Songs of Dreaming Gods

by Meikle, William

  When she looked at the high shelf at eye level above the furthest dresser across the room she had to fight to control her breathing again. A row of china dolls stared back at her from eyes made black by the shadows in which they sat. The stares were bad enough, but Janis knew these dolls, knew them of old, just as she knew that their eyes were blue, far too blue.

  The six sisters, her grandmother had called them, six witches more like. Janis had always refused to sleep over at Nana’s place until the dolls were securely locked in a closet, for she had known that they watched her, with their beady little too-blue eyes. Even after they were hidden away she felt those eyes, following her around the room from inside the cupboard, and watching her as she lay, too scared to sleep, watching even from the darkness, especially from the darkness.

  To see them here, now, made her more sure than ever that she was under the effects of some kind of drug.

  Stop fucking around with my memories.

  Although the gramophone had wound down, and there was no one near it to wind it up again, the turntable started to spin and the song once more filled the room.

  Where he lies, where he lies, where he lies, where he lies

  The Sleeping God is dreaming where he lies.

  She had turned to look at the gramophone when the sound started, so she was looking in the wrong place when she heard another noise at the end of the first chorus, a soft thud as if something had fallen. She looked back to where she thought the sound had originated. Five dolls looked back at her from the shelf.

  There was no sign of the sixth.

  Shadows darkened in the room, threatening to plunge it into darkness. Something scurried and skittered along the floor at the far baseboard, and although it was too dim to make out, Janis knew that it wasn’t a rat. It was too big, too noisy for one thing. It could only be the missing doll, those scary, staring eyes seeking her out.

  You’re not real. This isn’t happening.

  Just to prove her wrong, the scurrying noise came again, this time from the corner between the bed and the armoire. And she knew just which doll it would be, the one with the blue dress and the slightly badly offset eyeball that had always seemed like an evil squint. That had always been the one she thought of when she thought of them at all. And there it was again, a scurry of tiny porcelain-shoes on the hardwood. It may not be real, but that didn’t make it any less frightening.

  And it’s getting closer.

  She turned, feeling panic rising, and tried the door handle again, almost crying out in relief as the door opened allowing her to slip out quickly to the kitchen and close it tight behind her.

  She heard more scurrying in the room beyond, then scratching, down at floor level, where a doll might be. The song from the gramophone wound down to a last fading bass drone.

  The Sleeping God is dreaming where he lies.

  The room on the other side of the door fell quiet again now that the song was done. Janis thought she might be able to open it again, if she only had the courage. She could look in, just a peek, to see the old dolls, all six now back together, staring at her from the shelf. It might even persuade her that the last thirty seconds had all been part of this bad dream, nightmare, she was locked into. But courage was in short supply at that moment. She stood there with her hand on the handle holding the door closed until she felt comfortable letting go.

  It took a while before, making sure the door was going to stay firmly closed, she turned her back on it, walked back through to the kitchen and opened the fridge door wide. The interior light wasn’t functioning. She knew that the power had been out at least since much earlier that morning, but the six-pack of beer she found inside felt cold enough. There was also a bowl of leftovers, lasagna by the look of it, and a pint of milk that hadn’t gone off, but it was beer she needed right now, and plenty of it. She took a bottle out, putting the others back to avoid the risk of being tempted by a second, cracked it open. She chugged half of it down before she started to feel like her old self again, although she had not taken an eye off the bedroom door since walking away from it. She finished the beer off at a more leisurely pace while leaning back against the kitchen table.

  There was no sound apart from the slight gurgle of beer in the bottle, and the only thing she could see out of the small kitchen window was yet more of the swirling fog.

  Still not in Kansas, Toto.

  The lurid poster above the stove wafted and waved as if in a slight breeze then went still. The whole apartment went still, as if holding its breath, waiting to see what might come next. There was something different too, and it took her a second to spot it. The center of the red pentacle had been colored in yellow, and somebody had left a smudged fingerprint right in the center.

  The fat man. Had to be.

  She carefully ran a fingertip over the new coloring, but it came away dry. It looked to have been done some time ago, another impossible fact to file away for future reference over more beer, much more beer.

  Once she was sure the bedroom door wasn’t going to open again, Janis gave in and went back on her decision that one was enough. She took a second beer from the fridge then went through to the main room. She stood at the window looking out at the swirling fog. At least there was still plenty of light, but she knew that it must already be sometime in the mid-afternoon, and that darkness wasn’t going to be too far away.

  She wasn’t sure she was going to survive here in the dark.

  Not here. Not like this.

  She finished off the beer, took the empty through to the kitchen and dropped both bottles in a bin by the side of the refrigerator, checking that the bedroom door was still shut in the process, then went in search of a way out of the nightmare.

  She wasn’t quite ready to face the stairs again yet, so she went across the landing and rapped on the door of the apartment opposite. If she could only find someone, anyone, she might have a hope of navigating her way toward some kind of sanity. But nobody answered, and she could hear no noise either here on the top landing or from elsewhere in the building.

  The light shifted, like clouds scudding overhead, and it got darker, worryingly quickly. She looked at the stairs, remembering that last frantic flight up. Going down would be fraught with danger, if only because her nerves were already jangling just at the thought of it, and vertigo threatened to send her head spinning.

  But if I don’t go down, what do I do?

  She wasn’t at all keen on heading back into the crime scene apartment, not now she knew the dolls were in there, lurking and staring.

  She rapped hard on the door of number five again, and to her astonishment it swung open wide to reveal a short, dark, hallway inside. But she didn’t get time to check it any further than a cursory glance, for the darkness thickened further on the landing, making it almost too dim to see clearly. A door slammed in the crime scene apartment across the landing. Something, something small, sent hurried, tiny footsteps across the kitchen floor. The sound carried out into the hallway all too clearly in the still quiet air, porcelain shoes on hardwood, and the swish of a dress slightly too long to avoid being dragged on the floor, a blue dress, belonging to a doll with a wall eye.

  She imagined its too blue, too staring, eyes trying to seek her out, the slight turn of its head to compensate for the bad one. She knew, just knew, that it was already looking right at her, and she did the only thing she thought might keep her safe, she stepped quickly in through the open apartment door of number five. She closed it quietly behind her as the footsteps got closer, coming through the main room opposite and heading for the white landing door—a door she had left open.

  8

  By three o’clock neither the sarge nor Inspector Green had turned up at the station. Neither had answered their phones. Todd went to see if the witness had anything to add to her earlier statement, but the blonde, Samantha, had fallen asleep with her head in her hands, so he left her to it. If she was guilty of anything they’d find out soon enough, and if she was innocent, s
he’d seen something so terrible that sleep for her would be a blessed relief that would all too soon be over.

  He went back to the office and sat at his desk, sifting the ever-growing pile of paperwork the case was generating. They’d had cops canvassing the length of Church Street most of the day, and with no reward to speak of. Nobody had seen or heard anything untoward. It was as if the mass violence and mayhem had occurred in a bubble of silence, despite the fact that it had probably been full of screams and wailing. The dead that Todd had seen had not died easy.

  The lack of any information bothered Todd, and there was also the fact that Forensics hadn’t turned up a murder weapon. It was beginning to look like the sarge’s initial prognosis of some kind of animal attack was pretty close to the truth.

  So, where’s the damned beast now? Should we be worrying about rabies? Do we need an animal control team?

  He supposed that, in Inspector Green’s absence, the chief would be the one asking these questions and making the tough decisions, Todd was just glad right then that it wasn’t his job. He decided to keep up his head down, get on with the paperwork and wait it out. Either the sarge would turn up later, or she’d show up, sheepish and hung-over in the morning with the boss in tow. Either way, Todd was now past caring. He’d stay small and let his superiors deal with the shit storm that was inevitably on its way. But just minutes later the chief shattered any illusion Todd had of getting back to a quiet life.

  Todd got up to fetch himself a coffee and met the bulky Irishman at the machine. There were no pleasantries.

  “So, where are they? I know they’re not here.”

  Todd had known the question would come eventually, and had wondered how he was going to answer it. The least objectionable answer came out first.

  “They’re following up a lead, sir, over in Quiddi Viddi.”

  “What kind of lead?”

  “They didn’t tell me, sir.”

  Todd knew that was a good enough answer. The chief didn’t expect constables to know what inspectors were up to, any more than inspectors kept the lower ranks informed of their movements. He thought that his answer would be enough to get him off the hook, but the chief had other ideas.

  “You’ll have to do it then.”

  “Do what?”

  “Inform the next of kin, at least one of them anyway. I'm doing two, the ones who stayed in the apartment, Peter Hines and Don Gelling. They’ve both got folks in Foxtrap and I’m off over there now. I need you to do one of the others, John Phillips was his name, you’ve got his file already on your desk. He’s got a mam up on Elizabeth Street, just ’round the corner. Take Williamson with you, in case the woman gets teary. Another woman always helps. Trust me.”

  The chief must have seen the look on Todd’s face.

  “Have you done one of these before?”

  “Once, traffic accident,” Todd replied. “I didn’t enjoy it much.”

  “Nobody ever does, lad,” the chief said softly. “Nobody ever does. Just get it done and I’ll buy you a drink when we catch the bastard that made us have to do it at all. Okay?”

  Todd nodded, but felt far from okay.

  Five minutes later he was back out on the street again, with Constable Williamson in the passenger seat as they drove the short distance around to the Phillips’ house. And this time even the bright sunshine did nothing to improve his mood.

  Far from being teary, Ma Phillips took the news with a shrug of the shoulders, a cigarette and a large slug of rum.

  They’d arrived ten minutes earlier, and at first, she’d refused them entry, thinking they might be debt collectors or church types. Then, after they were shown in, and Todd, clumsily to his own way of thinking, told her that her son was dead, she sat down, offered them a drink, and went quiet. She didn’t look shocked or stunned, or even grief stricken, she just looked like an elderly woman who wanted more rum.

  In the immediate aftermath of imparting the bad news, Todd wondered whether he shouldn’t just get up and leave her to it. The house was clean enough, but it stank, of smoke, rum and cats, he could see four fat tabbies from where he sat and knew there were at least two more behind the sofa. Constable Williamson started sniffling as soon as they entered the house and was forced to excuse herself when a sneezing fit kicked in before she could even sit down. Going by the rules, Todd shouldn’t be left alone with the woman, but it didn’t look like Ma Phillips needed tea and sympathy, not judging by the rate she was getting through the Screech. And the booze was starting to make her talkative so Todd decided to stay. It was bad form to quiz a grieving next of kin, but if she volunteered information, he wasn’t going to pass it up lightly.

  “Was it that Hines that did it? He’s an evil sod, right enough and I wouldn’t put it past him,” she said, lighting another smoke from the butt of the last. She had one of those almost impenetrable thick accents that older folks from the island beyond the peninsula often had, one that as an inveterate Townie, Todd struggled with unless he paid total attention.

  “So, John had known Hines for a while? It wasn’t just a random party that he got invited to when he was out drinking?”

  Ma Phillips did something moist and disgusting with her false teeth before replying, shoving them halfway out before sucking them back into place again. Todd had to stifle a laugh; it looked so comical, then had to pay attention as she continued.

  “Don’t ye hear me, boy? Of course he knew Hines, knew him since he were a lad, they went to school together, played together all the time. Like brothers more than pals they were. And I knew as soon as they started going ’round to that damned house in Church Street that there’d be trouble. Nothing but trouble ever came out of there.”

  Todd wanted to jump in with another question, but kept quiet. If he pushed too hard here he’d just get shown the door, and it looked like she could do enough talking of her own volition if he left her to it. Besides, he had an over affectionate cat to deal with. It had leapt, unbidden, onto his lap and was nudging his hand, forcibly, demanding to be stroked.

  At least having the cat on his lap gave him an excuse to look like he was doing something as Ma Phillips poured herself another rum, three fingers, straight up. If Todd had swallowed it at the rate she was getting through it, he’d be on the floor already, but it hardly seemed to be affecting her at all, apart from the fact that her accent got even stronger, and her delivery faster. Todd struggled to keep up with what was being said, but he caught the gist well enough.

  “They used to play ’round that Church Street alley when they were lads, John and Peter and Don, the three musketeers they called themselves. They were always getting chased off for banging a ball against the walls—this was back when the fat man was running the place, years ago, long before your time. An older copper kept getting sent round to talk to the boys but they never paid him any notice. I think they just liked to play at being scared.”

  “Scared?” Todd said, then bit his tongue, he hadn’t meant to speak at all, but she went on as if she hadn’t noticed.

  “Everybody knew that house was wrong, this was ten, fifteen year ago, but it’s been wrong for a lot longer than that, strange folk in and out of there day and night, and some as went in and never came out. Even when I first came off the island in seventy-five I heard folks talking about it as a place to avoid. I told the boys to stay away, but Peter Hines in particular kept going back, even when they were teenagers and should have been out smoking and chasing lasses. He couldn’t stop talking about it and making up daft stories about goblins and demons and dolls and all kinds of soft shite. But I thought it was just a passing thing, you know how lads get stuff in their heads for a while, then forget about it for years?”

  She stopped to light another smoke, and then delivered the blockbuster blow that had him rushing back to the station.

  “It all flared up again last year when Peter moved into the empty house and John started hanging around with that blonde tart, Samantha something or other, I knew she was no goo
d right from the start.”

  9

  Someone, something, waited for John at the foot of the next flight of steps.

  At first, he couldn’t see much more than a darker shadow and John thought it was another one of the Burdens, come in through a window and waiting for him. But it stood there so still, so brazenly, on the landing of the seventh level down, as if it knew that he would be coming.

  Its wings rustled where the leathery skin brushed the walls on either side of the passageway, and a thin rat-face widened in a grin full of sharp yellow teeth when it saw John coming. This one was bigger and older than the other Burdens he’d seen so far, broader across the chest, and gray around the whiskers and eyes. Its feet were thicker and broader too, allowing it to stand upright, the outstretched wings helping it to balance. More than that, this one also had arms. They were currently crossed over his chest but couldn’t hide the fact that each of its five-fingered hands looked much too human.

  John was not fooled though, there were still talons on those broad toes, inches long, black as jet and razor sharp. The thing saw John looking and tapped the toes on the ground in a martial drumbeat that rang and echoed in the confines of the corridor as it danced a slightly off-balance accompanying jig. In other circumstances, it might have been almost comical.

  It, he, for the pale thing dangling between its legs could hardly be ignored, wore a crown of silver, a thin band, intricately carved, on top of his head, perched somewhat precariously between a pair of pink fleshy ears that twitched as he spoke.

  “Well met, my friend,” he said. His voice was high pitched and whiny, sounding incongruous, again almost comical, coming from such a great barrel of a chest. John nearly laughed, but the pistol sent a blast of heat to his palm and the choir sang louder. He got the message. There was potential danger here, and he needed to pay attention.

  “You’re no friend of mine,” John replied, trying to keep his voice even.