My eyes popped open. My back was tight and my stomach was in mid-growl. Had I fallen asleep? If I had, something had jolted me awake in a less than normal manner. I lay there a moment, listening, eyes staring at the faded ceiling and numerous hairline cracks traversing the plaster.
The weather had grown worse from the sounds. Wind whipped angrily outside, rattled the windows. My eyes immediately darted to the source of the sound, and although I recognized the cause it bothered me nonetheless.
Another sound crept in from the den, only this time I wasn’t certain wind had been the culprit. I remained perfectly still and strained to listen, but all I heard was the wind and rain. “Hello?”
I wondered if Toni had locked the door on her way out. She usually did, why would this time be any different? Yet something didn’t seem right. I didn’t feel alone. Slowly, I pushed myself up into a sitting position and slid down to the foot of the bed. “Toni?” I called. “Toni, are you home?”
I sat quietly for a few seconds. Although I heard no other noises, the relaxation portion of my day had clearly come and gone. I stood up; reached for the towel I’d brought with me and wrapped it around my waist. The bedroom door was slightly ajar, just enough to reveal a sliver of the den beyond, and as I moved silently across the carpeted floor, I suddenly realized what was wrong.
Due to the weather it was much darker than normal, and Toni had left lights on in the den and kitchen. Lights I didn’t remember shutting off before getting into the shower. “Hello?” A chill caused my body to visibly shudder.
And then the phone rang.
I nearly jumped out of my skin, staggered back and scrambled around the end of the bed to the phone on the nightstand. The receiver was in my hand and pressed to my ear before it could ring a second time.
“Alan,” a voice on the other end sobbed. “Alan, I—”
“Donald?”
“Alan, I’m…”
“What’s wrong?” I stared at the door. “Where are you?”
“I’m home,” he said, voice cracking. “I’m sorry, I’ve been drinking.”
“It’s OK. Listen, let me call you back in—”
“I wanted to say something today, I wanted to, but—”
“Listen—”
“I couldn’t do it, I just—Alan, I’m having nightmares.”
I nodded into the phone. “It’ll be all right. I’ve—”
“You’ve had it too, haven’t you?”
Something in his tone caught my attention, shifted it from the darkened den to the sound of his voice. “It?”
“The nightmare you can’t get out of your mind, that won’t leave you alone.”
I could hear him crying, sobbing openly, and I knew he was not only drunk but utterly terrified. “I’ve had a nightmare.”
“Did Bernard say goodbye to you in it? Were those things with him?”
My grip tightened on the phone and my legs trembled so violently I thought I might collapse. “How—How the hell do you know that?”
“I’m scared, Alan. Christ, I’m so fucking scared.”
“How did you know that?”
“They never said anything but I knew—I know—just like you, I know what it was all about. They were taking him to Hell. There’s more to this than we know. Why were they taking him to Hell, Alan? Why would they take Bernard to—”
“Answer me, goddamn it! How did you know!”
Donald gagged and coughed. “Because that’s the only difference between our nightmares,” he said in a near whisper. “In mine, Bernard told me he’d been to see you first.”
* * *
I sped through the streets of town ignoring the black clouds perched overhead, the rain, and a level of darkness generally reserved for the dead of night. My mind raced, my palms were moist with perspiration, and I felt an odd detachment, as if I were more a passive observer of the reality surrounding me than an active participant in it.
Donald’s cottage was less than two miles from our apartment and located in a small settlement of mostly summer cabins nestled into a heavily wooded bluff overlooking the largest stretch of beach in town. I turned onto the dirt road and followed it through the forest. In summer, this corner of Potter’s Cove was bustling with campers and summer people, the cottages occupied, yards cluttered with lawn furniture and barbecues, people young and old following the dirt paths down to the beach while music played from boom boxes and car radios. But the summer season was still a couple months away, and as the area only housed a handful of year-round residents, most cottages were boarded up and abandoned. A seasonal ghost town of sorts, in dismal weather and at this time of year, it seemed a fitting location for recalling the past and exorcising the demons found there.
I pulled up in front of Donald’s cottage. His old Volkswagen was parked in a narrow side driveway, and faint light bled through the sheer curtains in the front windows.
The front door was open, so I gave a quick knock and let myself in, stepping directly into the living room. It was modestly furnished and somewhat disheveled, and it hadn’t occurred to me until that moment just how long it had been since I’d visited Donald at home. Magazines and paperbacks were strewn about, overflowing ashtrays, crumpled cigarette packs and empty vodka bottles littered most available coffee or end table space, and although the small kitchen at the rear of the cottage was clean, other than for the refrigerator, it was obviously seldom used. The bathroom and bedroom constituted the remaining area. Both were quiet and dark.
A television in the corner was on but muted, which explained the sparse light, and in a recliner on the opposite side of the room Donald had collapsed in a drunken heap, an ashtray balanced precariously on his knee, an empty bottle of vodka on the floor just beyond his dangling hand. His other hand still clutched the phone, which had since gone from dial tone to an annoying buzz. I pulled it free and hung it up. His eyelids fluttered a bit, then I noticed the cigarette he’d apparently been smoking when he’d nodded off had burned well into the filter and was still smoldering on the lip of the ashtray. “Christ,” I sighed, butting it out, “one of these days you’re going to burn this place down with you in it.”
His eyes opened, and he struggled to raise his head. “Alan.”
“You all right, man?”
Dry, chapped lips parted slowly. “I don’t know,” he said groggily. “Are you?”
I crouched next to the recliner. “How could we have the same dream?”
His eyes rolled about for a moment, then he blinked rapidly and seemed to focus somewhat. “I never believed in an afterlife, Alan, you know that. I…I never believed in any of it. You did but not me, not me…But…but this—I don’t…I don’t understand what’s happening.” He tried to sit up and nearly passed out. He wouldn’t be conscious much longer. His bottom lip quivered. “I don’t even quite know why but I…I’m frightened.”
“So am I.” I looked at the near-hysteria in his bloodshot eyes and wondered if mine looked the same. “It’ll be all right. There’s a reasonable explanation, we just have to find it.”
“You didn’t have to come over, I—I shouldn’t have called you like that, I…I’m sorry I—”
“Take it easy, man, it’s all right.” Past experience with Donald’s binges told me he’d only have limited memory of all this anyway.
He struggled to smile, but the alcohol and exhaustion took him, leaving him slumped forward in deep sleep.
I grabbed an old afghan from the back of the couch and gently covered him with it, then went to the phone and dialed our apartment. Toni answered on the second ring.
“It’s me.”
“Where are you?”
“I had to come over to Donald’s for a minute.”
“Is everything all right?”
“He had a little too much to drink, just wanted to make sure he was OK.”
“Something new.” When I offered no response, she said, “I thought you’d be here when I got back from the store.”
“So did I
.” An old black and white movie flickering from the TV set distracted me. “I’ll be home in a few minutes, all right? Just heading out now.”
I quickly tidied up the living room and brought the ashtrays into the kitchen. As I emptied them into the wastebasket, I noticed the stack of pictures Rick had found in Bernard’s duffel bag fanned out across the counter. They looked as if they’d been frantically shuffled through several times. The photograph of the woman none of us knew was on top. I don’t know why, but I tucked it into my jacket pocket and returned to the living room.
Though Donald was out cold he was breathing normally. Even in alcohol-induced sleep his face bore an emotional torment that never fully left his expression, but he looked about as peaceful as he was likely to get.
Satisfied he’d be all right I quietly headed for the door.
* * *
The aroma of roasting chicken wafted about the apartment, reminding me I hadn’t eaten since the day before, and that, coupled with a lack of sleep and the events of the day thus far, had left me in a less than jovial mood.
While Toni prepared a salad to go with dinner, I took up position at the kitchen table and explained the situation as best I could. Donald and I had somehow shared a nightmare, and even before we realized we’d had the same dream, it had taunted us both as much while we’d been awake as it had in the throes of sleep. She listened patiently; refraining from comment until I’d finished. For what seemed an eternity, she sliced a cucumber and added it to the bed of lettuce, nibbling her bottom lip throughout, a signal I had come to recognize meant she did in fact have a response but was thinking it through before voicing it. Eventually, she looked over at me, brow knit. “Alan, when Dad died I had that dream about him, remember? And a few days later when I spoke to my mother I found out she’d dreamt about him too.”
“This is different,” I insisted. “You both had dreams—but you didn’t have the same dream.”
“Honey, neither did you and Donald.”
“I’m telling you—”
“Listen,” she said, “in my dream my father came to me, talked with me and told me everything would be all right. The dream Mom had was essentially the same. He came to her, they talked, he promised he was fine and everything was going to be OK. It’s the same with you and Donald. You were both close to Bernard, you both dreamed of him in very similar ways, as if he were contacting you. It’s not an uncommon occurrence at all. People dream of loved ones after they die all the time, particularly soon after death.”
“This isn’t the same thing, this—”
“Have you spoken to Rick about it?”
“No, not about this specifically, but I doubt—”
“Maybe the dreams people have—yours included—really are those who have died making contact. Was it really my father who came to me in that dream? I’d like to think so—it’s comforting—and I believe in an afterlife, so assuming that’s true, why would a visitation through dreams be outside the realm of possibility? It wouldn’t.” She smiled. “Maybe that was the only way Bernard could say goodbye.”
“Fine. Then if that’s true why couldn’t we have had the same dream?”
“Essentially, you did.”
“Not essentially.”
Toni smiled. “Alan, first of all Donald’s account is unreliable because of his condition. When someone drinks the way he does you can’t—”
“It’s not like I told him about my dream and in some drunken stupor he claimed to have had the same one. I never even brought it up. Donald told me about the nightmare first—and before I said anything he already knew I’d had the same one.”
“OK, then what did he say when he described the nightmare? What were his exact words?”
I stared at her; already aware of the direction in which her questions were headed, and suddenly skeptical of my own certainty. “He mentioned a few particulars that sounded exactly the same as my dream,” I said, “but I didn’t question him on every little detail.”
“Well, there you go.” She raised her hands, palms up, then let them fall and slap against the outside of her thighs. “You both had a dream where Bernard came to visit you. In both, he wasn’t alone. In both, he had come to say goodbye, and in Donald’s he said he had gone to see you. Is that the size of it or did I leave something out from what you’ve told me?”
“No,” I sighed, “that’s it.”
“Just like lots of other people, you had similar dreams. Similar, Alan, not identical—and I’m not saying that isn’t sometimes a little unsettling in itself—but there’s nothing unique or even unusual about it.” She returned to the counter to fuss with the salad. “Besides, when you two discussed this Donald was blasted out of his mind. Add to that the fact that you’re exhausted and haven’t slept or eaten and the two of you are still dealing with the shock and stress and emotional turmoil of the death of someone you loved, and you’ve got a situation that would almost certainly blur your sense of what’s real—or more importantly, accurate—and what isn’t.”
“You’re—yeah, I guess you’re right. It’s just…” I shook my head both in confusion and in the hopes of clearing it a bit. “Neither of us had a good feeling about it. It wasn’t like a nice, reassuring dream. This was a nightmare.”
“Well if one of your best friends was dead in it, of course it’s a nightmare, sweetie.”
“That’s not what I mean.” I was wringing my hands without even realizing it; my palms had again begun to perspire. “There was a darkness to it, a sense of—I know this sounds silly, but—a sense of evil to it. It was like Bernard was going to Hell.”
Toni covered the salad with plastic foil and slid it into the refrigerator. “Honey, Bernard committed suicide, and it was a total shock to you guys. What’s worse, he didn’t even leave a note explaining or maybe shedding some light on why he did it. It’s a horrible and hideous and painful thing.” She looked at me, compassion in her eyes. “You probably feel some guilt—which is wrong but inevitable—and you have confusion and anger and God knows how many other emotions all boiling to the surface at once. What happened is a dark and evil thing, and you’re dealing with it, working through it, trying to make sense of it. That’s all, Alan—and that’s enough—but that’s all.”
Something similar to a smile twitched across my lips. “Not bad.”
“Can’t work for a shrink for ten years and not learn a couple things.” She grinned, but it left her quickly. “Death is a huge factor in a lot of the cases Gene sees.”
Toni worked as a secretary for a psychiatrist in town with a private practice, and had learned quite a bit about human nature in her tenure there. Unlike my rent-a-cop gig, which I loathed, she had a job she genuinely enjoyed, where she got along with and was respected by her boss. Still, if there had ever been a person who should have continued their education beyond high school, it was Toni. She’d always had tremendous interest in psychology, and though I’d encouraged her to take some courses over the years, she never had. Whatever small bit of extra money we had always went directly into the “house fund,” a savings account she’d set up right after our honeymoon. It grew at such an anemic rate we were consistently three or four hundred years away from ever owning a home, but she never closed it out or lost faith. In many ways it reminded me of our marriage, and why despite our failings, she remained with me.
Certainly her physical beauty had lured me originally, and although we were the same age she looked considerably younger than I did and had maintained not only her figure but a good deal of the vibrancy of her teenage years. Still, her visceral advantages aside, it was the genuine connection between us that kept our relationship afloat. I knew better than anyone that I had not become the provider she’d expected—that I was trapped in the same lowly security guard job I’d held since right after high school—and that after twelve years of marriage odds were I probably wouldn’t ever do anything else. For Toni, that was a realization she had accepted and learned to deal with long before I had, and at the
end of the proverbial day, she’d chosen to stay.
It was something neither of us had ever voiced, but we were both somewhat disappointed in each other, in the often-monotonous routine our lives had become and in the robotic patterns we executed day in and day out. But there was comfort here, safety, trust, and there was something to be said for those things. Familiarity and reliability had replaced the passion that weakened after the first few years of marriage, and instead of panting lovers we were steady companions, friends, sound and dependable roommates who now and then made love, as if mistakenly.
“Not everyone can handle death,” I heard her say. “Most can’t. But it touches us all.”
That was true, of course, but I’d come to believe Death had his favorites. In my thirty-seven years, death had not only visited my life far too frequently, it had been there from the very start, as if gleefully lying in wait for the carnage to begin, when my father, a mason, was killed in a construction accident only weeks after I was born. While still in high school, Tommy had been struck by a negligent driver and killed right before my eyes. Toni’s parents had both died while still in their fifties, her father from a sudden heart attack and her mother from the same only a year later. My mother had suffered a series of strokes and died in my arms not long after. And now Bernard had taken Death’s hand and stepped off the edge as well. It all seemed so pointless—arbitrary—as Donald had called it, yet I had to believe that somewhere a cogent reason, a plan of sorts did exist amidst the mayhem.
“Look, dinner’s not going to be ready for a while yet,” Toni said. “Why don’t you go lay down and get some rest?”
I stood up, took her by the waist and pulled her close. Her arms found my shoulders and she looked up at me with a smile, but I could feel the tension in her body rise. I was willing to at least entertain what she’d said as fact—I was exhausted and my judgement probably was fogged—but I still couldn’t shake the fear. “I just have a strange feeling about all this.”
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