Chapter Seventeen
Warm hands fastened around Toby's trembling arms and he screamed as his eyes
rolled up and around. "Toby, honey," Mimi whispered against his face as she pulled him
nearer to her. Like a newborn kitten, the young boy instinctively gripped for her warmth
and hid his face in close to her familiar-smelling clothes. She still had an aroma of cooking
around her, despite the eventful night.
"A-A B-body," Toby stammered moving his eyes just a bit to insinuate in which
direction he had seen the dead man.... or rather felt him.
Mimi nodded and carefully ushered Toby away from the corpse. She ran her hand
over his golden-brown hair and kissed the top of his head affectionately. Toby was silent,
and his gray face was emotionless as he let her lead him towards the barn's double-wide
doors with the chipping pain and old wood.
Then a thought resurfaced in his mind and Toby turned his face up to look at
Mimi, "What about Sarah?" he asked and then carefully looked over his shoulder into the
darkness. Mimi pressed his face against her and then continued their way towards the
doors.
"Gabriel's with her," Mimi whispered and glanced at Toby with a wan smile
stretched over her thin skin.
Toby shivered and his face seemed to pale even more at the comment. He
wrapped his arms around himself and continued the rest of the way out of the barn with
Mimi. The snowstorm outside had subsided, but the snow was so deep that both took the
greater part of an hour making their way back to the house, which was nothing more than
a white shadow in the night.
When the returned to the house they slipped out of wet and heavy clothes, started
the fire again (which had died during the attack) and tried in desperation to get a phone
connection. All lines were down, or so Mimi assumed, because the phone was dead in her
hands, and the only light was offered by the candles she and Toby lit around the living
room.
Then they sat on the couch and Toby laid his head in Mimi's lap, shuddering and
shivering as he thought about Sarah and Gabriel.
* Gabriel's with her.* He heard Mimi's voice in his mind again as he let his heavy
lids slide over his burning eyes.
*That's what I'm afraid of,* he thought to himself and then, shivering all the more,
he slowly spiraled down into an uncomfortable sleep.
* * * * *
Excerpt from: The Nightingale Dreams
Published: 1900, NY
By: Mary Ann Remington
..."The printing press had finished the story even though the editor had been
steadily against it. Such discrepancies rarely passed Mr. Berminghand, and on an occasion
of the prominence as was the day and the popularity of the name in the scandalous article,
most were taken aback to see it blazing out from the front page, below a picture of the
largest and whitest building in all of the city.
Annabelle Lawson, laying weak and paled in her bed, beneath the thickest Parisian
silk blanket that her father had managed, was the most surprised of all when her nanny
entered. Annabelle looked once at Elizabeth, her Irish nanny with a thick girth and curled
red locks poking from under her white bonnet, and became even more ill with fright.
"They've printed the episode from last night," she spoke, exhausted as she had
been awake through the night tending to her little mistress. Annabelle was peaked as she
turned her thin face away.
"Where is my father?" Annabelle questioned.
"Not now, Annie, I have new medicine from the physician. It should help you with
your sleep. They're speaking of terrible things as of late, and its best you heal yourself
before the physician convinces your parents of anything but the best for you," Elizabeth
said and turned quickly to usher the family doctor into the large bed chambers.
He pulled a cord around her arm and, as Annabelle watched with wide and
frightened eyes, he embedded the beveled needle into the fold of her arm and slowly
injected the cloudy substance within the syringe.
"She'll sleep now," he said as he took his black bag in hand and left Annabelle
alone... Elizabeth shut the door.
As she turned she saw the little glass nightingale standing near her bed, with ruby
eyes that sparked. Annabelle smiled as her eyes drew closed, pulling heavy on her
stretched skin. She had lost much weight over the duration of her illness. Even though it
seemed to be much more than just the affliction all else had been treating it as.
*sleep sweet angel, and into the dreams of the nightingale I will be born at last*
The rich voice swallowed her whole and Annabelle let her head slip back as a wan
smile touched her pale lips, thin above her pearly teeth. "Prince of the Underground, I
thought you gone," her own voice rose, lilting, from her mouth, and the door to her
chambers opened. Elizabeth had been waiting outside, standing still and silent to listen for
the delusions again.
"Dear angels in heaven and my lord above," Elizabeth breathed as she felt her heart
rise into her throat.
Annabelle, though sedated to a point that would make any grown man drowse,
was sitting straight in her bed and staring, unblinking, at the nightingale at her side. And
she was singing a song that Elizabeth had never heard before. The nanny pressed her hand
to her chest and backed out, trying to make the song go away.
But it wouldn't. Just as the voice of the Prince of the Underground sang the song
to Annabelle so she sang it out to the empty room and her little nightingale figurine.
"As the pain sweeps through, makes no sense to you..."
* * * * *
Jareth lowered himself upon Sarah, his eyes glinting like gold- like a panther. She
herself felt the changing part of her rear its head again, and step into the last control she
had gained over herself. With the darkness all around, Sarah reached out and brought
Jareth down nearer to her, until she urged him to enter her and she arced her neck back in
a sublime sense of pleasure.
"Accept me, and this," he hissed as he bit down on her neck just enough to make
her suck in a harsh breath of air.
Sarah was silent though, guiding him closer as she ran her nails over the smooth
contours of his back. Jareth shivered in response. Deeper and harder and faster and
faster. Sarah rolled her eyes back and clutched at his lithe body with her hands and her
legs as his muscles turned taught and rock hard beneath his smooth flesh.
And then all around them the clocks began to chime. First one then another and
then all together. Sarah and Jareth heard little as they rolled over on the ground and
suddenly Sarah found herself atop him, looking down into his eyes that shone back mostly
as they had always- The King. But there was something else now in his eyes, like fear.
With the sound of the clocks the castle began to shake and tremble and Sarah,
ground her teeth as she felt the power between the mounting and surging forward to meet
her. "Oh my God," she whispered, breathing out as Jareth's hands reached up to hold her
nearer.
Then it came upon them, and Sarah's hips ground deeply into the surging energy
of the moment. All around the clocks were chiming, in a thousand different tones, and
their unified sound made the masonry of the walls crumble just enough to send small
spirals of dust up and around the two as they slowed and finally laid beside each other.
*There you go, darling, you can have your body back again* the venomous voice
of the darkness within Sarah seemed to say as she slid hopelessly and helplessly up to her
elbows to look at a shard of glass that had once been the mirror she had broken in her
determination to triumph as she had so many years before.
Such would not be the case this time, or so she feared as she looked at her face in
the piece of the mirror and saw the dark orbs of her eyes staring back. It wasn't herself
that she saw anymore. Sarah jumped away, sliding over the ground as Jareth's laughter
added to the chiming of the clocks... on and on into eternity.
It was then, scuttling across the uneven ground, that she found herself huddled in
the corner, beside the little purple book she had tossed, carelessly, aside. Sarah reached
out, her bare body trembling and in adequate as Jareth rose to stand tall above her, fully
dressed in cloak made from black leather, that whipped around his sleek frame like a storm
reading to be raging.
"Now, Sarah, its time for us to speak of just what it is that you can do for me," he
whispered and cracked a sly smile that sparked fire in his eyes.
Desperate, Sarah brought the little book to her chest and tried to remember just
who she was... certainly not this dark thing that she had seen in the mirror. She wasn't a
beast, and she, above all else, was not part of this King- as he had time and again claimed.
"I'll do nothing for you!" she hissed in response, and he bent down near her with
lightning speed in response to her harsh statement. Jareth cocked his head and then,
brutally, grabbed hold of her arms and easily threw her back to the ground as a rich
laughter floated from his mouth.
"Your no match for me Sarah... and you never were," he tossed his loose mane of
golden hair over his shoulders and then went to the window were he leaned out to watch
the sun begin to rise over the horizon of trees in the far distance- past the labyrinth itself.
Sarah, willing herself not to cry, flipped her head up and looked at him with as much
disgust and hate as she could manage.
She dropped the book and let it fall- open to the middle where a piece of folded,
yellow paper marked the place. Sarah's hand hesitated on the old and frail page as her
eyes blurred and she hitched in a controlled breath. "I beat you once!" she demanded and
Jareth scoffed in immediate response to her allegations.
"A trifle discrepancy," he turned to look at her and he smiled such a smile that
Sarah shivered. Jareth looked hungry. "But, perhaps you could have really bested me, had
you been whole and taken in the part of you that was me all along. Do you think I've
been like this from the start, Sarah? I have a been a thousand faces and times, always
changing with my hostess. You, darling, are merely the most recent and most intriguing
of the lot."
It was then that she looked down, her head spinning with Questions. Sarah ran a
finger over the single sheet of loose paper and then, breathing in deep as Jareth turned to
watch the sun a moment longer, she opened it quickly and began to read.
* * * * *
23 May 1904
Dearest Diary:
I have seen him in every waking moment, the man from my dreams who bid me first to
write this story and then took over my ever-active mind. He comes to me dressed like a
gentleman, as I have told you any number of times. But now, diary, I think my mind is
heading into a downwards spiral. My colleagues- the few who I will tell of this, my horrid
plight- have given me names of doctors who deal with maladies of the mind. Mine is as much.
If I find no help then I'm sure I will be as poorly off as Annabelle (I relate more
and more often to her as of late) and locked away in the largest and whitest building of our large
city.
I have been soiled by his hands and his lips. My husband, dear Edward, must
never know of the primal passion that has sent fire into my loins. A horrible ecstasy it is, with
each bit of myself I give to this King (Prince of the Underground?) I became more
and more like him. Or perhaps I merely lose more and more control to him. I think that
what has started as a production of my muse has taken on a life of his own. It is, in essence,
my Frankenstien.
I hear him calling me now. Dear God diary, what future is there for me. I
come my Prince, I come.
Mary Ann Remington
* * * * *
Sarah's heart beat hard and her mind spun so that she didn't sense the presence
over her, until it was too late. Jareth took the diary entry from her trembling hands and, as
she slowly fixed him with her eyes, he tore it apart. His face blank, he merely tossed the
remnants out the window, at which he had been so adamantly gazing.
"What is this?!" Sarah demanded, snapping the book closed and holding it out
from her naked body like a shield as Jareth came closer to her. He smirked, but flinched at
the rough handling she gave the book.
"A story," he responded.
Sarah managed a grin as she flipped back the lavender cover and turned to the first
page. "The Nightingale Dreams" was printed in large type across the top of the page and,
as she read the author's name at the bottom, Sarah couldn't control the laugh that broke
through her fear and hate- a single loud and victorious laugh.
"This is your story."
Warm hands fastened around Toby's trembling arms and he screamed as his eyes
rolled up and around. "Toby, honey," Mimi whispered against his face as she pulled him
nearer to her. Like a newborn kitten, the young boy instinctively gripped for her warmth
and hid his face in close to her familiar-smelling clothes. She still had an aroma of cooking
around her, despite the eventful night.
"A-A B-body," Toby stammered moving his eyes just a bit to insinuate in which
direction he had seen the dead man.... or rather felt him.
Mimi nodded and carefully ushered Toby away from the corpse. She ran her hand
over his golden-brown hair and kissed the top of his head affectionately. Toby was silent,
and his gray face was emotionless as he let her lead him towards the barn's double-wide
doors with the chipping pain and old wood.
Then a thought resurfaced in his mind and Toby turned his face up to look at
Mimi, "What about Sarah?" he asked and then carefully looked over his shoulder into the
darkness. Mimi pressed his face against her and then continued their way towards the
doors.
"Gabriel's with her," Mimi whispered and glanced at Toby with a wan smile
stretched over her thin skin.
Toby shivered and his face seemed to pale even more at the comment. He
wrapped his arms around himself and continued the rest of the way out of the barn with
Mimi. The snowstorm outside had subsided, but the snow was so deep that both took the
greater part of an hour making their way back to the house, which was nothing more than
a white shadow in the night.
When the returned to the house they slipped out of wet and heavy clothes, started
the fire again (which had died during the attack) and tried in desperation to get a phone
connection. All lines were down, or so Mimi assumed, because the phone was dead in her
hands, and the only light was offered by the candles she and Toby lit around the living
room.
Then they sat on the couch and Toby laid his head in Mimi's lap, shuddering and
shivering as he thought about Sarah and Gabriel.
* Gabriel's with her.* He heard Mimi's voice in his mind again as he let his heavy
lids slide over his burning eyes.
*That's what I'm afraid of,* he thought to himself and then, shivering all the more,
he slowly spiraled down into an uncomfortable sleep.
* * * * *
Excerpt from: The Nightingale Dreams
Published: 1900, NY
By: Mary Ann Remington
..."The printing press had finished the story even though the editor had been
steadily against it. Such discrepancies rarely passed Mr. Berminghand, and on an occasion
of the prominence as was the day and the popularity of the name in the scandalous article,
most were taken aback to see it blazing out from the front page, below a picture of the
largest and whitest building in all of the city.
Annabelle Lawson, laying weak and paled in her bed, beneath the thickest Parisian
silk blanket that her father had managed, was the most surprised of all when her nanny
entered. Annabelle looked once at Elizabeth, her Irish nanny with a thick girth and curled
red locks poking from under her white bonnet, and became even more ill with fright.
"They've printed the episode from last night," she spoke, exhausted as she had
been awake through the night tending to her little mistress. Annabelle was peaked as she
turned her thin face away.
"Where is my father?" Annabelle questioned.
"Not now, Annie, I have new medicine from the physician. It should help you with
your sleep. They're speaking of terrible things as of late, and its best you heal yourself
before the physician convinces your parents of anything but the best for you," Elizabeth
said and turned quickly to usher the family doctor into the large bed chambers.
He pulled a cord around her arm and, as Annabelle watched with wide and
frightened eyes, he embedded the beveled needle into the fold of her arm and slowly
injected the cloudy substance within the syringe.
"She'll sleep now," he said as he took his black bag in hand and left Annabelle
alone... Elizabeth shut the door.
As she turned she saw the little glass nightingale standing near her bed, with ruby
eyes that sparked. Annabelle smiled as her eyes drew closed, pulling heavy on her
stretched skin. She had lost much weight over the duration of her illness. Even though it
seemed to be much more than just the affliction all else had been treating it as.
*sleep sweet angel, and into the dreams of the nightingale I will be born at last*
The rich voice swallowed her whole and Annabelle let her head slip back as a wan
smile touched her pale lips, thin above her pearly teeth. "Prince of the Underground, I
thought you gone," her own voice rose, lilting, from her mouth, and the door to her
chambers opened. Elizabeth had been waiting outside, standing still and silent to listen for
the delusions again.
"Dear angels in heaven and my lord above," Elizabeth breathed as she felt her heart
rise into her throat.
Annabelle, though sedated to a point that would make any grown man drowse,
was sitting straight in her bed and staring, unblinking, at the nightingale at her side. And
she was singing a song that Elizabeth had never heard before. The nanny pressed her hand
to her chest and backed out, trying to make the song go away.
But it wouldn't. Just as the voice of the Prince of the Underground sang the song
to Annabelle so she sang it out to the empty room and her little nightingale figurine.
"As the pain sweeps through, makes no sense to you..."
* * * * *
Jareth lowered himself upon Sarah, his eyes glinting like gold- like a panther. She
herself felt the changing part of her rear its head again, and step into the last control she
had gained over herself. With the darkness all around, Sarah reached out and brought
Jareth down nearer to her, until she urged him to enter her and she arced her neck back in
a sublime sense of pleasure.
"Accept me, and this," he hissed as he bit down on her neck just enough to make
her suck in a harsh breath of air.
Sarah was silent though, guiding him closer as she ran her nails over the smooth
contours of his back. Jareth shivered in response. Deeper and harder and faster and
faster. Sarah rolled her eyes back and clutched at his lithe body with her hands and her
legs as his muscles turned taught and rock hard beneath his smooth flesh.
And then all around them the clocks began to chime. First one then another and
then all together. Sarah and Jareth heard little as they rolled over on the ground and
suddenly Sarah found herself atop him, looking down into his eyes that shone back mostly
as they had always- The King. But there was something else now in his eyes, like fear.
With the sound of the clocks the castle began to shake and tremble and Sarah,
ground her teeth as she felt the power between the mounting and surging forward to meet
her. "Oh my God," she whispered, breathing out as Jareth's hands reached up to hold her
nearer.
Then it came upon them, and Sarah's hips ground deeply into the surging energy
of the moment. All around the clocks were chiming, in a thousand different tones, and
their unified sound made the masonry of the walls crumble just enough to send small
spirals of dust up and around the two as they slowed and finally laid beside each other.
*There you go, darling, you can have your body back again* the venomous voice
of the darkness within Sarah seemed to say as she slid hopelessly and helplessly up to her
elbows to look at a shard of glass that had once been the mirror she had broken in her
determination to triumph as she had so many years before.
Such would not be the case this time, or so she feared as she looked at her face in
the piece of the mirror and saw the dark orbs of her eyes staring back. It wasn't herself
that she saw anymore. Sarah jumped away, sliding over the ground as Jareth's laughter
added to the chiming of the clocks... on and on into eternity.
It was then, scuttling across the uneven ground, that she found herself huddled in
the corner, beside the little purple book she had tossed, carelessly, aside. Sarah reached
out, her bare body trembling and in adequate as Jareth rose to stand tall above her, fully
dressed in cloak made from black leather, that whipped around his sleek frame like a storm
reading to be raging.
"Now, Sarah, its time for us to speak of just what it is that you can do for me," he
whispered and cracked a sly smile that sparked fire in his eyes.
Desperate, Sarah brought the little book to her chest and tried to remember just
who she was... certainly not this dark thing that she had seen in the mirror. She wasn't a
beast, and she, above all else, was not part of this King- as he had time and again claimed.
"I'll do nothing for you!" she hissed in response, and he bent down near her with
lightning speed in response to her harsh statement. Jareth cocked his head and then,
brutally, grabbed hold of her arms and easily threw her back to the ground as a rich
laughter floated from his mouth.
"Your no match for me Sarah... and you never were," he tossed his loose mane of
golden hair over his shoulders and then went to the window were he leaned out to watch
the sun begin to rise over the horizon of trees in the far distance- past the labyrinth itself.
Sarah, willing herself not to cry, flipped her head up and looked at him with as much
disgust and hate as she could manage.
She dropped the book and let it fall- open to the middle where a piece of folded,
yellow paper marked the place. Sarah's hand hesitated on the old and frail page as her
eyes blurred and she hitched in a controlled breath. "I beat you once!" she demanded and
Jareth scoffed in immediate response to her allegations.
"A trifle discrepancy," he turned to look at her and he smiled such a smile that
Sarah shivered. Jareth looked hungry. "But, perhaps you could have really bested me, had
you been whole and taken in the part of you that was me all along. Do you think I've
been like this from the start, Sarah? I have a been a thousand faces and times, always
changing with my hostess. You, darling, are merely the most recent and most intriguing
of the lot."
It was then that she looked down, her head spinning with Questions. Sarah ran a
finger over the single sheet of loose paper and then, breathing in deep as Jareth turned to
watch the sun a moment longer, she opened it quickly and began to read.
* * * * *
23 May 1904
Dearest Diary:
I have seen him in every waking moment, the man from my dreams who bid me first to
write this story and then took over my ever-active mind. He comes to me dressed like a
gentleman, as I have told you any number of times. But now, diary, I think my mind is
heading into a downwards spiral. My colleagues- the few who I will tell of this, my horrid
plight- have given me names of doctors who deal with maladies of the mind. Mine is as much.
If I find no help then I'm sure I will be as poorly off as Annabelle (I relate more
and more often to her as of late) and locked away in the largest and whitest building of our large
city.
I have been soiled by his hands and his lips. My husband, dear Edward, must
never know of the primal passion that has sent fire into my loins. A horrible ecstasy it is, with
each bit of myself I give to this King (Prince of the Underground?) I became more
and more like him. Or perhaps I merely lose more and more control to him. I think that
what has started as a production of my muse has taken on a life of his own. It is, in essence,
my Frankenstien.
I hear him calling me now. Dear God diary, what future is there for me. I
come my Prince, I come.
Mary Ann Remington
* * * * *
Sarah's heart beat hard and her mind spun so that she didn't sense the presence
over her, until it was too late. Jareth took the diary entry from her trembling hands and, as
she slowly fixed him with her eyes, he tore it apart. His face blank, he merely tossed the
remnants out the window, at which he had been so adamantly gazing.
"What is this?!" Sarah demanded, snapping the book closed and holding it out
from her naked body like a shield as Jareth came closer to her. He smirked, but flinched at
the rough handling she gave the book.
"A story," he responded.
Sarah managed a grin as she flipped back the lavender cover and turned to the first
page. "The Nightingale Dreams" was printed in large type across the top of the page and,
as she read the author's name at the bottom, Sarah couldn't control the laugh that broke
through her fear and hate- a single loud and victorious laugh.
"This is your story."