Another Kingdom

by Andrew Klavan

  I threw the grate aside and scrambled on my belly over the dirt floor to the opening. I slithered through as fast as I could, and instantly found myself standing in the narrow hallway of the restaurant in Beverly Hills with the men’s room door swinging shut behind me.

  I stood there, looking around me, openmouthed, wild-eyed. My heart was hammering. My knees were quivering. My mind teetered on the edge of madness.

  I DON’T KNOW HOW MANY SECONDS PASSED WHILE I stood there gaping at nothing. I couldn’t have been more dumbstruck if I had found myself lost among the stars in deepest space. I turned this way and that, my hands lifted, my mouth still open. I saw the wood-paneled walls on one side of me and on the other. I sucked in breath, trying to still my heart, the way you do when you come out of a nightmare.

  I had no idea why I was standing there. I could not remember how I’d gotten there or where I had been going. I couldn’t think at all, in fact. It came to me that there was something I was supposed to do, somewhere I was supposed to be.

  My parents. My brother. They were out there in the restaurant, on the brick patio, waiting for me. I ought to go back to them before they wondered where I’d gone.

  I walked unsteadily down the narrow corridor. I reached the door to the main room of the restaurant. Stretched out my hand to open it—then froze in place.

  What if I went through and found myself back in Galiana? Racing through those dungeons with the executioner right behind me …

  It took me several seconds to work up the courage, but what choice did I have? If anyone came in and saw me like this, they’d call an ambulance. I’d be put away. Tentatively, I touched the door. I pushed it open. I peeked through. There was the restaurant, all right, just as I had left it, white tables full of fancy diners in their fancy clothes.

  But what would happen to me if I crossed the threshold and went in?

  I stepped over it slowly, gingerly, as if that would prevent my being teleported—or whatever the hell it was—back into the dungeon. I made it through into the large dining room. I let the door shut behind me and let out a held breath. Then I wobbled my way toward the brick patio. I returned to the table where my parents and my brother were still chatting, unconcerned. They hardly noticed when I dropped down, deadweight, into my chair.

  They went on talking. I didn’t listen. I felt lost in a state of disjointed consciousness that was as close to insanity as I had ever come. I had to calm myself down before I became hysterical. If my parents or my brother looked at me, would they see the crazy on my face? Would they notice? Would they care?

  What was happening to me? What was happening?

  It had to be psychosis or a brain tumor or some drugs I’d taken by mistake or … something. But how would anything explain the bruise on my head from Sir Aravist’s sword? Or the purple marks on my wrists from the manacles? I glanced down at my own trembling hands. I tugged up the cuffs of my denim jacket. The bruises were still there on my wrists—plus I saw red splotches where the sparks from the mutant rodent-woman’s claws had singed me.

  I shook my head. The mutant rodent-woman! How could those words even make any sense, let alone describe something real that I had seen with my own two eyes?

  Slowly—slowly—I got hold of myself, at least to the point where I could start to string some thoughts together. What had I been doing here—here in this life before I’d been carried back to Galiana?

  This life! I thought. My life! Real life!

  It came back to me. The book. Another Kingdom by Ellen Evermore. That’s right. I had talked on the phone with Sean Gunther, the writer who had submitted the book to Mythos Productions, submitted it and then withdrawn it before I could read it through. The book was linked to Galiana. It took place in Eastrim, where the castle was and the dungeon. The characters in the book were the people I had seen there: Sir Aravist, Lord Iron, Lady Betheray, and the rest. The book was the connection, the only connection I had between Galiana and LA. It was the only clue I had to what was going on. I had to try and find it.

  Without thinking, I stood up. My parents turned to look at me in surprise. My brother stopped mid-portentous-sentence and narrowed his eyes at me.

  Dizziness and nausea came over me in a wave. I almost had to sit down again. Maybe instead of finding the book, I should get to a doctor, I thought. But no. I needed to know what was happening to me.

  “I have to go,” I murmured vaguely. “I have an appointment. I have to go.”

  “Well, that … you know … it’s the sort of thing …” murmured my father. We sounded just like one another.

  “You will speak with her though, won’t you?” said my mother.

  I gaped down at her. What the hell was she talking about?

  “Riley,” she said. “Really, Austin. She has to stop.”

  Oh. Right. Riley. My kid sister was doing something she wasn’t supposed to do. As always. I nodded dumbly.

  “Well …” I said.

  “Good to see you, buddy,” said my brother.

  I nodded again, dumbly again. Then I turned and walked away.

  Back into the restaurant, back through the tables, to the front door this time. I put my hand on the cold metal of the door handle. But I couldn’t pull it. I was paralyzed—paralyzed with the fear that I would step across the threshold and find myself back there, back in the dungeon, on the run.

  I stood there long seconds, unable to move.

  “Be a man,” I whispered.

  Then I pulled the handle, opened the door, and walked out into the night.

  THE VALET BROUGHT me my battered Nissan and returned it to me, sneering. I drove away along the evening streets. I was still in a daze, my mind flashing from one impossible image to another. I let out a shuddering sigh as I remembered the moment when the ogre had ripped off the jailer’s head. I remembered the spout of blood and the wet sound the head made when it hit the cell floor.

  “Jesus, Jesus,” I whispered as I drove.

  There were other memories. The jostling crowd raging at me. The judges on their high bench, looking down at me with cold doom in their eyes. Lady Betheray …

  The thought of her seemed to draw me even deeper into a dream state. The thought of how she looked. In her tiara with her raven hair spilling down. In her flowing gown of white and gold. How she moved in it. How she spoke like silver bells ringing. And as I thought of her, it happened again just as it had happened in the courtroom when she faced me: I felt her kiss warm on my lips, felt her arms around me, her body pressed against mine—a visceral memory that could not be a memory at all because it had never happened. All the same, the absurd realism of it made my body stir.

  I drew a long, deep breath, forcing myself out of my trance. I looked around to get my bearings. Where was I?

  I was stopped—the Nissan was stopped—at a red light at an intersection on Santa Monica Boulevard. The rush hour was over now, the traffic thinner but still LA thick. A theater in an old Spanish-style building with a tiled roof was to the right of me; a little park, shadowy beyond the street lamps, was to my left. Lady Betheray melted from my vision as I focused on the bright red taillights in the two lanes ahead of me, the bright white headlights in two oncoming lanes to my left. Then I glanced up into the rearview mirror.

  That’s when I saw the black Mustang.

  “SHIT,” I SAID aloud.

  In all the craziness of life and madness and transition from one world to another, I had forgotten all about it: that car that had been parked outside my building in the red no-parking zone. Under the bright lamps of the boulevard, I could make out the maybe-transgender-maybe-guy-maybe-girl sitting behind the wheel staring right at me. I could see through his windshield the bland, eerie smile on the kittenish face beneath his short blond hair. I could see another man sitting in the passenger seat beside him, a great hulk of a man: shaved head, enormous chest, enormous arms, expressionless face, a thug if ever there was one.

  They were following me! Was I paranoid to think that? No,
they had to be. I remembered now how they had sat outside while I slept, how I had caught the driver looking up at my window. And now here they were? Come on. I wasn’t being paranoid at all. They were watching me, keeping tabs on where I was going.

  The light turned green. I drove on, checking the rearview every few seconds. The Mustang sank back a small distance behind me so that another car, a red Passat, pulled into my wake and got between us. A space opened to my right so I changed lanes—quickly, without a turn signal—just to see what would happen. The Mustang changed lanes also, now two cars behind.

  What the hell? Why would anyone follow me? It made no sense. Did it have something to do with this nightmarish fantasy I was bouncing in and out of? It had to. Right? Who was I? A story analyst. A reader. Another nobody show-biz wannabe, one of a zillion in LA. It had to be about this, about Galiana. Why else would anyone even bother with me?

  And what was I supposed to do about it? That was the real question, the urgent question. Should I just ignore these guys? Just let them trail me all the way to Sean Gunther’s house? That didn’t feel right somehow. What business was it of theirs where I was going? And why should Sean Gunther be caught up in my troubles? But what other real options did I have?

  I kept moving along with the traffic. There were no left turns allowed here, and nowhere to go on my right. The traffic kept on moving smoothly. Looking up in the rearview again, I spotted the Mustang still lurking two cars back, keeping its distance but sticking to my tail. I tried to convince myself I was imagining things, but I knew I wasn’t.

  I faced forward. In my job, I must have read at least two dozen books or scripts in which the hero got followed by the bad guy or vice versa. I tried to think about how they had handled it. I remembered one scene in one novel that had stuck with me because it had an air of realism. I couldn’t remember the book’s title. Officer in Trouble. Officer Down. Something like that. It was this gritty crime thing. The narrator had talked about how hard it was to follow somebody, especially if you didn’t want to be obvious about it. It really required teams of people, he said. One car alone was too obvious, and made it too easy for the target to slip away.

  That encouraged me. If it was easy to give a single tail the slip, then maybe even I could do it. It was worth a try.

  I remembered the rest of the scene. It was a street scene, just like this one. City driving, four lanes, thick traffic. I remembered how the hero had lost the tail …

  I made my decision. My heart sped up, but I wasn’t afraid. Well, I was afraid, but I was excited too. Hollywood schmuck becomes Hollywood hero. I liked the idea. Be a man.

  It was all in the timing. I signaled and pulled into the left lane again. I checked the mirror. Sure enough, the Mustang edged over with me. But they lost some distance in the exchange. Now they were three cars back. Ha. That was the exact same mistake the bad guys had made in the novel I read!

  I looked ahead. A road opened to my left. The sign indicated no left turn. The oncoming traffic was streaming steadily. I slowed, just a little. Dropping back from the taillights in front of me. Waiting for any opening I could get.

  There it was. Just a small gap. I hit the gas. Shot forward. Hit the wheel. A horn bellowed as my Nissan swung in front of the oncoming traffic. Brakes screeched as I blasted for the intersection. I could only hope there were no cops around.

  Then I was through, off the boulevard. The oncoming traffic closed ranks behind me. I looked into my rearview mirror and saw the Mustang passing the intersection, unable to make the turn. I saw the driver glaring at me. The shaved-headed hulk beside him was leaning forward, giving me the Sneering Stare of Cold Death.

  Well, bite me, Sluggo. Bullied by honking horns, the black car drove helplessly on until it was gone from view.

  I drove away into the curling, elegant web of side streets they call the Flats. I made turn after turn, traveling block after block past big lawns and big houses, making my roundabout way north toward Sunset Boulevard and the hills. I kept checking the rearview, but there was no sign of the Mustang. I had lost it.

  For the first time in what seemed like forever, I laughed with pure glee.

  SOON I WAS winding high into the Hollywood Hills. The twinkling starlike lights of the city danced below me, going in and out of view on the snaking roads. I made my way to Sean Gunther’s address and pulled the Nissan to the curb across from his steep driveway. I shut off the engine and stepped out.

  The driveway was blocked by a heavy metal gate. A small wooden door, painted black, stood beside the gate. A bell and intercom stood on a concrete column beside the door. Curb, driveway, gate, door, and bell all stood under the pines and oaks that lined the quiet road. There were no streetlamps. It was dark everywhere except where a single hooded bulb burned dimly on the concrete column.

  I still felt pretty good—pretty hero-like—about losing that car. But who was it? What the hell was it all about? Would Kitten Face and Billiard Ball be parked in the red zone outside my apartment when I went home?

  Lost in these thoughts, I walked up the drive and stood under the single bulb and pressed the bell button. If it made a sound, I couldn’t hear it. I stood and waited, listening to an owl going whoo-whoo in the trees. Nothing else happened. I pressed the button again.

  Beyond the gate, a door opened and closed. I felt that surge of sort-of-fear-sort-of-excitement again. I heard footsteps. A woman’s. High heels on stone or slate. I smelled her before I saw her, a rich, dark, sensual perfume that would have been overpowering indoors.

  The latch on the door clacked. The door swung open, and there she was. No doubt in my mind what she did for a living. A prostitute. A cheap streetwalker, judging by her ridiculously short shorts and the latticed tank top that let her breasts show through and her ridiculously tall, ridiculously red high heels. She had a cheap face too, hard and cynical. But her hairstyle—that was kind of odd. I don’t know much about these things. I don’t know what kind of hairstyle you call it. But it was not a hooker’s hairstyle, not long and loose like I saw hookers wearing on the street sometimes. It was elegant, a complicated ’do, the hair piled up, the blond strands interwoven. Something like what I’ve seen brides wear. Anyway, that’s what it looked like to me.

  I started to introduce myself. “Hi, my name is …”

  “Save it, baby. I’m just leaving.” She strutted by me, clack, clack, clack. The door began to swing shut behind her, so I had to reach out fast and grab it. “Thanks for the distraction,” the hooker said. “If you hadn’t rung the bell, I’d’ve never gotten out of there.”

  I watched her move off into the darkness, wobbly on those heels. She worked her phone as she maneuvered down the slope of the driveway to the curb. Calling for a pickup, I guess. I had a brief, instinctive gentlemanly urge to offer to keep her company in the dark till her car arrived, but it seemed a kind of dopey notion, given what she was. I went inside and let the door shut behind me.

  The house was a big boxy white stucco, with long windows reflecting the distant lights of the city. I walked over the slate path along the side of it, looking for a door. I found one, but before I could knock, I heard a low muttering from around the corner. I continued along the path to the back of the house. I found Sean Gunther there.

  The author was on the mountaintop patio, pacing a staggered trail back and forth on the slate paving stones. The water of a kidney-shaped pool flashed under night-lights behind him. There were deck chairs here and there and small round tables. Beyond, far away and far below, was Hollywood, twinkling colors on a sable bed of night.

  Gunther was a tall man, well over six feet, and lanky. He still had the swept-back lion’s mane of silver-white hair I’d seen in his picture online. But from what I could see of his profile when he paced past, his high, flat, white, noble, majestic face was pitted and scarred by an oozing red rash that curled up the side of his cheek to his brow. He wore deck shoes with no socks and white slacks and a long-sleeved white pullover. His slender body waved like
a reed in soft breezes. He gestured with the plastic yellow tumbler in his hand. I noticed a whiskey bottle and an ice bucket and another tumbler, this one purple, on one of the little tables near him.

  “Actually, I don’t think women really have personalities,” he was declaring. “Not like I think of personalities, individual characters. Each man is the man he is, but every woman is all women, really. A principle more than a person, if you see what I mean.”

  He was talking to the hooker. He hadn’t even realized she had slipped away. It made him seem like kind of a dick: the fact he hadn’t even noticed. That and the adolescent crap he was spouting—spouting in that voice men use when they’re secretly angry but want to play it cool and philosophical. I disliked the guy on sight.

  I came closer to him and stopped. I caught a whiff of the hooker’s perfume on the chill night air. I could understand why the poor girl had seized on my arrival as a chance to get out of there.

  “That’s why this is honest, you see, an honest transaction,” the author went on, swirling his plastic yellow tumbler in the air. “Everything I want from any woman I can get from you and my imagination. And money is cheaper than lies or affection. I don’t have to—”

  “Mister Gunther,” I said.

  It really startled him. He was maybe two yards away from me and so immersed in his own bullshit, he hadn’t seen me there at all. He jumped and spun, his silver mane jouncing. It was kind of comical, really.

  “How the fuck did you get in here?” he said, glaring at me.

  “My name …”

  “I didn’t ask your name. Who gives a shit? Where’s my whore?” “She left. That’s how I got in. When she opened the door to go.”

  He blinked at this, puzzled. Then he gazed into space through a haze of alcohol. His head tilted. He looked like a dog who’s heard a strange noise. I could see the story assembling itself in his mind. The hooker slipping out, me slipping in. A humiliating story when you come to think about it. He couldn’t even pay a girl to listen to his crap. I felt for him, kind of.