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