Nightmare Ballad

by Benjamin Kane Ethridge

  Ignore her too. Ignore it all. Keep going.

  The second floor approached. Luke’s office was down the adjoining hall; she’d been up here many times before, but the last room in the hall, the conference room—never. Seeping through the drop-ceiling tiles and falling heavily onto the floor, a black curtain covered the door. The black was deep, void-like, space without stars in the distance.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Dara saw a purple bug skitter over the wall. She snatched it, compulsively, just to touch one of the pretty things.

  Then everything became clear. Just coming in contact with this familiar bug had brought her awareness she hadn’t possessed a moment earlier.

  Like magic!

  This wasn’t real.

  She was dreaming.

  She was still at home, in bed, asleep.

  No. Can’t you feel the air in your lungs? The heart beating under your ribs? This is no dream. This is real.

  “Yeah sure,” she said. “This is totally a dream.”

  In her hand, the bug settled down like a dog making itself comfortable. She slowly turned her hand, to let it drop, wary of her fascination. The insect nipped at her finger anyway. She yelped, and it fell on the floor to scramble off.

  She examined the bead of blood on her finger.

  Concentrated.

  Healed!

  Dara loved when she got control of her dreams. Self-awareness happened so very rarely. The stranger part of this experience seemed to be how deeply asleep she was, because usually alertness made her wake-up. But not this time. If she wanted to, she could stay here for a while and dream up anything she desired. The muted colors of the walls and the carpet made her feel uncomfortable, however; and she wasn’t so sure she wanted to stay in this dream. Not after that scene back there at Shasta’s. What a funny thing to dream about, though. Johnny had been there, too, hadn’t he? Yeah. He’d been riding some funny looking steampunk-cycle or something. Where her mind had dug that up, she’d never know!

  Curious to see what her mind would conjure up for her interviewing experience, she headed for the black curtain. Before she submerged herself into the velvety nothing of the curtains folds, she glanced back to the hall. No sign of the purple bug. Weird that the insect had brought her awareness, almost like an antidote for her obliviousness. Why an insect? Why was it so familiar?

  Dara crossed through the curtain, her skin immediately chilled and prickled with goose bumps. On the other side, the overpowering force of the air conditioner hit her bare skin full force.

  Someone. A woman. Gasped.

  The dream had ended.

  Dara realized, however, standing in the board room only in her bra, that reality had been in sync with the dream. Everything that had happened, had really happened, and now she was here, at the head of this long conference table, with four people ogling her in complete disbelief. Despite the whirling air conditioning from above, the room hung with body odor. Had she sleep-walked all the way from the house?

  “What in the heck is the meaning of this?” Derek Stobecker slammed his palm down on the table. His red-rimmed, exhausted eyes seemed to bulge to the point of rupturing. “We…we…we’ve been here over a day…and you show up like this?” He gestured to her breasts, quite visible through her sheer bra. “Like…that!”

  She covered herself. The CEO, his secretary, and the balding man who ran the community outreach program sat there in perplexed silence.

  A scream wanted to escape Dara’s mouth, but nothing came. She fell back out the door. The black curtain was gone, but fragments of spider webs still lined the stairs. Outside, through the building’s large wall-sized window, she could see the parking lot surging with sheets of paper.

  But the dream ended…how are these things still here?

  Her ankles bent painfully as she hurried down the stairs. This had to still be a dream! No. No. No. This was reality. Right here now. Those people in the board room had been real, and they’d been waiting there for her since yesterday! You could see it on their faces and smell it on their skin. Dara hadn’t merely dreamt she overslept, she really had overslept!

  It had all started with that song. That horrible, wonderful song. She couldn’t recall exactly how it went now. The memory of its tune had disappeared when she stepped through that curtain. There had been words though, right? Someone was singing the song.

  Ballad.

  It was a ballad.

  A story-song about…what?

  She stood in the lobby. Outside, papers heaved up into the air like a lesser mushroom cloud. Hypnotized, she watched the flurry, origami leaves tossed every which way.

  “Miss, you can’t stay here like that.”

  A car drove through the papers, kicking them out in a festive display from under its tires.

  “Mrs. Rhodes…uh, Dara…you have to put on a shirt if you’re going to stay in here.”

  Dara turned to the receptionist. “Did I come in with a blouse on?”

  The woman blinked. “Did you take it off upstairs?”

  “So you remember?”

  “You have to put it back on.”

  “That’s my ride. I’m leaving.” Dara raced outside. Luke jumped out of his Volt and cried out in surprise. He embraced her. “What happened?” he asked.

  “Let’s go. Let’s just go.”

  Through her quiet tears, he ushered her back to the car.

  “Didn’t I drive this car here?” she asked, confusion calming emotion.

  Luke hit the windshield wipers, but they were already thoroughly caught with the graph papers. “No, hon. I think you just walked all the way here.”

  Another Chevy Volt sat in the parking lot, all its doors and the trunk wide open. Papers covered it like mock snowfall.

  Dara shook her head, speechless, and turned away. She noticed Luke’s hands on the steering wheel. Dry blood covered them. He had his fingers slightly extended, rather than curled around the wheel.

  “What happened?”

  “My guitar. I was playing too long.”

  “How long?”

  “I got up yesterday and decided to play a little before work. I couldn’t stop. Time just flew by. It happens, I guess, when you’re caught in the moment.”

  “You played for an entire day, Luke. That doesn’t just happen.”

  “Where’s your top?” The question had no emotion behind it, only mild curiosity.

  “I don’t know if I was drugged or what, but I’ve had a very bizarre experience this morning. And I get the idea that if I hadn’t found….” She didn’t want to tell him about the purple insect. It was just too damned weird. “If I hadn’t discovered something for myself, I think I’d still accept everything as normal. God, I think a bunch of people might have died down at Shasta’s, too. We need to call there and see if anybody knows anything.”

  Luke didn’t seem fazed by the unusual turn of events. “Just be calm, hon. You probably rushed out to make the interview and didn’t even think about your blouse.”

  “Wait…you can’t serious? And I just told you people might have died. Did you hear me?”

  He shrugged. “Well, we have a real problem back home.”

  “What? Is Maribel okay?”

  “Yeah, just tired. Same here. We’re wiped out. I’d like to take a nap after the plumber gets there.”

  “Plumber?”

  “For the tunnel through our wall.”

  “What?”

  “You know, the one that goes through our pantry, right through the stucco and everything—out to the backyard. Come on, you know the one.”

  “Uh, what? You act like it’s always been there.

  “Sure it has.”

  “It leads to the backyard?”

  Luke laughed. “Where do you think it leads, Wonderland?”

  He wasn’t processing anything she said in a rational way. What in the hell was going on?

  “Why do we need a plumber?”

  “Pipes broke in the tunnel. Don’t know how. They do
n’t look corroded or damaged.”

  “Listen to what you’re saying. It doesn’t make any sense. Why would we have a tunnel through our kitchen to the backyard? Think about what happened to you the other day at the pool. At the time, for whatever reason, I felt all that business with the frogmen was normal too, but now...I know better. Something is really wrong, Luke.”

  “How did the interview go?”

  “Like fucking shit! I’m in my damn bra! You drove through a blizzard of graph paper! Frogmen drowned a whole swimming pool full of people, and there are zombie skeletons covering the floor of Shasta’s! Now why in the hell are you acting like you just accept these things?”

  “Don’t yell at me. I’m sorry your interview went bad.”

  “Oh sure, you’re sorry.”

  Luke looked away, pissed. “Whatever.”

  He pulled into the driveway and got out to pull some papers out of the windshield wipers and the wheel wells.

  Dara sat there a minute. Angry. Embarrassed. Out of her mind.

  The dream had ended, but what it changed, it destroyed.

  She went into the house, saw the disaster in the kitchen, as if a grizzly bear had made a frenzied exit through the pantry. Water had flooded the lower shelves and the entire kitchen floor. Beach towels were set out to seep some of it up. Dara checked the faucet. Yeah, nothing. He had to turn the water off.

  For a moment she wondered about those people in the bar. What Johnny said about her being responsible…she was definitely responsible for this calamity in the kitchen. Were lives on her hands, too?

  Dara felt like passing out, not from lack of sleep, but from all the confusion gripping her. She entered the master bedroom. Maribel slept on the bed, breathing soundly. Careful not to make any noise, Dara shuffled into the bathroom. Her black blouse hung on the door frame, where she now remembered hanging it.

  That’s what happened. In the dream she imagined wearing the blouse already—stop this dream stuff, it can’t be what happened–and then when the dream ended, the illusion of the blouse ended. She’d never really put it on, just like there wasn’t an actual tunnel from the pantry to Shasta’s, but somehow it had been reality while it was happening. So the dream had left its mark.

  One of these Lifemares had happened to Luke at the pool. Frogmen? That’s what Frogmen do? She remembered thinking it. Hell, she remembered believing it.

  She had to ask Luke if he’d seen the bugs in his dream. But how could she ask that? He wouldn’t be responsive.

  A hand dropped on her shoulder, and she started. Luke stood there, eyes beet-red, face drooping. “I’m so freaking tired. Do you mind waiting for the plumber?”

  “No, honey, go ahead and lay down.”

  “Thank you. I love you. Sorry again about the interview.”

  Her eyes warmed with tears. Why was this happening to them? Why now? She’d been so close to breaking out of her shell, only to come to some psychotic episode?

  Oh, but it’s not. You have a plumber coming to prove its authenticity.

  And those Bone Men. Were they still down at Shasta’s? Probably not. Not everything had been accounted for once Luke had ended his dream…that must have meant he went through a black curtain too?

  Dara opened her mouth to ask, but as Luke lay down next to Maribel, he gestured feebly to the spot beside him. “Just for a second, okay?”

  She nodded and lay at his side. He wrapped his muscular arms around her and took Maribel’s hand and brought it up, so Dara could place hers over it. Dara never wanted to leave the safety of this moment. She might be losing her mind, or some cosmic disease had polluted reality, but she still valued this above all. She couldn’t lose these two people. They were everything to her.

  For now, she could only let this all sink in a little more. Hopefully she wouldn’t remember the ballad again. If she did, with any luck, the next reality wouldn’t bring any monsters with it, and she could stay here with her Luke and her Maribel, just like this, forever holding each other.

  Their bodies together as one, entwined.

  Chorus:

  He considered how the universe’s paradigm had changed.

  The playground was awash in primary colors and basic shapes. Without the world trapped under a Devil’s eye, the play-set would certainly catch Their hungry attention in this lush grassy field, the cherry-red ladders, the banana-yellow railings, the blueberry-blue flags, the avocado-green bastions. At present, nobody would look on this spot, however. The Eyes. Desire. To flee to brighter places.

  He’s caused this. They’ve all caused this. The faded wooden teeter-totter, which once sat unused while hordes of children enjoyed the swings and slides, now has become overwhelmed by purple bugs. Peering harder, They would spot two riders, before adverting their gaze. On one seat, an old black corpse overrun with maggots tied there with razorwire, and on the other seat, a man with a grinning horse face, gently pumping the contraption up and down (again again again; soft soft soft; in the dirt dirt dirt; mangy cloven feet mangy cloven feet mangy cloven feet). Their souls would warn them, it’s a way to have fun, whatever anybody else may say, it’s a way to have fun. Away from it, Their eyes must go. Of course.

  All but a single man, who sat on a bench overlooking it all. Eavesdropping—Lingering—Staring. Underneath the play-set, the clown-face tunnel stares back at him. How long has it been a pit to Hell? Wasn’t it just an hour ago that it led to a harmless place of playtime? Not an hour…a minute-year ago. The ballad, cumbersome as it was on his senses, did not completely diminish from his ears the idle tickling of the xylophone, or the hollering hyena kids murdering each other with love from the sincerest black beyond. Answers were nowhere; questions were yeswhere; his mind invested in confusion and the yields were amazing. Crawling, scraping things comingled with shadows dripping from their wounds and blood shrouding their deeds, according to his mangled eye-sight. He shrieks, chokes off a whimper. Quite expected. They are always doing that kind of thing.

  He asks, “Do you hear my voice down there? Stop it from coming again. I beg you…I don’t want to die. Hear that? Answer me! Just something! A sound. Promise me it won’t come here. I can’t take it one more time. My heart…won’t endure that. Please

  Verse 3: The Count

  Chapter 9

  Startled, Johnny fell off the sofa, startled by a metallic clatter in the garage.

  The clock on the DVD player said 9:17 pm. He couldn’t remember what it’d said when he came home from the bar, but he couldn’t have been asleep for more than an hour, dead tired as he felt.

  Something tinny settled on the ground in the garage. A cat might have got inside and knocked down some cans of spray paint, or a rat, or possum got in the trash—some damn thing. With everything he had, Johnny just wanted to make an excuse not to get up, to put his head back down and sleep off the crazy dream about the bar. The nightmare had lasted for a long time, in the scope of his mind’s eye, anyway; and he still felt creeped out by it. He’d probably only been dreaming for twenty minutes, but in the dream he’d nursed too many beers to count. Those from real life had his gut feeling like a bucket of steak knives.

  His eyelids bobbed, and he lowered his head, about to knock off again, and then a word got his blood running.

  U-Haul.

  “Oh, Christ.” He pawed at the coffee table for his glasses and then his phone. “Call U-haul,” he told the phone. After waiting a moment, it responded, “Find Carnegie Hall?”

  “Suck my dick,” he whispered and brought up his web browser. He found the number for the place off Alder Road. They closed at 10 pm.

  Head pounding, arms and legs quivering, Johnny Cruz put on his glasses and got up from the mildewed couch. He made for the garage and hoped that if an alley cat was lurking in there it hadn’t pissed on his leather jacket. He flipped on the florescent light. The rods fluttered, illuminating his garage. He halted, his mouth dropped.

  His Harley lay in pieces, meticulously, almost surgically dissected. Some part
s had finely drilled holes through them, and others had strange welds in the frame that at first glance didn’t appear natural. It was as though the motorcycle had been pulled apart to create something completely different, a piece of art perhaps, and then was promptly deconstructed again, left for dead.

  Johnny’s mind quickly supplied the answer. You had to get away from the Bone Men at the bar and an ordinary chopper wasn’t going to do the trick.

  He nodded and, as though to answer himself, said, “Yeah, I just wish I could have kept the other parts that made it so badass.”

  The clattering must have been all the parts sliding off a pile. He’d probably organized and stacked some of them (couldn’t remember, though). Good thing he was suspended from work. This damn thing was going to take a lot of TLC to put back together the way he liked it.

  Fuck, did his head ever hurt. To think he’d completely ignored Lou and drunk himself so silly he dreamt about Death- and Time-cocktails and spear-wielding tribesmen speaking like demons in his mind. They’d been real, right? The Bone Men?

  His mind again: doesn’t matter, you just had to get away, right?

  “Right,” he breathed and rubbed his nose, thinking for a second. A bus stopped up the street at around 9:30. He’d used it before. Looked like he would be using it again.

  Johnny put on the coat his ex-wife Lisa had gotten for him the year before they divorced. It was an old thing, not as stylish as his leather jacket, but he didn’t feel right getting rid of it. She’d been the mother of his child. The love of his life, really. His first wife, Mandy, had never come close. Lisa had been the one. It was harsh, but he guessed he was glad how things had turned out. He’d been lucky not to have been around when Lisa’s diabetes got the best of her. He wouldn’t have been as supportive as Charles Reinhardt, the great and wonderful professor and stepfather of the year.

  Johnny stroked the soft green sleeves of his jacket and wondered if something similar hung in Charles Reinhardt’s closet.