Night Mares in the Hamptons

Table of Contents

 

 

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?

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.

No, stay calm,
I told myself mid-dream.
Look around. Find the door.

There was no door. No windows, either, just rough wood plank walls with a bare lightbulb shining overhead. Where the hell was my wheelchair? I pulled myself over to the wall so I could lean against it, panting with the effort. I could feel my sides heaving, dampness on my skin. Why couldn't I get out?

A noise. The monster was coming!

Wake up, Hetty
, I tried to scream. As if I could warn my sleeping self or my character or my alter ego.
There are no monsters!

Oh, yes, there are,
she/I shrieked back.

 

“Readers will love the first Willow Tate book, Willow is funny, brave and open to possibilities most people would not have even considered.”

—
RT Book Reviews

DAW Books Presents
Celia Jerome's
Willow Tate
Novels:

 

TROLLS IN THE HAMPTONS
NIGHT MARES IN THE HAMPTONS
FIRE WORKS IN THE HAMPTONS
(
Available November 2011
)

Copyright © 2011 by Barbara Metzger.

 

All Rights Reserved.

 

 

DAW Book Collectors No. 1547.

 

DAW Books are distributed by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

 

All characters and events in this book are fictitious.

Any resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

 

 

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eISBN : 978-1-101-51454-2

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

First Printing, May 2011

 

T
HE GATES BETWEEN THE WORLDS WERE closed forever. Except for the time a desperate troll broke the rules, and when a megalomaniac tried to conquer both universes, and when a half-breed boy was returned to his rightful place.

Who knew what else crossed the lines while the barriers were down. . . .

A
WAITER ON HIS WAY HOME FROM WORK flipped his Nissan on Montauk Highway to avoid a deer. Only it wasn't a deer, he swore after he passed the alcohol test, but a white horse that disappeared in front of his car. Shock, the EMTs said when he went delirious on the way to the hospital, and bad driving.

A bunch of kids at a beach party in Amagansett trampled each other when three white horses trampled their driftwood campfire and vanished into the surf. Mass hysteria, the police said, and bad weed.

Three fishermen driving out to Montauk before dawn saw three white shapes flickering in and out of sight. They pulled over to argue about what they'd seen and beat each other bloody. Beer for breakfast, everyone said, and bad blood.

The trouble did not end there. Tempers flared all over Long Island's East End and the fabled Hamptons, especially in little Paumanok Harbor, the site of the recent weirdness. Nestled on the northern, bay side of the South Fork, east of East Hampton, Paumanok Harbor was mostly ignored by the press and the police, more so since the recent weirdness.

No one nearby could sleep at night, troubled by horrible, sweat-inducing, throat-closing, ripping-the-sheets dreams, and not just because the economy was in the toilet and summer rentals were way down. The Season had arrived; the rich tourists had not. Which meant restaurants stayed empty, boats stayed at their moorings, farm stands and art galleries stayed full of unsold merchandise, and the locals stayed cranky. Fistfights broke out all over town, plus divorces, lawsuits, road rage, spite fences, and nasty letters to the editor. Meanness clung to the little village like a cold, damp fog.

I couldn't sleep either, so I was just as bitchy as everyone else in the Harbor. Maybe more so, because I didn't want to be here in the first place. I should be back in Manhattan, writing and illustrating my latest Willy Tate graphic novel in my cozy East Side apartment. I should be going to free concerts in Central Park, gallery openings, sample sales, and art movies. Instead, I was in a backwoods fishing village that didn't even have a movie theater of its own. It did have a bowling alley, though. Oh, boy.

Someone had to look after the dogs, my mother said. She rescued abandoned animals from shelters, then kept the ones she couldn't find homes for. Right now she was in Florida, not trying to reconcile with my father the way I hoped she would after his heart surgery, but crusading against greyhound racing. So I was elected to watch over a pack of ancient mutts no one wanted, the snippy three-legged Pomeranian I'd kind of adopted, and Grandma Eve, whom no one wanted either, but that was another story.

According to my doting mother, I could scribble and doodle just as easily in the country as in the city. Scribble and doodle? I'd been supporting myself for years with my books, and was damned proud of them. I got great reviews, even awards. I had long lines at my book signings, and almost more fan email than I had time to answer. I wanted to tell my mother I was saving kids from video games and illiteracy while she was out saving canines, but I'm a grown woman, just turned thirty-five, and I didn't need my mother's respect. Sure.

Besides, I liked dogs better than kids, too, which was half the problem. Mom didn't want a shelf full of books; she wanted grandkids.

On the other hand, my mother and her nagging were in Florida, and New York City wasn't at its best in the heat of summer. The air was unbreathable, the park was crowded, the galleries were elitist, the movies pretentious, the sale prices still exorbitant, and everyone who could leave for long weekends did. So I wasn't altogether unhappy to be spending a month or so minutes from a secluded beach, in a comfortable old house down a private farm road, but don't tell my mother.

Even the little village had its own kind of charm, once you got over the fact that the librarian knew what book you wanted to read before you asked, the harbormaster predicted the weather better than NOAA, the town clerk was ninety-five percent accurate about the sex of an unborn baby, and the police chief always found your lost keys. Oh, and a bunch of the natives could tell truth from lies, and another bunch spoke to friends around the world, living or dead, without telephones or knowing the language. And my grandmother was a witch.