Lair of Dreams

His mother’s voice came to him. “Memphis, stop!”

His mother was there in the tall reeds, and she looked scared.

“Mama?” Memphis said.

The spirits of his ancestors faded into mist. Angry clouds moved across the sun. It grew colder.

“Memphis!” His mother choked and coughed. A tuft of feathers tumbled from her lips. Her eyes were huge; her voice rasped toward a squawk. “Memphis, get out now!”

But it was too late. His body twitched and jerked as he was pulled under a great wave, and when he surfaced again, it was as if he were awake inside Mrs. Carrington’s dream. He was on a blue bicycle, riding through a bright green field of freshly mown grass that smelled of high summer. Mrs. Carrington’s laughter echoed in his ears. She was young and free and happy. The happiness affected Memphis like a drug. His body relaxed. It was nice here in Mrs. Carrington’s dream, and Memphis struggled to remember his purpose.

He was supposed to heal this woman. To wake her up.

As he renewed his concentration, a shrieking voice broke through. “Who dares disturb my dream? I will make you live in nightmares.…”

The warmth vanished. Cold flooded through his veins. Memphis wanted to break the connection, but he couldn’t. Something had him, strong as an undertow. He struggled against its pull, but it was no use. The bicycle, the field, the sun—all of it went away. It was dark now, and he couldn’t move. Where was he? Far away, through a dot of light, lay a train station. One minute, the station was beautiful; the next, it was nothing more than a rotted, filthy ruin.

Memphis had been trying to heal Mrs. Carrington, and still, they were joined. He felt what she felt. Her mind desperately wanted to drift back to the happy time in the grass and the blue bicycle. Her yearning was a gnawing hunger clawing at Memphis’s guts, as if its craving would never be satisfied. But Memphis sensed, too, that the dream was draining Mrs. Carrington’s life force. In order to heal her, Memphis would first need to stop her dreaming. But how?

Wake up, Mrs. Carrington, he thought. There are people who want you to come back. Wake up.

A threatening growl interrupted Memphis. He lost his concentration. What was that sound? The dark sparked with flashes of green. A figure approached. She wore a long dress and a veil. Mrs. Carrington’s heartbeat sped up; so did Memphis’s. The tunnel was loud with an awful din. The ghostly figure came closer. Memphis could sense great rage and sorrow in her, something beyond his healing.

“Who intrudes on my dreams?” the woman shrieked. And then her eyes widened with recognition and a strange joy. “So much life in you! More than all the others. You could feed these dreams for a long, long time. Dream with me.”

Her mouth was on his, sucking the life from him even as her kiss promised him everything he ever wanted. Flocks of hopes fluttered past Memphis’s eyes: Memphis and Theta sitting beneath a lemon tree under a warm sun, a typewriter on his lap. Isaiah laughing as a little dog jumped for a ball. Their mother hanging wash on the line, smiling over at her boys while his father smoked his pipe and read his newspaper. But when Memphis struggled against this dreaming, nightmares intruded: Soldiers blown apart. His mother wasting away to nothing on her deathbed. A fearsome wood and the man in the stovepipe hat holding out his palm, emblazoned with the eye and lightning bolt. “You. And I. Are joined.”

These terrible things turned him back toward the beautiful dreaming.

His eyes blinked open to buttery sun shining down on a grand town house. The door opened, and a butler welcomed Memphis inside. “Evening, Mr. Campbell. Take your coat, sir? Everybody is awfully excited to hear you tonight.”

The butler handed Memphis a program: Miss A’Lelia Walker presents new poetry by Memphis John Campbell.

“Just like Langston Hughes, Mr. Campbell. You’ve made it, sir.” The butler paused outside a second door and smiled wide. “Would you like to go inside, sir?”

The last of Memphis’s resistance gave way. All he wanted was to have that door opened for him and to walk right through. “Yes. Yes, I would. Thank you.”

The second door opened into a grand parlor filled with elegant people who greeted Memphis’s arrival with applause. The applause grew, and Memphis never wanted it to stop. He was losing himself to the room and the joy and the want. Theta blew him a kiss from the front row. The great A’Lelia Walker, patron of Harlem poets, writers, and artists, drew back a curtain, and behind it was a table holding a stack of books with Memphis’s name on the spine.

“My book,” Memphis murmured, a half smile on his lips.