Charles De Lint - Dreams Underfoot

“I think Wolfe’s asking for your help, too,” Bob said.

“Oh, really?” Zoe said. “And how am I supposed to do that? Find you and him a good shrink?”

“In the old days,” Hilary said, “there were people who could drive out demons just by a laying on of the hands.”

Zoe looked from Hilary to Bob and realized that they were both serious. A smartass remark was on the tip of her tongue, but this time she just let it die unspoken.

A surreal quality had taken hold of the afternoon, as though the Academy of St. Martinin-theFields was playing Hendrix, or Captain Beefheart was doing a duet with Tiffany. The light in the Mall seemed incandescent. The air was hot on her skin, but she could feel a chill all the way down to the marrow of her bones.

I don’t want this to be real, she realized.

But she knelt down in front of Bob and reached out her hands, laying a palm on either temple.

What now? she thought. Am I supposed to reel off some gibberish to make it sound like a genuine exorcism?

She felt so dumb, she

The change caught her completely by surprise, stunning her thoughts and the everplaying soundtrack that ran through her mind into silence. A tingle like static electricity built up in her fingers.

She was looking directly at Bob, but suddenly it seemed as though she was looking through him, directly into him, into the essence of him. It was flesh and blood that lay under her hands, but rainbowing swirls of light were all she could see. A small sound of wonder sighed from between her lips at the sight.

We’re all made of light, she thought. Sounds and light, cells vibrating ...

But when she looked more closely, she could see that under her hands the play of lights was threaded with discordances. As soon as she noticed them, the webwork of dark threads coalesced into a pebblesized oval of shadow that fell through the swirl of lights, down, down, until it was gone. The rainbowing pattern of the lights was unblemished now, the lights faded, became flesh and bone and skin, and then she was just holding Bob’s head in her hands once more.

The tingle left her fingers and she dropped her hands. Bob smiled at her.

“Thank you,” he said.

That sense of sincerity remained, but it wasn’t Bob’s voice anymore. It was Wolfe’s.

“Be careful,” he added.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“I was like you once.”

“Like me how?”

“Just be careful,” he said.

She tilted her head back as he rose to his feet, gaze tracking him as he walked away, across the marble floor and through the doors of the Mall. He didn’t open the doors, he just stepped through the glass and steel out into the street and continued off across the pavement. A halfdozen yards from the entrance, he simply faded away like a video effect and was gone.

Zoe shook her head.

“No,” she said softly. “I don’t want to believe this.”

“Believe what?” Hilary asked.

Zoe turned to look at her. “You didn’t see what happened?”

“Happened where?”

“Bob.”

“He’s finally here?” Hilary looked around at the passersby. “I was so sure he was going to pull a noshow.”

“No, he’s not here,” Zoe said. “He ...”

Her voice trailed off as the realization hit home. She was on her own with this. What had happened?

If she took it all at face value, she realized that meeting Wolfe had brought her a small death after all—the death of the world the way it had been to the way she now knew it to be. It was changed forever. She was changed forever. She carried a responsibility now of which she’d never been aware before.

Why didn’t Hilary remember the encounter? Probably because it would have been the same small death for her as it had been for Zoe herself; her world would have been changed forever.

But I’ve negated that for her, Zoe thought. Just like I did for Wolfe, or Bob, or whoever he really was.

Her gaze dropped to the floor where he’d been sitting and saw a small black pebble lying on the marble. She hesitated for a moment, then reached over and picked it up. Her fingers tingled again and she watched in wonder as the pebble went from black, through grey, until it was a milky white.

“What’ve you got there?” Hilary asked.

Zoe shook her head. She closed her fingers around the small smooth stone, savoring its odd warmth.

“Nothing,” she said. “Just a pebble.”

She got up and sat beside Hilary again.

“Excuse me, miss?”

The security guard had returned and this time he wasn’t ignoring Rupert.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “but I’m afraid you’ll have to take your dog outside. It’s the mall management’s rules.”

“Yes,” Zoe said. “Of course.”

She gave him a quick smile which the guard returned with more warmth than Zoe thought was warranted. It was as though she’d propositioned him or something.

Jesus, she thought. Was she going to go through the rest of her life secondguessing every encounter she ever had? Does he know, does she? Life was tough enough without having to feel selfconscious every time she met somebody. Maybe this was what Wolfe had meant when he said that he had been just like her once. Maybe the pressure just got to be too much for him and it turned him from healing to hurting.

Just be careful.

It seemed possible. It seemed more than possible when she remembered the gratitude she’d seen in his eyes when he’d thanked her.

Beside her, Hilary looked at her watch. “We might as well go,” she said. “This whole thing’s a washout. It’s almost twelvethirty. If he was going to come, he’d’ve been here by now.”

Zoe nodded her head.

“See the thing is,” Hilary said as they started for the door, Rupert walking in between them, “a guy like that can’t face an actual confrontation. If you ask me, you’re never going to hear from him again.”

“I think you’re right,” Zoe said.

But there might be others, changing, already changed. She might become one of them herself if she wasn’t just be

Her fingers tightened around the white pebble she’d picked up.

She stuck it in the front pocket of her jeans as a token to remind her of what had happened to Wolfe, of how it could just as easily happen to her if she wasn’t

—careful.

1

Once upon a time there was what there was, and if nothing had happened there would be nothing to tell.

2

It was my father who told me that dreams want to be real. When you start to wake up, he said, they hang on and try to slip out into the waking world when you don’t notice. Very strong dreams, he added, can almost do it; they can last for almost half a day, but not much longer.

I asked him if any ever made it. If any of the people our subconscious minds toss up and make real while we’re sleeping had ever actually stolen out into this world from the dream world.

He knew of at least one that had, he said.

He had that kind of lost look in his eyes that made me think of my mother. He always looked like that when he talked about her, which wasn’t often.

Who was it? I asked, hoping he’d dole out another little tidbit about my mother. Is it someone I know?

Even as I asked, I was wondering how he related my mother to a dream. He’d at least known her. I didn’t have any memories, just imaginings. Dreams.

But he only shook his head. Not really, he told me. It happened a long time ago. But I often wondered, he added almost to himself, what did she dream of?