Dead Lies Dreaming

by Charles Stross

  “Fuck this dogshit haze,” Yuri complained when they slowed for a regular breather, an hour down the lane. “No telling when you’re going to trip on a tree root or run into a low branch if you keep pushing it.”

  “Tough.” Alexei grunted. “Have deadline, no time to waste.” Although it was true. On a good night in the woods his guys were ghosts, moving silently through ground cover. But something was wrong tonight. Alexei had caught a thin branch like a horsewhip across the face. Then Igor had nearly broken his leg on a hidden pothole, and Yevgeny had sprained his ankle on one of the lurking, hostile tree roots Yuri was rabbiting on about. It was almost like the road didn’t want them here. And that fucking glassy laugh he could swear he kept hearing—it had to be a hallucination, didn’t it? Maybe his mask seal hadn’t been as tight as he thought and he’d caught a whiff of happy gas. The impulse to turn and hose down the road behind him with steel-jacketed disinfectant was strong—but not quite strong enough to break fire discipline. Alexei was a professional, and so were his guys, and nobody was about to start shooting at shadows. Yet.

  The plague pit at the end of the sunken trail was something special, and no mistake. His crew went through it with hackles raised and guns twitching outward, covering each other with eyes wide open as Alexei whacked on the locked mausoleum gate with the butt of his gun until it unfroze and opened with a screech like the waking dead. He hustled out onto the sidewalk—pavement, the Brits called it—and tried to breathe a sigh of relief, but relief wouldn’t come: not now, not here, not with tentacles of mist coiling lasciviously around his ankles.

  “Have you reconsidered decision to apply for a career as insurance loss adjuster?” Yevgeny asked mordantly. “Maybe should have pick something safe instead? Like test pilot for zero-zero ejector seat?”

  They pressed on into the dank, narrow streets of Whitechapel, sticking close together with guns held close, stocks folded for concealment beneath their overcoats. They only passed a handful of locals, and one group clustered outside a bar who grunted a challenge at them. “Are with Vigilance Committee!” Alexei glared at them and twitched his coat aside far enough to reveal a gun barrel. They backed down.

  The mist grew thicker as the alleyways and backstreets grew darker and narrower. Alexei was half-tempted to go off-map and start blasting holes through the rotten brickwork and decaying wooden doors to either side, to punch a demolition tunnel through the obstacle course of urban architecture lying between them and the decadent nobles’ reading room. But no: their supply of pyros was strictly limited to whatever Yuri and Igor had packed in their leather satchels (typically a kilo of C4 and a brace of flash-bangs), and there was no telling what kind of unwanted attention they might attract if they started blowing shit up. This was London in 1888, but not the London the history books described. This was a London born of the folkloric horror myths that future London told about its past. A London in which magic had never guttered and died, a London liminal and unstable in its absolute form, crumbling away in the yellowish pea-souper smog clouds that pervaded the frayed edges of reality.

  Whenever Alexei glanced over his shoulder he had the most disturbing feeling that the street behind him was not the one he’d just walked down but a hasty substitute, swapped in from some eldritch continuum of crapsack dipshittery stalked by the ghosts of maniacal serial killers and adorable Dickensian street urchins; where every barber’s shop was owned by a grinning slasher with a meat pie sideline, and every bedroom window offered a glimpse into the life of a soiled dove waiting for her Leather Apron lover. This was not the real Whitechapel of 1888 but the Whitechapel of the clichéd collective unconscious: pencilled, drawn, and inked from the scripts that London told about itself.

  “Fuck this shit up its left nostril—” Igor began to complain, then emitted a strange, burbling gurgle. A moment later there was a thud of a body falling.

  Alexei spun in place, flipping his AK-12 up and out as he scanned for threats. Around him the other five—no, four now—did likewise. Yevgeny dropped to his knees over a mound in the mist while Yuri and Boris took up positions. “He’s a goner,” Yevgeny reported after only a couple of seconds. “Both carotid arteries severed. Very clean work.”

  Alexei swore some more in the privacy of his head: a howl of pure rage and frustration directed at the night and mist around them. “Boris, get his satchel and piece. Guys, follow me. Shoot anything that moves.”

  They strode through the alleyway shoulder to shoulder. It wasn’t far if the map was telling the truth. Silvery giggles like shattered window glass echoed faintly from above, behind, and the sewer grates below, taunting: but Alexei and his crew held their itchy trigger fingers for now. If Tinkerbell wanted to fuck around with the Transnistrian loss-adjusters, she was about to find her life insurance renewal premium had just gone to infinity. But they were too professional to light up the street without a target.

  They had a mission to accomplish. And the reading room was just around the next corner.

  * * *

  “Bring me my sedan chair, minion,” Rupert announced: “Failing that, ready my helicopter. Flight plan for Barclays London Heliport.” He paused momentarily to think. Ms. Starkey would know what to do, but this understudy … “Have the Bentley waiting for me when I get there,” he added, “and prepare my suite at HQ. You—” he addressed the naked woman lying on his bed—“see yourself out, there’s a good girl.” She snivelled something in response, but his attention was already directed elsewhere.

  In principle it was possible to have his pilot set down in Kensington Park, within walking distance of HQ—but the police tended to frown on it. Something about babysitting for the royals living at the palace next door, and stopping random joggers from getting sucked into the pedestrian cuisinart or tail rotor or whatever the technical term for it was. By the time all the red tape was sorted out it’d be faster to set down at the heliport in Battersea and drive, just like any other prole. He’d tried to get planning permission for a helipad on the roof a few years ago but got knocked back. (Maybe it was time to ask Ms. Starkey to revisit the application process again, when she got back to work? Perhaps a bigger donation next time, or better blackmail material. That sort of thing usually did the trick.)

  Rupert ended the call and sighed heavily. “You just can’t get the staff these days,” he announced as he began to button his shirt.

  Eve was out of the loop (and most interestingly so, having left HQ in the company of a bodyguard Rupert didn’t remember authorizing her to hire). This was unusual enough that the Security Desk had discreetly paged him. The Bond was also incommunicado despite having been ordered to report in frequently. Rupe had hoped that a brisk BJ would clear the free-floating anxiety that was fogging his usual analytical brilliance, but in a moment of post-orgasmic clarity he realized that the only thing that would exorcise his personal demons would be the certain knowledge that his chess pieces were still on the board, in play, and on his side.

  Hence the helicopter ride.

  Cocooned in the Versace-designed luxury cabin of his AgustaWestland AW109E Power Elite, Rupert hunched over his BlackBerry in a black humor. He needed that book, he realized, not like a market acquisition or a hostile takeover or a pretty blonde whore, but like the next hit of heroin, or maybe a life raft after his yacht foundered. This need was no mere desire, it was a matter of raw animal survival. The more he thought about it, the more the Prime Minister’s subliminally encoded message in the Mansion House speech freaked him out. The PM was a benign horror, but a horror nonetheless, and not one inclined to shower mercy on the worshippers of his rivals.

  ***Rupert***

  His vision doubled: his head struck the restraint behind his seat as his jaw clamped shut. An icy sweat drenched the small of his back.

  ***Rupert***

  The voice inside his head was louder than thunder and softer than a silk noose around his throat.

  He tugged his headset off hastily. The thunder of the rotors overhead was a whisper on
the breeze compared to the call he answered. “Master?” he said aloud, before he remembered to verbalize inwardly. “My Lord?”

  ***The Book of Dead Names calls to me, Rupert. What have you achieved?***

  Rupert squeezed his eyes shut, a gut-loosening fear churning his stomach contents like wavecrests before an onrushing storm. The Mute Poet seldom spoke quite so clearly, and never tried to micromanage his priesthood. Perhaps that’s why it had been the PM’s faction who achieved the first-mover advantage, executing their adroit takeover of the government before any of the rival faith communities—the Red Skull Society, the Cult of the Mute Poet, the Chelsea Flower Show—got their shit sufficiently together to immanentize even a minor eschatological reality excursion. The PM was, unlike most of the other long-absent Gods, forward-looking to the point of almost integrating into human society: he reputedly knew how to use email, which put him light years ahead of Tony Blair. But the Poet had been speaking to Rupert for a couple of years, his demands becoming increasingly urgent and specific. And now this. It was a breakthrough, indicative of the Poet’s awakening into this realm. Previously it took a successful rite of unholy communion to get a peep out of him, using the larynx and auditory nerves of a freshly sacrificed victim as a hotline. A megaphone blast delivered straight into Rupert’s head was new, and also betokened an unaccustomed sense of urgency on the part of a weakly godlike entity whose clock ticks were measured in millennia.

  “I have my best people working on obtaining it, My Lord. I expect results very soon.”

  Rupert reached for the cocktail cabinet, which was currently stocked with bottles of Fijian spring water and Goldschläger (the latter because everything palatable in this month’s load-out had already been quaffed, and the valet service hadn’t restocked the chopper yet). He twisted the lid off a water bottle and gulped from it, wetting his bone-dry mouth.

  “Rivals attempted to intervene, but I put a stop to that,” he added. “However, the Prime Minister…”

  ***The Black Pharaoh is of no concern. Time is fleeting. The next suitable conjunction for the Rite of Embodiment begins in less than two months. There will be another opportunity a lunar year hence, but the Path of Flowery Death is opening right now and Xipe Totec stirs.***

  “I hate those Aztec fuckers,” Rupert complained before he realized he’d spoken aloud. Mortified, he ground his teeth together. The Mute Poet was kind-hearted and enlightened compared to the followers of the Red Skull cult, appropriated and imported into Europe in the sixteenth century by Spanish occult treasure hunters returning from Mesoamerica. If the reign of the Black Pharaoh was bad enough, the return of the Flayed God would be … well, it would not go well for the Mute Poet Fan Club in general and Rupert de Montfort Bigge in particular, given his role as Lord High Adept of the Inner Chamber.

  ***Your devotion is recognized. Bend every sinew to the recovery of my liturgy, bring it to me immediately and without delay, and I will smile upon you. Otherwise … not.***

  And Rupert was suddenly alone in his skull again.

  * * *

  It was not quite one o’clock in the afternoon when Evie and her father crossed the park and stood across the quiet street from the chained-shut gates of the ancestral family manse.

  Later she would have plenty of time to regret her lack of foresight. But she’d been coming here with Dad since she was sixteen, not every month but often enough that breaking into someone else’s locked-up property had come to feel almost routine. Indeed, over the past two years Dad had roped in Imp from time to time, saying he was old enough to walk the boundaries and reinforce the wards, doing his bit to help lock down the family wyrd. But today there was no Imp. It was just her and Dad on a little-travelled street. Which simply meant there were fewer bodies to share the guilt.

  Dad had shown Evie that the trick to breaking and entering was to hide in plain sight. They approached the chained-up gate openly, carrying clipboards and wearing high-visibility work vests. Dad pretended to open the padlock with a key, but he’d charmed the lock long ago so that it would open at a touch for any who bore their blood. He swung the gate wide open, and Evie strolled in and stared up at the house while he made a show of closing and relocking it. Dad triggered another spell macro that blinded the CCTV to their presence. Then he began his rounds, pacing the perimeter of the overgrown garden, pushing through the knee-high grass and the wildly overgrown hedge to check on the bones and ribbons and the skeins of silver wire fine as cobwebs that bore the charge of stored magic, or mana, that deflected curiosity and dampened desire in anyone who crossed the threshold of the grounds.

  Eleven pottery urns were buried in two rows, flanking the path leading to the front door. For generations their family had grown up with dogs: their loyal pets lived on in a tenuous afterlife, penning in the Lares that haunted their humans. Eve had helped Dad bury Nono here about four years ago, the most recent (and the last) arrival in the canine cemetery. The security company who patrolled these buildings had long since stopped trying to bring dog patrols round: the mutts went bugfuck, whining and trying to bolt. As for Evie, she felt a sad and tremulous comfort, as of a wooly presence leaning an imaginary shoulder against her hip, shaking at the specific frequency of a dog wagging its tail. There’d be no new additions. Not unless Evie or Imp started families of their own and brought puppies home to play with a new generation of Starkeys. And that couldn’t be allowed to happen.

  “Let’s do it round the back,” Dad proposed after they finished walking the perimeter. “Keep watch while I set up.”

  Evie nodded, and stared at the boarded-up windows at the back of the house. The high stone wall between the garden and the park was capped with broken bottle glass embedded in cement to keep trespassers out. Just inside the wall, trees that had barely been saplings when Grandpa sold the manse had matured, growing up warped from the weight of the walls. They spread their branches above Dad’s workspace, a flattened square of grass where he’d spread a tartan rug weighted down with the paraphernalia of his trade: a small brass bell, an athame, his latest notebook—a continuation of the family spell book—and a skull. Eventually he opened his day pack and lifted out a lunchbox and a stainless steel flask, the ritual offerings of food and wine for the Lares. Rather than scribing a pentacle or summoning circle as he would on a hard surface, he laid it out carefully using skeins of braided silk cord. Then, with Evie anchoring one corner of the ritual space, he took up his own position and began the opening propitiation.

  The rite was familiar and her part came easily to Evie. It was the first thing they did, every time—an offering of food and drink and a symbolic re-establishment of the ties that bound the Lares to the Starkey family. There was no set time or season for it, nor any significant sacrifice or purification ritual required. It was more like watering a plant or feeding the family dog than actual magic. This time, however, Dad followed it with a more alarming rider. “Lend me your mana,” he politely requested, “to aid us, your family, in our time of need.” He raised the skull and turned in place, presenting it to the four quarters, and Evie could swear that faint green striations glowed in the recesses of its eye sockets. “Lend me your blood, your bone, your sinew, your spirit: your blood to live, your bone to strengthen, your sinew to bind, your spirit to drive the hungry ghosts from the soul of my wife.” For a moment Evie felt a tightening in her scalp and a buzzing tingle in her fingertips, almost as if she had been brought before the regard of something ancient and unsleeping. Then it passed, and her father bowed his head. “Thank you,” said Dad, and he returned the skull to the crimson velvet bag it lived in. “And so, the contract is sustained.” Evie’s skin crawled as if someone had cast a handful of soil across the mouth of her future grave.

  Dad was uncharacteristically quiet on the way home. Usually these rituals put him in a cheerful mood. As often as not he’d stop in a pub for a pint by way of unwinding. Evie found these refreshment stops useful, because he relaxed enough to explain what they had just done, both the sup
erficialities (which as often as not she already understood) and the deeper significance. But this time Dad headed straight for the tube station, lips drawn tight and crow’s feet deepening around his eyes.

  “Dad, what was that at the end about sustaining the contract?” she asked as they turned the corner onto their street. A fine rain had started, tickling her face and the backs of her hands. “Is there something I should—”

  “You needn’t worry about it.” Dad shut her down casually, irritating her: as with most parents, he sometimes forgot that his offspring were adults and reverted to treating her like a six-year-old. He wasn’t totally oblivious—there was no pretty little head to talk down to here—but Evie knew a snow job when she heard one, and the tension in his jaw was obvious. “It’s nothing important.”

  “The only contract with the Lares I’m aware of is the one that requires—” she swallowed—“you know what? I don’t want to know.”

  Her father drew a deep breath as he unlocked the front door. “That’s right, you don’t want to know,” he admitted sadly. “It’ll make sense afterwards. Not to your detriment,” he added hastily. “I wouldn’t lay that on you.”

  “Fucksake, Dad,” she said, not unkindly. She hadn’t asked to be born under the family curse, any more than one might ask to be born with a genetic disease or a high risk of hereditary breast cancer. But at least the curse came with side benefits—unlike the ailments, if you could call an ability to harness the power of dreams a benefit when it could so easily slide sideways into nightmare.