If Souls Can Sleep Read online

  His gaze never left Milton as he raised the can to his lips again. “I’m DJ Who are you?”

  Milton opened his mouth but stopped himself just in time.

  What if he is one of them?

  DJ laughed. “A little shy, huh? Or maybe just socially inept. You remind me of a teacher I had in high school. Mr. Kenneth Furrows. All us kids called him Kenny. Mind if I call you Kenny?”

  “Ah, I suppose not.”

  DJ’s uneven smile widened. “Are you a teacher?”

  What’s with all of the questions?

  “No,” Milton replied. DJ waited expectantly. “I mean, I’m not a teacher anymore. I’m…I’m between work right now.”

  Why did I tell him that? Just face forward, Milton, and maybe he’ll shut up!

  Milton smiled politely and looked away. He turned to the window for a distraction, but the world outside the bus had become a black abyss. Acting as a mirror, the glass broadcast the interior of the bus, revealing a stubble-cheeked, heavy-lidded version of Milton. The transparent reflection of DJ, still staring straight at Milton, took another drink of beer.

  “Are you OK, Kenny? You look like shit.”

  Milton gritted his teeth. “I’m fine. I just haven’t slept in a while.”

  “You’re not a teacher, but I bet you have a ton of books lying around your house,” D.J said. “Stacks and stacks of ’em, right?”

  Milton sighed, rubbed his eyes, and looked over at his unwanted companion. “You sure think you know a lot about me.”

  “Am I right?” DJ asked. “About the books?”

  Milton tried to picture his home, but no matter how hard he concentrated, the image remained hopelessly blurred.

  How long have I been gone? How long have I been running?

  “Seriously though,” DJ continued, “you should try to get some sleep. I heard you’ll go nuts if you miss too many nights in a row.”

  Sleep deprivation can cause blurred vision, depression, general confusion, hallucinations, and, yes, psychosis.

  “How long have you been awake, Kenny?”

  “That’s none of your business.”

  DJ emptied the beer can into his mouth, coughed, and wiped his lips with the back of his sleeve. “How about I guess how long it’s been, and you tell me if I’m too high or low?”

  “Are you insane?”

  DJ closed his eyes and laughed quietly. “No, you’re the crazy one, remember? Of course, I never said there was only one crazy person per bus. We both could be out of our minds.”

  The young man scooted closer to Milton, planting his gray-white tennis shoes on the floor between their seats.

  “The problem with you,” DJ said, “is that you don’t just go with it. There’s this guy…he rides the 30 and hands out suckers to all the girls on the bus. Nice guy but kinda creepy.

  “And there’s this big black woman who, out of nowhere, will start shouting and swearing. Damn near pissed my pants the first time she did it. Funny thing is, I think she’s yelling at her own reflection in the window.”

  Milton edged away from DJ and looked at the back of the seat in front of him. He considered getting off at the next stop, but now that he was on the bus, his exhaustion had caught up with him. Feeling more tired than ever, he feared he would nod off while waiting for the next bus.

  If nothing else, DJ, inebriated though he may be, is keeping me awake.

  “All the good crazies have gimmicks,” DJ continued. “But you, Kenny…for all I know, you’re just a run-of-the-mill weirdo.”

  “For all you know,” Milton muttered.

  “I got it!” DJ shouted.

  Milton regarded the young man with alarm. DJ’s bright blue eyes burrowed into him.

  “You can’t sleep because you’re so damn paranoid. You think the whole world is out to get you.”

  Milton glared at him, trying to decide whether to be angry or afraid.

  DJ crossed his arms. “Am I wrong, Kenny?”

  Milton hesitated, then sighed. What was the worst that could happen?

  “I don’t think ‘the whole world’ is out to get me,” he snapped. “But I am on the run. They’ve been following me for days…maybe weeks.”

  “Who?”

  A voice in the back of his mind cautioned him against trusting DJ, but he ignored it. He had to tell someone, even if that someone was a stranger he would never see again. Or perhaps because of it. Milton took a deep breath and turned toward DJ

  “They work for the government…CIA, I believe,” he all but whispered.

  DJ gasped. “Do they wear suits and dark glasses?”

  “I…I can’t be sure. It’s been a while since I…”

  Across the aisle, DJ’s lips curled back into his customary smirk.

  “You’re mocking me, aren’t you?”

  “Can you blame me?” DJ retorted. “Conspiracy theorists are a dime a dozen. You’re probably on your way to the copy shop to print out your manifesto.”

  “I don’t have a manifesto! I’m just trying to stay alive!”

  DJ let out a great yawn and reached both of his arms up in a long and exaggerated stretch. Milton noticed for the first time that the front of DJ’s sweatshirt was marked up with what looked to be whiteout. The imprecise lines formed the silhouette of a wolf, its toothy mouth agape.

  Milton stiffened.

  The wolf…it means something…

  Crossing his arms again, DJ asked, “So what’s this vital information you have that the government will stop at nothing to recover?”

  Swallowing his fear, Milton replied, “Oh…nothing that would interest you, I’m sure. Like you said, it’s probably all in my head.”

  DJ frowned. In a voice low and soft, he intoned, “But I have promises to keep.”

  “What did you say? Are you quoting something?”

  “Come on,” the young man drawled. “One lunatic to another…what’s your secret, Kenny?”

  “For the love God, my name is Milton, not Kenny!”

  DJ’s grin reappeared. The lights inside the bus flickered, and somehow DJ looked older.

  “How, exactly, do you intend to prevent the end of the world, Milton?”

  He was on his feet in an instant. “Who said anything about the end of the…hey, what’s that on your hand?

  Without breaking eye contact, DJ raised his forearm and rolled up his sleeve, revealing a tattoo of a grayish green snake. “Do you like it?”

  The serpent, the wolf—Milton knew were important, but he couldn’t piece it together. Lethargy coated his brain like sludge, but the two images filled him with a sense of urgency he couldn’t ignore. He tried in vain to mask his terror.

  DJ chuckled. “You can’t run forever, old man.”

  Milton yanked hard on the cord and was halfway to the front of the bus when he heard DJ shout, “And miles to go before I sleep.”

  When the bus jolted to a stop, Milton scrambled down the stairs and almost slipped on the icy pavement. He spun around, expecting to find DJ following him, but as the bus pulled away, he saw DJ through the window.

  Their gazes locked. DJ’s lips moved, and Milton knew the young man was repeating the last line of the poem: “And miles to go before I sleep.”

  Milton waited for the bus to be swallowed up by distance and darkness before resuming his hike. His only destination was a direction far from the bus route, far from DJ He turned at the first corner he encountered.

  Unable to sort through the chaotic flashes of thoughts and memory, he concentrated instead on keeping his eyes open and ignoring the lulling cadence of his snow-crunching footsteps.

  They can’t catch me if I never stop.

  If I never sleep.

  Chapter 4

  The screen door slammed—except there was no door.

  Lying on his stomach, Vincent stared uncomprehendingly at the metal bowl clattering to a stop against the cold floor a foot from his face. He propped himself up on an elbow and inspected the bowl’s sloppy brown contents
. The stench twisted his insides. He was on the verge of pushing away the mystery meal when he noticed the wall of bars.

  I’m in jail?

  A revelation lurked on the fringe of his memory. He had been somewhere else a moment ago, but the more he tried to grab onto that thought, the farther it receded.

  He sat up and groaned. The sudden pounding in his head felt a lot like a hangover, but he didn’t remember getting drunk.

  I don’t remember getting arrested either. How the hell did I end up here?

  Vincent cradled his head in his hands and winced when his fingers found what felt like a doorknob protruding from the back of his skull.

  Must have hit my head. That would explain the memory loss.

  “Valenthor.”

  The whispered word sent a chill down his spine. Half-crouching, he turned around to confront his cellmate, but all he found was a shapeless pile of material crumpled up in the dark corner. He squinted, trying to make sense of what he saw.

  Vincent stifled a gasp as the blanket creature situated itself into a more or less upright position. There was an opening near the top, but even deeper shadow hid the thing’s face.

  “Stay back!” Vincent scrambled away from the monster until his back hit the bars.

  “Thank the holy Ancestors!” The creature’s tone was warm and feminine, not the deep, guttural voice a demon. “I feared you had departed for the next world.”

  A memory started to surface—a beautiful woman in a bar—but then the shadows closed in again.

  He carefully climbed to his feet. “‘The next world’? What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I thought you were…dead.” She pronounced the last word strangely, like she was testing it out for the first time. He couldn’t identify her accent, but she definitely was a foreigner.

  “Why are we in jail? What happened?” he asked.

  The woman shifted, causing her hood to slide back a little, revealing a narrow chin. “Caution, Valenthor. We are not alone.”

  Vincent tore his gaze away from the exposed pale skin and looked around the small cell. Aside from them, a single mattress that looked like it was made of straw, the soup bowl, and a rusty bucket that might have been a makeshift toilet, the space was empty. He peered through bars but found no sign of someone lurking in the dimly lit hallway beyond.

  “You must have good eyes because I don’t—” He choked on his words and spun around to face the woman.

  Her eyes!

  Everything came back to him then. The big, unnaturally green eyes. The high cheekbones. The pointed ears.

  Everyone in the bar was coming at her. I tried to stop them but fell flat on my ass.

  An eerie sound interrupted Vincent’s reverie. It was only when he saw the knight emerge from what must have been a doorway down the hall that he realized he was hearing the creaks of metal scraping against metal.

  “It hath been told that the Fair Folk see the night as though it were day. Forsooth, yon she-elf proves the legends speak truth,” the knight said.

  The stingy light of the windowless room managed to glint off the knight’s sword. Vincent took a few steps back.

  “Hail, Valenthor of the Three Rivers,” the knight said in a booming baritone that belied his tall, thin frame. “Long has it been since fortune smiled upon thee.”

  “No arguments there,” Vincent replied. “But for the last time, my name’s not Valenthor. I’m Vincent Cruz. I’ve never even heard of Three Rivers.”

  The visor of the knight’s bullet-shaped helmet was open, providing Vincent with an unobstructed view of the man’s fierce frown. The deep furrows suggested his captor was older than Vincent, in his forties at least. However, the thick, dark mustache showed no hint of gray.

  “How came thee to be familiar with the she-elf?” the knight demanded.

  “I’m not familiar with her.” Vincent glanced back at the huddled figure, feeling a pang of guilt as he added, “She came up to me in the bar, asking for my help. I’d never seen her before in my life.”

  “Yet by the landlord’s report, she asked for thee by name,” the knight said.

  “The wrong name!”

  The knight’s steely eyes widened. His jaw clenched. “Playing the fool will not save thee. Thy refusal to cooperate, compounded with thy enduring fondness for inebriation, puts thee in a precarious position.”

  “Is that right?” Vincent muttered.

  “Verily!” The word echoed down the corridor. The knight took a steadying breath. “Surely thou knows the penalty for conspiring with the enemy.”

  “I am no enemy of thine!” the elf shouted.

  Vincent spun around in shock. He almost couldn’t believe that the delicate creature was capable of such vehemence. She pulled herself up to her feet, using the mildew-speckled wall for support. For the first time, Vincent wondered what abuse she might have suffered after he lost consciousness in the tavern.

  The elf pulled back her hood, her face full of defiance. “Ever have the Fay strove for peace between our people, and yet—”

  “Be silent, ye dagger-eared demon, lest I tear out thy tongue!” the knight roared and raised his sword.

  Vincent took a step toward the knight and stepped on the bowl of slop, almost losing his balance. He slammed into the bars with more force than he would have liked, causing the knight to fall back in surprise.

  “What’s your problem anyway?” Vincent asked, passing off his blunder for bravado. “Do you get off on threatening defenseless women or something?”

  The knight straightened up. “Either the ale has pickled thy brain, or tragedy has made thee as vulgar as a bastard.”

  “Fuck you.”

  The knight moved so quickly that Vincent didn’t realize the danger until the butt of the sword collided with the bridge of his nose. Then he found himself falling into a black expanse where no thoughts could survive.

  ***

  Vincent struggled in the darkness. Tangled in his sheet, he fell to the floor with a thud. He frantically freed himself from the fabric’s stranglehold and turned on the bedroom light. The sight of plain white walls and scattered clothes calmed him a little but couldn’t replace the memory of the cold jail cell, the iron-clad captor, and his alleged co-conspirator.

  Vaguely aware that his door was buzzing from a loud, throbbing noise from the living room, he pulled on a long-sleeved T-shirt—the same one from yesterday?— and approached the faded wood-framed mirror he inherited from his mother back when he moved in with Bella.

  Sweat, not blood, coated his unusually waxen features. He gingerly touched this nose, but there was no pain.

  The sword…it felt so real.

  The blasting sound from beyond the door abated for a moment, only to return just as strong as before. Vincent glanced back at the bare mattress, not knowing what he expected to find there, before opening his bedroom door. Jerry nearly jumped out of his recliner when he saw him.

  “Damn, dude. You scared the shit out of me!” He scrambled over to the stereo and stopped the music. “Sorry ’bout that. I didn’t think you were home.”

  Vincent shrugged off the apology. “Don’t worry about it. I’m not sure if it was the music that woke me up, but if it did, I should be thanking you.”

  “A nightmare?” Jerry asked, plopping back down in his not-quite-gold throne.

  “Something like that.”

  The ensuing silence was louder than the music had been. Nearly a week had passed since their argument, and Vincent was tired of tiptoeing around.

  “Look, Jerry, about the other day…I’m sorry I was such an asshole,” he said before he could talk himself out of it. “I just…I don’t like talking about the past. I guess I’m trying to start over, you know?”

  Jerry licked his lips and smiled weakly. “No worries, man. Let’s just forget about it.”

  More silence.

  “So…” Vincent leaned against the doorframe, faking a comfortable pose. “When did you start listening to heavy metal,
anyway?”

  Jerry’s full-on dopey grin made its first appearance of the night. “Actually, Hypnogaja is hard rock, not metal. And, yes, there is a difference. It has to do with the singing-to-screaming ratio.”

  Vincent, who hadn’t bought music since Kurt Cobain died, nodded stupidly.

  “Metal is probably about the only genre not represented in my music collection,” Jerry said. “I can groove to just about anything. But I can put something else on if you want, or we can watch TV. You don’t usually have off on Friday nights.”

  “What?” Vincent asked, confused by the segue. At once, he realized he had no idea what time it was.

  Christ, don’t tell me I overslept!

  A glance at the clock confirmed it. 9:37 p.m. Two and a half hours late. Vincent made a beeline for his bedroom and snatched up the clock on his dresser. The alarm was set for the usual time, but it was switched to off.

  He returned to the living room and asked, “Did you hear my alarm go off before?”

  Jerry shrugged. “Just got home.”

  Vincent cursed under his breath. He reached for the phone but thought better of it. Darlene, the supervisor from hell, never missed a chance to bust his balls. Not at all eager for another verbal battle, especially after his encounter with the imaginary knight, he decided to give Darlene the weekend to cool down.

  “Need a ride to work?” Jerry asked.

  Vincent shook his head. “No, thanks. They’ll just have to find some other sucker to push the broom tonight.”

  Considering the dreams I’ve been having, maybe a sick day isn’t too much of a stretch. The nightmares about Clemmy always feel real because that all really happened. But these new dreams…they’re so damn vivid!

  Jerry’s voice wrenched his attention back to the present. “You look like you got a lot on your mind.”

  Vincent hesitated. On one hand, he wanted to keep the lines of communication open. On the other, he didn’t want his roommate to think he was losing his mind. Vincent chuckled inwardly.