The Archive

A nurse who lies down beside her husband on a night of rain and wind, holding his hand and trying to fall asleep on purpose, because he has promised to bring her with him into a dream. He does: she finds herself in the lobby of the In-Between Hotel, is hurried through it by Tom, and is sent on alone through a book. She wakes in her own bed with the place beside her cold and Tom’s pajamas folded on his pillow.

Kate’s husband. On the night of the storm he looks tired and very sure, and he brings her with him into a dream: in the In-Between Hotel the gray has gone from his skin and he grins like a kid who has snuck her in somewhere. He floats up the bookshelves to find a book, tells her that somebody out there can reach out and change other worlds, and sends her through the book before their pursuers reach them. In the morning only his folded pajamas are left.

The city Kate knows best. In the hotel Tom holds her wrist as he used to crossing Eighth Avenue against the light, and the lamp on the reception desk is like the ones in the reading room at the New York Public Library.

Around a corner from the sitting room, a dining room with its table set for at least twenty guests, where two people in suits look up in unison when Kate and Tom come in.

The grand central staircase that climbs away from the lobby to the higher floors.

A stately old hotel where Kate finds herself standing when Tom brings her into his dream: a chandelier the size of a car, a grand central staircase, corridors leading off in every direction, Persian carpet and dark wood paneling as solid as any wall at home. “Welcome to the In-Between Hotel,” Tom tells her. “This is where all the worlds connect.” Down the longest corridor, he says, is the Reality Vault.

The hotel’s lobby, lit a sparkling white by a chandelier the size of a car, with a grand central staircase climbing to the higher floors and corridors leading off in every direction. Down the nearest of them runs a long row of doors, every one of them shut: the detail that stays with Kate afterward. Behind her, a reception desk she would have sworn was not there a moment ago.

Its reading-room lamps are what the green lamp on the hotel’s reception desk looks like.

The first thing Tom names in the hotel, pointing up the longest corridor: the Reality Vault, where they store the access portals.

A room off the lobby that Kate sees as a warm blur of firelight and plush furniture: armchairs, lamps with little fringed shades, and bookshelves all the way to the ceiling. Tom floats up along the top shelves, runs a finger across the spines and pulls a book free.

A small, polite sound, like the bell on a bicycle. The brass of the desk bell is still quivering when Kate turns round: somebody has just hit it. There is no one there.

The lobby’s chandelier, the size of a car, lighting everything a sparkling white.

When Kate wakes on the night of the storm, the bed beside her is cold. Where Tom was lying, only his pajamas remain, neatly folded on his pillow.

A scalloped green lamp on the reception desk, like the ones in the reading room at the New York Public Library.

A waist-high slab of solid oak about the size of a rowboat, which Kate would have sworn on her license was not there a moment before, with a scalloped green lamp on it and a brass bell beside the lamp.

In the hotel Tom tells Kate that his journals, the dreams, are all real.

In the hotel, with their pursuers at the door, Tom tells Kate he needs more time: there are only so many hours in the night, and in dreaming time doesn’t run the same as it does in our world.

In the hotel’s sitting room Tom jumps, a little hop like a man testing ice, and does not come down: he drifts along the top shelves as if on a library ladder someone had taken away. This is basic, he says.

How Kate leaves her bed the first time: not falling asleep but a tug, sharp and low, as if someone had hooked a finger behind her navel and yanked.

The deal struck across Tom’s desk that afternoon: Kate will fall asleep, and he will bring her with him. She keeps an open mind as you hold a door for someone taking too long to reach it. At half past nine, holding his hand, she stops having to pretend to be calm, and wakes standing in a hotel lobby. Somebody rings the bell at the desk; people in suits look up; Tom floats up the shelves for a book, puts her hand on a page, and she is alone in a dark, vacant landscape.