We Are Where the Nightmares Go and Other Stories

by C. Robert Cargill

  “What do we bet?”

  “Loser has to swing twice as much for a whole day so the other can drink.”

  “That sounds fair. I’m going to get proper drunk.”

  “Don’t count your drink yet. We haven’t even told him where to find it. He might chicken out and change his mind.”

  “The bet’s off if he’s a coward.”

  “Oh yeah, the bet’s off if he is.”

  “Although,” said Yagjabula, “whether or not he’s too scared to go in would make for an interesting side wager.”

  “Oooh, it would.”

  “Fancy a side wager?”

  Yabiringi smiled and nodded, his headdress bobbing on his head. “I do fancy a side wager.”

  “Then it’s agreed?”

  “Agreed.”

  The two swung their hammers at the same time, sealing their bet with a sky full of lightning and a low-magnitude earthquake.

  “We’ll tell you where he is,” said Yagjabula. “But you gotta promise not to chicken out.”

  “Oy! Not fair. No cheating on the wager.”

  “We didn’t agree to that.”

  “That’s it! Bet’s off!”

  “I will take your head off again, I swear.”

  “Do it! Give me an excuse to hit you back.”

  The two began swinging again, lightning flashing upward, the sound near deafening.

  “Where’s the pit?” asked Colby.

  “What?” asked the two, simultaneously lowering their hammers.

  “The pit. Wulgaru. Where is it?”

  Yagjabula smiled broadly, his teeth a bright white against the ocher paint and charred black of his skin. “Just follow your fear. You’ll feel it try to keep you away from the valley he’s in. Fight it. Go in. And you’ll find it easy enough. Just look out at the horizon and walk the way you’re most scared to go.” He swung his hammer again. The plateau lit up brighter than ever, resounded with thunder louder than ever. The storm they were feeding was brewing stronger.

  “Thank you,” said Croc.

  “Anytime,” said the brothers in unison.

  Colby looked out and scanned the horizon, unsure of what to think, and then felt his gut sink like he’d eaten a lead sandwich. His throat tightened and he began to sweat. That was it, out to the west. The darkest valley, the one with no fires of its own. That was where he felt the fear.

  “Why aren’t there any fires?” asked Colby, climbing down the face of the plateau.

  The croc followed swiftly after, scaling down the rock with a fretful scurry. “Because no one is there to light a fire.”

  “Why not?”

  “That’s where we keep the things we fear most. Few people go there. Even fewer return. Those that do, come back changed. Sometimes for the better, sometimes not. The rest learn firsthand why we fear it.”

  “Have you ever been in there?”

  “No,” said the croc. “And I never will.”

  Colby at once was very scared. “You’re not going with me?”

  “I can’t risk not coming back. There are things in that valley that have no tolerance for things like me. My sins are too great and I still have to absolve myself of them. So I’ll stay here.”

  “But what about me?”

  “You?” asked the croc. “Anything out there that isn’t more afraid of you than you are of them deserves what they get.”

  Colby shook his head. “I don’t go places alone. Not yet. I’m not old enough. Please?”

  “No one is old enough to go into the valley alone. But you’ve actually got an advantage.”

  “What is that?”

  “You’re not old enough to know all the things you should fear. Now go. Warra doesn’t have much time.”

  “What do you mean, he doesn’t have much time?”

  “Do you know how Warra’s soul came to be here?”

  “Someone stole it.”

  “Right,” said Croc. “In revenge for a friend Warra murdered. The spirit that told the Clever Men where to find Warra traded them the information in exchange for Warra’s spirit, which the spirit brought here. And left near Wulgaru.”

  “Why did he do that?”

  “The spirit has its reasons.”

  “But if Warra murdered someone . . .” Colby trailed off, putting it together. “Wulgaru is going to eat him.”

  “He very well might, if he hasn’t already.”

  Colby took a deep breath, clenched his fists, and nodded stoically. “Thanks, Koorong,” he said. “I hope you can make things right.” He took a step toward the fear, his gut tightening. Colby closed his eyes, took one last deep breath, and propelled himself forward, moving the very darkness around him.

  13

  Colby ran, the sound of thunder fading, its whine trailing behind him into the never-ending night. The darkness grew blacker, deeper, lonelier, like a second death. Here the winds became stronger, howling across the desolate nothing. Dust kicked up, turbulent little desert devils called willy-willies moaning past him—none caring enough to stop to pick a fight. And as he pressed farther he found that this fear wasn’t so much deadly as it was empty. Hollow. Unpopulated.

  He began to believe that there was nothing worth fearing in this valley at all. And yet, that didn’t help.

  He pressed on again toward the fear, the foreboding dread now a crippling weight on his back. It became harder and harder to focus, each step met with doubt. His mind fought against him, throwing what-if after what-if his way. But he held strong, refused to give in. Made every step measured, valiant.

  At last he could see it. The hole must have been a mile wide, dug deep, its sides too steep to climb. And just on the edge stood a familiar shadow as still as a stone.

  Warra. His dark skin was now colored a pale bluish-white, the life and the sun drained from his very being. Scars ran over every inch of his body, as if he were a jigsaw puzzle that had been hastily put back together. His eyes were black orbs, his teeth stained with plum sauce, pulp dug deep in the recesses. “Why are you following me?” he asked. “Stop following me.”

  “I came looking for you,” said Colby. “To bring you back.”

  “Who are you?”

  “A friend of your father’s.”

  “My father has no friends.”

  “He does. You just don’t know it.”

  “I don’t want to go back. That body isn’t mine anymore. That life isn’t mine anymore.”

  Colby shook his head. “There isn’t a body. I’ll make you a new one.”

  “Why isn’t there a body?”

  Colby swallowed hard. He didn’t know quite how to say this.

  “I didn’t have a choice.”

  “A choice about what?” Warra looked at him suspiciously. Then it dawned on him. He reached instinctively for his bone wand, but it was gone, still in the land of the living.

  “It wasn’t my fault.”

  “Of course it was your fault,” said Warra, his voice raspy, reverberating, out of sync with his own mouth. “You killed me.”

  “The thing you left behind, your body, it was trying to kill me. I didn’t have a choice.”

  “Yes, you did. You could have let me kill you.”

  “That was not an option.”

  “Yes it was,” said Warra, sneering a little. “You just didn’t like it. Be a man. Accept what you did.”

  Colby swallowed hard. “Can you forgive me?” he asked, eyes downcast.

  “Get rooted. You’ll have to forgive yourself, because I sure won’t.”

  Nodding, Colby looked at Warra. “Please, I have to make this right. I have to take you back. Come with me.”

  “Why should I?”

  “Because I can’t let you die again.”

  “Well, since you asked nicely.” Warra stepped to the side.

  “Thank you.” Colby took a step forward.

  Warra stepped backward and went over the side, plummeting into the pit.

  “No!” screamed Colby. He looked do
wn into the abyss, a tumultuous sea of black filled with uncertainty and a history Colby didn’t fully understand. Colby steadied himself, took a deep breath, and jumped in after Warra.

  The fall was quick and painful, the drop slamming him through an accumulation of junk. He hit the ground with a hard, dull thud, the force dazing him. Colby hopped to his feet, bolting through a narrow alleyway flanked on both sides by piles of refuse, looking for the boy he’d murdered.

  Around him were the discarded dreams, wishes, nightmares, and relics of thousands of souls. Items of power and importance, tokens of sentimentality. The pit was a thrift store of found treasures, tossed away to be kept out of the wrong hands. Towers sprung from walls, tenuously stacked, precariously placed, teetering in the wind.

  Colby slammed his fist hard against a stone wall and it burst like a flare, lighting the area enough to see. He scanned the walls as he ran, looking for Warra. There were swords and stopwatches, stuffed bears and headdresses. Spears. Boomerangs. Vases, baskets, and kangaroo bags. Knickknacks with a thousand different purposes. But not a soul to be seen.

  Then there came a deep, grating grumble, followed by a terrible, hollow rumble, and the sound of stone scraping against wood. Heavy, dense footfalls thumped the earth, echoing through ramshackle halls. Wulgaru had awoken. And he was headed Colby’s way.

  Colby turned and heard Warra scrambling through the pit. He had little time left. He needed to find the boy.

  Colby closed his eyes, reached out into the tendrils of energy around him, tickling the webs, trying to find something that vibrated the same way a soul did.

  Something clamored behind him, knocking over a stack of miscellany. Colby ignored it, reaching out farther, scanning the whole of the pit now. Footfalls, light but swift. Warra. He reached out farther still, up the stacks. And there he was.

  But it had taken too long to find him.

  Colby braced himself for the hit.

  Warra charged, hunched over, throwing a stiff shoulder into the small of Colby’s back as he grasped his waist with both arms. Both went facedown into the dirt.

  The screech of stone grinding against stone was getting louder. Wulgaru was coming. Seconds away.

  “Warra! Get off! Get off or we’re done for!”

  Warra responded by punching Colby in the back of the head with his fist, pounding his face deeper into the dirt. Colby bucked but couldn’t shake the boy off.

  “Warra!” he screamed.

  “You’re done for now, fella.” Warra stood, put out a stern elbow, clenching it tight, ready to drop it dead center into Colby’s back. He let his legs go limp, dropping, the sound of stone and splintering wood suddenly overwhelming behind him.

  A large hand held him in midair several feet above the ground. Warra stared and saw the massive golem, eight feet tall, solid wood trunk for a torso. It gnashed its stone teeth, held its gaping maw as wide as it could, hoisting a struggling Warra into the air.

  Colby scrambled to his feet and ran off down the cobbled-together corridor between the walls of junk.

  Warra sneered at Wulgaru, the golem snapping its teeth together, flint sparking. “Do it,” said Warra. “If you’re gonna do it, just do it.”

  Wulgaru crammed him into its mouth, the teeth shredding the boy’s soul as it did. Warra screamed—a blood-curdling wail punctuated with sobs—but it didn’t last long. First the golem chewed off his legs, snapping bones, tearing flesh. Then in quick succession Wulgaru finished off the rest, bit by bit.

  Colby rounded a pile of trash, pulling down pieces of junk to scatter in his wake.

  But the sound of stone grinding against wood continued to follow him. Colby looked down at his hands, still stained as red as before. He crouched low to the ground, summoning all the belief and might he could into his knees.

  Wulgaru appeared, plowing through stray objects, flint teeth chattering, sparkling in the dark like a windup toy monster. It stepped forward, pawing at Colby, preparing to grab him, to swallow him whole.

  Colby sighed deeply, guilt weighing heavy on his heart.

  Wulgaru stared down at him, giant palms hovering over him.

  Then it turned around and wandered back the way it had come, looking for other souls to devour.

  Wulgaru had judged him.

  He was no murderer.

  Colby sat on the ground, thunderstruck, crying. He’d failed. Warra was gone, gone for good now. But he’d tried to save him, tried to make things right. There was nothing left for him to do here—no child to return to his body, no family to reunite. It was time to go home.

  Colby sprung into the air with a force even greater than before, rocketing out of the pit and into the sky. Below him were thousands of campfires, flickering, lonely, beckoning him to stay.

  But this wasn’t his time.

  So Colby Stevens continued to soar toward the earth, away from the cold grip of death, the air buzzing louder with the tingle of life the closer he got to the world of the living.

  14

  Colby landed squarely atop the rock from which he’d first launched himself, to find Mandu sitting beneath it by a fire, waiting for him. Mandu smiled.

  “It’s about time,” he said.

  “Oh, quit it. I was gone maybe an hour.”

  Mandu grimaced. “You were gone for two months. I would have given you up for dead if not for the visions I had of you in my dreams.”

  “No, that wasn’t . . .” He thought back on his many lessons, remembered what it was like to be in Fairy Time. And he knew that Mandu’s words were true. Colby Stevens had been dead and gone for two months and had only now returned.

  “Did you find him?”

  “Yes,” said Colby sadly, hopping off the rock.

  “And?”

  “He wouldn’t come back.”

  “Understandable.”

  “And he tried to kill me.”

  “Oh.”

  “And Wulgaru ate him.”

  “I see.”

  “It’s all my fault.”

  “No, it isn’t,” said Mandu. “That child was evil. Pure evil. He was born of evil. He was raised by evil.”

  “Then why did you let me go?”

  “Let you?” said Mandu, cocking a curious eyebrow.

  “You could have stopped me.”

  “If there’s anything I’ve learned, it is that there is no stopping the destiny of Colby Stevens.”

  “Well then, why did I go?”

  “That boy was born of evil. He was destined for it. But he was never given the chance to choose it for himself. His father, Koorong, wanted him to have a chance at redemption. He made a pact with a powerful spirit. That spirit arranged for you to give him that chance.”

  “So some spirit used me?”

  “Of course it did, Colby. And it won’t be the last time it happens either.”

  Colby sat on the ground, defeated, frustrated, feeling used.

  “Don’t worry,” said Mandu. “It was also a powerful lesson.”

  “Yeah? How?”

  “Did you meet Wulgaru?”

  Colby looked up. He nodded. “I did.”

  “And were you judged?”

  “I was.”

  “And are you still here?”

  Colby stared up at Mandu. He thought for a second. “I need to learn more songlines.”

  “Why?”

  “It was all dark up there. I didn’t know the history. I need to learn. I need to hear all of the stories.”

  “I know some stories.”

  “I know,” said Colby. “And I’d like you to tell them to me.”

  15

  Koorong stood in the desert of the outback, screaming into wasteland. “Spirit, show yourself!”

  There was no answer.

  “Damn you, spirit! You promised!”

  “I promised to help your son,” said the spirit from behind him. “And I did.”

  “You did no such thing!”

  “I did. I sent you a dreamhero. You thought I was
giving you souls, but I was doing you one better. I sent a dreamhero to bring your son’s soul back.”

  “Well, where is he?”

  “I said I would help your son, not save him. I gave him the chance to save himself. But he did not want to be saved. He did not want to come back. I cannot help those who do not want my help.”

  “You deadly bastard. You rooted me.”

  “I gave you what you asked for. I fulfilled my end of the deal. Now it’s your turn.”

  Koorong shook his head. “No, you failed me.”

  “You failed you. I sent Mandu to warn you and you did not heed him. I gave you every opportunity to make things right. Now you owe me two services or what little there is left to you is mine.” The spirit grinned viciously.

  “What do you ask of me?”

  “Only two things. One, you are not to step into Arnhem Land for a hundred and eight moons. Not to collect your possessions, not to chase down a soul. You are exiled until then.”

  “And the second?”

  “No harm may come to Mandu Merijedi until your exile is ended.”

  “That’s it? That’s all you ask of me?”

  “I think it is more than fair a trade.”

  Koorong nodded. “When my service is done, we’ll have business again, spirit.”

  “Please,” said the spirit, “call me Coyote.”

  16

  Now

  Colby and Jirra stared at each other across beers. Then Jirra told his story.

  “Mandu came to me one afternoon, just as a storm was brewing. Handed me a mason jar filled with dirt. Told me to dig a hole behind the house and bury it before the rains came. He looked sick. His eyes were heavy and weak. His hair had almost overnight gone completely white. He walked with a hunch and the color was draining from his skin. I said, ‘Are you okay, fella?’ He smiled at me, shook his head weakly, and said, ‘It is my time. Go, bury the jar. Don’t forget where. I’ll explain later.’

  “So I did. I came back and that’s when he told me I was the new Clever Man now, and that you would turn up one day asking about him. He said I could tell you anything up until that point right there, but anything after that would have to wait until you came back. And here you are.”