But I didn’t want to give Eli a lie. I wanted to give him me as I truly am, and have him accept me for it, not be disappointed by a dream-world expectation I could never match in real life.
“Maybe next time,” I said, giving a little laugh that rang false to my ears. “Like when we’re actually able to do more than look.” I waved at him, willing his gladiator gear to vanish and his usual jeans and T-shirt to take its place.
“It’s a promise,” Eli said, smoothing down his new clothes.
His words sent a prickle of anticipation dancing over my skin. I savored the feeling for a moment, and then closed my eyes and concentrated on changing the dream. I pictured the Rush as I’d seen it last, the main cathedral-like room with its haphazard rows of desks and clutter. The dream resisted the change at first, like it always did, but slowly I felt the substance of it give way, bending toward my vision and will.
“Wow, good job,” Eli said a few moments later.
I opened my eyes and understood the compliment at once. Sometimes when I set the scene of a dream, the result was an in-between thing, close to real but not quite, a surreal blend of truth and imagination. This time, however, I was nearly spot-on. The only thing off about the scene was the lack of policemen. I doubted the Rush was ever so empty. Even more strange was all the indicators that people should’ve been there—a coffee cup with steam still rising from its surface set atop a file cabinet, a half-eaten doughnut on a desk, the red jelly in its middle still wet and oozing. There was even a lit pipe laying on a little wooden stand, smoke trickling up from one end.
Then again, perhaps my magic hadn’t worked so perfectly. I doubted any kind of smoking was permitted in the Rush. Too many naturekinds were allergic to the fumes of burning plants.
“Which way should we go?” Eli said, looking around.
“I’m pretty sure the prison is that way.” I pointed ahead at a set of double doors. To the left of them ran the hallway with the interrogation room. Offices filled the hallway on the right.
Eli headed that direction, and I stepped into place beside him, being sure to keep an abnormally wide distance between us. The last thing I wanted was to get ejected from the dream early. Bollinger would no doubt call an end to the session.
The double doors led to a wide corridor lined with windows that looked out on a lawn and an artful arrangement of flower beds. They were the kind maintained by naturekinds, the plants large and vibrantly colored, a painting right out of a fairy tale. Bright sunshine poured through the glass, making the air pleasantly warm.
On the other end of the corridor was another set of double doors, these made with iron bars. Eli tried the lock on it, but it wouldn’t give.
“Let me,” I said. I waved my hand over the lock and willed it to open. The dream obeyed easily, and we stepped through.
We arrived in a short hallway, dim and cramped. Ahead was a glass door and to the left and right two more iron gates. Above the one on the left was a sign that read: WEST CELLBLOCK. To the right was the East Cellblock. Peering through the bars, I saw a wide corridor lined with prison cells on each side. The sight sent a shiver down my arms, and a sense of claustrophobia began to squeeze my chest.
“Let’s try in here first,” Eli said, striding over to the glass door. He opened it and we stepped inside. A reception desk filled the first half of the room. Behind it was some kind of observation post. TV monitors lined the walls on three sides, stacked from the desks to the ceiling. Microphones, switchboards, and other equipment cluttered the tops of the desks. All the equipment looked ancient, the kind of stuff you saw in old movies from the ’60s about the space race. If this really was the type of equipment in the Rush, no wonder the animation effect was so bad. This stuff had been absorbing magic and electromagnetic fields for years.
“This must be central control,” Eli said, walking past the reception desk toward the monitors.
I followed him, but stopped as I spotted a massive book sitting open behind the desk. I walked over to it, and in seconds realized it was a prisoner’s log.
“Eli, look at this.”
He turned and came back. “Huh. Do you think there’s real information in there?”
“Maybe.” Anything was possible inside a dream, especially if this one held dream-seer power in it. There was no way to tell, but I had a feeling it did. The details so far were too good for there not to be something bigger at work.
“Let’s find out.” Eli started leafing through the pages. Moments later he tapped his finger against the book. “Got it. It says Titus Kirkwood was being held in cell B-Three.”
My pulse quickened at our good fortune, and Eli and I left the control room and headed for the West Cellblock. Once again, I had to will the locks to open. The moment I stepped inside, vertigo struck me and I froze. The cellblock was six tiers high with narrow platforms set at the base of each tier. Stacked in rowed columns, the tiny cells lining the walls reminded me of upright coffins. The place had a cave-like feel, windowless and dark. Through the bars of the nearest cells I saw rust stains on the walls. Chips and cracks marred the concrete floors as if the prisoners had tried to claw their way free. A sick feeling struck my stomach at the thought of my mother spending her days in this place. She would go mad. Anyone would.
“W-One, W-Two,” Eli said as he scanned the small plaques on the front of the cells. “Huh, it must be just a straight count.” He leaned his head back, trying to get a look at the second tier.
“Hold on. I got it.” I flew into the air, rising up high enough to see the labels on the second level. “You’re right. It just keeps going up.” I lowered myself back down.
“Let’s check out the other cellblock.”
I nodded, but could already guess that it would be labeled with an “E” not a “B.”
My suspicions proved right. The East Cellblock was a mirror image of the west, the only noticeable difference the labeling on the doors.
“There’s another cellblock this way, I think,” Eli said as we left the East Cellblock. The short hallway in front of the command center wrapped around on both sides of the East and West blocks. We followed the hallway and soon came to a set of iron gates labeled: CENTRAL CELLBLOCK.
“What do you want to bet these are labeled C?” I said as we stepped in.
Eli didn’t answer. I was right, of course, which we both saw at once, but it didn’t matter. The Central Cellblock was not a mirror match to the others. A few feet down the corridor lay an iron gate set into the floor. Icy fingers stroked the back of my neck. It could be a doorway to hell or an oubliette filled with the dead, decaying bodies of prisoners thrown down into it and forgotten.
“Think B stands for basement?” Eli said.
I swallowed, trying to muster my courage. Even if it didn’t, I knew we were going down there.
Wordlessly, Eli strode forward and lifted the gate by the thick handle. Unlike the other iron gates in this place, this one wasn’t latched. He headed down first, and I followed after him. A foul, damp stench hung in the air as I descended. I covered my nose with my hand and forced my breathing to go shallow. The walls were damp and slimy. Cool air wrapped around my face and bare arms.
The darkness grew thicker with each step until I could no longer see Eli in front of me. “Hold on a sec,” I called.
I heard more than saw him stop and look back at me.
I closed my eyes and willed us two flashlights into existence. The dream handed them over easily, almost as if it was eager for us to see what waited below. I flipped one of the flashlights on, accidentally blinding Eli for a second, and then I handed it over to him.
We continued on for a long time, the descent several stories down, it seemed. Finally, we arrived at the bottom floor. It was true dark down here, no light at all except what we brought with us. All I could see from my vantage point was that the walls were made of a dark redbrick, the color of dried blood.
“You don’t really think they keep prisoners down here, do you?” I said,
trying to look past Eli.
“I think they certainly do.” He stepped farther down the passageway, far enough for me to see the barred door on the left with a plaque on the front that read B1. It opened onto a prison cell so narrow I wouldn’t have been able to lie crossways inside it. It was completely empty except for a blackened, ancient pillow and a urinal pot in the far corner. My stomach wrenched at the sight of it, and I pulled my gaze away.
“Looks like we found it,” I said.
Eli nodded and moved on. Unlike the cellblock above, down here the cells lined only the one wall, the other nothing but blank redbrick. Except, I realized as we headed farther down, for shackles dangling out from the bricks at intervals. They were set so high that anyone locked into them wouldn’t have been able to touch the floor. I supposed that was the point.
“B-Three,” Eli announced as we reached the third cell. “Oh, God, Dusty, don’t look.” He turned his head away.
For a second I almost listened, but my curiosity was too powerful. Just a dream, I told myself as I peered in, nothing here I can’t change by—
A gasp climbed my throat and came out a scream. I choked it off at once, because the thing inside the cell had heard. It was a giant, slithering thing, scaly in patterned stripes of black, yellow, and red. For a second, my mind resisted the word snake. Not because of its size, not because of the too-aware, intelligent look in its black eyes.
But because it was in the process of swallowing a man whole.
14
Doppelgänger
He was dead already at least. That much I could tell. The man’s legs and waist were already gone down the snake’s gullet, but his head lolled side to side against the brick floor, the movement in perfect harmony with the snake’s undulating body.
I turned away, gagging.
“It’s Titus,” Eli said, a horrified awe making his voice higher pitched than normal. Despite his warning to me, he’d already looked back and was now watching the scene with the same kind of terrified entrancement I felt tugging my gaze back to it as well.
Reminding myself this was just a dream, I focused on the man’s face. It was Titus, all right. His was a face I would never forget. “Can you tell how he died?” I said.
“I don’t think so.” Eli took a step nearer the door. I would’ve shouted at him to stay put, but the iron bars were too closely knit together for the snake to pass through. Not to mention that it was a little preoccupied at the moment. “There’re no visible marks on his neck or chest. He could’ve died of a heart attack for all I know.”
I stared at the snake once more, right into those inky, beaded eyes. They seemed to be watching me with an unsettling keenness, as if it knew just how much it bothered me to be watching this. “He could’ve died of fright.”
Eli looked over at me. “The snake’s just a symbol. I doubt it’s even supposed to be a magical snake, except for its size.”
I pried my eyes away from the creature long enough to shoot Eli a puzzled look. “How do you figure?”
He pointed. “See the colored stripes? That’s an Eastern Coral Snake. I’ve seen some before, on hunting trips with my dad down to Mississippi. They’re really poisonous, but not magical.”
“Let’s move on,” I said, turning away from the snake and Titus. I didn’t want to see anymore. And dream or not, I wasn’t about to open that cell door for a closer look. The idea of snakes and their symbolism was something we could investigate outside of here. Somewhere safe, like the Internet.
“All right.” Eli backed away slowly as if the snake might strike if he stopped watching it.
I moved on to the next cell. “I wonder which one they were keeping Bethany in.”
As soon as I said it the door to the last cell swung open. I flinched at the loud creak it made. I stopped and waited, braced for whatever was inside to appear. Another snake perhaps—or something worse.
Several seconds later, or it might have been a minute, Eli said, “I think we have to go down there.” He stepped past me, once more leading the way. And once again I was okay with letting him. Normally, snakes didn’t scare me that much, but I had a feeling that would be different from now on. At least it hadn’t been giant bugs. That would’ve left psychological scars so deep I might never recover.
The second I thought about giant killer bugs, I pushed the idea away before the dream got any ideas.
Eli paused outside the entrance to the last cell. I came to a halt beside him and peered in. Instead of a cell there was a narrow passageway, one deep enough we couldn’t see where it led before the darkness closed in. A feeling of déjà vu struck me. The bricks ended right at the edge of the other cells, giving way to stone. From there, the passageway sloped downward.
“It looks like an Arkwell tunnel,” Eli said.
“It is an Arkwell tunnel.” I stepped through the doorway into it. “At least it feels like one.” I concentrated hard, trying to make the connection between my sense of familiarity and a direct memory. “Wait.” I reached out and touched the stone wall. “This reminds me of the tunnel that led down to Nimue’s tomb.”
“You’re right, it does.” Eli touched the wall, too, grazing his palm over the rough surface. “But I doubt this tunnel exists in the real Rush.”
“Me, too.” Even if the likelihood wasn’t so doubtful, the feel of the dream was indication enough. It had changed the moment I stepped inside the tunnel. The world became less substantial, less real, as if at any moment it might come apart at the seams.
The farther along we walked, the more I began to suspect this was the exact same tunnel that had led us to the tomb of my ancestor Nimue, to Bellanax, and ultimately the showdown with Marrow. Finally, I spotted proof of it when we arrived at a small door.
“We’ve definitely been here before,” Eli said, an ironic note to his voice. “But why would the dream bring us back here? It makes no sense. That chamber was emptied out after we defeated Marrow.”
I smirked. “You mean that’s what they said they did with it afterward. But I’ve never been back to check, have you?”
He shook his head.
The only thing I was certain about was that Nimue’s tomb as well as her body had been buried in Coleville Cemetery at Arkwell. My mother and I had attended the ceremony.
The small door stood open, inviting us in. I hunched down to avoid scraping my back on the roof and stepped through it. When I reached the other side, I stood up, fully prepared to see a massive chamber lit with torches that burned purple fire. Instead I found myself standing on the shore of a river. Or maybe a lake. It was impossible to tell in the murky darkness, hanging like curtains over the black water. The smell of brine and rot burned my nose.
I looked up and saw we were still underground, in a massive cavern, the roof pierced with stalactites like jutted, misshapen swords. Ahead, a narrow, decrepit dock perched out over the water. Tethered next to it was a boat, the same low-sided pleasure barge from Eli’s last dream. A funeral barge, you mean. I swallowed as my eyes fixed on the raised platform at the center of the boat with its billowing, gauzy curtains.
“It’s the same one,” Eli said from beside me. Worry threaded his voice. It wasn’t just because of the dead body we’d seen the last time, I knew. No, the worry had to do with the frequency of the thing. This was only our second dream together and already we were seeing the same ominous signs again. Normally, a repeat of dream symbols meant that whatever was coming was coming soon. But never before had it happened so quickly for us.
“They shouldn’t have kept us apart all summer.” I glanced at him. “I bet your dream has been trying to warn us about the Death’s Heart and Bethany’s disappearance and all of it for weeks now. We just weren’t together to read the signs.”
Eli ran a hand over his head, his expression haunted. “Maybe. Which means we better step it up now.” He offered me a brave smile. “Ready to go see what’s in there this time?”
I inhaled a sharp, quick breath. “Sounds like a blast.” B
ut he was right. This was the heart of the dream, the deepest level. I could tell by the way my skin tingled with the subtle presence of magic.
Eli stepped down onto the barge first. I followed after him, holding my hands out at my sides as I adjusted to the feel of the shifting floor. A second later, the barge began to move. I glanced behind me to see the ropes that had moored it to the dock were gone. The boat slid quickly through the black water, and in moments the shoreline grew distant. We were moving impossibly fast. As before there was no wind driving us forward. No visible current. And no oars or ferryman either.
Silently, Eli and I approached the platform and pulled back the curtains.
“Oh,” I said, my voice breathless with shock. The strange round bed with the ouroboros frame was gone. In its place stood Nimue’s tomb. It was exactly as I remembered it, made of some kind of crystal and engraved on one side with an elaborate battle scene.
I stepped nearer the tomb and peered down on the scene, my flashlight setting the crystal surface aglow. Two armies converged around three larger figures in the center, a woman and two men. One of the men lay on the ground with a sword protruding from his chest. I stooped to take a better look. The sword, I realized, was Bellanax. I hadn’t known it the first time I saw this engraving, but I knew it now. As if in confirmation, the silver band around my wrist began to warm.
The other man stood with the woman just behind him, her hands cupped over his eyes, and he seemed to be falling down. Into sleep, I realized. Because this was Marrow and Nimue depicted here. Dream-seers, lovers, and ultimately enemies.
“Does it look different than you remember?” Eli said, stooping down beside me.
I shook my head. “Exactly the same.” I reached out and touched the figure of Nimue, running my finger over the smooth edges of the carving. “This is the moment Nimue locked Marrow in a dream,” I said. For several hundred years, the Red Warlock had slept, trapped in Nimue’s spell. It was the only way she could think of to keep him from spreading his evil. With his black phoenix familiar, he couldn’t be killed, not permanently. But he could sleep forever.
The Nightmare Charade Page 15