Dream Thing

Okyek Meh Thih lit a fire to warm them both. The bird screeched and cried out all night, as if demanding something of the rock wall and its meaningless symbols. When the Caretaker tried to pet and comfort it, the bird wouldn’t remain in his hands, but paced and strutted and screeched. When it finally slept, it was a fitful sleep in the Caretaker’s hands.

Okyek Meh Thih awoke when the bird screeched in the late morning, jumping out of his hands, staring at Okyek Meh Thih. The bird wobbled to the cave mouth and leaped into the air.

Chak flew away, over the canopy of the jungle, and Okyek Meh Thih saw him no more for two long years.

Chapter 24

“I’m fine, Mrs. M.,” Mark Howard insisted to the elderly woman. “Hi, Dr. Smith.”

“Mark? What are you doing here?”

“They just released me from the free clinic,” Mark said.

“Why wasn’t I informed?” Dr. Smith asked the nurse who was guiding the wheelchair into the office, and fighting Mrs. Mikulka, Smith’s longtime secretary, for control.

“I insisted. Thanks, you’ve been great. Thanks, Mrs. M. I’ve got it. I’ve got it.”

The nurse took the hint. Mrs. Mikulka steadfastly refused to. She fussed with him until he had stepped out of the wheelchair and slumped into the office chair behind the desk.

“You shouldn’t be out of hospital care,” Dr. Smith said.

“Yes, I should be.”

“That will be all, Mrs. Mikulka.”

The old woman left, promising to bring Mark tea. She closed the door behind her.

“How are you feeling?”

“What’s happening. Dr. Smith? What’s the news?”

“Problems are intensifying globally, but there’s nothing new. A worsening of the same. Why?”

“Europe?”

“A mess, but the truly dangerous security threats are under control.”

Mark Howard looked dissatisfied and began snapping out commands on his keyboard. “Something’s happening.”

“Much is happening. Are you all right, Mark?”

“I mean something is really happening. I don’t know what it was that I saw. It was something big.”

Sarah pushed into the office and hurried to Mark, embracing his head against her stomach as he sat.

“Why are you here?” she demanded. “God, you know what I thought? I walked into your hospital room and the bed was empty.”

“Sorry. Something is happening. I saw it in the dream. That thing showed it to me. What it intends to do.”

“What thing?” Smith demanded, but he knew perfectly well what thing.

“I was dreaming. I was in the ocean.” Mark stood up, clearing his head, trying to see it again. “It was pulling me down deep, into the water, where it was pitch-black. It was pulling me by the leg—Jesus, it hurt even in the dream. It hurts now.” He was in baggy sweatpants and he felt the leg, felt the bandage and yanked up the sweatpants to see the bandage.

“That explains the wheelchair.”

“What else did you see, Mark?”

“I should take him back to the doctors,” Sarah insisted.

“It pulled me down through the earth and into the hollow. I saw the water in the hollow. It was too big—I couldn’t make sense of it being something that was inside the earth but so big. Then I was pulled into the water. It was moving fast. I never would have believed it could move so fast. The erosion of the stone walls was visible. Then I was in the water. It was a maelstrom, out of control, chaos. I may never ride a roller coaster again.”

He peered into the middle distance.

“Then it got bigger, the space around me, and the water was boiling. I was riding inside a wall of steam and I was falling—up.”

Mark looked around the room, as if expecting to find what he was looking for. Harold Smith didn’t like the look in his eyes. “I want you under a doctor’s care, Mark.”

“Where it’s cold. My skin was scalded, but when I touched the air, the air was cold.”

Mark was trembling. Sarah pierced Smith with a look as she eased him into the desk chair.

“He was laughing at me, Dr. Smith. He was taunting me. He knew there was nothing I could do about it.”

“Mark, I need to know more details if I’m to take action.”

“There’s no action to take. It was too big. Bigger than anything on Earth, ever.”

“What was it you saw? Clear your mind. Picture it. Tell me what it was.”

Mark nodded and squinted at the desktop. “I saw cold.”

Dr. Smith looked disappointed.

“Antarctica,” Mark blurted. “What’s happening at the South Pole?”

Dr. Smith frowned. “Nothing.” He tapped out commands on his desktop and confirmed the news. “No reports of anything out of the ordinary.”

Mark Howard shook his head. “Not yet, but it’s coming.”

Chapter 25

The Caretaker became miserable in the two years after the bird left him.

Nothing was worse than watching one’s People suffer, especially when one is the Caretaker charged with alleviating their suffering.

Okyek Meh Thih’s dread grew. The legends of Chuh Mboi Aku, the elder god who would destroy this world, appeared to be coming true. Why in his generation? Why now? Countless Caretakers had come and gone and carried the old secret of Chuh Mboi Aku. What evil trick of fate caused the legend to rear its ugly head while he was Caretaker?