when he tried to breathe he could not. He went down, flailing at the
waves with arms and hands that were only bone, caught in an undertow,
sucked into everlasting darkness, dissolution, oblivion.
BAD THING!
Bobby sat straight up in bed.
He was screaming, but no cry issued from him. When he realized he had
been dreaming, he stopped trying to scream and finally a low and
miserable sound escaped him.
He had thrown off the sheets. He sat on the edge of the bed feet on the
floor, both hands on the mattress, steadying himself as if he was still
on that heaving beach or struggling to swim in those roiling tides.
The green numbers of the projection clock glowed fain on the ceiling:
2:43.
For a while the drum-loud thud of his own heart filled him with sound
from within, and he was deaf to the outer warmth But after a few seconds
he heard Julie breathing rhythmically, and he was surprised that he had
not awaken her. Evidently he had not been thrashing in his sleep.
The panic that infused the dream had not entirely left him His anxiety
began to swell again, partly because the room was lightless as that
devouring sea. Afraid of waking Julie did not switch on the bedside
lamp.
As soon as he was able to stand, he got up and circled the bed in the
perfect blackness. The bathroom was on her side but a clear path was
provided, and he found his way as he had on countless other nights,
without difficulty, guided by both experience and instinct.
He eased the door shut behind him and switched on the lights. For a
moment the fluorescent brilliance prevented him from looking into the
glary surface of the mirror above the double sinks. When at last he
regarded his reflection, and that his flesh had not been eaten away. The
dream had been frighteningly vivid, unlike anything he’d known before;
and in some strange way it had been even more real than waking like with
intense colors and sounds that pulsed through his slumbering mind with
the full glare dazzle of light along the filament of an incandescent
bulb. Though aware that it had been a dream, he had half feared that
the nightmare ocean had I its corrosive mark on him even after he woke.
Shuddering, he leaned against the counter. He turned on the cold water,
bent forward, and splashed his face. Dripping, he looked at his
reflection again and met his eyes. He whispered to himself.
“What the hell was that?” CANDY PROWLED.
The eastern end of the Pollard family’s two-acre property dropped into a
canyon. The walls were steep, composed mostly of dry crumbling soil
veined in places by pink and gray shale Only the expansive root systems
of the hardy, desert vegetation-chapparal, thick clumps of bunchgrass,
pampas grass scattered mesquite-kept the slopes from eroding extensively
in every heavy rain. A few eucalyptuses, laurels, and melaleucas grew
on the walls of the canyon, and where the floor was broad enough,
melaleucas and California live oaks sank roots deep into the earth along
the runoff channel. That channel only a dry stream bed now, but during
a heavy rain it over flowed.
Fleet and silent in spite of his size, Candy followed the canyon
eastward, moving upslope, until he came to a junction wit another
declivity that was too narrow to be called a canyon There, he turned
north. The land continued to climb, though not as steeply as before.
Sheer walls soared on both sides of him, and in places the passage was
nearly pinched off, narrowing to only a couple of feet. Brittle
tumbleweeds, blown into the ravine by the wind, had collected in mounds
at some those choke points, and they scratched Candy as he pushed
through them.
Without even a fragment moon, the night was unusually dark at the bottom
of that fissure in the land, but he seldom stumbled and never hesitated.
His gifts did not include super human vision; he was as blinded by
lightlessness as anyone However, even in the blackest night, he knew
when an obstacle lay before him, sensed the contours of the land so well