Bathing the Lion by Jonathan Carroll Page B

okay.”
    Confused and frightened she managed to ask, “You were the only ones inside?”
    “Yes.”
    And then without warning their world disappeared. Although Jane and the two men remained, everything else around them vanished: the landscape, sky, all smells and sounds … everything except them.
    It was as if they stood now on an empty stage or in the middle of a dimly lit tunnel. There was light but nothing else around them, absolutely nothing. All three looked around in that weak light, trying to find some clue, sign, or indication of what had just happened. Where were they? Seeing nothing anywhere, they looked at each other.
    “What is this? What happened?” Jane asked the men.
    Bill Edmonds shook his head but said nothing.
    “Kaspar?”
    “I don’t know. Where’d everything go ?”
    “There’s no sounds either, just us. Did you notice?”
    “Or smells—the air doesn’t smell of anything, nothing.”
    Without a word Kaspar walked away into the shadows. The other two exchanged glances. Jane nodded—maybe it was a good idea. Maybe something out there in the gloom would explain this: something that would clear up this impossible mystery. They took off in opposite directions.
    But nothing was out there. More “stage,” more emptiness and faint sad light illuminating only this bare new world so unexpectedly thrust on them.
    In time Jane and Edmonds returned to where they’d been. But Kaspar stayed away. They first thought maybe he’d found something. Then they thought, what if he doesn’t come back?
    “Bill, what did you mean when you said, ‘Everything is okay’? Back there when your house was burning? Right before this—” Jane put out a hand to indicate the emptiness around them.
    Bill squinted at her. She could see he was deliberating whether to speak or not.
    “ What? What do you know?”
    Instead of answering he asked quietly, “Is this yours, Jane? Is it your dream?”
    The questions were so odd and out of context. She could only shake her head, not knowing what he was talking about, waiting for him to say something else to clarify things. Seconds passed before she demanded, “What do you mean? What are you asking?”
    He stared at her, adding things up in his head. “It makes sense. Just as it started burning, just after we got out of the house, you appeared out of nowhere. Why? It’s a hell of a coincidence, wouldn’t you say?”
    Jane shook her head again. “What are you talking about?”
    Bill stared at her, his face giving no indication of what he was thinking.
    Kaspar reappeared out of the shadows and said, “My guess is they woke up. It’s why we’re here; it’s why everything disappeared. Whoever’s dreaming all this woke up and left us here. We’re still somewhere in their head, but just the basics—just us and nothing else.
    “You know how when you wake up at night to go pee after having had a strong dream? You carry it with you to the toilet. Not all of it, but enough. Look around us—maybe this is all that’s left of someone’s dream.” Kaspar grunted. “Let’s hope they’re only taking a piss and haven’t woken up for good. And let’s also hope if they do go back to sleep afterwards they don’t start dreaming about something else. Because then kids, we’re cooked; we might all just be about to disappear for good.”
    “How do you know this, Kaspar? How can you tell?” Bill sounded like a worried child asking his father if the thunder outside would pass.
    “I don’t know if I’m right. It’s all a guess, but it makes sense if it is a dream. Think about it—where do dreams go after we wake up? They’ve gotta go somewhere in our head. Some great big dream storage locker we all have.”
    Jane stepped forward. “You’re saying everything—all this and everything before—is a dream ? That’s what you believe—it’s all a dream?”
    Kaspar nodded, looking straight at her. Yes, he was sure.
    “How do you know?”
    “I’ll tell you more about it