The Sandman, page 22
She moves in and out of our realms fast.”
“They don’t, um, they don’t usually do that.”
Despair shakes her head. “There’s something strange here. I really think that Dream should handle this, but you know how he is.”
“I do?” Delirium blinks her one blue and one green eye. “Was she, like, was she, you know? Before she took that stuff?”
Despair juts out her square, fanged jaw. “Was she what?”
“Asleep?”
“Of course she was asleep. I was watching her.”
“I mean, really? With dreams and everything?”
“Sister, what are you trying to say?”
“I don’t know. I never really do.”
Barnabas brushes against her leg. “Sweetums,” he says. “Do you mean that you think that mortal’s tapped into something else? Something that’s not dreams? Like prophecy?”
Delirium nods so vigorously that her hair goes swirling up and away from her head. Yellow and green curls tumble into orange pinwheels and blow away on the wind. “I think so. Yes. I do. Yes.”
Despair gazes at her sister without speaking. She bends down. Her squat, graceless body seems to melt into itself, slack breasts resting upon raddled knees. She picks up one of her pets, a sleek gray rat, and strokes it thoughtfully. “Prophecy? Why would this mortal be granted such a gift? She’s no oracle.”
“I dunno. Sometimes they catch it, like a bad cold.”
Delirium’s new hair grows in quickly, purple dreadlocks. She twirls a bit of it around her fingers. “Remember Cassandra? Boy, she got a dose. And our nephew, whats-is-name.”
“Orpheus,” says Barnabas.
“Yeah. Him, too.” Delirium pauses, remembering other sadder things. “I don’t think he enjoyed it.”
Barnabas scratches a flea bite. “They never do.”
“No? Oh, I’d like it. At least, I think I would. Our sister, Death, says we know everything anyway. Or anything every way.” She pauses. “Umm, what were we talking about?
“The mortal is slipping more firmly into your realm, sister.” Despair says, and makes a sign of parting. “Farewell.”
Delirium waves but her troll-like sister is already gone, taking her rats with her.
On the bed, Sarah moans softly.
Delirium giggles and wiggles her toes. “This is a nice room,” she says. “I like your chair. I like your cat, too. You don’t seem to be having a very good time, though.”
Barnabas forces his nose against her hand and whines softly. “She gives me the creeps.”
“Do you want to go back to my realm?”
“Anyplace else.”
“Okay.” She smiles as he vanishes. In his wake she scatters a dozen glowing purple toadstools and, just for fun, puts miniature yellow pigs on top of them.
THE MEN LISTENED to their leader as he spoke to them of need, of righteousness, of redemption by fire. He was strong and proud and upright, shining in their eyes like a small sun. He wore his green paramilitary jacket with its yellow insignia as proudly as a king’s robes. His sharp-billed cap with its scrolls of golden honor sat atop his dark hair like a crown.
The men nodded at their splendid leader, at his words, slapped palms against tabletop and heels against floorboards in appreciation. Fire, yes. Revenge, yes. Death. Redemption. Revenge. Yes, yes, yes. The table and floor rattled and thundered with their approval.
A VOICE WHISPERED in a long-distance hiss. Sarah’s brother, Scott, a scientist, calling from a pay phone near the South Pole. He had been scrambling through the labyrinth of the underground lab, searching for the switch, the food, the light above the exit door.
“Run,” he said. “Run, run, run . . .”
His words broke into sharp pieces in her ears but Sarah could feel his meaning transmitted in pulses over the shining wires and pillowed cables, all the longing and sadness bounced off of satellites and into her brain, once around the auditory canal and home. She’s been infected with the twentieth century—love was the vector but the cure was years distant.
“Take care,” she said. “I miss you,” and many other safe words, safe because he couldn’t hear her, because the line was dead. She hung up tenderly. The TV was there, waiting to comfort and understand.
A blue face onscreen said, “Run, run, run . . .”
The television flared up into flames and melted into a sizzling multicolored puddle. Sarah didn’t care because the entire room was on fire.
She peeled down, pulling off every layer until she reached ground zero, skin, and still couldn’t strip off enough, unwind herself, cool down her soul.
Sarah fought up toward wakefulness, slipped, fell back into the flames, the torrent of flames and blood.
“I DON’T LIKE this one,” Delirium says. “Make a different one. Come on, you can do it. Let’s have the blue flowers again or the white noise. No, wait. What about blue noise? Or maybe strawberry?”
Sarah is motionless, staring at something that Delirium can’t see.
“Stop it,” Delirium says. “Stop it. I don’t like it anymore. This is real, isn’t it? I don’t like it.” She watches Sarah, fretful now. If only her brother Destruction were here. He would know what to do. But he’s long gone. He had been nice to her.
Her other brother? No, not Destiny. The other other one, Dream. He might help. He had helped her before, after she had cried. He was nice, too, sort of.
“Dream! I’m holding your insect face thingamajiggy. You know. Your vigil, um, sigil. Yeah. Anyway, Dream, I need you. Where are you? I know you can hear me. DREAM, ANSWER ME!”
A sound that is not a sound. The movement of air that is scarcely perceived, barely felt. The lord of the dreamworld, her brother, stands before her, dark robes billowing. “You called, my sister?”
“I did?”
Dream, her brother, floats before her, a pale wraith with hair the color of the darkest nightmare and eyes unfathomably deep. A look of irritation crosses his colorless face.
“I did,” Delirium says, nodding happily. “See?” She points at the bed, at Sarah. “It’s really not my kind of thing, is it?”
“What isn’t?”
“Her.” Delirium gestures again at the curled lump of Sarah.
“Who is this mortal?”
“Her name’s Sarah. Don’t you know? I mean, weren’t you in charge of her originally? Who gave her all those awful dreams?”
“I may once have given her dreams, sister, but she is unknown to me now.”
“You didn’t send her the fire and the burning babies and the wolf-thing in the sky?”
“No.”
“Well, neither did I.”
Dream sighs. “No, I suppose you didn’t. Is that all?”
“Dream! Don’t you dare leave.”
“My sister, I confess I have no idea what you want of me.”
“If you’ll—just wait a minute, then I’ll tell you.” Delirium pauses, squinting. She can’t remember. But she must. “Um. You’re my brother, Dream. Yes, that’s right. And I called you. So it must be because of dreams.” She smiles, triumphant. “Yes, her dreams.”
“I’ve already told you, sister, she has not been dreaming.”
“Then what is it, all this fire and things exploding and cities getting smashed and stuff?”
“Possibly the imaginings of a diseased mind.”
“Don’t you talk about her that way! She’s nice. She’s unhappy, and she’s trying to die because of all the pictures in her head.”
“Then you have called the wrong sibling. You want our elder sister.”
“No I don’t. And she doesn’t, either.”
“What exactly is it that you want me to do?”
“Help me find where her pictures are coming from. She took pills and yucky things to get away from them.”
“I don’t know the source of her discomfort.”
“Well, find it. And hurry up.”
“And why can’t you do it?”
“Because I have to stay here with her. That’s my job. But you don’t. You can go see Destiny—he likes you best, anyway—or look it up in your library or pond or mirror or lily pad or tea leaves or entrails or . . .”
“Enough! I’ll see what I can do.”
He thins upon the air. She can see the blue-rose wallpaper on the wall behind him, through him. He is gone. Poof. Dream is like that.
Delirium waves at the empty air and wonders if she should call for Death. Probably not. Her sister is always very, very busy. Sooner or later she would be here anyway. She went everywhere, sooner or later. Better to wait for Dream to come back. Yes. But in the meantime Delirium will do the best she can. She smiles. She has an idea.
“Hey,” she whispers to Sarah. “Wake up. Just a little bit.” She nudges the telephone with her spangled toe.
“Come on. Wake up. You can do it.”
THE TIME HAD come. The leader gave the sign and his followers rose, shook hands, then turned to the piled objects against the wall. Each man took a soft, cloth-wrapped bundle: death swathed in flannel. To them the weight of it against their bellies was sweet, almost as sweet as the weight of a nestling fetus, awaiting birth. But this coming birth would be fiery, bringing death and deliverance. The thought, too, was sweet. The leader reminded them of their quest once more. With tears in their eyes, proud tears, they went out into the night carrying their deadly parcels, secure in their righteousness.
“BRAINS TURNED IN upon themselves, beating themselves to death,” the thin, high voice muttered.
Christ, Bill thought. It’s the Poet. Again “Look,” he said. “You know the rules. Three calls maximum. This is your fifth today.”
“But really, I feel suicidal. . . .”
“No you don’t. Read a book or watch TV or something but don’t call back here until tomorrow.” Bill hung up, immediately regretting his rough treatment of the Poet. He was getting an edge, bad sign. Maybe it was time to take a vacation. But who would fill in here if he were gone? So much need, so few volunteers.
The phone rang.
“Hello? I just took something. At least, I think I did.”
Bill sat straight up, all fatigue gone. The woman’s voice quavered slightly. This was for real. He could feel it. “What did you take?”
“Little green pills.” A yawn. “Some of them.”
“Dark green?”
“Pale.”
Shit. Probably Valium 20s. That could be bad. Especially if she mixed them. “How many?”
“The whole bottle. And rum. A bottle of that, too.” Definitely bad. He went into major crisis mode, signaling Rita that he had an emergency and to call the police and have them tie in the trace line.
She nodded, signaled back when it was engaged. Fine. Now all he had to do was keep his caller on the line for fifteen minutes.
“Hello?” he said. She sounded woozy. He had to keep her talking. Keep her awake. “Have you vomited?”
“No.”
“Can you make yourself vomit?”
“I don’t think so.”
Don’t panic, he thought. She didn’t swallow Drano. It’s good old Valium with booze. Takes a while to fully dissolve, get into the bloodstream, and conk her out. “Did you eat dinner?”
“I think so.”
Good. Anything to slow the body’s absorption of the poison. “When did you take the pills?”
“I don’t know. Maybe an hour ago.”
“What’s your name?”
“Sarah.”
“Sarah, I’m Bill. Why did you take the pills, Sarah?”
“Because the world is coming to an end.”
“How do you know?”
“I saw it.”
THE MEN SEPARATED, all of them taking different cars with untraceable license plates. Some were thinking of the task ahead. Others were thinking of loved ones. A few thought of the parcels, their little clock faces shining green and red and yellow with digital readouts. Tick. Tick. Tick.
DREAM, DARK LORD of the subconscious, has been busy, been many places in the space of time that a mortal lowers and raises an eyelid.
Blink.
His brother Destiny’s garden is not a restful place. Nor is Destiny himself a pleasant companion. The visit is brief. Destiny reveals the patterns he sees in his books for Sarah.
“This is not her time, not yet,” says Destiny.
“But see, here,” Dream replies. “She is tangled here with the destiny lines of these others, these violent men.”
Destiny nods. “Sometimes connections cross. At night, late. It happens.”
“I see. Thank you, brother.”
Blink.
Dream is in the leader’s house, the man called the general, listening as the man sits alone at a table and babbles to an imaginary army.
“We will destroy them all. The evil ones must be vanquished. Only then can we make the world safe for our families. We’ve waited too long. You know what to do. Make them die, make them all die. We must cleanse the world so that our children will be safe.”
Dream sees that the man exists in a waking dream state, constantly hallucinating.
“No,” says the lord of the Dreaming. “No more. You may dream no longer.”
The general’s face grows pale and he begins to tremble. His eyes go wide but the light within them falters, dims, fades. His splendid cap tumbles from his head as he crumples like an abandoned puppet, falling into a long, empty sleep which medics will call persistent vegetative syndrome.
Blink.
The general’s followers. There are too many to handle at once, dispersed as they are.
Dream returns to find Sarah on the telephone and his sister, Delirium, whispering in her ear.
“Sister,” he says. “Why are you interfering?”
Delirium gives him an indignant look. “If I hadn’t been supposed to interfere, then I couldn’t have, could I? So I must have been supposed to do what I’m doing.”
Dream sighs. “Never mind. Listen to me carefully. I need your help in order to prevent many foolish mortals from destroying themselves—and from further polluting the dreams of others.”
“You said I was inter—inter—”
“Interfering.”
Delirium pouts. “What do you call what you’re doing? And you’ve never asked for my help before.”
“It never seemed so peculiarly appropriate.”
“Will this stop her bad pictures?”
“I think so.”
“Then okay.” Delirium takes his outstretched hand. “How was Destiny?”
“The same.”
“He always is. Poor Destiny. What do you want me to do?”
“I want you to steal this mortal’s pictures and give them to me.”
Delirium giggles. “You really want them? But I could give you something much prettier, with hyacinth wings, maybe, or lemon tires. Or you could do it for yourself. Why do you need her pictures?”
“Never mind, Del. Just do it. Please.”
“You called me Del.” She dimples at him. “Okay, Dream.”
She pulls all the ugliness out of Sarah’s head, encapsulates it in gossamer bubbles whose curved iridescence masks the horrors within. Gently she tosses each bubble toward her brother.
He catches them in a deep basket made of wind. “Thank you, sister.” Laden with nightmares, Dream bows and leaves.
In the time it takes to tell it, he is with the general’s men, sitting in the car beside each true believer. In each car Dream raises up one of the shining bubbles and pricks it. Soon his basket is empty. And each one of the general’s men knows that he has been betrayed. The general has promised that Armageddon and agony will fall upon the others. He has promised. And lied.
THE STREETS DISSOLVED into rivers of fire and blood. Terrible riders raced beside the general’s men, riders in blood-caked armor and horned helmets, on hellish beasts, who pierced their mortal bodies with flaming spears. They fell, screaming, into fiery cauldrons where their skin was burned from their bodies. They writhed in torment, screamed, covered their faces. The luckiest among them died.
THE POLICE AND hospitals had a busy night mopping up after a string of strange accidents. Each wreck produced a dead or dying driver and a deactivated bomb. Months later, the bombs led investigators to a silent, unresponsive man lying in a hospital bed in a county ward. Very peculiar. Definitely one for the books.
THERE WAS THE shriek of brakes, the slam of car doors, and frantic knocking. Sarah raised her head but was too weak to get off the bed.
The front door burst open. Tito scrambled for the safety of the bedroom and, gratefully, Sarah fell into the arms of her rescuers.
One of the blue-coated medics picked up the phone. “Hi,” he said. “It’s okay. We got here in time.”
On the other end, Bill said, “Thank God,” and hung up the receiver. He and Rita exchanged high-five slaps of congratulations. He blinked, yawned, stretched. Rescues always made him feel light-headed and spacey. He checked the wall clock. Two hours to go until dawn, until his watch would be over. He shrugged and reached for a cookie.
Sarah sleeps upon the medics’ stretcher. Delirium blows the mortal a kiss.
“Take good care of her, Dream,” she says. “And come visit me and Barnabas.” A kaleidoscope of rainbow colors, and she is gone.
The lord of the Dreaming peers down upon Sarah on her stretcher. “Sleep well,” he whispers. “All of your dreams will be sweet.” He leaves her dreaming that she is a star twinkling in a blazing, beautiful firmament. In her sleep, Sarah smiles.
Dream is there and then he is not there, and the space where he stood is filled with a strange wind from a bone dry land and a hundred emotions, but not one single regret.
The Witch’s Heart
Delia Sherman
Delia Sherman is a real lady. She knows more about things obscure and English than I do, and has written brilliant, stylish stories, and an amazing novel called The Porcelain Dove. Sometimes she lives in Boston and sometimes she lives in New York.
This is a beautiful tale of love and madness and heartbreak, hearts and wolves. There’s blood running through it, like a strong, intoxicating wine; blood, and desire.
“I HAVE KILLED.”
