ellie's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Ellie was twenty-one years old and she had not slept in three nights, because the thing under her bed was learning her name. It had followed her out of a dream on Sunday. She had felt it come, a cold weight pressed against her back as she opened her eyes. Since then it had thickened. Last night it took the shape of a man in the corner of her room and did not move when she turned on the light. She knew what it wanted. She had known since the market, since the stranger with no sign and no portfolio bent over her arm and inked the dream catcher into her skin without asking a single question. He had told her only one thing before she stood up. He said, You are going to guard people. He said, They are coming for the sleepers first. She had walked home with a bandage on her arm and a job she had not applied for, and now the first of them was in her apartment, and if she closed her eyes tonight it would pull her down into the dark and keep her. At sundown she went to the alien bar three blocks from her building because she had heard, from a girl at work who talked too much, that things went there that could not go anywhere else. The place hummed. Neon ran along the ribs of the dome. Inside, a boy sat alone at the counter, human-shaped, blue-skinned under the lights, drinking something that steamed. Ellie showed him her arm. She said, I need help tonight or I am not going to wake up. He looked at the tattoo for a long second. He said, Yeah. That's real. He said, Sit down. His name, he told her, was Outlast, and he was not supposed to be on this planet. He said he owed nobody any favors, but he liked her odds less than his own, which was saying something. From a bag at his feet he took a woven ring strung with glowing charms and cold beads that shifted color when she touched them. He said, Hang it over your bed. He whistled once, low. Two dark birds slipped through the open door and landed on the counter, trailing a fine pale dust from their wings. He said, They'll sit with you. The dust keeps the dreaming clean. He said, Don't thank me. I'm going to want something back. She hung the ring above her pillow that night and the birds perched on her headboard and folded their wings. The shadow in the corner thinned. It pulled at the edges of the ring and could not get through. Ellie slept, and in her sleep she saw a wide dark country full of sleeping strangers, and she understood, without being told, that she was standing watch. When she woke, the shadow was gone, the ring was warm, and Outlast was sitting in her kitchen, waiting to collect.