D didn’t so much as raise an eyebrow at these weird proceedings, but surely his eyes caught the next eerie transformation to the girl’s flesh. A number of black lines burst out of her body
in different places, stretching out in all directions, sinking into the floor, walls, and ceiling. Yes, they sank in—everything in the mansion lost its shape, growing soft as watery paint and swallowing the vines that grew from the girl. But did D realize what it all meant? As he calmly looked over his shoulder, countless vines were sprouting back out of the walls and ceiling, intersecting and forming a fine lattice that, in the blink of a human eye, managed to completely contain the Hunter.
Tearing his boots free of the sticky floor, D went over to the closest lattice, put his left hand and both feet against the center of it, and then leaned his body against it. His brow crinkled ever so slightly. The lattice of thin vines had grown needle-like thorns that pierced his hands and feet.
“Oww . . . This is the real thing!”
Though the Hunter’s left hand may have overstated the case, it was clear the pain from this was real. The blood running out of him was real, too—the dream’s reality. In which case, a death in a dream might be a death in reality.
The walls began sliding closer, the ceiling lowered, and the floor slowly rose. As the walls reached the body of the fake Sybille still nailed to the wall, she melted away. In less than ten seconds, the three-dimensional jaws of death would make contact with D.
The dagger glittered in D’s right hand. The blade was brought down with all the power he possessed, and sparks shot out as it bounced off the surface of the vines.
“Looks like we’re cornered,” the Hunter’s left hand moaned almost nonchalantly.
“Why don’t you try swallowing the ceiling or one of the walls?” D asked softly. Although he sounded as if he was talking about having a cup of tea, this was, of course, a grave matter that could mean the difference between life and death.
“You’ve gotta be joking. You think you can just drink a dream? If I did that, then everything would just turn to dreams.”
“Okay, then,” the Hunter replied.
“What’ll you do?”
“What happens if you die in a dream?”
“I don’t know,” the left hand said. “And wouldn’t you know it, there’re no dead folks around to ask. Why don’t you try asking the one who made all this in the first place?
You-know-who
.”
Giving no reply to that, D reached into his coat with his right hand. “Dying in a dream? That would be an interesting experiment—but we can’t do that.” As he spoke, his right hand was thrust toward the sky. Something like a scrap of paper flew up into the air. It was D’s dagger that then pierced the scrap. And then both items were driven right into part of the floor that was rising like muddy water, though the substance rang like something solid as he stabbed into it.
Suddenly, everything went black.
D opened his eyes and found himself in the middle of the lane that ran to Sybille’s mansion. Waking from a dream within a dream, he’d returned to the first vision. Not saying a word, he looked down at his left hand. There wasn’t so much as a scratch on the back or the palm. As for his longsword, it remained in its sheath.
“Hey! What did you do?” the Hunter’s left hand asked in a surprised manner.
Bending over, D reached for something that glittered on the ground by his feet. This was the spot where he’d thrown his dagger, and what he’d picked up was that very same blade. To the tip of it was stuck a piece of brown cloth—the cloth that the assassin in the thicket had left behind. Because the twisted, melting mansion was some nightmare spawned by the assassin, a strike to the piece of cloth that linked it to Sybille’s dream was all that was needed to deal a lethal blow to that dream within a dream. Nevertheless, waking from one dream into another was quite strange.
“What’ll you do now?” the voice asked.
D began walking. In his dreams, just as in reality, the young man’s steady pace was always the same.
.
III
.
As soon as he awoke, Sheriff Krutz opened his eyes and realized he was lying on a bed in an examination room in the hospital’s internal medicine ward. When he tried to get up, something tugged strongly at his head. Bringing his hand up to it, he felt countless cords there. Some kind of pliable substance covered his scalp, and cords were stuck into it. It must’ve been the conduction paste they used when taking electroencephalograms.
Just as the lawman finished prying the whole mess off his head, the hospital director appeared in the doorway on the far side of the room. The speed with which the old man stepped aside belied his age. The gooey mass the sheriff had hurled slammed against the wall, cords and all. The only thing capable of marring his face any further at this point was retribution.
“I’d say our friendship has had it,” the sheriff said as he got off the bed.
“Would you just wait a minute?” Dr. Allen said, raising one hand.
Though the sheriff had been about to uncork some choice vocabulary, the thing that kept his tongue in check was the depth of the pain the old doctor wore on his face.
“After having done this to you, it’s only fair that I explain all the circumstances. The truth of the matter is, I don’t want to tell you, and I believe you’ll probably wish you’d never heard it, either. You see, I’ve come to a conclusion—a most unfortunate one.”
“Where is Sybille?” Sheriff Krutz asked, as if brushing aside everything the hospital director had just said. He felt around his waist to make sure that his gun was still strapped
to his belt.
“She’s this way. Come with me.”
“No more sneak attacks,” the director said in a sarcastic tone.
“What did you do to me?” the sheriff finally inquired after a few minutes of walking in silence.
“We checked your brainwaves for abnormalities—although
I doubt you’ll believe that. Come with me and you’ll find all your answers.”
The two of them got into a wooden elevator and descended into the basement.
“Hey—we’re in the emergency ward. Is Sybille’s condition more serious now?” the sheriff asked, his voice echoing down the cold corridor. Before it had entirely faded, the two of them were greeted by a white door. Tough-looking male nurses stood to either side of it. The sight of one of them carrying an old-fashioned rocket launcher and the other cradling a photon-beam rifle made the sheriff’s eyes glow with quiet determination. Whatever was going on with Sybille, it was extremely important.
“Was Basil okay?” the sheriff asked.
“Yep, he’s resting now.”
“Be sure to tell him I’m awful sorry about what I did.”
One step through the doorway, and the sheriff froze in his tracks. The sound of the closing door was quietly embraced by the thin darkness. The bed that held the soundly sleeping girl, the curtains, the machine by her pillow, and even the feeble darkness of human design were all very much like her old room.
“I just stopped it a little while ago,” the hospital director said, having noticed how the sheriff’s gaze fell on the machine. “She was connected to your brain, and it was working beautifully, but things got fouled up when we were so very close.”
“Don’t you have any nurses in here?” the sheriff asked.
“They’ve finished up. From here on out, no one comes into this room except you and me. And if anyone else tries it . . . Well, I suppose a doctor committing murder does pose a bit of an ethical dilemma.”
The sheriff eyed the elderly physician with something akin to anxiety. “And what reason would you have for going to that extreme to protect Sybille?”
The hospital director gestured to one of the chairs and seated himself in another. After he’d watched the sheriff seat himself in a chair with its back against the wall, Dr. Allen said, “I want to ask you the God’s honest truth.
Are you sure you really don’t know?
”
Feeling like he might be incinerated by the blazing spark in the other man’s eyes, the sheriff replied, “I don’t know. What are you talking about?”
The hospital director stared at him. The fierce light in his eyes had a hint of desolation to it that suited the perpetual twilight of the room. Suddenly, the active doctor looked like a tired old man covered with wrinkles and hung with heavy shadows, and Sheriff Krutz had trouble believing his eyes.
“Earlier, when I was bringing that Hunter back to town, I saw Sybille.” As the lawman spoke, he paid special attention to the director’s face to see what reaction it would register,
but the old physician didn’t react at all. Maybe he thought it
was a joke, maybe other matters were occupying his mind, or
just maybe—
Tracing back through his memories so he might describe Sybille better, the sheriff suddenly remembered something. Something he’d seen somewhere before. Her clothes . . . The white blouse and the skirt . . .
“The Sybille you saw was one I called forth.”
The impact of the director’s words jarred the sheriff back to his senses. The wind whistled in his ear. “What did you just say?”
“To be a bit more precise, I extracted Sybille’s image from her dream. Using this device here.”
“Then, does that mean you can use that thing to wake her up?”
The director said nothing.
“I guess that’s what I should expect from a machine from the Capital. That’s fantastic.”
“No,” Dr. Allen said as he looked down at the peacefully slumbering girl with a pained gaze, “this machine can’t awaken Sybille. The only thing that can do that is the Noble who left his fang marks on her throat. And another thing—this isn’t from the Capital.”
“It’s not? Well, who made it then?” Sheriff Krutz asked, suspiciously eyeing the complex arrangement of metal, crystals, and batteries.
“I did. And it took me just two hours.”
The sheriff was at a loss for words.
“Two hours before I ran into you and the Hunter outside her room, I had just gone back to my office after finishing my rounds. I thought I’d stare out the window for a while, have myself a smoke, straighten up my desk—when I found
this
there.”
The sheriff was still speechless.
“Well, not really
this
, but all its parts. They didn’t even have plans with them. But I took one look at them and knew how to put it together. Now, don’t you look at me that way,” he said to the sheriff. “I’m not crazy. You should know better than anyone I’m not that kind of person. I always tell the truth.”
“That’s true, but—”
“Come on, Krutz,” the hospital director said in a nostalgic tone. Very rarely did he call the sheriff by name, but what they were involved in now had made them compatriots, or, perhaps more accurately, co-conspirators. “It’s been a long thirty years. When this happened to Sybille, I was just thirty-five, a doctor still wet behind the ears. I tried so hard to save her, like I was fighting for my very life . . .”
A ghastly spark resided in the director’s eyes. It was as if something extremely precious had been taken from his soul, and that spark was a light shining out of the abyss left in its place.
“I can still recall how it was back then. You and Sybille walking home from school, holding hands. And Sybille making you garlands with flowers from the field out back. White and blue ones—maybe they were celaine blossoms? She put them around your neck, but you got all bashful and took them off like a big dope. On the other hand, that time Sybille fell into the river, you jumped in without a second thought—even though the current was wild enough to drag a man away in only knee-deep water. And when she went out grape picking with her friends and she was the only one who didn’t come back, you were the one who went off with a beat-up old rifle in hand to search for her all over a demon-filled forest. Isn’t that right?”
Sheriff Krutz nodded. His expression looked like he was staring at something right in front of him, but on the other side of an eternal gulf.
“Were Sybille’s hands warm? Were her lips soft the first time you kissed them? Was that golden hair of hers as soft as silk? Well, was it?” Dr. Allen asked. “And when she pressed her feverish cheek against your chest, didn’t she tell you it was like iron? And that she could hear the beating of your heart?”
“Probably.”
The tone of the old man’s voice suddenly dropped. “What if all of that was a lie?” he said.
For a brief while, the sheriff’s expression showed he was still lost in remembrance. And then, slowly studying the face of the elderly physician, he said, “What?!”
“I’ll tell you.” Gently resting his hand on Sybille’s forehead, the director muttered in a low voice, “I’ll tell you something you’re better off not hearing. Something you’re better off not knowing.”
.
When Sheriff Krutz got back to the station, D was lying down in the cell without bars.
“What happened here?” the sheriff asked, and Bates explained the situation. “As soon as Clements gets out of the hospital, lock him up,” the lawman ordered. “We’re gonna make an example of him. Give him two weeks. Now, get out there and patrol. I’m gonna ask our guest some questions.”
“Yes sir.” Wearing an expression that showed he didn’t completely understand, Bates stepped out of the office.
The sheriff turned around to face D. There was an incredulous look in his eyes as he inspected the shattered wall.
“Did you solve the mystery about Sybille?” D asked softly.
“Nope. Think you know the answer?”
“How long are you going to keep me in here?”
“Until this is over.”
“When will it be over?”
“I don’t know,” the sheriff replied wearily. Of course, D had no way of knowing the lawman wore the same tired air as the hospital director. “From what Bates tells me, you were sleeping. You dream about Sybille?”
“There was some interference,” the Hunter replied.
“Interference?”
“It seems there are those who don’t want me to respond to the girl’s call.”
“Are you saying a foe can get inside dreams?” the sheriff muttered as if in a daze. “In that case, could you even call it a dream? What do you think?”
“Maybe even dreams can dream.” D quietly gazed at the sheriff. “I don’t mind staying in here, but are you sure that’s the best thing for the rest of you?”