The Last Dream

by Gordon R. Dickson

  “Some of those old bags are that way.”

  It was a crazy conversation. He checked an impulse to shake his head and clear it. He could talk to a woman better than this. A clink of metal reached his ears. She was lifting the kettle off the hook. Was it boiling already? She carried it away to the further shadows.

  He was aware of eyes watching him; and looked down to discover it was the cat. Tall and tawny, it sat upright before the fire, staring at him. Its eyes, half-closed, seemed dreamily to be passing judgment upon him.

  “You live here all by yourself?” he asked.

  “All by myself.” Her voice came back to him and he peered into the dimness, trying to make her out. “Did she warn you about me?”

  “Warn?” he said. The cat moved suddenly. He heard the soft sound of paws on the floor and it bounded into his lap. He jumped at the weight of it, then raised his hand to pet it. But it wrinkled its nose suddenly—and spat—and leaped back to the floor again.

  “Warn?” he said. “No. What for?”

  Marie-Elaine laughed.

  “Just talk,” she said. She came walking out of the shadows into the firelight, an odd-looking earthenware coffeepot in one hand and two black china cups in the other. She sat down on the settle opposite him, filled both cups and handed one across to him. He took it, hot in his hand.

  “How come she’s got it in for you?” he asked.

  “Oh, it’s business,” she smiled a cat’s creamy smile across the small flame-lit distance between them. “We sell our wares to the same people.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Your looks wouldn’t have anything to do with it?” He watched her to see how the compliment registered. She tilted her face, framed by the dark hair, a little to one side and her shadowed eyes heated his blood.

  “My looks?” she murmured.

  “You’re a doll,” he told her, in that sudden harsh voice that usually worked so well for him with women. Her smile widened a little. That was all. But enough.

  “Do you want some more coffee?” she asked.

  “Pour me.” He held out the cup. Her fingers caught and burned against his hand, holding it as she poured the brown liquid into his cup.

  “Milk and sugar?” she said.

  “Black.” He shook his head and drank. The coffee was like nothing he had ever tasted before. Delicious. Staring at the curving china bottom, he realized he had drunk it all without taking his lips from the cup.

  “More?” He nodded, and she poured again. He held the cup this time without drinking, warming both hands around it; and looked at her over it. With the coffee in him, the fire seemed brighter and she—standing before him, she had not moved, but now as he watched she seemed, without moving a muscle, to float nearer and nearer, calling to all his senses. His head swam. He smelled the wild, faint savor of her perfume; and, like the candle in the old woman’s house, she blotted out everything.

  “Tell me—” It was her voice, coming huskily at him.

  “What?” he said, blindly staring.

  “Would you do something for me?”

  “Something? What?” he said. He would have risen and gone to her, but the amulet anchored him like some great weight around his neck.

  “You shouldn’t ask what,” she breathed. “Just anything.”

  His head spun. He felt himself drifting away as if in some great drunkenness. “You got to tell me first—” he gasped.

  Suddenly the enchantment was gone. The room was back to normal, and she was turning away from him with the coffeepot. He leaned a little forward in his chair, toward her, but something had come between them.

  “They got a hotel in Peterborough?” he asked.

  “No hotel,” she shrugged, replacing the coffeepot. “Sleep here,” she said indifferently. His chest itched suddenly; and, reaching up to scratch it, his fingers closed around the amulet, through his shirt. Hastily, he dropped his hand again.

  “Well, that’s nice of you,” he said. “I sure appreciate that.” The words came out clumsily, and he gulped his second cup of coffee to cover the excitement and confusion in him. The amulet, now that he had noticed it was itching and burning like a live thing. There must be something in it that he was allergic to. He had got all puffed up from poison oak once, on a picnic. When he looked up from the coffee, he saw she was on her feet.

  “Here,” she said. She picked up the lamp from the table and it lit up a bed against the wall beyond her. “This is where I sleep. But I’ve another— over here.” And she crossed the room, the shadows rolling back before her until against the opposite wall he saw a narrow bunk built of heavy wood and with slats across it, peeping out from under the edges of an old mattress. “I’ll get you some bedding.”

  She turned and went toward a dark door opening in the rear wall of the room. The cat meowed suddenly from near the front door and she spoke over the shoulder. “Let him out for me.” Then she had vanished through the rectangle of darkness.

  He got up, feeling the relief as the amulet swung out and away from contact with his skin. He walked across to the door, and opened it.

  “Here, cat,” he said.

  It did not come, immediately. Peering through the dimness, he discovered suddenly its green eyes staring at him, unwinkingly. “C’mon! Cat!”

  The cool night air blew through the doorway into his face, chilling and antiseptic. Standing with his back to the inner room, he fumbled open the top buttons of his shirt and pulled the little weight of the amulet out. The fire flickered high for a moment behind him, painting the bare wooden door ajar before him and reflecting inward. Looking down, he saw a great, furious rash on his skin where the amulet had rested.

  He heard the old witch again, in the back of his mind, chanting—once by call of the flesh, once by bum and rash. Sudden fury exploded in him. Did she think she’d frightened him with stuff like that? Did she think he wouldn’t dare—?

  He yanked, snarling, at the amulet. The cord broke; and he tossed it into outer darkness.

  Sudden relief washed over him—and on the heels of it, suddenly, the night became alive. With a thousand voices, whispering, its clamor surged around him, advising him, counseling him, tempting him. But he was too sharp now to be tricked, too wise to be betrayed. Clever, clever, his mind curled and twisted and coiled about on itself like a snake hungry in the midst of plenty and waiting only to make its choice. The heat of his body was gone now, all the lust of his flesh for Marie-Elaine, and only the shrewd mind was left, working. He would show them. He would show them both.

  He became aware, suddenly, that he was still standing in the open doorway.

  “Cat?” he said. The green eyes had disappeared. He turned back into the house, closing the door behind him. She was fixing his bed.

  “You let Azael out?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said. Something better than her, he thought, looking at her—something better here for me. I’ll show you, who can handle who, he thought. She was smiling at him, for no reason he could see.

  “Don’t be hasty,” she said, looking at him.

  “Who’s hasty?” he said.

  “Not you,” she said. And she had slipped away from him suddenly into the shadows around her bed.

  “Turn out the lamp,” her voice came back to him. His fingers fumbled with the hot little metal screw; and the brilliant, white-glowing mantel faded. He looked across again at the darkness where she lay, but the firelight danced like a bar between them.

  He stepped backwards to his own bed and sat down on its hard, quilted surface. He took off his shoes and socks, listening for the sounds of her undressing—but he heard nothing. He slid in under the covers, still wearing pants and shirt—but after he was covered he thought better of it and stripped off his shirt and dropped it over the side of the bed, leaving his chest naked to the quilt.

  He lay on his back, waiting for sleep. But he could not sleep.

  The fire danced. He felt at once drugged from the coffee and quiveringly awake. With the throwing
away of the amulet, a weird lightness and swiftness of thought had come upon him, and a sense of power. Witches or women, he thought, they couldn’t match him. Women or witches… almost he laughed out loud in the darkness at the irresistible fury of his galloping thoughts. The events of the day flickered like a too-swift film before his eyes. He saw the kid, the freight, the old woman over the ridge. Again he climbed the stony, wooded slope and stood at its top, feeling the evil in the sunset. But now he no longer wondered about it. He accepted it, feeling it echo back from some eager sounding-board within him.

  The dark fish of his thoughts swam in the black flood of the silent hour surrounding him. The keen edge of his desire for Marie-Elaine, her woman-flesh, was gone. Now something deeper, further, stronger, attracted him. It was a taste, a feel, a hunger, a satisfaction—like that which the business of beating up the kid had brought him. It was as if a mouth within him whose presence he had never suspected, had now suddenly opened and was crying to be fed. Somewhere about him, now, was the food that would satisfy it, the drink that would slake it. He lay still in the darkness, listening.

  From the far side of the room came the soft and steady breathing, a woman in sleep… His wide eyes roamed the blackness; and, as he watched, the room began to lighten.

  At first he saw no reason for this brightening. And then he saw the faint outline of the room’s two windows taking dim ghost-shape amidst the dark; and, gazing through the nearest one, he saw that the moon was rising above the ridge. Its cold-metal rim was just topping the crest of brush and rock; and he saw light spill like quicksilver from it, down the slope, picking out the points and branches of the dark pines.

  He gazed back into the room. Dim it still was, all steeped in obscurity; but by some faint trick of the light, the book on the mantel lay plainly revealed against the wall’s deep shadow. Its gold chain lustered in the gloom with some obscure element of reflected light.

  The hunger and thirst came up in his throat. He felt a need to do great things, and a feeling of wild joy and triumph swung him from the bed. He stood upright in the room, then swiftly stooped to gather up socks, shoes, shirt and suitcoat and put them on. When he was ready to leave, the book lying above the mantelpiece drew his eye again, like a cask of gold. In three long strides he crossed the room to it and tucked it under his arm. It was heavy—heavier than he had thought; but he could have carried a dozen like it easily, with the wild energy now possessing him.

  He went swiftly to the door, opened it a crack, and slipped out, and it was like stepping into another day that was just the negative of the film that sunlight would print when the dark hours ended. Cold light flooded the low places and the hills, and before he had taken a dozen steps from the cabin his eyes had adjusted and he was at home in the night.

  He went quickly, seeming to swim through it effortlessly on tiptoe and with the sharpness of the cool air in his lungs, a drunken headiness came on him. The book felt rich with its heaviness under his arm. A warmth from its thick leather binding seemed to burn through his shirt and side, infecting him with a strange and bright-fevered heat. He pressed its shape closer to him, so that the beating of his heart echoed back from it, giving blow for blow. Now running, he went up the ridge between the two hollows with their cabins—but all he did was without effort, as if this was no steep slope, but a plain. And at the top of the ridge he paused— not because he was out of breath, but because he had the book now, and the money, and the railroad tracks lay there before him in the moonlight and another freight would be along before the dark was gone. He had won, but at the same time, something pulled at him; and he was reluctant to go.

  He stood, irresolute on top of the ridge. The night wind blew coldly in his face; and suddenly the fever that had brought him this far faded out of him, leaving him abruptly cold and clear-headed as if he had just risen from a long night’s sleep.

  Stunned, dismayed, deprived, he stood blinking. What had happened?

  The plain earth, the plain moonlight, and the plain wind, gave him no answer. The dark magic that had lived in them was abruptly gone, snatched away from him as if it had never been; and he stood alone at night on an Ozark ridge with a worn and ancient book in his hands. With fingers that trembled, he tucked the book under one arm and reached into his hip pocket. Stiff paper crackled in his grasp; and he drew it forth to stare at it in the moonlight, slim twenty dollar bills.

  “Money!” he muttered. And then, yelling out suddenly in furious disappointment and anger, “Money!” he flung it all suddenly from him, far and wide into the night wind. The bills fluttered, darkly falling in the moonlight, lost among the shadows of the two slopes. Snatching the book from under his arm he held it before him, closed, in both hands, heavy and warm from the heat of his body—in both hands. Was this it? Was this the way to their rich and secret life?

  His heart beat. In the depths of the hollow be-hind him, the cabin of Marie-Elaine sent small wisps of smoke from its chimney. Before him the cabin of the older witch lay in equal silence and lightlessness. Under the night sky, they and the whole countryside seemed to beat and shimmer to the beating of his own heart—and to the reverberations of some mighty soundless drum, now far off, but waiting. The book burned his fingers.

  “Why not?” he murmured. “Why not?” Slowly his one hand closed over the edge of the book’s cover. The taste that had been in his mouth as he clubbed the kid behind the toolshed was with him again. The red fire of the hearth played once more over the curves of the crouching Marie-Elaine. These waited for him behind the cover of the book. He wrenched it open.

  Black lightning leaped from the page before him, and blinded him. He staggered back, dropping the book, yet crying out in ecstasy. Blinded, he groped for it on all fours on the ground, mewing.

  The distant drumming grew louder. The drummer approached. The landscape melted in the moonlight, swimming around him. He was aware of strange perfumes and great things moving. He crawled in the shadow of a robe and the two witches were somehow present, standing back. But the blindness hid the book from him like a curtain of darkness, and out of that curtain came a Question.

  “Yes!” he cried eagerly, yearningly.

  And the Question was asked again.

  “Yes, yes—” he cried. “Anything! Make me the smallest, make me the littlest—but make me one of you!”

  And once more, the Question…

  “I do!” he cried. “I will! Forever and ever—”

  Then the darkness parted, accepting him. And, even as he looked on the beginning of his road, he felt himself dwindling, shrinking. For one last moment it came back to him, the big-muscled, sunburned arms and the proud body lithe and clean, the strength and the freedom; and then his limbs were narrowed to bone and tendon, to thickset fur, his belly sucked in, and his haunches rose and a tail grew long.

  And the two witches shrieked and howled with laughter. They stood like sisters, arm in arm, sisters in malice, filling the night sky with their raucous, reveling laughter.

  “Fool!” screeched the old one, letting go the other and swooping forward to fasten a leash and collar about his hairy cat’s neck. “Fool to think you could match your wits with ours! Now you are my Charon, to fetch and run, an acolyte to our altars. Fool that was once a man, did you think to feed before you had waited on table?”

  “Character is destiny” said the ancient Greeks, and drove the point home in their myths.

  The Haunted Village

  He came to the hill overlooking the village and braked to a halt. Below him the still town lay, caught like a mirage of hot air in a shallow cup of the enforested earth. He stared at it as he might have stared at a mirage, not quite certain even now as to how he had found it, for the instructions of the boy at the filling station had been vague and he had seen no one along the way who could give him directions. He had taken County Road number twelve and hunted at random through the small, twisting and rutted trails of dirt that snaked back from it among the pines and birch. Now, as twilight was dim
ming the hollows with the long rays of a red sunset glancing across the rolling hills of soft, glaciated earth, he had come upon it.

  He looked down. In the still, late afternoon, the heat waves still beat and shimmered in the narrow streets and above the dark housetops, giving the town a twisting, insubstantial look. Still as a dream, it lay; and no people were visible about it.

  He released the brakes and the car rolled forward down the hill, and the first houses, building quickly to a wall on either side of his car, trapped the sound of his car’s motor, and magnified it, so that it seemed to clamor in the stillness. He went slowly, searching for a stopping place, until he saw to his right a high, weathered building of brown clapboard with three steps leading up to a dusty porch that bore a HOTEL sign upon its overhang. He stopped his car beside the porch and got out.

  A tall dark man with grey eyes large in a thin face appeared out of the porch’s deeper shadow, walking toward him.

  “Can I help you?” he asked. His voice was deep but muted, as if a sort of weary sadness in him made it a special effort to speak.

  “Why, yes,” said Barin, mounting the three steps. “I’m looking for a room.”

  “Oh,” said the tall man. “You’ll have to ask inside, then.”

  He waited until Barin had passed him, then followed half a step behind. And Barin thought he felt the slight breath of a sigh on the back of his neck, but it was so light he could not be sure.

  He opened the door and stepped into a dim lobby, lit only by the fading light from a bay window. To the left a shadowed passage led away into the gloomy depths of the hotel and about the lobby heavy leather chairs sat cracked and withdrawn. Ahead was the desk. He walked toward it, the tall man behind him.

  “Mikkelson?” It was a heavy voice from behind the desk, hoarse and mechanical as the grating of a spade on concrete.

  “There’s a guest,” answered the tall man from behind Barin’s shoulder, in his sad, tired voice.

  Beyond the counter of the desk, a cubbyhole reached back into obscurity. At the counter, a pale patch of light from the distant window fell on the grained wood and the stiff white pages of an open guest book—just turned, evidently, to a new page, for there were no signatures upon it.