Unquiet Dreams Read online

  Between waking and sleep, they wait.

  UNQUIET DREAMS

  A Murmuration of Unsettling Tales

  by K.A. Laity

  Published by Tirgearr Publishing

  ISBN: 9781301518685

  Author Copyright 2012 K.A. Laity

  Covert Art: Amanda Stephanie

  Editor: Kemberlee Shortland

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away. If you would like to share this book, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please log into the publisher’s website and purchase your own copy.

  Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  DEDICATION

  For Robert,

  brother and friend

  Buffalo Bayou

  for Ray Bradbury

  Mother offered up a daily bounty. Her gifts varied; some days they fed him, some days they earned him scorn from the Man, who would cuff his ear and spit angrily through the gap in his teeth, threatening dark prophecies and secret pain. Occasionally, her offerings puzzled him. White, shapeless objects, their soft, soaked secrets brimming with her waters—they pleased him enough to ignore the Man's shouting and to poke tenderly the bloated surface, wondering. At least until the inevitable gruff rebuke, when the Man would slap the offending entity from his curious hands and stalk off, muttering ruin and starvation.

  Not today; today her treasure came to him. He gazed at it and felt a deep sound, unheard, uncoil within his belly. It was a like the ringing of the train crossing's warning bell, a sound he heard only when the winds were fierce from the south. It echoed within his gut and shook his bowels and gave him a kind of excitement he had never known in his short life. He could not tear his eyes from their hungry appraisal of its surface. He did not know what it was, truly. He only knew it was her face, the face of the hungry waters, of the Mother. It was as changeable as her waters, mysterious and fluid. He held it in the shadows, then in the light. He was eager to see it in the murky darkness under the overpass, but before he could tuck it under his ragged coat, the Man noticed his inaction and grumbled toward him, cursing the boy's slothfulness. He would never have a secret while the Man was around. At that tired realization—a thought much repeated—the boy knew that one day he must kill the Man or he would never escape. Not now, but someday when he was bigger and stronger, he would do it. It was the only dream he had.

  "Whatchoo got there, boy?" the Man rumbled gruffly, swiping at his head perfunctorily. The boy just as habitually ducked his blow, and reluctantly turned to show his prize to the Man. For once the Man did not immediately grab the gift from his hands, but paused. If the boy had had a word for it, the word would have been awe. But he knew respect—the Man complained often enough about not getting any—and he knew that the Man had found something worthy of respect. "Damn, boy, whatchoo find there?" He almost seemed squeamish about touching it, gripping instead the boy's wrists and bringing them up to his squinting gaze.

  The light caught it differently then, and it seemed to change its shape a little. At first the boy would have said it had a face, or was a face, but now he could see that it was something else. Oh, it was still her face, it was still the face she showed the world, her heart, her soul—if you believed the Savers—but it was changed. The Man's jaw hung open, his eyes transfixed. He couldn't resist any more than the boy could, but reached out a tentative finger and poked its squishy, waterlogged skin. The boy could hear the Man's sharp intake of breath, but already knew the surprise: the feeling as if it were alive. It wasn't. The boy was pretty sure of that, but it did have that eerie feeling, like it might move, or worse, like it might squeak out some kind of wet, burbling sound, a sound that would make the boy shiver, he was sure. The sounds that Mother made in the night, or the sound of impending flood; sounds that weren't fishes or the gators, those were the sounds it might make. Not splashes, but gurgling and gasping like something moving under the water with a mind. It was kind of hypnotizing, waiting for it to do something.

  But it did nothing.

  The Man was no less fascinated, the boy could tell, yet he made no move to snatch it away from the boy's hands. Normally, there was no stopping him. Why, he'd just grab whatever the boy had if it looked at all promising. Whoosh, it was gone. He seldom found anything really worth something. Most often the Man would seize it, smell and weigh it, then throw it back to him. Sometimes, the Man would secret it away in one of the countless pockets in his coat, an architectural wonder that he never removed even on the most doggy of the dog days of summer. The boy would strip down to his smalls when it got too hot, and burn red in the early part of the hot season, but be deep brown by the time the cool returned for its short visit. The Man, however, never removed a stitch. The coat was his treasure trove, but the boy could not understand why the Man might not remove his other clothes and avoid the rivulets of sweat that plagued him every day and created an elaborate network of paths through the venerable grime on his face and neck, all the flesh that was visible above his collar. His fortunes were just too precious, he supposed.

  Yet the Man made no move to possess this gift. There was something undeniably eerie about it. Even if it didn't really have a face, now that he looked at it again, it did have some kind of personality, he guessed you might say. It had something that made it seem alive—and looking, almost. There was the whole thing about sound, too. It might make some sound. Not that it had done so, but there was some certain glow to it that suggested the possibility; not speech, no, probably not that, but some kind of gurgle or burp, surely. Not that it was alive—what that dwelt so long in her bosom and was not fish could live?—but that there was something beyond mere living and not.

  He had no time to puzzle out these oddities, though, for the Man was formulating ideas. He was at his most dangerous then; he expected things. Whenever his hopes went up, the Man was much more inclined to get angry. His audacious strategies seldom amounted to anything more than half-assed thoughts, but the boy could not complain. It wasn't as if he had any ideas of his own. All he knew was the Man and the Mother, her moods and her offerings, her floods and swells. His moods, too, and their hidey-hole under the overpass. The other Men and the few women around the bayou left them alone mostly, and they did the same. There was never a time, the boy could remember, when things had been any different. He knew the world was out there, the world the Savers lived in and the people who walked by the Mother, and drove their cars over the overpass. But he knew, too, that he had no part in that world and its mysteries. Sometimes he looked up at the billboards and pondered their messages. Mostly they were unclear, but sometimes he knew they were stories of hooch—not the hooch like the Man liked to drink with the others—but a special kind of hooch that those other people would drink, because the pictures looked like them, smiling and laughing, not fighting with knives like the Man always wanted to do. Sometimes, when the floods came, all manner of things appeared after the waters receded, bits and pieces of the wide world out there—small people you could hold in your hand, shoes, boxes with pictures of food.

  "We got us a money-maker, boy," the Man said at last. "Yup, there's a rare kind of quality in this…here thingee. I expect folks will be willin' to give us a quarter—mebbee even a dollar—to see this thing, hell, to touch it." The boy only nodded, for her knew that was what the Man wanted. "Smarts," said the Man, pointing significantly at his own head, "Smarts is takin' advantage of opportunities what come your way. I do that, boy. This time we won't need to be diggin' in the dirt no more, ye see, no more siftin' through the gator waters. Folks is gonna come to us." He rubbed his hands t
ogether in a greedy spasm of self-satisfaction. "What we need is a jar or something. You don't wanna go touching that thing too much, might…might…" he paused, and his face looked puzzled again. He swallowed. "Well, you don't want it to lose any of that specialness. Folks go touchin' it too much and it'll get all dirty." He looked pointedly at the boy's filthy hands, but did not demand the treasure from him.

  The boy did not understand why the Man did not claim possession, but he reveled in the handling of this precious object, loved being its keeper. He knew it forged a closer connection to the Mother, for it was her particular gift, her treasure, a true reflection of her ever-changing face. She blessed him, he knew, in the way the Savers talked about their Man, but she blessed him in the way of the Mother, which was much more mysterious, but a lot more friendlier, too. He felt a kind of odd excitement, like when you knew it was finally getting cool, when the nights would be sweet and fresh, and the days not so sweltering. It was a kind of anticipation, but he did not know what for. He would have to wait and see, as life had always told him. Things happened to him, he did not make them happen.

  They returned to the overpass and frightened a pair of squirrels who had taken an interest in the system of boxes heavily coated with pigeon droppings. The vermin hardly did any real damage—the two were too well-prepared for such thievery—but squirrels were a nuisance all the same. They took stuff and hid it, or chewed holes in their boxes and bags. It was a constant battle, but one so much a part of daily life that the two would have only noticed its absence. Like the mice who found their way into every crevice, there were certain indignities that simply had to be endured. What did it matter anyway; they rebuilt the burrow every few months, whenever Mother rose up from her banks, washing away everything in her path, but leaving new gifts and wonders behind.

  The Man at once began to paw through the heap of bottles anchoring the far corner of their warren. A cascade of green, brown and clear glass rolled away from his burrowing hands, but he did not seem to locate what he needed. From time to time he paused, held up a bottle or container for closer scrutiny, but each potential candidate had to be dismissed after a quick glance at the prize. There just wasn't one big enough. The Man stopped for a moment and rubbed his chin, cogitating. The boy thought about it, too, but no miracle seemed forthcoming. Then his eye alighted on their cooking pot, heavy, blackened, and deep.

  "We could put it in the pot," he suggested hesitantly, his unused voice croaking unsteadily. The Man looked ready to cuff him out of habit, but then seemed to consider the possibility. He could see the Man had had his heart set on a jar or a bottle, so you could hold it up and look at the treasure from all different sides. Yet a jar that big, it would be kind of awkward. If they set it down in the pot, you could gaze down into the depths and… well, it would kind of add to the mystery of the thing.

  "We'll need some water," the Man said at last. The boy made to hand him the thing and go fetch, but the Man twitched away from his gesture. The boy felt his own eyebrows raise unexpectedly. A curious feeling arose in his chest. He would not have recognized it as power, for that was an unknown quality in the boy's experience. He'd been on the receiving end of it most of his life, but it was not a tool he had ever wielded himself. All he knew though was that its glow was pleasant, and that there was an unexpected joy in watching the Man grumble to no one in particular, turn, and head down to Mother with a couple of bottles under his arm. The Man was afraid! It was not a victory of his own; no, it was more proof of the power of the Mother, her boundless love for the boy. As he watched the retreating steps of this conundrum, he had another realization. The Man's momentary absence would also leave the boy a little time to examine the thing further, and he reveled in the chance for closer observation.

  It was whitish, but it was not entirely without color. No—more like it was a kind of elusive shade of grey, but one that had some other possible shadings. Oh, it was impossible to describe, the boy thought helplessly, he just didn't have the words. His tutelage under the Man's harsh rule had left far slighter impressions on his grey cells than on his back and arms and legs. He did not have the words to say how it was both alive and not alive, not dead, but somehow, well, outside the life he knew. That gave it knowledge, Her knowledge. Was it a part of her? Why, yes, that must be it. That was why he loved it already—and why the Man feared it. Just as he hated and feared Her, though they were all dependent upon her largesse. Mother fed them, drowned them, and sometimes, she surprised them all.

  The Man returned, lugging containers full of Her waters. Without a word he poured them into the cooking pot, then nodded to the boy. With a gentleness worthy of a newborn's father, the boy laid the treasure in the mouth of the pot and there it floated with seeming contentment as the water lapped the coal-colored sides of the pot. Returned to the water, it gave off a whiff of the bayou smell, equal parts trash and rotting vegetation baked by the constant sun. It was the scent that filled your nose as you stood on the banks, while all around you trees hung low over the lazy waters as if bowed down by their sorrows. The boy shivered. Surely it was a mystery.

  "Git som'more water, boy, don't stand there gawpin'," and then the long-expected cuff came, and the Man thrust the bottles into his still slippery hands and the boy turned with some reluctance to trudge back down to the water's edge. Surreptitiously he turned just before their nook was out of sight and saw the Man staring into the depths of the pot. Just staring, and doing nothing. The boy kept on his way to the bayou, unaccustomed thoughts fighting for predominance in his head. He scooped the greenish water with gratitude, silently thanking Mother for the gift of this momentous day and wistfully hoping that there was more to the mystery than just making money for the Man. As if to soothe his troubled brow the waters gurgled a familiar tune and he smiled, trusting to Mother's wisdom. She would show him the way.

  He carried the water-weighted bottles back to their home and found the Man still staring, and now squatting beside the pot. The boy said nothing, but the Man coughed energetically to cover his uncertainty, and motioned for the boy to fill the pot with a surly economy of jerking movements. The thing in the pot seemed to welcome the additional fluids and swam eddies around the inky rim. The boy and the Man both stared, and the boy felt his neck want to follow the floating circles, like his eyes already did. It was as if a part of himself wanted to rise right out of his skin and hover up high. From nowhere it struck him that maybe this was what the Man and other others felt, loaded up on hooch, rambling, incoherent. They would sway like the lazy circles of the treasure in its pit, moving to music no one could hear, feeling the earth move. The boy shied away from the lure of the hooch, for he saw the vomiting and the shakes and the blood, but he understood now the magic, the lifting, the hope.

  The Man was cogitating again. The boy could tell because he was rubbing his grubby hands up and down his greasy coat, humming a tuneless song. There was something close to a smile on his face, as grim an expression as any other in his repertoire. The boy let his eye drift back to the depths of the cooking pot and the treasure that floated within it, but kept alert to cues from the Man. All this cogitating would result in some chore, likely unpleasant, usually tiring. It was all he knew. That and the bayou from the seven pillars to the prison: her smell, her lazy pace, her swelling floods, her green waters, these were the boundaries of his existence and they had begun to weigh upon his shoulders ever since the treasure had come to him that day. He got ambition, just as the Man had always warned.

  "Boy!" The Man's cogitating was through and he had a plan. "Go get Rusty, and Lefty and Jimbo. Tell 'em we got som'thin' they just gotta see fer theirselves." The boy nodded and hastened to the command, but he puzzled at the Man's vision. Those three—they were the oldest of the lot. They had survived most of the calamities their rough life afforded: punks with knives, cold snaps, hurricanes, floods, cars, drunkenness, starvation, and their own mutually destructive tendencies. Come night fall, like as not there'd be a fight betwixt this one and that.
These old codgers, not usually at the center of it, but they had that stray dog kind of logic to know the winning side and help tip the balance toward the natural order of things. But they weren't the kind of folk you might make money off of—no sir, they were as shifty and suspicious as the Man himself, ready to take a chunk out of you as soon as not, just on principle. Maybe the Man wanted them to go in with him, but that didn't seem likely. He barely allowed the boy to have any share of his glories. The boy chewed the thoughts without resolution as he sought out the trio of grizzled prospectors.

  He found Lefty and Jimbo all right, but Rusty was nowhere to be seen. The boy looked for the shock of white hair—had it ever been red?—but did not see it in his usual haunts, up by the big wheel or by the government building, where he gathered up his evidence. He was lucky to find Lefty and Jimbo together, slumped over a picnic table by the University where they growled at the passers-by with impotent menace and shared a warm bottle of hooch. The boy liked to look up at the University, where students called to one another on the patio high above the bayou in that other world they lived within, weighed down by the knowledge in their enormous satchels, but free to come and go, to get into cars and buses and travel to places far from the fetid land under the overpass. Jimbo and Lefty went there just to spit and snarl, enjoying the small surge of power they had to frighten the kids and perhaps to stand as proud harbingers of what might yet be.

  "Man wants to talk," the boy stuttered out, barely heard, barely acknowledged. Nevertheless, Jimbo corked the bottle with a few practiced spins and the three shuffled off to the overpass like the condemned men they were. The Man greeted them with a crafty look and a puffed up air of magnanimity. But all he said was "See what I got here?" He practically bowed before them, swinging his arm out in an arc that took in the whole of their cavern as if it were a palace. There was no mistaking, however, the aim of his gesture, for his hungry eyes sought it out and grew hooded, as if he regretting sharing the prize so soon. Lefty and Jimbo squinted in the murky dimness, caught sight of the white thing floating in the black pot and beheld its luminosity.