Fiction River: Unnatural Worlds (3 page)

“So you’re running.”

“I’m finding an answer to my problem.”

“What answer?”

“You.”

“No,” she said.

“No? I haven’t even asked you anything
yet.”

“No, I will not kill your son, and no, I will
not kill you.”

He held her gaze. He was good at reading her
emotions. It should be loud and clear just how serious she was.

“Killing me,” he said slowly, “would make
this an easy cleanup, an easy ending.”

“No,” Still said again. “So what’s plan
B?”

“Who says I have a plan B?”

“Because, Curious, you always have a plan
B.”

“All right. I turn myself in to the bosses,
tell them everything.”

“Who will kill you
and
the kid just to
be safe,” she said. “No. Next. Plan C.”

He lifted his hands and pressed his thumb
knuckles into the inside corner of his eyes. His hands shook. “Plan
C,” he said. “I’m open for suggestions.”

“To begin with, you get some sleep.”

“No,” he said.

“And I’ll call Horse.”

Curious pulled his hands away from his face.
“God, no. Horse? What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking you need sleep and Horse and I
can handle whatever comes crawling out of or across reality while
you do it. We’ll take care of it before the bosses show up.”

“That’s not a solution.”

“Yes, it is. It’s a short-term solution. Once
you get some sleep, we’ll work on a long-term solution.”

“Horse owes me money,” he grumbled.

“I’ll be sure to tell him that while he’s
saving the world from you. Go.”

He started off to the bedrooms, and she
pulled her phone from her pocket and dialed the nearest warden in
this reality, Robert Horse.

“Mary Still, it’s been some time,” Horse said
in a voice as broad as his shoulders. “You ready to switch out
partners and leave Curious behind?”

“Hi, Horse,” she said. “I need some help. Can
you get over to the shop in the next ten minutes or so?”

Horse was stationed in Idaho, somewhere up
near the border with Canada. Distance wasn’t that much of a problem
for wardens. After all, they had to locate and get to outbreaks of
terrors and crossovers from other dimensions as quickly as
possible.

Luckily, once you knew the differences and
variances of other dimensions, it wasn’t difficult to map a route
that could get you from any place on earth to another in about
fifteen minutes.

“Should I bring my cross and guns?”

“Would you leave them behind if I told you
to?”

“No. I’ll be there in ten. You seen Curious
lately?”

“Yeah, that’s my problem.”

Horse was quiet a second. “He still got a
soul?”

“Yes.”

She could hear his exhalation of relief.

“Well, then how bad can it be?”

“Just come soon, okay?” She thumbed off the
phone.

The sound of the shower turning on told her
Curious was going to scrub the grit of other realities off before
crawling into bed. Good. That would give her five minutes.

And five minutes was all she needed.

Mary picked up the cross she’d left on the
table and stuck it in the back pocket of her jeans. Her gun was
strapped against her ribs where she always carried it.

It was early March, and a Wednesday—not
exactly high tourist season—but just in case, she walked back to
the shop, turned the sign to “Closed,” locked the door, and dimmed
the lights.

She had a little boy to see.

Mary Still set her feet and took a deep
breath. Walking into other dimensions took some getting used to.
Without a lodestone, a person was doomed to be lost, to never quite
know if they were headed toward or away from their home reality.
She placed the palm of her right hand over the lodestone she wore
on a leather thong around her neck, and with her left hand tapped
her fingers in the sequence that would trigger the shift in
dimension.

Then she started walking. Right through the
wall of her shop that was a wall of an antique store, a gas
station, a grocery store, a hospital, then wasn’t even a wall any
more, each step taking her miles or hundreds of miles, across hills
in some dimensions, rivers in others, and strange bottomless
canyons filled with swirling stars.

She knew the shortcut to London, and took it
until she was walking down a street, rain and sudden, biting cold
making her wish she’d thought to wear a coat or even long
sleeves.

Brown brick buildings stacked up on either
side of her, wooden fences in various states of paint and disrepair
soldiering along the alleyway as she headed to the apartment where
the East London kid dreamer was not dreaming.

A tap of her fingers and she sidestepped this
reality until she found one where the door was open, then entered
the third apartment from the left, top floor, into a cluttered but
tidy home.

She didn’t want to be seen, so she stayed
just on the edge of where her home reality and the next met. Dogs
and cats and other animals would sense her here, but most humans
wouldn’t.

The East London kid dreamer was in his
bedroom, sitting on the floor, surrounded by action figures and
cars. He had Curious’s mop of dark hair, but his eyes were brown in
a cherubic, freckled face.

Mary paced a circle around him, looking for
the glow that signified someone plagued by the terrors and
imaginings. This kid had been practically on fire when she and
Curious had found him six months ago caught in the paralysis of
nightmares and terrors. But now—nothing.

He had that slightly elevated aura that all
kids under the age of thirteen carried. No one, not even the
bosses, would suspect that he was anything more than a normal
kid.

How the hell had Curious pulled that off? You
couldn’t undream a person.

She knelt in front of the boy so she could
see his face more clearly.

He looked up as if he’d heard a sound. And
that’s when she saw it. Curious had somehow erased the kid’s
ability to even have a nightmare. Oh, he might have a bad dream,
but the deep horrors that called terrors and imaginings into the
world would simply not be possible.

She didn’t know where her partner had learned
that, but it sure wasn’t in the rule book. Great. If the bosses
found out about this—any of it—Curious would be dead. The only good
thing to come out of it was that the terrors would never find the
kid again.

“Good luck kiddo,” she whispered.

His gaze almost settled on her. He smiled and
she felt something inside her break. He looked so much like
Tom.

Mary made it back to the shop and into her
home dimension before Horse arrived. Curious was out of the shower,
so she went down to his bedroom and knocked softly on the door.

“You awake?”

“Are there monsters trying to eat your face?”
His reply was muffled.

“No,” she said.

“There ya go.”

She stepped into the room. He was lying in
bed, under just the top cover, his arm draped over his eyes.

“I looked in on the kid.”

He didn’t move his arm. Didn’t say anything
for a moment or two. She sat in the chair next to the bed, suddenly
tired and wishing she could crawl under the covers with him to hold
him against her, solid and real.

“Why?” he asked.

“I wanted to see how you did it. And I
wanted...wanted to see the only kid—in any reality— we can call our
own.”

He swallowed hard, then stretched his other
arm out across the bed toward her, his hand open.

She pressed her palm into his, lacing his
fingers. His entire body tightened a little and he exhaled a held
breath. She must be the first real person he’d touched in awhile.
Maybe in six months.

“We can’t ever see him again,” she said
softly.

“I know.”

“He’ll never know you.”

“I know. I’m sorry, Mary. To put you in this
mess. To bring it here for you to clean up.”

“I can handle it.”

He finally dragged his arm away from his eyes
and turned his head to look at her. She’d never seen him so deeply
tired. “You shouldn’t have to.”

“We’re partners, Curious,” she said. “All the
way to the end.”

“If I die...” he started.

“No,” she said. Then, to the stubborn set of
his jaw that told her he wasn’t going to let it go that easily:
“You owe me, okay? Secluded tropical beach—real world— private
chef, and no work for a week.”

That got a smile out of him. “Seriously? A
week? Do you think I can pull off the impossible?”

“Yes.”

The distinctly glass
tink
of realities
being crossed rang out from just beyond the door, interrupting
whatever it was Curious had been about to say.

“Heard you two were having some trouble,”
Horse said. “Didn’t expect it to be in the bedroom. Although it’s
not that big of a surprise.”

Curious scowled. Mary gave his hand a squeeze
before letting go and standing to face the warden.

Horse was a tall, rangy man with overly
prominent cheekbones and hard edges everywhere else. He wore his
long white hair tied back in a single braid beneath a gray cowboy
hat that didn’t exactly match his dockers and Mr. Roger’s green zip
up sweater. He was anywhere between ninety and a hundred-and-three,
which was saying something since the life expectancy of most
wardens hovered closer to the fifty marker.

“Thanks for coming, Horse,” Mary said. “We
owe you.”

That was enough to stop Horse mid-step.
“Before I’ve done anything? It must be bad.”

“It is,” she said. “Curious took on a
dreamer’s terrors.”

Horse laughed. It was loud enough to cover
most of the swearing Curious set off into. Mary waited for the old
guy to get his breath back.

“My boy, you are a cracker. Let me get a look
at you.” He crossed over to the foot of the bed and stared down at
Curious, who had propped up to a sitting position and was glaring
at him.

All the laughter drained from Horse’s face.
“Dreamer light. I should turn you in for this, Tom. You too, Mary,
for not reporting him.”

“Help us or leave,” Mary said evenly.

Horse made his decision with a nod. “You,
personally, are indebted to me, Tom Curious.”

“If you do what Mary says, yes,” Tom
said.

“And I don’t owe you money from that damn
poker game any more.”

Curious gritted his teeth. “Fine.”

“Good,” Mary said before the agreement went
sour. “Time for you to sleep, Curious. Do you need any help?”

He shifted down to lie flat on his back. “I
could sleep through the end of the world.”

“Let’s hope you don’t have to,” Mary
said.

Curious closed his eyes. It didn’t take more
than three breaths before he was out.

“You know who this dreamer is?” Horse
asked.

“No.”

“If you’re lying to me, Still...”

“I’m not.”

That was the one advantage to people not
reading her well. She could get away with a lot of falsehood if
necessary.

“I always thought that boy was a little too
unstable for the job,” Horse said.

“He’s my partner, Horse. I’ll stand by him
until the end.”

“Of course you will, Mary. Of course you
will.”

The terrors arrived, slipping through the
walls, oozing through the floor, dropping from the ceiling. They
crawled out of Curious while he screamed.

Mary pulled her gun.

“Remember to cross the t’s and dot the i’s,”
Horse said, drawing his own weapons.

“I always do.”

They waded into the terrors, brandishing
crosses. It took faith or will power to banish the terrors, and
while any religious or focusing symbol would do, Mary preferred the
cross. The only thing that stopped the imaginings were
silver-coated bullets, but the smallest bullet would do, therefore
the term: dot the i’s.

Solid creatures with strange assortments of
limbs and skins and mouths, with too many eyes, or none at all,
launched at them, hungry to destroy. They sizzled to dust and smoke
at the slightest brush of a cross, and faded to screams when the
silver bullets struck true.

Mary wasn’t sure if Horse would be able to
keep up, but the old guy worked tirelessly, shifting over edges and
back to keep the outbreak contained in this one room and then
holding here while Mary did the same.

Dozens and dozens of beasts shuddered into
existence. So many, she almost lost one on a simple shift. There
were too many for her and Horse to handle. And the bosses would be
here in minutes.

She didn’t know when Curious had stopped
screaming, but when he stood at her side, wearing pajama pants and
a T-shirt, gun in his hand, she realized he’d been awake and on his
feet for awhile. He shouldn’t be able to do that. No dreamer woke
up until the terrors and imaginings were gone. But he wasn’t just a
dreamer. He was a warden.

It felt like it took them three sweaty hours
to dispatch the remaining monsters, but only fifteen minutes
passed. Then it was suddenly very, very quiet in the room.

“That everything you got, boy?” Horse panted
and wiped sweat off his face with his forearm. “Cause I could do
this all day.”

Nothing but the dark ichor and dust of the
beasts remained. There was no time to clean it up now.

Curious holstered his gun. “How long before
the bosses arrive?”

“About five minutes,” Mary said.

“Bosses?” Horse said. “What are you two doing
standing around? Curious, get dressed—a suit and tie. You too,
Still. And a little lipstick wouldn’t hurt.”

She’d punch him for that comment later.

Mary ran to her room, scrubbed her hands,
face, and arms, brushed the dust out of her hair, then slipped into
a tailored dark green suit and fashionable boots. She pulled her
hair up with pins. And yes, quickly applied lipstick and some
mascara.

It took her all of three minutes. By the time
she was striding into the kitchen, Curious and Horse were there
waiting.