Bad Dreams

by Kim Newman

  Now, perhaps, they would understand.

  His wrists began to ache, and his nails were empurpled with blood.

  Anne. He must tell Anne.

  He was not a total ice-cube. This music proved that.

  The symphony continued, greater than anything he had ever done. It was greater than him. He was not needed any more.

  His hands were released, and he dropped them to his lap. The theremin was playing itself with passion, with feeling.

  For the first time, he understood his own work. His face was wet with tears.

  Minerva's solo came and went. The trick with the watches was more than a technical stunt, it actually worked in the context of the piece, sucking the audience even further into the spell.

  Quietly, humbly, Cameron took off his headset and set it down on the floor. He slipped off his stool and backed away from the theremin stand. No one noticed. The music had them all.

  He turned. A single globular tear crept from the white blank of Telemachus' eye and ran down the giant mask.

  Alexia was sobbing gently in the wings, stifling herself into silence. The music went on, and on.

  Cameron left the stage, unremarked, and stepped into a carpeted, brightly-lit corridor. He could still hear his music, as if it were very far away.

  He needed a cigarette.

  He felt light-headed, as if he had been awake for days on end.

  Looking for a concession stand, he turned a corner. The bogeyman was waiting for him.

  It was a long time since he had seen Mr Whistle. They had both grown up. Mr Whistle's clothes had grown in size with him. He was a tall, broad man now, but he still wore knickerbockers and velvet. His face was different, almost human, but he still had a shark's mouth.

  'Hello, Cam,' he whistled. 'Long time, no see…'

  Cameron felt small again. The music was fading. Mr Whistle seemed to be growing to giant size, his huge head scraping the ceiling. He was forced to bend at the waist, looming over him.

  'You have such an interesting family,' he said. 'So varied, so talented…'

  Cameron remembered his dream, remembered the thickly-populated nightmare life he had led, trailing off into a bland and dusty future.

  Mr Whistle smiled, teeth cutting his lips. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and tore away a ragged stretch of skin.

  'Just think of me as the Ghost of Cameron Yet to Come…'

  Could he hear laughter from the auditorium? He was clutched by dread.

  Was it all coming true?

  'We stand at a crossroads, Cam,' Mr Whistle said. 'You, and your entire family. You know how I served your father, and let him live. You know how I loved your sister, and made her die. They each had a choice. As do you…'

  He was held fast again, his whole body wrapped in an invisible field.

  'And Anne?' he asked.

  'Her too. I'm dealing with her even as we speak. As a ghost, I'm not really here. I could tear you in two, but I'm not really here. It's one of my many talents.'

  Cameron did not doubt his old bogeyman. He remembered Mr Whistle's ways.

  'You're whistling, little boy,' the Monster told him.

  He was. He could not stop himself.

  His half-heard symphony was a background for his tuneless whistle.

  'You know what I do to little boys who whistle?'

  Cameron was a child again, the hell of life before him. Growing up, exams, acne, practice, arguments, girls, alienation, scales. He could not go through it all again.

  'I take their voices!'

  The whistle died in Cameron's throat.

  'That's better. You won't need to speak. This is a yes or no question. You can nod or shake your head.'

  Cameron realised that Mr Whistle looked a little like Hugh Farnham. He was a bogeyman for all the family.

  'Consider yourself lucky. I've given you all a choice, but you're the only one who is getting it straight, all cards on the table. There are no subtle, metaphorical struggles here. This is a simple deal.'

  Cameron tried to hear his symphony, strained his ears for it. The music was there, but very faint.

  'You've seen a possible future, stretching out from this evening. I can't guarantee it will be exactly like that, but you must have got the picture. You can expect a long and happy life if you give up serious music. Simple, isn't it? Which would you rather died, you or your music? You know how your father chose. He has had the benefit of a fine son and beautiful daughters, but there have been no more great plays.'

  The music was growing louder. It was inside his head, but throughout the building too. He tried to get a fix on it. It was strong and clean. It expressed the feelings he had never allowed himself. He could not let it go.

  'So, let's get this clear. Nod your head if you want to live, without music…'

  Cameron held still.

  'Live? Die? Music? Happiness? It doesn't mean much to me. I get mine either way.'

  Mr Whistle rested a large hand on Cameron's shirtfront. He flexed his fingers. Cameron felt an electrical tingle.

  He had decided. Not until now had he really known how much it all meant to him. He was older now than Mozart had been when he died. He still had a lot more to write but, considering that he was bowing out with Telemachus, he thought that he would not leave a negligible oeuvre behind him.

  'Well, Mr Ice-cube…? What can I do?'

  Cameron's throat started working. It was agony, but he got the words out.

  'You…'

  Mr Whistle knew what his decision had been. Static crackled between his fingers, and Cameron felt the bolts charging into his heart.

  '… can…'

  The killing force came. It exploded inside him just as the last notes of his symphony died away. As he fell, a smoking black handprint on his chest, he heard the standing ovation building. They were calling for him, whistling shrilly, stamping their feet.

  He smiled as the life went out in him, looking up at the already transparent Monster.

  '… you can whistle!'

  NIGHT

  ONE

  'BBA-BA-BOMP-ba-ba.'

  Anne tried to stand up. It was not easy. She nearly lost a shoe pulling her foot out of the hole behind her.

  'BA-ba-bomp-ba-ba.'

  It was dark in front, but there were indistinct swirls of painfully bright colours to the left and right. Stained glass and neon, Technicolor and Dayglo, fireworks and foil-embossed paperback covers.

  'BA-ba-bomp-ba-ba.'

  The scat-singing was loud, but it was fighting several other pieces of music in an arrangement that was less contrapuntal than cacophonous. It was merely the nearest and loudest of five or six clashing noises. The scum skimmed off the top of an ocean of din.

  'Ba-ding-a-dang-ding.'

  This was not St John's Wood.

  'Ba-ding-a-dong-ding.'

  This was somewhere in the centre of town. The West End. Soho. It did not make sense.

  'Blue MOOOOONNN!'

  Her eyes hurt. She covered them, blinking purposefully.

  'Dib-da-dib-da-dib-dib.'

  It was dark inside her head.

  '… moon, moon, moon… blue moon…'

  Each 'moon' from the backing vocalists was a needle pushed through the bridge of her nose, probing for the forepart of her brain. It did not hurt as much as it should have.

  She took her hands away from her eyes, and looked again.

  The world got clearer, as if someone were twiddling the focus of her retinae. Her eyes tuned in, but her mind could not match them.

  She leaned against a rough, damp wall, feeling an icy draft on her ankles. It was very cold, and she was very tired. She felt hung over, and a million miles from the bed she wanted to be asleep in.

  How the hell had she got here?

  And where was here?

  She was in a narrow passage that crookedly connected two busy streets. It was irregularly paved, and lit only by an open window a few storeys above. There were no doors in the walls,
but she could tell from the noise that the building she thought she had come out of was a pub. The boards she had broken through were an entrance to the cellar. She tried to superimpose this place on Amelia Dorf's house, but could not make the images jibe.

  There was nothing coming after her any more. She thought that the cellar was empty. It was dark down below, but she could make out the shapes of beer kegs. No monsters, no people. They had given up.

  But it had all been real. She could still feel the points in her throat where the Nina Thing's fingers had fastened. She must have plenty of other scrapes and bruises.

  She got out of the passage, and found herself somewhere she recognised. She was back in Brewer Street. There were crowds of people about. Ordinary, real, non-monstrous people. The pubs had not let out yet, so it must be not be later than eleven. She had thought it must be well into the small hours. The streets were not exactly reassuring, but they were safer than the old dark house, or the wardrobe of death.

  Next to the pub was a loud strip club. Bare coloured bulbs flashed on and off around a come-on sign. 'Beautiful Girls XXXXXXX Totally Naked.' There were black and white posters under glass, just a shade more indecent than allowed by the law. So much for the Clean-Up Soho Campaign. The silver paper stars pasted over nipples had peeled and slipped to the bottom of the case, leaving the pouting, overdeveloped girls with gluey smudges on their breasts.

  'Come in and slobber over our fat ugly bimbos,' bawled a fat ugly young man in jeans and a windbreaker, standing in the middle of a yellow-lit foyer. His breath was steaming in clouds, and he stamped his feet in a crooked little tap-dance step to keep his doubtless numb toes warm. 'Get your rocks off as they get their clothes off. Sex, sex, sex. Get your lovely, steaming, thirst-quenching, piping hot, country-fresh sex here! You can't get things like this in Russia, you know. It's a free country here. Sex, sex, sex. God save the Queen, and all who sail in her…'

  The bored black woman in the club's ticket booth looked up from her knitting magazine and laughed. Nobody was being lured in. The spieler noticed Anne.

  'Fuck off back to your own turf, lovey,' he shouted, 'you're putting the shits up the punters. You've got a look on you like Dracula's bleeding daughter!'

  He raised his hands, crossing his fingers to make a crucifix.

  'Back! Back, I thay!' he adopted a Karloffian lisp. 'Begone hellthpawn!'

  Anne retreated, and was jostled along the pavement by a group of colourfully-dressed Chinese kids with '70s punk haircuts. They chattered and laughed, being rude about Western passersby who could not understand their language. Anne knew she was being discussed, anatomised as a freak.

  She wondered just how awful she did look. She did not feel all right inside. She realised that she had not eaten properly in twenty-four hours. Just half a breakfast and a sandwich in the Nellie Dean ages ago.

  The Chinese kids piled into a pub, pushing and kicking each other. A gust of beery hot air hit her. She wanted to be sick. A young man in a smartly hideous jacket tried to come out while the kids were trying to go in. He was buffeted from side to side, and swore in what Anne thought was an Australian accent. He pushed her, and headed off on a determined course for somewhere.

  She tripped, and tottered at the edge of the kerb. She stepped into the gutter and got her balance. A McDonald's carton crumpled lousily under her shoe, and her heel squelched into a half-eaten Egg McMuffin.

  The music mix was more offensive out in the open. Anne could pick out random snatches of disco, Derek Douane, reggae, acid house, rhythm and blues, funk, Kylie Minogue and '60s oldies. The result was a sweaty medley, harsh and brittle on the surface, but cheesy and rotten underneath.

  Every shop in sight was open, selling sex. She walked towards Wardour Street. That would be quieter, calmer. She could get her bearings. There were a few clubs at the lower end of the street, but it was mostly owned by monolithic movie companies. She went past displays of posters and stills for upcoming films, gradually calming herself. Heroes posed with guns: Sylvester Stallone, Kurt Russell, Rutger Hauer, Clint Eastwood. If she could get to Tottenham Court Road tube station, she could get home almost on automatic pilot.

  First, she needed to make herself human again. She crossed the road, dodging a limousine with a personalised number-plate, and squeezed into a long, thin pub called The Ship. It was full of leather and PVC-clothed young people, banging their heads in time to the music. This was one of the overspill places for The Marquee, just down the road. Daeve Pope would have been in heavy metal heaven.

  A battered man in a woollen hat, one eye almost closed by a bruise, was appealing to the drinkers.

  'Are there any East End boys here?'

  He was ignored. Anne tried to get past.

  'Come on now. East End boys. I need some help. One of our own's been done over. Gimme some help. Come on.'

  Some of the patrons were getting annoyed. The would-be lynch mob leader grabbed an arm and was shaken off.

  'Where's the old East End? I need some fucking help.'

  'Listen,' said a cockatoo-plumed girl, 'we wouldn't fight for our country. I don't see why we should go to war for our fucking post code.'

  'Bitch. One of our own is bleeding…'

  Anne got out of the mini-drama and went upstairs to the Ladies. It was empty and relatively clean. She locked herself into a cubicle and took a leak. It was good just to sit down, and she was tempted to rest her head against the partition and get some sleep. It would be so easy just to give up for a while.

  She pulled herself back together again, and hauled herself out of the cubicle to make full use of the facilities. A girl with a superheroine costume was holding her face up to the mirror, tracing a cobweb pattern on her pale cheeks. Anne looked at her own face. It was pretty ghastly. She washed. The dirt and the make-up came off easily, and there were no obvious bruises underneath. Even her neck, which still hurt, was unmarked. She had lost her handbag somewhere, but her wallet was still in her inside jacket pocket, and she had some make-up things in her coat. The coat, mercifully, was large enough to cover the clothes she had borrowed from Nina. She lipsticked in her usual modest mouth and combed her hair. Her reflection looked like her again. She even practised smiling.

  Walking to the station, past the brightly-lit boutiques, cinemas, remainder bookshops and tatty souvenir stalls, all decorated for Christmas and building up to the January sales, she found herself having to think about what had happened to her.

  Drugs. It was something to do with drugs. Maybe they had doped her perrier at Amelia's, with LSD or some other hallucinogen. Then, after she had taken her tour of Nightmare City, they had brought her into the middle of town and dumped her.

  But it did not feel like drugs. She had done acid once, at college, and it had not been anything like this evening's entertainment. What she had just been through was insane and illogical, but also unambiguous and actual. It felt real.

  Not LSD, then. Maybe something a good deal weirder. Something expensive and experimental, like Inspector Hollis' designer dope.

  Hollis. She must call him in the morning, give him all the names she had found, and let the police handle any investigation. This evening had proved her incompetence as Philip Marlowe.

  A taxicab cruised by with its light on, and she decided to signal it. It would be faster than the underground. But, as she pulled her hand out of her pocket, she remembered. She had given Nina all her cash, and the girl had thrown it at Clive. If she wanted to get home in comfort, she would have to find a cashpoint. The taxi was gone. There was no point in bothering. She turned her back on the street and descended into the underground station.

  Underground. The tube. That was how she thought of it. Not as the subway. She was turning British. Writing a piece a few weeks ago, she had had to think very hard before remembering the American expression for council housing.

  It was still quite busy. She found her travel pass in her top pocket, and slipped it into the automatic gate, muttering 'open fucking sesame' to
the machine. It refused to accept the bent card, and she had to find a barrier run by a human being. The robots were doing a lot of turning people back, and the guard-manned point was thronged with a wedge-shaped queue of complaining travellers. Anne hung back, but got past in a minute or so.

  She would take the Northern line to Kentish Town. It was only six stops. Her fiat was only a few minutes' walk away from the station. Then, she would sleep.

  She was underground. Going down. Please mind the gap.

  As she descended the escalator towards the platforms, she noticed the digital clock in the ceiling. In the station, the time was 10:37.

  She did not have to wait long for a train.

  TWO

  THE MAN opposite her was nodding, muttering to himself, just this side of being asleep. There were dusty stains on the lapels of his suit jacket, and his too-small cloth cap was creeping backwards on his scalp with each roll of his head. He had a bald spot, under a straggle of brown hair, and a ratty Fu Manchu moustache. His arms were wrapped around a full carrier bag on his lap. Anne could see bottle-necks and wrapped sandwiches. A stick of French bread stuck up, resting against his head like the neck of a cello. He did not look well at all.

  There was no one else in the carriage; unusual on this part of this line and at this time in the evening. In Central London, this was a peak travel hour. The restaurants and movies and theatres would be starting to turn people out. A lot of service workers would be clocking off. The train should be at least half full. She should still have been able to get a seat, but she should not have a carriage practically to herself. It was unusual, strange; but unusual and strange were not words she was prepared to apply to anything short of a surreal Hell on Earth after her day.

  Tomorrow, it would all seem crazy. Next week, she would have talked it through with three or four different people. Hollis, Mark, Nigel and Clare at the office, maybe even Cam. She would prod them, and they would rationalise things, give explanations, make jokes, suggest she calm down. It would all start to seem more like a bad trip, a bad dream. Now, she knew that it had not been a hallucination, it had been real. Soon, she knew she would be thinking in terms of shock, stress, guilt reaction, grief, anxiety, a clouded mind. Eventually, she would convince herself.