The Nightmare Charade (20 page)

“Think B stands for basement?” Eli said.

I swallowed, trying to muster my courage. Even if it didn't, I knew we were going down there.

Wordlessly, Eli strode forward and lifted the gate by the thick handle. Unlike the other iron gates in this place, this one wasn't latched. He headed down first, and I followed after him. A foul, damp stench hung in the air as I descended. I covered my nose with my hand and forced my breathing to go shallow. The walls were damp and slimy. Cool air wrapped around my face and bare arms.

The darkness grew thicker with each step until I could no longer see Eli in front of me. “Hold on a sec,” I called.

I heard more than saw him stop and look back at me.

I closed my eyes and willed us two flashlights into existence. The dream handed them over easily, almost as if it was eager for us to see what waited below. I flipped one of the flashlights on, accidentally blinding Eli for a second, and then I handed it over to him.

We continued on for a long time, the descent several stories down, it seemed. Finally, we arrived at the bottom floor. It was true dark down here, no light at all except what we brought with us. All I could see from my vantage point was that the walls were made of a dark redbrick, the color of dried blood.

“You don't really think they keep prisoners down here, do you?” I said, trying to look past Eli.

“I think they certainly do.” He stepped farther down the passageway, far enough for me to see the barred door on the left with a plaque on the front that read B1. It opened onto a prison cell so narrow I wouldn't have been able to lie crossways inside it. It was completely empty except for a blackened, ancient pillow and a urinal pot in the far corner. My stomach wrenched at the sight of it, and I pulled my gaze away.

“Looks like we found it,” I said.

Eli nodded and moved on. Unlike the cellblock above, down here the cells lined only the one wall, the other nothing but blank redbrick. Except, I realized as we headed farther down, for shackles dangling out from the bricks at intervals. They were set so high that anyone locked into them wouldn't have been able to touch the floor. I supposed that was the point.

“B-Three,” Eli announced as we reached the third cell. “Oh, God, Dusty, don't look.” He turned his head away.

For a second I almost listened, but my curiosity was too powerful.
Just a dream,
I told myself as I peered in,
nothing here I can't change by—

A gasp climbed my throat and came out a scream. I choked it off at once, because the
thing
inside the cell had
heard
. It was a giant, slithering thing, scaly in patterned stripes of black, yellow, and red. For a second, my mind resisted the word
snake.
Not because of its size, not because of the too-aware, intelligent look in its black eyes.

But because it was in the process of swallowing a man whole.

 

14

Doppelg
ä
nger

He was dead already at least. That much I could tell. The man's legs and waist were already gone down the snake's gullet, but his head lolled side to side against the brick floor, the movement in perfect harmony with the snake's undulating body.

I turned away, gagging.

“It's Titus,” Eli said, a horrified awe making his voice higher pitched than normal. Despite his warning to me, he'd already looked back and was now watching the scene with the same kind of terrified entrancement I felt tugging my gaze back to it as well.

Reminding myself this was just a dream, I focused on the man's face. It was Titus, all right. His was a face I would never forget. “Can you tell how he died?” I said.

“I don't think so.” Eli took a step nearer the door. I would've shouted at him to stay put, but the iron bars were too closely knit together for the snake to pass through. Not to mention that it was a little preoccupied at the moment. “There're no visible marks on his neck or chest. He could've died of a heart attack for all I know.”

I stared at the snake once more, right into those inky, beaded eyes. They seemed to be watching me with an unsettling keenness, as if it knew just how much it bothered me to be watching this. “He could've died of fright.”

Eli looked over at me. “The snake's just a symbol. I doubt it's even supposed to be a magical snake, except for its size.”

I pried my eyes away from the creature long enough to shoot Eli a puzzled look. “How do you figure?”

He pointed. “See the colored stripes? That's an Eastern Coral Snake. I've seen some before, on hunting trips with my dad down to Mississippi. They're really poisonous, but not magical.”

“Let's move on,” I said, turning away from the snake and Titus. I didn't want to see anymore. And dream or not, I wasn't about to open that cell door for a closer look. The idea of snakes and their symbolism was something we could investigate outside of here. Somewhere safe, like the Internet.

“All right.” Eli backed away slowly as if the snake might strike if he stopped watching it.

I moved on to the next cell. “I wonder which one they were keeping Bethany in.”

As soon as I said it the door to the last cell swung open. I flinched at the loud creak it made. I stopped and waited, braced for whatever was inside to appear. Another snake perhaps—or something worse.

Several seconds later, or it might have been a minute, Eli said, “I think we have to go down there.” He stepped past me, once more leading the way. And once again I was okay with letting him. Normally, snakes didn't scare me that much, but I had a feeling that would be different from now on. At least it hadn't been giant bugs. That would've left psychological scars so deep I might never recover.

The second I thought about giant killer bugs, I pushed the idea away before the dream got any ideas.

Eli paused outside the entrance to the last cell. I came to a halt beside him and peered in. Instead of a cell there was a narrow passageway, one deep enough we couldn't see where it led before the darkness closed in. A feeling of d
é
j
à
vu struck me. The bricks ended right at the edge of the other cells, giving way to stone. From there, the passageway sloped downward.

“It looks like an Arkwell tunnel,” Eli said.

“It is an Arkwell tunnel.” I stepped through the doorway into it. “At least it feels like one.” I concentrated hard, trying to make the connection between my sense of familiarity and a direct memory. “Wait.” I reached out and touched the stone wall. “This reminds me of the tunnel that led down to Nimue's tomb.”

“You're right, it does.” Eli touched the wall, too, grazing his palm over the rough surface. “But I doubt this tunnel exists in the real Rush.”

“Me, too.” Even if the likelihood wasn't so doubtful, the feel of the dream was indication enough. It had changed the moment I stepped inside the tunnel. The world became less substantial, less real, as if at any moment it might come apart at the seams.

The farther along we walked, the more I began to suspect this was the exact same tunnel that had led us to the tomb of my ancestor Nimue, to Bellanax, and ultimately the showdown with Marrow. Finally, I spotted proof of it when we arrived at a small door.

“We've definitely been here before,” Eli said, an ironic note to his voice. “But why would the dream bring us back here? It makes no sense. That chamber was emptied out after we defeated Marrow.”

I smirked. “You mean that's what they said they did with it afterward. But I've never been back to check, have you?”

He shook his head.

The only thing I was certain about was that Nimue's tomb as well as her body had been buried in Coleville Cemetery at Arkwell. My mother and I had attended the ceremony.

The small door stood open, inviting us in. I hunched down to avoid scraping my back on the roof and stepped through it. When I reached the other side, I stood up, fully prepared to see a massive chamber lit with torches that burned purple fire. Instead I found myself standing on the shore of a river. Or maybe a lake. It was impossible to tell in the murky darkness, hanging like curtains over the black water. The smell of brine and rot burned my nose.

I looked up and saw we were still underground, in a massive cavern, the roof pierced with stalactites like jutted, misshapen swords. Ahead, a narrow, decrepit dock perched out over the water. Tethered next to it was a boat, the same low-sided pleasure barge from Eli's last dream.
A funeral barge, you mean
. I swallowed as my eyes fixed on the raised platform at the center of the boat with its billowing, gauzy curtains.

“It's the same one,” Eli said from beside me. Worry threaded his voice. It wasn't just because of the dead body we'd seen the last time, I knew. No, the worry had to do with the frequency of the thing. This was only our second dream together and already we were seeing the same ominous signs again. Normally, a repeat of dream symbols meant that whatever was coming was coming soon. But never before had it happened so quickly for us.

“They shouldn't have kept us apart all summer.” I glanced at him. “I bet your dream has been trying to warn us about the Death's Heart and Bethany's disappearance and all of it for weeks now. We just weren't together to read the signs.”

Eli ran a hand over his head, his expression haunted. “Maybe. Which means we better step it up now.” He offered me a brave smile. “Ready to go see what's in there this time?”

I inhaled a sharp, quick breath. “Sounds like a blast.” But he was right. This was the heart of the dream, the deepest level. I could tell by the way my skin tingled with the subtle presence of magic.

Eli stepped down onto the barge first. I followed after him, holding my hands out at my sides as I adjusted to the feel of the shifting floor. A second later, the barge began to move. I glanced behind me to see the ropes that had moored it to the dock were gone. The boat slid quickly through the black water, and in moments the shoreline grew distant. We were moving impossibly fast. As before there was no wind driving us forward. No visible current. And no oars or ferryman either.

Silently, Eli and I approached the platform and pulled back the curtains.

“Oh,” I said, my voice breathless with shock. The strange round bed with the ouroboros frame was gone. In its place stood Nimue's tomb. It was exactly as I remembered it, made of some kind of crystal and engraved on one side with an elaborate battle scene.

I stepped nearer the tomb and peered down on the scene, my flashlight setting the crystal surface aglow. Two armies converged around three larger figures in the center, a woman and two men. One of the men lay on the ground with a sword protruding from his chest. I stooped to take a better look. The sword, I realized, was Bellanax. I hadn't known it the first time I saw this engraving, but I knew it now. As if in confirmation, the silver band around my wrist began to warm.

The other man stood with the woman just behind him, her hands cupped over his eyes, and he seemed to be falling down.
Into sleep,
I realized. Because this was Marrow and Nimue depicted here. Dream-seers, lovers, and ultimately enemies.

“Does it look different than you remember?” Eli said, stooping down beside me.

I shook my head. “Exactly the same.” I reached out and touched the figure of Nimue, running my finger over the smooth edges of the carving. “This is the moment Nimue locked Marrow in a dream,” I said. For several hundred years, the Red Warlock had slept, trapped in Nimue's spell. It was the only way she could think of to keep him from spreading his evil. With his black phoenix familiar, he couldn't be killed, not permanently. But he could sleep forever.

Until someone broke him out.
I stood up.
But who?

“I wonder how she did it,” Eli said.

I blinked and looked over at him. “What do you mean?”

“How she trapped him in a dream. Is it something all Nightmares can do? Could you do that to me?” A humorless smile crested Eli's lips then fell away.

“Don't be absurd,” I said, but my tone wavered. The truth was I didn't know if it was absurd or not. Maybe it was something I could do. There was a lot of magic that had been lost after the magickind wars and the Black Magic Purge. Maybe trapping someone inside an eternal sleep was one of those things. I wouldn't know. When it came to being a Nightmare, most of what I knew and understood I had discovered on my own.

“Shall we open it?” Eli said it like a question, but we both knew it wasn't.

Together, we placed our hands against the lid and pushed—hard. Too hard it seemed, as the lid slipped off fast and crashed against the bottom of the boat with a loud, wet thump.

Eli winced. “I thought that was going to be more difficult.”

“Me, too.” It had been impossible the last time we saw this tomb in a dream.

I peered over the side, feeling my breath catch in my throat and my heart rattle against my rib cage. It wasn't Nimue lying in the tomb this time, but my mother. She didn't look dead, not as my body had in the last dream when it lay in this place. Instead she looked asleep, but also pale and sickly. She was lying on her back with arms folded across her chest. In her hand she held the shaft of a scythe. The long curved blade rested across her right shoulder.

“Why is she holding that?” I said. I didn't expect an answer, but I heard Eli draw breath beside me.

“The scythe is the symbol of the Grim Reaper,” he said. “At least in the ordinary version of the myth.”

I swallowed. The Grim Reaper. As in the personification of death. Steeling my courage, I stretched my hand toward it. The moment my fingers grazed the metal surface, a surge like electricity pulsed out from the shield. It sent both Eli and I sailing backward, landing in a heap. I groaned, the pain real despite its dream origin.