Nightmare Man (10 page)

“What?”

“That when I moved out, he’d soundproof the walls of my room and put a drum set in there. He used to say that all the time. He’d see me studying and say, ‘Study hard. Get a good scholarship. Because come eighteen, this becomes the rock room.’ And he was joking, but he knew what he was saying. He was saying it was my fault, that his whole boring, normal life was my fault, that he’d be a rock god if he hadn’t done the right thing and stuck by my mom and taken care of me.”

I don’t say anything. Thoughts fly through my drunken, spinning mind and are gone before I can latch onto one. Feeling angry and ashamed and sorry and indignant, I won’t give any one idea enough time to accumulate words and be expressed.

Leslie says, “The first time we met, you sat at your desk and did the most awesome drawing of me. So why don’t you draw at your desk every day? Your work barely requires your hands. When we first met, your youngest was home all day. Now she’s at school all day. Why don’t you shift your hours to give yourself some time in the morning before work? You could work something out. You’re always talking about how much the collection company needs you. Hell, they need you so much that when you flipped out on the phones, not only did they let you keep your job, they gave you paid fucking time off. Have you put it to use? Have you started drawing again? Have you even considered it?”

It should be shame. Shame should be winning. But somehow, anger is holding its own, and I still can’t speak. I just keep my eyes on my piss water, amber and fizzing.

Leslie slides out of the booth. “Basically, you need to set your subconscious straight on who’s at fault here. You’re the only one who can kill your dreams. That’s what’s so amazing about dreams. No one else can touch them. Dreams are fucking bulletproof.”

I don’t look up, but the table jumps and her shadow looms. Leaning across the big round table, she puts a hand on mine. “Jessie, I want this to get better for you. Hit me up again when you want to talk.”

I nod. She leaves.

* * *

Looking across the vacant street, the E-Z Inn seems very far away. Next thing I know, I’m struggling with the lock, jiggling the key, turning the handle, and repeatedly pushing in until it gives—mission accomplished—and I stumble into the room.

Jesus, it was only six beers. I can’t even think of the shame my early twenties self would feel if he saw this. But I don’t drink anymore. Never more than a beer. Maybe two if it’s stretched out over an entire evening.

The room is dark. After dropping my jacket on the floor, I walk forward until I hit my shins on the bed, then just fall, allowing sweet gravity to put me horizontal. I kick off my shoes and am out.

I wake up to anxiety knocking around the corridors of my mind and dragging its thorny body through my veins. And to bad cotton mouth. This is why I never drink more than two beers in a night. The depressive effect of alcohol would either stimulate a night terror or a bad case of drinker’s remorse. I used to wake up like this and take a double dose of clonazepam. But I don’t take clonazepam anymore. I might if I had it with me.

Getting to my feet stirs a weak wave of nausea, but I head to the bathroom and do shots of water from the ridiculous little plastic-wrapped plastic cup. Then back to bed.

I manage to do all this without turning on the light. There’s a headache stirring, and I don’t want to wake the beast.

I strip off my pants and slide between the sheets, but sleep doesn’t come. I lay feeling my pulse bang in my neck like it’s got a rubber mallet. Fear has staked out the place in my brain where sleep usually sets up camp.

I look around the room for the nightmare man, but he must be busy. I feel like he should be here, but when I stare into the corners, the swirling black never coalesces into the cloaked figure.

I fall back into light sleep. I’m not sure for how long before my phone rings.

“Hello?”

“Logan is okay. He set a fire and we’re at the hospital, but he’s okay.”

* * *

Shannon stands from her seat beside Logan’s bed when she sees me coming. She’s got jeans on beneath her oversized Looney Tunes T-shirt. I throw my arms around her.

“He’s okay?”

“They say it’s no worse than a really bad sunburn.”

His face is pink beneath whatever greasy substance they’ve smeared him with.”

“Logan?” I put a hand on his chest to feel his slow breathing, and to feel a bit less terror.

“They gave him something to help him sleep. He was so upset.”

“Where’s Madison?”

“My parents came and got her.”

“What the hell happened?”

Shannon sighs and sits down. “He said he woke up and felt the shadow man coming, so he got up and set a trap. He doused his closet in lighter fluid and shut the door. When the shadow man tried to come out, he opened the closet and lit it with a stove lighter. The fumes had been building. He ran out of the room screaming. His hair was smoldering, that front little cowlick. Thank God we got that fire extinguisher.”

I lean over her, rest my cheek on top of her head. All I can do is thank her over and over.

Soon, they let us take Logan home. He wakes up a bit and tells me about the shadow man, how he scared him away, and he apologizes for setting the house on fire. He sleeps in Madison’s room for most of the day. We keep him slathered in ointment and deal with his low fever, but other than that, he seems all right. Shannon won’t leave his side. She’s afraid to bump him, so I drag his bed into Madison’s room and she lies beside him, napping and reading.

Logan’s room is wrecked. The closet is a black, charred hole. After Shannon put the fire out with the extinguisher, she pulled all the clothes and games onto the floor and poured several buckets of water on everything. The smell is acrid and horrible.

Black trails up the wall outside the closet. The ceiling is sooty. I’ll have to repaint the whole room. Put up new drywall in the closet.

This seems right. For all the chaos he’s caused in my life, the nightmare man has never left a trace. This dark explosion from the closet, this feels right.

I’m no longer confused. My nightmares have come to life and are after my son. In the hotel, I felt the nightmare man emerge, but instead of going after me, he came here to get Logan. I thought my family would be safe if I stayed away. It only left them more vulnerable.

But what can I do? I can’t leave and take him with me. I can’t barricade him out. I can’t stay awake forever.

Something has changed. The nightmare man has always been with me, but he’s never tormented anyone else. Not until I started taking those pills.

I check in on Logan. He’s sleeping, his mouth hanging open, his skin red and glistening. I chase the image of a suckling pig from my mind. Shannon is asleep, too.

I put on my coat and head for the medical research center.

* * *

The man at the security station beside the entrance to Conway Medical Research Center slides my ID back through the slot in the glass, but instead of buzzing me in, he says, “Your study has been canceled.”

“What?”

“Your study has been canceled.”

“Okay.” My head reels with the implications. They know something. “I still need to see Dr. Bill Turner.”

“People not taking part in a study aren’t allowed in the building. You will be contacted regarding the study soon.”

“They told you that?”

“Yes.”

“But why?”

The young man sighs and rolls his eyes. “I have no idea. I’m a security guard. They don’t consult with me about this stuff. Now please go. Other people are waiting.”

I look at the line growing behind me, full of people giving me the stink eye. I’m caught between wanting to apologize and wanting to bash someone’s skull in for not understanding the vast gulf of difference between their problems and mine.

I drive my car around the huge lot. At the back, I find a section of lot cordoned off by a fence and a guard station with a mechanical arm. It’s unmarked, but I know it’s employee parking. Since their jobs are to give people medicine they aren’t certain won’t make their dreams come alive and attempt to murder family members, people like Dr. Turner need extra security.

He mentioned he works until six.

* * *

It’s dark out by six, but the guard station is illuminated, and, sitting low in my car parked in the general lot, I can clearly see each person’s face as they leave. When Dr. Bill Turner pulls away, I simply follow.

Whatever has happened must not have him too paranoid about people coming after him personally, because there’s no chase. The doctor doesn’t try to lose his tail. No security vehicles or cops pull up alongside. He does drive through one very yellow light, forcing me to run a red, but in fifteen minutes I’m pulling up behind him in his driveway just as his automatic garage door is going up.

I flip my brights on, get out and tap on his window with a tire iron. He’s fumbling with a phone.

“Put it down,” I say. He hesitates, and I make like I’m going to smash his window. He puts the phone down.

“Get out.”

He rolls his window down a few inches and says, “No. I’ll talk to you from here.”

I nod. “You know what this is about?”

“Yes. You’re from the canceled study.”

“What the hell is going on?”

He sighs and slumps in his seat. “How did your son end up in the hospital last night? The fire, how did it start?”

In my shock, the truth spills from my mouth without censor. “My nightmare tried to kill my family.”

He nods. “Are you recording this?”

“No.” I should be, though.

He waves his hand, shooing me back from his door, then steps out. “I’m going to point out that you have a weapon, that you’ve threatened me with it, and that I’m just saying whatever is necessary for you to let me get into my home.”

“Yeah. Fine. So why is the study canceled?”

“Because last night, family members of two of the men in the study were killed violently. Two that we know of. There were other incidents, as well.”

“What the hell do those pills you had us on do? I thought it was supposed to help with the night terrors?”

“It was. We thought it would. In one way, it did just what we wanted it to do. It stimulated activity in that part of the brain that is dormant during dream state in many people who suffer from night terrors. Though we didn’t know exactly what this area is responsible for during that portion of the REM cycle, we thought that if your brain behaved normally, then your sleep would become normal. Today, we revised our theory.”

“To what?”

“We got the causation backward. The inactivity in that area doesn’t cause your night terrors. Rather, because you have night terrors, as a safety mechanism, that portion of your brain is supposed to stay deactivated.”

“What are you saying? Did you flip a switch in my brain that is causing it to make my dreams real?”

“Oh, I’m not saying that at all. All I can say is that we need to perform new studies with new parameters. Your study led us here, so it wasn’t a waste.”

“New studies?” I shift my grip on the tire iron. “I joined your study because my life was on the brink of collapse. These other men, they did the same. And this, this wasn’t a waste? More studies?”

Dr. Turner gestures over my shoulder. I glance quickly and see a woman watching us from a large picture window at the front of his house. “That’s my wife. She called the police some time ago. You should go. I’ll tell them who you are, that you wanted to talk, that you were upset, but that they should leave you alone. But if anything happens to me…”

I nod and head back to my car. “Will this stop now? Will this part of my brain go back to sleep?”

“It’s likely. But it might not.”

I can’t be here when the police arrive. What my brain has unleashed, my being in a jail cell won’t stop it. I’ll be caged, but the nightmare man will still be free.

Dr. Turner doesn’t look smug, but he also doesn’t look worried enough. The fear thrashing through my brain hasn’t touched him. “Doctor, there’s nothing more dangerous than a man with nothing to lose. You’d better pray that nothing more happens to my family.”

He nods. “I do hope so, for both our sakes.”

* * *

Shannon asks me where I’ve been. I say, “Out.” She’s accustomed to me being around the house. I’m usually too drained from work and my early hours to do much more than veg in the evening.

As far as Shannon knows, last night shows that Logan’s problem isn’t all about me. In fact, things might not have gone as far last night if I’d been home and alert. I’d intervened in all of Logan’s previous night terrors. Shannon won’t take his problem lightly again. Madison is staying the night with Shannon’s parents, and Shannon hasn’t left her post in the bed beside Logan. They spent the day watching cartoons on her laptop, and by 10:00 they’re both asleep. I close the laptop, and Shannon shoots upright with a gasp.

“It’s all right, honey. I was just shutting down the computer.”

She stares at me with wide eyes for a long moment, assessing me because she knows I’ll make excuses when coming out of an episode. She exhales loudly and says, “Thanks. Good night.” I give her a squeeze and a kiss and head back to the living room. I’m not used to having control of the television. The popular cartoons, I can list them all out for you, along with the standard-issue plots of most episodes, but I’m completely unfamiliar with programming intended for people over the age of eleven.