The Lineman

Keith drifted up the mountainside and into the wilderness. There weren’t streetlights nor traffic of any kind; only the midnight moon offered a glow.

He followed a flaking two lane highway out of Flagstaff; a common route for the company as it provided access to the southern grid. The service truck rolled by a marshy lake and a ranger station-- then into the forest.

The radio transitioned from classic rock to a hard static. Keith spun the volume dial--the signal waned and let a final melody through before fizzing into silence.

He swallowed hard and checked the clock; 2:34 AM.

Just like the dream. There wasn’t much left to go now.

The Mogollon Mountain cast a shadow for two hundred miles; the desert sand turns to caliche at its feet, where razor underbrush offers no respite. Oceanic crags remind tourists that every inch of it used to be a seabed. Keith read it went all the way to Mexico.

He went over what he could remember: the song, the static, the time on the clock. Remembering stuff that hadn’t happened yet was the hardest part. It’s hard to recognize a dream unless it's happening in real time.

“Keith,” a voice dribbled from the ether.

He zoned out and continued to gun up the mountain.

“Keith, come…” it whispered. “…this is dispatch.”

He blinked away the visions and picked up the receiver.

“Hey, Roxy,” he responded. “I just got into Coconino.”

The truck radio died outside the city limits, but the satellite radio kept him in contact with the Arizona Direct Power office.

“We still don’t have a cause for the outage, so you might find anything out there,”

“What road am I looking for?”

“85E--it’s gonna be a little dirt offshoot that’ll take you back to 231.”

Further than Keith thought, well beyond the last outlier neighborhood.

He chewed his lip and looked up at the moon. Just like at home, just like the dreams, Keith was powerless. Reminiscent of a puppet, he was simply a man going through the motions; hence his presence in the work truck at a wholly evil hour.

Still, he couldn’t deny his natural compulsion. When the visions started, Keith found himself more and more curious about their accuracy. It became hard not to do things when he’d already seen the outcome.

He checked the clock and settled into the driver’s seat.

The road bent away and became shrouded with pine boughs. Keith let off the gas and cruised around the blindspot. Potholes rattled the cab.

The headlights cut through the foliage and picked up a boy. He stood rigid just off the shoulder.

A numbness started in Keith’s throat and tickled the roots of his teeth. He reached for the receiver out of habit, but made no effort to call anybody.

The kid stood frozen along the roadway as the service truck rolled by. He was short, skinny, dressed too ordinary for a starlit stroll through the wilderness; denim shirt and plain brown trousers. His matted hair frilled out in every direction.

Keith tapped the brakes and guided the truck to a halt.

This was the last leg of the dream; 2:51 AM.

The kid toddled down the lane toward the truck, passing ominously through the exhaust. They made eye contact in the rearview mirror and Keith realized his misjudgement.

What he took for a boy was actually an adult; a small, wiry man with big shaky eyes. Keith derived more age with each step he took, like the wrinkles across his brow and the rot between his teeth. He leaned over and unlocked the passenger door with uncertain hands.

“Got room for an android?” he called up into the cab, holding up his palms.

“Can’t leave you stranded,” Keith explained. He wondered if the man dreamed about him too.

The stranger dusted his hands on his trousers before climbing up into the rig; Keith noted a pair of work gloves hanging out of one pocket, rusted pliers in the other.

“Car trouble?” Keith asked after a time. They ascended higher into the Mogollon peaks.

“I live out here,” he explained, slowly turning to look at Keith. His skin was mottled under the moonlight.

“Where’bouts?”

“Where the dreamquest takes me,” he said. “Just like where it takes you.”

Keith tightened his grip on the steering wheel and made no effort to respond.

“Sometimes I feel in the right place, you know what I mean? If I don’t follow the visions I start to go a little crazy,” he went on.

“What’s your name?” Keith asked.

“The council calls me Midas.”

Keith nodded.

“We formed a council when enough of us showed up. Took a long time, but we’re better for it. Need structure, otherwise everyone’d just be sittin’ around all the time, waiting for the next vision.”

“You dream a lot?”

“We all do,” Midas said with a smile.

A green road sign flickered just ahead; Forest Road 85E.

“I showed up back in ‘89, but we have newcomers every week,”

Keith turned the service truck and guided it deeper into the forest while the passenger spoke.

“How’d you get out on the road?” Keith asked.

Midas tapped the dashboard and said, “I was waiting for you! Almost thought you didn’t get the message.”

The numbness within Keith ebbed into anxiety; the same sensation he imagined a trapped animal would have.

“Right on time, though. You’re lucky you can drive,”

“Huh?”

“The council makes the rules--say they get’em from the dreams. Androids ain’t allowed to drive.”

The roadway led into a meadow that opened up into a valley, and the pine trees transitioned into gnarled old oaks. Green grass blanketed the earth.

Midas sighed and grabbed the Oh Shit handle above his head.

“You know where you’re goin,” he quipped. “We thought I’d have to guide ya.”

They pushed through the meadow and intersected with the utility road that framed the powerlines. Keith checked his perimeter, cut the wheel and hit the gas. The service truck roared up the path as it followed the cables.

He leaned over the steering wheel and eyeballed the wires. They were starting to droop down the pole, a sure sign of needed repair. Keith picked up the receiver.

“Dispatch, this is Keith with overnight response. I’m approaching FR 231 and see a couple low cables,” he said.

“You sound awfully pulled together. Everything alright?” Roxy asked.

Keith swallowed and glanced at the stranger in the cab. Midas only grinned, motioning to the radio with his eyebrows.

“Just didn’t expect a call tonight. Wishing I was in bed,” he cleared his throat. “I’ll touch base when I’ve got eyes--” he squinted through the glass.

Midas clapped his hands and rubbed them together.

The powerline descended to the ground right before the truck, but not any reasonable amount; what looked like a mile’s worth of cable sat coiled between the poles. More of it snaked off into the treeline.

“I found it, Roxy.” he breathed into the transmitter.

“Good work, right? Took us all day,” Midas added.

Keith clicked the radio off and shook his head.

“What the fuck, dude?”

Midas smoothed his lips.

“You never dream this far?”

“No,” Keith said as he opened the truck door.

“We’ve turned the electricity off out there. You got an ETA?”

He bit his lip and laughed, hesitating to answer.

Keith turned and looked into Midas’ eyes. They were murky, tinged with yellow along the outside. Still, they were harmless, and they knew something.

“What are we doing out here?” he asked the stranger.

“Keith?” Roxy asked.

Midas pointed to the radio and said, “Buy us a little time and I’ll show ya.”

Keith exhaled hard through his nose before bringing the receiver to his lips.

“Give me four or five hours. I’ve gotta assess about a half mile.”

The radio coughed up a fit of static.

“Sounds like a pain in the ass. Keep us updated.”

Roxy’s easy voice fizzed out.

Keith killed the engine and slid out of the cab. He could hear Midas exit the truck and slam the door on the other side.

The stranger was right; it was impressive. The amount of labor alone was staggering, but the knowledge it required to detach live electric cables made it something else.

“How’d you-” Keith asked, but he turned and found the answer. Midas stood near the truck, but behind him, a group of people emerged from the brush. They were dingy, dressed in the same plain clothes as the hitchhiker.

“Welcome, Lineman,” a sagely old man offered. He leaned on a smooth walking stick that reminded Keith of biblical times.

“Have we met before?” he asked.

“Not in the waking world,” the old man explained. “But you’re in my dreams.”

“What do I do?”

“We can’t know,” he said. “We aren’t the dreamer.”

“Why’d you take the line down? You could have killed yourself,” Keith redirected.

Midas stepped between the two men and said, “The dreams showed us how to do it. They always do.”

“But why?” he asked again.

“To summon you,” the old man clarified. “You’re the last pilgrim on the dreamquest.”

The lineman swayed under the moonlight, swimming through the fuzz in his brain. He desperately hoped this would all be interrupted by the buzzing of his alarm.

“I’m Shepherd. You’ve already met Midas, one of our most trusted agents,”

“You mean android?” Keith asked.

The strangers shared a collective smile that drained the color from his face.

“Why’s he think that?” he pressed.

Shepherd shrugged and said, “Aren’t we all androids? Preprogrammed and operating on established systems? Dreamers are hardlined to the source; we’re extensions of something greater.”

Keith sized up the group. He didn’t like his odds.

“I know this is a lot of information, but I think you understand. That look in your eyes tells me you dream, too,” Shepherd said as he gestured to the others. “My wife and I had our first dream out here in the seventies. We walked away from camp and never looked back.”

“I’m gonna lose my job over this,” Keith tried to explain. “I don’t need déjà vu to tell me that.”

“None of that will matter after tonight. I promise,” Shepherd said with a nod. “I’ve seen it.”

The lineman sighed and moved toward the bucket truck.

“Go, don your noble robes!” the old man shouted into the night. “Trust your visions!”

Keith flinched at the thunderous holler.

“I don’t have any robes,”

Keith felt an arm on his shoulder, and turned to find Midas carrying his yellow reflector vest and stock white hard hat.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” Keith chuckled. “Why?”

“We don’t know. It’s how it happens in the dream,” Shepherd explained. “You ride into the village like a knight from the round table.”

He looked down at his ADP uniform and remembered the timeline he gave Roxy.

“Alright,” he said while pulling on the vest. “Show me.”

“Mount your steed,” Shepherd instructed.

He pointed at the bucket on the back of the service truck.

Keith turned and shrugged.

“If you say so,”

He climbed into the box and waited. Below, Midas clambered into the driver seat and fired up the engine. Keith gripped the steel cage as the truck rolled off the trail and into the woodland.

Sweat beaded along his brow and reminded him of the cool mountain air. No one else had been dispatched to the area, which meant he was alone with a dream cult.

Now he offered them his only way of getting back to civilization.

“Idiot,” he muttered. “The hell are you thinking.”

The bucket began to ascend as he spoke, as if spurred by an incantation. Keith clipped himself into the safety harness as the arm extended upward.

“Moses in a pisspot,”

He looked down and watched Shepherd and the others vanish in the pine branches. They wandered alongside the truck like a caravan of refugees.

He looked up and found himself level with the treetops; motionless beneath the moonlight. The only thing that moved was a man, walking carefully between the branches.

Keith blinked and rubbed his eyes, certain he was hallucinating. When he opened them again the man was still there. He stood on a small wooden platform that was pegged to a sturdy tree trunk. He was wrapped in a light blanket and snacking from a bowl of berries.

He raised a hand and waved at the lineman. Keith, bewildered, only waved back. The platform slowly disappeared behind the pine needles as the truck rolled on.

The forest opened into a glen, framed with oak and red manzanita. Midas parked the truck where the scrub brush came to an end and where the buildings began.

Keith pushed his hard hat back and swooned at the sight; a hundred villagers looked up in return. The bucket craned down toward the earth so he could see their faces.

They cried out a welcome; Keith thought it was the praise of a hero. The women approached first, garbed in dresses and working overalls. Children of all ages dashed back and forth in the crowd, followed by a herd of puppies and piglets. A crowd of men loitered silently in the back.

“What is this?” Keith asked in a trembling voice. He could smell freshly baked pies drifting out from the village; cinnamon apple and blackberry butter.

“The dreamer’s colony,” Shepherd said, placing a hand on the lineman’s shoulder.

“How long have you been here?”

“What year is it?” the old man asked.

Some of the villagers leaned in to hear the answer.

“2002. It’s June,” Keith replied. He watched the children clamber up the sides of the service truck and play with the equipment.

“Twenty seven years,” Shepherd said. He waved an old woman over and took her under his arm. “We came in ‘75.”

“I’m Mother Midnight,” the old woman whispered through teary eyes. “We’ve been waiting so long for you.”

Shepherd introduced the whole assembly: bakers and masons, woodworkers and teachers. All of them called into the Coconino wilderness by the channel of their dreams. Shepherd and Mother Midnight started the initial camp so the questers had a place to land. As more people arrived, the camp turned into a colony.

The old man pointed out a granary, a schoolhouse, stables and workshops. A team of laborers shuffled into a warehouse with shovels and pickaxes.

A length of power line stretched from the woodline into the village.

“So, what?” Keith prodded. “You guys want electricity?”

Midas cackled like a wildman. Shepherd hushed him with a wave of his hand.

“Not for the colony. For the dreamer,” he explained. “He’s calling for us to wake him.”

Keith swallowed his ability to reason.

“Who?” he stuttered. “They’re our dreams.”

“No,” Shepherd laughed. “We are the dream. Our nightly visions are merely tapping into the source.”

“The powerline’ll kill him,” Keith said.

“Not if he’s made of stone,” Mother Midnight replied. “Go and show him. We don’t have long,” she instructed.

The old man and some of the others moved toward the colony; Keith stayed fixed where he was.

He looked over their faces; wild eyed and pale. He recognized some of them from missing persons posters in the city. Not anyone recent, but folks from his childhood. The shanty structures behind them looked just as ghastly and haunted, composed of roadway trash like signs and pallets.

It wasn’t disconcerting like the dreams; it was that none of it should be out here. Even the sweet pastry smell in the air turned Keith’s stomach. Everything seemed alien under the starlight.

The crowd jostled Keith forward and ushered him into the village.

They passed by a storage shed and a cluster of hovels. A mother nursed a baby near a glowing fire pit.

She smiled at Keith as he stumbled by.

The colony spread out into the meadow as the valley opened up. Old cars of every make and model dotted the flatlands: SUVs and minivans from the 80s and 90s, brand new sedans, a pocket of muscle cars, and even a couple rusted out Volkswagen Buggies.

A blown out Ford Model T sat atop a hill. Keith guessed it was almost a century old.

He looked over the village with a shifting perspective. They weren’t just a cult--they were crafty to be out here this long.

They followed a trail that banked between two hills. It sloped away and dropped into a craggy ravine.

Keith could see the mouth of a cave at the bottom. A coil of power line waited just before the opening.

“Where are we going?” Keith asked as they made a careful descent.

“The resting chamber,” Midas huffed.

They dropped down into the opening and found it illuminated by a series of lanterns that continued into the passage. It reminded Keith of the copper mines of the Old West. Inside he could hear the steady ring of steel against stone.

The cave was a simple tunnel at first, barreling deeper and deeper into the earth. After a series of switchbacks, Keith found himself descending vertically through the stonework. Some corridors were so narrow that he had to empty his lungs in order to pass through them.

The passage turned into a honeycomb of hallways that served as the central structure. As more passageways intersected, the main chamber was formed that allowed Keith and the others to get to their feet and stand. They were covered in dust, some of their clothing shredded from the jagged rock ceiling throughout the tunnels.

Keith jumped at the sight of shadows passing back and forth under the lanterns. Men and women in jumpsuits just like Keith’s, laboring to chisel away the stone. A series of wheelbarrows sat in key positions down the lane.

“Did you find gold?” Keith postured. His eyes wandered up the rockwall and saw the truth before it could be told.

“This is only the archive,” Shepherd countered. “The markings are ancient, beyond any recorded history,”

Unspeakable hieroglyphics spiraled up into the darkness. Carvings of horrific creatures accented with characters from an unhuman language--and the miners worked to expose more of it, to further preserve what was there. The etchings proved mesmerizing; they kindled memories of every dream Keith ever had.

They moved adjacent to the miners as they passed deeper into the cave. Keith was reminded of The Hobbit, and the mythical dwarves from the mountain keeps. He expected them to uncover a jewel and start singing at any moment.

Or was it goblins they found in the end?

The light fixtures fizzled out for a length of the tunnel, smashed from various mining debris. Instead, a series of thick, waxy candles clung to the stone mantle. Flames licked up the walls and exposed different sculptures in the rock.

An enormous jawbone stretched out before him, complete with flaking teeth embedded in the stone. Keith squinted through the shadows and realized these were no longer hieroglyphics but real fossilized beings. The jaw hinged to form a massive diamond-headed leviathan.

Its spine arched away into a looming silhouette; the massive ribcage resembled a viking longhall. Mummified tail fins were still partially intact, covered in hardened scales.

It lay entrenched in overlapping oyster beds, some of which were taller than Keith.

The fossils transitioned from titans into more familiar creatures; fish-lipped humanoids, eyeless and covered in spines. They rested in petrified clusters by the dozens. Jurassic seahorses as tall as light poles stood like sentries amongst them.

Finally, the shaft fed into the final chamber, where the miners carried more delicate tools.

They passed through a landing that forced Keith to pause. It wasn’t the sights, but the hushed little breaths. Scattered all around the floor were dozens of sleeping children, gently snoring in the dark.

Keith turned to Shepherd.

“They come in groups,” he explained. “And their dreams keep a purity none of us have anymore.”

A black cable divided the room, leading into the chamber. Yellow light radiated out and cast twisted shadows against the stone.

Keith stepped inside and found what Shepherd called The Sleeper. He expected another alien entity, but found something familiar to his childhood. It wasn’t a dinosaur or a fishman, but a long extinct species of trilobite commonly found across the state. He used to find them around the canyon lakes when he was a kid.

Those ones were marble sized; The Sleeper was bigger than a warehouse. Its shell was riddled with hieroglyphics that kept its own forgotten legend. Cultists took care to sweep away dust and debris from its crumbling body.

“Jesus,” Keith whispered.

“Nah. Much older,” Midas retorted.

A bucket brigade labored to bring water into the chamber. They upended each pail over the shell to moisten the fossilization; it rested in a shallow pool of runoff.

Keith started to see their intentions.

He wandered in a circle around the trilobite; the chamber had been chiseled out to accommodate an audience. Each side of the shell showed a different era of engravings, and the tailpiece was covered in puncture wounds. Keith imagined some ancient tribe made a stand against the behemoth with spears and arrows.

“This is the weaver of the dreamweb,” the old man said with a grin. “He’s what brought us together and gave us vision.”

The lineman knelt down and inspected the underbelly; the specimen was surprisingly intact.

“I’m not sure this will work,”

“We won’t stop dreaming until we’ve tried,” Shepherd stated.

Keith remembered the stifling stone passageways; there was no quick way to the surface. Even so, getting back to the truck would be just as difficult.

A plan started to come together.

“Alright,” Keith said, throwing his hands up. “Let’s give it the college try.”

Midas handed him the end of the power line and the pliers from his pocket. He pointed at a series of holes across the skull plate.

Keith nodded along while he worked, stripping the cables apart.

“That’s good. You dream of that?”

“No,” a man called from the back wall. Keith turned and found a tall, ghostly looking fellow. He was far older than Shepherd. “It’s my idea.”

“You an engineer?”

The stranger pointed to the ADP logo on his jumpsuit and said, “I used to be a lineman like you.”

Keith’s hands went still as he looked him over. There was something familiar in his demeanor.

“Is that Ralph?”

The stranger nodded.

Keith’s vision narrowed into a dim tunnel that pulsed with his heartbeat. He could taste iron painting the walls of his throat.

Ralph worked for ADP when Keith had first been hired, circa twelve years ago. He vanished in the spring of ‘93 on a weekend fishing trip; authorities found his truck and nothing else.

Here he stood, half a mile underground.

They shared a look that strengthened Keith’s resolve; he wouldn’t die down here like them.

He thought about the children sleeping in the next chamber as he fed the cables into the slots. They pushed through dust and sand before finally coming to rest against the brainstem.

It made him think of his own infant son, swaddled and snoring sixty miles away. His wife sat in the dark, first waiting for the power to come on and then for him to stumble through the door.

A rage came to simmer within the lineman. He stuffed the final cable into the fossil and descended back to the chamber floor.

“That’s it,” he said flatly.

“Okay,” Shepherd breathed. “Turn it on.”

Keith unclipped the mobile radio from his belt and took a deep breath. He clicked both the talk and the power button at the same time and created a fit of static.

“We’re too deep. No signal,” Keith explained.

Shepherd and the others exchanged a worried look.

“Go,” he instructed Midas. “Take him up.”

Keith followed the little man into the chasm. He could feel damp winds whispering through the airways around him.

“Have you explored it all?” Keith asked as they navigated the cave.

“Just abouts. That'll take you to the Gran' Canyon,” he pointed down a dripping slot in the wall. “Other way takes ya to Mexico.”

They kept on through the dark. The tunnels looped through endless rooms of bones and fossils.

Keith recognized some of the terrain when Midas called for them to stop. It was where the fishmen began to poke out of the walls.

“Try it here,” he said.

“I think if we-”

“Do it now,” Midas demanded. His mouth pulled back in a grisly snarl.

Keith pursed his lips and nodded, unclipping the radio from his belt.

“Okay.”

He clicked only the talk button this time; a clear channel opened up.

“Roxy, this is Keith in 231, over.”

The line chirped with feedback.

“Connection sounds funky, you pretty far out there?” Roxy asked.

“I need you to turn the power on,” Keith said in a monotone. He and Midas shared a gaze as he spoke.

“What was the issue? Animal interference?”

“Something like that. I’m still working on it,” he explained. “Turn it on as a test,”

“You got it. Keep me updated,” Roxy said. “And change the battery on that radio.”

The line went dead and left them in silence. Midas’ rancid breath filled the air like the gasses of a rotting corpse. His little chest heaved with panic in the shadows.

“You ever dream this far?” Keith asked with a grin.

He already knew the answer.

“What?” Midas snapped.

“Do you know what happens next?” the lineman asked again.

The powerline buzzed to life on the floor. It didn’t spark or glow, but merely hummed with the unmistakable surge of electricity.

“Nah. Can’t remember nothin’ after the Chamber,” he admitted.

Keith licked his lips and traced the cable back into the chasm. It’d be easy enough to follow.

The stone quaked beneath them. Midas turned back down the tunnel just as the first groan leaked out from the darkness.

“What is that?” he whispered.

“Your worst fucking nightmare,” Keith muttered as he peeled off his hard hat. He took a step to better position himself.

Midas turned to look at the lineman, just in time to receive a crushing blow to the nose. He collapsed into the cave wall, but Keith didn’t stop; he bashed his head with the helmet until he felt it crack in his hands.

“Sleep tight, buddy,”

Keith wiped his hands on his pants and took off deeper into the cave.

When he stumbled into the mouth of the Sleeping Chamber, the first person he saw was Ralph. He stood on the threshold, half facing both rooms. His skin was white, not ashy like before, and his eyes turned to milky globs in the sockets. He took slow, haggard gulps of air through his mouth.

Keith crept over to his rigid form and waved a hand in front of his face; nothing, as if he were comatose. The rest of the council stood the same way around the trilobite.

The great fossil droned with an electric pulse.

A sound came from behind him. Keith whirled around anticipating a rogue cultist, but instead found the stirring bodies of the children. They awoke now that the creature had a new lifesource.

He rushed over and started shaking them awake. Some of them coughed, others vomited, but all of them cried. Keith rubbed their heads and hushed them.

“It’s okay, we’re going home,” he promised. “We gotta be brave. Big breaths.”

The kids gathered around to hear him.

“Do you guys like games?”

They nodded.

“Have you ever played follow the leader?”

A tremor shook the chamber. Stones shifted and adjusted some of the hallways. The children pressed together and whimpered under the dust.

“Shhh, it’s okay. Look, who’s the fastest?”

A little girl raised her hand. She wore a nightgown and couldn’t have been older than ten.

“You go last. Make sure everyone is following along, alright?”

She nodded.

Keith moved over to one of the smallest boys and yanked off his reflective vest.

“You’re gonna be the leader,” he said, wrapping him in the bright nylon. “That means you’ve gotta wear this.”

The little boy wiped away his tears and did his best to fill out the costume.

Keith pointed down to the powerline and said, “This is all you have to do: follow the rope up, up, up--until you see the stars,”

The chamber rocked under another tremor. A scraping sound came to life in the other room.

“When you get to the top, follow the power poles all the way through the forest,” he looked at the older girl and coaxed a nod out of her. “Make sure they keep going.”

“Go!” he said with a jump, pointing into the tunnel. They scrambled through the dirt and disappeared in darkness.

Keith turned to face The Sleeper. A writhing shadow filled the doorway, casting tendrils over Ralph’s vacant face. The others behind him were slowly being devoured by a slick pink membrane.

Mucus and tissue spilled out of the shell like a wave of rancid foam. It reminded Keith of popping a zit. The pool of water turned black from the awakening excretions, filling the cavern with a noxious odor that made his eyes water.

The lineman pulled his jumpsuit over his nose and tore off for the surface.

Stones shifted in the floor and ceiling, but the tunnel remained passable. He trundled through the craggy abyss, the powerline his only guide.

Keith passed into the fossil rooms, where he left Midas to bleed to death.

There wasn’t anyone around, save for the mess of gore against the wall.

He didn’t bother to stop or investigate. If Midas was alive, he was chasing those kids through the shadows.

Keith tore his uniform to ribbons in his flight through the cave, banging off every odd corner or overpass. Something moved just ahead of him, slinking back and forth in the dark.

It was the little girl.

She squealed under Keith’s hand when he grabbed her.

“Are they all here?”

“Yes,” she nodded. “Is it much further? I’m tired, mister.”

“Almost there,” Keith promised.

“BASTARD!” Midas shrieked from the chasm.

Both of them flinched at the sound.

“Run,” he said with a push.

They raced to catch up with the others. The cave continued to tremble beneath their feet, but just ahead, Keith could see the exit.

The children poured out in a breathless heap, steaming in the cool night air. Keith crawled out behind them and shook his head.

“There’s no time,” he pointed to the closest utility pole and ushered the kids toward it. “That’s what I was talking about. If you follow those, they’ll take you home.”

Their little lungs hitched at once.

“Really?” one of them asked.

“Yes, but you have to go,” he pointed back toward the city. “Follow them until you see lights.”

They jumped to their feet and scampered into the treeline. None of them looked back as they disappeared into the thicket.

Keith collapsed to his knees and tried to catch his breath. Years of smoking and drinking in his youth left his fitness to be desired. Still, his drive to divert the dreamquest kept his eyes open.

He looked down as the cave mouth crumbled into itself; the foul membrane pushed through the rubble in slimy tubes. The entire cavern overflowed with a caustic ooze that seemed to grumble as it moved.

The earth above the cave system swelled, pregnant with it.

Keith turned and sprinted for the service truck, praying the keys weren’t in Midas’ pocket down in the trilobite sludge.

Pine branches raked at his face as he ran. He swiped them away with one arm and was shocked to see a man before him on horseback.

“What’s happening?” he demanded. The horseman held a spear in one hand, reins in the other.

“What?” Keith laughed. “You never dream this far?”

The earth sank away beneath their feet, sliding into the collapsing cave system. Keith sprang forward, passed the guard, and smacked the horse on its ass on his way by. The rider hollered as they teetered into the opening pit.

He sprinted into the village and didn’t bother turning back. Colonists wandered around the settlement in a fog, as if they’d lost all memory of the dreamquest. They screamed every time the ground shook.

No one stopped the lineman on his dash to the truck.

A coil of powerline rested beside it; the same coil that fed down into the cave. Keith grabbed a length and hooked it to the rearcrank. He locked it in place and ran around to the driver’s seat.

The keys dangled like a lifeline from the ignition.

“Dipshit,” Keith muttered as he climbed in and slammed the door. Midas reminded him of every tweaker he ever knew; people he called friends once upon a time. He looked down at the King of Clubs tattoo on his knuckle and recalled the glory days of addiction. The dreams started not longer after Keith got sober.

It felt good to get the best of that little shit.

Keith turned the keys and flooded the forest with his headlights. Scattered cultists tucked behind trees, others started to flock to the truck.

The earth rumbled again beyond the colony, and a plume of dust erupted into the sky. The woodland shook with a final tremor as a shadow overtook the valley. The cult stood transfixed as they stared beyond the truck.

Keith looked into the rearview mirror and saw The Sleeper emerge from the rockbed. The unmistakable trilobite shell played host to a godless creature of unimaginable size. It dwarfed even the oldest oaks in the valley.

Five wet appendages unfurled from its face and flared out like a blossoming flower; Keith watched the mucus spew out from what could only be its mouth. Beneath it, folds of shapeless tissue gushed between the trees.

It erected itself and roared over its subjects. Every trunk and branch shook beneath the power of its yawn.

Legs and tentacles surfaced through the meat. It looked like a parasite merged with the trilobite before the fossilization, and now the electricity awoke the mutant.

Keith saw the lines reaching up to its skull and remembered they were fused to it. He shifted into drive and punched the gas pedal. The roar of the truck broke the spell over the cult, who went screaming into the wilderness.

The horseman rode back and forth in the rearview, trying to rally a fighting force.

“I’ll do you one better,” Keith mused in the reflection. He saw the powerline go taut between the truck and the monster.

He picked up the radio receiver and brought it to his mouth.

“Roxy, there’s been an accident,” he explained. “You’ve gotta turn the power off.”

The transmitter fizzed.

“What happened? Are you alright?”

“Kill the power,” he said again. “Get the Sheriff’s Department out here--or the National Guard.”

The line snapped behind the service truck and brought it skidding to a halt. Everything in the cab flew forward into the windshield. The creature screeched and tried to pull itself free, but the cables held firm.

Keith cut the wheel and made a hard U-turn at the end of the meadow. The creature slithered to descend into its hole to relieve the pressure within its skull.

He waited until it was level with the hood of the truck; the powerline reached out like a great jousting rod before him.

He wondered if his son would dream of any of this--if the visions were hereditary.

The behemoth squirmed once more and Keith floored it. The truck was slow at first, but soon roared up to a speed he could barely manage. He delicately maneuvered between trees and ditches as he sailed toward the oozing mouth before him. Every little bump threatened to divert the truck into a collision.

The radio light came to life; 101.5 out of Phoenix. He managed to pick up a signal on a high rise in the clearing.

Keith cranked the volume dial and ground his teeth. He hit the extension lever and lifted the bucket up into the air; anything he could do to ensure a killing blow.

“CAN YA TAKE IT ALL THE WAY, WHEN YA SHOVE IT IN MY FACE-” blared through the soundsystem.

The front end smashed into the star-like fins and obliterated the spongy flesh. The truck cut through every inch of membrane until it met the carapace. Glass and tissue filled the cab, which had the mouth pinned to the rubble of the hillside. The titan croaked a final time as the electricity drained out of its system.

Keith drifted in and out of consciousness; the dreams didn’t come, though. The blood dripping in his eyes kept stirring him awake. Outside, the colony sank away into the pit, where the earth continued to shake.

____________________________________________________

Thanks for reading! As stated in the byline, this is based on some local legends about the Coconino Forest, one of which comes from my mom. She was driving from Flagstaff to Payson when she encountered a hitchhiker deep in the wilderness. She stopped for only one reason: the transient appeared to be a twelve year old boy. Upon closer inspection, the hitchhiker was really a small but grown man who seemed totally out of his mind. He said he was an android from a nearby commune and desperately needed a ride back to the village, as androids weren't allowed to drive.

This story always lingered in my head, and now I pass it on to you in an even stranger form. If you enjoyed this bizarre tale, please consider subscribing to me here on Vocal, and following my Facebook author page.

Thank you so much for your time and consideration!

Image by the great Ivan Palma!