Chapter Twenty-Six

The meeting was planned for, Karl and Chris met one another at Krieger’s front door. They looked at one another without saying anything. He had known her to be a little on the unhinged side since she and Vince broke off their short-lived relationship. She looked at him behind piercing eyes. She always felt it was Karl’s doing that eventually ended the relationship.

At last Krieger opened the door and let them inside his house. He led them to his office in the back, past the kitchen.

He took his chair behind his desk while the other two took chairs opposite his. They seemed to have a similar fixed gaze on the black telephone sitting at the corner on the desk next to his computer.

No one said a single word to one another until the phone rang ten minutes later. Krieger jumped and grabbed the receiver. “Hello? Yes, I’m going to put you on speaker,” he announced and pressed a button on the phone and hung the receiver back up.

“Karl? Chris? You guys there?”

“Yeah, Vince. We’re both here. What’s up?” Karl called out to his friend.

“I’m going to be brief; there are Dreamkillers coming your way. I don’t know how many. But I believe the three of you can destroy these sons of bitches. You can send them back to hell.”

Krieger was studying their faces. He was curious to know how they would receive this news. They must have talked before now because neither Karl nor Chris seemed at all surprised at the news. “You do know what you’re asking?”

Vince was surprised that Krieger was the one to put up this point. He had expected it from Karl. “Yes. This is an urgent matter. I don’t think they’re strong enough yet.”

Krieger slammed his fist down on the desk. “They’ve already been killing, damnit!”

“What? How? How do you know?” Vince did not see this one coming.

“I can read. I’ve been tracking murders all across America and until last night, only one other man died in his sleep. Three people last night were slaughtered in their sleep.”

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Vince paused; he had not heard of this. Maybe if he had read the newspapers this morning and caught up on current affairs, perhaps he would have been able to spot this. “I didn’t know.”

Everyone was surprised when Chris spoke up. “These Dreamkillers, they like killing people, right? Well, if it’s us against them then I say so be it. If they’re out there and we know about it, we need to do something about it.”

“There’s more to it than that, Chris,” Vince said and Krieger nodded. “Samantha must be protected at all costs. She is to bear humanity’s protector. Like it or not, our fight is as protector to Samantha.”

“Why? Why her?” asked Chris. She didn’t understand anything of the prophecies, and it didn’t look like she was about to be filled in right now.

“God chose her. Only he knows why.”

There came a longer pause as Karl studied Krieger and Chris. He wasn’t sure if he bought any part of this ludicrous story. Sure, he witnessed first hand how Mykella had entered his dream and tried to have sex with him. He believed in the will to travel within the dream world, but he wasn’t too sure of the existence of demons called Dreamkillers.

Krieger looked at him and could easily read his face and he nodded. “Let me say this to you, Karl,” he said and Karl looked up from his thoughts. “I knew of the race of Dreamkillers long before I taught this class. It was my passion to prove their existence. I asked my class to write a paper on whether or not they were real and why so or why not. I was amazed that no one thought they were real. Then Vincent came to me with this story of Orion and I knew I was right – here was the proof I needed.”

Karl shook his head disapprovingly. “You haven’t even seen this Orion in the flesh. How can you say he exists? For all you know, Vince could be Orion.”

Krieger smiled at what Karl had said. “Son, do you believe in God?”

“Yeah. So?” Karl was getting irritated with this conversation.

“If you haven’t seen or touched God, how can you say he’s real?”

Chris smiled as she watched the two of them stare at one another.

“Because I believe in him,” said Karl.

Krieger nodded. “And I believe in Vincent.”

Another pause filled the room; along with a cold chill emanating from the two men as they stared each other down.

“Excuse me, guys, but this call is costing me money here – and a lot of it,” said Vince from hundreds of miles away.

“All right, Vince. I guess. Don’t ask me to sacrifice myself for these two, though,” announced Karl and Krieger smiled.

“You already have, my friend. I owe you all my life.”