Dreams of Shreds and Tatters

by Amanda Downum

  Minutes later she heard the front door close again and sighed. Rae scrubbed her long tangled hair and tried to ignore the guilt she felt at that relief.

  LIZ DREAMED OF a dark forest, of a stone road nearly swallowed by trees and earth. A canopy of branches held the ground in a perpetual twilight that smelled of moss and loam and decay. Weeds cracked the paving stones, and roots thrust them aside. The underbrush was alive with sounds—skittering feet, slithering bodies, huffing breath. Shadows shifted around her and wind hissed through the treetops.

  She knew this road, though she hadn’t walked it in years. It had never been so dark and overgrown before. If she kept going the forest would end soon, giving way to hills and fields and the city.

  “Welcome back, Lizzie.” Liz jumped, throat closing. She looked up to see a girl sitting on a tree limb, feet dangling. Her striped stockings were torn, and mud and leaf-litter clung to the soles of her patent leather Mary Janes. Water dripped from her skirts, a puddle spreading across the cracked stones below.

  “It’s been a long time,” Alice said. A thread of water ran between her bloodless lips, splashing her already-soaked pinafore.

  Liz shuddered but didn’t look away. She’d never seen Alice after she died; the casket had been closed. Her friend’s puffy white face and bruised-violet eyelids were her own invention. “You don’t belong here,” she whispered.

  “That isn’t very nice. You used to tell me all about your dreams. You said you wished I could see them too. I remember your stories— the stairs, the city of cats.”

  “What are you doing here?” Liz said.

  “I was going to ask you the same thing. Trying to save someone else?” The dead girl smiled. Her eyes were black wells. “Maybe you’ll have better luck this time.”

  “Alice—” Her voice broke.

  Alice shook her head, flinging water. “I’m sorry. That wasn’t fair. I know you tried. But you’re down the rabbit hole now. Beware the King.”

  “Don’t you mean the Queen?”

  But the dream slipped out from under her. Wakefulness returned in layers: cold, stale air; the vibration of engines; a dizzying sensation of movement. A hand on her arm, a gentle shake. She blinked and lifted her head from Alex’s bony shoulder, rubbing the pebbled, cable-knit imprint his sweater left in her cheek.

  “We’re landing,” he said, pulling off his headphones. He sat folded like a marionette, knees brushing the tray table in front of him despite the airline’s alleged six inches of extra leg-room. Over ten hours in transit had left his hair lank and tangled, and a film of oil and dried sweat clung to Liz’s skin and itched at the nape of her neck.

  The day after she’d made her decision and bought plane tickets, Liz had slept, deep and dark and dreamless. She’d known it wouldn’t last, but Alice’s white face hanging behind her eyes made her stomach clench.

  The plane banked and turned with a rumble. Leaning across Alex’s lap, she saw the last violet and apricot glow fading in the west, and airport lights bright against the black water of the Pacific. She stretched, kneading a knot in her neck.

  Alex adjusted his glasses, glancing at her out of the corner of one eye. “Do you feel better now that we’re here?”

  “No,” she said, her voice nearly lost in the low hum of the plane. Action may have bought her a night of rest, but had done nothing to dislodge the feeling of wrong that stuck like a bone in her throat. “But thank you for coming with me.”

  He shrugged. “I’ve already turned in my lesson plans for the spring. And it’s better than going home to see my parents.” His fingers tightened around hers, belying the lightness of his words. Liz held his hand as the Fasten Seatbelt light blinked on and they spiraled down and down.

  THE SKY HUNG low across Vancouver, spitting rain and veiling the night in grey haze. Liz’s eyelids sagged as Alex drove the rental car downtown. She stared through her reflection in the window and tried not to think about how tired and lost she looked.

  Fog clung to the streets, turning wet asphalt and trees into something distant and otherworldly. Christmas lights glowed through the brume, muted shades of red and gold and eerie underwater blue. Fairy lights to lead travelers astray—where would they take her if she followed them? But the road carried them safely through, to Granville Island and the glass-and-steel forest of downtown. The mist swallowed skyscrapers, softened sharp-angled condos and bled halos of street lamps and jeweled neon. The brightness of clubs and coffee shops faded as they turned onto the quieter side street that led to their hotel.

  A crowd gathered on the sidewalk in front of the lobby, a glistening half circle of umbrellas and raincoats. A man shouted to the onlookers in a deep preacher’s voice.

  “I have seen the King! He is coming for all of you. Aldebaran is his star, and its light will burn your eyes out.”

  Liz’s hands tightened on the handle of her suitcase. Icy drizzle stung her face as she moved closer, snaked frozen fingers under her collar—she hadn’t thought to pack an umbrella. Between the shoulders of the crowd she glimpsed a seamed, chill-reddened face and tangled iron grey hair.

  “I have seen the yellow sign!”

  A pair of police officers pushed through the crowd. “I’ve seen a sign,” one of them said. “It says No Loitering.”

  The old man tried to pull away. “I have to warn them!”

  “Warn them after you’ve slept it off, Yves.” The audience broke apart as the police flanked the preacher.

  “You’ll see him,” Yves yelled as they led him away. “You’ll all see him.” For an instant Liz met his wild eyes. “Le roi jaune vient!”

  Alex caught her shoulder, steering her gently toward the lobby doors. “Come on. I’m sure there’s something more entertaining on cable.”

  SLEEP WAS A long time coming that night. Liz lay still on starch-stiff hotel sheets, listening to the rhythm of Alex’s breath and trying not to toss. Wind sighed past the balcony, rattling the windows with spatters of rain. Citylight fell in a pale stripe across the foot of the bed.

  She was amazed sometimes how comforting the warmth of another body beside hers could be. She’d spent years thinking she would sleep alone for the rest of her life, after she outgrew childhood slumber parties and realized that the heat of lust and sex that drove the world was something she would never experience. To have found someone willing to look past that, to settle for the negotiation and compromise of a relationship without the haze of pheromones, felt like a dream from which she was constantly afraid of waking.

  But no amount of comfort or companionship could soothe her tonight.

  Patterns and correlations. Coincidence and hindsight. She wanted to believe that. Wanted to believe that there was nothing she could do, could ever have done. If her dreams and anxiety were only that then she couldn’t have done anything to prevent Blake’s ominous silence. Couldn’t have stopped Alice from lying back in a bathtub with a belly full of pills. Couldn’t have kept her parents from getting on a plane destined to fall out of the sky.

  What was better—to be helpless and therefore blameless, or to have had the chance to change events and failed?

  Sleep stole over her before she found an answer.

  3

  Negative Space

  “SO,” ALEX SAID the next morning, propping his feet on the coffee table. “Tell me everything you know since Blake moved to Vancouver. He met Alain online, didn’t he?”

  Sunlight streamed through the balcony door, catching sparks of gold and brass in his damp hair. With the clouds burned away, the city seemed less like something trapped in a snow globe. Mountains rose in the north, soaring snow-veined peaks that might have sprung up overnight. Wind rattled the windows, sharp as a razor despite the morning’s brightness.

  Liz sat curled in one corner of the couch, still wearing her pajamas, a second cup of coffee cradled in both hands. It wasn’t helping; fatigue weighed on her, dragging at eyes and limbs. She’d dreamt no more portents last night, but fitful sleep took its toll.


  “In an art forum. A year later Alain came to New York for a week. Blake and I took a train to the city to meet him. You were in London that summer. He was—” She raised a hand, groping for words to describe someone she’d only met once. “Sarcastic, irreverent, sweet. A month later Blake visited Vancouver.”

  “And decided to stay.”

  She nodded. It had been no surprise by then, not after seeing the two of them together. Hearing the way Blake’s voice brightened every time he answered the phone. There had been no warning dreams, only the bittersweet happiness of a friend leaving. She’d known Blake liked to run—she knew about the nightmare that had been his family, and his escape from home at seventeen. She’d watched him run from half a dozen other situations—some better, some not—before they moved in together. But when he left for Vancouver, she thought he was running to, not from.

  “He wrote at first. Emailed. Called a few times. He talked about the city, about the gallery that showed Alain’s work. Everything seemed like it was going well. He sounded... strained the last time I talked to him, but he said it was stress about a show, money, his visa. And then—” She shrugged.

  Alex’s eyes narrowed. “And then you had the dream.” Liz nodded again, staring into the depths of her cup. The room’s powdered creamer left an unappetizing skin across the surface. She’d called again this morning but reached nothing but voicemail.

  She hadn’t left another message.

  “Liz.” The tone of his voice drew her head up. “If something has happened—if—you can’t blame yourself for it.”

  “Of course not.” But she was never any good at lying, not even to herself. “I didn’t call as often as I should have. I stopped writing—”

  “You have a life. So does he. You can’t be there all the time. Nor should you.” His voice softened. “I know about Alice—” She recoiled—head turning, arms crossing, one knee pulling toward her chest. I don’t have to ask how it makes you feel, Dr.

  Matson’s voice echoed in her head. Your posture tells me that. “I’m sorry,” Alex said.

  “No.” She forced herself to unknot, to face him. “Don’t be.”

  She never should have told him if she didn’t want it mentioned.

  “Blake isn’t Alice.”

  “No. Of course not.” He leaned forward, feet sliding to the floor. “You wrote each other—you have his address. That’s the best place to start.”

  THEY CAUGHT A bus across town, within a block of the address Blake had given her. The apartment was a narrow building above a Korean grocery and a palmist’s shop, grimy brick walls and rusting wrought-iron balconies.

  A dark corridor lined in mailboxes ran past Madame Cecile’s, thick with the scent of kimchi and patchouli. An Out of Order sign on the elevator sent them up three flights of creaking stairs. Graffiti hieroglyphs tagged the walls, and green and amber bottles were piled in the corners—someone trying to stay warm.

  The fourth floor hallway smelled of musty central heating and damp carpet, cooking spices and trash that should have been taken out a day ago. One overhead light buzzed in a low locust drone. A TV blared at the far end, dramatic music and impassioned voices.

  They walked the length of the hall twice, somehow missing the right door both times. The stuttering light set her pulse throbbing queasily in her temples. The air was heavy, and she unbuttoned the collar of her coat. Alex tugged his long striped scarf away from his neck, one hand slipping into the pocket where he kept his inhaler.

  “What the hell?” he muttered. Liz began another pass down the corridor, counting every door under her breath. 425, 423, 421, 417... She pulled up too fast and nearly stumbled, but Alex’s hand closed on her elbow, hauling her back to the disappearing door. 419. She pressed a hand against the wood veneer, half expecting it to dissolve at her touch.

  She knocked, gloved knuckles muffled against hollow-core, but no one stirred. The door rattled softly under the pressure of her hand; the handle was scratched near the lock plate, as though someone had tried to force it. She rapped again with no better luck.

  “You feel it too, don’t you?” Liz said, rubbing her aching head. Alex glared at the door. “I feel something, all right, and I don’t like it. You’re sure this is the right address?”

  She pulled an envelope out of her coat pocket, brandishing it like a warrant. Alex nodded and reached for his wallet. He took out a card—a university copy card, the same size and thickness as a credit card—and held it up in a mirroring gesture. “How badly do you want to look inside?”

  Her eyebrows rose. “Will that work?”

  “It does in films.” He glanced both ways, but the hall was empty. The television soundtrack swelled to a crescendo. “Nothing like a little B and E to enliven a vacation.”

  The card slipped between door and sill, scraping against metal. Alex cursed softly, then leaned on the handle. The door swung open with a creak. Liz flinched, expecting shouts, accusations, a sudden blare of sirens. Only silence greeted them, and a draft of cold, stale air that smelled faintly of Chinese food and art supply stores. It was the smell that let her take the first cautious step over the threshold.

  Alex shut the door quietly behind them and reached for the light switch, but it clicked back and forth uselessly. Wan daylight seeped through a window across the room. Posters watched them from the walls: Tom Waits, Peter Murphy, a City of Lost Children print. Ikea furniture, a threadbare red velvet couch. Art supplies lay scattered across the room, a familiar controlled chaos that made her chest tighten.

  “This is it.” She spoke in a whisper, but it was still too loud for the silent room. “This is the right apartment.”

  “It would have been embarrassing if it weren’t,” Alex said dryly. His voice was thin and strained, his lips pinched pale. His chest swelled as he took a hit of his inhaler and deflated again with his sigh. “I’m fine,” he said before Liz could ask, waving her toward the room. The strange pressure and nausea faded as she stepped away from the door.

  Newspapers and books covered the folding table in the dining nook. The window opened onto a fire escape and a view of another dirty brick wall. Dishes filled the kitchen sink and white paper cartons littered the counter. Liz’s nose wrinkled at the sour tang of old lo mein noodles and sesame chicken. At least it was too cold for flies.

  “This has been here for days, at least,” Alex said, risking a closer look at the cartons and retreating quickly.

  If the apartment had been broken into, she couldn’t tell at a glance. The TV and stereo were still there, and it was impossible to tell if anything was out of place amid the mess. Except...

  Sketchbooks were strewn across the scuffed wooden floor, pages bent. Despite the chaos, Blake had always been careful with his supplies. Alex knelt, smoothing creases in heavy paper, and handed her a sketchpad.

  Liz recognized Blake’s work; even simple pencil and charcoal sketches had a powerful economy, a grace of line and form. Disembodied features and anatomical studies covered the pages— the curve of a jaw, hands stripped of skin, a slender back with spine and muscles bared. Over and over she saw the same eyes, dark and narrow beneath a sweep of lashes. At the back of the book she found another pair—pale eyes and arching brows, hints of nose and cheek. Not Alain. Pages had been ripped out, tattered edges caught in the spiral binding. Liz closed the book carefully and set it on the couch.

  “What do you think, Watson?” Alex asked, picking up a stack of mail from the coffee table.

  Liz tried to raise one eyebrow, but suspected she was only squinting. “What makes you think you’re Holmes?”

  “Justifiable arrogance and a predilection for pharmaceuticals. And you’d look silly in a deerstalker.”

  “So would you.” She leaned over his elbow to look at the mail. Bills, junk mail, something to Alain Ngo from the University of British Columbia.

  “He never wore one in the books, you know. That’s—”

  “A cinematic invention that became part of the folk pr
ocess,” Liz finished, rolling her eyes. “I know.”

  “I heard that eye roll,” he said, not looking up from the mail. “What was the gallery Blake told you about?”

  She frowned. “I’m not sure—it’s in an email. Something with an M, I think.”

  “The Morgenstern Gallery?” He pulled flyers out of the stack and handed them to her with a flourish.

  “That sounds right.” She stared at glossy paper. Carving Spirals: sculpture and paintings by Gemma Pagan. The Seduction of Gravity: photographs by Robert Files. Black Dogs and Blue Girls: photography by Alain Ngo. “This must be it.”

  Alex arched an eyebrow. “What do you think, Watson? Shall we investigate?”

  THE MORGENSTERN GALLERY was three stories of red brick, wedged into a row of art and music stores along Granville Street. On the sign above the glass double-doors, a faceless angel lifted a star. Its halo was black, an absence of light, and golden wings dissolved into smoke and flame. A poster in the window advertised the newest exhibit.

  Deaths and Entrances: Transitions in photography, sculpture, and oils. Open to the public December 20nd through January 25th. Private showing December 19th @8:00 PM.

  The gallery was closed, but lights were on inside. Pressing her face against the glass, Liz saw movement. She rubbed the oily nose-smudge off the door—then, before she could stop herself, she knocked.

  At first the figures inside ignored her, but after the third knock a dark-haired woman emerged from the shadows. Her sigh was audible even before she threw the bolt and pushed the door open a few inches.

  “We’re closed,” she said, a German accent sharpening consonants already crisp with annoyance. She was tall to begin with, and the doorstep gave her another few inches of imperious height. “The next exhibit opens—”

  “I’m sorry,” Liz interrupted, voice cracking. Anxiety clenched cold fingers around her throat and stomach. Her cheeks burned with nerves and her tongue felt three sizes too big. For Blake, she reminded herself when she wanted to turn and run. “I’m sorry to bother you. My name is Elizabeth Drake, and this is Alex McLure. We’re friends of Blake Enderly’s. I can’t get in touch with him, and I was hoping maybe someone here could help.”