Lair of Dreams

“You want this arm to rot off, you damn fool? Stop it, ’fore I hit you back! Stop—”

The connection surged through Memphis quick and hard, like an electrical current. His body jerked twice. The back of his tongue tasted of iron. The street beyond blurred, grayed, then filled with light. The last thing Memphis saw was the drunk’s eyes going round as coins as he tried, but failed, to speak.

Memphis felt as if he were falling, and all around him was a sound like rushing water. His body settled, and he stood once more in that other, healing place that lay between this world and the next. He felt the press of spirits beside him. Their hands welcomed him back first, and then he saw them standing all around: vague shapes of ancestors draped in layers upon layers of cloth, reaching across oceans and generations, unknown yet so familiar. There was the soft, distant rhythm of drums and subdued singing. A warm breeze brought the smell of salt and heat-baked sand.

When their hands fell away, the shapes parted, and Memphis saw his mother in a coat of shiny blue-black feathers, waving at him through amber fields of sun-ripened wheat.

“Memphis. Son…” Her voice was raspy, her words slow, as if it took great effort to speak. “We h-haven’t much t-time.” She clutched her stomach as she gagged, vomiting up a small, feathery tuft. A thin stream of oily drool dripped from her lips. Her voice thinned to a croak. “Follow. The. Eye. Heal. The. Breach.”

Dark, roiling clouds massed on the horizon, blocking out the sun. Angry light crackled against the churning sky and pitchforked down into the earth. Ghosts appeared in those brief flashes; they swayed in the wheat like shimmering scarecrows. These dead bore no resemblance to the shadowy spirits who’d welcomed Memphis into the healing space. There was nothing benevolent or ancestral about these wraiths. Instead, there was something terrible and hungry about them, as if they could eat and eat and never be filled.

Another storm of lightning lit up the sky, and Memphis could see that it swirled around the man in the stovepipe hat. It balled in his palm. He seemed delighted by this. His laugh was everywhere at once. He extended a hand toward Memphis, and though he was far away, his face loomed large and close. “Mine,” the gray man said in a voice as old as time. He strode through the field toward Memphis, and the dead moved with him.

Memphis’s mother coughed and spasmed with some violent change. Her eyes widened as she fought to whisper one last word: “Run.”

Before Memphis’s eyes, his mother was swallowed up in a whirl of blue-black feathers and desperate cawing as she transformed into a crow and flitted up, crying into the angry sky. She dove down and tugged at Memphis’s collar with her beak, as if trying to pull him away from that place, but the man in the stovepipe hat and his retinue of dead were like a magnet, drawing him in. Memphis could hear his heartbeat pulsing in his ears. His eyes fluttered. He felt as if he could fall and never stop falling.

The shock of feathers across his cheek like a slap startled him. The crow cawed in his face, and Memphis jolted out of his healing trance, sweating and confused. His hands still gripped Noble Bishop’s arm, but Noble himself lay on the ground, still as death.

“Mr. Bishop, you gotta get up now,” Memphis pleaded, panicking as he shook the motionless old drunk. “Mister, please, please wake up. Please!”

Terror curled inside Memphis. He was close to crying. High above, the sky pulsed with lightning. Wind kicked up, sending dead leaves skittering down the street. A pounding rain started. Lightning struck a tree across the street and a branch fell off, burned and smoking. Memphis dragged the old man into the alley, where he could be protected.

“Sweet Jesus,” Memphis said, looking down at Noble’s still body. “I’ve killed him.”

A couple of policemen walking their beat came down the street. Memphis knew these particular cops were dirty for Dutch Schultz, and they’d love nothing better than to take one of Papa Charles’s runners in for any offense they could think up. Murder would be a hell of a charge.

“Mr. Bishop please, please wake up,” Memphis pleaded.

Noble Bishop coughed and breathed. And then he settled into a light snore that was the best sound Memphis had ever heard.

“I did it,” he said, grinning in astonishment at his hands. “I did it,” he said again, almost reverently. The cops were nearly there.

“Hey! There’s a sick man here!” Memphis shouted from behind the protection of the wall. Once he saw the cops heading toward the alley, he turned and ran away, climbing up and over the fence toward home.

PART TWO