Read Online Neil Gaiman & Caitlin R. Kiernan & Laird Barron by The Book of Cthulhu - Free Book Online Page B

down from the boxes. Outside the theatre he glanced up towards the speckled sky, towards the roof, where he knew one slate hid the upturned telescope. He hurried away through the gas-lit streets, out of Ingels’ dream.
    He awoke and knew at once where the theatre was: at the edge of Brichester, where his mind had been tugging him all day.
    III
    He rose at dawn, feeling purged and refreshed. He washed, shaved, dressed, made himself breakfast. In his lightened state the preamble of his dream seemed not to matter: he’d had his inclination towards the edge of Brichester explained; the rest seemed external to him, perhaps elaborately symbolic. He knew Hilary regarded his dreams as symptoms of disturbance, and perhaps she was right. Maybe, he thought, they all meant the theatre was trying to get up through my mind. A lot of fuss, but that’s what dreams are like. Especially when they’re having to fight their way, no doubt. Can’t wait to see what the theatre means to me.
    When he went out the dawn clutched him as if he hadn’t shaken off his dreams. The dull laden light settled about him, ambiguous shapes hurried by. The air felt suffocated by imminence, not keen as the cold should make it. That’ll teach me to get up at cock-crow, he thought. Feels like insomnia. Can’t imagine what they find to crow about. The queues of commuters moved forward like the tickings of doom.
    Someone had left a sheet from the telex on his desk. Photographs from the space probe were expected any hour. He wrote his reviews hurriedly, glancing up to dispel a sense that the floor was alive with pale grubs, teeming through the aisles. Must have needed more sleep than I thought. Maybe catch a nap later.
    Although his dream had reverted the streets, replacing the electric lamps with gas, he knew exactly where the theatre should be. He hurried along the edge of Lower Brichester, past champing steam-shovels, roaring skeletons of burning houses. He strode straight to the street of his dream.
    One side was razed, a jagged strip of brown earth extending cracks into the pavement and into the fields beyond. But the theatre was on the other side. Ingels hurried past the red-brick houses, past the wind-whipped gardens and broken flowers, towards the patched gouge in the road where he knew a gas lamp used to guard the theatre. He stood arrested on it, cars sweeping past, and stared at the houses before him, safe from his glare in their sameness. The theatre was not there.
    Only the shout of an overtaking car roused him. He wandered along, feeling sheepish and absurd. He remembered vaguely having walked this way with his parents once, on the way to a picnic. The gas lamp had been standing then; he’d gazed at it and at the theatre, which by then was possessed by a cinema, until they’d coaxed him away. Which explained the dream, the insomnia, everything. And I never used to be convinced by Citizen Kane. Rosebud to me too, with knobs on. In fact he’d even mistaken the location of the lamp; there it was, a hundred yards ahead of him. Suddenly he began to run. Already he could see the theatre, now renamed as a furniture warehouse.
    He was almost through the double doors and into the first aisle of suites when he realised that he didn’t know what he was going to say. Excuse me, I’d like to look under your rafters. Sorry to bother you, but I believe you have a secret room here. For God’s sake, he said, blushing, hurrying down the steps as a salesman came forward to open the doors for him. I know what the dream was now. I’ve made sure I won’t have it again. Forget the rest.
    He threw himself down at his desk. Now sit there and behave. What a piddling reason for falling out with Hilary. At least I can admit that to her. Call her now. He was reaching for the telephone when Bert tramped up, waving Ingels’ review of the astronomical television programme. “I know you’d like to rewrite this,” he said.
    “Sorry about that.”
    “We’ll call off the