Memory and Dream

“You mind telling me what’s going on here?” the detective asked.

Rolanda straightened up, determined not to fall apart. Someone had to hold things together because there were still other lives at stake. Ignoring Davis, she asked the reading woman, “And the others? Alan and Marisa?”

“There’s no way to tell. We’ve no connection to them as we ... as we had with Isabelle.”

“Did you drive over?” Rolanda asked the detective.

“Sure,” he replied, pointed to the unmarked sedan that stood at the curb. “But what’s that got to do with anything?”

“We’ll tell you in the car. Right now we need to get to a tenement in the Tombs before somebody else dies.”

“Look, lady—”

Rolanda gave him a hard glare. “I don’t have time to argue with you. If you want to help, give us a lift. Otherwise, just stay out of our way.”

She took Cosette’s hand and hurried down the walk toward his car without waiting to see if he’d follow. Davis hesitated for a long moment before he sighed and joined them.

“This better be good,” he said as he started up the car. “The only reason I’m going along with you is because I know you folks are straight shooters, but if you’re dicking me around we’re going to be playing twenty questions down at the precinct. Take that as a serious promise, lady.”

“My name’s Rolanda.”

“Whatever.”

He pulled away from the curb, putting his cherry light on the dash with his free hand. As he reached for the siren’s switch, Rolanda caught his hand. “No sirens,” she said. “Otherwise you’ll scare them away.”

He pulled free of her grip. “Fine. You mind giving me an address so I can call it in?”

“We don’t have an address.”

The car slowed. “Lady,” he began, then started over at the sharp look she gave him. “Look, Rolanda. If you can’t trust me with the address, why the hell are you having me tag along?”

“We don’t know the address,” Rolanda said. “Cosette can tell us how to get there, but she hasn’t got a street name or number.”

Davis glanced at the pale-faced girl who sat between them.

“Great.”

He put his foot on the accelerator and the car picked up speed again, heading north for the no-man’s-land of the Tombs.

“Turn right here,” Cosette said.

Davis nodded and followed her direction. Once they were out of the traffic and driving down the empty, rubble-strewn streets of the Tombs, he slowed down and turned off the cherry light.

“Left,” Cosette said.

“I’ve got to call this in,” Davis told Rolanda.

When she nodded, he unhooked the mike from its holder, but before he activated it, he studied the graffitied walls and darkened streets that lay beyond the windshield. There were no street signs. There was no indication that anyone had lived here for decades. All he could see were derelict buildings and over-grown lots.

“I haven’t a goddamn clue where we are,” he said.

“Left here,” Cosette told him.

After he made the turn, he replaced the mike on its holder. He had to swing around a couple of abandoned cars, weave around a rotting mattress that lay in the middle of the street, and then the way was relatively clear for a few more blocks. Ahead of them, at the far end of the block, the car’s headlights caught the rusting bulk of a city bus, its sides festooned with graffiti.

“We’re almost there,” Cosette said.

Davis nodded. “Almost where?” he tried.

“This is what we know,” Rolanda said as he pulled up in front of the abandoned bus and she began to explain.

XI

The dark, claustrophobic space in which John had unaccountably found himself made a wild unreasoning fear flare up inside him. With an effort he worked to suppress it. There was too much at stake to panic. He took a slow, steadying breath, then another.

He had meant what he’d said just before he’d lunged for Rushkin. He wouldn’t allow another to die in his place. He would prefer oblivion to walking in the same world as the monster. But most of all he’d prefer to continue the existence Isabelle had given him and instead, rid the world of Rushkin.

But the latter wasn’t an option since he’d discovered that he couldn’t physically harm Rushkin. So when John had leapt forward, it wasn’t to attack Rushkin. He’d had the painting in mind, Isabelle’s The Spirit Is Strong, his gateway. If he could reach it before Rushkin pierced it with his knife, John knew he could wrest the painting from the monster’s grip. He was capable of that much. It would be up to Isabelle to stop Rushkin for good.

Halfway to Rushkin he’d felt a familiar sensation—that faint buzz of something like static electricity heralding the instantaneous passage from wherever he was to his source painting. And then he’d vanished from Rushkin’s makeshift studio in the Tombs. He’d felt an endless moment of bewildering vertigo as he hovered in the between place through which he had to pass before his journey could be completed. A long confusing moment during which there was no up and no down, no before or behind, no direction whatsoever, only an endless flux of possibilities. He had expected to reappear directly in front of Rushkin, prepared to grab the painting away from the monster when he did, but the between hadn’t functioned as it normally should have. Instead of being returned to the tenement studio where Rushkin was holding his gateway painting, John now found himself floundering about in an enclosed dark space, unidentified objects pressing against him from every side.

Standing absolutely still, he reached out with an exploring hand to find that what crowded him were stacks of paintings. The darkness, he realized after a moment, wasn’t complete either. A body length away he could see a crack of light, and as his eyes adjusted to the dimness, he could see a course through the paintings.

John worked his way carefully toward the light, fingers finding a doorknob. It turned readily under his hand, the door opening with a sharp creak. A moment later he was stepping out into the large bedroom of Barbara Nichols’s apartment that doubled as her studio. Across the room from where he stood, Barb was at her easel. She was half-turned to look at him, one hand upraised and held against her breast, her eyes startled wide with surprise.

“This ... this shouldn’t be possible,” John said slowly.

Barb lowered her hand, then wiped it on her jeans, leaving behind a smear of bright red pastel pigment. “God, you gave me a fright,” she said.

“I ...” John shook his head, trying to work out what exactly had gone wrong. “I don’t understand.

Rushkin’s got my painting. When I reached for it, I shouldn’t have come here.”

“I knew that guy wasn’t you.”

“What guy?”

“The one who looked just like you who came for your painting a few days ago.

Bitterweed, John thought. His doppelganger had been here before him. “But—?”

“I didn’t give it to him,” Barb told him. She walked over to where he stood and led him back toward the battered chesterfield that was set kitty-corner between a bay window and a bookshelf stuffed to overflowing with books and papers. “You look terrible,” she added. “You better sit down before you fall down.”

John allowed her to steer him to a seat. While he sat there, she left the room, coming back moments later with a teapot and a mug.

“I think it’s still sort of warm,” she said, pouring him a mugful of tea.

She fetched her own mug from its precarious position on top of the wooden box holding her pastels and filled it as well. As she returned to sit with him, John cupped his mug with both hands. The mint tea was only lukewarm, but it was still comforting to have something to hold. As was the act of drinking the warm liquid. It made him feel