The Cure for Dreaming (2 page)

Up in a box seat to my left sat Judge Acklen's son, Percy, in an ebony suit and a three-inch collar that made him look far older than his seventeen years. The electric lamplight shining down on his head coaxed a rich redness to the surface of his auburn hair, which made me think of Father's favorite saying about my mother's strawberry curls:
Red hair is a symptom of dangerous, fiery passions.

Percy shifted toward the orchestra seats, and I could have sworn, even from that distance high above me, he glanced at me and smiled.

A sharp elbow jabbed me in the arm.

“Stop gawking at him, Livie,” said Frannie—my dearest friend, despite the jabbing. “That boy is a vampire.”

“A vampire?” I snickered and rubbed my walloped bicep. “Here I thought
I
was the one who'd read
Dracula
too many times.”

“Percy Acklen would do nothing but make you feel small and meaningless.”

“You never even talk to him.”

She patted my hand. “Neither do you, my friend.”

I shut my mouth, for she was right. Percy and I had never exchanged as much as a simple
Good morning
or an
Excuse me for stepping on your toe
.

“Forget him,” said Frannie, “and enjoy your birthday treat. You're worth a thousand Percys.”

Our friend Kate, a dimpled blonde whose married older
sister was supposed to be our chaperone for the evening, plopped down beside Frannie after chatting with other girls at the back of the theater.

“Why is Livie blushing?” she asked, leaning forward.

“I'm not blushing.” I fanned myself with my program. “I'm just flushed from the heat.”

Frannie frowned up at Percy and twisted the end of her waist-length braid, but she was a good-enough friend not to betray my silly infatuation.

I folded the upper-right corner of the program's front page until the tip of the cream-colored paper met the boldfaced words at the center:

“Maybe as a birthday present to yourself, Livie,” said Kate, flapping open her own program, “you should volunteer to join this Mr. Reverie on the stage. Maybe he'll teach you how to hypnotize your father into being less of a grouch.”

“Maybe.” I gave a small sniff of a laugh, but I greatly doubted anything could fix Dr. Walter W. Mead.

The lights dimmed, submerging us all in the dark, save for five small candles that flickered inside a row of jack-o'-lanterns in front of the closed red curtain. A hush fell over
the audience. Electric footlights rose to life in a fog of white and orange.

A full-whiskered man in a green checkered suit plodded across the apron of the stage, which set off a hearty round of applause from a thousand pairs of gloved hands. The gentleman waved his arms to quiet us down and offered a grin that turned his eyes into tiny crescents.

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” he said in a booming voice that rumbled up from the barrel of his round belly. “And a Happy Halloween to all of you. I am William Gillingham, your stage manager, and I'm ecstatic to announce that we have a bewitching show for you tonight. Young Monsieur Henri Reverie, barely eighteen years old, has traveled all the way from Montreal, Canada, to exhibit his enthralling hypnotism skills.”

Additional exuberant applause echoed across the theater, and again Mr. Gillingham settled us down with a wave of his hands.

“Thank you, thank you—I'm overjoyed by your enthusiastic response. Some of you sitting out there in the audience will be invited onto the stage to fall under Monsieur Reverie's spell. The rest of you will bear witness to his remarkable powers over the human mind. I assure you, this talented young man will cause your jaws to drop and your eyes to open wide in astonishment. For musical accompaniment, he's brought along his sister, the highly talented Mademoiselle Genevieve. So . . . without further ado, I present to you”—
Mr. Gillingham turned with an upward sweep of his right hand—“the Reveries.”

The curtain ascended and revealed two mahogany chairs, facing each other at the center of the stage, and a canvas backdrop painted to look like a star-kissed nighttime sky. On the left, a young woman with long golden ringlets sat in front of a monstrous pipe organ made of dark wood and gleaming copper. The stage lights brightened to their full brilliance, and the girl's peacock-blue evening gown gave off an otherworldly glow that made her appear more spirit than mortal.

She reached toward the instrument's keys and pressed a single D note twelve times in a row—the sound of a church bell chiming midnight. Chills shuddered down my spine. The pumpkins' toothy leers seemed to burn brighter.

Silence swallowed up the theater again, but before we could all lean back into the comfort of the calm, Genevieve Reverie lunged toward the keys and played a series of eerie notes that swelled into a passionate rendition of Camille Saint-Saëns's “Danse Macabre.” She hunched her shoulders and plowed her feet into the instrument's pedals, as if she were racing through the streets of the underworld on a tandem bicycle, on which we were all unwitting passengers. I clutched the armrests. My head seemed to spin around and around and around, but I smiled and straightened my posture, for I adored a good Halloween fright.

A cloud of white smoke crept across the floorboards from
both sides of the stage. Genevieve's playing intensified, and the mist grew and billowed into a wall of burning orange that blurred the girl from view. The air tasted like my parlor whenever Father lit the fire in the hearth but forgot to open the flue. Those in the first few rows coughed into their gloves. The rising music warned that something was about to happen—something horrifying. The stage was about to erupt in flames.
We'd all burn up on Halloween night!

“Are you all right?” whispered Frannie.

“Yes.” I nodded with a laugh. “It's just better than I imagined.”

The song reached its climax, racing, rising, climbing, higher and higher.

Smoke stung my nose.

I braced myself for fire.

But, no—instead, a young man stepped out of the clouds onto the apron, and the audience drew a collective gasp. A woman in the front row actually screamed. I gripped the armrests with all my might, for the boy looked like the devil—I swear, he resembled Lucifer himself with his black suit and crimson vest and his face shining red in the pumpkins' lights.

“Good evening,
mesdames et messieurs
,” said the boy in an accent that sounded French and dangerous and deliciously sophisticated. “I am Monsieur Reverie.” He gave a deep bow with his hand pressed flat against his stomach.

Silence greeted him. Our brains took several moments
to absorb the fact that this was our entertainer for the night—Henri Reverie—not the ruler of hell. Weak applause trickled across the theater, but it gained speed and volume as everyone roused from their stupors. Relieved laughter boomed through the crowd. I settled back in my seat, eased my viselike grip upon the armrests, and clapped along with everyone else.

“
Merci
. Thank you.” The young man turned toward the reemerging pipe organ and stretched his arm toward the girl at the bench. “Isn't my sister astounding? Please, won't you give a warm round of applause for Mademoiselle Genevieve Reverie.”

We all applauded Genevieve's performance, which far surpassed the uninspiring efforts of an amateur organist like myself. Genevieve panted as if she might collapse, and her golden ringlets uncoiled and wilted across her shoulders like limp strands of seaweed. Oh, how I envied her passion.

The applause dissipated, as well as the smoke, and the theater collectively exhaled a calming breath. The stage settled back to normal. Henri Reverie's skin faded to a less-diabolical shade without the orange smoke rising around him, and his short hair, a bit mussed on top and parted on the right, revealed itself as dark blond, a tad lighter than the hue of fresh honey. He was attractive, I suppose, with red lips and a rosy blush of health in his cheeks.

He stepped closer to us and spoke again. “
Merci
. Thank you for coming here today. My name is Henri”—he pronounced
his name
On-ree
—“Reverie, and I have been studying the arts of mesmerism and hypnotism with my uncle ever since I was twelve. I use a combination of techniques from the great masters, including animal magnetism, deep relaxation, and the remarkable power of suggestion.”

Genevieve played a hushed rendition of “Beautiful Dreamer.”

“In a moment”—Henri strolled across the stage, his hard soles clicking against floorboards—“I am going to invite my first volunteer to come onto the stage with me.” He placed his hands behind his back, which pulled his coat farther open, allowing the crimson silk of his vest to wink at us in the footlights. “There is no need to be afraid of what you will encounter with me. I am going to temporarily take you away from your worries. You will submerge yourself in a depth of relaxation such as you have never experienced before, and you will awake feeling better than you have felt in your entire life. All your troubles will dissolve into nothingness the moment you let me guide you into the beautiful world of hypnosis.”

Despite my previous fear that Henri Reverie was the devil, his words melted in my ears like spun sugar. I needed a temporary escape from life. Yet I wasn't brave enough to say so.

“Is there a young lady in the audience who would like to be my first volunteer?”

A dozen hands flew into the air. And then at least two dozen
more. Silhouettes squirmed and arms flailed throughout the darkened audience.

“Let me see—how should I choose?” Henri grinned and scratched his smooth chin. “Tell me, is anyone here tonight for a special occasion? A birthday, perhaps?”

Next to Frannie, Kate shot her hand into the air and shouted, “My good friend over here is celebrating a birthday.”

Henri Reverie pivoted our way. Fear stabbed at my heart.

Kate stood and urged me to my feet by tugging on my hand. “She's turning seventeen today.”

Murmurs of disappointment over not being chosen rumbled through the crowd. Frannie took my other hand and said, “Do it, Olivia. Don't be afraid. It might be fun.”

Henri strutted closer to us. “You have a Halloween birthday,
mademoiselle
?” he called down to me.

I cleared my throat and answered in an ugly, croaking voice, “Yes.”

The hypnotist smiled with those red lips of his. “Then legend says you are a charmed individual. You can read dreams and possess lifelong protection against the spirits. Come up here with me, and let us see how you fare with hypnosis.”

“Go on, Livie. Don't be shy.” Kate steered me toward the aisle as if she were herding a lost sheep into a pen. She then clapped her hands together, which triggered yet another thundering round of applause.

I tripped my way down the center aisle in the dark. Classmates
from school called out my name in encouragement, and someone patted my arm as I struggled to figure out how to get onto the stage with the disorienting clapping ringing in my ears.

“Over here,
mademoiselle
.” Henri waved me over to the left side, where I found a short flight of wooden steps. He reached out his gloved hand for me to take.

I hesitated a moment, wondering what my father would think of me climbing onto a stage with a young man who had reminded me of the devil only minutes before. Yet I reminded myself of Henri's promise of escape:
You will submerge yourself in a depth of relaxation such as you have never experienced before
.

The hypnotist wrapped his fingers around mine and helped me climb to the floorboards above. Our respective pairs of gloves separated our hands, but I felt the warmth of his skin beneath the smooth fabric. Hot white lights smoked by my feet and glared down at us from the ceiling like an army of small suns. I shielded my eyes while Henri led me to the center of the stage, continuing to hold my hand.

“What is your name?” he asked in a voice for all to hear.

“Olivia Mead,” I answered in a decibel only he would be able to detect.

“Do you live here in Portland?”

“Yes. I attend Portland High School.”

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said to the audience, “I present to you Mademoiselle Olivia Mead of Portland, Oregon, my first subject of the evening. Do any of you know Miss Mead?”

“Ask her about her father,” called a husky male voice from the audience. “Mead the Mad.”

I lowered my head and stiffened my shoulders, but Henri gave my hand a squeeze and pretended not to have heard the horrifying remark.

“Is this raven-haired beauty known for her brute strength?” he asked, at which several people laughed, possibly because I was never typically referred to as a beauty. “Would you like to see this delicate young feather of a girl become as strong and rigid as a wooden plank?”

The audience clapped and cheered, and Kate yelled out, “Go on, Livie. Have a bit of fun.”