The Last Dream

by Gordon R. Dickson

  “Ma’m,” he said in a soft shy voice, “Ma’m, could I get a drink of water from you, please?”

  He chuckled, and went down the dip toward the field with easy, long-swinging strides. She was still chopping wood when he came into the yard. The long axe flashed with a practiced swing at the end of her thin, grasshopper-like arms, darkened by the sun even more deeply than his own. The axe split clean each time it came down, the wood falling neatly in two equal sections.

  “Ma’m…” he said, stopping a few feet off from her and to one side.

  She split one more piece of wood deliberately, then leaned the axe against the chopping block and turned to face him. Her face was as old as history and wrinkled like the plowed earth. Her age was unguessable, but a strange vitality seemed to smoulder through the outer shell of her, like a fire under ashes, glowing still on some secret coal.

  “What can I do for you?” she said. Her voice was cracked but strong, and the you of the question came out almost as ye. Yet her dark, steady eyes, under the puckered lids, seemed to mock him.

  “Could I get a drink of water, ma’m?”

  “Pump’s over there.”

  He turned. He had seen the pump on the way in, and purposely entered from the other side of the yard. He went across to it and drank, holding his hand across the spout to block it so that the water would fountain up through the hole on top. He felt her gaze on him all the time he drank; and when he turned about she was still regarding him.

  “Thank you, ma’m,” he said. He smiled at her. “I wonder—I know it’s a foolish question to ask, ma’m—but could you tell me where I am?”

  “Spiney Holler,” she said.

  “Oh, my,” he said. “I guessed I’d been going wrong.”

  “Where you headed?” she asked.

  “Well—I was going home to Iowa, ma’m.” His sheepish grin bared his foolishness to her laughter. “I know it sounds crazy. But I thought I was on a freight headed for Iowa. I was going home.”

  “You live in Iowa?”

  “Just outside Des Moines.” He sighed, letting his shoulders slump. “Can—can I sit down, ma’m? I’m just beat—I don’t know what to do.”

  “A big chunk like you? Sit down, boy—” her lean finger indicated the chopping box and he came across the yard as obediently as a child and dropped down on it. “How come you’re here?”

  “Well—” he hung his head. “I’m almost ashamed to say. My folks, they won’t ever forgive me. I tell you, ma’m, it’s about this pain in my side.”

  He felt, rather than saw, a dark flicker of interest in her eyes, but when he looked up, her wrinkled face was serene.

  “—this pain, ma’m. I had it ever since I was a little kid. The doctors couldn’t do nothing for it. And then, my cousin Lee—he’s a salesman, gets all over—my cousin Lee wrote about this doctor in St. Louis. Well, the folks gave me the train fare and sent me down there. I got in on a Saturday and the doctor, he wasn’t in his office. So I went to this hotel.”

  He looked at her. She waited, the little breeze blowing her skirt about her.

  “Well, ma’m—” he faltered. “I know I should have known better. I was brought up right. But I got sick of that little hotel room and I went out Saturday night to see what St. Louis looked like and—well, ma’m, I got into trouble. It was liquor that did it-—unless they put something in my drink—anyway, I woke up Monday morning feeling like the wrath of God and all my folk’s money gone.” He heaved a groaning sigh.

  “And you ain’t never going to do it again.”

  The open sneer in her voice brought his head up with a jerk. She stood, hands on hips above the tight-tucked skirt, grinning down at him. Sudden wrath and fear flamed up in him, but he hid them with the skill of long practice.

  “Boy,” she said. “You came to the wrong door with your story—set down!” she said sharply, as he started to rise, a wounded expression on his face. “You think I don’t know one of old Scratch’s people when I meet ‘em? Me—out of ’em all? Now how’d you like a drink?”

  “A drink?” he said.

  She turned and walked across to the half-open door of the house and came back with a fruit-jar, partly filled. She handed it to him. He hesitated, then gulped. Wildcats clawed at his gullet.

  She laughed at the tears in his eyes and took the jar from him. She drank in her turn, without any visible reaction, as if the liquid in the jar had been milk. Then she set the jar on the ground and fished a pack of cigarettes from her pocket. She lit herself one, without offering them to him, and stood smoking, gazing away over his head, out over the fields.

  “I sent for someone last Tuesday when my Charon was spoiled,” she said, musingly. “You can’t be nobody but him.”

  He stared up at her, feeling as if his clothes had been stripped off him.

  “You crazy?” he demanded roughly, to get a little of his own back. “You nuts or something?” She turned and grinned at him.

  “Well, now, boy,” she said. “You sound like you’d be some great comfort to a lone old woman on long winter nights and nothing to do. Quiet!” she snapped sharply, as he opened his mouth again. “Come on in the cabin with me,” she said. “I got to check on this.”

  Warily, confused by a mixture of emotions inside him, yet curious, he rose and followed her in. The interior of the small house was murkily dark, a single room. Some straight-backed chairs stood about a polished wood floor decorated with throw rugs. There was a fireplace and a round-topped, four-legged table. The corners had things in them, but there the shadows were too deep for his sun-dazzled eyes to see. He thought he smelled cat, but there was no cat to be seen; only an owl—stuffed, it seemed—on the mantel over the fireplace.

  She bent over. There was the scratch of a match and a candle sputtered alight, illuminating the tabletop and her face, but throwing the rest of the room deeper into darkness. A strange thrill trembled down his spine. He stared at the candle. It was only a candle. He stared at her face—but for all its strangeness, it was only a face.

  “Money,” she said. “That’s what you think you want, eh, boy?”

  “What else is there?” he retorted; but the loud notes of his voice rang thin at the end. She burst suddenly into harsh laughter.

  “What else is there, he says!” she cried to the room about them. “What else?” The candle flared suddenly higher, dazzling him for a moment. When he could see again, he discovered two things on the table before him. One was a circle of leather string—like a boot shoelace with a small sack attached—and the other was a thin sheaf of twenty-dollar bills, crisp and new, bound about by a rubber band. He looked at the money and his mouth went dry, estimating there must be two or three hundred dollars in the stack. His hand twitched toward it; and he looked up at the old woman.

  “Look it over, boy,” she said. “Go ahead. Look at it.”

  He snatched it up and riffled through the stack. There were fourteen of the twenties. His eyes met hers across the table. He noticed again how thin she was, how old, how frail. Or was she frail?

  “Only money, boy?” she sneered at him. “Only money? Well, then you got no trouble. You just run me an errand and all that’s yours—and as much again when you come back!”

  Still he stood, looking at her.

  “You want to know?” she said. “I’ll tell you what you got to do for that money. You just go get my recipe book from my neighbor, Marie-Elaine.”

  His voice came hoarse and different from his throat.

  “What’s the gag?” he said.

  “Why, boy, there’s no gag,” she said. “I done lent my recipe book to Marie-Elaine, that’s all, and I want you to fetch it for me.”

  He considered, his mind turning this way and that like a hunting weasel; but each way it looked there was darkness and the unknown.

  “Where does she live?” he asked.

  “Her? Over the ridge.” She looked at him and leaned toward him across the candle and the table. “Money, eh, boy? Just mone
y?”

  “I say—” he gasped, for the smoke of the candle came directly at him, almost choking him. “What else is there?”

  “Something else, boy.” Her eyes held him. They were all he could see, shining in the darkness. “Something in particular for you, boy, if you want it. You did a fine, dark thing last night; but it’s not enough.”

  “What you talking about?”

  “Talking about you. Marie-Elaine, she borrowed my book and my Charon; but she spoiled my Charon. Now she got to get me another, or I take her Azael—don’t know what I’m talking about, do you, boy?”

  “No—” he gasped.

  “I got to play fair with you. Them’s the rules. So you take up that amulet there afore you and wear it. No business of mine, if Marie-Elaine can get you to take it off. None of my doings, if you open the book.”

  His hand went out as if of its own will and picked up the string-and-sack. An odd, sour smell from it stung his nostrils.

  “Why’d I want to open your book?” he managed.

  “For the pride and the power, boy, the pride and the power.” The candle flame flared up between them, blinding him. He heard her, intoning. “Once by call of flesh—once by burn and rash—once by darkness—she’ll try you boy. But wear the amulet spite of her and me and the book won’t tempt you. There, I’ve given you fair warning.”

  The candle flame sank to ordinary size again. Sight of the room came back to him, a slight grin on her face.

  He hesitated, standing with the limp, oily leather of the string in his hand. He had feelings about bad spots when he was getting into them—he’d been in enough. Cat-wise, he was. And there was something about this that was whispering at him to get out. Or was it just the moth-wing of fear he had felt as he looked over this hollow? He believed in nothing, not even in witches; but—all that money for a book—and not believing meant not disbelieving… and that made everything possible. If witches were so— A shiver ran down his back; but hot on it came the sullen bitter anger at this old granny who thought she could use him—him! I’ll show her, he thought; and the blood pounded hot in his temples. He shoved the bills into his pocket, lifted the amulet, hung it around his neck, and tucked it out of sight into his shirt.

  “Yeah. Leave it to me,” he said. She laughed.

  “That’s the boy!” she crackled. “You can’t miss it when you see it. A black book with a gold chain and a gold lock to the chain. You’ll see it in plain sight. She’s got no blindness on you.”

  “Sure,” he said. “I’ll get it.”

  He backed away, turned, and went out the door. He came out into rich, late sunlight. It lay full on the fields; and, in spite of the fact that it was near to sunset, he had to shut his eyes for a moment against its brilliance after the darkness inside.

  He turned to the ridge, towering up black with scrub pines above him. A dusty footpath snaked off and up from the cabin and was lost. He was aware of the old woman watching from her cabin door.

  “See you,” he said, and flipped a hand at her in farewell. But she did not answer; and he turned sullenly away, burning, burning with his resentment.

  The first cool breath of dying day filled his lungs as he climbed. He felt the goodness of being alive; and the money was comfortably pressed against his thigh—he could feel it through his pocket with each step up the ridge. But the sourness that had come upon him in his encounter with the old witch stayed with him. The path wound steeply, sometimes taking half-buried boulders like stone steps upward. It had not looked like a very high ridge; but the sun was barely above the horizon when he reached the top.

  He stopped to catch his breath and consider whether he should go on, or take the money and cut back to the tracks. Another freight would come soon. Below him, down the way he had come, that shadows were long across the fields of the old woman and the slow curve of the railroad right of way. Before him, the further hollow was half in the shadow of the ridge, and only a small house, very like the old woman’s but neater-looking with a touch of something colorful at the windows, stood free of the dark. A sudden thrill of something that was fear, but yet was not fear, ran through him as he stood above the low lands, drowning in the last of the twilight. This was country for witches. He could feel belief coming up into him from the earth under the soles of his surplus army boots. Something evil burnt in the far redness of the descending sun; and the growing breeze of night came out of the shadow of the pines and caressed his cheek with cool, exciting fingers of darkness.

  He began with an odd eagerness to scramble down the path along the far side of the ridge. He seemed to go rapidly, but the further hollow was all in twilight by the time he emerged from the pine trees into its open pasture. Overhead, the sky was blood-red with sunset and the roof of the house was tinged with its ochre reflection. A little light glowed yellow behind its windows.

  He crossed the meadow and stumbled unexpectedly into a small stream. Wading across, he came up a further slight slope and into the yard of the house. When he was still a dozen feet from the door, it opened; and a woman stood suddenly revealed in silhouette, with the gloaming now too feeble to illuminate her face and the lamp light strong behind her.

  He came up to the steps; and as he did so, something large and grey flitted by him and disappeared through the open doorway. It had looked almost like an owl, but the young woman seemed to pay it no attention. He looked up the steps. There were three of them; and they put her head above his own. She was quite young; and her thin, summer dress clung to the close outline of her, revealing a slim, tautly proportioned body.

  He stopped, looking up at her.

  “Hi,” he said. “Say—” a sudden cunningness stilled his tongue as it was about to mention the book he had been sent for—“say, I seem to be lost. Where am I?”

  “Not far from Peterborough,” she said. She had a low, huskily musical voice. “Come in.”

  He walked up the steps and she stepped back before him. A light scent of some earthy perfume came to his nostrils and reminded him all at once of how he was a man and this was a woman. The lamplight, as in the old woman’s house, blinded him for a second. But he recovered quickly; and when he looked up, it was to see her regarding him from beyond a small table not unlike that other, although this was smaller. There was no owl to be seen. This room, like that in the old woman’s house was full of shadows, the main difference being a large yellow cat that sat before a fireplace in which a small fire was burning against the quick coolness of evening. On the mantelpiece above it was a large black book with a gold chain around it, secured by a small gold lock. All this he saw in a glance, but it registered as nothing on his mind compared to the lamplit sight of the young woman.

  He had never expected to find her beautiful.

  She was tall for a woman, and sheer grey eyes looked at him from under slim black brows. Her hair was the color of the deepest shadows and dropped thickly to curl in one smooth dark wave about her slim shoulders. Her lips had their perfect redness without lipstick and the line of her jaw was delicately carved above the soft column of her neck. Her body was the kind men dream of.

  “You’re Marie-Elaine,” he said, without thinking.

  “They call me Marie-Elaine,” she nodded.

  “You’ve got a crazy neighbor over the ridge there,” he said. “She—” caution suddenly placed its hand on his tongue—“told me your name—but she didn’t tell me anything else about you.” His voice came out a little thickly with the feeling inside him.

  She laughed—not as the old woman had laughed; but softly and warmly.

  “She’s old,” Marie-Elaine said. “She’s real old.”

  “Hell, yes!” he said, continuing to stare at her. And then, slowly, again, he repeated it. “Hell… yes…”

  “You’re a stranger,” she said.

  “Call me Bill.” He looked at her across the table. “I was hitching a ride on a freight and the brake-man saw me. I had to drop off by the old lady’s place. I got a drink of water from h
er. She said it was this way to town.”

  “You must be tired.” Her voice was as soft as cornsilk.

  “I’m beat out.”

  “Sit down,” she said. “I’ll make some coffee.”

  “Thanks.”

  He looked about and saw a chair on two slim rockers, spindle-backed and with a thin dark cushion on the seat of it, standing beside the fire. He crossed and sat down in it gingerly—it held. There was a sound of water splashing; and Marie-Elaine came across the room with a kettle. She crouched on the opposite side of the fireplace to swing out a metal arm, hooked at the end, and suspend the kettle from the hook, over the flames. The red flickering light lit up the smooth line of her body all down the clean curve of back and thigh—and the wild blood stirred within him.

  “What’s Peterborough like?” he said, to be saying something.

  “It’s a town,” she answered. Straightening up, she turned her head and smiled at him, a smile as red as the flames of the fire. “A small town. Strangers don’t come, often.”

  “You like it that way?” he asked, boldly.

  “No,” she said softly, looking at him. “I like strangers.” He felt his heart begin to pound slowly and heavily. “What’d she say about me?”

  “Who?” he blinked at her. “Oh, the old bag? Not much.” He spread his hands to the fire’s warmth. “I didn’t get the idea she liked you too well, though.”

  “She doesn’t,” Marie-Elaine said. “She hates me. And she’s lost her Charon.”