Chapter Ten
~A Watcher~
Laura felt exhilarated. She’d spent the last few hours exploring this world together with Logan. Reality really was mutable here, and she couldn’t believe the things they could do.
What stood out most to her was that you could go anywhere. Really anywhere. You had to know your spot to get to it, though, which meant you have to have been there in real life. Unfortunately for Laura, she hadn’t been much further than the border of the town where she grew up. Fortunately, Logan had.
“Ready?” he asked after explaining how traveling would work. She nodded, and took his hand. Instantly, everything around her started streaking in one direction. Landscapes raced by, towns and cities and mountains and highways and rivers and fields, all flashing by her in the blink of an eye. It didn’t feel like she was moving – there was no wind in her face, no resistance from the air like when you put your hand out the window of a speeding car. But everything around her changed, rushing by.
She couldn’t do it by herself, yet, which was why she needed to take Logan’s hand. It was the only way he could bring her along where he went. Finally they stopped, and Laura found herself atop a lush green hill, where wild flowers and grasses grew as far as the eye could see. The sun shone brightly above them, radiating heat onto Laura’s body.
She laughed and twirled around, spreading her hands to feel the flora brush against them. Logan laughed too, and sped down the hill, taunting Laura to follow. She ran after him, right through the tall grass and colorful flowers. Her toe caught and she tripped, but the soft dirt cushioned her fall, and she didn’t even bother to get up as she rolled down the hill laughing and giggling.
At the bottom, Logan was waiting. She landed right at his feet, and another fit of giggles overtook her. He pulled her up, laughing alongside her.
“This is wonderful!” she exclaimed for what must have been the tenth time thus far. “Everything about this place! The feeling of freedom, the absolute control, the endless possibilities… it’s wonderful!”
“Glad you like it,” Logan smiled.
“Although I’ve been wondering,” Laura added, “is it possible to bring things into this world?”
“Like what?”
“Objects, maybe?”
“You have to know it very well. Like…” he thought for a moment, and Laura jumped as his Volvo fell down behind her.
“Your car?” she said, raising an eyebrow.
He spread his hands defensively and smiled. “I’ve been working on it for a very long time. You try.”
“On what?” Laura asked.
“Something simple, at first. A purse maybe. It’s just like anything else here, you have to picture it down to its finest details.”
“Hmm. Ok.” Laura thought for a second, and then a heavy book appeared in her hands.
“A book?” This time, Logan rose an eyebrow.
“No, not just any book,” she said, and threw it to him. He caught it, and flipped it over in his hands. “Our math book,” he chuckled.
“That’s how all this started, after all.”
“That’s right,” Logan said.
Just then, Laura felt a shiver run down her spine. She turned back, wondering what caused it. Logan caught her movement.
“What is it?” he asked.
“I thought I felt something,” she said slowly, then shook her head. “Never mind. It’s gone now.”
“Are you sure?”
“I think so, yes.”
“Ok,” Logan said. Then he extended his hand to her. “Want to see something really cool?”
“Of course,” Laura replied, and took it.
Again, landscapes raced by, streaking alongside Laura. And then they stopped, and Laura found herself standing with Logan before a beautiful lake. It was hidden deep in the crest of a mountain, the far side cradled by cliffs of ragged stone. The water was crystal clear, casting perfect reflections of the sun’s rays, and the shore contained only the smoothest blue-gray pebbles.
“I found this place once after walking for an entire day through the dream world,” Logan explained. “I come here sometimes to think.”
“I can see why,” Laura said. The air here felt even fresher than at the lake they began at. A bird sang in the distance, and the rustle of trees came from behind them. The only thing that foiled the illusion was the slight edge of fuzziness that lay upon all the items of this world.
Logan let go of her hand, and strolled up to the lake. He bent down to dangle his fingers in the water, then, picking out a round stone, got up and skipped it across the lake.
“Can you skip rocks, Laura?” he asked.
“Uh… no, not really,” she admitted.
“Come on over, then. I’ll teach you.” He smiled at her. “It’s easy, really.”
Laura walked to him, but as she got closer, that feeling of being watched returned. She glanced back, but, on seeing nothing, continued on. Logan tossed her a stone, and she stumbled catching it.
“Come on now, that’s the easy part,” he teased. Laura grinned at him devilishly, and chucked the rock as hard as she could into the lake. It fell lifelessly into the water without a single skip.
“Well, you sure have the strength for it,” Logan laughed, and threw another rock himself. His skipped five times before sinking. Then he came over to help.
For the next twenty minutes, Logan tried teaching Laura how to duplicate his feat – without much success. Still, they was having fun, and they both laughed at her attempts while playfully poking fun at one another. By the end of it, Laura’s arm was absolutely exhausted, and her shoulder kind of hurt, so she collapsed, defeated but laughing, onto the ground.
Right when she fell, that feeling of unseen eyes returned, stronger than ever before. This time, she was sure somebody was there. Just as Logan threw one last stone across the water, she looked back – and froze as she saw a man, dressed in all black, peek out from a faraway tree. Their eyes met for an instant, and then the man disappeared.
Suddenly Logan was at her side. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
“I just saw somebody.”
“What do you mean?” His tone was grave, and his face serious.
“At that tree, over there,” she pointed. “He disappeared right when I saw him.”
He relaxed visibly. “Sometimes people drift in here, coming to places they know,” he explained. “They only stay a moment, and then return to their regular dreams.”
“This man was looking right at me, though. I felt his gaze.”
“What?” His eyes became laser sharp, and he focused on her. “Are you sure?”
“Yes. I felt it before, too, but I didn’t think anything of it.”
“This man,” Logan said, “what did he look like?”
“I didn’t get a very good look at him,” Laura admitted. “And he was far away. But he had a black coat on, and a black hat. Everything about him was black. Except his skin, it was pale white, much like… yours.” Laura gulped the words.
“What?” Logan demanded. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Shit.” Logan got up, looking over his shoulder, looking all around. “Take my hand,” he said to her urgently.
“Why?”
“We need to leave. Now.”
Laura reached up to grasp his hand. On contact, a blast of cold jolted through her bones, and everything around her turned dark. She felt herself fading away, felt her body begin to disintegrate as the world around her started to crumble. The only thing she was sure of was Logan’s hand, gripping her own tightly. Then she felt heat, the flare of molten-hot rock churning down a river of lava, and she started to fall. Direction became meaningless, and she fell for infinity, for eons, in no direction and in them all, with no sense of time or space to guide her. She fell through layers of heat and layers of cold, and the frost from all the world’s glacier’s froze her body as the heat of a thousand suns coursed through her veins. She fell… and was ripped back into her body, on top of Logan’s gray Volvo in front of the lake.
Her eyes popped open. A light rain had begun to fall while they were asleep, and her clothing was slightly damp. She felt Logan’s hard body at her side, and looked up. He was blinking, coming to as she had. He looked down, and his eyes met hers momentarily. Then he pushed her aside and leapt off the car. He started to pace back and forth in front of her, and he looked troubled.
“Logan, what’s wrong?” Laura worriedly. “What happened back there?”
Logan looked at her, but didn’t answer. He kept pacing back and forth in front of her.
“Logan, tell me what’s going on!” Laura demanded.
“I’m not supposed to bring you there,” he said, half to himself. Then he spoke louder, “Get in the car.”
Precipitating his own words, he had unlocked the door and climbed in before Laura even had a chance to get off the hood. She opened the door and sat inside, and looked at Logan. He looked worried, uncertain, troubled, and conflicted all in one. Without speaking, he started the engine, and backed the car up in reverse.
“Where are we going?” Laura asked.
“I need to get you home.”
“Why? Logan, what’s going on?”
“I need time to think,” he answered. He turned the car around, and sped down the dirt road, away from the lake.
“Does it have to do with that man I saw?” Laura asked.
“Maybe,” he said quietly. “I’m not sure.”
“Logan, look at me!” Laura practically screamed the words. His behavior had her on edge, and she wasn’t getting any answers. He hit the brakes hard, causing her to fly forward and hit the dashboard. She grunted on impact. “Why did you do that?” she demanded angrily.
“You told me to look at you.” Logan turned his head to stare right at her.
“I didn’t mean it literally,” Laura said under her breath, but returned his stare. “Logan, you have to tell me. Is this… any of this… dangerous?”
“I’m not sure.” He sighed. “I can’t say.”
“Well, what can you say?” she said furiously. “You brought me into this, and if there’s any danger, I need to know!”
“What can I say?” he repeated. “Not much. Not much that would make sense to you. But… this might. There are others… like me. My kind. They’re dream walkers. Where we just went, Laura, that was your dream. To access it, I needed your touch. To bring you into it. Everybody has their own dreams. Most occur in the safety of their own imagination, but from time to time, people access the same place we went to. That place is the same for everyone, and yet everyone has their own version of it. I…” he paused, struggling, “… I know I’m not making much sense. Think of… of a movie DVD. If you have a movie on a disk, and I have another disk of the same movie, the two disks exist as separate objects. But if you put them into a player, they’ll both output the same thing. They’ll play the same movie. But one of the disks is mine, and the other is yours. It’s the same thing with the dream world. A person can’t access another person’s dream world like we just did… not consciously, anyway, and not at all most of the time.
“But there are some… that can transcend that limitation. They don’t need the touch. I wouldn’t think they’d notice, if we went into your dreams. But they jump from people’s to people’s dreams like a frog jumps from lily to lily over a pond. In between the dreams… an abyss exists. We touched it briefly when we left. But that’s the only time we reach that abyss. To go to it consciously, to jump from dream to dream…” he shivered. “To go to it consciously means you might lose yourself forever. But the dream walkers can do that.”
“Wait,” Laura said, “are you telling me that somebody else was in my dream?”
“Maybe. I can’t be sure. But I need time to think. I don’t know what attracted his attention. I was sure that our trip was going to be inconspicuous. I was sure, dammit!” Then he started the car again, and continued driving forward. But something he said stuck out in Laura’s mind.
“What did you mean,” she asked, “when you said ‘your kind’?”
“Others like me,” he replied absently. Then he looked at her. “Where do you live? I need to get you home.”
She told him the address. Before she knew it, they were on the right road, heading towards her house. The drive was spent in silence; every time Laura looked over at Logan, he appeared to be even more concentrated on the road ahead. Soon enough, he pulled up in front of her house. She got out of the car, and told him thank you for the drive. As he drove off, she realized something: she didn’t give him any directions to her home.