Steven Harper - Nightmare

"So what’s the latest on the investigation?" asked Uncle Hazid around a mouthful of curried shrimp.

Ben looked up from his plate. The question had been directed at his mother, but something in Uncle Hazid’s tone got his attention.

Mom blinked. "What investigation?"

"You know," Aunt Sil put in. "The one about the Dream killer. I’ve heard he can change shape in the Dream. Is that true?"

"How in the world would I know?" Mom said.

"You’re assisting the Guardians on the case, aren’t you?" Aunt Sil said. Like Mom, she was short and round, with a heavy face and thick black hair that swooped or twisted over her head as whim and fashion decreed. She wore a corsage of red and blue flowers. It matched the centerpiece on the table. The rest of the house was decorated with more flowers and the computer played Festival music in the background. Ben liked everything about Festival except the annual family dinner. Fortunately, that part always came first, meaning he could get it out of the way and enjoy the rest of the evening.

"The case?" Mom said.

"I heard all about it from Jenine Frank at the Guardian outpost just up the walkway," Aunt Sil said. "A nice thing-you’re working on a famous murder case and you don’t even tell your own sister."

Ben put his fork down, unsure how to feel. "Mom? You never said anything about this."

"I-that is, I’m not supposed to discuss it," she floundered.

"Well, certainly not with someone who isn’t Silent," Aunt Sil said with a friendly smile toward Ben. "They wouldn’t understand. But we’re your family ."

Ben’s jaw firmed until it ached but he didn’t say anything.

"Sil!" Mom said. "That’s not-"

"Did you get to see the body?" interrupted Tress. She was seventeen, also short and dark-haired, and already into advanced Dream studies at the monastery.

"Yeah!" said Zayim, who was sixteen and battling acne. "Was it all creepy? The news services said it was all bruised."

"Kids!" Uncle Hazid admonished. "A healthy curiosity is one thing, but this is gruesome. It’s a dangerous situation. Everyone’s running scared, Ara. What can you tell us?"

Mom face went tight-lipped in an expression Ben knew well. At this point, they may as well try to pry open a clam with their fingernails. "I said I can’t discuss it. Any information about the investigation that gets out could get back to the killer and help him-or her."

"We won’t tell anyone," Tress said, opening her eyes until they looked wide and innocent. Ben recognized that expression too, and he had long ago learned not to trust it.

Apparently Mom had learned the same lesson. "And how are your studies coming, Tress?" she said.

"Fine," she said. "But what about the-"

"And yours, Zayim?" Mom interrupted. "Did you pass your first-tier qualifiers yet?"

Zayim, who was more distractible than Tress, went on at some length about the tests he had taken in the Dream to prove the amount of control he had. Ben tuned it out and went back to eating. Zayim and Tress were always talking about the Dream and what they did there. Uncle Hazid and Aunt Sil were the same way. Usually this meant Ben felt bored and left out of family discussions, but this time it gave him a chance to think. He stole a glance at Mom. She was investigating the Dream killer? What did that mean? Was she tracking him down in the Dream? Would she be in danger from him?

Worry, the most familiar of all Ben’s emotions, settled over him like a heavy blanket. It seemed like he was always worrying. When he was little and Mom lay comatose on her couch doing business in the Dream, he worried she wouldn’t come out of it. When he was older and Mom regularly left Bellerophon to hunt down enslaved Silent, he worried she would be enslaved herself and never come back. Now he knew she was hunting down a murderer who had, according to the Bellerophon news services, killed at least two Silent women, and he worried that the killer could come after her.

Don’t be stupid, he scolded himself. Mom can take care of-

"Attention! Attention!" chimed the computer. "Incoming call for Mother Araceil Rymar."

Mom excused herself, then came back a moment later, her face tight with annoyance. "I’m sorry, everyone, but I have to go down to the monastery. Kendi-my student-is in trouble. Again. Make yourselves at home while I’m gone. I’ll be back as soon as I can and we can go down to the games."

"We’ll clean up," Aunt Sil said. "But really, Ara, I don’t understand how you can work with these people. Ex-slaves always make trouble. You’d think they’d be more grateful-and on Festival, too."

"Not all of them make trouble," Ara said lightly. "And it’s a fine reward to see them take formal vows."

"All that trouble and next to nothing in return." Sil shook her head. "I couldn’t stand it."

"Yes, Sil dear. That’s why you’re still a Sister and I’m nearly a Mother Adept." And she swept out the door. Ben held back a snort and Sil’s face colored. Hazid adjusted the napkin on his lap. Tress and Zayim exchanged glances.

"She always has to throw it in my face, doesn’t she?" Sil whined the moment the front door had shut. " ‘Look at me. I’m going to be a Mother Adept.’ Well, la-dee-da."

"That’s just how she is," Hazid said philosophically. "She’ll never change."

"Working with her little slaves all the time," Sil raged on as if Ben weren’t sitting at the same table. "The woman gives time and shelter to every little bit of trash that darkens her door. Doesn’t she realize how that looks ?"

Tress nudged her brother and smirked at Ben. Ben’s hands shook. He wanted to fling his plate into Sil’s face, into all their faces. Instead he got up and left the dining room. Sil and Hazid, still deep in conversation about Mom, didn’t even seem to notice. In his bedroom, Ben lay back on the weight bench and, heedless of his dress clothes, started a series of reps. The room was still warm from the afternoon sun and sweat quickly soaked his good shirt, but anger pushed him onward, anger at his aunt and uncle, anger at his mother for leaving him with them so often, anger at his cousins for being so self-centered.

Anger at himself for not standing up to them.

Ben let the weight stack fall harder than he should have and set the machine for some leg work. What would it be like, he wondered, to belong to a real family? One with a father and a mother and more than one kid? Mom had tried to make Tress and Zayim into a brother and sister for him, but-

"I feel sorry for him," came Zayim’s faint voice. "It’s like Mom said-it isn’t his fault he’s not Silent. It’s probably Aunt Ara’s."

"Yeah. You think she did some kind of drug while she was pregnant and that’s what screwed Ben up?" This was Tress.

Ben very carefully lowered the weight stack, letting it make only the tiniest clank as it touched down. The voices were coming in through his open window. Tress and Zayim must be on the deck that wrapped around the house.

"Maybe. You get a look at that weight machine in his room?" Zayim said. "What a waste of time. First the computers, now this. He might be able to hit the Dream if he kept working on it instead of screwing around with this other stuff. Dad says he just doesn’t try hard enough."

"I read somewhere that guys who lift weights a lot do it because they think they’re dicks are too small and they’re trying to make up for it," Tress said.

"Completely true. And the proof is that I’ve never had any interest in weights."

Tress snorted. "He always was a twerp."

Ben’s jaw trembled with agitation. It was always this way with Tress and Zayim. When they were small, they had called him names like paleface and shorty. When it became clear that Ben was unaware of the Dream and would never enter it, the names had changed to loudmouth and mutant. Tress used to pinch him under the dinner table, leaving black and blue marks on his arms and legs. Zayim liked to break Ben’s toys and blame it on Ben himself, which got him into trouble with Sil and Hazid. Staying with his aunt and uncle while Mom went off on her "recruiting missions," as she called them, became a form of hell. Computers and studying became at first a way to escape and later a habit. It was with great relief that Ben received permission from Mom to stay by himself while she was gone.