Come Hell or High Water: The Complete Trilogy

by Stephen Morris

  Sean saw the valley fill with destruction. All signs of the city vanished, covered by waves. The few smoldering ruins that remained were collapsing. The cries of the inhabitants gradually subsided, everyone a victim of either fire or drowning or the devilish figures that the great horseman had apparently unleashed. Lightning flickered over the devastation.

  “Please let me wake up!” Sean demanded of himself, his strange dream having become a nightmare of destruction.

  A lone voice caught his attention. He turned back to the plaza before the Loreto, the only manmade structure that remained in the night, even though its walls appeared cracked and damaged. The bonfire that had burned before the gates had burnt itself out, leaving great streaks of soot on the cobblestones and the cloister walls. A solitary cry rose from some unseen person. The wail resonated and echoed around the plaza, growing more intense, more piercing, as if an indescribable sorrow had seized hold of the person’s heart and there was no way to express this grief apart from the mournful keening. It snaked through the air and bore into Sean’s consciousness. Unbearable pain. Then it was gone, cut short as if the throat that had given it birth had been cut with a dagger.

  The images shimmered and faded and grew clear again. But now Sean was looking down across a kaleidoscope of European cities. He saw the dome of St. Paul’s and Big Ben in London, the Eiffel Tower in Paris. He recognized the Plaza de España in Madrid and the chimneys of Sintra in Portugal. The streets of Berlin rippled out beneath him and merged with St. Peter’s Square in Rome. Churches of Florence hovered along the periphery of the vision and the statue of the mermaid in Copenhagen’s harbor sat beneath the walls of the Kremlin lining Red Square as the onion domes of St. Basil’s rose beneath him. Sean glimpsed the dome of the capitol building in Washington, D.C. to one side and a courtyard of Beijing’s Forbidden City that he recognized from a photograph. Even the black-draped Ka’aba in Mecca squatted beneath him.

  The horseman charged across the vision again, trampling the landmarks beneath the hooves of his eight-legged horse. Black tides of thunderclouds erupted from where the stallion’s hooves punctured the air and spread across the scene, obliterating the landmarks. Lightning flickered between the tufts of the storm clouds and the sound of crumbling stonework reached Sean’s ears, mingled with the cries of those crushed beneath the collapsing monuments.

  Sean was amazed at the intensity, the reality of the nightmare that was unfolding around him. The colors, the sights, the sounds, the physical sensations all seemed more real, more accessible on a visceral level than his waking life ever had. He covered his face with his hands.

  “Wake up!” he ordered himself. “I can’t stand this anymore! Wake up!” He rubbed his knuckles into his eyes and peered around.

  Then the city of Prague was back, intact and safe, exactly as it had looked when his dream began and he had first been tipped out of his bed and into the night sky by the wood-sprites in the first stages of his dream. He slowly shook his head.

  Sean realized that he was drifting closer to the earth. His feet scraped against the rough cobblestones and he was rudely dropped onto his knees near the bicycle rack.

  “Sean O’Neill! Good God, man! What are you doing here?” It was the obese, nearly retired British professor with the auburn hair, Peter Thomlinson, who had been clambering and sliding along the roof of the cloister a few moments before. The stout bald man he was with—who had also been up on the roof—was still looking about, as if befuddled and confused. Sean recalled having met Wilcox Hammond at the conferences.

  “What am I doing here?” Sean exclaimed. He managed to stand up and keep his modesty intact with the sheet. “The better question is, what are you doing here? And who are you?” he demanded of the young woman on the bench, who had stood and turned to him as he approached. “I don’t even know you! What are you doing in my dream?”

  “Your dream?” Peter responded, before the unknown woman could answer. “If that is what you think this is, then it is becoming a very crowded dream indeed!” He pointed to the plaza behind Sean, who turned to see what or who was there.

  Approaching them across the plaza were Father Dmitri and his wife, Sophia. Still hand in hand, the priest still gawking around him, the couple drew closer. Sophia gasped and pointed at the nearby spire. They all turned to look.

  Alessandro, in his toga-style sheet, was slowly descending. He waved towards the people on the ground and then, hearing a commotion behind him, pulled himself to one side as a tangled mass of sheets and limbs hurtled past him towards the ground. Theo cursed loudly and hit the ground with enough force that he lay stunned for a few moments before pulling himself up to sit and look around him. Moving with the urgency common to dreams, they all rushed to assist him but with feet that seemed mired in molasses. Alessandro’s feet touched the earth not far from the linen twisted around arms and legs. He reached out to hoist the Englishman to his feet. They both grunted with the effort.

  Sean was dumbstruck. What was his subconscious mind trying to communicate by means of this strange, increasingly crowded dream? He shook his head in a daze. The academics soon found themselves standing in a group in the dark, wondering who would break the silence. Whoever spoke first would probably wake him, Sean thought, leaving him to puzzle out the meaning of the dream the next day. If he could recall the details of the dream at that point.

  “So, who thinks this is all just a dream?” It was the priest, Fr. Dmitri, who spoke. There was a murmur of confusion among the others.

  “What do you mean, ‘thinks this is all just a dream?’ What else can it be? It has to be a dream!” Sean found himself protesting.

  “At the very least, it seems a group hallucination to me.” Wilcox scratched his double-chin and then gestured around the assembled group. “For us all to imagine the same thing is quite an extraordinary event. For us to all share the same dream would be nearly impossible.”

  “Thank you, but I’ve had one hallucination tonight already and that was quite enough!” Alessandro quickly inserted his opinion. “I don’t need another group hallucination atop that one!”

  “Of course we haven’t all imagined the same thing!” sputtered Sean, clutching his sheet more tightly around him. “I’m the only one who has imagined any of this because it’s the dream that only I am dreaming and the rest of you are here only because I’ve included you in my dream. When we all wake up back in our hotels and I tell you about this at breakfast, it will be a total surprise to each and every one of you!”

  “I think it is neither a dream nor a group hallucination.” Sophia spoke up, her voice surprisingly calm. “I think that the most reasonable explanation is the truth: we have all experienced this extraordinary thing together.”

  “What makes you so certain that I am in your dream and not that you are in mine?” Theo demanded.

  “Because my dream began quite some time before you arrived in it!” responded Sean. He turned his attention to Sophia and her husband. “What makes you so damned sure that this is real?”

  “How about the feel of the cobblestones, to begin with?” Fr. Dmitri offered for his consideration. “No dream ever included such sustained physical sensations.” He rubbed a foot against the ground. “Tell me you’ve ever felt such real cobblestones in a dream before, Sean. In addition,” he went on, “the similarities of our experiences but the fact that they each differ in significant ways speak to the reality of what is going on tonight, yes? I dare say that we were each launched into the night in a different way but we have all been brought together here for the exact purpose of seeing that vision of the destruction of Prague that we have just witnessed.”

  Sean sputtered in protest. “But this is impossible! No one—let alone a group of people!—flies through the air and meets each other in the middle of the night!”

  “Oh, really?” It was Peter’s turn to speak out next, his many jowls quivering. “Every one of us here is familiar with the accusations against the Renaissance and early modern witches,
that they flew through the air to gather in the middle of the night at their witches’ Sabbat meetings. We’ve always explained away those stories by attributing hallucinogenic properties to the salves they anointed themselves with before embarking on those flights. But there is abundant evidence—in fairy tales and folktales also, I might add—that ordinary people are reported to fly in just such a way through the night to gather together. If this is real, and not a group hallucination or small group hysteria, I am inclined to agree with—excuse me, your name? Sean, is it?—that we have been brought here precisely for the purpose of seeing that vision which just played out.”

  He rubbed the sole of his foot against the ground and then sat on the nearby bench with a loud sigh. “I am less and less inclined to think of this as a hallucination,” he added. “We would have all needed to ingest some psychotropic agent. I know I didn’t and I doubt anyone else did either. And I doubt that anyone slipped us all the same drug in secret.”

  The Eastern European priest spoke up. “Such flights may not be common but they are known, even in Biblical material. You may not be as familiar with these as with the flights to the witches’ assemblies. The prophet Habakkuk was lifted up by an angel who clutched the prophet’s hair so that he could deliver lunch to another prophet, Daniel, who was locked in the lions’ den. So might our flight be a flight to aid another in distress, yes? I think our colleague—Peter, yes?—is correct in guessing that we have been brought together precisely for the purpose of experiencing that very impressive vision. But we have not only to experience it, but to interpret and then act on it. No vision is ever given simply for the purpose of seeing it. It is always a communication, a message, a warning to respond to. It shows us who is in distress that we have been brought through the air to assist.”

  Sean threw up in his hands in frustration. “How can I make you people see reason? This makes no sense! This is a dream!” He threw himself down on the bench next to Peter and stared at them all incredulously. “But why should I care if you see any reason? This is a dream! Why even bother trying to convince you otherwise? When I wake up, it won’t matter if I convinced you that this is all just a dream, a nightmare!”

  “Well, then, I think we should leave you here to appreciate the dream you are convinced you are having. We could all wait here with you until breakfast time, but that seems counterproductive.” Wilcox, one of the nearly retired professors, spoke up again. “I suggest we all return to the hotel—are we all in the same hotel?—and meet again over breakfast to consider the plausibility of all this and what it means.”

  “I think returning to our hotels makes the most sense yet. I suspect that we will have to walk, given that we are unlikely to return the same way we came here, and the fewer people that see me in the street wrapped in a sheet—the better!” Theo exclaimed.

  “Excuse me.” A small voice spoke up. Everyone turned to the woman standing alongside a nearby bench that none of them recognized. “I think I know why you are all here and what the vision means. This is all real, I’m sure of it, and I need to tell you how I caused it.”

  A cacophony of voices broke out. “What? You caused it? Why do you say that? Tell us why. What does this all mean? Are you sure? Who are you?”

  She seemed startled at their responses. She looked at the ground and then into each of their faces. She swallowed. She seemed about to speak, then paused. Finally, she began.

  “I—I lit a candle in my footprint here, last night. There, under the hedge.” She pointed toward the place. “I read that if I lit a candle in a footprint it would expose a thief, the thief who stole my best friend from me and ruined our friendship, a man who filled her head with crazy stories of meeting the dead and… and clearing the name of an old woman burned for witchcraft here.”

  She pointed to the plaza where the vision had played out. “After I lit the candle, I went home to bed. But I couldn’t sleep. I kept wondering how the candle-in-the-footprint would expose the man who had stolen my best friend. Finally, I couldn’t stand staying in bed any longer. I got up dressed, and came here. That’s when I saw you all coming down through the air! I sat here and saw the vision that you did! But I lit the candle to stop a thief. That’s what all that was about. Exposing the thief. Exposing his lies to Magdalena. The book said that the thief would be exposed and the appropriate authorities could then take action. That means that you—all of you—are the authorities to deal with him. But all this that we just saw is so much more than simply trying to save Magdalena. I don’t really understand it all. I need your help. I can’t do this alone.” Her voice held a tone of pleading. She gestured toward them all. “Please. Help me save my friend.”

  As if an afterthought, she added, “My name is Victoria.”

  There was silence in the plaza. The academics all looked at their feet before looking sheepishly at each other. Sophia walked to the young woman and took her hands.

  “Of course, we will help you. We will do whatever we can to save your friend,” she promised Victoria. “We can do whatever we can to save your friend but I think you are right, Victoria. This seems to be about so much more than simply trying to save your friend. But first, I think Wilcox here is also right. We should return to our hotels—as our friend Theo says, before there are too many people to see us stumble about in our sheets and nightclothes—and then meet at one of our hotels for breakfast to discuss how to best proceed.” She looked around at the group. Everyone nodded.

  “Will you be coming with us, Sean?” Peter asked as he struggled to stand from the bench to join the others, who were beginning to follow Sophia and Victoria from the plaza.

  “No, thank you,” Sean replied. “I prefer to wait until I wake up in my bed.”

  “Suit yourself.” Peter chuckled. “See you at breakfast.”

  The sheet-wrapped professors, the academics who had spent lifetimes studying monsters and the ways and means of magic but never dreamed of experiencing or practicing any of it, slowly filed out of the plaza and down the hill. Sean sat on the bench and stared after them. A breeze rustled the sheet he still held around himself.

  He caught himself dozing off and shook his head. He heard a bird twitter and realized the eastern sky was beginning to lighten. Streaks of pink and rose gingerly reached out to the few stars remaining in the west. Sean reluctantly considered that perhaps he was awake and had not been dreaming after all. Perhaps the only way he would find himself in his hotel bed was if he got up and walked back to the hotel as the others had done.

  He stood. It seemed gangs of birds awoke at that instant and greeted his movement with an explosion of sound bursting from the trees around the edge of the plaza. He shook his head again and realized that, dream or no dream, he needed to get back to the hotel before he was forced to explain why he was wandering the early morning streets in nothing but a bed sheet. He turned to make his way out of the plaza.

  Crossing out of the plaza, Sean got his bearings. He knew he should head down, down the hill toward the river. He would reach the hotel just before coming to the river. Having only seen photos of this plaza before in a guidebook, he only dimly recognized the street. Gathering his sheet more tightly about him, he set out downhill.

  The birdsong behind him was silenced as if someone had turned off a recording or unplugged a loudspeaker. The growing light stalled and dimmed. The light was an odd off-shade of daylight. It wasn’t the sickly green he had seen once in the United States when the circumstances that could give birth to a tornado were gathering. It was if the sun itself were spilling shadow and half-light across the city, as if the dawn had given out and failed, wrapping the city in half-shadows. “Like an eclipse,” Sean muttered to himself and, turning his attention back to the earth, scurried toward the hotel.

  He stubbed his toe against a cobblestone and cursed loudly. His voice seemed even louder to him than it probably was, given the ongoing eerie silence. The longer the silence went on, the more menacing it became. The realization that he had to come to terms with
this new reality revealed over the course of the night was unavoidable. Yes, it was easier to do that than continue his attempts to convince himself it had all been a dream.

  Sean came into the hotel breakfast room a few hours later. He had made it back to the hotel but, having no room key with him, had to stand in the sheet as if nothing were out of the ordinary while a desk clerk opened his door for him. (He’d made up a story of sleepwalking. That seemed not altogether dishonest.) Having lain down briefly, he had stood at the window on rising and saw the still eclipse-like light that bathed the city. He strained to hear the birds and heard the muffled sounds of the city waking and the river rushing past the bridge a few blocks away, but no birds, no sounds of nature met his ears. Here, in the dining room, the group already sat around a handful of tables pushed together. Those who were staying at another hotel down the block must have eaten breakfast there, but everyone had at least a cup of coffee or tea before them. He shook his head to clear the remnants of his short nap from his consciousness and, taking a deep breath, brought his breakfast roll and coffee to join them.

  “So, how long did you stay up at the Loreto?” asked Theo.

  Sean blushed. “Not long. When the birds woke up and the sun started to rise, I realized that there was no way I would wake up back here in bed.” He paused before admitting, “You were right.”

  “Not to worry. All that is in the past.” Fr. Dmitri gestured to the waitress and his cup of coffee was quickly refilled. “Victoria was just telling us about her friend Magdalena and—what was his name? George, I think you said?—and their intentions to clear the name of a woman burnt as a witch in the Middle Ages.”