what they would do with the dream-creatures once they had them all in custody, but they agreed they could worry about that later.

  One of the mayor's first actions was to set up an information hotline. The city officials permitted anonymity, but that didn't prevent them from secretly logging and tracing the calls. Two long conference tables were set up with a bank of phones to sift through the distressed calls. As far as anyone knew, the situation was limited to the heart of the city. Public service announcements had gone out almost immediately to the television stations, newspapers and any other news outlet.

  Initially, it seemed like everything was under control. There were FBI representatives, the highest police officials, and the mayor himself had a cubicle off to one side. The spindly threads of order were torn apart within a few hours. A bright flash illuminated the street side of the office as a Molotov cocktail smashed just above the window frame.

  "What in the world?" The police chief, a man who regularly wondered why he took the position when it was offered to him earlier in the year (his gout was no good, and his feet swelled, a
nd God damn it, he wanted to see Disney World before he died for Christ's sake), the police chief could only stare out the window at the mounting chaos outside.

  "Maybe… how do we get the national guard in here?" a slightly less gray-haired policeman asked, a man waiting in line for the top spot.

  A rock crashed into the window, splintering the glass, making the scurrying office workers flinch away. Flames guttered from a car's open doors. Papers spiraled from an overhead office window. Crazed people formed a spontaneous line as they marched down the street. It all looked like some kind of insane tickertape parade.

  "Mr. Mayor, sir, you should see this." The police chief once again wondered why he took this stupid position in the first place. He should be retired, sipping fruity drinks somewhere tropical.

  The police chief saw what had focused the attention of the people outside. They were striking back, cornering a couple of dream-people in the small wedge of space formed by the building's brick wall and the burning car.

  The couple spilled into the office, a bare-chested dream-man, with a hole in his chest the size of a basketball, carrying an injured dream-woman in his arms. The dream-woman had mottled, feather-like wisps for hair, an aquiline nose, long and banana yellow like a macaw's. Blood flowed from a gash on her temple, and she tried to focus her eyes, but didn't quite succeed.

  "Help! They attacked us." The man seemed unfazed by the hole in his chest--he was a dream-man after all. "They saw Rahkel's appearance, and they… oh dear, she's not breathing. Someone do something."

  A circle formed around the pair of dreams, but no one offered assistance as a collective gasp spread through the room. They watched the dream-woman's wounds spontaneously heal. The gash at her temple knitted itself closed, and her skin seemed to reabsorb her shed blood. Her eyes fluttered as if she were merely waking.

  Smoke trailed in through the open door, a corrosive mélange of burnt gasoline and melted plastic.

  The mayor, with his sausage fingers flitting about his face with his kerchief, stepped through the crowd. He arrived just in time to see a mob of people forcing their way through the door, swinging metal pipes above their head, rolls of coins in clenched fists, spittle dripping from their chins. It was a collective insanity, this backlash against the dreams. Once their blood-crazed desire to destroy was sated, people would deny partaking in such violence. People would claim to have been at home, with the shades pulled, waiting out the storm, waiting for the calm of everyday to return.

  Within minutes, the people calling the hotline only heard the humming of a dead line.

  Chapter 23

  Kevin woke slowly, afraid to open his eyes. He could feel the morning sun warming his eyelids, a red, welcoming warmth. Stretching his arms behind his head, gripping his feather pillow in his hands, he felt the familiar comfort of his mattress. When he did open his eyes, something was wrong. Totally wrong. He was in his bed, having slept on his mattress. Not his Uncle David's lumpy mattress, not in the cramped bedroom at his grandma's house all the way in Chicago.

  He swung his legs off the bed, taking stock of the bedroom. Albert Pujols stared down on him from his life-size poster. Then there was his 50th anniversary corvette poster with models from every year, his favorite being the 1962 classic convertible. His dresser, nightstand, and desk--all in order. All of this was right, and somehow, none of it was right at all. When he stood up, the hardwood floor creaked its familiar creak.

  A voice called out from downstairs, breaking the morning silence and multiplying his confusion. "Kevin, come on. You gotta eat something before we leave." It was his dad's voice, sharp and authoritative, but from the tone, he could tell he was in a good mood. Then the voice joined his mom's in conversation. Comforting and reassuring, muffled by the distance to the kitchen, but still closer than he ever thought the two of them would be again. His mind started whirling, creating a list of questions and grappling with their answers.

  What's going on?

  Like a sheet of paper from a notebook, he took hold of the list of questions in his head and tore it out, crumpled it into a ball and threw it over his shoulder. He didn't want to consider anything. All he wanted was to go to those voices and feel the affectionate embrace of his family.

  He padded down the stairs, whipped around the corner, and stopped so suddenly his feet skidded on the wood floor. It really was his dad. With his shirtsleeves unrolled and his tie loose, he offered Kevin a wry smile, and then brought a plate of French toast over to the kitchen table. His mom had her back to him at the stove, turning bacon with metal tongs. The bacon sizzled and splattered, and it smelled like heaven. Seeing his parents midway through their morning rituals, Kevin had an uneasy sense of familiarity. Sure, he had seen his mom make bacon a hundred times. And his dad always set the table. It was something else. Something outré-familiar.

  "Nice of you to join us. I'm afraid the French toast isn't as warm as it was five minutes ago, but then again, if you were hungry enough, you would've been down earlier," his dad said as Kevin took his seat on the far left of the table. French toast was his favorite. He could eat it three times a day and never get sick of it. His dad heaped some onto his plate, and then patted his shoulder to let him know he was just kidding. His dad didn't think much of breakfast, and usually only had a cup of coffee before leaving for the office.

  His dad had touched him.

  Kevin looked at his arm, stunned. Even through the fabric of his t-shirt, he could still feel the rough touch of his calloused hand. All of this was wrong. All of this could never happen again. Because… because he had left his mom at his grandma's house, and his dad… his dad was never coming home again.

  "Kevin, what's wrong, honey?" his mom said when she turned from the stove. She was wearing the rainbow brooch he had made for her from plastic beads and pipe cleaners the year before for Mother's Day. She wore it high up on the lapel of her blouse where everyone would see it. When he had given it to her, he had waited for her to wear it. Every time the family would go out for some special night, he would scan her lapels for the rainbow brooch. She had never worn it. After enough parties and get-togethers went by, and he ran out of excuses why she hadn't worn it, Kevin had given up on her wearing it at all. He figured she had not liked it. In fact, she hated it. He had been secretly heartbroken. Now, on this morning, this morning of all mornings, she wore it prominently.

  "Really, Kevin, what's wrong? You're crying." She put the bacon on the table and sat down next to him, scooting over and lowering to his eye level. His dad was stirring his coffee, that familiar clinking of the teaspoon inside the cup like a rhythmic morning song he'd forgotten until just now. He wanted to cry even harder. But he didn't.

  "Nothing's wrong," he said. Her eyes were glassy and distant, without the intensity he had become accustomed to. She looked much younger without it.

  "You're not upset about going to your grandma's house are you?" his dad asked and sipped his coffee.

  "Grandma?"

  "You know, your mom's mom. The nice lady who bought you that baseball glove that's been like an extra appendage hanging from your arm?"

  "Grandma," Kevin said again. "No, I'm fine. Just got some sleep in my eye." He rubbed his eye, rubbing away the crust that was not there.

  "You sure?" his mom asked.

  It was his last chance to explain how he really felt--jerked around, discombobulated. But instead, he only nodded.

  "Orange juice?" his dad asked.

  "Sure. Grande o.j. on the rocks," Kevin said without thinking, reading off his order as if they were at a Starbuck's. It was another morning ritual, and his alone to perform. His mom smiled before returning to the stove.

  His grandma's house. Now he understood.

  The familiarity. He understood it completely, but he didn't want to recognize this day for what it was. Didn't want to give it a name. And yet things weren't exactly like that particular morning. He sensed no tension between his parents, no cold silences; in fact, they seemed overly in love, at l
east by their standards. If anything, it was as if a thick sheen of fake happiness had glossed over that morning. An idealized morning with his favorite breakfast, his mom wearing the rainbow brooch, his dad speaking to him, his parents acting lovingly to one another. It was just so wrong. Holding the juice he poured for Kevin in one hand, his dad wrapped his other around his mom's waist, then kissed her on the cheek.

  "Grande o.j. on the rocks. Sorry, we only have cubes. If you wanted shaved ice, you can go to the Ruby's house next door, I'm sure they would accommodate you." He slid the juice across the table, like a barman passing a beer, not spilling a drop.

  "Thanks, Dad."

  His dad went back to his place at the table. He sipped his coffee and read the morning's sports page. After a couple minutes, his mom joined them at the table, bringing along a bottle of maple syrup.

  She cut her French toast, drowned it in syrup, like she always did, and took a bite. She looked at his dad, and he turned his attention away from the cover story about the Bears, and they shared a smile. She took another bite, looked up again, and again, the smile. They were like robots. The more methodical their actions became, the more the questions prodded at Kevin. His family together; all he ever wanted. Ever since that morning… this morning.

  "When does the bus leave?" Kevin asked. He had not touched his food. He had lost his appetite.

  "10:35," his dad said, unable to pull his gaze away from his mom. Their behavior was overbearing. Creepy. They were looking into each other's eyes as if they were starving animals finding thick slabs of steak just behind the other's eye sockets.

  Thankfully, someone knocked on the front door. If something did not interrupt the creepiness, Kevin thought he would scream.