The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters by Gordon Dahlquist
The Prince was in the midst of unbuttoning the collar of his tunic. The Contessa had not moved. Miss Temple could not readily credit that such a man could be so shamelessly describing to such a woman the destined aspect of their imminent assignation—though she knew one could scarcely underestimate the arrogance of princes. Still, she pursed her lips with dismay at his droning prattle, as he all the while dug at the double row of silver buttons with a pale hooked finger. Miss Temple looked to Mrs. Dujong, whose expression was equally unsteady, and leaned her lips quite close against her ear.
“That is the Doctor’s Prince,” she whispered, “and the Contessa—”
Before she could say more the Contessa took another step into the room and closed the door behind her. At the sound the Prince paused, interrupting his words with an unhealthily gratified leer that revealed a bicuspid gone grey. He dropped a hand to his belt buckle.
“Truly, Madame, I have longed for this since the moment I first kissed your hand—”
The Contessa’s voice was loud and sharp, her words spoken clearly and without regard for sense.
“Blue Joseph blue Palace ice consumption.”
The Prince went silent, his jaw hanging open, his fingers still. The Contessa stepped closer to him, inhaled thoughtfully from her lacquered holder and let the smoke pour from her mouth as she spoke, as if upon exercising her hidden power she had become that much more demonic.
“Your Highness, you will believe you have had your way with me in this room. Though it would very much give you pleasure, you will be unable to convey this information to anyone else under any circumstances. Do you understand?”
The Prince nodded.
“Our engagement will have occupied your time for the next thirty minutes, so it will be impossible that I have in this time seen either Lydia Vandaariff or her father. During our encounter I have also confessed to you that the Comte d’Orkancz prefers the erotic companionship of boys. You will be unable to convey this information to anyone else either, though because of it you will not begrudge any request the Comte might have for unaccompanied visits to your bride. Do you understand?”
The Prince nodded.
“Finally, despite our encounter this evening, you will believe that upon this night you have taken the virginity of Miss Vandaariff, before you are married, so rapacious is your sexual appetite, and so little can she resist you. In the event she conceives, it is therefore entirely as a result of your own impulsive efforts. Do you understand?”
The Prince nodded. The Contessa turned, for at the door behind her came a gentle knock. She opened it a crack, and then, seeing who it was, wide enough for that person to enter.
Miss Temple put her hand over her mouth. It was Roger Bascombe.
“Yes?” asked the Contessa, speaking quietly.
“You wanted to know—I am off to collect the books from this night’s harvest, and meet the Deputy Minister—”
“And deliver the books to the Comte?”
“Of course.”
“You know which one I need.”
“Lord Vandaariff’s, yes.”
“Make sure it is in place. And watch Mr. Xonck.”
“For what?”
“I’m sure I do not know, Mr. Bascombe—thus the need to watch him closely.”
Roger nodded. His eyes glanced past the Contessa to the man on the chaise, who followed their words with an ignorant curiosity, like a cat captivated by a beam of light thrown from a prism. The Contessa followed Roger’s gaze and smirked.
“Tell the Comte this much is done. The Prince and I are in the midst of a torrid assignation, do you see?”
She permitted herself a throaty chuckle at the ridiculousness of that prospect and then sighed with contemplative pleasure, as if she were in the midst of a thought.
“It is a terrible thing when one is unable to resist one’s impulses…” She smiled to Bascombe and then called to the Prince. “My dear Karl-Horst, you are having your way with my body even now—your mind is writhing with sensation—you have never felt such ecstasy and you never will again. Instead you will always measure your future pleasure against this moment…and find it lacking.”
She laughed again. The Prince’s face was pink, his hips twitching awkwardly on the chaise, his nails scratching feebly at the upholstery. The Contessa glanced at Roger with a wry smile that to Miss Temple was confirmation that her ex-fiancé was just as much subject to this woman’s power as the Prince. The Contessa turned back to the man on the chaise.
“You…may…finish,” she said, teasing him as if he were a dog awaiting a treat.
At her words the Prince went still, breathing air in gulps, whimpering, both hands clutching the chaise. After what seemed to Miss Temple a very brief time, he exhaled deeply, his shoulders sagged from his effort, and the unpleasant smile returned to his face. He absently plucked at his darkening trousers and licked his lips. Miss Temple scoffed with abhorrence at the entire spectacle.
Her eyes snapped to the Contessa and her hand flew up to cover her mouth. The Contessa glared directly into the mirror. The speaking tube—the knob had been turned. Miss Temple’s scoff had been heard.
The Contessa barked harshly at Roger. “Someone is there! Get Blenheim! Around the other side—immediately!”
Miss Temple and Elöise stumbled back to their curtain as Roger dashed from sight and the Contessa strode toward them, her expression dark with rage. As she passed, the Prince attempted to stand and take her into his arms.
“My darling—”
Without a pause she struck him across the face, knocking him straight to his knees. She reached the mirror and screamed as if she could see their startled faces.
“Whoever you are—whatever you are doing—you will die!”
Miss Temple dragged Elöise by the hand through the curtain and to the nearby door. It did not matter where it went, they had to get out of the passage at once. Even wearing a half-mask the fury on the Contessa’s face had been that of a Gorgon, and as her hand tore at the doorknob Miss Temple felt her entire body trembling with fear. They barreled through the door and slammed it behind—and then both squealed with alarm at the brooding figure that loomed suddenly over them. It was only the back side of the door, covered by a striking, somber portrait in oils of a man in black with searching eyes and a cold thin mouth—Lord Vandaariff, for behind the figure rose the specter of Harschmort House. And yet, even as she continued to run, her heart in her mouth, Miss Temple recognized the painting as the work of Oskar Veilandt. But—was he not dead? And Vandaariff only in residence at Harschmort for two years? She groaned at the annoyance of not being able to pause and think!
As one she and Elöise cut through a strange ante-room of paintings and sculpture, its floor inlaid with mosaic. They could already hear approaching footsteps and dashed heedlessly in the other direction, careening around one corner and then another, until they reached a foyer whose flooring was slick black and white marble. Miss Temple heard a cry. They had been seen. Elöise ran to the left, but Miss Temple caught her arm and pulled her to the right, to a formidable dark metal door she thought they might close behind them to seal themselves off from pursuit. They rushed through, bare feet pattering across the marble and onto a landing of cold iron. Miss Temple thrust the coat at Elöise and shoved the woman toward a descending spiral staircase of welded steel while she tried to close the door. It did not move. She heaved again without success. She dropped to her knees, pried out the wooden wedge that had held it and then thrust the heavy door shut just as she heard footsteps echoing off the marble. The latch caught and she quickly dropped to her knees again and with both hands drove the wedge back under the door. She leapt after Mrs. Dujong, her pale feet soft and moist against the metal steps.
Being a spiral staircase, as the steps reached the iron column in the center they became quite narrow, and so because she was smaller Miss Temple felt it only fair she take the inside going down, half a step behind Elöise but holding on to her arm—as Elöis
Was there someone behind—a noise? She pulled Elöise to a stop, patting her arm to indicate urgency and silence, and looked back up the stairs. What they heard was not footsteps from within the tower, but what seemed very much like footsteps—and scuffles and snippets of talk—outside of it. For the first time Miss Temple looked at the tower walls—also welded steel—and saw the queer little sliding slats, like the ones sometimes seen between a coach and driver. Elöise slid the nearest open. Instead of an open window, it revealed an inset rectangle of smoked glass through which they could see…and what they saw quite took their breath away.
They looked out and down from the top of an enormous open chamber, like an infernal beehive, walls ringed with tier upon tier of walled prison cells, into which they could gaze unimpeded.
“Smoked glass!” she whispered to Elöise. “The prisoners cannot see when they are spied upon!”
“And look,” her companion answered, “are these the new prisoners?”
Before their eyes, the upper tier of cells were filling up like theatre boxes with the elegantly dressed and masked guests of the Harschmort gala, climbing down through hatches in the cell roofs, setting out folding chairs, opening bottles, waving handkerchiefs to one another across the open expanse through fearsome metal bars—the whole as unlikely, and to Miss Temple’s mind inappropriate, as spectators perched in the vault of a cathedral.
So high were they that even pressing their faces angled down against the glass did not allow them to see the floor below. How many cells were there? Miss Temple could not begin to count how many prisoners the place might hold. As for the spectators, there seemed to be at least a hundred—or who knew, numbers not being her strongest suit, perhaps it was three—their mass emitting a growing buzz of anticipation like an engine accelerating to speed. The only clue to the purpose of the gathering, or indeed the cathedral itself, was the bright metal tubing that ran the height of the chamber, lashed together in bunches, emerging from the walls like creeping vines the width of a tree trunk. While Miss Temple was sure that the layers of cells covered the whole of the chamber, she could not see the lower tiers for all the metal pipes—which told her sensible mind that the pipes, not the cells, had become the main concern. But where were the pipes going and whatever substance did they hold?
Miss Temple’s head spun back, where a grating shove echoed down to them like a whip crack—someone was opening the wedged door. At once Miss Temple took Elöise’s arm and leapt ahead.
“But where are we going?” hissed Elöise.
“I do not know,” whispered Miss Temple, “take care we do not get tangled in that coat!”
“But”—Elöise, annoyed but obliging, shifted the coat higher in her arms—“the Doctor cannot find us—we are cut off! There will be people below—we are marching directly to them!”
Miss Temple simply snorted in reply, for about no part of this could anything be done.
“Mind your feet,” she muttered. “It is slippery.”
As they continued their descent, the noise above them grew, both from the spectators in their cells and then, with another sharp scraping exclamation of the door being forced, from their pursuers at the top of the tower. Soon there were hobnails clattering against the steel steps. Without a word to each other the women increased their speed, racing around several more turns of the tower—how far down could it extend?—until Miss Temple abruptly stopped, turning to Elöise, both of them out of breath.
“The coat,” she panted, “give it to me.”
“I am doing my best to carry it safely—”
“No no, the bullets, the Doctor’s bullets—quickly!”
Elöise shifted the coat in her arms, trying to find the right pocket, Miss Temple feeling with both hands for the bulky box, and then desperately digging it out and prying up the cardboard lid.
“Get behind me,” hissed Miss Temple, “keep going down!”
“But we have no weapon,” whispered Elöise.
“Exactly so! It is dark—and perhaps we can use the coat as a distraction—quickly, remove whatever else—the cigarette case and the glass card!”
She pushed past Elöise, and working as quickly as she could began to scatter the bullets across the metal steps, emptying the box and covering perhaps four steps with the metal cartridges. The bootsteps above them were audibly nearer. She turned to Elöise, impatiently motioning her to go on—quickly!—and snatched away the coat, spreading it out some three steps lower than her bullets, plumping and plucking at the sleeves to make as intriguing a shape as possible. She looked up—they could only be a turn above—and leapt down, lifting up her robes, legs flashing pale, darting away from view.
She had just caught up to Elöise when they heard a shout—someone had seen the coat—and then the first crash, and then another, the cries, and the echoing clamor of scattered bullets, flailing blades, and screaming men. They stopped to look above them, and Miss Temple had just an instant to apprehend a swift metallic slithering and see the merest flash of reflected light. With a squeak she flung herself at Elöise with all her strength, lifting their bodies just enough that they each sat on the handrail, buttocks poorly balanced but feet clear of the disembodied saber that scythed at them, as if the steps were made of ice, then bounced past to ring and spark its way to the bottom of the steps. The women tumbled off the rail, amazed at their own sudden escape, and continued down, the rage of confusion and gruesome injury clamorous above them.
The saber was a problem, Miss Temple thought with a groan, for its arrival below would surely alert whoever was there that something was wrong. Or perhaps not—perhaps it would run them through! She snorted at her own unquenchable optimism. She had no more clever ideas. They came round the final turn of the spiral and faced a landing as cluttered with boxes as a holiday foyer. To the right, leading out to the base of the great chamber, was an open door. To the left, another man with a brass helmet and leather apron crouched near an open hatchway, perhaps the size of a large coal furnace, set directly into the steel column that rose through the center of the staircase. The man carefully examined a wooden tray of bottles and lead-capped flasks that he had obviously pulled from the hatch and set down on the floor. Next to the hatch, affixed into the column, was a brass plate of buttons and knobs. The column was a dumbwaiter.
In the middle of the floor, its blade imbedded—presumably in silence, given the man’s inattention—in a discarded heap of packing straw, was the saber.
From the doorway marched a second helmeted man, walking directly past the pile of straw, to gather two wax-capped bottles, one bright blue, the other vibrant orange, and rush back through the door without another word. The women stood still, unconvinced they had yet to be seen—could the helmets so impede the men’s peripheral vision and muffle their hearing? Through the open door Miss Temple heard urgent commands, the sounds of work, and—she was quite certain—the voices of more than one woman.
From above them came the deliberate pinging of a kicked bouncing bullet, striking the steps and the wall in turn. The men above had resumed their descent. The bullet flew past them and bounced off of the stack of crates on the far wall, coming to rest on the floor near the man’s feet. He cocked his head and registered its unlikely presence. They were ruined.
Outside the door a man’s voice erupted into speech at such a volume that Miss Temple was bodily startled. She had never before heard such a human noise, not even from t
“Welcome to you all,” the Comte intoned.
The man in the helmet looked up. He saw Miss Temple. Miss Temple leapt down the final steps, dodging past.
“It is time to begin,” cried the Comte, “as you have been instructed!” From the cells above them—incongruously, fully the last thing Miss Temple would have ever expected—the gathered crowd began to sing.
She could not help it, but looked through the open door.
The tableau, for it was framed as such by the door in front and the silver curtain of bright shining pipes behind, was the operating theatre writ large, the demonic interests of the Comte d’Orkancz given full free rein—three examination tables. At the foot of each rose a gearbox of brass and wood, into which, as if one might slide a bullet into the chamber of a gun, one of the helmeted men inserted a gleaming blue glass book. The man with the two bottles stood at the head of the first table, pouring the blue liquid into the funneled valve of a black rubber hose. Black hoses coiled around the table like a colony of snakes, slick and loathsome, yet more loathsome still was the shape that lurked beneath, like a pallid larva in an unnatural cocoon. Miss Temple looked past to the second table and saw Miss Poole’s face disappear as an attendant strapped a ghoulish black rubber mask in place…and then to the final table, where a third man attached hoses to the naked flesh of Mrs. Marchmoor. Looking up at the cells was a final figure, mighty and tall, the mouth of his great mask dangling a thick, slick black tube, like some demonic tongue—the Comte himself. Perhaps one second had passed. Miss Temple reached out and slammed the door between them.
And just as suddenly she knew, this echoing vision provoking her memory of the final instant of Arthur Trapping’s blue glass card…the woman on its table had been Lydia Vandaariff.