Dream Thing

He started at the shore, where the fresh groove marks appeared, and he paced all the way to the yacht.

“Four hundred and twenty-one paces! You guys rock!”

The folks emerging from the yacht were in brown robes with deep hoods that hid their faces. There were several of them regarding Lagrasse somberly as other robed figures were being carried from the wreckage.

“Nice outfits,” Lagrasse commented.

“Who are you?” intoned a tall robed man who left the neat new rows of corpses. “Whom do you serve?”

Lagrasse shrugged. “I don’t know. Not the Coast Guard anymore, I guess. You know you guys made the best landing of anybody? You set the distance record for sure. I can already tell you set the survivor record, too. The best survivor rate so far was five, I think.”

“We are the chosen,” the man in the robe said. “What makes you so mirthful?”

“Hey, I’m only having the best time ever,” Lagrasse said. “This place is so interesting and now, with you guys here, it’s bound to get better. You’re a real trip. I like your robes.”

“So you have said,” the tall one responded, losing some of the deepness of his voice.

“Not exactly tropical wear,” Lagrasse added. “But nice. You sail all the way in from Idaho?”

The tall figure wiped his hidden face with his hand and it came back coated with sweat. “We are the Supplicants of Anarchy. We are the ones who have found the truth in the words of Lucre.”

Lagrasse’s attention wandered. He did a quick head-count and totaled nine survivors. Almost double the previous record.

“We worship the gods of the Necronomibok.”

That got Lagrasse’s attention. “The Necronomibok? Come on. You mean H. P. Lucre and all that stuff? I read those stories when I was a kid.”

The robed figure nodded as if his head were heavy stone. “We know the truth that is the Necronomibok.”

Lagrasse laughed. “All right! This is great! You guys really believe in that stuff?”

“It is truth, hidden in fiction.”

“Cool!” Lagrasse couldn’t be more pleased. Real wackos! What luck! In robes, no less, and trying to talk in real deep voices! This was going to be the most fun ever. “Wasn’t the Necronomibok just made up?” he teased.

“It is real.”

“I love those robes,” Lagrasse said. “Must be a lot cooler in Idaho than it is here.”

Rob Landsburg was getting very hot indeed in his Robe of Supplication, and he was distressed by all the deaths that accompanied their landing. He was also very annoyed by the frivolous man with the blood clot that covered half his head. “We are not from Idaho.”

“Says Idaho on your robe,” the strange man insisted.

“What?” Landsburg demanded, then snatched at the lapels of his robe and saw the words coming through the brown dye. Super Spuds From Friendly Idaho. Dammit, he had paid three bucks for that dye and it was already wearing off.

He couldn’t take all the scratching and sweating anymore, anyway. “Let us all disrobe,” he announced.

He was expecting resistance. They had all worked hard on their robes. Some were rich, dark velvet. Some were made from the denim of old blue jeans. All were dark brown in color. Somehow, it had never occurred to them that this was not practical worship wear in the equatorial Pacific. Now the robes came off in a flurry.

“You guys aren’t nearly so pretty now,” said the stranger.

“How we look does not matter,” Landsburg insisted.

“Then why’d you have us make these stupid robes!” asked a young woman named Sandy, whose rayon robe was a ball in her hand. Her mascara made black streaks on her cheeks and her T-shirt and gym shorts were drenched with sweat—all of the supplicants had been sweating profusely under their robes for hours. She was also bleeding from a gash that started at her temple and vanished in her bloodied hair.

Lagrasse was delighted to realize that he could see her breasts perfectly.

She burst out laughing. It wasn’t a pleasant laugh. “Your dye ran.”

Landsburg’s eyes flitted in panic. He ran to the wrecked hull and found some brightwork and tried to see his distorted reflection, which was stained with splotches of muddy brown. Cheap-ass dye!

He held back the outburst. He had to remain in control. This was his moment.

“Who the hell are you?” Sandy was asking the stranger. She wavered on her feet like a drunk.

“Henry Lagrasse of the United States Coast Guard at your duty, ma’am,” Lagrasse said. “Use to be, anyway. Now I’m just the local lunatic.”

“Why are you staring at my chest,” Sandy demanded.

“You guys are not in Idaho anymore. This is like some new freaky world and normal rules don’t apply,” Lagrasse said, looking her in the eye for the first time. “So I do whatever I want. Besides, you have a really nice rack.”

Sandy gave him an odd look.

“Let’s assemble for our march,” proclaimed Rob Landsburg, and rose to assemble his flock. He had rubbed at the brown splotches to spread them out evenly. He looked like he was in poorly applied blackface. “Krac’thlen awaits.”