Dr. St. Cross’s Passer, Andrei, stood at the foot of the shrink’s bed, wearing what had been a khaki button-up shirt, watching and waiting for the man to awaken. The psychiatrist had been spending a lot of time asleep as of late since he switched to an analgesic that made him drowsy. His doctor kept insisting rest was required for healing, and though he complied, St. Cross didn’t voice his doubts that he would recover any faster than he already was.
Blue velvet curtains were drawn over the blinds in the bedroom windows, creating an illusion of night that made Andrei all the clearer in its pale, hazy form. The temperature in the room began to fall and St. Cross shivered in his sleep, slowly coming around when he felt the bed shutter. Andrei was gripping one of the corner knobs on the footboard.
“Wake up, I have something important to tell you,” it said.
St. Cross propped his head up on his elbow, blinking repeatedly to clear away the sleep. There was an uneasy truce between the psychiatrist and his Passer after the accident, and though it had been discussed more than once, Andrei could shed little light on what had happened.
“I saw what I would do,” it’d explained vaguely, “and I did it.”
Even St. Cross’s psychiatric mind could not solve the puzzle of Andrei’s future sight.
“I have learned,” said Andrei now, “that your patient is being taken to the dead zone in Wellsburg, Iowa.”
St. Cross looked lost and continued to blink.
“With this knowledge among my kind,” continued Andrei, “there will be a much more concerted effort to prevent him from arriving at any safety. If you want to find him alive, you should go immediately to where he is in Ohio.”
St. Cross shook his head to become more awake and said, “Go get Todd to help me.”
Williams had his staff load plastic tubs of clothing and supplies into the trunks of the rental car and his own vehicle. He, deTarlo, Dreamer and Aidriel sat lined up on the stone wall bordering the raised flower bed behind the hotel, watching. The patient and phleb were both hanging their heads sleepily, their eyes struggling to stay open against a stupor thanks to their pills.
“You need to wake up,” deTarlo said to Dreamer. “You’re an accident waiting to happen.”
Dreamer appeared offended and blinked rapidly, picked up her cardboard coffee cup and took a drink. The caffeine had not seemed to kick in yet.
The trunks being slammed startled Aidriel and he rubbed his right eye with the heel of his hand. He got to his feet to stretch and the others followed suit. Chester’s assistant finished programming the GPS device in the dashboard of the rental and slid out of the driver’s seat, leaving the keys in the ignition for Dreamer.
“You’re all set,” he told her, shuffling through some papers and handing her the ones regarding the rental, along with printed directions and a credit card.
“We’re only about an hour and a half from the airport,” deTarlo told the phlebotomist. “You can sleep on the plane. You need to stay very alert.”
Dreamer pursed her lips and swallowed, nodding. She was becoming more alert as the gravity of the situation sank in.
Aidriel blearily fumbled with the handle on the side of the car, slid into the passenger seat and strapped in. Dreamer walked over to the still-open driver’s door, but stopped when deTarlo gripped her sleeve at the elbow.
“Be very careful,” the psychologist said, appearing to be concerned. “We all think he’s very important.”
Dreamer nodded neutrally, pulling her arm away and entering the car. Williams, deTarlo and the others got into the second vehicle, and both engines started at the same time.
As she pulled out onto the highway, Dreamer glanced at the reflection in the rearview mirror of the car following them. The computerized voice of the GPS told her to drive point-eight miles and merge onto a ramp to the expressway.
Aidriel crossed his arms and leaned his head against the window, closing his eyes.
“Turn on the radio,” he mumbled.
Dreamer glanced at him and asked, “Why?”
“I don’t like the quiet.”
She flicked on the stereo and scanned until she found a station she liked, spinning the steering wheel to turn onto the ramp. Aidriel drifted to sleep easily.
When he first awoke, Aidriel felt as if he had been sleeping for only minutes and was a little stiff. He was still awfully lethargic and wasn’t entirely aware of what was happening. The radio was quieter than before, and Dreamer was continually glancing into the rearview mirror. She was driving very quickly, weaving back and forth on the expressway around other cars, her eyes ever darting between the road and the mirrors.
For several minutes, this frenetic driving persisted and only then did Aidriel begin to wonder if something was wrong. He didn’t feel the usual fear or sense danger. Perhaps Dreamer was just running behind schedule or was lost.
The engine’s growl increased as the phleb continued to accelerate, flying around a truck and down a steep hill. Getting as close as possible behind another car, she maneuvered to the left and slipped in front of a semi at the last moment, gunning it to stay ahead before pulling back into the right lane. Clicking on her signal, Dreamer took a tightly curving ramp, riding the brakes to keep control before rolling to a complete stop at a red light. She was still keeping a close eye on her mirrors, and Aidriel noticed she was firmly gripping the wheel with both hands. He looked out the windshield, but didn’t recognize the area or the names on the street signs. Unconcerned and still sleepy, he drifted off again.
When Aidriel had tried to leave Indiana of his own accord, it had not sunk in until the third attempt how trapped he really was. Twice already he had tried driving out by car and had crashed as a direct result of the Passers’ interference. The third time, he spent most of the money he had saved up to buy a sport motorcycle. Surely it would be easier to avoid the ghosts on a smaller vehicle, or so he thought.
He left at a random time, leaping up from the kitchen table as if it was spontaneous, abandoning his canned soup. Perhaps the Passers would be caught off guard. There was only time to grab a few essentials, then he was out the door. He started the bike and backed it out of the crowded apartment garage, gunned the motor, and sped off with nothing but a cheap helmet and his wallet.
For miles there were no obstacles, and Aidriel began to think that maybe he’d slipped past them, and was home free. It was such a surprise to see the little girl Passer crouching in the middle of the open country road outside Clinton that he had no time to react. The spirit materialized out of thin air only moments before he drove by, holding some kind of long metal spike. He swerved around it, and the Passer turned. As if in slow motion, Aidriel watched the small hand rise and swing down, colliding with the blur of his front tire with inhuman strength. There was a sound like a small explosion, and he was suddenly thrown forward. As if incapable of detangling himself, Aidriel’s hands and legs clung to the motorcycle in a death grip. He rolled across the road, the bike spinning with him, and every inch of his body collided with something.
Somehow, he landed on his side in the ditch, the bike lying on top of one of his legs and his torso. He tried to stir or turn his head, but couldn’t seem to break through the curtain of pain shrouding his being. His other leg was bent back, probably broken, and neither arm was responding to his conscious efforts to move them.
Aidriel could hear cars passing on the road, though none of them slowed. The ditch was not that deep; could no one see him? He wanted to yell out, but all that he could manage was a cross between a bitter laugh and sob of pain. The bike was hot against his side, and was searing through his clothing. He could feel the terrible scorching pain and smelled burning, but was entirely helpless.
He had no idea how long he had laid there before Rubin walked down and stood beside him, pulling the lifesaving helmet off his head and staring in disgust.
“I’ve found you,” the Passer said.
“How do you do that?” Aidriel did not recognize his own shell-shocked voice.
“‘Do’?”
“Send messages to the other Passers to stop me?”
“They know you’re coming.”
Aidriel gasped and repeated his earlier cry of dismay. He was in so much pain, it was unreal. His nerves were on fire; he knew there would be burns on his side.
“You bring this on yourself,” Rubin snarled, bending over to talk in Aidriel’s face as it did when he was a kid. “You’re selfish! You think of only yourself and how things affect you!”
“What choice do you give me?” Aidriel groaned, trying with little success to shift out from under the scorching surface of the motorcycle. “I have to spend all my time trying to survive and stay one step ah…”
Aidriel was beginning to lose consciousness, but was terrified that if he did, Rubin would finish him off.
He saw his Passer straighten, toss aside the helmet and calmly climb the side of the ditch to the street, motioning at an approaching car to stop. As the vehicle slowed, a woman in the passenger seat stuck her head out of the window and craned her neck, spotting the crashed sportbike and its rider. Darting back inside the car, she spoke hurriedly and with concern to the driver about calling for help.
Aidriel realized as he began to gain minimal control of his movements, that when he turned his head slightly, he could see the little girl Passer standing on the far side of the ditch, just out of his range of view when he was limp. He wondered why the spirit had remained still and quiet while he lay at its mercy.
Seeing that he was aware of it, the Passer spoke, but its small voice was drowned out by Aidriel’s involuntary moans of pain. Too weary to pay any attention to his surroundings, Aidriel laid his head down in the damp grass and tried to find some semblance of relief. The child Passer walked down and around him slowly, stopping right in front of his head. He could see the detail of its ghostly lace-trimmed socks and Mary-Jane shoes.
“I’m sorry,” the little girl whispered, and kicked him in the face.
The second time Aidriel awoke in the rental car, he was sore from sitting in the same position for an extended period of time, and wondered how long he had been asleep. He shifted and blinked, feeling more awake and aware from the rest and the wearing-off medication. The clock must be wrong; it said it was four hours since they left. The GPS was turned off.
Dreamer was more relaxed and was bobbing her head in time to an upbeat Katy Perry song on the radio, which she’d turned up again. She was smiling and tapping her fingers against the wheel, observing their surroundings.
Sitting up straighter, Aidriel looked out the windows and saw that they were driving on a long, straight stretch of suburban highway with no car in sight in either direction. They slowed down through a little town with a firehouse and a cemetery, then only houses and country roads passed on either side.
With a sinking feeling, Aidriel tried to make sense of the scene. Perhaps the clock wasn’t incorrect after all. He had no idea where they were, but it was most definitely not the airport or expressway. And Williams’s car was no longer following them.
“Where are we?” he asked gruffly.
Dreamer turned and smiled, her eyes remarkably lucid and her movements relaxed.
“Just west of Toledo,” she said.
Toledo was not supposed to be one of the stops on the ride. In fact, Toledo was beyond the airport—way beyond.
“Why are…?” Aidriel was too bewildered to form an articulate question.
Dreamer smiled mischievously.
“I lost them,” she said with a shrug. “I got far enough ahead and took the wrong exit. I’ve been weaving around since then to make sure they won’t find us.”
Aidriel stared at her, even more confused. Lost them? Lost who? Williams and deTarlo? Why in the world would Dreamer intentionally get them lost in an unfamiliar state in an unfamiliar vehicle? What if the Passers caused them to crash? The whole reasoning behind Aidriel riding separately and ahead of Williams and deTarlo was so that if something happened to him, they would know and could handle it.
“Why did you lose them intentionally?” he demanded, punching the button on the stereo to turn it off. His immediate impression was of how incredibly stupid Dreamer was. This was not at all how he had imagined she would help him. He was angry he had trusted her to drive, and disappointed because he liked her and kind of trusted her. Now she’d gone and made such a thoughtless decision without asking him, and they might both be in danger because of it.
Dreamer became very nervous and kept her lips sealed, her eyes on the road. Her knuckles began to whiten as she gripped the wheel.
“Because I thought you wanted to lose them,” she mumbled finally. “You were upset with how blasé they were being about your safety, but you’d signed deTarlo’s papers, so I figured this was your only way out.”
“Why would you make a decision like this without asking me first?” Aidriel demanded angrily.
The strain between them was intensifying, and Dreamer refused to look at him, keeping her gaze fixed on the open road. Another car flew past from the opposite direction, and she tilted her head down, her eyes following it as it passed. She was taking on the appearance of a frightened child being reprimanded, and were she not driving the car, she probably would be considering giving in to her flight reflex.
“I’m sorry,” Dreamer whispered.
“What good does that do us?” snapped Aidriel. “We’re lost and hours away from the airport. Either they’ve left without us or are lost somewhere looking for us and you’ve cost us hours.”
Dreamer was leaning away from Aidriel, gripping the wheel as if for dear life. She was pushing her foot down on the accelerator without realizing it and they were increasing in speed, flying past the crops in the fields on either side of the road in a blur.
Arriving at a stop sign, she stomped on the brake a little too late and they jerked to a halt. Looking left and right only once, Dreamer clicked on her blinker and whirled left, once more gunning the engine to get up to speed. She still wouldn’t look at Aidriel.
“Pull over,” he ordered, sitting up straighter in his seat and itching to grab the wheel out of her hands. Dreamer said nothing, but showed no signs of doing as he wished.
“Pull over,” he repeated harshly. “I’m driving.”
“No,” she answered, her voice low and uncertain. “You don’t know where we are.”
“Well, I’ll use the GPS and actually do what it says,” he shot back, his voice rising in irritation.
Dreamer didn’t flinch and continued driving at her own speed. Aidriel was becoming increasingly aggravated that she refused to listen to him. The thought that he could not control her made him wish he could get rid of her, his mind filling in the word divorce for some reason.
“Pull over,” he ordered again, his temper and volume rising.
Dreamer took in a deep breath, flying through an intersection at the fastest speed she dared.
“No, I’m driving,” she answered. “If I get out, you’ll leave without me.”
Aidriel flinched at the painful memories stirred by her words.
“Why would I leave without you?”
“Because you’re mad, I don’t know. But if I get out, you might drive away without me and leave me here on my own.”
Abandonment was not something to cite so thoughtlessly. In his anger, Aidriel assumed Dreamer had no experience with such a thing; she should never have mentioned it.
“That’s so stupid!” he exclaimed. She was accusing him of being more selfish and inconsiderate than she seemed to be, and his pride was hurt. If she believed her claim so strongly that she refused to stop, there was no way for him to prove her wrong.
“I’m not stupid,” Dreamer answered defensively.
“I didn’t say you were stupid.”
“Not in those words, you didn’t.”
“Well, stop making stupid decisions if you want me to think you’re not! Why’d you go and get us lost?”
“Why not?” Dreamer shot back, finally looking at him. “Where were we even going? To another Bird Cage? Back to Fort Wayne? Does it matter where they were taking you? Nothing good was going to happen, if anything changed at all!”
“You consider this a good change?”
“None of the Passers have attacked us yet. Keeping ahead of them isn’t a bad thing.”
Aidriel thought that he’d rather be somewhere familiar when the Passers did find him, but held his tongue. What was the difference where he was? The attacks were no less brutal based on where he was, so why not drive down some random road in the middle of nowhere?
Perhaps it was a sense of obligation to make good on his agreement and the helplessness of decisions being made without his input. Dreamer’s choice to take him away from Williams and deTarlo was no different than deTarlo’s choice to send him to Kelly Road. He didn’t have a say in either resolution, and it felt worse now that someone he considered a peer and not an authority was choosing for him.
“You are not making any more decisions,” he said finally in a steely tone. “You’re just the phlebotomist.”
“And you’re just the patient,” she answered, upset at being slighted like that again. “Besides, you were asleep. You could have driven yourself.”
Aidriel didn’t care to answer and looked out the window as they rolled up to another light, waiting for it to become green before Dreamer turned right. They passed a giant steel plant on the left with a billowing cloud of steam and followed closely behind a slow semitruck for several minutes before a town came into sight.
It suddenly passed from Aidriel’s mind how upset he was to realize he liked traveling. He had not been able to afford much sojourning in his youth, and after the attacks from the Passers began, he had stopped entirely. Frustration had long since changed to despair when even the thought of leaving Fort Wayne entered his mind. But once he had been taken to Kelly Road and had long hours alone, he’d realized how little that trip had mattered. Yes, he was out of state, finally. But he was inside a featureless dome; he might as well have never left home.
This, however, was different. The landscape was not remarkably unlike what he was used to, but the particulars of this town were foreign. He saw shops he had not seen in Indiana. And he was not the one driving. Aidriel could not remember the last time he was a passenger and was not being attacked by the spirits he saw all around. But now they didn’t even glance his way.
Dreamer brought up the GPS and had it search for a hotel, following the directions through a light, past a Walmart and Mexican restaurant, then turning right again on State Route 108. Still the awkward silence ensued until Dreamer switched the radio back on. After half a song, they arrived at a several-story hotel on the left, and Dreamer parked a bit faster than required.
Once the car was off, the two sat in silence, staring out the windows. Dreamer shifted and looked at Aidriel, swallowing, and softly offered an apology.
“I’m not mad at you,” he replied.
“You were a bit ago.”
Aidriel just shrugged and focused his attention on her. There were circles under her eyes. He hadn’t once thought of how tired she must be, or that she was probably just as sore from the ambulance crash as he was. It had been on his mind how lost and disconnected he was, but she was in exactly the same boat. She was a girl in a strange town with a strange man. It hadn’t quite dawned on him before now how they were actually one another’s responsibility, however they each interpreted it. To the best of his ability, he should protect her.
“I’m not mad at you,” he repeated.
Dreamer just nodded and became uncomfortable, pinching the soft surface of the wheel with her nails.
Aidriel held out his hand.
“Give me the card,” he said. “I’ll get us a room.”
Without a word, Dreamer leaned toward the door to reach into the side pocket of her scrub top. Her fingers brushed the palm of Aidriel’s hand when she put the credit card in it. He got out and walked away from her toward the building.
Dreamer rested her elbow against the door, supporting her head on her hand. She closed her eyes to rest and wait, and felt the sudden drop in temperature. An adolescent girl Passer with pale hair was sitting patiently in the seat beside her, watching. Dreamer started in surprise.
“Dreamer?” said the ghost in a strange, monotone voice. “My name is Maralyn.”
“You don’t know me; I’ve never seen you before.”
“You never will again. I follow another. We speak to each other; every one.”
“Who does?”
“The Passersby.”
Dreamer looked toward the hotel, hoping Aidriel wouldn’t come out.
“What do you want?” she asked.
Maralyn began to sob, and cradled its face in its hands.
“It’s going to be worse for him,” it mumbled. “I’m warning you to be ready. If my words could help you, would you listen to them? You mustn’t let him go.”
“Stay away from this hotel,” Dreamer said in a threatening tone. Maralyn looked up sadly and nodded.
“Answer it,” it blubbered. Dreamer promptly opened the door, taking the keys from the ignition and getting out of the car. As she was walking toward the building, the phone in her pocket began to ring. She took it out with