Songs of Dreaming Gods

by Meikle, William

  He went down, deeper into the black, gripping the gun tighter for warmth, took two steps more, and another tear in space appeared, right in front of him, two eggs, four, sixteen before he had time to react, calving in time with his rising heartbeat. He raised the pistol and fired into the center of the bunch before they could double again.

  Light flashed, and he opened his eyes to look over an all too familiar hospital room. He’d woken up here once before, coming up out of a morphine-induced dream that had been a hell of a lot more pleasant than his current circumstances.

  It wasn’t a sad, white-coated doctor carrying the board with his notes on it on the other side of the bed this time, it was the Reaper again, the long-hooded robe pulled down over his face, and the blood-red scythe leaning against the wall behind him. But when he spoke it was in the same deep, cultured tones John remembered the doctor using that day, and the same two words that John would never forget.

  “You’ll live.”

  John sat up in the bed. He wasn’t wearing a hospital gown, he was dressed as he had been since his arrival, and he had the gun his right hand. He brought it up and pointed it at the Reaper’s face.

  “Now, now, sir,” the Reaper said. “We’ll have none of that in here. You need to rest.”

  “Fuck rest,” John said, almost shouting, aware of the irony even as he said it. “I’ll rest when I’m dead.”

  He fired, but the Reaper was faster, reaching behind him and bringing the scythe up and round, the bullet hit it and pinged off and away.

  “Careful, you could have somebody’s eye out with that,” the Reaper said.

  John leapt from the bed, intending to shoot again, to kill the Reaper, break the spell. But he wasn’t given the time, the Reaper waved the scythe in the air and the hospital room wavered, then disappeared entirely.

  The background filled in slowly again around them; John stood on a landing at the bottom of a flight of steps. A small table, two chairs, a candle and a chess set were there some six feet in front of him, ivory figures, white winged rat-things on John’s side, black reapers on the far side where the hooded figure sat between John and the next flight of stairs down. John doubted that the placing of the seat was accidental. He raised the pistol again.

  “Forgive the cliché,” the cultured voice said from inside the hood. “But I needed to get your attention. Please don’t shoot me again, it’s most unpleasant and just wastes both of our time. Okay?”

  The pistol sent John some extra warmth, but there was no flaring heat, no soaring choir. It seemed that danger was not imminent. John held his peace, hoping to learn something to his advantage despite everything telling him to just shoot and keep shooting until this…thing, went away completely.

  But he didn’t move forward, and he didn’t lower his gun, he stood his ground, staying six feet from the table. The hooded figure sighed, and started to make moves for both players. John recognized the opening, the Dragon variation.

  “We didn’t get a chance to introduce ourselves earlier,” the Reaper said, “although I do believe we have met several times, long ago for you, mere minutes for me.”

  The Reaper reached up a too white hand and dropped back the hood. The head underneath was as white and skeletal as John remembered, and there were no eyes, just black holes that seemed to sink back forever. Stars danced, way down in the black depths of the sockets. A thick gray tongue was the only piece of flesh left, and it slithered, like a fat maggot bloated on a meal inside a mouth full of tombstone teeth.

  John had no words, he could only stare, remembering boyhood terrors and night sweats, dismayed to see that the barrel of the pistol trembled and shook as he took aim again at the thing’s skull.

  “Do you like what you see?” the Reaper said, still making quick moves on the board, the pieces seeming to dance under the bony fingers. “This is what I can offer you, if you insist on your current course of action.”

  “Balls,” John said.

  “And you won’t be needing them either,” the Reaper replied, deadpan, “not where you’re headed. Now, are we going to play, or are you just going to let me win? Because, and I’m doing you a favor telling you this, you really don’t want me to win. Not yet anyway. Not here.”

  John stepped over and sat down.

  “What do you mean, not yet?”

  “I thought I was perfectly clear. Not yet, too early, sometime later maybe, not at this time, all that happy shit.”

  “You know, you don’t talk the way I thought you would.”

  That got John another laugh.

  “I can boom with the best of them, I just find it a tad camp and theatrical if truth be told.”

  It was John’s turn to laugh.

  “And the rest of this shit isn’t?”

  He put the gun down at the side of the board, and didn’t move his hand far from it. If the Reaper noticed, he didn’t remark on it.

  “Now, are we going to talk or are we going to play chess?” the Reaper said.

  The pieces were all back in their starting positions, although John had not seen the Reaper move them. John leaned forward and moved his King’s pawn forward two squares.

  “Boring,” the Reaper said, and responded by doing the same with his own King’s pawn.

  John moved out his Queen’s side knight. The piece, a Burden riding a horse, felt warm in his hand, and seemed to squirm slightly as he put it in place.

  “Smoke them if you’ve got them,” the Reaper said, taking a pipe from the folds of his cloak. It was only then that John remembered the smokes in his pocket. They were a bit battered, but he managed to salvage one and lit up. It was his move again. He reached over and touched the King’s side knight.

  “Ah, it’s about time he came into play again. You’ve met the gatekeeper,” the Reaper said. It wasn’t a question.

  “What does that make me, the fucking key master?”

  Without a pause the Reaper replied in a deep throaty voice.

  “There is no key master, only Zuul.”

  Despite, or maybe because of, the sheer absurdity of it all, John laughed, long and loud, the sound echoing away and up into the tower where it was answered by manic cackling from the Burdens.

  The Reaper looked up.

  “Noisy wee buggers, these things of yours, aren’t they?”

  “They’re not mine,” John started, but the Reaper’s laughter stopped the sentence from finishing.

  “Of course, they’re yours,” the cloaked figure said, waving a skeletal hand over the board, “and you know that already, you drew them, both literally and figuratively. You have yours and I have mine. That’s the way the game works.”

  “There are rules?”

  “It’s chess. Of course, there are rules, the dance is everything.”

  “What are we playing for?”

  “Control of the board. Haven’t you got that yet? The board is all there is for you now. You came over the threshold with your sigil and your pain, the Dreaming God called, and you answered. You are his now, to dream as he pleases.”

  “No, I’ve seen it, I’ve seen the room with the chair. I can go back.”

  “That is not back. Not all the way at least. And seeing and going are two different things. Could you go everywhere you’ve ever seen in a movie? Or on television?”

  “No. But they weren’t real.”

  “They were constructs of someone’s imagination though. And as real as those screeching friends of yours up above.”

  “No. The Rat King controls them. I’ve seen him. I’ve talked to him.”

  The Reaper laughed and moved a Knight to block John’s attack before pointing at the white King.

  “Take a closer look,” he said.

  John turned the white King round to face him. It had the wings, the clawed feet and the tail, but the rodent-like face was all too familiar, it was the face John saw in the mirror in the mornings when he shaved.

  “I don’t understand,” John said.

  “No. But you�
�re getting closer now, and you will reach full understanding when the time is right. We are on the cusp of change and renewal, a changing of the guard if you will.”

  John had to think, and he didn’t like the results much.

  “So, you’re saying that I am creating all of this in my mind?”

  “No. That’s not what I’m saying,” the Reaper replied, and moved his Queen out into a menacing position. “The boards exist, although the players may change.”

  “Boards? There are other places like this?”

  “Oh yes. There are places like this all over. Most people only know of them from whispered stories over campfires; tall tales told to scare the unwary. But some, those who suffer…some know better.

  To John’s ears that sounded too pat, like a prepared speech.

  “And theses sufferers, what do they know that I don’t?”

  The Reaper made another move, hiding his King behind a barrier of other pieces before replying.

  “They are drawn to the places where what ails them can be eased. As you have been drawn.”

  John made a non-committal move, it strengthened his defense but did little to put any pressure on his opponent.

  “What ails me? Nothing ails me,” he said.

  The Reaper smiled, there seemed to be more than a hint of sadness in it. At the same time John’s belly throbbed, the wounds making themselves felt, deep cuts that he suspected would never fully heal.

  “Your sigil says otherwise, my friend,” the Reaper said.

  “My what?”

  The Reaper moved his King’s side Bishop so that it joined an attack with the Queen. John hadn’t been paying too much attention to the game, but it now looked like his pieces were in danger of being swamped if he didn’t do something about it soon.

  The Reaper waved a hand and the table, board and pieces started to waver and fade.

  “We shall finish this later, you have enough to think on for now.”

  The Reaper pulled his cowl over his face, took the scythe in his hand, and leaned over. For a horrible second John thought he was going to be kissed. He felt the chair fade from under him and stood up just in time before its support failed completely.

  “Later,” the Reaper whispered, and blew out the candle, plunging John into darkness.

  16

  Janis walked out of the boudoir bedroom and through the closet door. She emerged, not into a bedroom, but back through the front door of the house itself to step into the quiet downstairs hallway. She was so astonished that she did not think to hold the door open, it slammed shut behind her with a clang that shook the building.

  The hallway looked, and felt, different, although she couldn’t put her finger on how; it was a subtle change in the way the air moved, or a shift in the color scheme, or the smell, which now reminded her of bread and coffee. Whatever it might be, it hardly felt like the same place at all.

  But if I’m here, maybe I can get out this time.

  She tried the main door again, but it was as securely closed as before, and fog, dense and almost solid, still swirled outside the high window above the door. No matter how much she tugged and pulled, kicked and punched the door stayed solid. She considered starting in on the wall to tear the wallpaper, woodwork, insulation and eventually the outside wall, but that would need tools, tools she didn’t have.

  Maybe I can find some.

  She turned away from the main door and looked around. From where she stood she couldn’t see anything that might be a storeroom.

  But that doesn’t mean there isn’t one in the back.

  She started down the hallway, but to her great surprise the green door to the left-hand apartment swung open as she came level with it.

  “Hello?” Janis said. “Anybody there?”

  She wasn’t thinking about people at that instant, she was thinking about dolls, blue eyes, staring, porcelain shoes and hardwood floors. Before she stepped fully forward and exposed herself to the view of whoever might be inside, she stood to one side, listening. There were no tiny footsteps, no skittering in shadows, but there was the murmur of low voices in conversation.

  She looked inside to see a small woman standing over a bulky man, who sat in a kitchen chair. They were both drinking, Scotch, Janis could smell it, and smoking strong cigarettes, which she could also smell, there was the faintest hint of aniseed or liquorice wafting through to her.

  The woman looked barely five feet tall, the paleness of her face accentuated by jet-black hair that hung in a single long plait to tickle her waist. Her clothes were equally black, a floor-length dress giving her the appearance of a hole in the fabric of reality. She seemed to glide rather than walk.

  “I am the concierge,” Janis heard her say, “but you already know that. What you don’t know is what that means, here in this place.”

  “Hello?” Janis said, trying again to get noticed. “Can somebody help me out here? Can somebody tell me what’s going on?”

  Neither of the room’s occupants took any notice of Janis’ presence, and when she moved forward to step into the room it was as if there was a barrier in the doorway, preventing her from entering. As with the main door itself, no matter how much effort she expended, she could not make any headway. She could only stand and watch, a spectator watching a scene as if it were playing in a movie. But she could hear well enough, and started to pay attention when the small woman spoke again.

  “I live here, in number one,” the concierge said. “But you could have number three if you like. Number six is empty, but you wouldn’t like that. The last concierge had that one, and he wasn’t as fastidious in his habits as some, it might be years before it’s ready for somebody else.”

  Her apartment seemed to have been transported wholesale from a previous time period; it was decorated with heavy wood furniture, mahogany by the looks of it, and polished to within an inch of its life. There was dark red flock wallpaper, portraits of the long dead, presumably family, and a thick crimson pile carpet that had seen its best days many decades before. A gas fitting in the wall provided the only source of light, sending flickering shadows dancing everywhere. There was no television, no computer, not even a radio, or a gramophone, just a long wall covered totally in bookshelves housing leather-bound volumes that looked older still than the furniture. Dark velvet curtains, deep red, almost purple, covered the windows that overlooked the street. Janis suspected she knew what she’d see if she pulled those drapes back, fog, thick swirling fog that would look almost solid.

  “You’ll have questions.” the concierge said to the man.

  “I will have questions,” he agreed. “Many of them. Here’s an easy one to start with. What in blazes is going on here? Something brought me here, I felt its tug and pull in my head and in my gut, what is it? Is it some kind of hypnotism, some kind of drug?”

  “There are houses like this all over the world,” she started. Janis realized that she’d read those same words, just minutes before, words that were on the card she now carried in her pocket. And the man’s questions were very close to the same ones she had been asking. She forced herself to pay attention. The concierge had stopped puffing on her cigarette and was going on with her reply.

  “Most people only know of them from whispered stories over campfires; tall tales told to scare the unwary,” she went on. “But some of us, those who suffer…some of us know better. We are drawn to the places, the loci if you like, where what ails us can be eased. Yes, dead is dead, as it was and always will be. But there are other worlds than these, other possibilities. And if we have the will, the fortitude, and a sigil, we can peer into another life, where the dead are not gone, where we can see that they thrive and go on. And as we watch, we can, sometimes, gain enough peace for ourselves that we too can thrive, and go on.

  “You will want to know more than why. You will want to know how. I cannot tell you that. None of us has ever known, only that the place is important, and a sigil is needed. Those are the two constants here.”

&n
bsp; She puffed contentedly again for several seconds. Smoke went in, but very little, if any, came back out, soaked away and down inside her.

  She might be full of it, nothing in there but swirling smoke, like the fog.

  That thought made Janis pause.

  I don’t believe in ghosts.

  That was another long-held belief she was having trouble in maintaining, just one of an increasingly long list.

  The concierge was speaking again.

  “If you still want to stay after what you have seen here today, you must agree to my terms,” she said. It wasn’t a question, and the man nodded in reply.

  “How can I not stay? All I ever wanted is here, somewhere in this house. I need to be here, with her. It’s all I’ll ever need.”

  “Then it’s decided. You’ll take number three. Once we get you settled and your things moved in, there will be more rules, all of which are for your own safety while you are here. But first things first. You will need a sigil, for that is your connection to the Great Beyond, and the way that the Gatekeeper knows to allow you access.”

  The man motioned at his belly. There was plenty of it under his shirt.

  “You mean I’m to get cut? Here?”

  She smiled.

  “Cut, or tattooed, or even drawn on with a Sharpie. It is the voluntary marking of the flesh that is the important thing. Don’t ask why. I can’t tell you. All I know is what I was told myself. Just putting it on paper doesn’t work, in fact, it could open ways that the Gatekeeper does not control, and that way lies madness, then death soon after. So, it must be the sigil, and it must be on flesh. The fact that it works is all I know. It has to be taken on faith.”

  “You do know what I do for a living?” the man said, rather too harshly. “Faith is not normally a word in my vocabulary.”

  “Then learn it,“ she said, raising her voice. “That, or leave right now and don’t come back. I don’t really care either way. I’m not here to mother you, or be your confessor. I’m the concierge. If you want to talk, I’ll listen if I feel like it. But my job is to look after the house and make sure you continue to have access to the Gatekeeper. That takes up most of my time. The occupants need to be able to look after themselves.”