Brian Lumley - Dreamlands 1 - Hero Of Dreams

VIP免费

2024-12-16 0 0 300.19KB 104 页 5.9玖币

侵权投诉

file:///G|/rah/Brian%20Lumley/Brian%20Lumley%20-%20Dreamlands%201%20-%20Hero%20Of%20Dreams.txt

PART 1

First Meeting

CHAPTER I

It was evening and the uplands of dream were turning chilly. Spiked grasses nodded in a slight

breeze, like hissing Gorgon heads, where they made silhouettes atop rocky rises. Soon the sun

would be down and the stars would come out to blaze in the heavens of Earth's dreamland. David

Hero did not know these parts, for his dreams had never before carried him here; he knew only that

he did not like this place, where green plains gave way to scrub, stony slopes and sliding shale,

and the crags cast gaunt shadows that would soon become threatening caves of blackness as night

drew in.

He shivered a little and fondled the hilt of his curved sword where it hung at his hip, then

turned up the hood of his brown cape a little—but not too much. He did not want to shut out the

evening sounds of these uplands, for his ears were sensitive and would often tell him of a danger

before the danger itself became visible. The breeze stiffened to a wind and moaned with an eerie

insistence as he leaned forward up the slope, and high overhead a scud of gray clouds hurried into

view as they crossed the peaks and headed south.

South .. .

BRIAN LUMLEY

Now why couldn't he have dreamed himself south? To Celephais, perhaps, where King Kuranes reigned,

or sky-floating Serannian where the west wind flows into the sky? But no, he was here, wherever

here was, and so must accept whichever dreams were his due this night. Whichever dreams ... or

nightmares.

David Hero knew he was in the north of Earth's dreamland, but no more than that. These peaks above

him could well be the ultimate range leading to Leng itself, whose plateau was home to some of

dreamland's vilest inhabitants; or they might merely be the foothills of that far mightier

escarpment, Kadath in the Cold Waste. Thoughts such as these had almost determined the dreamer to

turn back and head for healthier lands when, on cresting a ridge, he came upon a scene which had

him drawing his sword in a whisper of steel and falling automatically into a defensive crouch.

Below, a lone wanderer sought cover in crevices of rock; while ranged about him, a trio of six-

legged spider-hounds hissed and snapped at his leather-clad legs, trying to secure a hold on him

and pull him down. One of them awkwardly clutched a straight sword in a prehensile fore-paw,

having doubtless snatched it from the frantically scrabbling, hoarsely panting object of their

detestable torture.

David Hero knew some of the ways of spider-hounds from tales told to him by travelers and

storytellers in dreamland's more civilized regions: how they would wear a man down with their vile

hissing and leaping, then paralyze him with their poisonous stings and eat him alive, often making

their meal last through several nights. Such was obviously the intention of this monstrous trio,

and Hero could well understand the near-demented scrabbling of their victim as he sought to find

some crevice in which

HERO OF DREAMS

to wedge himself, the better to make a stand against the horrors.

Without a thought to his own safety, the newcomer grit-led his teeth and went slithering and

leaping in the gloom down the shale-covered slope. He waved his sword above his head as he ran at

the hissing, scampering creatures, whistling and shouting like a madman. Still on the run, he

snatched up a large lump of lava in his free hand and hurled it at the insect-like hounds, and had

the satisfaction of seeing one of them leap high in the air with the shock of the impact as die

missile struck home.

Then he was upon them, slicing with his sword and panting through clenched teeth and grimacing

lips. By good fortune his singing blade took the jointed hind legs right off one of them—the one

file:///G|/rah/Brian%20Lumley/Brian%20Lumley...0Dreamlands%201%20-%20Hero%20Of%20Dreams.txt (1 of 104) [2/13/2004 10:09:25 PM]

file:///G|/rah/Brian%20Lumley/Brian%20Lumley%20-%20Dreamlands%201%20-%20Hero%20Of%20Dreams.txt

that held aloft the beleaguered stranger's sword—and in another moment the man had leaped forward

to snatch back his weapon from the crippled spider-hound. Striking together, the two men put paid

to that demented creature where it dragged its stinger uselessly behind it.

But now the other spider-hounds had realized that the balance of the game had evened up, and that

therefore a quick end must be made of it. As at a single word of command they launched themselves

at Hero, twisting their bodies in the air so that their stingers struck at his face. He ducked,

impaled one of them on his sword, felt the weight of the other on his back and a lancing agony as

a single drop of mordant poison burned through his clothing to the skin . .. then felt the horror

kicked from him and heard its final hiss as the rescued man took both hands to his sword and

hacked its cockroach head clean from its body.

Quickly, without a backward glance, Hero tugged his own weapon free of the scale-armored hound

where it twitched and jerked among shale and lava fragments, then split its chitinous skull with a

single stroke. The fight was

BRIAN LUMLEY

finished, and only the moaning of the wind over the peaks remained: that and the panting of the

men, and the nameless drip of the thin gray ichor which was the life-blood of diese denizens of

nightmare.

Now Hero turned to the other man, peering at him where he stood cleaning his weapon on his black

jacket. The other looked back in turn, and gratitude shone in his eyes; but his breathing was

ragged and he coughed painfully.

'They took you by surprise," Hero ventured.

"Eh?" the other finally grunted. "Yes, they did. Damned horrors! Didn't see 'em till they were on

me. They don't hiss at all when they're tracking you—only when they have you cornered!"

"I wouldn't know," Hero answered. 'This is the first time I've come across them—I'm happy to say!"

He touched a severed head with his fur-booted foot and turned it until starlight fell onto the

faceted eyes, then grimaced at the way the thing seemed to stare at him even in death.

Then, headless as it was, one of the carcasses began to twitch and the hard carapace rattled on

the rocks. Both men stepped back from the dead things and shivered—and not alone from the chill of

the night air. Finally they turned more fully to one another and clasped hands in the manner of

dreamland.

"In the village where I sometimes lodge, I'm known as Eldin," the dark-jacketed man told Hero.

"Since Eldin is the old word for 'wanderer,' it suits me well enough. Of course, I've another name

in the waking world ... at least, I think I have. And how are you called?"

"My name's Hero, David Hero. I haven't earned myself a dream-name yet, though I'm pretty well-

traveled in the better known places."

"No dream-name, eh, David?" Eldin grinned and nodded as if he knew something special. "Just a

fellow trav-

HERO OF DREAMS

eler from the waking world, eh? Well, there seem to be damn few of us about these days. And what

brings you here?"

"I could ask the same of you," Hero answered, casting nervously about. "And I would if I didn't

think this a funny sort of spot to be spending our time in idle chatter. Is there no place we can

make ourselves at ease for the night?"

"I was making for a cave back there in the shadows when these damned things set on me," Eldin

said. "I've a flint in my pocket and the makings in my pack, and we should be able to pick up a

few dry sticks for a fire. What would you say to a cup of tea?" Hero caught a flash of grinning

file:///G|/rah/Brian%20Lumley/Brian%20Lumley...0Dreamlands%201%20-%20Hero%20Of%20Dreams.txt (2 of 104) [2/13/2004 10:09:25 PM]

file:///G|/rah/Brian%20Lumley/Brian%20Lumley%20-%20Dreamlands%201%20-%20Hero%20Of%20Dreams.txt

teeth in the darkness.

"I'd say that was a very kind offer," he answered. "Lead on, Eldin, and we'll pick up some sticks

as we go."

"Now then," said Eldin when they sat on flat stones in a dry and sheltered cave and sipped their

tea out of tiny silver cups, "you were going to tell me what you're doing here, on these unbeaten

paths so far away from dreamland's towns and cities."

Hero shrugged. "I go where dreams take me. This time they brought me here."

"You're not an inveterate dreamer, then?"

"Well I am, yes, but my dreaming never seems to have much point to it—if you know what I mean.

It's like I said: I go wherever my dreams take me. I have no anchor here, as you seem to have. No

village where I board, no place to call home. I never seem to be here long enough to build up any

sort of permanency. Come to think of it, I believe I'm pretty much the same in the waking world.

When I'm there I can't remember much of this place, and when I'm here ..."

"You can't remember much of the other place, eh?"

BRIAN LUMLEY

"Only my name," Hero answered, "and that's about all."

"I always make a point," the other said, "of going down the seven hundred steps to the Gate of

Deeper Slumber. I've found that if you do that it makes it easier to stay here for longer periods.

You don't wake up so easy. Those steps take you down to lower levels of dream, if you see what I

mean."

"Not for me," Hero shook his head. "I've heard of people using those steps who never returned to

the waking world at all. They're used by people who have to escape into dreams, and I don't have

to. I suppose I'm not much of a dreamer, really—and I don't think I really care to be."

"Have it your own way," Eldin growled. "Anyway, we still seem to be two of a sort. The way I see

it, we've got too much going for us in the waking world—or too little— and so we dream. You say

you've no anchor here? I'll bet there's precious little to anchor you to the waking world, either.

And then again I'm older than you. Perhaps dreams are kinder to me than the waking world. Anyhow,

I like it here. Things seem easier, somehow." He coughed and held up a great hand to his mouth.

"I'll take my chances in dreams. If they don't kill me, this damned old troublesome body of mine

surely will!"

Hero shrugged. He looked at the other in the flickering firelight. Eldin was older than Hero's

twenty-six years by at least a dozen, probably more, with a scarred, bearded, quite unhandsome

face which yet sported surprisingly clear blue eyes. Stocky and heavy, yet somehow gangly, there

was something almost apish about him; yet his every move and gesture hinted of exceptional

intelligence and a rare strength. But Hero suspected that the man's strength was being sapped

internally, that the flame of death brightened steadily in his lungs, threatening to blossom into

HERO OF DREAMS

raging inferno. Perhaps that was why he was here* this misfit from the waking world.

"And what of you?" he finally asked, seeking to confirm his reckoning. "What are you doing here,

Eldin? I mean specifically, well, here, in the uplands?"

Eldin grinned and sipped his tea, peering at his new friend and admiring his strong arms, clean

features and straight, slim figure. "Me? Why, I was looking for you!"

"For me?" Hero was taken aback.

"Let me explain," said Eldin. "In Bahama on the Isle of Oriab, there's a wharfside tavern where

sailors gather from all the seas of dreamland. It's a funny little place, that tavern, and until

file:///G|/rah/Brian%20Lumley/Brian%20Lumley...0Dreamlands%201%20-%20Hero%20Of%20Dreams.txt (3 of 104) [2/13/2004 10:09:25 PM]

file:///G|/rah/Brian%20Lumley/Brian%20Lumley%20-%20Dreamlands%201%20-%20Hero%20Of%20Dreams.txt

recently none too healthy for outsiders—if you know what I mean. There's been a big clean-up,

however, and many of dreamland's peoples have taken to traveling about a lot more. Even Dylath-

Leen gets its quota of visitors these days, and I'm told that people are settling there again."

But Eldin's words had set Hero's mind wandering. He remembered stories he'd heard of the Bad Days,

when the demon-god Cthulhu's minions in dreamland had attempted a coup over all the lands of

dream, and only the intervention of two men from the waking world had stopped them. He remembered

the names of those men: Titus Crow and Henri-Laurent de Marigny, and felt a certain awe when he

thought of the battles they had fought against all the forces of nightmare.

"Anyway,'' Eldin's words brought him back to the present. "I was in Bahama across the Southern

Sea, and it was there—in this tavern I've mentioned—that my future was told by a certain seer of

no mean skill. Mind you, these old bellows of mine—" (he tapped upon his great chest) "—were

playing me up and I was a little drunk at the time, and so I can't swear to the surety of my

memory, but still I'll tell you what I think the prophet told me:

BRIAN LUMLEY

"He cast his stones, gazed at my palm with his strange, invisible eyes, and said—"

"Invisible eyes?" Hero felt obliged to cut him short. "What sort of eyes are those, for goodness'

sake?"

The firelight flashed on Eldin's grin and sent shadows slithering over the cave's walls. "What

kind? Why, invisible, of course! The kind when you look into them and see .. . nothing! The spaces

between the stars—an empty void—you know?"

"No," Hero shook his head.

"You can see their edges," Eldin patiently explained, "Their rims, like craters on both sides of

the nose—but inside them ... nothing! I've met several such in dreamland."

Hero slowly nodded and said: "You were saying?"

"Eh? Oh, yes. Well, I'd had a few drinks, I admit it-yes, and I fancy the old seer had, too—and so

he read my future in the stones and in the palm of my hand. And he said:

" 'Eldin, you'll meet a man one evening in the northern uplands, and he'll save your life. Then

... he'll join you on a quest—on several quests—which will take you to the farthest corners of

dreamland.'

" 'Quests?' I said. 'What sort of quests?' But he'd say no more."

Fascinated, Hero asked: "Nothing else? That was all he told you?"

"I'm afraid so," Eldin nodded ruefully. Then he brightened and added, "Oh, yes! He did say that if

we lived through these quests, how then that you'd have earned yourself a dream-name. That's how I

know you're the one."

"Because I have no dream-name?"

Eldin nodded.

"Well then, I reckon I'll have to get along without one."

HERO OF DREAMS

"You won't come with me?" Eldin seemed disappointed.

"Hero by name," the other reminded him, "but not necessarily by inclination. And I don't much care

file:///G|/rah/Brian%20Lumley/Brian%20Lumley...0Dreamlands%201%20-%20Hero%20Of%20Dreams.txt (4 of 104) [2/13/2004 10:09:25 PM]

file:///G|/rah/Brian%20Lumley/Brian%20Lumley%20-%20Dreamlands%201%20-%20Hero%20Of%20Dreams.txt

for the way your seer foretold the future. 'If we live through it, you say? There's one sure way

to live through it, my friend, and that's not to go questing in the first place! Sorry, Eldin, but

you can count me out. Anyway, it all seems rather vague to me. We're to go a-questing, you say?

Where to? What for?"

Eldin shrugged. "I never did discover. But what does it matter, since you're not interested?"

Now Hero frowned. He turned his face away and gazed out of the cave's mouth into the night. "Let's

sleep on it," he said, without looking at the other.

Eldin grinned. "I'll take first watch," he said.

David Hero

CHAPTER II

David Hero awakened to sunlight that burned through his eyelids and warmed his face. He briefly

wondered how this could be, for he remembered that the cave he shared with Eldin faced south and

away from the rising sun. Then, shielding his eyes, he opened them to squint up at latticed

windows where they sloped down and formed the east-facing roof. Through the small panes he could

see the morning sun rising over Arthur's Seat.

Arthur's Seat?

Eldinburgh! Of course it was Eldinburgh. No, Edinburgh, without the "/"! Now why on Earth had he

called the city Eldinburgh? And this was his studio-flat in a converted attic in the Dalkeith

Road.

In that split second of confused realization, David Hero was once again a man of the waking world.

All accumulated memories of that other world-life shrank and receded into those half-suspected

regions of mind at which students of the human psyche have occasionally hinted and upon which they

frequently conjecture. Earth's dreamland, in that moment, ceased to exist for him, or at least

became a shadow in his subconscious.

Except ...

BRIAN LUMLEY

Eldin? Now what or who in hell was Eldin? And why had Hero been so surprised upon awakening to

find himself in Edinburgh? He sat up in bed, yawned and shrugged. The mind's natural confusion in

the transitory moments between dreaming and waking, he supposed. He had always had trouble waking

up. Now what did he have planned for today?

A walk on the castle's esplanade? He always enjoyed that: the view of the olden city from on high.

He loved the marvelous silhouettes, which always seemed to remind him of—other places, beyond

memory. And perhaps that was how he might explain the inspiration for his outrg art.

He got out of bed and crossed scrubbed floorboards to peer at yesterday's work. There, on an

easel, a newly-daubed canvas was given a certain perspective as the morning light just failed to

strike it. Basalt-towered and myriad-wharved, a gray and eerily fantastic city with leprous

cobbled streets seemed to gloom back at him through the bleary, small-paned windows of its houses.

Buckled pavements made dark-shadowed humps in subsided roads, and deserted wharves crumbled into a

soulless sea. There was no sign of life at all and the whole scene was distinctly gloomy and

disquieting.

Looking at the painting, Hero cocked his head on one side and frowned. The thing looked too damned

dismal. Something utterly hideous had happened to that city, and he felt he should know what it

was. He was not at all sure now that this was the effect he had wanted. There was nothing wrong

with the painting itself; indeed, the work was good. No, the fault lay with the subject matter.

"Dylath-Leen," he muttered to himself. "Yes—but much too dreary. A good name, though!" And he

picked up a pencil and quickly scrawled "Dylath-Leen" in one corner of the canvas. "There, now I

file:///G|/rah/Brian%20Lumley/Brian%20Lumley...0Dreamlands%201%20-%20Hero%20Of%20Dreams.txt (5 of 104) [2/13/2004 10:09:25 PM]

file:///G|/rah/Brian%20Lumley/Brian%20Lumley%20-%20Dreamlands%201%20-%20Hero%20Of%20Dreams.txt

won't forget it."

Then he stepped back and yawned again, scratching his

HERO OF DREAMS

tousled yellow hair. The picture would be better, he thought, if done as a night scene; with dim-

glowing lights behind certain of the windows, friendly groups of small people in the streets and

the occasional figure on a doorstep, lanthorn held high. It would lose none of its other-

worldliness, but it would certainly be made more, well—true to life? After all, Dylath-Leen was

like that now ... wasn't it?

He snorted derisively at his own fancies and turned to peer at a second, older picture where it

hung in a cheap frame. This one was more lively, its highlights accentuated by the glinting sun

striking into the attic room. Trapped in golden beams, motes of dust seemed to float like a

thousand tiny drifting airships among faery towers, domes and turrets; and below, overhanging a

blue crystal sea, the foundations of the city were set in an incredible promontory of green

volcanic glass. In one comer of the canvas Hero had long since scrawled the legend: "Ilek-Vad."

Unwashed, unshaven, he frowned again, turned and seated himself at a small desk. His mind was

usually strangely fertile during its first waking moments. Rapidly he sketched upon a scrap of

paper. Heavy hills quickly formed a background to his sketch, and in the foreground—

He grimaced at the hairy, insect-like dog-thing he had drawn, then crumpled the scrap into a ball

and tossed it in his wastebasket. Wherever the inspiration for that came from, today he could well

do without it! No, today was a day for walking in the city—or perhaps a trip out to the Firth of

Forth Bridge, whose massive cantilever of almost four thousand feet never failed to fascinate

him—or better still a day on the coast at Dunbar, where the seagulls called and the boys collected

and sold empty, fist-sized sea urchin shells washed in on the tide. There was a place where he

liked to sit on the rocks at the edge of the sea

BRIAN LUMLEY

and look down into deep pools, where tiny fishes darted in deeps of waving weed.

No sooner had this thought occurred to him than another, far stranger vision came. In his mind's

eye he stared down from Ilek-Vad's cliffs of green glass into waters where the finny and bearded

Gnorri swam and, with then-self-appointed and all-consuming industry, pursued the construction of

intricate and utterly mazy labyrinths. This idea, coming so suddenly, startled David Hero. For

this was surely inspiration! He had been commissioned to prepare a dust-jacket for an "Epic of

Submarine Science Fiction," and the vision his mind had just conjured seemed near-perfect for his

purpose: a scene of gentle, subaqueous beings going about their business among the caves of a

fantastic seabed—and in the foreground, to one side of the main picture, weirdly-suited and armed

intruders about to burst rapaciously upon the scene.

Excellent!

... But it could wait until later in the day, perhaps this evening. Right now Hero must wash and

tidy up, make his breakfast and decide where the day's wanderings were to take him. Over eggs and

bacon washed down with black coffee, he mentally reverted to his original choice: Edinburgh

Castle. If ever a place were designed to create awe, wonder and inspiration in the eye of the

beholder, surely this massive sky-climbing castle was that place. Yes, he would go there—and

tonight he would start his sub-sea painting ...

To the polyglot tourists who thronged the Royal Mile as Hero toiled up steeply slanting pavements

past public houses and souvenir shops, he would not be too impressive a figure. In old jeans

spotted with paint and faded by sun and sea, and wearing his yellow hair long so that it lay on

the shoulders of his dark, open-necked shirt, he might

file:///G|/rah/Brian%20Lumley/Brian%20Lumley...0Dreamlands%201%20-%20Hero%20Of%20Dreams.txt (6 of 104) [2/13/2004 10:09:25 PM]

file:///G|/rah/Brian%20Lumley/Brian%20Lumley%20-%20Dreamlands%201%20-%20Hero%20Of%20Dreams.txt

HERO OF DREAMS

well be just another wastrel idling his time away in the hot summer days. And indeed, if such was

the general suspicion, then it were not too seriously misplaced.

He was academically qualified, to be sure, but his tutors each and every one had found occasion to

remark that he was "much too much of a dreamer," or "given to flights of fancy totally removed

from his studies." The one field in which he felt truly at home—and in which he somehow managed to

make his way in life—was painting, and this was really as much as he wanted to do. Oh, it would be

nice to be rich, certainly, but not if that meant joining in the rat race. Since he was not

without a degree of responsibility he could not be termed a dropout, but at the same time his

ambitions were very limited.

His trouble was that he was a man bom out of tune, and perhaps out of place. He could well picture

himself as a swashbuckling privateer on the Spanish Main, or an explorer of strange horizons on

distant worlds—but never as an executive in some sprawling tower-block of offices on 20th Century

Earth! Why, the very world felt alien to him, except in certain places. Edinburgh was one such

place, with its fresh sea breezes and high-riding gulls, its castle, ancient monuments and general

air of antiquity—for which reasons Hero could bear living here. And of course atmosphere was very

important to his painting.

Eventually he found himself on the esplanade at the top of the Royal Mile, where he turned left

out of the stream of tourists and went to lean on the old south wall. Beneath the wall the grass

of the hillside fell swiftly away, merging into a rocky precipice which plunged down to a

ribbonlike road that wound round the castle rock and into the labyrinthine city.

High overhead the seagulls wheeled and cried in distant discord, and Hero found one with his

binoculars, following the great circle of its effortless glide as it rose in the cas-

BRIAN LUMLEY

tie's thermal. For long moments the bird gained height, then deliberately turned out of the rising

current of air and fell in great swoops towards me earth, down past the castle rock, down to where

the circular structure of Granby Halls stood in the castle's shadow.

On a piece of waste ground beside the Halls stood a billboard, and there the gull came to rest,

keenly scanning accumulated garbage dumped amongst weeds and wild ivy. Hero, following the gull's

swoop, briefly scanned the billboard through his binoculars before he found the bird where it

perched above the large, freshly-pasted poster. He found the bird .. . then frowned and lowered

his glasses until the wording once more sprang into sharp relief. "Dreams and their Meaning," said

the poster, and beneath this heading it displayed a legend in letters which were far smaller and

less legible at this distance. Hero adjusted the binoculars and tried again, and after a moment's

jiggling he managed to get the lower part of the poster into perspective.

DREAMS AND THEIR MEANING

The Extension of the Human Psyche into the Subconscious Realm of Dreams. Your Sleeping Fantasies

explained in Layman's Language, by Scotland's Foremost Expert on the Hidden Worlds of the Mind!

There was more but the letters were much smaller and Hero was at a loss to further enlarge them

and still retain a degree of clarity. Again he read the poster's more readily legible lettering

and frowned, lowering the binoculars to let them hang on his chest. Dreams and their meanings?

Foremost expert?

An expert on dreams ...

Almost without knowing it, simply letting his feet take him, he left die esplanade, turned right

off the Royal Mile

file:///G|/rah/Brian%20Lumley/Brian%20Lumley...0Dreamlands%201%20-%20Hero%20Of%20Dreams.txt (7 of 104) [2/13/2004 10:09:25 PM]

file:///G|/rah/Brian%20Lumley/Brian%20Lumley%20-%20Dreamlands%201%20-%20Hero%20Of%20Dreams.txt

HERO OF DREAMS

and wended his way down into the city. In a little while he had found his way to the billboard and

was able to read the rest of the poster's legend:

Tues, Wed, Thurs, this week. 8 P.M.—9 P.M.— Professor Leonard Dingle (Psychology and Anthropology)

talks on the fascinating subject of Man's secret desires, the dreams which motivate his every

waking moment.

There was a little more in much the same vein, but Hero read no farther. Professor Leonard Dingle

. .. There was something about that name. Something that rang bells of inquiry in the back of his

memory. A bright vision of a bearded, burly face flashed in his mind's eye, then was gone. Did he

know the man? But how could he know him?

And yet—

—It might be an interesting talk at that, and the dust-jacket painting could always wait until

tomorrow. After all, what harm could there possibly be in attending a lecture?

The bells of inquiry in his mind turned to a distant, barely-heard clangor of alarm ... but David

Hero wasn't listening.

Second Meeting

CHAPTER III

The hall was hardly filled to capacity, anything but, and Hero suspected that things were not

likely to improve. Since this was Tuesday and the first night of the lecture, it fully looked as

though Prof. Leonard Dingle was in for a lean time of it. In the height of the tourist season, he

must have been extremely fortunate to obtain the use of the hall in the first place—and surely

this was the most dismal looking audience.

The hall was about one-third full of middle-aged ladies who looked like rejects from the bingo

halls with nothing better to do; foreign tourists who fidgeted and chatted in diverse tongues,

obviously having paid their entrance fee in error and wondering what time the main feature began;

jean-clad, leather-jacketed roughnecks who appeared to be "lying low" from someone or thing; and,

in the rear row of seats, courting couples who plainly were not interested in anything the speaker

or anyone else had to say.

Hero, arriving tate, took all of this in as he entered the darkened hall to discover the lecture

already underway. He found a seat three rows back from the front and having quietly made himself

comfortable at last turned his atten-

BRIAN LUMLEY

lion to the speaker, "Scotland's foremost expert on the hidden worlds of the mind."

And here a paradox, for at one and the same time Dingle was and was not exactly the figure Hero

had expected! That is to say: while he was not the small, frail-looking, bespectacled and retiring

chap his name and subject might suggest to the minds of most people, he very definitely was the

burly, gangling figure Hero had glimpsed in his mind's eye while studying the poster. There were

differences, however, and Hero found himself trying to pinpoint them as he studied the man where

he stood behind a lectern, beneath a spotlight, talking into a microphone which amplified his

voice only just sufficiently to make it audible at the back of the hall.

For one thing the speaker was clean shaven, which was inconsistent with Hero's precognitive

glimpse, and for another he was far more articulate than Hero had pictured him. This of course was

only to be expected in a man who delivered talks and lectures, and yet somehow Hero had not

expected it. The voice was deep and fairly impressive, as he had somehow guessed it would be, and

marred by an irritating cough or the suspicion of one, which also seemed to fit the artist's

preconception. And yet, for all Dingle's aggressive-seeming stance and gangling appearance (and

file:///G|/rah/Brian%20Lumley/Brian%20Lumley...0Dreamlands%201%20-%20Hero%20Of%20Dreams.txt (8 of 104) [2/13/2004 10:09:25 PM]

file:///G|/rah/Brian%20Lumley/Brian%20Lumley%20-%20Dreamlands%201%20-%20Hero%20Of%20Dreams.txt

despite the fact that one side of his face looked to be familiarly scarred), still he seemed much

too much the scholar and gentleman to truly represent Hero's previous— knowledge?—of him. Again

the artist found himself wondering: did he know the man? And if so, where had he met him before?

But at last the professor's message was getting through to Hero, and despite his consuming

curiosity about the man himself he became gradually drawn in by the speaker's subject and gripped

by his words. For certainly Dingle knew his stuff.

HERO OF DREAMS

"Most people at some time or other have been puzzled by dreams," the professor was saying. "Dreams

are often thought of as mere curiosities, occasionally prophecies, omens and sometimes

parapsychological experiences. Periodicals may today be purchased which purport to 'translate'

dreams into forms which have commonplace or at least everyday meanings and applications.

"But what do dreams really mean? What are they all about? Was Sigmund Freud right? Can dreams be

explained away simply by calling them 'primary processes' of the mind? Are they indeed the 'royal

road to the unconscious mind,' disguised expressions of otherwise suppressed urges?

"Modern thinking, with some aid from 'hardware' science as opposed to the science of psychology,

would seem to show that Freud's conclusions are not altogether complete. A recent theory has it

that our minds are computers, which require regular 'clearing.' That is, removal of superfluous

programming. Dreams perform the clearing, getting rid of accumulated and unwanted experiences, the

mental garbage of conscious existence. Pretty clever ...

"But is that it? Is that all? Is that really all there is to it?

"I for one don't think so. There are—anomalies. Big ones!

"For instance: how may we explain Kekul6's dream of the benzene ring, wherein a complicated

molecular structure which had baffled many scientists was suddenly made clear to the dreamer?

Astonishing!

"Or could it be that dreams serve the purpose of solving problems which are too difficult for a

merely conscious, cluttered mind to comprehend? H.P. Lovecraft, a writer of horror stories who was

anything but prolific, actually dreamed entire stories—almost as if his dreaming mind were trying

to solve his waking problems! Of these dream-

BRIAN LUMLEY

tales, several were published and are fairly good examples of their genre.

"And so in Lovecraft's case we see that something solid actually came out of the allegedly

insubstantial world of his dreams. I ask myself: could that world really be so insubstantial? And

if dreams are so ethereal, what of Gerhard Schrach's statement on the insubstantiality of so-

called solids? His own dreams, you may remember, were so 'real' that he was ever at a loss to know

which world was the more vital, the waking world or the world of dreams.

"Once, in Vienna, I was fortunate enough to meet and talk at some length with Schrach about some

of his 'experiences' in those subconscious realms of his mind which he termed 'the dreamlands.'

For it seemed to Schrach that those brief periods of our steeping lives which the great majority

of people term 'dreams' were not dreams at all as he understood the term but merely reflections of

the waking world impinging on the surface of the subconscious mind during its shallower sleep-

times. To discover the real dreamlands, Schrach said, one must go much deeper.

"For Gerhard Schrach's dreaming took the form of a separate and solid existence which he believed

lies at the roots of Man's subconscious. Not merely his own subconscious, you understand, but

Man's. He believed that if only we knew how, then all of us might explore those selfsame worlds of

wonder! But even so, it would be an exceptionally rare dreamer indeed who could bring back even a

file:///G|/rah/Brian%20Lumley/Brian%20Lumley...0Dreamlands%201%20-%20Hero%20Of%20Dreams.txt (9 of 104) [2/13/2004 10:09:25 PM]

file:///G|/rah/Brian%20Lumley/Brian%20Lumley%20-%20Dreamlands%201%20-%20Hero%20Of%20Dreams.txt

fragmentary recollection to the waking world.

"As I have said, he was just such a man, and I was so impressed with the depth and detail of what

he told me he had dreamed that I found myself actually carried along by his recounting of his

adventures in those dreamlands; by tales and descriptions of dreamland's customs, peoples, rivers

and hills and cities.

HERO OF DREAMS

"Yes, it actually seemed to me as I listened to Schrach that I, too, had known such rivers as the

Skai and the Tross, such cities as Ulthar, Celephais and Ilek-Vad . . ."

Ulthar, Celephais and Ilek-Vad!

Hero jerked upright in his seat and his hair felt full of some weird energy, an electrical

pricking which crawled across his scalp and down his neck to solicit a response from his suddenly

charged skin, covering him in shuddery goose-pimples. Ulthar, Celephais and Ilek-Vad!

What in the name of everything holy .. . ?

This man on the stage in the haze of his spotlight—this familiar stranger Hero could not possibly

but did somehow recognize—was talking of the subconscious world of another man's dreaming

imagination; and yet David Hero, too, had somewhere known those fabled names and places before.

Why, when his own imagination was working at its strongest, he even painted them!

Hero heard no more but stumbled to his feet. He was utterly shaken, numb, as he made his way to

the foyer, and from there to the wings of die stage, where he waited in a sort of euphoric stupor

for Dingle to finish his monologue. He heard little of what remained of the professor's talk,

however, for his head was humming with winds of mystery, his mind's eye full of half-seen visions

that could not quite be brought into perspective. He stood, he knew, on the tiireshold of

something quite momentous, something unique.

And always he kept asking himself: how could this be? Had he heard a-right? Did he and Gerhard

Schrach—yes, and perhaps Leonard Dingle, too—share in part a mutual dream-world which, upon

awakening, rney left behind except for the occasional tantalizing glimpse or vision? Or had

Schrach perhaps written of the lands of his dreaming; and then without knowing it, had Hero

somewhere long ago read his work and remembered it, so mat the names of

BRIAN LUMLEY

certain dream-places and something of their descriptions had stuck in his head?

There was that possibility, of course, but Hero did not believe that was the answer. For even now,

as he impatiently waited for the professor to finish, misted visions of incredible lands beyond

the boundaries of the conscious world kept flashing across his mind, half-glimpsed and transient,

and yet real, he knew ...

At last it was over and the lights went up on a hall containing less than half of its original

number. The roughnecks had departed to face whichever fate pursued or waited for them; the foreign

tourists had long since discovered their error and taken their leave of the place; and at last the

small core of the audience got wearily to its feet and made to pass out into the city, where by

now the twilight of evening would be silently settling.

Hero met Dingle in the wings with: "Sir, my name is David Hero, and—"

"Hero, d'you say?" Dingle rumbled, tucking his crammed briefcase under one great arm. He looked at

Hero closely and his forehead wrinkled in a frown. "We've met somewhere before, eh?"

Hero's heart gave a mighty lurch. "I ... I don't think so," he answered; then quickly added: "Yes

I do—but I don't know where. I was hoping you . . . ?" And he paused, not quite knowing how to

file:///G|/rah/Brian%20Lumley/Brian%20Lumle...Dreamlands%201%20-%20Hero%20Of%20Dreams.txt (10 of 104) [2/13/2004 10:09:25 PM]

文档加载中……请稍候！
如果长时间未打开，您也可以点击刷新试试。

下载文档到电脑，查找使用更方便

5.9 玖币 0人已下载

立即下载 VIP免费下载

摘要：

file:///G|/rah/Brian%20Lumley/Brian%20Lumley%20-%20Dreamlands%201%20-%20Hero%20Of%20Dreams.txtPART1FirstMeetingCHAPTERIItwaseveningandtheuplandsofdreamwereturningchilly.Spikedgrassesnoddedinaslightbreeze,likehissingGorgonheads,wheretheymadesilhouettesatoprockyrises.Soonthesunwouldbedownandthestar...

展开>> 收起<<

Brian Lumley - Dreamlands 1 - Hero Of Dreams.pdf

共104页,预览21页

还剩页未读，继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

Brian Lumley - Dreamlands 1 - Hero Of Dreams

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: