A deep crack resounded through the chasm. It was the sound of breaking bone. It was the sound of the bridge we both stood on crackling beneath our feet. I looked down and realized that it was bone. The ice had been its flesh. At the same time, I reached out a hand and pushed Josephine toward the other side of the bridge.
As soon as my hand touched her, propelling her forward, my vision plummeted far below to the raging river I had not known was there. A boat filled with half-man beings seemed to reach up for me. They were men, but they had goat legs with cloven hooves and horns protruded from their heads. More demon than man, they shouted, “The Bride! The Bride is here!” Some with no faces gibbered and jeered in glee. Fear overwhelmed me as bile filled my throat.
Then they were gone and we were running across the bridge as it shattered beneath us. Josephine tumbled to her knees as we reached the other side. She disappeared in a shower of falling ice, bone, and stone, screaming.
Plunging my left hand down, I grasped for her. I could reach her. And I did. I found and gripped her wrist as hard as I could. She reached up and grabbed my arm with her other hand. I hauled her over the edge, back from the precipice. Josephine sobbed and clutched at me. For the briefest of moments, I hugged her tight. I wanted to fall into the relief of having caught her. I could not. In my other hand was my weapon. Above us, hell screamed its fury.
I aimed another shot, my fifth, and fired. It struck the shantak’s tail, but didn’t appear to slow it down. I surged to my feet and looked for shelter. Not twenty feet away was a door in the wall of the mountain. Framed in dark wood, and as neat as you please, it waited with the patience of a saint. I did not question it. The door looked as if it had been made for us. “There! Go there!”
There was no more time. The shantak was on me. It beat at me with wings of leather as its talons slashed the air. I dodged as best I could. It was not enough. One of its claws caught hold and pierced my shoulder, knocking me to the ground, pinning me there. I screamed my pain and beat at its leg, trying to free myself. My scrabbling hand couldn’t get purchase on those slick, hard scales.
Fetid breath assaulted me as the shantak came in to bite. I pistol-whipped it to no avail. The shantak snapped at my face, inches from my nose. I did the only thing I could do. I thrust the pistol into its slavering mouth, pointed up, and pulled the trigger.
For a moment, it continued to flap its wings. Then it went slack and fell, its mouth ripping my father’s pistol from my hand, as it hit the ground, half on and half off the cliff edge. Its talon tore at my shoulder as the monster’s body slid over the edge of the stone. I thought I was going to go with it. Then strong arms wrapped themselves about my waist and pulled me back from the edge. The shantak’s talons hung on, tearing flesh and cloth as I screamed. Then the talons, and the monster, were gone.
Pain-dazed and bleeding, all I could do was let those strong, tawny arms—Josephine’s—pull me from the cliff edge, through the door in the mountain, and into darkness.
I leaned against a cool stone wall and put my hand to my left shoulder. Pain spiked and my hand came away wet. The sound of a match striking gave scant warning that light was coming. Then the vision of Josephine lighting a lamp came into view.
As did my blood-covered hand.
I was bleeding and in pain. You weren’t supposed to feel pain in dreams. I’d never bled in a dream before. I tried to marshal my thoughts, my focus, my will to make the bleeding and the pain stop. Nothing happened. I was still wounded. Still bleeding.
This was real.
“We’re in luck. This is a tunnel I know. A little red singing bird of Celephaïs lives here.”
I ignored her. I stared at my bloody hand glistening in the lamplight. I touched my torn shoulder again and gasped at the pain.
This was real.
This was happening.
This world was real.
The Dreamlands were real. I could die in this place. Josephine could die. I wasn’t strong enough to save us both. Worse, I’d lost my father’s pistol. No longer did I believe it still lived in my desk drawer. I’d lost my protection, my touchstone. I’d lost…
Malachi sprang to mind, one of our many conversations before a hypnotherapy session.
“You’re still suffering from intense nightmares, or bad memories?”
“Well, Doctor, those are two things I’ve got a bit of trouble keeping straight.”
“Malachi, let us see what we can do about that…”
He’d been telling the exact truth and I hadn’t seen it for what it was. Those nightmares and bad memories had been one and the same. In my mind’s eye, his hesitant smile morphed into the relaxed state of hypnotic sleep, then his brow furrowed with fear. I could hear him whispering.
“Shadow figures stood above me and blood dripped from their fingertips.”
I hadn’t believed him. I had been so wrong. The ones with curved knives had come for him. Even though he died with one of their knives in his heart, all I could remember were the glyphs drawn in his blood on the wall of his room.
When he told me the shadow figures had taken his last name—“The Darkness that Watches”—he’d told me the truth. They’d left one of their knives in his body and I still had not believed. I had been so blind. So arrogant and so blind.
A sound came to me. Someone kept saying the word “no” over and over.
That someone was me.
I couldn’t stop myself.
“Shhh. Shhh.” Josephine was by my side. “Listen to the singing. Listen. It’s a bird of Celephaïs. Listen.”
She put her fingertips to my lips.
I wanted to bite them.
The very idea of me biting my patient shocked me into stillness and silence. I listened. There was birdsong. It was sweet. It cascaded over me, relaxing my tense muscles. Pain receded. Although it did not disappear, it cleared my mind of its panic.
I wanted to fight the song’s soothing touch, to lose myself to the panic, the fear, and to never have to think of what I’d just realized ever again.
“I need to look for something.” Josephine’s voice echoed in the tunnel. “I will be back. Listen to the singing. Listen to the bird.”
My patient was trying to care for me. She was barely more than a child. I had a duty to her. I had to process what I now knew. For her sake as well as mine.
I leaned my head back with my eyes closed. Birdsong swelled. I fell into its ebb and flow. They say music soothes the savage beast. In this case, it soothed the chaos of panic. I considered my position. Somehow—Josephine did this, my mind whispered, she brought me here—I was in this place called the Dreamlands. It was filled with monsters and allies. Somewhere in this land was a place Josephine called the Red House. It was a safe haven. There, Josephine would return something she was protecting and her nightmares would go away, thus, her madness. I would deal with the rest of her mental trauma back in the real world.
I bowed my head. I had been uncommonly deceitful—to Josephine and to myself. This whole time that I’d assured my patient I believed her, I had actually been waiting for the logical explanation to appear. I’d been waiting for Josephine to realize the lie she’d told herself to cover the pain of a trauma she did not want to face. Deep down, I had believed Dr. Mintz. I had believed that Josephine Ruggles was merely hysterical and was crying out for attention. That she had not actually needed help.
How many of my other patients in the asylum had I done such a disservice to?