It took Emery four more windows to realize that moving through them was the only way to move through the Dream. If they avoided the windows, saving themselves the confusion of going in and out and in again, they didn't advance. The landscape around them always stopped at some point, like a very convincingly-painted room. They would try to walk in one direction only to find the sparse scenery repeating itself and the same dream windows passing them by. When they went through the windows, they always came out in a new place, slightly different from the place before. More plants. Different plants. Moist earth. A stream. A tree. Rocks.
"Maybe even this isn't moving forward," Wes said after they tumbled out of the tenth window. "Maybe the Dream just wants us to think we're moving forward. It's changing the scenery around us but we're always in the same spot."
Emery didn't want to think about it. She had no idea how long they'd been there, but her stomach ached, her head throbbed, and the relief of finding Wes had worn off three windows ago. It helped to think of the Dream as an annoying detour, a place not to escape but to endure until they eventually found their way out, because the alternative was thinking of it as it actually was: a vicelike acid trip of a nightmare, endless and complex in its pursuit of their memories. The Dream wanted them to forget like a dog wanted the stuffing out of a chew toy.
Window nineteen was another chase, this time with a large worm-type creature that whipped and railed at them until Wes pinned its tail with his hammer and Emery shot it seven times in different spots. They jumped from that window, exhausted, and fell straight into the next.
It was a living room, crowded with furniture and lit by a small table lamp. Wes landed on hands and knees; Emery managed to stay on her feet for a second, then collapsed next to him.
"What kind of nightmare is this?" Emery sat up and leaned against a stack of old newspapers. The carpet was sticky, burned in spots, and stamped down. It reeked of chain-smoked cigarettes. The blinds were drawn. Ashes spilled from a dead fireplace, around which were crowded a moth-eaten couch, armchairs, and a graveyard of broken children's toys and lawn ornaments. Against one wall was a bookshelf full of homemade VHS tapes, each neatly labeled with a six-digit date. One door led, presumably, to the outside of the house. The small window at the top was taped over with more newspaper. On the other side of the table lamp was a closet door made of wooden slats, and the wall adjacent to the fireplace opened onto a dark hallway.
Wes's knees popped as he pushed himself to his feet. "I don't know, but I hope it's easy to leave."
Emery tried the door with the newspaper over the window. Locked. Behind the newspaper was a lone streetlamp guarding against the night. The street was silent. Wes tried the slatted door--also locked--then moved for the dark hallway.
A man rushed through it and ran straight into him. The man, small and pale and weedy, stared with openmouthed shock at Wes, then Emery, until a door slammed somewhere in the darkness.
"You have to hide!" he whispered. He grabbed Wes and shoved him toward the second locked door. It was a closet, and the man opened it without a problem. He pushed Wes inside, then grabbed Emery and shoved her in afterwards. She didn't have the strength to fight him, not because she was tired, but because his fingers threatened to crush her bicep. He moved Emery and Wes around like rag dolls, stuffed them in the closet together, and shut the door.
Light slanted into the closet. Emery tried to push her way out. The door wouldn't open.
"Break it down," she said to Wes.
He shook his head. "Wait."
Through the slats, Emery watched the thin man back up against a ratty armchair and the wall of VHS tapes. Two other men came around the corner from the dark hallway. One wore a t-shirt with the sleeves torn off; the other, a flannel shirt. They were both big, bigger than the thin man, and both pale. Emery could just barely see the sweat on the back of their necks.
Her hairs rose. She broke out in goosebumps. They didn't look back at the closet, but she felt as if they might at any moment and find her there, catch her spying.
"Did you take it?" said the one in flannel.
The thin man shook his head. "No, no, I'd never--"
"Trev, then," said the one in the t-shirt.
"No! I don't let Trev in here, of course I wouldn't--"
Flannel shoved the thin man, sending him into the wall of tapes. A few rattled and fell off the wall.
"Do you know what happens if anyone finds these?" T-shirt asked. "We're dead. You and me and Avery and Ma and Granddad. And Trev, too. We're all dead."
Thin Man whimpered. "I told you not to leave them out like this—I told you that anyone could walk in and find one—at least keep them in the basement with the other equipment!"
He was looking to the right, at T-shirt, when the first swing came from Flannel. Thin Man gasped and reeled back. The other two closed in, blocking him from view. The tapes rattled and shook off their shelves as the two men beat the first.
"WHAT DID WE TELL YOU—"
"—NO ONE CAN KNOW—"
Wes grabbed Emery's hand. Emery jumped. Her pulse thudded in her ears.
"We have to stop them," she whispered. "It's his window, that's why he's so strong. They're the nightmare."
"If he's so strong why doesn't he stop them?"
"Wes, break down the door."
"What if it's not his dream? What if it's one of their dreams? And it's—it's just a dream! They can't really hurt him."
"Well not immediately, but what if he has this dream all the time? You can feel it right now—" Emery swallowed past the knot of fear in her throat "—this isn't the first time these people have been here. Nightmares like this cause damage, and it's our job to keep that from happening. You're a dreamhunter, Wes, start acting like it and break down the door."
There was no room for him to swing his hammer. Instead, he gritted his teeth and slammed his hand against the door slats. They pushed outward, stretching as if they were made of putty instead of wood. Wes dug his fingers in. The slats crumbled under his hand and settled as black ash in the carpet. He dragged his hand down the length of the door, stopping near the bottom and bracing his shoulders in the opening.
"Go through," he grunted. "I think it's going to try to close again."
Emery used his back as a springboard and jumped over him, into the room. Wes came after her. The slats snapped back into place. Flannel and T-shirt turned at the sound.
Their faces were smeared, like someone rubbing a thumb over wet ink. There were hints of noses, mouths, cheekbones. The only sharp features were their eyes, glittering in the shadows of their brows. Behind them, the Thin Man's legs were visible.
"Who are you?" T-shirt said. The smear of his mouth didn't move.
Flannel was already moving toward them, fists clenched and bloody.
Emery shot him in the head. He pitched backward and crashed to the floor like he'd been made of concrete, without stumbling or surprise. Black blood leaked onto the floor.
T-shirt gaped--as much as anyone could with a smeared face--and when he started forward, it was Wes who caught him mid-swing with the hammer. There was a deep thud of snapped bone and ruptured organ, and the man fell beside his companion. He gurgled. His chest was entirely caved in where the hammer had struck him. Wes pulled back for another swing, but stopped, face pale, and the hammer fell.
T-shirt went still. Past him, the Thin Man lay unmoving, eyes open, beneath a pile of VHS tapes.
"Dreamers can't die in the Dream," Emery said, breathless, grabbing for Wes's wrist. "They're not--dreamers can't die in the Dream."
"It's not ending," Wes said. "They're all dead. Why isn't it ending?"
The dream held strong around them. All Emery could hear was the thrashing of her heart in her chest, and below that, she imagined the sound the black blood made as it pooled in the carpet.
Someone sniffled.
Emery and Wes spun. The closet door, reformed, had swung open again, and from it tottered a little boy in an overlarge flannel shirt and pajama bottoms, holding a strange cat doll in one hand and in the other clutching yet another VHS in a clear plastic case. His face ran with snot and drool and tears. His eyes fixed on the bodies on the floor, and his expression tightened and twisted. He began to cry.
He was five years too young, but he had untidy black hair and a face as pale and gaunt as Edgar's. Emery put away her Peacemakers and went to him, realizing the truth of the space around them and what had happened.
It was his nightmare. The Thin Man had been strong because he would seem strong to a child. The dream had not ended because this little boy was still in it.
Emery sank to the floor and pulled the little boy into her lap. He dropped the VHS and clung to her. The long springs that made the lanky arms and legs of his cat doll tapped against her back. He felt too small under his pajamas, all bones.
"It's okay. Shh, it's okay. It'll be okay."
She tried to think of something to comfort him, but there were three dead bodies on the floor behind her and the pool of blood had just reached her leg. Emery buried her nose in his hair. He smelled like cigarettes.
His cries petered into hiccupping whimpers and finally silence. His arms went limp against hers. The strange cat doll fell to the floor. He'd fallen asleep.
The nightmare disappeared around them. The boy vanished.
Emery kneeled in a field of bright red poppies that swayed gently in a breeze. Purple thunderheads rolled overhead, flashing. The field sloped gently down into a valley in the shadow of a towering, snowcapped mountain. A few leafy trees bordered a crystal lake at the very bottom of the valley, beside which sat a small cottage, nearly invisible from where they were.
Dream-windows hovered in the distance, all weak and trembling, as if the intensity of that last nightmare had worn the Dream out.
Wes's fingers brushed Emery's shoulder. She looked up at him. There was a dull ringing in her ears that matched the shell-shocked look on his face. She didn't move as he slid his hand down her arm, took her elbow, and pulled her to her feet.
"We just—"
"It was a dream."
"But who was he? He was just a little boy..."
"We won't know. He could be an adult now. That could have been a memory from childhood. Or a warped memory, or something he saw in a movie once." Wes's voice became steadier and stronger the more he talked. "We have no way of knowing where that came from, or who he is, or if he actually needs help. We can't worry about that right now. We need to focus on us."
She knew he was right. They both swayed on their feet as the fear and adrenaline of the nightmare drained out of them. Hunger gnawed at Emery's stomach and made her head ache. They needed to rest, to sleep, even, despite that they had woken from the sleeping sand so recently. And now seemed as good a time as any, while the Dream's windows kept away from them.
"Do you think we could drink the lake water?" Emery asked.
"We might as well try," Wes said.
~
Like the rest of their time in the Dream, Emery had no idea how long it took them to get to the bottom of the hill. She knew it took a very long time because they were both tired but neither of them could let go of their dignity long enough to drop and roll all the way down. She knew it also took a long time to get to the lake's edge, but that she couldn't explain, because it couldn't have been more than thirty feet from the bottom of the hill. When they did finally arrive, they sank to their knees in the water and drank. It was cool and sweet and nothing came out of the depths to terrorize them.
Once her stomach hurt with all the water in it, Emery sat back against a boulder on the lakeshore and stared across the water at the little cottage. Cracked white paint covered the walls and a vine grew wild up the trellis on one wall.
Wes cupped water in his hands and dumped it over his head. He ruffled his hair, then smoothed it back, then moved over to sit next to her against the boulder. His hammer lay motionless in his upturned hands, glinting silver and gold in the dim light. He stared down at it.
Emery hadn't taken her revolvers from their holsters again, and her hands were balled into fists against her thighs.
Wes said, "It seemed so real."
Emery nodded and said nothing. Her understanding of the Dream and her weapons and what she was actually supposed to be doing seemed so inadequate now. It wouldn't have mattered if she'd shot the dreamer or his nightmares; she had aimed for the head as she always did.
"We should sleep," she said. "One of us should. The other can keep watch."
"For how long? We can't tell time."
"I don't know. For as long as we can stay awake."
"I can...I can go first. For watch."
Emery's eyes were already closing.
"Do you remember if Professor Lenton said anything about this?" Wes asked. "About falling asleep inside the Dream? Should we not—"
She didn't hear the rest of his words.
(Next time on The Children of Hypnos --> 234dfgADFFS##%^^^!!!!!!DKFNADSFJ9508753)