Ruins of Dreams

By C.L. Bevill

On one day everything was normal. The next morning billions of people had vanished, and new magical creatures had appeared, altering not only the Earth but everyone who woke up on that one day. Lulu survived the change, only to encounter far worse situations than she'd ever known before. Two years after a sea of dreams transformed everything, Lulu searches for "tech bubbles," places where technology is still operational, and consequently useful to the survivors. What she discovers is that not all weapons from the past are nonfunctioning, and that the past is never truly dead. She will fight to save the new world and everyone she's come to love.
Discovering her own powers, Lulu is on a frantic journey to recover items that will shut down a doomsday device. Nothing will ever be as easy as snapping one's fingers as she encounters new animals, new people on a weird purple world, and who her enemies really are.

Ruins of Dreams is the fourth novel in the Dreams series. The order is Sea of Dreams, Mountains of Dreams, Forests of Dreams, and Ruins of Dreams.

• Language: English
• Publisher: C.L. Bevill
• Release date: Feb 17, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370901470

C.L. Bevill

C.L. Bevill is the author of several books including Bubba and the Dead Woman, Bubba and the 12 Deadly Days of Christmas, Bubba and the Missing Woman, Bayou Moon, The Flight of the Scarlet Tanager, Veiled Eyes, Disembodied Bones, and Shadow People. She is currently at work on her latest literary masterpiece.

Book preview

Chapter 1

Lulu in a Purple World

The Present – The Purple World

The dark grove hadn’t brought me here.

I had.

Then one of the three men who was with me— I think it was Westin— hit me and darkness instantly plummeted.

* * *

Gradual consciousness resumed with the acknowledgement of pain. I catalogued it with irate humor. There was pain in the side of my head where one of them had slugged me. There was pain in my shoulder where I’d been hit with an arrow. My thigh was a throb of pain, aggravated from where I had gotten impaled with a stake in a pit trap in front of Cheyenne Jr. There was also a varied and accumulated set of aches and pains that had resulted from being manhandled and from riding hard for days before I had come to the dark grove. Pain, pain, pain, and some more pains abounding. However, and the however was very interesting indeed, it wasn’t as bad as I imagined it should have been.

I accepted that I was lying on my back, and my head was resting on something comfortable. I immediately thought of Landers providing a lap, and my mind reached out to him. Landers? Little help here? Maybe just an angry rejoinder?

Nothing answered me, and I was inordinately disappointed. Maybe later.

What I did hear was the crackling of a nearby fire burning. The air felt chilled on my right, and I realized I was stretched out beside the fire so that it was warming my left side. I didn’t have a strong urge to open my eyes and see the purple world again. I didn’t want to see anything but Landers, the firefly pixies, and a dozen other people and new animals I’d left behind when I’d crossed through the black door. Mostly, I wanted to see Theo’s head on a pike, well, maybe on a metaphorical pike, and the threat of Cheyenne Jr. eliminated. Peace and calm in the world again, yea.

More knowledge stomped into my brain wearing steel-tipped, Frankenstein-sized boots and helped me out. The black door. That was me. No longer was I in the proverbial dark about what my power was; it was a handy-dandy door that I could pass through. I had a way to get out. All I had to do is figure out how to call on it without enduring a panic attack. Furthermore, it seemed as though all I would have to do was envision the place I wanted to go, and that was where I would go. Didn’t that sound a little more than easy? Yes, it did sound easy. That fell into the category of if something was too good to be true, then it generally wasn’t true.

Of course, there were questions and questions and dozens more questions to be asked. Could I do it with someone else? Could I bring someone back with me? If I brought someone back from the purple world, would they immediately vanish when they were on Earth again? Would I end up unconscious again because of the trip? Could I learn how to control it easier? Was I portal master extreme? Would I be worshiped by a remote tribe of natives in remote New Guinea? Probably not the last one, but a girl could be hopeful.

As I stayed still and flat on my back, I became aware that I wasn’t alone.

How long is she going to be out? came a voice. I think it was Devin. He was one of the three men I’d encountered in the purple world. There was also Kane, who’d shot me with an arrow. Finally, there was Westin of the swinging fists, who seemed like the leader. They weren’t exactly surprised to see me, an isolated woman digging through ruins, but they had been surprised about the color of my skin. Simply put, I hadn’t absorbed the purple chemicals that saturated this place, and I was still pink and pale as I’d always been. (Sunblock still worked just fine, thank you very much.)

You know I don’t know, Westin said near my head. I hoped I wasn’t propped on his lap. I was a one-lap woman and that lap was on another planet at the moment. I was going to get that lap back, too. I wanted a shot with that lap. That was Lulu’s lap, plain and simple.

You shouldn’t hit women, Kane said. My mother would have burned you in your bed while you slept. She was badass. Man, I miss her chocolate chip pancakes.

She was freaking out, Westin said as if Kane hadn’t said anything. I don’t like doing that any more than you do. You know the Stone Guild takes care of their women. It wasn’t like we were going to kill her.

I would have blinked. It almost sounded like Westin was genuinely contrite about hitting me and about their plan to trade me for food.

There was a pause. Someone thumped something. It sounded like a fist inside the palm of their other hand. Does anyone want to talk about the big black hole that popped up? That was Devin again. We could call it the white elephant in the corner, but it was black, and it wasn’t in the corner.

You think she’s telling the truth? Kane asked.

You heard that traveler last week, Westin said. That woman who appeared near that little town talked about being in Earth Prime. Talked about magic things. Talked about mythical creatures. Talked about, what did she call them, bubbles where technology worked, in a world where tech no longer works.

Oh my God, I thought. I only knew of one woman who’d vanished lately, and I hadn’t said anything to these men about the lack of tech. Was her name Clora? I asked, opening my eyes and looking up at Westin.

Westin looked down at me. My head wasn’t resting on his lap, but on my backpack. He reclined against a nearby rock and poked at the fire with a stick. He didn’t look particularly surprised to hear my question. Clearly, he’d had an idea that I was awake and listening to them. What color is her hair? he asked slyly.

She’s a carrot top, I said. Orange as a grove in Florida.

And she’s missing something, Westin added. He was testing me.

A hand, I said. It’s not a pretty story.

Okay, so she knows this woman, Kane said, and I looked at him across the fire. He was a big man, too. At least six feet tall and broad in the shoulders. His hair had probably been black once. Now it was purplish black. It looked like he’d dyed it, so he could be a little bit goth. Don’t mean that they came from Earth Prime.

I always figured it was aliens, Devin said, and I looked at him. He wasn’t as tall as the others and was all lean muscles. His hair was violet in the firelight, and I concluded it had once been blonde. That was likely what would happen to mine if I stayed here much longer.

I groaned and touched my shoulder where it had been shot with an arrow. The arrow had been removed, and it was freshly bandaged.

Don’t mess with it, woman, Westin said. We put some fixum on it. Should be on the mend pretty quick.

"What did you put on me?" I snapped.

Fixum, Westin repeated as if I was supposed to know what that was. He looked at me skeptically. It’s like a purple moss. Folks figure it’s a blend of chemicals that helps us heal. Also makes us purple quicker. I’ve never known anyone that used it get an infection, and it grows all over the place. Small blessings for us in this place.

It fixes our boo boos, Devin said, so it’s called fixum, which sounds better than turnumpurple.

Great, I was going to turn purple. Where’s this woman? I asked, slowly sitting up.

Westin handed me a crudely made canteen. It looked to be made out of vegetable fibers that had been woven together and then coated with something that looked like rubber. It only served to remind me that the people in this place didn’t have access to the amenities that those who had been left behind did. Drink some water, he said. It’s been boiled, so the little buggies are all dead, he said, mistaking my hesitation for distrust.

I didn’t think there was a point in drugging me, so I drank the water. I was thirsty, and it tasted good.

Then he handed me what looked like beef jerky. I looked at it and then at him.

Westin shrugged. It’s from a kind of goat thing. Tastes like chicken, though. Doesn’t kill you. You’ll need the protein, cuteness.

I smiled grimly. Where is Clora?

Two towns to the east, Westin said carefully. How do we go through the black hole thing?

I clamped my mouth shut. They wanted to trade me for meat and produce, and if I told them I could generate an exit, then what would they do? Trade me anyway? Run back to Earth? I didn’t know them. I couldn’t trust them. But if I couldn’t trust them, who could I trust?

Westin rubbed his jaw. He scratched his beard and looked at me. I didn’t have a lot of time for this. I needed the code keys in my backpack, and I needed to amp myself up to make another black door. I could make a dash for it, but then there was the whole thing about Clora. (Could I really do it at will?)

There was another man who came through about a year or so ago, Westin said. We heard about him, too. Said he was the President of the United States. I don’t think he lasted long because he thought people should kowtow to him, and well, this isn’t the United States of America any longer. He scratched the side of his nose. Don’t know where he is.

Realization stunned me. They were talking about Corbin Maston. He was the solitary politician who’d outlived all the others in the chain of command. Sophie had summarily tossed his butt out of the tech bubble at the Naval Observatory, and he’d vanished. Sophie was going to be relieved to find out that she hadn’t really killed him. You don’t know if he’s still alive? I asked.

I don’t think so, Westin said. You know him?

I might have met him a few times. I never would have voted for him, that was for certain.

He said a girl threw him out of one of those ‘bubbles,’ Westin said. He sat straight up, and his eyes were large and round with understanding. Oh my God, it’s true. These are people who were isolated somehow, and when they…

When they came out of their tech bubble, they came here, I finished. And no, I didn’t throw him out of a tech bubble, but that was only because someone else beat me to it.

Devin clapped his hands together. We can go home? We really can go home?

I don’t know, I said bluntly. It was one of those questions that needed answering. If I could take someone with me, it was going to be Clora. Furthermore, if I could do it, then I was going to take her directly into the tech bubble where she’d be safe. The black door had appeared to me while I had been in Cheyenne Jr., so I thought it was possible.

You know how to get it back, Kane said. You know we weren’t really going to leave you with the Stone Guild, don’t you?

The Stone Guild being the ones with which you were planning on trading me for food, I finished.

Kane sighed. We find girls. We trade them. If they don’t want to stay there, we sneak in later, take them, and deliver them to the communities who need women. They get treated right. It’s just the way we get along.

I’d heard of worse in the world we’d left behind, and there was a glaring note of truth in his words. I’d been through worse myself. I made myself take a bite of the jerky and wasn’t instantly appalled by the flavor. It did taste like dried chicken. It wasn’t the worst thing I’d ever eaten. I rubbed the side of my face and wondered if I was going to have a black eye. Something crackled and fell off, and I realized that they had put some of that Fixum stuff on my jaw.

I chewed methodically, swallowed, and then took another drink out of the canteen. All three men watched me, waiting for me to get all trusting with them and volunteer the information they were dying to hear.

Westin finally sighed. I get it. You don’t trust us. I understand that. How can we convince you?

One of the questions rattling around in my head was whether or not I could repeat the trip. If I made it here, then could I make it back to Earth Prime as they called it? Or if I made it to Earth Prime, then could I come back and get people if I wanted? If I could get people, could I bring them to tech bubbles? Or would whatever magic that was at work cause the whole thing to short circuit?

I want to get Clora, I said. I want her safe and sound.

Westin rubbed his scraggly beard again. Well, that would be a problem, then.

I stared at him. I needed information. They needed information. I needed to go back and stop a doomsday weapon. They wanted out of the purple world. We could trade if I could bring myself to trust them.

Westin finally sighed and tossed something at me. It was the Beretta pistol I’d had before. It’s loaded, he said. Don’t shoot your foot, darling.

I picked up the gun and cradled it in my hands. I checked the load. One round was chambered the way I’d left it. The safety switch showed the little red dot, revealing that it was ready to go. The only thing that it wasn’t, was cocked. I’d rather have my knives, I said.

Westin shrugged and tossed over the bayonet I’d found before. Then he tossed some of my other knives including a Swiss Army knife and a switchblade I’d once found in a pawn store in Nebraska. I put weapons in various places where I could get at them.

We help you, you help us, Westin said. He steepled his fingers together. Clearly, he was ready for the negotiations to begin.

That would be ideal, I stated, not ready for the negotiations to begin.

Can you tell us what happened after that first day? Kane asked. His tone was equal parts courteous and curious.

I woke up the day after, and almost everyone was gone, I said. I was in San Francisco, and it was like everyone just hid. The electricity was off. Nothing technological would work anymore. It still doesn’t except in very select spots.

You call those bubbles, Devin said.

Tech bubbles, I said. They’re useful to the people who are left.

And there are more like you? Westin asked.

They reckon there’s less than a half percent of one percent of the population left, I said. Then there’s the things that appeared on the same night. Dragons. Unicorns. Things that don’t have names. Some of them like humans a lot. Some of them don’t.

Kane said, It’s like…a story out of a book.

This woman, this Clora, Westin said hesitantly, she left the bubble and just vanished like all of the other ones?

Clora was pregnant the night of the change, I said. The fetus was the one who anchored her there. Once the child was born, Clora would have vanished too, except that she was in a tech bubble. Well, most of her was.

You mean, her missing hand wasn’t inside the bubble? Westin said. He was quick.

That’s right. We rushed to get her to a tech bubble before she gave birth, and it worked except that her hand was on the wrong side.

Westin frowned at me. How did you know she would vanish? How could you know?

The people who were left on Earth, I said carefully, have gifts. We’ve come to trust those gifts. One of them was clairvoyant and said that if we didn’t get Clora to the bubble, she would disappear like all the rest.

So if Clora was in the bubble, how did she end up here? Kane asked.

Someone took her out of the bubble, I said. His name was Penn, and if I had a chance later, I would be beating his head against a concrete floor again. He hadn’t believed that Clora would vanish, and he’d gambled with her life. He’d also messed with the life of Clora’s daughter, Delphine, when he’d kidnapped her along with two other adults from Sunshine, Colorado.

Let me get this straight, Westin said. People who vanished came here. The ones that are left there because they have…gifts. What kind of gifts?

They’re psychics. They have varying degrees of mental powers. I thumbed the pistol’s safety, making certain it was still off. Oh, I was more than a touch paranoid. If I didn’t trust a person, I would give them a gun that didn’t work. I would disable it somehow. Without hesitation, I cocked the weapon, aimed between Westin and Kane, and fired it. I heard the hollow echoing explosion that followed, and the bullet ricocheted into the night. I nearly sighed with relief as it automatically chambered another round. I liked that gun. I liked it a lot. It was truly a shame that it wouldn’t work on Earth.

The three men had jumped. Westin was on his feet, glaring at me. Kane had dove for the bushes behind him. Devin was halfway down the hill.

WHAT THE HELL, WOMAN? Westin yelled. He took a step toward me, and I shook my head minutely. He stopped.

Just checking to see if you really trust me, I said. I glanced at the Beretta meaningfully. And surprise, surprise, surprise, you won the kewpie doll.

Westin looked at the gun and grimaced. Yeah, he said after a moment, "I get that, too. Why would any rational person give you a loaded weapon?"

I shrugged. I have to tell you something, fellas, I said. I’m here for a specific reason, and I don’t have time to mess around. I don’t know if I can get you back. I don’t know what would happen if I can get you back. Finally, I don’t know if I’m going to be able to save the world back there. You might be going back to a desert wasteland. My friend told me once that it was like a sea of dreams had washed over the land. It took people away. It left other things. It wiped the slate clean and started the world again. It might be something else altogether now. Maybe even just ruins. I paused and added thoughtfully, Ruins full of dreams.

Chapter 2

Lulu Has Another Mission

The Present – The Purple World

There, Westin said to me. We peered over a ridge in the direction of what I would have called east. Despite all the vivid purple reminders, I kept forgetting that this was a new world and all wasn’t the same. Westin had told me that compasses didn’t work here and muttered something about a lack of magnetic north. The sun did not set in the west; it set in what I would have called the south. And have I mentioned how very purple the whole place was? Why, yes I have.

Westin handed me my own set of binoculars, and I used them accordingly.

It had taken us three purple days to get here. Along the way, the three men had argued with me and had tried to change my mind. Westin had been the most adamant. She’s not likely to be alive. We might not even know she’s dead until we get in there, he’d said. You’re risking your own life and hers.

So what was I supposed to do? Produce a black door and slip back into Earth without even trying? What if I couldn’t come back? Zizi had said it was only weeks for whatever was going to happen on the other side of the black door. Based on what Westin and the others were saying, it wouldn’t be weeks for Clora. My mind was made up, and the three men who’d found me were along for the ride whether they liked it or not.

They call them the Alberts, Westin commented as if I’d asked.

That’s not really funny, Kane said. He low-crawled up beside me and peered over the rim. They give me the willies.

It wasn’t funny, but Tate would probably like the name just fine. You mean after Albert Fish, I said. I don’t remember where I’d learned that particularly tidbit. Albert Fish had been a well-known cannibal in the early 20th century. Keeping up with notorious serial killers hadn’t been part of my grandfather’s usual repertoire. (Biblical quotes, baseball, old movies, and airplane shows had been Poppops’ shticks.) I think the knowledge had come from my grandmother’s side. She’d always had a fascination with murderers and bad guys. She’d sworn that while she was at Oxford in London in the 80s, she’d once danced with an infamous serial killer named Dennis Nilsen.

They could have called them the Jeffreys, Devin commented. He low-crawled to a spot on Westin’s right. Or the Donners. Or we could go with fictional cannibals. The Hannibals, for example.

Shut up, Devin, Westin said.

I looked through the binoculars at