The Sandman: Book of Dreams

by Neil Gaiman

And, in the end, the gryphon's immense sadness lifted a fraction, a flicker. It didn't laugh. But it gave a sigh that was not entirely woven of sorrow.

  "Indeed," he rumbled. But he turned to his brothers, and they exchanged silent thought. Finally, the gryphon spoke. "Follow the trail of the Master. It will lead you to the Gate."

  "Where is the trail?" asked the doll, hardly daring to believe his good fortune.

  "It begins there." The gryphon pointed with a claw to a patch of the silver mist that seemed to glitter. "You will feel the mark of his passing, never fear."

  "Thank you."

  "We give you no gift. Morpheus does not take kindly to unasked-for visitors. And no dream has ever dared disturb him within the Gate of Gold."

  The doll bowed. "Even the Lord of the Dreaming shouldn't ignore a child's nightmares."

  The guardians said nothing. The doll found the beginning of the trail and felt a chill knife through his being. Following the Master's path might be the end of him. Suddenly, he felt a tug, a light pull back toward Ginny. Her nightmare was almost over. She would be waking soon and he would be sent into sleep. Would he ever have the courage to try again? He thought not. It was now, or never.

  He rushed away, down the trail.

  "Farewell," whispered the gryphon, fashioned into a dreamless warden who had never known the games of other children. "You were well made."

  The journey was hard. The steps of the Lord Morpheus left the doll's entire being cold as ice. He fought the whole way against Ginny's summons. He could hear her faint cries as her nightly torment came close to an end. Grim and frozen, the doll moved against a myriad of silver storms, never slowing his pace.

  The Gate of Gold came into view at last. The doll had expected some vast ornate arch, gem-encrusted and shining. Instead, he stood before a simple gold curve, filled with a swirl of ebon.

  He paused outside, uncertain and afraid. He could feel the freezing fire from the gate. He knew that if he passed through the arch, he would be destroyed. He called out to the gate. "Lord Morpheus?"

  There was no reply.

  "Lord Morpheus? If you can hear me, please listen. Children ..." The doll trailed off. What could he say that would matter to one of the Endless? Surely, the Lord of the Dreaming knew everything he cared to know. Ginny's call was very strong now. He had only moments to decide whether to enter the gate. "Children are the hope of dreams, Lord Morpheus. It's not right to break them with never-ending nightmares. I have seen so many of their dreams. They are always alone. No one cares about the hopes of the young, and they know it. I try to make them laugh, but too often the waking world is empty, and they learn to be empty in dreams. Please help me. I'm just a doll, but I love them."

  The only reply was a blast of cold from the gate. A final scream echoed across the Dreaming. Ginny was awakening to the sound of her mother's screams in the waking world.

  For the first time in its long life, the doll felt tears break from its glass eyes. He leapt into the Gate of Gold, and the razors of dreaming light ripped through him, severing his being too swiftly for him to even cry out. His last thought was for Ginny, who would be alone again for the rest of her life, and all the children who would never have a doll to play with in their dreams.

  Morpheus stood upon a shelf of shadow, looking down on a darkling plain. His glittering eyes, like stars wrapped in black velvet, burned in his pale face. His cloak rippled in a self-created wind. A raven hovered in the air before him.

  "I don't get it."

  "What is that, Matthew?" murmured Morpheus.

  "Well... that doll, you know, it's just destroyed itself for nothing. I mean, there isn't any Gate of Gold."

  "No," said Morpheus. "There isn't."

  "But then... well, it was kind of brave," said the raven. "Wasn't it?"

  "It was very brave, yes."

  "Uh, well, what's gonna happen to Ginny? And her mother and that creep of a father?"

  "Those are matters of the waking world, Matthew."

  "So, that's it? Geez, it just seems ... I don't know ... unfair, like the doll said."

  "Does it?" Morpheus fixed his gaze briefly on the raven, who let out a frightened squawk and fell silent.

  Morpheus raised a hand as if he were plucking a fruit. The shape of the doll formed in his palm. He whispered something to the manikin and with a gentle toss, the doll vanished into the Dreaming.

  "What was that?" asked Matthew.

  "I made the doll in the beginning and, as the gryphon said, it was well made." Morpheus drew his cloak closer to his slender frame.

  "So, he just starts over? And kids have to have nightmares?"

  "Not necessarily." Matthew started to ask another question, but the Lord of the Dreaming quelled him with a glance. "I told the doll that a nightmare belongs to its owner. A brave dream might find a way to chase a nightmare into the sleep of the one who made it."

  And with that, Morpheus turned away and headed home. Matthew followed after, in silent thought.

  A BONE DRY PLACE

  Karen Haber

  I met Karen Haber for a few moments at the World Fantasy Convention in New Orleans in 1994, and discovered in meeting her that she was married to Robert Silverberg. The said Bob Silverberg was the first person I interviewed professionally as a journalist, and was (although he doesn't know it) indirectly responsible for the shape of my subsequent journalistic career. And while I wouldn't normally mention people's spouses, loved ones, inamorata, and so forth, in this introductory bit, I thought that warranted some kind of minor commemoration.

  This is a tight and punchy story about late nights on the telephone, and saving the world.

  Out on the long road beyond burnout, beyond woe, beyond anger, humor, and fear, but mostly beyond hope, is a place some call Desolation Valley. It's a bone dry place for people who are past the rationalizations and recriminations, the acting-out and shutting in.

  The usual therapeutic juju doesn't work here: No happy drugs, sleight of hand, faster-than-light distractions, slamdunk denials, excuses, or escapes. Only regrets. And yes, those are mandatory.

  Some folks just stop by for a visit and get right back on the road going the other way. Others return every year, their reservations prepaid by their parents, grandparents, or somebody else in their gene stream.

  Oh, and it's dark. But those who dwell here don't really need light.

  Despair, the younger sister of Death, twin of Desire, knows this valley well. She has been here often, stumping along on her short, misshapen legs to sweep up the tag ends of feeling, clutch each shard of a shattered dream, savor the sudden bursts of festering pain.

  It's not by choice that she serves. She is one of the Endless, sworn to duty here until the universe ends or her elder sister takes over: Despair doesn't much care which comes first. Until then, she waits. The Endless are patient.

 

  Others were on watch through the long night as well.

  The phone, when it rang, was always startling, breaking the midnight hush. The ugly, green-walled home of the Bay Area Crisis Hotline, lit with white-cold fluorescent light. The rooms where the smell of stale coffee and old sweat lingered, mixed with the echoes of old fears. It seemed a place out of time, set apart from dusk to dawn. The rest of the world was asleep, everyone tucked in safely, dreaming sweetly, except for the caller and the volunteer linked by a telephone umbilicus.

  "Incoming fire," said Bill Rutledge, night shift supervisor, as he watched the red light blink on his phone.

  The voice on the other end was a rasping whisper. "My mind was eating itself for breakfast. I decided to wake up."

  "It's twelve-thirty in the morning," Bill said. "That's kind of early for breakfast, isn't it?"

  A reluctant chuckle. "You guys are good."

  "Thanks." Now Bill recognized the voice. It was Zefrem, one of the chronics. He leaned back and ran his hand through his thinning brown hair. "Zefrem, you've called twice today. You
know this is the last call you can make until tomorrow."

  "Yeah, well, I just wanted to say that I've taken my medication and I'm waiting for it to kick in and I got lonely, so's I called, okay?"

  "Sure."

  "Okay, well. What are you doing?"

  "Talking to you."

  "Have I talked to you before?"

  "Yes. Many times."

  "Oh, good. Bad night?"

  "No." Thank God.

  Another phone light flashed. Across the room, Rita, the night shift volunteer, gestured frantically for Bill to take the call. She had been on the phone for twenty minutes, working with a Hispanic mother stuck in the city bus station, eight months pregnant, no place to go, no money, no English.

  Jesus, Bill thought, why do they give them our phone number? All the shelters will be filled by now. She might as well stay put in the bus station--at least it's got lights and a bathroom. She can start calling around in the morning, when somebody might have room for her.

  "Listen, Zefrem," he said. "I've got to go. You take care. Somebody will be here tomorrow."

  "Yeah, I know. G'night."

  Bill switched lines with practiced skill. "Crisis Hotline. How can I help you?"

  The voice, when it came, was hesitant, female, low-pitched. "I just don't know anymore...."

  "Don't know what?"

  A deep breath, a long exhalation. Was she smoking? The pauses could be drug-induced, could be exhaustion or fear. "I just don't know. I just don't really. I-I can't. I can't do it anymore."

  "Are you thinking about killing yourself?"

  "Yes. I mean, I think so. I don't know."

  "Why don't you tell me about it?" Bill settled in for a long listen. Outside, the fog rolled in, eating the stars.

  Across town, in a small cottage near the edge of a deep canyon, Sarah Underhill, student of philosophy, was having a nightmare.

  A tigerish noise in the sky. A fervid light brighter than the sun at midday, too bright to see except through black glass, flashing neon against the red silk lining of eyelids. Outside a corona of particles sleeted softly down upon the sleeping city. A thousand souls cried out, briefly. Terrible silence, after.

  Sarah came to herself, shivering, her blond hair drenched in sweat. Another god-awful dream. She had struggled with them for weeks, the terrible dreams and visions. She couldn't work, couldn't think. Armageddon was coming, she was certain. But she would outwit it. She could. The pills were in the bathroom. She had prepared for this.

  Despair has stood guard over the realms of pain and regret, relishing the agonies of this night. Now she peers into Sarah Underbill's living room, wondering. This one woman, she thinks. This Sarah. Problematical. Something about these nightmares and visions she's having, these dreams, seems wrong. Despair is no expert in dreams, however. She decides to consult her brother, Oneiros, dark lord of the Dreaming Realm.

  He does not respond when she grasps his sigil. How typical of him, she thinks, always elsewhere when you need him. Despair--patient and, in her way, faithful-- returns to stand watch over Sarah and all the others.

  Half a continent away, on a plane not yet uninhabited by Despair, men were gathered around a table. Men with hard, serious faces and fanatical light in their eyes. Men who had lost and lost again. They had fingered their scars. They had cursed their enemies. And now they had found a leader and a plan.

  They had been talking all night or, rather, they had listened as their leader, the general, talked. A platter in the middle of the table held the remains of a roasted goat. The men ignored it, intent on their leader. It was almost time for them to take action. Yes, it was almost time. They nodded at one another with grim satisfaction.

  The addict, whose name was Letisha, sobbed over the phone. "I've already got one kid. What am I going to do with another?"

  "Have you considered not having it?" Bill said.

  "Sure. You want to tell me how I'm going to pay for an abortion?"

  "What about adoption?"

  "Abandon another baby? Oh, yeah, right. And who'd want an addict's kid? You tell me that. A black addict's kid?" Letisha sobbed harder.

  Bill knew he had no solutions, no answers. And that what Letisha really needed was to get off the junk. But until she did that, she would live minute by minute. And right now, this very minute, what she most needed was another human being to listen and say he was sorry. So he listened.

  Rita had finished with her call and was sitting on the threadbare couch, eating cookies and flipping through a tattered three-month-old magazine. She glanced up, caught his eye, rolled hers in sympathy, went back to her magazine.

  "I never thought it would be this hard," Letisha said. She choked on the last few words.

  "I know. I'm sorry." Bill reminded himself for the thousandth time that he couldn't save everybody, that he had no answers, no solutions. And for perhaps the thousandth time, he hated it.

  At 1:30 A.M., Sarah lay in bed waiting for the pills to work, her cat Tito curled against her. Briefly she thought of the cat, with regret.

  "I'm sorry, Tito. I'd take you along too, if I could."

  And it began, again. The sound. The pain. The sweet purple dark.

  The horror.

  Cities ignited in flame and exploded, spewing orange dust, and toppled in upon themselves. A maddened cyclone wind swept through the ruins, tossing the luckless survivors into the red ravenous maw of uncontrollable fire. Children screamed as the skin was crisped from their bodies. The scent of roasted flesh was sweet, cloying, nauseating.

  The Fenris Wolf loped across the orange clouds. Its fangs were bared and its mouth dripped saliva. It crushed buildings underfoot, trampled all those who would flee before it.

  The crust of the earth broke open as the legions of Hades erupted from below in a cacophony of screams and trumpets. The forces of evil rode the land, triumphant, as the universe ended in pain, in unthinkable holocaust. No Golden Age would follow. No rainbow phoenix would come forth, shrug off the ashes, and begin anew. Only scarred and shaken survivors, left to paw through the rubble, to kill for survival. And so the entire ugly killing cycle would continue, red in tooth and claw. No miraculous rebirth, perfect, cleansed, redeemed. No hope. Only blood. Rivers and rivers of it.

  Tears and sweat mingled across Sarah's face. "No more," she whispered. "Please."

  Despair turns to greet her wide-eyed, wild-haired sister, Delirium. "I was wondering when you'd get here." She nods down at Delirium's companion, the German shepherd named Barnabas. "Watch out for my rats."

  The dog manages to look insulted. "I don't do rats."Delirium brushes her peppermint-striped hair out of her blue and green eyes, peers at the mortal, Sarah, giggles, and says, "She looks so sad. I don't usually get sad ones."

  "You're welcome to her," Despair says. "But watch out. She moves in and out of our realms fast."

  "They don't, um, they don't usually do that."

  Despair shakes her head. "There's something strange here. I really think that Dream should handle this, but you know how he is."

  "I do?" Delirium blinks her one blue and one green eye. "Was she, like, was she, you know? Before she took that stuff?"

  Despair juts out her square, fanged jaw. "Was she what?"

  "Asleep?"

  "Of course she was asleep. I was watching her."

  "I mean, really? With dreams and everything?"

  "Sister, what are you trying to say?"

  "I don't know. I never really do."

  Barnabas brushes against her leg. "Sweetums," he says. "Do you mean that you think that mortal's tapped into something else? Something that's not dreams? Like prophecy?"

  Delirium nods so vigorously that her hair goes swirling up and away from her head. Yellow and green curls tumble into orange pinwheels and blow away on the wind. "I think so. Yes. I do. Yes."

  Despair gazes at her sister without speaking. She bends down. Her squat, graceless body seems to melt int
o itself, slack breasts resting upon raddled knees. She picks up one of her pets, a sleek gray rat, and strokes it thoughtfully. "Prophecy? Why would this mortal be granted such a gift? She's no oracle."

  "I dunno. Sometimes they catch it, like a bad cold."

  Delirium's new hair grows in quickly, purple dreadlocks. She twirls a bit of it around her fingers. "Remember Cassandra? Boy, she got a dose. And our nephew, what's-is-name."

  "Orpheus," says Barnabas.

  "Yeah. Him, too." Delirium pauses, remembering other sadder things. "I don't think he enjoyed it."

  Barnabas scratches a flea bite. "They never do."

  "No? Oh, I'd like it. At least, I think I would. Our sister, Death, says we know everything anyway. Or anything every way." She pauses. "Umm, what were we talking about?

  "The mortal is slipping more firmly into your realm, sister." Despair says, and makes a sign of parting. "Farewell."

  Delirium waves but her troll-like sister is already gone, taking her rats with her.

  On the bed, Sarah moans softly.

  Delirium giggles and wiggles her toes. 'This is a nice room," she says. "I like your chair. I like your cat, too. You don't seem to be having a very good time, though."

  Barnabas forces his nose against her hand and whines softly. "She gives me the creeps."

  "Do you want to go back to my realm?"

  "Anyplace else."

  "Okay." She smiles as he vanishes. In his wake she scatters a dozen glowing purple toadstools and, just for fun, puts miniature yellow pigs on top of them.

  The men listened to their leader as he spoke to them of need, of righteousness, of redemption by fire. He was strong and proud and upright, shining in their eyes like a small sun. He wore his green paramilitary jacket with its yellow insignia as proudly as a king's robes. His sharp billed cap with its scrolls of golden honor sat atop his dark hair like a crown.

  The men nodded at their splendid leader, at his words, slapped palms against tabletop and heels against floorboards in appreciation. Fire, yes. Revenge, yes. Death. Redemption. Revenge. Yes, yes, yes. The table and floor rattled and thundered with their approval.

  A voice whispered in a long-distance hiss. Sarah's brother, Scott, a scientist, calling from a pay phone near the South Pole. He had been scrambling through the labyrinth of the underground lab, searching for the switch, the food, the light above the exit door.

  "Run," he said. "Run, run, run ..."

  His words broke into sharp pieces in her ears but Sarah could feel his meaning transmitted in pulses over the shining wires and pillowed cables, all the longing and sadness bounced off of satellites and into her brain, once around the auditory canal and home. She's been infected with the twentieth century--love was the vector but the cure was years distant.