“So you’ll be heading for the cathedral now, I take it.”

“I don’t see any other alternative.  I keep hearing that the dream will drive me crazy.”

“It might.  Or it might not.  That would be up to you, I guess, whether you’re strong enough to take it.  But for sure, the only way to make it stop is to go to the cathedral.  You do that and one way or another you won’t have that dream again.”

“One way or another…  Nice.”

“You wanted me to be truthful.”

“I did.”

Edgar lowered the Chrysler’s hood again and began walking between the isles of long-forgotten vehicles.  Eric walked with him.  “Straight ahead is the old driveway.  You can just make it out.  About half a mile ahead, it’ll clear out and you’ll find yourself on a dirt path.  Don’t even think about turning around.  Try to follow the road back to here and you’ll be lost forever in the other world.”

“One way road.  Got it.”  After all he’d seen he did not doubt this to be true for even a second.  “By the way, how far have I gone now?”

“You’re in the extreme northwest of Wisconsin now.”

That was a long way from where he started.

“By the time you get to the cathedral, you’ll be somewhere in northern Minnesota.  No one’s sure exactly where it is.  You technically can’t even get there from here.  The only way to reach the cathedral is to walk the entire length of the fissure, starting at Annette’s house.”

Annette’s house.  That was where the dream began…

Eric nodded.  If he’d been told he was in the Congo, he’d have little reason to doubt it.

“Like the others, I’ll be leaving you to go on alone.”

Eric turned and looked at the old man.  “There’s something else, isn’t there?”

Edgar looked back at him.  He did not wear any question on his expression.  He did not even pretend ignorance.  He only waited.

“You and the others.  You’re not just random, are you?  It’s no coincidence that you all lived and died in the fissure.  You have a connection to the cathedral.”

Edgar did not lie.  “We do.”

“Are you at least going to tell me what it is?”

Edgar considered it for a moment.  Eric didn’t think he would respond, that this information was simply not for him to have.  But he was about to be surprised.

“This thing you’re looking for, the thing that’s hidden inside the cathedral…we were the ones who put it there.  Nearly a hundred years ago.”

This caught Eric off guard.  “You put it there?”  He’d assumed that whatever was at the cathedral had simply always been there, or at the very least that it had been there for untold ages.  He never even considered the possibility that someone had walked this path before him.

“I had a dream just like yours once.  We all did.  Except there were six of us.  There was me and Taylor, Grant, Annette and Ethan.  We were the five who survived the trip.  And we all stayed here to make sure what we left there remained safe.  Only Ethan moved on when he died.  The rest of us are here still.”

“And you’re still not going to tell me what it is you put there, are you?”

“Can’t.  We never knew what it was.  We weren’t allowed to see it.  We all followed our dreams and we all ended up in the same Illinois hayfield, gathered around a curious little clay pot.  Each of us knew somehow that we weren’t allowed to open the lid and look inside.”

“So the six of you carried it north.  All the way to the cathedral.  And one of you died along the way.”

“Ben.”

“His name was Ben?”

Edgar nodded.

Eric started to ask what became of him, but he found he did not want to know.  Somehow, he felt that knowing what happened to Ben would only make the task ahead of him harder.

Edgar was staring at him now, studying him.  “How have you done in your dream?  Are you better today than you would have been?”

Eric remembered his mangled hand.  His head fuzzy with morphine, he never learned Edgar’s secrets in the dream.  He’d only learned the way forward and stumbled blindly on.  He recalled the three golems, the foggy man.  But he also recalled Father Billy.  Isabelle.  “I’m definitely better off today,” he replied.

“Good.  Our dreams were different, too.  Some things were better.  Some things were worse.  To this day, I’m not sure which was better.”

The two of them reached the edge of the salvage yard and stopped.  Eric could see where the old drive used to be by the gap in the trees, but the brush and branches had crowded it until it was barely recognizable.  If he wasn’t careful, he could easily wander off the path and get lost forever.

“Off you go,” Edgar said.  “Might as well get on with it.”

Eric nodded.  He considered asking if he should expect to run into more creatures between here and the cathedral, but decided he was better off not knowing.  As long as he remained aware of the possibilities, he was as prepared as he was ever going to get.  “Thank you,” he said, but as he turned, he found that Edgar had already turned away and was walking back toward the salvage yard.  Like the others, he did not disappear.  He simply walked away like a man still of flesh and blood.  He lifted a hand in a silent wave.

Finally, Eric understood his apparent fondness for the cars.  They were just like him:  long forgotten.

Pulling the phone from his pocket, he snapped a picture of the old man, just to see what would happen.  He examined the picture and then watched as Edgar strolled off between the vehicles.

Turning away and pushing into the brush that had overrun the driveway, Eric wondered if he, too, would eventually become one of these many forgotten things.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Eric had only walked about a hundred paces beyond the edge of the salvage yard when his cell phone rang again.  It was Paul.

“How’s the standoff?”

“Over,” replied Paul.  “Stupid thing ran off as soon as it heard Kevin’s truck.”

“Anticlimactic.”

“No shit.  It would’ve been nice if it’d stuck around long enough to make it look like I wasn’t just imagining the damn thing.”

“You got pictures at least.”

“I did…  But pictures can be faked.  I would’ve rather had Kevin run the little freak over.  Then I’d have real proof.”

“Someone would’ve argued that it must be endangered.  Then there’d be hell to pay.”

“I guess.  But it bit me!  How do I know I don’t have rabies or something?”

“I don’t think it was rabid.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I’m pretty certain.”

“Fine.  Can’t believe I wasted almost my whole day sweating in a stupid cabin.”

“Well I told you not to go.”

“I think we already covered that.”

“Just making sure I made my point.”

“You made your point.”

“Good.”

“What about you?  Where are you?”

“Northern Minnesota, somewhere, I think.”  Technically, he was most likely still in Northwestern Wisconsin, since he’d only just left Edgar behind.  But at any moment he could jump forward.

“Damn, you’re moving.”

“I know.”

“Do you know how much farther you have left to go?”

“I should be arriving at the cathedral soon…”

“Then what?”

“No idea.  I’m flying by the seat of my pants here.”

“You’re doing considerably better than I did.”

“Well, I was chosen for this.”

“Oh aren’t you special.”

“Apparently I am.”

“Right.”

Eric grinned.  “I’ll probably be something of a legend around here…  You’ll be the dumb brother who got chased by a mutant baby rhino.”

“Nice.”

“Over time it’ll probably evolve, like legends do.  I’ll be all buff and manly, spouting cool one-liners as I battle all the monsters with my bare hands.  Instead of a cabin, you’ll be hiding in a tree.  Crying.  It’ll make a great bedtime story.”

Paul chuckled.  “That sounds like just my luck.”