Dreamlands (10 page)

“The
book is hidden in a disused apartment on Marsh Street.  Take the stair to the
first floor.  There is a door there, but it is hidden.  Put out the light in
the hall, and when it is dark you will see a symbol on the wall.  Wipe it clean
with your sleeve.  With a bit of coal, draw this.”  He flashed a metal symbol
in one hand.  It was a circle with an opening at the bottom, like the Greek
letter Omega, around something like a letter ‘I’ with serifs.  “The door will
open.  The book is inside; it will be wrapped up.  Don't unwrap it, don’t look
upon it, and especially do not touch it beneath its wrapping.”

“Didn’t
Uncle Eamon sail the Southern Sea?” I asked, grabbing a handful of his coat.  It
was soaked through and bitterly cold.  “The enemies he spoke of on his
deathbed, they were from the Dreamlands, weren’t they?”

“Yes,
our old enemies still roam,” the bo’sun replied in a whisper, facing me.  “They
are your enemies too now, servants of the Black Throne.”

“I
haven’t heard of this faction.  Do you mean the merchants from Dylath-Leen?”

“I
will not tell you its true name.  If in the course of your travels you learn it
for yourself, try not to think on it and never speak it aloud.  This sort of
enemy grows more powerful the more it is in your thoughts, and speaking its true
name is like a shout of invitation.”

Longbottom’s
breath was coming in short, fearful bursts.  There was a change in the emptiness
surrounding us.  The mist, I noted, had begun incrementally to recede.  He shook
loose of my hand and stumbled in a brief circle, head darting in every
direction.

“This
book of yours, is it guarded?” I asked, raising my voice against the eerie
tranquility surrounding us.  “What am I to do with a book I cannot open?”

The
fog was growing less opaque as it retreated, and I could discern the outlines
of figures within, human in shape, but ill-proportioned, too tall, too thin.

I
blinked awake at the shrill ring of the Y’s front desk bell, immediately below
my room.  I lay still, running over the encounter in my mind.  At the end Longbottom
had said more about the book, but the dream was paling, already insubstantial
in the daylight, and the rest was lost.

I
did not need to dress for I had slept in my clothes, and though a desperate hunger
racked me, it would not be satisfied by porridge or a piece of toast.  Taking a
scrap of coal from the downstairs scuttle, as Longbottom had instructed, I resolved
to seek out the book.  It was at least a place to start.

* * *

Marsh
Street was a row of sullen brick buildings, half of them abandoned, the rest employed
in a variety of enterprises requiring cheap labour.  The few folks I saw made a
slow, grim march of every errand, their resentment as palpable as the smoky air.

I was
drawn to a particular structure, distinct from the others in its dilapidation. 
Someone had taken a pry bar to the brass numbers, but their absence still
proclaimed it
313
.  The entrance had been the target of a determined
attack, the handle, plate, and lock all torn free and discarded.  Even the
glass in the transom had been smashed, oddly thorough work for vandals.  Though
I had not been given a specific address, I did not doubt this was my
destination.

It
took several tries to jostle the door open against an armchair wedged up the
other side, and the entryway and stair were choked with smashed furniture and
debris.  There being no place to shift the mountain of junk, I clambered over it
instead.  On the top landing a candle illuminated three blind walls.  In
obedience to Longbottom’s instructions, I snuffed the candle.

I
worked the coal nervously in my fingers while I waited, wondering irrelevantly
if it was dirtying my shirtsleeve.  When my eyes adjusted to the scant light, a
collection of chalk strokes and designs, which had the moment before been
invisible, came clear on the wall opposite the stair.  I could not make any
sense of it, but after I turned away momentarily at a cry from outside, the pattern
seemed to change.  I was almost certain a vertical line of symbols had shifted
from the left of the diagram to the right.  I gave my head a shake and wiped
away the markings.

After
scrawling Longbottom's symbol in its place, I attended some change, but five
minutes passed and nothing happened.  Our conversation, I thought, had been nothing
but a gin-soaked hallucination.  I leaned against the brickwork in relief and a
door swung smoothly open.  While I waited for the pounding of my pulse to
subside, a further detail from the bo’sun’s visit came to me:

Take
a haunch of something with you,
he had said,
beef or
mutton.  All the better if it's starting to rot.

There
would be a dog then.  I unbuttoned my coat, the better to reach my pistol.  I
wasn't concerned about a dog.

A wainscoted
entranceway led into an apartment, where a pair of violet drapes denied most of
the daylight to a room dim and spare.  Opposite the window was a lonely side
table, and upon it a raggedly wrapped object about the size of an encyclopaedia
volume.  Catercorner to the table was a closet with two smashed hinges and no
door.  An unmistakable trace of putrification floated on the stale air.

Reminding
myself that it mustn’t be opened, I crossed the room and picked up the package,
very pleased with myself.  Here was something tangible, weighty and solid in my
hands.  I do not know why I put it down again, and turned to examine the closet.

The
space was deep enough that the feet of the corpse, sat spraddle-legged within,
did not protrude into the room.  The man’s skin was as pale and rubbery as last
night’s boiled meat, though I figured from the relatively mild odor he could
not have lain dead long.  I bent to look more closely, and started back,
wishing I had not.  The head was grossly deformed, the cranium too small and
the skull elongated, with pointed ears and a face tapering towards a snout,
giving the impression of a hairless jackal.  The arms were also unnaturally long
and ropey.  Two bones sat in the V of its thighs, splintered open and sucked clean
of marrow.  I hoped I was wrong is judging them human femurs.  Pushing down my
gorge, I kicked at one of its feet.

“Nothing,”
I laughed to myself, letting go the butt of my revolver.  “He’s dead, you
ninny.”

Turning
again to the book, I saw from the corner of my eye that the deformed man was now
standing.

I tripped
backwards, one hand reaching for, but missing, my holster.  The creature pitched
forward awkwardly, knocking against the table as it shifted to face me.  It did
not stand straight, but hunched bobbing in place, as if resisting the urge to
rest, apelike, on its knuckles.  It eyed me redly for several seconds before an
arm swung out like the boom of a sailboat.  When I dodged to the side its
talons raked four identical gouges in the hardwood floor.  It swiped at me and
missed again, blundering on its ungainly legs, and I drew my gun.

The
abomination stopped to growl at me, black lips pulled back over curving, canine
teeth, but did nothing to spoil my aim.  I fired, leaving a neat black hole in
its ribs.  The back of one claw knocked the gun from my grip and it clattered
on the floor.

My
opponent shook its head like a dog killing a rat and, apparently in
bewilderment rather than pain, looked down at the wound.  It did rock forward
on its knuckles then, and gibbered at me in what sounded like an insane parody
of speech.  Backed to the window now and weaponless, I glanced past it at the door
to the stairs.  It followed my gaze and smiled cunningly.  This, more than its fangs
and claws, forced a half-choked scream to my lips as the beast ducked its
shoulders to attack again.

Hoping
that sunlight must drive it back, or reveal it to be a man or, better, a hallucination,
I reefed with both hands on the rotting drapes.  They tore away, rods and all, and
I fell in a heap with them.  My foe chose that moment to leap, face flinching away
from the light, and went through the window with a crash.  A brief, moaning cry
presaged a thud on the street without.

Coughing
in a miasma of dust and mildew, I rolled to my feet, brushing glass shards from
my hair.  Grabbing up my prize and my gun, I scrambled once more over the
debris in the stairwell.  I should have been steeling myself to finish the
battle, but could not stop shaking.  Peering out gun barrel first into the
street, I discovered no body, nor spot of blood or sliver of glass.  I looked
up at the second storey; the windows were all intact.  I fled the scene before
Fate should take back my reprieve.

Many
blocks from Marsh Street, I weaved automatically amongst the lunchtime crowds, the
book pinned beneath my right arm as if I feared it would try to escape.  My brain
rejected my encounter with the book's ghoulish guardian, lingering instead on
something worse.  My body’s yearning for opium was beginning to return in force.

I
moved with no destination in mind until the traffic broke like a river around a
rock for a tramp on the edge of the path.  Painfully bent, he stood in the
classic pose, one hand out for alms, the other clutching the remains of a coat
over his bare chest.  He wore no article of clothing without a noticeable hole,
from his shoes right up to a hat the colour of stains, and his beard was so
tattered it looked like the tug of a comb might pull it free.  The passersby
took no notice of me when I stepped into the bubble of space around him, which
was guarded by a terrible stench.  When I made to pitch him a four-bit piece, he
stepped back as if afraid.

“Here
now, old fellow”, I said, as if he were an animal of questionable disposition,
“you should be able to use this.”

He
withdrew into the alley behind him, and looked over my shoulder at the
oblivious citizens traipsing past.  Satisfied that we were not watched, he
gestured me closer and I, holding my coin aloft like an idiot, followed.  It
was dim and cool off the street.  He continued to retreat, his gaze locked onto
mine.  The passage must have become covered at some point for soon only his red-rimmed
eyes were visible, jogging along always five paces ahead.  When the eyes winked
out, I was enveloped in darkness absolute.

I shuddered
violently, both to free myself from whatever hypnosis I had been under, and at
the abrupt, freezing cold.  I stamped my feet, too perplexed at first to be
afraid.  The tramp was gone, but I was not alone.  Something massive shifted in
the umbral nothingness, stirring a rank breeze.  There came a voice, slow and
ponderous as that of a sleepy giant.  Its vibrations thrummed in the soles of
my feet. 

You
meddle.
  This was said in puzzlement rather than menace, like
a man addressing a housefly who he suspected of interfering in his plans.

An
unmeasurable length of time passed, during which I was paralyzed from toes to
crown.

I
want the book
, it said.

My
stupor ebbed enough for me to understand the object in question remained pinched
beneath my arm.

“This
book?” I asked thickly.

There
was no response, yet its attention on me was as palpable as dry leaves
scratching my skin.

"No,"
I said, quite steadily, considering.  These words followed, inexplicably, from
my lips:  “I have been tasked with an important mission, and I will not shirk it,
no matter the consequences.”

Come
closer.

I bleated
a laugh of pure hysteria.  I'd sooner have stepped in front of the
Boston-Arkham Express.

A
scraping sound anticipated something touching my skin.  It was the blunt tip of
an appendage which in my imagination was similar to a broom-stick, but wavering
and flexible as an insect’s antenna.  After briefly probing my torso, it recoiled
like a hair singed by flame.  With this, I fell unceremoniously on my bottom
and my sight returned, the world pouring back into me like ice water into a
pitcher.

After
establishing that the book was still in my possession, I blinked spasmodically
around me.  I was in a courtyard, a perfect square uninterrupted by window,
door or drainpipe, except for a gap on one side for an exit.  When I looked up
it must have been mental fatigue that made the enclosure seem ten storeys high,
and the square of sky at the top that greenish hue which heralds a tornado.  Near
the exit were a holey shoe and heap of rags.  I kicked at it; there was nothing
beneath but more rags.  I hurried through the brick-roofed passage, and after
many twists and turns staggered into Main Street, upsetting a carter’s horse
and nearly getting myself maimed.

Anchored
by one hand to the pillar of a bank, I tried to steady myself.  Part of that
unreality had followed me however, and the world warped as if viewed through
three panes of leaded glass.  Deciding that any action was better than swaying in
place like a drunk, I lurched forward.  A strong breeze moved the flags outside
a hotel, but did not stir my hair.  I felt beneath my feet a springy surface
like moss, but looked down at paving.  In my peripheral vision, bizarre shapes
darted or floated or hopped.  Worse were the ones which chose to remain
carefully still.

Though
I did my best to fight it back, a terrible notion was gathering within me, that
what I saw as everyday life was nothing but a magic lantern play.  If my perspective
were to shift ever so slightly, another world, perfectly juxtaposed with our
own, would be revealed, and what was now barely suggested would come plainly
into focus.  About to rest against it, I spun away from a lamppost, fearing it
would have no more substance than a moonbeam.  I would tumble through it and
the pavement, and into that which waited beyond, a void separated from the
quotidian trappings of the twentieth century by the flimsiest shroud.