by C.S. Thompson

C.S. THOMPSON is the President of the Cateran Society, an organization devoted to researching and practicing the historic Gaelic martial arts. He is a poet and translator, and an author of crime fiction, horror, dark fantasy, and a manual on the use of the Highland broadsword. He is a board member of the Fellowship for Celtic Tradition LLC, and a member of the Celtic Martial Arts Research Society. He is 31 years old, and lives in Portland, Maine.
Contact C.S. Thompson

EXTRACT FROM A SEASON OF STRANGE DREAMS

Chapter One - The Ronin’s Life

She came up behind me and put her fingers on my shoulder. I was almost surprised, but I resisted the urge to shudder. Thousands of dim stars looked down at us from between the bars of the venetian blind.

"Come to bed, Jim."

Her voice was soft, not impatient at all, and I should have been soothed. I knew the rhythm of her body as it rose and fell in sleep; I knew her name. I could have joined her there in bed.

"But I can’t," I said, "I’m watching the stars."

She pressed her lips against my neck.

"They’ll be there tomorrow night. Right now you need your sleep."

"I don’t sleep," I told her.

"What," she asked me, "Not at all?"

"Not much. Sometimes not for days."

"Why not sleep with me now?"

"It’s not under my control."

She looked out the window at the sky.

"Do you do this a lot?" she asked me.

"It depends on my mood. Often, I walk. I may walk tonight."

She rested her head on my shoulder. Minutes passed in silence. Then she pointed at the sky.

"Do you think there’s life out there?"

The old question, predictable and familiar. I kissed her on the forehead for it.

"There are things out there," I said, "But those worlds are mostly empty."

"Empty?" she said, "You mean, like tumbleweeds blowing in the wind?"

She giggled at her little joke, and I took her hand in mine.

"No," I told her, "There isn’t even wind."

Beyond the red and yellow lights, the highway was a vast blankness leading off into the state. Whichever state it was. I stayed, at first, inside that circle of lights. The neon signs were soothing to me, and I imagined staying for a week or more in this place, exploring the truck stop and the liquor store, renting movies from the video shack.

This wasn’t a town to me, just an anonymous patch of necessities on the interstate. The kind of place with no past of any kind, no history at all. Just dark trucks like beached whales washed up on an otherwise empty shore; a place to pull in for coffee and a quick meal on the road; a motel to sleep in and a few stores with cheap entertainment. The kind of place where no one ever noticed you, where no one ever remembered you. The kind of place I courted.

I walked past the dark glass storefronts and imagined wandering through the aisles. Tonight I would sleep, I told myself, I would sleep until the late afternoon, and then I would get up and explore these stores one by one. I would read the backs of videos I had seen a dozen times before. I would purchase snack food and cheap whiskey. I would kill some time. Several hours, at least, before I had to go back to my room. Except that she was there.

I lingered outside the truck stop before I went in. The lights were too bright, and my eyes were unaccustomed to brightness, after several hours of staring at the walls in my room. Staring at the walls, while she breathed in her sleep beside me.

Too much light only reminded me I was still awake.

"Black coffee," I said, as pleasantly as I could. This was a risk I had to take. Coffee might postpone my sleep still further, but without it I would soon slip into a flat and empty state- too tired to think, but not tired enough to dream. That’s when the barriers are soft. Frank refused the speed pills to his cost; I wouldn’t make the same mistake.

The waitress brought my coffee with a smile.

"You look tired, hon," she said, "Got a long way to go?"

I looked up at her, confused.

"I’m not going anywhere," I said.

I sat by the window. Cars went by it now and then, and I imagined the passengers travelling endlessly in their lives, each one separate and contained. I watched them pass, and I tried not to think about how much time had really gone. But it had been five years, five years of hours much like this one, or far worse hours when I finally went to sleep. Even the thought of those dreams was enough to keep me wandering forever.

I looked at my reflection in the napkin holder. I guess I looked about the same. A little older, of course. More guarded. A lot more tired. But still the same old me. Dark hair, and eyes with wide black pupils. Narrow and unshaven cheeks. I leaned back in the booth.

Around me, here and there, exhausted truckers talked quietly or smoked in silence. The waitress bustled around. I fished out a cigarette, and lit it with a matchbook from the table. A cloud of smoke rose, thin and gray, around my head. The remains of a grilled cheese sandwich grew brittle on my plate.

"You want your check?"

I looked up at the waitress. She was smiling at me, chewing on a piece of gum. Her blond hair was matted with sweat.

"Sure," I said.

She brought it out to me, and I paid.

I wandered out past the circle of lights at last. I know what’s out there, but I do it just the same. I don’t really have a choice.

Beyond the picnic benches and the parking lot, the highway was swallowed up by the night. Sometimes a car passed, or a truck. The headlights grew and then faded away. A light breeze stirred dead leaves by the side of the road.

My hands were in my coat, and through the hole in my right pocket my fingers brushed the metal of a gun. Maybe nothing would happen tonight. It had been a long time since the last night-wandering dream, almost six months to be exact. Everything was quiet, as if the Fringe had stopped its constant erosion of our world, as if the tides in the Sea of Blood had pulled away. There had been no ghosts, no voices. There had been no dreams. And I didn’t miss them.

I paused for a moment, and looked up at those oceans of empty worlds. I thought about their deserts, and the red sands without so much as a breeze to shift them once in a hundred million years. I envied their unchangeable state of rest.

But there was wind here, on this world. It made it hard to light a cigarette, but it still felt good on my face.

"Noctiviganti’s coming home."

The accusation startled me. I had known it would happen, despite my daydreams and empty thoughts. Despite my six months of silence. Some things never change. But I hadn’t known it would tell me this.

A handful of dead leaves, stirred into motion by the wind, made a spiral at my feet. I was careful not to disturb it, unwilling to provoke Their wrath. But I wanted to kick it into pieces, burn its leaves in an empty can. I told myself that it lied.

"Noctiviganti’s coming home."

"Oh no," I said, "I’m not."

The voice was in my head, not even in my head, and certainly not in the leaves. The trees didn’t whisper it by the side of the road. There were no words in the empty beer cans, rolling along in the ditch. Their skittering carried no sense.

But it was still in my head, like it always was, whether it rested for a day or a thousand days. Voices like fragments of dreams.

"Noctiviganti’s coming home."

I looked around the circle. Two of our enemies were puking. A few of them had tears in their eyes. They were fixed on the remnants in front of them, the torn bits of a white dress speckled with red, the splayed limbs and empty, doll-like face. They hadn’t known it would come to this. They had wanted the ultimate drug- a taste of death. But the death had not been for them. At least not yet.

Mere seconds had passed since we had come in out of the shadows, and most of them had already scattered. We had taken them completely by surprise. One of his apprentices pulled a gun from his jacket. Frank made him suffer for it. I took a stick from their campfire.

The tall man wasn’t scared of us. He thought we were innocents. Horrified, but powerless to stop him. He was alive with the power of what he had done.

Then my eyes went slack and dreamy, and he saw the stick in my hand. He recognized me at last. He knew he’d miscalculated.

"I know you," he said, backing away and reaching into his shirt. Stark fear blossomed on his face.

"I know all about you. You’re the sleepwalker."

"Yes," I whispered, "Noctiviganti."

I fell into a sleep filled with screams.

A thin rain washed the blood of memory from my hands. The sun rose. So we had battled monsters and become monsters, in the end. And I was never going home.

I walked back along the highway, quietly singing a song. My cigarette calmed me, and I knew that when we found a ride, I’d be able to sleep on the way. Maybe I’d pick up a bottle of booze.

My coat was damp, and the water stained my shirt. The collar was bent and out of shape. But she’d be waiting for me at the motel. We could take a shower together, and get ready for the road. There’d be dry clothes in the room.

I turned the key in the lock, and threw my coat across the bed.

And she was gone.

Chapter Two - Horrors and Wonders

I didn’t know I was really going home. Not till I was sitting in a bus station after five rides, and the ticket said, "Nottamun. One Way."

I sat on my pack in the wide bright empty spaces of the station. Freezing rain coated the shining streets outside. People struggled slowly through the wind, their faces invisible behind collars, umbrellas and scarves. Cars crawled by the window now and then.

Why were they calling me home? The thought was enough to make me shudder. I crossed my arms and wrapped them around myself, each hand on the opposite shoulder. A thin comfort in this cold.

Except that it wasn’t cold inside. There was a draft when the door opened, and puddles of brown water filled the sunken spaces in the floor. But the station itself was fairly warm I leaned back and uncrossed my arms.

I should have known better, the victim of so many dreams. You can’t talk yourself into believing a different world. And those who can, pay a price.

So, my cold came from deeper inside. So be it, it was every bit as real. I crossed my arms again.

There was a diner across the street. Its bright lights were inviting, and I imagined the steam rising from black coffee, warming me deeper than my skin. There was another hour until my bus.

I put my pack across one shoulder. There wasn’t very much inside. A few t-shirts and faded black jeans. A bottle of Coke mixed with bourbon. Odds and pointless ends.

I flipped my collar up against the wind. The rain struck me when I opened the door, stung my face like a host of tiny bees. Somewhere, the sun set behind the clouds, and as I crossed the street a shadow seemed to settle across my path.

The diner welcomed me like a bed. I stumbled through the door, barely able to see with the harsh ice in my eyes, but the blue-haired waitress called out a friendly hello. I waved back at her in reply, and settled down into a booth. I wiped cold water from my eyes and ran a napkin over my head.

Almost before I could even ask, there was a warm mug in my hands. I held it briefly against my face, and a long sigh escaped my lips. I sipped it carefully and felt its glow.

Beside me, the wind rattled the windowpanes, and whistled in the almost empty street. I looked around me at the world. Not surprisingly, there was hardly anyone in the place. An old man, picking carelessly at a bowl of cooling soup, with his lower jaw slack and soft. A man in a cheap blue suit in the corner, talking excitedly on his cell-phone. A waitress and a cook.

And a young woman, at the counter, with shoulder-length black hair and a rose tattooed on her arm. She wore a sleeveless, midriff-baring shirt, not at all appropriate for the weather, and she looked tired, hungry and cold. When she turned and looked me straight in the face, I was startled by the blue intensity of her eyes. You know the kind of girl that you could almost fall in love with just by looking at her? And it’s never the figure, or anything else you could put a name on. It’s just some intangible quality of magic. Well- she wasn’t that kind of girl. For me that kind of girl no longer existed. But she reminded me of her.

I looked away.

So many times, in these five years, I had sat in a diner much like this. I was unwilling to turn my back to the crowd, so I liked to sit in the corner. There I would watch the people passing, and the snow or the rain on the street. Sometimes I imagined what they were doing, and invented stories about their lives. This one was going to propose to his girlfriend; that one was rushing to an interview. Ordinary stories in a world without horrors and wonders.

I glanced at the clock on the wall. Almost time now, almost time. My gut turned over at the thought that I was going home. Every time I pictured Nottamun in my mind, Frank came quickly after. Frank laughing and smiling, and teasing me about the twins. Frank matching me drink for drink, his vodka and orange, mine whiskey on ice. Frank's black blood being coughed out on a moss-covered stump.

Because of him, I would never be able to think about them again. Except that I would see them, very soon. I shuddered again before I stood.

I paid my bill, and tipped generously although I was running out of funds. I believe in encouraging your luck. As I left, I glanced around me for a sight of that girl with the startling eyes. They had been so improbably blue, much darker and yet more shining than the sky. But she was already gone- hopefully, I thought, to a place with a warm change of clothes.

I crossed the street again, and by the time I was in through the station doors, my hair was almost frozen and hard. I ran my sleeve across my head, and the already melting ice ran in streams down my flushed face and into my eyes. As I stood in the doorway, a passing car cast water up behind me, splashing my legs before the door swung shut. This was definitely an evening for the bourbon.

The line for the Boston bus was long. I knew it was unlikely I would get a seat to myself, and that was mildly unfortunate. There was just a chance I might fall asleep on the way, and I’m not always the best person to be near when I’m asleep. But in Boston I would make the connection for Nottamun. And that bus would probably be almost empty.

I gave my ticket to the driver, and made straight for the back of the bus. Not only would I be most likely to find privacy there, but it would also be easier to drink. I wanted to avoid being thrown out in the middle of the highway, and I couldn’t tolerate being searched. Carrying a firearm on a bus is a serious crime.

My bones were stiff when I slumped down in the seat, as if I’d been working for days. I leaned back as far as I could, to find the nearest thing to comfortable- true comfort, of course, is impossible on a bus. Then I unzipped my pack, and pulled out the damp little one-liter bottle. It was mostly whiskey, with just enough soda inside to look halfway believable. Enough to convince the driver not to bother, that it was probably really Coke.

I used to drink to beat the world. Frank and I would trade shots and stories half the night, and if I was still awake when he slumped over, I thought I had won the game. But this was no game any more. When I unscrewed the cap from the bottle, I could smell the Maker’s Mark, its subtle sweetness barely masked for me by the soda. And I was hungry.

I spilled the first mouthful down my shirt. This was an accident, of course. I would never waste good whiskey on purpose- but I was reminded of those gangsters who pour a drink for absent friends.

"Well, that’s yours, Frank," I muttered. The second drink found its way into my mouth.

Almost immediately, the pain of travel was eased for me in my bones. I closed my eyes, and savored the warmth that grew in my chest. My body was a wood stove, and whiskey was dry eager pine. I sat by the stove and warmed my whole being in its heat.

The bus doors had started to close, and the driver was in his seat to pull away. At the very last moment, someone came running out of the station and stuck her arm in the closing door. The driver jerked it open, scowled down at her, then tore her ticket from her hand. They exchanged words briefly- he was irritated, she was contrite- and then she came walking down the aisle.

It was the girl from the diner, carrying a tiny pack that could hardly even have held make-up, and she was headed directly for the back of the bus.

"Do you mind if I sit here?" she asked. And I did, in fact, I did- but there was nowhere else for her to sit. Her eyes had struck me, and to the extent that I could still convince myself it mattered, I found her beautiful. But I had a long way to go, to an unwelcome destination, and I didn’t think the mere fact of her beauty would be a comfort on the road.

In any case, I moved over to make room for her, and she sat down beside me. Almost immediately, I closed my eyes. I felt her settle in and put her feet up on the back of the seat in front of us. Someone in that seat began to mutter in irritation. I took another swallow of my soda, and she giggled.

"Is that Maker’s Mark?" she whispered.

I opened my left eye and regarded her. She was pointing at my bottle with a smile to get drunk on, like a good girl being bad.

"You’re a little young," I answered, "To know your whiskey by the smell."

"Oh, come on," she said, "I probably know it better than you do. Give me a taste."

I was amused, I think, at such a brazen request from a stranger. But I was not quite happy at the idea of running out of whiskey along the way. Then again, who was I kidding? I would have finished the liter within an hour, and I would not have been drunk when I was done. I passed her the bottle with a sigh, more feigned than actual I suppose.

Her taste was a long, fierce swallow, and she chased it with a smaller one before passing the bottle back to me.

"Thanks," she said, and gave me another smile like a gift.

"I’ll tell you what," I said, "You’re going to owe me a cigarette when we stop."

"Fine by me," she said, "I’m dying to have one myself."

The bus had pulled out now, and we were crawling through the city, surrounded by thousands of lights of every shape and size within the wider dark of the night.

"My name’s Rose," she said.

I looked at her, resigned to her company and starting to warm up to it.

"You can call me Jim."

"Where are you going?" she asked me.

"Nottamun," I said, "It’s a little city in the Northeast."

"Oh, I know," she answered, "I’m going there myself."

The hair on the back of my neck stood up when she said this, but I told myself it meant nothing.

"Who do you know in Nottamun?" I asked.

"I don’t, really," she said, "Just a few people here and there."

"Then why are you going there?"

"I’m bored," she said, "And I’ve been just about everywhere else."

"So you just picked it off a map."

"No," she laughed, "I do know a few people there. Just not very many."

I got the picture. She was going to end up down at Statue Square. Home of the street kids and petty hoodlums. Well, I used to know a few of those people myself. I passed her the bottle again.

"Thanks," she said, and leaned back in the seat.

The bus went down into a tunnel, and the lights were yellow and dim. They cast strange shadows on her face, and I watched in abstract interest.

"What about you?" she asked me, quietly, as if disturbed by my attention.

"What about me?" I said.

"What’s Nottamun to you?"

"Ah," I said, "Well, it’s home."

I took the bottle back, and drank deep.

She was tipsy now, and I was not. We had long since abandoned the bottle, because an empty bottle is no use even for nostalgia. It had rolled away beneath our feet, in a journey down the aisle.

She leaned half over me, shaking, with her hands on her belly. Her laughter was far more potent to me than the drink. It washed hundreds of miles of wandering from my bones; replaced my history with a blank slate for that hour. But then again, my tolerance was much higher for the whiskey.

"I’m sorry," she laughed, "I can’t help it, I really can’t."

I patted her on the back, and she burst out into laughter again. In the middle of the bus, sleeping people woke up and pointedly adjusted their blankets. Pretty soon, I thought, the driver would have to notice.

"Rose," I whispered, "Rose, you’ve got to calm down."

This only made her worse. She practically fell into the aisle.

"What’s so funny, Rose?" I asked her, "Why are you laughing so much?"

"It’s just you," she said, vaguely waving at my face, "With your black coat and your eyes. You look like you’re posing for a picture."

I almost laughed along, when she said this. But when I opened my mouth, she was silent. My companion had fallen asleep.

It started as a hobby. We went where the dreams led us, to out-of-the-way places where people heard strange noises late at night, to ghost towns worn down to stone by time, to stretches of forest where visitors sometimes disappeared. And we found the things the legends spoke of- corpse-candles flickered after twilight among the pines, and the voices of unseen children echoed in abandoned homes, still playing. We heard footfalls in the empty places where no one living walked but us. We heard the whispers of old ghosts, and sometimes darker things as well. Expeditions to the edges of the Fringe, frivolous camping trips for the morbid and the obsessed. We would stay up all night long, mutually terrified of what we found, and we would go back in the morning unharmed and ever closer in our secrets. People came to us with problems- curses, possessions, and hauntings, all the shadows cast up by the Fringe on the white screen of our world.

"What’s the pin for?" she murmured, brushing it with her fingers. She had fallen asleep on my shoulder, but she was conscious now and then.

"It’s a British punk band," I said, "They’re not around anymore."

"Oh," she slurred, making a face, "I thought it meant you were damned."

"Oh no," I laughed, "Not me."

She fell asleep again, with her arm across my chest. I turned away from her and looked out the window at the road. We were far from the city now.

There were no lights along the highway, and the empty spaces of the night sky and blank, flat fields merged together into a void like outer space. I imagined we were a starship, on an almost endless journey between the planets, aiming at the one spot in the sky where the equations favored life. We would be here for generations, flying silently through space, and when our descendents finally left the ship and stepped off on an alien world, they would know nothing of the Earth. I heard the howling of the wind between the worlds.

She stirred against me on the seat. I turned to look at her. Because I rarely sleep, I often watch those who do. She was slumped over on my arm, with her cheek pressed up against my shoulder. Her eyes were half-open, and I could still see their remarkable late-twilight blue.

There was something peculiar about this girl. I had seen hints of turbulence in her eyes, like omens of rough weather on a calm day at sea. Only now, when she was sleeping, did she seem to be fully at peace.

She had touched my arm repeatedly as we were drinking, and once she had passed her fingers through my hair. These things had affected me, of course, though I had not shown her this at all. I suppose my heart might have done a little trick, jumped a little as people say they do. But I had long ago given up on assigning any meaning to such things. They were mere reactions, pleasant moments without purpose, like symbols without significance.

How often had I been stopped in my tracks by rainwater running along pavement under the streetlights? Or by some new sight in my wanderings, like the Green Mountains around Burlington in the summer, haunted by old legends but still more gentle than their barren Highland cousins? I carried a thousand such moments in my memory, and I would carry this one as well. She slept on my shoulder and dreamed, and I saw none of my nightmares in her still half-open eyes.

The rest of the bus was quiet and almost totally dark. Here and there, an overhead light helped someone read. People snored, and stirred in their restless sleep. I glanced at the watch on her wrist. It was three o’clock in the morning, the long dark night of the soul as it is sometimes called. The hour when hearts prefer to stop. I grinned, and put my hand under my coat to check my pulse. All systems functional, so far.

I decided to try to rest. She was comforting to me in the warmth and closeness of her body, and I thought perhaps with her I could finally sleep. The whiskey buzz had long since worn away, but I still felt calmed and quieted inside.

I shifted my arm, to put it around her shoulders. She grumbled a little, then settled in against my chest. I leaned back, and closed my eyes.

But they were open again in a moment, and it was all I could do to keep from shoving her away. My free hand checked instinctively for my gun. It was still there, a little hard to reach but not quite trapped, against her leg.

What did that mean, that her goal was the same as mine? Could she possibly be one of them? If she was, then she could gut me while I slept. I had a sudden picture in my mind, of bright blood foaming up between my lips, of my hand shooting up to check it as duelists used to do. Blood from the body in the mouth- a sure sign of approaching death.

If she was, then she would have a weapon. It would be hidden on her body, but somewhere not too difficult to reach. I began to check, discreetly. If she woke up, she would think I was being fresh- and who knows, I thought with a grin, perhaps she would not object- but she could not be sure that I was actually patting her down. There was nothing at her hip or against her body, and I was momentarily ashamed because I was touching her while she slept and becoming aroused. But then I found it- a short dagger, strapped upside-down to the back of her jeans. I sat back again to think.

I was shocked, of course, at first. I had only just returned to the clearing, and Frank had almost fallen asleep. There of all places, in the worst place of all. I watched him as they came up through his half-dreams, into his eyes.

There was no way to be sure. She was a wanderer like me, and just as I carried a gun, she might naturally carry a knife. She wore it like she knew how to use it- upside down, so it would fall easily into the hand. A quick draw in case of emergency, or to help ensure surprise.

She still slept against my chest, and her heart beat against my body while she dreamed. Why would a young woman ever wear a knife that way unless she had violence in her plans? But that didn’t mean she was one of them.

I could surely not go to sleep. But despite my wariness, I was still comforted by her warmth, and even by her trust in sleeping at my side. I settled in to a position where I could stretch my legs if needed, and I squeezed her shoulders to pull her closer in towards me.

And that’s when she stirred in her sleep. Her fingers clenched a little, then uncurled, and a shadow of worry passed across her face. She muttered a little, and I could not hear the words. I leaned closer, and she screamed.

"Don’t worry," I called out to the driver, and the other passengers on the bus. People were stirring, or sitting up in startled confusion.

"She just had a bad dream," I said. She was wide-eyed, awake, and staring.

"It’s okay, Rose," I whispered, "I think you just had a nightmare."

"I don’t remember it," she said.

"What are you thinking about?" she whispered. She had woken up on my chest, after another hour of restless sleep. Her fingers pulled at a fold of my shirt. Far away, like an echo of distant thunder, I felt my heart beat a little harder. I observed it, and was unmoved.

"Old memories," I said, almost as quiet as her, "Things I would rather forget."

The sun would rise soon over the road. Along the sides of the highway, the dim shadows of birds fluttered among rows of pine and yew.

"We’ll be in Boston before long."

She kissed me silently on the cheek.

"I’ll give you a cigarette in South Station," she said, "I owe you one for that drink."

We were in Boston with the sun. Our bus to Nottamun wouldn’t come for another hour, so we smoked and watched the world. Hordes of people came and went at Downtown Crossing, rushing along from one task to the next, with briefcases and folders of paper. I craved having nothing to do. I talked to Rose to pass the time, to forget for a moment how close I was to home. I watched the message of her smile, both playful and direct, open yet ultimately casual. Her hair was blowing in the wind.

"Do you have a number in Nottamun?" she asked me.

"Not yet," I said, "Do you?"

She shook her head.

"Oh well," she said, and the shrug of her shoulder said it all, "I’m sure I’ll run into you now and then."

Copyright© 2003 C. S. Thompson

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Read C.S. Thompson's article GOTHIC NOIR