The Anubis Gates

He heard the shuffle of slow steps, and saw a dark form begin to emerge from the wall of mist; then the figure was close enough for him to see the face—and it was Brendan Doyle.

A hand seized Darrow’s shoulder and the next thing he knew he was sitting bolt upright in his own bed, clenching his teeth against the despairing cry that in the dream had burst from his lips and resounded flatly in the fog-deadened air:

“I’m sorry, Doyle! God, I’m sorry!”

“Jeez, chief,” said the young man who’d awakened him, “didn’t mean to startle you. But you said to roust you out at six-thirty.”

“Right, Pete,” Darrow croaked, swinging his legs to the floor and rubbing his eyes. “I’ll be in the office. When the fellow I described gets here, send him in, will you?”

“Aye aye.”

Darrow stood up, ran his hands through his white hair and then walked down the hall to the office. The first thing he did was pour himself a glass of brandy and drain it in one long swallow. He set the glass down, lowered himself into the chair behind the desk and waited for the liquor to sluice the images of his dream out of his head.

“May the damned dreams go with the body,” he whispered, fumbling a cigarette out of a box and lighting it in the lamp flame. He drew the smoke deep into his lungs, leaned back and blew it toward the ranked ledgers on the shelf next to the desk. He considered, then discarded, the idea of doing some more work on his already complicated network of investments. He was getting rich again rapidly, and it was irritating to have to work without computers and calculators.

Soon two sets of boots could be heard ascending the stairs, and in a moment there was a knock on the office door.

“Come in,” said Darrow, forcing his voice to sound easy and confident.

The door opened and a tall young man strode in, a smirking grin on his handsome, clean-shaven face. “Here it is, yer Honor,” he said, doing a satirical pirouette in the middle of the room. “Okay, hold still. The doc will go over you in a few minutes, but I wanted to eyeball it myself first. How’s it feel walking?”

“Springy as new French steel. You know what surprised me? All the smells on the way over here! And I don’t think I ever was able to see this well.”

“Well, we’ll get you a good one too. No headache, stomachache? He’s been making a living for years as a prize fighter.”

“None atall.” The young man poured a brandy for himself, bolted it and refilled the glass.

“Easy on the sauce,” said Darrow.

“The wha’?”

“The sauce, the booze—the brandy. Want me to get an ulcer?” With an injured expression the young man set the glass down. His hand went to his mouth.

“And don’t bite the nails, please,” Darrow added. “Say, do you … ever catch any of the old tenant’s thoughts, left behind in the, like, cupboards of his head after his eviction? Uh, do things like dreams ever stay with the old body?”

“Avo—I mean, yes, yer Honor—I believe so. It’s not the sort of thing I pay attention to, but sometimes I find myself dreaming of places I’ve never seen, and I believe it’s bits from the lives of the lads I’ve passed through. No way of knowin’ for sure. And,” he paused, and his eyebrows drew together, “and sometimes when I’m just driftin’ over the line from awake to asleep, I hear… well, picture standin’ on the forecastle of an emigrant ship, you know, in the middle of the night with all them bunks like bookshelves all over the walls?… And imagine that each of those men is talking in his sleep… “

Darrow reached across the desk, took the filled glass and drained it. “This stomach doesn’t matter,” he said, pushing his chair back and getting to his feet. “Come on, let’s go see the doc.”

* * *

Young Fennery Clare, his bare feet still tingling from having stood for a while in the warm pool below the sheet metal manufactory by Execution Dock, waded out from the docks, skirting the Limehouse Hole, and tried to line up the landmarks he’d memorized this morning. It was getting darker by the minute, though, and the two chimneys across the river were completely invisible, while the crane on the third pier downstream of him seemed to have been moved since he saw it last. And though the tide was on its way out again, he was already in up to his waist, and like most Mud Larks he couldn’t swim.

Damn that bunch of Irish kids, he thought. If they hadn’t been hanging about the Hole here this morning, I could have just picked the sack up and carried it out, for I can thrash any of the local kids. Them Micks would have taken it from me for sure, though, and a stroke of luck like this might come only once in a lifetime: a cloth bag, evidently dropped by one of the workmen who were re-sheathing that big ship here last week, absolutely filled with copper nails!