Courting
Morpheus
Edited by Jodi Lee
Introduction by Alethea Kontis
Proofing by Brandon Layng
Cover Art & Interior Design by Jodi Lee
ISBN: 978-0-9864831-2-7
Multi-Format Ebook/Digital Download
Smashwords Edition
This anthology is a collection of works of fiction. Any resemblance to place, person or event is strictly coincidental.
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What a Long Strange Trip It’s Been – Editor’s Note
Poppies So Red, Bones So White – Camille Alexa
Like Father, Like Daughter – Jeff Parish
The Aldevowering Chesterfield – Ann Tupek
Grinds Slowly, But Exceeding Fine – Bruce Barber
You're Gonna Think I'm Nuts... – M.R. Sellars
What You Know – Geoffrey Girard
Night Terrors Revisited – Louise Bohmer
The Word Inside – David de Beer
Case File Closed? – Rhada McKai
* * *
What a Long Strange Trip It’s Been
Editor’s Note
Courting Morpheus was originally set to be released by another publisher, nearly three years ago. It’s since been through many more edits, many more incarnations and at my low point in this project, I gave up and created The New Bedlam Project webzine as an outlet for the writers here.
Along came Greg Hall who basically told me I was insane for giving up. Both he and Louise Bohmer ganged up on me and with everything else that was going on at just that time, I began formulating the idea behind Belfire Press, and I knew my first project would be getting Courting Morpheus into print. A little advice from my darling mentor extraordinaire Murv, and… well, here we are.
The writers have been amazing through all of this, waiting patiently as the fates of their stories balanced precariously on the edge of abandon. Secretly I’ve envied their patience with me, as I’ve never been so impatient with myself. I love them all, and have been so very blessed by their words. Without them, without their belief in this project, it would never have risen from the first stumbles. Thank you!
I want to take a moment to acknowledge the contributions of my pseudonymous writing group – Rhada McKai. Steve, Mel and James were in their own ways instrumental in keeping the Courting Morpheus and New Bedlam dreams alive. We no longer write together – the epilogue here was our last real hurrah. On January 17th 2010, James succumbed to a brain aneurysm; Mel lost her husband, Steve lost his best friend, I lost a soul-brother. Rhada McKai may live on in name, and in New Bedlam. Perhaps we’ll see her there, some day.
So, this is for my grandparents, who let me play in their nightmare New Bedlam and for my daughters who love to roam the streets at night. It’s for Yahootie, who takes my hand and leads me through the mirror so often and for Louise, Greg and Murv for being my soft shoulders to whine on so often. And for D., who knew I didn’t really mean that it was just a word. Last but certainly never least - for the writers, for the readers.
Here it is. At long, long last.
* * *
By Alethea Kontis
If you've actually made a point of reading this introduction, you're probably already familiar with my infamous ersatz guardian angel, Murphy. If, however, you happen to be a neophyte glutton-for-punishment completist that must, as the King of Hearts decrees, begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end, please let me introduce you.
Murphy is what invisible friends evolve into after you graduate college. Spiritual optimists, like my mother, refer to him as an angel. Realists like myself, who have to live with the damned imp day in and day out, call it like it is. He's the gun-toting shadow in the alleyway, the silver-tongued devil in disguise, the trickster spirit on the stairs. He's the evil older brother who has the right to beat you up and tease you mercilessly, but who still loves you no matter what (if sometimes begrudgingly only because he has to).
Murphy is everything that can go wrong and will, but for the best possible reason. If he knocks your ass in the mud while wearing your brand new party dress, it's because a.) you needed to be reminded of your humility, 2.) you were in the line of fire on the grassy knoll, 47.) someone else at the party is wearing the exact same dress, or Q.) the handsome millionaire that helps you out may not be able to remember his secretary's name, but he's sure as hell going to remember you. Possibly all of the above, since by leaning down to help your sorry butt out of the muck, your Harlequin hero just dodged that bullet too, while currently missing the most important meeting of his life with the owner of that exact same dress.
You know how it works. You might not have met my Murphy, but you've all danced with him. He's let you down when you needed hope, and he was none too gentle about it. He gave you blue skies when you wanted rain. And when you fell asleep, he brought the monsters. The monsters know him by another name.
They call him Morpheus.
I was born under a lucky star, and healed a breach between families. My father looked into my future and saw mountains and valleys… and Elvis in a Pizza Hut. Psychics told me I was destined for greatness. They warned my mother that I would bring home interesting friends, and I lived up to that end of the bargain. Murphy never surprised anyone—he was just another in a long line of my beloved misfits.
The daughter of a superstitious family is taught to remember her dreams. It is definitely a learned skill—over the years, the diaries on the bedside table filled with only semi-coherent scribblings gave way to post-it notes with full sentences, snippets of poetry, snatches of brilliant, Technicolor memory that could be fully recollected with one word, or one name. I have wrestled criminals and ridden dragons. I have played on playgrounds with schoolchildren I did not know and walked through houses and hotels so vast they shamed every skyscraper. I have learned that death means change, and that defecation means wealth. I have dreamed the same dream compulsively until I accomplished whatever that dream was telling me to do. I have watched the monsters change from giant flying chemical molecules and thieves in the night to a voice on the phone, seducing my own mother with faraway pleas for sympathy and cries for help.
I have learned that every ending begets a new beginning, a new set of paths to choose from, and a new town that they all lead to. I have learned that both the prophecies and fears evolve as we evolve, and we must always be brave enough to conquer them. So far, I have been brave enough.
It is also better to have fewer words to remember the bad dreams by. Superstitious families will be more than happy to tell you how much power lies in words. Spoken aloud, they are curses that need to be spat upon so as not to tempt fate. Written down, they are wishes and summonings. And you must be careful what you wish for, because no amount of tossed salt or evil eyes or lucky coins can turn aside the ill fortune you bring upon yourself.
My friends joke that I'm the “Girl who Lives.” You know, the sweet, smart, naïve, doe-eyed brunette who inevitably escapes the clutches of the man with the hook or the witch in the deep woods. Everyone sympathizes with that girl. They run with her, they bleed with her, they survive with her, and then they watch another movie. After all, someone has to live to tell the tale, don't they?
I've always felt sorry for that girl, having looked at her face in the mirror every morning. She is still sweet, still far too trusting, and yet she is haunted. Her eyes now know sadness and pain and wisdom. They are what make her beautiful, and what keeps her isolated from the rest of the world. She has witnessed things no one should witness, and she knows better than to write them down and preserve such nightmares for a lifetime.
In time, perhaps she realizes that her mother was right, that everything happens for a reason. Perhaps she stops running from the ghosts that haunt her, and instead turns and introduces herself. Instead of fearing death, she chooses to embrace life. And those ghosts hold her hand and guide her through the most exquisite darkness. The ghosts… or one spastic, unpredictable invisible friend named Murphy.
I have lived many places in my life, and I look forward to living in many more. I have run from monsters, I have been bitten by friends, and I have tasted the darkness like cherry ice cream on my tongue. I have burned so brightly that all the shadows have fallen away around me, and—so far, for better or worse—I have survived. I write down only the events in my life that have already happened, and stories that never will. I am careful what I wish for, and what I call down upon myself.
In my dresser there is a drawer filled with old check registers and notebooks lined with semi-coherent scribblings and envelopes stuffed with post-its. There is sometimes one word written on them, sometimes a name, sometimes a couplet, but I keep them all. All the dreams, for better or worse, get filed away there to live quietly unforgotten.
Shoved in the back of that drawer too is a certificate, crumpled and smeared with age, boasting the birth of one baby girl to loving parents Marcy and George Kontis. They tell me that smudge where the city should be reads “Burlington,” but it just as easily could be “Bedlam.” For every ending begets a new beginning, a new set of paths to choose from, and a new town that they all lead to. Both prophecies and fears evolve as we evolve, and we must always be brave enough to conquer them. Morpheus is holding out his hand.
Are you brave enough?
Alethea Kontis
Murfreesboro, TN
August 2, 2008
* * *
By Rhada McKai
I remember thinking that New Bedlam was an unfortunate name for a town, even for a town as small as this one. I killed the lights and engine as the car eased to a stop on the side of the road. It’d been a long drive, and I couldn’t wait to get out and stretch my legs.
After the blood flow returned to my toes, I perched on the hood of the old beater to light a smoke and contemplate the town just a half-mile or so down the hill. Not really much of a town, with only 1800 people in residence, and that seemed to include the rural area immediately surrounding the town. Lit up as it was, it was almost pretty. I shivered; a cold, damp breeze wafted over the hood of the car and tickled the back of my neck.
It wasn’t just the eerily drifting fog or the full moon above that gave me a case of the jitters. It was unnatural that out of the entire population tucked into their beds in the homes below, at least half were writers of some degree, probably more. Further, half of those were writers of such disturbing material that would give even Freddy Krueger nightmares. And that didn’t include the small artist community, either. Some of that shit just wasn’t right.
The Federal-issue radio crackled on the seat where I left it—reception was bad, nothing but static.
How the hell did I end up out here, in the asscrack of Neverwhere? Oh, yeah… my middle-aged raging hormones.
Reports of all sorts had been leaking from the local authorities who didn’t know how to handle what looked like a serial killer with numerous modi operandorum. The townspeople themselves had been loose-lipped too; the internet was alive with conspiracy theories and tales of mysterious goings-on in New Bedlam. The Assistant Director thought someone ought to check it out.
As usual, when he asked for volunteers, I wasn’t paying attention. I was busy checking out Special Agent Thompson’s ass filling out her skirt, when I realized the room was silent and almost everyone was looking at me. Fifteen hours later there I was, contemplating the view from the crest of the hill outside New Bedlam.
Next time I’d pay attention. I hopped off the car, got it running and headed on down to the New Bedlam Inn. Time to get to work…
Message boards had postings from people like ‘Anon-ee-mouse’ and ‘IGottaTell’ and other pseudo-anonymity jargon. No one wanted to be up front and forward and give a name. No, that would have made my job much more simple. Instead, I’d pulled a disc from the stack on Thompson’s desk; I’d just snag the IP numbers from the posts using his nifty little programs, and work my way down from there. Wham Bam, thank you, Thompson…
What caught my eye, over and over, were comments that included insomnia, nightmares and writer’s block. I wasn’t sure what writer’s block was exactly, but I figured a few glasses of Metamucil wasn’t going to help matters.
I pushed the crappy hotel room chair away from the crappy hotel room desk and reflected on those last few postings. I knew from experience that insomnia could make you think things, even see things, that weren’t quite right. Maybe it was something in the water around here that was keeping everyone feisty and they’d developed a form of mass delusion. Suddenly I was glad I’d brought bottled water.
As I was mulling that possibility over in my rapidly draining brain, I glanced out the window and felt my heart stall, skipping a beat before thudding hard, back into action.
A girl stood outside the window, staring in at me. She looked to be in her late teens, long dark hair hanging well over her shoulders in stringy tangles. I’ll be honest here, she looked like a frickin’ ghoul. The moment I made to leave my chair, she was gone. I dove to open the door, but noticed something had been shoved through the ample crack between it and the floor. An envelope – and of course inside was a note:
‘They couldn’t keep them confined.
Now they’re out of their minds.
The dark ones have woken.
No words can be spoken.
Before the last is bitten.
The end word must be written.’
There was no signature, but I was sure the ghoul-girl had not only left it, but had written it as well.
I pushed the chair back to the desk and sat down, loading the browser on the computer. I searched the ‘Net for the poem and after a fair bit of link drilling, I found it. A writer’s blog, loaded with crazy ramblings of monsters of the mind unleashed on the remains of humanity.
By the time I finished reading the entire blog, I was shivering. Mostly from what I’d read, but also the air in the room. The air conditioner must have fucked up — it was cold, but damp and muggy at the same time. I closed the drapes over the window after checking numerous times to make sure there wasn’t a creeper out there, waiting for me to fall asleep – or worse – to leave the room.
I understand now. The writers can’t sleep and the monsters they’ve written about, contained on pages of what was once thought fiction, are loose. No longer contained.
What is the ‘end word?’ How is it written? Where?
That’s when I thought I should call on you, to help me.
* * *
Poppies So Red, Bones So White
by Camille Alexa
1.
They couldn’t keep them confined.
Ruby walked along Grail Street between Quest and Haven. A small pebble rolled from her foot, click-clacketing along the edge of the sidewalk from the toe of her boot. She’d walked the same route to school since the third grade, so she didn’t have to concentrate too hard to keep the stone rolling. Didn’t have to concentrate at all, really. She felt numb inside, dead. Already cold, like a corpse in its dank bed.
Rattle-te-tat, tat, tat-tat-tat.
Rattle-te-tat, tat, tat.
The small ivory pebble rolled away again and again from Ruby’s slow kick. As it tumbled across the pale pavers of the sidewalk it made that sound: the sound of bones rattling against the insides of a clay cup.
Ruby turned the corner at Johns Street toward the school full of people she didn’t want to see. All her life she’d been told senior year would be the best, would be the year she made good friends, would be the year everything came together and she would start the real part of being alive. Instead, her senior year turned out to be the year the nightmares came to stay.
To call them nightmares didn’t seem exactly right. To anyone living outside New Bedlam, a nightmare was a thing which came when one slept. It rolled across the unconscious mind like a dark shadow, but when a person woke and turned on the light the shadow would dissipate, or it would eventually be chased off with the dawn. Or a person could run to her mother, her friend, perhaps her husband, and she could say, “I had a bad dream.” A soothing word or sympathetic arm about the shoulder would banish nightmares with light and company.
But in New Bedlam, when dawn came and lights were turned on, the shadows lingered, scrabbling and clawing at the back of the mind. When Ruby looked deeply into the eyes of her classmates, her teachers, her parents, she saw the flickering movements of raking talons, or the licking of flames, or the cold, empty flatness of despair. Perhaps elsewhere nightmares were confined to the dreaming mind, but not in New Bedlam. Not anymore. Now they lurked behind the eyes, looking for ways to get out.
2.
Now they’re out of their minds.
The smattering of kids who wandered the halls spoke in hushed tones and low murmurs. Ruby’s footsteps echoed hollowly along the corridors, as though the bodies of her fellow students were as ghostly and insubstantial as they seemed. Seniors who were eighteen could sign themselves out of school for health reasons, and Ruby thought she might be the oldest student still attending classes since her birthday the day before. Everyone who could, stayed at home scribbling in notebooks or banging on laptops, trying to exorcise the nightmares that haunted their waking hours. It was almost a relief to see old Ms. Hubbard for Algebra.
Ruby slid into her seat and looked out the window while Ms. Hubbard called roll in monotone. Every time she received no answer to a name on her list, she made an audible scratch with her pencil on the sheet before her. She did not look up. The room was at least two-thirds empty.
Ruby answered the call to her name without turning her attention from the window. Outside, the sun shone bright and cold. Things should look more alive, thought Ruby, with the sun streaming down and the sparse leaves on trees fluttering. Instead, things looked bleached and desolate. Old bones, she thought. Everything is the color of old, old bones. Or maybe teeth that have been buried in dry sand for a hundred years. Old teeth and bones.
Ms. Hubbard glided around the room passing out papers. She didn’t glide like something graceful - a bird, or a dancer - more like something so insubstantial, it no longer made proper connection with the earth beneath it. An apparition.
At every occupied seat, Ms. Hubbard leaned low and muttered something into the student’s ear as she slid a paper face down onto the desk. Ruby couldn’t hear what she said, but watched her classmates as they nodded, heads hung low, eyes down. Sometimes they scribbled on the sheets before them, their pencils tearing gouges in the paper and the desks beneath. Some gave no indication of having heard the words uttered inches from their ears, though one or two flinched. A girl began to sob at her desk in the corner, as Ms. Hubbard glided away to mutter into the ear of the boy down the row.
When the teacher reached Ruby’s desk, she paused. Ruby tried to decipher the nightmare in her eyes, tried to read the series of claw-marks she saw at the back of her teacher’s retinas as though they were runes or pictographs. She tried to ignore the faint rustling noise which came from beneath the teacher’s wrinkled, parchment-colored blouse, sounding like the scrabbling hooked feet and clicking carapaces of large beetles. She tried to shut herself off from the odor which followed Ms. Hubbard like a nearly tangible cloud: lye and compost, with a hint of lavender masking the scent of decay.
Ms. Hubbard leaned low, holding Ruby’s gaze with eyes like those of a snake-charmer or a bird of prey. “It’s no use running, dear,” she said, the makeup around her wrinkled mouth flaky, disintegrating. Her voice sounded like the crumpling of butcher paper, laced with the scraping of fingernails down a chalkboard. “The Dark Ones have woken, and the King of Dreams must have his bride.” She smiled, her face crinkling. “There is no other way.”
With that, she placed a page from the stack in her arms face down on Ruby’s desk and glided toward the next row. When Ruby turned the paper over, all she saw was a field of white poppies, white against the white of the page and the searing cold white light streaming in the classroom window. White against white against white. Old, cracked-ivory white. White like salt-bleached bones, or the enamel of long-lost teeth, left in desert sun for a hundred years.
3.
The dark ones have woken.
The final bell rang though the schoolyard as Ruby turned onto Main Street. The sound of the bell echoed down the empty road behind her and lapped against her heels like nipping dogs.
She passed the sports arena. She passed the steak place, the hair salon. The few people she saw when she looked into the plate-glass windows performed the habitual functions of their daily lives with the stilted motions of string-led puppets, or the smooth, gliding moves of people with ether in their limbs instead of blood and bone. Each carried his or her nightmares differently. The waitress in the front window of the steak place just stared out into the street, her head moving in pace to match Ruby’s steps as she filed by, so slowly, it seemed she wasn’t moving her head at all, like a painting that follows a person with its eyes. The waitress’s eyes were dead and dark, flat like two drops of black paint.
As she walked past the next storefront, Ruby watched Louise Mayfield in the salon window mechanically snip, snip, snip at Mrs. Gobbin’s split ends. Snip, snip, snip. Neither woman looked up as Ruby passed.
Ruby came to her mother’s antique shop and paused, one hand on the heavy, Victorian doorknob. She knew that knob so well, she could picture the pattern of the pressed iron under her palm: scrolling vines and large roses, crumpled like deflated footballs, or the ungainly heads of rotting cabbages.
Ruby turned the iron knob and pushed open the door. A heavy bell clanged once at her arrival, then went still as she stepped into the shop. Ruby dumped her school bag on the floor by the door and wandered toward the back room. As she went, she trailed her fingers over the smooth, dull surfaces of tarnished silver candlesticks, dented snuff boxes, dead cigarette lighters, single salt cellars. She paused to run her hands beneath the fringed hanging tassels of a large lampshade, its hooped and rigidly-billowing form reminiscent of the skirts women must have worn when such a monstrosity would have been considered fashionable. Its alternating panels of purple and crimson velvets had an overlay of dark, crumbly lace. The frayed silk tassels fluttered in the air behind her as she passed, like mothwings fluttering against a naked bulb.
“Ruby, is that you?”
Ruby’s mother stepped from behind the curtain across the door to the back room. She wiped her hands on her jeans, then reached to grasp Ruby by the shoulders and draw her close. “I’m so sorry, baby. So sorry we didn’t do anything special to celebrate your birthday this year. It’s just that, with your father away, and your brother so ill, I guess things just… didn’t work out this year.” She pushed Ruby away, held her at arm’s length and stared into her face. Her lips curved faintly upward. “But you’re a woman now, Ruby. Not my baby anymore. Eighteen is a magical age, really it is. It’s when the whole world starts to make sense…”
She trailed off, her uncertain smile falling back into nothing against her teeth. In her mother’s eyes, Ruby saw wells of hot tar where pupils should be, instead of grey irises, a thousand overlapping daggers, or the thousand miniature shards of broken mirrors. At the back of her eyes, Ruby watched her mother kill herself a thousand different ways with a thousand sharp objects.
“I love you, Mom.”
“Oh, Ruby. Ruby, my baby…” Ruby’s mother pulled her into herself and clasped her close. Ruby felt the heart beating in her mother’s chest like a wounded bird flapping its wings against the bars of a cage.
“You need some sleep, Mom. Go home. I’ll close the shop tonight.”
Her mother drew back, looked into Ruby’s eyes. She bit her lip. “Well, I should check on your brother. I hate to leave him when he’s feeling so bad. That chemo really takes it out of him.” She stepped behind the curtain and returned with her armful of ragged notebooks and her keys, fumbling her sunglasses onto her face with trembling fingers. “Thank you, Ruby. I love you, too. And you’re right, of course. I should try to get some sleep.”
She crossed the small shop, turned the heavy iron knob and pulled open the large door. She hesitated, glancing at Ruby over her shoulder. “After all, Sleep is half-brother to Death, and they’re all awake now, walking among us.”
She smiled shakily, then stepped into the street, closing the door behind her. The shop bell sounded its single bitter clang to mark her passing.
4.
No words can be spoken.
Ruby pushed aside the piles of her mother’s notebooks, with their dense, dark scribblings spilling from the edges of pages and leaking over the covers like crow prints in wet sand. She slid a leather-bound antique volume from the shelf, hiked up onto the stool behind the curving glass of the art-deco counter, and settled herself as she spread open the pages. She turned each brittle leaf as carefully as she could. The Latinate text was dense, tightly-packed, with no more meaning to Ruby than the claw-mark runes behind Ms. Hubbard’s eyes. But the pictures…
Page after page of etchings dominated the book, ink pressed so deeply into the old paper, the edge-marks from metal plates were still clearly visible along the perimeters of the images. On these pages gods loved, begged, threatened, and punished other gods and lowly mortals with equal rancor, favor, and dispassion. The folds of their cloaks and robes, the tips of their antiquated weapons and the symbols of their power burned darkly against the parchment pages. The eyes of the gods were so dark and bold, it was as if they bled from the page straight into Ruby’s soul.
Ruby ran her finger along the twined forms of Hypnos and Nyx: the gods of Sleep and Night. On the next page, she stroked the embossed edges of the plate depicting the sons of Sleep and Night; those godlings who rule the dreams of men: Phobetor, Phantasos, and the greatest of the brothers, Morpheus.
“He who shapes dreams,” whispered Ruby into the dim coolness of the quiet room.
The air seemed to shudder. The light filtering past the heavily-curtained windows of the small shop flickered, as though the sun beyond were not a fiery ball of heat and life, but the flame of a tiny, vulnerable candle.
Ruby swallowed convulsively and closed her eyes. The sound of beating wings filled her ears. Dark feathers brushed against her mind. She let go of the ancient book, and the beating wings receded. When she opened her eyes, it was as though a ribbon cinched taut about her chest was released; she could breathe and her heart could beat again.
She looked down at her hands, balled into fists on each side of the open book, and at the pages which lay between them. Morpheus stared back at her, his eyes burning into her mind. White poppies spilled from his feet across both pages, though the petal of every flower was roughly the shape and scale of a human skull.
Ruby slid from the stool. Her knees felt like soft jelly, her stomach like a puddle of murky water. She sank onto the rich Aubusson carpet beneath, almost sighing with relief when the soft, prickled ends of the antique silken fibers met her cheek. She closed her eyes, the shop and its jumbled contents spinning outside her as though caught in the eddy of a fast-flowing river. Inside, behind her eyelids, she felt calm and still.
The sound of rushing water grew. It flowed past and around her, though Ruby felt safe at the center of it, as though she lay in the eye of a hurricane, where everything is more still than it would be even without the chaos raging around.
When the last of the rushing faded, she opened her eyes and sat up. The silken strands of the antique carpet beneath her had become the soft crumpled petals of the reddest flowers Ruby had ever seen. The petals crushed beneath her hands as she steadied herself and fell away from her lap in a cascade of crimson as she swung her knees over the edge of the long, low, ebony bed upon which she lay. Around her flickered the gentle brilliance of hundreds of candles, their rich, honeyed scent filling her mind. Beyond the mingling halos of candle flames, she could make out the rough-hewn surface of glittering rock, arching far above her head and disappearing into lofty dark.
A slight sound caught her attention. A tapestry of cascading red poppies hanging along one wall was brushed aside and a small procession of black swans entered the cave, each bearing in its beak a velvet sack with a satin ribbon drawstring. Each swan waddled to Ruby - far less graceful on land than in water - and placed its burden at her feet. Each in turn made a snaking bow with its long, sleek neck, then left the way it had come. A woman, with a cat’s face, paws the color of cold milk and eyes darker than ebony, nodded as the last swan ducked past the tapestry she held aside. She turned to Ruby and made a sinuous dip of her own slender neck, eerily similar to that of the swans, though covered in smooth white fur rather than black feathers.
Ruby opened her mouth to ask the catwoman a question - any question. But instead of words, the sound of rushing water fell from her lips. The woman smiled, sadly, thought Ruby, and shook her head, then turned to go.
The poppy curtain fell into place against the hewn stone of the cavern wall and Ruby was alone. Reaching her fingers to her lips, she opened her mouth a second time, but the only sound which emerged was like the rustling of dry leaves on a forest floor.
Ruby clenched her fists into tight knots. She felt the nails of her fingers pressing into the flesh of her palms. She closed her eyes and opened her mouth and screamed at the top of her lungs into the soft, gently-flickering dimness of the poppy-filled cave.
The only sound she heard was the sound a pebble might make as it rolled along damp earth - the only noise spilling from her lips.
5.
Before the last is bitten.
Ruby slept. For the first time in almost a year, she slept deep.
Before sleeping, she had run to the wall and brushed aside the tapestry of hanging poppies. There was no sign of the opening through which the swans had come. No amount of pounding with her fists against the rough rock of the wall caused any reaction other than the small blossoming of purple bruises on the edges of Ruby’s hands. No amount of screaming produced greater sound than the trickle of mountain streams or a noise like grains of sand, blowing across the side of a dune.
Ruby’s explorations had revealed nothing in the cave other than the candles nestled into niches in the rock, the copious amounts of red poppies spilling across the bed, floor like a carpet of congealing blood, and the several small bags of midnight velvet left by the swans. One of these contained a pair of beautiful silk slippers, each with a tiny white poppy embroidered on the toe. Another held a pale ivory dress so light, it must have been woven from spidersilk. Yet another contained a beautiful necklace, a plaited choker of pale silver filigree set with enormous red gemstones of her namesake. And in the final bags, the matching cuff and earrings to the necklace. Rubies for Ruby; perhaps someone remembered her birthday, after all. When she opened her mouth to laugh bitterly at the thought, the sound of twigs lightly scraping against a bough emerged from her lips. It was after that, Ruby slept.
She woke to the cold bite of hard gemstone against her cheek.
Ruby rolled upright and tried to swing her legs over the side of the ebony bed, but was thwarted. She panicked a moment, kicking as though against sucking water. But when she looked down, she saw the movement of her legs was merely hampered by the long, fine silken skirts dragging about her limbs. On her wrist sparkled the huge dark ruby set in the filigree cuff, and when she raised her fingers to her cheek where a tingle still lingered, she could feel the gem’s impressions on her flesh where she had lain with her face pillowed against her wrist. She felt at her throat for the ruby necklace and when she swung her head, the earrings dangled to brush against the edge of her neck.
“You are even more beautiful than I thought you would be.”
Ruby peered into the darkened perimeter of the room past the diffuse glow of candles. From the flickering dimness a man emerged, stepping into the light ringing the bed. Just as in the pages of the ancient book in her mother’s shop, his eyes and hair were darker than medieval ink, his robe black like starless night. His skin shone like pale marble. He held a hand out to Ruby and without realizing what she did, she took it.
“Morpheus,” she said, but it came from her throat like the sound of rain, pelting against flat stones.
Ruby slid from the bed to stand beside him. She felt her gown shimmering, glowing like moonlight against the inky dark of his robe. Turning, he shifted his hand so hers rode above, resting lightly on his skin, which felt warm and soft and not like marble at all. Together they walked toward the woven tapestry of poppies, and as they approached, the twined stems detangled themselves and fell into heaps of flowers at their feet, petals crushing beneath them where they trod. The opening in the wall yawned wide, a black gouge in the face of the living rock. When Ruby stepped through she felt a slight pull against her hair and skin, as though her body resisted following her mind from one place to the next.
And then they stood in the middle of New Bedlam at night.
This was not the New Bedlam of Ruby’s childhood, nor even the town through which she had passed earlier that day.
Only vaguely was this the Main Street Ruby had walked a thousand dusty afternoons. Instead of the wide, pitted road, with its crumbled, stained gutters and parked cars, there bloomed an avenue of poppies. The flowers rolled past her like a red carpet, unfurled for royalty and stretching the entire length of the street. Past the post office, the grocery and the market to one side of her, past the salon and the restaurant all the way to the arena on the other side. Hunched along the edges of the road, crouched to mimic the shapes of cars, hunkered gigantic animals, animals Ruby had only ever seen in the pages of books in her mother’s shop. She thought she recognized some of the forms; the manticore, the harpy, the gryphon, all with the crushed red petals of poppies between their fangs and caught in their talons like gobbets of fresh blood. Other creatures she knew not at all, and doubted they existed outside dream or nightmare.
Ruby looked up into the face of the man at her side. He is so beautiful, she thought. His beauty emanated from him like heat from a bonfire. When he smiled at her, the heat grew so intense, she nearly stumbled as he led her along the swath of crushed red petals.
“My brothers…” he said, his smile dying on his lips. “My brothers hunt dreamers. Tonight, all will feel the bite of Phobetor’s beasts, or the bite of a dagger wielded by Phantasos. They hunt to draw power, so we gods may walk in the realm of man.”
Ruby, unable to speak merely looked at him, letting his gaze pierce her like a shard of hot glass. About them, the creatures began to slither and crawl and slink away from where they were parked along the edges of the poppy-covered curbs. The gaping windows of storefronts, empty for the night, blazed as though fire licked through the buildings, though there was no smoke, no heat or actual flame. Ruby thought she heard groans and screams carried on the wind, but she couldn’t be sure. She looked again about the street, familiar but not familiar - home but not home - New Bedlam, but something completely different at the same time.
And still screams echoed to her on the night breeze, as tooth and blade and claw of the creatures of the brothers of Morpheus bit their way into the hearts and minds of the nightmare-ridden sleepers of New Bedlam.
6.
The end word must be written.
Why? thought Ruby.
She could not voice the question aloud, but as Morpheus led her along the center of the poppy field that had always been Main Street, and the beasts of her nightmares cavorted in their wake, and the eerie golden glow of light flickered from the wide, flat windows of the buildings that had earlier that day been the shops and restaurants Ruby had walked past all the days of her life, he began to speak as though she had spoken first.
“Once, gods roamed the heavens and planets, invincible,” he began, and though he did not turn to face her, nor slow his stately pace toward the end of the street and the arena, she heard each word as though it were a crystal drop of sound, falling into her ear.
“Gods roamed free among men, and loved them and hated them with equal measure. We, the sons of Hypnos, the Oneiroi, had more business with men than most of our kind. It is perhaps why we have lingered the longest. As long as there is man, there will be dreams. We once ruled those dreams of men, but do we still?”
Ruby felt ridges of poppy stems and small bits of asphalt gravel press into the soles of her feet through her embroidered silk slippers. The two New Bedlams mingled there, one overlaying the other like a shroud over the face of a corpse, or like a waking dream which taints all the conscious senses.
Morpheus stepped up from the street onto the sidewalk, though all was covered with the same crushed red petals. The beasts which had leapt and turned in their wake bounded past, hurtling through the flickering night like earthbound comets, rending the earth beneath their talons or slicing the air with their wings and their strangled cries.
Several disappeared into the yawning archway entrance to the arena, usually the province of New Bedlam High ball teams. As Ruby and her escort stepped beneath the arch, and the silvery lights above blinded her with the brilliance of captured stars brought close, she could barely reconcile this arena with the one she knew. That other had been the mediocre practice field of a small town and its mid-list teams. It consisted of patched, worn astroturf and soda-stained bleachers. It had peeling paint, and a whiff of old sweat. But this…
The amphitheater rose on all sides, encircling them with tiers filled with creatures familiar and foreign. Ruby recognized the catwoman from the cave, flanked by seven swans blacker than night. She saw in the stands creatures she had dreamed of when she was a child and still afraid of things under the bed and things that went bump. She recognized creatures from books she had read, some frightening in appearance, some rather tragic, and some just odd; men with the heads of snakes, women with eight arms and three eyes and six naked breasts, children with smooth, blank skin where faces should be and with fish scales instead of hair.
The harnessed starlight flooded down, cold and fierce. When Ruby looked at her dress, it was the shade of dry, cracked teeth, of old enamel or crazed porcelain. When she held her hand to the light, she thought she could see the bones showing through, naked and brittle underneath her flesh.
The sound of Morpheus’ voice in her ear made her start. “And what happens to a god who no longer rules? He dies. He dies, but before he goes, he leaves his legacy. He leaves an heir.”
Ruby gazed into his face. He smiled at her again, and his beauty hit her with the force of a blow. When he stepped forward into the center of the arena, she stumbled at his side, blinking into the light and breathing in the sounds of the crowd as the audience in the amphitheater hooted and cheered and lowed and cawed and clapped and beat the air with enormous wings. She allowed herself to be lowered gently into one of two ornate stone thrones set in the center of the field, which was a riot of rolling red from the flowers which knew no end. The marble of her chair felt comfortingly cool beneath her, and solid. Ruby closed her eyes, grateful for the cold which leached up through her dress into her bones.
“And for the King of Dreams to procure himself an heir, he must first procure for himself a Queen.”
Ruby opened her eyes. She thought about the New Bedlam she had always known. She conjured in her mind her mother’s face, drawn and exhausted. She thought of the dead, flat light and bleached existence of New Bedlam day, and the failing of its residents, as the gods of dream and nightmare roamed their sleep and borrowed from their souls to bring her to this man’s side.
Why me? She wanted to say. She had no sooner thought the words than Morpheus reached to take her chin and tilt her face toward his.
“It has never been anyone else,” he said, and placed his lips lightly upon hers.
The bestial sounds in the amphitheater rose to a new pitch. Roars and screeches rode over rumbles and squawks and joyous hisses.
With the touch of Morpheus’ lips to hers, Ruby felt again the beating of large wings against the edges of her mind. Black feathers brushed across the backs of her eyes, and the sound of flapping and fluttering filled her ears. In less time than it took her heart to complete a single beat, she flowed like dark water through the dreams and nightmares of every mind in New Bedlam. The grocer, the postman, the pharmacist. Ms. Hubbard, the waitress, Mrs. Gobbin, Ruby’s own mother. Even her brother’s dreams lay open to her touch, soft and dark and covered in baby screams and the pain of mortal illness.
Gasping for breath, shivering like a swimmer emerging from cold water, Ruby pulled back. Morpheus reached to take one of her hands in each of his. “Come,” he said, though it sounded a request, not a command. “Help me restore balance to the world of dreams. Help me shape the next generation of gods and men.”
Ruby closed her eyes again. With her hands still gripped in those of the King of Dreams, she saw the nightmares of the town lying thick over the buildings and sleeping residents like a woven blanket. She saw the sparks of light of every sleeping soul in New Bedlam, burning like feeble match flames in humid air. She could sense, rather than see, the dark shapes of Phobetor and Phantasos as they bit into the dreams of the sleepers with steely knife and fang and shard and claw.
When Morpheus spoke, his voice was soft, unhurried, as beautiful as the rest of him. “When my brothers reach the last sleeping soul, it will be too late. Even now, my power in this realm fades.”
Ruby felt the starlight dissipate above. The raucous, beastly sounds of the creatures in the stands dimmed, and when Ruby opened her eyes, it was to see a field of ragged astroturf beneath her chair without a poppy in sight. But the man at her side looked only at her. With both her hands still clasped in his, he helped her to her feet.
“What say you, my Queen, do you take me as your King? It will mean the letting go of many things, but a wondrous welcome to many, many more.”
Ruby opened her mouth, but only the gentle slapping of waves against a sandy shore issued forth.
The marble thrones melted away. Common crickets began to chirp from beneath the paint-peeled bleachers. The flat, dead rays of streetlamps dimly illuminated portions of the empty field.
“Do you take me?” he asked again, his voice barely more than a graveled whisper.
From Ruby’s lips came only the sound of snowflakes hitting petals of late-season blossoms.
Dreams, thought Ruby, I am the Queen of Dreams. With that, she willed a quill pen into her hand. She felt it there, clasped between their palms, the nib biting into her skin and the frond-ends of the curling feather tickling her wrist.
Ruby pulled the hand with the quill from Morpheus’ grasp. She slightly turned her other hand, still clutching his, so her wrist lay exposed to the night air. The vein which ran beneath the skin there pulsed faintly, visibly, under the thin, pale sheath of her skin. With the sharp nib, Ruby drew once along the unblemished white of her wrist, and when beads of red welled up - redder than poppies, redder than her name - she dipped the quill. Glancing down at the bodice of her bleached-bone dress, then up into the eyes of the King of Dreams, she lifted the pen to write her words in scrolling red ink across her silk-covered breast:
I do.
* * *
By Jeff Parish
Fog crept through the farmer’s market as a canary yellow LUV rolled down Main Street. A few tendrils tested the twilight air, but most of the mist seemed content to lurk among the empty benches and stalls. Squealing brakes brought the truck to a halt at the Anders Avenue traffic light. Silence descended once more, broken only by the pickup’s clattering, choppy engine.
“Green would be nice,” TJ McCollough muttered at the red light glowing above her. The temptation to run the stoplight was strong—she couldn’t see anyone around—but Mom had always warned her about the sneaky cops of the New Bedlam Police Department. The last thing she needed right now was a traffic ticket she couldn’t afford.
Looking around, TJ frowned. New Bedlam was hardly party central, but even a small town that rolled its streets up at dusk should be jumping at least a little. If not for the lights from the inn and businesses along Main, she might have thought the town deserted. She saw more people in the University of Houston library on a Friday night. Motion to the right caught her attention; she watched, trying to make sense of the shadows frolicking in the patchy fog. Probably high school kids out for spring break. She rolled down the window and leaned out, squinting at the mist.
Despite its ghost-town appearance, the night was alive with an odd assortment of stealthy sounds. Whispers, snatches of conversation, footsteps and an occasional moan drifted on the breeze with the gathering mist. TJ shivered despite the warm spring air. Some of those noises sounded wrong, somehow. Get hold of yourself, girl, she thought with a mental shake. This has always been a creepy little town. Don’t let your imagination run away with you.
TJ had planned to stay at school over spring break and catch up on a couple of major projects. At least, that’s what she told her parents. She did have a lot of homework piling up, but truth was, she didn’t want to come. Dad had insisted on moving to this backwater just before her senior year of high school. He had found some wonderful haven for professional writers—a nice, out-of-the-way town where he could write in peace and network with fellow scribes. Mom had loved the idea of moving back north. Raised in Nebraska, she found the Galveston climate oppressive. Even her twin brother Horatio seemed pumped, but TJ refused to leave. She had friends in Texas she could stay with and a scholarship lined up for college. Besides, the town was just too creepy. She found herself a little overwhelmed by the star power gathered here, but the town itself was too Lovecraftian, full of old buildings, shadows and fog. And she barely recognized her family when she visited.
Horatio had fallen in with some Goths. Mom seemed happier than she had been in years, but her smile had an odd brittleness about it. Dad had retreated almost entirely into his work. They used to stay up late into the night discussing the horror genre and writing in general, but TJ could barely pry him out of his study to say hello and goodbye. Plans of staying in Houston evaporated with her mother’s call. She could still hear the barely controlled panic in Mom’s voice.
“It’s the writer’s block,” she said. “You’ve got to come, TJ. I’ve got to get out of here before he drives me crazy. He won’t sleep. He barely eats. All he does is walk around the house yammering about darkness and making sure all the lights are on. I swear, I think if I flipped a switch off, he’d kill me. Please, TJ. Talk to him, you know, writer to writer. You’ve got to do something.”
The traffic light finally changed. Pushing in the clutch, TJ wrestled the transmission into first gear amid a grinding, metallic chorus. The Chevy lurched forward, threatened to die and lurched again. Cursing, she stomped down on the clutch, gunned the gas and popped her left foot free. The tires spun a moment before catching asphalt.
Writer to writer, she thought with a smirk. Now that she wants something, suddenly I’m a writer. Dad had encouraged her literary ambitions, but the best Mom managed was to tolerate them. When a major horror magazine bought her story “A Doll’s Eyes” earlier in the semester, she had called them, eager to share the news. Dad wouldn’t come out of his study. Horatio was at the local coffee shop. All Mom would say was, “Don’t get your hopes too high, dear.” That off-handed condescension kept TJ at a slow boil for weeks. When her mother called, she had nearly refused, but she had to go—her father needed her.
A wall of brownish-gray fur flashed past her headlights, jerking her back to the present. TJ slammed on the brakes, but whatever it was had already disappeared into the mist beyond. A dog. It was just a dog, she told herself. But what kind of dog is that big? Why couldn’t I see it any better? Glancing upward, she saw a darkened streetlight. She turned. It looked as if maybe one of every three lights was lit. As she watched, another flickered and died.
Shuddering, TJ turned left on King Avenue, past the book and antique shops and into residential neighborhoods. Lights burned in nearly every house she passed. One particularly bright oasis glowed a little down the street on the left. She tried to count the houses. Surely not... Protestations died as she pulled into the driveway at 1418 King, parking where her mother’s Camry normally sat. The sprawling McCollough residence had lots of windows, and every single one shone brilliantly. Rows of lights lit up the yard. What on Earth is going on here?
She grabbed her backpack, slid out of the truck and trotted up the gravel walkway to the front door. There she saw not every light was on; the ornate glasswork set in the door was dark. She tried the knob and found it unlocked, just as Mom had promised. TJ walked in. Light blazed everywhere except the stairway in front of her.
A glassy-eyed, gaunt figure shambled out of the shadows, pale hands outstretched. Stained, wrinkled clothing hung loosely on its frame. It moaned as it approached. TJ screamed and backed away, fumbling with her keychain, trying to find the pepper spray she kept there. It was only after she hit the wall that she realized the groans were actually words.
“Lights out. Too dark. Got to get the light back on.”
“Daddy?”
He ignored her. Reaching overhead, he grabbed the bare bulb and quickly unscrewed it, tossed it at her and inserted a replacement. TJ hissed in pain and dropped the hot light bulb. How long had that thing been burned out? A couple of seconds? Light restored, her father blinked and peered at her.
“Hi, TJ. It’s good to see you.” He gave her an awkward hug. “I don’t know where your mother’s gotten to, but I could use some help checking the other lights. Do you mind?”
“Sure.”
TJ followed in a daze. Every Frederick McCollough fan knew him as a tall, fat man who smiled a lot. The same picture appeared on the back of every book cover, from his early Outer Darkness to his latest, The Living Night. The last time she had seen him, he still resembled that photo, even if he didn’t smile as much. Now he looks like something out of ‘Dawn of the Dead.’
“Daddy, are you OK?” He didn’t answer, or even pause in his constant muttering of “lights” and “dark” and something about the “end word.” She opened her mouth to repeat herself when he replied.
“I’m fine, sweetie. Just… tired.” He never stopped his slow, shuffling gait. “It’s a lot of lights to keep up with, you know?”
Chewing on her lip, she lapsed into silence once more. He threaded a random path through the house, but he seemed determined to check every last bulb. As they wound their way from room to room, she noticed that every lampshade and light fixture had been removed. Easier access to the bulbs, she thought. This house—an antiquated, sprawling domicile that must have been home to generations of farmers before New Bedlam swallowed it—had been one of the few bright spots of her visits. TJ had found herself unable to contain a sense of childlike wonder at the way rooms seemed to magically appear when you were convinced you had reached the outer wall. Now, she just found it exhausting.
After they completed their circuit of the first floor and headed upstairs, TJ decided to call it a night. “I’m going to bed now. I’ll see you in the morning.” She grabbed his arm and pulled him into a tight hug. After a moment’s hesitation, he returned the embrace. “It’s good to see you, Daddy.” He smiled faintly, restless eyes scanning the walls. Something about his behavior seemed oddly familiar, but she couldn’t put her finger on it.
“Good night. Don’t turn any lights off, OK?” He turned and resumed his inspection, calling over his shoulder: “Sleep while you can.”
Frowning at the floor, she turned down a side hall and went to her room. What’s that supposed to mean? She shut the door and slipped her boots off. I’ll ask him about it in the morning. Her backpack hit the floor with a soft thump. TJ yawned and turned toward her bed.
A hundred glinting eyes stared back at her.
She yelped and took a half-step backward. The china dolls, apparently unmoved, continued their silent gaze from atop her bed. Hand pressed to her chest, TJ gave a shaky laugh and took a deep breath.