Authors: Christopher Golden
Waking Nightmares (12 page)
Something dark struck the plate glass and she jerked back, startled.
“Okay, this day is officially weird,” Ben said.
“Ya think?” Amber snapped.
The window had a long crack in it now, and she worried that further impacts might shatter it. But curiosity drew her forward. She thought she knew what she had seen but wanted confirmation. Others followed her, moving toward the front of the store. Through the glass, she could see two dead birds on the sidewalk outside—one a crow, and one a fat seagull.
“Over there,” Ben said, pointing to the left, up Eastwind Avenue. “There are more.”
And there were. Amber counted at least a dozen dead birds on the sidewalks on either side of the street. An old Volkswagen Jetta parked right in front of Starbucks had a dead pigeon on its hood, nestled in a fresh dent.
A muffled thump reached them, and Amber glanced over at the façade of Holland’s Flowers, watching a dead gull drop to the ground. The front window of the florist shop had a spiderweb of cracks in it. One more blow and it would shatter.
“What is this?” someone whispered behind her.
“The fucking End Times, or something,” another voice muttered.
Amber ignored them. She leaned forward and craned her neck, looking up into the cloudy sky. The light drizzle continued to fall. Against the gray storm clouds, hundreds of dark, winged figures flew in circles. Then some of them started to dive.
“Back up,” Ben said, pulling her a few feet away from the window. Stumbling, she almost shrugged him off before she realized he meant to protect her in case another bird hit the window and smashed it.
“Jesus, look at that!” said the businessman who’d been the first to complain about his coffee.
But they were already looking. Amber watched in silent amazement as birds began to rain down on Eastwind Avenue. Sparrows, crows, gulls, and pigeons dove from the sky, darting with unrelenting speed into the rain-slicked windows of the restaurants and shops all up and down the street. The front window of the Scarlet Letter Bookshop imploded with a crash they could hear half a block away at Starbucks, even with the door closed. Birds hit parked cars, cracking windshields. For thirty or forty seconds it went on and on, hundreds of birds flying straight into windows and walls and cars.
“They’re aiming,” Amber muttered to herself.
“What?” Ben asked, whispering so that only she could hear.
Wide-eyed, she looked at him. “None of them are hitting the street. Did you notice that? Yeah, they fall on the ground when they die, but it isn’t just some fucked-up bird suicide. It’s like they’re pissed off and they’re attacking.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Ben said, shaking his head, ready to argue.
“Is it?” Amber asked.
Ben peered back out the window. Whatever he had been about to say, he swallowed the words, unsure.
The big redheaded barista stood in front of the doors to the store. He bent and looked up at the sky. “I think it’s stopping.”
Amber could have told him that. The avian assault slowed. A final gull swooped down, headed right for the front window of Starbucks, and then—even as they scrambled back to avoid shattering glass—it banked to the left, flapped its wings, and soared skyward once more, attack aborted.
The people inside Starbucks held their breath for ten or twelve long seconds before they began to wonder aloud if it was really over, and safe to go outside.
“Ben,” Amber said, taking his hand to get his attention. “Please take me to my home.”
“I thought you wanted to go back to campus and get your car.”
“I’ll get my dad to drive me later. Right now I just want to see my family.”
She’d lost interest in coffee.
AS
Octavian drove along the rutted road that led past the sign for Summerfields Orchard, the willow trees overhead seemed to lean in toward his car, although whether they welcomed him or meant to keep him away, he did not know. It might have been entirely his imagination, but with a sprawling farm and orchard owned and staffed by earthwitches, it seemed entirely likely that the willows would respond to the witches’ intentions, conscious or not. Cat Hein and her wife would not be happy to see him; that much he knew. They looked at him as a danger to Keomany, and Octavian could not deny it. Whenever he and Keomany were together, it seemed there were dark and perilous events afoot.
Octavian drove along the rutted road that led past the sign for Summerfields Orchard, the willow trees overhead seemed to lean in toward his car, although whether they welcomed him or meant to keep him away, he did not know. It might have been entirely his imagination, but with a sprawling farm and orchard owned and staffed by earthwitches, it seemed entirely likely that the willows would respond to the witches’ intentions, conscious or not. Cat Hein and her wife would not be happy to see him; that much he knew. They looked at him as a danger to Keomany, and Octavian could not deny it. Whenever he and Keomany were together, it seemed there were dark and perilous events afoot.
One of these days,
he thought as he turned into the Summerfields parking lot,
I’m going to have to come here just to buy apples
.
he thought as he turned into the Summerfields parking lot,
I’m going to have to come here just to buy apples
.
He piloted the silver Lexus he’d rented in Montreal across the yellow grass and dried mud of the field Summerfields used for most of its parking. It was after six o’clock now, and he assumed that the handful of cars still in the lot must belong to employees. On the far side of the lot, he turned into the narrow path that led to the enormous farmhouse where Keomany lived with her employers. Dust rose behind the Lexus, turning into a swirling cloud in his rearview mirror.
As he pulled up in front of the farmhouse, the dust cloud billowing around the car once he came to a stop, the front door swung open and Keomany came out onto the front steps, a big black shoulder bag and a lavender backpack her only luggage for their trip. A beautiful woman, Keomany had a gorgeous smile, but she wasn’t smiling today.
She didn’t even give him a chance to get out of the car. Pulling open the back door, she tossed her bags in. The rich, earthen scents of the farm and the sweet, slightly decaying smell of the orchard blew in on the breeze that swirled into the car.
“Do you need to use the bathroom or anything?” she asked, before shutting the rear passenger door and then opening up the front.
“I’m fine,” Octavian told her as she slid into the passenger seat and yanked the door closed.
“Good. Let’s get going, then.”
“Tori and Cat don’t want to come out and say hello before we go?”
Keomany shot him an impatient glance. “Tori and Cat don’t like you.”
Octavian laughed and feigned offense as he put the car into gear. “You’d think saving a woman’s life would earn you a little affection.”
“Cat appreciates that you saved her life,” Keomany said. “But that doesn’t make her like you any better. Maybe she’s just envious of how easily magic comes to you.”
Octavian grinned again, but this time he did it to hide the anger that flickered through him in that moment. He had a command of magic that Cat Hein could barely conceive of, but he had paid for that knowledge with centuries of torment in Hell.
“So, do you have a better fix on our destination?” Octavian asked, bluntly changing the subject.
Keomany nodded, reaching back to grab her backpack. From a side pocket, she drew a map of New England, which she unfolded to reveal a spot that had been circled in purple marker.
“Hawthorne, Massachusetts,” she said.
“And what’s in Hawthorne, Massachusetts?” Octavian asked.
“I honestly don’t know,” Keomany replied, tucking her silken black hair behind her ears. Her soft, brown eyes were full of fear. “But it’s something old and dangerous. The natural order of things is unraveling in Hawthorne, and whatever is causing the chaos is growing stronger.”
Octavian pushed a little harder on the accelerator. Keomany turned on the car radio and starting punching buttons until she found something she liked—a tinny, edgy bit of rock that sounded like it would only be played on the local college radio station. Now that they were on their way, she seemed to lighten up a bit.
“It’s good to see you, Peter,” Keomany said.
“Always good to see you, Keomany.”
“Nikki didn’t want to come with you?”
Octavian smiled. “It’s sad. She was so disappointed not to be able to join us. It’s been months since something evil tried to eat her. She sends her best, though.”
Keomany smiled archly. She traced her finger along the map, following the route they would take to Hawthorne, and then glanced out the window at the dimming sky.
“No sign of a storm,” she said.
“Was there supposed to be?”
“No. But I have a feeling that will change as we get closer.”
“So, Hawthorne?” Peter said. “You really have no idea what we’re going to be driving into the middle of?”
“I told you. Chaos.”
“You can’t be more specific than that?”
Keomany rolled her eyes and started scanning radio stations again.
“That’s why they call it chaos.”
NORMAN
Dunne groaned in his sleep, furrowed his brow, and reached out his right hand in search of his alarm clock. Half conscious, he tapped the nightstand and extended his probing fingers farther, bumping a plastic water glass, which tumbled off the table and spilled its contents onto the linoleum floor.
Dunne groaned in his sleep, furrowed his brow, and reached out his right hand in search of his alarm clock. Half conscious, he tapped the nightstand and extended his probing fingers farther, bumping a plastic water glass, which tumbled off the table and spilled its contents onto the linoleum floor.
“Come on,” he muttered, his voice a dry rasp.
The alarm emitted loud, rapid-fire beeps, irritating as hell, and after several more seconds of this, he opened his eyes into slits, glancing to his right in search of the offending clock.
Awareness flooded back into him. He felt the IV tube in his left arm tug as he shifted in bed, saw the chair against the wall and the tray table with its plastic bedpan and the white cable wrapped around the metal side rail of the bed—with which he could call the nurse—and he remembered it all. Out on the boat, fishing with Tommy, dragging up that old trunk in the net, opening it, and then the pain in his chest. A heart attack at his age!
“Shit,” he whispered, sadness sweeping over him.
But that irritating alarm kept going, and as he came more fully awake, he realized that he could hear others echoing up and down the tiled hospital corridor. A sickly yellow light came from two units set into the ceiling of his room, but it took him a moment to understand that these were emergency lights. The alarm came from the machine that had been monitoring his vital signs earlier in the day. It was no longer attached to him now—the nurse had disconnected it when she had last checked on him—but it had yet to be removed from the room. Now the contraption beeped and flashed. He figured it had a battery backup, and that the lights in the ceiling meant there was a fail-safe system so that people on other machines—the kind that kept you breathing, or your heart beating—wouldn’t die just because the wind had blown down a power line. In fact, any moment . . .
Even as the thought crossed his mind, the lights popped on, electricity in the hospital switching over to backup generators. He exhaled, relaxing the tension that had gripped him without his even being aware of it. The machine beside him was not keeping him alive, or even monitoring his vital signs anymore, but it had still unnerved him to think the hospital’s systems might go down.
People rushed by in the corridor, no one even pausing long enough to poke their head in to see him. Not that Norm minded. After a day or two of observation, they would send him home with instructions about changing his diet and adding exercise to his life, not to mention prescription drugs to cut his cholesterol. His heart attack had knocked him on his ass, but the docs had told him already that it didn’t seem to have done any significant damage. He needed rest and a new lifestyle, and there were lots of other people in the hospital whose condition required more attention. Norm didn’t mind at all. He just wanted to go back to sleep.
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