Defy the Dark

Jon Skovron There’s Nowhere Else

Monday, February 1, 8:15 p.m.

Usually I get the dreams when Mom’s working the night shift at the hospital and Bill’s between demolition jobs and has been drinking a lot. He passes out on the couch and starts to snore. God, he snores so loud. I can hear it all the way up in my room with the door closed. The only way I get any sleep is by putting on my headphones and turning up my music. I don’t know why it’s easier to fall asleep to loud music than Bill’s snoring, but it is.

Those are the nights I have the dreams. They feel different from regular dreams. Mostly because I’m never me; I’m always someone else. Well, not even that really, because I don’t do anything. I just watch through someone else’s eyes while they live their regular lives. Sometimes it’s someone cool, like a cop busting a drug dealer or a NASCAR driver in a race. And sometimes it’s someone boring, like a guy sitting in an office, typing numbers into a spreadsheet all day.

When I first started to get the dreams, I didn’t think about it much. Everybody has weird dreams. They don’t mean anything. But last night, I was an old lady in a hospital bed. The smell was disgusting, all chemicals and BO. I couldn’t get up because I could hardly breathe. My hands were twisted so bad I couldn’t even lift a book. I had a tube attached to my wrinkly old stomach and piss was draining into a bag at the other end. My whole dream was just sitting there for hours watching game shows.

This morning when I woke up, I had this feeling that something about these dreams wasn’t normal. I started to get worried. Like maybe something was wrong with my brain.

I decided to ask Ms. Randall, my English teacher, about it. She’s my favorite teacher, and not just because she’s hot. She knows I read a lot, so she lets me borrow books from her personal collection. But she doesn’t make a big deal about it in front of the other students. I appreciate that. She also has a nice voice, especially when she’s reading plays in class. Like for instance, we were reading The Importance of Being Earnest, and when she read Cecily, she did the English accent, and I closed my eyes and it was like I was right there in the story.

Anyway, I had her for the last class of the day and she was packing up to go home, putting papers into her laptop bag, getting her coat on, all that.

“Ms. Randall,” I said, “can I ask you a kinda personal question?”

“That depends on if it’s polite or not, Sebastian,” she said. She’s from Cleveland and she has this funny way of saying words with long As in them. All up in her nose. Makes her sound real sharp.

“It’s polite,” I said. “At least, I think it is. I wanted to ask, do you ever have dreams where you’re somebody else?”

“Sebastian, I think we all sometimes dream of being someone better. Or maybe somewhere better.”

“No, I mean, like real dreams,” I said. “And not necessarily about being someone better. Just somebody else.”

She looked at me for a moment and pursed her lips, like she had to think carefully about what she wanted to say next. Finally, she said, “You enjoy those fantasy books I lend you, don’t you?”

“Sure,” I said. “I know it’s not great literature or anything. It’s just escapism.”

“You say it like it’s a bad thing. Like that makes it less important, less useful. But sometimes, it’s the only thing that can keep you sane. There’s nothing wrong with dreaming of another life. Especially if things aren’t so great at home.”

“Right . . .” I was getting the feeling like we weren’t exactly talking about the same thing.

“If you need anything,” she said, “someone to talk to about . . . things at home, my door is always open.”

“Okay, Ms. Randall. Thanks. I really appreciate that.”

As I walked out of the classroom, I wondered if maybe I didn’t explain myself right. Or maybe I had just asked the wrong person.

Max is one of those big, red-faced guys who get pissed off real easy. But at least he hangs out with me. I can’t be real picky. I’m not the most popular kid in school. Anyway, we were shooting some hoops in his driveway after school, and I asked him if he’d ever had dreams about being other people.

“Sabe,” he said and shook his head. “You’re the weirdest guy I know.”

“Yeah,” I said. I couldn’t really argue. I was the weirdest guy I knew, too. “So I guess that’s a no, then?”

“Damn right I ain’t never had no dream about being an old lady,” Max said. Then he punched me in the shoulder. “Now take your shot.”

I shot the ball and bricked it.

“You suck,” he said as we watched the ball go rolling into his patchy crabgrass yard. “Now, go get it.”

So tonight is one of those nights. Mom is working late, something that seems to happen more and more these days. And Bill is downstairs with the TV so loud it almost drowns out his snoring. Almost. I went down there to turn the TV off, and he woke up and yelled at me to turn it back on. So I did. But about a minute after I was back upstairs I could hear him snoring again.

I probably should have been doing my homework, but I couldn’t really concentrate, so I ended up just putting on my headphones and picking up the paperback Ms. Randall gave me a few days ago. It’s one of those thousand-page monsters with lots of warriors hacking each other to pieces and hooking up with babes in chain-mail bikinis. I never get tired of those kinds of stories.

I wonder if I’ll have the dreams. And if I do, will it be someone cool? I hope so. Something to look forward to, anyway.

Tuesday, February 2, 2 p.m.

Something different happened last night. I had the dreams. And like I’d hoped, it was someone cool. A basketball player for the Cavs. A big Hawaiian guy who moved so fast and so strong, for the first time I understood why some people actually like to play sports. He was pounding down the court, slamming that ball to the floor over and over again, not missing a single dribble, not even thinking that there was a possibility he could. And that was all really great and I was having a lot of fun. Maybe too much fun. Because toward the end of the game, I had this crazy impulse to shoot the ball from half-court, just sling it, one armed. And I did it. I mean, he did it. The guy I was being in the dream threw it. And of course he missed and everybody on the team got mad and started yelling at me. I mean, him. “What’s wrong with you, Kapono?!” and “What’s your problem? You on drugs again, man?” and “What kind of juvenile stunt was that, you moron!” I wanted to run away and hide.

I started to wake up, but right before my eyes opened, I heard his voice in my head say:

“What the hell did I do that for?”

And then I was awake in my bedroom, sweating so bad my sheets were sticking to me. It was only about four in the morning, so it was still dark out. I turned on the ceiling fan and lay there and tried to fall asleep as the fan dried my sheets, turning them cool and stiff against my skin. I kept remembering how it felt to be that basketball player. The power, the freedom. I wanted so bad to fall asleep and go back there and be that guy again, and this time I wouldn’t screw it up. But I couldn’t fall back asleep.

About two hours later, right around sunrise, I heard the front door slam and I winced. Mom was home from work and she must have been pretty tired, since she forgot how much Bill hates it when people slam the door. A minute later I could hear him yelling and her yelling back and then some things breaking.

One time, about six months ago, I tried to step in when they fought. I thought I could stop him from hurting her. But I ended up in the hospital, which was worse than she usually got. After that, she made me promise not to get in the way. She could take a lot of things, she said, but not me getting hurt on her account.

So now I just try not to listen, wishing I was anywhere else. Yeah, maybe I did want to escape from my life sometimes. I wouldn’t mind being a big warrior guy with a chain-mail babe. But then I thought about these dreams I’ve been having and I wondered if Ms. Randall was wrong. Maybe instead of keeping me sane, all this escapism was making me crazier.

Mom was hiding in her room when I got out of bed, which meant he’d probably left a mark on her face. It made me mad, but not in that way you see in the movies where the hero gets this tough look in his eye, makes a fist, and punches out the bad guy with some amazing strength. It just made me feel like I was going to throw up. And that’s more or less how I felt all through my morning classes.

But if I thought I was in a bad mood, Max was even worse. All through lunch he just sat there, looking at his roast beef sandwich like he wanted it to turn back into a cow just so he could kill it again. I knew better than to ask him what was wrong, so I just kept my head down and ate my lunch.

“You see the game last night?” he asked after a while.

“No,” I said. “Who won?”

“Damn Heat, man!” he said, and slammed his fist on the table. “Because of goddamn Kapono!”

“What?” I said.

“Yeah, I know, right?” said Max. “The Cavs were in the lead just about the whole game. Then in the last minute, Kapono was heading for the hoop and he got this crazy look in his eye, then just chucked the ball from half-court. It bounced off the backboard, the Heat got the rebound, ran it back, and hit a three-pointer before the clock ran out and won the damn game.”

I stared at him for a couple seconds before I realized he was expecting me to say something.

“Wow,” I said.

“Yeah!” he said. “They should fire his ass, don’t you think?”

“Um,” I said. Because I was pretty sure the poor guy shouldn’t be fired for something that was my fault.

So now I’m sitting here in study hall, not sure if I’m going crazy or if I’m some damn Harry Potter wizard. And I don’t even know who to ask about this. Not Ms. Randall, and definitely not Max. Especially if it’s true I made his team lose.

Maybe there’s nobody I can talk to.

Tuesday, February 2, 7:05 p.m.

You know, I’m never going to ask anyone about anything ever again. Well, okay, maybe not never. But I’m going to really think about it before I ask other people about weird stuff that happens to me.

When I got home from school, Mom was sitting at the kitchen table, staring at a nice bouquet of flowers in front of her. Our kitchen is small and it’s all different shades of brown, so flowers always really stand out in there.

“Hey, Mom,” I said.

“Hi, Sebastian,” she said. She had a bruise on her left cheek, and her eye was a little swollen. It looked like it hurt pretty bad. I guess that was why she was drinking wine coolers at four o’clock. Even Bill usually waited until dinnertime to start drinking.

“How was school?” she asked.

“Okay,” I said as I grabbed a bag of pretzels from the pantry.

“Yeah? Then why did Ms. Randall just call me to tell me she’s concerned about you? She asked how things are at home. Why’d she ask that?”

“I don’t know.” I stuffed a handful of pretzels in my mouth. “I didn’t tell her nothing.”

“Sebastian Younger, don’t you talk with your mouth full.”

I swallowed real quick even though I hadn’t finished chewing. It hurt a little.

“Sorry,” I said.

“So, Ms. Randall, she says you’re having trouble sleeping? A lot of bad dreams or something?”

“I didn’t tell her anything about bad dreams,” I said. I started to head for the stairs and the safety of my room.

“Stop,” she said.

I stopped.

“Sit,” she said.

I sat down at the kitchen table across from her.

“So,” she said, leaning in, still clutching her wine cooler, which made it tip a little. But it was mostly empty so it didn’t spill. “What did you tell her?”

I thought about lying, honestly. But I just wanted to talk to someone about the crazy thoughts I was thinking right now, and if you can’t talk to your mom, who can you talk to, right?

“Okay,” I said. “Now, I know how this sounds, but hear me out. I been having these . . . well, I thought they were dreams. I thought I was dreaming I was other people or something. And I thought that was kinda weird so I asked Ms. Randall about it.”

“Why Ms. Randall?”

I shrugged. “She was just the person who was there when I thought to ask someone, I guess.” I didn’t want to hurt Mom’s feelings that I would choose Ms. Randall over her. “So that’s what I thought it was. Dreams. Then last night I was a basketball player for the Cavs and I accidentally made him mess up a shot. But today I found out that the real basketball player, the same guy, messed up in real life in the same way that I messed him up in my dream!”

She stared at me, and I could tell she wasn’t getting it at all.

“Mom,” I said. “Somehow, while I’m sleeping, I’m, like, possessing other people’s bodies or something! It’s like . . . I don’t know what. Magic, I guess.”

She was still looking at me and I couldn’t really tell what she was thinking, partly because of the bruise on her face. But then she took a last swig of her wine cooler and put the bottle down. She rubbed her good eye with the heel of her hand. Then she looked at me again.

“Sabe, honey, I know things are hard right now,” she said. “And I promise things are going to get better someday.”

“Mom, I don’t think you’re really getting what I’m talking about. Maybe if—”

“No, Sabe. I get it. I’m not dumb. You wish you were somewhere else. Someone else. Can’t say I blame you. But come on, it’s time to grow up. It’s time to—”

“It really happened. You have to believe me! I—”

“Now, Sabe—”

“You think I’m some stupid, crazy kid, lying to get attention—”

“You better quiet yourself down—”

“You have to listen to me! I’m not making it up—”

“Sebastian! Enough!”

“No, Mom! You’re never here and when you are, you never listen!!”

“SHUT UP!” And she threw her wine cooler on the floor. It smashed into tiny, sharp pieces that slid all over the place. Then she reached out and grabbed my chin with her thumb and forefinger. “You listen to me,” she said, a snarl on her face. “There’s no such thing as wizards or dragons or magic lands or any of that shit. There’s nowhere else out there. This is all there is. Do you hear me?”

She still had my chin and she pinched it hard.

“Do. You. Hear. Me,” she said through clenched teeth.

“Yes, ma’am.”

She let go and leaned back in her seat. “Now, go up to your room and do your homework. And mind the broken glass. I don’t want you cutting yourself.”

I nodded and walked across the kitchen, trying to tiptoe around the glittering shards. I climbed the stairs two at a time, that feeling of needing to be alone in my room like a craving in my gut. I closed the door and dropped down on my bed. I felt so stupid, so embarrassed. I curled up in a ball so hard I felt like I’d turn myself inside out. Of course I wasn’t magically possessing other people’s bodies. That was just idiotic.

I wanted to pull the covers over my head and sleep until the sun was up. Maybe tomorrow I wouldn’t feel like the stupidest person in the world anymore. Maybe. But I couldn’t even keep my eyes closed, much less go to sleep. I picked up my book and almost started reading. But then I thought, What if these books are the problem? Filling my head with wishes that couldn’t come true. I threw it across the room.

It lay there on the carpet, the sword on the cover glinting in the light. Maybe that was too harsh. Maybe I didn’t mean it. . . .

To distract myself, I decided to write in this journal. I thought maybe it would clear my head. Help me see what’s really going on. But it still doesn’t make sense, and now I want to pick up my book again.

Screw it. I’m going to go read. At least it’ll stop me thinking about what a jackass I am.

Wednesday, February 3, Butt-Ass Early

I think I really messed up. I don’t know how, exactly, but here’s what happened.

Last night I read so late that I fell asleep on top of my covers with my clothes still on. Then I had one of my dreams. If that’s even still what I’m calling them. And this one was the weirdest yet. I was inside this old black guy. He was dressed all in white and had lots of jewelry. Like necklaces, bracelets, and rings. Except it wasn’t jewels and gold. It was all made of bones and fabric and a few weird crystals here and there. He was sitting in a chair in a motel room. You know, the kind that all look the same. He was reading some book, but it was in another language. French, I think. But I don’t read French so I couldn’t say for sure.

I watched the foreign words in the book as his rough, dry hands turned pages. And I got that crazy impulse again. To assert myself. What did it matter, anyway, since none of this was real? So I grabbed the book and tossed it across the room just like I’d thrown my own book earlier in my room.

“Interesting . . . ,” said the man. He had a French accent, but not a heavy one.

He stood up slowly. I expected him to walk over and pick up the book, but he went the opposite way to the dresser. There was a mirror above the dresser, and he looked at himself in it. He had long gray dreadlocks and his face was wrinkly and scarred. But his expression was curious. Playful, almost. He touched the mirror and whispered something quietly in French. The mirror shimmered. Then, instead of looking at his reflection, I was looking at my own.

“Hello, little nightwalker,” he said. “You should be more careful where you go. No telling what sort of attention you’ll get.”

I snapped awake in my own room, on my bed. But I was breathing hard like I’d just been running, and in my ears I could still hear his quiet, dry chuckle.

I didn’t sleep the rest of the night. I didn’t want to, because I was afraid I’d go back to that guy. But even if I wanted to sleep, I couldn’t because my mind was racing. Nothing but questions without answers and no one to ask. All I’ve got is this stupid journal that just stares back at me with my own thoughts.

Wednesday or Thursday, Hell If I Know What Time It Is

It was hard to get through school that next day after only three hours of sleep. I kept nodding off in class and then jerking back awake, afraid I’d slip off to somewhere else. Or I guess, someone else. I never did, though. Not sure why. The old guy had called me “nightwalker,” so maybe it’s something I can only do at night.

Max wasn’t at school. And neither was Ms. Randall. I heard they were both in the hospital, Max with appendicitis. They didn’t say what Ms. Randall had, only that she’d be out at least a few days. Did the old guy do this to them? Curse them or something? He hadn’t seemed evil, exactly. But he had jewelry made from bones. That was like witch-doctor stuff. I thought about going to check in on Max at the hospital, but then I thought if the old guy did it, maybe that was exactly what he wanted me to do. No, if I did that, I might be putting Max and Ms. Randall in more danger. Not to mention myself.

After school, I tried to do some homework. It was kind of nice to do math, something that was predictable. But eventually Bill came home and he turned the TV up extra loud again and it was getting late and I was so tired by then that I started to nod off over my homework. And if I was right that I could only go places at night, I definitely didn’t want to fall asleep right then. I thought about reading for a while to keep myself awake. But I was still half convinced that all this was some crazy paranoia from reading too much of that crap. So instead I did something drastic. I went downstairs and watched TV with Bill.

“Well, goddamn, if it ain’t Sabe,” he said as I walked into the den. He was sprawled out on the plaid wool couch, his big belly sticking up, a can of Natty Light in his hand. “Didn’t even know you still lived here.”

“Hey, Bill,” I said, and sat down in the easy chair across from him.

“Get too sore to jerk off anymore?” he said, then laughed. But the laugh turned into a nasty, hacking cough that went on for about a minute and ended with him spitting some big glob of something into his handkerchief.

“What are you watching?” I asked.

“One of those reality shows,” he said, his eyes still watery from coughing so much. “’Bout this guy who makes stuff out of junk.” He took a gulp of beer. “I shoulda done somethin’ like that. Makin’ stuff, instead of destroyin’ stuff for a living.” He chugged the rest of his beer. “Well, too late now.” He put the empty can with the rest of the empties on the coffee table, then picked a fresh one from the case on the floor next to him.

The guy on the show wandered around a junkyard, picking up stuff that you would have thought would be totally useless. Then he put all these useless things together and came up with this cool tractor-car thing. But even though the show was kind of interesting, my eyes started to get heavy, and before I’d realized what was happening, I fell asleep.

When I woke up a little later, I was looking at myself. It took me a second to figure that out because it was hard to think for some reason. First I stared stupidly at myself snoring in the easy chair. Then I noticed I had a beer can in my hand. Well, that explained why I was having trouble thinking. I was drunk. I looked down at myself and I was sprawled out on the plaid couch with my big belly sticking up in the air. I was inside Bill.

I was thinking to myself that this was about the worst thing that could happen, when my mom came home. She walked in without looking at us and slowly put her bag on the kitchen counter. Bill stood up, stumbling a little. I’d had a few beers here and there with Max, but I’d never felt drunk like this. It was weird how slow his body was. It felt kind of numb, too. As he walked over to the kitchen, he banged his shin on the coffee table and it barely felt like anything.

“What you doin’ home so early?” he said. He didn’t sound happy about it.

“They sent me home because of my face,” she said. Then she turned toward us. Toward him I mean. And what had been a small bruise before now covered half her face. It had a weird purple shine to it, except around the eye, which was leaking some kind of fluid.

“What the hell happened to you?!” he said, stepping back.

“You happened, Bill,” she said quietly.

“Bullshit. I didn’t do that. Yesterday, that was an accident. I said I was sorry. But this? No way in hell I did this.”

“I’m telling you,” she said. “Nothing else happened. It just keeps getting worse and worse. It’s what you did.”

“You better shut the hell up, woman, or I will make it worse.”

“Not with Sabe over there sleeping!”

“Who gives a rat’s ass about that whiny little bitch?”

“Don’t you talk like that about my son!”

“Or what?”

“Or . . . ,” she said, her one good eye wide, angry, and desperate. “Or I’ll leave you.”

“That’s it,” Bill said. I could feel the blood pounding through his drunk brain, feel him make a fist, feel his shoulder tense as he hauled off to hit her. For a split second I felt and watched it all start to happen, and I was so scared I wanted to scream.

Then I thought, I can stop this.

His fist was halfway to the good side of her face when I stopped it in midair. Mom stared at me. I mean him. Us. Stared at us, looking scared and surprised. I wasn’t sure if I could talk to her, or what I’d say. Hey, Mom, don’t worry. It’s just me, Sabe, possessing Bill’s body. Yeah, I knew that probably wouldn’t work, so I just didn’t say anything.

I made him walk to the front door. It wasn’t easy. Controlling someone else’s body was already pretty awkward, and being drunk made it even harder. After stumbling back and forth a little, I made it to the door. It was hard to turn the knob and open the door, too. Finally we made it out onto our rickety old front porch. Thankfully, Mom didn’t follow.

I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with him at first. I just knew I had to get him away from Mom before I lost control of him. But once I got outside into the cold night air, I started to think maybe I could solve this problem forever. We lived real close to the freeway. Everybody in the neighborhood knew Bill was a useless drunk, and it wouldn’t surprise any of them to find out tomorrow that he’d walked out in front of a semi truck going seventy miles an hour.

It took a little while to stumble up the steep grassy hill to the short metal guardrail that ran along the side of the freeway. But finally we were there, right on the shoulder. It was still way before midnight, so there was plenty of traffic zipping by. The wind hit our face every time a car or truck blew past. If I stepped us out now, it would happen in seconds.

But I hesitated. Because now that I was here, now that I was feeling less drunk and a little more calm, this looked a lot like murder.

“Do it,” said a voice like rock scraping tar.

I turned toward the voice. It looked like a man, big and muscular, with gold armor that shone in the fluorescent freeway lights. He sat on a white horse with a sword sheathed at his side and a long wooden spear in his hand. But even weirder than all that, he had a lion head. His mouth was open slightly and I could see his big canines. His cat eyes flashed as he stared down at me.

“What the hell . . . ,” I whispered with Bill’s voice.

“An amusing choice of words,” he said. “I am Sabnack, and I am here to take you away from this banal and tedious existence to a place better suited for you. But first, destroy this useless meat sack. I want to make sure you can follow orders.”

“I don’t think he’s going to do that,” said another voice. That one I recognized. I turned to my other side and saw the old black guy with the gray dreadlocks.

“You!” I said.

“Hello, little nightwalker,” he said with a tired smile. “It looks like you’ve picked up some unwanted company.”

“You are the unwanted company, bokur!” said the lion-headed guy on the horse. “I have been watching this one for weeks, working in the background, waiting until his abilities had acceptably matured. Your sudden appearance has forced my hand.” Then he turned to me. “This old fool is weak and poor. What can he possibly give you? I am strong. I am powerful. I have lived for five centuries and have forgotten more than he will ever know.”

“You said you’ll take me away from here?” I asked. “What, like some magic land?”

“More strange and magical than you can imagine,” he said. “A world of heroes and beasts, beautiful maidens and cruel, villainous foes. Kill this mortal whom you hate so much and prove your loyalty to me. Then I will take you there.”

“It’s true,” said the old man. “I’m old and weak. Sabnack is far more powerful than me. He can take you to a world so unlike this one, you’d scarcely believe your own eyes. A world that contains both breathtaking beauty and horrifying destruction. But think about what he asks of you. To kill, even a man as wretched as this one?”

“I deal out life and death without hesitation,” said Sabnack. “And if I tell him to kill this mortal, that is the only justification he needs.”

The old man’s eyes narrowed. “It’s true you deal in death. I’ve heard that the sword and spear you carry are only symbols. That your real weapon is sickness and decay.” He turned to me then. To Bill and me. “How’s your friend? Your teacher? Sick, aren’t they? Very suddenly?”

“Mortals are weak,” said Sabnack. “They get sick constantly.”

“What about your mother?” the old man said to me. “And even the body you occupy now is in the grip of a cancer. You can feel it yourself, can’t you? Try and look—you’ll see.”

I could feel something dark and heavy at the bottom of Bill’s lungs.

“This is what he is: disease and decay,” said the old man. He turned back to Sabnack. “Will you deny your nature, demon?”

“Why would I deny it?” asked Sabnack. “Disease strikes down the weak. Decay repurposes them so that the strong may thrive. This is a fundamental law of the universe.”

I noticed that what Sabnack was sitting on wasn’t really a horse. It was a white, horse-shaped creature. But its eyes were red, its teeth were sharp, and it had claws instead of hooves.

“You’re making everybody around here sick?” I asked Sabnack. “On purpose?”

“I cannot be bothered to concern myself with the effects I have on regular mortals. And neither should you,” Sabnack said. “You have been granted a gift from the gods. The ability to transfer your soul to another and dominate it. You don’t belong here. You deserve more. I can give you more.”

“But I have to kill somebody first.”

“You’ll have to do more than that,” said the old man. “You will have to swear fealty to him and to Lamia, the Grand Duchess of the East, whom he serves.”

“The east of what?” I asked.

“Hell,” said the old man.

“What?” I said. “You’re kidding!”

“I’m not,” he said. “It’s actually not all bad. Hell isn’t quite what most people think it is.”

“And you are not quite as good as you pretend,” said Sabnack. “Tell him what you are, and we will see if he still trusts your word over mine.”

The old man nodded. “My name is Poujean and I am a bokur, or what you might call a voodoo priest or witch doctor. And I make no claims of being good. I commune with powerful spirits, called loa, who grant me certain abilities. Some of these loa can be just as cruel as Sabnack. But ultimately, I am, like you, a mortal, often forced to make hard choices like the one you must make now.”

“So what’s my choice?” I asked. “Get out of this place and have everything I’ve ever wanted but become a killer who gets bossed around by demons? What’s the other option? Stick around here and watch my mom get beat by her boyfriend until he dies of lung cancer?”

“That’s not the only other option,” said Poujean. “If you want, you may come with me on my travels. I can’t show you magical lands, but I can show you the magic of your own land. Not a luxurious life, but a vibrant one. Perhaps together we can help you learn to master your own special abilities. And though my means are humble, I still have my humanity. I will never ask you to do something you feel is wrong.”

“Well,” I said, “that’s good enough for me.”

Poujean held out his hand and I shook it. It felt dry and warm and strong. Handshakes are important to me, and his felt good.

“Stupid mortals, both of you,” said Sabnack, his lion face curling into a snarl. “Her Grace told me to bring him back alive if I could, but dead was an acceptable alternative.” Then he drew his sword.

But Poujean smiled and drew a small glass bottle from beneath his robes. “We have never met before, Sabnack, so you do not know that before I became a bokur, I was a priest. I still remember all the rites of exorcism, and it just so happens that I learned them from the best.” He popped the lid off the bottle with his thumb and flicked it so that water splashed on Sabnack. “In the name of Jesus, Moses, and Abraham, I command you to return from where you came!”

Sabnack hissed and his horse creature screamed. They stumbled backward, then the creature threw him. He landed in a clatter of metal. He stabbed his spear into the ground and pulled himself up with it. His legs looked too skinny and weak to hold him up by themselves.

“Shall we continue or was there somewhere else you had to be?” asked Poujean as he pulled a silver crucifix and rosary beads from his bag.

Sabnack roared at him; then both he and his hellsteed disappeared in a smelly, brown gas cloud. The spear he had buried in the ground remained, sticking up from the grass like a little tree without branches.

“Could you have really destroyed him?” I asked.

“I’m not sure. I’ve seen my friend Paul do it, but I’ve never had an occasion to try it myself before.”

“What if he’d called your bluff?”

Poujean shrugged. “Then we would have found out if I could really destroy a demon.” Then he put his hand on my shoulder. “Do you still want to come with me? It won’t always be an easy life. Or a safe one.”

“I’ve always felt like this wasn’t quite right for me. I want to go with you.”

“But?”

“My mom. This guy.” I touched Bill’s big belly. “He’s gonna hurt her again if I’m not around to stop him.”

“Ah, well, if that’s all,” he said, and smiled. “Stopping a man from beating his wife or girlfriend is something I am very good at. Come, I will need to gather a few ingredients. Then before you release his body, we will give him a potion that will make him violently ill whenever he tries to harm your mother.”

“You can do that?”

His smile grew mischievous. “That and many other things, little nightwalker. Watch and learn.”

“What about that?” I asked, pointing to the spear sticking out of the ground.

“See if you can take it,” he said.

I walked over and tried to pull it out of the ground.

“It won’t budge,” I said.

“It must be for someone else then,” he said. “Come—let’s take care of this man and his violence problem before the sun rises and you lose control of him.”

Are You Kidding? I Don’t Even Know What Day It Is Anymore

We were at a rest stop outside Chicago. I think a few days after I left home, or maybe a week. I’d left a note for my mom, but Poujean said it might make her feel better if I called. I wasn’t looking forward to her freaking out on me on the phone, but I figured he was probably right.

Luck was on my side, though. Or maybe Poujean’s loa. Because she didn’t pick up her cell. I just leaned back against the side of the pay phone and talked into her voice mail. And I have to say, it felt really good.

“Hey, Mom, it’s Sebastian. Just wanted to let you know that I’m doing great. Eating healthy, taking care of myself, getting sleep, all that stuff you’re always fussing about. So don’t worry about that. I hope your face is healing. Keep putting that cream on that I left for you. I know it smells a little funky, but my friend tells me it’ll do the trick. Also, I don’t think Bill will be beating on you anymore, so you don’t have to worry about that, either. I’ll try to make it home at some point, but it probably won’t be for a while. I’ve got some stuff I have to learn, places I want to visit. That kind of thing.

“One thing I want you to know, Mom. You were wrong about there not being anywhere else. There are other places. Amazing places. And amazing people, too. There’s a lot more to the world than you think. I’m seeing it now. I hope maybe someday I can show it to you.”