CONVERSATIONS
FOR MUCH OF THE REST OF THE AFTERNOON AND EARLY EVENING HE JUST SAT at one of the tables set out by the Little Nevada station, thinking about everything that had been going on lately. Things just didn't fit together. At least, not in any logical way; if he forced himself to accept what was going on for what it seemed like, then everything fit perfectly. The Gravitron. The dreams. Rosie. The dizzy spells and headaches. Him, Anders, and Jacob. 2:47.
He sighed and picked at the splinters in the worn tabletop, pricking his fingers several times and having to stop and pull them out. There was a tap-tap-tap sound from nearby and someone sat down in front of him. He didn't even look up.
"Hi," he said.
"Hi," Gavin's voice said.
"What brings you here?"
"Oh, I don't know. Maybe it was just because you looked so dejected." Puck wasn't sure if it was a joke or not. "How's things going?"
"Well, things are going, but where it is that they're going, I'm not sure."
"Oh. Your dreams, right?"
Puck looked up. "Sid told you?"
Gavin bit his lip and frowned. "I don't want to implicate her or anything. I did ask."
Puck put his head down again and continued picking. "Well, don't worry. Everybody knows about it anyway."
Gavin leaned forward and "looked" at him; those big dark glasses bothered him, and he ducked his head lower. "It is really what she said, though? You and a bunch of other people having the same dream?"
"I don't really know how many people," he admitted. "But I do know that there's at least two of us."
"Really?"
"Yeah. Anders Carlsson. You must know him if Sid spoke with you."
A sort of smile. "Yeah, she did tell me about him. He's an exchange student, isn't he? From Stockholm?" [Note--probably the only Swedish city I knew. Based on the description I gave of Anders's home earlier in the story, during his hypnosis sessions, I take it he actually lives out in the country. But like I said...I don't know any other Swedish cities!]
"Yeah. Why he ever wanted to come here is beyond me."
The blind man shrugged. "Maybe he wanted a change of place."
For more than one reason, obviously, Puck thought, and he stopped picking to ponder that.
"You think maybe--" he started, but cut himself off and pulled up another splinter. "Never mind."
"Okay."
"Hi, guys!"
Puck looked up; it was Dino, carrying a Styrofoam tray heaped with food, a large grin on his face. Puck couldn't help but roll his eyes and smile. Dino may have been a little squirt, but he ate like an elephant. "Hey, Dino."
"Mind if I sit here?" Even as he asked it he was already putting down his tray, unwrapping his fork-slash-spoon, and digging in.
"Not at all."
"I don't believe we've met," Gavin said, sticking out his hand. Dino took a second to put down his fork and shake his hand.
"Dino Garris," he managed to say, around a mouthful of food. Puck wondered how the fastidious Anders ever got along with him. "Three-quarters Italiano."
Gavin smiled again. "I guessed."
"Really?" Dino looked impressed. "How?"
He nodded at Dino's plate. "I smelled spaghetti there. I know it's a stereotype, but I was just wondering. You know, this place has a lot of foreigners and exchange students."
"Yeah, I know!" Dino replied, continuing eating and apparently taking no offense.
"Hey, Dino," Puck said again, leaning on his elbows. Anders's roommate cast a brief look up at him to show that he'd noticed. That was a good sign. "How's Anders doing lately?"
Dino screwed up his face. "Huh? What d'you mean?"
"Is he sleeping well lately?"
"Oh. Yeah. Well, it takes him a while to get to sleep, but he eventually does. I don't know much after that; I'm out by then." A chuckle.
Don't I know it, Puck thought. "So you never notice him wake up and walk around or anything?"
"Well, one time I woke up 'cause I was thirsty and he was looking out the window." Not bothering to elaborate, he kept on eating.
Puck waited a moment for him to continue; when he didn't, he prodded on. "Did he do anything?"
"Oh." He looked thoughtful for a moment. "Let's see. Uh, I asked if he was okay, and he just turned and looked at me, and said something." He shrugged and kept eating.
Another pause. Puck sighed, and wondered if he ever needed this much prompting to eat. "Well, what did he say, Dino?"
"Oh. Well, I asked him if he was okay, and he just said, 'Go back to sleep, Dino' or something. Maybe something else."
"Like?"
"God, you're impatient. I think he said I shouldn't be awake, so I had to go back to sleep now. I was thirsty but I guess I was more tired so I just said, 'Okay,' and I dozed off again." He took a bite of garlic bread. "There. You happy?"
Both Puck and Gavin were staring at him, or, rather, through him, as Gavin couldn't see, and Puck appeared to have zoned out. He shrugged and, taking advantage of the pause, scooped up some more spaghetti.
"Dino," Puck said finally, his eyes still foggy, "have you been sleeping well lately?"
Dino actually looked a little ticked off. "Why, what is this, some kind of sleep inventory? I've always slept okay, you know that."
"You said you were thirsty."
"Yeah, I was."
"But evidently not very thirsty?"
"Well...thirsty! I was thirsty thirsty. I don't know how thirsty I actually was."
"Were you hungry?"
Dino opened his mouth to speak, then shut it and thought. "Yeah, come to think of it. I'm usually hungry when I wake up. In the morning, I mean. And thirsty. Yeah, I think I was."
"What's the first thing you do in the morning when you wake up?"
"Well, I get dressed, get my stuff in my bag, and go down to the Gen-X to meet Sid." He giggled. "She gives me drinks for free. No sugar in them, though. That'd be bad."
"And you eat there, too."
"Sure! I mean, of course. What else? I can't make it through the day without my breakfast. The most important meal of the day, they say."
"But when you woke up and saw Anders, you went back to sleep," Puck hinted. "You didn't get up to eat or anything."
"Yeah." Now Dino looked puzzled. "I don't know why I did that. I mean, I always keep some snacks around somewhere, and if I ever wake up I eat one and go back to sleep. We have a pitcher of water over on the dresser in case we get thirsty. I could've gone over to that without having to leave the room. But I was just so tired."
"When Anders was looking out the window, did he seem okay to you? Was he looking at anything in particular?"
"I don't know," but even as he said it that look came over his face again. Puck doubted he'd ever thought so much in one day. "Come to think of it, he looked kind of 'out of it,' himself."
Puck frowned now. He'd read of that phrase somewhere, and he didn't like it. "'Out of it' how?"
A shrug. "I dunno. Tired, maybe. Kind of zoned out. But he was awake, I can tell you that. He did talk to me."
"How'd he talk?"
"Like he was tdired [sic]. He just said it. No feeling or anything. It wasn't like, 'Hey! Dino! Get back to sleep!!' He just kind of looked towards me and said, 'You should be asleep, Dino. Go back to sleep.'"
"Looked towards you?"
A nod. Dino took a forkful of spaghetti and swallowed it. "Like he couldn't focus on me. But y'know, it was pretty dark." His eyes opened wide, and he nearly choked on his bread. "No, wait a minute! It wasn't!"
Both Gavin and Puck sat back with surprise. "Wasn't what?" Puck asked, growing confused.
Dino slapped his fork down onto the table and pointed at him with his other hand, grinning triumphantly. "It wasn't dark out! It was pretty light, to tell the truth!"
"Light like--?"
"Like it was a full moon out or something! Bright! I'll bet that's what Anders was looking at. Y'know, maybe he couldn't sleep because the moon was shining in his eyes?"
Puck stood up, so abruptly that the other two looked up at him. "Or maybe not," he said, his own voice flat. He turned and left the table, stopping a few feet away from the thoroughfare and turning back. [Note--okay, so, any time it says "thoroughfare" in reference to fairgrounds, just assume I meant "midway."] "When did this happen, did you say?"
"Oh," Dino said. "I don't know. A couple days ago. Uh, it was when he fell out of bed. Yeah! That woke me up, too!"
"When he had the first dream," Puck said to himself, and he left the table, walking quickly away. Dino held up an extra cup of cola he'd brought along, as he didn't drink cola himself.
"Hey!" he shouted above the noise. "Did you want a drink?"
But Puck was already gone, lost in the crowd. Dino lowered the cup and snorted.
"Huh!" he said. "Wonder what's gotten into him."
Gavin only shrugged and smiled.
A baseball hit its target, and another, and then another. The person running the booth gaped on with amazement as Anders kept tossing baseballs--or, more like, hurling them--at the colored cloth, striking it every time. If he kept this up, then so much for prizes.
Puck came out of the crowd behind him, and paused to watch. Anders looked like he was trying to kill the cloth; every ball he threw was thrown harder than the last, and steam was practically snorting out his nostrils. As soon as he'd tossed the last ball, he stooped to pick up a stray, stretching back to throw it. Puck caught his arm. He whirled around with surprise, then relaxed, seeing who it was. The ball dropped from his hand and he sighed, wiping his brow.
"Hi," he said, simply. He noticed the booth master's look, and turned red. "Sorry. Thanks for the game." He turned away before he could be offered any prizes, and Puck noted the booth master didn't look upset at all.
"You okay?" he asked, as they walked through the crowd.
Anders shrugged. "I just feel kind of tense today. I thought maybe playing some of the games would get rid of it." He rubbed his sore shoulder and grimaced. "I guess I was wrong, huh?"
"Dino told me something today. I want to ask you about it."
Anders looked at him and forrowed [sic] his brow, but shrugged and nodded.
"He said he woke up the night you had the first dream. He saw you looking out the window at a light. You told him to go back to sleep."
"I did?"
Puck nodded. "He said he didn't sound right. [Note--that seems like it should read, "He said you didn't sound right."] Maybe like you were drugged. He said you told him he shouldn't be awake and had to go back to sleep. He was hungry but he did."
"Wow!" Evidently Anders caught the significance behind that as well, or else was being sarcastic.
"Yeah, I thought so too. Tell me how come you didn't remember that?"
Anders thought a moment, then shrugged again. They reached an old police car on display in the middle of the thoroughfare and stopped, and he leaned against it and crossed his arms. [Note--our county fair had such a display one year.] "I don't know," he said. "But Al has the transcript. I was yelling at Dino to wake up and he wouldn't. So why would he be awake and I be telling him to go to sleep?"
"Maybe you didn't remember that. Come on, Anders. You don't recover everything under hypnosis. Some of it comes up on its own. Don't tell me you can't remember anything."
Anders shrugged again, a scowl forming on his face. "Maybe Dino's mistaken," he said. "Maybe he got the wrong day, and it was the moon I was looking at."
Puck shrugged now. "I don't know, but I never said he thought it was the moon. So how'd you know that?"
Anders's face fell. He sighed and turned away. "I don't know."
"What I was thinking," Puck filled in for him, also leaning against the car, "is that maybe what you told Al under hypnosis wasn't everything that happened--maybe you cut part of it out. You had to cut off on the first one, when you were twelve. Do you remember what happened then?"
He shook his head, too quickly. "No. All I remember is that something hurt. I don't want to know." He peered at him out of the corner of his eye. "Not unless you do."
Puck shook his head. "No, that's something you've got to find out."
"So why're you telling me all this?"
"Take a look at it all together. It makes sense. Let's say you wake up one night because there's something outside the window, and it's really bright so it hurts your eyes. You want to wake Dino up, so you yell at him. Dino may be a deep sleeper but he certainly knows when someone's screaming, so he wakes up, and he sees you at the window, looking out. By now you're either so scared or so zoned out--or maybe both--that when he asks you what's wrong you just tell him to go back to sleep. Or maybe something else is making you do this--you yourself wanted Dino to wake up, but somebody else didn't, so you have to tell him he shouldn't be awake. Because, if he is awake, he's going to see something he shouldn't."
Anders only looked at him.
"So you tell him to go back to sleep. And he does; suddenly he's very tired, and nothing, not even being hungry, can keep him awake. You look out the window again, and then you see your little guys coming in through the walls. Boom--Dino's out, you're awake, and they're here."
A vicious shrug. "So you're saying that we were both manipulated somehow? They 'made' me tell him to go back to sleep, and they 'made' him do so?"
Puck cocked his head and smiled faintly. "Remember, it's just a hypothesis. But it would account for everything, now, wouldn't it?"
"That still doesn't explain why I didn't remember it under hypnosis."
"Maybe you did. But it was pointless because it wasn't what you were thinking at the time; you may have been telling Dino to go to sleep, but you were thinking him awake. You were only telling Al what you were thinking. Not what they were doing."
Anders shut his eyes and shuddered.
"And just think of Dino's dream about you."
Anders opened his eyes and gave him a look; Puck explained. "The one where you tied him up and put him out because you were 'going out with friends.'"
A blank look. "You think that's what he was dreaming about? That he may have witnessed something?"
Puck shrugged. "It's possible. In fact it's probable. Dino couldn't do anything because maybe they froze him too--the way they froze you so you couldn't escape them."
"So why doesn't he remember? Do you mean they took Dino, too?" The mere thought made him start to panic.
Puck shook his head and waved his arms. "No, no, no. He doesn't remember because he was pretty tired and, besides, maybe they told him not to remember. He was just there, in the wrong place at the right time, and he just happened to wake up. They couldn't have any witnesses who actually remember anything. But I don't think they were interested in him. If so he'd probably be having all these weird dreams too, don't you think?"
Anders sighed with relief. "Thank goodness," was all he said.
Then they just stood there, in silence, watching the other students and visitors go by.
Finally Anders turned to Puck, and looked him straight in the eye. "Look, Puck," he said, and Puck looked back at him. "I know that something's going on now, and even though you might not want to admit it, I think you're involved too. It seems that every time something happens to me it happens to you, too."
"Such as?" Though he could think of a million examples already.
Anders decided to answer him. "Well, such as the first time here. And the one with the Gravitron. And when you dreamed about Rosie, I was dreaming about a horse carrying me off. Every time I had a weird dream, you had a weird dream."
"What're you getting at?"
"What I'm trying to say is, maybe we should try to check this thing out together. Maybe we should get together some night and see if anything happens. You know, if either of us remembers anything. Do you have any windows in your room?"
"No. I'm on the other side of the hall, near the middle of the building."
"Well, then, maybe we could meet in my room. I've got windows." He shuddered again. "Lord knows I do."
"Okay," Puck shrugged, still not quite understanding. "But what do you want to prove?"
Anders gave a tired smile. "Corroboration," he replied. "I want to know if it really is us against them."
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