Did I remember falling asleep? No. Nothing felt real here, and I struggled to keep one foot planted in reality.
“How do you know what I’m looking for?” My voice echoed back at me, though what it had hit to create the echo, I didn’t know. The air was so heavy I wanted to sit down, but I didn’t dare. I still didn’t know where I was or what was around me. Dream or not, I didn’t feel like plunging to my death.
“You want what I was looking for. Stop. ”
That male voice was unfamiliar, yet somehow I knew it. “Sutherland?”
“I know what you’re doing. You have to stop. ”
“I’m looking for you. ”
“Stop. ”
“No. ” I shook my head in case he could see me. “I have to find you. ”
“Because they want me back? It’s not worth it, girl. I’m not worth it. What you find…just stop looking. ” His voice grew distant for a moment and then loud again, the way a phone with a bad connection might.
“I found the key. ”
“It unlocks a cabinet of horrors. ” Again his voice faded out, only now he sounded tired. “Don’t go. ”
Was this my dream or his? We shared blood, so it was possible for us to communicate this way, but it hadn’t happened before. In all my twenty-three years he’d never slipped into my head, nor me into his. What had changed? Was it proximity, or desperation? And whose need had made it happen?
“Where are you?”
“I’m with The Doctor. Stop looking. Stop. ”
“What doctor?”
“The Doctor. Don’t unlock the door. He knows you’re looking. You have to go home. ”
I stood still, frozen in place. What was he talking about? What doctor? This dream infuriated me in new ways because it wasn’t similar to any I’d ever had. It wasn’t vague in a symbolic way; it was just vague enough to be annoying.
“Sutherland, I need to find you. ”
The darkness flickered and was replaced with a dimly lit corridor. On either side, illuminated by individual yellow lights, was a series of doors. The layout was like the warehouse in the Tenderloin, except these doors all looked old and expensive.
The key was in my hand.
We were in his subconscious, not mine. I’d never seen these doors before. If only I could manipulate what he was dreaming, he might show me the right door in spite of himself.
“If I start at the window, where do I go?”
A dozen doors vanished, their lights going dark with the audible sound of a bulb burning out. I took a step forward, able to see a path through the murky darkness.
“Stop,” he protested.
“Show me the door. ”
Another set of lights went out—pop, pop, pop—and I ran forward to keep from being consumed by the dark.
“You’ll regret it,” he promised.
“I regret a lot of things. I won’t regret this. I have the key, now show me the door. ”
All the lights around me went out in a shower of sparks, leaving one door lit, seemingly miles away. I walked towards it, drawn like a moth to the flame, the key held outstretched in my trembling palm.
“Don’t,” he shouted.