The Ruined City

by John Wilson

  He tried to step back, but he couldn’t move. He looked over his shoulder, hoping Madison would come to his rescue again. But she was nowhere to be seen. Then he had an idea. To stave off the approaching horror, Howard started to recite the words his dad had used to rescue him in the basement. “Huilai! Xinglai! Huilai! Xinglai!”

  Nothing happened.

  He repeated the words—almost screaming them this time. Still nothing. Perhaps he was remembering them wrong. He tried once more. A cold, clawed hand pawed at his ankle.

  Annoyingly, in the middle of what could well be the last moments of his life, the ditty that his mother had told him popped into his head. He pushed it away. Another foul hand grasped at his waist. Breath that smelled of rotting fish wafted over his face. Without fully understanding why, Howard shouted out:

  Filleadh abhaile.

  Duisg.

  Filleadh abhaile.

  Duisg.

  He awoke, wrapped in his tangled bedding.

  With a hand still shaking from fear, Howard reached up and switched on the light. His messy room looked wonderfully normal. His heart rate slowed, and he murmured, “Thanks, Mom. I’ll never laugh at your odd friends again.”

  But Howard was confused. His first dream had been wonderful, his second a horror. Why hadn’t Bes protected him? He felt let down. Cate had promised. He reached for his pillows and discovered they were both on the floor. He must have thrown them off the bed while he was doing the breaststroke above Aylford. A small green statue was nestled between them. Was that why Bes hadn’t worked?

  He crawled out of bed and scooped up both pillows and Bes. As soon as he held the little smiling god, he felt calm and unutterably tired. He crawled back under his blankets, Bes clutched in one hand. A disturbing thought crossed Howard’s mind. Was the flying dream sent so that he would knock Bes away and allow the darkness back in? If so, by whom? He shook his head. Anything was possible these days.

  AYLFORD

  ARCHES

  The next morning Howard slept late and woke up more refreshed than he’d been in days. The sun was streaming through his window, and he felt good as he got dressed. On the kitchen table he found a note from his mom, saying that it was such a beautiful day she couldn’t resist going to tai chi in the park on her way to visit his dad. Howard grabbed a bowl of cereal—healthy stuff with dried fruit, nuts and lots of whole grains—and a glass of milk. He wolfed them down as he texted Cate. She replied almost immediately, inviting him over. He scrawled a cryptic note for his mom, saying he might be gone all day, threw on his hoodie and left.

  Crowninshield House was large, with two stories and an attic, and set in rambling grounds at the end of Old Ashton Road. It had been a boarding house as long as Howard could remember, but it was once the home of the victim in Aylford’s most notorious murder, Edward Derby. A man named Daniel Upton had been convicted of and eventually hanged for shooting Derby six times in the head.

  As Howard walked up the curving drive, Cate leaned out one of the attic windows. “I’ll be right down!” she shouted. She answered the door wearing a paint-stained smock over her clothes and holding a cup of coffee. “Want a cup?” she asked. “I’ve just made a pot.”

  As Cate led the way through to the kitchen at the back of the house, Howard, eager to show off his knowledge of local history, asked if she knew about the murder. When she nodded, he asked, “Aren’t you nervous living in a house where a gruesome crime was committed?”

  “When you’ve been around as long as I have, you discover that most buildings have something dark in their past,” Cate replied.

  When they got to the kitchen, Howard accepted a mug of coffee that Cate poured from the silver coffee percolator on the stove and helped himself to milk and sugar at the table. He was about to point out that he and Cate were the same age when she gestured toward the front of the house.

  “Let’s go upstairs. I’ll show you where the coven meets.”

  “What?”

  “Joke,” Cate said. “The really creepy bit about the Derby story is that when Upton was being dragged up the scaffold steps, he claimed he wasn’t Daniel Upton at all. He said that he had been possessed by a ghostly spirit.”

  “I’d probably say strange things too if I were about to be hanged.”

  “The odd thing is that Upton made his claim in a voice that, according to the townsfolk, sounded exactly like that of Derby’s long-dead wife.”

  “Enough,” Howard said. “Now you’re telling me ghost stories.”

  “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio—”

  “Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. Yeah, I know. Hamlet. I’m in the same English class as you.”

  They both laughed.

  “There aren’t many people here at this time of year,” Cate said as they climbed the narrow stairs to the attic room, “so I got to choose my room. I took the attic. The ceiling’s full height only in the middle, and because the dormer windows are small, there’s not as much light as some of the other rooms get. But it’s the full length of the house, so I have three times as much space.”

  Howard banged his head on the top of the door frame.

  “Watch out for the low ceiling,” Cate said.

  Rubbing his forehead, Howard entered the room and straightened up. If he stayed in the center, where the ceiling peaked, there was plenty of room to stand. The space was indeed huge. Two dormers on the front of the house and a small window at each side let in enough light to see by, but the shadows were deep, and it took Howard’s eyes a minute to adjust. The bed, a small bookcase and a bedside table were below the window at one end. At the other end was a low desk covered with papers and Cate’s computer. A single chair stood next to an artist’s easel with a large square canvas turned toward the wall. Several large multicolored cushions were scattered along the walls. Heimao was occupying one and regarded Howard with a bored look.

  “Keep Heimao company,” Cate said, putting her cup down the floor. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

  Howard settled himself on the cushion beside the cat. “What’s it like being a witch’s familiar?” he asked, reaching over and stroking Heimao. The cat stretched luxuriously and began purring. “Doesn’t seem like such a hard life. Maybe I should get a familiar. Then I’d have someone to talk to. The trouble with talking to humans is that they react. Cate’s not bad—I feel I can say most things to her, although sometimes her responses are a bit odd. On the other hand, I have to be really careful with what I say to my mom.”

  As Howard stroked Heimao he let his thoughts drift back over the previous night’s dream. “I suppose if I had a conversation with Madison in real life, she’d just say something dumb.”

  Heimao purred more loudly, as if she agreed.

  “Actually, I had a conversation with Madison in my dream last night,” he told the cat, “and she didn’t say anything dumb. I was really happy, but I think I’ll skip that bit when I tell Cate about it. I don’t want her to be jealous that I’m dreaming of someone else.” He fell silent when he heard Cate ascending the stairs.

  “You two seem to be getting on all right.” She settled onto a cushion.

  “These are really comfortable,” Howard said, working his body deeper into the cushion’s softness.

  “They’re much better than regular furniture in an oddly shaped room like this,” Cate said. “Sometimes I just spend the whole night on them.”

  “The room’s not what I expected.”

  “What did you expect? Vials of potions and dried bat wings hanging from the ceiling?”

  “Of course not. But for someone as smart as you, I did expect more books.”

  “I’ve got all I need here.” Cate pulled a tablet out of her satchel. “Besides, I can’t lug around too many books when I travel as much as I do. Did you put Bes under your pillow last night?”

  “I did,” Howard answered, “and I had two dreams.” He told Cate about flying and seeing the world and how wonderful it felt, but he edited
out Madison’s appearance.

  Cate was staring intently at him. “That was it? That was the dream?”

  “The first one,” Howard confirmed. “I guess when I was moving my arms around in the dream, I knocked Bes to the floor. In the second dream I was back at the same beach I went to during my fit at the AIPC. The only thing different was that the white ship was closer to the end of the peninsula.” He hesitated. Just talking about the dream brought back the numbing fear of being on the beach.

  “Was anything different on the island?”

  “It might have grown a bit, but the arch was there and so were all the weird stone blocks with the inscriptions on them. I felt a sense of dread when I looked at the ruins. The blocks of stone and the fallen pillars were wrong somehow, like the buildings in ruin shouldn’t have been possible. I can’t describe it, but I was sure no one should have been able to build that city.”

  “No one human,” Cate said softly.

  “And there was something odd about the arch too,” Howard went on, the memories flooding in faster now. “It was black inside, and not just shadow. I got the feeling the darkness was solid, yet a cold wind was blowing out of it. I could feel it on the beach.” He shivered at the memory.

  “No creatures though?”

  “Not on the island. They were all coming for me on the beach.”

  “Wow! Scary.”

  “No kidding. They were rising out of the sea. It was terrifying. Their webbed hands were clutching at me, and I was sure they wanted to kill me. But I had a much deeper sense of fear when I looked at the island. What I couldn’t see through the arch was terrifying.”

  Howard fell silent. He was emotionally drained, as if he’d just lived through the dream again.

  Cate stared at him for a long time. Then she stood up. “There’s something I think I should show you,” she said, moving over to the easel at the end of the room.

  Howard stood by her side as she turned the canvas around.

  “I’m not happy with it,” she said. “The proportions are wrong, and it’s too bright. It should be much darker than this.”

  In fact, the painting was remarkably dark. It was completely black around the edges. Then fragments of ruined buildings began to appear as half-seen, ghostly shapes. At the center of the painting was a well-defined black arch made of massive interlocking stones.

  Howard gasped. “That’s the arch from my dream!”

  “I thought it might be.”

  “The only difference is that the arch in my dream was covered with marks and hieroglyphs, and it was on an island out in the sea.”

  “Mine could be on an island.” Cate reached out and gently touched the black shape in her painting. “I never saw a white ship. Everything around the ruins and the arch was black. The darkness could have been hiding anything. You’re certain it’s the same arch?”

  “Yes, absolutely. It has the same feeling of strangeness. When did you paint it?”

  “After a dream I had almost a week ago.”

  “You saw it in a dream before I did? Have you dreamed about it since then?”

  Cate shook her head. “Just that one time, and I didn’t see it clearly. We’re dreaming about the same arch, but you’re seeing it and its surroundings in much more detail. It’s almost as if someone tried to show me the dream, but when I couldn’t see it clearly, they tried showing it to you.”

  “That’s a creepy idea, but I guess anything’s possible,” Howard said.

  “How did you get out of the dream?”

  “I tried using the words Dad said in the basement, but they didn’t work. Then I remembered something my mom told me she learned at her cosmic harmony group.”

  “What was it?” Cate asked eagerly.

  Howard closed his eyes and recited his mother’s little chant. “That doesn’t sound like Chinese though.”

  “It’s not. It’s one of the Celtic languages.”

  “Is it the language they spoke in Atlantis?”

  “They spoke many languages in Atlantis. Supposedly Enochian was the most common, but no one’s sure it’s even a real language. It might have been made up by medieval alchemists.”

  “Mom also said the Atlanteans had a book called The Golden Mask,” he said. “That can’t be a coincidence, right?”

  “No. No coincidence,” Cate said. “Can you remember anything else your mom told you?”

  “Yeah, she said there were two high priests in Atlantis, one who followed the light and one who was dark. I can’t remember their names.”

  “Amshu and Claec.”

  “That’s it. Mom said the chant would ward off the bad guy, Claec. Does this mean she’s an Adept of some kind as well?”

  “Probably, but she has no idea.”

  Cate absentmindedly scratched Heimao’s ear. The cat looked up at her, and Howard had the odd feeling that they were talking to each other.

  “When you told me about your episode in the basement, you said you thought the Chinese guy looked familiar,” she said.

  “And you said I’d probably seen him around when I was visiting Dad.”

  “But he wasn’t the real janitor, so you couldn’t have seen him at the AIPC.”

  “So who was he? Where did he come from? Where did he go?” Howard had too many questions swirling around his brain.

  Cate ignored them all and said, “Think hard. Where did you see him before? It might be very important.”

  Howard closed his eyes. He could picture the face he’d seen in the door, but where had he seen it before? Then it came to him.

  “Leon!” he exclaimed.

  “Leon’s not Chinese,” Cate pointed out.

  “No, no! Last summer Leon lost his license for reckless driving. For the first week or two of school, he was driven in by someone I assumed was a family servant. The driver never got out of the car, so I only caught a glimpse of him a couple of times, but it was definitely the Chinese guy from the basement. I’m certain of it. He had the same long gray face. But how can that be? Why was Leon’s driver in the basement of the AIPC?”

  “You say you first saw the face just before you had the fit?”

  Howard nodded.

  “And it spoke to you?”

  “Yeah. It said, Welcome. I have waited long for you. What did that mean?”

  Again Cate ignored his question. “When you came to, the face said something else?”

  Howard nodded. “I have found you at last. What’s this all about, Cate?”

  “I think Leon’s driver is more than he seems. What if he somehow woke your dad and got him to lead you down to the basement so you could have your attack?”

  “But what would be the point of terrifying me?”

  “He was testing you. Searching for someone who can help him.”

  “That’s ridiculous. I’m not going to help Leon or his driver.”

  “You may not have a choice. Look, something tested your dad—something immensely powerful. He beat it by shutting it out, by closing down his mind. Now something is sending you dreams to test you. It’s looking for someone it can use.”

  Howard shivered. The words I have found you at last suddenly had a much more sinister meaning. He was still struggling with the implications of what Cate was telling him when she went off on one of her tangents.

  “What did Madison say to you in your dream last night?”

  “She said—” And then it hit him. He hadn’t mentioned that Madison was in his dream. He stared at Cate. “How did you know she was in my dream?”

  “Heimao told me,” she said matter-of-factly.

  “What?” Howard stared at the cat.

  Heimao stared back at him with green eyes that seemed so deep he felt he was being drawn into them. Howard looked back at Cate, who was almost smiling at him. “You’re joking, right?”

  Cate shrugged. “Okay, how about this? Madison was in your last dream, so I assumed she would be in this one as well. Is that a more comfortable explanation?”

  “Oka
y,” Howard said grudgingly. “She was in my flying dream. She invited me to the big party this weekend at Leon’s house.”

  Cate frowned, and Howard worried that he’d offended her. But she just said, “I think we should accept her invitation and go to Leon’s party.”

  “What? We’re not members of that crowd, and in real life we weren’t even invited. There’s no way we could fit in with those people, even if we’re allowed through the door. Besides, the party was last night.”

  “Yeah, but at school Leon said it was going to be an all-weekender. It’ll definitely be on tonight as well. That might make it easier to get in. And think about it. Everything is leading us to Leon’s house—Aileen’s story about Wat Heely and Josiah Whateley, the Chinese guy who appeared during your attack, and now Madison in your dream.”

  “What do you think we’ll find there?”

  “I don’t know, but I do know one thing we should do before we go. We need to read the book.”

  SANXINGDUI

  EARTHQUAKE

  “We won’t make it.” It was evening, and Chen and Ting were on the hillside high above the eastern end of Min Lake. They had stopped to drink and water the horses where a small stream crossed the road.

  “They’re getting closer,” Chen agreed, looking back at a dust cloud that was nearer every time he checked. He stretched. Every bone in his body hurt, and it felt as if his insides had been shaken and rearranged.

  “The scouts ahead of the army are only a mile or two back, and they’re moving fast,” Ting said with urgency. “They will overtake us on the open stretch of road sloping down to the plain.”

  Chen had trouble caring. He felt so miserable after the long day on horseback that capture and torture almost seemed like something to hope for.

  “It’s too open ahead,” Ting went on. “We’ll have to find somewhere to hide. Do you see that cliff up there?”