Dream Walker (15 page)

“Well, does she know him? Does he know her?”

“I don’t know that either. I don’t think she does. She would have said something to me. Of course, I’ll ask her and if she does, I’ll get her in touch with you.”

Mathis came into the hallway, “What is Demesne?”

“
That
is actually a good question,” Troy replied, throwing Jackson a sharp glance. “Demesne is a game. The game Blake’s parents felt he was addicted to and why they brought him to my group in the first place. At least half the kids in my group are obsessed with it. It is what they call a MMORPG, a massive, multiplayer, online, role-playing game and it is one of a few games out right now that are thought to be extremely addictive.”

“Could somebody be so addicted to a game that they kill someone, say,
their dad
, because of it?” Jackson was asking both Mathis and Troy.

“No way,” said Mathis.

“That’s a controversial subject,” Troy said. “There have been studies, but gaming has only been shown to slightly increase aggressive behavior. I could send you some information about the research if you’d like. I’m sorry if this didn’t accomplish what you were hoping for, but at least you know all isn’t lost. It may just take some time.”

Jackson let out an exasperated puff of air. “Looks like it will be a babysitting job until tomorrow.”

Mathis looked back through the window, watching the boy rocking and gibbering. Instinct was scratching around inside him and it didn’t feel like a byproduct of too much Starbucks. “Something’s rotten in Denmark,” he mumbled.

“You say somethin’,” Jackson asked.

“Just talking to myself.”

“Well, we got enough of that goin’ on around here, so knock it off.”

With that, Troy took his leave and Mathis wasn’t far behind, leaving Jackson on his own to unass the aftermath.

It was Thursday night. Mathis thought about changing and heading over to Sammy’s for a beer and karaoke. Some people had golf. Some people had the gym. Some people had Fantasy Football. Mathis had karaoke. After Denise died, the only thing grounding him was his job...his job and karaoke.

It began as an idea to drink himself to death at Sammy’s Sushi Boat, in a red leatherette booth or on a corner barstool surrounded by bar flies and badge bunnies. The ratty dive ended up being a live version of an American Idol reject show. Who knew so many people really thought they could sing? They came in droves, arriving by seven o’ clock in their bedazzled tees and cowboy hats, personal karaoke CD collections in tow, handing their evening’s worth of song slips to the KJ, then knocking back a couple before it was their turn to make the dogs howl.

Months went by, Mathis wallowing in grief and beer to the keening of Modesto’s Least Talented, without kicking the bucket. One night, after figuring out that beer probably wasn’t the elixir of death he was hoping for, he knocked back a couple of shots of Jack and asked for the mic, opting for suicide by mortification, instead.

Mathis moseyed up onto the makeshift stage, his boots sticking and pulling on the liquor-candied carpet. All the bar flies’ eyes in the room turned toward him. This was something new.

They all knew his story—without him ever speaking a word. They had been reading it for months in the withdrawn hunch of his posture, in the stack of peeled beer labels he piled up on the bar, in his face, weary from carrying the weight of woe. They went silent with respect as the solo strum of acoustic guitar began the first measure. Under the glow of red paper lanterns and the spinning stars of the disco ball, Mathis began to sing.

“The road is long, so long. The years stretch out ahead of me.”

In came the sad slide of the steel guitar and the low grief of bass.

“Now that your gone, it’s all wrong. I cry tears for what will never be.”  

Mathis closed his eyes and sang for Denise—
to
Denise, if there was a heaven.

“I’m left behind, without your smile. Without your hand, I walk each mile.”

Mathis sang all the lonesome out, the vibrations of his rich baritone a balm on the longing ache in his heart. Everyone in the room nodded their heads, understanding exactly what he felt as though they had lived it themselves.

“Wish you were here just a little while...just a little while longer.” 

When the final words of the lyrics faded from the monitor and the guitar strings drove off into the sunset, a hush took over the humble bar. Then a crescendo of applause erupted as the regulars honored Mathis with a standing ovation. And gave him a hobby.

Every Tuesday and Thursday night, like religion, you could find Mathis at Sammy’s. Never on weekends, though. He left the weekend karaoke to the drunk bachelorettes who crowded the stage and performed sloppy pole dances with the mic stand. But he
owned
Tuesdays and Thursdays. Bringing in his small collection of CD’s in a little folder, he could get as many as four songs in. He was hooked. Sometimes he wished there was a geriatric version of American Idol, because he’d
so
win.

He hadn’t missed a Thursday night in three years, but Mathis was done and doner. He was two decades past being young enough to pull a 24, so at hour 28 he finally decided to head for home.

When he finally made it inside the warm dark of his humble, bachelor abode, he dropped trou in the laundry room and prowled into the kitchen in his skivvies. He dug out a Hungry Man Salisbury steak dinner from the freezer and nuked it in the microwave. Then he shopped the beer crisper for a brew, pulling out two Newkie Browns, the first for its slam factor, the second to savor with his snack.

With a hot plate in one hand and a cold brew in the other, he flopped down in the man-chair and turned on the tube. He scrolled through the guide for some mindless programming, skipping ESPN (too stimulating), CNN (too boring), and FOX (too aggravating). MTV was playing a “Jersey Shore” marathon, but there was just no fucking way. It was mindless all right, but he hated anything that needed closed captioning because he couldn’t understand what the fuck they were saying. And who calls themselves “The Situation” or “Snookie”? And where did the “M” in MTV go to?

Mathis settled on the Food Network. Giada was at home! The next best thing to porn! He devoured his meat and potatoes, drank his beer, and watched Giada cook, enjoying the jiggle of her ample cleavage as she sashayed through the kitchen or vigorously stirred something in a bowl. The best part was when she sampled her completed concoction. In practically slow motion, she lifted the spoon into her mouth, taking the food from it with her lips, and moaning with delight at how fucking good it tasted.

“Jesus Christ, I need a date,” Mathis said to himself. “It’s a pretty damned, desperate situation when you start fantasizing about the chef of a cooking show.”

Now that he thought about it, Giada kind of looked a little like Sabine—or at least what Mathis imagined Sabine would look like if she were done up for a night out with her hair down and flowing and a nice dress on. He made a vow to himself to grow a sack and ask her out the next time he was in the diner. What did he have to lose? The worst she could say is “no.” But what if she said “yes”? The possibility was worth the risk of disappointment.

Mathis thought about pulling himself out of the Lazy Boy and hitting the rack, but couldn’t overcome inertia. Instead, he reclined the chair back and in less than a minute he was snoring—visions of pasta, wine and a hot waitress dancing in his head.

CHAPTER 12

Aislen sat in her car in the driveway of her house trying to make sense of the thousand things running amok through her mind. The day had proven truth in what she had dismissed as pure fantasy. But what of this new vision? She didn’t feel like she had been asleep in the shrine. She had felt deeply restful but still awake and present. She could hear the muffled babbling of the river below, smell the sandalwood essence of the incense burning on the alter, and see the light of fading day dwindling beyond her closed eyelids. Yet she was also entirely immersed in the vision—it was bright and present, as vivid as her dream from the night before.

This is how the madness starts.
Isn’t that what she witnessed time and again with her patients? They could seem so normal and functioning, only to step in psychological quicksand and slowly sink into delusion.

Mrs. Crowley, for instance. She could carry on a lucid conversation about her childhood: about her daddy running liquor for the mob during Prohibition, about her mama getting gunned down by an ex-lover, about her subsequent years growing up in foster care during the Great Depression. But then a voice only she could hear would interrupt her and she would begin to argue with it. Then a second, and then a third would chime in their two cents. In no time, she would be batting at the air around her head yelling at people who didn’t exist.

Or did they?
It made Aislen wonder now. Maybe they were real to Mrs. Crowley. Maybe the rest of the world just couldn’t see what she could.

It was thoughts like that that reminded Aislen—
she was out of her mind
. She tried to stay calm. Her goals were about to evaporate before she had a chance to achieve them. She wanted to
work
in a mental health facility, not
live
in one of them.

She thought about Troy. She was sure he’d have a professional opinion about what she was experiencing. It had been a mistake to have ever had personal conversations with him. She should have kept it strictly professional. Now, if he suspected she was losing it, not only would it deteriorate their relationship further, it could affect her work.

She thought about talking to her mom. But her father played such a significant role in both of her hallucinations. She didn’t want to risk reopening the wounds of her mother’s heart. She needed to do her best to bury it all down inside of herself and move forward as if the day had never happened.

“Go inside, beg exhaustion, go upstairs to bed, and wake up tomorrow morning, on the right side of it—the
sane
side of it,” she told herself.

A light was on in the kitchen. Her mom would be in there, making their dinner. Aislen checked her reflection in the rearview mirror. The puffiness in her eyes had diminished and her nose was no longer swollen and red. She was going to put the day behind her now.

Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear.
The thought flashed through her mind.

“Shut up,” she told it, taking one last, deep breath to fortify herself, so she could go inside and face her mom as if everything was the same old, same old.

She got out of the car. The air had sharper teeth in it now, gnawing and gnashing at her in a wind that had kicked up. A train down the track let out a wail as it headed toward town. Batten down the hatches, it warned.

Aislen fumbled through her backpack for the house key, but it kept slithering away from her gloved fingertips. The train rumbled closer, sending a foreshock of ripples through the ground. Aislen couldn’t help being reminded of how her dream world had transmogrified after just such a tremor the night before. She shoved the recollection from her mind.

Retrieving the key from her bag, she tried to slide it into the lock, but it jumped out of her hand, tinged on the ground, and then bounced off the porch. Aislen clamored down the steps, picked the key up out of the dirt, and headed back to the door to try again. The train was roaring upon the house now, the rafters of the porch rattled, the porch light began to sway. She got the key in the lock just as the iron horse bellowed again. The door fell open and Aislen tumbled inside, the cold of the night billowing in on her heels. The whole house was a-shimmy as the long line of boxcars galloped past.

She took off her coat and gloves and wandered toward the warm glow of the kitchen. Under the veil of the train’s cacophony, Aislen could hear her mother sobbing. She stopped; dread coiling up inside of her. Never in her life had she seen or heard her mother cry. She stepped hesitantly into the kitchen and found her mother sitting on the floor, bent over the shattered fragments of a teacup and saucer. Aislen could make out the sapphire blue and white of her beloved, lotus teacup in the jagged shapes that littered the floor. She knelt down beside her mother on the linoleum and put an arm around her.

“Oh, Aislen! I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you come in,” she said, trying to wipe away her tears, hoping Aislen wouldn’t notice.

“Mom, what happened?”

“Stupid train,” she said. “It finally knocked one of them down after all these years. Don’t worry about it. It’s a stupid tea cup.” More tears spilled over, belying her true feelings.

Aislen looked at the shards of porcelain.

“
Ask her.
” She could hear her father in her head—feel his pleading.

She pushed him away, but an icy hand pushed back with unrelenting pressure. “
Ask her.
”

She reached down and touched at the particles of dust. Tears welled up in her own eyes, and her throat choked with grief. “This was my favorite cup.”