The Waking Dreamer

by J. E. Alexander

  The thrill of success surged through Ellie, mixed with a lustful desire at the mention of Troy’s name.

  “I will see you at ten o’clock.”

  Before Ellie could respond through Emmett, he felt a sudden jerk along his shoulder, a forceful tug that nearly toppled him backward over the bench. The foyer dissolved in a haze of darkness.

  Emmett felt himself flailing. A hand held his wrist down as he opened his eyes against the assault of sunlight. Through spots in his own vision, he saw Keiran standing over him with a worried look on his face.

  “Emmett? Emmett! Wake up!”

  After several disorienting moments, Emmett realized that he had awakened on the ground. He pulled himself upright and propped his back against one of the bed’s legs while Keiran went to get a glass of water from the bathroom.

  His eyes were open fully now with the bright flood of daylight. He drew in a long breath as if he had been underwater for several minutes, and his throat was filled with the dry, cold air of the suite, the fire in the fireplace having burnt out hours before. Where moments before the classical piano feathered his ears, now there was only the hollow sound of the distant ocean waves crashing against the cliffs below.

  He tried to catch his breath. He paused and willed his pace to slow. The Rot demanded his attention, shooting pain slicing across his chest. He hissed, clenching down with his jaw as he looked down. The decaying patch of dead flesh had already snaked down past his stomach and was winding toward his navel.

  “You want to tell me what that was all about?” Keiran asked, kneeling beside him.

  Keiran explained how he had awoken after sunrise and heard Emmett talking in his room. After knocking on Emmett’s door and hearing only Emmett talking, he came in and found Emmett lying on the ground mumbling in his sleep and twitching his limbs various directions. Concern ceded to panic when Keiran was unable to wake him, shaking him for several minutes before Emmett finally awoke with a start.

  His black, floppy hair matted to his sweaty face, Emmett looked down and saw that he was still in his white boxer shorts, just what he was wearing when he remembered getting into bed.

  As Emmett accepted the glass of water, Keiran stood up and hurried back into his room, returning a moment later pulling a shirt over his torso.

  “I guess I can’t complain about not getting any sleep,” Emmett said.

  “How much pain are you in?” Keiran asked as he took the glass away from Emmett and looked at the spreading patch of blackened skin down Emmett’s torso.

  Emmett cursed as another cough sent wrenching pain into his chest. “I’m nauseous when I move. I can’t catch my breath. And my skin’s flaking off. Basically, I’m the Fly, but without swag hair.” Keiran traced his finger around the perimeter of the Rot just above the skin, careful not to touch it for apparent fear it would cause Emmett further pain. To Emmett, it seemed as if Keiran were estimating how much larger the Rot had grown.

  “Yeah. This thing is really starting to annoy me. I may have to see someone about having it removed,” he snickered.

  “It looks like it’s at least tripled in size. It’ll be in your blood soon, too.”

  “Lovely.”

  “Have you seen anything that might have been a sign or contact from the Archivist? Have you heard anything unusual like a voice in your mind or whispers that you did not know where they came from?”

  Emmett had no way of knowing if the dreams were contact from the Archivist. Amala had been explicit that he tell no one of his waking dream in Portland. But it was clear that his dreams were more like memories of things that had happened to Ellie and seen through her eyes. That he was, in some way, within Ellie’s body and seeing things from her perspective.

  Amala told you not to tell anyone.

  But Emmett would be dead within a week. He could not afford to waste time in assumptions that could be wrong. Amala still had not come. He was on his own with Keiran. Time was something that he had little of remaining.

  “Emmett, what aren’t you telling me, mate?”

  He knows something’s up. This is it.

  “Keiran,” Emmett began slowly as he sighed and looked into his eyes. “Could you hand me my shirt? We need to talk.”

  And for the first time since he’d tumbled down the proverbial rabbit hole, Emmett found himself in the rather unusual position of having to pace himself as he explained things to Keiran and tried to answer his many questions.

  CHAPTER 22

  “That’s about it, I guess. I woke up with you standing over me, and that brings us up to the present.”

  “That is everything, yes?” Keiran confirmed.

  “Yep.” Except about how Amala told me not to tell anyone of what she called the “waking dreams” or the dreams I had every night of Amala before meeting her. He accepted Keiran’s sincerity and had no need to create problems between Keiran and Amala. No matter how much he may have wished for her to be free of him.

  “You were not asleep,” Keiran said. He was sitting across from Emmett along the edge of the bed as Emmett sat upright propped against a hedge of pillows. He still sat in his white T-shirt and shorts, his heavily inked left arm lying across his lap.

  Emmett felt a rush of relief from the certainty with which Keiran spoke. He would know what was going on; he had to. He would know what to do.

  “If it were a dream, it would be constructed from your own memories, not Ellie’s. They are most certainly visions.”

  “I could have just heard Kellner’s name on the news broadcast in Portland.”

  “He is how I am certain. Charles Kellner is a Professor of Anthropology and President of a small private college for women in northern California. He is also an accomplished pianist. His 1923 Steinway is something of an affectation of his. I do not recall that detail being mentioned in the news report.”

  “I don’t know, K. Seems like a stretch to me.”

  “There is The Grinning Man, the red eyes you saw.”

  “That’s real, too?” Emmett asked exasperated.

  “He is an Old One, Emmett, like the Hag. It is not possible that you could have described him as you did unless you had encountered him. Or rather, Ellie encountered him.”

  Emmett rocked back with the implications. Even as he retold the entire story to Keiran, pouring over every detail that he could remember, his mind had begun to rationalize away everything he had experienced as nothing more than fanciful dreams induced by fatigue, insomnia, and shock. It had made it easier to tell Keiran what had happened when he assumed there was a sensible explanation. He needed it to be rational, if only to tell himself that he was not going crazy.

  He stumbled for words. “This is real?”

  “Kellner’s parents were wealthy industrialists who were executed for selling munitions to the French Resistance during World War II. His uncle, a mid-level bureaucrat within the National Socialist Party, adopted him. Kellner used the money his family had laundered and established a private college. His occult research required our investigation of him.”

  “So he is the Revenant leader? Not Ellie?” Emmett asked.

  “Druids were sent to pose as students, and when nothing was discovered, he was classified as a harmless, if eccentric, collector. Wealth often leads to boredom, and it was determined that Kellner’s interest was purely academic.”

  “You said it would take a powerful leader to launch that attack.”

  “And this could not have been Ellie?” Keiran asked.

  “My Rot never had me doubling over on the ground near her.”

  “That only proves that she did not have contact with Underdwellers or Revenant magiks for a period of time. It would have been necessary for her to be clean due to the possibility that someone would sense it in her presence when she was planted at the Grove.”

  The mention of Ellie being planted reminded Emmett of the most salient and problematic revelation if these were, as Keiran was certain, Ellie’s memories as visions. “Keiran, she said she had a
spy at Silvan Dea.”

  “As difficult as it might be for me to accept that such a thing was possible, I cannot discount that.”

  Emmett ran through the faces of those he had met at Silvan Dea. “If I have another vision, perhaps I’ll see who the spy was.”

  “No, that would prove nothing,” he said curtly.

  Keiran saw the confused expression on Emmett’s face. “Emmett, don’t you understand what is happening? What you’re experiencing is not contact from the Archivist. You are seeing through another person’s life. Regardless of how or why, there is no doubt in my mind that you’ve been touched with the gift of the Mara. You’re a Dreamer.”

  At first, Emmett felt only confusion, and in his mind he all but laughed at the absurdity of it. The Mara? Only the Children are born with that gift!

  “That’s not possible, is it?” he shakily laughed.

  “Perhaps your contact with the Archivist unlocked something; the visions could just as likely end when you finally reach her and are cured of the Rot. I do not know. You are quite literally seeing into and through another person.”

  Emmett found that he had stopped breathing, and he had to tell himself to resume. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. There was numbness in his limbs, and he looked down as he told his toes to wiggle. Move. He felt detached from his body, as if listening to their conversation from a great distance away. It was shock, of course, and an inability or perhaps unwillingness to accept what Keiran was saying.

  “What are you going to do to me?” Emmett asked in almost a whisper, his eyes staring down at his own hands folded in his lap. He could not bring himself to look up. He was manifesting something that was forbidden by most of Keiran’s people. Would he have to seek sanctuary with the Lighthouse? Would the Archivist refuse to heal the Rot if he did?

  “Emmett, listen to me.” Keiran put his hand over Emmett’s and leaned forward so that Emmett had to look up into his face. It was a gesture of friendship, solidarity, and of something Emmett had not experienced before: brotherhood.

  “The Archivist will heal the Rot, and then we will determine together what will be done. You must promise me, however, that you will tell no one of these visions, particularly here.”

  More secrets. Just like Amala.

  “Yeah, okay.”

  “If the visions progress as they have, we need to be mindful that you are entering this state without realizing it. I’ll need to stay in your room to keep an eye on you.”

  “I don’t want this to turn into a thing,” Emmett said sheepishly. “I’m fine. Really. I’m not gonna go all Memento on you and start marking myself up.”

  “I’m not going to take any chances. When you have another vision, at the first opportunity when no one else is around, I want you to tell me. As soon as you are able, yes? No matter what you see, I want you to tell me everything.”

  “Sure. No more holding back.”

  “And Emmett, the gift of the Mara is a fickle thing. Lacking perspective, you are experiencing one side of a story as remembered by someone who is now dead. You must appreciate why drawing conclusions from that could be problematic.”

  Though the argument between Keiran and Sebastian over the Great Preclusion had meant little to him at the time they had it in Portland, Emmett had understood that anyone with a precognitive gift would obviously be an asset against Revenants. Keiran’s opinions to the contrary had seemed unfounded until now as Emmett’s mind sifted through the images and struggled to apply much-needed context to them.

  “Come on. Let’s wash up and go down. Breakfast and fresh air should help.”

  Emmett only nodded, allowing Keiran to help him get dressed and head downstairs.

  It was sitting at the table eating that he first noticed the trembling, his spoon shaking in his hands as he tried to eat his fresh muesli. Keiran only patted his shoulder, telling him it was the inevitable consequence of the Rot’s continued penetration of his body.

  Eitan entered the dining hall and greeted them just as they were finishing breakfast.

  “Mon frère,” Eitan said in his high voice as he addressed Keiran with a low bow. “Dr. Hazrat has requested both your company in his private study.”

  Exchanging knowing looks, Keiran nodded and followed with Emmett behind him. They passed several flights of winding stairs and hallways before they reached a circular room with high walls lined floor to ceiling with ornate wooden bookshelves and a gold rail from which a ladder on wheels rolled around the circumference of the room. A multi-tier chandelier hung down at its center, and spread among several large burgundy chairs and tasseled area rugs stood several wrought-iron floor lamps.

  Dr. Hazrat sat in one of the chairs with an open leather-bound tome. He had eschewed his frock coat for an evening jacket, though it was scarcely late morning, and his polished black loafers for comfortable down-lined slippers. He sipped from a crystal glass and nodded at Eitan with a whispered thank you before Eitan closed the double doors behind him as he exited.

  “Please, join me,” Dr. Hazrat gestured to a pair of chairs opposite him.

  “Thank you,” Keiran said as he sat down beside Emmett.

  “I trust that your accommodations have been sufficient for your needs?” he asked, setting his drink and book down on an end table next to his chair that sat before a large, roaring fireplace that crackled with the sweet smell of pine.

  “Yes, thank you, sir.”

  Several moments of silence passed, and Emmett was unsure what Dr. Hazrat must have been expecting them to say or do. Then the door opened again and Oliver Gray strolled in just before Eitan bowed a second time and closed the door.

  “Ah, yes, Oliver. Do join us,” Dr. Hazrat said.

  “Thank you,” Oliver nodded. Emmett studied him fully for perhaps the first time. He was obviously American by his accent, and his square jaw and athletic features reminded him of Keiran. He also wore his black hair in the same casual, unassuming manner, the style for those whose attractiveness was as effortless as the color of their eyes. Oliver’s were crystal blue and perfectly complimented the amaranth-colored long-sleeve shirt with silver cufflinks that he wore tucked into tailored, fitted slacks.

  Dr. Hazrat unfolded his hands and placed them on the arms of his chair. “Earlier this morning, I was gifted with a disturbing vision.”

  Emmett allowed his eyes to glance over at Keiran, and though he wanted to ask the obvious question, he wisely remained silent. Keiran was guarded in his own expression, not filled with the indulgent look in Oliver’s eyes.

  “May I ask you your vision, Elder?”

  “You may,” Dr. Hazrat said, as if he were waiting for the request before proceeding. “It was a vision of the three of you,” He paused, either to ascertain that each was listening or just to increase the dramatic effect of his words.

  “Those with the gift of visions are known as the Dreamers, Mr. Brennan, or the Mara in the old tongue,” Dr. Hazrat began as he leaned toward Emmett. “The Dreamers were chosen by the Composer to guide the Children.”

  “What were we doing, Elder?” Oliver asked.

  “Fighting to save Amala Amjadi.”

  “If she is in danger, we must leave at once!” Oliver said hurriedly as he made to stand from his chair. Dr. Hazrat shook his head ever so slightly, and the subtle movement was not lost on Oliver, for as quickly as he had reacted, he sat back down.

  In the ensuing silence, Oliver stared at Dr. Hazrat, who stared at Keiran, who was trying not to stare at either of them. All of them were watching one another for some kind of reaction to indicate what they were truly thinking.

  Dr. Hazrat steepled his fingers together, tapping them silently as he regarded Keiran. The surreal exchange was broken only when Keiran finally nodded and leaned forward in his chair.

  “Can you tell us anything about where we were so we can find her?”

  This seemed to appease Dr. Hazrat, Emmett saw, as the briefest smile escaped his jaw. “I saw two street signs. Considering the weather over
head and the surrounding landscape, I have determined the location for you. Here,” he said, withdrawing a slip of folded paper from within his jacket pocket.

  “It occurs within this week, as Mr. Brennan was still infected with the Rot. That the address is less than a half-day’s drive, coupled with the position of the moon overhead, indicates that this event occurs late tonight or early tomorrow,” Dr. Hazrat said as he gave Keiran the paper.

  “I’ll have one of our unmarked vehicles brought around so we can leave,” Oliver said.

  Keiran’s eyes betrayed hesitation as clearly as Oliver’s eyes showed eagerness. Dr. Hazrat had been watching Keiran this entire time and noticed it, too, with a slight uptick of his eyebrow.

  “You do not wish to bring Oliver with you, brother?”

  “Amala is my Companion. I would never ask another Bard to risk his life.”

  “She was my charge long before you, Keiran. I love her, too.” Oliver looked wounded by Keiran’s exclusion. “I would never allow her or you to stand in danger alone.”

  “It is not in question that Oliver will be with you, as I have already seen it in my vision. It has already happened and also must still happen yet. What remains is not to debate its existence, but rather to experience it directly. There also remains the continued threat of Revenants apparently pursuing Keiran.” On Keiran’s name, Dr. Hazrat notably looked at Emmett. “Though no word has reached me of any within the area, there may be spies who would signal their comrades and descend upon him as he is traveling. I could not permit such a risk to be taken. The three of you will go together.”

  Keiran showed no additional objection in his face as he looked to Oliver. “Then we leave at once.”

  “Together, again,” Oliver beamed. “Like old times.”

  Emmett stood as well and stepped behind them toward the door, Keiran turning to follow him just as Dr. Hazrat cleared his throat.

  “I should mention one additional thing,” Dr. Hazrat said, pausing once again for both their attention and the effect that his words caused.

  “There was a presence of another, a being of such power that its own energy obscured it from any meaningful recognition. I cannot say what it was, but I can tell you that powers such as those do not come to the young. They are harvested only by those of great age; the very, very old. I should think you would value Oliver’s presence.”