He was still standing by the door when his decision was made for him. He saw nobody and heard nothing, but suddenly he caught the strong raw smell of gasoline, as if somebody had splashed it all around the room. He sniffed, and sniffed again. The smell was so strong that it burned his throat and made his eyes water.
Then – without any warning at all, the woman on the bed exploded into flames. A wave of heat seared Lincoln’s face and he stumbled backward, lifting up his hand to shield his eyes. Within seconds, the whole mattress was blazing like a bonfire. Lincoln tried to edge closer, but the heat was so intense that he couldn’t get anywhere near enough to drag the woman off the bed. Lurid orange flames licked right up to the ceiling and the bedroom rapidly began to fill up with whirling sparks and billowing brown smoke.
Although she was burning from head to foot, the woman didn’t move, or cry out, so Lincoln guessed that she must have died a few minutes before when she had closed her eyes. But in any case there was no time to think of trying to save her. The linoleum flooring was ablaze, spitting and shriveling as it burned, and he knew that he had to get out of the bedroom somehow or he was going to die, too – and in only a few seconds. Fifteen years ago, his uncle and his aunt and his four cousins had all died in a house fire in Brightmoor. They had been overwhelmed by toxic smoke in less than two minutes, huddled together behind a front door that they hadn’t had the strength to open.
Lincoln pulled out his handkerchief, folded it into a pad, and pressed it against his nose and his mouth. Then – keeping as low as he could – he crouched his way toward the bathroom. In spite of the fire, he was still reluctant to climb out of the window, in case he could never climb back. He reasoned that he could break open the bathroom window if he needed ventilation, and there was plenty of water there, too.
He pushed his way through the bathroom door and quickly slammed it shut behind him. Then he dragged the soggy towel across the floor and wedged it underneath the door to keep the smoke out. He stood for a while with both hands pressed against the wall, coughing and wheezing. He was still shocked and bewildered by the way in which the Hispanic-looking woman had appeared as if from nowhere, and the way in which she had abruptly caught fire. He had smelled gasoline in the seconds before the bed had exploded, for sure, but where had it come from?
He turned around, with his back to the wall, trying to suppress his coughing. If smoke started to seep into the bathroom, he guessed that he could balance on the edge of the bath, break open the window and squeeze his way out. The window frame was just about wide enough. But for all he knew it was a sheer three-story drop out there, and even if he managed to escape uninjured, would he ever be able to climb back in again?
Maybe this is nothing but a nightmare, he thought. Maybe I was overtired and I went to bed and I’m simply dreaming all this. It can’t be happening. It’s impossible.
He reached out cautiously and touched the brass door-handle. It was already too hot for him to hold, and the door panels were growing warmer, as well. He began to think that he had made the wrong decision, shutting himself in the bathroom. At least there had been a fire escape outside the bedroom window, no matter what reality it might have led him into.
He was sweating now, and he wiped his forehead with his shirtsleeve. As he did so, he heard a shuffling noise inside the shower stall. He had seen a dark shape inside it before, but he had assumed that it was nothing but a combination of dirt and shadows. Now he could see that it was moving. Something inside the shower stall was alive.
‘Who’s that?’ he called out. ‘Come out here where I can see you!’
There was no answer, and he felt too foolish to call out a second time, in case it was nothing but an optical illusion, or maybe an animal that had gotten itself trapped – a dog or a cat or a raccoon. But then the shower stall door was pushed open with a reverberating shudder, and a man stepped out of it. Lincoln opened and closed his mouth, and coughed, but he couldn’t find the breath inside him to speak.
The man was tall – at least as tall as Lincoln, and maybe an inch or two more – but he was also very thin, with arms and legs that were disproportionately long. He was wearing a black tuxedo with a black silk vest underneath it, and a black shirt with a black bow-tie. His hair was white and ragged and almost shoulder length. What alarmed Lincoln about him the most, however, was his face. It was very pale gray, like a face in a black-and-white photograph, and it was blurred, as if he had moved when he was having his photograph taken. Lincoln could make out the dark smudges of his eyes, and the upward-sloping curve of his lips, but that was all. The rest of his features seemed to be permanently out of focus.
‘I warned you not to come, now, didn’t I?’ the man told him, hoarsely. ‘You would not listen to me, though, would you? You out-and-out refused to listen.’
‘Who are you?’ Lincoln demanded. ‘What the hell is going on here?’
‘Things that are no concern of yours, Lincoln. Things that you would have been wiser to stay ignorant of. But of course it is much too late now, isn’t it? You have come here, in spite of the fact that I specifically asked you not to, and you have witnessed what you have witnessed. And I cannot risk anybody interfering in what I am doing here. Not you. Nobody.’
‘But there’s a woman dead out there!’ Lincoln protested. ‘There’s a woman dead out there and the whole goddamned bedroom is on fire! It isn’t even my bedroom! And this sure as hell isn’t my bathroom, either!’
The gray-faced man tapped his forehead. ‘It is the power of the mind, Lincoln, that is what it is. It is the power of the human imagination, unbridled by consciousness. The power of dreams.’
‘I don’t understand one goddamned word of what you’re talking about,’ Lincoln told him. ‘I don’t want to know, either. All’s I know is, I want to be back in my real hotel room, back in my real reality.’
The gray-faced man shook his head so that his ratty white hair swung from side to side. ‘Not possible, Lincoln. You would speak to people and those people would not necessarily understand what I am doing here, but they could well speak to other people who do understand, and then it would be mayhem.’ He paused, and then he said, ‘“Mayhem,” from the Anglo-Saxon word meaning to maim, or to seriously injure.’
Behind Lincoln, the bathroom door cracked loudly as the heat from the bedroom split the wood. Without any further hesitation, the gray-faced man reached into the shower stall and took out a long cross-cut saw. He lifted it up in front of Lincoln’s face and took hold of the end of the blade, so that he could flex it one way and then the other.
‘See this, Lincoln? The tool of my trade. Fine Pennsylvania steel with champion-pattern teeth. Cuts through anything, this beauty, faster than any chainsaw.’
Lincoln said nothing, but backed away as far as he could. The gray-faced man came after him, still flexing the saw blade so that it went whoop – whoop – whoop.
‘You cannot say that I did not give you fair warning, Lincoln,’ said the gray-faced man. He was much closer now, and Lincoln found it even more disconcerting than ever that his features were so blurred. It was just as if his face were shaped out of nothing but fog.
‘You stay away from me,’ said Lincoln. ‘If you take even one step closer—’
‘You will do what, exactly? Scream like a girl, like they all do? They all scream, you know, every one of them! They howl like bitches, men and women both! I have never known a single one of them suffer in silence. It is against human nature.’
He stopped flexing the saw, and then without any hesitation at all he slashed it diagonally across Lincoln’s right shoulder. It cut through Lincoln’s shirt and into his deltoid muscle, almost a half inch deep, and Lincoln could actually hear his flesh rip. Blood sprayed down his arm, all the way to his elbow, and spattered across his cuff.
He crashed backward against the bathroom door and tried to grab the gray-faced man’s wrist, but the gray-faced man yanked the saw vertically downward and its irregular teeth tore into Lincoln’s kn
uckles. Lincoln pushed him, hard, with both hands, and the gray-faced man staggered backward, but at the same time the edge of the saw almost took Lincoln’s right thumb off. Suddenly there was blood flying everywhere, like a scarlet blizzard.
Neither of them spoke as the gray-faced man came for Lincoln again, swishing the saw blade from side to side as if it were a saber. Lincoln thought: he’s going to kill me. He’s going to cut off my fingers and cut my face apart and then he’s going to cut my fucking head off.
There was only one way to escape. As the gray-faced man came closer, he reached across and took hold of the bathroom door-handle. The handle was so hot that it blistered his fingers instantly, and he shouted out ‘Aahhhh! Shit!’ The wet towel was tangled underneath it but he pulled the door open as wide as he could, keeping himself shielded behind it as he did so.
With a roar like a ravenous lion, a huge orange fireball rolled into the bathroom, hungry for all the oxygen that it could devour. The gray-faced man lost his balance and stumbled backward, colliding with the shower stall and cracking the glass. He didn’t lose his grip on his saw, however, and the instant the fireball had dissipated he came for Lincoln again, slashing the saw blade even more violently so that it whistled and sang as it cut its way through the air.
‘They all scream, Lincoln!’ he repeated, in that thick, hoarse voice. ‘They all scream, every one of them! They howl like bitches! And you, Lincoln – you will be no exception!’
Lincoln wrenched the bathroom door even wider. The bedroom was filled with dense brown smoke now, and through the smoke he could see flames dancing like demons dancing in hell. The heat was overwhelming but he knew that he had no choice. He took a deep breath and plunged right into the inferno, keeping his hands held high to protect his face.
‘Fool!’ screamed the gray-faced man. ‘You really think you can get away?’
The gray-faced man started to come after him, slashing at the smoke, but Lincoln had managed to find his way to the window. He twisted the catch, burning his fingers again, and heaved the window upward.
Immediately, a huge rush of cold air blew into the bedroom, sprinkled with raindrops. With a deep whoomph! the flames jumped up like a fiery Mexican wave, and the gray-faced man temporarily disappeared behind them. Lincoln felt the heat on the side of his face and he could smell his own hair burning, but he climbed out of the window on to the fire escape and dragged down the window behind him. As he did so, he could see the gray-faced man through the flames, with his cross-cut saw still lifted, as if to warn him that this wasn’t over yet.
Lincoln looked over the railing. Three stories below him, a narrow alley ran between this building and a derelict warehouse next door, crowded with broken crates and empty window-frames and overflowing trash cans. He grasped the wet handrail and started to make his way down. It was too late now to worry what reality this might be, and if he would ever be able to return. As far as he was concerned he was lucky just to be alive.
He had only just started going down the second storey when one of the metal treads gave way beneath him. His left foot plunged through the gap, right up to the ankle, and the broken tread fell all the way down to the alley, bouncing and clanging when it reached the ground. He lurched forward, grabbing both handrails to stop himself from falling, but then the next tread gave way, and the next, and then the entire section of fire escape on which he was standing came tearing away from the wall.
He didn’t know why he continued to grip the handrails, because the whole structure was plummeting into the alley, but there was nothing else for him to hold on to. He wasn’t aware of any sound, no banging or clattering, although the noise of the collapsing fire escape must have been a deafening cacophony of falling metal.
All he heard was the rush of air in his ears as he dropped toward the alley below him, as if he were an angel dropping from a great height. He didn’t even hear himself hitting the ground.
FOUR
Rooms 237 and 239
Kieran was sitting up in bed watching Paranormal Activity and eating handfuls of chili peanuts when Kiera came in through the connecting door in her bright pink knee-length pajamas.
She climbed on to the bed next to him and said, ‘What are you watching this crap for? You have enough trouble sleeping without watching scary movies.’
Kieran clapped another handful of peanuts against his mouth. ‘It’s good. It’s all about this girl who thinks she’s being stalked by this demon and she can’t get away from it.’
‘The same way that I am, you mean, by Mickey Veralnik?’
‘Mickey Veralnik isn’t a demon. He’s just a crappy two-bit pain-in-the-ass promoter. You shouldn’t pay him any mind.’
‘But he’s always there, right in my face, isn’t he? When has he ever missed one single concert? Or one single promotion? Or one single TV special? Don’t tell me he won’t be sitting in the front row tomorrow night. I’m sick of the sight of him grinning at me and giving me those winks and those little finger-waves. And those endless text messages. “Kiera I know you’re a twin but you’re the true star! You could shine so much more brightly if you only dumped your brother and let me handle your meteoric rise to fame and fortune!”’
Kieran shrugged. ‘Maybe you should go solo. You always sang a hundred times better than me.’
Kiera scruffed up his thick blond hair and gave his shoulder a shove. ‘We’re the Kaiser Twins, stupid! And even if I did split up with you, I wouldn’t let Mickey Veralnik handle me. I mean, like, yuck! That comb-over! And bad breath or what?’
Kieran continued to chew for a while. Then he said, ‘What if I was to split up with you?’
‘What do you mean? You don’t seriously want to split up with me, do you?’
‘I don’t know. Yes. No. I guess I’m just bushed, that’s all. All this fricking traveling. I don’t even know which city we’re supposed to be in.’
‘Cleveland, Ohio. Tomorrow we open at the State Theater at Playhouse Square for three alternate nights and then we’re off to not-so-sunny Cincinnati.’
‘Cleveland. Jesus. To think we got famous to wind up in Cleveland – the Mistake on the Lake. If that’s not a fricking paradox, I don’t know what is.’
The twins sat on the bed in silence for a while. They were seventeen-and-a-half years old, although Kiera was actually older than Kieran by thirty-one minutes. They had blond hair and faces that were almost ethereally good-looking, with wide green eyes and straight Grecian noses and sensual lips. Their manager Lois Schulz often said that they reminded her of the very young Elvis Presley and his twin Jessie – ‘Well, they would if Jessie had been a girl instead of a boy, and if he hadn’t been stillborn.’ Lois often came out with remarks like that.
In actual fact they looked like their mother Jenyfer Kaiser, who had died of an apparent stroke only two hours after giving birth to them. Their father Jim had raised them as if they were the most precious children on earth – and to him, of course, they had been. They were the living reminder of the woman he had loved so much and lost.
Kieran and Kiera had always sung songs together, ever since they were very small. They used to swing on their swing set at the end of their yard in Brentwood, harmonizing Puff, The Magic Dragon. To them, singing together was as natural as talking. When they were sixteen Lois had heard them singing in their high school musical Grease and had persuaded their father to let her take them on. Within two months they had appeared on America’s Got Talent and won rapturous applause from the audience, and the day after their sixteenth birthday they had been signed by Sony. Their first album Kaiser Twins had reached number nine on the Billboard Top 100.
‘I don’t know why you think this movie is so scary,’ said Kiera, frowning at the TV. ‘Ghosts never hurt people, do they? Not real ghosts.’
‘That old bum was scary,’ Kieran reminded her. ‘That one we saw on Santa Monica Boulevard.’
‘Well, kind of. But he didn’t actually do anybody any real harm, did he? Just stepping right out in fr
ont of cars like that.’
‘He could have caused a serious accident.’
‘Only in somebody’s pants.’
Kieran gave his sister a wry smile and shook his head. ‘What time do they want us for the run-through tomorrow?’
‘Early. Seven at the latest. Lois wants us to make some changes. She wants us to finish up with Magic Mirror instead of I Love The World And The World Loves Me. She thinks it’s much more upbeat and the audience always sing along so we can make it into a really grand finale. She’s even hired a twelve-piece horn section.’
‘Jesus. I don’t know why she doesn’t go the whole hog and bring in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.’
‘Oh, come on, Kieran, it’s going to be amazing. There’s going to be hundreds more mirrors, too, so the whole stage is going to be sparkling.’
Kieran smacked the chili powder from his hands. ‘You love all of this, don’t you?’
‘What, and you don’t?’
‘Sure I do. I just don’t want to spend the rest of my life singing I Love The World And The World Loves Me, over and over and over, until I’m about a hundred-and-eleven years old. At some time in my life I want to do something important – something that really makes a difference.’
‘Our singing makes a difference. We make millions of people happy, don’t we?’
‘Pizza makes millions of people happy, but that doesn’t mean it’s important. If you woke up tomorrow and nobody had ever heard of pizza, what difference would it make? Same with us.’
‘So what do you want to do? Run for the White House?’
‘I don’t know. I can’t describe it exactly, but I feel like I have this destiny waiting for me.’
The Ninth Nightmare Page 5
