Dreams Underfoot n-1

by Charles de Lint

  GRAVEYARD AMID OCCULT PARAPHERNALIA.

  POLICE BAFFLED.

  MAYOR SAYS, ‘THIS IS AN OUTRAGE.’

  “Hey, this isn’t a library, kid.”

  Rexy growled and I looked up to find the drugstore owner standing over me. I dug in my pocket until it coughed up a quarter, then handed it over to him. I took the paper over to the curb and sat down.

  It was the picture that got to me. It looked like one of the buildings in the Tombs in which kids had been playing at ritual magic a few years ago. All the same kinds of candles and inverted pentacles and weird graffiti. Nobody squatted in that building anymore, though the kids hadn’t been back for over a year. There was still something wrong about the place, like the miasma of whatever the hell it was that they’d been doing was still there, hanging on.

  It was a place to give you the creeps. But this picture had something worse. It had a body, covered up by a blanket, right in the middle of it. The tombstones around it were all scorched and in pieces, like someone had set off a bomb. The police couldn’t explain what had happened, except they did say it hadn’t been a bomb, because no one nearby had heard a thing.

  Pinpricks of dread went crawling up my spine as I reread the first paragraph. The victim, Grierson.

  Her first name was Margaret.

  I folded the paper and got up, heading for the post office. Franklin was alone behind the counter when I got inside.

  “The woman who died last night,” I said before he had a chance to even say hello. “Margaret Grierson. The Director of the AIDS Clinic. Did she have a box here?”

  Franklin nodded. “It’s terrible, isn’t it? One of my friends says the whole clinic’s going to fall apart without her there to run it. God, I hope it doesn’t change anything. I know a halfdozen people that are going to it.”

  I gave him a considering look. A half dozen friends? He had this real sad look in his eyes, like ...

  Jesus, I thought. Was Franklin gay? Had he really been just making nice and not trying to jump my bones?

  I reached across the counter and put my hand on his arm. “They won’t let this screw it up,” I told him. “The clinic’s too important.”

  The look of surprise in his face had me backing out the door fast. What the hell was I doing?

  “Maisie!” he cried.

  I guess I felt like a bit of a shit for having misjudged him, but all the same, I couldn’t stick around. I followed my usual rule of thumb when things get heavy or weird: I fled.

  I just started wandering aimlessly, thinking about what I’d learned. That message hadn’t been for me, it had been for Grierson. Margaret, yeah, but Margaret Grierson, not Flood. Not me. Somehow it had gotten in the wrong box. I don’t know who put it there, or how he knew what was going to happen last night before it happened, but whoever he was, he’d screwed up royally.

  Better it had been me, I thought. Better a loser from the Tombs, than someone like Grierson who was really doing something worthwhile.

  When I thought that, I realized something that I guess I’d always known, but I just didn’t ever let myself think about. You get called a loser often enough and you start to believe it. I know I did. But it didn’t have to be true.

  I guess I had what they call an epiphany in some of the older books I’ve read. Everything came together and made sense—except for what I was doing with myself.

  I unfolded the paper again. There was a picture of Grierson near the bottom—one of those shots they keep on file for important people and run whenever they haven’t got anything else. It was cropped down from one that had been taken when she cut the ribbon at the new clinic a few months back. I remembered seeing it when they ran coverage of the ceremony.

  “This isn’t going to mean a whole lot to you,” I told her picture, “but I’m sorry about what happened to you. Maybe it should’ve been me, but it wasn’t. There’s not much I can do about that. But I can do something about the rest of my life.”

  I left the paper on a bench near a bus stop and walked back to Grasso Street to Angel’s office. I sat down in the chair across from her desk, holding Rexy on my lap to give me courage, and I told her about Tommy and the dogs, about how they needed me and that was why I’d never wanted to take her up on her offers to help.

  She shook her head sadly when I was done. She was looking a little weepy again—like she had when I told her that story before—but I was feeling a little weepy myself this time.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked.

  I shrugged. “I guess I thought you’d take them away from me.” I surprised myself. I hadn’t lied, or made a joke. Instead I’d told her the truth. It wasn’t much, but it was a start.

  “Oh, Maisie,” she said. “We can work something out.”

  She came around the desk and I let her hold me. It’s funny. I didn’t mean to cry, but I did. And so did she. It felt good, having someone else be strong for a change. I haven’t had someone be there for me since my grandma died in 1971, the year I turned eight. I hung in for a long time, all things considered, but the day that Mr.

  Hammond asked me to come see him after school was the day I finally gave up my nice little regulated slot as a citizen of the day and became a part of the night world instead.

  I knew it wasn’t going to be easy, trying to fit into the day world—I’d probably never fit in completely, and I don’t think I’d want to. I also knew that I was going to have a lot of crap to go through and to put up with in the days to come, and maybe I’d regret the decision I’d made today, but right now it felt good to be back.

  Bridges

  She watched the taillights dwindle until, far down the dirt road, the car went around a curve. The two red dots winked out and then she was alone.

  Stones crunched underfoot as she shifted from one foot to another, looking around herself. Trees, mostly cedar and pine, crowded the narrow verge on either side. Above her, the sky held too many stars, but for all their number, they shed too little light. She was used to city streets and pavement, to neon and streetlights. Even in the ‘burbs there was always some manmade light.

  The darkness and silence, the loneliness of the night as it crouched in the trees, spooked her. It chipped at the veneer of her streetsmart toughness. She was twenty miles out of the city, up in the hills that backed onto the Kickaha Reserve. Attitude counted for nothing out here.

  She didn’t bother cursing Eddie. She conserved her breath for the long walk back to the city, just hoping she wouldn’t run into some pickup truck full of redneck hillbillies who might not be quite as ready to just cut her loose as Eddie had when he realized he wasn’t going to get his way. For too many men, no meant yes. And she’d heard stories about some of the good old boys who lived in these hills.

  She didn’t even hate Eddie, for all that he was eminently hateful. She saved that hatred for herself, for being so trusting when she knew—when she knew—how it always turned out.

  “Stupid bloody cow,” she muttered as she began to walk. High school was where it had started.

  She’d liked to party, she’d liked to have a good time, she hadn’t seen anything wrong with making out because it was fun. Once you got a guy to slow down, sex was the best thing around.

  She went with a lot of guys, but it took her a long time to realize just how many and that they only wanted one thing from her. She was slow on the uptake because she didn’t see a problem until that night with Dave. Before that, she’d just seen herself as popular. She always had a date; someone was always ready to take her out and have some fun. The guy she’d gone out with on the weekend might ignore her the next Monday at school, but there was always someone else there, leaning up against her locker, asking her what was she doing tonight, so that she never really had time to think it through.

  Never wanted to think it through, she’d realized in retrospect.

  Until Dave wanted her to go to the drivein that Saturday night.

  “I’d rather go to the dance,” she told him.


  It was just a disco with a DJ, but she was in the mood for loud music and stepping out, not a movie.

  First Dave tried to convince her to go to the drivein, then he said that if she wanted to go dancing, he knew some good clubs. She didn’t know where the flash of insight came from—it just flared there inside her head, leaving a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach, a tightness in her chest.

  “You don’t want to be seen with me at the dance,” she said.

  “It’s not that. It’s just ... well, all the guys ...”

  “Told you what? That I’m a cheap lay?”

  “No, it’s just, well ...”

  The knowing looks she got in the hall, the way guys would talk to her before they went out, but avoided her later—it all came together.

  Jesus, how could she have been so stupid?

  She got out of his car, which was still parked in front of her dad’s house. Tears were burning the back of her eyes, but she refused to let them come. She never talked to Dave again. She swore that things were going to change.

  It didn’t matter that she didn’t go out with another guy for her whole senior year; everyone still thought of her as the school tramp. Two months ago, she’d finally finished school. She didn’t even wait to get her grades. With money she’d saved up through the years, she moved from her dad’s place in the

  ‘burbs to her own apartment in Lower Crowsea, got a job as a receptionist in an office on Yoors Street and was determined that things were going to be different. She had no history where she lived or where she worked; no one to snigger at her when she went down a hall.

  It was a new start and it wasn’t easy. She didn’t have any friends, but then she hadn’t really had any before either—she just hadn’t had the time or good sense to realize that. But she was working on it now.

  She’d gotten to know Sandra who lived down the hall in her building, and they’d hung out together, watching videos or going to one of the bars in the Market—girls night out, men need not apply.

  She liked having a girl for a friend. She hadn’t had one since she lost her virginity just a few days before her fifteenth birthday and discovered that boys could make her feel really good in ways that a girl couldn’t.

  Besides Sandra, she was starting to get to know the people at work, too—which was where she met Eddie. He was the building’s mail clerk, dropping off a bundle of mail on her desk every morning, hanging out for a couple of minutes, finally getting the courage up to ask her for a date. Her first one in a very long time.

  He seemed like a nice guy, so she said yes. A friend of his was having a party at his cottage, not far from town. There’d be a bonfire on the beach, some people would be bringing their guitars and they’d sing old Buddy Holly and Beatles tunes. They’d barbecue hamburgers and hotdogs. It’d be fun.

  Fifteen minutes ago, Eddie had pulled the car over to the side of the road. Killing the engine, he leaned back against the driver’s door, gaze lingering on how her Tshirt molded to her chest. He gave her a goofy grin.

  “Why are we stopping?” she’d asked, knowing it sounded dumb, knowing what was coming next.

  “I was thinking,” Eddie said. “We could have our private party.”

  “No thanks.”

  “Come on. Chuck said—”

  “Chuck? Chuck who?”

  “Anderson. He used to go to Mawson High with you.”

  A ghost from the past, rising to haunt her. She knew Chuck Anderson.

  “He just moved into my building. We were talking and when I mentioned your name, he told me all about you. He said you liked to party.”

  “Well, he’s full of shit. I think you’d better take me home.”

  “You don’t have to play hard to get,” Eddie said.

  He started to reach for her, but her hand was quicker. It went into her purse and came out with a switchblade. She touched the release button and its blade came out of the handle with a wickedsounding snick. Eddie moved back to his own side of the car.

  “What the hell are you trying to prove?” he demanded. “Just take me home.”

  “Screw you. Either you come across, or you walk.”

  She gave him a long hard stare, then nodded. “Then I walk.”

  The car’s wheels spat gravel as soon as she was out, engine gunning as Eddie maneuvered a tight oneeighty. She closed up her knife and dropped it back into her purse as she watched the tail lights recede.

  Her legs were aching by the time she reached the covered bridge that crossed Stickers Creek just before it ran into the Kickaha River. She’d walked about three miles since Eddie had dumped her; only another seventeen to go.

  Twice she’d hidden in the trees as a vehicle passed her. The first one had looked so innocent that she’d berated herself for not trying to thumb a ride. The second was a pickup with a couple of yahoos in it. One of them had tossed out a beer bottle that just missed hitting her—he hadn’t known she was hiding in the cedars there and she was happy that it had stayed that way. Thankfully, she had let nervous caution overrule the desire to just get the hell out of here and home.

  She sat down on this side of the bridge to rest. She couldn’t see much of the quickmoving creek below her—just white tops that flashed in the starlight—but she could hear it. It was a soothing sound.

  She thought about Eddie.

  She should have been able to see it in him, shouldn’t she? It wasn’t as though she didn’t know what to be looking out for.

  And Chuck Anderson. Jesus.

  What was the point in trying to make a new start when nobody gave you a break?

  She sighed and rose to her feet. There was no sense in railing against it. The world wasn’t fair, and that was that. But god it was lonely. How could you carry on, always by yourself? What was the point?

  Her footsteps had a hollow ring as she walked across the covered bridge and she started to get spooked again. What if a car came, right now? There was nowhere to run to, nowhere to hide. Just the dusty insides of the covered bridge, its wood so old she was surprised it was still standing.

  Halfway across she felt an odd dropping sensation in her stomach, like being in an elevator that was going down too quickly. Vertigo had her leaning against the wooden planks that sided the bridge. She knew a moment’s panic—oh, Jesus, she was falling—but then the feeling went away and she could walk without feeling dizzy to the far end of the bridge.

  She stepped outside and stopped dead in her tracks. Her earlier panic was mild in comparison to what she felt now as she stared ahead in disbelief.

  Everything familiar was gone. Road, trees, hills—all gone. She wasn’t in the same country anymore—wasn’t in the country at all. A city like something out of an Escher painting lay spread out in front of her. Odd buildings, angles all awry, leaned against and pushed away from each other, all at the same time. Halfway up their lengths, there seemed to be a kind of vortal shift so that the top halves appeared to be reflections of the lower.

  And then there were the bridges.

  Everywhere she looked there were bridges. Bridges connecting the buildings, bridges connecting bridges, bridges that went nowhere, bridges that folded back on themselves so that you couldn’t tell where they started or ended. Too many bridges to count.

  She started to back up the way she’d come but got no further than two steps when a hand reached out of the shadows and pulled her forward. She flailed against her attacker who swung her about and then held her with her arms pinned against her body.

  “Easy, easy,” a male voice said in her ear.

  It had a dry, dusty sound to it, like the kind you could imagine old books in a library’s stacks have when they talk to each other late at night.

  “Let me go, let me GO!” she cried.

  Still holding her, her assailant walked her to the mouth of the covered bridge.

  “Look,” he said.

  For a moment she was still too panicked to know what he was talking about. But then it registered.

>   The bridge she’d walked across to get to this nightmare city no longer had a roadway. There was just empty space between its wooden walls now. If her captor hadn’t grabbed her when he did, she would have fallen god knew how far.

  She stopped struggling and he let her go. She moved gingerly away from the mouth of the covered bridge, then stopped again, not knowing where to go, what to do. Everywhere she looked there were weird tilting buildings and bridges.

  It was impossible. None of this was happening, she decided. She’d fallen asleep on the other side of the bridge and was just dreaming all of this.

  “Will you be all right?” her benefactor asked.

  “I ... I

  She turned to look at him. The moonlight made him out to be a harmlesslooking guy. He was dressed in faded jeans and an offwhite flannel shirt, cowboy boots and a jean jacket. His hair was dark and short. It was hard to make out his features, except for his eyes. They seemed to take in the moonlight and then send it back out again, twice as bright.

  Something about him calmed her—until she tried to speak.

  “Whoareyou?” she asked. “Whatisthisplacehowdidlgethere?”

  As soon as the first question came out, a hundred others came clamoring into her mind, each demanding to be voiced, to be answered. She shut her mouth after the first few burst out in a breathless spurt, realizing that they would just feed the panic that she was only barely keeping in check.

  She took a deep breath, then tried again.

  “Thank you,” she said. “For saving me.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  Again that dry, dusty voice. But the air itself was dry, she realized. She could almost feel the moisture leaving her skin.

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  “You can call me Jack.”

  “My name’s Moira—Moira Jones.”

  Jack inclined his head in a slight nod. “Are you all right now, Moira Jones?” he asked.

  “I think so.”

  “Good, well—”

  “Wait!” she cried, realizing that he was about to leave her. “What is this place? Why did you bring me here?”