The Dreaming: Dark Star (Book 5)

18.2. 2447W12

After the man disappeared into the bush, everyone looked at me to see what I would do. I groaned and, using Nike's support, got down on my knees in front of the house-sized blackberry bush and peered into the darkness. 

Crawling closer, I cursed at the gravel that dug into the soft, flabby flesh of my knees—I'd have bruises tomorrow—and was relieved to see a perfectly cylindrical hole to crawl into. It was a metal tube lined with foam or perhaps a few yogamats. Ingeniously, he'd installed a metal drainage tube under the blackberry bushes, and it was perfectly concealed—no one would ever find it.

I crawled through the tube to the light at the other end, and for a moment, I had the nostalgic feeling of being a child, crawling through a playground tube. When I finally made it through, I realised that standing back up wouldn't be an easy affair, and embarrassing in front of a stranger. 

I stopped a moment to catch my breath, and noticed there were blackberry bushes on this side as well; they threatened to take over the entire space—a small, paved courtyard that had been turned into an outdoor living room of sorts, with various plastic roofing materials that had broken down over time. There was lots of plastic flapping in the breeze, which made a funny sound.

I groaned and stood up with difficulty, catching a thorn in my messy hair and the back of my fuzzy, thermal fleece.

"Mahsi cho, welcome," the man said.

"Agh," I responded, getting a thorn through my thumb as I unhooked myself. Jimminy cricket! I grumbled, biting down on the thumb and tasting blood. It was just a small wound, but I knew that in a world without antibiotics, small wounds regularly killed. I tried to clean my hair, but had a significant shoot of blackberry bush caught in it.

Ocean snickered.

"Hehe!" the man laughed, but when he saw the dirty look I gave him, he wiped that smirk off his face and came over and extricated the branch from my hair. After he'd finished, he faced me and repeated, "Mahsi cho," and bowed his head slightly. "I'm so glad you made it. Sorry about the blackberry bushes."

"Thank you." I recognised the greeting—mahsi cho—it was a common West Coast First Nation greeting of hello and welcome. But the guy didn't look native. He had blonde hair and blue eyes, in his early forties. Maybe he was a wannabe native guy—back in the day there'd been a ton of those.

Just then I felt something at my foot, and saw a head of blonde, frizzy hair sticking out the end of the tube, and I remembered Nike and all those bloody children out there.

The man looked down, "Here," he said, taking my arm. "Come follow me." He turned to Nike, "tell your friends to be quiet and come on in."

He put his arm around my shoulder and squeezed me slightly in a one armed hug, saying, "Hello Shalon. I've been waiting for you."

Waiting for me? "Well, I only live down the street," I said. "Why didn't you come and find me? And on top of that, I don't even know you, so how could you be waiting for me?"

He looked at me like I had spoken another language. "Don't you recognise me?"

I scratched my head.

"He pointed at his body, and said, "Yes, I know I'm a bit less... how should I say it?" he pondered for a second. "I'm less fat in the dream realm! Haha!" He did have a bit of a belly on him, but what I noticed more was that he was tall, and broad-shouldered, and his face looked kind, with round rosy cheeks and kind eyes.

"I've met you in the dream realm?" This was the second time today that someone had mentioned meeting me in a dream. Was it really possible? Was I sharing dreams with these people? How come they seemed to remember it, but I didn't?