Keiran clasped their hands individually before they left through the door Keiran and Emmett had just exited. Emmett watched them leave, noting that neither turned to say good-bye to him as they did so.
“Right, then,” Keiran began before Emmett could ask anything else. “On to food.”
Sure, we can just pretend I processed all of that.
They passed through a seeming labyrinth of hallways and passed at least a dozen or so people of various ages—usually in pairs, the woman always with glittering eyes—before reaching the rustic kitchen, its extensive deep cherry woodwork and granite facing an uncovered window looking out across a wide valley.
“Right. Have a seat, then,” Keiran offered to Emmett, moving to the refrigerator. “The trick is always to find something that refreshes without being too objectionable.”
Keiran withdrew a knife from a drawer and set to slicing various pieces of fruit. Emmett’s eyes glanced sideways at the door, and in a moment he had decided that if he chose to run, short of throwing the knife at him, Keiran probably wouldn’t be able to catch him.
Fine, genius, you run … and go where, exactly?
Keiran offered a kiwi wedge from his knife to Emmett. Emmett made no attempt to hide his leeriness as he regarded the extended knife or possibly drugged fruit. Keiran seemed comfortable with Emmett taking time to consider him as if he expected it.
Emmett finally accepted the offering with a loud rumbling of his stomach. He felt the first bodily objection as he hesitantly chewed, and tasting nothing immediately foul, swallowed it to quell his rising hunger.
“Mind that you don’t drip juice on the floor, please,” Keiran said, handing Emmett a napkin.
He took the napkin, prickling with irritation. Nancy’s husband, Gerry, had done something similar once, too. By outward appearances, Keiran was not entirely unlike Gerry: tall, well built, and genetically blessed with the rugged good looks women bypassed lanky, boy-faced Emmett for. If that weren’t enough reason to not like him, Keiran was a better dresser, too.
Hating the guy who rescued you isn’t helpful, genius.
Unlike Gerry, though, Keiran exuded a relaxed manner. Emmett couldn’t tell if it was because he was British or not, but when he spoke, Keiran seemed entirely comfortable in his own skin. To anyone else, that would engender an equally relaxed manner. To Emmett, though, it only served to remind him how uncomfortable he felt in his own skin—now even more with the Rot on his neck.
Emmett touched his jaw to test if it was still there, hissing at the pain.
“It’ll hurt less if you don’t poke at it,” Keiran said.
No kidding.
A silver kettle whistled, and turning the stove off, Keiran poured steaming water into two ceramic mugs. He scooped heaping teaspoons of fresh leaves from a jar into a pair of silver strainers, releasing a heady, almost overwhelmingly sharp aroma. Keiran dropped a strainer into each mug, offering one to Emmett.
“Cream and sugar?”
Of course he drinks tea.
“No thanks.”
“To rare joys,” Keiran said, raising his mug. “Cherish life’s simple pleasures wherever one might find them,” he saluted.
Of course he’s an optimist.
“I suppose you have lots of questions,” Keiran said after setting his tea down.
“Nah, I enjoy being clueless,” Emmett said. That would have worked far better as inner monologue, Emmett. Go you.
“Fair play,” Keiran grinned. “I was cheeky the first time I arrived here, too.”
“When was that?” Emmett asked, hoping to get information before he lost any pretense of patience.
“Seven years ago. I was seventeen and had come searching for answers. Like you, my life had been touched—or marred, rather—by the Underdwellers.”
“Guess I have to ask, don’t I?” Emmett snarked.
Keiran’s expression was genuine confusion. In a way, Emmett regretted his sarcasm and was thankful Keiran didn’t recognize it. “Sorry. What’s an Underdweller?”
“Abominations that hide in the earth. Long-lived creatures that are wicked strong who exist only for the pleasure of devouring flesh.”
The creature’s jagged teeth and unnatural speed flashed in his mind. Silence passed between them as Emmett suppressed a shudder that was accompanied by a dull throb of discomfort along his neck.
No wonder I always preferred the George Romero lumbering dead type.
“What about the robed dudes with the face-melting?”
“Revenants. Their human worshippers. They practice what we call runic magicks, invoking ancient words of power to harm others. Ancient cults, secret societies, tyrants and sadists—Underdwellers have ruled entire kingdoms by proxy through their human Revenant cabals. Civil wars, human trafficking, slavery … it’s all their lot.”
“So, soylent green really is people?”
Keiran raised an eyebrow in confusion.
“How’d you kill it?” Emmett asked. Fewer movie references, snob.
“Iron stave through its heart.”
“Was kinda hoping for a more inventive trope there.”
“Underdwellers avoid pure running water, and fortunately for us, they have lived underground for so long that their skin can’t tolerate direct light. They only rise in full darkness when the moon is at its lowest apogee.”
“You mean they don’t rise under a full moon?” Emmett quipped.
“Silly superstitions,” Keiran remarked more to himself than to Emmett. “The moon reflects the sun’s light. The gift of light in the darkest hours of the night is associated with nonsense superstition. And the brightest reflection of light, a full moon, is viewed as an ill omen. You must appreciate the irony.”
“Superstition makes for good storytelling. Can’t have a horror movie without it.”
Smiling, Keiran began clearing the countertop and rinsing the dishes. “Superstition is often a convenience for avoiding uncomfortable truths. A woman dares to live unmarried on the outskirts of town in the frontier, and rather than being a resourceful, capable woman who records weather patterns and uses medicinal herbs for various maladies—”
“She’s a witch, and firewood is being handed out to the town’s children as party favors,” Emmett added as he saw Keiran already nodding.
“It’s an unfortunate reality we contend with: this need to wrap the truth in fanciful stories, when the truth is so plainly evident,” Keiran said.
“You say that like this wouldn’t be all-new information to most people.”
“If you know what you’re looking for, it shouldn’t be.” Keiran set the knife down and sipped from his tea, his eyes dancing over the cup’s rim. “You just don’t know it.”
Emmett shook his head dismissively. “Nah, I’m as tin-foil-hat as anyone else, but even I know you couldn’t keep this off the Interwebs.”
Keiran chuckled as if Emmett had just insisted that babies came from storks. “Do you watch the news? Even if you remove your everyday murders, kidnappings, and rapes—some of which are Revenant in origin, mind you—there are still other things.”
“Such as?”
“Cattle killings, their sexual organs removed with surgical precision and all bodily fluids drained. Bodies left in unnatural positions with unknown odors and markings in the area. And normal scavengers refuse to approach the corpses?”
“Aliens, bro. Always always always aliens,” Emmett snarked.
“Human combustion? People inexplicably incinerated from within with no evidence of chemicals or a source of ignition and their surroundings undamaged?”
“Not so much, no.”
“You’ve never seen anything that you couldn’t explain? Never experienced something that you wouldn’t admit to others for fear they wouldn’t believe you?”
“Any six-year-old with a phone and free app can turn you into a werewolf.”
“Then look to stories and art. Human history is riddled with stories of Underdwellers, but—and this is critical, of course—you m
ust know what it is you are looking for. Most fairy tales are based on some historical truth that people have otherwise forgotten.”
“Straight-to-DVD films,” Emmett dismissed.
“Haven’t you ever wondered why in nearly every culture throughout human history, death is associated with a place underground? Why the bad people always go down?”
“You bury the dead so you don’t have to deal with decomposition.”
Keiran’s eyes danced with enjoyment at their back-and-forth, irritating Emmett all the more. “Don’t you wonder why most monsters fit what you have already seen of the Underdwellers? Rises from the earth, feasts on human flesh, impossibly strong with bone-white skin, and is destroyed by impalement or returns to the earth before sunrise? Cultures separated by languages and isolated by oceans all share the same common stories.”
Emmett crossed his arms. “There’s a reason most directors wisely edit info-dumps out of the first act, bro. Why? Because no matter how real this may all seem to you, no one else cares. No one believes anymore. Life shines with a green-screen glow.”
A serious look passed between them, and without breaking eye contact, Keiran pointed over Emmett’s shoulder toward a mirror hanging on the far wall behind him. Emmett hesitated for a moment before turning in his chair and, seeing his reflection, blanched noticeably in response.
In the natural sunlight pouring through the windows, the color of his skin along his neckline had darkened considerably around the Rot, as if it were already spreading. Emmett’s eyes met his reflection, his floppy black hair matted with the greasiness of two days’ worth of travel. But his hazel eyes staring back at him, fatigued from the travel, tired perhaps from too much sleep, looked insignificant and frightened by the diseased flesh around his neck. His mind fumbled with half-hearted assurances that if he could just get to a hospital, someone could fix him. Yet he knew that no story he could tell could do anything but have him, at best, humored by a disbelieving physician and sent home with some topical cream, or worse, committed to a psychiatric ward. No, he knew there was no other way.
“Doubt if it comforts you. But people who require evidence before believing are often disappointed in the answers they receive to their questions,” Keiran said.
Emmett bristled at what at first felt like an empty platitude. He wanted to respond with something equally banal. Yet when he saw the Rot in his flesh, he realized that there was nothing he could do but trust people he did not know to help him.
Emmett recognized how small and helpless he truly was. It was a disconcerting, if humbling, realization.
“Okay,” Emmett began. “Let’s say I’m convinced. That still leaves the unanswered question.”
“And that would be?”
“Who all of you are.”
Keiran’s only answer was his Cheshire cat grin.
Vagueness, much?
“Why don’t we head outside where you can see the answer for yourself?”
CHAPTER 6
They exited through a series of hallways and oak doors out onto a sweeping mountain vista. The compound was built on the ridge of a high mountainside whose face featured a flat, wide ledge. Emmett stumbled as he struggled to take in the entire panorama, struck by the vista’s scope and feeling dwarfed by the endless mountains. He was irritated by having to use Keiran’s offered hand to balance himself, momentarily dizzy from the extreme heights.
Keiran took a satisfied breath. “Welcome to Silvan Dea, the Archivist’s Grove.”
Emmett kept his gaze aloft to steady himself. “Where are we?”
“About an hour outside Portland.”
“I suppose I won’t find a signal up here,” he said, seeing no signs of development, power lines, or towers.
“Our Groves always intersect powerful telluric currents. Electronics never function well.”
Emmett followed Keiran down a winding cobblestone path away from the compound. Ensconced in stacked rock and cut stone, the compound’s central, circular tower raised high like a ziggurat. Its stone walls seemed to flow out of the rugged earth itself as if it were carved directly from the mountains, and over time, the fir trees and ambling paths simply grew around it.
“Silvan Dea, you said, right? How old is it?”
“It was built by our Elder, the Archivist, before the Spanish began exploring the region in the seventeenth century. Well, not built. Grown. Semantics.”
Emmett’s memory flashed with the name “Archivist,” remembering what Keiran had said to Amala in Florida. “That’s the person you said could heal the Rot, right? A librarian is going to heal this?”
“There are nine Elders worldwide, and the Archivist is the wisest and most powerful of them all.”
“Elders of what, exactly? What do you people belong to?”
The cobblestone path they had followed along the hill dove into the ravine, ending at the darkened entrance to a cave. Keiran paused before the cave as if waiting for Emmett to enter.
Emmett shook his head with a nervous laugh. “Yeah right, not happening. I enjoy enclosed spaces even less than great heights. There’s a reason The Descent is the only horror film to scare the piss out of me. No cave for Emmett. Thanks.”
“Given everything that has happened to you, I can understand your doubting.”
“I’m doubting you mean that,” Emmett scoffed. “See what I did there?”
“This can all be too much to bear,” Keiran said. He raised his arms out slightly with hands open at his sides, a gesture of openness offered with a smile. “For what it’s worth, I am sorry.”
Emmett wasn’t sure if it was the lingering headache or the low pain in his neck, but hearing Keiran apologize was enough to ignite the frustration he had been withholding since waking.
“Then tell me who the hell you people are, John Steed. Try straight answers!”
“Welsh,” he corrected.
Emmett blinked. “What?”
“Mr. Steed from The Avengers? He was English. I’m Welsh. And I don’t fancy bowler hats.”
Emmett lowered his head, succumbing to how overwhelmed he felt.
“Druids and Bards,” a voice said.
Emmett looked up at the new voice. Feminine. Familiar. From Florida and so many countless dreams.
“I am a Druid, and Keiran is a Bard.” Amala emerged from the shadows of the cave. Emmett could not hide the flush that reddened his face at seeing Amala’s tapered, bronze-skinned form or his embarrassment at being disoriented and confused in front of her. “We are the Children of the Earth, servants of the Song of Creation.”
Emmett rushed to hide his embarrassment. “If we’re doing cosplay, I get to be the Pale Man from Pan’s Labyrinth. Don’t have the costume for it, but who cares?”
Amala’s face was a blank, unreadable expression.
Always impressing the ladies, Emmett. Tell her about your favorite movies. Girls love it when you do that.
“We are the sentinels that defend the world from the darkness,” Amala said.
Emmett had prepared himself for any kind of ridiculous or improbable explanation for the whole affair: a government conspiracy; a drug-induced hallucination; a medically induced coma. He thought he could tolerate any answer … other than that.
“So where’s your oaken staff? Or am I confusing you with wizards? I may not be up-to-date on current fashion trends in magic.”
“Druid staves are crafted from iron, not wood,” Keiran said. “Iron drawn from the stars and shaped in cold waters beneath a full moon. We don’t use staves. Bards, I mean.”
“Oh, of course. Who needs a staff when you can whistle people into the air? Sorry. Stave. Not staff. Finally, a non-comic book convention setting where the staff-staffs-stave-staves debate can be settled. And linguists everywhere fist-bump the air.”
Emmett looked away from them and out across the mountains. The sarcasm felt comfortable to him. Yet having said it, Emmett had to admit to himself that he had, in fact, seen Keiran do just that. Right before his eyes.
And Amala had wielded twin serpents as she fought the Underdweller. Right after it had cursed him with the Rot.
He bit down on his lip, forcing himself to face the situation. He felt his knees grow weak with the inward acknowledgement. Silent and guarded, Emmett expected Amala or Keiran to say something. He was relieved when neither did, seemingly respecting the moment’s acceptance with a reverence that comes from understanding the scope of the experience. Emmett felt himself recognizing the truth of everything and beginning the slow ascent toward belief. He was in this now: the grand compound, the stalking monsters, the silent guardians who stood against the encroaching darkness.
“Time is of the essence, Emmett. I am going to take you into the mountain to a place set aside for contacting the Archivist. Follow me,” she said, turning her back to him and returning into the cave before he could protest.
Emmett stared dumbly after her, looking at Keiran, who only smiled. “I wouldn’t make a habit of keeping her waiting. She doesn’t fancy that. Believe you me.”
Keiran had only made some sense of the situation for him. When Emmett looked at Amala, he was reminded again of a lifetime of dreams where a mysterious, dark-skinned woman with amber eyes explained the significance of a strange painting in a stranger apartment.
Fine. Red pill it is.
Reticently entering the cave, Emmett steadied himself with outstretched arms and permitted himself several moments for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. He felt the narrowness close around him. The crisp winter air was swallowed in a humid, sticky embrace the farther he walked in. Blind in the darkness, his ears sought sounds to guide him: whispers, faint yet persistent, echoing down long, unseen corridors.
His hands felt crumbling rock in front of him, and he turned to his right around a bend in the tunnel. He nearly cried out in panic, feeling the ground slope up underneath his feet just as his head grazed the ceiling overhead. But another wall ahead signaled a turn in the tunnel, and his path bent suddenly left.
Emmett’s eyes quickly focused on soft light sources that gently eased him from the darkness. The tunnel had opened into a large cavern twenty feet high overhead and three times that size around. The cave walls were gray with visible veins of sparkling mineral. Water dripped somewhere in the distance, bounding along the echoing walls.
The Waking Dreamer Page 6
