The Donors (20 page)

Dreams are just like that.

Yes, they are. They really are.

The images floated around her, the same disturbing images as before, and she refused to look at them. She knew exactly what they were without looking, so what the hell difference did it make? She floated through the dream she couldn't describe, ignored the images, snuggled against Jason and pulled his arms tightly around her.

Just a dream, you know.

No, pay attention. Don't let them in.

The child's voice sounded like a whisper, the words more like feelings and tied to the images she wouldn't look at. The fragments were ugly and violent, but they didn't hurt like before. Like when you got your teeth drilled after they gave you novacaine. You know it hurts—it has to hurt of course, and you can feel the tugging and pushing—but you're numb.

The new images showed a thin and angry-faced black man—a boy really. He sneered at her as the images wiggled into her brain, still just feelings, but with pictures. He had done terrible things, this boy James. Had raped and murdered—but young children not adults—and that mattered she knew. He wouldn't stop. Not ever.

Run back to Jason, girl. You're in the cave and you don't even see it.

Help us stop him, Jenny. It's okay. It's right.

Jason nodded to her from the cave and smiled. He would understand—maybe even do the same thing if he were in Jenny's shoes. She felt fear grow insider her, but something else in the dream stifled it. None of that made sense, but that was okay in dreams.

Dreams are just like that.

She realized the child's voice was not really Nathan, not this time. Like Nathan, but deep and false. But that was okay, dreams really were like that.

Just help us in the dream. Just this time and we'll leave. You can be with Jason and even with Nathan. We'll take the evil people like James away with us and we'll leave you together in peace. One last time and just in a dream. Jason would want you to if he knew it could save you all from this nightmare. Help Jason and make this all go away. Just help us finish and we'll be gone.

Dreams are just like that.

She dreamed that she slowly and carefully unwrapped herself from Jason's embrace and slid gently out of bed. She padded barefoot across the bedroom floor, careful to avoid the squeaky board near the closet door as she scooped up her dirty scrubs and jacket from the closet floor and grabbed her Crocks from the wall beside the bathroom.

Even in her dream she couldn't just slip away from him, and so she tiptoed gently back to the edge of the bed, bent over and kissed Jason softly on the corner of the mouth. She looked at his gentle face for a moment, softly illuminated by the street light that snuck in between the bath towels over the windows.

“I love you, I think,” she said.

The corner of his mouth ticked up a bit, a half-smile, like he had heard her. It looked to her like “I love you, too.” Then she creeped silently out of the room, steered around the loose board again, and dressed in the living room. Jason would worry if he woke up and shouldn't she really go, especially if this would make the nightmare stop?

 

Dreams are just like that.

True enough.

 

She locked the door softly behind her and then headed to her truck and the hospital.

 

 

 

 

 

 

He didn't crave a drink at all, but prayed for the drug that had made him not give a shit about the nightmare he found himself in. He could see some of what went on in the room, like if your TV was black on the top half of the screen and you could just see people's legs. The nightmare didn't feel like no dream no more, and he had tried for what felt to be an hour to wake up, so he felt pretty sure about it being real.

The burst of air in his chest every few seconds no longer seemed like no big deal, either. The most terrifying part was that he couldn't move, not at all. The half-up eyelid thing was the most movement he had managed since the doctors had given him the other medicine that sucked the high out of him in seconds and left him with pain, terror, and half a view of the room he lay in, paralyzed and helpless.

He sensed a change, like a suction almost, and felt his ears fill with pressure. Much of the movement in the room stopped and he could hear hard shoes clicking on a tile floor. He seemed to be able to focus his eyes a little better now, and the bottom half of his vision revealed a long overcoat as a figure approached him.

He knew that coat—it was that pasty mother fucker with the red eyes and long teeth. He had convinced himself that he had been a prank the asshole cops played on him. Maybe it still was. Maybe this was just more of that same grab-ass bullshit. But then he remembered the long teeth and red tongue and knew it wasn't no prank. They had asked him a bunch of bullshit and then left—had told him they'd help him be sorry for the shit he done. What shit, goddamnit? Them white bitches had beat him half to shit—had shot his ass, not the other way around.

The coat stood right beside him now and he couldn't focus as good up close.

“Hello, James. I'm here to help you repent.”

The bony fingers pulled his eyes open again and he stared up into that deformed face. James felt his heart beat in his chest and in his temples, even in his eyes. The cold hand grasped his hair, and pain shot through the top of his head as he felt it lifted from the table he lay on. He saw clearly now: a surgery room. Two people in masks and shower caps with long blue gowns arranged surgical instruments on a blue, covered table.

Beside them a woman, out of place in brightly colored scrubs and a jacket covered with clowns holding balloons, stared at him with large, beautiful blue-green eyes. Her look was stone, like she might be in a trance or something. Then his head dropped suddenly onto the table again and a burst of air exploded in his chest. Tears filled his eyes and broke over the bridge of his lower lids, tickling down the sides of his face.

“Start the Narcan drip—no narcotics of any kind.”

The girl with the pretty eyes and the colorful scrubs came forward and he watched her hang a smaller IV bag on his pole and jamb some tubing into it.

“I want you to enjoy every moment of your repentance, James,” Mr. Clark said, only his mouth didn't move. James felt glad ‘cause he thought if he saw the long teeth again his heart might explode. “Let me tell you what we're going to do to you, James,” the voice said only this time the blood-red lips did move.

The face, still in shadows under the brim of the hat, leaned close, and as he watched, it shimmered and started to change. So did the room behind it. For a moment, he stared at a dinosaur-like head, the eyes burning lumps of coal—black surrounded by a halo of red. Darkness replaced the harsh lights and he thought he saw the dirty roof of a cave. Then the image shimmered like a tar road in the heat and he looked again at the shadowy face in the top hat. The lights burned his eyes and made them water.

“We're going to cut you open, James,” the voice said in his head, the mouth a partly open, but motionless, blood-red slit. “We are going to tear you open and rip things out of you while you are awake and powerless, and you will feel everything we do.”

The ridiculous words cut through him. He heard alarms sound and a furiously fast beeping that had been slow background noise moments ago. James's own voice screamed in his head. This was impossible. They couldn't do this. He had rights. The cops would come and stop this shit. The mouth above him split wider into a horrible grin and then Mr. Clark stood slowly and addressed the blue-suited doctors by the table full of instruments.

“Take a kidney, only one for now, and don't feel you have to rush.”

James's eyes wouldn't move, but his corner vision caught a man in blue moving toward him. He felt cold wetness on his skin followed by fingers pressing harshly into his belly above his navel.

“Knife, please,” a new voice said.

His screams rose to a fever pitch inside his head and he heard a hissing sigh from the creature in the hat, like he was coming in his pants.

“Yeeesss…..”

 

*  *  *

 

The other voice inside Jason's head called to him and he reluctantly decided to listen. It felt more like a taunt than a calling.

Double dare you, scaredy cat.

“Bite me,” Jason whispered in his sleep, but he went just the same. He remembered that the other-him voice, the one with the sing-song, little-boy quality, wasn't him at all. It never called him to do anything that didn't have a purpose. He doubted he had understood that before, so long ago, how could he have? He had been barely older than Nathan. His fear for Nathan and Jenny had grown enough now that he couldn't ignore the call, and so he went.

You learned about ignoring, didn't you? And Mom paid the price.

He opened his eyes and looked around. As silly as it seemed that he would find comfort or safety in the presence of a five-year-old, he realized that it felt much, much worse being here alone. Partly because of the memories and the little-kid terror it brought back, but also because last time he had been so focused on taking care of Nathan that he'd had little time to be scared for himself.

Well, not this time, bro. I may actually piss my pants—if I was wearing any friggin' pants.

He felt some comfort in the dreamlike quality this time, and he wondered for a moment if he might not be dreaming. He didn't think so, but couldn't be sure. The darkness and the wet heat felt real, and he already felt a tickle of sweat running down the middle of his back and into his crack.

Real, I think.

Doesn't matter, Jedi. Get moving. Lots to see and lots to do.

Jason felt an intense sense of déjà vu when the other-him voice called him Jedi. He remembered now that he had been heavy into
Star
Wars
back then, and the voice had always called him Jedi or Young Jedi. The memory hit him hard. A closet full of heavy and painful memories might come crashing down on him if he cracked open the door to his brain a tiny bit more. He closed it firmly and started up the path toward the ledge where he and Nathan had looked down on his mom.

You mean Jenny, don't you, Jedi? Mom was last time—long before Nathan, unfortunately for her.

He shook the voice silent and kept moving. The dark puddles of purplish blood seemed to be everywhere now, like the cave bled slowly to death. He stood on his tiptoes to make his feet small and hunched over, trying not to touch the ceiling. His back ached as he zigzagged around the puddles and up to the top of the rise. Cautiously, he peered over, though he felt nearly certain that the creatures weren't here. What he did see nearly made a scream escape; he tasted Chinese food in the back of his throat.

Jenny lay on her back, naked in the dirt, and her filthy body glistened with sweat. Her hands were balled up and her fists clutched wet dirt so tightly that even from this far he could see her fingers and knuckles turn white. A large pool of cave blood, from a steady glistening stream on the far wall, snaked a narrow tongue in her direction. It curved toward her like a small river, twisting around mounds of dirt like it went to her on purpose. Already it had started to form a little puddle beside her head and her hair looked wet with it. At first Jason sprang to his feet, ready to scoop her up and carry her away, but he froze at the sound of the voice.

Won't work like that, Jedi. She's not all the way here yet. You know how it works.

“No, goddamnit, I don't know how it works,” Jason hissed and crouched back down.

Think, my young Jedi. You can't help her here unless she comes all the way here on her own or—well, the other way. She is still doing things on the other side.

As Jason watched, Jenny writhed around in the dirt—not in physical pain, he didn't think, but she clearly struggled against something. Her mouth lay open in a dark “O” and now and again little grunts escaped. Tears fell down Jason's cheeks.

For the first time, he noticed the other body, naked and supine on the dirt floor of the cave. He felt no surprise to see the long, thin body of the boy who called himself Jazz a few yards from Jenny. His arms stretched straight out from his sides and his feet sat close together, like he had been crucified to the floor. His eyes were open, but stared unseeing at the ceiling. Jason tore gaze away and focused again on Jenny. In another circumstance he might have given a shit about the kid whose fate he knew to be horrible. But not now. He watched as Jenny's head tossed back and forth in the dirt and the halo of cave blood started to move toward her shoulders.

“I have to help her,” he sobbed.

You can. Use the real force, Jedi. The power that you used to have and can help Nathan find. Nathan is the one, now.

Jason didn't really understand what that meant, but he knew he had to help Jenny and soon. Being all the way here sure as hell didn't sound good. He closed his eyes and listened—probably she squirmed around right beside him in her bed—but he heard nothing. Then he decided what he had to do.

He scurried back down the short rise and leaned his back against the cave wall, careful to avoid the purple that ran down the walls everywhere. He didn't know what the cave blood really was, but it looked like there was more now than even a few minutes ago. He filed that away in case it became important and then closed his eyes and concentrated on the feel of the sheets, the soft and subtle sounds of apartment living, and the little stream of light across his eyelids from the breaks in the towels over the windows.

He felt the air cool suddenly on his wet skin and opened his eyes and stared at the fingers of light, which danced mockingly across the ceiling of Jenny's bedroom. A sharp pain stabbed through his neck when he turned his head to the right too hard. Jenny's side of the bed lay empty.

“Jenny,” he called in panic, but he knew there would be no reply.

He leaped from the bed and pulled on jeans over his sticky legs with some difficulty. He tried to walk as he struggled, took two steps then hopped up and tugged, and felt sure he would fall on his face. By the time he reached the living room, he could button his fly. Jason slipped on his shoes, grabbed his keys, and dashed out the door.

He stopped in his tracks and then spun around just before the door slammed shut, grabbing it. He heard his keys hit the floor. Where was he going? He had no idea where Jenny would be on this side—it could take forever to find her. He needed help.

Nathan.

But it would be much quicker to go to him another way.

Jason went back into the apartment, closed the door behind him, and collapsed on the sofa. He sucked two long, deep breaths into his aching chest and then blew the last one out between pursed lips. He forced himself to relax and tried to concentrate. In his mind he called out to his only ally.

Nathan. It's me. I need your help.

He heard his thought echo and more warm tears spilled out onto his cheeks.

Nathan.