Dead Lies Dreaming

by Charles Stross

  The Lost Boys scrambled over the gate and dropped—or in Doc’s case slithered—down the bars on the other side. Finally Wendy scrambled up and over. Del caught her, cushioning her fall. “That was wicked!”

  “Thank me when we’re home,” Wendy gasped.

  “Come on.” Game Boy scurried towards the lich-gate, paused, then scuttled forward some more. “It’s safe,” he called quietly. “The big bad is behind us, not in front.”

  “Big bad?” asked Doc.

  “Tink—Tinkerbell,” Imp stuttered, on the edge of losing his shit completely. He’d heard the glassy chimes of malevolence ringing through the streets of a London that never was, the voice of the Lares in their true form, kept out of the real world by the psychopomp pets interred in the grounds of the mansion. Propitiated by the blood of Starkeys, generation after generation, maintaining custody over the family’s dream-buried treasures. He’d never truly believed, until now, whatever Eve said: and believing, he felt no desire to clap.

  Together they traced their route back to the door to the real world. The mist swirled thickly now, forming bizarre illusory sculptures that climbed hip-high in places, dulling sounds and making it impossible to see more than a hundred meters in any direction. “Walls are coming down,” Imp repeated. He peered at the mist between his legs. “Does anyone else see this?”

  “See what?” Doc took the bait.

  “Mermaids and pirate ships,” he murmured, “the set dressing for the ultimate pantomime—”

  “We can’t stay here.” Doc took his arm and tugged. “It’s not safe.”

  Imp didn’t move. “Scared now. Don’t wanna leave. You can’t make me.”

  “Yes I can.” Doc wrapped his arms around Imp. “You’re not staying. They’re illusions for kids, Jerm, it’s trying to trap you.”

  Imp fell silent as Del and Wendy followed Game Boy through the side-door, even though it was alarmingly ajar. If Game Boy’s gamer sixth sense said it was safe to proceed, then the bad man with the gun wouldn’t be waiting on the other side.

  “Dude,” said Doc. “We can’t wait.”

  “But the book—”

  “Forget the spell book, that asshole’s going to get what he deserves from the curse—”

  “—No, I mean the other book, the one I need to be inside—” Ticking crocodiles and flying infants and a shadowless boy with the burned-out corpses of stars in his eyes—

  “You can’t live here,” said Doc, then gently kissed him. After a couple of seconds, Imp relaxed in his embrace and kissed him back, hugging him tight. Finally they separated for air. “You’ve got to grow up sooner or later,” Doc told his lover.

  Imp took a deep breath of Neverland. “I never wanted that.”

  “Come on. Come with me, or your sister wins.”

  Imp scowled. “It isn’t like that, we’re not rivals.” Neither for human sacrifice, nor the favor of their father.

  “Prove it, then.”

  The mist rose chest-high now, extruding tentacles filled with hypnagogic images that swirled almost to their heads. Some were fantastic, others were scarily plausible; but either way, they sucked the eye in and demanded the attention of the beholder. Elves and dragons danced a deadly waltz across high moorlands, around a castle on a mountain at the center of a perfectly circular lake that had once been a giant city beneath the shattered moon. Then all were swept aside to make room for a merry row of gibbeted felons, dangling like the Devil’s Christmas baubles along a Regent Street where carol singers chanted praise before the throne of the All-Highest, the Dread Lord of Downing Street—

  “This is amazing,” Imp whispered. “All the dreams of films unmade: I could be Fritz Lang—” He shook his head.

  “What do you think your sister saw in the mists here?” Doc challenged him: “Come on, tell me!”

  “Eve … she lost her I; she’ll have seen nothing.” Imp smiled crookedly, or maybe it was meant to be a grimace. “Evie would have been another matter.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about and I’m scared now.” Doc relaxed his grip, now that Imp was at least responding to stimuli. “Come on, let’s go home.”

  Imp sighed, then set one reluctant foot in front of the other. “I’ll never get a source of raw material like this again,” he complained.

  “Save it for later.”

  The mist rose head-high and obscured almost everything now, but a faint rectangular glow limned the outline of the doorway. “Come on.” Doc tugged Imp’s hand. “Nearly there!”

  “Nearly where?” Imp’s voice sounded so dreary.

  “Nearly home. Just another step.” Imp wasn’t moving. Doc tugged, but Imp’s feet were planted. He turned and grabbed Imp’s arm in both hands and heaved him forward, feeling a faint sucking resistance as his shoes slithered free of the dream pavement and they crossed the threshold into a lobby lit by the cheery yellow glow of a low-power incandescent bulb and the welcoming cries of their friends.

  “What took you so long?” demanded Game Boy as Del slammed the door behind them. “What happened?”

  “He froze up,” Doc told them.

  Imp rubbed his forehead with one hand while he leaned against the door. “I feel drained,” he complained. Then he looked down, and shuffled nervously aside, searching for something on the floor.

  “What is it—” Doc began, just as Imp said, “Has anyone seen my shadow?”

  But answer came there none.

  * * *

  The Bond had a smug. But of course, to his way of thinking he had good reason for it.

  Despite the pileup of hunting parties outside the Neverland reading room, he had the book. The black dyke chick had given it to him fair and square and her crew of deviants and shoplifters hadn’t even tried to stop her. No surprise: they didn’t have enough guts to house a tapeworm between the lot of them. The men were faggots or trannies, the women were ugly bitches, and he was … well, he was going to be a lot richer once he figured out how to extract Miss Starkey’s collection bonus from her bank account and fence the goods, which would be a lot easier once the numb cunt was dead.

  He hurried through the nodes of the treasure map with bag in hand. Somewhere off in another room the windchimes were jangling—somebody had probably left a window open—but it wouldn’t matter for much longer. Not once he set the charges and brought the house down.

  He was feeling the burn now. He’d walked several miles around Whitechapel, managed to avoid getting sucked into a firefight—there was always an insane adrenaline crash afterwards—then pushed through the crash and jogged several more miles up that spooky sunken road. He hadn’t brought any protein bars or hydration, not having expected what he’d found on the top floor of the haunted mansion. He was probably dehydrated by now, and he wasn’t as young as he used to be. As he faced the seventh flight of stairs (three up, then two down, not to mention a whole bunch of corridors and a ring around the roses) he thought, Why not take the elevator? After all there was a lift just two corridors and a receiving room away from his current location, and he’d seen the other elevator doors on the top floor. It was the brass wire slam-door kind that had been current in the late nineteenth century, but dammit, why not? It’d save a couple of miles of this shit, and the Bond was all in favor of doing that right now.

  The Bond stole along the passage to the elevator lobby. But as he came close, who should he find but Miss Starkey and her bodyguard, already waiting for the lift car as if it was no big deal? How the bitch had gotten ahead of him was a question for another time. Right now, his biggest problem was the Gammon with the submachine gun who was covering her six. He was alert and doing his job properly, which is to say he’d clearly swept the lobby seconds ago and was now drawing a bead on the darkened elevator shaft beyond the shuttered gate. Miss Starkey was looking the same way, her back turned to the Bond. The whine of ancient machinery covered the Bond’s final step, although something—possibly a shadow, or his presence disturbing the air flow—made the Gammon w
hirl towards him and aim just a fraction of a second too late. A tight cluster of red-rimmed holes flowered around the bridge of his nose and he dropped like a sack of potatoes, his gun clattering to the floor.

  “Freeze!” barked the Bond. Miss Starkey froze in the act of turning. “Hands on top of your head, fingers laced!” She complied. “Kick it away! Now! Do it or I shoot! Face the wall!” The sinister windchimes chuckled their appreciation of his performance.

  The lift finally put in an appearance, sliding glacially down to halt behind the gate.

  The Bond licked his lips. “Open the lift gates,” he ordered her.

  Miss Starkey stiffened, then shrugged, drawing attention to her arms, her hands—

  “One hand only,” he warned. “Then back on top of your head.” He had zero intention of giving her the slightest opportunity to make a dive for her bodyguard’s gun, now resting on the carpet halfway across the lobby.

  Beside her feet, a pool of blood was spreading. Miss Starkey stepped delicately around it to reach for the outer gate. It clattered as it retracted. She drew the inner gate back as well, revealing a wood-panelled room, as cozy as a coffin sized for two.

  “Go inside and face the wall,” said the Bond, already stiffening with anticipation. This was not quite how he’d envisaged the trapped-in-a-lift-with-Miss-Starkey scene playing out—her dressed like a Victorian widow and himself returning from a mission exhausted and sweaty—but it was close enough. “Move!” he growled, stepping over the dead meat. He had a headache: best to get this over with.

  Miss Starkey finally spoke. “Did you get the book?” She sounded mildly curious, as if she was asking about the weather or the latest test series. Her lack of fear was irritating.

  “Shut up, bitch.” He held his gun to the back of her head as he dropped the bag on the floor of the lift and drew the outer gate shut with his now-free hand. Then he reached for the inner gate. “I got it. We’re nearly done here. No witnesses, like M said.”

  “Who’s M?” she asked.

  “The boss, Rupe—” He gritted his teeth furiously against the rapidly worsening pounding in his skull—“shut up! Only speak when I tell you to! Do you understand?” She shrugged again. He winced as he glanced at the brass control panel, then pushed the topmost button—black Bakelite with no label. “Going up.” The lift began to rise.

  “Do you want money?” she asked tonelessly, ignoring his earlier order. “Whatever he’s paying you, I can pay more.”

  “Turn round.” She slowly turned to face him, her expression botox-blank. Miss Starkey didn’t have resting bitch face; she didn’t have resting anything face. She’d have revealed more of her thoughts to him if he emptied his magazine into her perfect turquoise eyes. She was, however, beautiful. Beautiful like a priceless Ming vase or a very expensive supercar, one outside his price range. The kind of beauty that made him want to hurt her, to bring her down to the level of his own inner ugly, to make her feel something of the ache that gripped him right now, everywhere from his head to the soles of his feet. He shivered. This wasn’t normal; this was the vestibule to the land where dreams come true.

  “Kneel,” he demanded.

  She knelt. “What do you think you’re doing?” she asked.

  “Anything I fucking feel like. Tell me, how much is the book worth? Really?”

  “How much is anything unique worth?” She might have shrugged. “How much is your life worth?”

  “More than yours.” He held his gun to her forehead one-handed, his cock springing rigid with excitement. “Yes: I know about the curse.”

  “Why do you think it hasn’t killed you?”

  “I made them give me the book,” he gloated, willing his hand not to shake. He was sweating: it was unaccountably cold in the lift car. “Any final words?”

  “Mm, yes. Did I ever make you a cup of coffee?” She looked up at him with a quizzical smile on her face.

  “No, why—” He felt really sick. “The book. It’s worth … worth…” I’m burning up, he realized. A fever out of nowhere, sweeping over him like one of the sudden death diseases of childhood that swept through Victorian London leaving black crepe and tiny headstones in its wake. “Shit.”

  “I didn’t ever make you coffee,” Miss Starkey said, “so you missed out on my special demonstration. Pity, that.”

  The wall of the lift rippled in front of his vision, and began to fog. The pain behind his eyes was excruciating. He tried to squeeze the trigger, but his hand wasn’t working properly. In fact, nothing was working properly. The Bond leaned against the back wall of the lift, breathing hard.

  “Wha…”

  “A mug of coffee contains about half a liter of water,” Miss Starkey calmly explained. “I can bring it to a near-boil in about a minute. A human skull contains about two liters of stuff that can be approximated to greasy water. I can raise its temperature by ten degrees Celsius in about fifteen seconds. That’s enough to denature proteins, such as neurotransmitter receptors, like soft-boiling an egg—”

  But the Bond wasn’t listening any more. His feet drummed a tetanic tattoo on the elevator car floor. He’d bitten his tongue badly, a bloody froth trickling from his lips.

  Eve winced. “Damn it,” she complained softly.

  Finally, the lift arrived at the top floor.

  Eve rose and took a couple of deep breaths, clearing her mind. Then she leaned over the bag and addressed it politely in a dead language no human tongue had evolved to utter: “By the life I claimed on your behalf, the next one is yours also.” She opened the lift gates, stepped out, and closed the gates again. With ghostly mental fingers she reached through the lift gates and pushed the button to send the car back to the ground floor. With a somewhat greater psychic exertion, she ripped out the wires behind the call button. Then she made her way back towards the real world.

  Behind her, shadows lengthened in the lift as it descended towards Neverland. Inside it, the carpetbag sat in lonely splendor on a floor restored to pristine condition, all evidence of the Bond’s presence banished like a dream. Within the bag, the leatherbound book throbbed gently as a dead man’s pulse, waxing plump and powerful.

  Imp and his crew knew better than to touch the book. Which, to Eve’s way of thinking, was a very good thing indeed. She knew better, too: custody of the tome had already cost her family far too much. They’d bled for it ever since the late nineteenth century, when an ancestor had acquired it and foolishly followed one of the rituals it described, trading baby lives for Lares to protect his family and heirs in perpetuity. As long as it slumbered in Neverland it couldn’t do too much more harm—but now that it had come to the attention of Rupert and his friends, it fell to Eve to cover it up again.

  Sacrifices had to be made, starting with the Bond.

  Eve had always been of the opinion that when life handed you lemons, you should make lemonade.

  * * *

  Rupert dabbed at his forehead with his monogrammed silk kerchief, then paused on the landing to wheeze. Damn these stairs, he thought irritably as he reached for his asthma inhaler.

  Eve had popped out of the office with her alarmingly overpriced bodyguard a few hours ago, then she’d completely dropped off the map, as Rupert had discovered on arrival at London HQ. However, Tech Support had a tracker on her smartphone, and Rupert held the other end of its high-tech leash. It had led him here, to a decaying shitpile on Kensington Palace Gardens. It was an investment property, currently overrun by squatters and suchlike riffraff. According to the Tech Support database one of the squatters was a Person of Interest—Eve’s younger brother.

  Rupert had brought bodyguards along. They made short work of the gate, and he stalked through the overgrown debris-strewn drive to find a stove-in front door and shattered windows. Disgusting, he thought. What on Earth is she doing here? The only clue he could see was parked just around the corner—his Aston Martin. Obviously the Bond had come here, then Eve had followed him for some reason of her own …

 
; “Sir, I’d recommend that we check the building for squatters before you enter?” one of his guards advised.

  Rupert smiled tightly and shook his head. “I’ll be perfectly fine,” he told the man. “You fellows can stand guard outside. I don’t expect I’ll run into any trouble.” At least, not into any kind of trouble that might pose a threat to a High Priest of the Mute Poet. Rings of power dug into the fleshy skin at the base of his fingers, and he wore a ward under his shirt collar. His waistcoat lining was spun from the silk of a venomous spider, embroidered with fell runes and a powerful grid to absorb incoming imprecatory energies. It would take more than merely human malice (or bullets) to wound him.

  He’d entered with flashlight in hand, only to find chaos. Tables overturned, paper strewn everywhere, a lingering sickly stench. One of his rings pulsed luminous blue. Poison, he realized, startled, then commanded the ring to decontaminate the entire building. What kind of squatter throws poisonous substances around his own digs? Curious and curiouser.

  Of course he’d brought along a copy of the rather odd diagram Eve had printed before she nipped round to visit her brother. Looking at the diagram, it made more sense now. It was a map of sorts, and it started out right here. In fact, now he thought about it, this must be the document Eve had tried to buy at auction. He chuckled quietly. So the lost concordance to the Book of Dead Names had been in her family’s custody all along, but she hadn’t known? Such irony!

  It would be interesting to hear what Eve had to say for herself before he dropped the hammer on her.

  By the time he made it to the top floor Rupert was breathing stertorously and sweating like a pig. His opinion of Eve’s brother, low to start with, was now at rock bottom. How could anyone stand to live in such a shithole? Obviously he was an even worse wastrel than the reports had indicated, back when he had a PI looking into Eve’s background.

  But now Rupert found something promising: a door, wedged ajar where no door should be—a door between two rooms, and it was the source of the occult power he’d felt flowing through the building like effluent from an overflowing sewer. Well then.