DAMN. IT WAS A BLIND ALLEY. Arthur had secured his door with a four-digit code, just like the locker in school.
So far everything had gone smoothly. Admittedly it had taken half the week before I finally had a chance to snaffle some personal item belonging to Arthur, but then it was surprisingly simple: I’d borrowed a pencil from him in the library, and then I just “forgot” to give it back. He had been chewing the end of the pencil shortly before he lent it to me, and you can’t get much more personal than that.
It was an almost solemn moment when, after so many days, I went through my green door and into the corridor again. The corridor itself lay ahead, quiet and peaceful. But I’d made up my mind not to let any invisible, rustling presences lead me astray. This was only a dream, and I had a mission. Also, even though I didn’t know Arthur’s door itself, I had a fair idea of where I’d find it. After all, Henry’s door was right opposite mine as well.
The other doors had been playing their catch-me-if-you-can game again, but all the same I found Anabel’s door quite quickly in a neighboring passage. Opposite her magnificent Gothic porch, there was a plain, smooth metal door without any decoration except for the letters hammered into its center, saying CARPE NOCTEM.
Even their doors matched in a curious way. There was something utterly humorless about them both. I shuddered when I remembered my dream meeting with Arthur and Anabel, and once again I wondered whether I was doing the right thing. I mean, they were a really strange couple—did I truly want to know what a character like Arthur dreamed about?
Well, maybe I never would. Because I couldn’t get any farther anyway. It was infuriating. Four silly numbers! So unimaginative. I’d been expecting puzzles with all kinds of thrills and spills, maybe a doorkeeper with a curved sword or some such thing, but not a simple lock like that. I could have kicked the wall with frustration. It might have been possible to get through the metal with an oxyacetylene cutting torch, but to be honest I had no idea what a cutting torch looked like, so I couldn’t dream one into existence. I was tapping various combinations of numerals in at random when someone right behind me said, “Try one seven zero four.”
“Henry!” I spun around. “Are you nuts, scaring me like that?”
“I’m glad to see you, too.” Henry was smiling at me. “One seven zero four,” he repeated. “Anabel’s date of birth. Get a move on.” He cast a meaningful glance at Anabel’s door behind us, and I realized that this was no time for a romantic reunion. I turned back to the numerical combination for the lock.
“Cool outfit, by the way,” said Henry. “An elegant cross between Catwoman and a ninja warrior.”
I blushed under my cat mask. To be honest, I’d tried turning into a breath of air first, and this was the best alternative. I wasn’t good enough at dream changing yet to be a breath of air. However, at least Arthur wouldn’t recognize me at once in this disguise if I turned up in his dream.
The lock clicked. One seven zero four did indeed turn out to be the right combination.
I cautiously pushed the door open, but I hesitated to go in.
“What did you steal from Arthur?” I asked, taking off my mask and dropping it on the floor. It suddenly seemed to me amazingly silly. And, anyway, I had company now.
“Nothing,” said Henry. “We all drank each other’s blood, remember? That’s about as personal as you can get.”
“Oh.” Then my theft hadn’t been necessary at all. And I’d been wondering what would happen if I let go of the pencil in the night—I was clutching it firmly as I settled down to go to sleep, and I’d been on the verge of fixing it in place with sticky tape.
I was still hesitating.
“Come along.” Henry came over to me and opened Arthur’s door wider. “Now to go in.” He took my hand, and we went through the doorway together.
Next moment we were standing in the middle of a wide desert landscape, in a broad trench that looked like a riverbed where no water had flowed for a long time. The soil was reddish, dry, and dusty, there were stones and scree lying everywhere, and a few dried-up bushes and trees grew on the edge of the riverbed, along with giant cacti. I could see the outlines of mountains in the distance.
“Is Arthur dreaming a Western?” I asked, clambering over a rock and making for the bank. Although there was no one anywhere in sight, I was whispering.
“No idea,” Henry whispered back while he looked all around us.
“I bet there are rattlesnakes here.” I wondered whether to imagine myself a pair of good, stout boots. I’d forgotten to add anything like that to my Catwoman outfit.
At that moment we heard a strange rumbling sound, then a loud roar that filled the air as it came closer. The rock beneath my feet was shaking.
“Come on!” exclaimed Henry, taking my hand and leading me over the stones and to the bank, while the rumbling and roaring grew louder and louder. Shit! Arthur must be dreaming of some damn earthquake, or an underground nuclear experiment, or a …
“Tidal wave!” Henry shouted. The thundering was very close now, and all at once I saw it: a huge tidal wave surging toward us, a wall of water at least six feet high, and there was no escaping it. The mass of water carried away everything in its path: branches, stones, and in half a second’s time it would carry Henry and me away as well. That half a second was just long enough for me to realize that we were going to drown.
But we weren’t swept away by the huge wave after all. Instead, the rock under our feet suddenly rose several yards up in the air, growing like a stone mushroom. It was difficult to keep my balance, and I clung to Henry’s hand. The water shot past us, swirling down the riverbed, but we didn’t even get our feet wet.
“What on…?” My heart was racing. The rock on which we were standing changed shape again, spreading out lengthways this time until it formed a bridge to the bank. Henry helped me over the bridge as the sound of the rushing water below slowly died away. The whole episode had lasted only a few seconds. As we reached the bank someone clapped, applauding us.
It was Arthur.
“Not bad,” he said. He was standing motionless beside a dried-up tree and had never looked more handsome. “You’re getting better and better, Henry.”
Henry didn’t reply, while I was trying to calm my pulse and breathing and think clearly.
“My apologies for the rough welcome, Liv.” Arthur’s mouth twisted in a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “I don’t usually drown visitors. Only when they’re uninvited.”
Okay, so our plan of taking him by surprise had clearly come to nothing.
“I’m just wondering why my best friend is trying to slink into my dream on the sly.” Arthur took a step toward us and looked penetratingly at Henry. “Would you please explain, Henry?”
“I wanted a few answers, that’s all,” said Henry, unruffled.
Arthur shook his head. “What did you think you could find out here that you couldn’t simply have asked me?” He sounded injured.
“Oh, come on, Arthur! When did you last talk to me frankly?” For a moment Henry said nothing; then he added quietly, “I’m worried about you.”
Arthur gave a scornful snort. “Don’t be so damn self-righteous, Henry! You of all people! I know what you get up to at night—don’t think that escapes me. You’ve shown just now how well you’ve mastered the trick of it. But you were doing your duty, like all of us.” He made a sweeping gesture that embraced the whole dream valley. “For this. For immeasurable power. For the granting of our hearts’ desires.” A shadow fell on his face. “Anabel is the only one who understands that.”
Yes, of course, our perfect pair. Model students at the School of Demonic Invocation.
“Because you and the demon have Anabel’s ex-boyfriend on your conscience. And her dog,” I said. “Well, it’s logical for her to believe in all that.” A little too late, I caught Henry’s warning glance. Okay, so it wasn’t exactly the most subtle way of questioning a suspect. Sherlock Holmes would not have been proud of me.
Arthur narrowed his eyes. “Little Liv,” he said in his arrogant way. “You’re still too new to all this to have any real idea of what’s at stake.”
I folded my arms. When anyone called me Little Liv, I felt stubborn.
“Or maybe it’s the other way around, and unlike you I’m still in possession of my sound human reason, and I’m not about to be totally confused by pentagram diagrams and the muttering of mysterious sayings.” I darted an angry look at him. “So what’s going to happen at the last ritual? What are you going to do on Halloween? Light a couple of black candles? Build an altar and slaughter a lamb on it? Or hey, while you’re at it, don’t you think a human sacrifice would be even more effective?” I’d talked myself into such a rage that I almost laughed, but a change in Arthur’s expression stopped me. Something in his eyes had flickered up at my words, something dark and wild.…
All at once I felt sick to my stomach. Oh no! Had I by any chance hit the bull’s-eye?
Nonsense. That simply couldn’t be true. It mustn’t be true.
“Pugio cruentus—the bloodstained dagger,” murmured Henry.
Arthur nodded. “You have your answers, Henry. And in your heart you knew them all the time. It’s just that you wouldn’t look the truth in the face.”
“You don’t mean that seriously,” I whispered.
Arthur wasn’t taking any notice of me now. Only Henry seemed to count, so far as he was concerned. “Anabel is ready,” he said. “She wants to make up for what she almost did. And she will go through with it to the end. For the sake of all of us!”
As he spoke, the landscape had changed, at first imperceptibly, then faster and faster, until the scenery around us was entirely different. Everything was greener and darker; the riverbed, the rocks, the red earth all turned pale, and instead grasses, ferns, and ivy grew thickly at our feet. The color of the sky had turned from radiant blue to an overcast gray.
Arthur’s voice shook very slightly as he turned to a monumental tomb with two stone angels guarding it. “She’s going to sacrifice herself at Halloween to release the Prince of Darkness from his shadowy spell.” He raised his arm. “And it will happen here.”
I stared at the angels without really seeing them. “But … you love Anabel,” I stammered. “And she loves you. You can’t really want her to … Can’t you see how sick that is?”
I turned to Henry. How could he stand there so calmly when Arthur had just said he was going to make sure that his girlfriend—who was a friend of Henry’s, too—killed herself for a demon who didn’t exist?
Henry’s gray eyes were fixed on Arthur. “You think you’d do it because all this is happening in a dream, right? You believe that because this is just a dream you could really go through with it.”
Arthur nodded again.
I almost uttered a gasp of relief. A dream, of course. Anabel was only going to die in a dream. But—did that make it any less horrible?
Henry went up to Arthur, and now he was standing right in front of him. Beside Arthur the statue of an angel leaned against a gravestone covered with moss, and I saw other gravestones in the dense vegetation behind him. We were back in Highgate Cemetery again.
“You both think that’s the way to end this thing without anyone coming to harm?” Henry was speaking very slowly, almost as if to a small child.
“It’s the only way,” cried Arthur. He was silent for a moment. Then he asked, “Can I count on you, Henry?”
Henry didn’t answer at once. He and Arthur were staring into each other’s eyes. It was as if they were fighting a duel with glances.
I swallowed. If Arthur and Anabel planned to complete the ritual in a dream, they were counting on being able to wake unharmed from the nightmare they themselves had staged. But suppose they were wrong about that?
I felt for the gravestone beside me. These dreams were different. I had sensed Henry’s touch on my skin distinctly, as well as every breath of air, the pressure of his hand, his kiss, and now I could feel the rough surface of the old gravestone under my hand. How would a dagger against your skin feel, a cut, blood flowing…?
“But you can’t do it,” I said, and I realized that I was on the point of losing my nerve. “You have no idea what will happen to Anabel.”
“She’s right, Arthur. It’s going too far,” said Henry.
“You still don’t understand, Henry. We have no option!” Arthur was looking both angry and desperate. “He leaves us no other choice, and we’ve sworn an oath.”
“You always have a choice,” said Henry forcefully. He put a hand on Arthur’s shoulder. “We mustn’t do this. You mustn’t do it.”
Arthur bit his lip. “Don’t let me down now that it’s serious.”
“I won’t,” replied Henry gently. “We’ll think of another solution. It’s still almost a month until Halloween.”
“Another solution,” repeated Arthur, and there was something like a spark of hope in his eyes. For a second I had the feeling that everything would end well. Henry had all this under control. Or rather, he had Arthur under control.
But then I heard the growl. Right behind me.
I turned on my heel and stared into the empty eyes of a statue. It was a gigantic stone dog, lying on a plinth in front of a tomb overgrown with moss, in the shadow of an oak tree with ivy scrambling over it.
Another growl, and then one of the stone paws twitched. And slowly, very slowly, the creature raised its head.
“Henry?” Okay, I thought, don’t panic.
“Stop that, Arthur,” said Henry, but Arthur shook his head.
“I’m not doing anything.” There was fear in his voice, the same fear that had taken hold of me. “It’s not me.”
At that moment the creature rose to its full height. When it growled, it bared a set of powerful fangs. Presumably we’d soon know what it felt like being torn to pieces by fangs like that in a dream. Oh shit. We must get out of here fast.
Arthur’s door! Where the hell was it? My glance raced over the weathered crosses and gravestones. There—the metal door! Set into the wall of the monumental tomb, with the two statues of angels guarding it.
“Henry, quick! Over there!” I cried, and Henry reached for my arm.
“Get back, Liv!” He was looking up at the crown of the oak tree.
The dog crouched to spring, but before it reached us the tree came crashing down on it.
I didn’t wait to see whether Henry really had trapped the animal under the treetop. I hauled him over to the stone angels. With an abrupt jerk, I wrenched the metal door open and staggered out into the corridor.
But Henry turned around once more. “Wake up, damn it, Arthur,” he called to his friend, who was still standing in the same place, staring wide-eyed at the huge crown of the tree. “Wake up!”
Just as the door latched with a loud noise, I felt something warm and damp on my cheek. And the next thing I saw was Buttercup’s doggy muzzle as I felt her rough tongue lovingly licking my face. Dawn was already breaking outside the window. “Thanks for waking me, Butter,” I murmured, trying to get my breath back as I snuggled close to her warm, soft coat. “I was just dreaming of a really bad dog.”
And of a few other really troubling things.