Charles De Lint - Memory and Dream

“This is what we know,” Rolanda said as he pulled up in front of the abandoned bus and she began to explain.

XI

The dark, claustrophobic space in which John had unaccountably found himself made a wild unreasoning fear flare up inside him. With an effort he worked to suppress it. There was too much at stake to panic. He took a slow, steadying breath, then another.

He had meant what he’d said just before he’d lunged for Rushkin. He wouldn’t allow another to die in his place. He would prefer oblivion to walking in the same world as the monster. But most of all he’d prefer to continue the existence Isabelle had given him and instead, rid the world of Rushkin.

But the latter wasn’t an option since he’d discovered that he couldn’t physically harm Rushkin. So when John had leapt forward, it wasn’t to attack Rushkin. He’d had the painting in mind, Isabelle’s The Spirit Is Strong, his gateway. If he could reach it before Rushkin pierced it with his knife, John knew he could wrest the painting from the monster’s grip. He was capable of that much. It would be up to Isabelle to stop Rushkin for good.

Halfway to Rushkin he’d felt a familiar sensation—that faint buzz of something like static electricity heralding the instantaneous passage from wherever he was to his source painting. And then he’d vanished from Rushkin’s makeshift studio in the Tombs. He’d felt an endless moment of bewildering vertigo as he hovered in the between place through which he had to pass before his journey could be completed. A long confusing moment during which there was no up and no down, no before or behind, no direction whatsoever, only an endless flux of possibilities. He had expected to reappear directly in front of Rushkin, prepared to grab the painting away from the monster when he did, but the between hadn’t functioned as it normally should have. Instead of being returned to the tenement studio where Rushkin was holding his gateway painting, John now found himself floundering about in an enclosed dark space, unidentified objects pressing against him from every side.

Standing absolutely still, he reached out with an exploring hand to find that what crowded him were stacks of paintings. The darkness, he realized after a moment, wasn’t complete either. A body length away he could see a crack of light, and as his eyes adjusted to the dimness, he could see a course through the paintings.

John worked his way carefully toward the light, fingers finding a doorknob. It turned readily under his hand, the door opening with a sharp creak. A moment later he was stepping out into the large bedroom of Barbara Nichols’s apartment that doubled as her studio. Across the room from where he stood, Barb was at her easel. She was half-turned to look at him, one hand upraised and held against her breast, her eyes startled wide with surprise.

“This ... this shouldn’t be possible,” John said slowly.

Barb lowered her hand, then wiped it on her jeans, leaving behind a smear of bright red pastel pigment. “God, you gave me a fright,” she said.

“I ...” John shook his head, trying to work out what exactly had gone wrong. “I don’t understand.

Rushkin’s got my painting. When I reached for it, I shouldn’t have come here.”

“I knew that guy wasn’t you.”

“What guy?”

“The one who looked just like you who came for your painting a few days ago.

Bitterweed, John thought. His doppelganger had been here before him. “But—?”

“I didn’t give it to him,” Barb told him. She walked over to where he stood and led him back toward the battered chesterfield that was set kitty-corner between a bay window and a bookshelf stuffed to overflowing with books and papers. “You look terrible,” she added. “You better sit down before you fall down.”

John allowed her to steer him to a seat. While he sat there, she left the room, coming back moments later with a teapot and a mug.

“I think it’s still sort of warm,” she said, pouring him a mugful of tea.

She fetched her own mug from its precarious position on top of the wooden box holding her pastels and filled it as well. As she returned to sit with him, John cupped his mug with both hands. The mint tea was only lukewarm, but it was still comforting to have something to hold. As was the act of drinking the warm liquid. It made him feel more human.

“I’m missing something here,” he told her. “How did you know that it wasn’t me who came to fetch the painting? And if you didn’t give it to my double, then how did Rushkin get it?”

But Rushkin hadn’t acquired it, had he? His gateway painting still had to be in Barb’s closet, or else he wouldn’t be here. Yet he’d seen the painting in Rushkin’s hands.

Barb smiled. “First, although the guy looked like you, that’s where the resemblance ended.”

“Isn’t that an oxymoron?”

“Have you ever known identical twins?” Barb asked.

John shook his head.

“I grew up with a set of them. They might look identical, but once you get to know them, you can always tell them apart. Not from a distance, maybe, but up close and talking? You can’t not know which is which.”

“If you say so,” John said, doubtfully.

“I do.”

Barb regarded him with mock severity until John said, “Okay. I believe you. But Bitterweed and I—”

“Is that his name? Bitterweed?”

John nodded.

“I guess he thought the play on your own surname was clever.”

“Maybe he didn’t get a choice in the matter,” John said, feeling a little odd. As soon as he spoke the words he realized that he carried a certain amount of sympathy for his double. What must it feel like when your only reason for existence was to refute another’s?

“Anyway,” Barb went on. “You and I—we’ve known each other for a long time now. The man who came here with your face wasn’t you. And if he had been you, well he didn’t deserve to get what he’d come looking for. He’d have to lose that arrogance before I’d even give him the time of day.”

“But the painting ... ?”

Barb shook her head as if to say, Don’t you know me better by now?

“I’ve been expecting something like this for years,” she said. “Once I realized it was all true—the gateways and the otherworld and all—and once I realized how important your painting was to your existence, I knew something like this would come up at some point. If not from Rushkin, then from some other enemy.”

“You think I have so many enemies?”

“Since Rushkin can bring you folks across, I figure you’d have as many as he painted.”

“I suppose you’re right. But even if you knew Bitterweed wasn’t me, it still doesn’t explain how I ended up here.”

“That’s simple,” Barb told him. “I did another one. I duplicated the painting Isabelle used to bring you across, and then on top of it I made a copy of mine so that the two were exactly the same.”

“So I’ve got yet another doppelganger running about?” John asked, not at all pleased with the idea.

Bitterweed was bad enough. Though since it had been Barb bringing this other double across, he could at least be assured that it wouldn’t hold the same spiteful intentions toward him that Bitterweed did.

Barb shook her head again. “No, I thought about it before I started the new painting. With a bit of experimentation I discovered that it’s possible to make a gateway painting in which the gate will only open a bit—no wider than a crack. Enough to let the taste of your otherworld through, but not so much so that someone else can make the passage between our worlds.”

“So what Rushkin believed to be me ...”

“Was only an echo of you,” Barb finished. “Or rather, a taste of the otherworld, but nothing more.”