Back Under The Stairs - Book 2 in The Bandworld Series (5 page)

"Ah ... I'm getting ready to rush to the
airport. Need to get away for my health. Some place warm. Doctor's
orders."

"I'd appreciate it if you could give me a
little information about the house. It won't take long."

"Information?" Said warily.

"It's my understanding that a Mr. Van Robin
owned the house before me. I believe the name was in the
abstract."

"Ah ....."

"And what I'd like to know is, is this the
same Van Robin who recently died?"

"That's what you want to know?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"I've found some papers I think his family
might like to have." If one lie in time saved nine, surely two lies
would save a baker's dozen, "If that's the same man."

"Well ....."

"Anything you could tell me would be
appreciated."

"You're not ... dissatisfied with the home,
then? Because everything is legal about the sale. Let me assure you
of that." Said in a rush.

"Why should I be dissatisfied?" A
disbelieving pause on the line. "No. I just want to check on the
previous owner."

"Oh. Well, all right then." The ample smile
was back in the ample woman's ample voice. "I do believe you're
right. That that was the Van Robin property, Mr. Lyon. I was able
to list the property ... oh ... several months, before you bought
it." Make that several years if what John had learned about the
house was true. The sale of haunted houses had to wait for just the
right -- translate naive -- out-of-town buyer. "Such a charming old
place. Now, of course, if you're ready to move up, I have some
wonderful homes to show you, all in the very best of neighborhoods.
And with the interest rates the way they are today ......"

"I'm quite content with the Van Robin place.
All I want is to know the location of Mr. Van Robin."

"Well now." Said a bit huffily. "I don't know
if I'm at liberty to give out that information."

"I wonder if a call to the Better Business
Bureau might help me. Do you know if they provide that kind of
location service?"

"Ah. Ah. ..... Come to think of it, I do
believe Mr. Van Robin was living in a nursing home, somewhere."

"And the name of that nursing home?"

"I believe it might have been ... it might
have been 'Silver Lining Care.'"

"Thank you."

Hanging up before Madge tried to sell him
industrial real estate, John mulled over what he'd learned. First,
that he was so lonely he'd talk to a realtor. (The only woman he'd
been close to lately had been Platinia, a girl so small that all he
could see himself doing with her was snapping a leash around her
neck and taking her for walks.)

His woman problems would have to be solved
another time, however.

On track at last, John looked up Silver
Lining in the Yellow Pages. Found it. Dialed.

"Silver Lining Care," said the voice of an
older woman.

"I'd like to speak to someone about one of
your patients."

"We call them 'friends' here at Silver
Lining. For they are our friends."

"Right."

"You would want Ms. Cousins in our Life Care
section. I'll transfer you, now."

Click.

"Janett Johnson, care unit." Younger.
Efficient.

"John Lyon here. I'd like to speak to Ms.
Cousins, please."

"Ms. Cousins is away from her desk at the
moment, sir."

"Maybe you can help me, then. I'd like some
information about a Mr. Van Robin."

Silence. .......... As if the line had gone
completely dead. No click, no buzz.

"Hello?"

Nothing.

"Hello?"

"If this is the ambulance service again,"
said the same voice, coldly, "we have no further information."

"This is not the ambulance service."

"The mortuary? We still have no further
information."

"Sorry. There must be some mistake. All I
wanted was to know if a Mr. Van Robin was your patient. And if he
might have died just over a week ..."

Click!

They'd been cut off.

Redial.

Ringing. .... "Silver Lining Care."

"This is John Lyon again ...." Click.

Redial with more care.

Ringing. .........

No answer.

A recheck in the Yellow Pages. Dialing with
the care of a five year old.

Ringing. ..........................

No answer.

Strange ......

But not that strange, John decided. The phone
system hadn't worked all that well since deregulation. The airlines
hadn't for damn sure! In the entire world, only five airlines were
in financial trouble -- all of them in the United States!

No matter. John would call Silver Lining
Care, later. He was just trying to satisfy a curiosity itch,
anyway. Something he could do any time.

By the next morning, John's interest in Van
Robin had been replaced by something more important: the dream he'd
had that night. A bad one about someone threatening Platinia. This,
in spite of going to sleep quickly, the expected storm blowing up
in the form of a lulling rain.

The following night, John had a similar,
rainy nightmare.

The next night, no dreams that he could
remember.

The fourth night brought rain once more --
and another, frightening dream.

Three bad dreams in four nights, each ending
with Platinia pleading for John to return and save her.

* * * * *

"Still not sleeping?" Dr. Paul said, after
John had admitted as much by grunting when Paul asked him how he
felt. It was another, early morning, the two of them alone in the
office, awaiting the arrival of colleagues and students.

"Does it show?"

"Yes. You look like you've been 'rode hard
and put away wet.'"

"I fall asleep and it's like I'm there again:
a prisoner in King Yarro's dungeon on Xanthin Island. Or I'm
sailing the fresh water ocean they call Sea Minor, going to Bice.
Or I'm trying to get across the Malachite Desert and run into the
gravity traps."

"It's not surprising that those experiences
are coming back to you in dreams. What you went through is
unprecedented. Your psyche is, no doubt, using dreams to help you
come to grips with what's happened to you."

"That's what I think, too. It's just that the
dreams all end with Platinia wanting me to come back."

"Platinia? The girl you said had special
powers? I believe you called her an Etherial."

"Thought had special powers. From the
perspective of this world, she seems nothing more than a slip of a
girl who needed my protection."

"It may take some time for your unconscious
to work all this out."

"Right."

What John didn't tell Paul was about dreaming
of the time John had threatened Platinia, aggression that was
totally unlike him. Stroking the gem while willing it to do his
bidding, he'd terrified an already perpetually frightened Platinia.
Forced her to talk. To tell him she was some kind of sacrificial
princess. That she was an Etherial -- whatever that might have
meant to her.

For now, John decided to take Paul's advice:
John taking some time to let his experiences in the other world ...
fade.

Except that, night after night, he found
himself, as if compelled, dreaming of the Bandworld's circular
countries, the sky over each band a different color: from the rim
inward, red, orange, yellow, green and -- formerly, blue -- the sky
over Azare now blacked out by Mage-magic.) A flat world at war. The
green-skied Malachites fighting alongside the evil Mage-King of
Azare -- because they must? Stil-de-grain, Realgar and the outer
rim of Cinnabar, allied to stem the tide of evil.

Thinking about when he did and didn't dream,
John got a possible new insight: that his dreams might be connected
to Kansas City's weather.

While it was common to have Midwest
thunderstorms in the summer, it was rare to have them in late
November, this November uncommonly rainy, these late fall storms
not only producing rain, but also abnormal lightning.

Could lightning be connected to John's bad
dreams? Possibly. For lightning was nothing but a majestic form of
static electricity -- static electricity John's "link" with the
other world.

Time to walk his fingers through the Yellow
Pages once again.

* * * * *

The actual installation of the lightning rod
had taken less than an hour. John knew that because -- mindful of
what Professor Fredericks said about the danger of badly installed
lightning rods -- John had watched the man do the work.

Basically, all there was to a lightning rod
was a sharp pointed, iron spike fastened above the highest point of
the roof, a heavy-duty copper wire going from the base of the rod
to an iron stake the man drove into the ground. Grounded. That was
what a lightning rod did: diverted to the ground the electrical
ions that might build up on a house during a thunderstorm. Drained
them off before they could "draw down" the opposite charge of
lightning from the clouds.

Not at all concerned about a lightning
strike, John's interest was in the rod's ability to drain away a
thunderstorm's static build-up, John having the idea that
storm/static was making him dream about the other world. His hope
was -- no electric charge on the house -- no dreams of the other
world.

It was after he'd gone to the expense of
putting up a lightning rod, of course, that the weather turned cold
again. A dry cold. No clouds; no lightning; no static build-up for
the rod to drain away. A period of time in which the bad dreams
disappeared -- a correlation that seemed to support John's
static-nightmare theory. Still, it would take a rainstorm for John
to be able to test his static/dream thesis.

So much for dreams -- at least for the time
being.

John had developed another worry, anyway.

While working on dream-banishment, John had
begun to get that old feeling of being spied on, a sensation he'd
first had prior to going to the other world. (That was before the
glitch that had sent Platinia through to John's house, John using
the generator to take Platinia back to her own world.) It was not
until John was in the "other reality" that he'd discovered that the
Wizard, Melcor, had used magic to see through John's eyes; even let
Platinia, Melcor's slavey, have a look. No wonder John felt he was
being spied on! He was!

This time, the sensation of being watched was
different in two ways. First, because John got that odd feeling
when entering or leaving his house. Second, instead of John feeling
the "spy" was inside John's head, John had the notion he was being
watched from the fringe of woods that ringed his house, John even
thinking he saw someone lurking there. An ... old man? With long,
gray hair? At least, that was John's impression.

So much for the week and a half since getting
his lightning rod installed.

It was not until Friday of the second week
that storm clouds gathered from the west.

Good! He'd finally get to see if the
lightning rod could "dream-protect" his house.

He'd go to bed early; fall asleep with rain
on the roof and lightning in the sky.

"Good night, sweet prince, and flights of
angels sing thee to thy rest!"

Maybe.

On hands and knees, the old man crawled up
the warped steps. Still on all fours, dragging the blanket that was
his only protection against the night's increasing cold, he labored
across the paint-flaked, splintery porch, collapsing beside the
house wall, partially shielded there from the wet bite of the
rising wind. Over him, the door loomed tall, its handle impossibly
far away.

It had taken more life than he thought
remained -- using two rocks -- to abrade the vertical wire.

Exhausted, lying on his side, his back to the
smoothed, rock wall, the old man summoned a last effort to pull the
blanket over his frail body.

He coughed, doubling up with the violent hack
of it, after the spasm, gasping in a ragged breath to keep himself
alive.

His life nearly spent, only his black eyes
glittered in the dark.

As some strength returned, he found he could
feel again. Feel the wind and the approach of rain, not the
nighttime shower of his homeland, but rain that, day or night,
lashed into the narrow, earthen cave he'd dug for himself in the
woods.

How long had he searched -- long years and
more long years -- for the means to take him ... home.

With mummied fingers, the old man clutched
the blanket close.

He was too drained to curse the ill luck he'd
had in coming to this place; to curse the simple fools who, even
hearing who he was, had not bowed down to him!

That was at the start. Before discovering
that, awe inspiring as the name Pfnaravin was in his own land, it
was known to no one in this place where every slavey thought
himself a king!

Nor could he punish the others for mocking
him when he could not speak their barbaric tongue. Stripped of
power, he had become as much a slavey as the rest.

How often had he railed against himself for
journeying to this hideously, artificial land! Yet, he was not to
blame. How could he have known that, in coming here, he would be
shorn of crystal-magic.

Beloved crystal!

Green gem of the Malachites!

Precious stone that would not leave its
homeland.

So he had become marooned. Searching, ever
searching for a crystal with the force to take him home.

How long had he been trapped in this vast
band calling itself America? More than a century, as these rustics
reckoned time. Long enough to see them seized by the madness of
machines. Long enough to see himself decline to be the shadow-shell
of the man he was that day when, stroking his green disk, muttering
the sacred words, he'd shaken the bedrock beneath Hero Castle to
build the flow of transformation fluid that had launched him to
this other place.