Where He Dreamed Dungeons

      Master Huang stood in Lion's Poise Three, curled above the waist like a fiddlehead, listening to John's faltering explanation for asking such a question of his teacher.
      "I'm morbid, I admit it," John Jameson Castle said. "Can't help it. I think it's a family thing. Morbidity. But family things—they're always on my mind. Like my name. I mean—"
      He realized he talked too much. Talking too much came along with being too tall, having hair too sleek and compliant, and having too angular a profile. It fit his personality. Things came easily to him. Even things that might have worked better if they came harder—such as talking.
      Yet he wanted Huang to show him the move. More than anything else he wanted Huang to show him how to do the Nip of the Black Swan.
      Huang had come to Sand City two years earlier from New York via Cleveland, and to those places from a birthplace in either Chicago or Hong Kong: he gave different answers, depending why he was asked. His "Street Ki Defense Systems" derived from various traditions. Which ones? Depended who asked. On different days, John had heard: T'ai Chi. Philippino street fighting. Aikido. Twyla Tharp. Bruce Lee.
      Huang relaxed and stood normally. A face like an owl, regarding John.
      "Go on," he said.
      The man had the most passive way of evincing curiosity. He would smile, his eyes would thin with humor, his head would cock ever so slightly.
      "I was saying about my family," said John. "I don't know where the Castles came from, really. But there must have been a real castle, originally, at the start of it all. I dream about it. About my castle."
      He had meant to say anything but that. It came out whole: My castle. It sounded silly.
      "Of course," Huang said, as if the matter might be an everyday one.
      "I don't mean my castle, but—"
      "But you wish to learn this move," Huang said, as if John had revealed enough simply by admitting to a dream.
      "Of course," said John.
      "Esoteric move," said Huang, falling into the Lotus-in-Wind posture, then straightening again. "You must be in proper form. Inside. Outside. All sides. How shall I show you?"
      "You said it was no more than a touch, right?"
      "A touch. But must have proper frame of mind. Otherwise, is simply a touch. Harmless. Or—not so harmless. Must take care."
      "Do it on me, then," John said.
      "You sure?"
      John nodded.
      Huang nodded in return. An owl smile. "Watch me in the mirror," he said.
      Huang could move slowly, as through water, so students could watch and absorb. John held his eyes averted to the mirror, tracking the forms through which Huang traveled. John knew them all—the Bending Lily, the Circling Hawk, the Creeping Tiger. Huang passed through these, as preliminaries. Then came the unfamiliar: Nip of the Black Swan.
      Huang's hand shot out but with no more force than necessary to touch a fingertip to a place near the left back of John's neck, below the hairline.
      Even watching it happen, it startled John: for he felt as if a fire licked at his body, then engulfed it; and a tingle ran to his extremities; and for a moment he felt transported from this YMCA basement into a region miles above, among clouds, with views opening through the parting mists of farm land in squares of yellow, brown, and beige, hazed by distance below.
      "Oh my."
      "Powerful move," said Huang, slipping back over the mats. "Dangerous to try. If I had used proper inner form, you would be dead. Are you dead? No. I didn't use proper inner form. On purpose."
      "I'll never try it. I swear."
      "Dream is near to death," Huang said.
      "What's that?"
      "Too dangerous to try. Just watch, absorb. Never do."
      Huang repeated the moves for John's benefit, giving John once again the soaring feeling of existing on a plane above.
      Then the two men bowed to one another. End of class.

      The car refused him his will, and took him there a day early. Or he mistook his will. He intended to go home, have a nip of sherry, watch a television show, something. He would slip back into his comfortable evening skin, and be the uneventful nighttime creature called John Castle.
      His car, an Austin Stiletto, tapered in form from its square rear window to the tip of its carnivorous front fender. It shaded from gray to black, from hindquarters to headlights.
      It rumbled with quiet life and steered inexorably toward Downer Street and the neighborhood near work. Toward the Educational Opportunities offices. Toward the home of his boss.
      The too-poised, the too-beautiful.
      She went by the name of Paige Marie Kepplinger; he called her by the forename of the Bitch Goddess, because of all she held that he lacked.
      The too-accomplished, the too-successful.
      And because he found it convenient to hate her.
      It made it easier.
      He had, somehow, the foresight to equip himself, even without knowing he would be ready to do this so soon. He happened to be wearing a black turtleneck. He pulled a black head-wrap from beneath the seat. Thin, sensitive gloves. Climbing shoes, also black. All new.
      "John," Paige had said to him that day, earlier, in the morning, when they had been figuring where to send the three children out of Mrs. Hauser's classroom who needed reading help, and how to make room on the food program for a couple dozen children from Hanover School. The two of them worked most closely with Snyder School; but Hanover fell within their purview, too.
      "John," she said, after he had first ignored her. "I was thinking. Well, I don't know how to say this, but I was thinking we ought to meet over dinner sometime. I'd like to see you relax sometime. You get so involved with your work. Even over lunch—you're so uptight. You know? And I don't think you're naturally uptight. Are you? I can't believe it. I'd like to see you relax."
      She smiled: a large smile, showing perfect teeth with no touches of the makeup red upon her lips, eyes glittering. Beauty, wealth, prestige. Silver charms around her wrist. She had it. Everything.
      "Sure," he said, acting surprised.
      He had expected just such a ploy. Put him in a place where she could further humiliate him. Where she could show how kind, how appealing, how personable she could be.
      Moreover it fell within the Plan.
      "Tomorrow?" she said.
      "Sure." He smiled.
      Suddenly, however, driving his Stiletto darkly past dark houses, tonight felt right. Tomorrow: what if he weakened? What if he felt her kindness, her appeal, her personableness, and swayed toward her? What if?
      He pulled the car silently to a stop two blocks from Paige's house.
      Posture of the Wolf, form of the Running Fox, inner spirit of the Hunting Hawk: he slid into the night.

      Two weeks before, it chimed as quietly as the tinkling charms on Paige's bracelet when he rang the bell at the mansion on Pleasant Acre Road, on the East Side near the river. Bruce Kepplinger, estranged husband of Paige, answered the door, his hawk nose seeming to detect John before the watery pale eyes focused.
      John breathed in a scent of wealth—brandy and fine tobacco—and hesitated a moment before accepting Kepplinger's proffered hand.
      "She still loves me," said the millionaire, when they were sitting together in the study with cigars and snifters. "She still hopes to reform me." Kepplinger studied his liquor as he spoke.
      "She does?" He had not meant to say it, but it came out: she loves you?
      "Of course she does. It was just bad—ah—circumstances that ruined the marriage. But she hasn't asked for divorce. It's affection. She still has affection. That's the kind of woman Paige is. Loving."
      "Yes, sir," said John.
      "You'd like her. I'd like you to fall for her," he said.
      "No, thank you."
      "I'll pay."
      "It wouldn't work."
      "Sure it would," Kepplinger said. "You fall for her. She falls for you. Then—bang."
      "Um," said John, awaiting more convincing argument.
      Bruce Kepplinger opened a pile of bills like a fistful of cards, near enough John could see each had high denomination indeed.
      "Well," John admitted. "Maybe."
      "True love. Wild romance. Intimacy. You get close. Then you kill her."
      It startled him, the old man coming out with it so plainly. He knew why he came here. Even so—
      "But do it quietly. I don't care how. The thing is, pretty soon she'll wake up. Realize she doesn't really love me. I mean, how could she. Me?"
      John remembered his thoughts of a moment ago.
      Kepplinger dragged on his cigar. "Soon as she wakes up, then's the trouble. Then come suits. Then begin divorce proceedings. Then come bills. Claims. Damages. Bah. She'll win, of course. Because of—ah, circumstances."
      John knew these circumstances. They looked even younger than Paige. Not so lovely as her. Bustier, though.
      "And so," concluded the millionaire, "if I had my druthers, it would cost me less to give you this money—say, half a million? Pretty good? Yes? Otherwise she'd cost me more." He laughed without joy. "A lot more. I can see it. It's in her. It's only a matter of time. Do you hear me? A matter of time. She's that kind. Beautiful and kind and sweet right now. Thinking she does me well, hovering around, a snubbed wife, a wonderful social force, who will win in the end and steer me toward some beneficial project. Me, the one who needs help. Me! Do you hear me? She wants to use me for something! She doesn't know it yet, but it will happen! It will!"
      "Yes, sir," said John.
      As he sat with his own cigar and snifter, breathing not smoke but the scent of tantalizingly green paper, it occurred to him that he faced an immense dragon, a serpent who threw his coils around the leather of an antique chair, among teak shelves and leather-bound legal volumes, puffing out fogs, with eyes of amber, teeth of gold.
      John agreed to all the dragon said, and admitted he had heard of a remarkable way to bring surprising results. They sat arranging details until they looked upon one another with favor. The money would go into an account payable to John Castle upon commission of certain duty. They smiled smoke upon one another at the conclusion of the deal, and toasted their heady futures.
      "Good night," said Bruce Kepplinger in parting.
      John thought the dragon said, Good knight, with the hand upheld not to wave, but to pat his subservient head.

      "Don't you have any dreams?" John asked her at lunch, days after making his pact with Kepplinger.
      He and Paige often ate at Betty's, a diner around the corner from Ed Ops that served salads and sandwiches less taxing upon the digestive processes than other diners in town. John emerged from Betty's feeling still lean and mean. He kept in mind old Mr. Kepplinger: he had to train diligently to be a sleek lizard, as necessary preliminary to becoming a fat old dragon himself some day.
      "Dreams? No. Just to do my job. That's all I want," said Paige. She looked beautiful with her hair drawn back, silver pendants dangling from her ears, a sheer scarf around her neck and a loose blouse, hyacinth-patterned in dim violets and pinks, beneath a pale jacket. "My job, a few charities. That's enough."
      She ate her sandwich with her right hand, and propped her left against the table, the charms from her bracelet clinking occasionally against each other.
      He glanced sometimes to see one in particular. Among others she had pans, a house, a doll, an open book, a teapot, a tree, goblets, decanters, grapes, a ham, a pair of knights, dancing couples, and a king in a flowing robe: all in silver, dangling at her wrist.
      And a castle, with its finely etched gate and tightly bricked turrets.
      To him it symbolized his bondage and his opportunity.
      "That's all?" he said, disbelieving.
      "Really. I'm not shooting for city council or anything. I mean, why? I like it, working for Ed Ops. I want to help the kids. That's enough."
      "You're just too good, Paige."
      "Nah. Too boring, probably." She laughed at herself for saying it, and shrugged. "You do, I bet. You have dreams."
      "It's really stupid, but I do. I mean the dream I have, yeah, it's there and it's stupid. Really it is."
      "Tell me," she said, jingling her left wrist.
      "You know—my name. I really do want a castle some day."
      "Seriously? You mean like your name's going to mean something? John Jameson lives in his Castle? Like that?"
      "Yeah. Just like that."
      "Well." She shrugged. "Sounds good. I've lived in a nasty and drafty old mansion with Bruce, and that was enough for me. At least for a while. Really." She looked thoughtful. "You'd have to call it Castle Castle, right?"
      "Bah," he said, trying to frown.
      "And you'd have a dungeon, too? When you finish it, we'll have to say, `Well Done, John!'"
      "Ack," he said.

      Now when he slipped like an errant breeze into the shadows of her side yard and over the low chain-link fence, he could feel the calm of the night around him as a premonitory embrace of accomplishment: for killing her would be among the simplest tasks of his life. The half-million dollars: it would hardly lay the foundation for a dwelling such as he envisaged. Yet it would do for starters. He could extort more out of the old man, year after year. Or he could take the other path. The old man had suggested backing him for school board, then for city council. John would find his way greased through the inroads and backroads and byways to power; and from power, it would be a short road to wealth. After city council, he might think about state office. A business commission, a set of investments, a well-placed set of personal initiatives. Then, thinking higher—
      He wanted to be King but would settle for anything close.
      Silently against the sound of a hair-blower and a television inside the house, he cut through the plastic screen on the kitchen window. He slipped inside, letting himself down over the sink without a sound. Form of the Wandering Cat, of the Slithering Red Snake. Huang had not revealed what the proper internal pose would be for the Nip, to successfully commit this theft of a soul: but John knew. Huang often spoke of the inner templates, the hidden crystals of being, and the eternal patterns for strife, enough so that John knew which one held highest power, and had the most effect in dire circumstances: the Dance of the Sacred Crow, which even now he began to dance within his mind, as he slid off the linoleum of the kitchen onto the carpet of the hall and toward the passageway down which Paige even now walked, whistling just under her breath.
      She walked clad in nightgown, from bathroom toward bedroom.
      He caught a whiff of her scent, delicate and light.
      He heard the tinkling of silver, the outgoing of breath, the shuffling of bare feet.
      He reached—
      The Bending Lily, the Circling Hawk, the Creeping Tiger:
      Nip of the Black Swan.
      A cry, a sigh.
      Mine?
      She fell silently to the rug.

      John Jameson Castle slipped backward—Slide of the Eel—only to stop, reconsidering. He moved over the prone body. Street lights through the front-door window bathed her face. It made him catch his breath to see it. The beauty, even in death, nearly froze his marrow.
      He remembered why he hovered over her, and lifted her wrist, and with small wire snips—always prepared—removed the silver castle from the chain to pocket it.
      It terrified him too much to look on her face again: he kept his eyes firmly away.
      He stood, intending again to retreat—Scamper of Rat—and found himself unable to take a step back. The front door called him. The light through it changed. A nebulous fog churned outside. It ate through the glass. The wood around the window fell away.
      Drawn, John Castle stepped over the body of Paige and went through the dissolving front door to stand outside. He found himself in a place new to him, yet uncomfortably familiar, because it felt so strangely like he was—
      The realization came as quickly and as physically undeniable as a punch in the shoulder:
      Dreaming.
      When had he started? When had he fallen asleep? A moment ago he had been awake. He had been with Huang; he broke into Paige's house; he did what he needed to do; and now he stood outside, but within the confines of—of what? Of dream? He knew this place.
      He knew what he would see when he looked up.
      He did. Saw the hill, and the towering form upon it, huge and imposing in the dimness, with one lit window, where he could see the outline of the woman who awaited him.
      Paige.
      He had never realized before. Paige. She awaited him.
      He had never accepted—
      Never known—
      No: his first thought had been right. He had never accepted his love for this woman he was to kill, his own co-worker, his boss, finally his friend and companion during the drudgeries and make-works of the day, Paige! Paige, Paige, Paige: how he loved that woman, dead upon the floor behind him! He tried to wheel back to look upon her house, through the front door, to the darkness holding her stilled form. He found himself unable.
      Wherever he turned, he saw the hill.
      He wheeled in four directions: castle, castle, castle, and castle.
      Given such choice . . .
      He walked.
      Yet as he moved, the castle moved with him, leaving him no farther and bringing him no nearer.
      He started running.
      "Paige!" he cried.

      "I had the oddest dream last night," said the voice to Bruce Kepplinger, when he picked up the phone in the morning.
      He had expected a call. That exceptional young man, that John Castle, a brilliant fellow: he would be checking in any moment: he would bear good tidings. He felt it in the air.
      This voice had a feminine tinge, however.
      A familiar feminine tinge.
      He cringed.
      "Paige?" he said.
      "Yes, it's me. Sorry to surprise you like this, calling in the morning as if it were the normal thing to do, to call you, first thing in the morning. But you know, Bruce, dear, I do still have affection for you despite your peccadillos."
      "Ah," he said, hoping words would erupt from his throat to deal with this conversation. None came.
      "And in fact I'm of the mind to let things pass. I mean, past things. Like those bimbos of yours. They meant nothing to you. I know that. You know that. So why should they mean anything to me?"
      "You said something of a dream," he managed to say, trying to deflect the course of the talk.
      "Oh. The dream. It's odd—I was walking along, on my way to bed—and then I fell. Don't know why. Felt wonderful, though. Don't know why that, either. But I had a dream, when I fell. Almost as if I was given a dream, is the way it felt. And it was of something you could do for me, dear. To make up. For—you know."
      Bruce Kepplinger tried to loosen his throat muscles enough that air could escape, and form words: "Me? Do for you? Didn't I hear—about you, and some young man—?"
      "I was growing fond of someone, Brucie. But that was in the dream, too. He said goodbye to me. Didn't explain. Just said goodbye. Then pointed. And I looked where he pointed. And it was the most beautiful castle. So beautiful! And right away the thought came to me, I know who can build that for me!"
      Bruce groaned. "Am I then forgiven?" he said in horror that she would say yes.
      "Oh, Bruce," she said.

      John Castle saw with relief the figure crossing his path ahead. He recognized the measured step, the slightly forehead-forward poise, the inner ease reflected in each movement.
      "Huang!" he cried.
      The man stopped and looked at John, owl face calm with curiosity.
      "Ah," said Huang. "You tried the Nip of the Black Swan."
      "Yes! And I did it right! I used the inner form of the Sacred Crow in its Dance! That was the right one, wasn't it?"
      Huang shook his head. "Remember: death and dream sit so near. Try to give death, you give dream. Is what you did. Gave dream, not death. And you have locked yourself here, too, in dream. Poor fellow. Well, I must go now."
      "You must go? Wait! What should I have done?"
      "The form of the Infernal Grinning Idiot, John. Is the only way to do the Nip of the Black Swan. I would have told you if I had known you were serious about murder." Huang smiled and shrugged genially. "Oh, well."
      "But what do I do—"
      "What do you mean?"
      "I have to get out of here!"
      "Why? It is your dream! Don't you want to be here?"
      "But I can't get anywhere! The castle keeps moving away from me!"
      Huang nodded seriously, then leaned forward to whisper in John's ear. He walked away a moment later, his head bobbing up and down.
      John cursed the man beneath his breath. This figure was a shadow, a figment of this dream world! The real Huang never laughed at him!
      Even so he followed the figment's advice. He adopted the stance of the Fear-Harrowed Hare, and found that by doing so he could inch forward, making real progress toward his goal.
      When he reached the gates of the great building, he heard the silver tinkling of festivities within, and the joyous shouts of drunken celebrants, all no doubt pleased that he, the King, had finally arrived. He banged on the thick wood of the gate.
      The door sprang open to reveal the shimmeringly radiant and beautiful form of Paige, dressed in full court regalia, her bodice emphasizing her bust and her cheeks rouged and her eyes sparkling with pleasure.
      "At last!" she shouted, clapping her hands so two tall figures approached, each dressed in armor of silver and bearing blades of thin and glistening steel.
      They moved to each side of the new arrival, taking his arms; and they murmured into his ears in low tones of the damp, the decay, the rotten locks rusting into motionless perpetuity, the burgeoning hordes of rats, and the endless shadows of the place where they would take him, as they walked down into the deepest shadows beneath the walls of the castle, where John knew he had dreamed dungeons.
      Where He Dreamed Dungeons © 1998, Mark Rich. All rights reserved.