Dream Walker (13 page)

She started to give him directions to her house, but thought better of it. “You know, could you just take me back to my car? I can drive myself. I’m feeling better now.” He could think what he wanted about her, but she wasn’t about to continue playing the incapable, damsel in distress.

“No problem,” he readily agreed.

A-ha!
It was just as she suspected—he
was
eager to be rid of her. Although he drove in a more civilized manner back to the facility, the engine was too loud to talk. Aislen glanced over at him a couple of times, but he appeared to be lost in thought and uninterested in trying to converse with her either. When he pulled into the parking lot of the facility, he turned off the engine and he looked over at her.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” he asked, with the sincere countenance that she was beginning to believe was nothing but a great performance.

“I’m all right,” she replied in a clipped tone.

“You know, Aislen. After doing what I have been doing for the last couple of years, you kind of get good at reading people. And I can kinda tell—you
aren’t
all right.”

Just freakin’ great. Not only can he tell I am a nut job, he’s going to call me one now.
She bit back a withering retort and looked down at her hands.

“I think we have gotten to know each other pretty well over the past few months, and I would hope you know by now, that if you need to talk about anything, I’m a damn good listener.”

“You know, it’s been a really strange and stressful day for me and I really just want to be alone for a while and decompress.” And scream. She really wanted to scream. And cry. She really,
really
wanted to cry.

“Okay. I understand.”

She reached for the door handle to let herself out. “I am sorry about everything today.”

“And like I said earlier, you don’t have anything to be sorry about.”

She sighed. She disagreed, but wasn’t in the mood to argue about it. She got out of the car.

“Hey, Aislen,” he stopped her. “You know, I am the one who should apologize. You were under my supervision today and I was obligated to make sure you were all right. I shouldn’t have put you through that.”

“Obligated?” She spit the word back at him. She didn’t know why, but it made her angry. Of course, he felt
obligated
and responsible for her. She was his subordinate. They weren’t equals. They weren’t really friends.

“I get it. No worries,” she said, sounding angry. She slammed his car door and stormed across the lot to her car. She fumbled with her keys, eyes blurry with frustration and unshed tears. She managed to unlock the door, get inside, and pull the door shut. The windows immediately fogged over with condensation. She glanced into the rearview mirror. She could see the shadowy figure of Troy through the haze of the back windshield. He had gotten out of his car and was watching her. She needed to get away—the faster the better.

She started the car, floored the gas pedal, and sped off, leaving Troy standing in a sputter of exhaust. It was not as impressive an exit as the Mustang, but it felt good making the tires squeal, slamming on the breaks, whipping around the corner, and making something else her bitch for a change.

She drove down the road in the completely opposite direction of home. The last place she wanted to be was home. She didn’t want to have to face her mom or answer her questions about her day and have to lie, yet again. She knew exactly where she wanted to be.

Driving fast and furious, cutting in and out of traffic, Aislen made her way to Route 108 and drove it out of town. As businesses grew sparse, the landscape was taken over by dormant orchards and unplowed fields. Just before she reached the river, she pulled onto a private, dirt road and drove under a tall, vermilion torii gate almost completely shrouded by overgrown oleanders. The sign on the gate once read “Lotus Garden,” but time and weather had stripped it of both its “u” and its gilding. Aislen parked the car, put on her coat and walked down a steep hill into the garden grounds.

Gen had first brought her here one of their adventures when they first got their drivers’ licenses. It had been on a stifling June afternoon at the peak of the bloom. The main field had been green and lush, and the long, shallow ponds that surrounded it were overflowing with majestic blush and hot pink lotus blossoms. They spent hours admiring the flowers, peeking into the tranquil pools for frogs and turtles, and lounging under the shadowed side of the willow’s weeping branches, intoxicated by the exotic fragrance that permeated the air.

Being in the garden had filled Aislen with a deep peace that she had never experienced before. She felt free of every expectation, content to just be—rather than have to do or think. After that first visit, she came back often, when she found herself feeling overwrought with the pressures of school or needing to tune out the chatter of her own head.

Today, large, rotting lily pads blanketed the scummy water. Dry, brown stalks jutted upward from the bogs toward the stark, gray expanse of the sky, seed pods dangling at their tops, as if mourning the loss of the sun. Aislen walked across the burnished fawn of grass toward the river’s edge, past ornate, stone statuary and a golden, laughing Buddha that hid in the midst of a bamboo thicket. She walked up a grassy staircase toward a large, wooden water tank that had been converted into a shrine, opened one of the red doors, removed her shoes, and stepped into its pure stillness.

Crepuscular rays beamed down through window panes that encircled the top of the tank, alighting upon sacred objects that graced the room: a brass gong, prayer scrolls written in Chinese characters, and banners with woodcut drawings depicting mythological creatures. One in particular caught Aislen’s eye, a dancing chimera with an elephant’s trunk, a tiger’s body and paws, and the tail of a cow. It seemed to gaze directly at her with wide and benevolent eyes.

Although the gardens were soulless this afternoon, someone had been in the shrine earlier and had lit the candles on the altar in the middle of the room. Aislen took a stick of incense from a vase and went to the altar. She lit her incense from the candle, then placed it in a brass holder, watching as ethereal wisps of smoke spiraled up and fingered out into the waning ladders of sunlight and filled the room with the soothing scent of spice and wood.

Aislen sat down in the center of the temple on a straw mat, took a deep breath and, finally, let herself weep. Wracking sobs and streams of hot tears poured from her, releasing the fear, uncertainty, confusion, and frustration that had been gripping her all day. All that she knew herself to be—composed, independent, and confident—felt like an illusion. She didn’t know who she was. Yesterday, she knew herself. Today, she did not.

She wept for a long time, purging herself until she was completely spent and felt heavy with exhaustion. She laid down on the mat and rested her head on her arms. “I’ll just rest my head for a second,” she thought to herself.

The quiet of the shrine was absolute. It held her gently and the weariness that burdened her melted away. She began to feel light and let herself float, rising above herself, cradled in a blanket of serenity.

She allowed her mind to wander, staying clear of the mundane aspects of her life and the profane land mines of the day. She slipped into her imagination and saw herself driving in her car. She wasn’t in her hand-me-down Honda though. It was a shiny, new sports car, fast and smooth. She was speeding down slick, city streets of a town she did not know, trying to get somewhere. She felt a desperate need to get to her destination, but she couldn’t figure out exactly where that was. It wasn’t home, it wasn’t school, it wasn’t work, but it was someplace very important. She whipped through the asphalt grid, but every time she came to an intersection that felt familiar, there was a roadblock, signs and barricades denying her access down that avenue. She kept having to turn around and drive another direction, only to be met again with an obstacle: an enormous sink hole in the middle of one street, a decrepit, old lady crossing another in infinitesimal increments. She made U-turns and detours, until she finally came to one, open junction. There were three roads she could take; she could turn left, right, or go straight, but she didn’t know which one led to where she needed to go.

She sat in the car contemplating each direction. Each way looked exactly the same. She was about ready to play eeny-meeny-miny-mo, when she noticed a homeless man standing on the corner. He was watching her intently, holding a cardboard sign with “The Father Knows The Way” scrawled across it in black Sharpie.

Religious freak.
She shook her head and looked down each street again, then looked back toward the homeless man. She jumped. No longer standing across the street, he was now standing right at her passenger window peeking over another handheld sign that read, “Can I wash your windshield for you?”

She mouthed to him “No, thank you.” But the man paid no attention and set about washing her windows that were perfectly spotless and didn’t need cleaning.

She rolled down her window, stuck her head out, and shouted at him, “Sir, no! No, thank you...really...the windows are fine. Sir, please...it’s already clean.” But he kept squirting fluid on her windshield and rubbing it with a filthy cloth. Soon the window was completely smeared with a grimy film and she could no longer see through it at all. The man came to her open window and reached his palm in to her, waiting for his pay.

“No,” she yelled at him. “I didn’t need my window cleaned! And look, you’ve made it worse!” She looked at the mess of her windshield with dismay.

“You don’t know where you are going, anyway, Buttercup.”

She gasped and looked at the homeless man’s face peering at her through the open window. Underneath a veil of greasy hair, a pair of green and golden eyes gazed back at her intently. It was her father.

She reached down toward the button to roll the window back up, but the man reached inside and grabbed ahold of her hand in an intense but painless grip.

“Aislen,” he said tenderly. “Just give me one second. I know what you are going through. Believe me,
I know
. And you are going to need my help.”

“Leave me alone!” She screamed at him, her eyes clenched shut, refusing to look at him. “I never needed you before; I sure as hell don’t need you now!”

“Ah, but you do.” The soothing calm of his voice made her breath catch in her throat. “You have always needed me, but you need me now more than ever.” She tried tugging her hand away from his viselike grasp, but he held her steadily. “I understand why you feel the way you do, but I can’t explain anything to you in a way that you would understand right now. You wouldn’t believe it—especially coming from me. But listen to me, Aislen. You are waking up. You need help and protection, and I need you to let me in to help you.”

Aislen tried again to pull her arm away from him, but his strength was supernatural. Tears slipped out from her sealed lids and rolled down her face. She felt his other hand reach up and gently wiping one of them away.

“Aislen,” he whispered, “just do one thing for me...for
yourself
.” His voice was right next to her ear. “Ask your mother about the tea cups.” He released her hand.

Her eyes snapped open. She was laying on her back staring up at the roof of the shrine. Her face was soaking wet from crying. The sky beyond the windows had turned from heather to steel; the fading light barely illuminated a ceiling thick with cobwebs.

She jumped up, grabbed her shoes, and ran barefoot through the darkened garden to her car.

CHAPTER 10

Raze jumped up out of the chair without waiting for himself to reintegrate. He was full Beta now and he needed to break shit,
bad
. He wanted to tear the fucking place apart. He looked around for something to destroy, but everything in The Womb was too valuable. If he broke anything in here, it would compromise the work.

He stormed out of The Womb and back upstairs, scouring the house for any object he could smash to smithereens: a mirror, a window, a painting, a vase, his own fucking hand into a cement wall. He couldn’t find anything insignificant enough that he didn’t mind shattering. This only further enraged him. Since when did he give a shit about
anything
? He kicked a chair over. Very, fucking unsatisfying. He needed to get out.

“Away,” he told the house, setting the security system as he stalked out into the street. He walked for blocks trying to cool the fury. His blood was boiling, his brain on fire with a rage beyond anything he had experienced in years. Back in his youth, after years of suffering bullying and abuse at the hands of his peers, anger had been a problem, but once he gained control of his life, he gained control of his emotions.

He didn’t start out as a rageaholic. Quite the contrary, he’d started out an exuberant little boy, growing up in a typical, Midwestern family: the second son of an Air Force reconnaissance pilot and a stay-at-home military wife.

Raze had been a delight to his family, with an easy laugh and a stunning intellect. When most kids were just learning how to talk, he was already reading. While they were playing with their Duplos, he was taking apart all the radios in his house and separating the wires into color-coded piles. When he was supposed to be watching Sesame Street, he would stand precariously at the edge of his top bunk to balance the finial book on one of his elaborate house-of-books constructions.