The Waking Dreamer

by J. E. Alexander

  “That’s brilliant, Derrick. Thank you.”

  “We can buy you airline tickets tomorrow morning after you get some sleep, and we’ll get you on the first flight out of O’Hare. Where are you boys heading?”

  “For your own safety, Derrick, it’s best that you didn’t know.” Keiran looked to Emmett in return. “Go ahead and show him.”

  Understanding as Keiran pointed to his neck, Emmett nodded and pulled the collar of his shirt down enough to expose the rotting flesh underneath. Derrick made a hissing sound and shook his head.

  “No amount of convincing on your part would get you past a row of pat-downs at the airport, not with that growing down your neck. Annie had several old cars in a storage facility. All of the registrations and plates are fake. I assume you’re being followed.”

  “Possibly,” Keiran confirmed.

  “How long have you had it, son?” Derrick asked, turning to Emmett. “The Rot?”

  Emmett felt at a loss for words suddenly, fumbling each time he met a new person and forgetting that they understood his situation better than he did. “Uh, almost a week now.”

  “The last new moon?” he asked knowingly just as Keiran nodded. “Cursed things. There’s already too much evil in this world without those horrible creatures running around in it. It must be getting bad by now.”

  Emmett shifted in the chair, as talking about the Rot often caused him to become more aware of its gnawing discomfort.

  “Derrick’s daughter was a Druid of Silvan Dea. He knows something of what you are going through right now with the Rot and the rather sudden acclimation to the hidden world.”

  Emmett stared in mute surprise at Derrick as the words settled in. Keiran had not told him where or who they were going to, specifically, and when he had looked around the aging home, he had assumed that Derrick was nothing more than a kind, old man. That his daughter was a Druid, that he understood firsthand the strange and surreal world Emmett had been plunged into, and that perhaps his perspective was one that Emmett could relate to since he was on the outside looking in, was enough to flood Emmett’s mind with a thousand questions to ask.

  “The finest Druid in the world, excluding Miss Amala, of course,” Derrick said, almost privately to himself. Standing, he looked down at the floor and closed his eyes, whispering something too soft for Emmett to hear. Keiran lowered his eyes respectfully as well, and aware that something reverential was passing between them for his daughter, Emmett, too, lowered his head.

  “I thank the Good Lord that her mother never lived to see her death,” he said quietly, lifting his head. “Why don’t the two of you follow me downstairs and we’ll see about getting you set up. I just finished with dinner, but there are plenty of leftovers. I hope you like your food deep fried, Emmett.”

  Nodding, Emmett allowed his rumbling stomach to answer for him.

  Though the surface level and upstairs of the home were in a state of disrepair, Derrick’s basement was almost cozy, with simple, thin carpeting over a concrete floor and new wood paneling on its four walls. A large bed with a lamp and dresser sat in the far corner of the long room, along with a simple sofa, an old television that seemed capable of receiving two, grainy channels, and a kitchenette next to a small table that could comfortably seat the three of them.

  “After Mabel passed away, I didn’t have much else to do but sit around the house feeling sorry for myself,” Derrick said from the kitchenette as he looked over his shoulder at Emmett. Unwrapping several containers of food, Derrick set different bowls out on the table for them.

  “With Annie running around, the house just got too lonely. I started tinkering down here, making up all sorts of excuses to fix things that weren’t broken. But I didn’t have enough light, so I brought some lamps down. Then the arthritis started acting up, so I had a kitchen and bathroom installed. I was spending so much time down here that it made sense to have a bed delivered.”

  “Cheers, Derrick,” Keiran said as he was handed another plate of food. “These are the nicest accommodations we’ve seen in the last two days!” Emmett abandoned all pretenses at refinement and dove hungrily into a plate of fried shrimp, okra, and sweet potato casserole.

  “Well goodness, have you been starving this boy all week?” Derrick chuckled.

  “Sorry,” Emmett managed with a half-full mouth.

  “We ate a bit at a bus terminal yesterday.”

  “Vending machines don’t count,” Emmett garbled as he ate.

  “And you’ve been on the road for how long, exactly?” Derrick asked.

  Keiran feigned a tired expression. “Days that feel like weeks, honestly. I tell you, I can’t remember the last time my face touched a pillow.”

  “The linens are always clean here, son,” he said, motioning to the bed against the far wall. “It’s not much to look at, and there’s not a lot of privacy.”

  “It’s brilliant, Derrick, really.”

  Derrick shifted in his chair and watched Emmett hungrily eating with a satisfied smile on his face. “If Mabel were here, she’d keep you fed for days! It was all my wife could do to cook for hungry kids. The soup kitchen was her idea.”

  “Best meal in a long time, thank you,” Emmett said as he wiped his face. “I haven’t eaten real food since the train station.”

  “Train?” Derrick asked Keiran, and immediately Emmett regretted saying anything. “Were you boys on a train within the last few days?”

  Keiran looked at Derrick as a dark, knowing expression passed between them.

  Derrick’s head lowered as his aged hands passed over his face. Turning around in his chair, he stood up and walked to the counter to grab a newspaper on the stove. He handed it to Keiran, who unfolded it on the table for Emmett to see as well.

  The sooty black and white cover page featured the same litany of days-old news: orange juice futures affected by the heavy frost moving through Florida; a pair of double homicides in Fuller Park; the controversy surrounding a contentious call made during last weekend’s sports game that had most of the nation still arguing and two famous radio commentators calling on Congress for legislative action; and a small, bleak photograph of a wreck of charred metal hiding in the small bottom-right corner of the page.

  Emmett flipped through the pages to B-15 to read the story, as there simply had been no room on the front page for the story itself.

  “I saw it on the news earlier but didn’t think twice about it. That business with the train catching on fire and all of the people killed. That was them, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Keiran said as Emmett found the page and ran his finger over the article.

  The article was less than a narrow, three-inch strip of emotionless data: the date of the accident, the number of people dead, the lack of survivors, and the controversy surrounding the politicians who had taken up the cause of the train explosion to push for additional industry oversight.

  “You go for months without hearing anything and start to believe that maybe they don’t exist,” Derrick was saying as Emmett stared at the article in an obvious state of disbelief. “Then something like this happens, and you remember how the Revenants killed your wife and daughter. All they said was that it looked like a short in one of the electrical wires, but that it would be months before they knew for certain.”

  “Unfortunately, Revenant cabals cover their tracks rather well,” Keiran sighed. “And in several weeks, everyone will have forgotten.”

  “There’s nothing here,” Emmett mumbled as he pushed the newspaper away in disgust. “Nothing. No hint that anything out of the ordinary happened. They couldn’t even be bothered to write two paragraphs. They expect people to believe this? No wonder print is dead.”

  “There was barely a mention of it on the network news, Emmett. Everyone is talking about last weekend’s game,” Derrick said as he looked down at his own hands and shook his head.

  Emmett couldn’t stop staring at the article, noting how small it was compared to the full-page
ad opposite it advertising next month’s concert. “It’s not even about who’s behind the curtain. It’s like no one realizes there even is a curtain! Status quo and we’re good to go!” Emmett cleared his throat, fixing his attention on the wall behind Derrick’s head. Too much had happened for him to let go of his carefully maintained control over himself.

  Not now.

  “I know that look in your eyes, son. I see it in the mirror everyday. People just don’t want to know the truth. Then one day someone they love dies, and they wake up.”

  Derrick pushed himself away from the table and rounded back to the kitchenette, his fists clenched tightly at his sides. Emmett felt his face flush with frustration, and yet his words were mute in his mouth when he reminded himself that while his anger was on behalf of people he did not know, Derrick’s was understandably justified by his wife and daughter’s deaths.

  Perhaps to comfort Derrick by sharing in his anger, Emmett wanted to say something. But he saw Keiran shaking his head silently at him with a small gesture of his hand to remain silent.

  “I’m getting too old, Keiran,” Derrick said heavily, keeping his back to them as he gripped the counter in front of him. “You could be killed in broad daylight, and people walking by couldn’t be bothered to notice except to take a picture. Babies go missing, children are sold around the world, and people just sit at home and watch it all on television like it’s a movie of the week.”

  “There are bright spots,” Keiran offered tentatively with a soft voice. Emmett watched the expression Keiran tried to affect: that calm, hopeful understanding he offered people who just needed to tell someone that they had had enough. It was an expression that Emmett knew well.

  That’s Keiran, Emmett realized.

  Derrick turned around with an anguished look tearing at his face. “Oh, really? What would those be?”

  “People like you, Derrick,” Keiran smiled warmly as if he were telling a worried parent that their sick child was going to recover. “You’re so devastated by your loss that you’ve built a new living area underneath your home so you can avoid disturbing the memories that you have above you. Your life was robbed from you, and the people responsible are still free, likely hurting others the same way that they hurt you. You have no way to ever have justice or experience some semblance of closure.”

  “What’s your point, son?” Derrick asked, resignation in his voice.

  “Yet here you are, fighting the only monsters that you can: hunger, poverty, hopelessness. You’re using what I happen to know is a meager monthly benefits stipend to feed people the world has forgotten, never once touching the money your daughter left because of the honor you have for her memory. That makes you the bravest man I know, Derrick. If I came here for no other reason than this, it was to remind myself why I fight.”

  Derrick’s anger seemed to diffuse as he collapsed back into his chair. He cast his eyes down with the look of a man who had bore too heavy a weight for too long. Keiran made no move to speak further, but he gripped Derrick by the shoulder firmly for several silent moments.

  “I can still remember Mabel’s funeral. It was a Sunday morning in February. She’d always wanted to be buried in her Sunday best. No one here knew what had happened to her, and we couldn’t have an open casket.” Derrick turned away for a moment with his hand to his mouth, but clearing his throat he continued.

  “My goodness, it was a beautiful service. Emmett, I don’t know how many funerals you’ve been to, but this one was the finest, with flowers from all over the city. She was loved by so many people. We had the service at her family’s old church across town, and then we all left for the cemetery to see her buried. I’ll never forget it: the weather was rainy and the funeral home had brought a tent out. They had those awful metal folding chairs next to the site. Nothing you could sit on for more than a few minutes without feeling sore.”

  Emmett sat rapt, reminding himself to blink even as he watched Derrick’s eyes.

  “The minister came over and said a final prayer when they walked the casket down. They began lowering her into the ground, and I’m sitting there holding my little girl, Annie, holding onto her so tight with all the strength I could, because she was the only reason I had left to live. And this sweet melody just appeared then in the air. The sweetest, most beautiful singing you’ve ever heard.”

  Derrick shifted in his chair to look at Emmett with directness that he was surprised did not make him uncomfortable. Not knowing Derrick, something of his despair rang so true for Emmett that he felt like he knew the man almost as well as he knew Keiran. Perhaps, in some ways, even more.

  “You see, Emmett, I didn’t know it at the time, but the Druid and Bard who had saved Annie, and who had tried but were unable to save Mabel, had come to her funeral. They had been there all along, way in the back by the trees. The Bard was this handsome young man.” Saying this, Derrick looked at Keiran like an admiring father, and as Keiran nodded respectfully, Emmett realized who that Druid and Bard were.

  “He was singing the most beautiful song for my Mabel. A paean, Annie later told me. A song praising Mabel’s life and the lives that she touched. There were no words. None that I recognized, anyway. And just as the casket was lowered into the earth, a flock of snow-white doves─Mabel loved doves─flew from the trees, over her grave, and into the sky.”

  Derrick was weeping, smiling at Emmett with eyes filled with appreciation. “They came to honor her, Emmett. They didn’t have to, but they did. In their own way.”

  Emmett was not certain if Derrick was reliving the memories for Emmett’s sake or if he believed that Emmett needed to understand that the emotions he was experiencing were valid and true. Or, Emmett wondered, perhaps Derrick was unable to live without those memories anymore.

  “Two days later, Annie left with them to learn what she needed to. I don’t think I had any choice in the matter, and for years after I asked myself if I made the wrong decision in letting her go. But she needed to do it. She saw for herself what those things did to her mother, and she couldn’t live not being part of it. She was always special, talking to animals even as a girl. But she never left her mama’s side until they took her from her. I close my eyes at night and see her face crying over Mabel’s grave. Then I hear that beautiful song they sang for Mabel, and I know Annie is with her right now.”

  Derrick saw the confusion in Emmett’s face. “I don’t think Annie could ever let go of Mabel’s death. She was supposed to let go of it all when she became a Druid, and even though she hid it from all of us, I know she never did. About a year later, Annie came to me to tell me that she was certain that she knew who had killed her mother. She had that same look in her eye when we buried Mabel, that same mixture of anguish and revenge. She said she was going to finish it, track them down and bring an end to those who were responsible for so much death.

  “I would have gone with her, but I was too old and worth nothing to her. These old knees can barely walk up and down those stairs anymore,” he said, wiping the tears out of his eyes. “I tried everything I could to stop her. I tried to reach Amala and Keiran but couldn’t find them. Annie said good-bye, and I never saw her again. A few weeks later, Amala came to see me. She had found my baby,” Derrick’s voice broke.

  Emmett felt Derrick’s pain as brilliantly as if it were his own. He saw the faces of the doomed train’s passengers in Derrick’s eyes. He saw the Druids and Bards who had risen to defend Silvan Dea. He promised himself they would never leave his mind’s eye. He saw in Derrick’s eyes his own broken reflection, and the guilt that he was certain he could never fully let go of.

  For perhaps the first time in his life, Emmett’s mind was entirely silent as he spoke from his heart. “Your daughter would be proud of you. You help people now, honoring her life. Others would give up, but you live for them.” And as Emmett said this, he looked from Derrick to Keiran and understood he was speaking more to himself than to either of them.

  Derrick nodded. “I try my best. I
don’t know if it’s good enough, but it’s all I can do. Someday soon, I’ll be going home to be with my wife and daughter, and if I can measure up halfway to the lives they led, I’ll feel okay about standing in their shadow.”

  Emmett didn’t know how to respond. Keiran, of course, allowed silence to convey his respect, and so they sat quietly as Derrick wept.

  “Thank you, son,” he said, putting a hand on Keiran’s shoulder after several moments of silence had passed. “Thank you both for listening to an old man who can’t quite manage to let go,” he said as he patted Emmett’s hand with his own.

  Emmett did not wish to burden the man with the horror he had seen, for he knew that Derrick was someone like Emmett who would be too wounded to know how evil was continuing to infect so many people’s lives. Emmett wished he could tell Derrick what his words meant to him and how they had given him the freedom─the distance, as Keiran said at the bus depot─from things he had struggled to reconcile in his mind.

  “Each of us must find our own way. Some lead, others fight, or heal, or even comfort. The only crime is to know and do nothing,” Keiran said.

  “Emmett, hear these words from an old man who has seen enough in this world to know what he’s saying. These are good people. Don’t ever lose them.”

  Thinking of Mrs. Carmichael, Emmett nodded and said goodnight to Derrick. Steadying himself, arthritis in his knees, the widower began the slow walk up the stairs to the bedroom he had once shared with his wife.

  CHAPTER 18

  With a comfortable bed and Keiran’s repeated assurances that they were safe from immediate danger, Emmett permitted himself to succumb fully to his own fatigue. He welcomed the opportunity to not dwell on the murders aboard the train as the heavy dinner slowly settled in his stomach, bringing with it the blissful dreariness of approaching sleep.