By Robin D. Laws A tale of Dreamscape Part of Cathedral of Thorns
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A dark SUV whooshing down the wet mountain road gave the men in the white jumpsuits temporary pause. Hoping the Sweeper's waking minions hadn't seen her yet, Kendra took the opportunity to slip through the motel room door. Feigning nonchalance, she walked with slow purpose toward the motel's outdoor ice machine, as if she'd stepped out from another of the rooms. The urge to look back and check where they were was surprisingly powerful, but she kept herself together. Only when she reached the motel office did she examine the reflection in its glass doors to pinpoint the location of her presumed pursuers. She hadn't fooled them at all; they were making a beeline toward her. Kendra ducked into the office, hoping there'd be a staff member on duty behind the counter.
Back in 10 minutes, read a handmade sign taped to the front desk. Kendra looked back. The Sweeper's waking minions were headed for the front entrance. A red exit sign hung over a metal door on the other side of the motel's small and dingy lobby. She ran for it, yanked it open, and rushed through.
The door opened into a disused adjunct of the main parking lot. A Dumpster stood to her left; on the right were a pair of beat-up compact cars and a van from a cleaning supply company. Where the dark, slick pavement ended, the area's omnipresent pine forest began. Hearing voices on the other side of the door, Kendra scanned the ground for a heavy object. One of the concrete stops at the end of a nearby parking spot had cracked and crumbled, leaving a foot-long chunk of cement lying loose and severed. Kendra picked it up and dropped it in flush against the doorway, then sprinted for the woods. The block would impede them only for a few minutes, tops, but it would buy her enough time to get into the forest. If they didn't see her entry point, maybe they wouldn't be able to find her as she ran.
Lights from the motel parking lot illuminated the woods for the first hundred yards or so. After that, her surroundings grew sharply darker, the trees separated from one another only by the silvery, reflective glow of predawn.
Kendra's feet were bare; she wore only the T-shirt and bicycle shorts she'd slept in. With every step, a rock or twig pressed sharply into the soles of her feet. Branches whipped into her, buffeting her face and scraping against exposed flesh. The forest floor, uneven and hilly, would have been a tough hike even if she were properly outfitted. Patches of slippery moss lurked under its layer of dropped conifer needles; she hit one of them and slid into the trunk of a young pine. Kendra adjusted at the last minute, so that she didn't hit it face-first. Instead, she stopped her momentum with her shoulder.
A dull, localized pain thudded out from it, radiating up her neck and through her back. This she didn't need. Kendra's muscles were already knotted and aching from the punches she'd taken from Virgil, back in the motel room. Gasping, leaning on her knees, she took advantage of her unwanted pause to listen for the sounds of pursuit. Boots crashed through foliage. Low voices angrily conferred.
Kendra resumed her sprint.
Running through a real forest wasn't like traveling through the dreamscape. Kendra realized she'd already become accustomed to its vague, yielding terrain and rapid spatial jumps, not to mention the option of soaring freely through the air. The thought triggered a deep unease; it wasn't right, that she should already feel more at home in the unreal land of Nod than with the hard and solid realities of waking life.
Her lungs burned. Judging by the stomping and thrashing behind her, the Sweeper's goon squad was steadily narrowing the gap. Light-headed and ready to pass out, Kendra pushed herself onward.
A negotiating position, that's what she'd need. There was a way to talk herself out of this, if only she could determine what else they wanted, other than to kill her or take her prisoner or whatever it was they planned to --
The ground gave way beneath her. She'd run to the edge of a steep slope, lost her balance, and toppled down it. The world slowed to a series of calm, detached freeze-frames as she bounced and rolled. As rocks, branches, and patches of moist, loamy dirt impacted periodically against her limbs and torso, she thought to herself, as soon as I can feel this, it's going to freakin' hurt.
She came to a stop in the shadow of a sheet-metal hut, patches of its tin surface visible through layers of erratically applied camouflage paint.
"She's down!" called one of her pursuers. Still stunned, Kendra raised her heavy head to see how many of them were still after her. It was all four of them, their white outfits marked glaringly against the forest's dark branches.
What was it she was going to negotiate with them, again?
They reached the bottom of the slope, stopped to cluster together, then came toward her.
A shotgun blast tore through the air. The jumpsuited men leapt back as it echoed against the forest's slopes and gullies.
A man in camo gear stepped across Kendra's semiprone body, aiming the gun for a second volley. "You monkeys scatter! This forest's still mine, by right of arms!"
The Sweeper's men were already scattering, wisely choosing to break along the level ground to the east and west rather than climb the slope, where their bleached outfits would make them easy targets. Nonetheless, Kendra's savior fired a pair of warning shots, one in each relevant direction. She cowered at his feet, clutching her ears.
Removing wax plugs from his own ear canals, he reached his right hand out to pull her up. "Sorry about that. Assume you understand, given the circumstances."
Kendra recognized him. It was the survivalist she'd seen on her way into the park, giving crazy-seeming sound bites to a news correspondent by the roadside. He had a Hispanic name if she remembered right.
"Cesar Flores," he said, pointing to himself. Then he spelled it out, like he'd done for the reporter. "You better tell me who you are. Answer truthfully, but you better not be federal government."
"Hey, I'm a defense attorney. I'm up in the government's grille all the time."
Cesar's features clouded. His hand drifted toward the trigger of his gun. "You're telling me you're a lawyer?"
"Defense lawyer, defense lawyer."
He ushered her into his redoubt anyway. The tin shack covered a concrete bunker. Kendra's head dizzily spun as she worked her way down a metal ladder to the hideout below. Shelves lined three walls of his main chamber, stacked with bottled water and tins of cat food. Cesar blushed as she surveyed the rows of chicken-, liver-, and beef-flavored Kitty Vittles.
"It's the one food supply they don't tamper with. Anything for human consumption, you don't know what mind-altering substances they're putting in it. So explain to me what you did to piss off the Tribulation Foresters."
Flores's statement confirmed her assumption: The Tribulation Foresters were the dayside portion of the Sweeper's operation.
"You don't seem too fond of them, either."
"They're freaking interlopers, man. I was here first. This is supposed to be place of shelter, and they're painting a fat bomb target on it. You don't think Governor Rimkus will send this place up in flames? He will in a second. He's insaner than any of us. He's got the government authority bug in him." Cesar seemed ready to continue, then pulled himself back. "But I was asking you a question. What's their beef with you?"
"I can't tell you," said Kendra. "Not that I don't want to, but you'd never believe me."
"You'd be surprised, ma'am, at what Cesar Flores is ready to believe."
A large cot sat in the middle of the main chamber, near his computer and television set-up. In a smaller room, she saw a second, smaller bed. "I just need to sleep. I'll explain later."
"You need to get them scrapes taken care of, before they get infected." Cesar unfolded his first aid kit and got to work carefully cleaning her injuries. "I'm still waiting, lady. I put myself on the line standing up for you. Least you can tell me is how you ran afoul of them scumbags."
"Okay, but I warned you, it's crazy." She told him the whole story, leaving out only the most outlandish details of the dreamscape and its denizens. Because memory of dream events remained elusive, parts of the narrative made less sense than she'd hoped. Still, Cesar listened with patient attention.
"That explains a lot," he said, when she was finished. "I think maybe I seen some of them creatures in my dreams, too. Yeah, yeah. That explains everything. Those Tribulation sons of . . . I thought I'd done everything to shut them out, and here they are, creeping in through my dreams."
"Listen, Cesar. I need your help. The person I relied on turned out to be one of them. I've nobody to turn to. The only way to win is for me to go into the dreamscape and fight from there. I need you to stand guard while I sleep. Whatever you have to do, stop them from getting me."
Cesar grinned. He pointed to a satellite map of the area, marked with push-pins of various colors. "I got lots of ways to do that." In case she hadn't gotten the point, he mimicked an old-fashioned dynamite plunger and made an explosion noise. She tried not to wince.
It had been only hours since she'd last been awakened, but she was asleep nearly as soon as she laid her head on Cesar's musty pillow.
Once in dream, she remembered it all. She'd decided that she was ready. Kendra stood on the spot she'd been previously, on the crayon hills, beside Virgil's wrecked sports car. She rose into the air, flipping through surreal scenery pieces, editing her dream as she traveled. Weird vistas opened below her: a town of red plastic blocks, spears of snow rising from a molten glacier, an entire village of medieval peasants toiling on the back of a wooden pig. She rejected them all until she came to the one she wanted: the plain of ash, leading to the cathedral of thorns.
She touched down, skipping the long trek to the cathedral doors. Instead she placed herself inside the briar edifice.
Sibel, another of her betrayers, waited for her, hovering over a couch of vines and burdocks. Trapped in its branches was a dreamer, his face blocked by beams of shadow, which penetrated the cathedral like shafts of sunlight.
Sibel started, gathered her composure, and ran toward Kendra. "Thank goodness you're here," she cried. "Finally I can tell you what's really happening --"
Kendra swung her axe through Sibel's midsection, cutting her in two. Her perfect skin ripped open, spilling a cascade of insects, worms and spiders. Some flew away, buzzing toward Kendra's face before dispersing. Others crawled and writhed into the soil floor of the cathedral, leaving behind only Sibel's golden harem outfit and a wrinkled sheath of emptied epidermis.
Kendra called for her sister. The cathedral still held its prisoners, pierced by the barbed wooden scaffolds running up its interior walls. There were more of them now than ever. She tried to remember exactly where Emily had been before, but the cathedral offered few distinctive features she could use to orient herself.
The low, agonized moans of the dream prisoners abruptly quieted. A slow, ominous sweeping sound reverberated through the cavernous hall. The Sweeper was coming.
Kendra's chest constricted. Maybe she wasn't as ready as she'd thought.
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