Land of Dreams

by James P. Blaylock

  He had never been tempted, really, to go across. One world was the same as the next, all of them equally odious. It was power he wanted, that and the eradication of the people who hadn’t let him have it, who had scoffed at him and ignored him and tried to save him from himself. He had that power now – over life and death. The only master he served was the carnival itself, and it was a master that couldn’t speak, that needed what he needed, that sought, day to day, the same ends that he sought.

  He rather enjoyed the darkness of the ride. He could feel something in the air, a sort of electricity, like before a hot wind. It hovered around him, probing, watching him. But he was part of it, in a way, and could ignore it. Helen couldn’t, or at least she shouldn’t. But then she hadn’t any real choice in the matter. She was theirs.

  Painted skeletons and headless men appeared and receded. Steam roiled up around him. For a moment he felt the uncanny certainty that it was fog, not steam, and that he occupied a vast, open, and crumbling building somewhere, a building that decayed around him, the floors ankle deep in termite dust, sea wind whistling through gaps in clapboard siding. It felt right, somehow; like home. Then he was back in the cart, angling along the dark corridor. He heard Helen scream from the car ahead. He laughed, imagining her terror and half regretting that it wouldn’t last.

  Before they left for the south, he promised himself, after he’d seen to Helen, he’d burn down Miss Flees’s house. Fire might not kill the old woman who haunted the attic, but it would wipe out every trace of the things she possessed, of her reason for haunting anything at all. He smiled as he rumbled along, imagining the house burning. He’d burn Jensen’s house too. He’d have a busy night of it, and tomorrow he’d be gone, beyond where anyone would think to look for him.

  Jack and Skeezix found themselves on a beach. Jack woke up first, wondering how long he’d slept. The moon was rising beyond the coastal hills, and only a pale yellow bit of light leaked across the night landscape, so that just the outlines of things were visible. It felt like midnight, or thereabouts. They were in the cove – they must have blown back in, as Dr Jensen had done. The wet dolls’ clothes hung on him loosely, as they had when he’d first put them on. The foggy weather must have stretched them. It was too much to hope for any other explanation.

  There was no sign of fog now, not even offshore, although it might have been hidden by the night. The tide was out, exposing rock reefs and tide pools, shadowy and dark, the still water of the pools barely visible in the pale radiance cast by the hidden moon.

  Something moved down the cove, out in the water toward the headland – something big, that clacked and splashed. A ragged arm waved out of the water, the moonlit claw on the end clutching something, a fish maybe, as long as Jack’s leg. They’d returned to a world of monsters. This was proof – a hermit crab as big as a house. He could see the mountainous whorl of the turban snail shell on its back. Nowhere was safe. It was curious that they hadn’t grown. Harbin had. If he’d lived he’d be big enough by now to walk the streets. He’d have no fear of cats, or crabs, or rats as big as oxen. It wasn’t safe on the beach. A crab might as easily take a fancy to them as to a fish.

  Skeezix still slept. Jack didn’t want to wake him, even though he knew he had to. Despite Skeezix’s brave, adventurous talk, he’d be downhearted to find that he was back again, that he still occupied a world in which there was quite possibly another Skeezix, one that had quite conceivably already wooed Elaine Potts, a world in which a passing hermit crab could eat them both before going to bed.

  He prodded Skeezix with his foot and peered at the soggy shoe, wondering at it. Something was wrong. They’d gone to sleep thinking that during the night they’d outgrow it, that their increasing weight would swamp it, and that they’d find themselves swimming in the open, foggy ocean. Now it seemed to him that it was even larger than when they’d first leapt into it. Certainly the wet hadn’t stretched the shoe and his dolls’ clothes both.

  A wave broke behind them, washing across the heel of the shoe, spinning it sideways and beaching it entirely. A seagull landed on the toe just as the moon cleared the hills, bathing the coast in silver light. Jack stared at the bird for a moment, then blinked in surprise. It wasn’t a monster, like the hermit crab or the owl in the oak woods. It was a standard seagull. It would have had to stand on his forearm to look him in the face. He turned around to look at the beach again. Perhaps the crab was a figment, an illusion, a shadow, a trick of moonlight and darkness. But it wasn’t. It was still there, clacking and clambering over rocks, toward them. They seemed to have drifted into some giddy version of the world that was half monster, half normal. But there wasn’t any time to be puzzled about it.

  ‘Hey!’ Jack shouted, shoving Skeezix again with his foot. He boosted himself over the side of the shoe and onto the beach. The seagull flew into the air, circling overhead, then landed on the beach farther down. Skeezix awakened, looking about him groggily. Jack waved his hand in Skeezix’s face. ‘Hurry! A giant crab!’

  Skeezix blinked wonderingly at him for a moment, forgetting, perhaps, that such a thing as a giant crab was entirely possible. Then he remembered. He twisted round and looked down the beach toward where the crab scuttled along through the shallows. It hadn’t seen them yet, but it would. Skeezix tumbled over the side of the shoe and ran, he and Jack both, up the hill and into the cavern overlooking the beach. Jack scraped his head on the sandstone ceiling. The truth struck them both at once. It was Dr Jensen’s crab, coming up at last out of the sea – the last of the Solstice migration. The seagull, the cove, the cavern they shivered in – all of them were as they should be. They were home at long last.

  ‘Helen,’ he said. ‘What about Helen?’

  Skeezix shook his head. ‘We know where we are, but we don’t know when. Let’s get out of here before we freeze.’

  ‘We need clothes.’

  Skeezix grinned, nodded, and bent out of the cavern, sliding away down the slope and watching the great crab dawdle in the waves. Skeezix jogged to the rocks beneath the trestle. They were high and dry; the last tide hadn’t risen far enough to soak them.

  ‘What’re you doing?’ asked Jack, catching up.

  ‘This is where we hid Langiey’s clothes. You can have number five if you want it. I’ll take three. Helen ripped the shirt, but it beats these dolls’ clothes. It’ll be a tight fit, though; James Langley was dangerously thin, to my way of thinking.’

  Jack pulled the rocks out of the shoes, examining the slip of paper. ‘Where’s four?’ he asked, pulling on the shirt.

  ‘Your father got hold of four when he came through. If Langley arrives he’ll be out of luck. He’ll have to knit himself kelp pants. Let’s go.’

  They were off, running up the beach road, angling across the meadow toward the bluffs, hearing for the first time the tootling of the calliope over the rush of the ocean. A low, booming noise seemed to fill the air, to stretch it, as if it vibrated through the earth and rock of the meadow. They stopped for a moment to look back, toward where the crab followed along behind them in the moonlight. It seemed to have seen them at last but was wary of climbing up off the beach to pursue them and so was coming on slowly.

  The carnival was a wonder of lights, although the rides were silent and empty – all of them except the Toad. Jack and Skeezix could hear the rattling of the carts, the shouted laughter, the intermittent shrieks and ghostly hooting as they pounded along, Jack in front now, Skeezix falling behind but running as fast as he’d ever run and with a look of intensity on his face that seemed to say that he was ready, finally, to confront whoever it was that needed confronting.

  Jack could see the beehive oven, its door open, the fire banked and roaring and looking like the arched mouth of the descent into hell. Two men, weed-haired black shadows against the soaring flames, fed fuel in through the open door, one of them pitching in split logs, the other shovelling coal, both of them bending and lurching and casting the fuel like clockwork toys, at such a
pace that the oven must have been impossibly full. A banging and hissing filled the night air, rhythmic and slow like a steaming heart – the boom, boom, boom they’d heard coming up from the beach – and growing louder with each stroke as if the oven would explode along with the engine it propelled. The calliope sighed and moaned from the centre of the dark, still carousel.

  One of the men leaned into an iron lever angling out of the side of the oven, aglow in the light of the flame, and at once a rush of steam poured out of the top of the mechanical contrivance attached to the domed bricks in a rising shriek. The beating of the massive heart died to a throbbing pulse. The glow of the lamplit carnival diminished, as if the lamps weren’t burning oil but, like the carnival rides, were driven by steam.

  Jack slowed to a careful walk as he approached the plywood arch that spanned the dirt road across the bluffs. Skeezix puffed up behind him. It seemed wild and foolish to stride in at the door like that, through the arch, as if they’d come round for pleasure. But there was nothing else to do; there was no hiding on the open meadow. The plywood wall stretching away on either side seemed almost to shimmer, but the shimmering seemed to have nothing to do with the carnival lamps and the burning torches thrust randomly in the meadow grasses.

  The colours of the gaudy clowns and demons and apes that decorated the posters covering the walls seemed to shift and deepen. Faces slowly began to appear where there’d been none moments before – staring out from beyond cycling midgets, half obscured by odd, smoky lettering – not the faces of acrobats and strong men and fat ladies but of peering, hollow-eyed strangers, lost in the layers of countless posters glued onto the walls over the countless years.

  The ghostly faces grew more clear with the slowly brightening paint. Lines of sorrow and fear in their lonely countenances deepened until the shifting and the shimmering became the restless movements of what appeared to be a thousand captured souls, straggling in a procession from impossibly deep within the arched, painted facade. The plywood and the posters had become almost transparent, so that beyond it, through it, could be seen the slowly turning Ferris wheel, the flames of the open oven, the dark swinging door of the Flying Toad.

  Jack and Skeezix stood staring at the faces until they realised, at one and the same time, that Lantz was among the spirits they stared at, his face hovering at the forefront of the procession, drawn and tired. And something seemed to be materialising beside him – a pale hovering spirit, looking like dust shaken out of a rug. Jack and Skeezix leapt through the arch, past the wall and running, both of them sure whose face it was that drifted toward clarity.

  They could hear the clacking of the crab again as they ducked around behind the row of tents, and Jack looked back, one last time, to see it coming through the arch, the worn pastel colours of its barnacle-crusted shell shining in the glow of the lamps. Immense and startling as it was, there seemed to be nothing incongruous about it, as if an enormous hermit crab was a common carnival fixture. The boys slipped along in the shadows. It wouldn’t do to be seen, not just now. And yet if they dawdled –

  A hand clutched Jack’s shoulder. He shouted in surprise and twisted away, sitting down hard and certain that it was Dr Brown, escaped from the cat. But it was MacWilt, grinning, licking his lips slowly. His right eyelid twitched as he bent forward and closed his thin and bony hand around Jack’s ankle. In his other hand was a knife, its slender blade flecked with rust.

  Skeezix hit MacWilt head first in the side, wrinkling him up like a wet scarecrow and tumbling over him into the wall of a tent. Jack leapt to his feet and stamped on MacWilt’s wrist, thinking to loosen his grip on the knife. The tavern keeper sat up and spun around fast, his head tilted back and eyes pried open, grabbing Jack’s leg and swinging the knife in a wild arc at his stomach just as Skeezix clambered up and fell on MacWilt from behind, knocking him forward. The knife caught itself in Jack’s sweater -in James Langley’s sweater – and jerked out of MacWilt’s hand. A scream sounded – Helen’s scream – and Jack was running again, between the tents, the knife bouncing along, entangled in the sweater. He wrenched it out and threw it, hating the feel of it in his hand. In the same instant he heard MacWilt curse, but the curse cut off midway through, folding into the wheeze of a man who’s had the wind knocked out of him.

  Jack looked over his shoulder to see Skeezix appear from the other side of the tent, running. There was the Flying Toad straight ahead. Steam poured out from under the tilt-up sides of the thing, swirling away in the lamplit night like writhing demons. The air was hot with it, and with the glow from the oven, still stoked by the two men, or whatever they were. One of them, half turned toward them, appeared to be nothing more than a skeleton dressed in rags.

  Another jerking ghoul appeared, making toward the Ferris wheel, with Dr Jensen’s crab close behind it and nipping at its neck with an enormous claw. The crab swept through a string of lanterns, knocking them down across the top of the nearest tent. A fire sprang up in a rush, the burning oil pooled up atop the damp canvas and dripping down the sides, brightening the night with running, leaping flame.

  ‘I’m going to shut it down!’ hollered Skeezix, climbing over the railing that fronted the Toad.

  Jack nodded, shouted ‘Yeah!’ and ran shoulder first into the door, which swung open on its hinge, dumping him into the dark interior. Helen was inside somewhere. He was sure of it. At first he couldn’t see, but he could find his way well enough if he stuck to the tracks. He tripped over a pair of pipes that ran in under the wall, but he staggered ahead, hurrying. A light blazed forty feet farther on, almost hidden around the curve of track. It would be the headless man, pitching his head into a basket. Jack started to jog. He could see well enough now. It occurred to him that he might never catch up with Helen. The ride had been unnaturally long, as if it were as much a product of magic as mechanics. Eventually Helen would catch up with him. But he didn’t want to wait for that.

  The air was heavy with steam that weighed on his shoulders like sacks of sand. It seemed to him suddenly that he hadn’t got enough sleep in the shoe – he was dead tired. And he realised that he hadn’t been warm, not really, in – how long? It seemed like days. It was blood-warm in the ride, though.

  He slowed up. There wasn’t any hurry. Helen would catch up to him. That would have to do. He couldn’t chase after her forever, round and round the tracks. He stopped, wavering, feeling as if he were falling forward, down a well shaft – not in a rush but in a slow, lazy, somnolent drift, on a bed of feathers. He slumped against the wall and tried to shake the sleep out of his head. But it was more than sleep, and it wouldn’t shake out. Laughter sounded from ahead. There was the whir and clatter of wheels along the track.

  That was what he wanted – wasn’t it? – to hear a cart coming along. He couldn’t remember entirely why. It appeared from behind him, in the dark distance, coming along fearfully slowly, seeming almost to float along through the whirling steam. At first it seemed empty, but it wasn’t. Someone lay asleep on the seat. Helen. Even in the darkness he knew it. Jack reeled toward her, toward the moving cart, down the centre of the tracks. The cart rolled forward, the wheels barely turning, and with one last whoosh of released steam it stopped.

  In the sudden silence the air was alive with the sound of pounding, with the throbbing of the oven. The steam dissipated, hovering up toward the ceiling and vanishing, and the weighty, deadening atmosphere of the place lifted with it. Jack heard someone shouting. It was Skeezix. He’d shut the ride down, just like he’d said. Jack blinked the sleep out of his eyes and leapt along the last few feet of track to where Helen lay. He wrenched the bar forward so as to reach in behind it. Helen shifted uneasily. Her face was grey in the dim light, her eyes half open and blank. Jack would have to carry her out – into the ocean air. It was easier thought of than done, though. Small as she was, she was heavier than he would have guessed, and curled up in the cart, and him leaning in and doing all the work with his back –

  He was shoved, suddenl
y, from behind. He heard a little whining grunt of effort, and then he pitched forward, dropping Helen to the seat again, stumbling off balance. He grabbed the edge of the cart and turned around to see Peebles leering at him, sucking on his bent finger. Peebles held something in his hand – a doll, it seemed to be, with an inflated origami paper head, built of feathers and clay and hair, an obscene thing with a chicken’s beak on its face and thicken claws for feet and bits of the cut-up Solstice fish stitched on with coloured thread.

  ‘Part of this is you,’ said Peebles, smiling. And with that he plunged a straight pin into it, his eyes shooting open in surprised pleasure at the sudden sight of Jack’s face, twisted in pain. He wrenched out the pin and winked. Jack braced himself, remembering suddenly the way he’d thrust the hook into the poor fisherman on the dock and then borrowed his shoe without so much as a thank-you. Well, he hadn’t had any choice about that. He’d have to kick Peebles to bits and quickly, too. ‘Oh, no,’ said Peebles. ‘You shouldn’t move. It won’t be good for you. I can do things to you now that you wouldn’t understand.’

  Jack stood still. He’d let Peebles talk. The hot pain that still throbbed at his side, beneath his belt, made Peebles’s threats convincing.

  Peebles shouted, over the loudening throb of the oven. His eyes shifted uneasily. ‘Our fat friend seems to have turned off the machinery. I saw him wrenching at it when I drove past, but Mr MacWilt is dealing with the problem. In a moment –’

  Peebles was interrupted by a distant shriek of steam. The throbbing lessened momentarily. Jack started forward, but Peebles straightened up, jabbing the pin up into the shoulder of the doll and sending Jack reeling. Peebles turned, watching him, ready to thrust it in again. ‘I could kill you with this, you know. But that would be a waste. I like to hurt you, though. I’ve got one of these with the fat boy’s hair glued on, too. And I’ve got a Helen doll. I snipped bits of their hair off while they slept. Yours I snipped off one night a month ago when you stayed overnight at Miss Flees’s – just the tiniest bit, just enough.’