The Nightmares Come While I'm Awake

Dearest Jane,

I dared not write anything to you before I left to find your tormentor. If I did, I would have faltered. These are terrible times, and only after emerging from Mr. Odo’s mansion could I consider writing to you. I am coming, but this letter must go ahead of me. The visit has left me tired.

It was a long road there. I followed the smell of fresh earth rising above the stink of the maddened city. Past the tangled streets filled with people desperate to reach your shrines, where the wealthy kept to themselves, the scent grew stronger. Its source was among those oldest homes—gutted and renovated so many times they were merely hollow shells occupied by an endless succession of the wealthy who would move on when their fortunes increased.

Mr. Odo’s mansion sprawled out on grounds devoid of the manicured lawns and plant displays of the other homes. A rock garden provided the only adornment to the palatial home.

The gate did not stop me, nor the front door. I knew to avoid climbing up those sweeping stair cases into upper floors unlikely to see much use. Instead, I descended into the basement. Down flight after flight of stairs I went down, wondering if the light would ever give out.

It never did, though it grew so faint I nearly convinced myself that it existed only in my imagination.

He waited for me, in a study beneath the earth, sipping wine and smoking a cigar. His attendants brought me a chair, and the dog looked up from the fire it lay beside before returning to whatever vicious dreams filled its sleeping mind.

“I will make you an offer. When you leave here, head away from the city, in any direction.” He said. “Wherever you stop, you will find yourself wealthy beyond anything you imagined before. You can live there. Away from all this.”

I wanted my answer to be the gun that I brought, but I couldn’t move my hands fast enough and when I finally found where the weapon should have been there was nothing. He shook his head and I knew that I wasn’t responsible for being alive at that moment, and neither were you. There are rules, old and terrible rules that I had never guessed at.

He sighed and told me that I was free to go, and that I ought to head away from the city. I threatened him feebly, and he merely smiled. “Oh, I do consider you a threat. But not because you’ll lay a hand on me. You’ve done enough damage that way.” All of his words remain with me, along with the exact way he spoke them.

I’m ashamed to admit that I nearly walked away from the city. I could see the suburbs stretching out before me like all the nations of the earth, and I could catch a bus there to deliver me anywhere and start up with money from that bastard. But, instead I headed towards you until I found a place to write you a letter. There are couriers waiting to carry the messages to you, and the one in front of me seems to be buzzing with the prospect of carrying this one.

I suppose the police are no longer a concern, but any other name that I used for myself is now worthless.

Yours Forever,
John Stag