Book of Dreams

by Bunn, Davis

  The sound of honking horns drew Teddy’s gaze from the page. He realized the limo was slowing and maneuvering out of the fast lane. He tapped the intercom button and asked, “What’s the matter?”

  “The engine just cut out, sir.” As the driver spoke, it happened again. This time Teddy felt as much as heard it. The motor went silent, coughed, then picked up again. The limo was so heavy that its forward momentum softened the jerks. “It was going fine until … There it goes again.”

  The motor fluttered, surged, then died a third time. The driver turned on the flasher and steered toward the curb. He tucked the car into a bus stop. He rolled down the glass divider and said, “I’ll ring central and have them send you another car …” The driver studied his cell phone’s readout. Then he turned around and said, “Mr., ah …”

  “Wainwright.”

  “Sure. Could you check and see if your phone has a signal?”

  Teddy opened his phone. “Apparently not.”

  “We must be sitting in a dead zone.” The driver turned the key. The engine clicked but did not fire. He shook his head and opened the car door. Instantly the limo was filled with the roar of midday traffic. “I’ll just walk around the corner to where I can phone this in, Mr. Wainwright. Shouldn’t be long.”

  Teddy did not speak. There was nothing to be said. The car door shut, leaving him isolated. But not alone.

  The sensation was far stronger now. Although it was unlike anything Teddy had ever experienced, he had no question what was happening. There was simply no room for doubt.

  A young woman appeared by the same corner the driver had just rounded. She was very attractive though quite small, and carried herself with an air of fresh innocence. Teddy sat and watched her open the rear door and slide into the seat beside him. She had a pixie’s face and round, gray eyes, clear and seemingly without guile. “A limo. Wow. I guess you must be someone really important.”

  Her hand emerged from the pocket of her raincoat, holding something that might have been a silver pen. When the image had come to him the previous evening, Teddy had faced a dark wraith, little more than a twisting shadow.

  Teddy stared at the woman, and for a fleeting instant found himself seeing her true form. He realized the image had been absolutely true.

  His mind locked on to the verse from Second Corinthians that he’d been reading the previous evening when the room filled with that undeniable force. Just like now. “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”

  As the young woman reached toward him, Teddy said, “I’ve been expecting you.”

  2

  FRIDAY

  Friday morning, Elena unlocked her office’s front door and stepped into the reception area. She shut the door on the rumbling bus traffic and the early-morning sunshine. The receptionist Elena shared with her five colleagues had not yet arrived. Elena checked her image in the antique mirror opposite the desk. The mirror had only been hung the previous week. It was silver backed and six feet tall and veined like a crone’s face. The mirror was positioned so the receptionist could survey the entire waiting room from behind her desk. It showed a distinguished-looking woman in a fawn-colored suit, with long, auburn hair and a timeless gaze. Elena was going to have to discipline herself to avoid looking in that direction, for the action was a futile gesture. After nine years as a practicing clinical psychologist, Elena did not need to inspect her reflection to know her professional mask was in place. And there was nothing she could do about the vacuum that lay beneath.

  The world knew Elena Burroughs as a foremost authority on dreams. For three years and counting, her book had topped the bestseller lists around the globe. The Book of Dreams had sold eighteen million copies and been published in three dozen languages. Her rare public appearances were sold-out events.

  For Elena, that one glance in the mirror was enough to reveal the lie.

  She loathed the adulation that surrounded her infrequent lectures. She no longer did any publicity or televised events. She hated herself too much afterward.

  Elena climbed the carpeted staircase to her office on the British first floor. The entire building still smelled faintly of fresh paint. When the university had begun renovating their offices the previous autumn, Elena had inserted herself forcefully into the process. One of her defining traits was impatience with anything that did not move at a pace to match her own. And if a single word described the University of Oxford’s approach to any change, it was glacial.

  Elena persuaded a reluctant university to give her the sum planned for the renovations. She then doubled it with funds of her own. What she really wanted was an office to match those she had often seen in the United States. Modern and discreet and elegant in a properly subdued fashion. She knew anything the university did was going to wind up looking like a newer version of the stodgy interior they replaced. And the only way she could get what she wanted was to give it to everyone. From the receptionist to the newest associate in the fourth-floor garret. Even the elevator was new, a sleek tube that moved silently between the floors.

  Her grateful associates all took the renovations as a sign of her having recovered from the tragedy that had dominated her life for five long years. Elena saw no need to correct them.

  Elena used the ninety minutes before her first patient to catch up on her paperwork. Gradually the building around her began to hum with activity. She smelled fresh-brewed coffee and heard friendly banter in the reception area downstairs. At five minutes to nine, Elena checked her computerized calendar for the day and frowned. She rose from her desk and walked back downstairs.

  The main entrance opened into a brief hallway leading to the reception area and Fiona Floate’s kingdom. Fiona was the lone secretary for the entire building, and the only one they needed. Her new roost was an ergonomic chair behind a long elm counter, one shade darker than the maple floors. A Japanese vase held a spray of tulips and baby’s breath. The florist had a standing order to provide three matching displays every Monday, for the reception desk and Elena and the other female clinician. Elena assumed her male colleagues could buy flowers for themselves. The two women had never thanked Elena. Elena considered their silence a perfect example of British understatement.

  Elena waited while Fiona directed an arriving patient into the redesigned waiting area. Only two of the offices had antechambers, Elena’s and the director’s. Patients for the other counselors waited in the public area opposite Fiona’s desk. When they were alone, Elena leaned over the counter and said, “My nine o’clock.”

  “Mmmm.” Fiona did not check her computer. She did not need to. Ever.

  “What happened to Richard?” Her regular appointment was a postdoc student with an almost crushing burden of self-loathing.

  “Quite ill, actually. Physical ailment, for a change. I slotted this in yesterday.”

  “I did not see a last name for my appointment.”

  “A good thing, that, since I wasn’t given one.”

  “Is she a student?”

  “Not that I am aware.”

  Oxford’s system permitted the clinicians to accept patients from outside the university. This was necessary, as treatment of patients did not simply end upon graduation. Since her fame began spreading, however, Elena had stopped accepting new patients from beyond the university perimeter. The risk of being confronted with another rabid fan was just too great.

  Fiona answered her unspoken question. “Miriam referred this patient. She asked that Sandra be slotted in. Immediately.”

  This was news. “Miriam phoned?”

  “Yes, Elena. Miriam phoned.”

  “When?”

  “Yesterday evening after you left.”

  “Why didn’t she try my mobile?”

  “Do you know, I didn’t ask.” Fiona was clearly enjoying this. “One might assume it was because she didn’t want to speak with you. Perhaps in order not to be pestered with questions for wh
ich Miriam didn’t have answers.”

  “Oh, thank you so very much.”

  “My pleasure. Will there be anything else?”

  Elena returned to her office. She was in the process of phoning her closest friend when the outer door opened.

  The university counseling offices were located in what once had been a private residence on Broad Street, an avenue bisecting the central city. Elena’s office occupied a formal parlor. The room had been divided into a small antechamber and a larger office that looked over the building’s rear garden. Elena had fitted sliding double doors between the antechamber and her office. Through the open doors she observed a man in a navy suit enter and survey her waiting area. He then crossed the room, nodded once to her, and scanned the office. Then he retreated to the outer door.

  More than two dozen heads of state had formerly studied at Oxford. The current student body included family members from the sultan of Brunei, three former US presidents, the prime minister of Israel, the kings of Saudi Arabia and Jordan, and leaders of nine other nations.

  Elena knew a professional bodyguard when she saw one.

  Elena rose to her feet as the woman entered. She was perhaps a decade older than Elena’s thirty-five years. She carried herself with the casual elegance of someone who had handled both money and power for so long, they formed a second skin. She was dressed in a beige cashmere cloud and pearls.

  The bodyguard slid the double doors shut, sealing the two of them inside.

  Elena spoke the name on her computer screen. “Sandra?”

  “That is correct.” The woman’s accent was unmistakable. Northeastern United States, perhaps Canada.

  “I am Dr. Burroughs.”

  “You are American as well?”

  “I am. Won’t you have a seat?”

  “Thank you.” The woman carried herself without the nerves of most first-time patients. She chose the rosewood Louis XIV chair drawn up to the other side of Elena’s desk and said, “You came highly recommended.”

  Elena knew the woman expected her to ask how she knew Miriam, or what the woman’s last name was. Instead, Elena resumed her seat and waited.

  The elegant woman asked, “Are you recording, Dr. Burroughs?”

  Elena lifted the top of a Georgian silver box that rested on the desk next to the telephone. Hidden inside were a set of four electronic controls. “This first button is the general alarm. It rings at both the receptionist desk and inside my director’s office. All of the offices have one. The second button cuts off my phone. I press it, and the light on my phone goes from green to red, see? The third locks the doors leading to the outer office—”

  “Please don’t touch that button.”

  “Very well. I will leave the doors unlocked as per your request.” Elena held to the monotone she used with her most fractured patients. “See? The light remains green.”

  “The fourth button?”

  “That cuts on my recorder. I have a digital system installed in my top right drawer. The light turns green when the recorder is on. Would you like to see it?”

  “That won’t be necessary.”

  “Please, I would prefer that—”

  “No thank you.”

  “Very well.”

  The woman opposite her did not relax as Elena might have expected. Instead, a faint tremor ran through her slender frame. Only then did Elena realize how much control the woman imposed upon herself. The woman said, “Thank you for your candor.”

  Elena did not speak.

  The woman’s hands did a skittish dance from the chair arms to her lap and back again. “I am having dreams.”

  Elena waited.

  “Nightmares, actually. Worse than that.”

  Elena nodded once and remained silent.

  “They are so vivid I find myself unable to leave them behind. They shade my entire existence. They shatter my days as well as my nights.”

  Elena watched the woman age as she spoke. “How long have you been having these dreams?”

  “Twenty-six days.”

  Elena blinked. Nightmares generally did not show a clearly pronounced arrival. She had never heard of such a thing before. Even if they did arrive suddenly, patients were unable to date them so precisely. “They come every night?”

  “It,” the woman corrected. “One dream. Always the same. And yes, it attacks every night. Many times.”

  “You have had this dream more than once in the same night?”

  “The first doctor I approached prescribed a very strong sleeping pill.” The woman shuddered at the memory. “All the drug did was hold me down, where the nightmare could claw at me. Six times.”

  “You’re sure it was six?”

  “Of course I’m sure. Why, what does that mean?”

  Elena shook her head. Such precision was unheard of.

  The woman continued, “For the first time in my married life, I am sleeping in a separate room from my husband. My screams kept shredding his nights. And Lawrence …”

  Elena understood the woman’s hesitation. “Let’s pretend that this isn’t the first time we’re talking. Let’s pretend that we have been friends for years. And as a friend, I will treat your problem with the utmost seriousness and care. I will not try to smother your symptoms with drugs. I want one thing, and one thing only. To help you.”

  Generally Elena waited a few sessions to be so open with a new patient. She needed to ensure that the patient was indeed someone who sought help. And would respond to such a direct approach. Oftentimes those who most needed help were also terrified of the prospect. In such cases, a direct invitation would only slow down the opening process.

  But Elena sensed that this woman was different. It was more than her intelligence, or her desperately concealed need. These symptoms suggested a completely new issue, one that confounded the standard dream doctrine. They invited a new approach. Elena went on, “Let’s pretend that you can tell me everything. It’s clear that you want to. And I want to hear. And nothing, not a single solitary thing, will ever escape this room. Including who your husband is. And what he does. And why your dreams terrify you both.”

  The woman responded by coming apart. She folded so fast, she almost managed to hide the deep creases that marred her lovely features. She began weeping convulsively.

  Elena was up and moving and there to catch the woman as she slid off her chair and landed on her knees.

  3

  Elena called the hospital, then arranged for Fiona to reschedule her next two appointments. They took the woman’s Mercedes limo to the John Radcliffe, the university teaching hospital. A receptionist directed them through the crowded waiting room, down a long hallway, and into an empty MRI chamber. Elena’s new patient treated this rare immediate treatment as merely par for the course.

  Elena stayed in the control room while her new patient underwent a brain scan. One of the woman’s bodyguards remained in the hallway, the other stood against the wall behind Elena. Though the two young technicians performing the scan said nothing, Elena could sense that the bodyguard’s presence spooked them both.

  While the woman was deep inside the machine, the doctor slipped into the room. His name was Robards, and he had been the best friend of Elena’s former husband. Elena thought he had aged considerably since their last meeting. She supposed they all had.

  The doctor’s aloof greeting reminded Elena of her husband, who had abhorred any show of affection around the hospital. Robards swept up the woman’s chart, studied it a moment, and said, “I see you’ve failed to enter her name.”

  “That is correct.”

  He glanced at Elena, then at the bodyguard, and went back to the file. “What precisely are we looking for?”

  “I wish I knew.”

  “Symptoms?”

  “Severe nightmares. Traumatic stress. Related issues.”

  “Any severe pain?”

  “None other than what might be put down to interrupted sleep cycles.”

  “Seizures?”<
br />
  “None. Right now I am simply hoping to eliminate the worst.”

  He set down the folder and leaned over the largest of the three screens; he studied it a moment, then asked, “Anything so far?”

  The chief technician replied, “No evident anomalies that I have detected.”

  Robards straightened. “I’m due in surgery. Shouldn’t be long. I’ll have a look at your mystery woman’s results when I’m done.”

  “Thank you, Reggie. For everything.”

  When he reached the door, he offered Elena a terse smile. “At least she brought you out here again. I suppose I should be grateful for that favor.”

  While they waited for the results, Elena held the woman’s hand. “Will you tell me your name?”

  The radiology waiting room was one of three open-ended chambers that fronted the tea counter. To their left was the sitting area for lab tests. Beyond that was a nursery shared with the pediatrics wing. The children’s play area was sealed, but the din still echoed through all three rooms. The noise isolated the two women.

  The woman studied Elena for a long moment, then replied, “Sandra Harwood.”

  “It is nice to meet you, Sandra. I am Elena.”

  “My husband asked me not to tell you who I was.” She turned away. “Lawrence will be livid.”

  One of Sandra’s bodyguards stood by the exit, across the room from where they sat. The other had returned to the limo. Elena said, “My husband was a biochemist doing research here at the Radcliffe. I have not been back since I cleaned out his office.”

  “He died?”

  “Five years ago. I miss him terribly.”