Bad Dreams

by Kim Newman

  A swarm of ghosts gyred around him in a multiple helix, allowed some measure of self-determination by his preoccupation, furtively snatching their existence from his body and his mind. The strongest of Amelia Dorf's guests had already been processed and were settling into their new shapes, raw recruits in his army of phantoms. The lesser personalities - Clive, Anders, Amelia - were completely absorbed, gone forever unless he should choose to make the effort to reassemble them. They would do his bidding, more or less, and for the present they would have to cope with Anne.

  Of course, she had her own ghosts, as she must almost be ready to realise. She would hardly have been able to get as far as she had already without a very strong image of the outlines of the world, of her own personal dream. She had even been able to effect an imperfect superimposition of her reality upon his own. He had come across very few others not of the Kind, with that strength of vision. He wondered whether it was a hereditary factor, passed down from her father, gained by him through osmosis. After all, he had been one of Ariadne's proteges.

  Anne Nielson was an extraordinary woman, as he had known for years. Her father, when he came up before the Farnham Commission, had proved extraordinarily resilient, but he had still caved in, and then he had proved richly satisfying. More recently, the lesson had been reinforced by delicious, dangerous Judi. Even the son had had a tang to him, although he had proved surprisingly hard to digest at the end. It was a varied and satisfying meal, but the last dish would be the most exquisite, the most sustaining. He would need to fast, to recuperate, to change, before he would be ready to take her.

  He had sifted through Judi's memory, had scooped into Anne's mind, but could find no traces of Ariadne. The girls had never met their father's one-time patron, had never even heard of her. Cam had a vague memory of a glamorous 'aunt', who had once taken a remote interest in his father, but it was no more than a shadow. He was disappointed somehow. Perhaps he should seek out Ariadne. By the standards of the Kind, their sole meeting had been almost yesterday. It was probably too soon to see if she had changed in her opinions of him. No, the best he could do was to fortify himself with the Nielson family, and wait a century or two. Everything would change in time. Things changed faster as time progressed, he had noticed in this dizzying century. He would meet Ariadne again. Things would be different between them.

  Like an Elizabethan tickling the back of his throat with a peacock feather to induce vomiting so he would be able to face the next enormous course, he brought up another cloud of ghosts. Insignificant, meagre, thin and tasteless presences who could safely be ignored, who could safely be set free. Most of them came apart like butterflies in a whirlwind and were dispersed; some struggled for infinite moments, trying to summon up enough reserves of strength to achieve reality, before they were spent. A few tried vainly to coalesce into a hardier entity. Amelia fluttered against his lips, entreating to be let back in. He blew her away.

  He had only sampled Cameron Nielson Sr during the hearings, then let the man live out a diminished, unproductive life. There were no more prizes for Cameron, no more Pulitzers, Critics Circles, Nobels. And he had never taken home a statuette on Oscar night. He had had the playwright in his power, and been tempted to astonish the court and the television audiences by sucking him dry on the stand. But, rather than feed, he had just taken away Nielson's reputation, his genius, his worldly stature. He had even been rather touched by The Rat Jacket, that last flare of Cameron's talent, and had been amused by the author's recreation of his Hugh Farnham persona as the intellectual, bullying cop. Had he known that the man should be allowed to father his children? Or had he been too cautious, too frightened of his increasing visibility?

  This was a strange century. He could no longer run his course in one place, and simply leave a continent to start again. The faces, manners and origins of notable men were too highly publicised. He could change his appearance, but not enough to become immediately unrecognisable. From now on, he would have to devote himself to private achievements. That would limit his amusements, but nevertheless he was confident in his ability to find purposes to suit him, enthusiasms to pursue, people to relish… It would be a long while before he turned into one of the Elders, hiding away in a living death, nurturing their effete Dreams, too fastidious to get involved with the tumult of humanity.

  A wraith approached him, and latched on like a bat, suckling greedily from his surplus, desperate for a shape, for an identity. It was Judi; she had been seriously ruptured. He let her have her fill. She was important to him, a link with Anne, a shared ghost. He touched Judi's conscious memory, curious about the meeting on the train. She put up a token resistance, but, knowing that she only existed on his sufferance, opened her mind to him and let him prowl.

  The train scene was fresh and painful inside Judi. His admiration was excited by Anne. She was picking up the knack. It was such a simple thing, to go against the consensus reality, but so few human beings could work up the willpower. Given time, she could learn to shape the Dream to her will. But, of course, he would not give her time. Hers would be an untried talent, an unfulfilled potential. Even in its protean state, however, it would make the business of feeding off her protracted and tiring. But incomparable.

  He twisted, and descended in his dream.

  He delved deeper in Judi's memories. He considered Anne as a child, as a schoolgirl, as a college student, as a would-be parent substitute, as a journalist. Judi had read practically everything her sister had ever written, including an uncharacteristic series of pieces on tin toy collecting, sofa beds and other arcane subjects published under a pseudonym (Angela Buonfiglia) taken from one of their father's plays. Further back, Judi had envied Anne her college boyfriend, had always tried to impress and amuse the older girl, had briefly tried to copy her clothes and food preferences, had longed to be asked to share her toys so that she could express her devotion through generosity. He tried to dilute Judi's images of her sister with objectivity, with his own observations, with Cam's tightly-guarded feelings, with the pathetic and stupid judgements of Clive, Amelia and a few of Amelia's guests, and with the slight tastes of her he had sampled at the entrance to the maze. He had less than a tenth of the jigsaw puzzle pieces, but even the fragments of a picture he was able to put together made him ache for Anne. He was motivated, he would have to exert himself…

  His feet settled on the concrete of the tube platform. He reined in his multitudes, incorporating them. Even Judi. He was alone. He had seldom been more powerful this close to a change.

  Anne had gone. There were no egresses in the featureless white tile walls. The tunnel was the only way out. She had chanced the darkness. She was a clever girl, to realise that there would never be another train in this station.

  Already, the rails were softening, the circular tube was becoming ovoid. His presence froze the decay, but it would start again when he followed Anne into the tunnel. In time, the station would resolve itself, healing as invisibly as a wound in the deep of his brain. The overhead lights started going out, but that did not matter to him.

  He stepped off the edge of the platform, onto the track. He knew which way his rat had bolted. Balancing on the dead third rail, he tightrope-walked after her, into the tunnel.

  FIVE

  SHE KNEW SHE was not in a tube tunnel any more. The wall she had been feeling her way along in the dark had given out. There were no longer regularly spaced Christmas emergency lights to give an outline of her surroundings. The narrow path she was walking was not bordered by a shiny track. If she stopped to sit and rest, she could feel cold earth and a few scrubby patches of grass either side of the rough strip of asphalt.

  Above her, around her, was total darkness. There was no ceiling, there were no walls. The darkness was infinite. She was out in the open somewhere, but there was no trace of light. No stars, no fireflies, no streetlamps, no fires.

  There was no wind, but the still air was freezing. She wished she was wearing thick trousers rather than a skirt
and tights. Preferably arctic survival gear. Walking through the chilly night was like wading through pampas grass. The cold was as sharp as a straight razor. She could not feel her toes. Her hands were deep in her coat pockets, fingering the last patches of warmth near her body. There was probably ice on her cheeks where she had been crying.

  She kept on walking, picking up her feet and putting them down. Going somewhere.

  It had not been Judi on the train. At least, it had not been all of Judi. Just as it had not been all of Nina in the wardrobe. Just ghosts.

  But no one believes in ghosts really. Not M. R. James/Jacob Marley/white sheet-type ghosts. Ibsen-type ghosts, maybe. Not that she had ever actually read old Henryk, or seen Ghosts. Judi had one-upped her in the literacy game again.

  Then there was a light ahead. Three indistinct lines, shaped like a soccer goal, silhouetting an oblong. It was some kind of a building, with the light source squarely behind it. She could make out the hard black edges, and see how the light diffused around them.

  It was obvious that she would not like what she found there. That much she had picked up from the way things were going. But she was glad to have proof that she had not gone blind in the dark.

  The building was further away, and bigger than she had guessed. She could not measure time that well any more, but it took a considerable while to get there.

  This side of the building, there was a single, small light. It was above a door, above a weathered sign she could not read.

  Knowing she would regret it, but knowing she had no choice, she took the door handle and turned…

  Something sizzled above her, and hissed. She really was blinded, by the light this time. She turned away, into the darkness, electric blue and orange lines imprinted on her eyes. They faded quickly.

  She looked upwards. There was a neon sign, flashing on and off, crackling slightly. It was familiar.

  SAM'S, it said in big letters, BAR-B-Q AND GRILL.

  She pushed the door open, and went in.

  SIX

  WORLDS AWAY, across an ocean, it was late afternoon, time to take hot chocolate to an invalid. Outside, it was just dark, and there was thick, Christmassy snow on the ground. She had put up decorations all over the house, although the invalid could only get to two or three rooms. The tree was in his bedroom, and she had made paper angels for the bathroom. She had put fake snow and a silver star on the mirrored door of the medicine cupboard. She had finally arranged with the agency for a substitute nurse, a single girl who needed the triple overtime, to take her place over the holiday. But she would be back before the New Year, doing her best to make the old man's last months mess-free and painless. Tonight, she would sit up with her patient in his study and watch It's a Wonderful Life on television. It was on every Christmas, and was one of her favourite films. She remembered seeing it many times as a child, and was looking forward, after several years, to rediscovering its pleasures. She found it hard to believe that her patient had ever worked in Hollywood, had known people like Jimmy Stewart and Gloria Grahame. There were signed and dedicated photographs of them in his collection, unframed and unsorted after some long-ago house-moving. Also, photographs and letters from names she knew: Lauren Bacall, Tennessee Williams, Alistair Cooke, Arthur Kennedy, Paul Robeson, Jean-Paul Sartre, Cole Porter (another invalid), Lee Strasberg, Adlai Stevenson, Elia Kazan. She wondered whether they all had letters and pictures signed by him. As soon as she entered the study, she knew that he had given up. He was slumped into his chair, his blanket on the floor, a paperback book by his foot, spine-broken, pages down. She tried to find a pulse. Nothing. He was gone.

  SEVEN

  IT WAS THE original Broadway production, with most of the cast that had gone on to be in the film. She had walked on somewhere in the third act, after Sam's stroke. Lee J. Cobb would be sitting the rest of the play out in his dressing room while the other characters revolved around the void left in their lives, in the centre of the play, behind the bar. His passing out of the drama on the graveyard shift was so complete that Cobb never even came back to take a curtain call.

  Anne slipped into a booth, and sat as far away from the action as possible. A waitress brought her a cup of coffee. She was practically an extra, having already chipped in with her five lines, and was just trying to create an illusion of a real Bar-B-Q and Grill by looking busy in the background. She was young, and pretty in a lipsticky '50s way, but made up to look sluttish and bedraggled. Up close, Anne could see the panstick make-up and exaggerated black patches under her eyes. The coffee was cold tea, tart and nasty, but Anne sipped it anyway. She wanted to remain inconspicuous.

  Downstage, Sam's World War Two buddy and sidekick, played by Eli Wallach, was trying and failing to dispense Sam-style worldly wisdom and advice to the bar-owner's son-in-law. He, played by a young Martin Landau, was a shell-shocked, psychologically impotent Korean war veteran who had just discovered that his wife (Kim Hunter) had been shacked up with Maish (Marlon Brando) while he was in a prisoner-of-war camp. In an earlier scene, he had showed off the automatic he had brought home with him from the army, lovingly unwrapping it from its oily cloth, caressing it like the woman who was lost, seeking a response from its cold metal that he could never get from his flesh. Without Sam to calm him down, the Landau character was going to shoot someone. He was already working himself up to the boil.

  Landau had his back to the black space that replaced the fourth wall of the bar, and was taking a rest. His face had gone blank, while Wallach did the acting for both of them. Anne wondered whether Stella Adler would have approved.

  'It ain't so bad, Johnny,' said Wallach. 'Broads. Who can figure 'em? Maish ain't such a bad guy.'

  'He wuz draft-exempted. Me an' my brudder goes to Korea, an' get tortured by the slants, an' good ol' Maish sits on his ass in a gas station.'

  In the movie, Maish had sat on his 'setter' in a gas station.

  'Only 'cause of his leg, Johnny,' said Wallach. 'Maish got a bum leg from when he was a kid. You don't notice it so much 'cause he got a special kind of way of walking that covers up, but he couldn't pass no army physical. You want a shot?'

  'Yeah. A shot.'

  Anne's father had written several different endings. She had seen the manuscripts. Landau could shoot Maish, his wife Angie, Wallach by mistake or himself. In the out-of-town try-outs, he shot Maish; on Broadway, he shot Angie; and in the movie, he shot Wallach and himself. The movie ending was a compromise. The Breen Office and the Catholic Legion of Decency had not really wanted Landau to shoot anyone: they liked Bing Crosby films about singing priests, not modern American tragedies. Warner Brothers had stood up to the censors, forcing them to back down by waving a fistful of Broadway reviews in their faces, and then told Dad he could not shoot the girl at the end. Therese Colt, the politically acceptable substitute for Kim Hunter, had to be alive to go off with Brando at the fade-out.

  A stage manager put a cool jazz record on the juke box, and everyone settled down to wait for Brando to come on again. Maish had good news; he had just sold his first story to Atlantic Monthly and quit his grease monkey job.

  Everyone else had bad news; Sam, Maish's surrogate father and everybody's favourite wailing post, was in the hospital with his third heart attack. He had not bothered to mention the first two to anyone; he had been too busy serving up advice and worldly wisdom between his steak specials and famous salads. This was the big scene, Brando's big scene, the one she had heard about all her life.

  The jazz was a slow, sexy trumpet solo, high and piercing. Betty, the waitress with higher billing, began to dance alone, trying to distract everyone from their worries in her own way. She had been hired by Sam in the first act, even though he knew all about her backstreet abortion (jailbird ex-husband, in the film). Betty was played with a wobbly New York accent, from Rottingdean to the Bronx via Beverly Hills, by Victoria Page.

  Anne had not seen her mother in three years; and she had only seen her as she was here in old movies and photograph
s. She was the Hollywood Star going legitimate on Broadway, with a terminated contract back at Paramount and an egghead boyfriend. She was married to the Mayor of some Californian retirement colony these days, and still occasionally did guest appearances on television shows about geriatric detectives. She always played the private eye's old flame who was in trouble, and she still paused for applause everytime she made an entrance.

  But here was Vicky, her mother, younger than she was. She looked a lot like Judi. Under the arc lights, she was even made up like Judi. She moved sensuously, showing off her dance training, carried away by the music, caressing herself in way that would have to be toned down for the movie. She started to hum - the critics had been ready to pounce, but Dad had not written a song in for his then-fiancee - muttering under the tune. Anne was close enough to realise that she was just counting time, 'one-two-three-four, one-two-three-four', but to someone in the auditorium, she seemed to be expressing the inexpressible, summing up the hopeless yearnings of all the night people…

  Then Brando came on.

  He had worked himself up in the wings. One night, he had got himself into such a state while thinking through the offstage bit where he quit his dead-end job that he had laid out a stagehand who had spoken to him. It was just the sort of thing Maish Johnson would have done. He shouldered his way through the door, and almost danced across the stage, giving the impression of a limp but also covering it up. Every part of his body was in motion. He never just stood still on the stage. He was a pinball, bouncing off the fixed actors, lighting up the beacons in Dad's text. Anne was astonished. She forgot herself, and felt, for the first time, the full power of her father at the height of his talent. She wished she could talk to him again, tell him that he had not lived pointlessly, that he had set down something which would last…