Ernest scratched his head. “Okay, how did these get into your room, Grayson? Is this meant to be some kind of a joke?” For I don’t know what reason, he was looking at Mia. “Or a silly prank?”
Mia snorted indignantly in her turn. “I’d never think up something as silly as this. My jokes are funny.”
“Yes, I expect Mr. Snuggles is still laughing his head off,” murmured Florence.
“I’m sorry, Mia,” said Ernest. “It’s just that I’m rather baffled.”
He wasn’t the only one.
Gritting his teeth, Grayson cast me another glance. I’d have liked to help him out, but for once I couldn’t think up a good lie on the spur of the moment to use as an explanation. We couldn’t even try the truth because, well, we ourselves had no idea what was going on.
Of course, Grayson could have said, “Could be that the feathers come from the wings of a demon in limbo who wants to give me a warning,” but that was not the kind of explanation to satisfy his father.
I didn’t like it either.
Grayson avoided answering by heaving a deep sigh. “Why don’t you all go back to sleep?” he asked, exhausted. “I’ll tidy up in here by myself.”
Ernest shook his head. “We’ll do it together tomorrow,” he said. “And we will also find out where these feathers came from.” He took Mom’s hand. “Grayson, you’d better sleep in the guest room.” He yawned. “Good night, everyone.”
Florence also disappeared into her room, grumbling. Only Mia stayed put for a few seconds, looking hard at us. I was already preparing to fend off her questions, but much to my surprise, she turned without another word and stalked off to her room, taking Buttercup with her.
Grayson waited until her door had closed and then looked at me. “You do know you have a book strapped to your waist, don’t you? The Hotel New Hampshire. Interesting.”
Damn. I’d forgotten all about it in the chaos. “Yes, it’s a good book. You should read it sometime,” I said. “As soon as we’ve thought how you can explain all this…” And I pointed to the feathers lying around.
Grayson sighed again. “For now I’d be happy enough to understand it myself.”
I opened my mouth to say something, but he didn’t want to hear me. “No, don’t say it, Liv! Someone or other must … oh, I don’t know either! But there’ll be a logical explanation. An explanation without any demons in it.”
“Of course,” I said, bending down to help him pick up the feathers. “Because demons don’t exist.”
20
THE DAY AFTER the demon’s feathery shower, as I thought of it, was wonderfully uneventful. Unlike me, Grayson had managed to drop off to sleep again after we’d cleared up the feathers, and in the morning, when we met by the coffee machine in the kitchen, he seemed as if he’d not only had a fair amount of sleep, he was also in a very good mood.
Even after two espressos, I was close to falling asleep again on my feet. And sad to say I couldn’t find any reason at all to feel good. There had been rather too many feathers, snakes, and unsolved riddles over the last few days. When Grayson put some of the feathers in a transparent plastic freezer bag, which he then stuffed into his jacket pocket, I promptly got goose bumps again.
“Why don’t you throw those in the garbage?” I asked. “And why are you so disgustingly cheerful? Do you know something that I don’t know?”
“Not yet! But every scrap of evidence brings us a little closer to the truth,” replied Grayson, rustling the freezer bag in his pocket in a meaningful way. And whistling merrily (the Sherlock Holmes theme, but out of tune), he left the house.
I didn’t get to see him again until early evening, when he stopped at home to pick up his gear for basketball practice, and he was in so much of a hurry that he had time only to whisper to me, “You’ll be amazed by what I’ve found out,” with an extremely mysterious smile.
I very much hoped it was something about the snake, because out of all those unexplained phenomena it struck me as the most sinister. Right, so Arthur was still in the hospital, but according to well-informed sources (i.e., Secrecy), he was to be discharged today.
In spite of Mrs. Cook’s reassurance that there were no snakes at all in the school building, I’d seen countless other students hesitating to open their lockers. Emily even had her pepper spray at the ready.
When she saw me, she made a face. “I don’t know which I like less, a venomous snake in the lockers or a four-eyes gawping stupidly at me.” She pointed the pepper spray in my direction. “Want some of this?”
“Okay, if you want a broken hand yourself,” I retorted.
“Oh yes, you can do karate.” She rolled her eyes. “Don’t worry, I’m not in the habit of resolving conflicts by violence. My IQ is too high for that.”
“Kung fu, not karate,” I corrected her. “And what conflicts? We don’t have any conflict, apart from not liking each other. By the way, you look tired. Have you been having nightmares lately?” That was the right thing to say, although the rings around my eyes were dark today, as the espresso that hadn’t been enough to get me properly awake. But instead of rubbing it in, Emily briefly gulped.
“Valerian tea is supposed to be good for that,” I quickly added. “And so is just accepting things as they are.”
Now Emily was looking as if she’d love to make an exception and settle her conflicts by violence after all. “I’m just so sorry for Florence, having to live under the same roof as you,” she hissed, slamming her locker shut and hurrying away. A pity—I’d been about to ask whether she liked solving arithmetic problems in her dreams.
In spite of my exhaustion, I got through the school day well enough, presumably because of Arthur’s absence. I didn’t have to fear all the time that he might pick some random person to turn into a zombie and push me downstairs.
But there was no chance of relaxing after school, because as I turned into our road, Matt raced past me in his sports car, laughing and waving, which reminded me that demons, feathers, and snakes weren’t the only problems facing me. Recently I’d been very remiss about the Rasmus business, just letting it slide, but in the bright light of day, and seeing Matt’s rear lights, I couldn’t put it out of my mind as easily as last night in the corridor. Probably because Henry wasn’t here to distract me with his kisses.
The spring vacation would begin in only four days, and it turned my stomach to think how disappointed Henry would be by the lie I’d told. No one likes being lied to, particularly not if his own girlfriend is telling the lie. And how was I to explain why I hadn’t simply told him the truth, when I didn’t understand that myself?
Yes, possibly Henry had felt a bit superior when he’d thought I was a virgin, and yes, maybe that was why his expression had really sometimes been pitying and amused. But I hated to think how he was going to feel when he found out that I was a pathetic person with an inferiority complex and thought it necessary to invent an ex-boyfriend.
Obviously Mia was right to say love makes you stupid. Or at least, it makes you do silly things. And the worst of it was that, clearly, it didn’t get any better with advancing age. Mom and Lottie were prime examples. Well, Mom had made great progress since falling for Ernest, but the ridiculously grand wedding certainly came into the category of things you do just for love, even though you hate the prospect. Did she see how this event staged by the Boker and Pascal, in charge of the infamous guest list, was going to turn out? Because if not, nothing could be guaranteed. Mom was well known for her spontaneous changes of plan, and in my ghastliest fantasies, I saw Ernest waiting at the altar with its floral decorations in a church crammed full, while Mom, in her wedding dress, made us race through the Heathrow departure lounge so that we could catch the next plane to Sydney, or Addis Ababa, or somewhere else we hadn’t lived yet.
And Lottie—Lottie wasn’t her usual self at all. Yes, she had finally gone to that concert with Charles, but his U-turn didn’t seem to have impressed her much. Far from it. On Sunday morning, she and Pasc
al had visited Suffolk to see the country house hotel where the wedding reception was to be held, and because Mom and Ernest had chickened out of that (saying they had perfect faith in Lottie’s judgment), it had been as if they were on a date. At least, Pascal had kissed Lottie’s hand when he arrived and then escorted her to his showy Mercedes convertible, gallantly holding the passenger door open for her.
Charles, who was going to pay Lottie a surprise visit on Sunday evening (with a bunch of flowers too), knew nothing about either the kiss or the car door being held open, but all the same he was wild with jealousy when he realized who Lottie was out with. While he waited for her (which was a long time, because apparently Pascal’s wedding checklist also included an inspection of the hotel grounds in the romantic evening light), I felt a little sorry for him. Mom gave him a glass of red wine, but that didn’t make things much better. First he sounded off about the French, claiming they were nothing near as charming as their reputation but were well known for their unscrupulous dealings with women, and adding that they needn’t pride themselves on their thick hair because that was genetically determined and scientifically shown to go hand-in-hand with diminishing masculine vigor as they grew older. Then he began worrying, said the French were also notorious for their dangerous, showy driving, and wondered whether we ought not to call Lottie on her cell phone and make sure she hadn’t been in an accident. In the end, he went so far as to claim that all Frenchmen were potential murderers of women, and it had been very careless of us to let Lottie drive off with a total stranger. Finally, he just shook his head sadly and murmured things like Of course an ordinary British dentist can’t compete with a French accent and a diploma in canoodling, and Life has a nasty surprise in store if you come to the party too late.
All the same, he seemed to have taken Florence’s advice about Lottie to heart, because when she finally came home, safe and sound, and obviously in a good mood, he surprised us all by smiling casually and saying she looked wonderful, as in fact she did, with her rosy cheeks and bright eyes. And he asked if she’d like to go to a movie premiere with him on Wednesday, mentioning that the famous supporting actor in it had him, Charles, to thank for his brilliant new smile. Lottie accepted the invitation with a nonchalant smile of her own.
Mia and I were amazed. This was a new Lottie, one we’d never met before, and our new Lottie seemed to be enjoying herself in her unaccustomed role as a vamp with a man for every finger, or in her case a man for each hand. Her only problem was that she had nothing to wear for a movie premiere.
“This is how men like it,” she explained that afternoon, when we and Florence, who had turned up in the kitchen on the dot, as usual, at that time of day, were sitting at the table, and spreading warm scones with clotted cream. “If you show them how much you like them, it puts them off hopelessly. You should never serve up your heart to them on a silver platter.”
“Exactly,” Florence agreed. “It’s a terrible cliché, but men always need a sporting challenge. If you make it too easy for them, they immediately lose interest.”
“Do you mean that if I write Gil Walker the Stalker a love poem, he’ll leave me alone?” asked Mia.
“No, not him,” I said. “And don’t let Florence and Lottie talk you into anything; they’re just kind of temporarily—er, disillusioned. Men aren’t so bad.”
“Not all of them, anyway,” Lottie agreed at once. For a moment she was the old Lottie again. Florence only snorted. “You can go on indulging in your taste for romanticism, Mia.”
The idea of Mia and a taste for romanticism was so funny that we all burst out laughing, and Mia nearly swallowed her mouthful of scone the wrong way.
When she could speak again, she said, “Charles or Pascal, I don’t mind which you finally decide on, Lottie. The main thing is for you to stay with us in London.”
But Lottie turned serious. “One way or another I must go back to Germany, darling,” she said. “It’s time I stood on my own two feet, independent of your family—and independent of any man.”
“But you can do that here too,” wailed Mia. “You don’t have to move away.”
Lottie sighed. “I have a job waiting in Oberstdorf, and I can keep going with that for now. I don’t expect I’ll stay there forever, but for the time being, I’ll try to get a footing there.” She passed the jam to Mia, who was looking at her with her lower lip sadly thrust out. “It’s very pretty there. Mountains, cows, lakes—you girls will like it if you come to see me. And it’s not about to happen yet. I’m still here,” she added. “I’m going to make the best of every day!”
“That’s the right attitude,” said Florence, and Lottie beamed at her.
“Yes, times are changing, and we have to change with them,” she said enthusiastically.
Florence looked at Lottie with her head to one side. “My green dress would probably fit you, if you’d like to borrow it for this movie premiere…?”
Mia and I exchanged a glance. Times were certainly changing if Florence and Lottie were friends and swapping clothes. It really made me wonder what might happen next.
But I was just too tired to think much about that. And instead of waiting for Grayson, as I’d originally meant to do, I decided to go to bed early that evening. It was only because by now I worked to a strict routine that I managed to strap, tie, and clip assorted items to myself, including The Hotel New Hampshire, before my eyes closed. My last conscious thought was that it would surely be a long time before Anabel and Henry went to sleep. Maybe I could make it to Matt’s dream door by then, just to see what happened.
As so often, however, when my body needed to catch up with its sleep, I fell first into a long phase of deep sleep, and when I finally began dreaming, I noticed at once that something was wrong.
My green dream door with the lizard was nowhere to be seen. Instead, the structure of an old-fashioned pier on a sandy beach, going out into the sea, rose on my right, and behind me there was a quay wall with rocks enclosing a bay beside it. Farther away I saw trees and houses. The view was very familiar: it was exactly the small stretch of beach in the evening sunlight that Henry and I had found last night. We had been standing right here looking out to sea when the noise in the corridor at home had awakened me.
Without a doubt, this was dead Muriel Honeycutt’s dream, and I had no idea why I had landed in it.
I had often woken in someone else’s dream, but the next time I went to sleep, I had always found myself in my own dreams. Until today. It was disturbing enough to have landed in a stranger’s dream, and to make it worse the dream of a stranger who was dead, but the worst thing of all was still to come: there was no way out of it.
Whether I liked it or not, I had to acknowledge that fact an hour later, when I dropped on the sand, exhausted.
The door to the corridor through which Henry and I had reached the seaside had disappeared without a trace. Yesterday, it had been set in the quay wall, but there was no sign of it now, however desperately I searched.
I had tried everything I could think of. I had set out in every direction, and at different speeds, only to find myself back exactly where I had started from after several feet. I had turned into a seagull, I had swum out to sea, I had thrown stones, I had shouted for help. But none of that had changed anything. The waves were still breaking lazily on the sand, and there was no sound apart from the gentle splash of water and the cries of the seagulls, always flying the same way back and forth. And the sun hadn’t sunk an inch lower in the sky. Time seemed to have frozen, and the door was gone.
Slowly but surely, the conviction seeped into my mind that I was really caught. Caught in the dream of a woman who had died nearly forty years ago.
The only way out that occurred to me was to stop dreaming.
And luckily there was no problem in waking. When I sat up in my bed, my first feeling was relief. By now I had imagined what it would be like to be stuck forever in Muriel’s dream. Never anything but sand underfoot, no company except a few seagull
s—no one could bear that in the long run.
I got up and went to the bathroom. On the way back, I checked that all was quiet in the house. Everyone but Spot the cat was sleeping peacefully, and after I had let him out of the front door, I lay down in bed again, reassured, and went to sleep almost at once.
Only to find myself back on Muriel’s beach again.
This time I didn’t even try looking for the door. I let myself drop on the sand, clasped my hands around my knees, and did my best to keep calm. This eternal sunset scene no longer struck me as peaceful and atmospheric but threatening in an oppressive way. I’d never have thought that I’d miss the corridor with all its dangers so much.
Why hadn’t I woken Grayson just now, when I put my head around his door to make sure he was all right? I couldn’t bring myself to do so, that was why, because he was lying in bed so peacefully, with one hand between his cheek and the pillow. But now I regretted it. I ought to have told someone that I was stuck here. The best thing would simply be to wake up again.…
“Ah, there you are!” said someone right behind me.
I was so startled to hear a voice in the silence all of a sudden that I hit my chin on my knee. But it was only Henry, looking down at me with a broad smile.
“Sorry I didn’t get here until now,” he said, holding out his hand to help me up. I’d seldom felt happier to see him, with his clever gray eyes, the crinkles at the corners of his mouth, and his hair looking as untidy as if he’d strolled here through a tornado. All the same, I gave myself only a couple of seconds to give him a delighted smile, and then I turned around.
Thank heavens! Muriel’s yellow door was shining in the quay wall as if it had never been away, and I felt a heavy weight lift from my heart. So it still existed. And at last I could get out of here.
Couldn’t I?
“I was rather late working it out that you’d be shut in here as well,” said Henry.
“What do you mean, as well?” I brushed the sand off my jeans. Now that Henry was here—and even more important, the door—I felt relaxed enough to make sure, quickly, that the jeans were a perfect fit.