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Aix woke up, and grabbed their old-fashioned cassette recorder, pushing the red button and saying ‘Contri Patrick R B Protestant Lammergeier desert mountains’ before the wisps of dream could disappear. Over the years, they’d tried many ways to record things, but scrambling for a pencil and opening a journal was too much conscious thought, as was opening an app. A cassette recorder was just a single button-push in the dark, the only barrier being the summoning of words, which switched off dream-brain and usually lost details by the first word. But they were very clear, this time.
They ratcheted themselves upright, feeling as always much older than they were, and took out their earplugs, put them back in their case, and put in some eye-drops, so they could open their eyes and put their glasses on. They sat there for a while, going through the familiar motions that maintained the muscles of their feet because the tendons and ligaments were too destroyed to hold up the joints, and therefore their body, and then made coffee, all the while thinking about the dream, and how odd it was that they could remember it so clearly.
Just as they were searching the range of the lammergeier, and cross-referencing where that overlapped with mountainous desert biomes, their phone rang. It was an unfamiliar number, from New York City, of all places. For the sake of nostalgia—they had once lived in New York—they answered it.
‘Speak to me,’ usually foiled callbots.
‘Good morning, I’m Victoria Blackstone. This is going to sound terribly strange, but I seem to have written this number down in my sleep last night.’
‘You’re right, that is strange,’ they answered, typing the name into a new search as they spoke. The photos that came up first were of a historical goth in a very fancy wheelchair that seemed to be a hybrid between the old-fashioned wicker ones that went with her dresses and the new kind of self-propelled cantilever wheels. She was often with an extremely blond and ridiculously beautiful husband. ‘Okay, we’re both disabled goths who like Beetlejuice, so I’m gonna—marginally—trust you.’
‘That’s fair enough. Might I ask if you have had any sort of strange dreams or happenings lately? Perhaps last night?’
‘Are you Christian, atheist or New Age?’
‘Jewish, actually.’
They relaxed. ‘Oh, well then…’ and they told Victoria the dream. ‘…and I have no idea how I’m supposed to even get to where lammergeiers are, I don’t even have a passport, let alone money to travel aimlessly.’
‘You realise you just had contact with what is likely the sort of being Lovecraft wrote about; and most people’s first reaction isn’t to start worrying about logistics, yes?’
‘Ah, but here’s the thing. I am a pagan—and not the “I am still Christian in values but I’m just making up my own deities now” sort of pagan, either. Lovecraft was so ridiculous. “Ooooh, what if gods were alien and terrifying and huge, so scaaawy” my dude, that is what gods are like sometimes. The sea, for example. Get with the program.’
Pretty laughter from the other end of the phone. ‘I should very much like to meet you in person as soon as you are comfortable. Are you also in a chair?’
‘I’d like to be, but no, too poor to get one; just a rollator for now. Why?’
‘I have a plane.’
‘You have a what now?’
‘I’m afraid that terribly dashing blond man is my disgustingly rich husband, and he bought me a plane once he saw how absolutely wretched commercial air travel has become.’
It occurred to Aix that this might not be what people would call a good idea, trusting a stranger who called you because they’d written your number down while sleep-walking; but then again… Aix was also getting rather destructively bored, and had always had a policy of doing interesting things even if they were foolish by other people’s standards.
And they had told the being they would try and help. They couldn’t just leave that because it was inconvenient to make good on their word. What kind of people did that sort of craven thing, anyway? Gross people, that’s who.
And anyway, Aix had been through worse than accidentally befriending a disabled Jewish goth and her rich husband. ‘The nearest airport is Palm Springs International, I believe. Are you… actually offering to fly me to the middle east to look for this person?’
‘My dear, I’m one of the Massachusetts Blackstones.’
They searched that phrase, and many things came up. Things about disappearances, and major hauntings, and Arkham.
They hadn’t even known Arkham was a real place.
‘…Oh, yeah. Yep. Okay. That explains everything.’
‘Have you something I can call you?’
‘Aix. It’s, uh, it’s my favourite genus of ducks.’
‘Oh you’re a naturalist! Oh, no wonder you’re sensible! Well, I’ve got to call up our pilot and see how soon we can fly, my darling, but I shall send you my contact information by text. Do feel free to check up on me, I don’t mind. Do you want anything from New York City?’
‘Um, some Fox’s U Bet chocolate syrup? And a subway map? I miss those.’
‘You shall have them! Ta ra, Aix!’
A few seconds later, they got a text with a phone number, name, email, list of instant messenger screen names, personal website, and address. It was an enormous show of good faith, and Aix appreciated it. They spent the next hour doing a lot of searching on said information, and what they found was comforting—Victoria Blackstone wasn’t on social media at all, and was only easily found because she had been on the internet since well before Aix had been old enough to conceive of such a thing, and because she was, as mentioned, from a very old New England family—on her father’s side. She’d also written an article on disability in gothic fiction, one on the appropriation of Jewish Kabbalism in fiction, and her wheelchair had been featured in a few photo-heavy articles about various gothic or steampunk gatherings and conventions.
Her husband, while he was in photos and always dressed to compliment her, seemed to be decorative; and she did not mention him in interviews, even when asked, except to say that he was her husband, his name was Dmitri, and he had, in fact, taken her name, not the other way around.
Aix decided they liked her very much already.
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