despised herself for her weakness that she was finally able to shatter
her paralysis. Gasping, she sat up. Clawed at the back of her neck,
trying to tear off the oily, frigid, wormlike probe. Nothing there.
Nothing. Swung her legs over the edge of the bed. Fumbled for the
lamp.
Almost knocked it over. Found the switch. Light.
Whoosh.
She sprang off the bed. Felt the back of her head again. Her neck.
Between her shoulderblades. Nothing. Nothing there. Yet she felt it.
Whoosh.
She was over the edge of hysteria and unable to return, making queer
little animal sounds of fear and desperation. Out of the corner of her
eye, she saw movement. Swung around. The wall behind the bed.
Sweating.
Glistening. The entire wall bulged toward her, as if it were a membrane
against which a great and terrible mass was pressing insistently. It
throbbed repulsively, like an enormous internal organ in the exposed and
steaming guts of a prehistoric behemoth.
Whoosh.
She backed away from the wet, malignantly animated wall. Turned.
Ran. Had to get out. Fast. The Enemy. It was coming. Had followed
her.
Out of the dream. The door. Locked. Deadbolt. Disengaged it. Hands
shaking. The Enemy. Coming. Brass security chain. Rattled it free.
Door.
Jerked it open. Something was on the threshold, filling the doorway,
bigger than she was, something beyond human experience, simultaneously
insectile and arachnoid and reptilian, squirming and jittering, a
tangled mass of spider legs and antennae and serpentine coils and
roachlike mandibles and multifaceted eyes and rattlesnake fangs and
claws, a thousand nightmares rolled into one, but she was awake. It
burst through the door, seized her, pain exploding from her sides where
its talons tore at her, and she screamed -a night breeze.
That was the only thing coming through the open door. A soft, summery
night breeze.
Holly stood in the doorway, shuddering and gasping for breath, looking
out in astonishment at the concrete promenade of the motel. Lacy queen
palms, Australian tree ferns, and other greenery swayed sensuously under
the caress of the tropical zephyr. The surface of the swimming pool
rippled gently, creating countless ever-changing facets, refracting the
pool-bottom lights, so it seemed as if there was not a body of water in
the middle of the courtyard but a hole filled with a pirate’s treasure
of polished sapphires.
The creature that had attacked her was gone as if it had never existed.
It had not scuttled away or scurried up some web; it had simply
evaporated in an instant.
She no longer felt the icy, squirming tendril on the back of her neck or
inside her skull.
A couple of other guests had come out of rooms farther along the
promenade, evidently to investigate her scream.
Holly stepped back from the threshold. She did not want to attract
their attention now.
She glanced over her shoulder. The wall behind the bed was only a wall
again.
The clock built into the nightstand showed 5:08 A.M.
She eased the door shut, and suddenly she had to lean against it,
because all the strength went out of her legs.
Instead of being relieved that the strange ordeal had ended, she was
shattered. She hugged herself and shivered so hard, her teeth
chattered. She began to cry softly, not from fear of the experience,
concern for her: current safety, or concern about her sanity, but from a
profound sense of having been totally violated. Briefly but for too
long, she had been helplessly, victimized, enslaved by terror,
controlled by an entity beyond her understanding. She’d been
psychologically raped. Something needful had overpowered her, forced
its way into her, denying her free will; though gone now, it had left
traces of itself within her, a residue that stained her mind, her soul.
Just a dream, she told herself encouragingly.
But it had not been a dream when she sat up in bed and snapped on the
lamp. The nightmare had followed her into the waking world.
Just a dream, don’t make so much of it, get control of yourself, she
thought, struggling to regain her equanimity. You dreamed you were in
that lightless place, then you dreamed that you sat up in bed and turned