The Dream Runner (7 page)

 

 

I
made it home
without incident and went directly to the briefcase to lock up Mia's dream. But the minute the bottle was in my hands a craving hit. Just a taste of some good old-fashioned violence, that was all I needed. One small hit. I wanted my old vengeance dream, the way it had been before it morphed into nightmare. Since that wasn't possible, maybe I could borrow a little of Mia's before I sent it back.

A stupid, dangerous idea. I'd seen dream junkies before, people so strung out on dreams they let the rest of their lives go to hell—jobs, kids, their health, everything. For the first time, standing there with that shining bottle in my hands and the emptiness in my soul, I wondered if I'd become one of them.

And then I decided I didn't care, one way or the other. I'd be careful. No sleeping pills to keep me under. And as soon as I woke up I'd return it to the Merchant with no harm done. As far as places to sleep, my old room was out of the question, and all of the downstairs felt dangerous and exposed, knowing Saundra and Marvin still had keys.

So I barricaded myself behind the locked door of what was once my father's bedroom. I opened Mia's bottle and settled myself flat on the floor in a good old Savasana pose, thinking my yoga teacher would approve. Even though I worried that I wouldn't be able to sleep I was truly exhausted, and before I knew it I was dreaming.

The man from Mia's wedding picture stands beside me, holding my hand. I feel safe with him there, sheltered and protected. He bends his head over mine and kisses the top of my head.

"Be brave, Mia Mine," he says, and his voice is all kindness and love.

My hand in his is cold, and trembles, but it is not him I fear. I am secure in his love and willing to take risks because he is with me. Lifting my other hand I knock on a door—just an ordinary door but it dwarfs me now. The whole world has gone bigger and brighter and I am so very small next to the gentle man beside me. His love is like a shield and I knock again.

The door opens and I look way up, into the face of an angry old man. Inside the dream I'm both Jesse and Mia, and I recognize him as father, hers, not mine. He is not happy to see me; there is no love in his eyes.

A familiar knot twists in my stomach.

"Brat," the man growls, and his hot breath curls around me like a sickness. "Go fetch me a switch."

But the man beside me squeezes my hand, and it makes me strong. I say in my child's voice, "No, sir. I've done nothing wrong. And you can't hurt me anymore." As I say the words I realize for the very first time that they are true.

"We'll see about that." The angry man reaches out to slap me, but the man at my side grasps his wrist and holds him back.

"You can't hurt her anymore. Did you have something you need to tell him, Mia?"

"I forgive you," I whisper, the words beautiful and smooth in my throat.

The dream shifts. I'm standing beside a coffin, and the man—the good man, the kind one, who loves me with everything in his heart—is lying inside. I am broken and unloved, the brat once again with no one to stand between me and my father's hate. But then his eyes open and look up at me, so tender, so wise.

"Nobody can undo my love, Mia Mine," he whispers. "Not even death."

I thought I woke up and corked the bottle then, but before I knew it I was back in my own nightmare. It seeped under the door of my father's room and wrapped its fingers around my heart. I squirmed against its hold, but it wouldn't let me go. Again I watched Will's truck explode, with him inside it. Again the scene morphed, body parts and blood showering down on top of me, so that I was drenched from head to toe.

When a great white shark materialized in the middle of the air, jaws wide open and obviously hungry, the absurdity bumped me into waking. Of course my cell phone was ringing its
Jaws
theme, and I had about two breaths to be grateful the dream was over before the Merchant yanked me into transition, without so much as a by-your-leave or even a warning. The bottle of Mia's dream came with me.

 

 

T
he room I found
myself in—walls, floor, and ceiling—was covered in a hodgepodge of mirrors in varying sizes and shapes, all showing people of every possible nationality and social status. Most of them were in motion: making love, dying, fighting, killing, sleeping, playing. I thought I caught a glimpse of the president but it vanished the minute I looked at it directly.

Not one of those mirrors reflected either the Merchant or me, or the strange room in which we stood.

My stomach rebelled against the constant play of light and color, the kaleidoscope of humanity that was an onslaught to my senses. I put a hand over my mouth and swallowed hard, afraid I was going to puke right onto one of the mirrors.

"Close your eyes, child," the Merchant said, and all at once I remembered my first—and last—visit to this place, and that my reaction had been the same. Funny how the memory had been a vacant spot in my brain until just this minute, but I didn't have the luxury to focus on that for very long.

Fear of the unknown was rising to panic so I risked a glimpse. The Merchant had the bottle in her hands. Removing the stopper, she sniffed at it, then touched it with her tongue.

"Tell me," she said. That was all. There was nothing dangerous in her tone. No anger. But that didn't mean I wasn't in a boatload of trouble.

Trying to explain about the Merchant is like talking color with a blind person, or describing snow to somebody who has never seen it. When I'm with her I see her clearly and feel her impact, and when I'm not, the memory slides away from me like water. She's the opposite of dreaming. In her presence I feel sort of wide-awake and solid; real, I guess, in the way the Velveteen Rabbit and Pinocchio were seeking. And when I leave her, I slide back into something … less. Whether she is old or young, I can't say. It's possible she dwells outside of time. Maybe she's not even a woman, because although I definitely remember her as female, I met another dream runner once who swore the Merchant was a man.

I was plenty scared, but there was no point lying, so I told her everything. It felt good to spew it all out—the grief and the anger and the hate, everything that led to the shattering of my own dream and the stupidity of opening Mia's. I kept my eyes closed, so as not to watch her face or the mirrors; it was easier that way.

When I was done there was a small silence.

"Well, that explains things," she said. I heard two metallic clicks and braced myself for whatever supernatural retaliation was about to come my way.

"Here you go."

I opened my eyes to see that she was holding out my briefcase, as though nothing had happened, as though I hadn't just confessed to dream addiction and moral bankruptcy and complete ineptitude.

"No."

It wasn't a thing you could say to her, but I said it anyway, hands behind my back like a six-year-old kid, shaking my head in denial.

"You agreed to a price which is not yet paid."

"But—"

She actually smiled. It felt like lying in a warm patch of sunlight and diving into icy cold water all at the same time. "I expect you to fix it, Jesse. Clean up after yourself. Surely your mother taught you that before she left."

And the very next minute I was back in my haunted house with a briefcase in my hand, knowing that the Merchant was right. I had a sudden and vivid memory of standing in the middle of this very kitchen as a child. A shattered bowl lay at my feet, milk and cereal splattered from here to kingdom come.

My mother stood there, looking down at me and the mess. No smile—my mother wasn't big on smiles—but no anger either. Sort of a resigned look. And then she shrugged. "Put the pieces in the trash, and wipe up the rest."

I whimpered something about it being hard, and she said, "It's your mess, Jesse. Not mine. Clean it up."

If I'd thought cleaning up a broken cereal bowl was difficult, my current mess belonged on an impossibility chart. I had no idea what to do about most of it, but the one thing I could do was check on Mia. Even then, my motives weren't pure as the driven snow. There was so much I didn't understand and I was looking for answers as much as I needed to know if she was okay. I also wanted to know why her dream was all about love and forgiveness, while the desire of my heart was apparently to run around blowing people up.

The Williamsville Sisters of Mercy hospital had been renovated during my absence. I parked in a far corner of the lot, under the shade of a decorative tree, and wrapped my mind around the changes. New entryway, with wide automatic sliding doors and outdoor benches. Landscaping with decorative bushes and flowers. It had been a dirty white, and was now faced with some sort of honey colored stone. It still looked like a hospital, though, and no matter what they might have done to the inside, there were miserable, dying people in there.

Mia was probably still in the ER, so I figured I'd bypass the main entrance and dive straight into the lion's den through the doors where the ambulances pulled up. Still, I paced outside for a good ten minutes, trying to get up my nerve.

I really hate hospitals. People go there because they are dying or in pain or sick, or visiting somebody who is. The whole place is a festering cesspool of misery. As for me, I spent some time in this ER the night my father died, and I wasn't in the mood to deal with flashbacks.

Give me long enough, and my own anxiety pisses me off. Anger gave me the momentum to draw a deep breath, and I catapulted myself into the building like all the bats of hell were behind me.

Reality is seldom as bad as what I imagine. Once inside I was okay, despite the inevitable hospital smell. It was a small ER, maybe seven bays. Only two of them were occupied, and the glass doors were closed, the curtains drawn, and the suffering occupants screened from my sight.

A couple of nurses sat behind a long desk, absorbed in computer work. The young guy in the white coat, presumably the doctor, was playing with his cell phone and glanced up when I came in. His face lit up with an ear splitting smile.

"Well, I'll be damned. Jesse Davison! What drags you back to the old homestead?"

I recognized him vaguely from high school, but couldn't come up with a name. So I smiled back, playing along. "Oh, you know. Moth to the flame."

He laughed like I was funny, which I definitely wasn't. "Know exactly what you mean. I intended to never come back—planned to work at a big hospital in Seattle or whatever. And yet here I am. What are you doing here?"

"I'm looking for Mia James."

He had the decency to sober then, stuffing his hands into the pockets of the white lab coat. We both knew that technically he shouldn't talk to me, but small town bonds tend to win out over the rules. "Mia's upstairs. She'll be all right—we got to her in time, though it was a bit of a near thing. Charcoal, stomach pump. She's miserable but alive. Sad business, that."

"Tragic." Long practice let me keep my tone neutral despite a sudden tightness in my throat.

"I didn't know you guys were friends…"

"It's a strange world," I said, cutting off that line of questioning. "Can I see her?"

"She's off my ward and out of my hands, but I can't imagine anybody will object. ICU. Second room." He put a hand on my shoulder, professional but with a little added warmth for unremembered old times' sake. "Seriously, she's physically fine. ICU is for close observation, just to make sure the pills don't depress her respirations too much. Protocol. If she was really bad we'd have shipped her south to Spokane."

"Thanks," I said, meaning it. I took the stairs. Elevators are a necessary evil sometimes, but this hospital was only two stories and it was easier to walk. The ICU desk was empty—I could hear the nurse talking behind one of the glass doors. There were only five rooms, and I slipped into Mia's without being challenged.

She was very pale, her hair a little mussed, her lips stained black from the charcoal. Her eyelids were heavy, but her smile when she saw me was luminous.

"Thank you," she said.

This was not at all what I'd been expecting, and I had no idea what to say. She must have seen the confusion on my face, because she added, "I see now. Thanks to the dream, it's all perfectly clear."

I saw absolutely nothing. "Well, but—if it's all so clear, then…" My voice trailed off into silence. When she didn't respond I said, bluntly, "Why kill yourself?"

For a moment her eyes widened and she looked confused, and then a flush stained her pale cheeks. "Oh, you mean the pills? I'm so embarrassed about that. I'd never kill myself—Jayden needs me. It's just that I wanted to stay in the dream and I kept waking up. I kept taking pills so I could go back to sleep. Nothing else seemed to matter."

Everything about that visit confused me. Maybe they'd medicated her with happy pills; maybe the effects of the OD were lingering. This seemed like a good hypothesis when her eyelids drifted shut. But when I made a move to leave, her eyes opened and she reached out and grabbed my hand.

"People kept telling me that I'd be free if I could forgive my father. I thought they were crazy. But it's true. As for Zack…" Her face crumpled and tears spilled down her cheeks. It was a minute before she could speak. "It's a clean grief. No regrets. Nothing undone. And the love—it's there forever, like he said."

I wanted to ask more, but at that moment a little boy clattered in, stopping dead when he saw the white bed and the IV machine, and his mother lying there. "Hey," she said, patting the bed beside her. "Come on up here."

"My shoes … I'm muddy."

"Forget the mud for once." She held out her arms and he was there in a heartbeat. The woman at the door, probably the sister, smiled at me politely but didn't ask questions, heading straight over to the bed herself. "Are you all right? I was worried sick—"

No goodbyes from me. I wasn't needed here.