As trees took the place of the fields on either side of the driveway, Matthew hurled the entire box of crackers away from himself. The hand-cat said “Meow” in a disturbingly articulate way as it retrieved the box, but then a few little winged weasel things rushed out of the underbrush to fight for it until the cardboard box ripped asunder.
Matthew plunged past them, ready for the walk to be over.
“Matthew, stop,” Declan called. “I’ll go around.”
He meant to spare Matthew the security system Ronan had dreamt for the Barns since they left, a peculiar, invisible net of dreams that covered the end of the driveway. It not only made the entrance to the Barns very difficult to see, it also made you feel terrible if you did try to enter. Anyone who stepped into the net immediately began to relive bad memories. Awful memories. Stuff you thought you’d forgotten and stuff you wished you had. Stuff so wretched that people just gave up and went back the way they’d come.
Matthew was sort of drawn to it.
Secretly he frequented the end of the driveway while Declan was occupied in the farmhouse all day on his boring calls on his burner phone, and secretly he would suck in his breath and plunge into the net of bad memories again and again.
He didn’t know why.
“Matthew,” Declan said. He was cuffing his pants. There was a long way around the security system if one picked through the woods in just the right way, but even the right way snagged one’s slacks with brambles. It was a testament to how much Declan wanted to avoid the security system that he’d tromp through the woods instead.
Matthew edged toward the end of the driveway. “I’ll get it.”
“You are being even more ridiculous than usual.”
“BRB,” Matthew said.
“Matthew, for crying out—”
Matthew plunged into the security system.
The memories hit him like they always did, fresh as when they happened. His brain could not separate them from the truth.
This is what he remembered: losing himself. His thoughts slid into muddy dreaming. He climbed his school’s roof. The ground plunged hundreds of feet away. His body was unworried about the height.
This is what he remembered: He was mid-sentence with Jacob on the soccer field, and then he was forgetting what he was saying while he was saying it, and then he was watching Jacob wait and wait and wait for him to remember his train of thought as it never returned.
This is what he remembered: He was being woken by Declan by the banks of the Potomac River and realizing he’d walked there yet again without knowing it, and seeing all the creatures Ronan had dreamt dozing around him and realizing he was like them, he was a dream, he was a dream.
This is what he remembered: He was walking, dreaming, walking, sleeping, obeying a power outside himself.
Matthew.
A voice said his name.
This was the memory that he kept coming back for.
Sometimes, when he lost himself, he thought he heard someone calling to him. Not in a human voice. Not in a dream voice. In a voice-voice, in a language he felt like maybe was his real language.
He didn’t understand any more than that. So he kept coming back again and again.
Then Matthew was through the security system and facing the empty, wooded country road and the mailbox on an ordinary, chilly day in the present. There was a faded wood cabinet behind the mailbox for the delivery drivers to leave parcels in, but there were no parcels today. Instead, there were a few pieces of junk mail (boring) and an art museum postcard addressed to Declan (even more boring).
Lame. His sour mood remained.
He plunged back through the security system.
This time it gave him a memory he didn’t want at all, that was just him having to leave Aurora behind in Ronan’s dreamt forest Cabeswater before it was destroyed. The memory hadn’t been bad when it happened, even though Matthew never liked saying goodbye to her, but it was terrible now because he knew it was the last time he saw her before she died.
She wasn’t your real mother, Matthew told himself. She wasn’t even Declan’s real mother. She was just a dreamt copy.
But it never made him feel any better, so he was swiping a tear away when he emerged in front of Declan again. This infuriated him, too.
“Was that worth it?” Declan asked drily.
Matthew handed over the mail. “No groceries. We’re out of peanut butter.”
“There’s a man in Orange who I think will sell us a Sentra for cash. Then we’ll be able to do some shop …” Declan’s voice trailed off as he turned the postcard over.
“Is it from Ronan?” asked Matthew. It didn’t seem very Ronan-y. The postcard featured a painting of a woman dancing with the words ISABELLA STEWART GARDNER MUSEUM, BOSTON, MA, printed over it.
Declan didn’t answer; his cheeks were a little flushed.
“What is it?” Matthew could hear himself sounding a little whingy and was annoyed. Stop being a kid, he told himself.
Declan was smiling. He was trying not to, but he was. He had ironed his voice flat, though, so that if one hadn’t seen his face, one would think it was just a normal day, normal mail. “How do you feel about a trip to Boston?”
Matthew looked at the dreamt fireflies still winking in and out around them. Ronan’s dreams. Just like him.
“Anywhere’s better than here,” Matthew said.
“Finally,” Declan replied, “something we agree on.”
What do you feel?” Bryde asked.
“Shitty,” Ronan replied.
“I said what, not how. Hennessy?”
“I feel nothing,” Hennessy said. “Except the feel of my arteries closing in anticipation. Smell that grease. I love it.”
Bryde shut the car door. “This isn’t going to make you feel better.”
“It’s not going to make me feel worse,” Ronan replied.
“If life’s taught me anything,” Hennessy said, “it’s that you can always feel worse.”
It had been nearly twenty-four hours since the three dreamers had left the Museum of Living History. They were parked in front of Benny’s Dairy Bar, a decades-old fast-food joint located somewhere in West Virginia. The sun burned golden over the worn-down mountains surrounding the town. The dreamers’ shadows stretched thin across the faded lot.
Ronan was starving.
Bryde shot an attentive look around at their surroundings as Hennessy shivered and Ronan spat. The sparse parking lot, the decaying town, the quiet road. He was looking for Moderators. Moderators were why they were here instead of bedded down on a ley line; they’d barely left the day before when Bryde had suddenly ordered Hennessy to send Burrito in a completely different direction. He’d gotten information, somehow, in the mysterious way he sometimes did, that Moderators were close. They couldn’t risk leading them to their destination. Safer to stay in the invisible car until the coast was clear.
Which meant they’d spent the past twenty-four hours dozing in the car and driving in circles.
“Get down here,” Ronan said to Chainsaw, who had flapped to a nearby tree.
“Let’s get this exercise over with,” Bryde said. “This entire process is merely for demonstration, so I hope you are in an educational frame of mind.”
Ding! cried the door as the three dreamers entered Benny’s Dairy Bar, where they found booths bolted to the walls, hard tables bolted to the floor, soft locals bolted to seats, thin burgers bolted to hands. Above the counter was a menu board without any pretense or spin: HAMBURGER. CHEESEBURGER. 2 PATTY. 3 PATTY. FRIES. DOUBLE FRY. SOFT SERVE 1. SOFT SERVE 2. Behind the counter, employees wore purple Benny’s T-shirts. Golden oldies played overhead. Something something Mrs. Brown has a lovely daughter something something. It had a vague bleach smell, which might have otherwise turned Ronan off. But not right then. He instead thought only about the other smell: Grease. Salt. Food.