Dreams Underfoot

by Charles de Lint

  Her footsteps had a hollow ring as she walked across the covered bridge and she started to get spooked again. What if a car came, right now? There was nowhere to run to, nowhere to hide. Just the dusty insides of the covered bridge, its wood so old she was surprised it was still standing.

  Halfway across she felt an odd dropping sensation in her stomach, like being in an elevator that was going down too quickly. Vertigo had her leaning against the wooden planks that sided the bridge. She knew a moment’s panic—oh, Jesus, she was falling—but then the feeling went away and she could walk without feeling dizzy to the far end of the bridge.

  She stepped outside and stopped dead in her tracks. Her earlier panic was mild in comparison to what she felt now as she stared ahead in disbelief.

  Everything familiar was gone. Road, trees, hills—all gone. She wasn’t in the same country anymore—wasn’t in the country at all. A city like something out of an Escher painting lay spread out in front of her. Odd buildings, angles all awry, leaned against and pushed away from each other, all at the same time. Halfway up their lengths, there seemed to be a kind of vortal shift so that the top halves appeared to be reflections of the lower.

  And then there were the bridges.

  Everywhere she looked there were bridges. Bridges connecting the buildings, bridges connecting bridges, bridges that went nowhere, bridges that folded back on themselves so that you couldn’t tell where they started or ended. Too many bridges to count.

  She started to back up the way she’d come, but got no farther than two steps when a hand reached out of the shadows and pulled her forward. She flailed against her attacker who swung her about and then held her with her arms pinned against her body.

  “Easy, easy,” a male voice said in her ear.

  It had a dry, dusty sound to it, like the kind you could imagine old books in a library’s stacks have when they talk to each other late at night.

  “Let me go, let me GO!” she cried.

  Still holding her, her assailant walked her to the mouth of the covered bridge.

  “Look,” he said.

  For a moment she was still too panicked to know what he was talking about. But then it registered. The bridge she’d walked across to get to this nightmare city no longer had a roadway. There was just empty space between its wooden walls now. If her captor hadn’t grabbed her when he did, she would have fallen God knew how far.

  She stopped struggling and he let her go. She moved gingerly away from the mouth of the covered bridge, then stopped again, not knowing where to go, what to do. Everywhere she looked there were weird tilting buildings and bridges.

  It was impossible. None of this was happening, she decided. She’d fallen asleep on the other side of the bridge and was just dreaming all of this.

  “Will you be all right?” her benefactor asked.

  “I…I…”

  She turned to look at him. The moonlight made him out to be a harmless looking guy. He was dressed in faded jeans and an off-white flannel shirt, cowboy boots and a jean jacket. His hair was dark and short. It was hard to make out his features, except for his eyes. They seemed to take in the moonlight and then send it back out again, twice as bright.

  Something about him calmed her—until she tried to speak.

  “Whoareyou?” she asked. “WhatisthisplacehowdidIgethere?”

  As soon as the first question came out, a hundred others came clamoring into her mind, each demanding to be voiced, to be answered. She shut her mouth after the first few burst out in a breathless spurt, realizing that they would just feed the panic that she was only barely keeping in check.

  She took a deep breath, then tried again.

  “Thank you,” she said. “For saving me.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  Again that dry, dusty voice. But the air itself was dry, she realized. She could almost feel the moisture leaving her skin.

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  “You can call me Jack.”

  “My name’s Moira—Moira Jones.”

  Jack inclined his head in a slight nod. “Are you all right now, Moira Jones?” he asked.

  “I think so.”

  “Good, well—“

  “Wait!” she cried, realizing that he was about to leave her. “What is this place? Why did you bring me here?”

  He shook his head. “I didn’t,” he said. “No one comes to the City of Bridges unless it’s their fate to do so. In that sense, you brought yourself.”

  “But…?”

  “I know. It’s all strange and different. You don’t know where to turn, who to trust.”

  There was the faintest hint of mockery under the dry tones of his voice.

  “Something like that,” Moira said.

  He seemed to consider her for the longest time.

  “I don’t know you,” he said finally. “I don’t know why you brought yourself here or where you come from. I don’t know how, or even if, you’ll ever find your way home again.”

  Bizarre though her situation was, oddly enough, Moira found herself adjusting to it far more quickly than she would have thought possible. It was almost like being in a dream where you just accept things as they come along, except she knew this wasn’t a dream—just as she knew that she was getting the brush off.

  “Listen,” she said. “I appreciate your help a moment ago, but don’t worry about me. I’ll get by.”

  “What I do know, however,” Jack went on as though she hadn’t spoken, “is that this is a place for those who have no other place to go.”

  “What’re you saying? That’s it’s some kind of a dead end place?”

  The way her life was going, it sounded like it had been made for her.

  “It’s a forgotten place.”

  “Forgotten by who?”

  “By the world in which it exists,” Jack said.

  “How can a place this weird be forgotten?” she asked.

  Moira looked around at the bridges as she spoke. They were everywhere, of every size and shape and persuasion. One that looked like it belonged in a Japanese tea garden stood side by side with part of what had to be an interstate overpass, but somehow the latter didn’t overshadow the former, although both their proportions were precise. She saw rope bridges, wooden bridges and old stone bridges like the Kelly Street Bridge that crossed the Kickaha River in that part of Newford called the Rosses.

  She wondered if she’d ever see Newford again.

  “The same way people forget their dreams,” Jack replied. He touched her elbow, withdrawing his hand before she could take offense. “Come walk with me if you like. I’ve a previous appointment, but I can show you around a bit on the way.”

  Moira hesitated for a long moment, then fell into step beside him. They crossed a metal bridge, the heels of their boots ringing. Of course, she thought, they couldn’t go anywhere without crossing a bridge. Bridges were the only kind of roads that existed in this place.

  “Do you live here?” she asked.

  Jack shook his head. “But I’m here a lot. I deal in possibilities and that’s what bridges are in a way—not so much the ones that already exist to take you from one side of something to another, but the kind we build for ourselves.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Say you want to be an artist—a painter, perhaps. The bridge you build between when you don’t know which end of the brush to hold to when you’re doing respected work can include studying under another artist, experimenting on your own, whatever. You build the bridge and it either takes you where you want it to, or it doesn’t.”

  “And if it doesn’t?”

  His teeth flashed in the moonlight. “Then you build another one and maybe another one until one of them does.”

  Moira nodded as though she understood, all the while asking herself, what am I doing here?

  “But this,” he added, “is a place of failed dreams. Where bridges that go nowhere find their end.”

  Wonderful, Moira thought
. A forgotten place. A dead end.

  They started across an ornate bridge, its upper chords were all filigreed metal, its roadway cobblestone. Two thirds of the way across, what she took to be a pile of rags shifted and sat up. It was a beggar with a tattered cloak wrapped around him or her—Moira couldn’t tell the sex of the poor creature. It seemed to press closer against the railing as they came abreast of it.

  “Cancer victim,” Jack said, as they passed the figure. “Nothing left to live for, so she came here.”

  Moira shivered. “Can’t you—can’t we do anything for her?”

  “Nothing to be done for her,” Jack replied.

  The dusty tones of his voice made it impossible for her to decide if that was true, or if he just didn’t care.

  “But—“

  “She wouldn’t be here if there was,” he said.

  Wood underfoot now—a primitive bridge of rough timbers. The way Jack led her was a twisting path that seemed to take them back the way they’d come as much as forward. As they crossed an arched stone walkway, Moira heard a whimper. She paused and saw a child huddled up against a doorway below.

  Jack stopped, waiting for her to catch up.

  “There’s a child,” she began.

  “You’ll have to understand,” Jack said, “there’s nothing you can do for anyone here. They’ve long since given up Hope. They belong to Despair now.”

  “Surely—“

  “It’s an abused child,” Jack said. He glanced at his wristwatch. “I’ve time. Go help it.”

  “God, you’re a cold fish.”

  Jack tapped his watch. “Time’s slipping away.”

  Moira was trapped between just wanting to tell him to shove off and her fear of being stuck in this place by herself. Jack wasn’t much, but at least he seemed to know his way around.

  “I’ll be right back,” she said.

  She hurried back down the arched path and crossed a rickety wooden bridge to the doorway of the building. The child looked up at her approach, his whimpers muting as he pushed his face against his shoulder.

  “There, there,” Moira said. “You’re going to be okay.”

  She moved forward, pausing when the child leapt to his feet, back against the wall. He held his hands out before him, warding her away.

  “No one’s going to hurt you.”

  She took another step and he started to scream.

  “Don’t cry!” she said, continuing to move forward. “I’m here to help you.”

  The child bolted before she could reach him. He slipped under her arm and was off and away, leaving a wailing cry in his wake. Moira stared after him.

  “You’ll never catch him now,” Jack called down from above.

  She looked up at him. He was sitting on the edge of the arched walkway, legs dangling, heels tapping against the stonework.

  “I wasn’t going to hurt him,” she said.

  “He doesn’t know that. I told you, the people here have long since give up hope. You can’t help them—nobody can. They can’t even help themselves anymore.”

  “What are they doing here?”

  Jack shrugged. “They’ve got go somewhere, don’t they?”

  Moira made her back to where he was waiting for her, anger clouding her features.

  “Don’t you even care?” she demanded.

  His only reply was to start walking again. She hesitated for a long moment, then hurried to catch up. She walked with her arms wrapped around herself, but the chill she felt came from inside and it wouldn’t go away.

  They crossed bridges beyond her ability to count as they made their way into the central part of the city. From time to time they passed the odd streetlight, its dim glow making a feeble attempt to push back the shadows; in other places, the ghosts of flickering neon signs crackled and hissed more than they gave off light. In some ways the lighting made things worse for it revealed the city’s general state of decay—cracked walls, rubbled streets, refuse wherever one turned.

  Under one lamppost, she got a better look at her companion. His features were strong rather than handsome; none of the callousness she sensed in his voice was reflected in them. He caught her gaze and gave her a thin smile, but the humour in his eyes was more mocking than companionable.

  They continued to pass by dejected and lost figures that hunched in the shadows, huddled against buildings, or bolted at their approach. Jack listed their despairs for her—AIDS victim, rape victim, abused wife, paraplegic—until Moira begged him to stop.

  “I can’t take anymore,” she said.

  “I’m sorry. I thought you wanted to know.”

  They went the rest of the way in silence, the bridges taking them higher and higher until they finally stood on the top of an enormous building that appeared to be the largest and most centrally placed of the city’s structures. From its heights, the city was spread out around them on all sides.

  It made for an eerie sight. Moira stepped back from the edge of the roof, away from the pull of vertigo that came creeping up the small of her back to whisper in her ear. She had only to step out, into the night sky, it told her. Step out and all her troubles would be forever eased.

  At the sound of a footstep, she turned gratefully away from the disturbing view. A woman was walking toward them, pausing when she was a few paces away. Unlike the other inhabitants of the city, she gave the impression of being self-assured, in control of her destiny.

  She had pale skin and short spiky red hair. A half-dozen silver earrings hung from one ear; the other had a small silver stud in the shape of a star. Like Jack, she was dressed casually: black jeans, black boots, white tank top, a black leather jacket draped over one shoulder. And like Jack, her eyes, too, seemed like a reservoir for the moonlight.

  “You’re not alone,” she said to Jack.

  “I never am,” Jack replied. “You know that. My sister, Diane,” he added to Moira, then introduced her to Diane.

  The woman remained silent, studying Moira with her moon-bright eyes until Moira couldn’t help but fidget. The dreamlike quality of her situation was beginning to filter away. Once again a panicked feeling was making itself felt in the pit of her stomach.

  “Why are you here?” Diane asked her finally.

  Her voice had a different quality from her brother’s. It was a warm, rounded sound that carried in it a sweet scent like that of cherry blossoms or rosebuds. It took away Moira’s panic, returning her once more to that sense of it all just being a dream.

  “I…I don’t know,” she said. “I was just crossing a bridge on my way home and the next thing I knew I was…here. Wherever here is. I—look. I just want to go home. I don’t want any of this to be real.”

  “It’s very real,” Diane said.

  “Wonderful.”

  “She wants to help the unhappy,” Jack offered, “but they just run away from her.”

  Moira shot him a dirty look.

  “Do be still,” Diane told him, frowning as she spoke. She returned her attention to Moira. “Why don’t you go home?”

  “I—I don’t know how to. The bridge that brought me here…when I went to go back across it, its roadway was gone.”

  Diane nodded. “What has my brother told you?”

  Nothing that made sense, Moira wanted to say, but she related what she remembered of her conversations with Jack.

  “And do you despair?” Diane asked.

  “I…”

  Moira hesitated. She thought of the hopeless, dejected people she’d passed on the way to this rooftop.

  “Not really, I guess. I mean, I’m not happy or anything, but…”

  “You have hope? That things will get better for you?”

  A flicker of faces passed through her mind. Ghosts from the distant and recent past. Boys from high school. Eddie. She heard Eddie’s voice.

  Either you come across, or you walk….

  She just wanted a normal life. She wanted to find something to enjoy in it. She wanted to find somebody she could
have a good relationship with, she wanted to enjoy making love with him without worrying about people thinking she was a tramp. She wanted him to be there the next morning. She wanted there to be more to what they had than just a roll in the hay.

  Right now, none of that seemed very possible.

  “I don’t know,” she said finally. “I want it to. I’m not going to give up, but…”

  Again, faces paraded before her—this time they belonged to those lost souls of the city. The despairing.

  “I know there’re people a lot worse off than I am,” she said. “I’m not sick, I’ve got the use of my body and my mind. But I’m missing something, too. I don’t know how it is for other people—maybe they feel the same and just handle it better—but I feel like there’s a hole inside me that I just can’t fill. I get so lonely….”

  “You see,” Jack said then. “She’s mine.”

  Moira turned to him. “What are you talking about?”

  It was Diane who answered. “He’s laying claim to your unhappiness,” she said.

  Moira looked from one to the other. There was something going on here, some undercurrent that she wasn’t picking up on.

  “What are you talking about?” she asked.

  “This city is ours,” Diane said. “My brother’s and mine. We are two sides to the same coin. In most people, that coin lies with my face up, for you are an optimistic race. But optimism only carries some so far. When my brother’s face lies looking skyward, all hope is gone.”

  Moira centered on the words, “you are an optimistic race,” realizing from the way Diane spoke it was as though she and her brother weren’t human. She looked away, across the cityscape of bridges and tilting buildings. It was a dreamscape—not exactly a nightmare, but not at all pleasant either. And she was trapped in it; trapped in a dream.

  “Who are you people?” she asked. “I don’t buy this ‘Jack and Diane’ bit—that’s like out of that John Mellencamp song. Who are you really? What is this place?”

  “I’ve already told you,” Jack said.

  “But you only gave her half the answer,” Diane added. She turned to Moira. “We are Hope and Despair,” she said. She touched a hand to her breast. “Because of your need for us, we are no longer mere allegory, but have shape and form. This is our city.”