Nightmare's Edge Read online

  “Let’s keep it to ourselves for now,” Solomon said. “I think he will tell us what to do in just a minute.”

  While the others gathered around, Nathan drank in the details. Several other tombstones had appeared, each with etchings too small to be read. He strained his eyes. Could he get closer? Was it safe to lean in or even walk in?

  Dr. Gordon walked over and pushed his hand into the hologram field. Like electrified ripples on a pond, the boundary shimmered with warped light waves, but it seemed to offer no resistance. “As you can see,” he said, “I can interrupt the flow without disturbing the image. You can literally walk through this dream without harming it or yourself.”

  Nathan pushed a hand through. Although a slight tingling sensation crawled along his skin at the entry point, it didn’t hurt at all. “All right if I go in and look around?”

  “I was hoping someone would.” Dr. Gordon withdrew a pair of eyeglasses from his shirt pocket. “These lenses are similar to the one inside your father’s camera. You see, we had already conducted experiments that helped us look at the dream hologram, but because of the danger in trying to get an Earth Blue mirror and because the Earth Yellow mirror was inaccessible until now, we had to use fragments from the shattered Earth Red mirror that Simon Blue recovered from the funeral site.

  “The images we created were just as fragmented as the glass, and without the calibration we just gained from your travel to the dream world, much of our data was suspect. Yet, we did learn that dream images are skewed in both space and time. Because of these distortions, we were rarely able to figure out what was happening. Dreams might move at ten times normal speed or appear warped. We were unable to sort them out.”

  Nathan nodded toward the graveyard. “Yeah. I noticed something moving in there. It was too quick to see.”

  “That’s why you need these.” Dr. Gordon slid the glasses over Nathan’s eyes. “Now when you walk inside the hologram you will see a much clearer picture, as if you were actually within the dream world.”

  Nathan took off the glasses and looked at one of the earpieces. “I felt something cold.”

  Dr. Gordon touched a tiny metallic plate showing through the plastic. “You’re feeling two amplification devices, one for each ear. Although the mirror transmits sound, the signal is too weak for our instruments to detect outside the hologram. These will amplify the signal, allowing you to listen to the dream, just as if you were actually there.”

  “But without the danger,” Solomon added. “You will be invisible to anyone in the dream world.”

  Nathan put the glasses back on and rubbed an earpiece. “What does Kelly’s signal sound like?”

  “That device picks up dream sounds,” Dr. Gordon said. “Her candle’s signal can be detected only by the radio telescopes. We will continue to monitor it and let you know if we can pinpoint its source.”

  Nathan let out a sigh. “Okay. What should I do? Just walk around in there?”

  “Yes. Go from one Earth to the other and study every feature. When you come out, you can report your findings. In the meantime, we will search for your father’s signature.”

  “Will do.” Nathan took a deep breath and marched straight into the hologram. For a moment, the ripples of light blinded him, but once he stepped fully within the perimeter, his vision returned. Now surrounded by the graveyard scene, he studied the area. Several paces away to his front and to each side, the scene blurred, as if a wall of fog blocked his view. Could these fogbanks be boundaries to the next world’s dream?

  Standing still for a moment, he listened. The only noise his earpieces transmitted sounded like the whooshing of a breeze, evidenced by the occasional wisp of fog that blew slowly past.

  He turned to his left and walked parallel to the outer boundary. Lifting his legs high, he stepped over crawling vines and weeds, then dodged a tombstone that stood in his way. Stopping for a moment, he tried to lay his hand on its rough concrete top, but his fingers passed into the stone. With his elbow on one side of the marker and his bandaged hand on the other, it looked like a mummy had punched through it.

  He straightened and pressed on. Obviously, it wouldn’t hurt to pass right through these markers, but it seemed sacrilegious somehow, so he continued to leave space between himself and each grave while he searched for the fleeting shadow, or least footprints in the moist grass and mud.

  As he walked, he glanced from time to time at the others. Several looked back at him, slightly hazy but still recognizable. Daryl stared with her jaw hanging open. Tony and Molly held hands, both watching in awe.

  The only others in sight were Dr. Gordon and the two Dr. Simons. All three beamed, obviously proud of their incredible feat. And why not? They had figured out how to display dreams in virtual reality, presenting mental images from three different worlds. But could they use it to locate his father? Was this venture really the key to stopping interfinity? And if so, wouldn’t he have to hurry and get the job done?

  Something moved — a shadow, small and quick, but not as fast as before. Nathan held his breath. Slowly turning, he searched for the little ghost. The image was eerily like Francesca’s appearance in the WalMart, an out-of-place specter, lost and scared. Yet this one seemed taller and a little slower.

  Ahead and to his left something behind a tombstone flapped slowly in the breeze. He skulked toward it, approaching from the back. Even though the “ghost” on the other side likely couldn’t see or hear him, it still seemed wrong to rush ahead.

  As he rounded the tombstone, the sky suddenly darkened. Something sat on the gravesite’s bare earth, leaning against the marker, but now the figure was shrouded in shadows. Rain began to fall, pennysized drops that raised noisy splashes around Nathan’s shoes.

  He stooped, trying to get a closer look at the huddled shape. Lightning flashed. The sudden light revealed a shivering girl, a split-second image, yet one that stayed emblazoned in his mind’s eye. Wearing dark glasses, the girl clutched her tattered sweater and walking stick close with long, skinny fingers. Thunder boomed an echo, making her shake even harder.

  Nathan sighed. It was Felicity, living through another graveyard nightmare, worse than the one she had conjured in the midst of Frederick’s playground.

  Lightning streaked across the sky, illuminating her again, this time for several seconds. With stringy hair plastered to her face, and ratty clothes sticking to her trembling body, she seemed more pitiful than ever. Her head leaned just below the words “Here lies Felicity, an ugly blind girl.”

  Nathan looked back at the tombstone near the edge of the hologram, the first one he had seen. Did they all bear the same inscription?

  He curled his fingers into a painful clench. Part of him wanted to scream, “Where’s Kelly? What did you do to her?” But that would be stupid. The poor girl was suffering. She was the victim of fear and loneliness, dreaming the darkness in her mind.

  Nathan stepped back, and his throat began to tighten. What could he do to help? Even if he offered his sweatshirt, she wouldn’t be able to feel its warmth. His words of comfort would fall on deaf ears. All he could do was watch her suffer and hope that she would soon wake up from the nightmares that plagued her mind.

  He looked up into the rainy sky and breathed a quick prayer. The words of the ancient song again flowed through his thoughts: “Waking or sleeping, thy presence my light.”

  Leaning over, he kissed Felicity’s forehead, though it felt like kissing air. It was time to move on. Interfinity wouldn’t wait.

  Still walking parallel to the cylinder’s outer boundary, Nathan stepped through the fog, blinding his eyes for a moment. When he blinked away the flash, the Chicago snow scene came into view. Although nearby objects, such as a fire hydrant next to his shoe, were clear, distant objects, especially tall ones, seemed indistinct. Maybe they stood outside the dreamer’s thought range or were veiled by the wind-driven snow. He half expected to feel a chill from the breeze, but the temperature and air movement stayed the same �
�� a bit cold, but not nearly blizzardlike. Of course, the whooshing sound continued to rush into his ears, louder now as the snowstorm raged.

  He marched on, this time plowing right through the snow drifts that piled against cars and vans on otherwise deserted city streets. Since his legs left the drifts undisturbed, any telltale footprints from dream-world inhabitants would be easy to spot, but none appeared. Whoever was dreaming this scene hadn’t bothered to include any living creatures — no people, no dogs, not even a shivering bird to mar the pristine layers of white.

  He paused at a street sign and read the labels — “Michigan Avenue” and “Chicago Avenue.” To the right, a department store stood without a hint of customers, barely visible as it rose into the hazy borders. To the left, Neiman Marcus stood equally empty, even blurrier in the distance. This was definitely the same area where Gunther had picked them up. Could Gunther be the dreamer? He had driven a long way, so he might have stopped somewhere close by to take a nap.

  Nathan looked up at the falling snow, each flake just a tiny dot of white — there was no sign of crystalline uniqueness, making them more like Styrofoam particles than true snow. With nebulous boundaries all around, he felt like a human ornament in a recently shaken snow globe.

  Again he strode ahead until he reached another dividing wall of fog. This time he paused and pictured the entire cylinder in his mind. If he continued going in the same direction, he would pass into the Earth Red dream world, but that dream had ended, so he wouldn’t do any good in there. Then he would complete a full circle, but with the huge expanse of the dream world left to search, what good was this doing?

  Amber had said this was a limitless realm, but he could only see a few dreams. Still, maybe somehow his presence could draw the dreamers he loved. Maybe they would be attracted to his emotional energy. It wasn’t much of a hope, but it was better than nothing.

  Yet neither a footprint nor a wandering ghost would whisper a clue to either Kelly’s or his father’s location. It all seemed so futile.

  He turned ninety degrees to the right and looked at the center of the hologram, dark and foreboding. Could that be the central core Patar had mentioned? If he went into it, could the hologram show him what was inside Sarah’s Womb? When it was on the ceiling, that portion had been the doughnut’s center hole, the mystery spot that hadn’t yet revealed any secrets; maybe the telescopes hadn’t penetrated it and couldn’t display its contents.

  A gnarled oak stood near the barrier. With bent, twisted branches and long vines hanging from top to bottom, it looked like one of the trees Cerulean had said to avoid. Nathan walked up to it and studied its tough, ridged bark. Harmless as it was in its hologram form, it gave him a shiver all the same.

  Gritting his teeth, Nathan plunged through the dark barrier and into the center of the hologram. For a moment, only blackness greeted his eyes, then a flicker of light, like a firefly that glowed red for a brief second, then another light glowed blue, hovering at eye level not more than two steps away. He blinked and looked for the lights again, but they were gone.

  After a quick shudder, he pressed on and exited the blackness, expecting to enter the darkness of the Earth Red dream world, but something appeared. A piano sat on a hardwood floor, a Model B Victorian like the one in Kelly’s living room. Other furnishings faded in and out of the scene — a chandelier dangling low directly over the piano bench; portraits on the wall of people with contorted faces, some looking as if they had eaten sour pickles; and a basketball hoop, complete with a backboard and net hanging from a pole that suspended the orange metal rim within free-throw distance of whoever might play the piano’s keys.

  Atop the piano sat dozens of glass figurines, each one a little girl in a different pose. Some were dressed in feminine dresses and gowns, while others donned athletic gear — everything from a racing swimsuit to football pads and helmet to basketball shorts and a tank top.

  Beyond the piano, Tony and Molly stood at the hologram’s boundary, peering in. Nathan followed their line of sight. To his left only an arm’s reach away, a little girl, maybe nine years old, stood glaring at the piano, her brown ponytail protruding from the back of a baseball cap.

  He swallowed. Could it be? It had to be — Kelly Clark as a young girl.

  9

  KELLY’S SONG

  Nathan scanned the room, hoping to pick up some clue that might reveal where Kelly was sleeping. When nothing jumped out at him, he turned his eyes back to her young, dream self.

  She slid onto the bench and turned up the keyboard cover, exposing a set of warped, stained keys, very different from the keys on the real piano back at her Iowa farmhouse. With a slap, she opened a music book poised above the keys and let out a huff.

  Nathan couldn’t suppress a grin. That huff was definitely Kelly’s. He had heard it plenty of times before.

  Squaring her shoulders, she set her fingers on the keys and looked up at the chandelier. It hung so low, the bottoms of the prismatic crystals nearly brushed the top of her cap as they swayed ever so slightly.

  Beings of light, colorful and sparkling, began to dance around her head like wingless fairies in long dresses. Representing every color of the rainbow, each pint-sized pixie shook a tiny conductor’s baton at Kelly and shouted chipmunklike commands that were too squeaky to understand.

  Nathan knelt at Kelly’s side and gazed into her eyes — the same walnut-brown eyes the real Kelly had. He shifted his gaze to the pixies and studied their tiny faces. Each one looked like Molly, stern and demanding as they shook their toothpick batons, almost comical in their exaggerated expressions. Each wore a low-cut dress, far too revealing.

  He averted his eyes. Could that be the dress Kelly wore for Steven, the one her mother borrowed to attract a partner in adultery? The same dress Kelly, overwhelmed by shame, later ceremonially burned?

  Questions about Kelly’s past drilled into his mind. Why was she so ashamed? What did she do? How far did she go?

  Nathan clutched a handful of his shirt and squeezed. It must have been too far . . . just too far. After all he had been taught about remaining pure and someday marrying someone equally pure, how could he ever hope for a relationship with this girl? She was a strong, brave, and loyal warrior, but . . .

  He shook his head. Could it ever happen? Did she even want a relationship with him? Was singing “Amazing Grace” while plunging in a doomed airplane evidence of a cleansed soul?

  He let out a silent sigh. He hoped so. He really, really hoped so.

  Returning his gaze to little Kelly, he again watched her eyes. They seemed so innocent, reflecting the days before she had to face the trials of adolescence, the days when childhood fun held sway over fashion, popularity, and boys.

  Flashing an impish grin, Kelly batted the pixies away. A basketball appeared in her hands, and she shot it toward the hoop. It banged against the backboard, swished through the net, and bounced on the piano top, bowling over the collection of figurines as it dribbled back into her hands.

  The pixies returned, buzzing around her head like a swarm of angry hornets. Kelly sighed and tossed away the basketball. It bounced once and disappeared.

  After giving the pixies an angry scowl, Kelly played, expertly running her fingers through a scale. Then, after finishing a second warm-up drill, she flipped through an old music book, its pages more like ancient parchment than the thin paper in modern varieties. She looked at the musical score and played with a lovely touch, lifting her fingers and hands in slow, graceful arches.

  The notes passed through the transmitters and into his ears, familiar notes that pieced together a haunting tune. Nathan looked at the music book in front of her. The title, written in bold black script, seemed to float above the page — “Amazing Grace.” Now, as he looked back at her lovely little hands, the music synced with her strokes, each finger fall recreating one of the most heartfelt songs in human history.

  Barely able to breathe, he looked into her eyes. How could she know to play the so
ng he was thinking about? Could her gift of interpretation reach into his mind from so far away, even in a dream?

  Kelly swayed in time with the song, and her lips seemed to move, but only slightly, as if she were singing in her mind but not letting the words come out. She now seemed older, maybe twelve or thirteen. Her baseball cap was gone, and she wore a long skirt and a button-up blouse that revealed her blossoming femininity. The pixies had vanished, and new figurines appeared on the piano; young men dressed in white tuxedos, one for every Kelly figurine.

  As if getting ready to dance, they paired up, and when their hands touched, each Kelly transformed. The old clothes burned away, revealing a long, lacy gown every bit as white as her partner’s tuxedo. Then they danced, a waltz of sorts, though slower, moodier, and more contemplative.

  Nathan leaned close to Kelly but heard nothing. The dream was slowly becoming a nightmare, at least for him. Why wouldn’t the amplification device pick up the sound? Was Kelly not dreaming the music? Although the visual quality of this hologram was as perfect as real life, the missing dimension of sound made it feel like a true nightmare — surreal, out of sync, haunted. He squinted to read her lips, but she formed words that seemed unfamiliar, certainly not the lyrics of the famous hymn.

  He looked back at the page. Again, words floated above the ragged parchment. They pulsed with each press of her finger, as if energized by the music. With tears flowing down her cheeks, Kelly played on. Now dressed in the blood-stained safari outfit she had worn when they first traveled to Earth Yellow, she seemed sixteen again. Even the cut on her head returned, oozing a dark red stream.

  Kelly began to sing, her voice sweet, yet tortured, and dirge-like in cadence.

  Amazing grace is lost for me,

  A harlot soiled and stained.