The Nightmare Maker

by Gregory Pettit

  I rolled over and popped up to my feet in a smooth motion, realizing as I did that I was inside of a loop of the abomination’s tentacles and only feet from the edge of the hole. Thinking of my original intent to find Dana’s prison, I couldn’t resist the chance to glance into the beckoning tear in space and time. What I saw there made my eyes widen in shock—instead of the expected blackness of oblivion or the hoped-for-but-unlikely glimpse of my missing wife, I saw not only the vast bulk of whatever was trying to escape but also enormous, gleaming piles of gold. Scrooge McDuck would’ve had to change his pants. If he wore any.

  My momentary reverie was broken by twin realizations: I was still standing next to an impossibly large behemoth from outside of our universe—and I wasn’t the only Dreamwatcher here. A wave of sickness rolled over me as what I could only assume was the same masked, robed, and shadowed figure responsible for murdering a string of bankers stepped out of the nearest gap in the hedge maze.

  A nimbus of blueish light surrounded the figure as he strode forward, flaring brighter as a stomach-turning wrongness infused me, rising to almost overwhelming levels. It was a good thing that the feeling was only “almost” overwhelming because the man’s appearance caused a reaction in the titanic creature next to me: it went berserk.

  “GRZZNAKKK IA PHTAGN GRZZNAKKK PHTAGN!” the Anarchist screeched out, hurling a ball of azure light at the same instant that an enormous appendage whip-cracked in his direction, the other tentacles pounding the ground in fury, smashing yew trees to splinters. For my part, though I was already shaky from overusing my dream abilities, I knew I’d never survive this unprotected, so I put everything I had into focusing on the fact that I definitely had on a full suit of riot gear.

  My protection appeared a nanosecond before a golden tree trunk of flesh clipped my chest and knocked me twenty feet through the air, putting me in too much pain to breathe. I watched impotently as a ball of blue light shot just past the end of my nose and slammed into the behemoth. I landed in a heap just a few feet from the detective’s supine form and watched with horrified fascination as a chunk of shining flesh three feet across and two feet deep simply vanished in a flash of cracking iridescence. Unfortunately for the hooded figure, that still left about fifteen tons of tentacle coming his way.

  I crawled toward Badger, relieved to be in one piece thanks to the armor I’d willed into existence but unable to get to my feet. I wasn’t sure if I was making my way over to the man to kill him or keep him whole. I heard frantic thrashing behind me, and there was more shouting in the unknown language. I paused and, wanting to delay a decision a moment longer, looked over my shoulder. The Anarchist blazed with blue light, the hazy concealment that he’d used made unnecessary by the blinding brilliance of the power coruscating off of him. I was in awe of the level of concentration and willpower he must have been using, but even that didn’t seem to be enough.

  The glowing man had managed to shear through the appendage that he’d already damaged with his ball of blue light, but the titanic horror wrapped the tip of another tentacle around the man’s arm before he could flee. Kneeling over Badger’s form I, a man who’d spent half a lifetime in other people’s nightmares, was frozen in terror as the mysterious man hacked with inhuman strength at the mass of muscle holding him. Each blow vaporized a chunk of the titanic thing in a flash of light. In one of those flashes, I finally got a good look at the eldritch horror trying to invade the dream of a metropolitan police detective through a hole that I’d made in the universe.

  The creature looked like it was made out of solid gold, but the being’s skin showed patterns in silver and gems. Some of them were merely geometric shapes, cubes and rugose cones, but some of them were humanoid faces. I say humanoid because, while the terror of their expressions testified to their sentience, most of them had features that never originated on any world circling Sol.

  The unknown murderer that writhed in the thing’s grasp must have gotten a good look at about the same moment that I did because his efforts redoubled; his free hand was a blur as it hacked furiously at his captor, splattering gore and purulence through the air to land in sizzling, shining heaps on the ground. For all of the man’s rage, the monstrosity was infinitely stronger, and it hefted the insignificant mortal (where did that thought come from?) into the air, ready to smash him, and the glow around the human slackened as he ran low on power.

  Maybe ten seconds had gone by since I had paused over Badger’s prone form, and it was obvious that I had to take some kind of action. I was torn between murdering a police officer, helping a murderer, or freeing a monster. It’s choices like these that make me pretty sure that I’d had a bad roll of the dice at some point in the game of life.

  I staggered to my feet. People, even evil Dreamwatching murderers, I can deal with. I’m not going to kill Badger. So blast the monster it is then, I thought as I reached out to steady myself on a tree branch. I concentrated on unslinging an AK-47 from my back, and the effort sent a wave of nausea through me as dark spots nibbled at the edges of my vision. As I squeezed the trigger in an attempt to blow through the thrashing horror in front of me, I regretted blowing so much mental energy and emotion against the fake puca. The barrel flash illuminated even more of the creature’s true form, and I knew that I had made the right decision.

  That was the moment when the killer made his own tough decision.

  My bullets crashed into the thick, suppurating, metallic hide covering the tentacle, and I groaned in frustration as a line of purple-red bruises blossomed even as the entity dragged its furiously struggling victim to within a couple of feet of the edge of the hole into nothingness. Even with his powers fading, each of the man’s punches still sent pieces of flesh flying, but they came slower and slower as the creature’s resistance wore down his will, moving him inexorably toward the edge of the pit. What didn’t resist the other Dreamwatcher’s attack was the flesh of his own left arm. With one earth-trembling shout of, “AI Phatgn Hoth Phatgn!” he formed a flaming blade from his right hand and hacked through his upper arm, cauterizing the wound and freeing himself in a single instant. A cold chill went through me at the Anarchist’s display of willpower, and I shivered at the thought that I’d set myself against him.

  Robbed of its prey and relying on senses other than the usual five, the eldritch thing flailed wildly, and I threw myself down over the recumbent form of the detective. Air whooshed over our heads as a tentacle the size of an elephant passed a few inches over us, proving my caution to have been well placed. However, that caution also meant that I didn’t have a chance to see exactly what it was that the now one-armed man did as he cried out in a stentorian voice that made my ears throb with each wicked syllable. “Ptak, Ai Ctoggha!”

  The world came apart.

  Chapter 14 0000–0600, Thursday, October 1, 2015

  I awoke. Something was wrong. Olivia was hanging on to my arm, and I could tell that she was screaming, but I couldn’t hear anything. The flashes of light outside told me that there were definitely lots of emergency services vehicles nearby as well, but I couldn’t hear them either. I quickly swept my daughter up in my arms and stumbled across the cluttered room to hit the light switch. The trails of blood running from my ears explained my hearing difficulties, but that still didn’t account for why my three-year-old was plastered to my arm in terror.

  “Ollie, what’s wrong?” My daughter flinched, startled at the unexpected noise, and I realized that I could just barely make out my own words. I tried to watch the little girl’s mouth. I’m an awful lip reader, but I was pretty sure that she was saying “Scary man.” Well, shit.

  **********

  The eastern sky was still hours away from dawn. The sky wept sheets of rain, and Olivia was passed out on my chest, breathing softly in untroubled sleep. My hearing had slowly returned, and I whispered quietly to my daughter, “I don’t know what I’m going to do, baby. I wanna get your momma back so bad, but I’m scared. I tried to look for her tonight, and I go
t attacked by a very scary man and a monster. They hurt one of my friends. I only got away because they spent most of the time fighting each other. They attacked me where I’m strong, but what if they come after me here? I’m just a man. I’m not sure if I can protect you, let alone save your mom.” I buried my face in her hair, and tears trickled down my cheeks. “I can only keep trying to do my best, the best way I know how.”

  I was afraid to fall asleep, although my exertions had left me exhausted, so after a few more minutes I started surfing the net. Nothing was installed in the flat yet, but there was a good 4G signal, and I read the news. Eerily, at the same time that I had been learning that the enemy of my enemy is not always my friend, widespread riots had broken out across the city. There were reports of looting from every borough and, although the rain hadn’t kept people indoors, it had at least stopped any major fires from breaking out. Always look on the bright side of life, I thought. It was just about then that the power went out.

  Power outages in London aren’t the kind of event that they might be in a major American city like Los Angeles or New York, where they had triggered civil unrest on several occasions. In true British stiff-upper-lip fashion, people usually just broke out candles and used gas appliances to cook whatever might go off. However, given the timing of this power cut and recent events, I decided that this needed more than the usual reaction, so I rose to my feet with Olivia still clutched tight to my shoulder, grabbed my phone, and headed toward the bedroom door. I didn’t have any real weapons in the house, but among the items that had been in the flat when I moved in was, tucked in the hallway closet, a tool kit containing a heavy-duty hammer. Last time I’d faced something supernatural in a storm, I’d been packing a sword and an MP5 automatic carbine, so even with the hammer I felt grossly under-armed, but needs must when the devil drives. Then I tried to ignore the thought that, with the way things were going lately, the devil might actually show up in my hallway.

  I had my hand on the doorknob when a glance out the window sent a shiver down my spine: the streetlights were still on. Well, shit. It was then that I heard the sound of breaking glass and a scream from down the hallway. Becky. Olivia chose that moment to wake up and start crying two inches from my ear. I didn’t blame her.

  I had figured that Ollie was safest with me when I’d intended to just grab a weapon, but if there was someone actively in the house…I went across the room, opened the closet and shoved my little girl in there. In the dark. I’m sorry, Ollie. I closed the door while ignoring her terrified wailing and the gibbering of my overprotective inner caveman that didn’t want to let her out of my sight.

  Decision made, I crossed the room in three long-legged steps and burst into the hallway, thick glasses on and pale, hairy chest bare. A couple more steps took me to the closet, and I swore as my knee banged a radiator in the unfamiliar hallway. Quickly grabbing the hammer, I could hear weeping as I stumbled toward the bedroom that Becky had set herself up in. There weren’t any sounds of struggle, which could mean a lot of things.

  Heart pounding, I paused just outside the door and listened. I thought about the number of nightmare creatures that pounced when someone came through a doorway, and I clutched the hammer harder. Screw it.

  I took a deep breath, kicked the door open, and kept my momentum moving forward into a roll. I used this a lot in dreams, but forgot that I hadn’t done this sort of thing in the real world in years, managing to come down hard on my shoulder. I came to rest in a heap against a small table. I gave a manly battle cry that only an uncharitable soul would characterize as a shriek, put my back to the wall, scrambled to my feet, and hoisted the hammer over my head. Becky yowled in terror again.

  A light shone out from her mobile phone, illuminating the room well enough to quickly determine that besides the two of us, it was empty.

  “What the hell are you doing? What broke the window?” The high-pitched squeals coming from the young woman were on the verge of hysteria as she pulled a red duvet up to cover her lacy pink bra. I ignored the first part of her question and looked around to see what had broken the window. As I rounded the side of the bed, the rain-slicked brick sitting on the floor was a pretty obvious culprit. I opened my mouth to say as much, but what came out was, “Shit!” as I stepped on a piece of glass and tumbled over onto the bed. Becky then beat me to the next statement. “Where’s Ollie?”

  I was just about to explain that I had put her in the closet when I realized that I didn’t hear her screaming anymore. I didn’t stop to answer Becky’s question; instead, I bolted from the room, leaving a slick trail of blood behind me as I covered the distance back to the bedroom at a speed that would have required specialized instrumentation to measure accurately.

  I could immediately feel a draft of cool, wet air coming into the room as I crossed the threshold. Unfortunately for me, the next thing that I felt was a truck running into the back of my head, and the floor came up to greet me. However, unfortunately for whoever hit me, I have one of the thickest skulls known to man and can pretty much run on autopilot after a concussion. I even managed a fairly graceful roll and bounced up, wobbling but on my feet. I cocked an arm back and then saw that the hammer was still on the ground. With my eyes adjusting to the darkness and the streetlights still streaming in, I spotted Olivia’s shining hair first, suspended a couple feet off the ground. In the arms of a shadowy figure.

  “You’re quicker than I expected, Julian.” I instantly identified the voice as Mia’s.

  “What the hell are you playing at, Ms. Noel? It wasn’t you who tried to take her before—what the hell are you doing here now?” The growl that came out of my throat was so rough that I think she had trouble understanding it; she paused a moment before replying. It gave me time to get my legs steady under me.

  “I’m not playing at anything. I’m very serious. I wanted to offer you a job, but you wouldn’t hear me out. Now it seems that I have your attention, you arrogant prick.” The vulgar words seemed incongruous coming out of her mouth, underlining how seriously she was taking the situation. “People are dying. Not just a bunch of rich bankers like your buddy Jack Redderton wants to protect, but normal, everyday people are being used as pawns, getting hurt. You must have realized that these riots are connected to the killings. Two people died tonight, Julian. We believe that the Anarchist’s actions in the Dreamscape are triggering these somehow, and you’re the best qualified person in the entire world to stop him. We’ve already offered you a lot of help, and we were willing to offer you significant considerations to do this job for us. We even threatened you personally, but still you’ve refused…well, we’ve seen what focus you’ve put into finding a wife that is beyond rescuing. What will you do for a little girl that’s right here in London?” She punctuated the viciously delivered speech with a flash of pearly white teeth that gleamed in the shadows of the room. I caught a motion in the hallway behind her. Time to…negotiate.

  “Mia, perhaps I misunderstood the offer on the table or misjudged the intentions of your acquaintances. I hope you’ll admit that my interactions with the Sons of Perseus to date have not been such as to build a framework of mutual cooperation and trust?” I opened my hands and arched an eyebrow inquisitively while putting on my best business demeanor. The tighty-whiteys might have taken a bit of the shine off it, though. I was cold.

  She opened her mouth to respond, but never got to speak—because of the hammer that Becky swung at her head. There was a thunk, a surprisingly girlish squeal, and then the sound of a body hitting the floor. While that was happening, I only had eyes for the little blond ball of energy that was my daughter. When Becky struck, Olivia had wiggled free and bolted directly toward me, so I scooped her up in one arm and tried to put her down on the bed behind me. Instead, she tangled herself around my leg and, sobbing, she refused to let go.

  The thirty-five-pound weight attached to my thigh kept me from wading into the melee going on across the room, so I tried to deduce what had happened while I’d bee
n distracted by Olivia. Given that Mia was still standing, I had to guess that my sister-in-law’s swing hadn’t managed to actually hit her anywhere vital and, based on the fact that Becky now looked to be down on the ground, clutching at her chest, I had to guess that Mia knew a bit more about fighting than the Florida co-ed she’d been facing. I saw a Chuck Taylor-covered foot pulled back to deliver a vicious kick.

  “Mia—STOP!” I had astonishingly powerful lungs, and both women froze while Olivia’s sobbing cut off as she went rigid against me. I balled my fists and stared into her grey eyes. “I’ll do your little job, but I’m not going in blind. I want a briefing on everything your people know about what’s going on, and then I want your cooperation—your full cooperation—in helping me find my wife.” I’d been more than reluctant to help the people responsible for setting in motion the events that had led to the loss of my wife, but I’d made a snap evaluation over the previous moments—if I was going to be helping the Reddertons with their protection job, then I might as well attack the problem from more than one direction. Hopefully, I’d be able to play both sides against the middle to get what I wanted in the end. Also—this would get the scary, kidnapping lady out of my house.

  The foot came down, and she backed toward the open window with a hitch in her movements that told me Becky hadn’t missed entirely. The whites of her eyes showed in the gloom for a moment before she replied, “I can’t speak about the past, I don’t even know the details, but I can promise you that if you help stop these killings, then my organization will do everything in its power to help you find your wife. I think it’s a waste of time, mind you, but we keep our vows.” She eased herself all the way to the open window and put one shapely cheek on the sill.