The Dream Operator

by Mike O'Driscoll

  All of which made it more frustrating for Cleaver that he had never heard of Unyielding Death or When the Night Comes. And yet, he told himself, that didn’t disprove anything. There were many hugely influential people working in the fantasy field that he knew little about. It was impossible to keep track of each new writer or development in genre fiction. There were people he could speak to about Strickle—Pete Crowther for one. And surely Ellen Datlow or Stephen Jones could confirm his reputation? But, he reminded himself, they’d want to know why he was interested in Strickle. Their bullshit sensors would be activated and if they got any inkling at all of what he had, they had the muscle to get it from under his nose. Better to play this close to his chest. He wondered about the other stories, feeling a buzz of excitement. If they were half as good as the first two, then he’d be a fool not to take Strickle seriously.

  He emailed Strickle expressing his enthusiasm for the two he had read and asking him to send on the others. He left the office and went for lunch and a pint in a pub just down the road. When he returned to the office an hour later, he found the Jackson and Leiber stories where he had left them on the sofa. A sudden, intense excitement seized him and before he even realised what he was doing, he was rereading Leiber’s tale. It seemed every bit as powerful and compelling as first time round. By the time he had finished ‘Comings and Goings’ for the second time, he was convinced that both stories were genuine. A strange, heady sensation filled him, made him almost giddy with anticipation for the rest of the stories. When Strickle responded to his email later that afternoon, saying he would send the others by courier, Cleaver couldn’t help but start planning about how he’d put the book together.

  *

  At eleven the next day the package arrived. He’d been reading proofs of a novella by a young writer from Boston. She’d had some success with her short stories, but this would be her first standalone book. Just a week ago Cleaver had been excited about publishing her work, but this morning he’d found it difficult to focus on the text, so when the doorbell rang it came as a welcome distraction.

  He signed for the package and hurried back into the office. Inside he found a thick manuscript of single-spaced text. He poured himself a tea and sat down to look through the contents page. It listed stories by Clark Ashton Smith, Wheatley, Bloch and the others Strickle had mentioned. But there were other, even more surprising names to whet the appetite. Names like Ambrose Bierce, Mervyn Peake, Frank Belknap Long and Ira Levin. He felt his heart racing as his gaze wandered down the contents page. My God, he thought, seeing William Hope Hodgson’s name, and just below it, M.R. James’. And further down—his heart skipped a beat—a tale by H.P. Lovecraft.

  Jesus, he thought. No wonder Strickle had sworn him to secrecy. This was sensational. The anthology could secure the long-term future of the Thingumbob Press. As long as, he reminded himself, the stories were genuine. To this end he spent the next few hours checking online bibliographies to ensure that the stories had not been published under their current titles by these authors. It was a laborious process, particularly in the case of those like Derleth and Wheatley, who had published hundreds of books and stories across a range of genres.

  By one-thirty he had wearied of skimming through lists of stories and decided to read Aickman’s tale. ‘Our Time Together is Past’ concerned a middle-aged man who has been spending a summer revisiting favourite places where he had holidayed with his recently deceased wife. Initially, the story seemed no more than an elegiac reminisce about a relationship but as Cleaver read on, the narrative became more serpentine, with Carstairs, the protagonist, discovering that his memories of the places he had visited did not concur with the reality he confronts. Once familiar haunts are strange and the memories they prompt are unsettling and dark, hinting at a much more unstable and violent relationship than the warm memories his mind has conjured into being. By the end, the mood had become hallucinatory as the extent of the lie that was Carstairs life was revealed to him in full.

  Cleaver’s hands shook as he lay the manuscript down. His heart raced and his throat was dry. He laughed nervously at his own reaction, hardly able to believe it had disturbed him to this extent. His stomach felt tight so he went up to the flat and made a ham sandwich and a cup of tea. He took a bite and chewed methodically. It seemed tasteless in his mouth and he had to force it down with a swallow of tea. He thought about going to the pub, grabbing a bite there, but there wasn’t really time, he told himself, not when he had so many stories to get through. He drank his tea and threw the sandwich in the bin.

  Back in the office, he read two more stories, one by Robert Holdstock, the other by Angela Carter. The phone startled him when it rang. He stared at it for a moment, resenting the intrusion. He recognised Strickle’s grating tone. “Well, Cleaver?”

  Cleaver was confused. “Well what?” he said.

  “You’ve read them?”

  “A few.” He wondered if Strickle had seriously expected him to have read them all.

  “And?”

  “They’re good.”

  “Good?”

  “Powerful. They seem genuine, as far as I can tell.”

  “No one but their authors could have written those tales. You’re interested then. Are you ready to talk business?”

  Cleaver felt a momentary panic. Things seemed to be moving a little too fast. “You’re getting ahead of yourself,” he said. “I’ve read five out of what, thirty odd stories? You have to be patient.”

  “How much more time do you need?”

  Cleaver felt a flicker of annoyance. “Jesus, I don’t know.”

  “A day? Two days?”

  “Look, Simon, it will take as long as it takes. There are other projects I’m working on, other books ahead of yours.”

  There was silence for a few seconds. “A week?”

  “Jesus. I just told you, you’re not my only client.”

  “Listen Cleaver. I brought this to you thinking you’d give it the attention and care it deserves. Maybe I was mistaken.”

  Panic welled up inside Cleaver. “Hold on. I’d like to read everything before we agree on a contract. It’s the way things are done.”

  “There are other people, other publishers, I could take this to.”

  “No, please. I’ll get through them. I just need a little more time.”

  “How much time?”

  “Three days.”

  “Three days. We’ll meet then. Have a contract drawn up. There are certain conditions I’ll need you to meet.”

  “Like what?”

  “We’ll discuss those later.” The line went dead.

  *

  Cleaver read on late into the night, stopping only to answer a call from Allyson. She chatted away amiably about work and how she had thought about him and what they would do on Saturday. It was only when he mentioned that he might be busy over the weekend that her tone changed. “Come on, Nick. You never work weekends.”

  “I have a lot of stories I need to get through,” he said.

  “Weekends are sacrosanct, we agreed.”

  “Not when you’re on call.”

  “That’s different. It’s important.”

  “And what I do isn’t?”

  “I didn’t say that. It’s just, y’know, I don’t have a choice.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s only a couple of days. I’ll be done by Sunday evening. We’ll go out then.”

  “I see.” He could tell she was pissed off. “Don’t make a habit of it.”

  “I won’t,” he said. “I love you.”

  When she had gone he finished reading a story by Frank Belknap Long and went straight into a piece of cosmic horror by Hodgson. He fuelled himself on scotch and continued with the stories, caught up in the excitement of being the first reader, apart from Strickle, to encounter them. The sense of urgency he had felt earlier had been replaced by an exquisite pleasure, as though, rather than simple words on a page, the tales were made out of rare intoxicants. As soon as he finis
hed one piece he was compelled to read on to the next. He went from Robert E. Howard to Flannery O’Connor, and from Simon Lake to Michael McDowell.

  He woke late the next morning on the sofa, his head heavy with the weight of words and images that, even as consciousness crept over him, crowded his sense of himself. He stumbled to the bathroom, shivering, and splashed his face with cold water. It felt like a hangover, though he suffered from them rarely, and when he did it took a lot more than he had drank last night to set one off. Breakfast was paracetamol washed down with a glass of milk.

  Through the rest of that day and the next, Cleaver read, losing himself in the stories to the extent that at times one narrative seemed to blur into another. And yet, somehow, it all made sense to him. Clearly, these stories were meant to go together. They shared an overarching theme, he felt, one that spoke about the fragility of the real world and of how little man really knew about his place in the scheme of things.

  Allyson called on Sunday morning, asked if he was done reading. He stirred from the sofa and saw the loose sheets of paper scattered all across the floor. “I don’t know,” he said, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. “I don’t remember.”

  “Jesus Nick. What have you been up to?”

  He tried to explain to her but he struggled to make sense of it himself. She told him he sounded ill and he agreed that maybe he was. She said she would come round but he put her off till the afternoon, telling her that a few hours more sleep would see him right. Instead, he sat on the floor and gathered all the loose sheets together, surprised at how easy it was to get them in order. He couldn’t remember where he had stopped reading but it didn’t seem to matter. If he had already read Robert Bloch’s ‘Last Rites’ then it did not detract from his pleasure in reading it again. Mervyn Peake’s story, ‘Girl in Light,’ was a mesmerising tale of the usurpation and gradual stripping away of an identity. The narrative offered no logical explanation for the protagonist’s fate, other than the suggestion that it was born out of the malignant envy of rock and stone for living things.

  Cleaver couldn’t really tell when he had finished all the stories. Even if he hadn’t, he had read more than enough to know that he had to publish the anthology. He dragged himself away from the manuscript to shower and change before Allyson showed up, and when she did, he had already started working on a contract to put to Strickle.

  Through he felt a strange reluctance to leave the flat, Cleaver did not want to let Allyson down. It was fitting that he celebrate in some way, he told himself, and he wanted to share his passion for the stories with her. They took a cab to the bay and drank ice cold beers on a deck overlooking berthed yachts and pleasure cruisers. The late afternoon sunlight hurt Cleaver’s eyes but he didn’t complain. Allyson was concerned about him, said he was working too hard, but he told her he was fine. Yet, through the evening he did not feel fine at all. A slight chill worked its way through his clothes and he had to make a conscious effort not to tremble. Now and again Allyson had to repeat something she said because his mind had drifted off elsewhere.

  In Demerio’s, he barely picked at his food, eating a few salad leaves and half a forkful of the seafood risotto Allyson had ordered for him. She asked about the anthology and though he had been eager to talk about it, he found himself suddenly cautious, wary of discussing its contents. His gaze swept quickly over the other diners, lingering a second longer here and there as though something about this one or that aroused his suspicions. Allyson wanted to know what he was doing. It was impossible to communicate his anxiety to her—she wouldn’t understand.

  He invited her in when she dropped him off but she said she had an early start in the morning and would rather spend the night in her own bed. “Besides,” she said, kissing him and squeezing his arm. “You don’t exactly look up for anything tonight, lover.” He shrugged and gave her an apologetic smile, feeling relieved as he waved her goodnight.

  *

  Cleaver arrived at the Golden Gryphon thirty minutes ahead of time and downed two large whiskies. The terms of the contract he had prepared didn’t seem any more convincing after them. As it was, it meant using up all his liquid assets, and if the deal did go ahead he’d have to max out both his credit cards and maybe even ask Allyson to lend him some money to finance the kind of limited edition hardback he envisaged. Still, it was worth the risk since he was sure the anthology would create an almighty stir in the horror community. Probably beyond that, given the inclusion of writers like Jackson, Peake, Carter and O’Connor, whose appeal, stretched beyond genre. The book would be nominated for every fantasy award going and the reprint rights, he was sure, would be worth a small fortune. Yet the initial financial package he was offering seemed so inadequate. Strickle would probably laugh him out the door. Except that he had come to him. Out of all the publishers he could have picked, he had chosen the Thingumbob Press. Strickle must have known how good a job he would do.

  “Cleaver.” He felt something brush against his arm. Strickle was standing at his left shoulder. He looked different somehow, Cleaver thought.

  He wore the same ill-fitting suit but he seemed more present than the first time they had met. His cheeks seemed less gaunt and colourless, and his eyes had lost their furtiveness. “We’ll sit over there,” he said, gesturing to a table in an empty booth. His voice, Cleaver noted, was clearer, less grating. He nodded and asked Strickle what he wanted to drink.

  “You’ve read them?” Strickle said, when Cleaver placed a pint of lager and another large whiskey on the table.

  “Most of them,” he said.

  “And?”

  “I want to publish them.”

  Strickle smiled. “You had doubts though, about their provenance.”

  Cleaver admitted that he had. “Who wouldn’t have? I mean, even given the reputations of their authors, there’s usually damn good reasons why unpublished stories remain that way.”

  “Because they’re crap.”

  “Yeah,” Cleaver said, laughing as he recalled his own initial doubts. “I wasn’t really prepared for stories like these.”

  “Nobody is,” Strickle said. “In truth, neither was I.”

  Cleaver stared at Strickle, struck by the changes in his demeanour. His curiosity got the better of him. “I checked you out. You had quite a reputation yourself, back in the eighties and early nineties. Then you kind of dropped off the radar.”

  Strickle sighed and stared at his pint as though something in it fascinated him. “I went away,” he said. “I found these stories. And now I’m back.” His gaze met Cleaver’s. He picked up his pint and took a sip.

  “How did you find them? I mean, there must be dozens of scholars researching these people, trawling though their archives, uncovering lost material. It surprises me that guys like Hartwell or Joshi missed these stories but you found them.”

  “There’s no secret,” Strickle said. “Just hard work, and sometimes the luck to be in the right place at the right time.”

  “That’s a whole lot of luck.”

  Strickle said nothing. Cleaver realised there was no point in delaying it any longer. “Okay,” he said. “Here’s what I can offer you. Five hundred pound advance and fifteen per cent of net profits.” He paused for a moment to gauge Strickle’s reaction, then hurried on. “I want to do a five hundred copy limited edition with original cover artwork and interior illustrations. Alongside that I plan a paperback version of one thousand copies. I’ll commission the artwork, handle promotion and publicity out of my end. The aim would be to create a buzz around it, whet people’s appetites in advance of the launch which, hopefully we can schedule for one of the big conventions.”

  “All right.”

  Cleaver was about to outline his plan for the sale of the mass market rights when he realised what Strickle had said. “What?”

  “We have a deal. Show me the contract.”

  Cleaver was almost speechless. His hands shook as he pulled an envelope from his jacket and handed it over. Strickle o
pened it, studied the contract for a minute, then pulled out a pen. He held it over the paper and looked at Cleaver. “There’s one condition,” he said.

  “What’s that?”

  “No changes.”

  “What do you mean, exactly?”

  “No changes, no editorial interventions.”

  “What about textual errors?”

  “There won’t be any. The text must be presented exactly as it is in the manuscript, with the stories presented in the same order. No biographies, no introduction, no afterword.”

  “We’d be missing an opportunity. I’d be more than happy to write an introduction myself.”

  “These tales will speak for themselves.”

  Cleaver thought about the stories, trying to recall misspellings, repetitions or omissions. He could remember none. What did stand out in his mind was the extent to which the meaning of some stories changed between one reading and the next. Just went to prove how extraordinary they were, he figured. “Well,” he said. “You’re the editor.”

  Strickle nodded, signed both copies of the contract and handed one back to Cleaver. “This will create quite a stir, you know that?” Cleaver said.

  “I suppose it will.”

  “There’ll be interest from mainstream publishers. A mass market edition, you understand,”