Oneiromancer Read online

the window rolls down.

  “Hello my friend. I’m Angelo and welcome to Remote View. You are looking for us aren’t you? I can feel you are, but I need your invitation.”

  “Here you go Angelo,” he says and pulls the invitation out of his shirt pocket. He bites his lower lip to repress his laughter.

  “All is well. The gate will open and I know you will find what you seek. Pull up to the front and the valet will park your car. See you for comestibles.”

  The car creeps forward under the rising gate and Peter snickers, “Bozo is some super-psychic.”

  The sedan comes to a halt in front of the transparent dormitory, a structure made of pure glass. Peter looks right through the building to a cornfield as he gets out and grabs his bag from the back seat. To his left in a dirt parking lot, luxury cars and one run down hippie school bus sit under the autumn sun. Dry leaves tumble end over end in the growing breeze across the access road.

  Peter looks over the hood of his car and sees a red valet’s vest hanging over the thick trunk of a little man with thick legs and thick arms. A smoldering cigar rolls between his lips as he spins a black cane. The little man walks around Peter’s car with determined steps. He tosses the cigar nub at Peter’s feet and he sizes Peter up and down.

  “Your aura is all broken. You should have a cleansing,” the little mans says and hands Peter a ticket stub.

  “Okay,” Peter says.

  The little man hops in his car, pulls the door closed and his head rises into view through the window as the seat adjusts. With a quick twist of his head, the little man looks at Peter, winks and jams his cane onto the gas pedal and tears off down to the end of the lot.

  The door chimes as Peter walks into the lobby. He puts down his bag before a thin aluminum desk. A bald woman sitting behind looks up with a blank stare and she says nothing. He hands her his invitation and she places a key on the counter with a tag that reads 3E1. A twiggy finger points to a scroll on the counter next to a quill sitting in an inkwell. Ink blots drip across the page as Peter signs in. Under a sign to the stairs, an albino man gets up off a fold-out chair and heads towards Peter. He grabs Peter’s bag, nods, and disappears into a stairwell.

  “Okay,” Peter says.

  Through the front door a young man comes in scratching his Billy-goat beard.

  “I’ll take you to your room,” the young man says and puts on earphones.

  The transparent door to Peter’s chamber is open. There are no locks. The scent of dry cleaner’s starch greets him at the threshold. The kid coughs and Peter slips him a ten. A syllabus, a map and a white laptop are stacked on a single bed draped in white linen. His bag sits on the opaque floor where Peter sees people moving below the frosted tiles. The kid takes off his earphones and walks away. Peter pulls out his phone and turns it off.

  “No phone contact is going to suck but if I can spend a week camping out with eco-warriors when I wrote my thesis, then staying in an invisible hotel shouldn’t be a problem,” Peters says and thinks the toilets won’t be fun.

  “Orientation begins with dinner,” echoes through the dorm’s intercom.

  Men in tunics and toga clad women fill the cafeteria christened Messiah’s Hall. Peter slips into line, gets a salad and discovers an empty picnic table near the exit. As he begins to eat, his eyes are violated by a flash of intense sky blue. Angelo waddles toward the table.

  “May I join you brother?”

  Peter wants to say no but the Venetian mask smile distracts him.

  “Certainly.”

  “Most gracious of you. I introduced myself before, what might your name be? I’m sorry but I just glanced at the invitation.”

  “Uh, Peter.”

  “What contact with the spirits brings you here? Are you here to develop or refine your techniques?”

  “Develop. I received a message in my dreams.”

  “That is where it all starts my brother.”

  …

  Eyes open, Peter attends seminars on the occult and interviews the so-called experts but finds no evidence of intentional fraud among the psychics. They believe what they do. Taking lunches with Angelos, Peter leads the conversation always pressing for information but it comes back the same story about when Angelos met angels and changed his name. Now only three days remain and then Remote View Ranch will be closed to all but a few elites.

  Before dawn, a skein of ravens land on the roof above Peter. His eyes crack open and he sees the birds hopping along the skylight roof. Their talons clack and tap like a steel brush scattering on a snare drum. A volley of caws sends them into the brisk morning sky leaving behind streams of liquid feces that drool down the roof.

  “Gross.”

  Peter prepares for his first class, wrestles on his shirt, and picks the crust out of his eyes. Dawn penetrates the glass dormitory spreading rainbows along the halls. He makes his way by people meditating outside their doors and grabs the handrail as he descends the stairs to the first floor where he passes by the gymnasium filled with nudists in the downward dog yoga pose. The Crystal Theatre’s door is open and Peter sees Angelos on the stage. He stacks his notes on video game divination on the podium with a smile. Peter sits in a fold out chair.

  The crowd grows until the lecture begins and Peter thinks he wasted his time. The scent of vanilla from a familiar perfume surrounds him a few minutes into the class. The lecture is replete with angelic references and technical code.

  “…electronic devices are susceptible to outside electro-magnetic fields so the spirits can encode video games with messages,” Angelos says into the microphone.

  Peter rubs his temples with his finger tips and is tapped from behind.

  “I suspected you came here after I read Mardi’s new assignment memo,” a female voice says. Peter knows the voice.

  He twists at the waist and says, “Gloria what are you doing here?”

  His statuesque boss looks at him with a tilted chin. Her tailored black suit accents her curves.

  “I’m here to see Kasey Wells, but I assume that’s not why you are.”

  “Kasey Wells? She’s the founder of the Arcanum Group. They run this place. I don’t think she’s here,” Peter says.

  “She is. Quiet, I want to listen to this. We’ll talk when it’s over.”

  Angelos ends his lecture to a round of applause and the class begins an orderly exist but Peter remains seated.

  “How do you know Kasey Wells?” he asks and twists around.

  “She advised me to stop modeling and pay back the world for the gifts I received. She told me I would be a part of a story that would change the world so I bought the paper. I think that’s why you are here now.”

  Hot blood bloats his veins.

  “I will report the truth.”

  “Of course, I’ll introduce you to Kasey tomorrow but now I have an audience with the Professor of Clairaudience. Tomorrow at lunch, find me.”

  “Thank you Gloria.”

  Eureka he thinks as she leaves. Angelos approaches in his guacamole colored jumpsuit.

  “I see you have met our most glorious sponsor,” Angelos says.

  “Really? She’s my boss.”

  “How the stars have aligned! She’s the reason the Remote View Ranch opened. Comestibles today?”

  “Sure. This is personal but I have to ask, what with the smile?” Peter asks.

  “The angels told me to bring a smile to everyone I met, everyday, and then by the Graces I found the money to make it come true. I never thought cosmetic surgery would be so painful.”

  …

  Eyes open, Peter rises from dozing off in bed and the reflection of the full moon has filled the building with a powdery gray light.

  “Who are you?”

  “Not this again. Where are you?”

  “Here.”

  A swirling purple vortex appears, Peter recoils and the photonegative Thought Rider steps out.

  “You changed,” the Thought Rider says.
/>   “What?”

  “You reacted to the vortex. That means soon you can be a conduit. Your thoughts are beginning to vibrate at the frequency that allows the gateway to open. You must stop. You do not want to be a conduit.”

  “I’m confused. What the hell does that mean?”

  “I have studied your realm for eons and you are my final hope. These people who call themselves psychics are not talking to the dead. They are a conduit to my dimension where energy from human consciousness is extracted by using a telepathic connection.”

  “You’re not a spirit?”

  “No, a scientist who helped to create an awful device that will destroy your people. One of us has illegally passed through the dimensional gateway and inhabited a human. This possession, as you might call it, was perpetrated by a radical scientist who is addicted to your people’s energy and wants to keep the gateway open. You must help me.”

  “What?”

  “My people exist in a dimension very close to yours in Hyperspace. It parallels your in many ways but has slightly different laws of physics. My people are like humans but thousands of years ahead technologically. Five thousand years ago an accident eliminated our means of energy production. A few scientists, including myself, found that if we opened a gateway to your dimension, we could siphon energy from your dimension until a new source was found in ours. But, my people became addicted to this energy and soon our interference will damage humanity’s capacity to evolve. Your race in fact is devolving as your mental energy is depleted.”

  “What does this have to do with psychics?”

  “Human thought emissions, modulated properly, can be extracted and pulled through the