31

Disturbances

"There had been a slight earthquake tremor the night before, the most considerable felt in New England for some years; and Wilcox's imagination had been keenly affected." – H. P. Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu"

With a sort of half reluctance, Yuki opened her eyes, glanced at the clock on the bedside table, and groaned. The past few nights had not been restful ones, and it seemed as though tonight would be no different. It was about three in the morning. In several more hours she would have to be up and in front of her students. They were nice enough kids, sure, but tiring to deal with – and the last thing she needed was more tiring.

The memory of the last dream faded entirely in the few moments she spent contemplating the coming day. Something about a war, and a tall tower… Well, it was gone, anyway. She suspected it was these weird dreams that were causing her insomnia, but she didn't know what had caused them. She had never been a very active dreamer before, or a very imaginative person in any respect. They seemed like bad dreams – "seemed" because she could never remember much about them when she awoke, just a sense of oppression and worry.

Yuki started to drift off again before half an hour had passed. But something kept her from falling asleep entirely. There was a faint tapping sound somewhere, as if someone were knocking gently on a window. Wearily, she wondered if it was just her imagination. Whatever it was, it stopped after a while.

She was fading… fading… maybe into another dream, but at least there was some sleep in it for her. Just give me a few more minutes, Mom.

A voice spoke. It was a friendly, non-threatening voice, with only a little rasp to mar its pleasantness.

"I'm so sorry to bother you, miss. But I have a proposition for you, and the door was unlocked."

Yuki opened her eyes, unsure if she had really heard anything. Strange men don't simply walk into your apartment at night, at least not with an apology and a "proposition."

"I was just passing by," the voice continued, "and thought I detected a soul in need of some assistance."

Yuki couldn't see much, since it was late and her curtains were drawn. She could, however, make out an odd silhouette. Could the guy be cosplaying? The outline of his clothes was strange, especially with the huge, flaring collar, like something you'd expect to see in medieval Europe. Maybe this was just a dream.

"I won't take up much of your time," the man said. "I know you're so very, very tired."

Very tired.

"In fact, that's why I'm here. You see, no one knows a surer way to secure good rest than I do. It can be yours immediately, by way of special bargain."

It sounded tempting, it really did, but even through the tiredness of her body and the growing fog in her brain, Yuki remained skeptical. It didn't seem to her like the guy was lying; in that somnolent moment his suggestion seemed perfectly realistic and logical. But what did he expect in return? As if she had spoken aloud, he answered her question.

"I just want one little tiny thing. Insignificant, really. You'll never know that it's gone. I guarantee it! If I could just see your wrist for a moment we can make the exchange without any more delay…"

Of course. That was all. Just something small and useless for instant relief. Slowly her arm slid out from under her sheets.

"Oh, don't go to any trouble, miss! I'll take care of everything." He bent forward, and gently took hold of her forearm with his gloved left hand. His other hand hovered a moment over the exposed wrist, then descended and used a finger to scrawl something across her arm, leaving a thin trail of blood behind. Yuki felt nothing. Her eyes were closed, and with each passing moment the world was fading farther into the distance. Was it always this dark? she wondered, and then had faded away entirely.

Her visitor stood at her bedside for a few more seconds. With both hands he clasped the woman's arm, and ghostly purple light swirled in phantom coils up his arms and soaked into his body. When the light faded, he left the apartment the way he had entered, stepping out of the door to the balcony, and floating over the railing into the windy dark.

For the first time in four nights, Hikari did not dream of the dark-voiced man, nor did she see the rotting town on the beach. She was as alone as ever, and did not recognize her surroundings as any place she had ever been, dreamed, or heard of. Black stone rose all around her in the shape of spires and walls and crazily-angled battlements. The tops of many structures were entirely invisible in the gray, cloudy, sunless sky of the Dark World.

As at the ancient sea town, the air was heavy with the reek of dead sea creatures, though Hikari saw no corpse in the empty streets. Maybe she had misidentified it? There was an odd quality to it – an underlying, barely detectable, alien scent hidden under the more mundane stench.

The whole place was… offensive. Offensive to smell, sight, and feel. Staring too long at the architecture made her dizzy. She couldn't always tell if a particular angle of stone was convex or concave. It felt as though the scene might shift into something else at any moment – if she turned away from them the structures might spin or elongate or silently collapse in on themselves. Everything was covered in moisture, too. There were droplets on the walls, and water like slime squelched beneath her bare feet as she walked.

KUTOURUU

A sound suddenly thundered into her mind, something that seemed to bypass her ears entirely. It was so shocking that she let out a gasp, but couldn't hear it over the mental explosion. The sound was a word – it had syllables – but it was meaningless, and that made it all the more terrifying. It was followed swiftly by another half-sound, this one different, still unrecognized, just as horrible.

Hikari clapped her hands to her ears and continued forward, not knowing how she expected to escape. For a minute there was silence. Then the sound-impacts were repeated. This kept up as the girl moved blindly forward. She could hear them, and recognize them, but not make sense of them. KUTOURUU. FUTAGUN. Over and over. Any moment she expected her brain to explode as one of those gigantic sounds shot through it.

She took another step – and there was nothing beneath her toes. What had looked like a flat plaza was a chasm, a drop into empty space bounded by dark stone. KUTOURUU. Her heel slipped from under her. FUTAGUN. Her arms flew up as her other foot lost traction, treacherously sliding on the nameless liquid that coated every surface. She was falling, but that wasn't half as bad as the sounds. KUTOURUU! FUTAGUN! They would shake her to pieces!

"Hikari, wake up!"

Tailmon's voice brought the girl back into the waking world, but the shaking continued unabated. An earthquake was in progress. The apartment building seemed to sway, the confusion of the dream carrying over into conscious reality. Her heart racing, Hikari kept an arm around Tailmon for several minutes until the tremor ended.

It doesn't mean anything, she told herself. The Digital World's recent strange seismic activity had come instantly to her mind. Earthquakes happen all the time in our world. So do dreams. But this was different, and she knew it. There was meaning here. She and her friends would have to find it, before the two worlds were torn asunder.

Hiraga Ayaki also felt the quake. It was a fairly weak one – couldn't be over shindo four – but he was a light sleeper, and the tremor cut right through his dreamless sleep. He really shouldn't have been sleeping on the job in the first place, but he hadn't gotten much rest recently, nightmares or no.

"Don't worry about it, Hiraga-san," said a cordial voice. "You're only human."

Hiraga turned about quickly in his chair and saw the speaker, Sato's "Dark Man," standing in the room's entranceway.

"Good vibrations!" the man quipped, saying the phrase in English with an American accent as flawless as his Japanese one. Hiraga hadn't seen much of the Dark Man, but every time they met his mind always returned to that first question, Where is he from? He's not Middle Eastern, or Western, or Japanese. I wouldn't be surprised to see him painted on the wall of a pharaoh's tomb. "A very successful night," the Dark Man continued in Japanese. "Wouldn't you agree? Calls to emergency services keep pouring in."

"I apologize… I'm sorry – I don't think I ever heard your name?"

"You didn't," replied the other cheerfully. "And there's no need to apologize. Less than an hour ago I was sleeping myself, having a most amusing dream."

Hiraga nodded, then asked, "Will the Digimon be returning at dawn?"

"You mean you forgot to tell them?" the Dark Man asked in mock horror. He laughed as Hiraga's expression changed. "Don't apologize for that, either. They'll be back as soon as they run out of energy. After they get going they'll be hard to stop until they've had their fill."

Hiraga said nothing, just nodded again, dumbly.

"Keep up the good work," the Dark Man said with a trace of irony, then turned and walked out of the room.

Hiraga faced the monitor again. He knew he was lucky to have escaped without reprimand, but the brief encounter stuck with him for a long time, as every meeting with the Dark Man did. The room seemed to be somewhat colder for a few minutes afterwards, but that was probably just his imagination.

In several more hours, the sun had risen, bringing welcome light to a weary city. The authorities had had a busy night, and once the civilians had risen and heard the news – more murders and arsons throughout the dark hours than Tokyo had ever seen in one twenty-four-hour period – a wave of unease and fear swept through each and every one of them.

And there were even stranger things – people who had rotted away in minutes without apparent cause, and, as the day drew on, discoveries of brain-dead people lost in inexplicable comas. There had been electrocutions and shootings and stabbings, and accounts continued to pour in of monstrous beings seen by terrified witnesses. The monsters of the previous year were brought up often, those things called Digimon that had nearly brought the world to utter destruction.

As might be expected, those who felt the new fear most strongly were the Chosen Children. One by one they awakened from disturbing night visions to find that the horrors they had been facing over the past few days had finally manifested themselves in the human world. If any of them doubted it, their worst suspicions were soon confirmed by Ken and Wormmon, who had seen a winged, demonic thing fly from a burning building, and just barely managed to save a man's life.

All eleven of them rushed through their morning preparations and prepared to meet and discuss the situation. A call was put through to Mimi in the United States, and she promised to return to Japan as soon as she could manage. Jou, Yamato, Taichi, and Sora shook off their nightmares with difficulty, and the Chosen Children converged on Izumi Koshiro's apartment.