Night Mares in the Hamptons (3 page)

That's why I was afraid to make the call. I had to ask the most wonderful man I'd ever met to come help this poor, plague-ridden little village. And tell him I couldn't marry him.

I poured a little more Kahlua over my melting ice cream.

I got his voice mail. What I had to say couldn't be left on a machine, so I just asked him to call me back as soon as he could.

Reprieved for now, thank goodness. I could wring my hands, go for a walk, or get some work done. I chose to lose myself in the book I was writing, usually the perfect escape from reality for me. I hadn't done much on the story since the nightmares began, so I had to reread it from the beginning.

I'd decided to write about a teenaged girl this time. Girls read more than boys, and they deserved the kind of heroic adventure I tried to write and illustrate. There'd be a boy later, but as a partner, not any knight in shining armor come to rescue the helpless maiden. No, my heroine was going to be a kick-ass kid, doing battle with evil. The problem was, according to my outline, she was in a wheelchair and she needed a magical flying steed. A white magical flying steed. Holy shit.

I went back to the kitchen. Instead of a little Kahlua with my ice cream, I served up a little ice cream with my Kahlua. I didn't usually drink, but desperate times called for dire measures. And this was medicinal. Heaven knew, I needed a shot of something. I looked at the drawings I'd done. I looked at the ringing phone. I didn't usually pray either, but this seemed like a good time to start.

“Hello, sweetheart,” he said. I could hear the smile in his voice.

“I didn't do it!”

“You didn't make the plane reservation yet?”

I had reservations, all right, but I had bigger problems now.

“My mother would like to throw us an engagement party. I'd like you to pick out rings with me, too.”

I chickened out on the ideal opportunity. “I can't come right now. We have a problem here in the Harbor.”

He didn't say anything, but I heard the frustration in his silence. I quickly launched into an explanation about the horses, and the bad dreams, the mayhem and Susan's expectations, without mentioning my link, however tenuous, to any fantastical white horses.

“Yes, we've been getting reports about them and their effect. Some of our research associates are quite excited.”

“And you didn't call me?”

“I've been a tad busy here, darling. A few other, um, oddities have been spotted here and there. We've managed to convince the gremlins to find their way back, but the yeti appears too stupid to find the portal.”

“Can you come help?”

“Sorry, Willy. I'm needed here. I've acquired a bit more of the Unity language, so I cannot be spared. Further, since I was involved in at least one of the events that permitted the, uh, aberrations to get through, I feel responsible to get them gone.”

“But what are we going to do here?” I hoped he didn't hear the desperation in my voice. Or the disappointment. What kind of hero refuses to ride to the rescue?

“You needn't do anything. Now that the horses are in Paumanok Harbor, with all its ambient power, they'll be able to find their way back. Horses do that, you know, return to their barns whenever they can.”

I didn't know anything about horses. I was doing research online. Lord knew I wasn't going near Mrs. Terwilliger at the library. “What about the nightmares?”

“They'll end as soon as the horses are gone.”

“How the devil can you know?” I realized I snapped at him, which was better than whining, I guess, but he was so calm, when I was the one with no sleep and a guilty conscience. Besides, he was supposed to handle these Unexplained Events, not me. I never claimed to be a kick-ass heroine. I could hardly get my leg higher than a kneecap.

He explained how the Institute's archives had copies of every ancient reference to eldritch lore they could locate, from when magic and men lived in harmony. Some were in cuneiform, some hieroglyphs, petroglyphs, or cave paintings. They had scraps of every ancient or dead language, some translated by Grant's own father, a master linguistics expert before he had to retire to be earl. One told a fable, as far as anyone could determine, of magnificent creatures that gleamed with moonlight and brought great happiness to the spirits of men.

“They are bringing mayhem. Chaos and violence and bitter anger.”

“We think the horses are mood projectors. The source of our word ‘nightmares.' If they are troubled, as yours must be, lost and far from home and their herd, then they will project distress. People react badly to terror and the unknown.”

Yeah, they ate ice cream and drank. “How come people can see them if they're from another world? No one but me could see the troll. They saw trolleys and trains and troopers. By the ancient rules, you said.”

“People see them because we have horses of our own. Our minds have to put labels on things. Horses are easy. They'll be gone soon.” Grant sounded so certain, I started to relax, until he added that until then we should add more patrols to the police force and extra operators on the suicide hotlines.

“Suicide?” God, I hadn't thought of that. Not for me, of course, but for some poor soul who didn't realize the frigging horses were causing such despair.

“We really need you here, Grant. You can talk to them.”

“People contemplating suicide? That's not my field.”

“No, the horses. You can help them find a way back to their home world.”

“I'm sorry, Willy. I just can't get away now. You know I would if I could. I miss you.”

“And I you.” I figured I'd sleep a lot better with some therapeutic sex, like Susan did.

“Don't worry. It'll be over soon and things will be back to normal.”

Or as normal as they got in Paumanok Harbor. “I hope so.”

“And when everything is settled here too I'll come visit, shall I? I need to confer again with Martha about Royce's plans for purchasing the Rosehill property.”

“That would be wonderful.” So did not having to tell him by phone that the would-be engagement wouldn't happen.

“And when I leave, I'll drag you back with me so Mother can introduce you around and you two can start planning the wedding.”

Did suicide hurt?

D
UMBASS CHICKENSHIT. THAT'S WHAT I called myself. Stupid, mean, and immoral, too. Not just because I hadn't confessed to Grant that I was not going to marry him. I hadn't lied. I did miss him. I did love him, sort of. I just couldn't live my life living his life.

That wasn't the dumb part. What really pissed me off was expecting him to come rescue me and then being disappointed when he wouldn't. What was I, some wimpy Wanda who needed a man to change the tires and carry out the garbage? A spineless Sadie whose security blanket had a hairy chest? A nervous Nelly who—

I was not. I am not. I helped a troll. I saved a lost kid. Not by myself, of course, but I got it done. I am Willow Tate. Hear me roar.

If the town thought I could handle the spectral horses and their side effects, and Susan and Grant thought so, too, then handle them I would. Especially now that I knew the whole mishmash would end soon.

So I went into town and spread the word at Jane's Beauty Salon, the post office, the deli, the garage, and the one-room police station at Town Hall. Which meant the entire village would hear the news within the hour. The horses were lost but on their way home, I told everyone. They were broadcasting their own emotional distress, that was all. Nothing to worry about, nothing to stay up nights over. We needed to take a few extra precautions for a couple of days; maybe some sleeping pills—but not too many!

Some people looked relieved. Some appeared skeptical.

“How do you know, Willy?” Walter at the drugstore asked when I picked up
The Times.

Because I was smart and clever and the town's resident rescuer? No, damn it. “Because Grant told me. They researched it at the Institute.”

“Oh, that's okay, then.”

By the time I picked up pizza for dinner, people were smiling again. I even saw a Mercedes yield to a pedestrian at an intersection.

All was right with the world. I walked the dogs before sunset when we had the beach to ourselves as far as the eye could see: my favorite time, my favorite place. The old boys kind of ambled along while Red hopped around in circles until he exhausted himself and had to be carried home. On the way I stopped in at Grandma Eve's like the perfect granddaughter I was, and because I knew she'd been making strawberry jam that afternoon.

She handed me two jars and a jab. “What are you going to do about this horror?” Talk about sweet and sour.

“I told you, Grant thinks the horses will disappear in a few days.”

“Of course they will. And then we will all forget about them as if they never existed, until next time. I am referring to your cousin.”

“Susan? What, did she steal some of your herbs for the restaurant's special tonight?”

“Do not be flippant, missy.”

I didn't have long enough hair to be flippant.

Grandma Eve pursed her thin lips. You wouldn't know her age so well without the lines around her mouth. She was trim and fit, and dressed in denim and beads like an old hippie with a tan from working in the fields of her herb, vegetable, and flower farm. “I mean the men. She is getting a bad reputation in town. If she is not getting some disgusting disease.”

“I haven't been her babysitter since I was seventeen. We both hated it then. I cannot tell Susan what to do now.”

“Of course you can. That's what families are for.”

To be nags and tyrants? Grandma seemed to think so. I juggled the jam jars in my arms, so I could pick up Little Red again.

Grandma wasn't finished. “Furthermore, you just told half the town to take sleeping pills. I do not believe in them, you know.”

Or doctors or vitamins or shrinks. Which was maybe why my whole family was so messed up. I hoped Grandma Eve wasn't feeding Susan some witches' brew as a contraceptive. My grandmother knew every herbal cure known to man, and more she'd invented herself. She hadn't cured anything yet, not that I'd heard. Oh, but she did read tea leaves.

“I don't see why Susan stopped seeing that lovely boy she met during her treatments.”

“Toby was an investment banker. He lost his job and moved in with his brother in North Carolina.”

“Then she should find a nice young man like you did and settle down.”

I couldn't tell her about unsettling the nice young man, not until I told him. “Come on, Red, it's time to go.”

“You'll talk to her.” That wasn't a question, but a demand.

I nodded. Soothe the town, shape up the cousin, screw up my future. Oh, yeah. Hear me whimper.

I made myself another ice cream with Kahlua. This time I left out the ice cream.

 

I went to bed early, with a headache. That's why I don't drink. I vowed not to do it again. I also vowed to call Grant in the morning, so he could cancel his mother's engagement party for us before she ordered the champagne and hors d'oeuvres. Waiting until he got to New York, whenever that might be, was cruel and rude. He deserved better than that. I'd sleep better at night, once the horses left, knowing I'd done The Right Thing.

Susan wasn't home yet, but I decided to speak to her as soon as I threw out her latest bar friend when they came in and woke me up with the bouncing headboard. If she didn't show a little moderation, I'd throw her out next. I'd say it was on Grandma's orders. I needed my z's, damn it.

All resolved in my aching head, I fell asleep surprisingly easy. Then I started to dream.

You know how sometimes you dream about someone else, but you know it's really you? Like you see a girl going into the wrong door and you shout at her “No, there are monsters there!” but she doesn't listen, and you are the one who gets eaten by the monsters. In your dreams, of course. Or else you dream about yourself, but it's really someone else? Like if I dreamed I slept with a different man every week, when I knew that was Susan flitting like a honeybee.

Just so, I dreamed I couldn't move my legs. I started to panic, but I told my sleeping self that I was simply re-visualizing the paralyzed heroine of my current work in progress, the young girl in a wheelchair, Hetty. She was desperate to get out of whatever room she was in. Even knowing that she was a figment of my imagination, that I'd written her into that small, cold room, I felt trapped. Doubly trapped, because I couldn't get out of the dream either. I started to panic.