Lair of Dreams

“This is a sorry affair,” he grumbled, crumpling the page and tossing it onto the floor, which was already littered with his previous attempts.

Back in New Orleans, on the riverboat, when someone played a wrong note, Louis would grin and say, “What that cat ever do to you, you gotta make it cry like that?”

Louis.

Henry pushed aside the music and set a metronome in the center of the table. Then he wound the arm of his alarm clock and placed the clock on the windowsill, dangerously close to the edge. Henry released the metronome’s pendulum and settled his lanky frame into a worn chair beside a hissing radiator. For comfort, he put his straw boater on his head. The metronome’s steady ticking grew louder, drowning out the soft bleating of New York City street life, lulling Henry into a hypnotic state. His eyelids fluttered—once, twice.

“Please,” he said softly. And then he was under.

Henry came alive inside the dream world with a choking gasp, as if he’d been holding his breath underwater. For the first few seconds, there was only panic as his confused brain sought to make sense of what was happening. Slowly, his heartbeat settled. His breathing relaxed. Henry blinked, allowing his eyes time to adjust to the dream light. Sharp and unforgiving, it rendered ordinary objects—a haystack, a wagon, a face—starkly beautiful or, at times, slightly ghoulish.

Right now, that strange brightness caught the faces of a herd of buffalo whose deep, dark eyes watched Henry impassively.

“Hello,” Henry said to the majestic beasts. The buffalo opened their mouths, and music poured out as from a radio.

Henry grinned. “Shall we dance? No? Next time.”

Stretching behind Henry was a tall, snowy hillside whose top disappeared into a cloud bank. Theta sat on a rock nearby, watching the village below, where ropes of smoke twisted up from a row of floating, houseless chimneys.

“Hey, darlin’,” Henry said, standing beside her. The brightness of the dream gave her cheekbones a cliff’s-edge sharpness, like a German film star. She seemed agitated. “Bad dream?”

“Yes,” Theta said in an eerily flat voice. “I don’t like the looks of those red flowers over there.”

Henry followed Theta’s gaze. Where the buffalo had been was now a field of poppies. As he watched, the flowers trembled into flames and melted into thick red pools. Theta’s breathing quickened, signaling the descent into nightmare.

Henry’s voice was soothing. “Listen, Theta, why don’t you have another dream? How about the circus? You like the circus, don’t you?”

“Sure,” Theta said, smiling slightly. When Henry looked again, the flames had been transformed into a funny little juggler who kept dropping his pins on purpose.

“I gotta look for Louis now, Theta.”

“Sure, Hen,” she said, and then Theta was gone.

Majestic pines shot up from the ground. Their gray shadows spilled boldly across the white floor of the forest. On a tree stump, the needle of an old Victrola caught again and again on the damaged grooves of a slightly warped record, distorting the song: “Pa-uu-ck up your trou-u-u-u-bles in your o-oold kit b-u-ag and s-uu-mile, smile, smi-i-ile.…”

Beside the Victrola, a soldier mimed the words as he danced a little soft shoe. His smile was unnerving. Nearby, a group of soldiers sat at a table, playing cards. The cards all carried the same painted image of a macabre man in a long, dark coat and a stovepipe hat. The man’s black eyes were bottomless.

“We’re about to get started, old boy. You’ll want to take cover,” one of the soldiers said before securing his gas mask, the side of which had been stamped with an eye and a lightning bolt. That same symbol shimmered on the foreheads of the soldiers, a ghostly tattoo.

“The time is now!” a sergeant barked.

The soldiers quickly fell into position. The phonograph’s needle skipped: “Pa-uu-ck up your troubles… troubles… trou-u-u-u-bles… troubles.…” The smiling, dancing soldier faced Henry once more, but this time half of his face had been eaten away. Flies swarmed the rotting flesh along his jaw.

With a gasp, Henry stumbled backward, scrambling up the hill and into the forest, away from the camp. Beneath his feet, the snow vanished like a tablecloth snatched from under a place setting by a skilled magician’s hands. Now he stood on a weather-cracked road that stretched out toward a horizon line so sharp it seemed painted. Wheat fields lay on either side. The sky churned with storm clouds.

On the windswept prairie, his mother sat in an enormous red velvet chair. The wind whipped her silver-threaded hair across her delicate face. Henry couldn’t feel the wind or smell the dust—he never could on a dream walk, just as he couldn’t touch people or objects—but he was aware of the idea of both. Henry’s father stood behind his wife, one hand on her shoulder as if to keep her from flying away. His father’s face was stern, disapproving.