The Waking Dreamer

by J. E. Alexander

  Keiran had bathed first, admitting to Emmett that the strain of the past day had been the lack of clean clothes. A wardrobe along the far wall was filled with several suitable outfits, all of which Keiran said that he and Amala kept at Derrick’s should they ever have need.

  “I’ll tell you this much, there’s nothing that can raise one’s spirits more perfectly than a well-tailored outfit,” Keiran had admitted to Emmett. Emmett lay on the bed watching with heavy eyes as Keiran pulled various clothes from the wardrobe for the two of them, nodding occasionally or absently mumbling agreement to something Keiran would say as he felt himself giving over to a deep sleep.

  At some point between Keiran matching pants to socks and billowing steam pouring from the bathroom’s slightly ajar door, Emmett’s eyes closed. Too often restless when his body was tired, his mind acquiesced to a swollen presence of silence and quieted itself for sleep. As the previous day’s events effortlessly fell away, Emmett rolled onto his side and tucked one hand underneath his head. He relaxed as Keiran disappeared behind the bathroom door.

  Some time passed as Emmett relaxed, the room dark save for a narrow beam of light coming from the slightly ajar bathroom door. The room was empty, and assuming Keiran had gone upstairs for something, Emmett rose for his turn in the bathroom. He sighed with a long stretch, pushing himself upright and plodding across the room.

  His eyes narrowed even to the small blue nightlight behind a fake clamshell on the bathroom’s sole outlet. It was just enough light to see the tiny white square tiles along the floor. He felt a prickling all along his skin, a reminder of how horribly filthy the past two days had been and everything he had experienced.

  Closing the bathroom door, he peeled his clothes off into a pile at his feet and turned the shower knob. The shower responded soon with warm water. Stepping in and closing the beige curtain, he allowed himself the simple luxury of water pouring down and over his face, slowly washing away the layers of blood and gore that, though long since gone, he felt still coating his skin.

  Emmett stood leaning against the wall for some time, his mind drawing blissfully blank as he rinsed his hair and body clean. When at last he finally turned the water off and drew the shower liner back, he smiled when he saw a pair of thick towels sitting atop a stack of fresh pajamas laid along the rim of the sink.

  They’re still warm from the dryer, he thought, feeling the thick towels in his hands. He loved the feeling of a heated towel after stepping from a shower into the chilling cold of a home in winter.

  The thought formed somewhere distant and unbidden in his mind as he ran the warm towel over his face. He’s going to spoil me.

  After drying himself off, he pulled a pair of comfortable wool pajama bottoms on and snaked himself into a long thermal shirt that snugly clung to his lanky frame. He ran his towel over his floppy hair again, wringing out the moisture before draping the towel over the sink. Lifting one edge up, he wiped a broad swath of fog from the mirror and looking up felt his mind jump with such a start that he thought he might scream.

  A pale, narrow face framed by wet, blond hair stared back at him from the mirror. It was Ellie’s face: flush with life and blinking as if seeing her reflection for the first time. He looked down at himself, feeling with his hands his own skin. He saw his own naked body beneath him, the Rot spreading across the white flesh of his chest, the small birthmark just above his hipbone. It was a young man’s body. It was his body.

  He looked again into the mirror, and the billowing steam had clouded its image once again. Drawing the towel across the mirror─slower and more deliberate this time, as if hesitant yet curious of the reveal─he saw Ellie’s face staring back at him with an expression he knew could only be his … with eyes of both horror and wonder and lips that barely moved as he slowly mouthed words of confusion.

  What the hell? Am I dreaming?

  Emmett looked around the bathroom and pushed himself into the acuteness of his own senses. It couldn’t possibly be a dream, he kept telling himself. His dreams were always the same: a young woman who he now knew had been Amala speaking to him of a portrait he now knew had once hung in his mother’s apartment.

  This moment, though, was contiguous. Grounded. Emmett felt the steam from the shower still moistening his skin; he heard the faintest buzz from the nightlight as its bulb struggled not to burn out; even in the air he breathed, he tasted the soap that remained on his lips; and he felt his own presence within his body, conscious of his own physicality and the boundaries of his arms, hands, and even fingers.

  This is not a dream.

  Someone coughed loudly, and Emmett jumped with a start. The bathroom door swung open, and Emmett recoiled with a start as he lifted his hand to defend himself.

  “What’s the matter with you?” an unfamiliar voice said to him.

  Over his raised fist and tense, half-closed eyes, Emmett saw a young man standing framed in the doorway, a curious expression on his face. He was probably several years older than Emmett, with short golden-brown hair that was flattened along his forehead over a pair of dark eyes. He stood naked, casual, and with a playful grin raised both hands up above his head.

  “I’m unarmed,” he laughed as he put his hands back down. “I just came in to get a glass,” he said as he pointed first and then picked up a small glass on the sink.

  With alarming recognition, Emmett imagined clothes covering his athletic, nude form, and with suddenness he recognized Troy Brooks, Ellie’s brother, standing in front of him.

  When Emmett did not immediately lower his fist, the young man narrowed his eyes with a grin and tilted his head. “You still on edge, Elle?” he motioned with a hand at Emmett’s raised fist, and with a gentle motion lowered Emmett’s hand with his own. Emmett felt his body refusing to relax, though there was unmistakable softness in the young man’s touch.

  My God, what the hell is going on? Emmett screamed into his mind.

  When Emmett said nothing, the young man stepped closer into the space separating them. Immediately, Emmett recoiled from their naked awkwardness and, casting a glance in the mirror, saw Ellie’s nude form folding itself inward as her arm came over to cover the front of her body.

  The young man stopped within inches of him and placed his hand on the back of his neck. It was an intimate expression that set the hairs along his arms on edge. There was unsettling closeness between their bodies, and Emmett wasn’t certain what he found more troubling: that two siblings embraced naked, or that each time he looked in the mirror he saw Ellie’s reflection as his own.

  “Hey, we don’t have to do this, okay? If you don’t want to, we can walk away. We’re only here right now because you wanted to be here. But we can leave. If that’s what you’re afraid of, don’t be.”

  Without realizing that it was happening, Emmett felt words form in his mind as if a separate consciousness shared the space with him. The words came fully formed and unbidden as if an aspect of himself were conversing wholly and separately apart from him, yet using his body to do so.

  “What about Kellner?” he heard himself ask in response with a feminine voice that he immediately realized was not his own. “We need his resources.” It was Ellie’s voice, though it sounded so unlike what Emmett had heard before, with a calm, straightforward manner.

  “To hell with him, okay?” Troy said as he reached his other arm around and tried to pull them together in embrace. “He’s a fool. He doesn’t have your ambitions. Just kill Kellner and take his place. No one has the power to challenge you. And you’ve got me.”

  Ellie pushed away and took another step back as Emmett’s mind raced with confusion, this time his heels touching against the shower stall.

  “Fine, whatever,” Troy said with frustration. “I don’t get you sometimes. You’re afraid of Kellner, yet you’re the one who was saying just two days ago how you were going to kill him and take control! So which is it with you?” Troy’s body tensed noticeably as his hands motioned in the air with his raised voice.<
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  The firm seat of Emmett’s mind felt only confusion and an overwhelming need to run, yet that second aspect within his mind, the odd, separate consciousness that seemed to speak on its own with Ellie’s voice, suddenly felt a hot flush of anger. Pure, raw anger.

  “Shut up!” she spat as she stepped forward. His hand—Ellie’s hand—flew out with a stinging, loud slap across Troy’s face. “He’ll never let us in if he knew what I had planned! He’d never allow us to move against the Children!”

  When the second awareness within his mind spoke and acted, it did so independently as if Emmett were in the audience of a theatrical production, both watching as a scene played out before him yet feeling the full emotion of the experience from the actors’ performances.

  “We proceed as planned,” Ellie said through his gritted teeth, as if to quell the racing pulse that pounded within his chest. “We need Kellner. For now. Once our contact within the Grove is secure, we move against Silvan Dea. And I won’t hear of your fear again.”

  Emmett watched as Troy’s face changed from frustration to bitterness. The slap had done nothing to his jaw, yet his eyes seemed to glass over with a wounded expression. Perhaps not that the slap itself hurt, but rather what it had symbolized. Emmett had not sensed fear in him when he had been speaking, but instead some kind of concern and a willingness to abandon their plans for Ellie’s sake.

  “Fine,” he said heavily, turning away and walking out of the bathroom.

  Emmett allowed himself to catch his own breath as his mind reeled: What was Ellie’s relationship to Troy? Who was this Kellner? They spoke of him as if he was the leader of the Revenant sect. And their plans to attack Silvan Dea—did that mean he was watching something from the past play out before him? Some kind of vision of what preceded the attack?

  Then Ellie’s words resounded again in his mind. Once our contact within the Grove is secure, we move against Silvan Dea. The words echoed with shocking clarity, and Emmett stared back at the sullen face in the mirror.

  Who the hell are you?

  “Emmett?” a distant, hazy voice called out. Turning his head toward the door, he felt a wave of disorientation as the bathroom shifted around him, jerking itself in strange contortions as his vision blurred.

  “Emmett?” Again, a voice called out his name. It was closer now and warmly familiar. It was Keiran. In the darkness, he heard Keiran calling his name. His consciousness─alone again without the second aspect─emerged from beneath the gelatinous surface of sleep and opened his eyes, light and sound rushing in all at once.

  “All right, seven sleeper? Time for a spot of breakfast, then,” Keiran’s voice sounded as Emmett struggled to open his eyes. The room was fully awash in light, and Emmett squinted against the spots in his vision.

  “Bright,” he felt himself croaking with a dry mouth, recognizing through his own muddled senses that he spoke once again with his own voice.

  “Aye, apologies,” he heard Keiran saying as he switched off the overhead lights above the bed. “I’ve been trying to wake you for several minutes now, actually. I never knew you were such a heavy sleeper. Sleep through the end of the world, I daresay.”

  “I’m not,” Emmett said, licking his lips and swallowing as he struggled to wake.

  “Could have fooled me, mate,” Keiran responded. “It’s half past seven. I’d like to get on the road within the hour. There are towels and toiletries on the sink, and I hung the clothes I thought might fit you on the right side of the wardrobe. I have some things to discuss with Derrick upstairs, so take your time. But let’s try to get a move on,” Keiran said just before leaving the room, his voice bouncing with an irritating cheeriness that Emmett found ill-suited for the early morning.

  In his grogginess, Emmett rolled over onto his stomach and buried his face in his pillow. Already, his mind was attempting to make sense of his dream. It was, indeed, a dream, Emmett reasoned.

  What about anything that happens to me is normal?

  Peeling his shirt off in the bathroom, he winced as the fabric tugged at the Rot. He traced his finger around its perimeter, which was now crawling down toward his abdomen. Turning around, he looked back over his shoulder and found that the Rot was spreading along his back, too, at an alarming rate.

  For only the briefest moment, he wondered if he was still dreaming. That his dream had seemed so convincingly real earlier made him second-guess himself now. Yet Keiran had spoken to him as Emmett, and staring into the mirror now, he saw his tousled, floppy black hair and the decaying stretch of the Rot crawling down his body.

  Showering was both uncomfortable and dully painful. He attempted hot water, which produced throbbing discomfort deep in his chest; cooler water sent shocks of brittleness along the edges of the Rot. No matter what he did, the pain was becoming increasingly unavoidable, and though he showered for ten minutes, the pain itself never grew tolerable. It was all he could do to grind his teeth against the soreness as he rinsed and then carefully toweled himself dry.

  Ascending the stairs a short time later, he followed the distant sound of discussion back to the upstairs kitchen.

  “Good morning, son,” Derrick said brightly as he motioned for Emmett to join them at the small table. “Coffee?”

  “No, thank you,” Emmett said as he sat down.

  Keiran sat in the chair next to him, obviously refreshed from a full sleep and impeccably dressed once again. His face was cleanly groomed, and he was wearing a pair of gray, tailored pants with a well-fitted, long-sleeve dress shirt the color of soft pink tulips tucked in underneath a black belt whose flat silver buckle matched his diamond-shaped silver cufflinks.

  You would never know what he’s been through in the past forty-eight hours.

  “All right?” Keiran said as he counted through a wad of money in his hands.

  Derrick returned from the stove holding a bowl of steaming oatmeal and sliced peaches dusted lightly in cinnamon that bobbed along in the center of the oatmeal. Into this he poured a generous helping of fresh cream as he placed the bowl down in front of Emmett. Setting a napkin and spoon down, Derrick returned to his conversation with Keiran.

  “When you boys are ready, we’ll go get the car.”

  “And then you are going to leave, yes?” Keiran asked, and it was obvious to Emmett that they had already discussed this because Derrick sat back in his chair and made a dismissive gesture with his hand.

  “I have never run from these people, and I don’t intend to start doing it now.”

  “This isn’t like last time. I cannot guarantee that they won’t track our movements here to Chicago, and if they do, you’re in danger. You must disappear for a while.”

  Derrick was still shaking his head. “I won’t run from them. Even after they killed Annie, I’ve always been safe here.”

  “That’s because Amala and I lived across the street for three months,” Keiran added, and Emmett saw the look of surprise on Derrick’s face at the revelation. “Yes, Derrick, we relocated to Chicago. Amala didn’t want to tell you because she knew how crushed you were by losing Annie. The last thing she wanted was for you to live in fear of your own life, as well.”

  “I didn’t have much to live for, anyway,” Derrick admitted.

  “Annie would never have wanted you to be murdered as her mother was,” Keiran added. Personalizing the issue with the memory of his daughter seemed to work as Derrick finally nodded in agreement.

  “I’ve been meaning to visit my cousins down south, anyway.”

  “A proper holiday,” Keiran offered with a smile, patting his hand on Derrick’s arm. “When we are confident of your safety, we’ll contact you.”

  Emmett saw a look of regret in Keiran’s face, and he felt the same regret acutely, too. Once again, someone’s life was affected by his presence, that perhaps even death was a risk.

  “The weather report said they’re expecting a snow flurry from up north. I don’t have it left in my back to shovel out there. So at least I get to avoi
d that,” Derrick said with forced humor.

  “Best you tuck in and eat before we get on the road,” Keiran said to Emmett.

  The morning remained uneventful. Derrick took twenty minutes to pack several suitcases while they waited. Keiran seemed preoccupied, often staring off at pictures of Annie along the walls. Not wanting to add to an already complicated situation, Emmett said nothing of his dream.

  When Derrick was ready, he looked around the house once and shook his head, having each of the boys carry a suitcase for him as he locked several external bolts on the front door. Derrick drove them in his station wagon along the congested arteries of suburban Chicago, taking Lake Shore Drive north as it wound through the harbor district and hugged the Lake Michigan coastline.

  When they finally reached a storage center on the outskirts of the city, Derrick handed Keiran a set of keys to the locked garage he had parked directly in front of. Several minutes later, Emmett and Keiran had rolled the unassuming car out of the opened garage and, filling it with a portable tank of gas Derrick had purchased earlier, tested the engine with a satisfying rumble.

  “Thank you, Derrick, for everything,” Keiran said as they embraced.

  “Oh, it’s nothing, son,” he said as he stepped back and turned to Emmett. “You take care of each other,” Derrick said as he extended his hand to shake Emmett’s. “I want you to come visit me in July for my slow-cooked ribs. Put some meat on those skinny bones of yours.”

  “Thanks, Derrick.”

  “And the same goes for you, Keiran,” he continued, looking at Keiran. “Bring Amala with you, understand? Tell her I miss that gorgeous smile of hers.”

  “Aye. Travel safe, my friend.”

  “I’ll be thinking about all three of you,” Derrick said finally and, rolling his window up, backed his car up and turned out to exit the storage center.

  Keiran smiled and motioned to the rumbling car. “You drive. I’ll navigate.”