Twenty-three

Julie headed back to Circle Q and I stayed out at Black Briar for a couple of days, nursing my relationship with Jai Li and Bub, while just regaining my strength.

Jimmy had Katie’s old room converted to a hospital room. He had a full hospital bed brought in, as well as all the equipment needed to monitor someone in a coma. The hospital was not pleased but couldn’t really refuse him. He had staff who could watch her around the clock and hired several nurses to come in throughout the week. He also had Melanie to help coordinate all the care. She was just as safe and cared for there as she would’ve been in a long-term care facility.

After a couple of days, Jai Li began coming around me again. I was working in the smithy there, spending time with Bub, just making swords and trying different techniques. I sparred with Trisha and her crew and really pushed my body every day. I needed to feel fitter. The time in the dreamscape had taken something out of me, but the days at Black Briar were helping me rebuild it.

In the end, it was Jai Li who really accelerated the healing. Once she decided she could forgive me, I started feeling much better. I didn’t shirk my duties, either. I let her pick my punishment and spent another three days helping the Black Briar crew dismantle the old barn. Bub wasn’t going to be living there anymore. I was going to build him a place at the smithy, and then, when we got our own place, he was going to come live with us.

He was very excited by the whole prospect but insisted he had to stay near the forge. Jai Li assured him we’d have a forge at our new place. She even drew him a picture of the house she wanted with the fence and the roses. Only now, it had a smithy in the back with a house for Bub. It was all cute and healing.

By the time they had Katie settled into the house, we were a family again. But Jai Li insisted that Circle Q was our current home and we had to go back there. They missed us, she assured me.

We settled into a solid rhythm out at Circle Q. I started back to working with Julie, letting the hard labor of shoeing and mucking stalls beat my body down, so I could sleep long and deep at night. I was open with everyone, explaining how I was dreaming about searching for Katie. Jai Li knew how serious it was and approved, even if the others thought it was silly and dangerous.

One afternoon, after a long day of shoeing horses, Julie and I stopped out at the County Line for a beer before going home.

“I know you and Jai Li have made up,” she said, toying with her glass. “But I’ve been asking around, and I think you’re playing a dangerous game.”

I patted her arm and smiled. “I won’t lie to you, Julie. It scares the hell out of me, and I don’t go into that place every night, but when I do, I know she’s out there. You don’t know what it’s like. I can sense her, you know. It’s dangerous, and frankly scares the bejesus out of me, but what else can I do?”

Julie got her boss face on immediately. “This is that sideways place, right? The place between the mirrors where the eaters live?”

I could tell she was worried. I wondered who she’d been talking with.

“And Jai Li keeps drawing you in danger,” she said. “Have you seen the pictures? Giant glass spiders and hate-filled spirits hunting you through dark tunnels.”

I shivered. That pretty much described the way the latest trip had ended up. I’d barely escaped again. Just the thought of that last encounter gave me a shiver. I had been so close to losing it. I took a deep breath, pulled on my best suit of bravado and smiled.

“Home again, home again,” I sang as I walked into the house, just ahead of Julie. Jai Li came tearing down the hall and was about to throw herself into my arms, but stopped herself. She held her nose and shook her head, signing for shower.

I bowed. “You are so right,” I said, grinning. “Mucked out a few stalls today to help out Mr. Peters.”

“He’s a nice man,” Mary said, coming out of the kitchen with a dishrag in her hands. “But you go take a shower, then come into the kitchen to help your girl with her work, while Julie showers.”

She didn’t wait for an answer, but turned and walked back into the kitchen.

“I guess we know who’s boss,” I said, quietly.

Jai Li snickered.

After a quick shower, I sat beside Jai Li at the kitchen tables and worked through a math workbook with her. As we were home schooling her for the summer, there was no real break. Also no real class times. We studied as we could.

When Edith came in carrying a bag full of groceries, Julie and I hustled out to the truck to bring in the rest. When I got in, Jai Li and Edith had their heads together plotting.

Jai Li nodded, signing something I didn’t catch, and Edith nodded.

“She wants me to show you the pictures she’s been saving,” Edith said, standing. “The girl’s like a machine when she’s on, just creating one picture after another, colors and shadows …” she waved the thought away. “Let me show you.”

I sat at the table and pulled Jai Li into my lap. She snuggled against me, the top of her head under my chin. I loved the way she felt in my arms, the way she smelled.

I drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. I was worrying that I was becoming obsessed with this dream fugue thing again. The nights were getting rougher, which told me that either I was getting closer to finding Katie, or whoever was hunting us was getting closer to me.

I had to remember that Jai Li needed me, even more now that Katie was lost to us for the moment. Only for the moment, damn it. My throat clenched, and I squeezed Jai Li tighter, making her yelp in surprise.

“Sorry,” I said, lessening my death grip. “I just missed you so much.”

She cooed and ran her small hand over the side of my face. Her smile was a miracle, a moment of sunshine in a gray day. I turned my head and kissed her hand. She laughed. Guess it tickled.

When Edith came back in the room, she had Julie with her. They sat across from us and Mary came around to sit at the head of the table—her spot.

Jai Li held only my arm, one hand to her mouth as Edith laid each picture on the table in front of me.

There were so many. The world of sideways was immediate, the crystalline landscape, the shadows, and especially the eaters. Most were rendered in black and white, which fit the worlds I visited in my sleep.

She drew page after page of the eaters, from the smallest, about the size of her thumbnail, all the way to one that was nearly as big as Nidhogg in her full dragon form. And Jai Li had seen Nidhogg, so I knew there was no exaggeration in the scale.

This last one was not made of smoke or crystal, but meat and pain. I didn’t know how I knew that, but it was pretty clear in the pictures. Jai Li could capture emotion as well as form. It was a little terrifying.

Several pictures showed me jumping over lakes of fire, sliding down dunes made of broken promises, and delving through caves of forgotten dreams.

I touched each picture, getting the flash of their true meaning, understanding the world this child saw when I delved into the sideways.

I squeezed her hand and looked down at her. “Are you sure you’re only six?” I asked. She shrugged and hid her face against my chest as Edith brought forth the final batch of pictures.

They were odd portraits. Some were us as a family: Katie, Jai Li, Bub, and me, usually with horses in the picture somewhere. She did have her first and true love there.

But in every one there were our shadows. Mine was nearly always a boring smudge of gray, while Jai Li’s had no shadow. For some reason that made me sad.

Katie’s picture was the clearest. Her shadow was dark, darker than mine. As every picture was laid out on the table Katie began to fade and her shadow grew more distinct.

“We’re losing her,” I said, touching the papers carefully. “She’s fading.”

Jai Li nodded, but pulled my hands back, holding them in hers.

Safe, she signed, pointing between me and her.

“Yes, you and me, we are safe.”

She tapped Katie’s last picture and shivered, signing danger.

I nodded, not saying anything else.

Finally, the last three pictures were different. These weren’t about any of us, nor of the typical denizens of the Sideways. These showed a shadow—a wraith, like one of the hungry spirits that had been trapped in the house out in Chumstick. It was the ghost with the bowler hat. The one that promised to watch me suffer. He was drawn in such a way that if you turned the picture ninety degrees, it looked like the focus was on him, and Katie, Jai Li, and I were the shadows.

He stood there, as I’d seen him that dark night. He had a bowler hat in one hand and a dripping axe in the other. A skeletal frame peeked out from beneath his shoulder-to-ankle trench coat.

He’d been just inside the dome Qindra had erected over the house, a shield to keep him and his ilk contained. As I traced his outline with my finger I could hear his voice in my head.

When you die, I’ll be waiting for you. Waiting to play.

The last picture was of him and Katie, superimposed over one another in one frame, then another where Katie lay on the floor of her school and her shadow and the Bowler Hat Man’s were both flying away as the book obviously exploded.

Her spirit was blasted out of her body, as I’d suspected. But was this proof she hadn’t been inside there alone?

I covered my face with my hands, leaning back. “Burn those, please.” I said, my voice muffled behind my hands.

“Dark portents,” Edith said, gathering the stack of papers.

Where did Stuart find Katie after the Solstice battle? Was it within the boundaries of the dome? The dome had blown by that point. And the spirits had been siphoned into the rituals of the blood cult. But had this one eluded them? Had he somehow marked Katie?

I excused myself quickly and ran down the hallway. I made it into the bathroom just before the bile rose in me and I spewed the beer Julie and I had drunk an hour earlier.

Was that who hunted us? Had he latched onto Katie somehow to withstand the necromancer’s summons? Had that mass killer been inside Katie when we’d made love? Was he looking out of her eyes, hidden in the darkness, feeding on her nightmares and fears?

I had to call Qindra. Hell, maybe I needed to call an exorcist.