Land of Dreams

by James P. Blaylock

  Skeezix let go of Peebles’s jacket and stood glaring at him, clenching and unclenching his fists. Dr Jensen wedged himself between them to fend Skeezix off. Peebles, in a venomous rush, spat first at Dr Jensen, then, in a single move, bent around him and spat at Skeezix, leaping away down the Coast Road before Skeezix could push past the doctor. Jack turned to follow Skeezix, who bolted after Peebles, but Dr Jensen caught his arm and held on. ‘Let them go,’ he said.

  Jack looked round at Helen, who sat on a fallen log by Lantz’s body. Then he glanced into Dr Jensen’s face. The doctor gave him a look that suggested there was more in this than met the eye; it was the look of a conspirator. Dawson rattled up in his wagon then, braked it, and climbed down, and the four of them lifted Lantz onto the bed. Skeezix trudged back up the Coast Road toward them, Peebles having outdistanced him. Jack could have caught Peebles, but what was the use? What would they do, beat him up because the look in his eye suggested his guilt? That wouldn’t do. They picked up Skeezix on the way back to town, the carnival forgotten for the moment.

  Dawson stroked his chin nervously and stood a good two feet back from the table on which lay Lantz’s body, half covered by a sheet. It seemed as if he didn’t at all like the look of what he saw. He was out of his depth, he told Dr Jensen. The medical arts were a mystery to him – a closed book. He’d sewed up his arm one time when he’d sliced it open with a fishing knife, but that was the extent of his doctoring. But he was as curious as the next man, and maybe, taken all the way around, he had the right to know.

  There wasn’t any sign on Lantz’s body of a blow that might have killed him. He hadn’t been shot or stabbed; he hadn’t fractured his skull tumbling down the bluffs. But he was soft all over, like a pudding, Skeezix might have said, if any of them, including Skeezix, were in the mood for such a thing.

  ‘Reminds me of what they call “the last press” in my business,’ said Dawson, as if having failed to understand the phenomenon in medical terms he was having a go at it from the vintner’s point of view.

  ‘I’m not familiar with wine making,’ said Dr Jensen grimly. ‘What is a “last press”?’

  ‘It’s getting out – what is it? – the essences, you might say. The remainders. Pressing out the skins when it seems there ain’t nothing left. And when you’re done, there ain’t, either. This boy looks pressed out to me. But I ain’t no doctor, as I said. Something’s done away with his blood, though, hasn’t it?’

  ‘More than that.’ Dr Jensen peered at Lantz’s scalp line through a heavy magnifying glass. ‘It’s like his nerves have incandesced. I’d swear he was burnt up from within, if such a thing were possible, which it’s not.’

  Dawson widened his eyes and shrugged, as if to suggest that there were things in the world that ought not to be possible but were possible anyway.

  ‘Lantz rode the Ferris wheel for hours last night,’ said Jack, feeling half lijce a fool. Lantz’s riding the Ferris wheel couldn’t conceivably explain his condition, and yet it seemed to Jack that it must. And this was no time to conceal things, no matter how they made you feel. At least it wasn’t the time to conceal much. He’d keep the bottle of elixir hidden, of course. He’d reveal it to Dr Jensen if he thought the doctor might want to share it, but he was fairly sure that the doctor would suggest pouring it down the sink.

  ‘How do you know?’ asked Dr Jensen, suspecting, perhaps, that Jack himself had spent some time at the carnival last night and not at all liking the idea of it.

  ‘I saw him through the loft window. It might not have been him, but I think it was. He went off in that direction after the business with the crow. We told you about that. I watched him with my telescope hours later – early morning, actually.’

  Dr Jensen nodded, as if it seemed reasonable, taken all the way around. Then, abruptly, he drew the sheet over Lantz’s face and set in to wash his hands in the basin. ‘I don’t know what’s going on here,’ he said, not looking at anyone, ‘but I’ll tell you that what happened to our friend Lantz is the same thing that happened to the man I found in the tide pool yesterday.’ He turned around now and looked particularly at Jack. ‘Here we have the Solstice, the carnival, and all the rest of it – you kids know as much about it as I do, maybe more. It can’t all be coincidence. That’s what I say. Watch out for that carnival. Watch out for Dr Brown. Watch out for crows, for goodness’ sake. The Solstice peaks in two days. If I were you I’d lay low. Spend some time reading. In the library. If you go about the village, go together. Don’t get caught out alone. And give up your silly ideas about the Mrs Langley business. At best you’ll just get wet.’

  He cinched up his trousers with that, the cuffs of which were still soaked with seawater. White smudges of salt spray had dried on them, and his shoes were dark and wet. His hair, combed by the wind, looked as if someone had been at it with a harrow. He must be grievously tired, and rightly so, thought Jack, suddenly sorry for the doctor. He’d set out that morning with a destination, and not the corner market cither. It had been a destination unthinkably vast and colourful and mysterious, with unmapped shores and heaven alone knew what sorts of dreams, waiting to come true. And here he was, cold and wet and itchy with dried salt, dead tired and knee deep in the mire of other people’s worries.

  Still and all, Mrs Jensen was glad to have him back. She couldn’t keep the evidence of it out of her eyes when she’d seen them ride up on the wagon, until the sight of Lantz lying there dead had obliterated it. It could as easily have been the doctor himself lying in the wagon. He’d gone out on the same errand that Lantz had pursued, hadn’t he? And wasn’t Jack headed straightaway down that same road, a road that lay golden in the sun, across the grassy meadow and into the foothills? He and Skeezix had seen it, and he and Skeezix would walk along it before they were through. Helen too.

  Everyone filed out the door to see Dawson off, leaving Jack alone with Lantz. He reached for the sheet, to have one last look at Lantz’s face, regretting all the chances he’d had to make things a bit easier for his friend but had passed by. There had always been tomorrow, hadn’t there? He fingered the hem of the sheet but didn’t lift it. There was no use. It wasn’t Lantz who lay beneath it any more. What had been Lantz had seeped into the air above the bluffs last night, had been breathed by the dwindling carnival. He shook his head. That was nonsense, wasn’t it? There was no use inventing horrors, the world was full of enough of them as it was.

  On the counter, beyond the basin, was no end of empty jars and vials and glass tubes. Jack stepped across and looked at then. He pulled the vial of elixir out of his pocket. There were two inches of the green liquor inside. He could afford to part with half of it. Pulling the stopper out of an empty little bottle from the shelf, he unstopped his own vial and tilted it over the mouth of the empty bottle. A scraping sounded at the door – someone coming in. He corked his vial and shoved it into his pocket, then put the empty bottle back onto the shelf and pretended to look at a sidewise heap of books. Dr Jensen strode back in and stopped abruptly inside the threshold. He wrinkled up his nose, gave Jack a look, started to speak, thought better of it, and sat down heavily in a chair, The smell of the elixir hung in the air of the room. Jack nodded at Mrs Jensen, who followed the doctor. Then he slid out and joined his friends, the three of them walking away in silence toward the harbour.

  ‘What’s to do?’ asked Skeezix, kicking a stone along in front of him as they walked.

  ‘Kill time,’ said Jack.

  ‘Seems like we’re waiting for something, doesn’t it? Waiting for something to happen. That’s what killing time is all about. Maybe we have to make it happen. Chase this thing down.’

  Helen gave Skeezix a look. Obviously she wasn’t keen on ‘chasing things down’, whatever Skeezix meant by it. ‘There’s probably nothing to chase down. Or if there is, it isn’t what you think. You probably won’t want to catch it if you see it. MacWilt isn’t happy with what he saw. Dr Jensen said to keep out of it, and he’s right.’


  ‘Huh!’ said Skeezix. ‘Dr Jensen sailed out of the harbour in a shoe. Where was he going? Fishing? When he takes his own advice I’ll listen to him. What does Mrs Langley say about it?’

  ‘Mrs Langley talks about her dead dog, mostly, and about a haircut she got at Miss Pinkum’s that made her look like a fool. She can’t forgive Miss Pinkum.’

  ‘I mean in the book,’ said Skeezix.

  ‘Oh, the book. Not much. I haven’t read it all, mind you, but it’s mostly one of those books that avoids saying anything in particular by being very abstract. Mrs Langley was full of philosophy and mysticism. Most of it’s a mess, I think. She’s never actually been there as far as I can tell. There’s mention of roads and rivers, but all very allegorical. Not a specific road, like the one you two claim to have seen.’

  ‘We don’t claim anything –’ began Skeezix.

  ‘Let’s walk out to the hills,’ Jack interrupted. Somewhere against the back of his mind, like an after-image on the inside of his eyelids, the road he’d seen from the top of the Ferris wheel still meandered across the meadows.

  ‘What for?’ asked Helen.

  ‘The road,’ said Jack. ‘There’s probably nothing there now, but there might be. Some sign. Something.’

  ‘Of course there might be,’ said Skeezix. ‘We’ve got to see; and there’s nothing better to do, is there?’

  Helen shook her head. She had the look of someone who was sceptical of Jack and Skeezix’s road.

  ‘Oh, you didn’t see the road,’ said Skeezix theatrically. ‘That’s right; you were the sea anchor. Well, Jack and I saw it well enough, leading up toward the Moonvale Hills. Both of us did. If only one of us had seen it, it wouldn’t count. But there’s something there, all right, even though it faded. We could find it, I bet.’

  ‘Of course we could find it,’ said Jack.

  ‘ You can find it all you want. I’m going back to Miss Flees’s. Don’t be stupid.’

  Skeezix shrugged at her, as if to say he didn’t care what she did, but as for him, he was the sort who took risks, stupid or otherwise. ‘All I want is the treasure,’ he said, after which he turned up the alley that led past Mrs Oglevy’s orchard and then out over the Tumbled Bridge and into the hills. Helen didn’t take the bait. She said, ‘So long,’ and walked away up the High Street.

  ‘What treasure?’ asked Jack. ‘I didn’t see any treasure.’

  ‘Neither did I,’ said Skeezix, laughing. ‘Helen will worry about it all afternoon, though. I wouldn’t be surprised if she got halfway back to Miss Flees’s and then turned around and followed us.’

  Jack trudged along in silence. He hoped Skeezix was right. He’d rather have Helen along. And what with Dr Brown skulking about the village and Miss Flees necromancing and Peebles hating them all, the three of them ought to stick together. Dr Jensen had advised that too.

  It was a half hour’s easy walk to the hills. The sky was blue and white with scattered clouds, and the meadow was patched with moving shadows. The air was silent but for the distant cawing of crows in the almond orchards below the bridge. They could hear their own footsteps and the sound of their own breathing, and the few times that they spoke, the conversation languished at once and fell off again into silence.

  Jack didn’t like the crows, not at all. There seemed to be some safety in there being dozens of them – it was a single crow they feared – but then Dr Brown could easily enough hide himself among them – supposing, that is, that Dr Brown could turn himself into a crow. Willoughby and Dr Jensen supposed he could; that was certain. They’d shot him – winged him was the word, perhaps. Dr Brown’s arm hadn’t been bandaged yesterday, but at the carnival that morning it was.

  They watched the ground once they were out onto the meadow and climbing into the hills. What they were looking for they didn’t know: something, anything that signified. The meadow grasses and wildflowers were high and green, though, rising above their waists, blowing back and forth in the wind like sea waves. Jack climbed into the branches of a nearly lifeless oak in order to ‘spy out the country’ as Skeezix termed it. But from his perch he saw nothing that reminded him of roads, or of stream beds either. There was a movement near the Tumbled Bridge: a sash of blue and white that was gone as soon as he saw it – Mrs Oglevy, quite likely, out beating her almond trees with a rubber mallet.

  He could see landmarks, such as they were, that he remembered from the Ferris wheel, although now he was looking at them from the other side and from a different angle. Somehow, from the dizzy height of the Ferris wheel, nothing had seemed quite so distant as it proved to be now. A stand of trees that had appeared to be a couple of hundred yards from, say, an out-cropping of decomposing granite now was closer to a quarter mile from it. And the bank of stone that traced a little fault line, along which a hill had slid in an earthquake some distant time ago, didn’t seem to point straight toward the north at all but toward the southeast now, as if it had shifted around cunningly in the last hour so as to confuse the two of them.

  ‘Give it up,’ said Jack when he climbed down again. ‘Helen was right. There’s nothing out here anyway, except the wind and the grass.’

  But Skeezix was already hiking up the hill toward another stand of oaks, and so Jack followed him, knowing that in truth it wasn’t results Skeezix wanted so much as the quiet and the empty desolation of the foothills. With the coming of the carnival, the cove wasn’t empty enough for him – too many strollers and shell collectors. Skeezix poked at the ground with a stick, overturning stones, ferreting out clues. He found a broken penknife and a bit of cloth and an empty bottle that had turned purple in the sun. He held the bottle to his eye and peered through it, as if through the distorting lens of its heavy concave bottom he might see what it was he was searching for. Somebody’s following us,’ he said, turning around and continuing his walking.

  ‘Blue shirt, maybe?’

  ‘Yes. He’s down along the creek, angling up through the willows so as not to be seen.’

  ‘He?’

  ‘I don’t know. No, of course not. It’s Helen. Didn’t she have a blue jacket on and a white shirt?’

  ‘I believe she did,’ said Jack, who couldn’t absolutely recall what it was Helen had been wearing. But it sounded right. ‘Let’s wait for her.’

  ‘Let her catch up.’ Skeezix walked farther along, more slowly now, though.

  ‘We can wait at the hilltop,’ Jack said, anxious, actually, to get a glimpse of the countryside from a more elevated point. Already they could see far enough to make out the edge of the Eel River delta, fanning out toward Ferndale and Sunny-brae. And there was the carnival, down on the bluffs – not so big now at all, just a scattering of tents and sheds and a half dozen creaking rides. Smoke from the oven rose above it and was blown to nothing in the wind. Surely from the top of the hill, thought Jack, they’d see even more clearly the land laid out below them, revealed all at once, nothing hidden from view.

  ‘Look here,’ said Skeezix suddenly. He bent and poked at the ground with his stick. The grass had thinned and now sprouted in tufts from sandy soil, as if it were growing out of a river bottom long ago gone dry. Round, bleached stones like enormous eggs lay half buried among the grass tufts. The old stream bed was some fifteen feet across and meandered upward toward a cleft in the hills. They followed it, forgetting about Helen, stooping now and then to unearth bits of metal trash: an old railroad spike, bent and rusted; a blunt pickaxe with a bit of twisted oak limb shoved through it and wedged with a sliver of obsidian; a button cut from abalone shell as broad as Jack’s hand. There were fossils in the stones; like sepia-toned paintings, and there were little spiral seashells scattered in the sand as if they’d lain there half a million years.

  But it was the button that interested them – Dr Jensen would want that. It drew them into the hills that closed around them blocking out the sight of the bluffs and the ocean and then, after they’d rounded the first of the hills, of the village too and of the bridge and Mrs Oglev
y’s orchards. It was then that Jack remembered Helen. He stopped Skeezix, both of them agreeing to climb out of the stream bed and up the hillside to wait for her. They’d be able to see her from up there, no doubt, and wave their jackets at her or something to attract her attention.

  Skeezix was sweating despite the ocean wind, and he huffed and puffed as he talked, stopping every six or eight steps to rest. ‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘I don’t think these are river rocks at all. Not most of them.’

  Jack shrugged and climbed on.

  ‘They’re cobblestones is what they are. This is the road we saw. I’d bet on it. This giant button proves it. Let’s drink some more of your elixir – just a taste – and see what we see. I bet it’ll be a road.’

  ‘Let’s not,’ said Jack, thinking suddenly in the lonesome, windy silence that Helen made a very good sea anchor indeed. ‘Let’s wait for Helen before we do anything. Do you see her?’

  ‘No. I don’t see anybody. Wait. Yes, I do. Down there among the trees.’

  Jack looked where Skeezix pointed. There was a long line of oaks, stretched out almost in a single file, then muddling up into a stand of alder that bordered the woods edging the meadows. There was the blue again, moving through the trees. Something about it was strange. It wasn’t Helen. He was sure of it. It was someone hiding himself. But from whom? From them, obviously. If it were Helen she’d be in the open by now, probably yelling for them – mad that they hadn’t waited. It was impossible to think she’d be skulking through the trees on the edge of the wood, not on a strange and empty afternoon like that.

  Skeezix seemed to agree. ‘Who do you think it is?’ He whispered it, as if suspicious that the sea breeze might carry his words down across the waving grasses.