I stepped onto the translucent path. It felt…cold. I could feel myself curling my toes. As I did, small points of light appeared above me, seemingly lighting my way.
“Are you still there?” I heard the Doll ask.
“Yeah,” I called back. “Yeah, Doll. I’m here. I’m coming.”
I walked, my eyes on the glass beneath me. There was a blurry silhouette under my red road, and as I traveled, the shape slowly formed into my reflection. I looked tired.
“Over here,” the Doll spoke.
I glanced up. And nearly fell off of the path. In the distance, where the glass ended, I saw her.
The Doll.
She was just standing there, head hanging low, hands clasped. I wanted to shout something to her, something encouraging, but every word that came to me seemed so pointless. Instead I ran, creating cracks below as I moved toward her. When I nearly reached her, she lifted her eyes, and the glow that they cast shattered the remaining path between us.
“Dolly!” I gasped, teetering on the edge of a broken road in my lonely sleep. I stared into the gap between the girl and me, the dipping hole.
“Hang on!” I said to her, assessing the situation.
“There’s something between us,” the Doll quietly said.
“There’s nothing between us,” I argued. “Just a hole.”
“A hole is something.”
“It’s just…emptiness…”
“And that is a very big something.”
I frowned. She matched it and looked apologetically away.
“It doesn’t matter,” she continued. “I’m not real, anyway.”
“How…” I whispered, angry and clenching a shaky fist. “How can you dare to say something like that when all I’ve done is try and try and try to make you feel as completely human as—”
“No,” she interrupted. “That’s not what I meant.”
“Then what?”
“I’m not real where I stand. Nor are you.”
“What?”
“Haven’t you figured it out yet?” the Doll said to me. “You’re dreaming again.”
The boundaries of this void began to shrink. I again looked down the hole that separated us. I closed my eyes and lifted a foot.
“Stop!” Dolly exclaimed. “What are you doing?!?”
“If I’m dreaming, then I’m dreaming,” I said. “But that doesn’t make us any less real.”
“Please, don’t! You’ll fall away from me! I don’t want to be alone!”
“If this is my dream, then it’s mine to control. I’m coming to you.”
“Please! If you fall, you’ll probably wake, and we’ll be separated again!”
“I won’t fall.”
“Don’t!”
I stepped into the gap. The Doll surprised me by leaping forward to push me back, and in doing so, dropped in my place.
“Dolly!” I shouted, swinging my hand to grab hers.
Our fingers brushed.
And that was all.
She closed her eyes as she fell away from me, sinking into the empty chasm like it was a body of water.
“No!” I yelled. The ruby glass began breaking into pieces. And up from the abyss came a great swell, an arcing splash of clock gears that spewed high and then rained down upon me.
One fell into my hand. It was shaped much like a heart. The teeth that bordered the gear were a deep red. And embossed upon the piece were two words.
GUTSPLITTER FOXLEY
I awoke in a deep sweat, lying face-up on the cluttered floor.
“Gutsplitter Foxley?”
“That’s right.”
“Strange, the things we conjure in our dreams, eh?”
“Sure. Unless…”
“Unless what, Pocket?”
“Unless I took the words as more.”
“More?”
“Than just simple dream-speak. That’d make me, what? Crazy, right?”
“Well…it would seem to point in that direction. I mean, what further meaning could you derive from such random, unfitting words?”
“I’ll tell you.”
The Gutsplitter, I knew, was a “refreshment parlor” of sorts located in one of the slummier areas of the city. Fortunately, so was the room I had rented. As I stood before the establishment, I took a tense breath and entered. It was reek with booze and decorated with unfriendly eyes. The Gutsplitter wasn’t a legal pub, as the rumors went, but rather a place of opportunity for any soul wanting to stay out of the daylight to get a drink or whatever else he might need. It was a draped curtain behind Alexander’s great window of a city, a refuge for the forsaken. Hearsay put forward that it fronted an opium den or possibly a brothel. I didn’t care to sort out the truth.
“You looking for something?” a double-chinned potboy asked me.
I was standing in a haze, unsure of how to proceed.
“Foxley,” I uttered. “I’m…uh…looking for Foxley.”
“Foxley?”
“I think so.”
“Oh,” the man said. “Yeah. Foxley, sure. Hang on a tick.”
“What?”
“Yeah, I’ve got what you’re looking for. Hold tight. Here, read the paper or something.”
“Uh…all right. Thanks.”
The gent lumbered off, leaving me with a greasy wad of newsprint. I flipped through the pages with minimal interest, the beer-gummed edges sticking to my fingers. I grimaced, the stink of the room turning my stomach. “I've got what you're looking for.” What could he have meant by that? What could possibly be waiting for me, me, William Bloody Hopeless Pocket, under a nonsense word from a bad dream? A coincidence? No...couldn't be. Could I have done it myself....without remembering? Was I going crazy? Ridiculous, I told myself. Even if I had somehow lost my grip on sanity, wandered here, left something under a false name, wandered back, and rewrote the whole damn affair into a dream, even if such a scenario had played out...I had nothing to stash away, nothing missing from my meager collection that I could've called “Foxley” and hidden in this dirt hole. I flipped another sticky piece of newspaper. What then had led me here?
The Doll.
Yes, but...that was just a dream. A puppet of my own wandering mind singing a sleep-written script.
Right?
I thought of how Lady Alexia might handle such a situation. After the unusual slumber we had all shared during the mystic's tea steam reading, she had warned me not to take the presence of dreams lightly.
“So many, my good Mister Pocket!” she had lectured me. “So many dismiss the lives we live during our unconscious hours. On what, the premise that those moments aren't truly real? What would happen, I wonder, if we all looked upon our dreams with the same conviction we spend on our waking hours.”
It was an interesting supposition, albeit a terribly childish one, and I shook my head at it. Sorry, tea lady, but I couldn't consider myself anything but half-mad were I to start chasing after dreams.
And yet, here I was, doing exactly that.
I pushed the debate out of my head and glanced down to read the bold-lettered headline that stretched across the news page.
GREN SPADER, KNOWN ACCOMPLICE TO FUGITIVES POCKET AND SUNNER, SHOT DEAD OUTSIDE OF NEW LONDON PROPER
My eyes twitched. Drops of sweats ran down my neck. I felt that I couldn't breathe.
“Gren...” I whispered, squeezing the pages. I thought I was going to vomit. That fleeting last image of Gren Spader, fallen and surrounded by riflemen, haunted my vision to the point that I could barely see anything else. I became dizzy. Phantom tears welled up in my sockets and slid down my cheeks.
It was all my fault. After all of that dodged gunfire and last second chances, he was gone, and it was all my fault. If things had been different, Gren wouldn't have been along with me when I approached the city. He wouldn't now be...
It was my fault. And Kitt would probably fall to the same fate, if he hadn't already. He could be in print as soon as tomorrow, and as for the Doll...well...I couldn't imagin
e what the authorities would do with her.
The dizziness got worse. I wanted to go, just go and hide somewhere. Under a pillow, maybe. I wanted to be done with all of this and just sink into mediocrity.
I wanted to give up.
But I couldn't.
Because the other image filling my eyes was that of the girl I had kissed over the ocean. She was still sleeping out there somewhere, and if I gave up now, I would be breaking the promise I made at her bedside.
And if there's one thing that I have trouble doing, it's saying “no” to a pretty girl.
I closed the newspaper and set it aside.
“Don't worry, Gren,” I murmured. “I'm not out of this yet. I'll give them one hell of a punch for you.”
But this confidence was short-lived. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a man approaching me, dressed in the familiar trappings of black. Another cursed Magnate! Damn it, Pocket, I told myself, of course they’d start checking sleazy hideouts for a missing fugitive! The soldier loomed like a ghoul, his face hidden behind a high, upturned collar and the low-riding brim of his helmet. I watched only a moment further, and as he took three more steps, it became clear that he was indeed watching me. I sprang from my seat, wove my way through the sordid crowd, and darted out of the Gutsplitter as fast as my clanging boots could move me.
I looked for a subtle escape route. When I found none, I just ran, huffing and wheezing my way down the middle of the street. I didn't get very far very quickly. My body was exhausted following an inadequate night's sleep and, let's be honest, perpetual fatigue over the previous weeks. My pace was soon a wobbly stroll, my feet dragging in the earth. It wasn't long before I could see that I was being followed. The Magnate stood behind me in the distance, one hand resting on the strap his weapon hung from, and the other holding what looked like a stack of papers tied with string. I made myself run, my chest burning like fire. I squeezed between two neighboring buildings and moved desperately down the crevice until I came to a dead end. A tall fence blocked my further escape. I punched furiously at it, cursing my luck. Turning back, as expected, I found the Magnate in pursuit, his rifle leveled on me as he came at his captive.
No, I thought. Not like this. After all that has happened, all I have endured, it can't end like this.
Pushing my tired back to the wall, I held my hands up in surrender. The soldier neared, making crunching noises with his polished boots. Without word or expression, I slid down to the ground and awaited seizure or execution.
“Pocket,” the Magnate said, standing before me.
“That's right,” I said, eyes cast to the ground. “Will Pocket. It's me. I won't put up a fight. But if you're going to shoot me, can I have a moment to come up with some decent final words?”
“I outta shoot you, all right!” the man grumbled. “Leaving me behind like that! What in God's name were you thinking?!?”
My head shot up, unable to believe what I had just sorted out. Quickly, I stood up and pulled the low-hanging helmet from the Magnate's head.
Gren Spader's usual, irritated expression stared back at me.
“You're...you're alive!” I gasped, unsure if I should cheer or scream.
“Don't change the subject!” Gren spouted. “What were you thinking?!? There I was, down on my back, and you're nowhere to be—hey!”
I had grabbed him by the shoulder and hugged the noisy lout, laughing hysterically as I did. The Half-Luck, I realized, was also strapped to his back. It swayed as I took hold of my friend.
“Yeah, yeah, glad to see you too,” he muttered. “Now let go of me. I'm not through being angry.”
“How?!?” I asked, emotionally delirious by that point. “How, Gren? How did you escape from those men? They had you covered!”
“Oh, I know! I was there! I'm surprised you noticed, though. I thought you were too busy running off without me!”
“I panicked! I'm sorry, but I'll remind you that storming the firing squad was your idea!”
“Well, I wasn't planning on being thrown out on my...look, it's not important. We're both alive.”
“Oh, so now the great angry Spader has a sense of scope! When'd this—”
“We are both alive, Pocket. Let's shut up and leave it at that.”
“Right,” I nodded. “Again, I can't believe you walked away from that.”
“Well, they didn't think I did.”
“What?”
“The kick from the rifle, the drop to the ground, it slammed into me pretty hard. Got a little blood in the dirt.”
“Jesus, Gren...”
“I'm fine. Just a minor scratch. But at that moment, those idiots raced me, screaming 'he's down, he's down,' and I decided to go with it and play dead, hoping the bullet holes in my shirt and the red splatter around me might buy a few moments to think.”
“I take it that it did.”
“Fortunately. I'm sure that they would've inspected me closer, see if I was breathing at all, but they seemed more concerned with finding you and making your corpse look like mine.”
“That’s right, I remember. They took off after me.”
“Right into the woods. Didn't they catch up to you?”
“You think I'd be here if they did?”
“Good point. Anyhow, they left only one clown behind to take care of what they thought was my remains. First thing the bastard did was go for my gun. When he grabbed the stock, I grabbed the barrel. The surprise caught him for a moment, and I smacked the thing up and at his jaw. He dropped the Half-Luck and hobbled back, swearing and holding his bleeding mouth. Cursing and screaming, he went for his pistol, but by that point I already had my weapon back and aimed between his stupid, glassy eyes. I took his gun, his uniform, and got the hell out of there before his friends got back to finish me off. You impressed?”
I ignored the request for praise. “But...the paper. News said you were shot dead.”
He grinned. “Did it? Good.” I scratched my ear at him and he explained. “You think I don't have any connections in this city, Pocket? Think a guy like me can't fake a death story if he needed to?”
“So...you're connected to the printing industry? The journalists?”
“Of course not. Don't be stupid. I'm not that connected.”
“But you said—”
“I play cards with a guy who works in a printing factory, operates the press. As luck had it, the slob's lousy at poker.”
“So?”
“So, he’s owed me a large number for a long time. I tracked him down and made him a deal to pay me in a favor instead. You know, go to work, change a few letters in the press while no one’s looking.”
“That’s a lot of letters,” I commented. “Just how much did he owe you?”
“Enough,” Gren said. “Let’s leave it at that.”
“Sure, but…come on, Gren. I know you needed that money.”
“Eh, priorities. Besides, thanks to the heist, I’m not walking around completely broke for a change.”
“If you say.” Then something struck me. “Wait. The Magnate you stole your disguise from. Is he dead?”
“Of course not. I don’t need any unnecessary blood on my hands. Besides, my scattergun was still jammed from the misfire. He didn’t realize that though, thankfully.”
“So what did you do with him?”
“Just what I said. Took what he had and left him behind. He had a pair of handcuffs, so I chained his arms around a post and got the hell away from the scene. Why?”
“I’m sure he’s been found by now and reported that you’re still alive. That fake headline’s not going to fool the monarchy.”
“Yeah, but it’ll fool everyone else long enough for us to slip away. In theory, of course.”
“Right. Well, at any rate, we need to get out of the open before a real soldier comes along and finds us. Follow me. I’ve got a room nearby and it’s pretty secluded.”
“Wait, wait,” Gren countered, holding up the stack of papers in his possession.
“Aren’t you even gunna take a look at this?”
“We need to get hidden. Why, what is it?”
“I thought it was yours. The man at the Gutsplitter said you asked—”
“It was a misunderstanding, that’s all. I said ‘Foxley’ and he…it’s not important. That doesn’t belong to me, so just leave it behind and let’s go.”
Gren just stood there gawking, completely bewildered.
“What?” I exhaled. “What’s the problem?”
“You’re…you’re serious? You didn’t know anything about this?”
“How could I? I’ve been running for my bloody life every waking moment! You know that!”
“But…that’s impossible.”
“Why?”
“Because…this is meant for you.”
“What are you talking about?”
Nervously, he handed me the bundle. “Just look,” he whispered.
I held the papers tightly, and as I read what was there, I felt the winds of a thousand winters punched out of me. “No…” I trembled. “How?”
The manuscript that sat in my palms was topped with a front page, containing only a simple title written across the center in precise, curvy letters.
“To the One Who Will Awaken Me:
The Collected Diary of the Watchmaker's Doll”
“You’re joking.”
“No, Alan.”
“You’re joking!”
“I’m not.”
“But, but…how?!?”
“That’s pretty much how I reacted.”
“But…wait, no! How did…I mean…all you did was listen to a dream, and—“
“I know.”
“And Foxley?!? What did that even mean to you?”
“Nothing.”
“Then…then none of this makes any sense!”
“Calm down, Alan.”
“But—“
“I’ll explain.”
“Sigh…yes. Please do.”
“All right. So after I overcame my initial shock, Gren and I retired to my rented room, where we warmed up and I gathered enough stomach to sit down and read, believe it or not, an actual diary the Doll had been keeping in secret.”
“In secret? You mean while she was traveling with you?”
“Yeah.”
“And you never knew?”
Turnkey (The Gaslight Volumes of Will Pocket Book 1) Page 49