Reverie

by Ryan La Sala

“Witches interest me,” Dr. Poesy said. “If you look at most female archetypes—the mother, the virgin, the whore—their power comes from their relation to men. But not the Witch. The Witch derives her power from nature. She calls forth her dreams with spells and incantations. With poetry. And I think that’s why we are frightened of them. What’s scarier to the world of men than a woman limited only by her imagination?”

“Your parents do not know about Maxine Osman. The police do not know, either. I am not your appointed psychologist, as Thistler believes, nor do I answer to the East Amity Police Department. I answer to forces much more powerful. Those forces have an interest in Maxine’s disappearance. Those forces wish to keep this investigation a secret, and your involvement risks that secret, but I do not believe you are a risk yourself, Mr. Montgomery. I believe you are an answer.” Kane thought he had known fear, but this new horror recalibrated all the bad he’d gone through so far. This was so much worse than he thought. It must have been a long time before Kane answered, or maybe he never answered at all, because the next thing he heard was a ringing, hammering laugh. “Do not look so aghast, Mr. Montgomery. I do not think you murdered Maxine Osman. I’m not sure who did. That’s why we’re here, together.”

“There is a dangerous truth within you, Mr. Montgomery, that not even the most competent artifice will conceal for long. And, as with all dangerous truths, the trick to surviving it is letting it out in a way you can control.” Dr. Poesy leaned even closer. “People like us? We must tell our stories ourselves, you know, or else they will destroy us in their own violent making. And I assure you this truth will destroy you, too, if you’re not careful. It’ll crack you apart from the inside out”—Kane lurched back, Dr. Poesy’s fingers snapping an inch from his face—“like an egg.”

“Be careful. The things we cannot outrun are the things we must fight, and you are no fighter. You will need help. You will need me, and I do not provide for liars.”

rhododendron

They were at the path’s entrance. He expected her to run off, but instead she leaned in as she handed him his backpack and whispered, “Is it true? About your memories? Tell me quickly. They’re probably watching.” Kane pulled away. There was a hardness in Ursula’s stare now that had not been there a second ago, that had never been there. Right now, there was no meekness about her whatsoever. “Your memories. Tell me. Please,” Ursula pressed. “I need to know.” “I remember everything,” Kane said, defensive. Ursula was unflinching as she assessed this for the lie that it was. “You don’t. It’s true. The others were right.” She glanced around until her eyes tracked upon something over his shoulder, as though she saw things in the shadows he could not. The hair on the back of his neck rose up, and his burns prickled. Beware of dog flashed in Kane’s mind. “I remember…” Kane again felt his lost memories trying to guide him. “I remember Maxine Osman.” Ursula’s eyes went wide, and Kane knew his guess had struck something. She edged even closer so that cricket song swathed them in chatter, as though she were afraid of being overheard. “Never say that name again.” “But—” “I can’t help you. You have to find your way back to us on your own, Kane. Check the treasure chest.” And then the old Ursula returned. Meek and unsure. Rounded by anxiety. “It was nice running into you,” she murmured, unable to even look him in the eye. “See you back in school.” She jogged toward the path, messy bun bo...

Kane wasn’t scared to talk about his pain; he was scared of making other people listen.

It was a large room shrunken by clutter on every surface.

He ran his shaking hands over it all, searching for the holes in his memory. There were many, and without the patina of nostalgia, everything felt like junk. Useless junk.

She had called the heirloom her treasure chest. One room over, Sophia’s scale shifted into a minor key. Chills swept over Kane’s skin as he remembered the chatter of crickets on the path, and Ursula’s words all over again: Check the treasure chest.

But in the next drawer he found a photo of two people: the first was curvy and tall, with an untidy knot of red curls and sporting a goofy smile. Her arm was flung around the other person’s shoulders with chummy familiarity. Undeniably, unmistakably, it was Ursula Abernathy. And the other person was Kane. The flesh of Kane’s inner cheek was ragged from his grinding teeth, the bite of blood hitting his tongue a second before he could rouse himself from the shock. He glanced at the old camera on the shelf, then looked at the back of the photo and saw a date: July, just two months ago.

Upon reflex Kane ventured a small wave, which the boy did not return. Instead, he pointed at the journal. Where nothing had been before, a photo jutted from the seams where the pages met. Plucking it out, it showed four pairs of shoes from above. Four people standing in a tight circle, their toes almost touching. In the photo he recognized his own boots and what he remembered were Ursula’s running shoes, but the two other were anonymous: a pair of white ankles in straight-boy sneakers and a pair of gray sandals on brown feet. Something flashed in Kane’s memory, like a far-off lighthouse whisking its beam across black waters, there and gone before he could tread toward it. When Kane looked back up the boy was gone. Now—inches from where Kane sat—stood Ursula.

“You wanted to talk?” Ursula asked. “Yeah.” Kane was prepared this time. “Where did I get my fish?” Ursula stopped rocking. “Your what?” “My fish. Where did I get him?” There it was, the flash of deceit in Ursula’s eyes as she looked away. “I have no idea what fish you’re talking about.” Kane tore open his bag, dug out the photos, and slapped them down on the table. The one of Ursula holding the fish in the pouch of water was right on top. “You’re lying.” Ursula’s face went from pink to red to gray. She attempted to smooth out her expression, but there was no saving this. She’d been caught and she knew it. Her stiff posture relaxed, and a hint of a smile brushed her lips. Was she relieved? “Okay. Fine,”

“Relax, Urs,” Kane said. “It’s cool. They still look good.” Her face turned wondrous. “You called me Urs. That’s what you used to call me.” It hadn’t been on purpose. Kane shrugged uneasily, feeling no more familiar toward her than before.

“That night, on the path, there were these…things, with many legs…like, monsters.” A few freshman drifted by, making Kane aware of how strange this sounded. Ursula watched the freshman, as though keeping track of who had overheard. Kane lowered his voice. “And after you saved me from them, and I mentioned Maxine—” Ursula cut him off. “I didn’t save you from anything. I was out for a run. I run outside all the time. I’m very sporty.” This was clearly a rehearsed explanation. Kane was right; she was a terrible liar. She went on. “We can discuss what you think you saw later. Not here. And if you think you see anything else, text me, okay? We usually have lunch together during sixth period. You’ll be fine until then, I promise.” And she dashed off. Again.

“How can you be sure?” asked Elliot. “Because I just am, okay?” Kane clapped his hands over his mouth. That was Ursula! “That photo is proof he’s still in there,” she said. “The only thing this photo proves is that we didn’t do a good job purging his room.”

“URĪB!” the voices chanted in time with the door’s rise. It sounded like men, and many of them. “URĪB!” Absurdly, white subtitles appeared on the bottom of Kane’s vision. They read: HEAVE! HEAVE! He blinked. The subtitles stayed.

“Just because something is imagined doesn’t mean it isn’t dangerous. Sometimes the things we believe in are the most dangerous things about us. That’s why people build entire worlds in their minds. Because they think they’re safe, but they’re wrong. Dreams are like parasites. They grow up in the dark within us, and they grow deadly. Trust me when I tell you these reveries can kill you.”

“Most aren’t real,” said the boy. “You can tell by the eyes. The people created by the reverie have white irises.”

Adeline shrugged. “Okay, Nancy Drew, I hope you’re ready to fight. Do you remember how to do that snappy thing with your fingers?” “What?” With a shriek, the closest warrior lowered into a gallop, sword held high over his head. Adeline grabbed Kane’s arm and held it up, his hand aimed at the warrior’s chest. “Snap!” she commanded. In a flash he remembered the jet of magic that had burst from his fingertips to stop Ursula. He wiggled his fingers and, when nothing happened, Adeline heaved them out of range of a slicing blade. The warrior snarled, ready for another jab, and his friends were close behind him. “I said snap, not jazz hands!” Adeline screamed. Kane snapped. The sound was loud like thunder, sharp like a gunshot; the sight was a vein of iridescent brilliance carving the air apart. It was hard to see anything else as the flare slammed into the warrior with such savage ferocity that he was blown backward, very quickly and in a great many pieces. And then the other warriors were upon them.

More than once, he found himself seated on the edge of his bed, her phone number glowing on his laptop screen. One morning after he woke up with his burns on fire and his sheets twisted around him, he actually called it. It wasn’t like he expected anyone to pick up, but then someone did. “Hello?” Hi would have worked, but Kane hadn’t expected anyone to answer the phone in a house he thought was empty. It wasn’t Maxine’s voice, but it was somehow familiar. Small, questioning. “Hello? It’s very early to be calling. Hello?” There was a long silence in which the static between the two phones whirred, and then the voice asked, “Maxine? Is that you?” Something clicked. Through his shock, Kane recognized the voice: Maxine’s friend. The one who talked about the eggs. The one who didn’t know Maxine was dead. “Please,” she said, and behind her voice rose a strange din, a whispering that swallowed her just before the line went dead. Through it, Kane could hear her pleading: “Please, Maxine, just come home.”

This is so haunting and sad

The third thing was that the champagne was served warm. But no one minded that, on account of the monsters.

“Kane, you need to know something, and I couldn’t tell you with Ursula and Elliot there. They know what happened the night of the incident, but not everything.” She turned to face him. “You asked me to do what I did. When that crown was taking over you, you grabbed me and begged me to destroy your memories. Told me to destroy everything. And I didn’t know what to do, so I listened to you. And it worked. The crown let you go, and you survived.” She looked at Kane, something like hatred in her big, brown eyes. “And it kills me that I listened. I think of the person you used to be, and I hate myself for destroying him, too.” The air thinned to nothing. To poison. Kane died upon each word, sure he couldn’t take another breath of whatever Adeline was saying. This wasn’t his fault. This wasn’t his fault. “Poesy is manipulating you,” Adeline went on. “Can’t you see? She’s setting you up and breaking us apart. Again. You need to forget about that crown. I’m sure she’s the one who gave the crown to you, to trigger your blowup. And maybe she stole away Maxine Osman’s reverie, too. And now she’s back, to finish what she started, to finish—”

Kane absolutely did not want to fight the Dreadmare. He wanted to kiss the Dreadmare. Maybe. He slumped, defeated.

Biking through it, Kane thought about how the complex was, in some ways, its own reverie. An entire city imagined into being, then abandoned to the slow melt of neglect, then forgotten altogether as the world folded over it. Connecticut was full of these lost worlds, and the more Kane thought to look for them, the more certain he was that they slumbered everywhere. Just across this river, or beyond that hill, or behind that curtain. In many ways, the Cobalt Complex was the perfect place to bait nightmares into the light.

sometimes a person’s dreams are all they have and taking them away can break a heart or even stop a body. The act of crushing a dream can’t be minimized. At best, it’s mean. At worst, it’s murder.

“It’s a door,” Elliot said. “Yes, Elliot, we can all see the door,” said Adeline. “Do we knock?” Ursula asked. “I think we already rang the bell,” Elliot said.

“She’s building her own world,” Dean said. “Her own entire reality, bigger than just a reverie. All she needs is a source of etherea powerful enough to help her weave it all together.” Kane’s eyes cut through the tapestry of East Amity, up into the wide, blank clouds. “That’s why she’s after the loom.” “And that’s why she must never find it,” Dean said. “Whatever reality Poesy creates, it’s going to replace this one. I’m sure of it.”

“You forced Adeline’s hand. You took yourself away. Like it was easy. Like everything was just a game to you that you could reset when you weren’t winning. You ran away, like you always do.” “I’m sorry,” Kane said, defensive. “But I’m not that person anymore. I’m not the one who left you.” Dean rubbed at his eyes. “Funny, you have his smile.”

She was gone. Lost to her reverie. All while Kane and Dean sat atop a bridge, talking, watching over the exact location where Sophia’s reverie had formed: the Cobalt Complex.

“It’s a birth control packet,” Adeline provided. “How can you not know that?” Kane shrugged. “Haven’t started ovulating yet.”

“You think the year is 1961, don’t you? It’s not. It’s the year 2123. I know, because that”—she thrust a hand at the pill packet Kane held—“is from 2009. It’s a type of pill that stops the Mothering. Did you even know that was a choice?”

“Read them their arrest bill,” ordered Smithe. Ursula clearly didn’t know where to get this bill, so she very confidently put out her hand in the hopes that someone would hand it to her. Very politely, one of the other girls reached into Ursula’s own purse and took out a tablet, turned it on, and put it in Ursula’s hand. “If we make it out of this, we need to make Ursula take an improv class,” Adeline whispered to Kane.

Dreams can be parasites we sacrifice ourselves to. Dreams can be monstrous, beautiful things incubated in misery and hatched by spite. Or dreams can be the artifacts we excavate to discover who we really are.

This memory turned a switch in Kane’s head, and before he knew fully why, he was kneeling in front of Ms. Daisy. She raised her dog eyebrows at him. It was very doglike. Too doglike. Why would someone as ridiculous as Poesy own a normal dog? “Beware of dog,” Kane said. He looked between Ms. Daisy’s sleek, black coat and the door’s lustrous, black finish. The only time he’d seen the door work from this side was when Poesy was returning from walking Ms. Daisy. Otherwise, the whistle had to be used to call it. But whistles didn’t call doors. Whistles called dogs.

Kane approached the doors like they might eat him. Again he had the urge to vanish elsewhere, to deny that he had been given this chance, but the invasive daydream only lasted an instant before he snuffed it out. Running was not the answer; it was just the thing that he wanted. And, he reminded himself, saving the world was not usually a matter of want.

“What did Poesy do to you?” It took Dean a long time to put his words together. “She tried to take away my sight when I refused to tell her where Sophia’s reverie manifested. If it wasn’t for the Dreadmare armor, she would have taken everything from me. As it is, she got me pretty good.” Dean wouldn’t look at Kane. Downcast, his eyes weren’t their usual shade of green. They weren’t brown, either. “Look at me,” Kane said. Dean’s gaze rose. His eyes were pure white. Kane fell backward until he was against the opposite wall. “You’re not…” Dean crossed his arms over himself, turning to give Kane his profile and closing his eyes again. “Not what?” Real. Kane couldn’t say it. He didn’t want to say it. He didn’t understand what he was seeing. White eyes told you who was real in a reverie, and who was from the reverie itself. And Dean’s eyes were undeniably white. He was reverie-born. Finally, Dean spoke. “I told you, anything Poesy wants from a reverie, she takes.”

Kane put his head against Dean’s, who traced infinity symbols into Kane’s temples.

Dean found Kane’s hand, pressing something into it. Kane recognized the bite of cold metal. “Poesy is strong because of the weapons she wields,” Dean said. “But you’re strong on your own. I’m scared to imagine what you could do with an arsenal like hers. But please, don’t kill her.” Kane looked at what Dean had given him: Poesy’s bracelet of charms, torn from her arm by the Dreadmare’s jaws. The whistle. The teacup. The white key. The opal skull. The starfish. They were all there, waiting for him to light them up. As though recognizing its new commander, the bracelet slithered around Kane’s wrist and clasped itself.

“That’s the thing about a big imagination. It’s hard to belong anywhere when you can always imagine something better. I wouldn’t worry about settling just yet, though. You’re very young. Lots of time to figure out what you want, and then make it happen.

The crown he wore opened a dimension of omniscience within him that felt, for just a few seconds, fathomless. Limitless. He felt—no, knew—how simple it would be to destroy these worlds entirely. Instead, he set himself to the impossible task of feeling for their edges. Their breaks and seams. Every story had a beginning and an end. Every sky had a horizon. Every tale had its twists. Kane combed himself through it all without flinching. He felt first resistance, then the utter bliss of separation, and finally the relief of their lovely unraveling.