He’d clutched for something—anything—to fight the monster off.  It slashed him with its claws.  It nearly tore his ear off!

Its back claws dug into his legs, holding him down.

He was going to die.

Eric pressed his hands to his face, trying to force away the image of those horrible, blood-covered teeth snapping at him, but it wouldn’t go away.  The dream was going to reveal itself and he had no choice but to watch.

The pain was excruciating, but still he struggled.

His cell phone chimed again.  He looked down at it, numb with shock at the things he was seeing.

GOD, ERIC…

Still, the memory unraveled.  Somehow, his left hand fell on something.  A rock.  His fingers wrapped around it.  He swung it.  He missed.  He swung again and clipped the beast’s bared teeth.  It roared at him.

In the present, Eric opened his eyes.  There was the rock, lying right where he’d found it, unmoved because he never actually came here that day, never had to face the hell cat.

He remembered thrusting the rock upward.  His aim was true.  The narrow end of the rock struck the creature in the eye.  It roared with pain and leapt off of him, shaking its head.

He scrambled away from it, his eyes searching the ground for a better weapon.  He found another rock.  One with a sharper tip.

He could see that rock too, lying near the base of the canyon wall.

Dream Eric stood up and faced the cat, threatening it with the sharp rock.

He could see himself, his mangled hand dripping blood, more blood running down his arm, down the side of his face, down his legs, soaking his shirt and pants.

The cat-thing seemed to consider this weapon.  It wasn’t impressed.  It moved closer and he thrust the rock’s tip at it, aiming for its eyes, though he wasn’t quite close enough to reach.

The creature stopped.  It eyed him carefully.  It almost seemed to calculate the situation.  Then it began to back away.

Even in a state of shock, Dream Eric had realized that it wasn’t over.  The cat wasn’t stupid.  It hadn’t managed to kill him, but it wasn’t over.  There was no reason to risk being struck by the rock.  Its prey was badly hurt.  It wouldn’t be much longer.

It retreated back into the canyon from which it came, but it didn’t go far.

Eric’s eyes scanned the walls.  He could still see no sign of the cat, but this was an excellent hunting ground.  He had no doubt that if it wasn’t here now, it would soon return.

Isabelle sent him another message:  GET OUT OF THERE!

He paused long enough to retrieve the pointed rock from the dream.  If the cat put in an appearance today, he’d at least have something to jab into its eye from the start.  Now armed—though he’d much rather have one of Father Billy’s assault rifles—he moved on, still shocked by the horrors he’d just recalled.  And still the memories continued to play out in his mind.

Wounded, bleeding profusely, nearer to death than he’d ever been in his life, the Eric of two days ago had continued on, desperate to get out of this canyon before he collapsed and became an easy meal for the clever cat.

He recalled using his shirt to slow much of the bleeding, but he couldn’t stop it.  Not all of it.  Death had become a grim probability.

Now, two days after that encounter with the cat that never actually happened, Eric followed the stream along the canyon floor, his eyes scanning every rock, every crevice, searching for the beast he knew would try to kill him because it had already happened…even if it hadn’t actually come to pass.

All this insanity was beginning to make his head hurt.

As he rounded the next bend, he came upon a pool of blood beside the water and bent to examine it.

He was no hunter or tracker, but even he could tell that something had been badly wounded here recently, probably within the past couple hours.  Maybe sooner.

In his dream, he’d stumbled through this area, watching the rocks above him, occasionally catching sight of a dark, red shape moving along the rim above him, watching him, waiting for him to collapse and serve himself politely up for dinner.

He saw no blood in his dream, except of course for his own, which he left in frightful quantities.

Perhaps today the cat had found another meal.  Perhaps one of those coyote-deer had wandered through the canyon, or even an ordinary deer.  If that was the case, then perhaps the cat was fed and napping, unconcerned with Eric’s trespass.

That would be a stroke of luck.

He followed the trail of blood along the stream and around the bend, cautiously peering around each rock.  The last thing he wanted to do was walk up on the thing and surprise it during its meal.

A dreadful thought occurred to him suddenly.  He imagined turning a corner and finding the beast snoozing among the carnage of its last kill.  Among that carnage would be his own face, inconceivably dead even as he stood staring at himself.

It didn’t even make sense, yet the image was so profoundly terrifying that it nearly paralyzed him.

After all, he could hardly expect that anything was really impossible after all he’d seen and done today.

But as he made his way around a pair of fallen boulders, he found that there was nothing left to fear.  The trail of blood led him directly to the still body of the cat itself.

Things had happened so quickly in his dream that he didn’t get a really good look at the beast.  Now he saw that it was at least as big as a full-grown tiger.  It had an extra-long, bushy tail and paws the size of a grizzly bear.  It was amazing the thing hadn’t killed him instantly in his dream.

But then again, if it was a cat, perhaps it liked to play with its food.  It was a gruesome idea, but one that might explain why Dream Eric still lived.

The beast lay collapsed on its side, its eyes glazed and staring up at the rock walls of the canyon.  A drying pool of blood had spread around it.

In his dream, he’d kept going, managing somehow to remain on his feet, all the way to the canyon’s far end.  He hadn’t seen another predator.

What could have killed this thing?

But then it came to him.  What was here that wasn’t here in his dream?

Isabelle answered the question for him:  THE FOGGY MAN

Yes.  The foggy man.  And given that he’d just put in an appearance back at the factory, it was obvious that he didn’t have that big of a lead on him.  He would have only been by here in the past hour.

The foggy man had dispatched the cat that would have nearly killed him had he arrived two days ago when he was supposed to.  Had the foggy man, then, just saved his life?  That would be an ironic twist in all this.

But the three golems had been more than proof enough that the foggy man wasn’t here to protect him.  Likely, the cat had merely inconvenienced him as he passed through.  The foggy man was probably sure enough of himself that he didn’t feel the need to let the cat finish him off.

Still clinging to the pointed rock, just in case, Eric left Fluffy where he lay and continued on.

Above him, the walls began to recede and withdraw and the rocky ground gave way to soil and trees.  Soon, the canyon began to give way to a forest where he recalled making his way from tree to tree as the cat prowled along behind him at a distance, watching him, waiting for him to topple over.

His cell phone began to vibrate in his hand.  It was Isabelle.

“That was terrifying!” she announced as he lifted the phone to his ear.

“I know.”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t warn you.  I’ve never heard of anything like that in the fissure before.  I had no idea it was out there.”

“Don’t worry about it.  I can’t expect anyone to know everything.  Not even you.”

He kept looking around, still expecting to see something stalking him among the rocks.  Fluffy’s mate, perhaps.