The Nightmare Maker Read online

  “I have a great deal of information for you, Mr. Adler, but the doctors have told me that I only have five minutes…something about you complaining of being ‘fatigued.’ I don’t suppose that’s anything but hogwash, but one had best not buck the system unnecessarily,” he said.

  “Don’t you think that taking the time to tell a man whether his wife is alive or dead is necessary?” My voice came out as hotly as I could manage—which, as weak as I was, might have registered a few degrees above absolute zero. I really was running down…

  “Your tone certainly isn’t necessary, but yes, I had intended to tell you about your wife being missing and briefly about your other legal dispositions.” With that, Badger launched into a briefing that conveyed an impressive amount of information in the five minutes that he gave it—his military training on display.

  When the dust cleared following my banishment of the puca, Badger had found me unconscious and with a gaping wound in my back, but I was still alive. There had been absolutely no sign of Dana, and he mentioned that officially she was a missing person. He also had done me the favor of entering into the official record that he’d been with me at the time of her disappearance, clearing me of any suspicion. Indeed, it seemed that for the detective inspector, seeing really was believing; after he’d seen the horror that we’d destroyed and what I’d sacrificed to achieve it, he had gone out of his way to squash any trace of investigations implicating me.

  “A damned rum thing, Mr. Adler. I know many a man that jokes about seeing his wife disappear, but to actually follow through and make that kind of sacrifice…if you need something, then call me, and I’ll see what I can do within the bounds of the law,” Badger said calmly and then plunged his calloused hands into the pockets of his dun-colored trench coat and turned to leave.

  “What about Olivia?” I asked wearily. It had been her voice that had led me back, and I wanted to see her as soon as possible. I knew that I should be asking other questions, like if Badger knew where the duplicitous Father O’Hanrahan was at, but I was fading fast.

  “Your sister-in-law, Becky DuCaine, flew in from Florida shortly after Dana was declared a missing person, which would have been about forty-eight hours after the…incident. I filed the report on your behalf. She brought your daughter with her—I had to pull some strings with the US State Department to make that happen—and she has been staying at the Ealing Travel Lodge for the last several weeks. I really must be going, Mr. Adler, though there are other details I’d like to…discuss…with you.” He said the last few words with much twitching of his walrus-like mustache, turned on his heel, and left before I could thank him.

  While I pondered what the policeman had told me, I wondered how I could live in a world where James Badger wasn’t obsessed with finding a way to put me in jail. I stayed awake as long as I could, but the last coherent thought that went through my head before I finally succumbed to exhaustion was to wonder how a Metropolitan Police detective could have any pull with the US State Department.

  **********

  I opened my eyes. I expected to see the twisted cable trees and mind-warpingly alien landscape that had been my only existence for so long. I’d worried that my brief time in the real world was only a temporary escape or a hallucination. Thankfully, I was wrong. At one time, I would have slipped instantly into a routine: check my weapons, sense the dreamer, hunt down and obliterate the nightmare. My time being stalked in the puca’s realm had changed me. My first instinct was to hide, and the barest whisper of will and memory caused me to fade into virtual invisibility.

  I thought for a moment about the relief that I’d felt at seeing my daughter when I’d woken up. In the puca’s realm years had went by, but only six weeks had elapsed in the real world. I don’t know what I would have done if I’d woken up to find myself ancient and my daughter grown. I wondered what Dana was experiencing, if anything, in the oblivion that she had disappeared into with the dream-demon. I shivered at the thought, but then pushed it away to pay attention to my surroundings.

  The wind of a late-winter evening sloughed over me, and I was glad of my trench coat as I considered my next step. During my years as a Dreamwatcher, I had slowly learned how to master the dream environment, the Dreamscape, and use my will and memory to shape it so that I could protect the other dreamers of the world. Eventually, I’d learned the secret of permanently excising particular nightmares by opening a portal to nowhere, tossing them in, and throwing away the key. I was proud of what I could do, and I’d called myself a Dreamwatcher.

  Night after night, I’d banished terrors from the minds of the restless, knowing that too many of them woke up to real monsters like abusive boyfriends, pedophiles, and drug dealers. It made a mockery of my efforts, and I’d burned to do more. Hell, I’d even made the odd attempt to intervene in the real world, but when a trio of witches had tried to use the dream demon, the puca, to enchant me and my colleagues into awarding them a major contract, somehow my Dreamwatching had clashed with their spells, unlocking a limited ability to impose my will on reality. I’d taken that as a sign that I was meant to oppose their schemes. I’d been thrilled to finally be able to make a difference in the real world, but as the full scope of their ultimate goal, to take over the British Isles, had become apparent, things had spiraled out of control. My futile attempts to stop the puca had left me infected with an alien parasite, forced my family to flee back to America, got my house burned down, and left a trail of bodies across West London.

  In the end I’d managed—by reanimating the world’s largest collection of insane brains in jars—to stop the puca from snapping its leash and potentially devouring every man, woman, and child in the British Isles. However, in the process, I was complicit in the deaths of strangers, the madness of colleagues, and the disappearance of my wife. That had been the price for following my dream to take action in the real world.

  Now I found myself back in the Dreamscape, and I wasn’t sure that I cared about or wanted to get involved in whatever imaginary bullshit was going on. What would be the point, and how could I be sure that I wouldn’t do more harm than good? What I really needed was to get a decent night of sleep and work on finding my wife.

  I concentrated for a moment, and the strength of my memory and will quickly overwhelmed the paltry efforts of the dreamer whose creation I inhabited. I sat down and watched as the walls of Hanwell Asylum came into being around me, and I replayed the last few minutes of my wife’s existence in our reality. Somewhere in the distance, I could feel the dreamer’s nervousness at my imposition, and I didn’t care as once again I watched Dana choose to plunge into oblivion for me, firing a machine gun into the puca, and mouthing the three words that were seared into my soul: “Come find me.”

  In the alien landscape of the puca’s realm, I’d promised her that I would find her, and now that I was free, I was going to make it happen. I let the scene in front of me dissolve. The Dreamscape rippled, and somewhere the dreamer tossed in his or her bed. I reached out with my special senses and instantly detected the paltry flame of their sleeping mind. I pushed slightly with my will, and a single stride brought me to the dreamer.

  I took in the middle-aged woman standing unclothed in the moonlight of a London street. Three young men of unimportant ethnicity crowded around her. Typical. I strode forward, drawing my gladius. My right arm pistoned out once, twice, three times. Blood flew, and two men were on the ground before the third even started to move. I let him turn, and it was like watching someone in slow motion.

  The woman was almost invisible in the dimness, but she was easy enough to locate from her scream. I ignored her and waited patiently as the last man, a skinny youth with dark hair and a complexion that could have been Moroccan or Mexican, swung a broken bottle at me. My skin, which had shrugged off the needle-sharp ovipositors of a hundred hand-spiders, didn’t even dimple as he connected. This was a waste of time. He collapsed into a pile of ash. That was too much for the dreamer, and I was already pondering whe
re I’d be able to find Father O’Hanrahan and what I’d do to him as the dream splintered, and the dreamer jolted up in her bed somewhere in the city, gasping for breath and shaking at the fading image of a dead-eyed killer in a trench coat.

  I awoke, the dream’s abrupt fracturing sending lances of pain through my skull and a wave of nausea through my guts. The beeping of machines and the antiseptic smell of bleach told me immediately that I was still in the hospital. My eyes opened easily, and the dim light didn’t bother me. I reflexively stretched and was pleased to feel all of my limbs reporting in for duty. It seemed like getting some real sleep had had a positive effect on my previously AWOL nerves. Without my contacts in, my green eyes could only take in a blur from the room. I slid out of bed and immediately collapsed to the floor, leg muscles atrophied from weeks of disuse unable to hold my weight. The fall was painful, but my arms hadn’t really looked right without a lovely mottling of bruises anyhow. “I’m coming, Dana,” I muttered as I tried to rise.

  Twenty minutes later, I was sweating and shaking from the effort, but on my own two feet. The look on the face of a brown-haired nurse as I tottered out of the room brought a slight grin to my face. (I might have issues with authority.) After two minutes of trying in vain to force me back into bed, the nurse and her garish floral-print blouse flapped down the hallway to find a doctor.

  The balding Chinese doctor that showed up a few minutes later didn’t have any better luck. So, two hours after I woke up, I shuffled out of the hospital dressed in a polo shirt a couple of shades redder than my own auburn hair, blue jeans, and white sneakers. I had gotten the clothes from a suitcase that I found in the corner of my room and which, thanks to my house being burned down by a private investigator in the witches’ employ, contained the sum total of my worldly possessions. Dressed like an American flag, I hailed a cab.

  I like to tackle problems one step at a time, and until now I’d been most concerned with getting out of the hospital. That accomplished, I drew a blank when the cabbie asked, in a Russian accent, where I wanted to go to. The silence stretched out.

  “You are American tourist, yes? I know very good club. Beautiful girls?” The question was asked with a laugh and such a comically exaggerated accent that I almost managed a chuckle in reply. The mention of girls made me think about my daughter and my sister-in-law. Maybe I should be heading to the Travel Lodge to find them. Then I thought about Dana—finding Father O. would be the first step in getting her back.

  “Our Lady of the Visitation. Just up the road in Greenford. You know it?” I asked in an even tone.

  “Da. By cemetery,” he replied in a slightly more somber mood. The offer of girls had been a joke, but he had probably hoped for a decent fare back into central London; instead, I was asking him for a five-minute ride from Ealing Hospital to the west side of Greenford. For some reason, that made me feel vaguely guilty, yet I felt nothing about the havoc I’d wreaked on the Dreamscape earlier tonight. I’d always spent my nights before trying to help people, to banish their nightmares, but tonight I’d just tried to help myself. But what was I supposed to do? Dana was outside of our reality, and the Dreamscape was where I had the most power, and the best chance of finding her.

  I pushed those minor problems out of the back of my mind, and my fists balled up as I thought about the traitorous priest; I was both scared and excited at the prospect of what I’d do when I got my hands on him. The news came on the radio, and I closed my eyes as the announcer’s voice filled the taxi. “Another banker has been found dead in his bedroom. Evidence at the scene of this grisly murder points to the so-called Anarchist serial killer. In Syria…”

  Chapter 3 1900–2300, Sunday, September 20, 2015

  “So are you proud of how you played me?” I cocked my fist back and punched the old man in the nose. Priests never expect that, and he went sprawling and sprayed a gout of blood from his nose that coated the front of his white nightshirt.

  I didn’t give him a chance to get up. I marched through the front door of the rectory, slamming it behind me. Previously when I’d been in that room, I’d opened up and told Father O’Hanrahan about my Dreamwatching, making him the first person I’d ever told my secret to. I’d trusted the man with my past and my family’s future, and he’d lied to me with a smile on his face for days, using me and ultimately leaving my daughter without a mother.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, my son,” he said thickly from behind his hands as he tried to stop the bleeding.

  “If you didn’t play me, then where the hell is my wife? Why did a dozen cops and half a dozen hospital workers have to die?” I shouted, my knees quaking from the effort I was expending so soon after leaving the hospital.

  “Dana was innocent. She was never meant to get hurt—I completely supported your decision to get her and Olivia clear of the trouble. It says only good things about you, Julian, that she was willing to come back. Don’t do something that she’d be ashamed of…” The Irish former missionary’s voice was firm with conviction as he levered himself back to his knees, his wispy white hair hanging down in front of his face. His words had the opposite of his desired effect; the crass emotional manipulation impelled my leg back to deliver a vicious kick, but I stopped at the last second, realizing that if I’d tried to deliver it, I probably would have tipped over in exhaustion.

  “Where’s the book?” I said through gritted teeth. My change of subject caught him off guard, and the priest used the time it took to rise to his feet to consider a reply.

  “It’s with one of my contacts. I sent it there for safekeeping. I wasn’t sure what happened after you went to the hospital, so I thought it was best if the book was kept hidden in case the creature survived the battle. I’m sure you agree that was a prudent idea? You’ve been unconscious for weeks, and we still don’t know what happened inside the hospital.” The priest wiped his face and backed away from me. His manner was solicitous, and he obviously was trying to play up the “frightened old man” angle, but I noticed that his hands were steady as he dabbed at the blood on his face.

  “Oh, don’t worry. The creature is dead, so you should be able to release Brian Boru’s journal,” I said casually while pulling out a chair and turning it around so that when I sat, the back of the chair provided an extra layer of protection.

  “That’s excellent news, my—” Father O. froze in midsentence as he realized fully what I’d said. He’d certainly never told me what the book really was, but in the last minutes before she’d died, caught in the teeth of her own machinations, Ena O’Brian, the leader of the coven of witches, had explained that as one of King Brian Boru’s descendants she could read and remember the words in his journal, using it to summon the alien puca into our reality. What she hadn’t told me was where she’d got the book from. That story had been related to me by one of the partners at her firm, OMG; the book had simply “appeared” during a study session. However, after slaying the puca, I’d gotten a glimpse of the truth that it had tried to wipe from their minds: the journal had been delivered by two men. One was a fairly nondescript guy in his early fifties. The other was standing in front of me.

  “So, I’ll ask you again: Are you proud of how you played me?” I said coldly before adding in a growl, “You lying sack of shit.” The priest’s eyes narrowed, and he dropped his act, rising, with an audible crackling of his back, to his full height. He had to be pushing seventy, but he still could have looked me in the eyes.

  “My son.” He put an ironic emphasis on that last word, in contrast to the warmth he’d used it with in the past. “I never lied to you. You simply heard what you wanted to hear. You showed up only when you needed me, and still I was here for you, but did you expect me to tell you everything, every detail of the past?” With these last words, he opened his hands and raised his shoulders in a shrug, as though he were the aggrieved party. I thought back to the night I had told Father O. the secret of my Dreamwatching, and a shiver crawled down my spine as I recalled that pa
rt of the conversation:

  “Father, don’t you find it odd that in all of London, in all of the world in fact, you should end up being stationed for your final years to a church less than a five-minute walk from me?”

  I thought he might decide not to answer this question, but instead his blue eyes twinkled as he replied with a dismissive wave of his hand, “Yes, Julian, isn’t that a coincidence?”

  At the time, in desperation, I’d allowed that statement to translate into realms of mysticism, imagining a higher power or intelligence behind the unlikely happenstance. Of course there had been something guiding the coincidence, but in the cold light of day it was clear that the power behind the scenes had been all too human. My cheeks colored in shame. How could I have been so stupid as to think even for an instant that Father O. had only been involved through serendipity? I tried to assuage my pride with the minor consideration that I’d been distracted by a business deal gone wrong, monsters trying to kill me, and the loss of my wife.

  “You knew. You knew about my powers, and you were watching me.” As I spat the accusation out, I could see satisfaction flicker across the Jesuit’s face before it regained a look of aggrieved concern. I felt the situation slipping out of my control, so I decided to go back on the offensive; if there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s being offensive. “How long had you been watching me? Did you bring the book to the girls before or after you started spying on me?” The old man didn’t have a very good poker face, and the furious twitching that started in his left eye made it obvious that he was thrown off by the second part of my question.

  “Like I said, you played me, Father O. You played me like a pair of bongos at a frat party”—he wrinkled his nose at the metaphor—“and maybe you think that you won your game. What you don’t know is that I cheated. I know what you and your friend did; I saw you bring the book and destroy those poor girls. Everything that came after is your fault, and you’re going to pay for it,” I stated in an even voice, but blood pounded in my temples, and my head swam from the pressure as anger mixed with fatigue to leave me feeling almost drunk. “I want answers.”