“Painter,” she whispered, “are they actually dangerous?”
“Of course they are.”
“But if the stable one has been free for weeks…why hasn’t it killed anyone?”
He didn’t answer, just stared upward at that window.
“Maybe what you know is wrong,” she said. “I thought I understood my life, but it turns out I’ve been profoundly lied to. Is it possible the same is true for you?”
“No. I’ve seen pictures of cities destroyed by these things.”
“How could one creature, even a nightmare, destroy a city?”
“They’re hard to stop when stable,” he said. “And they call to others. One reaches stability, and then others follow.” He paused. “We think.”
“You think?”
“The most recent city this happened to was decades ago, and the few survivors couldn’t explain much. Dozens of nightmares rampaging.” He looked at her. “But I promise they’re dangerous. I’ve personally seen a child bleed after being attacked by one of these things. Maybe I don’t have all the answers, maybe there are holes in our understanding, but I know they’re a threat.”
She nodded to him, took a deep breath, and started to climb up to see what was in that window.
Painter, however, waved for her to halt. “My turn to be the ghost,” he said. “Have the bell ready in case. It’s wound—all you need to do is flip the switch, and the ringing should carry far enough to reach the nearby sections.”
She wanted to argue, but his point was valid. She shouldn’t risk herself if he could potentially sneak up on the nightmare unseen. He’d let her know if they’d found the stable one, or if they needed to keep searching.
Painter moved silently up the last two stories, then peered in through a window at the top. Yumi waited, anxious, clutching the bell in one hand and the strap of her large canvas bag in the other—barely conscious that by pulling it tight like that, it was cutting into her shoulder. She didn’t dare think, and instead focused on her breathing, in and out.
In and out. In and out.
Painter returned, shaking his head. “There’s a nightmare in there, but it’s not ours. We can move on.”
He started down the steps, but Yumi remained in place, looking up. “What happens,” she whispered, “if we don’t stop it?”
“It could become stable,” Painter admitted, halfway to the next level. “It takes many visits.”
“You’ve been off your patrol,” Yumi said, “for over two weeks now.” Twenty-seven days. “And there might not be a replacement doing your job. What good does it do for us to hunt this stable nightmare if we just allow a host of others to feed and become real, step by step, while we do nothing?”
“This nightmare might stray into other regions on future nights. It will eventually get caught.”
“And if it doesn’t? I could stop it now.”
“Too dangerous,” he said.
“How? If it’s not stable, it can’t hurt me. Right?”
He stopped next to her. “They feed on people, Yumi. Our dreams, yes. Also on our thoughts, our minds. Besides, it’s possible it has some stability. You can’t always tell by its appearance.”
She met his eyes, then started climbing the steps. She had trained for weeks. If not for this, then why?
Painter groaned behind her, then followed her up. She crept to the window, steeled herself, then looked in. An elderly woman lay on a bed there, frail. The light shining in through the window formed a square that framed her body, the shadow at its edge falling across her face. The voluminous bed seemed to have swallowed her.
The nightmare perched on the headboard. Yumi’s breath caught. She’d imagined something humanlike. A shadow of a person. This was more arachnoid, with legs made of twisting smoke that clawed down around the old woman like a cage. It was （lowly） big. Large as the largest of the great hawks that hunted the skies. With those leglike tendrils stretched out fully, it would easily be fifteen feet across.
Yumi froze, a powerful anxiety seizing her in its grip. She wanted to bolt, to scramble down the steps, to run until her strength gave out. But she couldn’t move.
Something buried deep inside her recognized that monstrous figure. And that piece of her was terrified. A primal instinct told her that you did not mess with a creature that saw humans as prey.
“Right,” Painter whispered. “Carefully remove your supplies and think calm thoughts, like I told you. It will focus on its victim, assuming you don’t get too afraid.”
“How do I—”
“Meditate, Yumi. And get your supplies out.”
You couldn’t meditate and pull out supplies. That wasn’t the way it worked, at least not for her.
She remained still and tried breathing exercises. That seemed to help.
“As long as you don’t make sudden motions or speak too loudly,” Painter said, “it won’t be drawn to you. With luck, you can get the painting going without it ever disengaging its victim. You can banish it quietly, and that poor woman doesn’t even need to know what happened.”
Yumi didn’t move.
“Yumi?” Painter said. Then a little louder, “Yumi.”
The nightmare shifted, then turned what might have been a head in their direction, with a face that dripped liquid darkness toward the ground. There were no eyes…
Or were those tiny white spots eyes? Like pinpricks swirling scratchily into infinity. The thing quested out with four of its many legs, stretching them across the room toward the window.
It had seen them.
No…it had heard Painter.
“Wait,” Painter said, backing up. “Wait, it’s pointing toward me. Did it （lowly） see me?”
Yumi finally found her strength. She looked down, frantic, and dug into her bag for the jar of ink. With trembling fingers, she tried to unscrew the lid—but found it fastened tight, as if bolted in place.
“You can hear me?” Painter said louder, stepping forward.
The nightmare paused and withdrew its legs. Then it balanced its bulky body in an impossible posture on only two of them as all the rest stretched again toward the window—slowly, carefully elongating—as if the night itself were reaching to swallow Painter.
“You do see me,” Painter said. “I guess if Design can do it, it’s not so surprising that…” His voice drifted off, then he made a strained sound, prompting Yumi to look.
To find him beginning to disintegrate.
Painter had gone rigid, his eyes wide, as parts of him became smoky and indistinct—his form fuzzing toward the nightmare. His essence twisted, coalescing into twin vortices of smoke like miniature tornadoes. One blue. One magenta.
Hion. His soul was becoming hion. And the nightmare—spreading its many legs around the window and drawing its center bulk toward Painter, pinprick white eyes facing his direction—was feeding on that energy.
Yumi screamed.
He’d told her not to do that. Some weaker nightmares did react to sudden sounds, but a painter’s job wasn’t merely to frighten them away—it was to deal with them so they didn’t assault someone else. Still, a loud noise could disorient and frighten off a nightmare, and was a last resort for a painter who was out of supplies or otherwise indisposed. Not that this was her line of thinking.