by Andy Briggs
Dan ignored the out-stretched grubby hand but nodded and followed Marlow from the shop. Marlow tried not to glower when the same people who had been cursing her under their breaths now whispered poor woman and other such platitudes to ease their own conscience as they passed.
Making sure Dan was always within arm's reach in case he decided to bolt, Marlow led them to a café and ordered two mugs of coffee and the greasiest burger and fries they had. They sat near the window overlooking the motorway. It was now getting dark and snowing heavy; fat flakes clung to the glass distorting the traffic below which had started flowing once again, evidence that the lorry had finally been cleared.
“I heard the lorry driver'll live,” grunted Marlow as she nibbled the food. “Lucky thing you didn't kill him.” She took some satisfaction watching Dan squirm.
Dan wolfed the hot food, talking as he chewed. “It wasn't on purpose. Besides, I'd rather it was him than Mum or Gramps...” He took a gulp of coffee, refusing to meet Marlow's gaze, no doubt expecting to be berated for such a reckless regards for other people. Instead he was surprised when he heard Marlow grunt in agreement.
“You know, when I was your age, I would've been happy if an Infiltrator had taken out my old man.”
Dan flinched at the thought. “Why d'you call them Infiltrators? They're monsters. And when I was my age I wished my dad could be here to help me.” He whispered the last in a low sorrowful voice that made Marlow instantly regret her flippant comment.
“Nightmares infiltrate our world, raiding it like thieves in the night... day in your case.” A long pause followed and Marlow felt compelled to add, “And I'm sure your dad was a much better bloke than mine.”
That brought a fleeting smile to Dan's face, which was almost instantly shadowed by grief. “I don't know. I never met him.”
Another silence. Marlow had no idea how to talk to kids. She had no idea how to talk to adults either, so decided that she might as well plough on.
“Look kid–”
“Dan. Not Daniel and definitely not 'kid'“
“Dan... look, your Grandpa and Mum’re worried. You shouldn't have run away from home. What d'you expect it would achieve?”
“I expect the monsters won’t kill them.”
Marlow wasn't used to such a direct answer, she felt awkward talking to children. “Well... there is that, but it's unlikely though. Your Infiltrators haven't attacked them yet, so there is no reason they would start now, right? Doesn't make much sense to feed so close to home.” She instantly regretted the last comment when Dan looked at her with wide frightened eyes.
“So they would!”
“Well, um, y'see... look, it ain't that simple...”
“The nightmares are getting worse, aren't they?” Marlow opened her mouth to answer, but Dan pressed on. “I never used to have them in the day, and at night they occasionally toppled furniture. Maybe smashed a mirror or scraped wallpaper.” Dan snorted humourlessly. “And to think I used to believe it was me sleepwalking. What an idiot.” He paused, then looked wistful. “I don't dream of them though. I never have nightmares. My dreams are always good... vivid. Sometimes I even realise I'm dreaming and can start controlling things. I can do whatever I want.” He stared at Marlow as if expecting her to challenge the statement. Instead Marlow shrugged.
“It's called lucid dreaming.” She was not sure if she should try to console the boy or not. In fact, she had no idea what to say - which was probably part of the reason her own children didn't seem to miss her. She was never there with motherly advice or encouragement. The horrible truth was that Trebor had done a wonderful job in bringing them up. Something her own dad hadn’t managed.
Marlow drifted back into the conversation when she realised that Dan had continued talking. “So we're agreed that going back is the wrong thing to do.”
“Huh? I didn't say that.”
“You implied it. Go back and my nightmares, Infiltrators, whatever, will kill them.”
Marlow suspected Dan was good at manipulating people, whether conscious of it or not. She had a strong suspicion that the kid would grow up to be a lawyer. “Not necessarily...”
“They almost got the trucker who picked me up.”
Marlow nodded. “Yeah, that was a dumb idea. What were you thinking?”
“I was thinking I better get far away, actually. You know, for an adult you're kind of weird.”
Marlow instinctively spat back, the words slipping out before she could stop them. “And for a kid, you're a freak.”
Dan glared at her. Marlow avoided his gaze and stared through the window as the snow gathered pace.
“Adults don't talk like that,” said Dan. It was a mixture of accusation and uncertainty.
Marlow sensed Dan was used to getting his own way, probably mollycoddled by his worrying mother. “My job is to hunt these Nightmares and stop them from polluting our world. Not to babysit.”
“You're not very good at either.”
Marlow's hand shook as she controlled her temper, so much so that the coffee plopped over the rim of the cup as she slammed it down.
“I'm the bloody best, you little shit.” Dan's eyes grew larger when Marlow swore. “And, quite frankly, you're the only real problem I ever had. See most normal kids,” Marlow said the word slowly just to annoy him, “would have a single Infiltrator. A lone Nightmare that would work long and hard on the other side to open the portal as they slept. You are not supposed to channel more than one through. It's supposed to be impossible.”
“Which makes me unique,” said Dan with the ghost of a smile.
“That's certainly one word for it. If my old man could see you, it would have puzzled him - and he hated puzzles.”
“I thought dreams were the subconscious playing out ideas and fantasies? At least that's what Doctor Donohue told me.”
“I guess the good Doc doesn't know everything. I suppose some dreams are like that. You're able to act out amazing things, see incredible places...” her tone was tinged with longing. She noticed Dan's questioning frown, so cleared her throat and continued more authoritatively. “Whereas Conduits, that fre... folks like you, create a channel from their world into ours.”
“But if dreams are all in the mind... how can these monsters, these Infiltrators, be real?”
“Oh, they come from a real place. Beyond your dreams, beyond what we can see around us. Innerspace. It's a very real world. I suppose scientists like to call such things parallel dimensions.” Marlow shuddered at the thought of it. She had never crossed into the Nightmare realm, as far as she knew, nobody could, but she had glimpsed it through portals. A land of darkness and shadow where the Nightmares craved the warmth of our world. As a child, her father had forced her to stare into the void - and it had gazed back, full off fangs, claws and blood. It was a place no kid should ever be exposed to, yet that was her childhood. For a few seconds she was irritated to feel a jolt of sympathy towards Dan - before his grating voice cut in.
“Another dimension? Beyond sight and sound,” he quoted from a television show he had caught one night.
“Exactly. Normally they would leave us alone, but some freeeee...” she bit off the word freak, “...are able to tap into their world. It takes the Infiltrators a long time. Months sometimes, to coax the Conduit to open enough for them to pass through. Then, as long as the Conduit remains asleep, they can roam free and rampage unchecked in our world. They never harm their Conduit, though. They’re their only way in or out, in fact they are very protective of that person. Once the Infiltrator has been eradicated here, the Conduit closes and, unless another Nightmare takes great pains in opening the channel again, that's it. That's why there are few Nightmares stalking down your average city street at night.”
Dan was thoughtful. “But my Nightmares keep coming. Once you kill one another takes its place.”
Marlow nodded. “My first thought was that it was connected to your narcolepsy. That's an ideal affliction for the Infiltrators, but after
seeing the bad boys that keep coming through I think it's something else entirely. I just don't know what.”
Dan stared out of the window, the snow was sticking, slowing traffic to a crawl.
“Like a motorway,” he mused.
“Mmm? What?”
“If normal dreamers, Conduits, are like roads that can only be used once, I'm more like a motorway. The Nightmares can zoom through.”
Marlow nodded. “Makes sense I suppose.”
“Does that means that bigger things can come through too.” Marlow's brow furrowed. “You can't get a lorry down a country road, right?”
“That's an... interesting way of looking at it,” Marlow conceded.
A heavy silence passed between them as Dan finished the rest of his food. Despite the initial buzz he experienced he could feel his energy was already flagging. After the lorry incident he was determined to find a way to control his narcolepsy. At the moment a single thought managed to keep him awake.
“Which makes me wonder how big they're going to get.”
Marlow shuffled in her seat. The same thought was bugging her too. She pushed her cups aside. She was starting to feel jittery, and in her line of work that was not a good thing.
“Come on ki... Dan. Time to get you home.” She started to rise, but saw that he made no motions to leave.
“Are you kidding? After everything you just told me? Or maybe you didn't understand exactly what ‘running away from home’ actually means?”
Marlow slumped back in the chair. “Come on! I thought we had a rapport going on here. That we understood one another?”
“Then you thought wrong, big style.”
Marlow thumped both palms on the table in irritation. “I need to get you home. Your Grandpa’s paying me to haul your butt back in one piece.”
“I don't care! I'm never going back!” he glared at Marlow. His steely gaze made Marlow look away. “Not until these nightmares stop.”
“They might never...” Marlow began, but stopped when she saw the fear in the kid’s eyes.
Dan gripped the edge of the table with both hands, partly determined not to move, but mostly to stop himself falling face-first asleep into the table. “I’m not going back until these Nightmares stop. That’s the deal. You're supposed to be the expert, and Gramps is paying you to make them stop - so do your job!”
Marlow stood up, impulsively contemplating walking out. The brat’s impetuous tone was annoying and, for a fleeting second, he reminded her of her father. In a flash Marlow thought all things she wanted to say aloud:
Fine, run away and get your dumb-self killed, see if I care! I don't need your Grandpa's stupid money and I don't need your hassle!
The problem was, she did need the cash, but that wasn't the whole reason she’d bit her tongue. As much as she resented the family business - and she despised with a passion the fact she’d inherited it with little thought from her father about what she would rather to do with her life - she was intrigued. No Nightmare had bested her before and she wasn't about to let one do it now. Then, left unchecked, there was the wake of destruction that Dan had already left behind. How many more lives would the creatures destroy? And, as much as it loathed her, she felt a modicum of responsibility. While she couldn't imagine the dreams the boy experience, and that was something that stoked jealousy, they had a common middle ground with the Infiltrators.
Marlow slumped back down and truculently folded her arms. “So what now? Like I said, I’m not babysitting you for the rest of your life, kid.” She had hoped to illicit a reaction from Dan, but the boy was above such juvenile mind games. He looked thoughtful, and more than a little tired.
“Help me,” Dan finally said in a low voice. “Whatever it takes. I can't let my family get hurt. They're all I've got.”
His voice was low and pathetic. Marlow wondered if her own children would respond with such passion at the thought of never seeing their mother again. Then again, they'd already forgotten her, and guessed that Trebor had probably already invented a convincing story to explain her long absence away.
For the second time that day, Marlow experienced her emotions trump reason as she spoke on autopilot. “OK then. Let's see what we can do.” Dan smiled, and Marlow wondered if it was a genuine smile of relief or the victorious smile of manipulation.
Marlow really didn’t like the kid.
Chapter Eight
They checked into the Travel Stop hotel attached to the service station. Dan had been drifting dangerously close to sleep and assured her that no amount of coffee would keep him awake. He was probably O.D.ing on the stuff right now and his body was rebelling.
Marlow bought a dozen energy drinks to keep herself and Dan awake and dug her dirty fingernails into Dan's arm, focusing on a pressure point that delivered just enough pain to keep him awake for the walk across the car park.
Marlow rented a room for her and her 'nephew' using money she could ill-afford to spend, and should really be going towards her son’s birthday, which she’d momentarily forgotten about. Once again, she had promised to send Trebor money, how could such a simple thing slip her mind? As usual she blamed such lapses on her condition. The lack of quality sleep must be ruining her short-term memory. Or was that just an excuse to hide her absent-mindedness? Marlow stopped slapping her forehead at the reception desk when the receptionist gave her a quizzical look.
The room was an exact duplicate to the one Dan had stayed in the night before, right down to the painting of abstract lollypop trees opposite the bed.
“I need to get my gear out of the car,” Marlow said. “You going to be OK for a few minutes?”
Dan sat on the end of the bed, the television remote already in his hand. “Sure.” The television blinked alive and Dan cranked the volume of a comedy show that was playing. He nodded reassuringly at Marlow. “I'll be fine for another thirty minutes or so.”
Marlow darted outside where the snow was now being driven by a gale, caught in the car park’s floodlights. Despite the storm, the service station was still quite busy. Marlow wished that wasn't the case, the more people around the more danger they were in if one of Dan's 'mares got loose, but the weather was encouraging people to pull over and take a break and there was nothing she could do about that.
The cold was already piercing her trench coat by the time she reached the Beetle. Freezing fingers fumbled through the keys as she unlocked the door and sat inside for protection from the elements. It was too dark to see anything, and her interior light had died long ago, so she groped around the backseat, searching for the kit bag. She fingered the straps and hauled it onto the passenger seat to quickly checked the contents: her short barrelled blunderbuss, several boxes of cartridges, a baseball bat, a high-beam LED torch and a few other items a savvy nightmare hunter always kept to hand.
She was about to climb out when she noticed Dan’s mobile phone had slipped down the side of her seat. She had forgotten about it. Thumbing the button, the cracked screen illuminated, a message indicated that it was now fully charged. She considered ringing Trebor to stem the tide of abuse he would surely throw at her for not sending money as promised. It was now snowing so ferociously it blotted the windscreen, the view beyond resembled an abstract painting. Jamie’s birthday was still four days away... she was pretty sure of that. She could send the money tomorrow. Hell, she might even turn up with it in person…
Or was it was tomorrow? What kind of parent would forget a detail like that - except her own dad of course.
She pocketed the phone and decided to sort it out tomorrow after she’d had chance to sleep on it. She glanced back up - and suddenly flinched in fear. The muzzle of a large black dog pressed against the windshield. At first she thought it was a trick of the light through the thin layer of snow across the windscreen. Then the vehicle rocked as the huge beast shifted position on the bonnet. Nighmarus Canineus - she had faced one before. Once was enough never to forget.
Marlow pressed back in the seat, desperately t
rying to focus on the shifting image as the snow obscured it; her left hand slowly reaching for the gun. Her fingers ran down the stock, but as she pulled it the funnelled barrel caught in the handles of the bag. Her eyes flicked to the problem and she deftly twisted the weapon free – only to look back out of the window to see that the beast had gone.
With her heart pounding, Marlow leapt from the vehicle, quickly scanning the car park. There were not footprints, but there were a million shadows in which the creature could lurk. She raised the gun with hands that trembled partly from nerves, but mostly from the cold. Across the car park a couple ran to their car, the man gallantly shielding the girl’s head with his own coat. There was no sign of the beast.
Marlow circled her car. There was a foot of clearance between the Beetle’s chassis and the ground: plenty of space for an Infiltrator to hide. She knelt, her kneecaps cricking painfully. She couldn't see fully underneath so, holding the blunderbuss out lest anything pounced, she dropped to her knees and propped herself up with one hand, then peered under the car.
Nothing.
With more effort than she would have liked, Marlow climbed back to her feet. She completed her path around the vehicle but saw no sign of anything unusual. Had it gone? Impossible surely, a nightmare would fight to protect its Conduit - and there was no bigger threat than Marlow. Then where was it? Or had she dreamt it?
Impossible, of course. She let the idea slide. She couldn't have dreamt it if she tried, which meant it had to be real.
And that meant Dan was asleep.
“Shit!” Marlow grabbed her kit bag from the car, shoving the blunderbuss inside. She sprinted across the car park, snow seeping into her boots, making her feet uncomfortably wet.
There was nobody at the reception desk as Marlow barrelled through. With a sense of dread she wondered if that was a bad sign. Fighting for breath, she pounded up the stairs two at a time and sprinted down the corridor, past identical doorways, through two sets of fire doors that bore smiling faces with drooping eyes and night cap perched jauntily to the side, a speech bubble read 'Sssh, guests are sleeping!'
