The Dream Runner by Kerry Schafer

dawn appeared over the mountain, I had torn up the ruined carpet, rolled it, and lugged it down the stairs and outside. A trip to the all night gas station yielded five gallons of gasoline and some matches, which lit the carpet okay to start with, but it burned reluctantly and with a lot of smoke and a stench of burning tires. The wallpaper I'd shredded off the walls was still too wet to burn and I toted it all outside and spread it out to dry, piling rocks on top so it wouldn't blow away. My plan was to give it a day of sun and light it up when the dark rolled back around.
    In the unforgiving daylight, both the room and I were a deconstructed mess, stripped down to basics, smudged and dirty. First things first. I scrubbed that room from top to bottom. Walls, floor, even the ceiling with the help of a push broom and a rag.
    Next, the shower, where I scrubbed my own skin almost raw and washed my hair five times, looking for signs of telltale black swirling down the drain. When I was done I burned my sleeping bag and the clothes I was wearing. I knew I was over the top—only a nightmare, only a dream—but I couldn't seem to pull my rational self together.
    Sleeping was out of the question, and the house was no longer my friend. Nobody to visit, nothing to do, and my thoughts kept going to Mia. Poor thing had no idea how dangerous a dream could be. What if the kid had gotten into it? What if hers got spilled? What kind of angel of destruction was I, handing these things out to people right and left as though they were a cure for the common cold? Take one dream, and call me in the morning.
    Ba dum. Ba dum. Badumbadumbadum.
    My heart stopped when the shark ringtone kicked in. She knew. Of course the Dream Merchant knew what I had done and there would be retribution. As I scrambled to find my phone in the middle of the chaos I'd created, I tried to tell myself it might just be a friend from Seattle checking on me. Maybe even Marsh, pretending nothing weird had happened and trying to salvage his dignity. But no, the caller ID display was totally blank, and I answered with cold dread at the pit of my stomach.
    "What?"
    "Time to collect the dream."
    "What? Why?"
    The line was dead. I stood with the phone in my hand, too numb and confused to figure out which action to take next. I'd thought for sure the Merchant was calling about the spilled dream and my attempts to clean it up.
    As for picking up Mia's dream—the only way I could figure she was done with it already was if something bad had happened.
    Motorcycles are unforgiving and I was tired and distracted. The gravel almost took me down at the first corner, but by then the morning air was starting to clear my head and I righted us, steadying and centering myself, and the rest of the drive was uneventful. Beautiful even, despite everything. The wild roses grew thick beside the road that leads down to the highway, simple and sweet with their golden hearts, and the fragrance of them pushed the darkness back a little. Once I was on the highway I could see the lake, wreathed in tendrils of mist this morning, all greys and shadowy blues. As always, it threatened to submerge me in memories and I made a point of looking elsewhere the rest of the way into town.
    There was very little traffic. Businesses wouldn't be open for another hour. School was newly out for the summer, everybody on a more laid back schedule. On Mia's street, nothing and nobody moved. The windows of her house were dark and curtained. When I put my ear to the door I heard nothing—no sound of TV, no voices, no footsteps. Even this early, a little kid like Jayden should be up watching cartoons. The unease in my belly burst into full-blown worry.
    No answer to the doorbell, or to the following flurry of loud knocks.
    "Nobody's home," a voice said, behind me.
    I turned to see a woman standing on the edge of the lawn next-door, decked out in gardening gloves, with shears in her hands. She crossed the lawn