LOT'S MOUNTAIN

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: Angels and Assholes

I'll always think that Shard's an asshole, but it gets me out of the tunnels.

That night, I don't dream about Bill or the faceless girl or wolves.

When I wake up the next day, Nameless is asleep next to me. Outside an old man's walking his dog, but he doesn't go down the road, toward the church. He takes a different way. A stubborn robin is singing his heart out, like he thinks it's spring. It's not. Far from it. We're eyeball deep in autumn, and things are getting colder and colder. Before there's any spring, there has to be a winter.

No Stone Man takes me to school. Instead, Diane does. Maybe Shard came through after all.

While Diane and me are driving, we talk a little about stupid stuff.

And then I sneak in, "Hey, Diane, what do you dream about?"

"When I was a girl, my mother used to dream of birds. She loves birds," Diane says, steering the car toward the high school. "And Tim has dreams where he shows up to work without shoes."

Yep, that's Tim all right. Well, thinking of the Huntsman and what the Mourner told me, I start up again before she can ask me what I dream about.

"Do you ever dream of wolves?"

"No, Dylan," she says. "But I do think that dreams are riddles. They're our brains trying to piece something together."

Or our brains know how screwed up we are deep down.

The bottom line is Diane hasn't dreamed of wolves yet. Damn.

******

Nothing happens during my classes. I ask around about dreams. No wolves. Mindy did have a dream about some actor, but not even an impending monster apocalypse could make me listen to the rest of it.

I failed another quiz. Sometimes it's kinda nice, though, that normal life is biting me in the ass instead of a monster.

When school lets out, I sit on the curb to wait for Cheap-Watch to pick me up. One by one, the buses all leave, and then the cars start to leave the parking lot.

Cheap-Watch doesn't show. I'm pretty happy about things until I realize I don't have a ride out of here. While I'm sitting there, Jamie walks up. She's on her way to the parking lot.

"Hey, Dylan."

Mark's with her. Some white shirts are at the front of the school, watching us.

"You were asking about wolves and dreams earlier, Dylan," Mark pipes up. "What do you dream about?"

Um, faceless people, drowning in graves, my dead brother. You know, the usual.

"Nothing," I say.

Why didn't I just make something up?

"Everybody dreams about something. You may not remember it. Or want to," he says.

"Yeah." I shrug before adding, "You okay, Mark?"

"No," he says.

I want to help him. So does Jamie. But we both know there's not much we can do.

About two minutes later, a dark green station wagon pulls up. It's Mark's mom, and she's wearing a white shirt.

"In the beginning . . ." Mark's mom starts off. She keeps babbling, but I'm only half-listening. Mark gets paler and paler, though, because his mom is putting her crazy on display in front of his friends. "There's an angel standing over the pit of hell and in his hands is the key, a beautiful golden key."