Nightmare - A Novel Part 7

Tan grabbed Ara's arm. "Let's move to the other side," she hissed. "Maybe we can see his face."

"You don't have to whisper," Ara told her. "They can't hear us. They aren't really here." But she closed her eyes and gathered her concentration. A Silent's relative position in the Dream was based solely on where she expected to be. Right now Ara was here here and she wanted to be and she wanted to be there. there. On the count of three, On the count of three, there there would be would be here. here. One . . two ... One . . two ...three.

There was a slight wrench and Ara opened her eyes. She was standing less than two meters behind Temm. Inspector Tan stood with her. Distortions rippled through the forest, Temm, and the man, as if the scene were reflected in a pool and someone had thrown a pebble. The conversation between Temm and the man wavered and swooped unintelligibly. Ara cursed herself for not realizing this would happen.

"Hold still," she ordered Tan. "It'll clear sooner if you don't move."

After a moment, the scene settled. The man's features, however, were shrouded in the shadow of the wide-brimmed hat.

"-me alone," Temm was saying. "I don't want you near me."

The man lunged for her. Temm gave a scream and ran. Ara and Tan turned as one to follow her. Then both of them halted and stared. The bare trees came to life. They lashed downward like stiff snakes, trapping Iris Temm in a mesh of branches and bark. The wind rose and howled like a cold living thing. Temm struggled and tore at the branches but she couldn't get free. Ara's stomach clenched in fear and she had to remind herself that this was nothing more than a recording, that the trees wouldn't-couldn't-attack her. Temm's scream wailed on the wind as the man in the wide-brimmed hat drew close to her.

"You b.i.t.c.h!" he screeched, and smashed her across the face. She screamed again, and Ara noticed the branches had wrapped around her shins and forearms. "I want the flowers! Pretty flowers!"

The branches stiffened and Temm screamed again. Ara realized tears were running down her face. She wanted to run, leave the Dream, or even look away, but she found she couldn't. Inspector Tan's face remained completely impa.s.sive. Iris Temm's scream went on and on, mingling with the wind and the growls of the dark man.

"I don't want to do this," he cried to the skies. "Don't make me do this!"

The cold air sliced through Ara's clothes and made the tears on her face feel like rivers of ice. Temm screamed one last time like a banshee howl. With a horrible sound that Ara knew she would never forget, the branches tore the limbs from Iris Temm's body.

The wind stopped. The branches snapped back upward with bony rattle, leaving the b.l.o.o.d.y pieces of Temm's body behind. As Ara stared in horror, the dark man knelt beside the remains.

"Why did you make me do that?" he said in a calm, chill voice. "You make me do it every time. Every G.o.dd.a.m.ned time."

He reached down and came up with a small, pink object. Ara's gorge rose when she realized it was one of Temm's fingers. A bit of yellow-gray bone poked out of the torn end. Temm's sightless eyes gazed up at the black branches above them. Using the b.l.o.o.d.y end of the finger like a paintbrush, the man wrote something on Temm's forehead.

Tan leaped forward to get a look. Ara stood frozen where she was. The man flung the finger away and put his hands over his face beneath the hat. Then he vanished like a burst soap bubble. A split-second later, so did the ghostly forest and the body of Iris Temm. Ara stood on the featureless plain alone with Tan. Whispers fluttered on the empty air all around them. It was as if the entire thing had never happened.

"Did ...did you see what he wrote?" Ara asked finally. Her throat was dry and she wanted a drink with more than just water in it.

"Yes." Tan's rich voice was flat. "It's worse than I thought."

"Why? What did he write."

Tan looked at her. "The number twelve."

Grandfather Melthine ran a hand through his silvery hair as Ara finished the story. They were in his study, a busy-looking office lined with bookdisks and comfortable chairs. Holographic models of s.p.a.ceships floated just below the ceiling. Outside, the sun was setting, and purple shadows gathered among the talltree branches. The office was a bit stuffy-Melthine preferred to keep the windows shut. Ara occupied a deep armchair, and an empty gla.s.s sat on a table at her elbow. Her hands had finally stopped shaking. Inspector Tan sat rigid in another chair while her partner Linus Gray leaned against one wall. He was a tall, spare man, with ash-blond hair that was receding from a high forehead. Around his neck he wore a medallion of worked silver instead of plain gold, a symbol of his position as Inspector with the Guardians of Irfan. Tan, presumably, wore hers underneath her shirt.

"This opens up a great many questions," Melthine said at last. "We need to discuss them."

"You and Mother Ara are both experts in Dream theory," Gray said. "Whatever information you can give us will help."

"The number twelve is significant," Tan said, voice raspy again. "Obviously."

"You think Iris was his twelfth victim?" Ara asked.

Tan shrugged. "Could be. Or he might write the number twelve on all his victims. No way to know yet. If we a.s.sume a.s.sume-" her emphasis on that word made it clear what she thought of the idea "-that the number twelve means he's killed eleven other people, and if we a.s.sume a.s.sume he killed the other two finger victims, that would mean there are nine other corpses we don't know about yet. I've already checked the databases. In the entire recorded history we have of Bellerophon, there isn't a single incident in which a murder victim turned up with someone else's finger sewn on." he killed the other two finger victims, that would mean there are nine other corpses we don't know about yet. I've already checked the databases. In the entire recorded history we have of Bellerophon, there isn't a single incident in which a murder victim turned up with someone else's finger sewn on."

She sat back in her chair, as if exhausted by the long speech.

"Which means the killer came to us from another planet," Melthine said.

"No," Tan groused. "It only means we've made a lot of a.s.sumptions. He might be a native and he hid the other bodies. Or he dropped them off a balcony, fed the dinosaurs. But it looks like we need to operate on the theory that the same person killed all three women and that he's going to do it again."

"I'm not Silent," Gray said, "and I'm nowhere near an expert in Dream theory, but doesn't a Silent's landscape disappear when they leave the Dream or if they die while in it? Temm-and her forest-should have disappeared the moment she died. Why did her Dream body hang around after this hat guy killed her?"

Ara picked up the gla.s.s. She could still smell the scotch. "I imagine it did vanish. But he he recreated her body and her turf long enough to ...do what he did. That scares the h.e.l.l out of me." recreated her body and her turf long enough to ...do what he did. That scares the h.e.l.l out of me."

"Why?" Gray said intently.

"Because he did it without a noticeable break in the scenery. There should have been a flicker or something between the time Iris's Dream ended and he took it over. There wasn't. That means he's highly skilled in the Dream, in addition to being frighteningly powerful."

"Powerful because he could kill her, you mean?" Gray said. "There've been other Dream murders over the centuries, and in all cases the killer had to be more powerful than the victim."

"It's more than just the amount of power." Ara set the gla.s.s back down and turned her gaze to the darkening window. "First, he was able to wrench control of her own turf away from her and change it. That means his mind was stronger than Iris's. Second, he was able to disrupt her concentration enough that she couldn't leave the Dream to escape. That isn't easy to do because every Silent knows that the Dream is just that-a dream. You can wake up whenever you want. He scared Iris so much that she forgot this fact. Third, he was powerful enough to convince Iris's mind that she was being torn limb from limb. The human survival instinct is very strong, Inspector. It takes a lot of power to convince someone that they're dead. This guy is both potent and skilled, and the idea that I myself might run across him in the Dream makes me shake."

"What's the official cause of death?" Melthine asked.

"Mental trauma," Gray said. "The patterns of bruises on Temm's body are consistent with being wrapped up and partially crushed by something with an irregular surface, such as a tree branch. Her body created the bruises in psychosomatic response to what happened to her mind in the Dream. Being torn to pieces, however, is more than your average human brain can pull off, so to speak."

Tan pursed her lips. "We need to discuss the finger angle." When the others didn't respond, she continued. "Medical examiner confirmed that Temm's finger was severed and replaced post mortem. Less than an hour after Temm died, in fact. Means that the killer murdered her in the Dream, came into her house afterward, cut the finger off, sewed Wren Hamil's finger on, and left. We've interviewed the neighbors. None of them saw anyone."

"What about her boyfriend?" Melthine said. "Is he a suspect? The neighbors wouldn't think anything of him going inside."

Linus Gray shook his head. "He's not Silent. Genetic scan confirms. He couldn't kill anyone in the Dream. And he has an iron-clad alibi for the time before and after she died. He's a monorail engineer and he was driving one all day. Plenty of witnesses."

"He kills them," Tan mused aloud, "tears off a finger in the Dream, writes a number on their foreheads. Then he goes to their house, cuts a finger off, replaces it with a finger from the last victim."

"Whose finger was sewn onto the first victim-Prinna Meg?" Ara asked. "Do you know?"

"The finger's DNA isn't in any computer records," Gray said. "All we know is that the thing came from a woman and she was Silent."

"So maybe the killer does does come from off planet," Ara postulated. "The killer brought the finger with him from somewhere else." come from off planet," Ara postulated. "The killer brought the finger with him from somewhere else."

"That would seem to follow," Gray agreed.

"What do all the victims have in common?" Tan said. "That might give us a clue, too."

"They're all women," Gray said, ticking his fingers. "They're all Silent, and they're all Children of Irfan."

"Wren Hamil, the second victim, was a student," Melthine pointed out. "Not a full Child."

"But they're all a.s.sociated with the Children in some way," Gray said. "They were all between eighteen and forty. Hair and eye color are all different. So are height and weight. None of them knew each other as far as we've been able to tell. We'll have to do a deeper comparison just to be sure, but I'm not optimistic."

"Did the forensics team find any clues at Iris's house?" Melthine asked.

"Not yet," Gray replied. "But it doesn't look good either. No fingerprints, no blood or other body fluids except the victim's. We're looking into fibers, but since there wasn't a struggle where any would get rubbed off, we aren't hopeful."

"Why does he do it?" Ara blurted.

Tan shrugged again. "Been doing some reading, but I'm not an expert on serial killers. Maybe he hates Silent women, or just the Children. Hope we can figure it out. It'll bring us one step closer to catching him." Her face hardened. "We will will catch him." catch him."

They discussed the case further, but brought nothing new to light. Ara walked home, jumping at every shadow and every fluttering leaf. She regretted pa.s.sing up Tan and Gray's offer of an escort. The warm summer breeze only reminded her of the cold one in the Dream, and it seemed like she could hear Iris Temm's final heart-rending scream in the far distance. Once, a dinosaur roared below her and she nearly leaped off the walkway in panic.

When Ara got home, the house was dark. Fear clutched at her and she ran inside. Ben's door was shut. Shakily, Ara opened it and peered inside. Ben lay face-up on his bed in a puddle of silver moonlight. The sheets were tangled around him, leaving his bed as messy as the rest of the room. His skin looked like marble, and she saw with relief the gentle rise and fall of his breathing.

She almost ran into the room to gather him close to her but stopped herself. Ben wouldn't appreciate being woken up, and the logical part of her knew the killer wouldn't come for him. He was male and not- -not Silent.

Ara looked at her son for a long time, then gently closed the door and went to bed.

CHAPTER SIX.

You can't buy friends. You can only shop for them.

-Yeoman Daniel Vik

Kendi Weaver woke with a small start and wondered where he was. The walls and ceiling were white plaster and they smelled of fresh paint. There were no high beams above him, and his pillow wasn't filled with- Memory returned in a rush. Mother Ara. Bellerophon. The monastery. His room.

His room. Kendi had never had his own room, not in the tiny apartment back in Sydney and certainly not on Mistress Blanc's farm. He sat up. His window faced east, and the sky outside, barely visible between the tree branches, was just beginning to lighten. The cool morning air was scented with damp summer leaves and carried only a fraction of the breath-stopping humidity he had hated back on the farm.

Kendi stretched luxuriously, and his skin slid over smooth white sheets instead of a rough pallet cover. The room was, he supposed, fairly small by most standards, barely five meters by three. It contained only a bed, night stand, desk, chair, and wardrobe. The white walls were bare except for a darker patch that would become a vid-screen. A set of narrow French doors next to the window lead out onto a shared balcony. Birds began hesitant morning song outside.

Kendi had arrived in the room fairly late last night. The paperwork he'd had to fill out at the s.p.a.ceport had lasted quite a while, and Mother Ara had left the little group in the care of a man named Brother Manny with the explanation that she wanted to get home and see her son. A hasty supper and a whirlwind monorail ride to the dormitory had followed. It had been too dark to see much of his new home, and the exhausted Kendi had fallen almost instantly asleep. A glance at the clock set into the vid-screen told him he had only slept about five hours, but three years of waking at dawn for work were hard to shake. He shoved aside the covers and stood up to stretch. His wrist and ankle felt gloriously bare. Time to get dressed.

The only thing Misstr-that is, Giselle Giselle Blanc had permitted him to take was the knee-length white tunic she had sold him in. Brother Manny, however, had scrounged up a spare shirt, shorts, and sandals. Kendi pulled them on and trotted up the hall to the community bathroom, which sported individual sink and shower stalls. Not as luxurious as the bathroom he had briefly shared with Pup, but a far cry above the barrack-like facilities of the slave barn, especially since he didn't have to rush through his shower. It did take him a moment to figure out that the box set into the wall was a sonic cleanser that would launder his clothes. Afterward, he went back to his room. The sun had just cleared the horizon, but it was high summer and the hour was therefore still very early. Kendi stood next to the bed and realized he had no idea what to do next. His stomach rumbled. Blanc had permitted him to take was the knee-length white tunic she had sold him in. Brother Manny, however, had scrounged up a spare shirt, shorts, and sandals. Kendi pulled them on and trotted up the hall to the community bathroom, which sported individual sink and shower stalls. Not as luxurious as the bathroom he had briefly shared with Pup, but a far cry above the barrack-like facilities of the slave barn, especially since he didn't have to rush through his shower. It did take him a moment to figure out that the box set into the wall was a sonic cleanser that would launder his clothes. Afterward, he went back to his room. The sun had just cleared the horizon, but it was high summer and the hour was therefore still very early. Kendi stood next to the bed and realized he had no idea what to do next. His stomach rumbled.

Is someone going to come get me for breakfast? he thought. Maybe he was supposed to figure it out on his own. Would he have to pay for the food? he thought. Maybe he was supposed to figure it out on his own. Would he have to pay for the food?

Then, Where is Mom waking up? Where is Mom waking up?

The thought struck down the earlier comfortable feeling. Kendi didn't even know who had bought her or where they had taken her. What was she doing right now? He imagined her scared and alone and wanted to run straight out and find her. And then, unbidden, a memory whispered in his mind.

What you cannot change, it said, accept accept.

A creed of the Real People. Kendi, the quick and magical lizard, nodded. He couldn't run out to find his mother or the rest of his family now, but that didn't mean he couldn't do it later.

Voices murmured from outside. Kendi pushed the thoughts aside and stuck his head out the French doors. He caught his breath. The view, which he hadn't been able to see last night, was spectacular. The dormitory was built into one of the tallest trees in the forest, and new student rooms were on the highest floor. Beyond the branches framing balcony, Kendi saw a vast carpet of white fog that stretched all the way to the horizon, where a scarlet sun was slowly edging upward. Gargantuan treetops poked up out the mist, and small flying creatures skimmed over it like insects. It was like looking at a giant's garden.

A small group of people had gathered on the balcony, which ran the length of the floor and was shared by several rooms. With relief Kendi recognized Jeren, Kite, and Willa. Kite saw him and waved him over.

"Cantsleeptherhuh?" he said.

Kendi untangled the blur of words. "Nope. I want to explore. Is the whole monastery up in the treetops, do you think?"

Jeren spat over the side and watched it fall. "h.e.l.l of a long drop if you fell over. How long do you think it'd take before you splattered all over the ground?"

"Don't," Willa said with a shudder. "How can you even stand to look?"

Jeren grinned at her and jumped up to the waist-high balcony rail to balance on it like a cat. Willa shrieked and clapped her hands over her eyes. Kite looked concerned. Kendi swallowed.

"Jeren," Kendi said hesitantly. "Maybe you shouldn't-"

"Hey, it's easy," Jeren said. He strolled casually up and down the rail, then paused to look down. White mist buried the ground below.

"Don'thinkyoush-"

"Whoa!" Jeren frantically windmilled his arms. Willa, who had been peeking between her fingers, screamed. Kendi lunged for Jeren, but he regained his balance with an easy grin. "Gotcha!" he laughed. Kendi scowled and suppressed an urge to punch him.

"That earns you demerits, guy," said a new voice.

They all turned to look. A young woman was striding toward them. She had curly black hair and emerald eyes set into a sharp, pixie-like face. Her movements were quick and darting as a hummingbird's. A simple gold medallion hung around her neck. She looked to be in her mid-twenties.

"Hey, Sis," Jeren said. "Am I in trouble then?"

"I'm not a Sister yet, bucko," the woman replied. "I'm a second-year student and I've been a.s.signed as your mentor. My name's Dorna Saline. Jeren, come down from there before I beat your a.s.s."

With a flourish, Jeren jumped to the balcony floor. Willa lowered her hands.

"If you want to play with heights, Jeren, use one of those," she said, and pointed to two ropes that ended in knots big enough to sit on. The other ends were tied to branches higher up. They were clearly designed to swing out beyond the balcony, and Kendi wondered who would be brave enough-or stupid enough-to swing on such a thing. As if reading his thoughts, Dorna added, "There's a net below to catch you if you fall, Kendi. You just can't see it for the mist, yeah?"

"Howdyknowournames?" Kite asked.

"Mother Ara described you," Dorna said. "Kite, right? And you're Willa and you're Kendi. Welcome to the Children of Irfan. You probably want breakfast, yeah?"

They all a.s.sented, and Dorna took them to the end of the balcony and down a set of stairs to a wooden walkway that lead around to the front of the dormitory. Kendi looked up at it, fascinated. He hadn't been able to see much last night. The building was enormous, fully five stories high, and it was the only building in the entire tree. The trunk ran up the middle of the building, and several branches supported it as well. Other branches framed it in fine green leaves. The dorm itself was built of warm brown wood and covered with ivy. Balconies jutted out everywhere, connected by ladders, staircases, and even sliding poles. Ropes dangled from a fair number of windows. Fresh morning dew coated every surface. The double doors in front opened onto a wide deck big enough to play rugby on. Kendi looked over the edge. An ocean of white mist obscured the forest floor below. He decided the entire place was beautiful, more homelike than anyplace he had ever lived. His mother would love it, and he wished with all his heart that he could show it to his entire family.

One day, he told himself firmly.

Dorna lead them through the main doors, waved to the sleepy desk clerk on duty in the high-ceilinged foyer, and herded them into a cafeteria. A food buffet took up one wall and the room was filled with long tables furnished with wooden chairs.

"You can get food at any hour, day or night," Dorna told them, "but there's a schedule for hot food. It's pretty good slop, right? We're too soon for hot breakfast, but I know that ex-slaves are always up early, so I though I'd bring you down."

Ex-slaves, Kendi thought. I'm an I'm an ex- ex-slave.

After a breakfast of cold cereal, rolls, and juice, Dorna shepherded them back outside for a tour of the monastery.

"It's kind of confusing at first," she said as they headed out, "real easy to lose your way, yeah?"

A few minutes later, Kendi indeed found himself thoroughly lost. Because the monastery-and everything else-was constructed in the top of a giant forest, there was no way to make a regular grid of streets. Walkways and staircases made of planks and ivy-draped wire ran in many different directions on a dozen different levels. The buildings varied in size from small cottages to multi-story edifices like the student dormitory, but they were all made of wood and were of similar design, making it hard to tell them apart. Some were living quarters, some were academic buildings for teaching and research, and some were business offices. Dorna pointed out the places where they'd be taking their cla.s.ses, and Kendi hoped he could get his hands on a map so he could find them again.