The Dream Runner (4 page)

Watching the headlights bounce and jolt in my direction, my brain initiated a full-scale adrenaline sequence without so much as a by-your-leave from me. Dry mouth, racing heart, the whole bag of tricks.
Not like the city
, I kept telling myself.
This is Williamsville. It's probably just somebody storing equipment in the barn. The new neighbors, maybe. Or old friends of my dad keeping an eye on the place.

Still, I picked up a dead branch I'd nearly tripped over in the dark, thinking it could serve as a weapon at need. As the vehicle approached, it became clear that whoever the intruders might be, they were not Williamsville natives. Folks in this town drive mostly pick ups, Subaru station wagons, the occasional Suburban—practical vehicles. Yes, there are a few muscle and luxury cars and motorcycles, but nobody with legitimate business on my property in the dark would be driving something as in-your-face swanky as a fully custom fitted black Hummer.

It did occur to me to melt back into the darkness and call 911, but I have a well-earned aversion to cops. Besides, by the time anybody official made it all the way out here from town, my intruders would be long gone. So I clutched my branch and waited.

The Hummer rolled to a stop at a respectful distance and both doors opened at once, the occupants obligingly stepping around into the headlight beams so I could get a look at them.

I hated the woman on sight. She was tall and model thin, her clothing entirely inappropriate for the territory. Hair all piled up on top of her head, ridiculous heels with open toes and, gods help me, a skirt and jacket that belonged in a windowed office some place like New York.

The man spoke first, stepping forward with his right hand outstretched to shake. Unlike his companion, who had obviously paid for a personal tailor, his sports jacket hung loose on narrow shoulders and strained across his belly. His hair glistened with gel, and the hand he held out looked soft enough to belong to an upscale trophy wife. He looked me over from the top of my head down to my toes, taking way too much time about it. He made me think of a dead fish, belly up and putrid, and I swear I caught an actual whiff of something rotten.

"You must be Jesse," he said. "You look just like your mother."

Manners are way overrated. No way was I touching that hand. Instead I hefted my tree branch, imagining the satisfying crunch it would make as it connected with his head. "And you would be?"

"My apologies." The woman stepped up beside him, surprisingly steady given the mismatch between the hillocky field and her shoes. Her voice was a husky contralto, far too cultured for my taste and with a hint of an accent. British maybe. I wasn't sure and didn't care. She didn't bother trying to shake hands, and I figured that of the two she was definitely the more dangerous.

"I'm Saundra, this is Marvin. I do hope we haven't worried you. We've been renting your lovely house and stopped by to collect a few items we'd stored in the barn."

I snorted in disbelief. "You're telling me you're the people responsible for the talking bunny wallpaper and that mess of boxes and trash downstairs?" Call me a skeptic, but that totally didn't fit.

"The bunnies weren't our doing. That was—"

"Marvin, do be silent."

The man deflated like a whipped puppy, but a curl of his lip made me think Saundra had better sleep with one eye open.

"I do apologize if we've startled you," she said. "We weren't aware that you had arrived, and we thought we'd just pop up to retrieve our belongings. I'm sure you can see that a single week's notice was rather short for us to completely empty the house."

"And the barn, apparently."

"In point of fact, we were forced to move a few items into the barn in order to clear the house by the deadline we were given by your Mr. Marshall."

That one took a minute to sink in. I'd been gone for a while, but I was pretty sure nobody, except for maybe the traffic cops, would refer to Marsh as Mr. anything. It certainly wasn't an expression I could get my lips around.

"Marsh gave you permission to use my barn?"

"He did say he would speak to you about it. I can see that he has not, as of yet, and again I do apologize if we've disturbed you in any way. I'll ring up the movers and have them clean the rubbish from your home first thing tomorrow. I had no idea they had been so careless."

"Skip it. I'll do it."

"But you must be exhausted. And how unfortunate that your homecoming should be ruined—"

"My homecoming is none of your business."

"I'm suggesting a mutually satisfying solution to both of our problems."

By now my hand was clenched around the branch so tight my knuckles ached. The bark dug into my skin. I knew antagonizing this woman wasn't smart. In fact, I would have bet my last fifty bucks there was a sleek little pistol in her designer handbag. I needed to cooperate, get her off my property, and then change all the locks.

But my mouth runs on its own agenda most of the time, and this was no exception. "I'd be mutually satisfied if you would sashay right back into your fancy-ass rig and get the hell off my property."

"Surely you don't suggest that we abandon all of our—"

"I suggest that I will call my realtor in the morning and ask him to arrange a transfer of any belongings that are rightfully yours. And I'll clean my own damned house. Right now, I want you off my property."

Saundra responded with a sweet smile, oozing a level of culture and control that made me feel like a three-year-old brat in the middle of a tantrum. "Certainly. We are terribly sorry to have intruded. I shall speak with Mr. Marshall in the morning and we'll get this whole thing sorted out. Come, Marvin."

Marvin came to heel without a word, although he did allow himself a last glance at me over his shoulder. Long after the taillights of the Hummer blinked out of sight I stood staring after it into the dark. All was quiet. Nothing but wind and crickets and the distant barking of a dog.

When I was convinced they were really gone, I dragged my weary self across the yard to check on the barn.

It was locked up tight, secured by a heavy-duty padlock on both front and side doors. Just perfect. Fuming, I pulled out my phone, prepared to call Marsh right then and there and insist that he come up and change the locks. But I thought better of it before I had time to Google his phone number. What I needed was a good night's sleep. Nothing was simple with Marsh, and it would be better to just wait until morning.

I was a little worried about the renters, as I was pretty sure they still had keys to the house, but after some consideration I figured they would probably do the smart thing. They'd had a perfect opportunity to kill me if that's what they were after—no blood stains in the house and a whole field to bury the body in. As far as theft goes, I had nothing worth stealing.

Or so I thought at the time.

 

 

D
reams are dangerous things
. My own designer special, given to me by the hands of the Merchant herself, looks innocent enough. It's contained in a small stone bottle, not more than two inches tall, with a cork stopper. It's a pretty thing, all swirls of blue and red and green with a sheen to it. I'm not entirely sure how the bottles get made. Maybe there's a production line, but I've never seen it. I know full well I'm not the only one who has been pressed into the Merchant's service as a runner, and if there are as many as ten of us out there delivering dreams at the rate of, say, one a month—then I figure there's got to be a room full of dwarves somewhere chiseling bottles out of stone.

If the bottle itself is a mystery, what lies within is even more so. If I open that stopper and lie down to sleep with the bottle beside me—well, I get to dream the deepest desire of my heart.

On that first night home, even though I was bone weary, I was too wound up to fall asleep. That was a problem. No sleep, no dream, and I desperately needed a dream fix. I had a little stash of Ambien, but I was reluctant to take them. I needed to be on alert in case Saundra's traveling dog show came back to visit. 

But after an hour of tossing and turning, I got up and double-checked the locks, pointless as that was. I made sure the windows were closed. Then I swallowed a couple of pills and lay down on top of my sleeping bag in my old bunny room, with the dream bottle open beside me.

At last sleep came for me, but just as I was drifting under a moment of panic hit me, as though I was drowning all over again. A hand reached down into the darkness to pull me up. A beautiful hand: tanned, work-hardened, with fingertip calluses built by hours playing the guitar.
Will. Must warn Will.…

And then the sleeping pills did their job, and the guilt floated gently away as I slid into my dream.

Will sits behind the wheel of his pick-up truck, relaxed, waiting for me. His tanned arm rests in the open window, fingers tapping to music that floats out of the speakers and fills the clearing. It's
The Beatles
,
Something in the Way She Moves
. My song, he always says. I can feel his happiness, his anticipation, even the heat in his groin and the pressure of an erection spawned by the sight of me walking out of the house in shorts and a tank top. He's full of love and music and the drowsy contentment of relaxing after a long day working in the sun. And he's thinking about where he's going to take me, the feel of my skin, his hands running through the long sheen of my hair.

Halfway to the truck I feel the shift, the moment when he realizes this is a nightmare. His heart speeds up. No more sunlight now, the world is dark and blood drips from my hands. We're no longer in the clearing in the woods; the truck sits half in the gravel, half in the lake, front tires submerged.

"J-bird," he says, pleading. "I never meant—"

He stops, seeing what I hold in my hands, eyes wide.

No need for a match or a lighter—the fuse ignites from my fingertip. And I throw, straight and true, my arm moving back, then forward from the shoulder like he taught me. The dynamite lands in the seat beside him and sits there, the fuse sizzling, long enough for him to do something. He could run, scream, fling it away. But he only sits, his eyes holding mine, until there is a satisfying slam of light and sound, a percussion that throws me off my feet into the air where I am flying, high over the town laid out like a child's toy below me.

It's not a nightmare for me, it's vengeance and my heart sings to its tune. Or at least that's how the dream has always been.

Tonight something shifts and changes.

Just before the bomb explodes Will whispers three words. I can't make them out, and it's only after he blows up that I realize he's said that famous line from The Princess Bride: "As you wish." Blood rains down on me from the sky. A severed hand lands at my feet.

There is no soaring flight this time. I try to run but it's a nightmare now for me as well as Will, and my body refuses to move. It's as though the air has grown solid and holds me back. I hear a sound behind me and when I turn around it's Will. He's holding his severed right hand in his left and his hair is dripping with blood. His eyes are blue, but they have that light behind them like when the sun shines through a storm cloud, eerie and wrong.

"Jesse," he says, and reaches out with a bloody hand.

Something has gone wrong with my precious custom-made dream. I'm supposed to be the terror here, not him. It's my revenge. I want to wake up but I can't. Behind me there is a tire iron. Just lying there, waiting for my need. All I need to do is form a thought—I need the tire iron—and it's in my hand. 

Will doesn't try to stop me. There is no clang of metal against bone; the weapon slices through his skull like butter, clean through his brain and down the center of his neck and into his chest where finally it sticks in his heart. He's still looking at me, with that lurid light behind his eyes when I manage to pull away, back, back.…

I woke to the sound of my own weeping, my body curled around an emptiness too profound to ever be filled. The sleeping bag was sweat-drenched and clammy. My hands were shaking so hard it took me three tries to switch on the light. The cork kept slipping from my fingers and when I finally got it into the opening at the neck of the bottle, it wouldn't go in. A film of black liquid seeped up around the edges and over the rim of the bottle and I panicked, grinding at the cork with the heel of my hand, twisting it with all the weight of my body behind it.

A black drop clung to the rim, welled bigger, and rolled down toward the carpet. I caught the liquid on my finger and ran to the bathroom to wash it down the drain, half expecting the sink to turn black. It did no such thing. The dream fluid swirled down the drain with a stream of water and was gone.

But I couldn't stop shaking and my heart wouldn't settle down. If the dream had mutated, then any monster I'd ever read in a book, seen in a movie, or created in my own imagination might show up. The house was too dark, too empty, and far too big.

Bit by bit I managed to unclench my muscles and get myself moving. First to the door of the bathroom, where I reached out and turned on the hall light. From there I moved through the house, turning on every switch, until the whole thing was awake and lighted.

Music next—thank all the gods for the radio feature on my smartphone. When the DJ's voice came on I would have kissed him if he'd been nearby. Human contact. Still, the fear ruled me. For hours I paced, still groggy from the pills I'd taken but afraid to go back to sleep.

Finally, when the light began to grey outside the windows, enough so I could make out the shapes of the trees, I had calmed enough to drag my sleeping bag downstairs into the empty living room, as far away from my bedroom and that stone bottle as I could get, and close my eyes.

 

 

I
must have slept, but
if I had more dreams they were gone when I awoke. A long hot shower cleared the cobwebs from my head. By the full light of day, with the sunlight shining in the windows, the panic of the night before seemed stupid. So there had been a change in the dream—big deal. Too many sleeping pills, maybe. Or an effect of actually seeing Will after all these years combined with the near drowning thing at the lake. Probably just an ordinary trauma-induced nightmare combining with the pre-programmed dream. Give it a couple of days and that dream would get back to what it had always been—a night of revenge for the crimes committed against me and mine. Even if the dream had gotten loose somehow, which was a ridiculous idea, it couldn't hurt me.