Garrison didn't sleep for most of the rest of the night. He went back to the apartment in the Trump Tower, and took a long ice-cold shower, which left him feeling pleasantly tender. Then he sat in the big armchair where he'd sat talking with Mitchell about Margie's death. He'd felt inviolate that night, but the feeling was nothing beside the sense of power that suffused him now.
He sat through the rest of the night, thinking what his next move should be. Plainly he had first to make good on his promise to Mitchell, which prospect pleased him. The Pallenberg woman posed no threat to him whatsoever, but if she was such a thorn in his brother's side, then it was better for all concerned that she be summarily dealt with, as Margie had been dealt with. Once that was done he'd have Mitchell's full attention, and they could begin their real work. He didn't doubt that whatever the nature of the other self he'd discovered rising in him, it was also in Mitchell. Dormant, but there to be awoken, and called out into glory. What a revelation they'd make together!
At dawn, with a pleasant weariness finally coming over him, he retired to bed. He slept for no more than two hours, and dreamed a species of dream his head had never before entertained.
He dreamed he was floating through a great forest. The canopy was thick overhead, but not so thick that sunlight didn't pierce it, falling warm on his upturned face. Somebody was taking to him-a woman, her voice light and happy. He couldn't understand anything that she was saying, but he knew there was love in the words, and that the love was for him.
He wanted to see her face; he wanted to know what kind of beauty he had accompanying him. But though he tried to make his dream-gaze obey his will, and shift in the direction of her voice, he was not sufficiently master of himself. All he could do was float, and listen, and feel the sweetness in the woman's voice bathing him, caressing him.
Finally, his motion slowed, and then stopped. For a moment he hovered there, and then he was slowly lowered to the ground. Only now, when he was laid in grass that was tall enough to partially obscure his view, did he realize that he had not been traveling independently, as he'd thought, but been carried: that in this dream he was a babe in arms. And now, majestically, the woman who'd carried him walked into view. Her back was turned to him, her focus fixed upon a house, a magnificent house, which was situated some distance from them.
He started to cry. He wanted the woman to come and pick him up again. But she just kept looking at the house, and though he couldn't see her face something about the way she stood, her arms hanging at her sides, convinced him that all the happiness he'd heard in her voice had deserted her, and that now she was consumed with yearning. She wanted to be there, in that splendid, white-pillared place, but she was forbidden.
And still he bawled, doing his best to get her to attend to him, his sobs echoing around the glade of moss-draped trees with such violence birds rose in panic from the branches and fled away. Finally, she gave up watching the house, and looked back at him.
It was his mother.
Why was he so astonished by that? Why did the sight of her face so startle him that the dream-scene fluttered and threatened to be extinguished? It was his mother; mothers were supposed to carry their babies in their arms, weren't they?
And yet he was shocked to see her; distressed even. It wasn't the fact that her face was tear-streaked and pale (that was his preferred state for a woman's face) it was the fact of her very presence here, where he sensed the uncanny. She belonged to a more mundane existence, whose minor enchantments could be bought and sold like any other commodity; not here, not here.
She went down on her knees beside him, as if she intended to pick him up. Tears fell from her eyes, and splashed on him. Then she said the only word in the entire dream he understood. She said:
"Goodbye."
Those syllables said-and without kissing him, without laying so much as a finger upon him-she stood up again, and walked away, leaving him there in the grass.
He started to cry again, his voice shrill and pathetic. But now his lips could form words-
"Don't leave me!" he sobbed. "Mama! Mama! Don't leave me!"
He woke to the din of his own voice, crying out in his sleep. He sat up in bed, his heart beating furiously. He waited for the inevitable retreat of the images that his mind had conjured up, but they didn't go. Even with his eyes wide open, feeding on a hundred concrete details of his bedroom, the sights he'd just seen and the feelings he'd felt insisted upon him.
Perhaps this was part of his transfiguration: his mind revisiting old anxieties so that they could be dealt with and sloughed off. It wasn't a particularly pleasant experience, but any change-especially one as powerful as that which had seized him-brought with it some measure of discomfort.
He got out of bed, and went to the window to open the drapes. As he did so-as his hand caught hold of the heavy fabric-he was suddenly seized by a sickening suspicion. He put on his robe, and went across the landing to his study, where he'd left Holt's journal. He'd begun reading it as soon as his brother had brought it to him, but events had overtaken his analysis, and he'd not returned to it. Now he began to search through its dog-eared pages, scanning the text. He passed over the passages about Benton-ville, and the section dealing with Holt's return to his house; on through the portions dealing with the events in the East Battery, on through Holt and Nickelberry's departure from Charleston. The deserters were moving north, in Galilee's company, heading back to the Barba-rossas' territory. There were four or five pages devoted to the precise methodology of entrance: several small diagrams that almost looked like brands, and paragraphs speaking of the mysteries of L'Enfant, which if unsolved would prove fatal to any who attempted to gain access to the Barbarossa residence. He lingered long enough on this passage to confirm that the solutions had indeed all been set down on the page, then he moved on to look for a description of the house itself.
And there, just a few pages from the end of the journal, he found the passage he was afraid he'd find.
I have never seen such a house as was presented before us as we came between the trees. Holt wrote, nor felt so strongly the sense that we were walking in the presence of things unseen, forces that would have done us calamitous harm had we not been Samaritans carrying a prodigal back onto his native soil. That's two Biblical stories in one, but that's probably appropriate, for I believe that here, gathered in this place, were enough mysteries to be the subject of a dozen Testaments.
So the house. It was painted white, with a classical fagade, such as you might see in many great plantation houses; but there rose above these familiar forms a dome of such beauty and magnitude, shining white in the sunlight-
Garrison put the book down. He'd read all that he needed to read. The house in his dream was the same which Holt had written about: the Barbarossas' great mansion. He'd be going there soon enough. But did the dream mean that he'd already been there? If not, how had he imagined the house so well?
Mystery upon mystery. First the death of the old man, and all the destruction that had accompanied it. Then his transfiguration: the force he'd seen in the mirror, blazing back at him. Now this enigma: dreaming of his mother abandoning him on the grounds of the Barbarossa home.