The Ninth Nightmare (10 page)

She parted her dress with both hands to reveal a bony white midriff, and that was all. She had no pelvis, no hips and no legs. Her abdomen ended as a lumpy bag, with the criss-cross scars of sutures all the way around it.

‘You see, my dears?' she said. ‘I could not possibly have children. I am Demi, the Demi-Goddess, the Half-Woman. I am surprised that you have not heard of me before. I am famous from coast to coast, isn't that true, Zachary?'

The bald man nodded. ‘Coast to coast, Demi, my darling. Coast to coast.'

Kiera turned around and collided with Kieran. He grabbed hold of her sleeve, but she twisted herself away from him and pushed her way out of the pavilion. Once she was outside, she began to run back between the trailers and the caravans, past the trucks, past the horses, in between the tents.

She could hear herself panting and see the red lights jiggling in front of her eyes. She ran out of the carnival encampment and bounded down the sloping field, toward the lighted doorway of her bedroom.

‘Don't close,' she gasped. ‘Please don't close.'

She turned her head around only once, to make sure that Kieran was following her, which she knew that he would, and of course he was. In fact he was less than twenty yards behind her, and gaining on her.

Soon the two of them were running side by side with the thunder rumbling all around them like heavy artillery and the long wet grass whipping at their ankles. They reached the bedroom doorway and Kiera ran straight into it without even breaking her stride. Kieran came hurtling after her and slammed the door behind him.

Kiera fell backward on the bed, whining for breath. Kieran stood beside her, bent forward, his hands on his knees. They stared at each other for a long time, not knowing what to say, not knowing what to think, hardly even daring to understand what they had just experienced.

‘That wasn't a dream,' said Kiera, at last. ‘Even if it was somebody else's dream. That was a nightmare.'

Kieran pulled up his pajama pants. ‘Whatever it was, it really happened. I'm totally soaked through, and look at you – you are, too.'

Kiera looked toward the bedroom door. ‘Do you think it's gone?' she asked Kieran.

They both listened. The room was silent, except for the sound of somebody talking in the corridor outside. No rain, pattering against the other side of the door. No wind, blowing underneath it.

Eventually Kieran went across and turned the doorknob. He opened the door about a half inch and peered through it. Then he opened it wide. The sloping field had disappeared. The rain and the thunder and the rumbling tents had all disappeared, too. There was nothing but his hotel bedroom, with the bedside lamp tipped over on to the floor and all of his bedcovers dragged off the end of the bed.

‘That
was
mom, wasn't it?' said Kiera.

Kieran said, ‘Yes. I could feel it.'

‘So what do you think happened to her? And how did she get into that freak show? And where
is
that freak show? Do you think it really exists?'

Kieran shook his head. ‘I don't know. But there's one thing I do know. I'm not going back into the fricking bedroom tonight. You don't mind if I sleep with you, do you?'

At about four a.m., Kieran was woken up by somebody singing, high and breathy. It was only when he had sat up in bed that he realized that it was Kiera, and that she was singing in her sleep.

‘
In the good old summertime – in the good old summertime
—'

FIVE

A Disturbing Visitor

D
avid said, ‘You're bushed. You need to take it easy. Why don't you cancel this afternoon's visit?'

‘Because I promised,' Katie told him. ‘It's Mrs Copeland's birthday. And it's only in Coral Gables. I'll be fine.'

‘Seriously, Katie, I don't think you're fine at all. That hallucination you had in Cleveland – sure, OK, maybe it was caused by nothing more than exhaustion. But I really wish you'd let Aaron run some tests on you. I just want to make absolutely sure that you don't have peduncular hallucinosis.'

‘David – what happened in Cleveland was an aberration. A one-off. Next time I have to go away, I'll make sure that my schedule is much less punishing. You can count on it. And what the hell is “peduncular hallucinosis” when it's at home?'

David pursed his lips to show her that he was far from happy, but he didn't try to dissuade her any further. She would go to the Coral Gables retirement home today no matter what he said, and both of them knew it. He could hardly lock her in her room.

Katie had never loved any man as much as she loved David, but he was controlling by nature and she constantly had to make sure that she protected her own individuality. He was handsome and athletic and he had a buoyant sense of humor, but his psychiatric training always led him to observe closely everybody's behavior, especially hers. Sometimes she caught him watching the way she performed the simplest of everyday tasks like spreading jelly on her toast and she had to challenge him and say ‘What? What am I doing wrong
now
? I'm spreading it, like,
compulsively
?'

He finished his coffee and stood up. He was thirty-five, only two years older than she was, but his hair was already steel gray. He had a squarish face and dark blue eyes which he had inherited from his Swedish mother. He wore rimless spectacles which accentuated his very analytical manner.

‘I'll be home around seven,' he told her, coming around the table and giving her a kiss on the top of the head. ‘Maybe we can go to Shula's tonight and treat ourselves to a steak.'

‘I love you,' she said, turning around in her chair. ‘And I won't allow myself to get too tired today, I promise you.'

‘OK,' he said, kissing her again. ‘Just remember that you're the most precious person in the whole of my life. And – since you asked – peduncular hallucinosis is a condition when a patient experiences highly-realistic hallucinations. The most common ones are scary or deformed faces, or strange landscapes, or people walking in a line, or people appearing to be unusually small. It's usually caused by a variety of serious problems in the midbrain, including tumors and subarachnoid hemorrhage. So please understand why I'm concerned for you.'

‘
You're
concerned? If that's what I've got, I'm ten times more concerned than you are.'

David left, and she waved to him through the living-room window as he backed out of the driveway in his ruby-red Audi convertible. She cleared up the breakfast plates and stacked them into the dishwasher. Then she went through to the bedroom to get dressed. It was a warm, sunny morning, as it almost always was in Nautilus, and the French windows in the bedroom were open. Outside she could see their small red-brick yard, with its terracotta flowerpots and its sundial.

She had taken two sleeping pills last night and this morning she felt much calmer and more rested. All the same, as she sat in front of her dressing table, putting on her eye make-up, she couldn't help thinking about the woman she had seen in that bloodied bed in the Griffin House Hotel. The woman must have been a hallucination, there was no other rational explanation for it, but she had seemed utterly real. And Katie couldn't imagine why she should have hallucinated about anybody who had been so horribly mutilated.

She took out her coral pink lipstick and was about to apply it when the door chimes rang. She frowned at herself in the mirror. She wasn't expecting any visitors, nor any special mail deliveries. She got up and went to the front door, peering through the peephole to see who was there. It was a young man in a light green linen coat, with a white rose in his buttonhole.

‘Yes?' she called out. ‘What do you want?'

‘Katie? Mrs Kercheval? I need to talk to you. It's important.'

She peered through the peephole again. As far as she knew, she had never seen this young man before, ever, although he strongly reminded her of her music teacher from junior high school. He had short reddish hair and a few freckles across the bridge of his nose, and pale blue eyes. He looked respectable enough, but maybe he was a door-to-door Bible salesman, or a Mormon, or a Jehovah's Witness. But how did he know her name?

‘What's it about?' she asked him.

‘Something happened to you, Katie. Something bad. I really need to discuss it with you.'

‘Who are you?'

‘I'm somebody who knows what happened to you, and why.'

‘All right, then – what happened to me, exactly?'

‘Katie, I can't discuss this on the doorstep. I need to talk to you face-to-face.'

‘I'm sorry, I don't think it's a good idea for me to let you in. Not without some kind of ID.'

The young man turned away from the front door, with the his right hand cupped over his ear as if he were thinking, or listening. Then he turned back and said, ‘Your grandmother used to sing you a song whenever you came to visit. Do you remember it?'

‘My
grandmother
? What the hell do you know about my grandmother?'

But, very softly – so softly that Katie could barely hear him – the young man sang, ‘
Fly, little falcon, fly high in the sky! So sharp are your claws, so sharp are your eyes! No one can escape you, because you will see, wherever they run to, wherever they flee!
'

Katie stood behind the door for almost half a minute. Despite herself, despite her strong sense of self-control, she had tears in her eyes. She hadn't heard that song for more than twenty-five years, when her grandmother had sung it to her in the living room of her house in Sarasota, overlooking the ocean. She could see her grandmother now, her white hair fraying in the warm Gulf wind, her blue eyes faded, her neck withered, but still beautiful, one hand resting on Katie's head as if she were blessing her, a priestess passing on a benediction.

‘
You will turn – yes, you'll spin, and you'll drop from on high! No one can escape you, however they try!
'

She drew back the security chain and opened the door. The young man in the light green linen coat was standing on the porch, both arms held out wide, as if he were trying to show her that he was neither armed nor dangerous. He was grinning at her like a long-lost friend who had found her address on Facebook and turned up without warning to surprise her.

‘Katie!' he said.

‘I don't know you,' said Katie. ‘
Should
I know you? How do you know my grandma's bird song?'

The young man kept on grinning. ‘Is it OK if I come in? Then I can tell you all about it.'

Katie looked left and right, up and down the street. Only two doors away, Mr Tomlinson was outside in his front yard, trimming his hedges, so she guessed that she could always call out for help if this young man gave her any trouble. Besides, he didn't give her the impression that he would. He was standing well back from her, giving her plenty of personal space, with his arms still spread wide.

‘All right,' she agreed, ‘but any funny business—'

‘Katie, this is very far from being funny business. This is deadly,
deadly
serious.'

She stood back and allowed him to walk into the hallway. She noticed as he passed her that he was wearing a light but distinctive cologne, slightly lemony, with a hint of vetiver grass. He went through to the living room, crossed over to the white leather couch and said, ‘May I?'

‘Sure, sit down. Do you want coffee? I think it's still hot.'

‘No, thank you,' said the young man, raising his hand. ‘I never eat or drink during the hours of daylight.'

‘Oh, really? You're not some kind of a vampire, by any chance?'

The young man smiled, but when he spoke he sounded completely serious. ‘There are no such beings as vampires, Katie. Vampires exist only in folk stories, and in nightmares.'

‘Well that's good to know.'

‘Yes. But there are beings which are far more frightening than vampires, and they exist not only in nightmares, but in reality, too.'

‘Oh, really?'

‘Yes, really. We call them Dreads, because we dread them.'

Katie looked at him narrowly. ‘
Dreads
? Is this a joke?'

‘Do I look as if I'm joking?'

‘So what, then? Are you trying to scare me?'

‘Quite the opposite. In fact: I'm trying to reassure you. But after your experience at the Griffin House Hotel, I think you already know that nightmares can be much more than your sleeping imagination gone wild. Nightmares are another world. Of course we can only visit them when we're unconscious, but then we can only visit the real world when we're awake.'

‘You
know
about my nightmare? How?'

The young man hesitated for a moment, as if he were trying to think how to phrase what he was going to say next. ‘It's what I do, Katie. You could almost say that it's my job.'

‘Are you a cop?'

‘No.'

‘A private detective, then? No? Not that either? You've been talking to the Cleveland police, though, haven't you? What did they tell you? That I was just some hysterical woman who must have eaten too much cheese before she went to bed?'

The young man shook his head. ‘I haven't talked to anybody. There wouldn't be any point. Besides, the police can't deal with this. Only
you
can. Well – you and several others like you.'

‘You're talking in riddles. If you're not a cop or a private detective then what's your interest in this?'

‘I told you, I know what happened to you, and why. I also know who you are, and what you can do about it. And – most importantly –
how
you can do it.'