The air was vibrant with myriad aromas. Salted popcorn, sweet cotton candy and the richness of frying onions from the hot dog stands danced above the astringent odour of oil, hot metal and warm bodies. Among the familiar smells of home were the exotic scents of foreign delicacies; Yakitori, Takoyaki, Ningyo-yaki.
Tumbling unsteadily from the Waltzer, Pike McClaren and Momoka Yamagishi clung to one another to stay upright. Momoka giggled wildly as she gazed up into his face.
‘Where now, America?’ she asked in her heavily accented English.
More than six thousand miles from Chicago, Pike nonetheless felt more at home here in Atami. He knew that was because of Momoka. Though he had only graduated high school a few months earlier, he knew he had found the love of his life.
Pike peered around the crowded funfair. The night was filled with excited cries, grinding machinery and the lively pop music which was pumped through competing PA systems. In every direction, lights glimmered and flashed. Spotting an attraction, Pike smiled and pointed.
‘There.’
Momoka followed his aim, grinned and began pulling him to the ghost train.
Erin stared at the empty space where, mere seconds before, a ghastly minotaur had decimated two office desks.
‘What just happened?’ she repeated.
The shorter woman with the red hair steps closer to the cowering man.
‘He is a dream breaker,’ she says.
The man turned his bewildering gaze from the redhead to Erin and back again.
‘Are you real?’ he muttered.
‘What is a dream breaker?’ Erin asked.
‘I suspected it when you lost your glove,’ the other woman continues, more to herself it seemed to Erin.
His brow furrowing, the man inspected the smaller woman. Recognition glinted in his eyes and he blurted, ‘You dragged me – dragged Mae – from the stage at Lemon Splitz.’
‘And you lost your glove,’ she adds.
‘No. The dream ended when we ducked through the trapdoor.’
‘That’s when your dream ended.’
‘Can someone please tell me what you’re talking about?’ Erin asked.
Turning abruptly, the redhead says, ‘Erin, this is Teddy.’
‘You know my name?’ Teddy gasped.
‘As soon as I enter your dream.’
‘Look, I really don’t know what’s-’ Erin’s words were cut off by a sound from the open cupboard. A wet hiss drifted into the main office, raising the hairs on Erin’s nape.
‘We better get out of here,’ the redhead says as she turns to one of the undamaged desks. She slides open a drawer and keeps pulling. The drawer extended much further than the depth of the desk until it was longer than three people side by side.
‘In here,’ the woman orders.
Teddy wasted no time and jumped into the drawer, dropping out of sight.
‘What-’ Erin began, but the noise behind her stopped her. The sound began to rise and fall, an ululation of a nightmare.
‘Now,’ the redhead commands.
Deciding her questions could wait, Erin hopped into the open drawer and fell a few feet. She landed painlessly on a bright green surface. Every few inches around her, thin black lines defined three blades of grass. The sky above was a uniform light blue, broken only by two pure white clouds. From behind one peeked a half-circle of yellow. The edges of the clouds and the sun were marked by black lines, similar to the grass.
When Teddy spoke, his voice was soft with awe. ‘We’re in a cartoon.’
The redhead floats down to join them and says, ‘Always best to put at least two dreams between us and him.’ Bending over, she plucks a cartoon petal from a cartoon flower and pulls the black edge until the petal is large enough to drape over the three of them. As easily as placing a giant hula hoop over them, the redhead transports them all to a rocky beach.
The car juddered through the darkness. Pre-recorded moans came to them from the left while, on the right, a glow-in-the-dark skeleton was propelled forward with an ear-piercing wail.
Pike slipped a protective arm around Momoka though she only laughed at the apparition.
Nudging through thin doors, they entered the next chamber. Eerie green cobwebs decorated the walls as the grating sound of clicking mandibles was piped through hidden speakers. From above, a giant spider descended in jerking movements.
‘Save me, America,’ Momoka said through her laughter.
Pike smiled and leaned forward to kiss her. She accepted, placing a warm hand on his cheek. The moment was broken when the car stopped suddenly and pitched them from their seats.
‘Are you okay,’ Pike asked as he helped Momoka up. ‘What happened?’
Wondering if one of the plastic monsters had fallen and obstructed their path, he turned to look at the track ahead. Whatever the car had struck was the most lifelike effigy Pike had ever seen. It stood six feet tall, looked mostly human but had the head of a bull. Even the chest was rising and falling rapidly to give it the appearance of ragged breathing.
When Momoka saw the minotaur she screamed, spurring the thing into action. Lowering its head, the beast rammed the ghost train. The collision forced the wind from Pike. He had no time to act as, with a twist of its strong neck, the minotaur flipped the car from the track.
Pike lost all sense of direction as they were thrown through the air, only relearning where the ground was when it smacked him hard on the back. Beside him, the upturned car lay over an unconscious Momoka.
Before he could move to her aid, Pike heard the minotaur issue a bellow of rage and smash through the far wall.
‘I’m still dreaming,’ Erin told herself. ‘That’s the only explanation.’
‘You are in a dream,’ the other woman concurs, ‘but not your own. And not one of Teddy’s either.’
A few feet from the three of them, water lapped at the shale with a soothing babble. Further out, a handful of windsurfers weaved about in the summer sun.
Erin turned on the redhead. ‘So this is not either of our dreams,’ she said, indicating herself and Teddy. ‘Which means you have taken us into somebody else’s dream. You’ve broken us in here. Is that what a dream breaker is?’
‘That’s what you called me,’ Teddy said. ‘Can I move into other peoples’ dreams too? How do I do it?’
The short woman shakes her head and raises her hands.
‘Anyone can pass through dreams,’ she says. ‘Dream walking is as easy as stepping from one room to another. You just need to be able to see the door.’
She bends over and scatters the pebbles around until she finds the right one. Holding it out to Erin, she says, ‘Look.’
Erin took the stone from the woman’s hand and inspected it. It was an unremarkable piece of stone save for the piddock hole bored through the centre. Lifting it to her eye, Erin peered through the hole and gasped.
‘What is it?’ Teddy asked.
Erin passed the stone to him and watched as he discovered the magic for himself. He held the stone to his own eye, pulled it away, placed it back, turned to the right, to the left, looked up, looked down.
‘I can see a city,’ he said. ‘It’s like virtual reality. Wherever I turn, I see a different angle of the city.’
‘That’s a doorway,’ the woman says. ‘And there’ll be a hundred more close by.’
‘We can use these to get to other dreams?’ Teddy asked, still gazing through to the cityscape.
‘Yes.’
‘Well if they’re so common,’ Erin asked, ‘what’s special about a dream breaker?’
Teddy lowered the pebble, holding it reverentially, and looked at the red haired woman.
She takes a deep breath before answering.
‘Teddy, you have the ability to manifest your dreams.’
Erin glanced at Teddy and was glad to see the confusion she felt mirrored on his face.
‘I can make my dreams come true?’ he said. ‘Like, believe in myself, create a vision board, that kind of thing?’
‘No,’ the redhead answers, ‘I’m not talking about your ambition or goals. In dreams, anything that can be imagined can exist. Ridiculous things like talking rabbits and Jabberwockies. You, Teddy, can push them into the waking world, the real world.’
‘I don’t know what a jabby Wookiee is,’ Teddy said.
‘It doesn't matter.’ Erin said quietly. ‘You know what a minotaur is.’
Teddy’s sharp intake of breath revealed he understood. ‘You mean, that minotaur is now at my office? My real office? In real life?’
‘It’s unlikely,’ the woman says. ‘There’s a whole world for it to materialise on, so the odds are against it appearing next to your sleeping form.’
‘So it could appear anywhere?’ Erin asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Like a hospital or a children’s party?’
‘It’s as likely to manifest in the middle of nowhere.’
‘But if it arrives near people,’ Erin said, ‘there could be casualties.’ As she thought about the devastation the dream monster could wreak in the real world, her skin turned to goosebumps and her stomach somersaulted.
‘You said that I’m able to quell nightmares,’ she went on. ‘Would I be able to stop the minotaur?’
‘Your ability is strongest in dreams,’ the woman replies. ‘Although the talent is innate, I wouldn’t know if you could harness it in the waking world.’
‘How would you find it, anyway?’ Teddy asked. Erin looked at him quizzically so he elaborated. ‘If it can appear anywhere in the world, where do you start looking?’
Before Erin could contemplate the magnitude of searching for a needle eye in a hay farm, the short woman says, ‘If it has been seen, there will be a way to locate it.’
Momoka Yamagishi was alone in the lecture theatre when the professor entered. The fact that he was naked did not faze her. Nor did the fact that his human head was replaced by that of a bull.
The professor approached the lectern, connected his laptop to the room’s big screen behind him and spoke into the microphone.
‘Continuing from our last lesson,’ he said in perfect Japanese, ‘today we’ll discuss the real world cultural effect of introducing Gohan into the Dragon Ball universe.’
At the press of a button, the cartoon image of a young man appeared on the screen. Dressed in orange and blue, Momoka immediately recognised the iconic Manga character. As the professor spoke about the fictional character’s role in the overall story, Momoka watched the picture morph. The black, spiky hair grew lighter and lengthened. The angular features softened into that of a woman.
Extending from the flat screen, the woman broke free and jumped into the lecture hall. Behind her, the image had reverted to Gohan but quickly changed into that of a man who also materialised into the room. After a third person joined them – a short woman with a red bob – Gohan remained static on the screen.
The first woman looked at the professor and said, ‘Is that it? Can I quell it?’
‘No,’ says the redhead. ‘This is Momoka’s dream version of Teddy’s manifestation.’
‘Who’s Momoka?’ Teddy asked.
‘I am,’ Momoka announced. She got to her feet and joined them. Seeming not to notice, the professor continued his lecture.
‘Have you seen the minotaur in real life?’ the blonde woman asked.
It occurred to Momoka that the newcomers were not speaking Japanese, but she was able to understand them nonetheless.
‘I’m studying,’ she said. To her, it was explanation enough.
‘She’s dreaming,’ the shorter woman says. ‘Wherever her body is, that’s where the minotaur will be.’
‘How can we get from her dream to her body?’ asked Teddy.
‘Erin,’ the redhead replies, ‘step into her.’
Momoka watched as the blonde woman moved toward her and tentatively reached out. Instead of touching, her hands passed into Momoka. A look of resolution passed over Erin’s face and she stepped closer until she fully occupied Momoka’s body.
The screams that came from the hole in the wall of the ghost train were no longer the delighted calls of revellers. They were now high-pitched, filled with terror and insanity.
Unable to mentally process what he was hearing, Pike concentrated on what he knew to be real and crawled to his fallen girlfriend. The thrown car lay over her but, thankfully, was not pinning her down and he was able to pull her from under it.
‘Please. Please be okay,’ he muttered as he desperately tried to remember the first aid training he’d learned as a boy scout.
As shaking fingers reached for the pulse in her neck, her eyes flicked open.
In flawless English, she snapped, ‘Let’s go get it.’
Comments