Yarrow

by Charles de Lint

  "Oh, come on, Ben."

  "Okay. It sounds crazy. But what happened last night was crazy too. What if this guy is some kind of… I don't know…"

  "Psychic vampire?"

  "Yeah!"

  "Jesus, Ben. You sound just like Cat. She thinks your Dude's the reason she hasn't been dreaming lately. She says he feeds on her dreams."

  "What?"

  Ben sat up straight, and Peter stifled a groan. What had possessed him to come out with that? He wanted to just cut the conversation there, but Ben was waiting expectantly for an explanation. If he cut things off now, he might be killing the relationship he was hoping would develop between the two of them, the relationship that might well solve all of Cat's problems. He decided that Ben could keep what he heard to himself. Besides, Ben was trying to help Cat as well. If he and Mick hadn't shown up last night when they did, who knows what the Dude would have done?

  "The reason Cat's not writing," he said, "is that she's stopped dreaming. She thinks she goes… someplace else when she sleeps. It's a place like out of one of her books, I think, complete with elves and gnomes…." Tiddy Mun's features reared in his mind— Go away! he told it. "An Other-world. The people there— she calls them her ghosts— are who she gets her stories from. They tell them to her and she fills them out when she writes them down."

  "No shit?"

  "She goes to the same place, meets the same ghosts, every night. She's been doing it since she was a kid— or at least up to about three months ago. Then the dreams stopped and her writing dried up and here we are now."

  "You don't believe her, do you?" Ben asked.

  "Christ, Ben. I don't know what to think."

  Again he pushed away the memory of Tiddy Mun's features. He looked at Ben and thought, Cat, you picked the wrong person to come to with your problems. Here's the man you want. Ben was wearing a thoughtful expression with nothing skeptical about it.

  "I believe that she thinks it's true," Peter added. "It's just that…"

  "It doesn't fit into the way you see things, so you'd rather not have to think about it."

  Peter nodded. "That's about it."

  They were both quiet then, each following his own train of thought. The kettle started to boil. Peter got up, made them their coffees, and returned to the cash area.

  "What if it's true?" Ben asked.

  "That's supposing a lot."

  Ben shook his head. "What the hell do we really know about the human mind anyway? What about people who claim to astral travel when they're supposed to be sleeping?"

  "Those people," Peter said, "claim to astral travel in the world we know, not some place chock full of gremlins and the like."

  "Uh-uh. They go to spirit realms— or at least some of them do. Like the Indians down in New Mexico or South America. And what about all the weird shit that goes down that there isn't any explanation for— at least no explanation that fits into the scheme of the world as we see it? I mean, there are enough cases of documented paranormal activity to fill this store, Peter."

  "Yeah. Except not one of them stands up to scientific scrutiny. Not one of them can be duplicated in a laboratory."

  "Maybe things like Cat's ghosts don't like the sterile atmosphere of a lab."

  "Maybe the moon's made of green cheese and the moon-landing we all saw on TV was just another Hollywood special effect." Peter shook his head. "That argument doesn't cut it, Ben."

  "Okay." Ben sighed. "But I have to consider how I'd feel if that sort of thing was happening to me— was real for me— and I couldn't share it with anybody else because they'd either laugh or have me committed. I'd feel really… lonely. I wonder how many unreported occurrences there are, simply because no one wants to get lumped together with the people who talk to Elvis Presley's ghost."

  That hit home. Peter thought of Cat living with her secret for so many years, alienated because of it, because it made her different, but knowing if she tried to speak of it to anyone it would only broaden the gap she already felt between herself and the rest of the world. He was the first person she'd told, and while he hadn't exactly laughed at her, he hadn't been very sympathetic either. He believed that she believed, but he'd made it clear that he couldn't accept it as real. That wasn't being exactly supportive. And then there were the things that he had seen. Or thought he'd seen. Like Tiddy Mun.

  He told Ben everything then, from when Cat came into the store, straight through to when they finally went to their separate beds last night.

  "She needs someone like you, Ben," he said.

  Ben shook his head. "I don't know. I always wanted to know her. To be her friend. But I never took it any further— not seriously. I mean, what would she see in a guy like me?" But he remembered her touch on his arm last night, and the look in her eyes. He could feel a flush start up at the back of his neck. "Let's talk about something else," he said.

  "Like what?"

  "How about this Tiddy Mun you think you saw."

  Peter sighed. "Right. But I didn't just imagine it— I did see something."

  "Oh, sure."

  "I just don't know if it was real or not."

  "You're the one that's acting nuts now, you know that?" Ben said.

  "Yeah. That's what I've been thinking. Only…"

  Peter's voice trailed off. Only what? He had to be missing a wire or two because just talking about Cat's gnome again brought those strange features back into his mind's eye. They seemed so real— as though the creature actually existed. He glanced at Ben, feeling a certain resentment. Jesus, he thought. Ben was the one who was willing to accept it all a few minutes ago, and now… Then he caught Ben's smile.

  "See how it feels?" Ben said. "And you're not even a true believer. Did you never think that Cat must wonder how sane she is at times?"

  Peter shook his head. "I never thought of it that way. But what about you? How can you accept this all so easily?"

  "I didn't say that I did. But I'm willing to allow that it's possible. Did I ever tell you about my aunt who reads tea leaves?"

  "Yeah."

  "It was scary how dead-on she could be. She gave it up because she just couldn't handle the way that what she saw in the bottom of a teacup became real."

  "That's not really the same thing as we've got here."

  "No," Ben agreed. "What's scary here is, if Cat's dreams are real, then maybe the Dude really is feeding on them."

  Peter sighed. "So what do we do?"

  "I don't know. We've got to watch out for her. Maybe try to track the Dude down. The trouble is, we don't really know what we're dealing with. It's easy in the movies. You just look for a castle on a hill and the guy in the black cape with the long fangs— well, he's your man. But if the Dude is some kind of vampire, he's not like any I've ever heard of." Ben's hand went to his neck. "He doesn't even bite."

  "In the old days," Peter said, "people used to think of blood as the life principle— a rejuvenating force. It was symbolic of our life essence."

  "I follow you. So if vampires are real, the legends just mixed up what they were taking from us. Or at least how. I suppose drawing out somebody's soul doesn't make as good copy as sucking the blood from their veins— even before Hammer Films got hold of the story."

  "If," Peter said, "you're willing to accept that that's what the Dude is in the first place."

  Ben shrugged. "The real problem is that I don't think a crucifix or stake is going to do this guy in. Sunlight sure doesn't seem to bother him. Christ, will you listen to us? Maybe we're both going off the deep end."

  Peter thought about Cat and about what they all might be facing if the Dude decided to live up to their wild speculations.

  "I almost wish we were," he said.

  Ben shook his head. "Not me. I'd rather the world went crazy than to think it was just me." He glanced at his watch. "Gotta run, Peter. I'll see you later."

  "Why don't you give Cat a call?"

  "You're really turning into a little matchmaker, aren't you?"

>   "Whatever does the trick."

  Ben thought about that for a moment, then grinned. "Well, maybe I will," he said.

  The General Assignment Unit of the Ottawa Police Force took up almost half of the third floor of the main station at Nicholas and Waller. In his office, overlooking the construction of the new Rideau Centre, Detective-Sergeant Derek Potter reread the report that had crossed his desk earlier that morning. On the surface it didn't give him much to go on. But when you put it together with one or two other items that had come in over the past few months…

  He tapped the end of a pencil against his upper lip as he thought about it. They had a regular community of about forty winos in the downtown core. In General Assignment you didn't deal with them that much, but you became aware of them quickly enough as you made your way up from patrolman to detective. Every big city had them, though Ottawa— for all that it boasted being Canada's fourth largest city— could actually claim relatively few.

  "Got your files, Potsy."

  He looked up as Detective Bill McKinty sat down beside his desk, a handful of files under one arm and a coffee in either hand. Black with sugar for Potter, cream, no sugar, for himself. Bill was dark-haired where Potter was blond, beefier in the jowls and deeper in the chest. He stood an inch taller than Potter's 6'1".

  Potter accepted his coffee with a nod. "Did you have a look through them?" he asked, tapping his pencil on the desk.

  Bill opened the top file. "Crazy Dick, a.k.a. Richard T. Brown," he read. "The T stands for Terrance. His body was found behind Coles on the Mall at 0705 by Constable Evans on July twentieth. The coroner's report puts his death at approximately 0400. Cause of death: massive hemorrhaging due to the fact that his fucking throat was slit, ear to ear."

  "Same M.O. as O'Dennehy here," Potter said. His pencil moved from the desk to the report in question:

  "You got it," Bill said. "Only the rest of these files you called up don't fit in. The coroner lists them all as dying of natural causes."

  "How many?"

  "Four, not including Crazy Dick."

  "In… what? Two months?"

  "Closer to three."

  "Something stinks here," Potter said. He lifted his gaze. "Something's killing off our street people, one by one."

  "Two guys…" Bill began.

  Potter shook his head. "Six. Not including the hooker that Wells is working on. Same M.O. again— throat slit. She had thirty-five bucks and change in her pocket and not a penny was touched. Happened in a back alley."

  "I forgot about her," Bill said. "Wasn't Wells all set to pin it on her pimp?"

  "Yeah. Except it turned out she really was working freelance— if you want to go with the word on the street."

  "What do you think, Potsy?"

  "I think she fits. I think someone's got a hard-on for low-lifes."

  "So we've got three—"

  "No," Potter broke in. "We've got seven. Those other four fit in."

  He frowned, chewing on the end of his pencil before going back to tapping it on the report again. The same instincts that had helped him break the Hooper/Gibbs case, which got him his last promotion, were buzzing up a storm.

  There was something going on, and he didn't like it. The trouble was that while there wasn't going to be a major problem getting Staff Sergeant Robinson to okay their tying the three knifings together, Potter couldn't see Robinson letting them reopen the other four cases. The verdict was in on them, and foul play wasn't a part of it, not unless you wanted to try and indict Mother Nature.

  No, what they were going to have to do was work on those cases when they could— a bit here and a bit there, look for connections, until they had something hard that they could take to Robinson.

  "I still don't see how they fit, Potsy," Bill said. "I mean, even if we've got a slasher with a yen for winos and hookers, that still doesn't explain those other four."

  Potter shrugged. "I can't tie them in, not in any way that makes sense. But I know they're all part of the same puzzle." The pencil beat a slow tattoo against his upper lip as he thought it out. "Are you with me on this?"

  Bill nodded. You didn't back out on your partner, even if he was going in for some extracurricular investigating. The brass tended to frown on that kind of shit, but what could you do? It wasn't like he could just walk out on Potsy.

  "Then here's what we'll do. We'll run down some of O'Dennehy's friends, like…" He glanced at the report on his desk. "Ron Wilson. The usual routine. At the same time we'll check on any cases in the last, say, three months that are similar to those four winos. We're looking for people who are keeling over for no good reason. Not heart attacks or shit like that, just those that died of"— he paused deliberately— "natural causes."

  "I'll take Wilson and start a preliminary check with the hospitals," Bill said.

  Potter nodded. "I'll start with Wells's report on the hooker case then."

  Bill began to get up, then sat down again. "Just what are we looking for, Potsy?"

  "You tell me. The boogeyman, for all I know."

  "Right."

  "And Bill?"

  "Yeah?"

  "Let's keep a lid on this."

  Bill smiled. "You think I want Robinson sniffing up my ass?"

  When Bill left, Potter stared out the window to watch a crane work its load up to the roof of the half-completed Centre, where a handful of construction workers were clustered. His pencil lay forgotten in his hand.

  Damn funny business, he thought. He sat like that for a long while, then sighed and pushed the O'Dennehy report to one side. Time to track down Wells and see what he had for them.

  The stranger was neither an elf nor a gnome, merely a human— as human as Cat, if appearances were anything to go by. He looked up as she stepped from the woods, one hand straying casually to the hilt of a knife stuck in the ground by his knee. There was something about both Kothlen and Ben about him that brought a lump to Cat's throat. Her natural shyness leapt to the fore and she ended up just standing where she was, waiting for him to say something.

  He was dressed the way Cat always imagined a Gypsy might look: heavy green corduroy trousers, woolen yellow shirt, scuffed leather boots, a rust jacket with many pockets, and two small earrings glinting gold in each ear. His complexion was swarthy, an earthy brown, but his features were neither African nor Indian. They were finely boned, the nose slender, the cheekbones almost gaunt. His hair was black and curled to the collar of his jacket.

  He was in the middle of frying flatcakes on the hot stones beside his fire. A small pot with steeping tea was perched on the rocks beside it. At his side was a traveler's pack, its contents spilled out around him. His eyes narrowed slightly as he studied her. Not until he seemed sure she was alone did he relax. His hand left the hilt of the knife.

  "So," he said. "The woods sent forth their waif."

  He smiled infectiously, and Cat found herself grinning back. Laughter lines crinkled around his eyes, and she saw that he was older than she'd initially taken him to be. She'd thought about twenty, what with the slender frame and the boyish tilt to his head. She adjusted that figure by about fifteen years.

  "I hope you don't mind me barging in like this," she began.

  "Not at all. I haven't had company for the better part of a fortnight. My name's Toby Weye. At your service. Care for some breakfast?"

  "I… yes. Please. My name's Cat Midhir."

  "A potent name."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I was told that these are the Katmeiny Hills. As in a multitude of cats. As in your name."

  "Oh."

  She made her way to the fire and smiled her thanks when he unfolded his blanket to give her a dry place to sit.

  "So," Toby said as he flipped over the cakes. "Are you a native or a traveler? Or a traveling native? A native traveler?"

  "A traveler. I come from"— she waved her hand in a general western direction— "back there."

  "Ah. Do you want your tea plain, or with honey?"
/>
  "Honey, please."

  "And are you fey?"

  "I… what do you mean?"

  "Fey. As in kin to elves and such. Magicky. Able to ride the wind and live in hills. To change your shape. To lure astray the lonely traveler. That sort of thing."

  "No. I… I'm a storyteller."

  "Ah."

  Cat was finding it a little hard to keep up with him. He talked quickly, changing topics as the whim struck him. And his questions were curious, to say the least.

  "What do you do?" she asked.

  "I," he replied, handing her a steaming mug, "make a lovely cup of tea."

  "No. I mean, I'm sure you do, but I was asking what you did for a living. Are you a Gypsy?"

  "A tinker, a tailor. A Gypsy, a traveling man. You guessed by my pack?"

  "Well, sort of. More from the way you look."

  "Tinkerish, as it were?" Toby smiled and took a sip of his own tea.

  "Yes."

  "I'm afraid I must disappoint you. I am a traveling man, but not a tinker. And the reason I travel is that the Road calls to me— the Secret Road that wanders uphill and down, through this world and that."

  He drew his flatcakes back from the fire's heat and leaned back against a stone to recite in a bardic fashion that put Cat in mind of Kothlen again.

  What is the Road?

  Endless it can seem

  with darkness on the one hand

  and on the other:

  the Muse herself

  —three-faced by any name,

  secret as the thorns of roses

  and winter sharp,

  leaf-cloaked and older still

  in summer's heart.

  While underfoot

  the merry Road, the gentle,

  winds to where it waits:

  the light of an old dance,

  an old song

  —the hoofbeats of the Green Man

  sounding on hill and sward,

  his brow horned, the moon horned,

  the scattered notes of harp and pipes