Darklands (Deadtown #4)

Phyllis pulled back her hand and looked at it like she’d never seen it before. “So you have to be with the sleeping person for it to work?”

“No, but it’s easier that way.” I turned off the machine. The colors hung in the air for a moment, then blinked out. “Mostly I work out of clients’ homes so we can get the paperwork out of the way.” I nodded to a stack of standard forms that Phyllis had signed. “And, more important, so I can get a sense of the dreams that have been troubling you.” Fear crossed Phyllis’s face, and I patted her hand. “Don’t worry—the nightmares will be gone after tonight. But tell me about them so I’ll know what I’m looking for.”

“Oh, dear.” She clutched my hand. “The dreams make me so tired. That’s the worst part. Every morning I wake up exhausted, as if I hadn’t slept at all.”

“That’s a common trick of Drudes, the nightmare demons. It keeps the victim’s resistance low. Is there one dominant dream, or are the nightmares always different? Tell me what you can recall.”

“Oh, it’s one dream. Night after night after night—it’s always the same.” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “I’m standing in a long hallway that stretches endlessly before me. And I do mean endlessly, dear, it goes on and on forever. The hallway is empty, but all down the length of it, on both sides, are doors. The doors are evenly spaced, every three or four feet. And they’re all closed.”

“How do you feel when you look down that hallway?”

“Frightened.” She opened her eyes, and I could see the fear there. “I know there’s one door I must open, that something important is behind it.”

“Do you know what?”

She shook her head. “I haven’t a clue, I’m afraid. But I do know that if I pick the wrong door, something terrible will happen.” Her frail shoulders shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know what that is, either. Just that I must avoid it—whatever it is—at all costs.”

“So what do you do?”

“Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I stand there like a statue, sick with indecision and fear. There’s so much riding on me, and I can’t act. The impulse to pick a door gets stronger and stronger. The pressure becomes horrible, unbearable. I wake up screaming.” She covered her face with both hands. “It’s so distressing,” she said softly through her fingers. “Poor Pookie refuses to sleep with me anymore.”

Gently, I pried her hands from her face. “Well, tonight you won’t have to do a thing. It’s not up to you to pick a door. That’s my job.”

Relief flashed across her face, followed immediately by worry. “But what if you open the wrong one?”

“I won’t. The worst thing behind any of those doors is a demon. And I’m going in equipped to kill demons.” I showed her my pistol. “Bronze bullets,” I said, loading the magazine. “Kills ’em dead.” I shoved a spare magazine into the front pocket of my jeans.

She stared at the gun, then nodded once. “Good.”

“Here’s how this job will go. I’ll enter your dreamscape through the portal I showed you. Since you’ve been having a recurring dream, I’ll land in the hallway you described. This”—I showed her my InDetect—“is like a Geiger counter for demons. It helps me flush out the Drudes hiding in your dreamscape. I’ll move down the hallway, pointing the InDetect at each door. If it doesn’t click, there’s no demon there and I move on to the next door.”

“And if it does?”

“If the InDetect clicks, it means there’s a demon behind the door, hoping you’ll turn the knob so it can jump out and yell, ‘Boo!’” Phyllis flinched. “No worries. When I open the door, the demon will be the one who’s in for a surprise.” I brandished the pistol again.

Phyllis’s expression turned puzzled. “But if you only open the doors that have demons behind them, how will you find the right one?”

“What do you mean?”

“The right door. The door I’m supposed to open. The one with something important behind it.”

“Phyllis, that’s nothing but manipulation by the Drudes causing your nightmare. There isn’t anything important behind a door—only demons. They feed off your fear and indecision. They want you to open a door, any door. If there’s a Drude behind it, they get a rush out of scaring you. If there’s nothing behind it, they feed on your fear that you’ve chosen the wrong door. You can’t win.” I smiled reassuringly. “But I can win for you. I can kill the demons.”

“I certainly hope so, dear.” Phyllis looked doubtful. I couldn’t blame her, since she’d never actually seen any demons in her dreams. But she swallowed her doubts, along with the magically enhanced sleeping pill I gave her, and lay on her back. A few minutes later, soft snores filled the room. She sounded exactly like Pookie.

I double-checked my gun. Then I powered up the portal generator and stepped into Phyllis’s dream.

I STOOD IN A LONG, BRIGHTLY LIT HALLWAY. JUST AS PHYLLIS had described, it stretched ahead of me as far as I could see. I turned around. There was nothing behind me but dense, gray fog. Ahead, the white floor and walls glared relentlessly under harsh fluorescent lighting. Doors lined up along both sides. They were the rusty brown color of dried blood.

Open a door. The thought tickled the back of my mind. But, for heaven’s sake, don’t open the wrong one!

I pushed the nightmare whispers aside and switched on the InDetect. With my left hand, I pointed it toward the first door. My right hand held the pistol ready.

Not a click. The InDetect remained silent. I moved on to the next door.

For door after door, the InDetect found nothing. I shook it, trying to remember the last time I’d recharged the battery. I turned it off, waited ten seconds, then turned it on again. The unit hummed to life, its green light blinking. Click click click, it calibrated itself. No technical malfunction, and the battery was fine. There simply weren’t any demons behind those doors.

I squinted down the hallway. The harsh light made my head ache. The hall stretched on forever, just as before, even though I’d checked dozens of doors. The fog was still at my back, the dream portal beam still beside me. Either they’d moved with me, swallowing up Phyllis’s dreamscape as I went forward, or I was somehow back where I started. Either was possible in dreams.

I sighed. Nothing to do but keep going. I pointed the silent InDetect at another door, then another. And still another.

Inside Phyllis’s dreamscape, time lost meaning. It felt like I’d spent decades, centuries, in here. Like I’d been checking doors since dinosaurs roamed the earth—there was probably a Tyrannosaurus rex behind this one. I sneaked a peek at my watch, which kept real-world time, and saw that ten whole minutes had passed outside. I sighed again. It was going to be a long night.

I’d checked several more doors—it could’ve been three or three hundred, no way to tell—when a scream ripped the air. I tensed. Far down the hallway, a door banged open and out hurtled a demon. It was too far away for the InDetect to pick up, but there was no mistaking the creature, even at this distance. It was a textbook illustration of a demon: huge, pointed horns; massive bat wings; and long, razor-sharp tail. Phyllis’s Drude must have gotten tired of waiting for her to open its door.

As I raised my pistol to fire, a second figure bolted into the hallway. The demon shrieked and ran down the hall. This second figure wasn’t a demon—or if it was a demon, it was hiding its true form. It had the silhouette of a man. He chased the demon. In a moment, he’d tackled it. The demon shrieked and thrashed as they struggled.

I moved forward, quickly but cautiously, pistol ready.

The man stood. The demon remained on the floor.

My InDetect was silent. Still too far to pick up any demon vibes. The man could be a demon in disguise, or he could be a beloved dream figure—Phyllis’s husband or son or high school sweetheart. I didn’t dare shoot him.

The man pointed at the demon, and it levitated. As it floated above the floor, he gestured around it with his hands. The demon started to shrink. Rapidly, it grew smaller and smaller. The man pulled a sack from his pocket. He plucked the infant-sized demon from the air and dropped it inside. Then he tied the sack shut at the neck. Even from here, I could see the sack bouncing around as the captured demon struggled. Its howls, full of rage and pain and fear, echoed down the hallway.

Shrinking demons and trapping them in a sack. I had a feeling I’d just met my competition—the one who’d been clearing out Boston’s demons and making all my clients cancel.

“Hey!” I yelled.

The man didn’t even look my way. In two seconds, he’d opened the nearest door, run through, and slammed it shut behind him.

What the hell?

Keeping my eye on the door, I sprinted down the hallway. My boots pounded the tiles, my breath rasped in my ears. By the time I reached the place where he’d disappeared, I wasn’t sure which door he’d gone through. The damn doors all looked the same.

There should be residual traces of the captured demon here. My chest heaving, I picked a door and pointed the InDetect at it. No clicks. The InDetect didn’t register any demonic presence at the next one, either. But at the third, a faint, rapid clicking started up. I pressed the device closer, and the clicks got louder. Bingo.

I turned the knob, pistol ready. Keeping to one side, I pushed the door open.

I braced my gun with both hands and spun into the doorway. Another long, white, empty corridor led toward infinity. No closed doors. Instead, the hallway branched into a seemingly endless number of other hallways. I ran forward, pointing the InDetect down each branch, listening for the clicks that would indicate demons lurked that way. When the InDetect told me to, I veered off to the left or right, trying to catch up with the shadowy figure.

Following the clicks, I raced through the impossible architecture of a complex dreamscape—up and down staircases, along ledges, through hallways that led to other hallways, rooms that morphed into different rooms. It was a building designed by M. C. Escher’s insane brother. My InDetect got louder as I caught up, telling me I was getting closer. The clicking was almost deafening as I pointed the device at a black-painted door.