The Six Messiahs - Mark Frost [125]
Doyle looked back at Lionel Stem, who drained his drink and poured himself another with trembling hands.
"It also looks like one they have here in the city," she said.
"The tower is here? In Chicago?" asked Doyle.
"No; the one in the dream is like this but larger, built of black stone."
"What tower are you talking about?" asked Doyle.
"They call it the Water Tower. That's where I've been waiting for you. That's what the dream told me to do."
"The dream told you to wait for us?" asked Presto.
She nodded solemnly.
"Can you take us there?" said Jack, pressing forward.
"Yes; it's near where you found me; where you would have found me if I had waited a little longer."
"Let's go," said Jack, heading for the door.
"Miss Williams, you've been through a great deal; I strongly advise you to rest before—" said Doyle.
"No," she said with enormous authority as she rose to heR feet.
On their way to the taxi stand, the odd sextet marched past the bar in the lobby of the Palmer House; Major Pepperman sat at a table near the door, force-feeding two reporters from Milwaukee stories about Dr. Arthur Conan Doyle's manly appeal.
"Say, isn't that him now?" asked one of the reporters, catching a glimpse of the man exiting the hotel.
"Couldn't have been," said Pepperman quickly. "Doyle's been asleep for hours."
"I think that was him," said the reporter.
"Not possible," said Pepperman, through clenched, smiling teeth.
When the two cabs stopped in front of the Water Tower, Doyle asked the drivers to wait as they climbed out for a look. Starkly lit by dramatically positioned gaslights, the Tower looked like a fairy tale castle rising from the darkness. Both Jack and Presto agreed it bore great similarity to the one from their dreams; Doyle took out Jacob Stern's drawing and they found many exact points of comparison as well.
"That explains the sketch," said Doyle, to Lionel Stern. "Your father must have seen this while attending the Parliament of Religions."
And yet Jack, Presto, and Mary Williams felt something wasn't right. The Water Tower was and wasn't the same; it seemed perhaps a model or template for the tower in the dream: one taller, darker, more ominous and forbidding. And there was no mistaking central Chicago for a desert. Their discovery delivered less than it seemed to promise, compounding the mystery and dampening their spirits.
What to make of the intersecting of their dreams? wondered Doyle. He had once investigated a case of three mediums in scattered parts of the world simultaneously picking up different pieces of the same spirit message, but each had received the information during trance states, not sleep, and it involved only a, simple written message, not complicated imagery woven together with an apparently identical narrative.
From what they had learned, it seemed likely Jacob Stern had be,en party to the dream sharing. Why had these four been singled out to receive this particular message? Mary Williams seemed a likely candidate to possess the gift; Jack had never exhibited signs of mediumship, although his brother had occult powers and Jack's dabbling with drugs could have brought them on. But Presto bore no resemblance to the classic medium's profile: He was a lawyer, for God's sake, how much more earthbound could a man be?
The other common thread: The men each had some connection to a holy book of central importance to their religion or culture; Mary Williams had no involvement with such a book but she came from a people without a written language.
None of which answered the crucial questions: What was the meaning and purpose of the dream? What did it have to do with the missing books?
I may not have been given the dream, thought Doyle, but this much I can do: I must find the answer to those questions so they can finish whatever task this dream has called them to perform... .
Doyle turned to look at Sparks, standing apart from the others, staring silently up at the tower.
And unless I can find a way to bring Jack back to himself, he realized, they'll never make it.
A few blocks