Chapter 6
I was dreaming. I found myself in the same field as I'd been in during the strange dream that I had experienced in the hospital. Once again, the crop was lush and green, and my feet were bare. The air was cool and fresh, so I definitely was not in Alabama. The sky was darker and thick black rain clouds were collecting on the horizon. It looked like it was going to be a terrible storm.
The Old Man was there also. This time he was sitting on a small grassy mound. His hair was still wild and white, his cane sat on the ground next to him, and he was absently polishing his small round glasses on a white handkerchief.
"Hello, Boy. Welcome again here." His accent was still thick, reminding me somewhat of my grandparents on my mom's side of the family. A deep Eastern European sound, but not from any of the languages that I spoke.
"What am I doing here?" I asked, sitting down on the grass next to him. We watched the storm front approach. The wind was beginning to pick up and the crop was waving under the onslaught. "I thought you said that we wouldn't meet again unless I did something stupid and got killed."
"I was wrong. I new at this too," he answered. "Is closer now. So I help more easy."
"What is closer now?"
"You will see. It comes." He pointed at the storm roiling across the distant landscape.
"What comes?"
"The storm. I show you when can. I help you if can."
"Help me with what?" This was a confusing dream, not helped at all by my host's mangled English.
"The evil comes. The Cursed One brings. You will stop, if can. If not, time will die." He stated it as if that cryptic information was a simple fact.
"Who are you?"
"I told you. I am friend. I here to help." He spit on his glasses and continued to polish them. I noticed that he wore a small Star of David around his neck. His clothes were old and simple, and appeared to be sewn by hand.
"What's your name?"
"No one ask that for long time."
"That doesn't answer the question," I replied.
"My name not matter now, Boy. I am just Old Man."
He held up the glasses and examined them, nodding in satisfaction before placing them on his face. "Is good. Help me up, please." I stood, and then lent him a hand as he slowly rose to his feet. I retrieved his cane and handed it over. The polished wood was surprisingly heavy and dense.
As I looked up I realized that somehow the storm had drawn impossibly close. The blue sky was blotted out and the wall that was approaching was a swirling mass of darkness, clouds, and lightning. The sky had taken on a green halo and I could feel the energy crackling through the ground. The crop was lying down or being torn out of the soil as powerful gusts struck us.
"We go now. I show you what I can. I need your help."
"Okay," I answered, not knowing what else to say.
"You help me. I help you. No can promise it will work, but I will try." He grasped my wrist. His cold hands were frail and arthritic.
He adjusted his glasses and watched with hard eyes as the storm approached. It was moving across the land like a tidal wave now, closing on us with what seemed like malevolent intent. As it grew closer I could see that there were shapes in the clouds-warriors, monsters, death, plague, famine, suffering, pestilence and war. My pleasant dream was changing into a nightmare. The roar of wind and crashing of thunder and wails of something else washed over us. The wall of black hit us, and we were swiftly engulfed.
Still dreaming. Only now, I was somehow above the MHI compound. I had no body, but somehow I could see, and not only that, I could see everything. Walls meant nothing to me. Maybe seeing wasn't the right term. I was aware of everything. I was not limited by the information that my eyes could register or that my brain could process. I found my body sleeping peacefully in the barracks. Trip, in the bunk above, was reading some pulp fantasy novel as he did every night. The man was a fantasy book addict.
The rest of my fellow trainees were sleeping or pretending to. In the women's barracks I was not surprised to learn that Holly Newcastle slept in the nude. As interesting as that sight was, I moved on. I was no Peeping Tom, or in this case a peeping ghost.
The office/fortress was totally open to me now. It was much larger than any of us had realized, with a huge underground level that was a complete secret to the trainees. In the dark corners I glimpsed that not all of the other employees were human. What a strange dream. On the top floor our instructors were holding a meeting around a huge table. Julie, Harbinger, Sam, Milo, and Grant were arguing about something. I focused in on that, and somehow my presence joined them in the room. Movements were cloudy, and the voices were indistinct and muffled because of all of the other sensations I was receiving without my normal faculties.
"No other teams are available. Just us and the Newbies. Boone's team's in Atlanta. They just finished a case, and they can meet us on the way. I can send them the schematics." Julie was speaking.
"We'll need extra men," Sam said, his voice echoing strangely. "Freighter that big is too hard to cover with just two teams. And we don't have an effing clue what we're facing."
"The Newbies aren't ready," Milo stated flatly. "Most of them would get killed if it gets hairy."
"Who do we have who's ready then?" Harbinger asked. "We can keep them in reserve. They don't need to be in front."
"Mead, Lee and maybe Triple J," Grant said. "Green could, except that oaf put him in the hospital."
"Newcastle can handle support," Milo added.
"Agreed," stated Harbinger.
"What about Pitt?" Julie asked.
"No way. He's out of control," Grant replied hotly.
"He's also the best shooter we have. I hate to admit it, but he's even better than I am," Sam said. The big cowboy banged the table for emphasis.
"Pitt's a hothead. He'll blow it," Grant retorted.
"He is a natural leader, however." Milo stuck up for me. "Put him in charge of the Newbie squad. The others will follow him."
"I vote that he goes," Julie said. "You heard the French. They lost a whole team on that boat. We don't know what's out there. We need every shooter we can get."
"I don't like the Frenchies, but their Hunters are first rate. I'll give them that," Milo said. "If something on that ship took out their team, then I'm guessing that it's bad news. I've got a feeling we're going to need trigger pullers."
"Done. Wake up Pitt, Jones, Mead, Lee and Newcastle. Let's move, folks. Clock's ticking," Harbinger ordered. Grant sulked and the rest of the team sprang into action.
Cool, I thought to my disembodied self. This was an interesting dream. Harbinger jumped as if somebody had startled him. He turned and scowled at the corner of the room that held my consciousness. Before he could act, my presence was suddenly jerked out of the room, through the roof, and into the night sky, leaving the man scowling in puzzlement at the now empty room. I heard the mysterious Old Man's voice.
"Sorry. Lost you for minute. I not done this before."
The ground flashed by below as my awareness sped through the air at what had to be a thousand miles an hour. The darkness was interrupted by the occasional lights of human activity, and finally a mass of lights on an otherwise dark coast came into focus as we appeared to slow. I could sense masses of people, most sleeping, a smaller number awake. The ocean stretched black and unrelenting before us, while above, unfettered by normal human senses, I could make out literally billions of stars. It was beautiful.
Then I was on a dark beach. Behind me was a patch of swampy forest, lit by incandescent gasses and teaming with life. Out to sea, something approached. I could sense the shape of men in a small lifeboat. The boat moved soundlessly toward the beach, propelled not by wind, oar or engine, but rather by some force that even in my dream state I could not understand. As the boat approached, the sounds of life behind us were suddenly silent as every living creature either fled or hid. Somehow I knew that even the fish in the water were swimming away from the boat in a panic. They knew something in their simple brains that all of the sleeping humans nearby did not. An unnatural fog, somehow icy in the humid southern air, swirled around the small craft.
"He comes," said the Old Man.
"Who is he?" my dream self asked.
"I know him as the Cursed One."
There were multiple shapes in the boat. Some appeared to be human, and were crouched low in the hull, red eyes scanning the beach, noses sniffing the air for prey. I recognized them from Harbinger's lectures. Vampires. The kings and queens of the undead, and from the vibe that I was getting from them, these were ancient and powerful beings. Master vampires. According to my lessons, masters were solitary creatures who had never been known to work together. Apparently the lessons had been very wrong. My dream was getting ugly.