resuscitation medicine. When she began to realize why he thought she
needed to know about such an esoteric subject, her grip on his hand
suddenly grew tight.
In room 518, Hatch foundered in a sea of bad dreams that were nothing
but disassociated images melding into one another without even the
illogical narrative flow that usually shaped nightmares. Wind-whipped
snow. A huge Ferris wheel sometimes bedecked with festive lights,
sometimes dark and broken and ominous in a night seething with rain.
Groves of scarecrow trees, gnarled and coaly, stripped leafless by
winter. A beer truck angled across a snow-swept highway. A tunnel with
a concrete floor that sloped down into perfect blackness, into something
unknown that filled him with heart-bursting dread. His lost son, Jimmy,
lying sallow-skinned against hospital sheets, dying of cancer. Water,
cold and deep, impenetrable as ink, stretching to all horizons, with no
possible escape. A naked woman, her head on backwards, hands clasping a
crucifix...
Frequently he was aware of a faceless and mysterious figure at the
perimeter of the dreamscapes, dressed in black like some grim reaper,
moving in such fluid harmony with the shadows that he might have been
only a shadow himself. At other times, the reaper was not part of the
scene but seemed to be the viewpoint through which it was observed, as
if Hatch was looking out through the eyes of another-yes that beheld the
world with all the compassionless, hungry, calculating practicality of a
graveyard rat.
For a time, the dream took on more of a narrative quality, wherein Hatch
found himself running along a train-station platform, trying to catch up
with a passenger car that was slowly pulling away on the outbound track.
Through one of the train windows, he saw Jimmy, gaunt and hollow-eyed in
the grip of his disease, dressed only in a hospital gown, peering sadly
at Hatch, one small hand raised as he waved goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.
Hatch reached desperately for the vertical railing beside the boarding
steps at the end of Jimmy's car, but the train picked up speed; Hatch
lost ground; the steps slipped away.
Jimmy's pale, small face lost definition and finally vanished as the
speeding passenger car dwindled into the terrible nothingness beyond the
station platform, a lightless void of which Hatch only now became aware.
Then another passenger car began to glide past him (clackety-clack,
clackety-clack), and he was startled to see Lindsey seated at one of the
windows, looking out at the platform, a lost expression on her face.
Hatch called to her. "Lindsey!"but she did not hear or see him, she
seemed to be in a trance, so he began to run again, trying to board her
car (clackety-clack, clackety-clack), which drew away from him as
Jimmy's had done. "Lindsey!" His hand was inches from the railing
beside the boarding stairs.... Suddenly the railing and stairs
vanished, and the train was not a train any more.
With the eerie fluidity of all changes in all dreams, it became a roller
coaster in an amusement park, heading out on the start of a thrill ride.
(Clacketyclack.) Hatch came to the end of the platform without being
able to board Lindsey's car, and she rocketed away from him, up the
first steep hill of the long and undulant track. Then the last car in
the caravan passed him, close behind Lindsey's. It held a single
passenger. The figure in black around whom shadows clustered like
ravens on a cemetery fense sat in front of the car, head bowed, his face
concealed by thick hair that fell forward in the fashion of a monk's
hood. (Clackety-clack!) Hatch shouted at Lindsey, warning her to look
back and be aware of what rode in the car behind her, pleading with her
to be careful and hold on tight, for God's sake, hold on tight! The
caterpillar procession of linked cars reached the crest of the hill,
hung there for a moment as if time had been suspended, then disappeared
in a scream-filled plummet down the far side.
Ramona Perez, the night nurse assigned to the fifth-floor wing that
included room 518, stood beside the bed, watching her patient. She was
worried about him, but she was not sure that she should go looking for
Dr. Nyebern yet.
According to the heart monitor, Harrison's pulse was in a highly
fluctuant state. Generally it ranged between a reassuring seventy to
eighty beats per minute. Periodically, however, it raced as high as a
hundred and forty. On the positive side, she observed no indications of
serious arrhythmia.
His blood pressure was affected by his accelerated heartbeat, but he was
in no apparent danger of stroke or cerebral hemorrhage related to
spiking hypertension, because his systolic reading was never dangerously
high.
He was sweating profusely, and the circles around his eyes were so dark,
they appeared to have been applied with actors' grease paint. He was
shivering in spite of the blankets piled on him. The fingers of his
left hand exposed because of the intravenous line spasmed occasionally,
though not forcefully enough to disturb the needle inserted just below
the crook of his elbow.
In a whisper he repeated his wife's name, sometimes with considerable
urgency: "Lindsey .. Lindsey .. Lindsey, no!"
Harrison was dreaming, obviously, and events in a nightmare could elicit
physiological responses every bit as much as waking experiences.
Finally Ramona decided that the accelerated heartbeat was solely the
result of the poor man's bad dreams, not an indication of genuine
cardiovascular destabilization. He was in no danger. Nevertheless, she
remained at his bedside, watching over him.
Vassago sat at a window table overlooking the harbor. He had been in
the lounge only five minutes, and already he suspected it was not good
hunting grounds. The atmosphere was all wrong. He wished he had not
ordered a drink.
No dance music was provided on Monday nights, but a pianist was at work
in one corner. He played neither gutless renditions of '305 and '40s
songs nor the studiedly bland arrangements of easy-listening
rock-'n'-roll that rotted the brains of regular lounge patrons. But he
spun out the equally noxious repetitive melodies of New Age numbers
composed for those who found elevator music too complex and
intellectually taxing.
Vassago preferred music with a hard beat, fast and driving, something
that put his teeth on edge. Since becoming a citizen of the borderland,
he could not take pleasure in most music, for its orderly structures
irritated him. He could tolerate only music that was atonal, harsh,
unmelodious.
He responded to jarring key changes, thunderously crashing chords, and
squealing guitar riffs that abraded the nerves. He enjoyed discord and
broken patterns of rhythm. He was excited by music that filled his mind
with images of blood and violence.
To Vassago, the scene beyond the big windows, because of its beauty, was
as displeasing as the lounge music. Sailboats and motor yachts crowded
one another at the private docks along the harbor. They were tied up,
sails furled, engines silent, wallowing only slightly because the harbor
was well protected and the storm was not particularly ferocious. Few of
the wealthy owners actually lived aboard, regardless of the size of the
craft or amenities, so lights glowed at only a few of the portholes.
Rain, here and there transmuted into quicksilver by the dock lights,
hammered the boats, beaded on their brightwork, drizzled like molten
metal down their masts and across their decks and out of their scuppers.
He had no tolerance for prettiness, for postcard scenes of harmonious
composition, because they seemed false, a lie about what the world was
really like. He was drawn, instead, to visual discord, jagged shapes,
malignant and festering forms.
With its plush chairs and low amber lighting, the lounge was too soft
for a hunter like him. It dulled his killing instincts.
He surveyed the patrons, hoping to spot an object of the quality
suitable for his collection. If he saw something truly superb that
excited his acquisitional fever, even the stultifying atmosphere would
not be able to sap his energy.
A few men sat at the bar, but they were of no interest to him. The
three men in his collection had been his second, fourth, and fifth
acquisitions, taken because they had been vulnerable and in lonely
circumstances that allowed him to overpower them and take them away
without being seen.
He had no aversion to killing men, but preferred women. Young women.
He liked to get them before they could breed more life.
The only really young people among the customers were four women in
their twenties who were seated by the windows, three tables away from
him. They were tipsy and a little giddy, hunched over as if sharing
gossip, talking intently, periodically bursting into gales of laughter.
One of them was lovely enough to engage Vassago's hatred of beautiful
things. She had enormous chocolate-brown eyes, and an animal grace that
reminded him of a doe. He dubbed her "Bambi." Her raven hair was cut
into short wings, exposing the lower halves of her ears.
They were exceptional ears, large but delicately formed. He thought he
might be able to do something interesting with them, and he continued to
watch her, trying to decide if she was up to his standards.
Bambi talked more than her friends, and she was the loudest of the
group. Her laugh was the loudest, as well, a jackass braying. She was
exceptionally attractive, but her incessant chatter and annoying
laughter spoiled the package. Clearly, she loved the sound of her own
voice.
She'd be vastly improved, he thought, if she were to be stricken deaf
and mute.
Inspiration seized him, and he sat up straighter in his chair. By
removing her ears, tucking them into her dead mouth, and sewing her lips
shut, he would be neatly symbolizing the fatal flaw in her beauty.
It was a vision of such simplicity, yet such power, that. One rum and
Coke," the waitress said, putting a glass and paper cocktail napkin on
the table in front of Vassago. "You want to run a tab?"
He looked up at her, blinking in confusion. She was a stout middle-aged
woman with auburn hair. He could see her quite clearly through his
sunglasses, but in his fever of creative excitement, he had difficulty
placing her.
Finally he said, "Tab? Uh, no. Cash, thank you, ma'am."
When he took out his wallet, it didn't feel like a wallet at all but
like one of Bambi's ears might feel. When he slid his thumb back and
forth across the smooth leather, he felt not what was there but what
might soon be available for his caress: delicately shaped ridges of
cartilage forming the auricula and pinna, the graceful curves of the
channels that focused sound waves inward toward the tympanic membrane.
...
He realized the waitress had spoken to him again, stating the price of
his drink, and then he realized that it was the second time she had done
so- He had been fingering his wallet for long, delicious seconds,
daydreaming of death and disfigurement.
He fished out a crisp bill without looking at it, and handed it to her.
"This is a hundred," she said. "Don't you have anything smaller?"
"No, ma'am, sorry," he said, impatient now to be rid of her, "that's
it."
"I'll have to go back to the bar to get this much change."
"Okay, yeah, whatever. Thank you, ma'am."
As she started away from his table, he returned his attention to the
four young women-only to discover that they were leaving. They were
nearing the door, pulling on their coats as they went.
He started to rise, intending to follow them, but he froze when he heard
himself say, "Lindsey."
He didn't call out the name. No one in the bar heard him say it. He
was the only one who reacted, and his reaction was one of total
For a moment he hesitated with one hand on the table, one on the arm of
his chair, halfway to his feet. While he was paralyzed in that posture
of indecisiveness, the four young women left the lounge. Bambi became
of less interest to him than the mysterious name- 'Lindsey"-so he sat
down.
He did not know anyone named Lindsey.
He had never known anyone named Lindsey.
It made no sense that he would suddenly speak the name aloud.
He looked out the window at the harbor. Hundreds of millions of dollars
of ego-gratification rose and fell and wallowed side to side on the
rolling water. The sunless sky was another sea above, as cold and
merciless as the one below. The air was full of rain like millions of
gray and silver threads, as if nature was trying to sew the ocean to the
heavens and thereby obliterate the narrow space between, where life was
possible.
Having been one of the living, one of the dead, and now one of the
living dead, he had seen himself as the ultimate sophisticate, as
experienced as any man born of woman could ever hope to be. He had
assumed that the world held nothing new for him, had nothing to teach
him. Now this. First the seizure in the car: Something's out there!
And now Lindsey. The two experiences were different, because he heard
no voice in his head the second time, and when he spoke it was with his
own famIliar voice and not that of a stranger. But both events were so
peculiar that he knew they were linked. As he gazed at the moored
boats, the harbor, and the dark world beyond, it began to seem more
mysterious to him than it had in ages.
He picked up his rum and Coke. He took a long swallow of it.
As he was putting the drink down, he said, "Lindsey."
The glass rattled against the table, and he almost knocked it over,
because the name surprised him again. He hadn't spoken it aloud to
ponder the meaning of it. Rather, it had burst from him as before, a
bit more breathlessly this time and somewhat louder.
Interesting.
The lounge seemed to be a magical place for him.
He decided to settle down for a whil
e and wait to see what might happen
next.
When the waitress arrived with his change, he said, "I'd like another
drink, ma'am." He handed her a twenty. "This'll take care of it, and
please keep the change."
Happy with the tip, she hurried back to the bar.
Vassago turned to the window again, but this time he looked at his own
reflection in the glass instead of at the harbor beyond. The dim lights
of the lounge threw insufficient glare on the pane to provide him with a
detailed image. In that murky mirror, his sunglasses did not register
well.
His face appeared to have two gaping eye sockets like those of a
fleshless skull. The illusion pleased him.
In a husky whisper not loud enough to draw the attention of anyone else
in the lounge, but with more urgency than before, he said, "Lindsey,
no!"
He had not anticipated that outburst any more than the previous two, but
it did not rattle him. He had quickly adapted to the fact of these
mysterious events, and had begun to try to understand them. Nothing
could surprise him for long. After all, he had been to Hell and back,
both to the real Hell and the one beneath the funhouse, so the intrusion
of the fantastic into real life did not frighten or awe him.
He drank a third rum and Coke. When more than an hour passed without
further developments, and when the bartender announced the last round of
the night, Vassago left.
The need was still with him, the need to murder and create. It was a