Dreams from the Witch House: Female Voices of Lovecraftian Horror Read online

  “Yeah,” I said. “Never mind.” And just because I guess I wanted to throw her a little, to get some kind of reaction I said: “The dream has ended, anyhow.”

  She moved so fast I didn’t even have time to stumble backwards or dodge. Her hand shot out and caught my wrist, fingers cold and tight like the rusted jaws of a pair of old pliers. “What do you know about Dreaming?” Her breath was cold. We were standing on a traffic island under a baking Cape Town summer sun and her breath was ice.

  “Nothing.” I shook my hand free. “Nothing, forget it, lady.”

  She shoved me hard in the chest, almost sending me backward into the traffic. “Stay away from Jarry, ape,” she said. “Stay in your own stinking shit and misery.”

  I didn’t have time for this. All I’d wanted was a liter of milk and a pack of Camels and to get back to my apartment where it was marginally cooler and I had a lifetime supply of illegally downloaded TV series that would probably only make it to South Africa in 3011. Jarry, cold breath and the Jesus. Apes. Just… nonsense words. Meaning nothing. I shook it away and ran.

  By the time I got home, I’d played that damn encounter in my head a million times. It wasn’t like I could talk to anyone about it. Savvie was at work and she’d probably call me an idiot for “making first contact” anyway.

  I could Tweet about how some crazy on the street just about gave me a one-way trip to the Saviour himself, or I could see if any of my friends were online and maybe I could mention something, because I couldn’t get her words scraped out from my skull.

  Not nonsense. True words.

  I knew nothing about dreaming. I never remembered mine. So instead of talking to anyone, I smoked cigarettes because a girl has to have vices and I watched a show I’d already seen because the actors were adorable and the hoyay was strong, and I Instagrammed Savvie’s cat because it was Saturday.

  My hands shook. I smoked more cigarettes and pretended everything was okay.

  What else was I supposed to do?

  I met The Jesus in a bar, while I was busy turning wine into water. Snap. I was there alone because Sav had bailed on me, claiming that working in a bar had put her off them for life. Odd thing. So I’d left her with the cat and headed down the road to the only-mildly grotty Hole, got drunk enough to not care that I was a frumpy mother’s failure, and found myself a skinny, pretty Jesus.

  He was haloed under a lamp that curved down like a curious tulip, drinking something clear and sparkly from a glass frosted with tiny droplets. It’s not like I was at the Hole trying to get laid, of course. More like I was open to the opportunity if it arose. Ha-ha, so many terrible puns. But that’s the reason I noticed him. I’m a sucker for a pretty face. Envy, maybe.

  And he was all Pretty Face. One of those boys that looks like he’s just waiting for the ’80s to resurface so that he can dig out his mother’s clothing. A long face and hair that stood out in every direction, a perfect collusion of natural curl and expensive product.

  He was sketching. And it should have felt so put-on, so damnably coy and pretentious. So look-at-me. Somehow it didn’t. I took a seat close to him and ordered another glass of the house red (boxed; I’m no fool, but then again I don’t come to the Hole to satisfy my exquisitely refined palate) and watched as his pencil danced across the paper, leaving a shadowy image behind.

  “Did you draw that from your head?” Stupid question. It must have been. It’s not like there was a three-headed dog sprawled out on the bar-counter.

  Pretty Face looked up and he had a startled look like I imagined a deer would have, if I’d ever seen a deer. I saw a porcupine once. It’s not quite the same thing, saying someone had a startled look like a porcupine. That’s a totally different kind of startled.

  One where you get a face full of black and white spines.

  “I—” He just sort of sat there. Looking for an escape route, possibly. There would have been an awkward silence. Instead there was just an awkward mumbly indie guitar with whispery vocals.

  So, All Pretty Face and No Pretty Brains. I was already spilling over with disappointment. At least the wine was good. What am I saying—the wine was terrible.

  “No,” he said.

  Terrific. Forward motion on the conversation train. I put down my glass. “Uh-huh.”

  “I saw one once.”

  I wanted to laugh at him, to mock him before he could mock me, but he had this serious cast to his face, a sweet sort of innocence that made me bite back on whatever scathing retort I was fermenting. “In your dreams?” I said instead.

  He laughed. It was a nice sound, all smoky and warm, like the last hour of a good party. “In the Dreaming.”

  “In Jarry,” I snapped back, like the word had been sitting curled up on the back of my tongue, just waiting for the moment I would let it free.

  “Yes,” he said.

  After a few seconds he closed his sketchbook, downed the last of his drink and took my hand. I let him, not because I’m an idiot, but because Jarry had already eaten into my dreams and I desperately wanted to go there.

  We walked out into a night that had turned shivery; a cold front blowing in from the ocean. I rubbed my hands along my arms and watched him, watched his breath smoking. He was real. I didn’t even know his name. I was drunk. Maybe.

  Probably. You should phone Sav, I told myself.

  “So,” I said. “You know how to get to Jarry.”

  He was fiddling with his jacket zip. It had got caught in the strap of his little flat portfolio bag. “I did once,” he muttered.

  “But the old ways are closed.”

  “Yes.” He looked up at me, frowning. He was even prettier when he frowned. It gave him the air of a confused lizard. “How do you know?”

  I shrugged.

  “Because you don’t smell like someone who has been to Jarry.”

  “I do this thing. It’s called bathing.”

  “No—” He brought one hand to his face, and covered his right eye. The other one stared at me unblinking. A little creepy, I’ll admit. But we were still standing outside the Hole. There were people around. “You look wrong.”

  “Nice. I already get that shit from my mother, I don’t need it from you.” I turned to stagger back and he caught my arm, gently pulling me to him.

  “Not—not like that.” He smiled, shy as a schoolboy on a first date. “Your face is perfect.”

  Perfect. I’m an idiot, but it was still nice to hear a little flattery for a change.

  “I meant,” he said, “that you don’t look like someone who has seen Jarry.” His hand was melting-warm on my cold arm, and just for once, I wanted to hold on to the idea that something about me was worthwhile, even if I knew he was lying. And I wanted to know more. So sue me. “I haven’t.” I sighed. “Obviously.”

  “Ah.” He lowered his hand, held it out to me. “I’m Sullivan. And I can get you there.”

  Pretty Face, Pretty Hands. Long fingers. Elegant. Fingers that could draw the strange, the magical. Of course I shook his hand. “Euphemia,” I said. “Shut up, my parents were weird, you get used to it. Call me Mia if the whole thing is too much.”

  “Euphemia.”

  “Exactly.”

  “It sounds like a drug.”

  I laughed. “Oh, hang on, is that what this is? Is Jarry a trip?”

  “Yes,” said Sullivan. “The best.” Then he shook his head. “It’s not—it’s better than drugs. It’s marvelous.”

  I’m not even going to pretend I wasn’t having massive second-thoughts by this point.

  “There are still ways into Jarry, there always are, but the main portico collapsed, so everyone ape-side is trying to find a new way back and it’s all a bit chaotic right now.…” He waved his Pretty Hands around.

  “Ape-side?”

  “Where the humans live.”

  “Ah.” I edged sideways. It was too cold out here anyway. Chatting with Pretty Face Sullivan had been entertaining, but we were now steering the Good Ship C
onversation far past the Harbor of Mildly Amusing into the uncharted Seas of Uncomfortably Weird. “Perfect.”

  “You can’t help being human,” and he said it so sincerely. Perhaps it was his voice. I was being hypnotized. That’s it. Totally hypnotized. “It’s not your fault.”

  “Ah.” My conversational train had derailed. I didn’t exactly have a lot of responses ready for this sort of thing. “What are you then?”

  “A go-between.” When he smiled, I swear it all made sense. “Now, come on. There’s supposed to be a slipway to Jarry here, but it’s temperamental at best. Takes a bit of thumping before it works.”

  “And you know this how?” I followed him, every molecule of my brain screaming, but damn me, I followed him anyway. “I thought you’d only used the Old Way.”

  “An angel told me.”

  “Right. Angel.” I nodded.

  “Yes, exactly. Zaile. He was drunk at the time and I had to trade him a starling-bowl for the information, but Zaile’s Mundus-born.” He was smiling again. “It will be there, and we will get it to work.”

  “Okay.” I was fumbling with my phone, sending a message to Sav. Near Hole. Chatting up weirdo. Pretty weirdo. Possible serial killer. Pretty serial killer. Not home in twenty send heavily-armed men. “So how far is this doorway-thing?”

  He stopped. We were literally half a block from the Hole. I could still see people lounging on the pavement, leaning against the walls, talking shit and smoking and drinking their craft beers. Safe. “Right here.”

  I tilted my head. Someone had stuck a poster to the wall. It was for a circus. Last year. Most of the poster was gone. Some scrawled graffiti, a damp patch that smelled like urine and a few weeds growing through the cracks. “It’s… wonderful,” I said. “I’m truly lost for words.”

  Sullivan slammed his open palm into the center of the crumbling brick wall, and I jumped. Beneath his hand, the wall shivered. Sullivan grinned.

  And I saw Jarry.

  §

  It was night over the city and the stars hung in garlands across the sky, stars of silver and blue and red and green, like distant fireworks. The buildings were tall and narrow teeth, blackened in the indigo maw of the sky. It wasn’t the sight of Jarry that made me draw a deep breath, like an infant’s first, but the smell.

  Incense and jungle green and parrot feather sweetness and a cinnamony musk, the air of a different world. Behind me, the Hole and the stink of beer and cigs, salt and stale fish faded, the empty ocean night falling away. I didn’t even have to wait for Sullivan to speak, I stepped forward before anyone or anything could stop me.

  The air was thicker here and my lungs had to work harder to draw oxygen from it. I took gulping breaths, filling my chest with a sweet taste that reminded me of pears soaked in whisky.

  “Jarry,” said Sullivan, and his voice was loaded with emotion. I tried to place it. Relief? Perhaps. It was flooded with something close to tears, like it had been years since he had seen the city and was finally coming home.

  “Oh my god,” I said. “It’s real. It’s really real.”

  Sullivan didn’t acknowledge me, probably because yes, it was really real and I was stating the fucking obvious. In my hand, my phone had gone dead—not just out of signal range or emergency call only, but utterly black. I thumbed the power button a few times, but nothing happened. With a short sigh of irritation I slipped the phone back into my pocket. Of course I wanted to Instagram this shit; it was the most exciting thing to happen to me since forever.

  The skyline grew clearer as my eyes adjusted to the new world and the strange starlight. One of the buildings towered over the other, a huge window like a rose flowering on one side. We might not have churches quite like that in South Africa, but I’d have to be completely illiterate to not know a cathedral when I see one. It was massive though, far larger than anything I’d ever imagined.

  “So the church even made it to other worlds?” I said, one finger pointed to the monstrosity. As if Sullivan wouldn’t know what I was talking about.

  He laughed. “The Cathedral still hangs on to its dreams of a new Jesus, but they’re waiting for nothing.”

  “You know that personally, do you? The Almighty drop you a line?”

  Sullivan took my arm. “Even if there is one, he won’t bother coming here. This is just a way-stop, a place where the lost souls drift. Purgatory, if you will.”

  “So why the hell did you want to get back?”

  “There’s something I need.” He fumbled in his coat. “Listen, it’s not exactly safe for you here. Stay too long and you’ll forget you were ever anywhere else, and then you’ll become part of the Long Road and never get back home.”

  “Whoa—wait. What?”

  He took a small blue egg out of his pocket and cradled it in his palm. “I can anchor you to earth, but you’ll need to swallow this.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Hardly.” He pressed the egg into my hand.

  It wasn’t actually an egg, just a tiny pale stone, no bigger than the nail of my pinkie. I closed my fist around it. Cold. And hard. Small enough to swallow whole. “And you want me to actually put this in my mouth—” I began.

  “The sooner the better.” His eyes were fierce and dark here under the rainbow stars. “You really don’t have much time.” His look softened. “Sorry, Mia. I’m worried. If you’re trapped here, it would be on me, all that guilt. I simply took you, didn’t warn you or anything. Please, for your own safety.”

  The egg tasted of nothing. Just a moment’s flinty coolness, and then I swallowed it down like I was taking a handful of painkillers the morning after the night before, dry and desperate.

  I imagined that it sat heavy in my stomach, connecting me back to earth, but in reality I could feel nothing at all. “You’re sure it will work?”

  “Yes,” he said and his smile grew warmer, grateful almost. “Beyond certain.” He grabbed my arm. “And now, we’d best move, if I’m to make my appointment.”

  I shook off his grip, but followed him anyway. Sullivan was walking briskly down a narrow road edged on either side by delicate spindly buildings draped in what looked like fairy lights. As I passed, I saw that they were all mismatched—some antique glass bulbs that looked older than dust, and some new and cheap, the kind you get at China Town for a couple of twenties.

  “Detritus,” said Sullivan. “Stolen dreams.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Some of the more unusual residents can slip off the Long Road, into what they call Dreaming. Back into your world. And it is your world, to an extent.” He glanced back at me. “It was your world.”

  “They… go back in time?”

  “About fifteen minutes or so behind, yes. They take what they can, and bring it back here to trade. There are also a few doorways that do the same thing, but they’re expensive to use.”

  “Oh.” I didn’t really have anything intelligent to say, I realized, but just about none of this made any sense. It had all the logic of a dream. I wasn’t convinced that I was not actually dreaming. The whole thing had taken on a menacing eeriness: things brought back from the past, dream-nonsense and doorways to other worlds.

  We walked the city of Jarry, heads bowed as though we didn’t want anyone to take notice of us. I saw things, of course. I couldn’t help staring. Women dressed in bearskins, their great ursine heads like bizarre frightening helmets, men in sackcloth and ashes, wearing gilded crosses almost as big as my hand, people with thin faces, their eyes like shifting mist. Three ashy figures wearing curling horns, naked, their mouths sealed. Butchers. They nodded at me as I past, their black eyes full of secrets they couldn’t tell me.

  I didn’t think I liked Jarry very much. My hand pressed against my stomach, just under my ribs. Staying here was becoming less and less appealing. Sullivan’s egg had better work.

  Finally, Sullivan led me to a small arched door sunk halfway into the ground, down a little half-flight of stairs
marked in a checkerboard pattern. There was a painted wooden sign just above the door, swinging idly in the faintly perfumed breeze.

  Die Eend en Esel.

  “Tell me purgatory is not full of repressed Afrikaans Calvinists,” I said. “The Duck and Donkey? Really?”

  “It’s as good a name as any, and besides, you can be sure that no-one here even remembers what it means. It’s gibberish from the past. Probably stolen,” Sullivan added. He stepped down and pushed the door open. Chatter and smoke and the rapid scrape and whine of a fiddle spilled out into the night. “Come along,” he said. “We’re letting the stink out.”

  Inside Die Eend en Esel the crowd were mussels in a tide pool, shoulder to shoulder, pressed thick and black and salty, their voices and laughs braying and rolling. People were dressed in mismatched fashions, like they’d raided a garage-sale black bag of unwanted clothes and tried them on with no regard for style or color or, indeed, anything. One tall woman was wearing a curtain tie-back as a necklace, the tassel hanging between her breasts like a tired dancer.

  Sullivan elbowed his way toward the back of the pub, and I trailed in his wake, muttering excuse-mes to no-one who was listening.

  Finally, we came to another door, this one closed. A few raps and a hurried exchange, and we were in, the door shut behind us and the noise muffled.

  “No,” said a small man, sitting on a stool in front of a large wardrobe. “It doesn’t matter what you pay me, it’s not going to work. Passage to Mundus is beyond your reach, not with that face.” He took off the long top hat he was wearing and squinted. “What’s this you brought?”

  “Tor.”

  “Sullivan.” The man rolled his hat in his hands, his eyes glinting as he looked at me. “Answer the question.”

  “A way in.”

  He shook his head. “Oh no. The gates won’t open for you and you know it. Mundus is closed to your signature.”

  Sullivan shrugged. “I’m aware of that. I’m also an avid reader, and a great follower of various Mundus-collectors and what they keep in stock.” He pulled a second little blue egg stone out of his jacket pocket, and held it out between finger and thumb.