Once Charlie had taken Justin out of his dream and into the tunnel, there was no longer any danger.
Joy dusted herself off, and went off to helm Bonny’s Revenge up to the sun that Charlie had gone through.
Suzy and I get up slowly from the deck. I can’t help but notice that Joy doesn’t try and help us and doesn’t check up on us. Maybe she assumes we’re okay?
“Suzy?” I ask, looking at her all disheveled and half panicked.
“I’m fine. I’m fine,” she straightens her clothes. “How are you?”
I feel a strange need to touch my chest and actually feel that I wasn’t hurt. “I think I’m okay. That was… That was really scary.”
“Is this how your adventures are?”
“Not at all. They’re usually controlled. Or Justin - and sometimes Charlie - protects us in other people’s dreams.” This time it was Justin’s absolute nightmare that attacked us and he had been unable to help or stop it. “We don’t go into nightmares. Joy certainly doesn’t.” That brings to mind a couple of times that Joy did step into nightmares, but I shove those aside.
“We’re here,” Joy announces. She runs past us and leaps onto the plank. Looking around, I see she docked the ship right outside the tunnel inside the sun, with the plank almost touching the entrance to the tunnel.
Inside Justin is lying on the ground of the small, round tunnel. He is shaking his head. Charlie is standing next to him, concerned.
“Dad!” Joy berates Justin. “What were those things? Is that something you saw or did you imagine them?”
Justin keeps shaking his head. “I don’t know. I think I saw them, but I can’t remember.”
“Well, think, Dad, think!” she yells at him.
Justin gives her a look - a daughter yelling orders at her father like that, after all, is not acceptable. Then he does what she says. He tries to think. He grimaces in pain, then vanishes.
“Oh, man!” Joy half whines in disappointment, using a phrase she learned in one of the dreams. Then, suddenly, she straightens in alert. “Oh, shoot! Master Mind, he can appear any second! Get grandma and grampa into the tunnel!”
That is fast thinking on her part. Master Mind lifts me in one hand and Suzy in another and jumps onto the wobbling plank. My head is turned down, and I can see the ocean kilometers below me. I get woozy and close my eyes, trusting my son’s robot killer and the paper heart Joy had given him to carry me safely to the tunnel.
I hear Suzy groan. This is not our lives.
Once we’re in, Master Mind lets us go.
We all stand there uncomfortably in a small space.
“All right,” Joy says. Everyone looks at her. She’s the boss. “This is our new base for a few days until Dad calms down. We’ll be here for three of his nights just in case he appears with demons. Okay?”
Suzy looks at me. “Uh… do you mean this is where we spend the days and the nights?”
Joy nods.
Suzy looks around. There’s no place to sit or to rest comfortably. But she doesn’t say that Joy is wrong. No one is. Joy is absolutely right.
This is going to be our ‘base’ for the next few days.
(To be continued…)
—Told by Grampa Walt