Land of Dreams (23 page)

‘You’re a smart lad, Jack. You might have been my own son. You know that, don’t you? You and I.’

He paused and shook his head, regretting, he seemed to imply, that he and Jack weren’t good friends, that he had nothing but Jack’s well-being in mind and wasn’t a murderer at all. Jack hated him for it.

‘My agreement with Ling saved me at the same time that it killed him.’ Dr Brown smiled up at him and stroked his chin again. ‘I’m tired of it, in truth. And I’m bound for greener shores, so to speak. What about you? Doesn’t eternal life appeal to you? We could strike a bargain, couldn’t we? Haven’t you dreamed of owning a carnival? It’s right up your alley, I’d say. There’s nothing to it. It maintains itself with a little help, and you get used to that soon enough. You’ll see lands you haven’t suspected exist.’

‘You’d die, wouldn’t you, just like Ling? You’re dead now.’ Jack could see that Dr Brown was edging toward the loft stairs, out of the circle of radiance thrown by the lantern and into shadow. Jack pushed open the shutters, letting in the feeble early evening light. There Dr Brown stood, regarding him with a questioning look. Was he stupid enough to think that the idea of ‘maintaining’ such a carnival would appeal to Jack? Probably he was – evil men no doubt suspected everyone of being equally evil. ‘It would be almost worth it, if we’d get to see you die – turn to dust.’

‘Of course it would be. Take your friends along. There are inevitable periods of – what shall I say? Self-denial, maybe – when the fat boy would lose a few pounds. But it would do him good in the end, and he could flesh himself out, if you take my meaning, in good time.’ There was a pause. Jack glanced down at the floor, calculating where the two bent bars were that he’d have to grab in order to hook them over the sill. He couldn’t afford to paw through the rope mess to search for them. He’d have to pluck them up and go. He’d have no second chance.

Wham! Dr Brown’s stick cracked against the pine floor. ‘Give me the bottle, boy. Now. You’re fooling away my time. I have an aversion to killing you, but that doesn’t extend to your friends, especially to the girl. It doesn’t extend past my patience, either, which is running out.’ He shook his head slowly. ‘You look a bit like your mother. Maybe that’s why I haven’t killed you yet –’

He was still speaking when Jack threw the table at him. He picked up the table by his bed, raised it into the air, and flung it with all his strength at the man below him. Then, without waiting an instant, he snatched up the end of the rope ladder and jammed the hooks down onto the sill, dropping the ladder out after it, watching for the second it took to unreel.

The crash and clatter below ended even as he let go of the ropes. He hoisted himself through the window, saw the black hair of Dr Brown rising into view on the stairs. Jack dropped, feeling with his feet for the rope rungs. He got a quick view of a face twisted with rage, heard a shout, a curse. He slid toward the grass, half expecting to be reeled in like a fish. The ladder heaved suddenly and he dropped, let go, and fell, closing his eyes and gritting his teeth and bumping to the grass almost at once. He’d been only two or three feet up. Dr Brown hung from the window, his hands on the ladder. He bent back in, thrust out again, and threw his stick at Jack’s back as Jack ran for the woods.

The road would do him no good. He’d have to take to the woods. He knew the woods around Willoughby’s farm better than anyone else. He could hide out until late, then circle around to Miss Flees’s. No, he couldn’t. He had to get there now and warn his friends. It would do Dr Brown no logical good at all to carry out his threats against Skeezix and Helen, but then logic hadn’t played much of a hand in this affair so far. He thought suddenly of Lantz lying dead beneath the tree on the meadow. It could as easily be Skeezix next if he didn’t hurry. Or Helen. It didn’t bear thinking about.

He ran along through the darkness of the forest, leaping over fallen limbs, smashing through the wet spongy grass. Oaks and alders and occasional clumps of redwood cast the forest floor into darkness. What little sunlight there was wouldn’t last out the next ten minutes. He’d get along easier in the woods than Dr Brown would, if only because he knew them. There were a dozen places he could hide, especially along the river. He slowed down when he thought about the river. He stopped, listening for the sound of Dr Brown coming along behind. There was nothing – only the chattering of a squirrel and the crying of birds. It wasn’t safe, though, to sit and think. He was off again, angling through the trees, back in the general direction of the farmhouse and the river, where it ran along behind, placid and slow and broadening out into a natural pond and then emptying into the harbour a mile and a half down.

A crack of thunder echoed out of the mountains. Rain began to fall – big, cold drops that caught on tree branches and misted down over him. He wished he’d grabbed a sweater to put on under his jacket, but there hadn’t exactly been time for that. There was open meadow ahead, high grass and skunk cabbage and the river beyond. He stopped and listened again, out on the meadow. He could see all around him, and there was no one, and not a sound of pursuit. Dr Brown had given up. He couldn’t run in the first place; that’s why he’d taken MacWilt with him up into the hills. Jack was safe enough for the moment.

He hunched over and ran for the river, hauling his jacket over his head. The rain thickened, beating down around him; For a moment he thought of going home. There’d be no profit in Dr Brown’s hanging around there. He knew well enough that Jack had the elixir, had seen through Jack’s lie. Jack could lock himself into the farmhouse and wait for Willoughby to come home. He could sit in the darkness, letting Dr Brown think he’d gone on into the village. But then what about Skeezix and Helen? And what about sitting alone in the dark, wondering whether Dr Brown was skulking around out in the rainy night? It wouldn’t do.

He leaped across the last few yards of meadow, down onto the muddy little path that ran up toward the farm. In a moment he was on the dock, such as it was, untying the painter of Willoughby’s rowing boat. It was half swamped with rainwater. Jack bailed it with a dipper even as he pushed off and settled onto the middle thwart. He unshipped the oars, plunged them into the water, spun the boat half around with the first crazy heave, and then settled to it, pulling out toward the middle of the pond and letting himself drift down as he bailed.

He was safe – wet and cold, but safe. He set his feet on cither side of the boat spinning toward town. With the current he’d be there in no time at all – long before Dr Brown would suppose. There’d be time to think, to plan. They could go to Dr Jensen, perhaps, and get his advice. Jack looked up into the falling rain. The sky was dark and whirling with clouds torn to bits by wind. The moon was high by now, showing through the clouds themselves, then through the sudden rents between them, then disappearing altogether and leaving the earth dark and cold.

Circling above, illuminated for a moment in moonlight, was a bird – a crow, following the lazy course of the river. When the moon blinked out beyond storm clouds the crow was gone with it, invisible against the night.

Helen pulled the door back and found Skeezix on the stairs, grinning up at her. ‘Smells like the devil up here,’ he said, wrinkling up his nose and looking around.

‘I’ve been burning the curtains,’ Helen said to him.’

‘Ah. Look what we’ve found, Jack and I.’

Helen looked at the thing in his hand, a disc as big around as a saucer. ‘What it is? Looks like it’s made of seashell.’

Skeezix looked around warily, surprised, perhaps, to see that Helen
had
been burning the curtains, or someone had. ‘I thought I heard voices. Were you talking to someone?’

Helen shrugged and took the disc out of his hand. It was a tremendous button, with two holes drilled into the centre of it, made of abalone, probably, and a monstrous abalone at that. ‘This
is
fascinating, isn’t it? You’ll give it to Dr Jensen, I suppose, and he’ll put it with his other giant trinkets, and you can go over and look at them on rainy Sunday afternoons and wonder where they came from.’

Skeezix gave Helen a dubious eye. ‘Sorry you stayed behind, are you? You missed it up in the hills. Dr Brown was there; MacWilt. He nearly killed Jack.’

Helen flinched a bit despite the ‘nearly’. ‘Is Jack hurt?’

‘No. I hit him with a rock – Dr Brown, that is. He’s a shape-changer, you know. Half the time he flies round the countryside as a crow. He was in a tree, and I hit him with a rock. Pow! Just like that.’ Skeezix thumped himself in the chest with his balled-up fist, then reeled back with a look of surprised chagrin on his face, imitating Dr Brown as a crow.

Helen nodded. ‘Just like that? He was a crow? How did he
almost
kill Jack, peck him in the forehead?’

‘Not the crow – MacWilt. Blind as a cave fish, but seeing through Dr Brown’s eyes. It was spooky, I can tell you. Here he came, around the hill, tapping with his stick. I could see that something was wrong, so I circled back around and hid. Jack stayed to talk. It was just like Jack – very polite to a blind devil with a gun.’ Skeezix grinned and shook his head, recalling it, glorying in his own good sense. Helen gave him a withering look, though, and he went on, telling her about slamming the crow with the rock and the two of them going for the gun and very nearly getting rid of the crow for good and all, and MacWilt staggering away sightless and shouting while Jack and Skeezix ran down over the hills toward Mrs Oglevy’s orchards, looking to get another crack at the crow.

‘You didn’t get him.’

‘No,’ said Skeezix, sitting down at the table and idly thumbing Mrs Langley’s book. ‘He was frightened for his life – flew like he was shot from a catapult. I wouldn’t be surprised if he packed up his carnival and left. If he was smart, that’s what he’d do, and without waiting for an invitation.’ Skeezix brushed his hair back out of his face and squinted at Helen. It was the look of someone who’d done a dangerous job and done it well.

‘You
nitwit
,’ said Helen, squinting back at him and giving him a smarmy sort of look – a look that made it clear she saw right through him. ‘Pack up and leave! I told you hot to go out there meddling around. So did Dr Jensen. What did you find? I’ll tell you what – nothing, that’s what. You nearly got killed, and what for? So you could come back here and carry on. Well, I’ve had a few adventures of my own. I’ve met a couple of curious people.’

‘Like who?’

‘Like Mrs Langley.’

Skeezix looked around him all of a sudden. The sarcastic face he was making dissolved.

‘She’s gone now. She disappeared when you came fumbling at the trapdoor. She was on the verge of telling me everything. Her husband’s been there, and –’

‘Been where?’

‘Why, to the magical land, idiot. Where do you think, San Francisco? Areata? Where else would he have been?’

‘All right, all right.’ Skeezix held up his hands in a gesture of resignation. ‘Relax, will you? Take a few deep breaths; you’re all worked up.’

‘I’ll relax you with this button.’ Helen menaced him with the button, holding it over his head with both hands. ‘Anyway, her husband’s been across, and back again. You can find all sorts of worlds over there, she’s been telling me. Worlds full of giants here, full of tiny little men there. And after a bit you grow or shrink to size – very convenient, except that your clothes don’t grow with you. I promised I’d take this change of clothes down to the cove where her husband – Jimmy – is supposed to come in. He won’t have a thing to wear, otherwise.’

‘The filthy –’ began Skeezix, but Helen waved him silent.

‘He isn’t filthy anything. He’s a wonderful man and he’ll seem like a giant to us, but then he’ll shrink out of his clothes. He probably already has and they’re scattered down the coast by now.’

‘The shoe!’

‘No,
not
the shoe. That stuff wasn’t his. I asked Mrs Langley.’

‘Then whose is it?’

‘How should I know whose it is? I got all this from Mrs Langley. She’s a ghost, for goodness’ sake, and lives in this attic. She’s no oracle. Her husband’s come from
little
worlds, too – crawled up through gopher holes. There’s any number of ways you can come across, but she recommends coming by water. It’s too dangerous the other way. You’re at the mercy of every mole you run into.’

Skeezix grimaced. ‘I dare say. And bugs, too. Imagine running into a potato bug when you’ve shrunk down to the size of a worm. It’s horrifying, isn’t it? So what did you find out that we can
use?
This is all very nice – first-rate gossip. But look at the source. A ghost, after all.’

‘Sshh!’ said Helen, widening her eyes. ‘You should have seen what she did to Peebles. He tried to burn the place down, with me in it, and –’

Skeezix stood up and punched his fist into his open palm. ‘I’ll murder him. Where is he now? He’s downstairs, in the kitchen. I saw him there. I’ll feed him to the dogs.’

Helen pushed him back over into the chair. The look on his face seemed to her to indicate that he’d do what he said. ‘Wait a moment. I’ll help you do it, but there’s more to tell you first. Mrs Langley
threw Peebles downstairs?’

Skeezix blinked hard, then looked around slowly. ‘Good for her!’ he said with an air of sudden overwhelming approval. ‘That’s just what I’ve been saying about her, haven’t I? Isn’t it? I’ve got nothing but admiration for a woman like that – living up here like a monk, nothing but the finest furniture all heaped around like this. It’s a wonder, isn’t it? I mean really.’ He gestured roundabout, then peered into the shadows, grinning weakly as if half expecting Mrs Langley to materialise there, perhaps intending to pitch him down the stairs too.