Charles De Lint - Dreams Underfoot

It was also probably one of the most dangerous parts of Newford. “I ... how did I get here?” Harriet tried again.

“What do you remember?” Flora said.

“I was biking home from work,” Harriet began and then proceeded to relate what she remembered of the storm, the giant who’d loomed up so suddenly out of the snow, her accident ... “And then I suppose I must have fainted.”

She lifted a hand to her head and searched about for a tender spot, but couldn’t find a lump or a bruise.

“Did he speak to you?” Flora asked. “The ... man who startled you?”

Harriet shook her head.

“Then it was Frank. He must have brought you here.”

Harriet thought about what the old woman had just said.

“Does that mean there’s more than one of him?” she asked. She had the feeling that her memory was playing tricks on her when she tried to call up the giant’s scarred and misshapen features. She couldn’t imagine there being more than one of him.

“In a way,” Flora said.

“You’re not being very clear.”

“I’m sorry.”

But she didn’t appear to be, Harriet realized.

“So ... he, this Frank ... he’s mute?” she asked.

“Terrible, isn’t it?” Flora said. “A great big strapping lad like that.”

Harriet nodded in agreement. “But that doesn’t explain what you meant by there being more than one of him. Does he have a brother?”

“He ...” The old woman hesitated. “Perhaps you should ask him yourself”

“But you just said that he was a mute.”

“I think he’s down that hall,” Flora said, ignoring Harriet. She pointed to a doorway opposite from the one that Harriet had used to enter the foyer. “That’s usually where he goes to play.”

Harriet stood there for a long moment, just looking at the old woman. Flora, Anne, whatever her name was—she was obviously senile. That had to explain her odd manner.

Harriet lifted her gaze to look in the direction Flora had pointed. Her thoughts still felt muddy. She found standing as long as she had been was far more tiring than it should have been and her tongue felt all fuzzy.

All she wanted to do was to go home. But if this was the Tombs, then she’d need directions.

Perhaps even protection from some of the more feral characters who were said to inhabit these abandoned buildings. Unless, she thought glumly, this “Frank” was the danger himself ...

She looked back at Flora, but the old woman was ignoring her. Flora drew her shawl more tightly around her shoulders and took a sip of tea from her tin can.

Bother, Harriet thought and started across the foyer.

Halfway down the new hallway, she heard a child’s voice singing softly. She couldn’t make out the words until she’d reached the end of the hall where yet another candlelit room offered up a view of its bizarre occupant.

Frank was sitting crosslegged in the middle of the room, the contents of Harriet’s purse scattered on the floor by his knees. Her purse itself had been tossed into a corner. Harriet would have backed right out of the room before Frank looked up except that she was frozen in place by the singing. The child’s voice came from Frank’s twisted lips—a high, impossibly sweet sound. It was a little girl’s voice, singing a skipping song:

Frank and Harriet, sitting in a tree KI-SS-IN-G

First comes love, then comes marriage Here comes Frank with a baby’s carriage Frank’s features seemed more monstrous than ever with that sweet child’s voice issuing from his throat. He tossed the contents of

Harriet’s wallet into the air, juggling them. Her ID, a credit card, some photos from back home, scraps of paper with addresses or phone numbers on them, paper money, her bank card ... they did a fluttering fandango as he sang, the movement of his hands oddly graceful for all the scarred squat bulk of his fingers. Her makeup, keys and loose change were lined up in rows like toy soldiers on parade in front of him. A halfburned ten dollar bill lay beside a candle on the wooden crate to his right. On the crate to his left lay a dead cat, curled up as though it was only sleeping, but the glassy dead eyes and swollen tongue that pushed open its jaws gave lie to the pretense.

Harriet felt a scream build up in her throat. She tried to back away, but bumped into the wall. The child’s voice went still and Frank looked up. Photos, paper money, paper scraps and all flittered down upon his knees. His gaze locked on hers.

For one moment, Harriet was sure it was a child’s eyes that regarded her from that ruined face. They carried a look of pure, absolute innocence, utterly at odds with the misshapen flesh and scars that surrounded them. But then they changed, gaining a feral, dark intelligence.

Frank scattered the scraps of paper and money in front of him away with a sweep of his hands.

“Mine,” he cried in a deep, booming voice. “Girl is mine!” As he lurched to his feet, Harriet fled back the way she’d come.

“The hardest thing,” the old woman said, “is watching everybody die. One by one, they all die: your parents, your friends, your family ....”

Her voice trailed off, rheumy eyes going sad. The monster merely regarded her.

“It was hardest when Julie died,” she went on after a moment. There was a hitch in her voice as she spoke her daughter’s name. “It’s not right that parents should outlive their children.” Her gaze settled on the monster’s face. “But then you’ll never know that particular pain, will you?”

The monster threw back his head and a soundless howl tore from his throat.

As Harriet ran back into the room where she’d left Flora, she saw that the old woman was gone. Her candles, the crates and stove remained. The tin can half full of tea sat warming on the edge of the stove, not quite on the lit burner.

Harried looked back down the hall where Frank’s shambling bulk stumbled towards her.

She had to get out of this place. Never mind the storm still howling outside the building, never mind the confusing maze of abandoned buildings and refusechoked streets of the Tombs. She just had to

“There you are,” a voice said from directly behind her.

Harriet heart skipped a beat. A sharp, small inadvertent squeak escaped her lips as she flung herself to one side and then backed quickly away from the shadows by the door from which the voice had come. When she realized it was only the old woman, she kept right on backing up. Whoever, whatever, Flora was, Harriet knew she wasn’t a friend.

Frank shambled into the foyer then, the queer lopsided set of his gaze fixed hungrily upon her.

Harriet’s heartbeat kicked into doubletime. Her throat went dry. The muscles of her chest tightened, squeezing her lungs so that she found it hard to breathe.

Oh god, she thought. Get out of here while you can.

But she couldn’t seem to move. Her limbs were deadened weights and she was starting to feel faint again.

“Now, now,” the old woman said. “Don’t carry on so, Samson, or you’ll frighten her to death.”

The monster obediently stopped in the doorway, but his hungry gaze never left Harriet.

“Samsamson?” Harriet asked in a weak voice.

“Oh, there’s all sorts of bits and pieces of people inside that poor ugly head,” Flora replied. “Comes from traumas he suffered as a child. He suffers from—what was it that Dr. Adams called him?

Dissociation. I think, before the accident, the doctor had documented seventeen people inside him.

Some are harmless, such as Frank and little Bessie. Others, like Samson, have an unfortunate capacity for violence when they can’t have their way.”

“Doctor?” Harriet asked. All she seemed capable of was catching a word from the woman’s explanation and repeating it as a question.