by Andy Briggs
Marlow fervently hoped that was not the case.
She reached the room and tried the electronic key card in the lock. A red light flashed and the door remained resolutely closed.
“What the hell?” She tried again. She could hear the sound of the television inside. Once more the red light flashed. She was about to hammer on the door, not that it would wake somebody like Dan - and would certainly sound like a dinner bell ringing to any beast lurking within - when she realised that she’d inserted it the wrong way round. She swiped it again, this time the light beeped green. Marlow dropped the kit bag - her hand squeezing the blunderbuss’s stock as it fell away - and shouldered the door open.
Dan was exactly where Marlow had left him, staring at the screen. He jumped as Marlow ran in and his face paled at the sight of the gun pointing at him.
“What did I do?” Dan spluttered.
Marlow combed the gun across the ceiling, eyes scanning around the room in confusion.
“You're awake!”
“Told you,” Dan held up a half empty energy drink then nodded towards the television. “I've never seen this show before. It's quite funny.”
“But I saw... I thought I saw...”
Marlow propped the blunderbuss against the table, used her foot to drag the bag into the room and closed the door.
“What?”
Marlow thought for a moment. What had she seen? A trick of the light? No, the car had moved… hadn’t it? She'd been a Hunter all her life. Disciplined training had forced her to see what was really in the corner of her eye, or define the vaguest shape in the darkness. It was a matter of life and death to be able to spot the things most people either missed or had to look twice to see.
“I thought I saw an Infiltrator out in the car park.”
Dan's eyes went wide. “I was awake, I swear. Ask me anything about the show.” He pointed at the TV.
Marlow recalled Dan's expression as she'd run inside. His eyes were open, his head upright, it was not the slouched repose of somebody caught slumbering. Besides, the kid had no reason to lie. The whole reason they were here was to deal with the problem, not avoid it.
Dan turned the TV off. “Could it have been... somebody else's?”
Once again, Marlow saw on his face a look of genuine fear. It brought back a memory of what she had seen so many times in the mirror when she had been that age. For the first time Marlow understood how terrified Dan was. The video he'd watched of the Infiltration at home was enough to scare him into running away from his family for ever. This wasn't a kid who thought it was all some stupid joke played by adults or a superpower they could wield at night - as many of the brats did. No, this was somebody frightened not just for their own life, but for those he cared about. Somebody who had witnessed the destruction a bad dream could leave.
Marlow forced a smile. “Nah, impossible. Conduits are never clustered together like that. You might get one or two in the same town at the same time, but that's a very rare event.”
“As rare as having repeat episodes? As rare as a daymare?” Dan's voice broke as he spoke.
The same thought had crossed Marlow's mind, but now was not the time to speculate. What he needed was a little parental reassurance - something Marlow was useless at dispensing. Instead she turned her back to Dan so the boy couldn't see her doubt and began emptying the kit bag.
“Don't worry about it. I was mistaken, is all. I'm tired. Here,” she threw his mobile to Dan. “You’d left it in the other hotel.”
Dan hesitated for a moment, then checked it was on airplane mode before tucking it into his jacket pocket. “Maybe you fell asleep and dreamt there was another monster outside?” He was being playful, but Marlow's cold realism trampled it.
“No chance. I don't dream.”
She pulled out a set of three small tripod-mounted lights and positioned them around the bed. Behind each bulb a silver reflector fanned out to amplify the light. She caught Dan's curious expression.
“High-lux beams. Powerful ultra-violet lamps.” She plugged one in and flicked a switch at the back of the lamp. A powerful white-light issued out, brighter than Dan thought was possible for such a tiny light. He shielded his eyes as Marlow angled the light so it played around the bed, vanquishing shadows. “They travel through the shadows so this gives the buggers less room to hide,” she explained, thankful that the hotel divan had only an inch clearance from the floor. Still, an inch of darkness was an infinite ocean for an Infiltrator.
“Everybody dreams,” Dan said dismissively as Marlow set the next light up.
“Not me.”
More light flooded the room on the opposite side of the bed, illuminating under the desk and highlighting the colours of the room.
Dan squinted as his eyes slowly adjusted. “That's just something people say because they don’t remember, but everybody dreams all the time. An average of six dreams every night in fact.”
The first two lights were positioned low and sent stark shadows across the ceiling, so Marlow angled the third light upwards to dispense them. “Like I said, I don't dream. It's a clinical thing. Never have been able to. That part of me brain just don't seem to work right.”
Dan was shocked. “Like ever?”
“Like ever,” Marlow confirmed, activating the last light to sweeping the ceiling shadows away.
“That's terrible. I've always dreamt about things. Cool things like having superpowers, once I had a really vivid one that I was in space piloting a star fighter. It was so realistic, I seemed to know everybody around me, but then I realised it was a dream. Do you know the moment that happens you can take control and do whatever you want. You said it was called lucid dreaming? They’re the best. You’ve suddenly got the power to create things, be anybody, see anyone you want to...” He drifted off thoughtfully and after a moment’s silence he added: “I couldn't imagine never having a dream.”
Marlow sat the blunderbuss cartridges upright on the table and made sure she had several spares in her pockets. She looked quizzically at Dan. “Ain't you tired yet?”
Dan shook his head. He looked more awake than Marlow had ever seen him.
“So why can't you dream?” Marlow shrugged and propped the baseball bat near the door. The bat’s surface was chipped and dented from the many uses it had served outside of sports. “You must have done as a kid, surely?”
Marlow sighed. “As far as I'm concerned I had the dreams frightened outta my skull by my old man.” She pulled a pair of night vision goggles from the bag and hung them around her neck.
“Why? What did he do?” Dan crawled under the bed sheets, still fully dressed. He only paused to kick his trainers off.
Marlow pulled the kit bag to her side, it still had a few other tools she could use to fight with if things got desperate. Satisfied, she pulled the chair from under the room’s desk and angled it between the bed and the window, keeping as far as she could from Dan to maximise her reaction time when the Infiltrator came. With a weary sigh, she sat down and rested the blunderbuss across her knees.
“When I was your age he'd drag me out on hunts like this.”
“Wow. That sounds so cool! If you’re not the one doing the Conduiting, that is.”
“It wasn't, believe me, it was bloody terrifying. I didn't want to know what he did. I didn’t wanna think about it and I certainly didn't want to do it myself but he forced me. Said it would make the difference between life and death.”
Memories flickered cross the dark screen of her mind. Her father's voice always encouraging as Marlow clutched a feeble weapon - a bat, a rusty sword, a plank with a nail in it - always poorly armed to face the malignant terrors. Claws, fangs, blazing blue eyes or hollow black ones peered back at her while her father excitedly reeled off what was about to consume her whole.
Serpentinius Dreamtus.
Vulgaris Nightum.
Mortis Morphosum.
Marlow could recall them all by rote. Her father would fearlessly yell their names at each
encounter. Nothing frightened him.
Nothing.
Except one word that was occasionally uttered between her father and her grandpa: Darkmare. When pressed to what that meant they would just shake their heads and mumble that some things in the Nightmare Realm were best left alone. If Marlow ever tried to press for more information her father would snap and order her to perform fifty press-ups or run a lap of the playing field - punishments designed so that Marlow was fit enough to maintain a constant state of readiness. Ready for whatever the world, or netherworld, might throw at her.
“I faced other people's bad dreams almost every single night. Maybe my brain shut down and refused to let me have any of my own. So, I have never been able to dream and you know what? It sucks to think about that. Sucks to think that everybody else can. All you gotta do is close your eyes and go to someplace else. You have no idea what an amazing gift that is.”
“But look what you can do now,” said Dan with genuine awe. “You can beat these things. You can stand up to them. That's something nobody else can do.”
Marlow had often wondered if there were other Nightmare Hunters out there. Her father said it was a calling passed through generations, and the inability to dream came with it. Her grandpa had told tales of hunting teams that rode up and down the land, saving villages from the evils that prowled the dark. But never once had Marlow seen or heard of another Hunter these days. Maybe she was the last of her kind?
“You want to know something weird?” said Dan.
Marlow smiled. “If you can say something weirder than what we're doing, go for it.”
“I've never had a nightmare. My dreams... they've always been kinda cool.”
“That's Infiltrators for you. They administer a kind of anaesthetic to their Conduit. They don't want you waking up in the middle of the night and severing the portal.” She indicated to the lamps. “Besides, they don’t like UV light. That’s why your daymares don’t last too long. They make sure you have the most riotously enjoyable dreams to keep you slumbering.”
Silence. For a second Marlow thought Dan was asleep, but instead he looked thoughtful.
“How do they deliver their anaesthetic?”
“As far as I can tell it's a chemical they create inside the body, like a natural hormone.”
“So if you could extract that... could you then take it? Would it make you dream?”
Marlow was surprised with Dan's logic. That had never occurred to her. “You know what... it just might. If we knew what to look for and how to extract it, that is. My old man was into that sort of thing. Always mixing chemicals and making stupid herbal remedies.”
Dan rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling, his mind was already racing with possibilities.
“That would be so cool. You know, you were lucky to have a dad like that.”
Marlow snorted derisively; she couldn't hold it back. “Lucky? He destroyed my life. By the time I was fourteen I had no friends. Other kids were terrified of me. I'd seen so many horrors that my hair turned white.” Marlow gripped a handful of damp black hair. “This comes outta a bottle.”
Dan shrugged. “He showed you things nobody else has seen. He taught you a skill nobody else has. I think that's pretty amazing. I wish my dad had been around to teach me something - anything - so I could do something nobody else could.”
Marlow stared at him, searching for traces of sarcasm. She wanted to snap how wrong he was. How having such an overbearing father had turned her into a dreamless screwball who was unable to even talk to her own kids, but something struck a chord. Dan was painting Marlow's father in a new light, one that was a stranger to Marlow.
“Maybe one day, when you have children, you could pass your secrets on?” said Dan. His voice was now distinctly slurred as he fought sleep.
“I've already got kids. Two of them. They hate me too.”
Dan laughed, a short sharp bark. “You have children? Ha! That's soooo funny.”
Marlow shuffled in the seat, uncomfortable at being grilled by a thirteen year old.
“Why is that funny?”
Dan didn't reply. He was sound asleep, already his eyes darting in deep REM sleep behind closed lids. Marlow looked around the room, waiting for the first signs of attack.
It was a real shame… the kid was just starting to get interesting.
Chapter Nine
Something was seriously wrong. Marlow had been a hunter for far too long and knew her enemies' proclivities. The moment a Conduit was asleep the bridge between worlds opened and the Infiltrators, eager for the warmth, energy and food from a rich new world, would slip through as swiftly as possible to make the most of it. So far Dan had been asleep for close to an hour and nothing had emerged.
Marlow found herself hoping that the incident onboard the lorry had somehow been the last one. Had something happened then to sever Dan's link for ever? Could this be the end of his curse? Maybe the beast that had emerged had been killed when the lorry crashed?
No. It couldn't be that easy. It never was.
The spotlights held the shadows at bay, but even they didn't have the power to hold back a determined Infiltrator. Marlow's eyes slid from Dan, still lying in the same awkward slumbering position, to the only void of darkness left: the bathroom. The door was closed and Marlow berated herself for not switching on the light and leaving it ajar.
She strained to listen, but heard no signs of movement from within, and Nightmares were not known for their patience. Still, she slowly stood and crabbed toward the door, not once taking her eyes off Dan.
It was difficult to grip the spherical door handle while wielding a sawn-off blunderbuss. She heard the latch click and nudged the door ajar with her boot. The trio of powerful spotlights in the room did little to illuminate the stygian blackness within the windowless bathroom.
Marlow flinched when a huge shadow loomed before her. Instinctively she raised the gun, finger pulling the trigger before she realised what she was looking at. Luckily, the gun's old trigger was in serious need of oiling and took a considerable amount of pressure to move, so her reflection was saved from being blown away.
She flicked the light switch and a feeble florescent tube erratically flickered a couple of times before illuminating with an irritating hum as it filled the room with a cold blue-tinged light that beached all colour.
There was nothing in here.
Marlow was so on edge that she jumped when the television suddenly turned on, a political show blaring from the speakers. She ducked back into the room to see Dan was sitting upright in bed, wide awake and glued to the TV.
“You scared the crap outta me,” she huffed as he sat back down. “Turn the volume down.”
Dan didn't seem to hear, he was too absorbed with the show. Marlow frowned, she knew her ability to relate to the younger generation was poor, but she had no idea kids were so engaged by politics these days.
“C'mon, turn it down before somebody complains.”
When Dan didn’t act, Marlow found herself getting annoyed. She opened her mouth ready to say something bitter - when she noticed the TV remote control was at the bottom of the bed where Dan had tossed it. How had the kid turned it on?
A gentle icy tickle told her that something was amiss. Marlow slowly blocked the view between Dan and the TV. The boy didn't try to crane around her to continue watching, nor was there a word of protest, yet his eyes were still wide open and staring.
Marlow waved her hand in front of him, waiting for a reaction. She was rewarded with a short snorting from the kid.
Dan was still asleep.
A crashing wave of thoughts swam through Marlow's head. She'd studied somnology and oneirology, the sciences of sleep and dreams respectively - in fact her father had forced the theory-heavy subjects upon her. She knew some folks could sleep with their eyes open and, other than suffer from irritatingly dry eyes, succeeded in having a good night's sleep. It also explained what Marlow had seen in the car park. Dan had thought he'd been
awake but he must have experienced a micro-nap and only Marlow's arrival had awoken him. As his eyes were already wide open, he was convinced that he'd been awake the whole time.
The hairs on the back of Marlow's neck rose. She knew without doubt that the Infiltrator was deliberately exploiting all of Dan's foibles. It didn’t fit the regular pattern for one reason - it was setting a trap to catch the hunter.
The wave of trepidation that gripped Marlow's stomach now lurched into full-blown fear. Something more sinister than the average Nightmare was at work here. Before she could guess what that might be, the window imploded with such force that chunks of the wall’s sheetrock around it splintered apart. Snow, broken glass and fragments of twisted window frame pelted Marlow as a coiling tentacle, as thick as a tractor’s tyre, unfurled through the gap and plucked her out into the driving rain.
Marlow was hoisted out and above the building's roof. Snow stung her eyes, but she could see enough to notice the lights across the car park had been smothered. Her ribs felt ready to crack as the tentacle spun her around and she finally saw the fiend had spewed from the other place.
It was colossal. Sitting on the roof like a giant octopus. Midnight black skin made details almost impossible to see. She could make out at least four other tentacles draped across the roof slates and dangling down the side of the hotel to give it purchase. Another two slightly shorter limbs flailed, while a seventh brought Marlow closer to the Nightmare's vertical slit of a mouth. Despite the creature's size, the teeth were no longer than Marlow's hand, not that that gave her any comfort as there were thousands of them tiered in several rows. Each leading further into the cavernous gullet. The fangs looked almost opaque, laced with crimson veins. As they gnashed together they created hellish sparks. Atop its head was a nest of coal black eyes that had multiplied across its brow like acne. It let out a hideous roar – a mix between Godzilla and a car alarm.
