Sorrow.
No, not sorrow.
Guilt.
As Adam’s body slumps to the ground, I feel an immense sense of responsibility, as if I’m the one who killed him. With tears in my eyes, I start crawling across the forest floor, until finally I reach Adam and see his dead eyes staring back at me.
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper, my voice trembling with shock. “It should have been me. I’m an old man, I haven’t got many years left anyway, I should have been the one who died.”
Sensing something moving nearby, I turn and see that the teeth are pulling back together, re-forming the creature’s original body shape. I can hear the scraping sound of all the teeth scraping against one another, but after a moment the creature – or at least, what’s left of it -slumps back down as if it’s too weak to continue. In that moment, I realize to my surprise that I can once again taste eggs, and I start spitting sand from my mouth.
“What is this?” I gasp, as more and more sand comes bursting up from the back of my throat, threatening to suffocate me. “I don’t understand!”
I roll onto my back and clutch my neck, but the sand is pouring out now and I can’t breathe at all. I try to call out for help, and when that doesn’t work I try to tell myself that this can’t be happening, that it’s just another dream. At the same time, I’m starting to suffocate and there’s nothing I can do to break free as more and more sand bursts out from the back of my mouth and starts pouring not only from my lips but also from my nostrils and eyes, until finally everything goes black.
Twenty-Two
I open my eyes and sit up.
I’m on the camp-bed in the room at the back of the farmhouse. The guitars are next to me, in a patch of moonlight, and for a moment I sit in absolute silence.
Finally, however, I realize that I know what I have to do.
As soon as I reach the barn, I can hear a faint rattling sound coming from the six metal boxes. I expected as much. Whereas I was able to put the first ‘dream’ down to a series of coincidence, this time I’m certain that there’s something else happening. And as I stop in front of the boxes and crouch down, I find myself filled with a sense of awe.
“I get it now,” I whisper. “I heard you.”
Reaching out, I open the first box, then the second, and then the rest. Thousands of tiny black teeth come rushing out, spilling across the floor, and then they slowly start to pull toward one another. The effect is quite startling, and finally I step back and watch. There’s still a part of me that worries I might be making a terrible mistake, but Craig is fast asleep in the farmhouse so I suppose the only person at risk here is me. And it’s a risk I’m willing to take, because I think I know what I should have done at the start.
I head further into the barn, using a candle to light the way, and finally I reach the coop where the chickens are kept. I crouch down and take a look, and I see that the chickens are unharmed, just as they’ve remained unharmed despite the several times that this creature has ‘attacked’ them. It would have been very easy for the little black teeth to have swarmed into the cage and attack the chickens, so it’s clear that they were not the target. Instead, my suspicions are proven correct as I examine the side of the cage and find that the eggs run into a small metal box that’s attached to the lower edge.
I fiddle with the box for a moment before finally managing to get it open, and then I reach inside and take out the two eggs that I find.
“It wasn’t the chickens you wanted at all,” I mutter to myself as I get to my feet and head back toward the boxes. “I get that now.”
The piles of black teeth are still drawing themselves together, but the process seems painfully slow and it’s clear that the creature remains weak. Crouching down again, I hold the eggs out and crack them together, and then I drop them down directly onto one of the piles. I watch for a moment as the eggs seep into the mass of teeth, and I must admit that I feel rather foolish. Then again, if the supposed dream was trying to tell me something, I rather think that the taste of the sand was supposed to be a clue. Is it possible that, for whatever reason, these creatures feed on something that is very similar to the eggs of our world?
Suddenly the piles of black teeth start shuddering and pulling together faster, as if the eggs have given them strength. I pull back, just as the teeth begin to rise up into the air. For a moment, they seem ready to attack me, and I worry that I am to suffer the same fate as Adam, but then there’s a rush of activity and the teeth bind together to once again form the vaguely human shape that I saw before. Except, this time the shape looks taller and bigger, stronger even, as it towers above me.
“I understand,” I stammer, trying not to panic. “You got left behind by your friends, and you were hurt. You needed food, but you couldn’t get to the eggs. But you’re strong now, so you can go. Can’t you?”
I wait, but the figure simply stares down at me.
“Why did you take the music?” I continue. “Don’t you have it, where you come from? You didn’t have to take it all, you could have just taken some of it. We could have shared.”
The figure leans down toward me, and I hear all those thousands of sharp teeth jostling together. For a moment, the entire creature seems to be comprised of nothing more than the teeth, as if it’s poised to attack. Finally, however, the teeth begin to disappear beneath the surface, leaving the creature once again with a smooth face.
“I saved you!” I snap angrily. “Now can’t you do something for us? You took all the music, you left us with nothing! Go to your friends and tell them we need some of it back! Our world is collapsing and it’s all your fault!”
The creature tilts its head slightly. Is it listening? Is it capable of understanding?
“We need it!” I continue. “At least some of it! You’ve left us like this, and look at us! Look what we’ve become! Wherever you’ve taken it, you owe us the chance to hear it again! If you were so desperate for it, that means you know how important it is. It means you know what you’ve taken from our world. Are you really going to just leave us like this? Don’t you care at all?”
I wait, but the creature is still just staring at me.
Suddenly I feel cold air blasting against the back of my neck, and I turn to see that a hole has been torn in the air right behind my shoulders. I pull away, shocked by the sight of flickering lights that seem to have come from nowhere, but after a moment the hole widens slightly and I realize I can see a whole other world on the other side. I lean a little closer, and I’m just about able to make out an orange beach at the edge of a vast purple sea, with scores of orange island in the distance. It’s the world from my dream, and I can only stare with a sense of wonder as I realize that it’s all real.
Slowly, I reach out toward the flashing light.
Before I can get too close, however, there’s a rush sound nearby and I turn just as the creature falls apart and becomes a mass of little black teeth. This time, however, the teeth race past me, falling quickly through the hole.
“Wait!” I call out. “Come back!”
The hole closes, and I’m left kneeling all alone in the dark barn. Even the candle has been snuffed out, and the only sound is the clucking of chickens in the nearby coop.
Twenty-Three
Five years later
“Two this morning,” Craig says as he comes through into the kitchen and sets a pair of rabbits on the table. “I hope you’re not getting sick of them.”
“They’re nice and plump,” I point out. “They’ll go well in a stew or a casserole.”