Dreams Underfoot: A Newford Collection (5 page)

Reece hesitated. He’d wanted to go in this afternoon, but hadn’t had the nerve to bare his white skinny limbs in front of a beach full of serious tanners. Well, there was no one to see him now, he thought as he stripped down to his underwear.

The water hit him like a cold fist when he dove in after her and he came up gasping with shock. His body tingled, every pore stung alert. Ellen drifted further out, riding the waves easily. As he waded out to join her, a swell rose up and tumbled him back to shore in a spill of floundering arms and legs that scraped him against the sand.

“Either go under or over them,” Ellen advised him as he started back out.

He wasn’t much of a swimmer, but the water wasn’t too deep except when a big wave came. He went under the next one and came up spluttering, but pleased with himself for not getting thrown up against the beach again.

“I love swimming at night,” Ellen said as they drifted together.

Reece nodded. The water was surprisingly warm, too, once you were in it. You could lose all sense of time out here, just floating with the swells.

“You do this a lot?” he asked.

Ellen shook her head. “It’s not that good an idea to do this alone. If the undertow got you, it’d pull you right out and no one would know.”

Reece laid his head back in the water and looked up at the sky. Though they were less than an hour by the freeway out of down-town L.A., the sky was completely different here. It didn’t have that glow from God-knows-how-many millions of lights. The stars seemed closer, too, or maybe it was that the sky seemed deeper.

He glanced over at Ellen. Their reason for being out here was forgotten. He wished he had the nerve to just sort of sidle up to her and put his arms around her, hold her close. She’d feel all slippery, but she’d feel good.

He paddled a little bit towards her, riding a swell up and then down again. The wave turned him slightly away from her. When he glanced back, he saw her staring wide-eyed at the shore. His gaze followed hers and then that cold he’d felt when he first entered the water returned in a numbing rush.

The booger was here.

It came snuffling over a rise in the beach, a squat dark shadow in the sand, greasy and slick as it beelined for their clothing. When it reached Ellen’s tote bag, it buried its face in her skirt and blouse, then proceeded to rip them to shreds. Ellen’s fingers caught his arm in a frightened grip. A wave came up, lifting his feet from the bottom. He kicked out frantically, afraid he was going to drown with her holding on to him like that, but the wave tossed them both in towards the shore.

The booger looked up, baring its barracuda teeth. The red coals of its eyes burned right into them both, pinning them there on the wet sand where the wave had left them. Leaving the ruin of Ellen’s belongings in torn shreds, it moved slowly towards them.

“Re-Reece,” Ellen said. She was pressed close to him, shivering.

Reece didn’t have the time to appreciate the contact of her skin against his. He wanted to say, this is what you were looking for, lady, but things weren’t so cut and dried now. Ellen wasn’t some nameless cipher anymore—just a part of a crowd that he could sneer at—and she wasn’t just something he had the hots for either. She was a person, just like him. An individual. Someone he could actually relate to.

“Can—can’t you stop it?” Ellen cried.

The booger was getting close now. Its sewer reek was strong enough to drown out the salty tang of the ocean. It was like some-thing had died there on the beach and was now getting up and coming for them.

Stop it? Reece thought. Maybe the thing had been created out of his frustrated anger, the way Ellen’s friend made out it could happen in that book of his, but Reece knew as sure as shit that he didn’t control the booger.

Another wave came down upon them and Reece pushed at the sand so that it pulled them partway out from the shore on its way back out. Getting to his knees in the rimy water, he got in front of Ellen so that he was between her and the booger. Could the sucker swim?

The booger hesitated at the water’s edge. It lifted its paws fastidi-ously from the wet sand like a cat crossing a damp lawn and relief went through Reece. When another wave came in, the booger backstepped quickly out of its reach.

Ellen was leaning against him, face near his as she peered over his shoulder.

“It can’t handle the water,” Reece said. He turned his face to hers when she didn’t say anything. Her clear eyes were open wide, gaze fixed on the booger. “Ellen ... ?” he began.

“I can’t believe that it’s really there,” she said finally in a small voice.

“But you’re the one—you said ...” He drew a little away from her so that he could see her better.

“I know what I said,” Ellen replied. She hugged herself, trem-bling at the stir of dark wings inside her.

“It’s just ... I
wanted
to believe, but ... wanting to and having it be real ...” There was a pressure in the center of her chest now, like something inside push-ing to get out. “I ...”

The pain lanced sharp and sudden. She heard Reece gasp. Look-ing down, she saw what he had seen, a bird’s head poking gossamer from between her breasts. It was a dark smudge against the white of her swimsuit, not one of Uncle Dobbin’s parrots, but a crow’s head, with eyes like the pair she’d seen looking back at her from the mirror. Her own magic, leaving her because she didn’t believe. Because she couldn’t believe, but

It didn’t make sense. She’d always believed. And now, with Reece’s booger standing there on the shore, how could she help
but
believe?

The booger howled then, as though to underscore her thoughts. She looked to the shore and saw it stepping into the waves, crying out at the pain of the salt water on its flesh, but determined to get at them.

To get at her. Reece’s magic, given life. While her own magic ... She pressed at the half-formed crow coming from her chest, trying to force it back in.

“I believe, I believe,” she muttered through clenched teeth. But just like Uncle Dobbin’s assistant in Christy’s story, she could feel that swelling ache of loss rise up in her. She turned despairing eyes to Reece.

She didn’t need a light to see the horror in his eyes—horror at the booger’s approach, at the crow’s head sticking out of her chest. But he didn’t draw away from her. Instead, he reached out and caught hold of her shoulders.

“Stop fighting it!” he cried.

“But—”

He shot a glance shoreward. They were bracing themselves against the waves, but a large swell had just caught the booger and sent it howling back to shore in a tumble of limbs.

“It was your needing proof,” he said. “Your needing to see the booger, to know that it’s real—that’s what’s making you lose it. Stop trying so hard.”

But she knew he was right. She pulled free of him and looked towards the shore where the booger was struggling to its feet. The creature made rattling sounds deep in its throat as it started out for them again. It was hard, hard to do, but she let her hands fall free. The pain in her chest was a fire, the aching loss building to a crescendo. But she closed herself to it, closed her eyes, willed herself to stand relaxed.

Instead of fighting, she remembered. Balloon Men spinning down the beach. Christy’s gnome, riding his pig along the pier. Bramley Dapple’s advice. Goon pinching Jilly Coppercorn’s leg. The thing that fed on eggs and eyeballs and, yes, Reece’s booger too. Uncle Dobbin and his parrots and Non Wert watching her magic fly free. And always the Balloon Men, tumbling end-over-end, across the beach, or down the alleyway behind her house ....

And the pain eased. The ache loosened, faded.

“Jesus,” she heard Reece say softly.

She opened her eyes and looked to where he was looking. The booger had turned from the sea and was fleeing as a crowd of Balloon Men came bouncing down the shore, great round roly-poly shapes, turning end-over-end, laughing and giggling, a chorus of small deep voices. There was salt in her eyes and it wasn’t from the ocean’s brine. Her tears ran down her cheeks and she felt herself grinning like a fool.

The Balloon Men chased Reece’s booger up one end of the beach and then back the other way until the creature finally made a stand.

Howling, it waited for them to come, but before the first bouncing round shape reached it, the booger began to fade away.

Ellen turned to Reece and knew he had tears in his own eyes, but the good feeling was too strong for him to do anything but grin right back at her. The booger had died with the last of his anger. She reached out a hand to him and he took it in one of his own. Joined so, they made their way to the shore where they were surrounded by riotous Balloon Men until the bouncing shapes finally faded and then there were just the two of them standing there.

Ellen’s heart beat fast. When Reece let go her hand, she touched her chest and felt a stir of dark wings inside her, only they were settling in now, no longer striving to fly free. The wind came in from the ocean still, but it wasn’t the same wind that the Balloon Men rode.

“I guess it’s not all bullshit,” Reece said softly.

Ellen glanced at him.

He smiled as he explained. “Helping each other—getting along instead of fighting. Feels kind of good, you know?”

Ellen nodded. Her hand fell from her chest as the dark wings finally stilled.

“Your friend’s story didn’t say anything about crows,” Reece said.

“Maybe we’ve all got different birds inside—different magics.” She looked out across the waves to where the oil rigs lit the horizon.

“There’s a flock of wild parrots up around Santa Ana,” Reece said.

“I’ve heard there’s one up around San Pedro, too.”

“Do you think ... ?” Reece began, but he let his words trail off. The waves came in and wet their feet.

“I don’t know,” Ellen said. She looked over at her shredded clothes. “Come on. Let’s get back to my place and warm up.”

Reece laid his jacket over her shoulders. He put on his T-shirt and jeans, then helped her gather up what was left of her belongings.

“I didn’t mean for this to happen,” he said, bundling up the torn blouse and skirt. He looked up to where she was standing over him. “But I couldn’t control the booger.”

“Maybe we’re not supposed to.”

“But something like the booger ...”

She gave his Mohawk a friendly ruffle. “I think it just means that we’ve got to be careful about what kind of vibes we put out.”

Reece grimaced at her use of the word, but he nodded.

“It’s either that,” Ellen added, “or we let the magic fly free.”

The same feathery stirring of wings that she felt moved in Reece. They both knew that that was something neither of them was likely to give up.

In Uncle Dobbin’s Parrot Fair, Nori Wert turned away from the pair of cages that she’d been making ready.

“I guess we won’t be needing these,” she said.

Uncle Dobbin looked up from a slim collection of Victorian poetry and nodded. “You’re learning fast,” he said. He stuck the stem of his pipe in his mouth and fished about in his pocket for a match.

“Maybe there’s hope for you yet.”

Nori felt her own magic stir inside her, back where it should be, but she didn’t say anything to him in case she had to go away, now that the lesson was learned. She was too happy here. Next to catch-ing some rays, there wasn’t anywhere she’d rather be.

The Stone Drum

There is no question that there is an unseen world. The problem is how far is it from mid-town
and how late is it open?

—
Attributed to Woody Allen

It was Jilly Coppercorn who found the stone drum, late one after-noon.

She brought it around to Professor Dapple’s rambling Tudor-styled house in the old quarter of Lower Crowsea that same evening, wrapped up in folds of brown paper and tied with twine. She rapped sharply on the Professor’s door with the little brass lion’s head knocker that always seemed to stare too intently at her, then stepped back as Olaf Goonasekara, Dapple’s odd little housekeeper, flung the door open and glowered out at where she stood on the rickety porch.

“You,” he grumbled.

“Me,” she agreed, amicably. “Is Bramley in?”

“I’ll see,” he replied and shut the door.

Jilly sighed and sat down on one of the two worn rattan chairs that stood to the left of the door, her package bundled on her knee. A black and orange cat regarded her incuriously from the seat of the other chair, then turned to watch the progress of a woman walking her dachshund down the street.

Professor Dapple still taught a few classes at Butler U., but he wasn’t nearly as involved with the curriculum as he had been when Jilly attended the university. There’d been some kind of a scandal—something about a Bishop, some old coins and the daughter of a Tarot reader—but Jilly had never quite got the story straight. The Professor was a jolly fellow—wizened like an old apple, but more active than many who were only half his apparent sixty years of age. He could talk and joke all night, incessantly polishing his wire-rimmed spectacles.

What he was doing with someone like Olaf Goonasekara as a housekeeper Jilly didn’t know. It was true that Goon looked comical enough, what with his protruding stomach and puffed cheeks, the halo of unruly hair and his thin little arms and legs, reminding her of nothing so much as a pumpkin with twig limbs, or a monkey. His usual striped trousers, organ grinder’s jacket and the little green and yellow cap he liked to wear, didn’t help. Nor did the fact that he was barely four feet tall and that the Professor claimed he was a goblin and just called him Goon.