—A power outage, says Mom.
Huh? I say.
I’m on the other side of the air, in the armchair by the fire. I look around. The fire in the fireplace is little more than embers now, gently smoldering, but giving enough reddish light to see by. There’s a blanket over me; I guess Mom must have put it there.
The lights are all off—the lamps and the overhead lights. Outside the windows is pure blackness.
I’m going to see if there’s a generator, she says. I think I saw one in the woodshed.
What time is it? I say.
Five a.m., says Mom. Early. I didn’t want to wake you, but you should probably go to bed. Get some more sleep.
Yeah, I say. My eyes are still sandy with exhaustion. Yeah, okay.
She leaves the room, opens the door to the outside. There’s a little blast of cold night air and then she’s gone.
I slowly sit up, and that’s when I see a sandwich on a little tray on the table next to me. A glass of milk. I smile. I fell asleep before dinner and Mom didn’t want me to go hungry. I take a bite of the sandwich—it’s good. Corned beef, I think, mayo, tomatoes. Where the hell she got the tomatoes I don’t know. I find myself suddenly hungry and finish the sandwich quickly. Then I drink the milk.
I should go to bed, I guess, like Mom said. But I have just been asleep—I know I would lie there in the darkness, eyes open, mind refusing to switch off. I glance at the book that got lodged between the cushion and arm of the chair, the Apache folktales. I shiver, and don’t touch it. These dreams have been getting way too weird, too real, for my liking. I can still feel the knife in my hand—the one Mom doesn’t seem able to see.
I slip it into my pocket, and out of my mind.
I get up and stretch, and nearly fall over because I’ve forgotten about the bulk of the CAM Walker on my foot. I grab on to the fireplace and steady myself.
I remember going outside the night before last, the moths flying, the moon bright in the sky above the trees. Fireflies leaving vapor trails in the air. I decide to go out again, to drink in the stillness, the peace.
Opening the door quietly, I ease myself out into the inky night. I wonder where this woodshed is that Mom mentioned—I can’t see her and of course I can’t hear her either.
It’s very dark—the moon hidden behind some clouds. I can feel living things around me—bats flitting, insects careering. For a moment I remember the sounds of the elks in the Dreaming, and I am filled with grief.
No.
I get a grip on myself.
I’m here, in the real world, and I can’t hear the insects, and it’s a real shame but just fricking deal with it, Shelby.
I look back at the cabin and it’s weird seeing no lights on in there, just the dim glow of the fire, red through the windows. It’s actually kind of creepy—a lonely cold feeling.
Should I be worried that the power went out?
Could someone have MADE the power go out?
I wonder if Mom thought about that too. I cast my mind back, to try to remember if she was looking anxious when she woke me up. In the meantime I turn away from the cabin, from its dead dark eyes.
Over there in the woods, I see something gleam. I blink. What was that? I make my way over to the tree line. I’m barefoot apart from my CAM Walker; I can feel the gravel under one foot, then the grass and moss, the bark, and it’s a little piece of the Dreaming in this world. I peer into the deeper darkness between the trees. Nothing. I make my way farther into the forest, avoiding fallen logs and stones as I get deeper into the trees.
Another flash—I turn and it’s gone. I head in its direction but I can’t hear anything. A creepy thought crosses my mind: if something weird was going on, I would have one less sense to detect it. What if there’s a sound that anyone else, anyone who could hear, would identify immediately as a hunting mountain lion?
Then I think:
No, a hunting mountain lion would be silent. Even someone who could hear would be screwed.
This thought cheers me up by a factor of approximately 6,700, except that it totally doesn’t. I take the knife from my pocket and hold it out in front of me, a feeble defense, especially because the knife probably isn’t real.
Enough of this crap, I’m going back in, I think.
I turn, and there’s a guy in front of me in a black uniform and with night-vision goggles on his face and an assault rifle in his hands.