The Door of Dreams Read online

  Table of Contents

  The Door of Dreams

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Map

  Glossary

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  The Door of Dreams

  By Greg James

  Copyright © Greg James 2015

  Published by Manderghast Press

  London, UK

  First Edition published September 2015

  All rights reserved.

  The right of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  Any reproduction, resale or unauthorised use of the material or artwork herein is therefore prohibited.

  Disclaimer: The persons, places and events depicted in this work are fictional and any resemblance to those living or dead is unintentional.

  Dedication

  For Henry & Natalie Kalevi.

  Thank you for believing in me.

  Come away, O human child.

  To the waters and the wild,

  With a faery, hand in hand.

  For the world's more full of weeping,

  Than you can understand.

  The Stolen Child - W.B. Yeats

  Chapter One

  It was raining on the day she found the door.

  Willow Grey wandered through the house, listening to the rain falling outside and the old wood settling inside. There were shadows in the house, but they didn’t scare her. She’d stopped being scared of most things since the diagnosis. This house was to be home, for a short time. Outside of the city and away from humanity, it was a very peaceful place, with woods guarding the north and low hills crouching to the east and west. Dad was out, getting supplies from the local store. He’d taken compassionate leave from work to care for her. Willow had been coming up to the end of tenth grade. The diagnosis had been a month ago and Dad had been by her side ever since.

  The house was pretty empty. Dad said the furniture from their old place would be delivered in the morning, so tonight they were camping out in the dining room on the first floor. The house had a second and a third floor, and a cellar. Willow had never lived in a house with a cellar before.

  She looked out of the window, watching rain fall on the empty land. There’re more trees out here than people, that’s what Dad had said; so much grass and so much space. It was like a dreamland compared to the city.

  Dad hadn’t been gone long but she felt a slight pang in her heart as she thought of him. She missed him. Maybe it was the effect of twilight leaking in through the windows. It was a time of day which always made her feel melancholy. It could be the tumour as well. The doctor had said it would affect her moods as it grew and put more pressure on the brain. She put the thought out of her mind, not wanting her feelings to just be a side-effect of her condition.

  Restless, Willow decided to explore. She went up and then down through the house. The simple activity of pacing up and down the stairs, crossing the landing, opening the doors and peering into still-empty rooms formed a basic reality for her that she enjoyed. It was better than sitting by the window and staring out into the rain until Dad came home.

  Better to do something than nothing, right?

  The sound of rain followed her through the house like a constant companion. The house replied to her footsteps every so often with a creak or a sigh. She was alone but with friends; the house and the rain were going to be her friends. They had things to show her; she could feel it.

  Willow’s old friends from school wouldn’t come to see her out here. She’d waited for the first few weeks after she was withdrawn from school, but they never came. Was it because of the cancer? Did they think it was like she had leprosy or something? That they would catch it if they came near her? Could they really love her so little? Willow hadn’t cried because she was sick yet but she had cried because her friends didn’t want to see her. It hurt a lot to know people could be so cold.

  Willow was standing at the door to the cellar. She hadn’t been down there yet. Down into the dark. She opened the door. It was very dark down there and a mouldy odour wafted up the wooden steps. The weight of the shadows below didn’t allow her to see a thing but she wasn’t scared of them. She went down the steps, listening to the sound of the rain receding until her bare feet made the only sound. Something sharp jabbed into the sole of her foot. It hurt like a bee-sting. Willow cried out as she lost her footing. Her hands grabbed at thin air. She fell. The world spun, hurtling around her over and over again. She hit her head and everything came to a stop. Raw static sounded in her ears. She closed her eyes, accepting the soft blackness.

  “I’m very sorry, Willow, but the tumour is malignant.”

  The doctor had been as gentle as possible when he told her. She remembered feeling Dad’s fingers curl tight around her own at the words. Willow didn’t cry but Dad shed a tear, just the one, in the silence that followed. The doctor filled the silence with words that seemed to have more syllables than sense to them.

  Craniopharyngioma ... Rathke’s pouch ... optic chiasm ... median survival rate ...

  There were two words the doctor said which stood out in her mind though.

  Six months.

  The tumour had been slowly growing behind her eyes for over a year. Her bad dreams, migraines and night-vomiting were its children. The shadows she saw; those were the tumour’s fault too as it pressed on the optic nerves. The doctor said he’d been amazed she didn’t have any other symptoms before the diagnosis. There was nothing they could do for Willow.

  Six months to live, that was it.

  She would’ve been a junior and then a senior at school. Then, there would’ve been college. Drinking. Sex. Even love. All those firsts, all gone for good. Six months, it wasn’t long enough to live the rest of a life. The doctor had said she could try chemo but she didn’t want to if there was no point.

  “I don’t want to die as a bag of bones in a hospital bed. I want to die as I am, at home with my Dad.”

  Dad could’ve argued with her but he didn’t. He let her decide. It was her life, after all.

  These days, she got tired easy. Some nights she woke up with night-terrors and couldn’t get back to sleep. The worst was when she had to throw up. Dad held her hair back as she was sick into the toilet or a plastic bowl. Her face was always red with embarrassment afterwards, but she loved him all the more for doing it – for just being there.

  Willow opened her eyes. Her surroundings fuzzed grey for a moment and she forgot where she was. Then she remembered. She was at the bottom of the cellar steps. She’d fallen. Her head hurt but it wasn’t bleeding. Thank goodness.

  Willow got to her feet shakily, and stretched out some of the pain from the fall. The ground under her feet was made of hard, packed dirt. It must be a very old cellar, she thought. It looked like a cluttered attic. There were old wardrobes, battered dressers, mirrors and faded, torn paintings all around her. They formed a strange maze of curiosities. The old owners must’ve
dumped all of this down here before they left.

  Some of this stuff is pretty cool, she thought.

  Willow heard a sound.

  It was the sound of a door opening and closing.

  Chapter Two

  Willow looked back up the cellar-steps but the door at the top hadn’t moved. It was still open, shedding evening light. No sign of Dad either. There was that pang in her heart again as she thought of him.

  He’s not been gone long, she thought, why’m I feeling like this?

  Willow nursed her head, wondering if the strange feeling was a symptom after all. Maybe I should go to bed and lie down for a bit – but she’d had enough of lying in bed.

  Today was the first day in a long time when she’d had this much energy. It would come and go, the doctor had said. Well, for once it had come rather than gone. She wanted to make the most of it. Willow went deeper into the cellar, carefully navigating around abandoned pieces of objets d’art until she reached the far wall.

  There was a door in front of her, slightly open.

  “Curiouser and curiouser”, she whispered to herself.

  The door was not for entering or leaving the house. The foundations were solid as a rock, Dad had said so. Willow went up to the door and traced her fingers over its surface. It was a regular hardwood door. Nothing special about it. As she stood there, the door opened wider. Willow snatched her hand away.

  Like when I was a kid, she thought, I always dreamed about finding a door into another world. An escape from this world. A way out. And now, when I want a way out more than ever, away from death, away from pain, here it is. Weird.

  She looked into the darkness beyond the door, reminding herself that she wasn’t scared. Tentatively, she reached out with one hand and found her fingers touching nothing. She snatched her hand back again.

  What’s going on here? How could this be possible?

  It couldn’t be. It must be her eyes. The tumour weighing on the optic nerves, that was it.

  Willow looked back in the direction of the cellar steps. She should go back upstairs, have a lie-down, and watch rain pearl on the glass until Dad came home. She could embrace the mundane world and its dull, tedious terrors. She could watch the last light of day bleed from the world; briefly turning the northern trees into a forest of fangs and the eastern hills into squat, slumbering ogres.

  She looked at the dark space beyond the door.

  Open. Waiting. Tempting. Beckoning. Promising; if she only gave it a chance.

  “I should walk away from this right now,” she said.

  She didn’t.

  Willow crossed the threshold. The air tasted musty, damp and of the earth. She began to walk; unsure of where she was going, or why she had really decided to do this. To prove something to herself? To show herself there was more to life?

  Perhaps so. She went further, further, and further in wondering all the time where she was going to. Time passed. Every so often, she looked back and saw the light of the door in the cellar; reminding her the real world was back there, waiting.

  She caught a glimpse of light up ahead. Willow closed the distance between herself and the light. It wasn’t artificial, she could see that now. It was natural. It looked like moonlight. Moonlight underground. How strange. Her fingers touched the wall of the tunnel and she felt leaves instead of earth. Willow turned around and reached out for the other side of the tunnel. It felt the same. The tunnel had turned into trees.

  A cold wind blew through the branches making them shiver.

  Willow carried on following the path towards the light; feeling bracken and undergrowth crunch under her bare feet. She wished that she’d put shoes on before she’d started exploring. Mind you, she hadn’t expected to find a forest underground. Willow came out into a clearing and saw something very strange indeed.

  A grandfather clock stood atop a grassy mound. Its pale face showed midnight.

  Willow went up to the grandfather clock and looked more closely at its face, watching the hands move and twitch as it marked off the seconds. She placed her hand against the clock. She felt the rhythm of its pendulum through the polished mahogany casing. The sound it made was thick and heavy, like a heartbeat. She traced her fingers along the unified line pointing upwards like a perfect arrow. She followed it to a sky which was clear and where thousands of stars shone around a light blue moon; stars she didn’t recognise, constellations which were alien.

  “Where am I?” she wondered.

  “You are in Tirlane,” said a voice.

  Willow started and looked around, “Who’s that? Who’s there?”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

  A small man emerged from among the trees. He was dressed in a rather shabby robe of leaf-green and had bark-brown boots on his feet. He had an unruly, greying beard and wore a small, woven skullcap on his head. His face was tanned, lined, and smiling, “I am Henu, a Wealdsman. This wood is Beam Weald and you are standing in Watchtower Grove. Tell me, how did you come to be here?”

  “I just went through a door, followed the tunnel on the other side, and I came out here.”

  “Doors and tunnels. Tunnels and doors,” he tapped at the side of his noble nose with a finger as he spoke, “there were so many once. I forget which ones are where. We do not get as many visitors as we used to, you know. So many used to come here from other worlds. Tirlane was known as the Unspoiled Land. But now, the ways are closed. Such a shame. So sad.”

  “I see, so I came here by a magic door,” Willow said, not sure where this was going, “so what’re you again? What do you do?”

  “I care for the trees. I keep the Weald alive. It has been my charge and my duty for many years.”

  “Why is it so dark and cold here?”

  “The Lamia. She has cursed Tirlane with her presence. Terrible. It’s so terrible. The nights are always like this; never warm, even in summer. The trees fear her. The grass no longer sings with the wind in case her servants hear and set it afire.” Henu’s face sagged in sad memory, but he soon recovered with a smile, “But that is not your concern, friend. Tell me, what is your name?”

  “Willow, my name’s Willow.”

  “Then come, friend Willow. My melancholy overtakes my manners. Come with me and we shall have some refreshment. The nights are long here and company is always welcome.”

  Chapter Three

  Willow followed Henu through the trees to a ramshackle cottage fashioned from the bole of a huge and ancient tree trunk.

  “Come inside,” he said, pushing open the low door, “make yourself at home.”

  Henu’s dwelling was overrun with bundles of scrolls, piles of crumbling books and worse-for-wear furniture. Some of it reminded Willow of the abandoned antiques in the cellar back home. Home, how’m I gonna get back there from here?

  “Sit. Do sit please,” he said, “I will bring you something to drink.”

  Willow cleared a chair of old maps and ornate tomes before sitting down. She tried not to cough from all the dust which billowed up into the air.

  “Here we are,” he said, handing her a steaming cup.

  Willow sipped at it. It tasted of autumn and its aroma was that of bonfires on a November evening.

  “What is this?”

  Henu sat down on a chair and beamed at her, “It is a very special brew called stardraught. It heals. It strengthens. It makes things better.”

  Willow drank some more. She could feel it making her fingers and toes tingle with warmth. “I think it’s time for me to wake up now.”

  “Wake up?” he asked, brow creasing, “so, you think me a dream, friend Willow?”

  “No, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be rude but I never meant to come here, wherever I am.”

  “Tirlane,” he said, “all the land from Watchtower Grove to the castle of Silfrenheart on the shores of the Bound Sea is known as Tirlane. You have nothing to fear while you are with me, friend Willow. Nothing at all.”

  “I know, I’m
sorry, but this is all a bit too weird for me. I think it’s time for me to go.”

  “But you have only just arrived, friend Willow. You have seen nothing of the land.”

  “I need to get back.”

  “Why so?”

  “My Dad. He’ll worry. He’ll wonder where I’ve gotten to.”

  “But if this is a dream, as you thought a moment ago, why do you not wake up from it by yourself? I cannot stop you from doing this.”

  “Because, well, some dreams you can’t wake up just like that. You have to wait until the end.”

  “I see. Well, I hope for you this dream has a good ending.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “There is only one way for bad dreams to end, is there not?” Henu said, “and I am sure you do not want an ending like that to happen.”

  “Yeah,” she said, unsure, “I guess you’re right.”

  She eyed Henu for a moment, wondering at the strange, knowing clarity of his words.

  “Come,” he said, smiling jovially once again, “let me walk you back to Watchtower Grove. If you wish to go, I should not keep you. It would be impolite of me.”

  *

  “Do you know your way from here?” Henu asked as they arrived back at the grandfather clock.

  “Yes, I think so,” Willow said, “thank you for the stardraught, Henu. It was very good.”

  “Farewell,” he said.

  She waved goodbye to him and walked off into the trees; trying to find the path again with her feet. She reached out to feel for the tunnel closing in around her with its earthy walls but she felt only trees and more trees. The way back was gone, lost; and there was a darkness growing in the air, darker than the surrounding shadows.

  A voice spoke to her. “Come with me, Willow Grey.”

  The shape of a man stood within the trees, a bare outline. There was no face to see. It raised fingers which were long, thin needles. Its skin was as black as tar. Shadows seemed to grow and crawl away from it like so many spiders and insects. It reached towards her with its fingers. It had no mouth but still it spoke, “Come with me. Come and speak to the one we serve. She has waited long to meet with you.”