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Ten years after.

Ten years of life, ten years of change since the Day of Slumber rewrote the world. Len hadn't been in town then; it had been two years before that since he'd last visited. From the looks of things it was far, far too late now. He could make excuses, of course; some of them would even be true. But his chances had been lost when Dream came calling.

The trucker had dropped him off on the northern edge of downtown, near the old Totinos restaurant. The area had been run down then, but now... The asphalt was cracked and overgrown, the buildings rapidly fading to decay and rot. A massive tree, impossibly large for only ten years had exploded the northern wall of the restaurant, and now towered impossibly high above the ruins. He considered exploring, but there were other things to do first. Squaring his shoulders, he headed south towards downtown on 3rd Avenue.

As he walked, he thought. Memories ran through his mind, remembrances made vague by the years as well as brilliantly-bright images: his fifth birthday, the time he'd stepped on broken glass, the cat that he'd gotten on is 15th birthday. The poor thing had to be gone by now; he'd left that silly thing behind when he left for college. The dorms' didn't allow pets. Whether he found his family or not, Lucky's luck had probably run out. Sighing, he forced his attention back to where he was.

The bridge was intact, he was glad to see. He didn't think he'd trust a vehicle on it, but it seemed solid enough to walk on. Downtown looked vastly different than it had way back when. The IDS tower and several other former giants of the skyline of course were long gone- nobody'd expected an earthquake in the middle of Minnesota, yet it had come. The great blue tower, long before the symbol of the city was still visible; nobody'd thought that buildings could have ghosts, either.

He stopped at the midpoint of the bridge and looked down on the lock and dams. Or he would have, if they'd still been there. The river was higher than he remembered, and seemed wilder, more real than real. No sign of the concrete locks remained, the dam also replaced with what Len guessed were the original rapids. Curiously, the old mills were back, or at least the ghostly images of them. The mill-runs and water-shunts were quite real though, and water gurgled through them with less power than the main channel now displayed.

"No people," he thought. "Is anyone left?" He shook his head and continued his trek, surrounded by the silence and the echoes of ghosts. The old Deco-style main Post Office still seemed grand, despite the river-facing half having fallen away into the widening river. Len supposed that the bridge would fall too, eventually. Green was everywhere, with native grasses and trees of all sizes growing everywhere. At seventh he detoured. He had to see the ruins of the great tower. Only a block down the pile started, the shattered remains of the Baker block of buildings making an odd hump on the side of the pile facing him. Towers of broken glass made the wind whistle eerily through the streets, and a chill went through him despite the summer heat.

The ghost of the IDS stood as tall and as prominent as ever the actual building had, now seeming taller than it had ever been. Always the tallest building downtown, people had questioned because of newer buildings that had been built on higher elevations. Now, the great ghost certainly overbore them all. Rather than frightening, it struck Len as being horribly, horribly sad.

He wiped sweat from his forehead, walking in the opposite direction and across third to Portland Avenue, several blocks down. His goal not far away, his heart started to pound. What would he find? Would they be there dead, bleached boness scattered by animals? Or alive but unecognisably changed? A cold lump formed and froze him in his tracks. Feeling light-headed, he found a still solid-seeming bench and sat down. He remained there for a long time, as his thoughts whirled and his heart triphammered with panic and fear. A sob, and he was crying like he'd not since he was a little boy.

"You okay, mister?" The child's voice came from behind him, causing him to start. He looked around, but saw nobody. But it had been so real...

"He can't see us, dear." Another voice, female this time, and adult.

"Where are you?" His words echoed dully down the empty street.

The woman's voice again. "Come along, dear. He's sad."

"But why, momma?" The boy asked.

Len stood, desperately trying to see where the voices were coming from, but they seemed to be everywhere and nowhere all at once. One last word from the woman and the street was more lonely than ever: "Regrets."

Nothing at all was there, but for him and the empty buildings. But he'd heard voices. Real people, and... No. It had to be his imagination. He wiped the tears away, oddly embarrassed. He took a last nervy glance around him and started down the street once again. A cat darted out from under a derelict car, watching him with flattened ears. Obviously feral, it quickly darted back out of sight. Len had always loved animals, especially cats, and it hurt his heart to know that so many pets had lost their owners as well as their own lives- worse, he knew that for them the end was horrid and lingering. Trapped within their homes with no food and little water, no way out at all.

This portion of Portland Avenue was... Or had been, a mix of housing. Some new apartment complexes that catered to more affluent people, with many more far older buildings where less fortunate people lived. It was to one of the latter that Len wound his way, a white brick building of four stories.

It looked terribly vacant, the front door broken loose and only leaned partly in it's frame. Numbly, he shoved it out of the way, and it clattered to the ground. The smell of mold and rotted carpet was strong in the entryway, and the hallway extending back was lit only by the sunlight through the doorway. He continued in, pulling out a flashlight. The office was, predictibly empty. A flash of tiny eyes in the light startled him; a raccoon kit that scurried back out of sight.

The stairs were dry; the water damage and rot seemed to be mostly at the entryway. Three floors up and fear took him again, heart pounding; what if, what if, what if... What if.

No sounds were around him, and memory wrapped him like a suffocatingly hot blanket. Finally, fighting the urge to run, he took out his wallet with shaking hands. From a plastic sleeve meant for a credit card he took a single key and put it into the lock. It turned with some resistance, as if as hesitant as he to allow the contents to be revealed. The bolt went to with a grating click, and he turned the knob.

The door swung inward, light from the window illuminating a room frozen in time. Only the dust covering every surface revealed the age of the scene. He stepped in, the key still in the lock and stared. Nobody had been here in a long, long time.

The single couch was where he remembered it to be, and the two secondhand recliners his parents had used as well. The television was also still as it had been when he'd left twelve years back, and he drew a shuddering breath. The carpet crunched with age as he walked. Nobody at all. The kitchen was off to the side, and he saw a pan on the burner- whatever had been within had burned, soot staining the range hood, but the fire hadn't spread. There was a pile of clothes on the floor by the table, a woman's dress- no body within. He wiped his forehead with his sleeve, then looked again at the smallish living room- another set of clothes draped on one of the chairs, another on the couch.

He sat down hard on a kitchen chair, the evidence of his worst nightmares before him. He didn't hear the door swing open again, didn't notice anything til the apartment's latest intruder spoke. "Who's in there?" The voice was an older man, a slight touch of the south to the accent. Len froze, fearing another disembodied speaker, and looked.

A man far darker-skinned than Len was himself stood there. Mostly bald, what hair he had was short, grey and curly on the sides of his head. Wrinkles, mostly from smiles were worked deep into the flesh of his face, and his thin frame was stooped with age. "You hear me boy, name yourself!"

"I... Mr. Larson, is that you?" Len remembered the old caretaker, and the man smiled.

"Hey, I know you, boy. You're Will Johnson's eldest, right? ... Leonard?" Mr. Larson stepped fully into the room, the door swinging shut behind.

"Yes, sir. I was off at school when... " He gestured at the room. The motion seemed too empty to explain. "I should have been back before this. I... I should..."

Mr. Larson held a hand up, stopping the flow of Len's words. "Son, I know. Th' whole worl' went mad that day. It's not your fault you weren't here. You weren't a boy no more."

Len slumped in the chair, elbows supported on his thighs, face in his hands. "But it WAS. Every time I thought to come visit, when I COULD visit, I always found something else to do, something that got in the way. Then... All this happened, and it took me this long to stop bein' a coward and come. They... I left them. I've lost them, and I never said goodbye..."

Mr. Larson sighed, and crouched on his haunches soundlessly. "You loved them, boy. They know that. They knew that. Can't change what was, but you can honor them, remember them. And make 'em proud of you. I bet they already are." He brushed a hand through nonexistent hair. "In this place, especially here, y'got to let go of regret. Look for somethin' good. Or all you'll ever see again are nightmares."

Len looked up at that, and there was no sign that the old man had ever been there. Not even a footprint on the dusty carpet.

He should have been terrified. He WAS scared, but... Mr. Larson would never have harmed him. And hadn't harmed him, either. Len wasn't sure if he was imagining things, but he didn't think so- he'd not thought of Mr. Larson since he'd left for Massachusetts and school. Standing, he walked back to the bedrooms, his heart aching even worse than before.

His parent's room was as dusty and static as the rest of the apartment, his father's wallet on the dresser. He opened it and took the driver's license. His mother's purse was there too, and he took her license as well. The money was worthless- what he wanted were memories. In what had been his room with his sister, he found a picture of her from her high school graduation, and took that. He sat on his old bed and sighed. His regret... He had to make that something else, something better... But how? Hope seemed far from him now.

He stood, and something brushed against his leg; nothing there. It was a familiar feeling though. "Stupid cat, was that you?" His soft words hung in the hot air of the apartment. He shivered- ghosts indeed. On a whim, he looked in his closet, to the nest Lucky had chosen. There, curled tightly up was a pathetic pile of fur and bones- his cat. The poor thing must have starved, trapped alone in the apartment. The sight broke some kind of dam in him, and where he'd cried before it had been for fear; now it was loss, as everything, every moment cascaded down upon him in an ocean of hurt.

"Meow?"

He still sobbed, blinking away tears at the sound. Something rubbed against him, something very, very real that purred. A cat. HIS cat, but... Not quite. It was translucent, almost an electric blue, but it certainly felt solid enough as it wound about him, demanding attention. Almost against his will his hand moved, fingers sliding through fur that was and wasn't there. The purring got louder, and with unsteady hands he lifted the feline into his arms.

"Damn, cat, how come you're still here?" Lucky didn't answer save to ram his head into Len's chin. "Guess I can't leave you; can you come or are you stuck like a ghost?"

Lucky jumped out of his arms and looked back at him, then walked to the door with another meow. For the first time on his journey, Len smiled, then laughed. While he'd not found what he'd hoped, he at least could put the pain and regret to rest. His past was behind him; now he had to find something of a future. At the door, he took one last look inside. "I love you all. I'll make you proud." He locked the door, then followed Lucky out onto the sunlit street. As they walked away, the old man watched from the doorway with a sad smile. "No lookin' back now, boy." He turned, and the doorway stood empty once again.