Hero of Dreams

Chapter Three

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 late, 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 attention 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 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.
"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 dreamtales, 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 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.
"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 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 explain his presence here in the wings.
"Hero, eh? Hmm," the professor rumbled. "The name rings a bell. You're from the south, yes?"
"The northeast coast of England, yes," Hero nodded.
"I'm from the Midlands myself. Seems unlikely we'd ever come together. What brings you to Edinburgh?"
"I live here-now," Hero explained. "I'm an artist, when I'm anything at all. As to why I'm here: the city has an atmosphere like no other. It's like a stepping-off place to-" he shrugged.
"I know what you mean," Dingle rumbled, and coughed a little as a shadow of pain crossed his face. "You'll excuse my cough," he hastily said. "That's my main reason for being here. I've lived here for some time, but I go even further up north whenever I can. It's good clean air up there. Scotland: the last bastion of civilized, air-breathing man. At least in this world ..."
"In this world?" Once again Hero felt the weird tingling of his scalp. "What other world is there?"
"Ah!" Dingle smiled. "Well now, that's a secret between me and myself." He picked up a poster or two, threw a coat over his arm and prepared to leave the Halls. "Were you part of the, er, 'audience,' Mr. Hero?" He grinned ruefully.
"For a while," the other nodded. Then, unable to hold himself back any longer, he blurted: "Is that what you meant by another world? The world of Ilek-Vad and Dylath-Leen?"
"Dylath-" the other gasped, dropping his briefcase so that it burst open and scattered its contents on the floor. "I made no mention of-"
"But you know it, don't you? You've heard of it before?"
Dumbly the professor nodded, then grasped Hero by the shoulders. In a half-whisper he said: "And Oriab in the Southern Sea?"
"With its coastal, capital city, Bahama. And Hatheg-Kla in the stony desert?"
"Which Atal the Ancient climbed in his youth-"
"-From which only he returned while Barzai the Unwise remained behind!"
After a long moment the professor said: "They come and go, these visions, and when they're gone I hunger after them." His grip tightened on Hero's shoulders. "You wouldn't be having a little practical joke at my expense?"
Hero shook his head. "No. Here in Edinburgh, this is where it's strongest for me. It was the same in Durham City, and Whitby on the coast, but not so strong. Listen, I've got paintings at home: of Uek-Vad and Dylath-Leen. Yes, and others."
"It's so hard to believe ..." Dingle began. Then: he fixed Hero with suddenly sharp eyes and said, "What do you know of ... of Ulthar?" And Hero knew that this was the final test.
Suddenly, from nowhere, the answer came; a memory from limitless depths of dream. "It lies beyond the Skai. In Ulthar, no man may kill a cat!"
Dingle's hands fell from Hero's shoulders and he slumped wearily against a wall. "Not even Gerhard Schrach remembered that," he finally said. "You have pictures, you say? Where do you live?"
"Not far. In the Dalkeith Road."
"I'm in Musselburgh. May I offer you a lift home? Perhaps I could see your paintings ... ?"
In Dingle's tiny Fiat, whose pistons clattered as the professor raced it through the streets, its headlights probing the cobbled ways ahead, the two sat hunched in mutual astonishment. Neither one quite believed the evidence of his own senses; and occasionally, as ideas came, they would put each other to the test: "They say that Thalarion is demon-cursed-" Hero began.
"Where the Eidolon Lathi rules a monstrous hive of horror," Dingle finished it for him, without quite realizing where such esoteric knowledge came from.
"And what lies beyond the Basalt Pillars of the West, I wonder?"
"Splendid Cathuria, some say. But what of Zoogs and GhastsT'
"And Gaunts and spider-hounds ..."
With a mutual gasp they turned to one another. And all the superficiality of the waking world melted away in an instant of time. "Eldin!" Hero croaked. "Eldin the Wanderer-Prof. L. Dingle!"
"Hero!" cried the other. "David Hero, no less, who saved my life in the northern uplands!"
At that very moment the professor's tiny car shot through a light which was red. The blaring of a massive horn, the screech and hiss of powerful air-brakes and the vastly glaring lights of an articulated juggernaut seemed suddenly to fill the whole world.
There followed rushing, headlong motion, tearing pain and a hungry black vortex that sucked both men down, down, down to worlds of wonder as old as the dreaming Mind of Mankind . ..