She knew immediate relief. Peter had been wrong with his REM/non-REM nonsense.
This
was her dreaming. And when she got up from his couch in the morning, she knew she'd recall it as clearly as though she was remembering the previous day's events. If it meant she was crazy, fine. Better this than the empty ache inside, the emptiness that nothing in her waking state could fill, except for her writing.
A breeze lifted her hair. She could taste the salt tang in it, and drew a deep breath. She was standing on Redcap Hill, with its three dancing longstones for company and the twisty-branched fairy thorn on its lower slope; the hill that housed Tiddy Mun's gnomish kin. Kothlen's moors unfolded before her into the northern horizon. The gray seas were to the west; behind her, Mynfel's oak and apple wood.
The moon was bright above, washing the hill with its cool light. For a moment Cat was so happy she couldn't breathe. She was home. She could walk Kothlen's moor, or sit here on the hill amongst the standing stones. She could travel to the wattle and daub huts of the marsh folk, or make her way to the craggy foothills of the mountains where Mynfel's wolves ranged. But then she became aware of a difference in the Otherworld, an emptiness that stole the heart from the land, and her happiness dissolved.
A vague dread stole over her— shapeless because she couldn't put her finger on its source. There was a wrongness in the air, a feeling of being watched— from a great distance, but being watched all the same. It was as though the night itself was searching for her.
Where were her friends? Why was the hill under her feet silent, where the gnomes usually held their nightly revels in its hollowed chambers? She was in the Otherworld, but it didn't seem to be the Otherworld that she knew. She was alone in its mysterious reaches— alone except for whatever it was that was searching for her.
She shivered. The night wasn't cold, but fear had its own way of sapping strength. Goose bumps started up and down her arms.
I don't want to be here, she thought. I don't want to be found by whatever it is that's looking for me.
But she didn't seem to have a choice. The dream shifted into a nightmare as she turned in a slow circle, trying to watch all directions at once, seeing the familiar landscape of the Otherworld alter as she perceived it through fear rather than wonder. Everything familiar seemed strange. Haunted. The night held menace in every inch of its darkness.
Something stirred, down by the fairy thorn, and she spun to face that direction, her breath catching in her throat. She saw a shape rise up from amongst the tree's roots, the moonlight reflecting catlike in large eyes. She wanted to bolt, but fear rooted her legs to the ground. Then the apparition spoke, called her by her secret name, and she sank to her knees with relief.
"Tiddy?" she called in a husky voice. "Is that you?"
Gaze flitting nervously left and right, the gnome approached her. His entire body was taut with tension and he looked ready to bolt at the slightest provocation.
"It's me, it's me," the little man said mournfully. He came up close, saucer eyes searching her face. "Why did you leave us?" he asked.
Ben had gone to bed more than a little tipsy. The clock beside his bed showed two-thirteen when he crawled under the covers. An hour later he woke in a cold sweat with the afterimages of a bad dream floating before his eyes and a buzzing in his ears.
There had been a man stalking him in his dreams— a man with skin like white frost and glittering blue eyes. His fingernails were curved like talons. When he smiled, his lips pulled back to reveal row upon row of incisors like a barracuda's. He had Ben backed up against the wall of an alleyway, the bricks pressing against Ben's shoulder blades, the man's eyes flat and cold, his grin widening. And then suddenly the mouth of alley was filled with cats— a wave of them that crested and swept over the man, clawing and biting….
That was when Ben woke.
Too weird, he thought. He sat up against the headboard, still shaken by the intensity of the images. He didn't normally have dreams— or at least he didn't normally remember them. But even the ones he remembered had never been like this. And there'd been something about the man who was stalking him— something familiar that eluded him the more he tried to place it.
After a while he lay down again, calmer, but still puzzled. He turned his thoughts to the evening just past, Becki's pleasure that he'd danced with her— "Guess you're not such an old fart after all," she'd teased him— and hanging out afterward with her and Mick and a couple of guys from the band— Johnny Too Bad and Ras… Ras Danny Dread.
He fell asleep again, the nightmare all but forgotten.
"I didn't leave you," Cat said. "I just… I don't know what happened. I just couldn't get here anymore. Something was stopping me. Oh, Tiddy, I've missed you. Why didn't you come to me?"
"I couldn't find the way," he replied in a small voice.
"But where have you been?"
"Hiding."
"Hiding from what? From me?" Just the possibility of that made the knot in her stomach tighten.
"Not from you," Tiddy Mun told her. "Never from you. From… from the evil one…."
"Evil….?" That was what filled the night, she realized. What was seeking her. Not the night itself, but something inhuman all the same. Something evil. "Where are the others?" she asked. "Mabwen and Kothlen… and all your kin?"
"Gone, gone. Kothlen is dead. Mabwen is fled." Tiddy Mun began to shiver uncontrollably. "All the… others are too scared to do anything but run and hide."
Cat stared at him in shock. "Kothlen… is dead?"
"The evil killed him. It comes like a great shadow to steal your soul. We thought… I thought he'd killed you too."
Cat drew the little man close and held him. Tears spilled from her eyes, ran down her cheek unheeded. Kothlen dead. That tall bright lord— dead. She couldn't accept it, but the truth plummeted through her like a rock plunging through water, sending up ripples of sorrow that threatened to drown her as they widened. She'd never be with him again. Never see him smile. Never sit with Tiddy Mun at the tall elflord's knee, listening to his stories or just sharing a companionable silence. He was dead. Dead.
"How can he be gone?" she cried.
Her despair rang across the hills, and Tiddy Mun grew very still in her arms. They both sensed the gathering of whatever it was that hunted in the night. Its searching narrowed, focused on them. A pressure beat at them from beyond the protection of the standing stones. It came from the darkness, sapping their wills, drawing them out from between the stones.
They stumbled on trembling legs, collapsing just outside the safety of the dolmen. Unprotected, they huddled under the night skies and felt the darkness sweeping near.
Lysistratus could sense her now. She wasn't far— a mile, perhaps two. She slept alone, in another's house. She was too far to feed on, but close enough to draw her to him. She hid, but hiding would do her no good. If she didn't come to him, he would go to her, but feed he would tonight.
"Come home, sweet dreamer," he whispered into the night. "Come to the comfort of your own bed, your own secret place of solace. No one can harm you here…."
Cat felt weak, as though she'd tried to get up too soon from a sickbed and had slumped helplessly to the floor. She wanted to be safe at home, in her own bed. Not in an Otherworld where Kothlen was dead and everything except for Tiddy Mun was strange. Nor to wake in a strange apartment, on a strange couch, to see the four enclosing walls of a living room that belonged to someone else surrounding her.
Tiddy Mun whimpered in her arms. The darkness above them took the impossible shape of a great dark-winged pterodactyl. They clutched each other tightly. Cat knew that they had to move, to get back inside the protection of the long-stones, but they were both too frightened to move. Then that black saurion shape in the darkness above them swept down with an icy rush of fetid air, talons outstretched and raking the sky.
Cat heard a wailing scream pierce the night and was only dimly aware that it had been torn from her own throat.
Peter sat bolt upright in his bed, the scream that had woken him still ringing in his ears. It took him a moment to get his bearings, then he thought: Cat!
"Oh, Jesus."
He lunged from the bed and skidded across the floor to the living room, hitting the light switch as he went in. In the sudden glare of light, he saw Cat crouched in a corner of the open daybed, holding what looked to be some sort of doll in her arms. Except it was too large to be a doll, Peter realized, and who'd make a doll as wild and tattered as this one was? Raggedy clothes, bone-thin limbs, wild hair, eyes too big for the pinched features of its face. Then the doll moved and Peter took a step back, stumbled over an end table, and sprawled on the floor.
When he got to his feet and half-fearfully looked back, there was only Cat, huddled on the couch, eyes wide with fright, hair plastered wetly against her forehead. She moaned, hands opening and closing on the blanket that she'd drawn up to her chin.
"Easy," Peter said, wondering just what the hell he thought he'd seen. He moved toward her. "It's okay, Cat. It was just a bad dream."
She looked blankly at him, then slowly her eyes focused. He sat on the edge of the daybed and drew her to him, rubbing her back with the palm of his hand in long soothing strokes. The shirt she'd borrowed from him was damp with perspiration.
"That was a bad one," he said when she finally drew back.
She nodded, swallowed with difficulty. "He's dead," she said numbly.
"Who's dead?"
"Kothlen. And—" She looked wildly about the room. "Tiddy Mun!"
"What—" Peter began. Then he heard a scuffling on the stairs that led down to the store.
The image returned to him— the image of what he'd thought she was holding when he first flicked on the lights, before he'd stumbled and fallen. It had to have been a trick of the light. He'd seen the blanket bunched up in her arms and given it features. Or the pillow that was now lying on the floor. Except… He turned toward the stairwell. The sound hadn't been repeated, but that didn't mean—
"You saw him too, didn't you?" Cat asked. "Tiddy Mun. A little man. A moment ago. I know he came back with me…."
He hadn't seen anything, Peter told himself. Especially not some lingering figment of her dreams. He just didn't need something like that to be real. But his whole body was tense and he found himself straining to hear another sound from downstairs. Was that the front door? Again the sound wasn't repeated. There was only silence.
As though she were following his thoughts. Cat asked, "You're going to pretend that you didn't see anything, aren't you?"
"Look, Cat. I'm not sure what I did or didn't see. All I know is I heard you scream and got out here so fast that I wasn't even awake yet."
That wild face with its huge eyes returned to him. It was like something out of a Rackham print or one of Charles Vess's illustrations.
"He
was
here," Cat said. "We were in the Otherworld, but everything was changed. There was something… hunting us. And then just when it was about to get us I…" Her voice trailed off. She'd been about to say, I woke up.
"It's okay," Peter said. "It's over now."
As soon as he spoke the words, he realized that he was being too quick to offer comfort, too pat. She wanted to talk it out, while he just wanted to forget it. Now she was withdrawing again. Bottling it all up inside because he was being too pigheaded to admit that maybe he
had
seen something.
"I can't stay here," Cat said abruptly. "I'm going home."
Peter glanced at the clock on the mantle. "For God's sake, Cat. It's just going on four. Why don't you just go back to—"
"I can't stay here. I have to go home. At home I'll be safe."
"You're safe here. I don't bite."
She didn't crack a smile. "I'm going," she said, and stood up.
Picking up her clothes, she headed for the bathroom and shut the door firmly behind her. Peter started to follow, then realized he'd better get dressed himself. All he was wearing was a pair of boxer shorts. She was ready to leave as he came out of the bedroom, and looked at him strangely.
"Why are you dressed?'
"I'm going with you."
"I want to be alone, Peter."
"That's okay. I'm just going as far as your front door. Humor me, won't you?"
They went downstairs in silence: Peter looked carefully around, but nothing seemed disturbed. He glanced at Cat. What if he
had
seen something?
"Who was he?" he asked as they stepped out onto the street.
Cat stood silently, studying the sky. She shivered as she remembered that great winged shape dropping down out of the Otherworld darkness. Where was Tiddy Mun now?
"Cat—" Peter began.
"Don't patronize me, Peter."
"I'm not." He shrugged. "Okay, so maybe I was. But just take a look at it from my point of view."
"You saw him," she said. "You just won't believe that you did. Or you won't admit it."
Her temper was rising. She was about to tell him to just leave her alone, but then she thought of last night's watcher and tonight's feeling in the Otherworld.
"Tiddy Mun is a gnome," she said softly. "One of my… my ghosts, I suppose you could say."
Peter realized how much that had taken out of her. Yesterday evening had been different. That had been a cleansing of sorts. This morning she was all closed up again. Somehow he had to get past that block, as he had last night. But he couldn't do it by playing along with her fantasies— no matter what he might or might not think he'd seen in her arms earlier.
"I thought you said they only visited you in your dreams."
"The gnomes used to always follow me around, here as well as in the Otherworld, though mostly it was Tiddy Mun. I'd feel him watching me from around a corner, but when I turned he'd be gone. It was son of a game that we played. But then I stopped dreaming…."
"You said someone had died."
"Kothlen. He…"
She couldn't go on. All the sorrow she'd been suppressing came surging up inside her. For the third time in less than twelve hours, Peter held her close, desperately trying to bring her back to the plain reality of the here and now. They stood near the corner of Bank Street and Fifth. He could see their reflection in the front window of Britton's Smoke Shop— the small form pressed against him, hair as wild as her gnome's….