The Nightmare Maker

by Gregory Pettit

  “Let me go,” I said, voice cold. After my initial shocked outburst, I’d clamped down on my temper. I was angry, but anger would get me dead, and dead wouldn’t get Dana back.

  “I am Senior Auditor John Brown,” he stated, seemingly ignoring my demand and continuing. “Do you know what that means, Julian? It means that in the United Kingdom, it is my job, my responsibility to assess, measure, and weigh down to the smallest iota the potential benefit and hazard of any being attuned to extradimensional energies. In short, I hold the naughty-and-nice list for magical beings, and like Santa Claus I can distribute either presents or lumps”—he paused a moment to underscore the implication—“of coal. As appropriate.”

  I wasn’t sure what he meant about extradimensional energy, but I’d spent my adult life negotiating, so I’d learned to eat the occasional shit sandwich, and this was definitely a shit sandwich situation. Even if I could find a few tasty kernels of corn, I was still fundamentally forced to swallow a load of crap. I nodded, sat up straight, and, mastering my rage, answered, “I greatly appreciate the assistance that your group”—I searched my memory for the name Mia had provided—“that the Sons of Perseus have provided. Let me go, and I’ll hunt down your man. For a price.” I’d already made up my mind to hunt down the Anarchist; if I could get something out of it, then there was no harm in that.

  The Senior Auditor frowned and steepled his fingers. “You are in no position to make demands, Mr. Adler. Nevertheless, in light of your previous, albeit unwitting, service to my organization, I will make you this offer: If you and your daughter come stay at our headquarters, and you apply your ‘talents’ to help catch this killer, and you agree to work for us on a permanent basis, then I may deign to bend my organization’s resources to helping you in your infeasible search for your wife.”

  I’d hated the Senior Auditor in the abstract before I’d met him, and a few minutes of conversation were rapidly filling in the specific details relating to his grade-A assholery. But I tried to stay calm as I replied, “Someone already tried to kidnap my daughter once today. There’s no way in hell that I’m bringing her here and leaving her alone with you people, and I’m not being separated from her again, ever.” I delivered the lines in a clipped tone, as cold as glacial ice, so I was surprised to realize that I was on my feet with my hands balled into fists.

  John Brown raised an eyebrow, but his voice didn’t rise a decibel as he stated, “Your other option, Mr. Adler, is to cease and desist in your use of extradimensional energies in the attempt to locate your wife. You were previously allowed to operate unmolested on the basis that we considered you largely benign, unable to affect the real world. Given the events of last summer, that clearly is not the case. Continued active use of your abilities will…leave you on the naughty list. Naughty children get the things they care about taken away.”

  I’d been used, but I’d been ready to compromise. I’d been held against my will, but I’d been willing to swallow my pride. I’d been forced to take my daughter out of nursery, but I’d given him the benefit of the doubt. But now he was directly threatening my family. Suddenly, I didn’t see the thing across from me as a man. I only saw a dangerous, enemy thing, no more worthy of continued existence than any nightmare. I stared at the wall behind the Senior Auditor and imagined a portal to nowhere forming. I pictured it vividly in my mind and felt my body start to tingle and throb in time with my pounding heart, I—

  “Now.” Brown spoke a single word, and two huge men, one white and one Indian or Pakistani, burst through the door and seized me by the arms, lifting me off of the floor. My concentration slipped, and I lashed out at them with one foot, but only connected with the darker man’s shin. He didn’t make a sound.

  “Mr. Adler. It is the purpose of this organization to protect humanity from threats originating from outside of our dimension. When it comes to being like you, who are human but not entirely of our dimension, we face a conundrum. Killing you outright would be morally wrong and could be a waste of so many fantastic talents. Therefore, I have personally located, captured, rehabilitated, and trained nearly two dozen of your kind.” Brown leaned forward. “Do not leave this room with the impression that I will hesitate to kill you if you ever attempt to use your witchcraft against me again.” The Senior Auditor surprised me by planting a hand on his desk and vaulting over it to land a vicious flying kick to my midsection, which exploded in pain, and I tried to double over, retching. Then he landed two quick punches to my belly, knocking the breath out of me, grabbed a handful of my ginger hair, and yanked my head up hard while holding a newspaper in front of it. He said very, very quietly, “How many more deaths can your conscience handle, Julian? You will find the Anarchist.”

  The headline splashed in giant letters read: “Anarchist Strikes Again: Interest Accumulates as Third Banker Found Dead.”

  Someone shoved a dirty rag in my face at the instant I took an involuntary, whooping breath. I was out before I exhaled.

  Chapter 12 1200–2200, Wednesday, September 30, 2015

  I awoke. I was in my new apartment in West Ealing. I’d Dreamwatched briefly, having just enough time to stop a rusty-saw-wielding surgeon from performing an involuntary organ donation on a fifty-something white guy. I couldn’t handle any more headaches, so I’d worked within the paradigm of the dream, arriving in a white lab coat and tackling the nightmare. I’d explained that the doctor was an escaped mental patient and then led him out of the room and bundled him into a closet. It wasn’t elegant, but my concentration had been erratic, presumably because I’d been drugged. Again.

  Although I’d failed to get what I wanted out of the Sons, I realized that things weren’t as bad as they could be: they had kept me alive for a reason. That must mean that I still had some amount of value to them, and I might be able to make a deal down the road.

  Not as bad as things could be wasn’t a bucket full of fluffy bunnies, though. While I’d been in the Dreamscape, someone had dumped me on the bed, and I was too sick from the druggings and too sore from the beatings to rise, so I spent an hour on my back. I scanned the paper, looking for the same pattern that I’d seen before, but there was no mention of any riot. I didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing. It was definitely a thing. I was pretty sure. Man, I’m a shitty detective.

  Speaking of being a shitty detective, I thought for a moment about my actual job. If I couldn’t even be in the same office as my area’s finance director, then I had no clue how I was going to get back to work. But I still had a couple weeks until my time off in lieu was used up. I just had to track down a supernatural murderer, find out why I was getting sucked into a mysterious little girl’s dreams, rescue my wife from limbo, and avoid falling into the clutches of the Sons of Perseus again. It didn’t sound like I had much time when I laid it out like that.

  I rubbed my temples and tried to ignore the crushing weight of the mountain of problems that I’d accumulated. My granddaddy always said that you chop down a tree one blow at a time, so I pondered on what I could accomplish in the state I was in. My mind travelled back to being a shitty detective—I knew someone who was supposed to be an excellent detective, and I needed to speak to him anyhow, so I decided to put in a call to the Redderton Agency in the afternoon. I could then spend the night attempting to uncover information about the murders in the Dreamscape. A quiet, devious voice in the back of my head also whispered that, just maybe, I could make a deal with the Anarchist to learn how to save Dana. But if I found her that way, would I lose myself? That had to be a last resort.

  Still groggy and halfway back to sleep, I thought I heard the front door click shut. Excited to see my daughter, I flopped onto the edge of the bed and clambered to my feet, groaning at the ache in my stomach muscles. Shuffling into the hallway, I expected to be met by squeals of joy from Olivia and imprecations from her aunt, but instead the house was eerily quiet. On alert, I slowly inched through the house, cursing silently as a floorboard squeaked just outside the kitche
n. I poked my head around the corner…and saw the note stuck up on the refrigerator with a Papa John’s magnet.

  Julian,

  There was no food fit for a growing child in this house. I took Olivia to the grocery store. We’ll be back soon. It’s fine if you pay me back in pounds. I’m not my sister, and I’m not going to put up with your shit. We’ll discuss later.

  Becky

  I sighed, but to be honest I had to agree with Becky. She wasn’t her sister. Not by a long shot. I told myself that the rest of my behavior could be excused by the fact that I was actually in the process of carrying out Dana’s last request. Fiddling with my ring, I closed my eyes for just a moment and remembered her face as she mouthed her final words. Come find me.

  That’s why, for the second time, I didn’t notice the enormous bulldog of a man, black hair slicked back and wearing a white linen suit with a poppy in the lapel, before he slapped me right in the face.

  His meaty palm across my cheek made me see stars, I stumbled backward, falling heavily against the fridge, and then ricocheted into the counter so hard that the plywood cracked. He said something, but I wasn’t quite sure what it was over the buzzing noise in my ears. I tasted coppery blood in my mouth, but my questing tongue didn’t find any loose teeth. I guess that’s why you should drink your milk as a kid, and being from Wisconsin, that—

  “Hello again, Jules…I can call you Jules, can’t I?” The big man’s words cut through the buzzing in my ears, and I snapped back into focus. Ouch. With my brain in gear, I now recognized the speaker as the same man who had assaulted me a few nights ago and realized that I could tick call Redderton off my list a little bit early. “I have a few more questions for you. This time I’m not drunk, and you’re not going anywhere. So we can do this the hard way, or we can talk like civilized men.” The East End accent was still there, but softened by a veneer of schooling that had been erased by liquor the last time we’d spoken. He did a little soft-shoe shuffle over to me and extended his hand. I decided to take the plunge and grasped hold of it.

  That turned out to be a stupid mistake. The mountain of man hauled me up and, in one swift motion, fastened a handcuff onto one of my wrists and hooked the other to a table leg. It wasn’t extremely secure, but I wasn’t going anywhere in a hurry either. He then rushed over to the sink and started washing his hands.

  “Hey…I shought you shaid we’d talk like shivilized mennnn…” I slurred out, spitting bloody phlegm into my palm. Jack Redderton winced.

  “Civilization is the art of lying—and I’d know,” he said, drying his hands on some paper towels. The big man sat down in a chair across from me. He looked younger and less menacing that way. I knew I should have been angry or terrified at the situation, but when you’ve faced nightmares every night of your life, a really big guy in a linen suit, white shirt, and red silk tie isn’t all that intimidating. Instead, I was curious.

  “Did you know that our mothers both disappeared on the same day?” I tried to throw him off balance. I was handcuffed to a chair, but I wasn’t helpless—I was going to get some information.

  “Yeeeees, Jules. I run a PI firm. That’s why I’m here. After our little…chat…I did some diggin’. I think you know how my brother died, and I do not like that I do not know that information. Soooo, you’re going to tell me all about it.” The private investigator’s assurance was so complete that I started to tell what I knew before I caught myself with an effort of will. It might have been that I was still a bit concussed as a wave of dizziness passed over me and I closed my eyes. When I opened them, the room had quit spinning. Jack Redderton just stared at me, face unmoving.

  “Nah—but if you’ve been digging around, can you tell me who in the world the Sons of Perseus are?” I said as flippantly as I could in the circumstances. Jack shook his head, pursing his lips. Then he slapped me in the face. Again. I blinked a few times and felt blood trickling down my chin. The big man must have pulled the punch, though, because I wasn’t seeing any stars, and the size of his forearms and the scars on his knuckles told me that he could have knocked me out with one strike.

  As I tried to figure out what to do, he opened his mouth and began to speak. “That’s for the lip, Jules. But yeah—I’ve heard of them. One of their agents has been tailing you for days, and they drugged you last night.” He spun his chair around so that its back was between us. “Do you know how I know this?” he asked, leaning in toward me.

  “Because you run a PI firm?” I replied glibly. Recent evidence suggested that I liked being slapped in the face.

  “I know this, silly boy, because I bugged your mobile phone when we met the other night. I’ve recorded everything that you’ve said since then.” My stomach dropped as I realized he must have heard everything I’d revealed to Toscan. He shook his head slowly and spoke again, “I think that we have shared enemies, and I’m willing to deal.” He leaned even closer and smirked. This time I didn’t feel any warmth, and I stifled my desire to bust out my best Monty Hall impression so that Jack didn’t bust out his best Rocky impression on my face. Again. “I’ll ask you again. Please tell me how my brother died. If I think you’ve told me the truth, maybe we can help each other.”

  I thought about refusing, but he probably knew most of the story already, so I spent five minutes giving him a brief synopsis of his brother’s involvement with and subsequent demise at the hands of OMG, highlighting the Sons’ instrumental role in the whole scheme.

  “Oh, Derrick…” Jack said, sniffling. He wiped at his eyes and squatted down to my level. “I believe you are telling the truth, Jules. That’s very good for you. I think we can work together.”

  “I’m a businessman. Make me a proposition.” I put on my best negotiation expression and kept my voice level while staring into his dark-brown eyes.

  “I’ve been hired by veeeeery rich men to protect them from the Anarchist. I think you can help me with that. When we’re done, my family’s firm will help find your wife.” He played with the poppy in his lapel as he spoke, and I was pretty sure he was telling the truth.

  “What about your mom?” I asked, wanting to see how much I could get out of him.

  What I got was slapped. Again. I licked blood off of my lip as the private investigator got up and paced across the parquet floor. He shook his hand, washed it again, and then shook his head before turning back to me. “Sorry. You don’t mention my family. And I won’t talk about yours. Now can I have an answer, or are you going to make me keep slapping that pretty face of yours?”

  My first reaction was to press for more information, to see what I could get out of the man, but I kept my mouth shut when I realized that finding Dana would be more difficult if I got slapped back into the hospital. Plus, I was genuinely interested in the offer. “Mr. Redderton, you may have some idea about what I can do, but you aren’t aware of everything. If you want me to have a chance at actually tracking down the killer, then I need you to get me close to one of his targets. Preferably, I need to be sleeping near them.” I’d managed to intentionally occupy Dana’s dream and flee to Olivia’s, and I was convinced that it had been proximity to them that had made it possible.

  “My contact, Mr. Hightower, doesn’t swing that way, Jules. I’d know,” Redderton said, adding a wink and shaking his head sadly. “You don’t have any problem with me that way, do you?”

  I figured that not many people would be brave enough to openly make an issue of the near-giant’s sexuality, but I imagined that it was important to him to know where I stood on the issue if we were going to build trust. “I believe in the platinum rule: ‘Treat others as they’d like to be treated,’” I replied, and Jack Redderton nodded, tension going out of his broad shoulders while I kept speaking, “Now, getting back to business. I need a good, strong connection to a person before I can intentionally Dreamwatch them.” I was stretching the truth there, but I really did want the help that he said he could offer.

  “I can get you a couple of minutes near one of my emp
loyers as a guard. That’ll have to be enough. In the morning. Try not to shoot your mouth off like a complete jackass.” He turned, Italian leather shoes squeaking on the flooring, seemingly convinced that he’d accomplished the aim of his visit.

  “Hey!” I yelled. Eloquently.

  “Heh.” He paused, grinning, while he pulled the handcuff key out of his pocket. “I’ll send a car by at nine a.m.” The keys arced through the air, and I raised a hand to snatch them. They hit me in the nose. Which was still sore. Shit.

  While I was freeing myself, Redderton moved with surprising fluidity for a man his size as he strode out of the front door, and I remembered Toscan telling me that he’d been a decorated war hero. I hurried to the shower and thought about what had just happened. I needed to get more information to help Dana, and I had planned to call on the Reddertons as my first lead, but instead they came to me. Not only did they come to me, but they came to me for help solving a problem that I was working on anyway. It felt like the coincidences were starting to pile up higher than bullshit in a room full of salesmen. Someone had planned the puca disaster, and I was pretty sure that someone was planning everything going on now, but was it the same person?

  I heard the front door open again and Olivia yelling that she needed a wee-wee about five seconds before she crashed into the bathroom. I smiled, checked that my nose had stopped bleeding, and sighed. Time to dad the shit out of this.