The Piper 17

Pete thought he had woken up in a panic.

His eyes were wide open as he strained his ears to pick sounds  out of the night’s quiet. He had discovered that, if he listened hard enough, he could follow noises to where they were coming from and he could see what was causing them.

Tonight, with his mother’s arm loosely encircling him, he closed his eyes again and listened. He was the traveller again, a Pete who could move between the different layers of sleep and along the avenues of awareness that connected man’s subconscious. He was both himself and the many others who had shared his gift and tonight he slipped like a sigh into the air.

He heard the rumbling of a train, the closing of a car door, voices raised in a hushed yet angry tone from the bedroom next door and a sound like wind coming…