Life According to the Dead

Henry

Dreams.

Strange dreams, too. Deputy Chief of Police Henry Longwood doubted he'd ever spent a night in the countryside in his life. His ex-wife, Alice, had always tried to get him to go out and "enjoy the fresh air," but Henry wasn't exactly one for fields and hills and trees. Or nature at all, really.

But here he was, dreaming about it.

It wasn't even the normal sort of countryside, the kind Henry always pictured, one that was all sunny and breezy and bland. The mother of all storms was raging around him. Rain pelted down from a dark mess of pregnant clouds overhead, and wind whipped across the fields, forcing the crops to bend and sway. Forked tongues of dazzling light split the sky in two, then four, then eight. That was mainly how Henry knew it was a dream: in real life, he reasoned, lightning usually only flashed in one place at a time. It didn't come down all around like this, trapping him in a cage of jagged white lines.

It wasn't just the storm, though. The world also looked oddly distorted, as though he was looking into one of those deforming mirrors you find at circuses and things. The horizon bent at an odd angle in the distance – or was it distant?

Henry Longwood hated trying to make sense out of dreams. He hated dreams, period.

Suddenly someone was there with him. Someone tall and pale and freckled. His sandy-blonde hair flecked with bits of brown, like mud on the beach. His lips turned up in a sideways smirk.

Oh, please, thought Henry. The countryside had been bad enough already.

"Jim Halliday," he said, or thought he said. "Get out of my dream, would you?"

"I've got to tell you something," said Jim. He didn't say it particularly loudly, but the words seemed to blare in Henry's head all the same.

"Beat it." Why was he dreaming about Jim, anyway? They didn't know each other that well. They didn't even like each other.

"It's really, really important," Jim insisted.

Henry peered at him suspiciously. "Why aren't you being snarky? In real life you're always snarky."

"Probably because this version of me is just a figment of your imagination," Jim explained, "and you're not smart enough to come up with anything even close to decently snarky to say to yourself."

Henry blinked. He hadn't really wanted an explanation.

He said, "Your shirt is bloody."

Jim looked down. His shirt was bloody.

"So it is," he agreed.

Henry frowned and shook his head. He could have sworn Jim's shirt hadn't been bloody a moment ago. How was it that Jim could manage to confuse him even in his own dreams?

He had the feeling he was about to say something else, but then he looked and in the distance he saw a boy.

The boy was standing in the middle of a wheat field, still as a statue and staring blankly at the two of them. His black hair rippled in the merciless wind, but his body was absolutely motionless, like a blinking photograph caught up in the dream. Henry tried to pin an approximate age on him, but found with astonishment that he could not. The boy was all ages and no ages. Silently he watched them.

Henry thought it was a bit creepy, to be honest.

"Who's that?" he asked, pointing.