Miles To Go Before I Sleep

by Bentley Little

  She ran down the hospital corridor, away from her echoing voice; she passed a glass-walled room. It had been a nursery, but the cribs and cradles had been broken and overturned, the bedding shredded. The lights were off, but even with only a quick glance, she could see small unmoving bodies thrown about on the floor. Along the shelf next to the window were six or seven infants lined naked in a tow, facing away from the glass. Bloody triangle eyes and noses, wickedly grinning jack-o’-lantern mouths, had been carved into the backs of their bald baby heads.

  She ran faster, turned the corner, and there, standing before her, was the most terrifying creature she had ever seen, a monster in the shape of a man.

  Freddy.

  Freddy.

  She didn’t know how she knew his name, but she did.

  And, even worse, she knew what he wanted.

  She wanted to scream, wanted to cry, wanted to run away, wanted to disappear, but she could only remain rooted in place, staring at the . . . thing in front of her. Her heart pumped crazily in her chest, pounding so furiously that she thought it was going to burst.

  She almost wished it would burst.

  Freddy stood there, rocking slightly on his heels, hands clasped behind his back. His face was a grotesque patchwork of interlocking scar tissue. He stared at her with small cold eyes and smiled, revealing uneven rows of small strange baby teeth, browned from rot, blackened from fire. His thick tongue, rough below the surface sliminess, was blood red in the black hole of his mouth, and it slid suggestively over the flat patch of melted skin that should have been his lips. “Lisa,” he said, and his voice was a low inhuman growl. “I’ve been waiting for you. What took you so long?”

  He stepped forward, taking his hands from behind his back, and now she could see that the fingers of one hand were made out of razors, long shiny razors that glinted in the cold antiseptic hospital light. They clicked together with deadly precision. “I knew we’d run into each other one of these nights. One of these crazy old nights.”

  She smelled blood as he approached, blood and rot, and it was the smell more than anything else that gave her the courage to turn away from him and run.

  He laughed, a grating sound like sandpaper on steel wool, which built in intensity and echoed through the halls.

  She ran down one corridor, then another. Turned right, turned left. She sped around a blind corner—

  —and found herself in a huge room filled with metal pipes and rusty tanks and staggered rows of industrial machinery. She stopped running. The air was cold, damp, filled with a heavily oppressive atmosphere that owed nothing to the physical elements of its surroundings. Above her, from the cavernous ceiling, hung scores of clanking chains.

  Many of which ended in hooks.

  There was the sound of rhythmic pounding, a thunderous noise which increased in intensity, approaching, growing louder, getting closer, and beneath that another, quieter, yet far more frightening sound. The high-pitched screech of metal on metal.

  Razor fingers scratching against pipe.

  She wanted to run, wanted to hide, but the rows between the machines all looked the same, and she knew that Freddy could be hiding down any one of them. She took a deep breath and screamed as loud and long as she could.

  She was still screaming when she awoke from the dream.

  The nightmare was still with her when she walked out to breakfast. Ordinarily she forgot her dreams instantly upon awakening. Even the good ones, the ones she wanted to remember, the ones about Phil Hogan and the bear rug and the cabin in the pines, she could not seem to recall except in the vaguest possible way. But this nightmare was lodged in her consciousness and could not be displaced. She had even felt it returning last night as she’d started to drift back into sleep, and she’d forced herself to stay awake for the rest of the night to make sure she would not dream it again.

  Freddy.

  Before this, the name would probably have seemed goofy to her, slightly comical. She would have thought of the Flintstones, or perhaps that old record of her mother’s by Freddy and the Dreamers. But this morning the name seemed as ominous as it had in her nightmare, carrying with it connotations of violent perversity and death.

  She slid into her chair, took a sip from the glass of orange juice her father put in front of her, and started digging through the paper for the entertainment section.

  “Are you okay?” her father asked, concerned. It had been he who had arrived in her room first last night, he who had given her the first reassuring hug.

  She nodded tiredly. “Yeah.”

  “You didn’t have any more nightmares, did you?”

  She thought of telling him the truth, telling him that she hadn’t gone back to sleep again, but decided that she didn’t want to worry him. “No.”

  “That’s good.” He put a bowl, spoon, and box of cereal in front of her. “It’s catch as catch can this morning. I have to get to work early today. Do you want to come with me, or are Keith and Elena going to give you a ride again?”

  “I thought I’d ride with Cathy. Her mom’s going to let her borrow the T-Bird today.”

  “T-Bird, huh? You two better not go cruising for guys.”

  “At seven in the morning? Be serious, Daddy.”

  He grinned. “I’ll still be timing you.”

  Lisa poured herself some cereal, doused it with Sweet ’N’ Low and added some milk. Her father left the kitchen, and she found herself listening to the news on the radio. There was another flare-up in the Mideast, a failed coup in Latin America. Locally, six infants had died overnight at Lutheran General Hospital.

  She stopped chewing, remembering her dream.

  Jack-o’-lantern faces carved on round baby heads.

  The kitchen felt suddenly cold. She sat still, listening. The babies had died from what was being diagnosed as Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. However, the odds of six infants dying in one night from this mysterious killer were so astronomical as to be suspicious, and an investigation was being conducted.

  Lisa looked up and saw her father standing in the doorway. His face was pale and his mouth was hanging open as if in shock. The way in which he was standing, his posture, reminded her of something or someone, though she couldn’t quite—

  Freddy.

  Her breath caught in her throat. She looked up at her father’s face. Their eyes met, and she saw something in his glance that didn’t look familiar and that she didn’t like.

  She suddenly felt uncomfortable being alone with him in the kitchen, and was grateful when her mother walked in a moment later. She excused herself as quickly as possible, and after putting on her shoes and makeup and brushing her teeth, she hurried over to Cathy’s house.

  FIVE

  Ed sat in the maintenance office and stared at the blank wall before him.

  He was worried. He had heard the story about the infants on the news, and while he didn’t honestly think that crib deaths in a hospital on the other side of town had anything to do with him, he could not help thinking about the dream he’d had last night. He recalled with sickening clarity the details of his dream, the way he’d had fingers, long fingers, sharp fingers, and the way he’d happily demolished a hospital, joyously carving pumpkin faces on plump baby flesh. In the dream it had seemed fun, exciting, but he had been disgusted with himself upon awakening, frightened at the gruesomely morbid potential of his own imagination. It was as if he had been another person in the dream, not himself, although perhaps that was just his attempt to rationalize the brutality of his subconscious thoughts. He wondered what a psychiatrist would say about it.

  He continued to stare at the wall. There was something else too. Something that had to do with the dream. Something that was eluding the grasp of his waking mind. A girl? One of the high school students? He couldn’t recall. But there was a nagging note in the back of his brain, a feeling that the information he had forgotten was more important than what he had remembered.

  He thought of the expression he’d seen on L
isa’s face as they’d both listened to the news report, and that, more than anything else, worried and concerned him. She had looked at him as if she was afraid of him, as if she knew what he had dreamed and somehow blamed him for the deaths of the babies.

  But that was stupid, wasn’t it?

  Wasn’t it?

  There was a beep and a hiss of static as the intercom above the desk clicked into life. It was Nora Holman, the principal’s secretary. “Ed?” she said. “Are you there?”

  He pushed the speak button. “I’m here, Nora.”

  “There’s been some vandalism in Mr. Kinney’s office. Someone, I assume it was kids, threw a rock through his window last night. I already called the district and they’ll send someone out to replace the window sometime this morning, but I was wondering if you or Rudy could come in and clean up a little before the principal gets here. There’s glass everywhere, all over the floor, all over the desk, and the rock is lying on one of the chairs. You know how Mr. Kinney is . . .”

  Ed smiled. He knew how Mr. Kinney was, and he knew that if that office wasn’t in perfect shape before he arrived, or as near perfect as possible under the circumstances, he would take it out on Nora and whomever else he came into contact with during the day. “Don’t worry, Nora. I’ll be there in a minute.”

  “Thanks, Ed.”

  He stood up, pushed from his mind all thoughts of last night, and grabbed his broom.

  After work he found himself driving through the industrial section of town, maneuvering easily through the maze of rutted railroad-crossed streets as though he knew the area, as though he had been here before. He had not been here before, had never really seen this area at all except as a dirty series of blocks to the right of the freeway, but now he traveled down the roads and alleys between the massive buildings, driving back and forth, forth and back, looking for something.

  He did not know what he was looking for, but he knew he’d recognize it when he came to it.

  He drove past an aluminum recycling plant and what looked like a wrecking yard, then pulled the car over to the edge of the curb and stopped. He stared out the window at the building next to him. It was new, recently constructed, not yet in use, but the contours of its form against the gradually setting sun seemed somehow familiar. Familiar and friendly.

  He got out of the car, stretched his legs. There was something welcoming about the structure, something that made him feel warm and good, and he found himself walking up the unfinished and partially paved walkway toward the entrance. The front doors, smoked glass with the factory stickers still on them, were locked, but he’d expected that, and he walked through the small side parking lot, turned the corner of the building and found what he was looking for—a small metal door deep set in the concrete wall. He tried the door, and it opened.

  Inside, the building was dark, but his feet propelled him forward, moving instinctively through the huge open room and down a short flight of stairs. He walked through an empty room with white walls; through another, smaller room piled high with unopened crates; past a working air-conditioning unit bolted to the floor; then up a series of metal steps, where he stopped.

  Here.

  Ed looked around. He was in a boiler room, a cavernous chamber filled with hissing steam and rumbling equipment. Everything about him was familiar, the smells, the sounds, the way the shrouded sun shone through the dirty skylight. The building was new, recently constructed, but the boiler room looked old, seemed worn-in, and he thought that he had never seen a place that was at once so forbiddingly industrial and so cozily intimate. He looked around, feeling happy, feeling good.

  He walked around a propane storage tank and stopped in front of a trash incinerator. He touched the warm metal lovingly. It felt just the way he remembered. His fingers sought and found a series of crude indentations. It was here, he remembered, that he had carved his name with the fingers: Freddy.

  And the names of the little children he had loved.

  Ed stepped back, shook his head, frowning. What was this crap? His name was not Freddy. And he had never been here before in his life.

  He glanced around, confused. What the hell was he doing inside this building? If someone caught him here, he could be arrested for breaking and entering. How would he explain that to Barbara and Lisa?

  He turned, intending to leave, to get out as quickly as possible, but his eyes alighted on a hook hanging from a chain attached to a metal crossbeam in the ceiling. He reached out, touched the hook, felt a delicious shiver pass through his body.

  He wished he’d brought the glove.

  He blinked. The glove. What the hell had he done with that thing? Hadn’t he turned it in to Mr. Kinney? He had intended to give it to the principal, but he could not remember having actually done so. He looked about him. Why was he still here? Why was he still inside this building?

  He hurried out of the boiler room and, through a quick trial-and-error process, found his way out of the factory. He stepped into the cool night air.

  Cool night air?

  Sure enough, the sun was down, the moon was up, the stars were twinkling. He looked down at his watch and was startled to see that it was eight forty-five.

  He’d been in the building for three hours.

  He ran around the corner of the building and across the small parking lot toward the street, frightened.

  Barbara was waiting for him when he arrived. Twin expressions of anger and worry were mingled on her face, but at the moment she saw him, anger gained the upper hand. “Where the hell have you been?” she demanded. “I was about to call the police.”

  He’d been thinking of an answer all the way home, a believable answer, but had come up with nothing. “I was out driving,” he said.

  “Driving?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You couldn’t call and tell me where you were or why you were going to be late?” She did not wait for him to answer. “Driving where?”

  “Around.” He looked over her shoulder, saw Lisa standing in the living room. She was staring at him strangely, frowning, her face worried. He smiled at her reassuringly.

  “Daddy?” she said.

  “Mmmm?”

  “Where did you get that sweater?”

  The sweater again. He looked down at his chest, smoothed the bunched material. He hadn’t realized that he was wearing the sweater. He didn’t usually wear the same clothes two days in a row. “I think your mother bought it for me. Why?”

  “I never bought it,” Barbara said.

  He looked at her, then turned back toward his daughter. “Why?” he repeated.

  “I don’t know. It just . . . reminds me of something.”

  “What?”

  She shook her head, tried to smile, failed. “Nothing.”

  “I never bought that ugly sweater,” Barbara said. “I wouldn’t let you buy that ugly sweater. You must’ve had it before you met me.” She glared at him. “So why were you ‘driving around’?”

  He pushed tiredly past her. “Let’s talk about it inside. I’m hungry. I need something to eat.”

  Barbara slammed the door behind him.

  Both Barbara and Lisa went to sleep early, Barbara angry, Lisa afraid. He sat alone in the living room, watching TV. Something was happening here. Something wasn’t right. He could understand Barbara’s anger. It was legitimate and totally justified. But he could not understand his own bizarre behavior, and Lisa’s fear frightened him. She seemed to be afraid to stay in the same room with him. What the hell was this?

  A commercial came on, and he walked into the kitchen to get himself something to drink. He took a glass from the cupboard and looked down at the top of the counter next to the sink. Lisa had come in here earlier and apparently made herself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. There was a peanut-butter-smeared knife lying on the counter next to three parallel lines of strawberry jelly which had obviously dripped over the edge of the bread.

  He stood there unmoving, glass in hand, staring at the j
elly. Those lines on the counter reminded him of something, something that hovered just below the tip of his consciousness, something he could almost but not quite remember. He stared at the lines. They looked like—

  —bloody slashes on skin.

  He frowned. Why had he thought of that? He swallowed hard and wondered for the first time if there might really be something wrong with him. Violent dreams, violent thoughts, blackouts? This sure as hell seemed serious. He thought of Barbara’s uncle Joseph, who had thought that aliens were spying on him from inside of his television. They’d thought that he was crazy, that he might have to be committed, but the doctor said that Uncle Joseph’s delusions were caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain, and he had prescribed medicine that had taken care of the problem.

  He hoped there was an explanation that simple for what was happening to him.

  He looked down again at the jelly on the counter and saw—

  —razor cuts.

  What the hell was the matter with him? He forced himself to stare at the lines, trying to see them in a different light, a more innocent light, but the horrible image was in his brain and he could not make it go away. Angrily, he wiped up the jelly and threw the dishrag into the sink. He got his drink and walked back out to the living room, troubled.

  SIX

  After band practice Cathy drove home, turning off Lincoln onto Elm.

  But her house wasn’t there.

  She slowed the car, peering out the windshield. Her house might be there, but she sure as heck couldn’t find it because all of the homes on the street looked exactly the same: white two-story wood-frame structures with green trim and picket fences. She drove slowly down the street, looking for mailboxes, for children’s toys, for house numbers, for something that would allow her to differentiate one from another, but the similarities seemed to be exact.

  She began to feel afraid. Outside, the houses looked cheerful, but underneath that surface brightness lay something dark and defiantly wild, something that made her feel nervous and profoundly uncomfortable. She stared at the houses as she drove past, and their facades suddenly seemed to her like false fronts, pretty pictures covering sites of rot and decay.