The Bazaar of Bad Dreams

Wesley smiled.

‘So where do we go? Home?’

‘Not yet,’ Wesley said.

They parked on the edge of a cornfield near the intersection of Route 139 and Highway 80, two miles west of Cadiz. They were early, and Wesley used the time to fire up the pink Kindle. When he tried to access Ur Local, he was greeted by a somehow unsurprising message: THIS SERVICE IS NO LONGER AVAILABLE.

‘Probably for the best,’ he said.

Robbie turned toward him. ‘Say what?’

‘Nothing. It doesn’t matter.’ He put the Kindle back in his briefcase.

‘Wes?’

‘What, Robbie?’

‘Did we break the Paradox Laws?’

‘Undoubtedly,’ Wes said.

At five to nine, they heard honking and saw lights. They got out of the Malibu and stood in front of it, waiting. Wesley observed that Robbie’s hands were clenched, and was glad he himself wasn’t the only one still afraid that Candy Rymer might still somehow appear.

Headlights breasted the nearest hill. It was the bus, followed by a dozen cars filled with Lady Meerkats supporters, all honking deliriously and flashing their high beams off and on. As the bus passed, Wesley heard sweet female voices singing ‘We Are the Champions’ and felt a chill race up his back and lift the hair on his neck.

He raised his hand and waved.

Beside him, Robbie did the same. Then he turned to Wesley, smiling. ‘What do you say, Prof? Want to join the parade?’

Wesley clapped him on the shoulder. ‘That sounds like a damn fine idea.’

When the last of the cars had passed, Robbie got in line. Like the others, he honked and flashed the Malibu’s lights all the way back to Moore.

Wesley didn’t mind.

VII – The Paradox Police

When Robbie got out in front of Susan and Nan’s (where LADY MEERKATS RULE had been soaped on the window), Wesley said, ‘Wait a sec.’

He came around the front of the car and embraced the kid. ‘You did good.’

Robbie grinned. ‘Does this mean I get a gift A for the semester?’

‘Nope, just some advice. Get out of football. You’ll never make it a career, and your head deserves better.’

‘Duly noted,’ Robbie said … which was not agreement, as they both knew. ‘See you in class?’

‘On Tuesday,’ Wesley said. But fifteen minutes later he had reason to wonder if anyone would see him. Ever again.

There was a car in the spot where he usually left the Malibu when he didn’t leave it in Parking Lot A at the college. Wesley could have parked behind it, but chose the other side of the street instead. Something about the car made him uneasy. It was a Cadillac, and in the glow of the arc sodium beneath which it was parked, it seemed too bright. The red paint almost seemed to yell Here I am! Do you like me?

Wesley didn’t. Nor did he like the tinted windows or the oversize gangsta hubcabs with their gold Cadillac emblems. It looked like a drug dealer’s car. If, that was, the dealer in question also happened to be a homicidal maniac.

Now why would I think that?

‘Stress of the day, that’s all,’ he said as he crossed the deserted street with his briefcase banging against his leg. He bent down. Nobody was inside the car. At least he didn’t think so. With the darkened windows, it was hard to be entirely sure.

It’s the Paradox Police. They’ve come for me.

This idea should have seemed ridiculous at best, a paranoid fantasy at worst, but felt like neither. And when you considered all that had happened, maybe it wasn’t paranoid at all.

Wesley stretched out a hand, touched the door of the car, then snatched it back. The door felt like metal, but it was warm. And it seemed to be pulsing. As if, metal or not, the car were alive.

Run.

The thought was so powerful he felt his lips mouth it, but he knew running wasn’t an option. If he tried, the man or men who belonged to the loathsome red car would find him. This was a fact so simple that it defied logic. It bypassed logic. So, instead of running, he used his key to open the street door and went upstairs to his apartment. He did it slowly, because his heart was racing and his legs kept threatening to give way.

The door of 2B stood open, light spilling onto the upstairs landing in a long rectangle.

‘Ah, here you are,’ a not-quite-human voice said. ‘Come in, Wesley of Kentucky.’

There were two of them. One was young and one was old. The old one sat on his sofa, where Wesley and Ellen Silverman had once seduced each other to their mutual enjoyment (nay, ecstasy). The young one sat in Wesley’s favorite chair, the one he always ended up in when the night was late, the leftover cheesecake tasty, the book interesting, and the light from the standing lamp just right. They both wore long mustard-colored coats, the kind that are called dusters, and Wesley understood, without knowing how he understood, that the coats were alive. He also understood that the men wearing them were not men at all. Their faces kept changing, and what lay just beneath the skin was reptilian. Or birdlike. Or both.