Dreamlands Read online

  DREAMLANDS

  Scott Jäeger

  Copyright © 2014 Scott Jäeger

  Cover Art Copyright © 2014 Matt Bradbury

  ~

  All entities appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual beings from the void is purely coincidental and not intended as an invocation of said entities.

  Table of Contents

  A Walk on Boston Commons

  Uncle Eamon

  Kingsport

  Zij

  The Yellow-Eyed Merchants

  Ajer Akiti

  The Coal Burners’ Camp

  An Unexpected Detour

  Sparrow’s

  The Seventy Steps

  The Moonlit Pool

  The Peregrine

  A Strange Coast

  At the Summit

  The Black Galley

  Helter Skelter

  A Walk on Boston Commons

  What a pretty mess I found myself in, that summer of 192–.

  Three years before, I had graduated from Northeastern University, a placement secured by virtue of family name and pity after my forced departure from Harvard. With the completion of my degree, my inheritance was converted from trust to capital and I embraced those aspects of my character which had, barely, been held in check by my responsibilities as a student. I began a regular circuit of counting house to gambling hell to drug den, until my personal resources followed the same path as the Sloan’s greater holdings. My friends soon went the way of my wealth, and over the past six months I had made the transition from quietly not being invited to the social gatherings of my peers to quietly being refused entry.

  The hour was close on midnight and I ambled down a gloomy corridor of starved-looking elms like a man at the end of a long drunk straightening himself out for his wife. The moon’s pale eye followed me, as well as a police constable, who had dogged my creeping steps from Beacon Hill to the Commons, the two of us like a pair of tortoises engaged in a footrace.

  I paused to take my ease on a bench kindly provided by the City, while my admirer stopped ten paces away to fiddle with his club. My lazy gait and worn shoes suggested I was a vagabond, but the cut of my suit gave him pause. Did it indicate a grandeur that was not quite so faded I should be stopped and quizzed for taking the air after dark? Then again, I may have come by my clothes second-hand. Perhaps he was waiting on me to leave the nacreous glow of the electric lights so he could pursue a more vigorous sort of questioning.

  I pushed myself up and moved on, driven not so much by the constable as by the itching which had begun in my palms and the thirst which water could never slake.

  My options were dwindling, but I could still wash up on the doorstep of my Uncle Eamon, who after months of silence had recently urged me to visit him in Arkham. However no rail ticket, and more critically no funds, had accompanied his telegram, and my subsequent response to him had gone unanswered.

  It came to me that the regular echo of the policeman’s hard-soled steps had ceased. Raising my head, I saw that my legs, to which I had given over my navigation, had treacherously taken a shortcut between two textile mills. It was a risky sort of place for a man to find himself, if he had anything to lose. Walking in a narrow strip of moonlight as if it were proof against the encroaching shadows I mumbled aloud the timeworn adage of mothers everywhere:

  “There is nothing to threaten in the dark that isn’t there in the light.” Except when there is, I added to myself as I was tripped to my knees by a man’s walking stick.

  I scrambled to my feet, my path blocked by a brown-skinned hulk who stared down at me from beneath a single black brow. His nose was beakish, his face scarred, and he wore a drab brass-buttoned shirt issued by some foreign military. The rank had been stripped away, leaving less dull green squares in place of insignia. I stood there gaping until his companion, who had moved to block my retreat, prodded me with his stick. In contrast to the hulk, Jacob Roth was lean, feral looking, and unpleasant. Actually, I had a feeling they would both be unpleasant.

  “If it isn’t Isaac Sloan,” Roth said heartily, “still living each day as though it were his last. In your case I would call that a prudent philosophy. Tom and I have been trying to catch up with you for the past –what is it?– two weeks, I believe. It appears you changed lodgings again and left no forwarding address.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, touching my shoulder. “You seem distracted.” I couldn’t drag my eyes from Tom’s face, the left side of which was a map of shallow scars, as if it had been flayed by a tiny elf.

  “What happened to him?” I asked.

  “He handles my birds.”

  “Birds?” I said, the tremor in my voice matching that in my knees. Though my pointless inanities must seem like some kind of tactic, my mind was dulled to everything but my sickness.

  “Roosters,” Roth said. “Cocks, as in cock fights.”

  My head moved in a small gesture of negation.

  “You know what cock fights are,” Roth said, incredulous. “Fighting birds, you dunce. You put two roosters in a ring to slash each other up and men place bets. There’s a match tomorrow night in the West End.”

  Recalling the business at hand, he stopped himself from extending me an invitation and nodded to Tom. Despite the blow being signaled well in advance, Tom’s fist hit my gut like a hammer, and left me stretched out on the cold bricks. For a long while I focused on expanding my lungs. When I had recovered enough to sit up, Roth was in the midst of a monologue addressed to the rectangle of stars framed by the close walls overhead.

  “–the matter of several trips to that Beacon Hill cathouse, not to mention the debt at Fox’s. Let a man do what he will with his money, it makes no difference to me. What that man does with my money however, is a matter of utmost importance.” The usurer dropped his philosophical tone to nudge me with his boot. “Wake up, man. This subject concerns you directly. It should concern you very much.”

  Following the unmistakable rasp of metal on leather, the point of a crescent-shaped blade came to rest beneath my chin, coaxing me back to the conversation. From a long ago museum exhibit on India, I was able to identify it as a khukuri. I made a sound which could easily have been mistaken for a sob, and Tom’s mouth twisted into a grin like that of the very devil.

  “This is an awkward topic to broach with a gentleman," Roth continued, "but it is unavoidable. I require payment in the amount of six hundred and fifteen dollars. This sum includes accrued interest and other expenses incurred by your difficulties as a client. I will also accept, with an additional fee for the exchange, the equivalent in pounds sterling.”

  I had not the value of the buttons on Tom’s shirt, and had I any coin at all I’d spend it on laudanum –threats, thugs, and khukuris be damned. Before I could gather enough sense to disappoint him, we were interrupted by a shrill tweet not entirely like that of a policeman’s whistle. Everyone present jerked in alarm as a tall figure stepped into silhouette against the light of the street beyond, one hand raised to its lips, the other bearing a long club. The two villains withdrew immediately at sight of this spectre, their mismatched footfalls and a last barked curse vanishing into the night.

  The shadowy figure grew taller as it approached, until I confirmed it was no member of the constabulary. He was a giant, taller than Tom, but leaner than whippet-like Roth, with skin as black as polished obsidian. Carrying an iron shod walking stick that would serve a normal sized man as a staff, he was dressed in a tailored linen ensemble more suited to the parlour of an English nobleman than the back alleys of Boston.

  My saviour squatted down beside me. Pressing a finger against my cheekbone, he gently shifted my head to one side and inspected the black blot flooding over my shirt. Tom had left me with an unsightly, but luckily
shallow, souvenir.

  “Do not worry,” he said calmly, “those ruffians won’t be back. No rat will stand to an even fight.” His accent had nothing in common with the slack-mouthed drawl of the Bostonian. With one hand he hauled me easily to my feet. Seeing that with the wall at my back I could stand, he gripped my left hand to shake, and with his right gave my forearm a friendly squeeze. It was an oddly comforting gesture.

  “Better now, my friend? Can you walk?” I managed a halfhearted nod. I could walk, but would take no pleasure in it. He studied me awhile longer, then added, “You know, I feel that you and I are already acquainted."

  “Mister, umm?” I said.

  “Jarvis, my friend, just Jarvis.”

  “I am Isaac Sloan, and happy to meet you, sir.” I took a few tentative steps, as if trying out a circus clown’s stilts for the first time.

  “I do not wish to contradict you, Mr. Sloan, but I am certain we have met already, and more, that I owe you a debt.”

  “You make a striking figure, Jarvis,” I said, drawing the words up from inside like water from a well, “one I would never forget. As for owing me a debt, please don’t embarrass me any further than I have done myself. You may have saved my life just now, and I– I thank you.”

  It was weak tea as far as gratitude goes, but that other brain of mine, the one that thinks most clearly when my need waxes greatest, was busily preparing a short but eloquent series of lies. If I told this man of means that I had been robbed, he would plainly not refuse the request of a small loan. A few dollars for a flop and a dose of medicine would see me through the night. Tomorrow would be soon enough to deal with my numerous other dilemmas.

  Mercifully, I did not have the opportunity to sink so low before collapsing altogether.

  * * *

  I strolled along the avenues of a different city. It was midnight as before, and just as ill-lit and foreboding as dockside Boston, but crowded with people. As these folks stepped aside to retire to their homes and traffic thinned, I noted those who continued alongside me were all dressed alike in cowled robes, like a monk’s costume. I thought at first they had something to do with the anniversary of the Tea Party, but that event took place sometime in winter. Also odd was the proliferation of candles, both in the hands of the mummers and in the windows facing the street. I supposed the electricity had failed again.

  As I walked on, thinking on no destination, my strangely garbed peers grew more numerous. They were watching me, probably because I was dressed as a normal citizen and not for some idiot festival. Their faces were obscured within cowls as deep and black as the openings of a hundred identical caves, but I sensed their surreptitious glances changing to bold stares. The mob and I were moving in lockstep, and it came to me that in the back of those caves was a secret too terrible to admit the ubiquitous candlelight, or any other light of this world.

  At the height of this unbearable tension, I understood this was a dream, a recurring phantasm which had many times rattled my drug-sick slumber. But despite this, what happened next never failed to prickle my skin with sweat and make every hair rise to attention.

  It began with a murmur from one of my antagonists, who to this point had been perfectly silent. I stopped and, as if connected to me by wires, so did each of the surrounding figures. The sound was answered, then repeated, and I heard from someone standing nearby three hissed, unintelligible syllables. I spun about, trying to keep them all in view, wishing to lay my hand on a stick or a knife or any kind of weapon, as now the whispering came from every side.

  My heart beat like the hammer of an alarm clock as the susurrus rose to a shout imbued with the frenzy of a dog running mad. I gasped for air, on the verge of hysteria myself, as they reached the climax, in which the syllables formed a word I recognized but had forgotten, a word I fervently wished never to recall. I was not certain I could remember it and remain Isaac Sloan.

  In one motion I sat upright, threw off the bedclothes and staggered to my feet. My brain leapt at once to my little bottle, the distilled essence of sweet dreams. However I was not in my room– in fact, I had no room anywhere. I was in quite a fine hotel suite. Though I had no reason to think I should find anything like medicine, I groped about the cabinets of the en suite bath, absently noting what items might be pawned for ready cash. Instead of any paregoric, I found a miracle: beside the water jug sat a square brown bottle, eyedropper, and glass tumbler.

  I cried aloud and, when I was able to control my trembling hands, decanted a glass of water and imbued it with six drops of tincture. I downed the measure at one draught and the relentless itch within me subsided to a pleasant tingling. I prepared and consumed a second dose of my vital tonic and sat in a deeply cushioned Chesterfield to wait. Dawn was just past. A robin was singing close by as the light changed from rose to cream.

  The sofa embraced me, as firm and gentle as a mother’s arms, when the second measure overcame me in a flood. I was filled with the intention to perform noble deeds and the satisfaction of having done them, both without the inconvenience of rising from my seat. In such a state I observed a stripe of light allowed by the slightly parted curtains as it followed the sun from horizon to zenith.

  When I could feel the carpet once more beneath my feet, I rose to see myself in the cheval mirror wearing a man’s dressing gown and a gauze bandage, like a Frenchman’s jaunty cravat, about the slash on my neck. Thinking of Tom with his pauper’s coat and scarred face, wandering the alleys of Boston carrying a weapon like a machete, I laughed.

  There was a suit of new clothes laid out on the divan: charcoal trousers, cream-coloured shirt, dark checked coat, and brogues with a low heel. For these boons I proclaimed my thanks to Jarvis, a mighty friend indeed. I remained convinced we had not been previously acquainted, but I was already imagining a future in which we would become bosom companions.

  However as I dressed the opiate tide began to ebb, and I began to enjoy (or suffer) the conscience of a rational man. That I had briefly considered burgling the room Jarvis had provided now seemed both disgraceful and ridiculous. I must move on. To prolong my acquaintance with this man and not somehow repay his kindness would invite a shame I could not, in my sober moments, bear.

  Upon leaving, I discovered a leather valise placed by the door where it could not be overlooked, and with it a short note.

  There is a ticket to Arkham on the 3pm Central New England waiting for you at the State Street Station, so that you may visit your uncle. Take these few articles with my blessing, and though you do not recall our friendship, trust that between us there are no debts.

  Yours, Jarvis

  Maudlin tears stung my eyes. Though I did not remember mentioning my uncle to my benefactor, Boston had in the last few days grown inclement, and since it would be churlish to turn down a paid ticket, I took up my new bag and headed for the station.

  Uncle Eamon

  “Arkham!” The conductor’s call, punctuated by a sharp rap of my head against the windowpane, stirred me from my doze, and I watched with little interest as the train cut away from the Miskatonic and into the warren of slouching, gambrel-roofed houses which made up the town.

  I had arrived in witch-haunted Arkham. This appellation had been passed down from a history of burnings heretics and other public manias, and persisted more recently thanks to her secret societies and unusually high incidence of missing persons. I do not believe in witchcraft or other forms of superstition, yet I cannot deny there is something disquieting about the place. Though I fondly remembered the summers I spent as a boy roaming the family estate, it had always seemed prudent to stay in the sunlight, close enough to call out to the nanny, and away from the looming pines which bordered the property. There was a sinister, watchful quality about them, as if the gloom itself was waiting, patiently, for a little boy to make a mistake.

  I shook the cobwebs from my head and, relinquishing the past for the dull pragmatism of adulthood, exited to the platform. Shabby and unremarkable, the station was const
ructed of the black brick used sparingly in Arkham when warped and peeling boards were unsuitable. The few people waiting there quickly boarded, leaving my case and me standing alone. A smoke-coloured sky lowered obligingly overhead, completing the scene.

  I listed a little in the breeze, pondering the reason for my uncle’s invitation. He had been a good friend to me in my youth, but my parents’ sudden death had perfectly severed me from my boyhood, and the two of us became estranged. My only contact with him since starting college had been via letters begging loans to which he had never agreed, and which I would not have repaid.

  “Mr. Sloan, is that you?” came a voice with a country Welsh lilt. My uncle’s housekeeper, Mrs. Caddock, shuffled ponderously towards me with a thick fellow I did not recognize following a few steps behind. She had gained weight in the years since I had last visited. Her gingham dress could have served for a tablecloth.

  “Young Mr. Sloan, very nice to have you back, sir,” she said, proffering a few damp fingers like a duchess.

  “Mrs. Caddock, thank you for making the trip to the station.” She had been with my uncle since before I was born, but my only memory of her was her sour expression as she shooed me from one place to another, just as she was shooing me down the platform now.

  “Did Monroe not come down with you?” I asked. Monroe had been my uncle’s butler. “I was hoping to speak with him.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry, dear. Mr. Monroe passed on winter before last, Lord keep him. Mr. Eamon tried to cable you in Boston, but I imagine it didn’t get through. Rent must be awfully dear in the city, the way you keep changing your address.” She sniffed in what I hoped was not a habitual way. “Anyway, it was a heart condition that took Mr. Monroe. He was gone just as quick as a snuffed candle.”

  I stopped for a minute to take in this unexpected news.

  “Yes, poor Mr. Monroe,” she continued, and with real pity, “and poor Mrs. Caddock. We all assumed in a house the size of your uncle’s that Mr. Monroe would be replaced. Instead, each of us had to work a bit harder.” She gave me a significant look, as if the purpose of my journey might be to remedy this situation. “That’s been the way of it for years now. We don’t even have our own driver, can you believe it? I had to hire Mr. Mills to take us up to the estate.”