"A wise old owl lived in an oak
The more he saw, the less he spoke
The less he spoke, the more he heard.
Why can't we all be like that wise old bird?"
-password for the historic Owl Bar at the Belvedere Hotel, Baltimore City (Mount Vernon), Maryland
Written April, 1875

"Hell is empty… all devils are loose."
–William Shakespeare, The Tempest

"This conviction that direct deed is the most meaningful reflection, I believe, has prompted the evolution of the extremely severe and unique disciplines of the jazz or improvising musician… Aside from the weighty technical problem of collective coherent thinking, there is the very human, even social need for sympathy from all members to bend for the common result."
–Bill Evans in his liner notes from the Miles Davis album Kind of Blue, 1959

Dedicated to the real heroes in Baltimore City during the Freddie Gray protests, 20 minutes from my hometown, when this was in the writing process. "Just this once, everybody lives."

Also, for Delian, the the first boy who introduced me to the imaginary world inside the big blue box.

Prologue: Cocktail Dreams

New Orleans, Louisiana, January 1921

Another nightmare. The exact same one again. Night thirteen. She sat up straight in bed, her eyes flickering, heart pounding, and so out of breath she felt as if she ran too hard. She threw back the covers in a panic to cool the perspiration on her collar and back. She wore nearly next to nothing in her white silk nightie, her brown hair bobbed slightly longer than a flapper's, and her hazel eyes stinging from the previous day accompanied with a headache. She grazed the heel of her hand against her tan forehead and tightened her eyes closed, wincing in the sharp pain from the lit streetlamp glowing through her bedroom window. All was quiet. A little too quiet for her taste, since she loved hearing the sound of that same man playing saxophone outside on the corner every night after midnight. So she figured it must have been very early in the morning; the sky when she saw it had been dark as raven feathers.

Starting out of bed, she checked the peep hole of her apartment to see if anyone was coming. She padded the floor of her apartment, nobody home. Moving towards the kitchenette, she went to the hidden cabinet next to the Frigidaire and the ice box, and poured herself a glass of scotch. She devoured it in two gulps, wincing and sputtering from the burn as she swallowed, and proceeded to pour herself another. As a retired devoted practitioner of the law in the British and United States military during the War, she never liked to drink, but in the last two weeks she felt the urge to go against her better judgment. A glass of wine before bed or between siestas used to be her only friend in fighting off her night terrors until wine became harder to come by. She hated whiskey in every version, and she preferred a nice cup of tea rather, but for two weeks the tea had not been strong or kind enough to her in fending off her nocturnal subconscious demons.

The door opened and closed. In a near panic, she hid her glass and the scotch in the ice box behind her. She whirled around and gave a fake grin with her hands behind her back as a guilty child. She only began to relax when her dark toned secret love came into view. He wasn't supposed to see her, but despite the rules against combining black and white, she figured he'd said who the hell cares.

"What are you doing up so late, baby-face?" the dark man said in a low gravelly voice.

"I should ask you the same," she replied, flaunting her native English accent to tease him.

He approached her and placed his arms around her tiny waist. As he was about to kiss her hello, she added, "You know you're really not supposed to be here. You'll get caught."

Noticing the smell on her breath, he said, "You shouldn't be drinking this late either, not even at all for that matter, copper girl."

"I'm no copper," she said, condescending him. "I told you, I'm a teacher now."

"But you still work with the police, right babe?"

She put a finger to his lips. "Get over here and kiss me, dipper man."

He bent down and kissed her, cradling each other in their arms like they'd been apart for weeks. Though he had been away for nearly a whole day and part of a night, they kissed like they missed each other immensely, due to the laws of the South regarding their separation, both unmerited and unbearable.

Just before breaking their lip lock, he reached inside the ice box and fished for the bottle of scotch she had started on. As he shut the Frigidaire door, she pulled away from him, and seeing the bottle in his hand, she grimaced. "That's not mine," she said.

"Of course it ain't," he said. "But you know as well as I do that you hate this stuff. And you don't like drinking alone."

"What do you know?" she said, offended. "You're not even eighteen yet! You're lucky I'm only waiting until your next birthday so we can go live together somewhere so no one cares what we look like."

He put the bottle back on the counter and swept his hand across her face, pushing her hair behind her ear. "Baby, it's not gonna matter no more. I'm getting my big break, I just know it. I got a telegram from King Oliver himself saying he's coming here to N'oleans for my audition for his Creole band. We're doing a gig soon and if he likes me, he'll take me. After that, it'll be you and me. You, me, the world, and jazz, babe. I'm thinking we should celebrate my birthday early. You think?"

She took the bottle with her hand and looked over at the foyer across from her. No one would ever believe her, let alone anyone she knew would never approve of her living with a black musician. When she looked in his eyes then, she realized that no one really mattered anymore. She wanted to take it to the next level and she couldn't wait.

She gave a low growl that she knew he liked and said, "Fine. But we have to be quiet about it."

"You know me, baby," he replied. "I'm only here because I got back from a long night at the club, my lips are numb, and I'm tired. You don't mind if I crash here tonight?"

"Yeah, I figured you would," she said. "After all, it is after midnight."

"No it ain't," he said to correct her. "It's only after eleven."

"What?" She looked over at the clock on the wall across from the kitchenette and saw that it wasn't nearly midnight. The time was 11:25. She only slept for about an hour and a half or two before the nightmare came.

"Oh god," she exclaimed, leaving her lover behind to prop herself on the couch. She buried her head in her hands in embarrassment and pain prior to proceeding with drinking more liquor, in this case, taking swigs from the bottle.

Her man pulled the bottle away from her and sat down, putting the scotch as far away from her. He rubbed her back and asked, "Claire, what's the matter?"

Taking a short breath, Claire answered, "I can't tell you. You won't believe me."

"It's all right, baby. I'm your man, I'll believe you."

Her eyes welled with tears. "Even if there's nothing you can do to help me?" she said.

"Yes, honey, anything. Just tell me."

She took a couple of deep breaths and steadied herself before starting. "I had another nightmare tonight. I still can't go back to sleep because of it."

"Claire sweetheart, nightmares are just dreams with nasty demons. It's just a way you're trying to face your fears, a way to deal with things that make you scared or angry. You're only thinking of bad dreams and you know those ain't gonna happen for a long time. You've got me and we've got a plan. So what are you afraid of, baby?"

"I don't know…" Claire said. "It's just… sometimes I dream I'm not actually here, that I'm somewhere else… and someone else. And there's always another man with me, a very strange odd man, who's nothing like you, if you want to know. We don't date or anything, but we go on lots of adventures, him and me."

"Sounds like a good dream," her lover said with a big smile. He always had big smiles, for his face and his Big Dipper sized mouth were hard to forget. For a long while Claire hoped he would get his break into the big time, to become well known as the iconic jazz trumpet player with the big beautiful smile. He often told her he loved singing too, but she insisted he'd keep practicing so his voice didn't sound so much like someone with a sore throat. Still, she didn't mind his beautiful face or his voice, and she thought him handsome for a young teenager looking forward to a bright future. Although sometimes, she thought she saw his face before at some point; she just couldn't place the time.

Upon mentioning that what she described was a good dream, she said, "It's a gray area, actually. It starts off nice where the two of us are walking somewhere and taking in different things, then something goes wrong. And we start running. I don't know why we're running, but we are. And he calls me something else, some name that isn't mine. He keeps calling out to me, but in the end I don't answer because I fall to the ground and I have a hard time getting to my feet. The next thing I know, I see him standing over me, trying to save my life, until there's this huge light like what comes out of a crystal prism. And a bunch of cords like tentacles reach out and grab him, pulling him away. He's screaming, I'm reaching out to save him, and he disappears in the light, crying for help. The last thing I remember by that time is crawling towards something to escape before I see this huge hideous monster hurdling right for me, and then I wake up with a headache."

Listening to every word, her secret boyfriend held her close to show compassion. "Is this the dream you've been having for the last few days?" he asked.

"Two weeks," she said. "Two weeks, this has been going on. I didn't want to tell you because you were so busy as was I, but I figured I didn't want to frighten you with the disappearances that have happened."

"Do you remember what you were trying to run to?" he asked.

"Not sure," she replied. She searched for an answer, but came up with nothing. All she could remember from that night was gasping, her chest heaving with a tight squeeze on her lungs as she slowly crawled towards it. She was only a foot away but it felt so far and hard to get to. The monsters were everywhere; she couldn't escape. The only thing she remembered about the object in front of her before she blacked out was that it looked to be made of royal blue painted wood.

"It's ok to have a bad dream, baby," her boyfriend said. "There ain't nothing to be afraid of now. Fear is all you got to fear, so don't worry. It's the 1920s now, and we will start a new life by then."

Through the window, she could hear music again. The same man playing the saxophone was now playing the Saint James Infirmary Blues, so calm and cool as her man who soothed her as he asked her to come back to bed. He put the booze away and joined her in the bedroom lying next to her. While he fell asleep to the beautiful outside music that would one day become an art, Claire hoped she would never have that same dream again in her sleep.

One thing remained echoing in her mind, his voice. The man she dreamed about, the one who disappeared into the light, his voice kept calling out in a whisper to her like he never left. It was sad, lonely, afraid… like a lost traveler as scared as she once was when she got lost at younger times.

Clara… Clara… Clara…

As she went back to sleep, she at least wished he got her name right. Not Clara, Claire.

Maybe he's calling for some other woman named Clara. She let the thought linger and held onto it as she drifted back to sleep.

Pass Code failed. Three attempts remaining.