This Eternity of Masks and Shadows

by Karsten Knight

  Cairn expanded Njörun’s profile. Details on her life since college remained relatively scarce. She and Ra had broken up before graduation, and Njörun had moved to Washington, D.C., where she briefly worked as a “crisis manager”—a fancy term for a fixer who helped politicians make problems disappear. Cairn could only imagine the secrets she’d learned trespassing in the dreams of Congressmen.

  But five years ago, she’d dissolved that firm. The biography abruptly ended there.

  Cairn frowned. “Venus—show me Njörun’s last-known location.” The screen zoomed in on a map of the Monongahela Forest in West Virginia and drew a circle fifty miles wide in the middle of the wilderness.

  “Thanks for nothing,” Cairn muttered.

  “You’re very welcome,” Venus replied cheerfully. Apparently, Vulcan hadn’t programmed her to recognize sarcasm.

  Cairn turned back to Themis. “I need you to get me on a flight south tonight.”

  “Njörun isn’t behind this,” the doctor insisted quietly but firmly.

  Cairn threw up her hands. “There’s potentially a serial killer on the loose whose victims are dying horrific deaths while they sleepwalk, and you want to tell me that the dream goddess who has a motive to silence them is not a suspect? Do I need to remind you that everyone on that island was complicit in the murder of a child? That you were complicit, too?”

  “You can keep holding that against your mother—against all of us—but you’re in for a rough ride in this life if you want to stubbornly believe that justice is black and white. The Pantheon had to make an impossible decision that day.”

  “You know what I think?” Cairn asked. “I think you have a heavy conscience about Sable Noir. I think that my mother and her friends killed that girl as a direct result of the vision you shared with them. Now, almost two decades later, they’re all paying for it one by one and you don’t want my investigations to succeed because it will confirm what you already know: that the blood from all these murders is on your hands.”

  Cairn started for the door—she’d use her own pitiful savings account to book a flight if she had to—but Themis seized her by the wrist. “You want to know what I saw that scared them so bad? Then I’ll just show you.”

  Cairn felt the tingle of electricity under Themis’s touch, too late, and then the Arboretum dissolved around her, and she was transported to another place altogether.

  When Cairn opened her eyes again, she found herself in a hazy, indistinct world. A series of glass windows stretched before her, looking out over a familiar skyline. She must have been at least forty stories above the streets below—a skyscraper. A dramatic show of fireworks lit up the sky over Boston.

  A dark shape congealed in front of her, the silhouette of a woman with long dark hair. Like everything else in this strange memory, she seemed to have been drawn in watercolors, her outline bleeding into the air around her.

  Cairn rubbed her eyes, trying to make some sense of this odd, blurry world. “Excuse me, miss,” she tried to say, but no words came out of her mouth.

  The woman stepped closer to the window. She extended a hand toward the sky. “Curoo, curoo,” she whispered, as if imitating a bird.

  And then an airplane filled the frame, jet engine roaring as it hurtled directly into the building.

  Back in the Arboretum, Cairn opened her mouth and released a strangled scream. Themis had let her go, and now Cairn lay balled up on the floor. Though she was back in reality, the nightmarish vision remained seared into her retinas.

  “So now you know,” Themis said at last. “Yes, she was a child at the time, but she would have grown up to become a weapon of mass destruction. That is why the Pantheon decided to kill her—one atrocity to prevent a far greater one. One life in exchange for a thousand. Ask yourself: faced with the same decision, would you have acted any differently?”

  Cairn staggered to her feet, still shaky. She swallowed the bile that threatened to bubble up. “This changes nothing,” she replied, though she knew that wasn’t entirely true. But didn’t the girl have a right to grow up and create her own destiny? To possibly choose a different path, without some stranger playing judge, jury, and executioner before she had the chance?

  Themis sighed. “Venus—show me the township of Sanctuary, West Virginia.”

  The map of the mountainous forest zoomed in further and dropped a pin in a valley between two peaks. Themis pressed a hand to the screen. “After years of working in Washington, I guess Njörun saw enough darkness in the dreams of others that she just kind of cracked. She withdrew to an old mining town called Sanctuary. It was abandoned nearly half a century ago after the coal seam beneath it ignited. I’ll have Vulcan make arrangements for you to leave as soon as possible.” She started to walk away.

  “Good,” Cairn called after her. “And better make it first class. Gods know you can afford it.”

  Themis lingered in the doorframe. “There will come a time when you have to make an unthinkable choice. And when that day comes, I hope your children don’t hold it against you the way that you’re vilifying your mother. Sedna was a good woman—she just got lost. We all did.”

  Then she was gone, leaving Cairn alone to her dark thoughts and the dull hum of the Arboretum’s screens.

  The Nightmare Express

  Cairn gazed sullenly out the train window, watching the forest whisk by outside. The blur of trees and the murmur of the wheels over the tracks threatened to lull her to sleep, but slumber seemed like an increasingly dangerous place, especially as she journeyed deeper into the domain of a dream goddess.

  There had been no flights bound for West Virginia until the following evening, so faced with the possibility of delaying her confrontation of Njörun—and giving her another twenty-four hours to wreak havoc in the dreams of others—Cairn had opted for a red-eye train instead. If anything, she figured, the long journey would give her some time to think away from the noise of the city and maybe piece together what few clues she’d gleaned from her ephemeral time shadowing Nook.

  And to generate a game plan for how not to get killed as she approached Njörun’s mountain sanctum.

  Cairn was grateful to have a corner of the train car to herself, but when she opened her eyes after briefly nodding off, a pale woman had materialized in the seat directly across from her. She must have boarded at the last stop. As the newcomer stared penetratingly at her, Cairn felt a tingle of recognition.

  The goddess in front of her had shorn off her impossibly long blonde hair since the photo from Sable Noir, trading it for a pixie cut. Her high cheekbones and marigold eyes, however, were unmistakable.

  “Why are you trying to find me?” Njörun demanded.

  In a panic, Cairn reached for the combat knife that Vulcan had gifted her before she left, but it was gone. And as she frantically groped around for the weapon, she caught a glimpse through the window of the scenery flying by outside.

  The forest had been replaced with an expanse of stars and galactic dust as the train seemingly hurtled through space.

  “You’re dreaming,” Njörun confirmed matter-of-factly and, noticing that Cairn was now trying to pinch herself, added, “That never works. Now, why are you trying to find me?”

  Cairn stood up and searched for an exit—only to discover an infinite train car stretching in either direction, with no end in sight. If she was in fact asleep, then she had stumbled into a realm where Njörun had home-court advantage. For all she knew, she was about to melt her own face off back in reality as this dream unfolded.

  But then she saw the Atlantic puffin perched just on the other side of the window, gazing calmly at her through the glass—that specter of her mother that had been frequenting her dreams. It gave her strength.

  If Cairn was in Njörun’s hands now, if running would be futile, then she might as well get some answers before she died. She settled back into her seat. “I was coming to ask you why you murdered my mom.”

  Njörun’s dark-rimmed eyes didn’t even blin
k. “What makes you think I killed Sedna?”

  “Three people who journeyed to Sable Noir with you are dead, all of them manipulated into killing themselves while they sleepwalked. Do you expect me to believe that you—the one dreamwalker from the group—had nothing to do with this?”

  “Yes,” Njörun replied flatly.

  Cairn pointed to the puffin roosting on the window outside the train. “You might have succeeded in killing her body, but she’s still here, watching over my dreams to protect me from the likes of you.”

  Only now did Njörun notice the bird that had been studying them. Her fingers tightened on the armrests of her seat, and for the first time, her impassive expression showed emotion.

  Fear.

  “Cairn,” Njörun said. “That’s not your mother. That thing is the dreamwalker who murdered her.”

  “What?” When Cairn looked at the puffin again, she let out a scream.

  Where she’d seen her mother’s irises before, the bird’s eyes had gone completely crimson, two pools of blood dripping from the corners.

  Then, with a squawk like a chainsaw, it slammed its orange bill into the window.

  This time Cairn jerked to her feet.

  Two more strikes of its beak and cracks spiderwebbed through the glass.

  “He sends his emissaries like this one to spy on you,” Njörun explained. She pounded her first against the window, hard enough to dislodge the bird. It flapped off into the darkness. “And if he doesn’t like what his scouts see …”

  Over the white noise of the train rushing along its spectral tracks, a different sound was slowly growing louder. It started off as a deep hum, like a chorus of monks chanting “om.” As it crescendoed, Cairn felt it vibrating through her bones.

  Njörun’s eyes widened in alarm. “That sound means that he’s arrived.”

  “Who?” Cairn asked. An inky darkness spread through the space outside the train car, blotting out the constellations until there was only a suffocating void.

  Njörun whispered her next word so quietly Cairn almost didn’t hear it. “Phobetor.”

  It took Cairn a moment to register the name from the sprawling list of myths her mother had recited to her. “Phobetor? The Greek god of nightmares?”

  The Nordic goddess nodded absently as she rose to her feet. Two daggers materialized in her hands, and the sheer, flowing garb around her hardened into chainmail. “Hitman for hire. Expensive, too—whoever put a bounty on your head must have deep pockets. And if he’s here then that means you’re already—”

  Without warning, Njörun was sucked vertically through the roof against her will, punching a hole in the metal and vanishing off into the void outside the train to leave Cairn alone in this unsettling nightmare.

  Well, not entirely alone. As she gazed around the train she saw that the previously empty seats had been filled with faceless silhouettes, humanoid shadows with burning eyes patiently watching her. “Om …” they all hummed in unison.

  The roof overhead screeched as a giant black claw pierced the metal. Cairn covered her ears and staggered back as the talon of an unseen monster carved a line along one side of the car, then the other. The creature outside peeled back the roof, opening it up like a can of sardines.

  Perched atop the train, a snowy owl the size of two dump trucks loomed over Cairn. The monstrous bird ruffled its white feathers as it leered down at her, curved beak glistening with a serrated edge to tear her apart.

  Once, out on the tundra near her mother’s hometown in Quebec, Cairn had watched an owl descend on a family of voles and snatch one into the sky.

  This one looked hungry for larger prey.

  Cairn sprinted down the train aisle, trying to ignore the molten eyes of the chanting shadow passengers. She heard the beat of the great owl’s wings as it took flight. It made a grab for her and missed by inches. Its talons ripped a group of seats from their bolted fixtures, throwing them and their ghost riders into the oblivion.

  Cairn fixed her eyes on the distant door at the end of the train car, even as the owl’s deafening screeches reminded her she was seconds from being torn limb from limb. She pumped her legs, and just when the exit was within her reach—

  A hand fastened around her arm. “Miss!” a man yelled.

  Cairn abruptly jolted from the dream and back to reality. Air rushed around her, and she shrieked when she looked down and saw the blur of railroad ties flying by.

  An adrenaline spike cast off the remaining cobwebs of slumber. She had one foot planted inside the train car and another one halfway through a door she’d pried open.

  She’d been one step away from dropping beneath the wheels of the train.

  Her savior was an elderly porter. “Miss, are you alright?” he asked. He studied her with alarm, his shaking hand still gripping her in case she lunged for the door again. “You could have gotten yourself killed.”

  “Yes, I ... I must have been sleepwalking.” The porter didn’t seem to buy this, so she lied, “It’s a symptom of my narcolepsy. I guess my unconscious self just wanted some fresh air.”

  He examined her a moment longer, then exhaled. “Next time”—he slammed the metal door, reducing the wind outside to a muffled whoosh—“tell your dream self to open a window instead.”

  Cairn couldn’t stop shaking as she made her way to the café car and ordered an espresso. She was going to need caffeine to stay awake for the rest of the night.

  Now more than ever, it seemed essential that she find Njörun, though this time in reality. If the dream goddess was telling the truth about Phobetor—the assassin who’d allegedly killed her mom—then she might have information that could lead Cairn to him.

  And if Njörun had been lying, then Cairn would kill her.

  Either way, one thing was clear:

  Until the dream killer was dead, even sleep wasn’t safe anymore.

  Shattered Sanctuary

  Cairn was understandably eager to deboard by the time the train rolled into White Sulphur Springs, a small town in the Allegheny Mountains. She contemplated trying to hitch a ride from one of the few drivers in the train station’s dusty parking lot, but at this point, she couldn’t trust anyone.

  Instead, she would trek the twenty miles north to Sanctuary, West Virginia. According to the dossier Vulcan had sent with her, the ghost town had been envisioned as a utopia when it was incorporated a hundred years ago, the promise of cooperative farming and fresh mountain air far from the bustle of the nearest city.

  Then tragedy: a brush fire had ignited the coal seam that ran under the town and torched half the buildings. Carbon monoxide had poisoned dozens in their sleep. Those who survived moved away to start new lives. To this day, small pockets of the fire still smoldered below ground, feeding on the threads of coal, and it would continue to burn quietly for decades more.

  Cairn spent the better part of the day hiking over rugged terrain, avoiding the main roads and working her way deep into the mountainous forest. Her father had dragged her to remote locations around the world every summer, from Siberia to Tierra del Fuego. And while Cairn had complained then about not being at the beach instead, she was suddenly grateful for all the survival skills she’d absorbed from him. It nearly made all those times he’d jokingly yelled “Cairn” as he pointed at a pile of rocks worth it.

  Cairn knew she was getting close to Sanctuary when she stumbled across the old, mangled road. The heat from the fire under the earth had buckled the pavement, and new growth trees had sprung from the cracks, rendering it totally impassable by vehicle.

  She paused and stared up Main Street, or at least what remained of it. Sanctuary had been a small village even before it had been disincorporated, just two lines of ramshackle houses and shops forming parallel lines along a single road, culminating in a church at the very end. Today, the surrounding forest had dramatically encroached on the ruins, to the point that the town was invisible from the air.

  The original fire had reduced half the structures to
charred husks on their foundations, and the few that survived had hardly fared better thanks to neglect and rot from the elements. Plumes of smoke from the fire still smoldering beneath the town vented out of fissures in the earth, casting an eerie haze over the street. When Cairn knelt and touched the asphalt, it felt uncharacteristically warmer than the cool November air.

  As Cairn slowly worked her way down the street, she feared that maybe the trip had been a waste of time. The town was so desolate it seemed impossible that someone had willingly lived here all these years. As a dreamwalker, Njörun no doubt could have leveraged her abilities to live a more lavish lifestyle. Why forsake all that for this primal, survivalist existence?

  Just when she started to give up hope, she paused in the charred doorframe of what appeared to have been a small tavern. The roof had collapsed, but a path had been cleared through the rubble to a bar along the back wall.

  In front of a single stool someone had left a half-eaten plate of kebabs, boiled root vegetables and skewered meat of indeterminate origin. It showed no signs of mold.

  The meal had been eaten recently.

  A bottle rattled behind the bar, and Cairn drew the combat knife from her sheathe, on high alert. She aimed the blade in the direction of the noise.

  A raccoon pounced onto the countertop. Cairn let out a yelp, then a sigh of relief. “That’s how you get hurt,” she told the creature as she sheathed the knife. “Ambush me again and I’ll sic my lynx on you.” It chittered and scampered away.

  Cairn returned to the street, her head on a swivel for Njörun, who couldn’t have been gone long. She was so focused on potential dangers from the ruins around her that she didn’t pay attention to what was happening beneath her feet until she stepped on the booby trap.

  Where there had been only dead leaves on broken payment before, one of her heels came down on something with tension—a hidden trip wire. Almost too late, she heard a creak in the forest canopy overhead. A thick log studded in rusty metal spikes and suspended by wires swooped out of the trees, descending on a murderous arc toward her chest.