Room for One More
It wasn't a dream.
At least, he didn't think it was a dream, he didn't think he was asleep. And it was definitely not one of those dreams, the Sentinel dreams - they were all blue-tinged, almost soundless jungle, this was black-edged, filled with the oddly insistent sound of static and rain, and in his own home.
No, not a dream.
After what seemed like an age of watching nothing on TV - quite literally nothing, just static and snow, but for some reason he didn't feel like turning it off - Ellison heard the sound of a vehicle in the road drawing up outside, an rumbling, heavily backfiring vehicle, overloud and echoing dully through the driving rain.
That was Cascade for you, at least seven kinds of rain. Odd that he didn't recognise this one though; with Sentinel hearing, he could usually recognise another forty-three without even trying.
He stepped out onto the balcony, vaguely surprised that it wasn't wet, and looked down on the darkened, rain-slicked road below and the hearse that had stopped outside the front door. Very old, maybe late 60s, and very big, it sat and idled, the sound harsh and hollow, as if it was waiting for something or someone.
Bit odd, he thought, at this time of night.
There were people inside - through the murky light and murkier windscreens, he could see them as clearly as by day and close up, but for him that was normal enough.
What wasn't normal was the way they were all packed in, huddled and crammed against each other like a peak hour passenger train, or the way they all stared fixedly towards the door of his building. And what was even less normal was that they were all naked, or swathed in old, frayed sheeting... that was none of his business, of course, but not normal, no.
He saw a small, dim figure emerge from the door below, and head for the hearse - Sandburg? What the hell, he wondered, was Sandburg doing out there and what the hell was he wrapped in? It looked like more sheeting, or sheets, the same sheets from the bed Blair had been sleeping in just... how long ago? Not that long ago, Jim was pretty sure of that.
He leaned over the balcony to yell at his friend to come in and get dressed for gods sake, and every one of those people in the hearse instantly turned that fixed gaze upward to him.
The window nearest the sidewalk slid down and the driver leaned out, waving one bony hand at Blair to hurry. In the dim light, the Sentinel could see the weirdo clearly - his rough, pasty skin, his thin, almost lipless mouth and his pale, almost white eyes.
"Room for one more!" The voice was harsh, like the screech of corroded metal, on Jim's ears, and he flinched back a little, not quite knowing why. It was just a damned hearse in the road in the middle of the night, after all.
Blair looked up, his own eyes hollows pools of darkness in the shadowy street light, and half-raised a hand in weak farewell... and that was when the hearse full of people, the driver, and Blair all vanished and Jim stared down at a dark and empty street for a minute before sitting up in bed and realising that yes, it was a dream.
Just not the usual, Sentinel sort of dream.
By the third night he had the same not-the-usual-Sentinel-sort-of-dream, he was ready to scream. Or hit someone. Or maybe - just maybe - tell Sandburg about it.
~oOo~
"Man, you are so grouchy this week, what is with you?"
Jim really liked to think that he'd covered it fairly well - after all, the Sentinel of the Great City was hardly one to be spooked - or goaded into grouchiness - by a damn dream, was he? Yeah, he prided himself on acting normal, just like always, not letting even the vaguest hint of disquiet show...
"I'm warning you, man, everyone's sick of walking on eggshells. And if you don't cool it, I've got this old Sandburg herbal remedy -"
"Everything's. Fine." He gritted his teeth at the look Blair gave him.
"Yeah, sure. As I was saying, this old remedy for chronic temper - or is it chronic constipation? - anyway, it's from Naomi's Great-Aunt Reba and I'm telling you, it will cure anything short of decapitation just from the smell. You don't either cheer up or fess up, man, and I'm siccing Great-Aunt Reba's nerve tonic on you... with Simon's blessing, I might add." Despite the rant, Blair was definitely concerned. "D'you think it's the rain? Not that that usually gets to you, I know - living in this sodden city, you have to get used to it - but maybe it's a new Sentinel thing -"
Jim cringed - even though there was no one in hearing distance (well, normal hearing), he wished Sandburg wouldn't say things like that in public. All too often, the public he didn't want hearing about 'Sentinel things' included Jim himself, something his pet genius would never quite grasp.
"Chief," he growled in the usual warning, which he knew Blair would ignore in the usual way, "there is nothing wrong with me. I am fine, you are fine, everything is damn well fine. Now I need -" an excuse to take off for a few minutes and fix his normal act, "- a word with Joel, you go ahead and I'll meet you down at the lobby."
"So okay, suit yourself," Blair blew out an exasperated breath, and hit the button for the ground floor. "But between you and me, Jim -? Your idea of fine officially sucks."
The elevator doors slid open.
It was packed, of course. Typical. Jim made a note to take the stairs down - that that would give him more minutes to work on that 'normal' bit - and half-turned away, even as Blair took one look and stepped back, saying, "Oh man, I think I'll tag along with -"
"There is room," a harsh voice like the screech of old metal spoke up, and Jim's head whipped round. "Room for one more!"
"Uhh... thanks, but -"
Jim stared at the waxen face, lipless mouth and pale eyes of the weirdo at the front of the pack. Vaguely, he was aware of the other faces, vaguely familiar and yet not... and their fixed oddly hungry gaze.
Fixed on Sandburg.
His hand shot out and curled around Blair's arm. "On second thoughts -" he heard himself say, "- you'd better come with me."
Blair stared down at the hand, then at the people in the elevator. "Uhh... okay." He gave them all a small, feeble wave of goodbye, or maybe apology, and stepped (or was dragged, Jim wasn't taking chances) back as the doors slid shut.
"Man, that was -"
"Let's take the stairs," Jim said, herding his partner away.
"Uhh, Jim." Blair tried to pull his arm free, and winced; Jim tried to loosen up his grip, failed to convinced his hand to do so, and kept moving towards the stairwell. "Jim, you are going to explain what just happened... aren't you?"
"Nothing to explain, Darwin." He thought he saw Great-Aunt Reba's nerve tonic in Blair's rather less than friendly glare, and softened his stance a bit. "I just don't think you and elevators are always a good match."
"That was so last year, man. You think it's gonna do something weird like break down, or fall, or catch fire, or -"
"Chief." He couldn't help himself, he put a hand over Sandburg's mouth. "Indulge me. Let's just go home, okay?"
Blair frowned, and yanked the hand away. "I thought you said you needed to talk -"
Jim sighed, and slapped the hand back, reducing what he knew would be endless argument to muffled muttering. "Let's. Go. Home."
~oOo~
If he was waiting to hear something... he kept waiting.
Something inside Jim scoffed at the idea that that elevator would - somehow - get Blair killed. Something inside Jim insisted that omens - or foretelling - or ghosts - or astral planes, damn it - were not real, no matter how often and how disastrously they erupted into his life.
But something else inside, the Sentinel side of him, was waiting to hear a crash, or an alarm, or something all the way down seven flights to the lobby. That something would not be denied.
Jim only hoped that something would have an explanation for Sandburg as they came out and saw the milling crowd heading for the front doors. Some of the people from the elevator, who now looked aggravatingly ordinary and sane and not staring or even slightly interested in Sandburg, were among the crowd.
Jim had a feeling that he'd been a fool - only in front of Blair, true, and Blair got to see him being a fool all too often to be surprised. But there was going to be a reckoning, he could see that in his partner's eyes. And that begged the question of which would be worse, telling Sandburg about the dream (which was unthinkable and impossible and all too embarrassing to think about) and dealing with the questions, the guesswork, the 'Sentinel things', the tests and with his luck, the nerve tonic... or trying to distract Sandburg with something, anything, even though anything short of an earthquake, serial murderer or pretty woman had never worked yet. And to be honest, neither did earthquakes or serial murderers.
The crowd thinned as they headed for the door, Blair still muttering (though, reluctantly, Jim had removed the hand when they'd reached the door from the stairwell - people talked enough about them as it was), Jim still on edge, still looking around.
There was nothing to see, though. The people were just average, everyday people. They were fine.
The elevator was fine.
Sandburg was fine.
And that weirdo, the driver, the man at the front of the elevator, he was gone.
~oOo~
Jim slept like a baby that night, and if he dreamed at all, he didn't recall it.
~oOo~
"See the papers, man?"
For a wonder, Sandburg had made it up earlier than he had - used all the hot water too - and was busy with breakfast when he came down.
"That's really weird, you know? I mean, I know we're there every day, so if anyone was to happen we'd know about it. Usually in it. This time, we missed it all by what, ten, fifteen minutes?" Blair poured the coffee, rambling on, and put the cup and the newspaper on the table. "Simon will think you're losing your touch, but personally I am so willing to miss things like this..."
He looked over at his Sentinel, pausing and holding up a buttery knife. "You okay, Jim? You look pale, man; I didn't mean it about Great-Aunt Reba's tonic, honest, but if you need something I do have another old family recipe... Jim, what's wrong?"
Jim was simply staring at the headline - DEATH COMES TO PD'S DOOR - and the picture of the vintage hearse that had crashed into the parking bays at the front of their building, smashing the place up, wrecking several cars, injuring a dozen people... killing just one.
And a picture - an old, indistinct but to Sentinel eyes unmistakable - picture of the white-eyed weirdo who had died.
-the end-