by Neil Gaiman
The darkness drew him out, coaxing him forward, swimming softly through his eyes. A great silent darkness surrounded him. He sailed through it, sleeping yet aware. He sensed energy flowering far out in the darkness, vast soundless explosions that cooled and congealed. He sensed immense weights slowly rolling at the edge of his blindness.
Then he could see, though the darkness persisted almost unchanged. Across its furthest distances a few points of light shone like tiny flaws. He began to sail towards them, faster. They parted and fled to the edge of his vision as he approached. He was rushing between them, towards others that now swooped minutely out of the boundless night, carrying cooler grains of congealed dust around them. They were multiplying, his vision was filling with sprinkled light and its attendant parasites. He was turning, imprinting each silently blazing vista on his mind. His mind felt enormous. He felt it take each pattern of light and store it easily as it returned alert for the next.
It was so long before he came to rest he had no conscious memory of starting out. Somehow the path he’d followed had brought him back to his point of origin. Now he sailed in equilibrium with the entire system of light and dust that surrounded him, boundless. His mind locked on everything he’d seen.
He found that part of his mind had fastened telescopically on details of the worlds he’d passed: cities of globes acrawl with black winged insects; mountains carved or otherwise formed into heads within whose hollow sockets worshippers squirmed; a sea from whose depths rose a jointed arm, reaching miles inland with a filmy web of skin to net itself food. One tiny world in particular seemed to teem with life that was aware of him.
Deep in one of its seas a city slept, and he shared the dreams of its sleepers: of an infancy spent in a vast almost lightless cave, tended by a thin rustling shape so tall its head was lost to sight; of flight to this minute but fecund planet; of dancing hugely and clumsily beneath the light of a fragment they’d torn free of this world and flung into space; of dormancy in the submarine basalt tombs. Dormant, they waited and shared the lives of other similar beings active on the surface; for a moment he was the inhabitant of a black city deserted by its builders, coming alert and groping lazily forth as a pale grub fled along a path between the buildings.
Later, as the active ones on the surface had to hide from the multiplying grubs, those in the submarine city stilled, waiting. Ingels felt their thoughts searching sleepily, ranging the surface, touching and sampling the minds of the grubs, vastly patient and purposeful. He felt the womb of the sea lapping his cell. His huge flesh quivered, anticipating rebirth.
Without warning he was in a room, gazing through a telescope at the sky. He seemed to have been gazing for hours; his eyes burned. He was referring to a chart, adjusting the mounting of the telescope. A pool of light from an oil lamp roved, snatching at books in cases against the walls, spilling over the charts at his feet. Then he was outside the room, hurrying through a darkened theatre; cowls of darkness peered down from the boxes. Outside the theatre he glanced up towards the speckled sky, towards the roof, where he knew one slate hid the upturned telescope. He hurried away through the gas-lit streets, out of Ingels’ dream.
He awoke and knew at once where the theatre was: at the edge of Brichester, where his mind had been tugging him all day.
III
He rose at dawn, feeling purged and refreshed. He washed, shaved, dressed, made himself breakfast. In his lightened state the preamble of his dream seemed not to matter: he’d had his inclination towards the edge of Brichester explained; the rest seemed external to him, perhaps elaborately symbolic. He knew Hilary regarded his dreams as symptoms of disturbance, and perhaps she was right. Maybe, he thought, they all meant the theatre was trying to get up through my mind. A lot of fuss, but that’s what dreams are like. Especially when they’re having to fight their way, no doubt. Can’t wait to see what the theatre means to me.
When he went out the dawn clutched him as if he hadn’t shaken off his dreams. The dull laden light settled about him, ambiguous shapes hurried by. The air felt suffocated by imminence, not keen as the cold should make it. That’ll teach me to get up at cock-crow, he thought. Feels like insomnia. Can’t imagine what they find to crow about. The queues of commuters moved forward like the tickings of doom.
Someone had left a sheet from the telex on his desk. Photographs from the space probe were expected any hour. He wrote his reviews hurriedly, glancing up to dispel a sense that the floor was alive with pale grubs, teeming through the aisles. Must have needed more sleep than I thought. Maybe catch a nap later.
Although his dream had reverted the streets, replacing the electric lamps with gas, he knew exactly where the theatre should be. He hurried along the edge of Lower Brichester, past champing steam-shovels, roaring skeletons of burning houses. He strode straight to the street of his dream.
One side was razed, a jagged strip of brown earth extending cracks into the pavement and into the fields beyond. But the theatre was on the other side. Ingels hurried past the red-brick houses, past the wind-whipped gardens and broken flowers, towards the patched gouge in the road where he knew a gas lamp used to guard the theatre. He stood arrested on it, cars sweeping past, and stared at the houses before him, safe from his glare in their sameness. The theatre was not there.
Only the shout of an overtaking car roused him. He wandered along, feeling sheepish and absurd. He remembered vaguely having walked this way with his parents once, on the way to a picnic. The gas lamp had been standing then; he’d gazed at it and at the theatre, which by then was possessed by a cinema, until they’d coaxed him away. Which explained the dream, the insomnia, everything. And I never used to be convinced by Citizen Kane. Rosebud to me too, with knobs on. In fact he’d even mistaken the location of the lamp; there it was, a hundred yards ahead of him. Suddenly he began to run. Already he could see the theatre, now renamed as a furniture warehouse.
He was almost through the double doors and into the first aisle of suites when he realised that he didn’t know what he was going to say. Excuse me, I’d like to look under your rafters. Sorry to bother you, but I believe you have a secret room here. For God’s sake, he said, blushing, hurrying down the steps as a salesman came forward to open the doors for him. I know what the dream was now. I’ve made sure I won’t have it again. Forget the rest.
He threw himself down at his desk. Now sit there and behave. What a piddling reason for falling out with Hilary. At least I can admit that to her. Call her now. He was reaching for the telephone when Bert tramped up, waving Ingels’ review of the astronomical television programme. “I know you’d like to rewrite this,” he said.
“Sorry about that.”
“We’ll call off the men in white this time. Thought you’d gone the same way as this fellow,” Bert said, throwing a cutting on the desk.
“Just lack of sleep,” Ingels said, not looking. “As our Methuselah, tell me something. When the warehouse on Fieldview was a theatre, what was it called?”
“The Variety, you mean?” Bert said, dashing for his phone. “Remind me to tell you about the time I saw Beaumont and Fletcher performing there. Great double act.”
Ingels turned the cutting over, smiling half at Bert, half at himself for the way he had still not let go of his dream. Go on, look through the files in your lunch-hour, he told himself satirically. Bet the Variety never made a headline in its life.
LSD CAUSES ATTEMPTED SUICIDE, said the cutting. American student claims that in LSD “vision” he was told that the planet now passing through our solar system heralded the rising of Atlantis. Threw himself from second-storey window. Insists that the rising of Atlantis means the end of humanity. Says the Atlanteans are ready to awaken. Ingels gazed at the cutting; the sounds of the newspaper surged against his ears like blood. Suddenly he thrust back his chair and ran upstairs, to the morgue of the Herald.
Beneath the ceiling pressed low by the roof, a fluorescent tube fluttered and buzzed. Ingels hugged the bound newspapers to his
chest, each volume an armful, and hefted them to a table, where they puffed out dust. 1900 was the first that came to hand. The streets would have been gas-lit then. Dust trickled into his nostrils and frowned over him, the phone next to Hilary was mute, his television review plucked at his mind, anxious to be rewritten. Scanning and blinking, he tried to shake them off with his doubts.
But it didn’t take him long, though his gaze was tired of ranging up and down, up and down, by the time he saw the headline:
ATTEMPTED THEFT AT “THE VARIETY.”
TRADESMEN IN THE DOCK.
Francis Wareing, a draper pursuing his trade in Brichester, Donald Norden, a butcher [and so on, Ingels snarled, sweeping past impatiently] were charged before the Brichester stipendiary magistrates with forcibly entering “The Variety” theatre, on Fieldview, in attempted commission of robbery. Mr. Radcliffe, the owner and manager of this establishment
It looked good, Ingels thought wearily, abandoning the report, tearing onward. But two issues later the sequel’s headline stopped him short:
ACCUSATION AND COUNTER-ACCUSATION IN COURT.
A BLASPHEMOUS CULT REVEALED.
And there it was, halfway down the column:
Examined by Mr. Kirby for the prosecution, Mr. Radcliffe affirmed that he had been busily engaged in preparing his accounts when, overhearing sounds of stealth outside his office, he summoned his courage and ventured forth. In the auditorium he beheld several men
Get on with it, Ingels urged, and saw that there had been impatience in the court too:
Mr. Radcliffe’s narrative was rudely interrupted by Wareing, who accused him of having let a room in his theatre to the accused four. This privilege having been summarily withdrawn, Wareing alleged, the four had entered the building in a bid to reclaim such possessions as were rightfully theirs. He pursued:
“Mr. Radcliffe is aware of this. He has been one of our number for years, and still would be, if he had the courage.”
Mr. Radcliffe replied: “That is a wicked untruth. However, I am not surprised by the depths of your iniquity. I have evidence of it here.”
So saying, he produced for the Court’s inspection a notebook containing, as he said, matter of a blasphemous and sacrilegious nature. This which he had found beneath a seat in his theatre, he indicated to be the prize sought by the unsuccessful robbers. The book, which Mr. Radcliffe described as “the journal of a cult dedicated to preparing themselves for a blasphemous travesty of the Second Coming,” was handed to Mr. Poole, the magistrate, who swiftly pronounced it to conform to this description.
Mr. Kirby adduced as evidence of the corruption which this cult wrought, its bringing of four respectable tradesmen to the state of common robbers. Had they not felt the shame of the beliefs they professed, he continued, they had but to petition Mr. Radcliffe for the return of their mislaid property.
But what beliefs? Ingels demanded. He riffled onward, crumbling yellow fragments from the pages. The tube buzzed like a bright trapped insect. He almost missed the page.
FOILED ROBBERS AT “THE VARIETY”.
FIFTH MAN YIELDS HIMSELF TO JUSTICE.
What fifth man? Ingels searched:
Mr. Poole condemned the cult of which the accused were adherents as conclusive proof of the iniquity of those religions which presume to rival Christianity. He described the cult as “unworthy of the lowest breed of mulatto.”
At this juncture a commotion ensued, as a man entered precipitately and begged leave to address the Court. Some few minutes later Mr. Radcliffe also entered, wearing a resolute expression. When he saw the latecomer, however, he appeared to relinquish his purpose, and took a place in the gallery. The man, meanwhile, sought to throw himself on the Court’s mercy, declaring himself to be the fifth of the robbers. He had been prompted to confess, he affirmed, by a sense of his injustice in allowing his friends to take full blame. His name, he said, was Joseph Ingels
Who had received a lighter sentence in acknowledgement of his gesture, Ingels saw in a blur at the foot of the column. He hardly noticed. He was still staring at his grandfather’s name.
“Nice of you to come,” his father said ambiguously. They’d finished decorating, Ingels saw; the flowers on the hall wallpaper had grown and turned bright orange. But the light was still dim, and the walls settled about his eyes like night around a feeble lamp. Next to the coat rack he saw the mirror in which he’d made sure of himself before teenage dates, the crack in one corner where he’d driven his fist, caged by fury and by their incomprehension of his adolescent restlessness. An ugly socket of plaster gaped through the wallpaper next to the supporting nail’s less treacherous home. “I could have hung the mirror for you,” Ingels said, not meaning to disparage his father, who frowned and said “No need.”
They went into the dining-room, where his mother was setting out the best tablecloth and cutlery. “Wash hands,” she said. “Tea’s nearly ready.”
They ate and talked. Ingels watched the conversation as if it were a pocket maze into which he had to slip a ball when the opening tilted towards him. “How’s your girlfriend?” his mother said.
Don’t you know her name? Ingels didn’t say. “Fine,” he said. They didn’t mention Hilary again. His mother produced infant photographs of him they’d discovered in the sideboard drawer. “You were a lovely little boy,” she said. “Speaking of memories,” Ingels said, “do you remember the old Variety theatre?”
His father was moving his shirt along the fireguard to give himself a glimpse of the fire, his back to Ingels. “The old Variety,” his mother said. “We wanted to take you to a pantomime there once. But,” she glanced at her husband’s back, “when your father got there all the tickets were sold. Then there was the Gaiety,” and she produced a list of theatres and anecdotes.
Ingels sat opposite his father, whose pipe smoke was pouring up the chimney. “I was looking through our old newspapers,” he said. “I came across a case that involved the Variety.”
“Don’t you ever work at that paper?” his father said.
“This was research. It seems there was a robbery at the theatre. Before you were born, it was, but I wonder if you remember hearing about it.”
“Now, we aren’t all as clever as you,” his mother said. “We don’t remember what we heard in our cradle.”
Ingels laughed, tightening inside; the opening was turning away from him. “You might have heard about it when you were older,” he told his father. “Your father was involved.”
“No,” his father said. “He was not.”
“He was in the paper.”
“His name was,” his father said, facing Ingels with a blank stare in his eyes. “It was another man. Your grandfather took years to live that down. The newspapers wouldn’t publish an apology or say it wasn’t him. And you wonder why we didn’t want you to work for a paper. You wouldn’t be a decent shopkeeper, you let our shop go out of the family, and now here you are, raking up old dirt and lies. That’s what you chose for yourself.”
“I didn’t mean to be offensive,” Ingels said, holding himself down. “But it was an interesting case, that’s all. I’m going to follow it up tomorrow, at the theatre.”
“If you go there you’ll be rubbing our name in the dirt. Don’t bother coming here again.”
“Now hold on,” Ingels said. “If your father wasn’t involved you can’t very well mean that. My God,” he cried, flooded with a memory, “you do know something! You told me about it once, when I was a child! I’d just started dreaming and you told it to me so I wouldn’t be frightened, to show me you had these dreams too. You were in a room with a telescope, waiting to see something. You told me because I’d dreamed it too! That’s the second time I’ve had that dream! It’s the room at the Variety, it has to be!”
“I don’t know what you mean,” his father said. “I never dreamed that.”
“You told me you had.”
“I must have told you that to calm you down. Go on, say I shouldn’t have
lied to you. It must have been for your own good.”
He’d blanked out his eyes with an unblinking stare. Ingels gazed at him and knew at once there was more behind the blank than the lie about his childhood. “You’ve been dreaming again,” he said. “You’ve been having the dream I had last night, I know you have. And I think you know what it means.”
The stare shifted almost imperceptibly, then returned strengthened. “What do you know?” his father said. “You live in the same town as us and visit us once a week, if that. Yet you know I’ve been dreaming? Sometimes we wonder if you even know we’re here!”
“I know. I’m sorry,” Ingels said. “But these dreams—you used to have them. The ones we used to share, remember?”
“We shared everything when you were a little boy. But that’s over,” his father said. “Dreams and all.”
“That’s nothing to do with it!” Ingels shouted. “You still have the ability! I know you must have been having these dreams! It’s been in your eyes for months!” He trailed off, trying to remember whether that was true. He turned to his mother, pleading. “Hasn’t he been dreaming?”
“What do I know about it?” she said. “It’s nothing to do with me.” She was clearing the table in the dim rationed light beyond the fire, not looking at either of them. Suddenly Ingels saw her as he never had before: bewildered by her husband’s dreams and intuitions, further excluded from the disturbingly incomprehensible bond between him and her son. All at once Ingels knew why he’d always felt she had been happy to see him leave home: it was only then that she’d been able to start reclaiming her husband. He took his coat from the hall and looked into the dining-room. They hadn’t moved: his father was staring at the fire, his mother at the table. “I’ll see you,” he said, but the only sound was the crinkling of the fire as it crumbled, breaking open pinkish embers.