Vicki Pettersson - Cheat the Grave

Then a sound as bright and faint as a rainbow stretched overhead. I looked up, twisting as it whipped by, but it was gone as quickly as it came. “Hello?”

My voice echoed, but unnaturally so. Less of a reverberation off canyon walls than a CD that kept skipping until the volume was turned down. Meanwhile, the sand continued to snake around my feet, each fine, pretty grain winking as it shifted. Every once in a while I’d hit a sinkhole and was forced to flail just to remain standing. Was it possible to be buried alive in a dream? If I died here, would I still wake?

I slipped, abandoning the thought to catch myself with my palm, the imprint blending into nothingness as soon as I’d scuttled back to my feet. A moment more gave me back my balance, and I held very still, though individual grains still threatened to give way beneath my weight. Then there was the full pregnant sound again, like ghosts whispering over the dunes.

“So you’re back.”

Whirling at the scratchy echo, I found a Chinaman perched directly in front of me. Blinking, I rubbed at my eyes.

Yes. Chinaman.

He was dressed in silk, a green brocade that lay sallow against his skin. His wide-brimmed conical hat hid most of his features, but the brown skin at his neck and jaw was wrinkled with age, his braided queue shot through with strands of thick silver. He was curled tightly over himself, a walking question mark, and jutted his chin to peer up at me.

“You!” I accused once he did, but fear rushed me all the same. I’d left this man in the Rest House the last time I’d fled Midheaven, neither expecting nor especially eager to see him again. Shen hated me.

Panicked, I turned again, searching for a way out-and succeeding in only sinking some more. Though the desert terrain was unique, the magic in this place was known to me. Only Midheaven took something normal and turned it on its head. “I do not want to be here. I don’t, I don’t…”

I pinched myself as my voice scratched the air, but the chemicals in the worm kept me under. My bloodstream was burning, while my thoughts were vicious jabs, needles trying to wake me up. It wasn’t the first time my dreams had been invaded this way-and I didn’t mean my mind’s hopeful conjuring of Olivia either.

No, the Tulpa had visited me in my dreams before too, months ago, also under the influence of sleep-inducing drugs. Something about the altered state made the mind more susceptible to influence and suggestion. And, appar ently, gave the spirit the ability to travel between worlds.

“I don’t want to be here!” The echo married with the metallic taste, and I bit my lip to keep from screaming.

“Of course you do. One’s truest desires are always revealed in Midheaven.” I’d have thought the sand would mute Shen’s soft clipped voice, absorbing it like a sponge, but his dismissive tones stood up well, bright as bells. He hadn’t liked me since we sat together at a table of soul poker and I accidentally gambled away some of his personal information.

That’s what Midheaven ran on. Names, desires, attributes, powers and skills-all the building blocks of a viable life-form. I had to admit, I’d probably still be irked too. But I’d paid him back with a chip of my own, and the power he’d taken was more than a revealed name. Shen had stripped me of my ability to heal quickly, like a superhero.

Not that it mattered now.

I could tell it also didn’t make us even in his eyes. He scuttled over to me like a bug, a sourceless wind catching the sandy dunes behind him, making them shimmer and slide in the cold red light. “If you didn’t want to be here in some small part of your thieving heart, then you wouldn’t be…and neither would I. So just tell me what you want. I have to get back to my game.”

“I’m the reason you’re here?” I asked as he came to a stop in front of me.

“Men are never allowed into the elemental rooms without invitation.”

Because women ruled Midheaven. Gazing around, I wondered which element this room represented. The last time I was here, I’d visited only one of the four rooms upstairs-Solange’s fire room. It’d been remarkably absent of fire, but for the stars burning up the night sky of her makeshift planetarium.

Yeah, makeshift. Comprised of people’s friggin’ souls .

But what could a vast expanse of arid desertscape be? The earth room? Or was that too straightforward?

“Am I really here? I mean, I was drugged. I didn’t cross here via the line.” I swallowed hard, hopeful even though my body continued to buzz like a live wire, and the question rebounded back at me.

Shen tilted his head, looking at me like I’d just gotten off the short bus. “Your ignorance is appalling. Drugs allow incorporeal passage for those with the ability to interact with this world. If you didn’t want to be here, you shouldn’t have taken the drug. Or called forth the world in your mind.”

Carlos, I thought, gritting my teeth. That’s why he’d had me repeat the word he whispered into my mouth. But why? What was I supposed to do here? And, more importantly, how the hell did I get out ?

“And you’re going to help me?”

“I am a man. You are a woman.” Shen rolled his dark, jaded eyes. “And the task would be infinitely easier if you actually told me what you want.”

But I had no orders to give him. I had no idea why Carlos would send me here, or what I was supposed to do now.

Then the other sound rolled over the sky again, not in the tinny tones of my voice’s echo, but the whipping arch from before, like the bright sweep of a lionfish’s tail as it sped along the ocean floor. It sounded like color, and moved like it came from within me. I followed it, neck craning from one side of the “ceiling” to the other, though the room sat like an island between red horizons. “What is that?”

“Finally,” Shen muttered, as if I’d made a wish. He reached into his robe, and I braced for the appearance of a weapon, wondering if he could go Jet Li on my ass in my own dream. The question became moot when all he did was pull out a forked branch and held it in front of him.

I palmed my hip. “What are you doing to do, poke me in the eye?”

He shot me a look of ill-concealed disdain, gripped one side of the branch in each hand, palms down, and pointed it in front of him. Head bobbing beneath his conical hat, he began muttering as he circled me. I frowned, then straightened. “Wait-are you dousing?”

I tried to recall what I knew about divining rods and dowsers. They were used to find water. Only seconds after this great mental leap, the rod took a dive of its own, seemingly flying from Shen’s hands to bury itself, single point down, right between my feet. It found a soft, or softer, spot, and sunk straight down, though the sand around it, and beneath me, remained unmoved. Relieved, I glanced back at Shen.

He lifted his head, the giant hat sliding away to reveal a mocking grin. Then he flipped me off.

A whirring sound started up underneath me, growing louder as the grains began to drain between my feet. The rod’s handles became propellers, blowing sand outward in a whipping blast to sting my bare skin. The ground altered elevation, and I backpedaled as if balancing on a rolling ball. I did a fair job of remaining upright-my dream, remember?-until a pair of rough hands found my lower back and gave me a good hard push.

“You little-”

Flailing, I slid in a roller coaster arch down the waterfall of sand, the light of the red sun disappearing like it’d been swallowed in one bite. Or maybe it was me. I thought of Carlos’s worms, burrowing through the years, existing underground, ingesting the old and birthing the new in the gritty darkness. Was Shen right? Had I called all of this to me? I waited for the drugs to wear off, and-as I continued to fall-prayed for a soft landing.