The Devil's Dreamcatcher (23 page)

Mitchell's swearing has now gone up to a whole different level. I think he's actually making new words up. Either that or he's fluent in Swedish.

“You went to see your dead mother?” I say faintly to Angela. “You were supposed to be getting food and sleeping bags.”

“But we did get food, M,” replies Elinor. She slips a bag off her
shoulder and walks to Mitchell and Alfarin, who dive straight into it. The smell of bacon wafts over to me.

Mitchell and Alfarin stop swearing and start stuffing their faces with crusty round rolls of white bread, stacked high with sausages and bacon.

But Owen doesn't eat, which means he can carry on where Mitchell and Alfarin left off.

“What have you done, Angela?” he cries. “We were expressly told not to have anything to do with anyone back in the land of the living.”

“But my mother isn't living, Owen,” replies Angela, placing her hands on her hips, “and so I haven't broken any rules and laws by seeing her, have I? And before you start shouting and pouting, you should know that I've told her all about our mission, and she and Granny are very proud of us.”

I'm going to throw up. I want to put my head between my knees, but I'm distracted by Alfarin, who's performing the Heimlich on Mitchell because he's choking—an uncomfortable situation even when you don't have to breathe.

“There's . . . a . . . granny?” gasps Mitchell as Alfarin continues to shake him up and down.

“Ye are taking this as well as I expected,” mutters Johnny sarcastically. “I knew Jeanne would do her head in, but I thought ye all would see what Angela and our Elinor are trying to do.”

“Ye aren't angry with us, are ye, M?” asks Elinor, taking my hand. “We were just trying to help.”

“But we don't need help, Elinor. And certainly not from . . . not from . . .”

“Nonsense, of course you do,” says Angela's mother. “You poor devils can't even eat without choking.”

She pushes Alfarin away from Mitchell and wraps her arms around Mitchell's chest, and with her hands clasped in a tight ball, she expels half a sausage from his open mouth.

“Chew your food properly, young man,” she says, slapping him on the back for good measure. “You may be dead, but that's no excuse for laziness and poor manners.”

“Angela,” implores Owen. “Please explain.”

“I don't mean to be nasty,” says Angela crossly, “but not one of you has given the end of this mission any real thought, have you? Owen and Jeanne, the two of you can only see the fight to get the Dreamcatcher back. Mitchell and Alfarin can't see past their next meal, and Medusa, I think you're truly awesome, I really do, but you have to deal with that awful Unspeakable, as well as the Skin-Walkers. . . .”

“What about me?” asks Johnny.

“Johnny, sweetie, you're so out of your depth here I can't understand for the death of me why you were even asked to come along,” replies Angela. “The fact is, only Elinor and I have picked up on something that you all seem to have forgotten.”

“Which is what?” I ask, not bothering to hide how pissed off I am at Angela for doing something so serious behind my back. If there was one angel I thought I might be able to trust, it was her. But she's just another Patty Lloyd: pretty, flirty and dumb as shit.

“Medusa, what happens to the Dreamcatcher once we have him back?” replies Angela. “Say we're successful, and the Skin-Walkers take that disgusting monster back into the circles of Hell. What then? The Dreamcatcher is a little boy. He'll need someone to care for him, because he can't be taken back Down There, and I don't think he'll be safe if we take him with us.”

“B-but . . .” stammers Owen.

“But nothing, Owen. We all exist in the Afterlife. The Dreamcatcher won't be safe. Heaven and Down There won't be safe if he's as dangerous as we think. He'll need supporting, and nurturing. He needs normal. A dead kind of normal.”

Angela's mother smiles at me, and at that moment I understand exactly what they've done, and more importantly, why.

And it breaks me.

I've been able to manipulate the fear and rage in our two teams, albeit for the greater good. I've even fooled myself into thinking we can change time and stop the need for a child Dreamcatcher at all, but Angela's right, I hadn't really given a second thought to what we
would actually do with that little boy once we had him. It's not as if we could take him back to his living parents; he's dead. And he's too young to be left to fend for himself.

It came so naturally to Elinor and Angela. So why not me? What's wrong with me? Am I really that hard?

“Medusa?” asks Owen. “What are they talking about?”

“The Dreamcatcher, Owen,” I whisper. “Didn't you hear a word she said? While I've been plotting, and you've all been training to control your immolation, Elinor and Angela were the only ones who gave any thought to what we do with the little boy once we've rescued him.”

“Which is what?”

“I will care for him,” replies Angela's mom. “I can't have my Angela back, but I can do the next-best thing and protect that little boy.”

“But you're dead!” yells Mitchell. “And sorry, Angela, but how did your mom and granny die and get to stay on earth in the first place? The last time I checked, the HalfWay House didn't have an exit.”

“You must be Mitchell,” replies Angela's mom. “Process of elimination, because that handsome young man next to you is surely Prince Alfarin?” She checks with Elinor that she got it right, and Elinor nods.

“Alfarin, son of Hlif, son of Dobin” replies Alfarin, going down on bended knee. “It is an honor to meet the lady mother of such a graceful, beautiful angel. From this day forth, my axe—”

“
Shut up, Alfarin,
” echoes a chorus of voices, mine included.

“I could use an axe like that to cut down firewood in the winter, Alfarin,” says Angela's mom. “I'm afraid I tend to rot the wooden handles of mine a little too often.”

“Sorry, but you didn't answer Mitchell's question,” I say, interrupting what is clearly about to become a two-way rapture about weapons. “Dead people go to Hell, or Up There. I've never heard of dead people being allowed to exist back in the land of the living.”

“That's because it isn't allowed, Medusa,” replies Angela's mom.
“There are a few of us, here in secret. It's a nomadic existence, for we would draw too much attention to ourselves eventually if we stayed in any one place for too long. You must be aware of the traces you are all leaving back in the land of the living already.”

Like flowers turning to gray ash. I nod.

“But how?” asks Mitchell. “Everyone who dies is processed at the HalfWay House. I've seen babies ripped from mothers' arms. I've heard the screams as new devils are dragged into Hell. . . .”

Mitchell's voice fades away in my head and is replaced by a faint ghostly echo of a young mother screaming to keep her baby. . . . I've heard those screams, too, in my nightmares. It's not just my own cries that haunt me.

“Oh, Mitchell!” exclaims Angela's mother. “Human beings are so conditioned and accustomed to doing what they are told that even in death, they follow each other like sheep. When you arrived at the HalfWay House, what was the first thing you all did?”

“But with esteem and respect, Angela's lady mother,” asks Alfarin, “what does that have to do with how you stayed here?”

“What did you all do when you arrived at the HalfWay House?” repeats Mrs. Jackson patiently.

“I went where everyone else was going,” replies Johnny. “When I died, the HalfWay House was a grand palace, like Versailles, they said. I thought they would look after me.”

“It wasn't like that when I died,” replies Mitchell. “It was the same glass-fronted building it is now. I went inside because some dude was about to kick my ass. Everyone kept asking me how I died, and I was looking for a way out. But before I knew it, my photograph was being taken and I was told I was going to Hell. I just thought they were insulting me. I didn't have time to process that I was dead.”

“And you, Prince Alfarin?” asks Angela's mother.

“I went searching for Valhalla,” says Alfarin proudly, puffing out his enormous chest. “They told me it was in Hell, so there I went to be reunited with my brethren. I ran into the mouth of Hell before the Grim Reaper had finished speaking, and I have never regretted my haste.”

“What about you, Medusa?”

But suddenly I don't remember.

“M?”

I don't remember.

“Medusa, are you all right?”

“I don't . . . I don't remember.”

Owen coughs, but not because he needs to. He does it to get my attention, and he is successful.

“Why can't I remember?”

“Ye were probably traumatized, M,” says Elinor, slipping her arm around my shoulders. “Death isn't easy, unless ye are Alfarin.”

But it has nothing to do with trauma. I'm dead because I fell from the Golden Gate Bridge on December 2, 1967. I know the Grim Reapers got my name wrong and marked me down as a suicide, but I can't remember arriving at the HalfWay House.

I remember slipping. The horrible lurch in my stomach. I can still taste the fear, and when I sleep, I can still feel the wind whipping my skin. The cold rush. I couldn't breathe.

Then darkness and a split second of the most intense pain I have ever experienced. My brain, exploding into fragments within my skull.

And what then?

I can't remember being told I was going to Hell. All I can recall is seeing a cadaverous hand writing the word
Medusa
on a sheet of paper. I can't remember that first time waking up in an overcrowded dorm. I know I worked in the law office, and I remember the interview for the trainee patisserie chef position.

Paris, and fountains, and strawberries on my tongue. More ghostly images start to blur into one flickering gray mass in my shattered brain. I'm being haunted by a past I'm not even sure I own.

I'm going crazy. How can a person forget being told they're dead?

“I followed,” says Owen softly. “I followed men onto the field, and I followed them into the HalfWay House. I just followed.”

Mrs. Jackson takes my hand. It's neither hot nor cold. It's just pressure on my skin. A ghostly imprint.

“Well, I didn't follow. And neither did my mother before me,” she says. “Angela has probably told you that cancer has an unfortunate habit of attacking the women in our family. Because of that, I had time to plan and time to think. I've never been much of a follower, you see, Owen. Always striking out on my own, that was me. I thought if I lived my life differently, perhaps the cancer would leave me alone. Unfortunately, it doesn't discriminate. My mother—Angela's granny—found me again, just before it was my time. Because she was family, I could see her, but I was in so much pain, I thought I was hallucinating. She told me not to follow. Then I appeared to Angela just before her time to tell her the same thing, but she decided on her own path.”

“So you aren't dead?”

“Oh, I'm certainly dead, Mitchell. Indeed, I am deader than any of you. The traits of human existence that you are allowed to keep in your immortal domains do not work on me. I do not sleep, I do not eat. I feel no pain, which at first was a blessing, but I feel no empathy, either. I am a true ghost haunting the landscape of the earth. Others can see you, and you are all surrounded by a thin nimbus of light. The living see me and I am white vapor. The living would not fear you, even if they thought you were different. But they fear me and those like me.”

“But you're holding my hand,” I whisper. “You can't hold my hand if you're vapor. And you do have empathy in your soul, because you want to look after the Dreamcatcher.”

“I'm holding your hand, Medusa, because that is what I know I should do, not because I want to. And I'm corporeal to all of you, choking devils included, because we are all dead.”

“So you don't actually
want
to look after that little boy?” I ask. “Then why would we give him to you?”

“What choice do you have?” replies Mrs. Jackson. “The ghosts upon the earth are aware of the tradition of The Devil's
Dreamcatcher. We see and hear what happens to those who have served their usefulness. They are returned here, and the destructive force of their little bodies is used to terrible effect by The Devil and his servants, the Reapers. Earthquakes, hurricanes . . . they are the remnants of each Dreamcatcher—”

“My brother is next on the list,” interrupts Mitchell. I tense up, waiting for his body to immolate, but although I can smell burning, Mitchell doesn't burst into flames. I think he realizes that what he has to say is too important now.

“Your brother?”

“Septimus—he's the top servant in Hell—he told me my little brother is next on the list. Septimus wants the Dreamcatcher taken back to Hell, and if we do that, then M.J.—my brother—will probably be too old to be picked when the time comes again. But Medusa has a better plan. We're going to stop The Devil from ever needing a child Dreamcatcher.”

“How?” asks Mrs. Jackson, her eyes widening.

“I think we'd all like to know that,” says Owen.

“I have a plan,” I reply. “That's all you need to know for now.”

And I do. But I can't tell the others. They'll only try to stop me. Even Mitchell, with everything he has at stake. The Devil's dreams can't be worse than my nightmares, and I've been existing with those for a long, long time.

Which is why, when we get back to Hell, I'm going to offer myself to The Devil as his next Dreamcatcher.

Mrs. Jackson offers us the use of her home while we're training; she says we can stay as long as we like. This isn't a field trip, though, so we remain where we are.