Book of Dreams

by Bunn, Davis

  The two women shared another glance, very frightened. Both clearly wanted to tell Elena she was overreacting. But Antonio’s gaze was steady and unblinking. One hand rested on her arm, ready to propel her forward. His confidence silenced the women.

  Elena hugged the book of dreams more tightly to her chest. “Don’t stray to the right, the ledge is very steep and there’s a rusted fence. Stay close.”

  Shirley started, “Is this really necessary—”

  Antonio turned and silenced her with a millisecond glare.

  “On three,” Elena said. “One, two, three, run.”

  Elena went first, then the two women. Antonio’s heels clicked on the stone stairs as he followed them. Elena flew across the lawn. The grass smelled freshly mowed. Flowers she could not see filled the still air with perfume. A night bird trilled to her left, urging her to go faster. She wore the first shoes she had pulled from her closet, an old pair of running shoes whose laces came undone as she fled. Elena was tempted to kick them off. Then the ledge came into view. To her right loomed the swooping drop into the flatlands below Boars Hill, festooned with a hundred thousand flickering lights. The hedge rose into a solid wall between her and any possible help. She dropped to her knees and crawled forward, feeling for the gulley with her hands.

  Elena’s husband had planted the yew hedge the summer after they bought their home. Yew was a fast-growing shrub that if left unchecked would climb to towering heights. The branches were thick and clinging and started growing at ground level. But over the years, rain had fashioned a gulley beneath the two shrubs closest to the ledge. Elena knew about the space because last summer her neighbors’ cat had birthed a litter of kittens there. The cat was a tabby with a gentle soul who sometimes allowed the neighbors’ twin daughters to dress it up in doll clothes. Elena had brought the cat food and water until the kittens were weaned. Her mind was racing fast enough to speed through this as she crawled and hunted in the dark. The hedge formed a solid wall to her hands, the interlaced branches tight as woven cord. She was beginning to question her own memory when the ground dipped under her hand and the space opened up.

  She whispered, “In here.”

  Shirley Wainwright was still on her feet. “I can’t possibly—”

  Antonio hissed, gripped the back of her neck, and pushed downward.

  Shirley whined, “This robe is shantung silk.”

  “Quiet,” Elena said. “For your life.”

  Janine backed into the space on her belly, then Shirley, still huffing soft protests. Antonio slipped in beside Elena. The space was about six feet wide and less than a foot high. There was room for them only if they layered in tight as sardines. She could feel Antonio’s chest breathing in and out, in and out. Janine was crammed up next to her other side.

  Elena’s lungs filled with the scent of night-damp earth. Streetlights played through the trees separating her house from the road. They dappled the front lawn with surreal shades of ocher and orange. A shape flitted across her vision, probably the neighbors’ cat. There and gone in a flash, like it was chasing something. Or being chased.

  Then a second shadow flicked in and out of sight, moving even faster than the cat. On two legs. Small as a child. Or a woman with elfin features and taunting eyes.

  Janine opened her mouth, perhaps just to breathe. But Elena could not take that risk. She reached over and clamped a hand to Janine’s mouth. In the vague light, Janine’s eyes turned to pale moons.

  Elena breathed, “They’re here.”

  As though in emphasis to her words, there was the faint tinkle of broken glass. They all stopped breathing.

  The alarm whooped once, then cut off so swiftly that it might as well have been strangled.

  Then nothing. The night held its breath with them.

  A sound came from the house, harsh as a bark. Elena imagined it was a curse from finding the place empty.

  From the bedroom window came two quick flashes. No noise. Just blinks of light, faster than heat lightning.

  To her right, Shirley moaned softly. Elena felt Janine’s body jerk in time to the pistol shots.

  Another shadow flickered about her garden. A man this time. Hulking and very fast. He was joined by the woman. Flashlights came on. Elena did not need to urge them farther back into the gulley, to push under the hedge’s far end with their feet. Elena felt the branches dig into her bare ankles. She knew it should hurt. But just then the lights sweeping her rear garden left her utterly numb to all but terror.

  Then the woman returned inside the house. A few moments later, the night gave off a quiet whump. A light started in her kitchen, bright and unsteady. It spread in lazy smoothness to the window of her dining room and the guest room. The man was clearly silhouetted now. Elena saw the gun in the hand not holding the flashlight.

  The woman appeared around the front of the burning house and whistled softly. The man joined her. They cut off the flashlights and sprinted away.

  The fire grew and grew, vicious fingers rising from her bedroom window, reaching up and gripping the roof. Elena moaned with the others. It did not matter what sound she made. The fire was burning so fiercely that the house groaned with her.

  38

  Janine called the police and the fire department on her cell phone. They remained where they were, fearful that the flames might mask a lingering attacker. They emerged only when the police arrived.

  By the time the first fire truck pulled up, the house was smoldering and fuming. Shirley stood next to a cluster of neighbors, her eyes glazed, her grimy features slack. Janine wept for the loss, which Elena found very touching. She felt nothing at all. Perhaps the numbness would eventually subside. Maybe she would then be swamped by regret. But she did not think so. What she really felt, hugging the book to her chest and staring at the wreck of her home, was affirmation.

  Detective Mehan arrived just as the fire chief completed his preliminary inspection. The fireman told the detective the house stank from incendiary charges. The detective asked them questions while the fire chief and the two officers who had arrived first on the scene stood and listened. The neighbors huddled farther back, all but the mother of the twins, who brought over a thermos of sweetened tea and plastic cups. Elena stood sheltered within a blanket someone had placed around her shoulders without her even seeing who it was. She drank the tea and let Janine describe what had happened. The prayer time. The sense of danger.

  The fire chief said, “Describe precisely what made you feel threatened.”

  “I can’t,” Elena replied.

  The fire chief frowned his dissatisfaction with her reaction. But Detective Mehan asked, “Was it similar to what you felt after the break-in?”

  The fire chief was an older man whose face was streaked by soot from the house and by a thousand previous fires. “What break-in was that?”

  Detective Mehan lifted a hand. The fire chief’s frown deepened, but he did not speak.

  Elena said, “Something very similar.”

  “Is there anything that might help us with our search?”

  “One man hunted for us while a woman set the fires.”

  “This was the same woman who accosted you in your office?”

  “I never saw her face. But the shape was identical. Deceptively small. Almost childlike. Very fast.”

  “And the man?”

  Antonio replied, “Tall. Over six feet. Very big. Well over two hundred pounds. All muscle. And fast as well.”

  Janine said, “They both carried guns.”

  “You saw weapons but you did not see their faces?”

  Elena replied, “The silhouettes were vividly clear. They had pistols. With silencers.” Then it hit her.

  Mehan noticed the change. “What is it?”

  “Charles.”

  “Who?”

  “My night man.”

  Mehan turned to the listening officers. “Check the perimeter.”

  Shirley Wainwright spoke for the first time since emerging from the
shrub. “This same woman also murdered my husband.”

  Elena said, “We don’t know that.”

  “I do. And so does your Nigel.”

  “He’s not—”

  A shout turned them around. Together they rushed across the front lawn. Beyond Elena’s house, the road tightened in close to the ledge and curved around a bend in the hillside. The empty lot was rimmed by ancient chestnuts and wild thornberry bushes. Charles lay sprawled below the branches of a dead oak beside the road, illuminated by the police officer’s flashlight. A black pool glistened beneath his head. The officer was on her knees, the fingers of one hand pressed to his neck. “We’ve got a pulse, sir.”

  Mehan was already lifting his radio from where it was clipped to the collar of his overcoat. “We need an ambulance. Sound and lights, please. Code green.”

  Detective Mehan was against it, of course. As were the two women. But the impression had come to Elena while she knelt by Charles and prayed over him. She had asked for his recovery and her own forgiveness for putting a good man in danger’s path. By the time the ambulance took him away, she knew what they needed to do next. Even though it was the last thing she wanted. Her own desires meant nothing. Not that night.

  Mehan had one of the officers call around the hotels, trying to find them rooms. But it was after midnight in early June, and the tourist hordes were in control. A pair of neighbors offered beds, but Mehan didn’t want to split them up.

  Which was when Elena said, “We need to go to the church shelter.”

  Mehan showed genuine astonishment. “Pardon me?”

  “The waiting list is a year long,” Janine replied. “I should know. I’ve been pressing them to add more rooms in the basement.”

  “Call them,” Elena said. “They have an opening.”

  Janine stared at her.

  “Please. Call.”

  Janine opened her cell phone and punched in the number from memory. She spoke softly, her eyes never leaving Elena’s face. She shut the phone, stared at Elena, said nothing.

  “Well?”

  “They kicked out a family for drug use. About an hour ago.”

  “Let’s go.”

  Mehan said, “Out of the question.”

  “You can protect us there as well as anywhere.”

  “It’s not very nice,” Janine said. “Rather wretched, actually.”

  Antonio said, “If Elena is telling us we must do this thing, we should agree and go.”

  Mehan must have seen something in their expressions, for he shrugged and said to the waiting officer, “Call for a taxi. Follow them in. I’ll arrange for the duty officer to relieve you.”

  “Thank you.” Elena handed the detective her book, still wrapped in the filthy sheet. “Put this somewhere safe, please.”

  The shelter was three blocks from Saint Aldates Church, in a former department store that had anchored the smaller of Oxford’s two center-city malls. The shopping plaza was cramped by American standards, fewer than two dozen stores. The department store’s closure had hit the mall very hard. There was talk that it might still go under.

  The church rented the space from the bankruptcy auditors. They had papered over the display windows and used cheap fiberboard to section off the two floors. The structure now held twenty-seven studio apartments, each sixteen feet square. Communal kitchens and washrooms anchored each end of both floors. Initially the church had opened the shelter to any family who had lost their home. Immediately they were swamped. So they limited it to single mothers with children under six. Even so, the waiting list held a hundred and three names.

  All this Janine told them on the ride into town. She explained that men were allowed in two hours each morning and evening. The men could shower and eat with the families. “Of course it also means some of the mothers aren’t single, just desperate enough to live apart from their men. But we don’t have the luxury of aiming for perfect. Only fair.”

  The taxi driver glanced back several times as Janine spoke. He was Indian or Pakistani and clearly wondering at the three women and man in his car, filthy and mud-streaked, dressed in odd clothing and talking about a homeless shelter. He had taken them because the police had been standing by and watching. But when he stopped at a light he finally turned all the way around and said, “Please, you are being able to pay for this ride?”

  Antonio said, “We are.”

  “I am asking this because it will be twelve pounds. Perhaps fourteen, yes? That is of course without the tip.”

  Antonio reached into his pocket and inserted a twenty-pound note through the Plexiglas slot. He then turned back to Janine and said, “Go on.”

  But it was Shirley Wainwright who declared, “I’ve had about all of this I can stand.”

  No one responded.

  “I’ve just been through the longest day since Teddy’s funeral. Not to mention that security man showing me those photographs. Then we’re trapped in the bushes by bad men, and the fire …” She looked down at her ruined silk robe. “I’ve lost all my things.”

  Janine said, “The church has a goodwill hamper—”

  “I don’t want castoffs. I want a bath. I want a clean bed. In a hotel.”

  “Shirley …”

  “I’m tired, and I want it now.”

  “We’re all tired.” Antonio spoke in the quiet monotone of a man who had left mere exhaustion far behind. “We are alive because of Elena. She says doing this is important. I for one do not need to hear anything more.”

  39

  TUESDAY

  The first sound Elena heard upon awakening was the same that had carried her into sleep. Somewhere down the line, a baby cried.

  The dividers did not reach all the way to the ceiling. The walls merely suggested a private space. The air was packed with the smells of frying grease and baby powder and wet laundry and too many people. Elena rose to a seated position and rubbed her face. She had slept on a thin foam mattress that she had pulled off a pile and carried into their cubicle. She wore the sweatpants and T-shirt she had obtained from the goodwill hamper. The previous night she had showered and washed her hair twice. But she could still smell the smoke.

  Janine and Shirley were already awake and seated at a table with foldout legs. The cubicle contained two folding chairs. Elena stared around their little chamber and wondered what families did if they needed more seats. She rose slowly to her feet. Antonio snored softly, his face turned toward the side wall. The night supervisor had not wanted to let Antonio enter. But Janine had mentioned Brian, and the police had firmly insisted. The night supervisor had promised they would be kicked out the next day, like any rule breaker. Shirley had begged her to be sure that happened.

  Janine asked softly, “Shall I make you a coffee?”

  “I’ll do it.”

  As she turned for the door, Shirley said, “You were right to bring us here.”

  Elena did not understand what she meant. But was glad just the same.

  Their cubicle was the closest to the outside door. Nearby were the laundry and showers. Elena walked the long central hallway, past a dozen or so doors, most of which were open. She saw many children, some asleep, others playing with toys on the floor. Others were crammed around the scarred table, seated on packing crates and rickety stools, eating off paper plates with plastic spoons and forks. Some of the children watched her pass with solemn gazes. Elena had felt eyes on her since their arrival. Shutting and locking the flimsy door had not changed anything.

  When they had arrived the previous night, a number of men had clustered outside the shelter’s doorway. They had given Elena and the others the same wary inspection as the children did now. Then the men had spotted the police car pulling up behind the taxi. They all vanished, silent and swift as smoke. Like they had never been there at all.

  Sunlight struck the brown paper covering the building’s east-facing windows. The light inside was muted and tinted like an old photograph. Fluorescent strips glowed far overhead, but many did not w
ork. Elena boiled water in one of the kettles and made herself a cup of instant coffee. A sign on the fridge said the fresh milk was for children under four, two cups per child per day. She spooned in sugar and powdered milk. She grimaced over the taste, but she drank it anyway, standing with her back to the kitchen and observing the scene that surrounded her—and wondering what these families must have been through to bring them to a point where they would call this place a refuge.

  At the stroke of ten the rear doors opened, introducing brighter sunlight and a silent tide of men. Elena made another cup of coffee and took it back to the cubicle. Antonio stood in the doorway, watching everything with an expression that probably mirrored her own. He accepted the cup with a tight smile but did not speak.

  Elena joined him in the doorway, observing the people and relishing the small comfort of being near this good man. When he finished the cup, she turned and said, “It’s time for us to go.”

  Shirley asked, “Will we be coming back here?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “My sense is, this particular lesson is over and done.”

  Both women shut their eyes. Shirley whispered, “Thank you, God.”

  They went by the hospital first, where the station nurse would not permit them to enter Charles’s room. But Nigel Harries was there and informed them that Charles was resting comfortably. He had woken twice in the night and spoken with the police but could not give any description of his assailants. The doctors had found a hole in his neck that corresponded to a needle fired by a high-compression air pistol. A mixture of several sedatives was found in his bloodstream. The man had gone down hard and evidently banged his head on a root. He was concussed and required stitches for the cut to his forehead. But otherwise he was recovering well. Nigel Harries delivered the news in very concerned tones.

  “I can’t tell you how sorry I am about your lovely home.”

  “Thank you.”

  “My team and I have failed you. It won’t happen again. You need to move into secured accommodation until we identify and locate—”