Chapter Twent-Two

I had the strangest dream. I was walking through this oddly colored town, the sky was turning red, and everything seemed to be covered in heat waves, making the curvy lines of the buildings move like snakes. In the distance there was a brilliant, white horse. As white as the newest snow fall, and as pure as an innocent child. Except for one odd thing about it was the fact that it was wearing a detective hat on its head.
“Hello there, little horse,” I said, but my voice echoed the moment it left my throat, which made it sound like I was either very high or very insane. “Do you want to give me a lift?”
The horse did not look my way. It had its eyes fixed on something. Something it could not keep its eyes off of, even if it tried.
“Little horse!” I called again. “I need to find my friend. His name is Lucas. He is the Keeper of the Dimensions or… well, something like that. I need help finding him. Could you give me a lift?”
The horse turned and looked at me, its black eyes fixed and un blinking.
“Come over here, little horse!” my voice echoed. “I need a lift! Could you give me a lift?”
The horse turned around, and walked away. It did not bother to look at me again. It had something else to look for.
“Hey! Hey, where are you going? You’re not just going to leave me here? All by myself? I need your help, and you’re leaving me? Hey, where do you think you’re going? Come back here!”
“Caitlin?”
“Don’t leave me…”
“Calm down, Caity-kins, I was never planning to leave you.”
“I don’t want to be alone.”
“You are not alone, Caity-kins. Wake up.”
My eyes opened. The sky was not red, it was blue. And the person talking to me was not a white horse, it was a white guy. Lucas was directly above me, holding me gently in his arms.
I sat up straight instantly. The pain shot into my head. “Ah! Oh, God. What… what the hell happened?”
“I really have no idea,” Luke said. “Is your head okay? Should I find you an ice pack or something?”
“No, my head is fine,” I said. “But really, what’s going on? Where’s that horse?”
“Horse?”
“Yeah. There was a horse… with a hat on…”
Luke raised one eyebrow. “You were dreaming, Caity-kins.”
“No! There was a horse… that didn’t feel like a dream.”
“Trust me. I haven’t seen any white horses wearing any caps.”
I paused for a moment. “I never said the horse was white.”
“What? Oh. I. Um. You mentioned it. While you were muttering.”
I gave him a skeptical look. “You did see a horse somewhere around, didn’t you?”
Luke sighed. “Yes, I saw a horse. It just looked at me holding you and then galloped off. I didn’t give it any importance.”
“Was it wearing a hat?”
“Why is that important?”
“Luke, just answer me.”
Lucas frowned. “Yeah, it was wearing a hat.”
“We have to go after it,” I said. “We have to find it. That horse has answers.”
“Answers? Slow down, Caity-kins, you’ve got a serious bruise on your head, and I don’t think you’re talking completely straight.”
“Of course, because a white horse with a hat on having answers is completely unlikely said the Keeper of the Dimensions.”
Luke sighed. “Just rest for a little bit. Do you have any idea what knocked you out?”
“No, I didn’t get to see. I wasn’t looking up, I was looking down, I think.”
“And you didn’t see who did this to you?”
I shook my head, which made it hurt even more. “No,” I answered.
“All right. Well, when you feel up to it, you can stand up, and we’ll go track down that horse with the funny hat.”
I stood up immediately, but felt incredibly dizzy and almost fell over again. Luke caught me before I completely toppled over, though.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said, standing up straight. “I’m fine. Let’s go.”
“Well, I don’t want to have you walking,” he said. “We’re going on the motorcycle.”
So Luke carefully led me to the motorcycle and I got on by myself as my brain continued to pound against the side of my head.
“How are you doing?” he asked.
“I’m fine!” I assured him. “Just drive.”
So he revved up the motorcycle, and took off in the direction the white horse with the funny detective hat went off to.
Before too long, we were at the strange colorful city’s edge, and we were going into a forest where the leaves seemed a bit too green to be natural. And soon after that, I noticed the perfectly white horse just a good number’s yards ahead of us.
“There!” I said, pointing at it. “There it is!”
The horse looked back at us, and even though horses don’t have expressions, it seemed incredibly shocked to see us following it. It soon broke out into a run, and went incredibly fast. Faster than I’ve ever seen a horse go.
“Come on, step it up!” I said. I watched the little needle indicating Luke’s speed on the dashboard slowly go more and more towards the right as the motorcycle gained speed and was gaining on the white horse.
As the horse realized that we were after it, it started to go faster as well, and soon, it was a race to see who could go the fastest. At time we would be right on the horse’s tail (literally) and at other times the horse seemed so much faster than we were.
Luke was in incredible concentration because of the high speeds he was now going at. He leaned against the dashboard, his knuckles turned completely pale white, almost as white as the horse itself, as he held onto the handle bars of his motorcycle.
And just like that, the stunningly white horse with the funny and oddly placed detective’s hat had vanished.
Luke came to a screeching halt. The two of us looked around to see where it could have possibly gone.
“Um… did you see where it went?” I said, now completely oblivious to the pain in my head.
“It seemed to just vanish,” Luke answered. “But I have never seen my motorcycle go that fast before, nor have I seen any living thing on its own feet go that fast before.”
“Well, why do you think your motorcycle went faster than usual? Do you think that horse had anything to do with the inter dimensional forces of all the universes?”
Luke smiled. “You’re finally starting to catch on, Caity-cakes, because that’s exactly why I think the motorcycle went faster than usual.” Luke pressed some buttons on the dashboard, and the light all turned green.
“Are you trying to locate a door?”
“If that horse is from a different dimension, this function will be able to tell us.”
“Honestly, it seems like this dimension is deserted,” I said. “All the houses were empty, and there was absolutely nobody. I don’t blame them, for having houses like that.”
“You tried to go into the houses?” Luke asked in a disapproving tone.
I shrugged. “I was thirsty, and not really in the mood to come crawling back to you.”
“And yet, I was still the one to find you unconscious on the street,” Luke said with a slight smile.
I rolled my eyes at him, but he was too focused on the lights of his motorcycle to notice.
“It… it’s just gone,” he said.
“Gone? What d’you mean gone?”
“It’s not here. Not in this dimension.”
“What do you mean? Where could it have gone? How could it have gone?”
But that last question was answered when look gave me a serious and unsettling expression.
My eyes widened. “You think that horse is the dimension hopper?”
“Well, you’re the one who said that that horse had answers,” Luke said slowly.
“So you think that’s the one that’s been causing the quakes? That’s the thing that killed my father and my brother?”
“I didn’t say that,” Luke said. “It’s a possibility. And the motorcycle even says it… the horse isn’t even in this dimension anymore. It is probably the dimension hopper we’ve been looking for.”
“I find that incredibly hard to believe,” I said.
“There’s only one way to find out for sure.”
“Oh, really? And what exactly is that?”
“We find out which dimension it went to and we follow it.”
Luke hit some more buttons on the dashboard. “Ah. Good. It went to the dimension directly adjacent to this one. So if we can find the door, we’ll be able to make it there. And this dimension I am actually familiar with. So we should be safe there. Well, safer there than here, anyway.” He hit the locator buttons on the dashboard again, and all the lights flashed green.
“And what if that horse wasn’t the dimension hopper? What if it doesn’t lead us to the person who killed my father and brother?”
“Well,” Luke said as the lights turned from green to purple. “Right now, that horse is the best lead we’ve got, and following it is our best bet. If we’re lucky, then that horse is the dimension hopper, and we will be able to stop it. If not, maybe it will lead us to the actual dimension hopper, and we will be able to stop whoever that person is.”
I nodded. “All right. Let’s go, then.”
So Luke kicked the motorcycle to life again, and we drove off in search of the door.