Dreams Underfoot

by Charles de Lint

  Sam laughed aloud. “Jilly sounds like my kind of person,” she said. “I’d like to meet her.”

  When it started to get late, I collected my clothes and changed in the bathroom. I didn’t want to start anything, not yet, not this soon, and I knew that Sam felt the same way, though neither of us had spoken of it. She kissed me at the door, a long warm kiss that had me buzzing again.

  “Come see me tomorrow?” she asked. “At the store?”

  “Just try and keep me away,” I replied.

  I gave the old tom on the porch a pat and whistled all the way home to my own place on the other side of Crowsea.

  * * *

  Jilly’s studio was its usual organized mess. It was an open loft-like affair that occupied half of the second floor of a four-story brown brick building on Yoors Street where Foxville’s low rentals mingle with Crowsea’s shops and older houses. One half of the studio was taken up with a Murphy bed that was never folded back into the wall, a pair of battered sofas, a small kitchenette, storage cabinets and a tiny box-like bathroom obviously designed with dwarves in mind.

  Her easel stood in the other half of the studio, by the window where it could catch the morning sun. All around it were stacks of sketchbooks, newspapers, unused canvases and art books. Finished canvases leaned face front, five to ten deep, against the back wall. Tubes of paint covered the tops of old wooden orange crates—the new ones lying in neat piles like logs by a fireplace, the used ones in a haphazard scatter, closer to hand. Brushes sat waiting to be used in mason jars. Others were in liquid waiting to be cleaned. Still more, their brushes stiff with dried paint, lay here and there on the floor like discarded

  pick-up-sticks.

  The room smelled of oil paint and turpentine. In the corner farthest from the window was a life-sized fabric maché sculpture of an artist at work that bore an uncanny likeness to Jilly herself, complete with Walkman, one paintbrush in hand, another sticking out of its mouth. When I got there that morning, Jilly was at her new canvas, face scrunched up as she concentrated. There was already paint in her hair. On the windowsill behind her a small ghetto blaster was playing a Bach fugue, the piano notes spilling across the room like a light rain. Jilly looked up as I came in, a frown changing liquidly into a smile as she took in the foolish look on my face.

  “I should have thought of this weeks ago,” she said. “You look like the cat who finally caught the mouse. Did you have a good time?”

  “The best.”

  Leaving my fiddle by the door, I moved around behind her so that I could see what she was working on. Sketched out on the white canvas was a Crowsea street scene. I recognized the corner—McKennitt and Lee. I’d played there from time to time, mostly in the spring. Lately a rockabilly band called the Broken Hearts had taken over the spot.

  “Well?” Jilly prompted.

  “Well what?”

  “Aren’t you going to give me all the lovely sordid details?”

  I nodded at the painting. She’d already started to work in the background with oils.

  “Are you putting in the Hearts?” I asked.

  Jilly jabbed at me with her paintbrush, leaving a smudge the colour of a Crowsea red brick tenement on my jean jacket.

  “I’ll thump you if you don’t spill it all, Geordie, me lad. Just watch if I don’t.”

  She was liable to do just that, so I sat down on the ledge behind her and talked while she painted. We shared a pot of her cowboy coffee, which was what Jilly called the foul brew she made from used coffee grounds. I took two spoons of sugar to my usual one, just to cut back on the bitter taste it left in my throat. Still, beggars couldn’t be choosers. That morning I didn’t even have used coffee grounds at my own place.

  “I like ghost stories,” she said when I was finished telling her about my evening. She’d finished roughing out the buildings by now and bent closer to the canvas to start working on some of the finer details before she lost the last of the morning light.

  “Was it real?” I asked.

  “That depends. Bramley says—”

  “I know, I know,” I said breaking in.

  If it wasn’t Jilly telling me some weird story about him, it was my brother. What Jilly liked best about him was his theory of consensual reality, the idea that things exist because we agree that they exist.

  “But think about it,” Jilly went on. “Sam sees a ghost—maybe because she expects to see one—and you see the same ghost because you care about her, so you’re willing to agree that there’s one where she says it will be.”

  “Say it’s not that, then what could it be?”

  “Any number of things. A timeslip—a bit of the past slipping into the present. It could be a restless spirit with unfinished business. From what you say Sam’s told you, though, I’d guess that it’s a case of a timeskip.”

  She turned to grin at me, which let me know that the word was one of her own coining. I gave her a dutifully admiring look, then asked, “A what?”

  “A timeskip. It’s like a broken record, you know? It just keeps playing the same bit over and over again, only unlike the record, it needs something specific to cue it in.”

  “Like rain.”

  “Exactly.” She gave me a sudden sharp look. “This isn’t for one of your brother’s stories, is it?”

  My brother Christy collects odd tales just like Jilly does, only he writes them down. I’ve heard some grand arguments between the two of them comparing the superior qualities of the oral versus written traditions.

  “I haven’t seen Christy in weeks,” I said.

  “All right, then.”

  “So how do you go about handling this sort of thing?” I asked. “Sam thinks he’s waiting for something.”

  Jilly nodded. “For someone to lift the tone arm of time.” At the pained look on my face, she added, “Well, have you got a better analogy?”

  I admitted that I didn’t. “But how do you do that? Do you just go over and talk to him, or grab him, or what?”

  “Any and all might work. But you have to be careful about that kind of thing.”

  “How so?”

  “Well,” Jilly said, turning from the canvas to give me a serious look, “sometimes a ghost like that can drag you back to whenever it is that he’s from and you’ll be trapped in his time. Or you might end up taking his place in the timeskip.”

  “Lovely.”

  “Isn’t it?” She went back to the painting. “What colour’s that sign Duffy has over his shop on McKennitt?” she asked.

  I closed my eyes, trying to picture it, but all I could see was the face of last night’s ghost, wet with rain.

  * * *

  It didn’t rain again for a couple of weeks. They were good weeks. Sam and I spent the evenings and weekends together. We went out a few times, twice with Jilly, once with a couple of Sam’s friends. Jilly and Sam got along just as well as I’d thought they would—and why shouldn’t they? They were both special people. I should know.

  The morning it did rain was Sam’s day off from Gypsy’s. The previous night was the first I’d stayed over all night. The first we made love. Waking up in the morning with her warm beside me was everything I thought it would be. She was sleepy-eyed and smiling, more than willing to nestle deep under the comforter while I saw about getting some coffee together.

  When the rain started, we took our mugs into the living room and watched the street in front of the Hamill estate. A woman came by walking one of those fat white bull terriers that look like they’re more pig than dog. The terrier didn’t seem to mind the rain but the woman at the other end of the leash was less than pleased. She alternated between frowning at the clouds and tugging him along. About five minutes after the pair had rounded the corner, our ghost showed up, just winking into existence out of nowhere. Or out of a slip in time. One of Jilly’s timeskips.

  We watched him go through his routine. When he reached the streetlight and vanished again, Sam leaned her head against my shoulder. We were cozied u
p together in one of the big comfy chairs, feet on the windowsill.

  “We should do something for him,” she said.

  “Remember what Jilly said,” I reminded her.

  Sam nodded. “But I don’t think he’s out to hurt anybody. It’s not like he’s calling out to us or anything. He’s just there, going through the same moves, time after time. The next time it rains.”

  “What’re we going to do?”

  Sam shrugged. “Talk to him, maybe?”

  I didn’t see how that could cause any harm. Truth to tell, I was feeling sorry for the poor bugger myself.

  “Why not?” I said.

  About then Sam’s hands got busy and I quickly lost interest in the ghost. I started to get up, but Sam held me down in the chair.

  “Where you going?” she asked.

  “Well, I thought the bed would be…”

  “We’ve never done it in a chair before.”

  “There’s a lot of places we haven’t done it yet,” I said.

  Those deep blue eyes of hers, about five inches from my own, just about swallowed me.

  “We’ve got all the time in the world,” she said.

  It’s funny how you remember things like that later.

  * * *

  The next time it rained, Jilly was with us. The three of us were walking home from Your Second Home, a sleazy bar on the other side of Foxville where the band of a friend of Sam’s was playing. None of us looked quite right for the bar when we walked in. Sam was still the perennial California beach girl, all blond and curves in a pair of tight jeans and a white T-shirt, with a faded jean jacket overtop. Jilly and I looked like the scruffs we were.

  The bar was a place for serious drinking during the day, serving mostly unemployed blue-collar workers spending their welfare cheques on a few hours of forgetfulness. By the time the band started around nine, though, the clientele underwent a drastic transformation. Scattered here and there through the crowd was the odd individual who still dressed for volume—all the colours turned up loud—but mostly we were outnumbered thirty-to-one by spike-haired punks in their black leathers and blue jeans. It was like being on the inside of a bruise.

  The band was called the Wang Boys and ended up being pretty good—especially on their original numbers—if a bit loud. My ears were ringing when we finally left the place sometime after midnight. We were having a good time on the walk home. Jilly was in rare form, half-dancing on the street around us, singing the band’s closing number, making up the words, turning the piece into a punk gospel number. She kept bouncing around in front of us, skipping backward as she tried to get us to sing along.

  The rain started as a thin drizzle as we were making our way through Crowsea’s narrow streets. Sam’s fingers tightened on my arm and Jilly stopped fooling around as we stepped into Henratty Lane, the rain coming down in earnest now. The ghost was just turning in the far end of the lane.

  “Geordie,” Sam said, her fingers tightening more.

  I nodded. We brushed by Jilly and stepped up our pace, aiming to connect with the ghost before he made his turn and started back toward Stanton Street.

  “This is not a good idea,” Jilly warned us, hurrying to catch up. But by then it was too late.

  We were right in front of the ghost. I could tell he didn’t see Sam or me, and I wanted to get out of his way before he walked right through us—I didn’t relish the thought of having a ghost or a timeskip or whatever he was going through me. But Sam wouldn’t move. She put out her hand, and as her fingers brushed the wet tweed of his jacket, everything changed.

  The sense of vertigo was strong. Henratty Lane blurred. I had the feeling of time flipping by like the pages of a calendar in an old movie, except each page was a year, not a day. The sounds of the city around us—sounds we weren’t normally aware of—were noticeable by their sudden absence. The ghost jumped at Sam’s touch. There was a bewildered look in his eyes and he backed away. That sensation of vertigo and blurring returned until Sam caught him by the arm and everything settled down again. Quiet, except for the rain and a far-off voice that seemed to be calling my name.

  “Don’t be frightened,” Sam said keeping her grip on the ghost’s arm. “We want to help you.”

  “You should not be here,” he replied. His voice was stiff and a little formal. “You were only a dream—nothing more. Dreams are to be savoured and remembered, not walking the streets.”

  Underlying their voices I could still hear the faint sound of my own name being called. I tried to ignore it, concentrating on the ghost and our surroundings. The lane was cleaner than I remembered it—no trash littered against the walls, no graffiti scrawled across the bricks. It seemed darker, too. It was almost possible to believe that we’d been pulled back into the past by the touch of the ghost.

  I started to get nervous then, remembering what Jilly had told us. Into the past. What if we were in the past and we couldn’t get out again? What if we got trapped in the same timeskip as the ghost and were doomed to follow his routine each time it rained?

  Sam and the ghost were still talking but I could hardly hear what they were saying. I was thinking of Jilly. We’d brushed by her to reach the ghost, but she’d been right behind us. Yet when I looked back, there was no one there. I remembered that sound of my name, calling faint across some great distance. I listened now, but heard only a vague unrecognizable sound. It took me long moments to realize that it was a dog barking.

  I turned to Sam, tried to concentrate on what she was saying to the ghost. She was starting to pull away from him, but now it was his hand that held her arm. As I reached forward to pull her loose, the barking suddenly grew in volume—not one dog’s voice, but those of hundreds, echoing across the years that separated us from our own time. Each year caught and sent on its own dog’s voice, the sound building into a cacophonous chorus of yelps and barks and howls.

  The ghost gave Sam’s arm a sharp tug and I lost my grip on her, stumbling as the vertigo hit me again. I fell through the sound of all those barking dogs, through the blurring years, until I dropped to my knees on the wet cobblestones, my hands reaching for Sam. But Sam wasn’t there.

  “Geordie?”

  It was Jilly, kneeling by my side, hand on my shoulder. She took my chin and turned my face to hers, but I pulled free.

  “Sam!” I cried.

  A gust of wind drove rain into my face, blinding me, but not before I saw that the lane was truly empty except for Jilly and me. Jilly, who’d mimicked the barking of dogs to draw us back through time. But only I’d returned. Sam and the ghost were both gone.

  “Oh, Geordie,” Jilly murmured as she held me close. “I’m so sorry.”

  * * *

  I don’t know if the ghost was ever seen again, but I saw Sam one more time after that night. I was with Jilly in Moore’s Antiques in Lower Crowsea, flipping through a stack of old sepia-toned photographs, when a group shot of a family on their front porch stopped me cold. There, amongst the somber faces, was Sam. She looked different. Her hair was drawn back in a tight bun and she wore a plain, unbecoming dark dress, but it was Sam all right. I turned the photograph over and read the photographer’s date on the back. 1912.

  Something of what I was feeling must have shown on my face, for Jilly came over from a basket of old earrings that she was looking through.

  “What’s the matter, Geordie, me lad?” she asked.

  Then she saw the photograph in my hand. She had no trouble recognizing Sam either. I didn’t have any money that day, but Jilly bought the picture and gave it to me. I keep it in my fiddle case.

  I grow older each year, building up a lifetime of memories, only I’ve no Sam to share them with. But often when it rains, I go down to Stanton Street and stand under the streetlight in front of the old Hamill estate. One day I know she’ll be waiting there for me.

  4

  Freewheeling

  There is apparently nothing that cannot happen.

  —attributed to Mark Twain
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  * * *

  There are three kinds of people: those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, and those who wonder, ‘What happened?’

  —message found inside a Christmas cracker

  * * *

  1

  * * *

  He stood on the rain-slick street, a pale fire burning behind his eyes. Nerve ends tingling, he watched them go—a slow parade of riderless bicycles. Ten-speeds and mountain bikes. Domesticated, urban. So inbred that all they were was spoked wheels and emaciated frames, mere skeletons of what their genetic ancestors had been. They had never known freedom, never known joy; only the weight of serious riders in slick, leather-seated shorts, pedaling determinedly with their cycling shoes strapped to the pedals, heads encased in crash helmets, fingerless gloves on the hands gripping the handles tightly. He smiled and watched them go. Down the wet street, wheels throwing up arcs of fine spray, metal frames glistening in the streetlights, reflector lights winking red.

  The rain had plastered his hair slick against his head, his clothes were sodden, but he paid no attention to personal discomfort. He thought instead of that fat-wheeled aboriginal one-speed that led them now. The maverick who’d come from who-knows-where to pilot his domesticated brothers and sisters away.

  For a night’s freedom. Perhaps for always.

  The last of them were rounding the corner now. He lifted his right hand to wave goodbye. His left hand hung down by his leg, still holding the heavy-duty wire cutters by one handle, the black rubber grip making a ribbed pattern on the palm of his hand. By fences and on porches, up and down the street, locks had been cut, chains lay discarded, bicycles ran free.

  He heard a siren approaching. Lifting his head, he licked the raindrops from his lips. Water got in his eyes, gathering in their corners. He squinted, enamoured by the kaleidoscoping spray of lights this caused to appear behind his eyelids. There were omens in lights, he knew. And in the night sky, with its scattershot sweep of stars. So many lights…. There were secrets waiting to unfold there, mysteries that required a voice to be freed.