The Ninth Nightmare Page 11

  They looked around the room one last time. ‘Maybe we should get a sniffer dog up here,’ said Charlie.

  ‘Yeah, maybe you’re right. But let’s give it twenty-four hours before we start treating Ms Fortales as a missing person. Like I say, she probably went out without the Yarbers seeing her. The best place for us to go now is CWRU, to see if she’s there, or if any of her friends know where she is.’

  They went back downstairs. Mr Yarber was still standing in the hallway, with Mrs Yarber close behind him. ‘Well?’ said Mr Yarber. ‘She well and truly vanished into thin air, didn’t she?’

  Walter gave him what he hoped was a reassuring smile as he headed out the door for the car. ‘Don’t you fret, Mr Yarber. She’ll turn up. There was no foul play carried out in that room, I can assure you.’

  ‘Now, are we going to Rally’s or not? My triple cheeseburger is getting cold.’

  Charlie didn’t start up the engine. ‘How did Maria Fortales get out of the room, Walter? Just explain that to me.’

  ‘It’s obvious. She wasn’t in the room in the first place.’

  ‘So how did she lock the door from the inside? And how come her purse was still on her desk? She wouldn’t have gone out without her purse, would she?’

  Walter slumped his head forward in defeat, so that his double chins bulged out. ‘She evaporated, OK? That’s how she did it. She just fucking evaporated.’

  ‘Did you ever see that happen before? Somebody just vanish like that?’

  ‘No, but this business is all about the inexplicable, isn’t it? We’re not here to explain anything. We’re here to find Maria Fortales and/or anybody who did her any harm. That’s all.’

  EIGHT

  Helpless

  Lincoln became aware that somebody was saying his name, over and over – not as if they were trying to wake him, but as if they enjoyed repeating it simply for the way it sounded.

  It was a young woman’s voice, soft and modulated. At first he thought she sounded like Grace, his wife, but then he realized that she had a slight accent. She reminded him of a pretty Creole girl who used to work on the reception desk at K-C Records in New Orleans.

  He opened his eyes. At first, everything was foggy. He was lying in an unfamiliar room, lit by bright fluorescent strip-lights. Above him there was a polystyrene-tiled ceiling and when he lifted his head a little he saw that three sides of his bed were surrounded by a pale yellow curtain with an interlocking pattern of seabirds on it.

  ‘Lincoln!’ cooed the young woman’s voice. ‘Lincoln, you’re back with us! I’m so glad!’

  He tried to sit up, but for some reason he found that he couldn’t. He felt no pain, but his muscles wouldn’t work. He lifted his head a little more and he could see his feet at the end of the bed, in white surgical socks, but he couldn’t waggle them. This was more than numbness. He felt as if he were completely absent from the chest down, leaving only his head and his arms.

  The girl stood up and leaned over him and to his bewilderment it was the Creole girl from K-C records. She was dusky-skinned, with high cheekbones and feline eyes, and her mass of black dreadlocks made her look like Medusa, who could turn men to solid stone. She was wearing a clinging dress in purple jersey with a large amethyst pendant dangling between her breasts and at least a dozen silver bracelets on each wrist.

  Lincoln could smell her and she smelled like jasmine flowers on a warm summer evening, in some enclosed courtyard in the French Quarter.

  ‘Can’t remember your name,’ Lincoln whispered. He gave a dry, abrasive cough, and then he said, ‘What was it? I know . . . always reminded me of “ukulele”.’

  ‘Eulalie,’ the girl smiled. ‘Eulalie Passebon.’

  ‘That’s it, Eulalie. What the hell are you doing here, Eulalie? And come to that, where the hell is here?’

  ‘You’re in the emergency room at the Case Medical Center, in Cleveland.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’ve had a very serious accident, Lincoln.’

  Again, Lincoln tried to sit up. He could move his arms, and press down against the mattress with his hands, but he could only raise his head a few inches.

  ‘I can’t move! What happened to me? I don’t remember.’

  ‘They found you lying on the patio outside of your room at the Griffin House Hotel. You fell, and broke your spine. You’re paralysed – temporarily, at least.’

  Lincoln stared at her. ‘Paralysed?’

  Eulalie took hold of his right hand and lifted it to her lips and kissed it. ‘I’m so sorry, Lincoln. This was the very last thing I wanted to happen.’

  ‘Where’s a doctor? I need to see a doctor! What are you doing here? Has anybody called my wife?’

  ‘Shh,’ said Eulalie. ‘I’ll call for the doctor in just a minute, I promise you. The hospital staff have contacted Grace to tell her what happened to you. She’s flying in from Detroit and she should be here in less than an hour. But first of all it’s very important that you understand what’s happened to you. You need to understand who you are.’

  Lincoln began to panic. ‘I don’t know what in hell you’re talking about! I need to see a doctor!’

  ‘Lincoln—’

  ‘I’m paralysed, for Christ’s sake! I don’t know how it happened and I’m lying here in this goddamned hospital bed and you’re a goddamned receptionist for a record company in New Orleans. What’s going on? Have I gone crazy, or what?’

  ‘Lincoln, listen to me. We don’t have much time. Do you remember the man with the gray face and the green lipstick and the long gray hair?’

  Lincoln blinked at her. ‘What? I still don’t know what you’re talking about!’

  ‘It was back at the Griffin House Hotel, room one-oh-four. A woman was lying on your bed. She was badly hurt, wasn’t she? Then the bed caught fire and you tried to hide in the bathroom but the man with the gray face and the green lipstick was there, hiding in the shower stall.’

  Lincoln said nothing, but continued to stare at her wide eyed. As he did so, a flickering image began to move inside his mind, as if he were remembering a grainy old movie that he had seen a long time ago, in some unfamiliar movie theater.

  The gray-faced man stepped out of the shower stall, all spindly and dressed in black, and his lips were painted with green make-up into a mad, pointed grin, even though his real lips were tightly puckered with anger. His voice when he spoke sounded as if he had a mouthful of dry sand.

  ‘I warned you not to come, now didn’t I? You would not listen to me, though, would you? You out-and-out refused to listen.’

  Eulalie said, ‘He came after you with his handsaw, didn’t he? And the room was burning and the door was locked and there was only one way out.’

  ‘The fire escape,’ Lincoln whispered. Now he remembered.

  ‘That’s right. And it collapsed, and you fell three stories to the ground. And that’s how you broke your back.’

  Eulalie kissed his hand again, and then she said, ‘The hotel staff who found you on the patio, they did the right thing and didn’t try to move you. So the chances of your recovering look pretty good.’

  ‘That man who came after me, who was he?’

  ‘We don’t know for sure. But we think he could have been a murderer called Gordon Veitch.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Gordon Veitch. He raped and killed at least a dozen women in the nineteen-thirties. Maybe it wasn’t the real Gordon Veitch, because Gordon Veitch is probably dead by now, but a nightmare of Gordon Veitch.’

  ‘A nightmare? That doesn’t make any sense at all. You’re tryin’ to tell me that he was only a dream?’

  ‘Maybe he was, maybe wasn’t. Another possibility is that he was somebody who was made up to look like Gordon Veitch. A copycat.’

  Lincoln said, ‘What happened in that hotel room, believe me, that felt real. I don’t know how it could have been, but I’m lyin’ here right now with my back broke, and nothin’ comes much realer than that, does it?’

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nbsp; ‘Whoever that man was, Lincoln, and whether he was real or not, we need your help to track him down and put a stop to what he’s doing.’

  ‘You’re kiddin’ me, right? Look at me, I can’t even get out of bed.’

  Eulalie leaned forward so that her face was very close to his, almost as if she were going to kiss him on the lips. He could even see his own face reflected in her eyes. ‘I’m not Eulalie, Lincoln, even though I look like her. The reason I took on Eulalie’s appearance was because you know her and like her, and I needed to gain your trust as quickly as possible.’

  ‘You’re not Eulalie? Then who the hell are you?’

  ‘My name is Springer. I’m kind of a messenger, an envoy.’

  ‘Who for? DHL?’

  Springer shook her dreadlocks. ‘I come from Ashapola, who is the spirit of faultless light and absolute purity.’

  There was a very long pause. Lincoln didn’t know if he ought to snort or laugh or burst into tears. ‘You’re talkin’ about, like, God?’

  ‘Ashapola is known to many different people by many different names. But Ashapola is our guardian and our protector. Ashapola is all that stands between the human race and ultimate chaos.’

  ‘You’re not some hospital visitor, are you? Where you from, the Baptists or somethin’? You tryin’ to convert me?’

  Springer smiled. ‘I don’t need to convert you, Lincoln. You are what you are. You’re descended from a long line of people who have the capability of entering the world of dreams and nightmares and fighting on the side of good. We call them Night Warriors. If you like, you’re one of Ashapola’s army.’

  ‘Say what? I wasn’t descended from no Night Warriors. My father was a jazz musician and my grandfather was a cook at The Whitney and my great-grandfather before him worked as a sweeper-upper in the Polish match factory.’

  ‘I know. But apart from being a cook, your grandfather Joseph was Zebenjo the Arrow-Storm. He was a Night Warrior who was capable of firing over two hundred arrows so fast that you couldn’t see them coming.’

  ‘Oh, right.’

  Springer squeezed his left knee through the blankets.

  ‘Feel anything? Anything at all?’

  Lincoln shook his head.

  ‘That’s because of your spinal injury. But that won’t affect your ability to become Zebenjo’Yyx, the grandson of the great Zebenjo, and fire arrows at the same devastating rate as Zebenjo did.’

  ‘Of course I will. Forget about the fact that I can’t sit up and I’ve never thrown anythin’ in my life more lethal than a frisbee. Lady – whoever you are – all of this sounds totally insane. It’s obvious that I’ve been hurt real bad. Maybe it happened for real or maybe I was havin’ some kind of trip. Maybe I was havin’ a nightmare. Maybe I’m still havin’ a nightmare, right now, and I’m beginnin’ to think that maybe I am. But, come on, what’s this arrow-shootin’ shit?’

  Springer stayed where she was, leaning over him, so that he could feel her steady breathing on his cheek. In spite of himself, his testiness began to subside. There was something so attractive about her that he wished he had the strength to raise up his head just two or three inches more, and kiss her. Yet the attraction wasn’t so much sexual as spiritual. He suddenly felt that here was a woman who really understood him, all of his ambitions, all of his frustrations, all of his impatience, right down to the very core of his soul. She gave him a feeling of deep relief, as if he had been waiting for this moment of revelation all of his life. As if she had said to him, this is you, Lincoln. This is who you really are. No need for posturing. No need for swagger. This is you.

  Springer reached across and picked up a hand mirror from the nightstand. She held it up so that Lincoln could see his own face in it.

  ‘You can’t stand up yet, so I can’t show you the way you’re going to look when you’re a Night Warrior. Not your whole armor, anyhow, head-to-toe, and all of your weapons. But this will be the face that you wear, when you enter other people’s dreams. This is the face that the enemies of Ashapola will see, and learn to fear.’

  Lincoln looked up into the mirror, but all he could see was his usual face, with a crimson bruise over his left eyebrow, and a split in his upper lip.

  ‘So?’ he asked Springer. ‘What am I supposed to be lookin’ at?’

  ‘Zebenjo’Yyx, grandson of the great Zebenjo, the Arrow-Storm.’

  ‘Oh, of course. I can distinctly see the resemblance.’

  ‘Wait,’ Springer chided him. ‘Have patience.’

  ‘I need to see a doctor, lady. I need to see a doctor right now.’

  ‘You’re not hurting, are you?’

  ‘No. I’m not hurtin’ at all. I almost wish that I was. At least that would mean I could feel somethin’.’

  He looked up into the hand mirror again, and when he did so, he said, ‘Shit!’ The face looking back at him was no longer his, but a tan leather mask, intricately decorated with scar patterns and diagonal lines of white paint. It was topped with braided knots of dry red hair, and its mouth was fixed in a ferocious scowl, with what looked like a mixed-up collection of human and animal teeth crammed into it.

  He could see his eyes staring out of the mask, and he knew they were his, because they blinked whenever he blinked. But the mask itself was terrifying, like a ju-ju mask. His grandfather Joseph used to have one hanging on his front door, with bulging eyes and a red protruding tongue. He had told Lincoln that he had nailed it up there to scare away any bad spirits, but it had scared Lincoln, too, when he was little, and he had always run past it with his hands covering his eyes.

  ‘This is a trick, right?’ Lincoln asked Springer. ‘Some kind of optical illusion?’

  ‘No trick,’ Springer assured him. ‘This is the battle mask that Zebenjo’Yyx wears, whenever he goes to war. And you should see his amazing armor, and the weapons he carries. In fact you will.’

  She reached down and picked up a small alligator-skin purse. She opened it up and took out a folded sheet of paper. ‘Here,’ she said. ‘This is the invocation that Night Warriors always have to say before they go to sleep at night. Once you have spoken these words, the spirit of Ashapola will visit you in your dreams and invest you with all of the equipment and protection that you require.’

  ‘Lady—’ said Lincoln. ‘Do you really expect me to believe any of this?’

  ‘Do you believe what happened to you at the Griffin House Hotel?’

  ‘I believe I saw it, for sure. But I don’t necessarily believe that it really happened for real. You can go to the desert, can’t you, and see lakes, but there’s no lakes there at all, only sand. You wouldn’t get your feet wet.’

  ‘So how did you fall out of a ground-level window and break your spine?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe I just fell awkward. I don’t even want to think about it.’

  ‘But you have to think about it, Lincoln, because we need you, desperately, and we need you now.’

  Lincoln turned his head away and stared at the yellow seabirds on the curtains. ‘I’m goin’ crazy,’ he said. ‘I’ve lost it. I’ve gone nuts. Admit it – tell me that this is a nuthouse.’

  ‘You’re not crazy, Lincoln, and tonight you’ll find that out for yourself. But you have to promise me that you’ll repeat the invocation. Look – I’m tucking it under the pillow, right here.’

  ‘What does it say?’

  Springer unfolded it. ‘“Now, when the face of the world is hidden in darkness, let us be conveyed to the place of our meeting, armed and armored; and let us be nourished by the power that is dedicated to the cleaving of darkness, the settling of all black matters, and the dissipation of all evil. So be it.”’

  ‘Read it again,’ Lincoln asked her.

  Springer read the words again. After she had finished, Lincoln said, ‘These Night Warriors – what exactly are they?’

  ‘They were created by Ashapola to protect us in our dreams. Their original Sanskrit name means “Army of Dreams”, although the Greeks and t
he Romans called them “The Legions of Sleep”.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Ashapola created the first human so that she could dream how the world of humans was eventually going to turn out, and he could copy her dreams and make them come alive. Some of her dreams were beautiful beyond any description, but others were violent and chaotic. So the second human that Ashapola created was capable of becoming a Night Warrior, to make sure that the first human came to no harm when she was asleep. And that was how the Night Warriors’ bloodline began.’

  ‘Come on . . . you’re tellin’ me that Adam wasn’t Adam at all, but some woman?’

  ‘Eve, that’s right. Why do you think she was called “Eve”? In Hebrew, her name means “life” or “breathing”. But she was created to imagine the world in her sleep, every night when evening fell.’

  ‘A woman. I can’t believe it. No wonder the world is in such a goddamned mess.’

  At that moment, the curtain around the bed was sharply drawn back, and a doctor and a nurse appeared. The doctor was Indian, with a long face and huge black-rimmed spectacles and a tiny black moustache, while the nurse was plump and red-haired and kept smiling and raising her eyebrows as if she had just been told a hilarious off-color joke and was bursting to share it with them.

  ‘I am very sorry to be interrupting your visit,’ the doctor told Springer. ‘Please – if you can come back in maybe ten minutes?’

  ‘I have to go now anyhow,’ said Springer. She leaned over again and kissed Lincoln on the cheek. ‘Tonight,’ she said. ‘You won’t forget, will you? We really need you. The others will be waiting for you. So will I.’

  ‘Others?’

  ‘At least six more, maybe seven.’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t think I can handle any more nightmares.’

  Springer kissed him again. ‘Please,’ she breathed. ‘Just be there. Please.’

  When she had left the room, the doctor came up to Lincoln’s bedside and leafed through his notes.

  ‘I am Doctor Dhawan and this is Nurse Fairbrother. How do you do, Mr Walker? It was I who first treated you when you were admitted.’