The tunnel curved. It shouldn’t have curved; it had no reason to curve. But what was a dream without wrapping me in darkness, without ensuring that the bulb behind me dimmed and was then snuffed out? Only fifteen feet separated the doors of Chesnes’ house and this one, and yet I was able to walk for minutes in the tunnel separating them, streaks of gold-flecked rock illuminated in the faint light I carried.
Some paintings depicted the Outscape as a mirrored city, one side of a coin. Here nightmares lived and died like people; surely somewhere dreams must do the same. They said that digging deep enough would reveal this glittering city, that somewhere beneath our feet the damp dank bedrock gave way to diamond and pearl-white sand, that endless sunrise and luxury were the gains others made for this wretched place. The question they’d never answered: how far down? Anyone who wanted to find their utopia would have to crawl through the blackness of the Abyss first; and I didn’t see many artists lining up for that.
I came to a door. The handle didn’t budge until Bella made it budge, splinters of wood clattering to the ground and kicking up dust. I raised the sleeve of my jacket over my mouth to keep from coughing and pushed at it.
The bottom of the door scraped along the ground for an inch before it ran up against something solid. I grumbled under my breath and threw my shoulder against it—once, twice, then three times, each time feeling the furniture on the other side tip before slamming back down. On the final push it teetered a hair’s width farther, then came tumbling down with a godawful racket, the thump-thump-thump of bound paper before the crash of wood indicating it’d been a bookshelf. I winced and held my breath, hoping Vallas had been as drunk as he’d sounded.
No footsteps on the stairs, no accusing glare of a lightbulb. I exhaled and stepped into the room.
The floor was barren, streaked with dark swirls, like wet paint had been dripping from someone’s skirt. There was no door separating it from the staircase on the other wall, steep and lopsided, disappearing up to the hallway above. A metal desk stood to my left, piled high with boxes and more than a few bottles, the glass gleaming along its curve, and a leather chair that had seen better days with blankets draped over one arm. There was a calendar nailed to the wall, alongside the thick metal door of a safe, all half-covered by scrawled notes that seemed to cover the wall.
I frowned, stepping close and squinting at them. A sketch—no, a charcoal rubbing, taken from a much older drawing—of a human brain adorned the top half, an incomprehensible chart of numbers beneath. In thick marker, Chesnes had drawn an arrow to a second paper pinned beneath: a doctor’s chart, the same letterhead Usher used, detailing what they could record of someone’s last moments, what they claimed to see and what they claimed to fear.
I couldn’t stop a hint of disgust creeping into my voice. “Really, Chesnes?” I whispered, turning on one heel to see the room in this new light. “Really? That’s what you were, under all this?”
It made sense. And I didn’t enjoy being right, I didn’t revel in the fact that Vallas had been lying to me, that Chesnes was a no better man than anyone else. However powerful of a nightmare he’d been, whatever pleasure he gained while sleeping, hunting around in humanity’s dreams—he’d wanted more. I’d seen plenty of these dingy little laboratories, often with a bed or cot or chair tucked in the corner like this one, often with a stash of bottles or knife-thin remnants of Dragon to accompany it. Often, too, with a corpse inside them. Nightmares lost themselves in the hunt, in the power trip, and once they fell deep enough down that rabbit hole the walls got too sheer ever to climb back out.
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
Chesnes hadn’t died here. But maybe it’d killed him all the same. I stepped gingerly towards the boxes stacked on the desk, the glaring red labels sealing them shut. “You wouldn’t have been stupid enough, would you? Not with Morés known for what she did, not with you tracking her down.” The red labels were from the docks, marked with shipping indicators and times. “Oh, but what if you thought you were cleverer than she was?”
Those labels read: UNFIT FOR CONSUMPTION. They were signed in Chesnes’ scrawl. I didn’t have to be a genius to know what I’d find inside—uncut cylinders of Dragon, wrapped up in their green and blue ribbons. And that was where I stopped being right.
I slit the box open and I didn’t find those. I didn’t find any Dragon at all. I found a bundle of copper wires wrapped into a strand, with thin pieces of tape attached to both ends. There were small spatters of blood in the corners of the box and on the edge of the wires, and a tiny bottle, no longer than my index finger from base to tip, filled with a dark grey liquid. I frowned, wrapped my hand in one of the many pieces of gauze scattered here and there, and picked it up. It was a viscous sort of liquid, shifting side to side agonizingly slowly.
“What are you?” I asked it.
At once the lights came on, glimmering through that strange thick liquid. “Starling?” came Vallas’ slurred voice. I could hear him stumble on the steps behind me but I didn’t dare turn. “I thought—no, I thought-”
I held my hands up, regretting that Bella was still in my pocket. I didn’t make any sudden movements and I turned slowly enough that he didn’t shoot me, but the compact black revolver in his left hand showed that he wanted to. “I had to know, Vallas,” I said. “I had to see it. But I don’t know if it’s important and I won’t say anything about it if you don’t want me to.”
“I don’t want you to be here at all. You said—you promised…” He stumbled on the words. “I paid you.”
“Uh-huh, uh-huh. And I’m very grateful for it.” I took a step closer. I moved my hand very slowly into my pocket, watching the gun follow it. With two fingers I grabbed the bill and brought it up to him. His eyes were unfocused, and in the dark they seemed so very small, almost recessed inside his skull. His hair was plastered down with sweat, and there was an imprint of cheap thread on the side of his face where he must have fallen asleep against the armchair. “I’ll give it back to you, even. I don’t want to be dishonorable over the death of a friend.”
“You shouldn’t have come back.” He swayed back and forth, but his hands were steady. “You sold me…so much about Kit. How he died—that you would save him, that you would find the truth. Did you mean any of it?”
“Of course I did.”
“No—no, no…” His face swam closer to mine. I brought my fist with the fifty-talent bill in it down on his nose and was rewarded with the crack of cartilage and the slick feel of blood across my fingers. He should have learned the first time—but I was worried about that gun and I didn’t stick around. I shoved past him and up the near-vertical stairs, cringing away when he found the trigger and a stray shot zipped past me. I slammed the door shut when I reached it and two more holes in it appeared before I could get away.
Vallas’ home was in a state of moderately greater disarray than when I’d left it, the bottle of paint thinner tipped over onto the carpet. I tore past it and out the front door, boots thumping on the weakened front porch. I snuck a look over my shoulder as I ran and saw him yank himself up the stairs, hands clawing at the walls and at the railing to try and pursue me. Goddamn trigger-happy morons like that! Chesnes was dead already—I didn’t have any obligation to protect him or his reputation. Just to find out what happened, and how it wouldn’t happen again-
It wasn’t my day. A hand shot out of the darkness and grabbed my collar, dragging me into the blue-flame light of a streetlamp. “Now why would I find you here?” grinned Koshmar, the flame falling on a short curved knife, almost comically small in his hands. “Let’s talk, Starling.”