The Ruined City

by John Wilson

  “Okay, I get the point.”

  “The point is that you imagine places your phone usually is and look there. In fact, what really happened was that your mom found your phone in the bathroom and didn’t want it to get wet, so she put it on the kitchen counter. It’s out in the open, and you’ve walked past it three times on your search, but you didn’t see it because you weren’t imagining it there.”

  “Okay, I’ve done that. But I would see a monster sitting on the kitchen counter.”

  “What if it was made of a material that you couldn’t detect with your five imperfect senses? What if it existed in a different time?”

  Cate tilted her head and looked at him. Howard tried to imagine a monster living in another time but still sitting on his kitchen counter—and failed.

  “This is really weird.” The idea that Cate might be crazy was getting stronger, but Howard decided to humor her. “I get what you’re saying, I think, but what does that have to do with Sanxingdui and what happened to me in the basement?”

  “What if the monsters existed in different dimensions from ours?”

  “Then we would never see them. We can’t travel between dimensions—if other dimensions even exist.”

  “What if some of us can? What if there are places in our world of great power—points where our dimension or time rubs against another one? What if those places are gateways where things can pass from one dimension into another—where someone or something can exist in two realities at once?”

  Howard stared at Cate, his brain spinning. How had they got from backyard ants and lost cell phones to gateways in time and space? He’d followed the path Cate had led him on, but he couldn’t believe where they’d ended up.

  “It’s impossible,” he said at last, hoping against hope that Cate was about to laugh and say that all this came from some strange play she was learning or…something.

  “Okay, what’s your theory for what happened in the basement?”

  “Look,” Howard said. “What happened was really eerie and frightening, and I admit it didn’t feel like a dream—I could think clearly and act on the decisions I made, and nothing changed for no reason, the way it often does in dreams. I was exactly as I am in the real world, even down to my backpack, but that doesn’t make it a trip to another dimension. It was just a weird dream that proves I’m going mad. I really appreciate your trying to explain it away, and you’ve been incredibly creative, but what you’re saying about other dimensions and monsters is insane.”

  “So how do you explain your dad’s reaction to the TV? What about his speaking ancient Chinese and calling you back from wherever you went when you had your fit?”

  “My dad’s insane!” Howard said, so loud that the woman behind the counter turned and stared at him. “And clearly I’m going insane too. There are no incredibly powerful monsters waiting to step on us. I’ll go to the doctor tomorrow and he’ll order a bunch of tests that will show nothing. Meanwhile, the attacks will get worse and more frequent, and two months from now, I’ll be in the room next to Dad’s, not even able to recognize you or Mom.”

  Saying it out loud was much worse than thinking it. Howard was within an inch of breaking down completely. Blinking back tears, he stood up and reached over to lift his backpack.

  “I have to go.”

  Cate grabbed his wrist. “One last thing,” she said, picking a toothpick out of the holder on the table and offering it. “Clean under your fingernails before you go.”

  “What?” The request was so bizarre that Howard sat back down. “Clean under my fingernails?”

  “Yes. That’s all you need to do.”

  He looked at his hands. His nails were filthy, and he wasn’t sure how they got that way. He scraped some green dirt from under each nail onto the tabletop. As he stared at the tiny pile of greenish slime on the table, it hit him. “Oh my god!” he said in a voice barely above a whisper. “It’s the slime from the walls and roof of the tunnel.”

  “Now look at your backpack,” Cate said.

  There were damp greenish streaks running all along the outside.

  “Now smell your runners.”

  It was an odd request, but Howard was not about to question Cate at this point. He lifted his leg and smelled the runner on his right foot. It was damp. That could have been from the rainstorm they had run through, but that wouldn’t explain why it smelled of seawater and a beach.

  “A wave that washed over my feet when the creature grabbed my ankle!” Howard couldn’t have left now even if he’d wanted to. “It actually happened,” he whispered. “How, how, how?”

  In an instant, everything that Howard believed in—everything that he and everyone else in the world accepted as normal and stable—had become fluid, uncertain and hideously frightening.

  “I’m not crazy?” he asked softly, his shoulders slumping.

  “I told you that you weren’t,” Cate said.

  “How do you know all this stuff?”

  She grinned broadly. “I’m a witch.”

  AYLFORD

  CAFETERIA CONFESSIONS #2

  “No!” Howard exclaimed. His mind desperately wanted to reject everything Cate had just said. It was all totally unthinkable, unimaginable, inconceivable. But so was the green slime beneath his nails and on his backpack, not to mention his runners smelling of the sea. In desperation he focused on the last thing Cate had said. “You can’t be a witch! There’s no such thing. It’s impossible.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t rush to say things are impossible,” said Cate, her grin firmly in place. “Would you?”

  Howard had to admit that his definition of impossible was broadening.

  “Anyway, I’m not really a witch. I don’t fly around at night on a broomstick. I’m a wu.”

  “And that is?” Howard asked.

  “It’s an ancient Chinese spirit medium. Probably more like a shaman than a witch, but we’ve been called many things: prophets, seers, magicians, lunatics. I prefer the term Adept.”

  “And you’re…an Adept?”

  Cate nodded. “Throughout history, there have been people who are sensitive to things outside normal day-to-day reality. Where do you think Lewis Carroll got all his strange ideas for Alice’s adventures, Edgar Allan Poe his horror stories and Hieronymus Bosch the images for his paintings? But right now, what’s more important for you to realize is that you are an Adept—and your father too, I think.”

  “So his fits—which everyone is assuming are related to mental instability—are the same as what’s happening to me?”

  “Not exactly the same. Different people see different things and react in different ways.”

  “Like how I remember every detail of my fits and he can’t remember a thing?”

  “Yeah. Whatever your dad saw was so strange or terrifying that his brain couldn’t handle it. It blocked his memories as a defense mechanism.”

  “But he’s started talking again,” Howard pointed out. “He said mask and have to go before he led us downstairs. Is he beginning to remember things?”

  “I think all the things he saw in his dreams are still there in his head—he’s just locked them away. Somehow a tiny corner of those experiences was opened up by the pictures of Sanxingdui on the TV.”

  “He also said something before I had my fit in the basement. What did that mean? Was that Chinese as well?”

  “Yes. He repeated the name of the book from the reading room, Jinse de mianju. Then he said, Zhe ben shu zai zheli, which means ‘The book is here,’ and then Ni yinggai kanshu, which means ‘You should read the book.’ The same thing Madison said to you.”

  “So we should read the book you found in the reading room?”

  “Probably.” Cate looked worried.

  “What is it?”

  “It was really quite extraordinary to find Jinse de mianju, Chinese for ‘the golden mask,’ in the reading room. There are only a few copies anywhere in the world, and mostly those are only badly translated fragments. What ex
cited me was that this copy seemed to be complete.”

  “So why should that worry you?”

  “Because it might be very dangerous. The original Jinse de mianju was translated from an ancient text written thousands of years ago in an unknown language. I assumed that the book I found was a relatively recent copy, but now I’m not so sure. Unlikely as it seems, both Madison and your dad keep telling us to read the book—and Jinse de mianju is the only one they could be referring to.”

  “I agree that’s weird, but what’s the problem? The book’s in Chinese, so you can read it, right?”

  “The problem is that it might be an accurate copy of the original.”

  “So?”

  “The original copy of The Golden Mask is said to have had immense power. People believed they could open portals to other dimensions, particularly the Realm of the Elder Gods, simply by reading aloud certain passages from it.”

  “What’s that?” Howard had the uncomfortable feeling that what she was saying was drawing him deeper into a place he wasn’t particularly keen to go to.

  “There are places in our world where it is easier to move not only between dimensions but also times. The dimensions swirl around in space and time, and when two are close together, it’s easier to move between them. We are almost at a time when the Realm of the Elder Gods will be very close to our world.”

  “What’s so terrible about that?”

  “If we’re the ants in the backyard, the Elder Gods are the homeowners about to come out for a barbecue.”

  Howard stared at Cate. “How do you know it’s the Realm of the Elder Gods that’s coming close?”

  “Partly from your dad. In the basement, after he told you to read the book, he chanted, Xiaoxin sizhe shei mengxiang—‘Beware the dead who dream.’ It is written in some ancient texts that the Elder Gods are the sleeping dead who dream, and that those dreams can sometimes leak across into our world and inform our thoughts when we’re asleep and our guard of rationality is at its lowest.”

  “Nightmares?” Howard asked.

  “Yes, and if an Adept is particularly sensitive, he or she can sense other elements. As the dimensions swirl closer together, the dreams become more realistic and stronger. They can become so powerful that they form a different reality.”

  “Powerful enough to happen during the day—like my attack in the basement?”

  Cate nodded. “You’re a very strong Adept. That’s why all this stuff with other Adepts is happening around you.”

  “Okay, let’s say I accept that you and my dad are these so-called Adepts. But Madison? I have a hard time believing she’s smart enough.”

  “Intelligence doesn’t have much to do with it,” Cate said with a smile.

  Howard finished his drink and thought long and hard about what Cate had told him. It all sounded crazy, but it did explain some of what was going on. But even if it was all true, it wasn’t going to help Howard escape from his dreams. And from what Cate had said, they were only going to get worse.

  “You said there were other elements to being a sensitive Adept,” Howard said. “The dreams and what else?”

  “You’re not going to like it.”

  “As opposed to realistic daytime nightmares of monsters coming to get me?” But Howard was relieved to see that Cate was smiling.

  “The other element is that Adepts can share dreams.”

  “Like Madison was in my dream?”

  “Yes,” Cate said, “and you were in mine. I came to Aylford to find you.”

  “Find me?”

  “Yeah. I’ve been dreaming about you for months.”

  Until a few days ago, Howard would have given his right arm to hear a girl say that to him. Now he wasn’t so sure.

  “My first dreams of Aylford were confused—images of streets, houses, the college, the psychiatric institute. Then they gradually became more focused. I saw through someone’s eyes as he moved around his house, went to work, lectured to students—”

  “Lectured to students?” Howard interrupted. “When did you begin having these dreams?”

  “A little over a year ago. At first they were very ordinary, but then they started to become more fractured. Large parts of them would just dissolve into blackness. I knew I was still dreaming, but I couldn’t see or hear anything. All I had was a sense that I wasn’t alone. Then the scenes of home and work were replaced by a hospital of some sort. Often I had a feeling of being restrained, tied to a bed or something, and then the dreams stopped.”

  Another silence—this one much longer.

  Eventually Howard managed to force out some words. “My dad. You were dreaming about my dad going insane.”

  Cate nodded. “I think I was. After those dreams stopped, there was nothing for a while, and then, about three months ago, the dreams started again. This time they were different. I had no sense of seeing the world through someone’s eyes. Instead, I was an observer, watching fragments of a specific person going about his daily life.”

  “Do you know who it was?” Howard asked, dreading the answer.

  “It was you.”

  It was shocking to think that for weeks someone—even someone as nice as Cate—had been watching him. He couldn’t stop his mind from running through all the stupid, embarrassing, private things he had done.

  “You were watching me. That’s so freaky.”

  “Don’t worry,” Cate responded quickly. “The bits of your life I saw were really boring.”

  “That doesn’t make me feel a whole lot better,” Howard said. “So you were stalking me in your dreams.”

  “No,” Cate said. “I had no more control over my dreams than you have over yours.”

  Howard considered this. Cate was right: he couldn’t get upset over something she had no control over.

  “Do you still dream about me?”

  “No. The dreams stopped when I arrived in Aylford.”

  “If I’m so boring, why did you come here?”

  “The dreams began to change. I started to get the feeling that I wasn’t the only one watching you. There was something else—something malevolent and evil. But I also had a weird impression that there was glee.”

  “Glee?”

  “Yes. A feeling that whatever else was watching you was glad to have found you.”

  “What was it?”

  “I have no idea, but the thought that it might have somehow discovered you through my dreams bothered me, so I came to Aylford.”

  “And found out that I was just as boring as your dreams had shown you.”

  Cate didn’t laugh at Howard’s nervous attempt at a joke.

  “When I came here, the dreams of you stopped,” she said, “but they were replaced by vague dreams of a threatening blackness.”

  “What is it that’s causing our dreams? Is it evil?”

  Cate thought for a long moment and then said, “Evil, yes. Probably. As to what it is, I’m not sure. There are many Elder Gods and many tales of them. Some say they ruled the earth before there were people—perhaps even before there was life as we know it. Others say they arrived from the stars at different times.”

  “Stop!” Howard said. “You’re making my brain hurt. You’ve given me enough information to last a lifetime. I just want the dreams to stop.”

  “So do I,” Cate agreed, “but I don’t know how to make that happen. Obviously, you and I are linked in some way, and I think your dad is as well. And we’re all linked to the book.”

  “But we have the book, so we should be all right.”

  “We have to be even more careful now that we have the book.”

  “Why? How can a book be so powerful? It’s just a collection of words.”

  “Words are immensely important.” Cate spoke softly, but there was an intensity in her voice that made Howard pay attention. “Some ancient religions believe that the uttering of a single word created the universe. In Judaism there are seventy-two names for God, and manipulations of those names created the world
and can destroy it. Even in the New Testament, the Gospel of John begins with In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Think about it. John’s saying the word is actually God. It’s possible that words can open portals between different dimensions and realities. During your episode, your father’s words brought you back to the basement.”

  Howard knew Cate was right about that, but it was all so confusing.

  “So what’s real?” he asked.

  “That’s the million-dollar question. We rationalize what we see around us, but that doesn’t make it real. There are countless cults and fringe religions with some very strange ideas about reality and our place in it. Some of those ideas, maybe most, derive from distorted or perverted versions of tales told by Adepts.”

  “I guess. There are people in Mom’s cosmic harmony group who believe they are channeling messages from the lost island of Atlantis.”

  “Exactly.”

  “So if my dad’s words could actually bring me back from the beach to the basement, can saying the right words unlock the gateways between these realities you talked about?”

  “Maybe not unlock, and certainly not for someone who isn’t an Adept, but perhaps certain phrases and combinations of words can act as a trigger, alerting whoever or whatever is on the other side. It’s best to be careful.”

  “Kind of like sending an email into a different dimension.”

  “Kind of,” Cate agreed. “But it’s an email you don’t really want an answer to.”

  “So what’s the other side like?”

  Cate stood up. “I think we’ve covered enough impossible things for now. It’s getting late, and we should probably head back into town. Heimao will be worried about us.”

  They walked in silence along the AIPC corridors. Howard’s mind was a confusion of monsters, dreams, magic books and other dimensions. He was still not certain whether he was going mad or was involved in something so vast and frightening that insanity seemed like a better choice. On the plus side, his dad seemed to be making progress, and whatever Howard was going through, at least he was with Cate. He was so wrapped in his thoughts that he barely noticed as they passed the reception desk.