A Nest of Nightmares

FLYING TO BYZANTIUM

The steady noise and pressurized atmosphere inside the plane made everything seem slightly unreal. Was she really going back to Texas?

She thought of flat, coastal plains, mosquitoes whining in the humid night air, dirty white plumes of smoke rising from industrial stacks, her mother’s house, and the dreary brightness of the Woolco, and a familiar misery possessed her.

No. Her hands clenched in her lap. She was going back to Texas, but not to the stagnant little town on the Gulf Coast where she had grown up; she was flying to Byzantium.

The name of the town made her smile: how the dreams of the pioneers became the lies of property developers! She didn’t know Byzantium. She had never heard of it before the invitation to spend the weekend as a guest of honour at a science fiction convention held there. According to the map, Byzantium was more than five hundred miles west of the southeastern swamp where she had grown up. West Texas to her meant deserts and dust, cowboys and rattlesnakes, rugged mountains etched against postcard sunsets: it was the empty space between Houston and Los Angeles, traversed by air.

She lived in Hollywood now, and Texas was no longer home. She was Sheila Stoller, author of Moonlight Under the Mountain, and her fans were paying for the privilege of meeting her.

Sheila pulled her traveling case from beneath the seat and took out her notebook, thinking of Damon. He had been impressed by her invitation to Byzantium, more than she was herself. But then he was an actor. Public appearances were something he understood, a sign of success. It had never occurred to him that Sheila might not accept – perhaps that was why she had. Away from him, though, she felt her confidence flag. She knew nothing about science fiction. Wouldn’t the others at the convention see her as a fraud? She had written a speech in her notebook, the story of how she had written Moonlight Under the Mountain, but the speech was a fraud, too, a carefully constructed fiction. She stared down at the page wondering if she would have the nerve to read it.

The notebook had been a gift from Damon. ‘For your next novel,’ he had said, giving it to her with his famous, flashing smile. And she had taken it, unable to tell him that there would not be a next novel.

Ordinary people had ordinary jobs in Hollywood, as they did everywhere else, as sales assistants, as waiters, as secretaries and caretakers, but in Hollywood the jobs were always temporary; the people in them were really actors, directors, dancers, singers, producers, writers waiting for the main chance. Damon had been an actor working as a waiter until his pilot took off: now he had a minor but regular role in a weekly comedy series. He was the wise­cracking roommate’s best friend. Viewing figures and audience response were both good, and he was on his way up.

He thought that Sheila was on her way up, too. It was true she made her living doing temporary secretarial work, but she’d had one novel published, and surely it was only a matter of time until she was well-paid and famous: all she had to do was to keep on writing.

But Sheila didn’t write anymore. She no longer felt the need.

Writing, for Sheila, had always been a means of escape. It took her out of herself, away from loneliness, dull school classes, and the tedium of working behind a counter at the local Woolco. When she was writing she could forget that she wasn’t pretty, didn’t have a boyfriend or an interesting job, had no talents and no future. She’d had no friends because she never tried to cultivate any. Girls her own age thought she was a weird, stuck-up bookworm – she thought they were boring, and didn’t bother to hide her opinions. Her quirky intelligence made her reject most of the people and things around her, but did not make her special enough to be forgiven. Despite her reading, she was an indifferent student, lazy in the classroom and inept at sports. She tried to write for the school magazine and newspaper, but after several cool rejections she learned to keep her writing to herself.

She wrote another world into existence. It was a fairy-tale world full of monsters and treasures, simpler, starker, and more beautiful than the reality she felt suffocating her, and she escaped into it whenever she could. Her universe contained a vast and dangerous wasteland spotted with small, isolated villages. One of the settlements had a mountain rising from its centre, towering over everything, dominating the landscape and the lives of those who lived there. For beneath the mountain was a series of maze-like tunnels where dwelt the evil, powerful grenofen. They kept the townspeople in terror until a young girl, Kayli, won her way through a series of adventures, battles, and enchantments to triumph over the grenofen and steal their sacred treasure for herself.

Sheila shared her world with no one, and never thought of publication, except as a vague fantasy. It was her mother who brought it about, indirectly. Sheila knew she was a disappointment to her mother – she almost took pleasure in it. Something in her seemed to compel contradiction, and as long as her mother nagged her about her appearance Sheila would eat too much, forget to wash her hair, and dress in unattractive, poorly fitting clothes. Her mother thought scribbling in notebooks was a waste of time, and it was her disparaging comment on a ‘writers’ weekend’ being held at a local college which made Sheila consider attending. And it was there that Sheila met the editor who ultimately published Moonlight Under the Mountain.

She didn’t make a lot of money from the book – the reality wasn’t like her fantasy – but it gave her enough to leave Texas, to fly to Los Angeles and buy a used car and find her own apartment before she had to look for work. On the West Coast, in the sunshine, far from her mother’s nagging, Sheila blossomed. She took an interest in the way she looked, bought fashionable clothes, joined a health spa, had her hair permed, and exchanged her heavy, smudged glasses for a pair of tinted contact lenses.

Damon met her while she was temping in his agent’s office. He admired her clear, emerald eyes, her smooth, tanned skin, and slim figure, but those things were the norm in California – it was her book which caught his attention. He admired writers, and liked the idea of dating one so much that Sheila didn’t know how to tell him the truth. She had written a book, but that didn’t make her a writer in the way that he was an actor. Writing was one of the things – like baby fat, acne, and bad manners – she had left behind her in Texas.

They were like ghosts of her past, standing there waiting for her in the Campbell County Airport. Sheila knew them at once, without any doubt, and knew she had been wrong to come.

‘Sheila Stoller?’

They knew her, too, and that was another bad sign; like calling to like. She wished she could deny her name, but she nodded stiffly, walking toward them.

There were two of them: a fat one swathed in purple, and a thin one in a lime-green polyester trouser suit and teased, bleached-blonde hair. She knew them – they were the unwanted. They were the sort of people she had been lumped in with at school, always the last to be chosen for teams or dances. Her mother had pushed them on her, inviting them to parties, but Sheila had preferred loneliness to their company. She always shunned them rather than admit that she was like them.

‘How do you do,’ said the thin one. ‘I’m Victoria Walcek, and this is Grace Baxter.’

Victoria would be smart, Sheila knew. Too smart for her own good. A bookworm with a sharp tongue and too many opinions, no one would like her, but she would exert a special influence over one or two followers; dull, timid outcasts like her fat friend.

‘Your plane was late,’ said Victoria.

The tone was reproving and before she could catch herself Sheila said, ‘I’m sorry.’

Victoria smiled. ‘That’s all right. We didn’t mind waiting. Do you have much luggage coming?’

‘Only this.’ She indicated the small case.

Victoria gave a dainty shriek. ‘That’s all? How do you manage? I couldn’t possibly . . . my hot-curlers and makeup would just about fill that little bag. I always need a big garment bag whenever I go anywhere. I suppose I worry too much about the way I look . . . I like to have everything just right. It’s much more sensible to travel light and just not think about that.’

‘Sheila looks very nice,’ said Grace with so much emphasis that it sounded like a lie. Sheila tried not to mind, but she wished Grace hadn’t felt obliged to defend her. She knew how she looked: more fashionable and far more comfortable in her pink and grey tracksuit than Victoria in her ugly green polyester and high-necked ruffled blouse.

‘Of course she does,’ said Victoria. ‘I didn’t mean to imply otherwise! Only with that little bag . . . well, there can’t be more than one change of clothes in there.’

‘I’m only staying the weekend.’

‘Oh,’ said Grace, sounding surprised. ‘We thought you’d want to stay . . . being from Texas, and all.’

‘I only came for the convention. I can’t afford – I need to get back.’

‘To your writing?’ asked Grace.

The lie came easily. ‘Yes, I’ve started a new book.’

‘Oh, please tell us about it!’

‘Wait until we get to the car,’ said Victoria – her sharpness might have been directed at either of them or both. ‘We’ve still got a long way to go.’ She turned with a twitch of her narrow shoulders which said she didn’t care if she was followed or not, and Sheila felt trapped into hurrying after.

‘How far are we from Byzantium?’

‘Fifty miles,’ said Grace, huffing and puffing beside her.

‘Fifty! I had no idea – ’

Victoria glanced over her shoulder. ‘I thought you came from Texas?’

‘Not this part.’

Victoria exhaled sharply. It sounded like disbelief, but Sheila couldn’t imagine why.

Outside, the darkness and heat disoriented Sheila, who remembered the cool, blue Los Angeles evening she had so recently left. She knew nothing about this place, she thought as Victoria steered the big car away from the lights and out into the unrelieved blackness of the vast country night. There was nothing on which she could focus but the stars winking in the distance, or the bright, white line down the centre of the highway.

‘Now tell us about your new book,’ said Grace from behind her. ‘Is it a sequel to Moonlight Under the Mountain? I loved that book so much!’

‘No, how could it be? Kayli escapes at the end – she’s found the secret of the grenofen and can travel. She’s free at last. How could there be a sequel?’

‘Well, she might have to go back. Maybe there could be a friend she wants to rescue. Or she could be kidnapped . . . most of the grenofen are still under the mountain.’

‘It would just be boring to send her back,’ said Sheila. ‘The new book will be something completely different.’

‘Grace writes too,’ said Victoria. ‘Maybe you would be kind enough, while you are visiting here, to read something of hers and critique it.’

Sheila stared into the blackness, wondering what sort of landscape the night concealed. Suddenly the headlights swept across a small herd of jackrabbits by the side of the road. One of them was sitting up on his haunches and gazing, with dazzled eyes, directly at her. A thrill of strangeness made her smile. Here was something to tell Damon!

‘Of course I will, if Grace wants me to. How about you Victoria – do you write, too?’

‘Oh, no. My talents lie in another direction,’ said Victoria primly. ‘In my own small way I am something of an artist. My interests are in painting, sketching, and in fashion and costume design. You’ll see my latest efforts at the convention.’

‘Wait’ll you see!’ cried Grace, bouncing hard on the back seat.

‘Sit still!’

Grace subsided as if bludgeoned. Sheila felt sorry for her, and yet contemptuous, for she invited such treatment by allowing it. As mile after dark mile passed and Sheila felt civilization – even if only represented by the Campbell County airport – growing more distant, she realised that she was even more dependent upon Victoria’s goodwill than Grace was. She could be trapped here in this strange desert, with no car, no money, no friends, no knowledge of her surroundings if Victoria decided Sheila wasn’t deserving of her attention. It was a crazy notion, sheer paranoia, and yet she knew nothing about these people. Why had they invited her? Why had she come?

Out of the darkness came the familiar, cheery glow of a Ramada Inn sign, and Sheila felt a rush of relief that made her smile. Whatever was out there in the darkness, whoever these two people were, she knew, now, where she was.

The clock above the registration desk showed nearly midnight, and Sheila yawned reflexively, reminding herself that it was an hour earlier in Los Angeles, and wondering what Damon was doing. Was he thinking of her?

Victoria’s melodramatic shriek sliced into her thoughts.

‘I did,’ said Grace in a high, terrified voice. ‘I did reserve a room, honestly I did!’

‘Yes, I know,’ said the desk clerk. ‘And I’m really sorry. But we couldn’t keep it for you. Our check-in time is seven p.m. It’s the same all over the country. You can request us to hold the room for as many hours after that as you like, but unless the request is made, after seven p.m. we assume the registered guest is a no-show, and we give the room to someone else. And all our rooms are taken tonight.’

‘But I didn’t know,’ Grace wailed. ‘It’s not my fault that I didn’t know.’

‘It is your fault,’ said Victoria in arctic tones. ‘I gave you the responsibility of reserving the room, and that includes finding out check-in times.’

Sheila had the feeling that they would go on arguing whose fault it was all night, and she would still be without a place to sleep. ‘Isn’t there some other hotel?’ she asked.

‘Are you kidding?’ said Victoria.

‘There’s one over by Taylor,’ said the desk clerk. ‘It’s a Holiday Inn, but I’d be happy to make a phone call to check if they’ve got a room for you.’

‘No,’ said Victoria sharply. ‘Taylor’s thirty miles from here. I’m not driving all that way there and back. You can stay with me tonight. Luckily, I have two beds in my room. I know it won’t be as nice for you, and I’m sorry about this. I apologize for Grace’s stupidity – shut up, Grace. You won’t mind sharing a room with me, will you?’

‘Well, I don’t think I really have a choice, do I?’ said Sheila. She knew she was being ungracious and forced herself to sound grateful. ‘It’s very nice of you to offer. Thank you.’

The town of Byzantium was four miles farther down the highway, and in the darkness Sheila received no clear impression of it. A yellow bug-light on the porch revealed Victoria’s house as an ordinary, one-story, white-painted frame house of the sort she’d often seen elsewhere. There was nothing special or unusual about it.

But the moment she stepped inside she broke into a sweat of fear. It was only Victoria’s physical presence at her back which kept her from bolting, and after another moment she realised that it was the smell of the house she had responded to so powerfully. It was the smell of her mother’s house, as if she had fallen back in time. But there was nothing mysterious or even unlikely about it – just an unfortunate combination of a particular brand of furniture polish, air freshener, and a whiff of bacon grease.

‘Keep quiet,’ Victoria breathed at her ear. ‘Just follow me. Mom’s asleep.’ Still shaken by the physical force of memory, Sheila obeyed. Victoria had told her in the car that she lived with her widowed mother.

‘Welcome to my sanctum sanctorum,’ said Victoria, and closed the bedroom door. Sheila was not usually bothered by claustrophobia, but as the door closed she felt her throat tighten and she began to have trouble breathing. The room was so crowded with books, furniture, and clutter that it felt more like a storage closet than a place to live. Sheila looked around, trying to relax by taking in details.

There was a fussy, pink and white dressing table with a lighted mirror; narrow twin beds separated by a chest of drawers; a slant-topped, professional drawing table and adjustable chair; and bookshelves covering two walls, overstuffed with books and seeming to strain at their moorings. Sheila looked at one of the beds and at the burdened shelves above it, and hoped that nothing would fall on her in the night. Where there was wall space not covered with books, paintings and photographs had been mounted. Sheila recognized various famous movie and television stars in customary poses, but the paintings were uninspired: landscapes in unlikely colours, and stiff, mannered depictions of dragons, unicorns, and strangely dressed people.

‘Most of the art is mine,’ said Victoria. ‘But I won’t bore you with my creations right now.’ She giggled. ‘Oh, it’s so exciting, having a real, live author in my very own room!’

Sheila realised suddenly that the bossy Victoria wasn’t as self-confident as she pretended – that she was actually shy – but the understanding didn’t change her feelings. Of course, it wasn’t Victoria’s fault that this house reminded her of her own past, or that in Victoria’s nagging and bossing of Grace Sheila heard her mother’s disappointment: Would it kill you to show a little interest? To be friendly?

Yes, she thought now, it would have killed her. If she had made friends and found contentment in the life her mother wanted for her it would have killed her soul. She would never have written. She would have felt no need to escape.

She looked at Victoria’s pinched, sourly hopeful face. Victoria was trapped, even if she didn’t know it, but Sheila had escaped. She could afford to show a little kindness.

‘It’s a very nice room,’ she said. ‘You’ll have to show me your designs in the morning . . . not right now because I’m too tired to appreciate anything but bed.’

‘Oh, silly me! Of course you’re tired – I forgot how late it is. It’s just that I’m so excited.’

Sheila decided she liked Victoria even less when she was giggly and excited, but there was no escape from her now except into silence and herself: the same old thing.

‘It’s like being a kid again, having someone spend the night,’ Victoria said in the darkness. ‘Didn’t you used to love going to slumber parties?’

Sheila had been to only one slumber party, attending under pressure from her mother. She did now what she had done then and pretended to sleep. But she lay awake for what seemed hours, listening to Victoria’s adenoidal breathing and hearing, behind it, her mother’s voice: Think you’re better than all the other girls? Too good to talk to them? You think you’re different?

She knew she was different. She knew she was better. The hard part was to hang on to that knowledge, and resist all those who tried to make her ordinary.

Sheila woke feeling as exhausted as if she had been struggling rather than sleeping all night, and when she saw herself in the bathroom mirror it was clear that she had lost the struggle.

There were days when she liked her face, but this was not one of them. Makeup didn’t really help, and her hair was hopeless. Confronted with the change in atmosphere and the dry, gritty wind of West Texas, it seemed the permanent had given up, leaving her with a lank, lifeless, mousy brown mop.

Her clothes, which had looked so fresh and fashionable in California, now looked drab and badly cut. They were wrinkled from having been packed, and they no longer fitted: the fabric of the skirt stretched unattractively tight across stomach and hips, while the blouse simply hung on her. Sheila had the eerie feeling that she had changed shape overnight. She sucked in her stomach as hard as she could and turned away from the mirror, not ready to face Byzantium, but having no other choice.

Daylight revealed what had been hidden by the night: towering above ordinary frame houses and scrubby trees was a vast, looming presence, a rugged brown peak.

‘What’s that?’

Victoria smiled disbelievingly. ‘What do you think? It’s the mountain.’

She was finding it hard to breathe – probably the effect of holding in her stomach, but it felt as if she was afraid. Of the mountain? That was silly. ‘I just didn’t realize there would be a mountain here.’

‘Oh, come on!’

‘No, really. I thought this part of Texas was all flat.’

Another hard look from Victoria. ‘But it’s the most famous thing about Byzantium, our mountain.’

That made Sheila laugh, despite her unease. ‘Look, no offense, but “famous” is not a word I’d use about Byzantium! I’d never even heard of your town until you wrote me.’

‘Really? And you’ve never been here before?’

‘Never.’

‘Well. That is a surprise. I’d better show you why. We’ll go up where you can see it all . . . why don’t you close your eyes until I tell you to look? It’ll be more impressive that way.’

Most of the drive was a gradual ascent – too gentle to be up the mountain, and it seemed to Sheila that the car was travelling away from the peak. It was not long before the car pulled to a stop and Victoria said, ‘You can open your eyes now.’

They were outside of town, up on a ridge, in a roadside parking area created especially for the view: there were coin-operated telescopes there, and a map mounted behind plastic, with the state highway department seal on it. Sheila took in the view mechanically, eyes scanning the distance, the hazy blue sky and a line of faraway mountains, then, just below, on the flat valley floor, the town of Byzantium, buildings clustered around the single peak rising like some rough, hunched beast furred brown and green.

And then she saw what she was seeing. She knew this landscape – she had been here many times before. She had invented the town, the mountain, and the wasteland beyond. She had written it into existence.

‘You see?’ said Victoria. ‘You had to come here.’

The Ramada Inn had what they called a conference centre, and it was there – a detached, windowless, concrete building on the other side of the swimming pool that the First Byzantium Science Fiction Convention was held.

When Sheila and Victoria arrived, they found Grace sitting behind a table near the door, with a cashbox and a list of names.

‘We’ve had fifteen people so far,’ she said, looking apprehensively up at Victoria. ‘I think that’s pretty good for the first hour.’

‘How many are you expecting?’ Sheila asked.

‘A lot,’ said Victoria. ‘Science fiction is big business these days, and there’s never been a convention in this part of the state. I’m sure it’ll be a big success. Here, put this nametag on. I designed it especially, so people can pick you out as the Guest of Honour.’

‘What am I supposed to do?’

‘This evening you’ll judge the costume contest. Until then, just enjoy yourself. Give the fans a chance to talk to you. Be friendly.’

Sheila felt tired and uncertain of herself. She wanted to retreat, having seldom felt less like talking to strangers. But she had agreed to come and must make an effort. She moved away from the registration desk to begin her tour of the convention.

The conference centre consisted of the small reception area where Grace sat, three small seminar rooms, and one big hall. In one seminar room Sheila found four boys and two girls huddled in a circle with dice and notebooks, playing Dungeons and Dragons. They didn’t even look up when she entered, too involved with their fantasy to notice her.

The next seminar room contained eight or ten dark shapes gazing at a large television screen upon which flickered an episode of The Prisoner.

The main hall had a podium and microphone set up at the far end, unused. At the near end several tables had been set up and people were selling used paperbacks, comics, posters, little clay and metal figurines, and other paraphernalia. Some artwork was displayed, and Sheila recognized the paintings as Victoria’s work.

People of both sexes, most of them apparently in their teens or early twenties, milled around the room. Sheila noticed a very fat man in a kilt, with a plastic sword belted at his side, and a skinny young woman in a black knitted mini-dress, who might have been attractive beneath the layer of green paint she wore over all exposed flesh. But even the people not in costume – the boy reading a paperback novel on the floor, frowning in fierce concentration; the acned young man whose shirt-pocket bulged with different coloured pens; the girl talking into a tape-recorder – seemed to exist in some other, private universe, and even if she had found any of them the slightest bit attractive, Sheila could not have approached without feeling herself an intruder.

‘Excuse me, are you Sheila Stoller?’

Sheila turned to see an ordinary-looking teenager, a girl in blue jeans and a pink T-shirt, holding up a copy of Moonlight Under the Mountain in much the way that people in horror films presented crosses to vampires. She smiled with relief and pleasure. This was what she was here for, after all: to be the author.

‘Yes, I am.’

‘Oh!’ The girl sounded surprised. ‘I thought – I don’t know – I thought you’d look more – like a writer.’

‘How is that? With thick glasses and a typewriter tucked under my arm?’

‘No, I thought you’d be more glamorous. Well, would you sign my book? Make it out to Lori.’

Sheila did as she was told. ‘Did you like it?’

‘Oh, I haven’t read it yet. I bought it because somebody told me it was sort of like Anne McCaffrey. I love Anne McCaffrey. I’ve read everything she’s ever written. I was hoping they could get her to come here, but . . . Thanks for the autograph. It was nice meeting you.’ She slouched away, leaving Sheila bemused. Was that it? Was that why she was here, to disappoint Anne McCaffrey fans and sign unread books?

She went back to the registration area to find Victoria and Grace, and was discouraged to find that even they were no longer interested in her. It was an effort to make them talk, and as she struggled she wondered why she was bothering.

‘So . . . Victoria, you’re interested in art. Do you plan to study it professionally, go to art school, or . . . were you an art major in college?’

Victoria looked at her coldly. ‘I didn’t go to college. As I told you last night. It wasn’t possible. We couldn’t afford it and mother couldn’t really do without me. Mother has problems with her health. As I told you.’

Sheila felt herself getting hot. She didn’t know how to apologize without making things worse. She should have been paying attention instead of daydreaming, as usual. ‘I’m sorry . . . I was tired last night, and . . .’

‘You were probably thinking of me,’ Grace said. ‘I went to college.’

‘And much good it did you,’ said Victoria. ‘You can’t get a job with your history degree now, can you? I’ve got a job in cosmetics, at Eckard’s Drugs. I get a discount on all my perfume and makeup. It’s a good deal. And it’s a pretty creative job, sometimes. It calls for someone like me with taste and a good eye for colour to tell the ladies what lipstick would suit them, and how to put on blusher to make the most of their own features. You should have seen the makeover I did for Grace! I don’t know why she doesn’t fix herself up like that all the time. It would only take a half hour in the morning, and it makes all the difference in the world.’

Grace was getting steadily redder, and glaring at her feet. Sheila tried to feel some sympathy for her, but was too repelled. Did she have to be so fat and her hair so greasy? Makeup would probably only aggravate her skin problems, but surely she could make some effort.

‘It might even help you get a job,’ Victoria went on. ‘If you looked more . . .’

‘Don’t want a job,’ Grace mumbled. She raised her head defiantly. ‘I need time to write.’ She looked at Sheila. ‘Don’t you? Don’t you need time to write?’

Before Sheila could think of how to answer, Victoria spoke for her. ‘But you also need to earn a living,’ she said. ‘You can’t sponge off your parents forever. You’re twenty-four.’

‘So? They don’t mind.’

‘But for how long? And how long before you actually finish your novel? You’re too comfortable; you think you’ve got all the time in the world. How many years have you been working on it? Three? Four?’

Sheila was beginning to feel Grace’s discomfort as her own, as if Victoria’s jabs had been aimed at her. This was a familiar, old quarrel, but it was nothing to do with her. She wouldn’t even try to break it up. She only wanted to get away and leave them to it.

Looking at her watch, Sheila said, ‘Maybe I should check into my room now. There doesn’t seem to be too much going on, and I’d like a chance to put my things away and maybe have a shower.’

Victoria and Grace looked at each other in a way that made Sheila’s heart sink.

‘I’m not saying this is your fault,’ said Victoria carefully. ‘Don’t get me wrong. But we haven’t had as many people register for the convention as we had hoped for.’

‘How could that be my fault?’

‘Well, a big-name guest will draw more people . . . but I’m not saying it is your fault, you understand. If people didn’t come to see you, it’s our fault for assuming that everybody would like Moonlight Under the Mountain as much as us . . . but that’s probably not the reason, anyway. Grace probably didn’t coordinate the publicity and press releases well enough – never mind, Grace, I’m not blaming you.’

‘I don’t understand. If you don’t think it’s my fault, why are you telling me?’

‘Well, of course it’s not your fault! And no matter how much money we lose on this, Grace and I will feel that it was worth it to get you to come here. I knew when I wrote out the check for your airplane ticket that I probably wasn’t going to get my money back, and that isn’t important. The thing is, we just don’t have that much money left over . . . for non-essentials. And since I’ve got a spare bed anyway . . .’

Sheila just stared at her, refusing to give in.

Victoria sighed. ‘We just can’t afford to pay for your hotel room. I’m sorry about that. But you are more than welcome to go on sharing my room. Like last night. You didn’t mind sharing, did you?’

She couldn’t answer honestly; she was trapped. Sheila bowed her head, giving in. She was doing figures in her head, furiously, but she already knew she couldn’t afford to rent her own hotel room. She thought, longingly, of Damon, wondering how he would handle the situation. But Damon would never be in such a situation, she felt certain. His agent would have arranged everything better than she had been able to do for herself.

‘Excuse me for a few minutes,’ she said. ‘I have to make a phone call . . . I have to let my boyfriend know where I’ll be.’

But Damon wasn’t in. Of course, it was silly of her to have expected him to be sitting at home in the middle of the day, but that made no difference to her disappointment.

She hung around the lobby for another twenty minutes, unwilling to return to the convention, leaning against the wall by the telephone as if waiting for a call. She wondered if she was expecting too much of Damon. She thought of them as a couple – an awareness of him and what he would think informed all her actions – but to him, she thought reasonably, she was probably just another girlfriend. They had made no promises to each other. She knew it wasn’t fair to blame him for anything – for this trip to Texas, for not being in when she needed him – that was like Victoria, always apportioning blame. But although she fought against it, that was the way she felt.

‘We’ll take you out for a nice dinner,’ Victoria said. ‘Our treat.’

It wasn’t Sheila’s idea of a treat: a drive to Byzantium to feast, far inland, in a Long John Silver Seafood Shoppe. The fried fish and potatoes were almost tasteless, but Sheila covered them with ketchup and ate her way steadily through the meal. It was a way of not thinking, of not caring that Victoria and Grace could chatter away about private concerns as if she were not there. She was still thinking, painfully, of Damon, and finally, when the food was gone and they lingered over large paper cups of iced tea, she couldn’t keep it to herself any longer. She told them about Damon.

She didn’t say a word about her doubts: she wanted to impress them. It was such a joy to speak of him possessively, casually, and to see the dim, faint envy on their faces. Any boyfriend at all was good, but Damon was a TV star. They knew how handsome he was, how desirable.

She was explaining how they had first met when Victoria interrupted. ‘Come on, girls, we’ve got things to do. We’ve got to get back to the Ramada. We’ll stop at the Dunkin’ Donuts on the way for our dessert.’

Sheila was irritated at being cut off, but knowing Victoria’s jealousy must be responsible made it easier to bear. She had proven just how different her life was from the lonely existence Victoria and Grace had to suffer, and Victoria couldn’t like the reminder.

At the convention, Sheila was left alone with the box of donuts while Victoria and Grace went off to prepare for the costume contest. Sheila was the judge, but she didn’t feel burdened: nothing was really at stake. The only prize was a scroll hand-decorated by Victoria.

There were only eight entries, and two of them were jokes more than costumes: an Invisible Man, and a Time Traveler in Authentic Costume of the 1980s. Sheila leaned on the podium in the darkened hall, unable to see the audience for the glare of the spotlights, and watched the contestants parade slowly past: a mangy Wookie, a scantily clad Amazon, a Vulcan couple who performed a pretend marriage ceremony, and the green-painted girl she had noticed earlier, now wearing a diaphanous gown and huge, painted cardboard wings.

Victoria and Grace came last, and when they emerged from darkness into light Sheila did not recognize them. She saw, not strangers, but two characters she knew very well, her own creations come to life.

She saw Kayli, triumphant in red velvet, brandishing a gleaming sword, leading a hunch-backed, shaggy, conquered grenofen on a leash.

Her heart threatened to choke her, and she leaned forward, nearly dislodging the microphone, to peer against the dazzle of the spotlights, trying to see through the illusion.

Fake fur and a papier-mâché head could disguise Grace, but how on earth had the unattractive Victoria been transformed to Kayli, as noble, heroic, and beautiful as Sheila had always known her to be. Was it possible that Kayli was real? That she wasn’t an invention, but a real person, a resident of Byzantium, and Victoria had found her? What magic was this?

But it was all illusion, even if she couldn’t penetrate it. Of course Kayli and the grenofen were only Victoria and Grace, revealed when they came forward to accept their prize.

Later, sharing the few remaining donuts and listening to Grace’s delight at having won, Sheila could hardly take her eyes from Victoria. The glamour of Kayli clung to her still, making her eyes shine and her cheeks glow, giving her plain, sharp features a beauty Sheila envied.

‘Weren’t the costumes just perfect?’ Grace demanded again. ‘Weren’t they just exactly how you imagined they would look when you were writing the book, Sheila?’

Sick at heart, yet she could not deny it, Sheila pretended her mouth was too full to speak, and nodded. She knew her denial would have made no difference: Victoria had triumphed, and they both knew it.

Now Victoria smiled graciously. ‘It’s nice of you to say so, Sheila. Of course, this prize should be yours just as much as ours, because without you . . . well, without you there wouldn’t be a Kayli. You created her first, in your book. And then I was fortunate enough to be able to bring her to another kind of life.’

You stole her from me, Sheila wanted to say. Kayli was mine, Kayli was me – you took her away and you had no right. But although that was what she felt, Sheila knew well enough how it would sound. She could say nothing. Once Moonlight Under the Mountain had been published, anyone could know Kayli. There might even be someone, like Victoria, who had more claim on Kayli now than Sheila did. Sheila, after all, had scarcely thought of Kayli since she sent her in her book out into the world. She had not thought of her as a real person until she saw her in Victoria.

It wasn’t until later, after they had dropped off Grace at her house and driven back to Victoria’s, that Sheila realised she had been robbed of something more concrete than a fictional character.

‘My suitcase!’

‘What?’

‘My overnight bag,’ Sheila said, twisting feverishly around in the seat. ‘Do you remember what I did with it? Did we put it in the trunk?’ Even as she asked she could remember only too well how she had slung it into the back seat, and she could see that it was not there.

‘You didn’t say anything about it to me. Why on earth did you bring it? Why didn’t you just leave it here at home?’

‘Because I thought I would be staying in the hotel.’

‘Oh, Sheila,’ said Victoria in the weary tone she used so often with Grace. ‘You don’t mean to tell me you left it in my car all day – unlocked!’

‘It’s your car. I thought you’d lock it!’

‘Don’t shout at me. If you’d said anything, I would have suggested we lock it in the trunk. I never imagined you’d leave something valuable in the car.’

‘It wasn’t valuable. It was just my clothes, my notebook – ’ the magnitude of her loss struck her and she stopped, struggling against tears. All lost. Everything she had owned in this desolate place.

‘Now, don’t cry,’ said Victoria. ‘That’ll only make you feel worse. Things will look better in the morning. Let’s go to bed.’

She let Victoria lead her to the house but balked at the bedroom door. ‘I want to use the phone.’

‘At this hour!’

‘It’s earlier in California. Please. I have to. It’s important. The operator can bill me.’

‘I do not think this is a good idea,’ said Victoria in a tight, disapproving voice. ‘But if you insist, the phone is in the kitchen. Try not to wake mother, please.’

Damon would be able to put everything into perspective. She knew that if she could only hear his voice things would be better. She would realize that she hadn’t lost everything, only a few material possessions. She could buy herself new clothes, and Damon would give her another notebook. But she needed to hear him say so.

His service picked up the call. No, he wasn’t in; no, he had left no message for her; no, she really couldn’t say when he would be back. Sheila left her name with Victoria’s phone number. ‘Tell him to call me whatever time it is, morning or night. Tell him it’s urgent.’ She didn’t care if the ringing of the phone woke the whole house. The most important thing was to make contact again with her life in California, to convince herself that it was real and this place the fantasy. The sound of Damon saying her name would wake her from this nightmare of loss and confusion.

She tried not to think of what would happen if Damon didn’t phone back. She told herself that she was over-tired and that things would look better in the morning, even if it was Victoria who had said so.

Things looked different in the morning, but not better.

It began when Sheila lost a contact lens down the drain. In three years she’d had no problems, but after one moment of sleepy carelessness in a strange bathroom she had no choice but to put on her old glasses. Then she saw herself – really saw herself – in the big bathroom mirror, and she wanted to scream in protest.

She was not, she refused to be, the person she saw in the mirror. That was the old Sheila blinking through thick, smudged lenses, the self she had outgrown, with lank, greasy hair, dandruff, and pimples. That Sheila was so fat she could scarcely fasten her skirt, despite the fact that it had fitted the day before.

Sheila reached out, and the creature in the mirror reached, too, until they were touching. They were the same. She didn’t want to believe it, but she had no choice. She was trapped in that hateful body again, as if she had never been different.

Victoria’s voice came through the door. ‘Hurry up in there, we’ve got to get moving! Your guest-of-honour speech is scheduled for an hour from now!’

Her speech was inside the lost notebook. Sheila began to tremble. She had no idea what she had written, what the words said. She knew she couldn’t give a speech without that text. She unlocked the door and told Victoria.

Victoria, dressed like a Victorian governess in a high-necked white blouse and a long grey skirt, her face made up like a doll’s with smears of blue eye-shadow and rosy blusher, did not hesitate. ‘You’ll give the speech. I don’t care what you say. But you will give the speech.’

‘You can’t make me.’

Victoria settled her glasses. She didn’t look angry. There was the hint of a smile about her mouth. ‘We paid to bring you here, and people have paid to hear your speech. Those people aren’t going to be let down. Somebody is going to give Sheila Stoller’s speech, even if it has to be me.’

Sheila felt her mouth go dry.

‘I can talk about your book as well as you can, probably better,’ Victoria went on. ‘I’ve read it four times; I know it. You saw how I was as Kayli. I could be the author of Moonlight Under the Mountain just as easily. I can tell them what they want to hear – better than you could.’

Sheila believed her. She shook her head.

‘Oh, yes,’ said Victoria. ‘If you don’t believe me – ’

‘I’ll give the speech.’

Victoria’s smile settled and hardened. ‘I know you will.’

‘I need to make a phone call,’ Sheila said.

‘Who?’

‘My boyfriend.’ She clung to that last, fragile hope. Even though he had not returned her call, he had to be in now – it was a Sunday morning – and as soon as he picked up the phone and heard who it was, his voice would go warm and teasing. Her fears would all vanish in the sunshine of his love. ‘Damon,’ she said, savoring his name. ‘I told you about him yesterday – ’

‘Oh, come off it, Sheila! Nobody believes you. It’s childish to pretend you know Damon Greene.’

‘I’m not pretending!’ She tried to laugh, but it sounded more like a sob.

‘Oh, no? And did you have a nice little conversation with him last night?’

‘I couldn’t get through to him last night.’

‘Well, I’m glad you’re still in touch with reality to that extent.’

Sheila was shaking. She wished it was with anger, but it felt like fear. ‘Look,’ she said. ‘I’m not lying to you, and I’m not crazy. I’m in love with Damon Greene, and – ’

‘Oh, yes, I’m not questioning your feelings. But that doesn’t mean you can phone him up, or that you have any special privileges, you know.’ Victoria’s hands fastened claw-like on Sheila’s shoulders and she steered her down the passage, into the bedroom. ‘I’m going to show you something. Look there on the wall.’

She hadn’t noticed it before – individual photographs tended to get lost among the many taped and tacked up around the room – but now she saw the picture which had appeared in People Magazine, the posed shot of Damon and three of his costars from the new series. Her heart beat faster at his familiar smile. ‘Oh, yes, I know that picture – ’

But already Victoria was turning her away from it, allowing her no comfort, turning her toward the frilly dressing table with its makeup mirror. ‘Now look at that. Look at yourself. Do you expect me to believe that Damon Greene would even consider going out with something that looks like that?’

But that’s not me, Sheila wanted to protest. That’s not the Sheila Damon knows; that’s not who I am in California, in my real life. It’s this place which has changed me.

‘What really disgusts me,’ said Victoria, ‘is the way you don’t even make an effort. You could try to make something of yourself, the way I do. Learn to use makeup and how to do your hair, eat sensibly, and follow my advice on clothes. But, no, you’d rather stuff your face with food and sit around all day imagining that television stars are in love with you. You’ll never change, and I don’t know why I knock myself out trying to help you.’

Staring at the horror in the mirror, Sheila began to cry. The great, wrenching sobs reddened her face, making her even uglier, and she felt the button on her skirt pop, and cried even harder at the hopelessness of her life.

‘Your own mother wouldn’t know you,’ said Victoria, satisfied, and Sheila gazed into the mirror thinking that she wouldn’t have known herself, either. Victoria had made up her face, covering the spots and making her eyes look bigger; her hair was hidden beneath a brightly patterned scarf, and her body in a tent-like yellow dress borrowed from Grace. She felt uneasy with her new image, but at least it was an improvement on the old one.

When they reached the convention they found between twenty and thirty people gathered in the main hall, waiting for Sheila’s speech – about half the number who had registered.

‘Now, don’t be afraid,’ said Victoria. ‘They’re just ordinary people, like you. Say anything you want to them.’

‘Anything,’ said Sheila dazedly. ‘What . . .’

‘Tell them how you wrote your book.’

‘I don’t . . . I can’t remember . . . what can I say?’

Victoria stared at her. ‘Do you want me to give the speech?’

Sheila backed away, shaking her head. She couldn’t remember why, but she knew she must do this herself. She must not give Victoria the chance to . . . what?

‘What are you waiting for?’ demanded Victoria. ‘Go on, they’re waiting.’

Sheila stumbled toward the podium. In the large room the sound of applause was feeble and sporadic. As it died away, she stared at them, her audience. Who were they? They all wore glasses; most of them looked adolescent. She was reminded, horribly, of the time her mother had pressured her into trying for the debating society, and how she had gone utterly blank in front of them all, without a word in her head. Just like now.

The silence stretched. The sound of her own breathing was horribly loud. Her hands clenched, and she realised she was holding something. When she looked down, her own name blazed up at her in yellow letters. It was her book, a copy of Moonlight Under the Mountain. With shaking fingers she opened it and began to read.

Gradually the familiar words, the well-known story, Kayli’s presence, all soothed her, and she was dreaming aloud, the audience forgotten. At the end of a chapter she looked up, pausing because her throat was dry, and was startled by the burst of applause.

She thought it would be all right to leave then, but as she turned Victoria blocked her way. Her face was grim and Sheila backed away, feeling threatened.

‘I’m sure we all enjoyed that very much,’ said Victoria. ‘And now, perhaps you’ll say a few words about how you came to write what you’ve just read us?’

Sheila shook her head, incapable of speech.

But Victoria seemed to have expected that, and scarcely paused. ‘Questions from the audience, then. Does anyone have a question they’d like to ask Sheila Stoller? No? Well, I’ll start the old ball rolling, then. About the setting of your novel, Sheila . . . what made you choose Byzantium?’

‘I didn’t – I didn’t choose it!’

‘It chose you?’ The audience laughed at Victoria’s inflection and Sheila felt herself blushing. Victoria said kindly, ‘I suppose it was a natural affinity. You felt a connection to this place and so you wrote about it. Writers do that all the time, turning their lives into fiction. And what about Kayli? What can you tell us about her? Is she based on someone real?’

It went on, with Victoria asking questions Sheila could not answer, and then answering them herself. Sheila no longer knew if she agreed or disagreed with the things Victoria was saying; she hardly knew what she was talking about, whose book or life they were discussing.

It ended, finally; not only the interrogation but the whole convention, and Sheila went with Victoria and Grace for lunch in the coffee shop. She was glad that they talked to each other and left her alone to eat, but when the meal was over she glanced at her watch and fidgeted, working up the courage to say, finally, ‘Isn’t it getting kind of late?’

‘Late for what? Was there something on TV – you-know-who isn’t on tonight, is he?’

Sheila felt herself blushing. She wasn’t going to talk about Damon; she would pretend she hadn’t heard. ‘I just don’t want to miss my plane,’ she said.

Victoria stared in disbelief, and Sheila’s certainty crumbled. ‘It . . . is tonight, isn’t it? Not tomorrow?’ She couldn’t spend another night with Victoria; another night and she might never get away, she thought.

‘What are you babbling about, Sheila?’ said Victoria, as wearily as if this was an old, old question.

Sheila dug in her bag for the ticket, praying that it had not been stolen, too. But there it was; she pulled it out, seeing the stiff blue folder enclosing the flimsy ticket, but when she looked at it more closely, she froze. It was a one-way ticket. There could be no mistake, yet she stared, willing herself to be wrong, reading it again and again. Had it changed in the same way and for the same occult reasons as she had herself? Why hadn’t she noticed before? She was certain that she would not have left Los Angeles with only a one-way ticket in her hand – not a one-way ticket to Texas, and no money for her return.

‘I can’t stay here,’ she said. ‘I have to go back.’

‘Where would you go back?’

‘Home. Los Angeles.’

‘That’s not your home. What’s in Los Angeles? Damon Greene? Your imaginary boyfriend? You really think he’ll notice if you’re in Los Angeles or in Texas?’

‘But I live there – I have an apartment and a job – ’

‘You don’t. You’ve been making things up again. People like you don’t live in Hollywood. You wouldn’t fit in. You’re much better off here, where you belong. You can stay in my room, and I might even be able to wangle you a job at Eckard’s. It’s not a bad place to work. You’ll have time to write. You’ll settle down.’

She wanted to argue, but everything she thought she knew had slipped away. What could she give as proof? Damon? The apartment? The series of temporary jobs in glamorous locations? All those things felt unreal now, as if she had only seen them on television. ‘I won’t stay here . . . you can’t make me.’

‘How ungrateful!’ said Grace, and Sheila looked at her, really for the first time since she had met her. She was shocked by the envy and hatred she saw on the fat, white face.

‘She doesn’t mean to be rude,’ said Victoria. ‘She just doesn’t understand.’

‘Oh, yes I do,’ said Sheila, although she didn’t. ‘I’m not stupid, I can see what you’re doing to me. Changing me, confusing me, trapping me. All right, you’ve got me now, but not forever. Maybe I can’t afford to leave now, with twenty dollars in my purse, but it won’t take me long to get out of here. I’m not like you. I got away once before. It’s not just dreaming. I had another life – the life I wanted. A life you’ll never know. I wrote a book and had it published.’

‘You think that makes you special?’

‘I know it does. I’m different from you.’

Victoria adjusted her glasses, checked the top button on her blouse, and moistened her lips. ‘You may be different,’ she said in her thin, colourless voice, ‘but you need us. Don’t blame us for that. We didn’t trick you into coming here; nobody forced you to use that ticket. You wanted to come back, so we helped you. Hollywood was no good for you. You couldn’t measure up, and you couldn’t write anymore. You wanted to escape but you didn’t know where or how. So we helped you. You’re safe here, and you can stay just as long as you like.’ She looked down at her empty plate, wiped her mouth with a folded napkin, and said, ‘I think we might as well go home now, don’t you?’

Not my home, thought Sheila, but she followed them out to the car. During the dark, familiar drive back to Byzantium she was thinking furiously, planning her escape.

Money was the most important thing, so she would get a job, even if it meant working in a drugstore with Victoria. She didn’t have to pay attention to her. And she would go on a diet and start exercising to lose this flab; get a facial scrub and do something about her hair, buy herself some more clothes, and when she was herself again she’d fly back to Los Angeles and take up her real life.

Sheila leaned back against the seat, feeling something inside her unknot. With all that out of the way, she could think about something more interesting. It was as easy as dreaming.

Kayli was under the mountain again, although Sheila wasn’t sure exactly why. Kayli didn’t know, either. Her mind was cloudy with drugs, and someone had tied her hands behind her and left her in this dark turning of one of the tunnels. She didn’t know where she was or what she had to do, but she would triumph. Despite her confusion, despite the constraints, her will was unbroken. All through the night she planned her escape.