Bedtime Story

by Robert J. Wiersema

  I made a couple of phone calls as I waited for my suitcase. Jacqui first, telling her I had arrived. Then Tony Markus.

  Straight to voice mail.

  “Tony, hi, it’s Chris Knox,” I said after the beep, forcing calm joviality into my voice. “I’m sorry we didn’t get another chance to get together while I was in town, but my time got away from me. I’m headed for home now. Why don’t you give me a ring tomorrow and we can figure out how to proceed from here. Thanks, Tony. I’ll talk to you soon.”

  The forced good cheer made my face ache.

  The night had seemed like it might never end.

  You have to sleep, Matt said, at various points, as the trees creaked in the dark forest.

  David knew that Matt was right, and there was nothing he would have liked more, but sleep wasn’t coming.

  And it got worse. As David dragged himself through the camp in the pale light of the morning, his body heavy and uncooperative, he began to feel a tightening ache in the back of his head, behind his ears, a dull throbbing that was difficult to ignore.

  Shortly after dawn, he left camp with Bream, the magus, and several soldiers.

  The woods were deep and glossy with the night’s dew, birds singing and chirping overhead, as they pushed their way through the underbrush and down the trail, moving in the direction of the river.

  “It’s not much farther,” the magus said. He was walking two strides behind the captain, just ahead of David.

  That’s not too comforting, Matt said.

  David agreed. The farther they walked, the more his dread grew, a sickly combination of fear and anticipation settling low in his belly. When they reached the river’s edge, his clothes were soaked from the leaves and the long grass, chilling him even more.

  This was a tributary to the mighty Col, which they had followed during their first few days. Slower moving and narrow, the tributary’s waters fed into the Col more than a day’s ride downstream from the Rainbow Canyon.

  The magus must have seen him looking at the water. “The Brotherhood has always held rivers sacred,” he explained. “Water is one of the elemental forces, powerful yet yielding, finding strength in its seeming weakness.”

  The captain snorted, but the magus ignored him.

  “Water will always break around a stone,” he continued. “On the face of it, it is the earth that endures, that stands fast while the water surrenders. But over time, the water will wear away the stone. There is little that can resist its power. The Order is drawn to rivers. Nowhere is the power of water more in evidence than at a river’s edge, as the water shapes the very land around it. That’s why the temples and the schools and the shrines are always built at a river’s edge. Like this one.”

  He had stopped moving at the shore, not far from the rise of a gentle, mossy hillock.

  David looked around. He was expecting some sort of building, something like a church or a memorial, but he saw nothing of the sort. Just the forest behind him, the river beside him, and the small hill on the shore.

  “There,” the magus said, pointing at the hillock. “That’s what we’ve been looking for.”

  David looked intently at the rise.

  “The land has started to claim back its own. It has, after all, been a thousand years. Come.”

  David followed him around the side of the hill closest to the river.

  “You see?” the magus said, pointing.

  There was a slight indentation in the bed of moss covering the hill. The moss had been cut away from the smooth green surface to reveal a heavy, metal door. Etched into it was the symbol of the Sunstone.

  “I never would have found this,” David muttered.

  “Nor would most,” the magus said, glancing toward the captain, who was still around the curve of the hill. “Thankfully,” he continued, his voice now little more than a whisper, as if he did not wish to be overheard, “the young soldier assigned to this area has a brother in the Order. He was familiar enough with the stories to pay special attention to the river’s edge, and clever enough to recognize the hillock for what it was.” He took another glance at the captain. “We are truly blessed in this discovery. As if we are being guided by forces greater than we can understand.”

  “Dafyd,” the captain called. “We should get underway.”

  I took the stairs to the front porch slowly and knocked lightly on the door. Even my knuckles ached.

  I could hear Jacqui’s footsteps inside. She opened the door cautiously, peering out, then swung it wide when she saw it was me.

  “Since when do you knock?” she asked, a smile breaking across her face.

  She threw herself into my arms, embracing me tightly. I moved my hands uncertainly up to her back, no longer familiar with even the simplest of things: how to enter my own house, how to greet my wife.

  “I’m glad you’re back,” she whispered.

  “Me too,” I said, feeling myself relax, soften in her arms, despite everything.

  She pulled away from me gently, and took my hand. “Come on in,” she said, pulling me. “David will be so happy to see you.”

  I followed her into the house.

  “Look who’s home, Davy,” she announced in an aggressively cheerful voice as we walked into the living room.

  I almost expected him to answer, and it was a shock to see him again as he’d become, after having only memories for so long. I had put out of my mind the way his head lolled, his neck loose, the flat pallor of his eyes, the way his hands jumped with spasms.

  He was sitting up in a bright, cold hospital bed that had appeared in the living room. He was facing the television, which was playing the Teen Titans, but it was obvious that he wasn’t actually watching.

  “Your dad’s home,” she said, more quietly this time, as I stepped toward him.

  “Hey, sport,” I said, touching his shoulder, flashing back for an instant to my dream on the plane. “I missed you while I was gone.”

  He probably had no idea that I had been gone at all.

  Jacqui’s smile narrowed. Her face was care-worn.

  “You got him dressed.” I hadn’t noticed it right away, but he was wearing jogging pants and a T-shirt.

  She nodded. “That’s one of our goals for every day. To get him dressed, get him fed, make sure he gets some exercise. We’ve already had our walk around the block this morning, haven’t we?” Pitching the question to David’s unhearing ears. “I couldn’t bear having him in a hospital gown all the time. It made him seem too much like a patient.”

  I nodded. Seeing him dressed in his own clothes made him seem a bit more like our old David.

  “And the bed?”

  “It’s just a temporary thing.”

  I wondered how many other parents had used those exact words for a piece of hospital equipment that eventually became part of their lives. “We’ve been working on the stairs. It’s not going to be too long before he’s able to sleep in his room.”

  I had been holding his hand, feeling it pulse in mine. “Is his temperature …”

  “He’s still got that same fever. He’s hovering, 100, 100.5. It’s not dangerous, but the doctors are watching it. And his hands”—we both looked down—“the spasming seems to be getting a bit more severe. The doctors don’t know what’s causing it. And he’s starting to have small seizures in the night.”

  I’m so sorry, David.

  “Of course, they don’t know what’s causing any of it.” Her smile twisted in on itself. “It’s so hard, Chris. I get him dressed, I prop him in front of the TV.” Her voice was jagged. “Sure, he walks, he helps me dress and undress him, we go to the bathroom together, but whatever was there, whatever made him … him, it isn’t there anymore.”

  My knees buckled and I stumbled over to the couch, falling into it as tears started to come. If only she knew how right she was.

  She came over and sat down next to me, and we held each other awkwardly as we cried.

  “It’ll be better,” she said. “N
ow that you’re here. We can take turns. We can make it work.” Trying to convince herself. “Something’ll happen. Something’ll give.”

  I couldn’t tell her that I had figured it all out, come up with a way to help David, only to lose our only chance. She still had hope, however small.

  “I’m sorry,” I gasped. It was all I could say.

  “We’re a hell of a pair, aren’t we?” she said.

  I choked back a tearful chuckle. “That we are,” I said.

  I held her for a long time, trying not to think about what the future held for us, about how I had screwed up, the way a bedtime story had cost us everything.

  And then I saw it, right there in front of me, half obscured by two magazines, but right there. If I hadn’t been stuporous from whatever Marci had given me, I would have remembered sooner.

  On the coffee table there was a rough stack of photocopied pages more than an inch thick: the copy of To the Four Directions I had made before I left for New York.

  David studied the markings cut deep into the metal door. Captain Bream had come around the hill to the magus, and the two stood a short distance behind him; the soldiers who had accompanied them stood watch on the other side of the hill.

  “Can you open it?” the captain asked sharply. “I can have one of the men bring round a horse to pull it open.”

  “I think I can do it,” David said, looking into the cut-away edges. Sure enough, there was a handprint carved into the stone wall on each side of the door.

  And, again as at the cave in the canyon, it took only the slightest pressure from his hands, which fit firmly into the stone handprints, to trigger the ancient mechanism.

  The metal door opened with a sound like that of a seal breaking. David stepped back as a gust of fetid, swampy air rushed through the widening entrance.

  Both the captain and the magus wrinkled their faces in distaste.

  This smells worse than the cave in the Rainbow Canyon, Matt said.

  David stepped back from the door and took a deep breath to calm himself. The weight of the leather bag that the magus had brought, packed with everything that had come out of the first cave—the stone and the map, the sack of mysterious red sand—hung heavy on his shoulder.

  David was grateful for its weight: it kept him anchored, focused, when all he wanted to do was run.

  “You’ll want a torch,” the captain said.

  “I think …” David began, stepping into the doorway. “Yes.” He wiggled a torch free of the bracket on the wall. “Someone already thought of that.”

  He fumbled with the tie to the small leather bag of matches attached to the handle of the torch. Striking the match on the wall of the alcove, he touched it to the sticky torchhead and smiled as it burst to life.

  “Well,” he said, shifting from foot to foot.

  The captain took a step forward, his hand falling to the hilt of his sword. “I’m coming with you.”

  The magus laid a hand on the captain’s arm. “You can’t.”

  The captain jerked his arm away and looked at the old man as if he had just slapped him. “We have no idea what dangers await him in there.”

  “We do know,” the magus replied, “that the prophecies require the one chosen to face alone whatever awaits him. It is up to Dafyd now.” He looked at David for emphasis.

  The captain was silent. He let his hand fall away from the hilt of his sword.

  David turned quickly and stepped into the darkness.

  Sarah was waiting for me. I had suggested to Jacqui that we should get something from Chinatown for dinner, and offered to pick it up. Alchemy was closed by the time I got there, but Sarah unlocked the door before I had a chance to knock, and led me through the dim store.

  I had spent the afternoon with Jacqui and David. She was eager to demonstrate the simple activities they had been working on while I was gone.

  “Are you ready for another walk?” she asked him quietly before taking his hand in hers.

  At her touch David swung his legs over the side of the bed and slid down.

  I followed them out the front door, down the porch steps and through the yard. It was a terrible sight. His halting, shuffling gait, his stiff legs, the lurch in his movements.

  “He’s doing so well, isn’t he?” Jacqui said over her shoulder as I followed a few steps behind.

  The sunlight had caught her hair, and for a moment I had a vision of the future: Jacqui white-haired and aging, her face wrinkled but still beautiful, leading our son, forty or fifty years old, on his daily walk through the neighbourhood. Caring for him like a toddler for the rest of his days, making arrangements for his care after we were gone.

  “He’s doing great.”

  In the kitchen behind Alchemy, Nora pulled me in for a rough hug and a dry kiss on the cheek.

  “I’m glad you’re back safely,” she said, turning back to the table.

  “It was only New York,” I said as I took my bag off my shoulder.

  She shook her head. “I’ve been reading through these,” she said, touching a stack of papers on the table in front of her: the photos I had taken of the lexicon, blown up to eight-and-a-half by eleven. “This is a dark, dark mind you’re dealing with.”

  I glanced at Sarah as I sat down. “Took’s been dead for more than fifty years.”

  “That doesn’t matter. This”—Nora touched the pages again—“does not bode well for anyone who comes in contact with it. Merely possessing that book is more than enough to draw dark forces against you.”

  “I don’t have the book.”

  “What?” they both said.

  “It was stolen,” I said. “Last night. In New York.” It was hard to believe it had only been the previous night. It seemed like another lifetime.

  I gave them a brief account of my time in New York, from my lunch with Tony Markus to my days at the library and my conversations with Ernest. I left out any mention of Marci, except to say, “The book was stolen from my hotel room last night.”

  “Chris,” Sarah said. “Without the book we can’t—”

  Her mother cut her off. “Wait, this is important. You think it’s this editor who has taken it.”

  “I think so,” I said, suddenly wary in the bright focus of her eyes. “He was desperate to get his hands on it.”

  “And you’re sure”—she stressed the word—“that it couldn’t have been anyone from the library?”

  “Pretty sure,” I said cautiously. “They didn’t even know about the book until yesterday morning, and by then …” I couldn’t explain why I could rule out the Hunter Barlow’s involvement without telling them about Marci. “I don’t think it could have been them,” I finished, more weakly than I would have liked.

  Nora bit her lip and looked away. “And this editor, he doesn’t have any magical training?”

  “I … I really doubt—”

  “Chris, this is important. If that book were to fall into the hands of even a novice magician, the damage—”

  “I don’t think he has any magical training,” I said. “He just seemed like he was desperate for his next best-seller.” Precisely the reason I had contacted him in the first place.

  “Chris,” Sarah said. “The lexicon is useless without the spell.”

  “I do have this.” I reached into my bag and dropped the photocopy of To the Four Directions onto the table. “I made it before I went to New York, so Jacqui could read it to David while I was gone.”

  “Well, it doesn’t address the problem of the actual book being out there …” Sarah said as she started to flip through the pages.

  I turned to Nora. “The photos turned out okay?” I asked. “You’re able to read them all right?”

  She nodded. “I almost wish I couldn’t.” She looked down at the top photograph. “The man behind these words was a very dark individual. Angry. Violent. Devoted to the pursuit of power. If he wasn’t evil, he was as close as anyone I’ve ever encountered.”

  “You can tell all of
that from a dictionary?” I asked.

  Sarah had stopped glancing through the photocopies. “It’s a matter of tone and emphasis. You know words. Well, the symbols are like words. Sometimes they have multiple meanings. Denotations and connotations.” She glanced down at the top image. “Took has accentuated the negative aspects of each sign to draw out the darker elements. He’s reduced an active symbolic language to its blackest, most dangerous …”

  She trailed off as she realized that Sarah was looking at us, her face drawn and tight.

  “What is it?” Nora asked.

  “It’s not going to work,” Sarah said quietly, biting her lower lip.

  I felt like I was going to pass out. “What?”

  She passed the photocopy of the novel’s cover to her mother. Nora held the page up, looked at it for a moment, then lowered it to the table.

  “I’m sorry, Chris,” she said, sadness verging on despair. She slid the paper toward me.

  It took me several seconds to see what was wrong. “Shit,” I muttered, letting the paper fall to the table. All of the symbols on the cover were blurred, as if the book had moved while it was being copied. Or the symbols themselves had.

  “Some magical elements, especially if a spell is active,” Sarah said haltingly, “they’re resistant to mechanical reproduction.”

  I could make out most of the detail in the large Sunstone symbol, if I squinted.

  The smaller symbols around the edges of the cover, though, were lost, shapeless stretched blobs without shape or definition.

  This smells like a swamp, David thought.

  He stopped just inside the doorway. The flickering torch lit a small vestibule. At its far end, he saw a narrow stairway, identical to the one in the Rainbow Canyon.

  Here we go again, Matt muttered.

  David could hear the faintest hint of fear in the other boy’s words. The last time Matt had gone down a staircase like this, he had died.

  Of course, Dafyd had died too.

  David lifted the torch high enough to illuminate the top three stairs. Taking a deep breath, though, he gagged.

  “Dafyd?”