Dream Thing

Mark asked, “Do you believe the water level will stop going down within twenty-four hours?”

Smith frowned at the desktop, his hands idly bringing up a window on the screen below the glass desktop. The screen contained various estimates of the possible volume of contiguous sub-Pacific caverns. “Every rational scientific estimation says it should have stopped already,” Smith stated. “Unless you give credence to Dr. Belknap.”

Mark Howard’s wristwatch vibrated, reminding him to get to his feet. Sitting for more than fifteen minutes still made his leg ache. He circled the desk and looked at Dr. Smith’s display window.

It was a deceptively simple table. The top box contained the bulleted names of scientists, universities or think tanks that had developed estimates of the possible course of the ocean drain. Next to each name was their estimate in total time. The box on the bottom showed the names of the more improbable theorists. The hollow-earth believers, for example, who claimed the earth was actually an air-filled sphere. Neither Smith nor Mark Howard gave them much credence, but their theory allowed for the seas to indeed drain indefinitely.

In the middle of the window was a single name inside its own box. Dr. Stephen Belknap, a seismologist from Oregon State University. Nobody had ever heard of him until yesterday, when he went public with Tectonic Hollow theory. He postulated that, as the tectonic plates drifted during the past few hundred million years, ripping apart Earth’s single super continent to form the continents man knows today, it formed an air-filled chamber under Earth’s crust.

“Even the experts that are working with the benefit of data about the most recently discovered cavern systems haven’t been able to accommodate the volume of water the oceans appear to have lost,” Smith said. “Belknap’s looking more credible by the minute.”

Mark wouldn’t have agreed yesterday.

His leg didn’t hurt but he was weary, body and soul. The bad dreams hadn’t allowed him to sleep soundly in days. He needed just a few minutes … He rested his head in his hands.

Chapter 21

Mark Howard sank through the oceans slowly at first, watching the water grow darker until it was black. Then he moved faster. The fish that existed here provided their own glowing lights, and they made trails going past Mark.

He was aware he was in one of the Pacific Ocean’s deep trenches. Somehow, he knew he was twenty-one thousand feet below the surface when he finally touched bottom-—and slipped into the earth.

The blackness was the same, but it felt different. It was the mealy coarseness of soil, and Mark felt miles and miles of it pass. He sensed what his destination would be: the talk of the evening news, the infamous Tectonic Hollow.

Mark, who had not been afraid at first, was afraid now. He pictured himself standing inside a rock chamber hundreds of miles across, nothing but emptiness, emptiness, emptiness until it finally reached the rock hardness of the wall. The fear was claustrophobia and agoraphobia combined, but Mark was too terrified to appreciate how unique it was. He tried to stop. He reached out to the earth, clawed at the dirt, but he was only a shadow, a helpless phantom without substance.

He shouted at himself to wake up and for an instant he felt the dream fade—then he was dragged back into it by a thick tentacle that constricted his bad leg and pulled him down.

Mark Howard tried to kick it off, and the pain in his leg was severe—as if the old wound were freshly inflicted. He couldn’t see whatever it was—and whatever it was, it wasn’t as horrifying as where it was taking him.

Mark lunged at his leg and dug his fingers into the tentacle. It loosened, then squeezed harder.

Then Mark arrived at his destination.

It wasn’t what he expected.

It was worse.

Smith noticed his assistant was dozing at his desk, head in his arms. Smith went back to his screen. The young man deserved any sleep he could steal.

Mark gasped.

“Mark?”

Mark was trying to dig into the onyx desktop with his fingers, then he curled up in his chair, a low groaning sound coming from deep inside him. Smith went to the young man and touched his shoulder.

Mark got to his feet, pushed against Smith and fell against the wall, hard. It shook the office. The look on Howard’s face was slow in coming—horror. His eyes were wide and his mouth dropped open, and Mark Howard made a long sound like a foghorn calling to the drowning passengers of a sinking ship.

Sarah Slate burst into the hospital room and found herself halted. Smith had her by the arms. She would have never thought the gray old man was so powerful.

Mark was shirtless on the platform, surrounded by doctors in the triage center that served as Folcroft’s emergency room when necessary. An IV was in his arm and a mask was on his face. A nurse pushed a needle into his arm and injected something.

“What happened?” she demanded.