“Hello. Hello. Is someone there?” the man called. “Please, please, someone be there.”
His pleading continued as Sky and I both easily hopped the fence. As my feet hit the ground, a rushing wind practically took me off my feet, so I instantly reached over and tugged Sky into my arms before it took him down. He held on to me, panting heavily. The hissing words of the menace were back. And nastier than ever.
“They’ll disssscard yoooouuuu…throw you away like traaaash…worthlessssss…worthless boy.”
“I really hate this thing,” I said into Sky’s ear.
He gave a full body shudder, then we dropped to our guy’s side. Like last time, he lay on one side with a blanket over his face, hiding. It didn’t stop the menace’s taunts, nor did our presence stop him from begging for help.
“Hey,” I said, tentatively touching his shoulder.
His body jerked, and his begging for help instantly transformed to horrified pleas for us to leave. “Oh shit. Oh fuck. Damn. Damn. Damn. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to pull you here. You have to go. Don’t let it follow you. Run. Run. Run.”
Sky and I exchanged a weary glance, then I gripped his shoulder more firmly and shook. His body responded to my touch in jolts, but he didn’t turn over. Didn’t remove the covering from his face. Didn’t acknowledge our physical presence in any way.
“We have to do something,” Sky said, sounding as frantic as I felt.
Like spraying bullets, all that we’d learned or seen in the Dream-veil darted through my mind. Yes, okay, this guy was here. More aware of us than he should be, but still not completely here. This wasn’t our normal reality, so we couldn’t treat it as such. So far, Sky had called forth the sword that had let me distinguish the ghosties, but this wasn’t a spirit. It was a new kind of terror, like one that Gran had told Sky about. I wish I’d taken the time to ask Malcolm if there was a volume of other entities. Maybe we’d have more of a handle on what was happening right now.
But a sword would do us no good now. I couldn’t vanquish what I couldn’t see. This poor man hadn’t traveled here with us in the Dream-veil, he was here from his own dream world, which meant what? Getting an idea in my mind, I turned to Sky.
“We need him to wake up.”
“What? How? Even if he’s laying here, we’d have to wake up ourselves and drive here first to wake him up. I don’t want to leave him alone with this thing a minute longer.”
“But his spirit is close. He’s sensing things more like the baby did. He’s conscious of what’s happening here. Maybe if wecan wake him up, tell him to stay here and wait for us, we’ll know where he is.”
“But what if he leaves before we get here? What if we can’t find him after?” Sky looked like he wanted to cry.
“Sweetheart, we don’t have a choice but to try.” I kissed his forehead, then leaned over the blanket-covered figure and gripped his shoulder. “When you wake up, remain here. Don’t run. We’re going to help you, but we have to find you first. It’ll help if you stay with us.”
“How do we get him to wake up?”
Reaching down, I petted the psychopomp-puppy. “Patchy. Can you wake him up? Can you try?”
The puppy jumped onto the figure, barking his little head off, and after what felt like an eternity—but was probably no longer than a handful of seconds, he disappeared right from under my hand. Patchy landed on all four paws and gazed up at me triumphantly.
The disembodied voice shrieked, breaking the sound barrier Sky had created to block him. “Nooooooooooo. Mine…he is mine!”
I nodded at Sky, and he picked up his pup and kissed the top of his colorful head. “Get us out of here.”
I woke with a start,gasping for air like I’d been stuck under water, drowning. Sky startled next to me. We took one look at each other and jumped out of bed, rushing around to get our clothes on.
“Where’s Patchy?” I asked as I tugged on my pants and zipped them up.
Sky shook his head while hopping on one leg and pulling his sock on the other foot. “I don’t know. He didn’t come back with us. I don’t know how it works for him, if he’s tired or what, so I’m going to leave him be until I talk to Rosie.”
That made sense, I supposed, but I thought Sky might be overthinking this. While yes, I assumed Patchy needed sleep like everyone else—goddess knew Duchess spent plenty of time curled into a ball napping—I was pretty sure that he could rest anywhere. The Dream-veil, here, wherever, but we had other things to worry about right now.
“I’ll drive,” I yelled over to Sky as we ran out of the house. He’d been in Willowhope long enough to know his way around at this point, but he’d admitted he hadn’t spent a lot of time at the boardwalk, so I wasn’t sure if he’d know the closest parking lot. There was no point in wasting time with things like directions when I knew exactly where we were going.
“I hope you don’t get pulled over,” Sky mumbled as I sped down Main Street toward Atlantic Avenue.
“Same,” I breathed out. I wasn’t a speeder or one to break the law in any way. As long as you didn’t count crossing onto properties that hadNo Trespassingsigns in the name of ghost hunting. I really didn’t want to have to stop now. There’d be no way to explain where we were going or why, and I didn’t want to scare this guy once we found him.
“Hopefully he didn’t run off once he woke up,” Sky said, peering anxiously out the front windshield.
Reaching over, I wiggled my fingers until he slid his hand into mine. “We’re doing all we can going to find him where he was. Let’s not borrow trouble.”
