Just Dreaming Page 4

  The Dream-Boker had followed my eyes. “I never did think much of arts and crafts, far too fussy,” she said. “And that kitschy lizard doorknob really is utterly tasteless … oh, my word!”

  The doorknob had moved. Her fine black and red scales shone in the light, while the lizard stretched, uncoiled her tail, and opened her eyes.

  “You’re not at all kitschy,” I said, charmed by her beauty as I always was. When I first saw my dream door, the lizard had been made of brass and was much smaller than she was today. Apart from a friendly wink now and then, she had never moved, but these days she scuttled up and down the door and condescended to act as a door handle only when I really wanted to go out. Her eyes were bright turquoise and—unlike the eyes of her twin on the other side of the door—always looked friendly. I was still looking for a name that would do her justice: mystical, musical, and kind of pleasantly familiar. After all, she was a creation of my subconscious mind and thus a part of myself. Just like her sharp-toothed, hissing sister on the other side of the door.

  “Far too brightly colored,” said the Boker. “And totally unrealistic. The proportions in front and behind are all wrong.”

  I waved a hand to dismiss the Boker from my dream. It was bad enough having her drop in on us so often at home in real life, noticeably picking days when Ernest was away on business and Mom had an afternoon when she wasn’t giving a lecture. Mia and I thought it was sheer bloody-mindedness, but Mom and Lottie, who persisted in believing in the good in people, thought the poor old lady just wanted to take part in family life and make herself useful.

  Sure. And the Earth was flat.

  I cautiously ran my fingertip over the lizard’s smooth scales. To my delight, she began purring like our cat, Spot. Unrealistic but kind of nice.

  “Call her Liz,” suggested Mia. She, Lottie, and Mom had turned up beside me to admire the lizard. Florence had obviously disappeared with the Boker. “I think she looks like a Lizzie.”

  “No, too … too prosaic,” said Lottie. “Maybe Salamandria. Or Nyx, like the goddess of night.”

  “Barcelona would suit her.” When Mom looked at our inquiring expressions, she added, “You know, like Gaudí’s famous lizard that … Oh, forget it, you two philistines.”

  As so often in a dream, I found it a bit creepy when my subconscious mind dug up information from the depths of my brain that I thought I’d never heard. I’d type “Gaudí” and “Barcelona” into a search engine tomorrow. And hopefully I would find more than just lizards.

  Someone was knocking at the door.

  The lizard obligingly rolled up like a good little doorknob, while her twin on the other side of the door put her head through the mailbox slit and hissed, “It’s Henry.”

  “That’s what I call an innovative spyhole,” said Mom.

  “You could call her Mata Hari,” said Lottie.

  I bent down. “What did Grayson’s room smell of this evening?” I asked through the mailbox slit.

  “The bottle of cologne that Grayson dropped on the rug, which is probably going to smell like his grandfather forever now,” replied Henry on the other side of the door. “I bet he dreams of him tonight.”

  I opened the door. Henry had propped one hand against the frame and was grinning at me.

  “Hi, cheese girl. May I come in?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, acting flirtatious. “It’s the middle of the night. My mother would never allow it.”

  “Nonsense,” said Mom behind me.

  Henry put his head around the door. “Ah, a nice, comfy family dream. And it smells delicious too … freshly baked cookies, and cinnamon … incredible, all those good smells in your dreams these days.”

  It was even more incredible that he could smell what I was dreaming about. That was so crazy that I avoided thinking about it for long. Because whenever I did that, I felt afraid—afraid that in the long run there might not be any logical, scientifically verifiable explanation of this whole dream thing. Which in turn would mean that …

  “Hello, who’s this?” said Henry, interrupting my train of thought.

  A rather fat chow had suddenly appeared under the kitchen table and was looking at us with his head to one side. Rasmus, as large as life.

  “He always looks like that when he’s begging for a treat,” said Mia, giggling. “What’s little Ras—”

  “Ouch!” Henry was rubbing his arm. I had pushed him into the corridor, slipped out after him myself, and slammed the door behind us both—all before Mia could finish what she was saying. I could move faster in a dream than Superman if I had to.

  “That little scamp. Let’s check up on the dream corridors around here,” I said, linking arms with Henry. “For instance, we could go and see whether Grayson is right, and it’s really impossible to get past his dream door anymore.”

  “But it was so comfortable in there.” Henry looked regretfully at my door. “While out here there could presumably be invisible spies and psychopaths up to all sorts of things.”

  Right, or demons. You could never be absolutely sure. The corridor with its different colored doors and soft lighting could have looked cheerful and peaceful, but it didn’t. There was something sinister about its silence, and I couldn’t make out where the light came from anyway—there were no windows and no ceiling lights, in fact not even a ceiling that the lights could have hung from. A little way above the walls there was a vague kind of void that could be compared only with the pale-gray sky that hung over London on many days. There seemed to be no end to all the branching corridors; they just lost themselves somewhere in the shadows. All the same, I liked this place, and the idea that there was another human mind dreaming behind each door, so that everyone in the world was linked by this labyrinth. It was a magical place, mysterious and dangerous—a mixture that, to me, was simply irresistible.

  I moved a little closer to Henry and took a deep breath. “We can have as many comfortable dreams as we like for the rest of our lives. Once we’ve saved the world from Arthur.”

  Henry moved away from me, only to put both arms around me this time. “That’s why I love you so much, Liv Silver,” he murmured into my ear. “Because you’re always ready for an adventure.”

  It was just the same with him. Without another word, we both turned into jaguars and padded forward side by side. I always felt a little safer here in nonhuman shape, and by now I could control being a jaguar so well that it didn’t take much concentration to keep the transformation going. Unlike difficult shapes such as flying insects, immovable objects, and, that most difficult transformation of all, a breath of air, I could maintain a jaguar for hours on end. Sometimes when I woke in the morning after an intensive night dreaming in jaguar shape, I had taken on the role so well that I had to suppress an urge to lick my paws, and once I had even growled like a jaguar at Florence because she was standing between me and the coffee machine in the kitchen.

  And speaking of Florence, the elegant reed-green door that was next to Grayson’s tonight was certainly hers. Unless the initials F.C.E.S., in silver lettering on the wood, meant something other than Florence Cecilia Elizabeth Spencer, but that was rather unlikely.

  We hadn’t yet found out what the rules for the arrangement of the doors were, and why they changed places now and then. But it was certain that the doors of people close to you in some way, whether positive or negative, were never too far from your own. You could tell who owned many of the doors just from the look of them—for instance, Grayson’s door was a perfect copy of the front door of our house, and Mom’s door even had her name on it: MATTHEWS’S MOONSHINE ANTIQUARIAN BOOKS—OPEN FROM MIDNIGHT TO DAWN. Other doors weren’t so easy to identify, but by now I was sure that the plain door painted an elegant gray next to Mom’s Moonshine Antiquarian bookshop belonged to Ernest. Wherever Mom’s door went, the gray door was always beside it. And the door painted bright red, with a showy golden door knocker, was a perfect match for Persephone’s character, particularly as it kept getting clos
er to mine when we’d been spending time together during the day.

  Not that I’d ever felt I needed to look behind one of those doors, but it kind of reassured me to know which door was whose. If you spent as much time as Henry and I did in this corridor, you got to know all the doors in the corridors near it pretty well—even if they changed places or altered their appearance. I’d spent half the day wondering how the hell Arthur had managed to find Mrs. Lawrence’s dream door. There were a great many doors here that might have suited her, but no real clue on any of them, like—oh, how would I know? Maybe like a picture of the Eiffel Tower carved on it, or a doormat saying BIENVENUE. Or at least a doorknob shaped like the stopper of a bottle of Chanel perfume. But Arthur had probably set about it pragmatically. Having laid hands on some personal possession of Mrs. Lawrence’s, he’d only have had to try all the likely doors until he found one that would open. It would have taken him some time, but that just showed how doggedly he kept pursuing his unpleasant plans. And if Mrs. Lawrence hadn’t built any insuperable obstacles into her door, it would have been easy for Arthur to get into the room behind it. And do whatever he had done there.

  I felt the fur on the back of my neck stand up at the thought of it. And for another reason too: by this time, Henry and I had turned off our own corridor and were now in the one where we were likely to find both Arthur’s and Anabel’s doors.

  Just in case Arthur was watching us somehow or other, we always used to stroll along this corridor in a particularly calm and confident way. We didn’t want him to think we were afraid of him. So I cast only a brief glance—a glance as scornful as my jaguar face could manage—at the words Carpe Noctem hammered into the smooth metal surface of his door, and then I turned my head away and went on scanning the surroundings. There—that plain silver doorbell on the door opposite was new. And even as I stared inquiringly at it, it melted and flowed like a silvery shining stream down the wall to the floor, where it formed again, grew taller, and finally turned into a girl with long, wavy hair and a striking similarity to Botticelli’s Venus. Except for being much, much more beautiful, and wearing jeans and a T-shirt instead of standing naked in a scallop shell. Anabel Scott, probably the best-looking psychopath in history.

  “Why, if it isn’t the kitty-cat patrol.” Anabel had an attractive smile, which had failed to impress me ever since she tried cutting my throat.

  I wasn’t so sure about Henry. He had changed back to his own shape and was smiling just as attractively back at her. “Nice to see you, Anabel. Is that your door, right next to your ex-boyfriend’s? Interesting. Or are you hanging around as a doorbell to spy on him?”

  “You’d like to know where my door is, wouldn’t you? So that you can spy on me.” Anabel gave a little laugh and then added, with a sigh, “Although spying isn’t so easy since everyone has found out how to be invisible.… I never ought to have taught Arthur so much.”

  She had a good point. One brilliant psychopath around the place would have been quite enough. And there was no denying it: Anabel was brilliant. Somehow or other, she had managed to lure her psychiatrist into these corridors, and while he had been living out his megalomaniac fantasies here, like a child given the run of a toy shop, believing he had everything under control, Anabel had found a way of locking him inside his own dream—after he had signed her discharge papers, by the way. Now Dr. Anderson, or Senator Tod, as he had called himself in the dream corridors, was lying in a care home somewhere in Surrey being fed through a tube—and was fast asleep. The doctors could find no conclusive diagnosis for his condition. Anabel had assured us that he was feeling fine because he was dreaming a life for himself and couldn’t tell it apart from real life. All the same, and although Senator Tod hadn’t been exactly a nice character, I felt sorry for him when I thought about all that. I had no idea how Anabel had managed to lock the man into his dream, but maybe he could be woken if his door was opened from the outside. But we’d have to find the door first, and unfortunately only Anabel knew where it was. She was right: invisibility made spying very difficult.

  I growled softly.

  “I’m afraid that now Arthur can do things even you haven’t mastered,” said Henry. He didn’t mention the fact that we did actually know where Anabel’s door was. Once, it had indeed been right opposite Arthur’s, but since Anabel’s breakdown last fall, her showy double door with gold fittings in the Gothic style had disappeared without a trace. Which meant that it had changed its appearance entirely, because Anabel herself was haunting the corridors as busily as ever. We’d been looking for it for ages, sometimes in corridors quite a long way from ours, but Henry had tracked it down only a week ago, thanks to his detective instincts and some underhanded shadowing tactics, as he claimed. But later he admitted that it had been pure chance—and luck—because he had been exploring the corridors invisibly when a bright-pink door with a Hello Kitty picture on it opened and Anabel cautiously stepped out into the corridor. When you were disguised as a breath of air or something as insubstantial as that, it was difficult to the point of impossibility to move objects or do something as simple as pressing down a door handle, and it reassured me to know that Anabel obviously had the same difficulties. A second later, she had made herself invisible again, but that brief moment had been enough for Henry. He had waited for her to come back, so as to make quite sure that it wasn’t the door of someone else whom Anabel had been visiting in a dream. Of course we’d seen the Hello Kitty door hundreds of times before; it was far and away the most tasteless in the corridors, and we’d never have expected to find Anabel behind it. You had to admit that her camouflage was perfect, in line with the principle that people who draw attention to themselves aren’t likely suspects. How she had done it was a mystery to me; I was pretty sure that you didn’t have any influence on the appearance of your own door. It seemed to suit its owner’s frame of mind just like that. However, maybe Anabel had developed a special trick—it wouldn’t be the first time she’d proved capable of doing something when we hadn’t the faintest idea of it. Now, for example, she even seemed to be capable of reading Henry’s thoughts.

  “You mean that scene with Mrs. Lawrence. I read about her nervous breakdown in Secrecy’s blog.” Anabel glanced up and down the corridor again. “Arthur’s been visiting her in her dreams these last few nights, so I knew at once he must have something to do with it. I did wonder what he wanted with her, of all people, after he gave up French.”

  “We think he picked her by chance, as a kind of guinea pig. He wanted to try out a new method of hypnotizing people in their dreams so that they’ll do what he wants in the daytime.”

  Anabel nibbled her lower lip. “But why would he want Mrs. Lawrence to climb on a table in the school cafeteria and tell all about herself and Mr. Vanhagen?”

  It was a good question. I looked at Henry with my jaguar head to one side.

  He shrugged his shoulders. “Well, just like that. To show that he can ruin people’s lives.” There was a short pause in which he looked around. “Because he can.”

  “Yes. Yes, maybe,” murmured Anabel, and her eyes were slightly glazed. “That would be just like Arthur. Or, anyway, the person that Arthur has turned into.”

  I found it hard to imagine that Arthur had ever had moral scruples and something like a conscience, but Henry and Grayson also kept assuring me that their former best friend had once been a really nice guy. Before he fell hopelessly in love with Anabel and then realized that he had been exploited, manipulated, and misused for her purposes. However, I kept my sympathy well within bounds. Where would we be if everyone who suffered a bitter disappointment automatically mutated into a criminal? I felt sorrier for Anabel. After all, she hadn’t been born a crazy psychopath. Her early childhood with her mother in a sect that worshipped demons and went in for weird rituals had made her the monster who tried cutting my throat. And now that monster had created another monster—a nastier and more dangerous one than Anabel herself.

  We knew it was risky, an
d neither of us was happy with the idea, but if we were to be a match for Arthur, we needed Anabel as an ally. Even worse than facing him without her help was the idea that she might get back together with him in the end. We had to prevent that, at all costs.

  Henry cleared his throat. “No one knows what Arthur has in mind, but with the abilities he’s developed, I guess every opportunity is open to him. He must be doing something like what you did to Senator Tod to get him to sign your discharge from the hospital. You must tell us how you did it, Anabel.”

  “So that you two can interfere as well?” Anabel gave Henry a thoughtful smile. “I can well imagine that you’d try everything, Henry Harper. No, thanks! It’s quite enough to think that Arthur could spoil my plans.”

  “And what plans would those be?” asked Henry with a deep sigh.

  “You’ve known that long enough.” The light suddenly changed. It was as if a shadow were falling over the invisible sources of light in the corridors. Anabel made a sweeping gesture with her hand. “You both know who we have to thank for all this, and what we still owe him.”

  The air around us was noticeably chillier. I was very glad I was still a jaguar. That way, I could stare hard at Anabel without her noticing how uncomfortable I felt.

  “Isn’t all that about the demon over and done with?” asked Henry gently. “I thought you’d realized in the hospital that it was only part of … part of your sickness.”

  “Yes,” said Anabel. “Or so they tried to convince me. And I may be crazy, but I’m certainly not stupid. I do take it into consideration that … that the Lord of Shadows and Darkness may have existed only in my sick imagination. But suppose that isn’t so? Wouldn’t you, too, rather be safe than sorry?”

  No, we wouldn’t. Heaven knows we had plenty of other problems as things were.

  “Are you still taking your medication?” asked Henry, frowning.

  “Always so splendidly direct.” Anabel was smiling again. “As it happens, I’ve stopped taking it. Just to see what happens. Or if anything happens. So we can wait and see.” Suddenly she seemed to be in a hurry. She threw her hair back over her shoulders. “Well, nice to see you, as always.” She walked away without waiting for us to say anything, and after she had taken three steps, her outlines blurred and became more and more translucent, until a few feet farther on she had disappeared entirely. She had taken the cold temperature with her.