Chapter Eighteen
Having arrived back at my apartment in the middle of the night after experiencing another energy draining night of work I was more than ready for bed. The small wooden box was deposited on the kitchen counter without a second thought. My work shirt peeled off and dropped onto the floor without any desire to find the dirty laundry basket. I left my undershirt on wanting to stave off the slight cool of the apartment. I didn’t even bother to turn the light on. I chose instead to stumble my way across the floor to my futon where I crashed on top of the covers. I laid on my front for a short time, thinking about moving under the blankets but not possessing the will to do so. Then I remembered the treasure in my pocket.
Flipping over onto my back my hand went blindly exploring in my pocket until it reached the key. I pulled it out and held it up in the dark. The moonlight streaming in through the window glinted dully off the old metal. I turned it this way and that hoping for some flash of intuition or inspiration but neither came. It rested mute in my fingers and I wished for a miracle cure so the thing would speak and tell me its story. The longer I waited the heavier my eyes felt. Finally I laid it to rest on the small table beside the bed.
Soon the weight of my eyelids was too much too bear and I felt my body begin to drift weightlessly. As the conscious mind closed for business, the unconscious mind flung wide its doors and lit up strange lights, orange and yellow ones that flickered and danced hectic reels against inky skies. In my dream I woke to Hell set loose on earth.
I stood in the yard of a large burning building. Ash and glowing embers drifted past my face but once again in that slower than reality fashion of dreams and movies. The heat was oppressive, much more so than the last time I had the dream. Then I saw the wooden sign which read, “St. Francis Orphanage,” and that idiot feeling you get when you see something you know you should remember without assistance but you just can’t slammed into me. I stared at the sign, vowed to recall the name of the place and then to research it when I awoke. Then I turned back to the building and saw the police officers run past me in the dream slowness.
I hesitated in following them in this time. I had done that before and had seen what I needed to see. Why was I having the same dream again unless I was meant to see something different? I decided that meant I should probably find another way to insert myself into the flow of events.
I moved toward the building but this time instead of heading for the front door I veered to the right. The mud of dream slowness pulled at the muscles of my legs and the interminable visual lag which often accompanies it taunted my heart. Frustration welled up in me and I asserted my will against the slog. A scream of effort started in the pit of my being and rose slowly until it escaped my lips as the phrase, “Let me go.” Suddenly something must have snapped because my body pitched forward at a rate which felt very normal. I moved in a real-time pace.
I almost stumbled and fell but caught myself and steadied my legs. I looked around as if the cause of the change of pace may have been close at hand, like a man behind a curtain pulling levers and pushing buttons. There was no one but the cops rushing into the building. I took my cue from their sense of urgency and I continued on my path.
As I made my way toward the side of the orphanage I passed a tree and skidded to a halt after I ran passed it. My back was to it for a moment. Then I half turned at the waist to look at it. Had I seen the thing before? I was almost sure I had. But the tree had looked different wherever I had seen it before. I paced over to it and placed my hand on its bark and ran my hand down it. I knew it for sure. But as the waking world and the dreaming world are often incompatible in the area of memory I couldn’t fathom why it had produced such a powerful sense of déjà vu. But it certainly had. I swore to myself if I could retain the detail upon waking I would look into it along with the orphanage.
I pushed aside all of that and resumed the journey. Knee-high grass whipped at my legs as I moved toward the back of the building. I could hear the screams of children drifting down from the upper floors. I remembered that soon there would be a police officer who would catch a glimpse of me up there. Could I really be in both places at once? Why not, I thought. I’m asleep in my bed but I’m also here now.
Eventually I happened upon the thing I hoped I would find. The dark shapes of wooden root-cellar doors lay before me in the flickering fire light. There was no lock on the doors, just a simple but sturdy stick wedged under the dual handles. I looked at it and knew someone had improvised the lock to make sure at least that way out would be barred. I bent forward and yanked the stick away and flung it into the inky dark behind me. Then I yanked both doors open into the night. The blackness of the opening in front of me stood in contrast to the windows above which leaked smoke and orange-yellow light. I took a few quick breaths and plunged forward allowing my feet to know where the steps lay, though I had never been down them before.
Immediately I was greeted by an almost eerily silent root cellar. I looked back up the stairs I had just descended and then back to the room ahead of me. I judged the floor of the room to be about thirteen feet or so under ground. It was not a proper basement by any stretch of the imagination. An oil lantern sat on a rough table to my right, its meek light pleading against the hostile darkness of the cellar. Just ahead on the far wall was a ladder leading up to the ground floor level of the house. I had been there before; or rather I had seen the same room through the eyes of someone else, someone who was shorter. It was drafty and cool, an impossible rebellion against the conflagration above.
I wondered momentarily at the draft as it seemed to come from within the room and not from behind me as I would have expected. My survey of the room revealed the source: in the dim light I saw a curtain closed over an area of the wall a little taller and wider than a man. The curtain moved gently forward, away from the wall. Before I moved toward it I knew what I would ultimately find beyond it. I stepped over to the curtain. It was dirty, stained, worn, and threadbare in parts. It was probably an old bed sheet, recycled and reassigned to this duty where no one would have to see it.
When I reached it I drew it aside. Behind the worn cloth were three shelves with potatoes of various sizes. Behind the shelves was a shabbily nailed together false back comprised of unfinished wood planks. I reached out and, taking the unit in both hands, heaved the whole thing aside, not caring that I spilled the contents of the shelves everywhere. There before me was a hand-carved tunnel like I had seen in my earlier waking dream in the basement of Spectra.
Sound drifted out, indiscernible yet unmistakably human in origin. I waited to find if my hearing would adjust and begin to pick out words. Bare moments passed before the faint sound of a yelp of pain drifted out followed by a much louder scream.
My heart leapt into my throat. I knew this. I had seen all of it only hours before. It was the exact same moment in time I had already experienced. The only difference this time was that I came to it from a slightly different piece of geography. I took a few steps back, expecting to see myself tumble out of the tunnel in front of me. But then I recalled how in the former vision I had seen all of it played out for me like a movie as I watched through someone else’s eyes. I also remembered how I could not be readily detected in this world of dream-remembrance unless I strongly asserted myself.
Regardless, I thought it would be best if I stayed back from the main action. I moved back until I could feel the press of the wall and then I merely waited for what would come next.
It wasn’t long until the little girl I had first seen in the street outside of Spectra sprang from the hole, spilling herself onto the floor and dropping the object she had carried with her on her journey through the tunnels under the house. As I watched I remembered what came next. The little girl recovered herself, began to dig with one hand and retrieved the cloth-wrapped key with the other. Soon she reached the depth of the wooden box buried there and thrust the key and cloth inside and just as quickly started the process of covering it all back up agai
n.
When the girl stood from her task another scream issued from the tunnel. This was a scream of rage rather than pain. The girl jerked her head around toward the sound and then made a run for the ladder which led up to the ground floor. She was about a quarter of the way up when a draft moved through the cellar, blowing out the fire of the lantern. Still, a shaft of pale orange fell through the opening to the floor above, just barely enough to distinguish basic features of things in the cellar. In the next instant a dark shape burst out of the tunnel and planted itself fiercely in the center of the cellar. I knew him, even in the near total darkness of the cellar I knew him. It was the dark man as he was in life.
He saw the girl on the ladder and wasted no time. He lunged forward and every instinct I possessed cried out at me to tackle the man, to stop him before he could reach her. Instead I remained frozen in place, helpless to watch the events of the past unfold before me in living color.
She was about three quarters of the way up the ladder when his hands wrapped around the sides of the thing. He heaved the ladder aside with all his strength and fury and the girl and it careered away from the opening to relative safety and toward the cellar floor. When they landed the ladder clattered against the hard dirt floor and the girl bounced once and rolled to one side. The dark man was instantly on top of her seizing her wrists in his rough hands and shaking her. That was all I could take.
“Hey, tough guy,” I shouted at the shadowed shape of his back. “Over here.” He stopped his struggle with the girl and whipped his head around to see me. When his eyes settled on me standing against the wall a brief moment of confusion danced across his dimmed features. When comprehension took hold of him his eyes became two fiery lanterns in the darkness of the cellar. Suddenly I could see everything more clearly.
The dark man stood up from his crouch and turned fully toward me. Smoke trickled out and upward from his nostrils and one corner of his sneering mouth. Behind him I saw the girl rise up to her feet. Alarm covered her face like a funeral shroud. Without turning the dark man stiffly back handed the girl and she fell back against the opposite wall with a whimper and then she was silent.
“I thought I told you to stay away,” the man growled. “This ain’t your world, sonny. It’s mine. And here I reign.” He lifted his arms straight out from his sides, palms upward like a magician. I watched in shock as every wooden object in the cellar instantly caught fire. He casually walked over to a flaming table and up-ended it. Then planting his foot in the middle of the upside down table top he grasped one of its burning leg and snapped it off. Hefting it like a club and examining its bright blaze he smiled and I noticed he was not singed by the fire. Then he looked back to me and the smile was gone. He was moving, his fiery club raised and drawn back.
When he reached me the club was descending but I still had enough of my wits about me to be out of the way when the table leg completed the deadly distance from the beginning of its arc to the place where my head had been. Dream or no dream there was murder in his eyes. That was enough for me. I danced away to the side on my heels to avoid the blow and then toward the center of the room when the dark man continued his pursuit, swinging the bludgeon with berserk ferocity as he came.
I stopped in the center of the room and waited for him. I am not a fighter. I never have been. My arena has always been in the pages of a book or in front of a classroom. That being said, there is just so much any man can take and just so far he can be pushed without being pushed within himself to give at least a little back. As I stood in the center of that ethereal root cellar of generations past I stood as a man just over that line. Enough was enough.
He charged with both arms fully extended out, one ending in the hand clasping the burning table leg. I calculated as best I could. As the club started to swing inward I sprang forward on one leg to about the middle of his reach. My other leg was cocked back and sprang forward. As the bottom of my foot connected with his stomach I prayed it would have some kind of effect in that strange dreamlike place. My prayer was answered.
He fell backward and the table leg clattered to the floor, no longer on fire. In fact, though it barely registered in my mind at the time, everything in the cellar which had spontaneously combusted a few moments before were now returned to coldness. The dark man was doubled over in pain and a groan escaped his throat.
He looked up. He had not expected that. Obviously. But something told me he had not even imagined it as a possibility. If I were to be completely honest I would have to confess much the same. The move had been one of desperation rather than cool meditation and planning. He stood to his full height and cradled his middle with his left hand. As we looked at each other in that moment I could tell that we both came to roughly the same conclusion. The game had changed somehow and neither of us knew the rules.
“That wasn’t part of the script,” he croaked as he regarded me warily. Without knowing why I took a brief but threatening step forward. He reciprocated by taking an involuntary and worried step back. We stood silently in the semi-darkness for a moment when a crashing sound above drew our attention. The house was beginning to collapse as its integrity was eaten by the fire.
I looked back at the dark man. He was smiling again. He knew what was coming and I didn’t like that one bit.
“Burn with me, sonny.” He scooped up the table leg and it was again covered with dancing orange flame. With lightning speed he darted forward and swung it. I barely saw it coming. I feebly raised my left arm to block it. The table leg connected with my forearm and pain screamed through my nerves and exited my mouth.
I staggered away from the danger as best I could but he chased me. As I scrambled backward I tripped over the fallen ladder and began to fall. Before I could complete my descent, however, he reached forward and seized the collar of my under shirt, yanking me up until my face was a bare inch from his.
“I told you. This is my world, sonny. Mine. If you don’t like the way I run my house you should have stayed home.” Then he began to laugh as he raised the burning club. It started to race toward my skull and I closed my eyes against the certain killing stroke. I heard a thud but felt no crash. I opened one eye to see the surprised expression on his face and the impossible hand of a child which had caught the table leg before it reached its final destination.
I looked behind me and saw the girl standing defiant and determined with her arm outstretched above my head holding the business end of the club. She had caught and stopped its descent.
“It’s my world too,” she said. The girl ripped the club out of his hand. He dropped me and stepped back three paces shaking his head in fear and disbelief. The girl reeled back and threw the table leg at him. It landed square in the center of his chest and exploded there into a thousand burning splinters. He staggered backward on his heels and finally he fell against the opposite wall and slid down.
I looked up at the girl and she looked down at me. “Quickly,” she said as she reached down and placed a hand on my left shoulder, “wake up.”
I did.
I was back in my apartment, laid out on the futon. I was covered in sweat and my left arm throbbed. When I looked at it I saw a red mark with a few blisters, almost like severe sunburn which was also encircled by bruised skin. It took my mind a few moments to piece together the whole picture but when it finally did my blood ran cold. What happened to me in the vision affected me even in the physical confines of the here and now.
“Well, what do you know,” I heard myself say. “Dreams really do come true.”
I got up from the futon and crossed to the bathroom, cradling the arm. I turned the cold water faucet and held the wounded forearm under the stream. When the cold water contacted the affected area I involuntarily sucked air through clenched teeth. It hurt like a beast.
After a minute of this, or probably less because I couldn’t endure the pain, I turned the faucet off and wrapped my forearm gingerly in a hand towel. I pulled at the corner of the mirror above the sink and opene
d the medicine cabinet. My eyes searched for the bottle of painkillers I knew I kept there. Finding the generic bottle I quickly opened it, popped three of the things and swallowed without the benefit of water. I closed the cabinet again and stared at my reflection. My face was ashen.
“Get a hold of yourself, Steve.” I lowered myself onto the closed toilet lid and shut my eyes. I’m not sure how much time passed but it couldn’t have been more than fifteen minutes. Sleep had almost come to me sitting there but no more dreams or living visions.
When I came back to myself I regarded the small room as if it were a foreign land. Nothing could feel as home to me. I was un-tethered to the world. I flexed the muscles in my hurt arm a few times by making a fist and releasing it a few times. Satisfied that I could keep the pain to a minimum I went back out to the main area of my little apartment and picked up my laptop.
Trent had sent a reply to my last e-mail. I don’t know what I expected to see when I opened it but I definitely did not expect to find what I did. It simply read, “I’m on my way. Need to talk. Had a bad dream. More when I see you.” The only other bit of information was his cell phone number, which I still had from the last time he gave it to me, and his flight and hotel information. He wanted me to pick him up from the airport the next day.
“Uh oh,” I said to the emptiness, “I don’t like the sound of that.” I shot off two obligatory but short lines in response and logged off of my e-mail account. I sat a moment and debated what I should do next. Finally I decided I was finished with the internet. I closed down the computer but with misgivings. I felt like there was something else I was supposed to do, like there was something I needed to run a search for but it refused to come.
I laid back down in the dark and waited. After a long time I was at last able to drift back to sleep. I prayed no more dreams would come and thankfully none did. Just before unconsciousness took me, however, I thought I smelled the faint odor of smoke.
A Ghost of Fire Page 29
