shadows on the ceiling moved, bat-lizard-spider forms of singular
stealth and malevolent purpose.
They talked soflly, on and on about nothing special. They both knew
what they wanted to talk about, but they were afraid of it. Unlike the
creepy lesson the ceiling and things that lived under kid’s beds, it was
a real fear. Brain damage.
Since waking up in the hospital, after being sedated, Hatch had been
having bad dreams of unnerving power. He didn’t have them every night.
His sleep might even be undisturbed for as long as three or four nights
in a row. But he was having them more frequently, week by week, and the
intensity was increasing.
They were not always the same, as he remembered them, but they contained
similar elements. Violence. Horrific images of naked, rotting bodies
contorted into positions. Always, the unfolded from the point of view
of a stranger, the same mysterious figure, as if Hatch were a spirit in
possession of the man but unable to control him, along for the ride.
Routinely the nightmares began or end-or began and ended-in the same
setting: an assemblage of unusual bags and other queer structures that
resisted identification, all of it unlighted and seen most often as a
series of backing silhouettes against a night sky. He also saw
cavernous rooms and mazes of concrete corridors that were somehow
revealed in spite of having no windows or artificial lighting. The
location was, he said, familiar to him, but recognition remained
elusive, for he never saw enough to be able to identify it.
Until tonight, they had tried to convince themselves that his affliction
would be short-lived. Hatch was full of positive thoughts, as usual.
Bad dreams were not remarkable. Everyone had them. They were often
caused by stress. Alleviate the stress, and the nightmares went away.
But they were not fading. And now they had taken a new and deeply
disturbing turn: sleepwalking.
Or perhaps he was beginning, while awake, to hallucinate the same images
that troubled his sleep.
Shortly before dawn, Hatch reached out for her beneath the sheets and
took her hand, held it tight. “I’ll be all right. It’s nothing,
really. Just a “First thing in the morning, you should call Nyebern,”
she said, her heart sinking like a stone in a pond. “We haven’t been
straight with him.
He told you to let him know immediately if there were any symptoms-”
“This isn’t really a symptom,” he said, trying to put the best face on
it.
“Physical or mental symptoms,” she said, afraid for him-and for herself
if something was wrong with him.
“I had all the tests, most of them twice. They gave me a clean bill of
health. No brain damage.”
“Then you’ve nothing to worry about, do you? No reason to delay seeing
Nyebern.”
“If there’d been brain damage, it would’ve showed up right away. It’s
not a residual thing, doesn’t kick in on a delay.”
They were silent for a while.
She could no longer imagine that creepy-crawlies moved through the
shadows on the ceiling. False fears had evaporated the moment he had
spoken the name of the biggest real fear that they faced.
At last she said, “What about Regina?”
He considered her question for a while. Then: “I think we should go
ahead with it, fill out the papers assuming she wants to come with us,
of course.”
“And if… you’ve got a problem? And it gets worse?”
“It’ll take a few days to make the arrangements and be able to bring her
home. By then we’ll have the results of the physical, the tests.
I’m sure I’ll be fine.”
“You’re too relaxed about this.”
“Stress kills.”
“If Nyebern finds something seriously wrong…?”
“Then we’ll ask the orphanage for a postponement if we have to. The
thing is if we tell them I’m having problems that don’t allow me to go
ahead with the papers tomotrow, they might have second thoughts about
our suitability. We might be rejected and never have a chance with
Regina.”
The day had been so perfect, from their meeting in Salvatore Gujilio’s
office to their lovemaking before the dinner and again in the massive
old Chinese sleigh bed. The future had looked so bright, the worst