✥ Chamber Tale XXII
A thread of amber light crested the harbor’s skyline, quietly waking the windows above it one by one.
Phillip Vale had spent most of his adult life arranging things so that very little surprised him.
His apartment occupied the twenty-seventh floor. His clothes for the day pressed and hung against the marble tiled bathroom wall. A green tie with gold medallions draped over the shirt. His coffee machine began warming itself five minutes before his alarm.
At Hamilton & Yardley, his days were similarly ordered.
There were meetings. Clients. Difficult decisions made easier by preparation.
Phillip was good at preparation.
He had become a partner younger than most and learned early that comfort was not the same thing as laziness. Comfort, properly managed, was simply the reward of effort.
That Tuesday evening, he ate alone at the kitchen island while rain moved soundlessly down the glass.
He answered two emails.
Ignored a third.
At eleven seventeen, he went to bed.
He remembered turning off the lamp.
Turning over to his right side.
Then cold woke him.
✥
Phillip opened his eyes.
The ceiling was timber.
For several seconds he watched the dark beams above him and waited for the room to become his own.
It did not.
Something moved beside him.
Phillip turned.
A woman lay beneath several heavy blankets, her dark hair loose against the pillow. One bare shoulder showed above the linen of her nightdress.
He pulled away hard enough to strike the wall.
She woke.
“Phillip?”
He said nothing.
Her eyes adjusted to the darkness.
“What is it?”
He climbed from the bed. The floorboards were brutally cold.
“Where am I?”
She stared at him.
Then, unexpectedly, she smiled.
“You drank more than I thought.”
Her eyes were soft and familiar.
Phillip looked around.
A low fire had nearly died in a stone hearth. Clothes hung from pegs near the door. A ceramic basin stood upon a narrow table.
The room was larger than he had first thought. Darkness simply occupied most of it. The weak fire reached the foot of the bed and surrendered. Beyond that, furniture existed mostly as shapes.
Wind found some weakness in the house and moved through it with a thin whistle.
Nothing electrical. Nothing modern.
Nothing his and yet not foreign either. He would have organized this room similarly.
“Come back to bed before you freeze.”
Phillip slipped under the covers. The warmer option was the comfortable one.
“What’s your name?”
The smile disappeared.
“Phillip.”
“I’m sorry. Please tell me.”
She sat upright.
“Clara.”
He swallowed.
“And I’m?”
“Phillip.” Now she was frightened. “It’s ok. You must be dreaming, Phillip Yardley.”
He almost laughed.
Wrong name. That helped.
She touched his shoulder. Somehow, it helped too.
He was dreaming.
Of course he was.
A remarkably convincing dream, but still a dream.
Yet Phillip had not told her he was dreaming.
He looked at Clara.
She had already settled against the pillow, her hand remaining on his arm.
Phillip Vale lay in someone else’s cold bedroom while a woman named Clara Yardley watched him as though her husband had suddenly forgotten his life.
Perhaps he had.
✥
The dream refused to behave like one.
Morning arrived slowly.
There was a daughter. Margaret.
Six years old, missing one of her front teeth, entirely certain that Phillip belonged to her.
She ran into him in the passage and wrapped both arms around his waist.
He froze.
“Papa.”
Clara was watching from the doorway.
Phillip put one uncertain hand against the girl’s head.
Something inside him hurt. Not recognition. Something worse.
Affection.
He spent the day discovering things his mind did not know and his body apparently did.
His hands knew how to close the iron latch on the barn.
They knew where the dry wood was kept.
They knew which horse would bite.
At midday, Clara asked him to bring something from the pantry.
Phillip had never seen the pantry.
He walked directly to it.
✥
By afternoon, he had stopped asking questions. That evening, exhaustion became impossible to resist.
Clara lay beside him.
Phillip kept himself close to the edge of the mattress.
She noticed.
“You are still unwell.”
“Yes.”
Her hand moved toward him. He wanted to recoil but couldn’t.
Clara’s soft touch warmed him like a sip of fine bourbon.
There was no anger in her face.
That made it worse.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Don’t be.”
Then, he slept.
✥
Phillip opened his eyes beneath a white ceiling.
For several seconds he remained perfectly still.
Then he laughed.
His bedroom. His sheets. His phone charging beside the bed.
Seven fourteen.
Tuesday had become Wednesday.
He showered longer than necessary.
By eight thirty he was downstairs.
At nine twelve he walked through the glass entrance of Hamilton & Yardley and almost stopped beneath the metal letters mounted on the wall.
HAMILTON
&
YARDLEY
He looked at the name differently.
Only for a moment.
Someone called to him from reception.
Clients were ready in the conference room. Presentations bound and presented one in front of every chair.
By ten, the dream had begun shrinking into absurdity, and the flow of the day was underway.
✥
At lunch, Phillip thought about his well-being.
No stress. Not overworked.
Phillip accepted every ordinary explanation offered by his own mind. He was fine.
Maybe it was just a bad dream.
He reached for his phone.
There was something dark beneath his thumbnail.
He scratched at it.
Soil.
Phillip looked at his other hand.
Dirt remained packed beneath three fingernails.
He remembered kneeling beside the barn that morning.
No.
Not that morning.
The dream.
Phillip went to the restroom and scrubbed his hands until the skin around his nails reddened.
That night, he stayed awake until nearly two.
✥
Clara was angry when he returned.
“You slept an entire day.”
Phillip stared at her.
“What?”
“It frightened Margaret.”
He looked toward the bed.
Same room. Same fire.
Morning light.
Clara stood near the window fully dressed.
“How long?”
“Since yesterday afternoon.”
For him, almost eighteen hours had passed elsewhere.
For Clara, perhaps the same.
That was when Phillip began keeping notes.
City apartment.
Countryside home.
Vale.
Yardley.
He must keep track.
A nap returned him to Clara.
Sleep beside Clara returned him to the apartment.
Sleep was the door.
✥
He noticed he became less incompetent.
One morning he found himself repairing a hinge on the stable door without remembering where he had learned to do it. Another time he reached above the hearth for a small iron key before Clara finished asking for it.
But whatever knowledge Yardley had left inside him was incomplete.
There were doors Phillip did not recognize.
One morning he found mud dried nearly to the tops of his boots although he remembered no journey that could account for it.
And beneath the windowsill in the bedroom, his fingers discovered several narrow marks cut into the wood.
Five straight lines. Then another five. Then another.
He asked Clara about them.
She looked beneath the sill.
“You did those.”
“When?”
Her brow tightened.
“I don’t know.”
Phillip stopped asking.
✥
One afternoon he walked along a low stone wall behind the Yardley house and noticed small white flowers among the late grass.
He bent and picked several.
Phillip had gone another twenty yards before realizing he was carrying them.
Clara stood at the kitchen table when he entered.
He offered them awkwardly.
Her expression changed.
Not surprise. Something softer.
“You remembered.”
Phillip’s stomach tightened. She smiled, her eyes already searching his face for more.
“Our first spring here.”
He didn’t remember. But looking at her, he wanted to.
That was worse.
Later, Clara stood beside him at the hearth.
Close.
Phillip could smell wood smoke in her hair.
He knew suddenly that if he kissed the place beneath her left ear she would close her eyes.
He had no possible way to know that.
She turned toward him.
Neither spoke.
Phillip kissed her.
Her eyes closed.
Then he stopped. His lips remaining near hers.
“What?” she whispered.
“Nothing.”
“Phillip.”
He leaned back.
“I don’t understand what is happening to me.”
Her expression became strangely calm.
“You’ve said that before.”
“When?”
She looked toward the fire.
“After Lucious.”
The name meant nothing.
“Who is Lucious?”
Clara’s head lifted.
For several seconds neither moved. Then she said very quietly:
“The gentleman you invited inside.”
Phillip waited.
Clara returned her attention to the fire.
“What did he want?”
“You never told me.”
Wind pressed against the house. Somewhere above them, timber shifted.
“How long was he here?”
“Until morning.”
Phillip looked at her.
Clara had stopped watching the fire.
“You wouldn’t let me in the room.”
“What room?”
“The small room beyond the study.”
Phillip searched his borrowed memories.
Nothing.
He had passed that door dozens of times.
It was locked.
“Did you see him leave?”
Clara hesitated.
“No.”
“Then how do you know he did?”
Her eyes moved toward him.
“You told me he had.”
The fire broke softly between them.
Phillip wanted to ask what Lucious looked like.
Instead he asked, “Why haven’t you mentioned him before?”
Clara considered the question.
“You didn’t ask.”
✥
Phillip began searching at Hamilton & Yardley. Not obsessively.
He told himself that mattered.
The firm had existed in one form or another for generations. Yardley remained part of the name despite no Yardley having worked there for decades.
Old records had been digitized badly. Others remained in boxes.
He found dozens of Yardleys.
Then he found Phillip.
Phillip Yardley.
The date beside the name placed him more than three centuries earlier.
Phillip closed the document. Opened it again.
Same name.
He did not search for Clara. He wasn’t ready.
Nor did he search for Lucious.
He told himself he wanted to understand one impossible thing at a time.
That evening he went to bed at nine.
The realization embarrassed him.
He was no longer sleeping because he was tired.
He was going somewhere.
✥
The countryside home remained uncomfortable.
His back hurt there.
His hands cracked in winter.
Smoke escaped the hearth on windy nights. Food took work. Water took work. Warmth took work.
There was no comfort.
And yet Margaret waited near the door for him.
Clara sometimes read beside the fire.
He no longer lay on the edge of the mattress.
There were evenings when nothing happened at all.
Those became the evenings Phillip wanted most.
He began bringing Clara flowers whenever he found them.
“Phillip, you shouldn’t have,” she told him once.
“I know.”
She smiled.
That smile followed him back to the twenty-seventh floor.
His apartment began to feel too quiet.
✥
Then Clara became ill.
Nothing dramatic at first. A cough. A fever.
She dismissed it.
Phillip did not.
He stayed awake beside her until exhaustion took him.
He opened his eyes in his apartment.
“No!”
He closed them. Sleep would not come.
He took the next day off.
By evening he had been awake thirty-six hours.
Finally, he slept.
The apartment ceiling.
He tried again.
Apartment ceiling.
Again.
Apartment ceiling.
Four days passed.
Then six.
Hamilton & Yardley called twice. He stopped answering messages.
Phillip sat beside his bed staring at it as though it had betrayed him.
Somewhere Clara was sick.
Somewhere Margaret was frightened.
If somewhere existed.
That thought no longer comforted him.
On the eighth night Phillip lay down fully dressed.
He did not expect anything.
Sleep came.
And then it was cold.
✥
Phillip opened his eyes.
Clara lay beside him.
He touched her face before he understood what he was doing.
Her eyes opened.
“There you are.”
Phillip’s breath caught.
She was thinner. But alive.
He kissed her forehead.
Then her mouth.
Clara held him as though nothing about his desperation surprised her.
Later, Margaret climbed between them and fell asleep with one hand around his thumb.
Phillip stared into the darkness.
He understood something then that he had spent weeks avoiding.
He did not want to return.
✥
Months passed. Or perhaps they did not.
Phillip stopped trusting calendars.
The city continued to receive him from time to time.
He went to work.
Paid bills.
Bought food that would go to waste.
People asked whether he was all right. He said he was tired.
That was true.
In the countryside, Margaret lost another tooth.
Clara recovered.
Winter loosened.
The first flowers returned beside the stone wall.
One evening Phillip brought Clara a handful.
“You remembered,” she said.
“I always will.”
He regretted the words immediately.
Clara did not.
✥
That night rain touched the roof with steady rhythm.
Margaret slept in her room down the passage.
The fire in the kitchen settled quietly into ash.
Clara rested her head against Phillip’s chest. He lowered his head as she looked up at him.
He carried her to bed.
✥
They remained in one another’s arms.
The rain strengthened beyond the window, enough to conceal the ordinary movements of the house.
Clara’s breathing slowed against him.
Phillip rested his hand against the warm curve of her back.
For once there was nowhere else he wanted to be.
Then he tried to remember the last time he had awakened in the city.
He could see the apartment.
The marble bathroom.
The harbor beyond the glass.
The letters on the wall at Hamilton & Yardley.
But he could not remember when he had last been there.
Yesterday?
A week ago?
Longer?
Phillip searched for the answer and felt something unexpected when it would not come.
Relief.
Perhaps the city was fading.
Perhaps whatever had happened to him was ending.
He looked at Clara asleep against him.
If one world had to remain, he knew which one he wanted.
His eyes began to close.
He opened them.
A minute later they closed again.
“Phillip.”
“I’m awake.”
“No, you’re not.”
He smiled.
“I can be.”
Clara lifted her head.
For a moment she looked directly at him.
There was something in her expression he could not name.
Not fear.
Recognition, perhaps.
She touched his cheek.
“Go ahead. Sleep.”
Phillip looked toward the window.
“I don’t want to.”
“I know.”
He held her closer.
Sleep came anyway.
✥
Phillip woke to stone.
Not timber.
Stone.
His cheek lay against it.
He could smell smoke, damp wool, something metallic.
A bell sounded somewhere beyond the walls.
Phillip did not move.
This was not the apartment.
It was not Clara’s house.
Voices passed beyond a wooden door.
He understood none of the words.
His heartbeat began to rise.
On the floor near his hand lay several crushed white flowers.
Phillip stared at them.
Footsteps approached.
The door opened.
Someone entered.
A man’s voice spoke from behind him.
One word.
A name.
Not Phillip.
Phillip closed his eyes.
For the first time since the dreams began, he was afraid to sleep.
For the first time, he was more afraid to wake.
✥
This door closes quietly.