The Ninth Nightmare Part 10

'Ashapola is known to many different people by many different names. But Ashapola is our guardian and our protector. Ashapola is all that stands between the human race and ultimate chaos.'

'You're not some hospital visitor, are you? Where you from, the Baptists or somethin'? You tryin' to convert me?'

Springer smiled. 'I don't need to convert you, Lincoln. You are what you are. You're descended from a long line of people who have the capability of entering the world of dreams and nightmares and fighting on the side of good. We call them Night Warriors. If you like, you're one of Ashapola's army.'

'Say what? I wasn't descended from no Night Warriors. My father was a jazz musician and my grandfather was a cook at The Whitney and my great-grandfather before him worked as a sweeper-upper in the Polish match factory.'

'I know. But apart from being a cook, your grandfather Joseph was Zebenjo the Arrow-Storm. He was a Night Warrior who was capable of firing over two hundred arrows so fast that you couldn't see them coming.'

'Oh, right.'

Springer squeezed his left knee through the blankets.

'Feel anything? Anything at all?'

Lincoln shook his head.

'That's because of your spinal injury. But that won't affect your ability to become Zebenjo'Yyx, the grandson of the great Zebenjo, and fire arrows at the same devastating rate as Zebenjo did.'

'Of course I will. Forget about the fact that I can't sit up and I've never thrown anythin' in my life more lethal than a frisbee. Lady - whoever you are - all of this sounds totally insane. It's obvious that I've been hurt real bad. Maybe it happened for real or maybe I was havin' some kind of trip. Maybe I was havin' a nightmare. Maybe I'm still havin' a nightmare, right now, and I'm beginnin' to think that maybe I am. But, come on, what's this arrow-shootin' s.h.i.t?'

Springer stayed where she was, leaning over him, so that he could feel her steady breathing on his cheek. In spite of himself, his testiness began to subside. There was something so attractive about her that he wished he had the strength to raise up his head just two or three inches more, and kiss her. Yet the attraction wasn't so much s.e.xual as spiritual. He suddenly felt that here was a woman who really understood him, all of his ambitions, all of his frustrations, all of his impatience, right down to the very core of his soul. She gave him a feeling of deep relief, as if he had been waiting for this moment of revelation all of his life. As if she had said to him, this is you, Lincoln. This is who you really are. No need for posturing. No need for swagger. This is you.

Springer reached across and picked up a hand mirror from the nightstand. She held it up so that Lincoln could see his own face in it.

'You can't stand up yet, so I can't show you the way you're going to look when you're a Night Warrior. Not your whole armor, anyhow, head-to-toe, and all of your weapons. But this will be the face that you wear, when you enter other people's dreams. This is the face that the enemies of Ashapola will see, and learn to fear.'

Lincoln looked up into the mirror, but all he could see was his usual face, with a crimson bruise over his left eyebrow, and a split in his upper lip.

'So?' he asked Springer. 'What am I supposed to be lookin' at?'

'Zebenjo'Yyx, grandson of the great Zebenjo, the Arrow-Storm.'

'Oh, of course. I can distinctly see the resemblance.'

'Wait,' Springer chided him. 'Have patience.'

'I need to see a doctor, lady. I need to see a doctor right now.'

'You're not hurting, are you?'

'No. I'm not hurtin' at all. I almost wish that I was. At least that would mean I could feel somethin'.'

He looked up into the hand mirror again, and when he did so, he said, 's.h.i.t!' The face looking back at him was no longer his, but a tan leather mask, intricately decorated with scar patterns and diagonal lines of white paint. It was topped with braided knots of dry red hair, and its mouth was fixed in a ferocious scowl, with what looked like a mixed-up collection of human and animal teeth crammed into it.

He could see his eyes staring out of the mask, and he knew they were his, because they blinked whenever he blinked. But the mask itself was terrifying, like a ju-ju mask. His grandfather Joseph used to have one hanging on his front door, with bulging eyes and a red protruding tongue. He had told Lincoln that he had nailed it up there to scare away any bad spirits, but it had scared Lincoln, too, when he was little, and he had always run past it with his hands covering his eyes.

'This is a trick, right?' Lincoln asked Springer. 'Some kind of optical illusion?'

'No trick,' Springer a.s.sured him. 'This is the battle mask that Zebenjo'Yyx wears, whenever he goes to war. And you should see his amazing armor, and the weapons he carries. In fact you will.'

She reached down and picked up a small alligator-skin purse. She opened it up and took out a folded sheet of paper. 'Here,' she said. 'This is the invocation that Night Warriors always have to say before they go to sleep at night. Once you have spoken these words, the spirit of Ashapola will visit you in your dreams and invest you with all of the equipment and protection that you require.'

'Lady-' said Lincoln. 'Do you really expect me to believe any of this?'

'Do you believe what happened to you at the Griffin House Hotel?'

'I believe I saw it, for sure. But I don't necessarily believe that it really happened for real. You can go to the desert, can't you, and see lakes, but there's no lakes there at all, only sand. You wouldn't get your feet wet.'

'So how did you fall out of a ground-level window and break your spine?'

'I don't know. Maybe I just fell awkward. I don't even want to think about it.'

'But you have to think about it, Lincoln, because we need you, desperately, and we need you now.'

Lincoln turned his head away and stared at the yellow seabirds on the curtains. 'I'm goin' crazy,' he said. 'I've lost it. I've gone nuts. Admit it - tell me that this is a nuthouse.'

'You're not crazy, Lincoln, and tonight you'll find that out for yourself. But you have to promise me that you'll repeat the invocation. Look - I'm tucking it under the pillow, right here.'

'What does it say?'

Springer unfolded it. '"Now, when the face of the world is hidden in darkness, let us be conveyed to the place of our meeting, armed and armored; and let us be nourished by the power that is dedicated to the cleaving of darkness, the settling of all black matters, and the dissipation of all evil. So be it."'

'Read it again,' Lincoln asked her.

Springer read the words again. After she had finished, Lincoln said, 'These Night Warriors - what exactly are they?'

'They were created by Ashapola to protect us in our dreams. Their original Sanskrit name means "Army of Dreams", although the Greeks and the Romans called them "The Legions of Sleep".'

'Go on.'

'Ashapola created the first human so that she could dream how the world of humans was eventually going to turn out, and he could copy her dreams and make them come alive. Some of her dreams were beautiful beyond any description, but others were violent and chaotic. So the second human that Ashapola created was capable of becoming a Night Warrior, to make sure that the first human came to no harm when she was asleep. And that was how the Night Warriors' bloodline began.'

'Come on... you're tellin' me that Adam wasn't Adam at all, but some woman?'

'Eve, that's right. Why do you think she was called "Eve"? In Hebrew, her name means "life" or "breathing". But she was created to imagine the world in her sleep, every night when evening fell.'

'A woman. I can't believe it. No wonder the world is in such a G.o.dd.a.m.ned mess.'

At that moment, the curtain around the bed was sharply drawn back, and a doctor and a nurse appeared. The doctor was Indian, with a long face and huge black-rimmed spectacles and a tiny black moustache, while the nurse was plump and red-haired and kept smiling and raising her eyebrows as if she had just been told a hilarious off-color joke and was bursting to share it with them.

'I am very sorry to be interrupting your visit,' the doctor told Springer. 'Please - if you can come back in maybe ten minutes?'

'I have to go now anyhow,' said Springer. She leaned over again and kissed Lincoln on the cheek. 'Tonight,' she said. 'You won't forget, will you? We really need you. The others will be waiting for you. So will I.'

'Others?'

'At least six more, maybe seven.'

'I don't know. I don't think I can handle any more nightmares.'

Springer kissed him again. 'Please,' she breathed. 'Just be there. Please.'

When she had left the room, the doctor came up to Lincoln's bedside and leafed through his notes.

'I am Doctor Dhawan and this is Nurse Fairbrother. How do you do, Mr Walker? It was I who first treated you when you were admitted.'

'Hi,' said Lincoln.

'Did I hear you say to your friend that you had been suffering from nightmares?'

'Right now, everythin's a nightmare. Am I going to stay paralysed like this for the rest of my life?'

'Of course that is the very first thing you will be wanting to know, sir. What has happened is that you have fallen with considerable impact, fracturing your T10 thoracic vertebra in the middle of your back. I will be able to show you your injury very clearly on your MRI and CT scans.'

Lincoln waited while Doctor Dhawan frowned at his notes again and tugged at his moustache. Eventually, he said, 'What has happened is that a broken fragment of bone is pressing on your spinal cord. You must remember that the spinal cord is very soft, with a consistency like toothpaste, and so it is very susceptible to pressure of this nature.

'At the moment, although you may not be able to feel it, your back is held immobile by a brace. I have also put you on steroids to prevent as much swelling of the spinal column as possible. I will be doing more tests in the coming days, but from what I have seen of your injury so far, I should be able to perform a surgical operation which we call "decompression" and this will be removing the offending fragment of bone.'

'Then I'll be able to sit up, and walk?'

'Eventually, sir, we are very much hoping so. It will take some time, and much therapy. But I believe the prognosis is good.'

Relieved, Lincoln lowered his head back on to his pillow. Nurse Fairbrother wheeled up a blood pressure monitor, picked up his right arm and wrapped the sleeve around it.

'You're that record promoter, aren't you?' she said. 'The Jive Machine? Skootah and the Gang? I really love that music.'

Lincoln gave her half a smile. He was preoccupied by what Doctor Dhawan had told him about his chances of recovery; but also by the feeling that Springer had given him that his life was on the verge of changing for ever.

'Millie D, too,' Nurse Fairbrother was saying, as she checked his heart rate. '"I'm going to dream about you, lover, even when I'm wide awake." I really love that song.'

'Yeah, cool,' said Lincoln. 'Next time Millie D's in town, I'll make sure you get some front-row tickets.'

'You know what you are?' said Nurse Fairbrother. 'You're an angel.'

An angel? thought Lincoln. Not just yet, thanks, if it's all the same to you.

Twenty minutes after Nurse Fairbrother had set him up with a new steroid drip and left him alone, he began to feel sleepy. Grace hadn't arrived at the hospital yet. According to the local news, severe electric storms over Lake Erie had delayed flights into Hopkins International by up to an hour. He watched Everybody Hates Chris for a while but his eyes kept closing.

He was right on the edge of dropping off when his left hand slid under the pillow and he found the piece of paper that Springer had given him. He took it out and unfolded it. He didn't really know why, but he began to read the handwritten words on it out loud.

'"Now, when the face of the world is hidden in darkness, let us be conveyed to the place of our meeting, armed and armored; and let us be nourished by the power that is dedicated to the cleaving of darkness, the settling of all black matters, and the dissipation of all evil. So be it."'

He folded it up again and pushed it back under his pillow. Night Warriors, he thought. That Eulalie must have been playing some kind of sick joke on him. She had probably been visiting Cleveland on business or seeing some relatives or some such, and heard that he was here in the hospital. He was a celebrity, after all, and they had probably run a bulletin about it on WBNX. But Night Warriors, for Christ's sake. She and her friends were probably wetting themselves with laughter right this minute. The coolest record producer in the country, cooler than Puff Daddy even, and he falls out of a first-story hotel window and winds up with a broken back. Never mind, I fooled him into thinking that he was going to be some kind of superhero. And who was he supposed to be? The Arrow-Storm? You got to believe it.

Lincoln closed his eyes. He wasn't asleep yet, but his mind was crowded with jerky, nightmarish pictures. He kept seeing the gray-faced man with the grinning green lips, stepping out of the shower stall with his handsaw. Then he saw the Hispanic woman with the wavy black hair, pleading with him not to leave her. El prestidigitator, she whispered. You don't know what he's done to me. Then he saw her bed exploding into flames.

This time, however, she didn't lie there motionless, as she had before, like a dead woman on a funeral pyre. This time she sat bolt upright and stared at him, and her hair was a crown of orange fire. This time she stretched her mouth wide open and let out an ululating howl of agony that went on and on.

'Stop!' Lincoln begged her. 'I can't save you! I can't even move! Please stop screamin'!'

But the woman continued to scream even though flames were licking out of her blankets and her nightdress was curling up into blackened rags.

'Stop!' Lincoln shouted at her. 'For Christ's sake, stop!'

Her screaming became fainter and fainter, until all that Lincoln could hear was the crackling of the flames. Gradually the woman herself began to fade, like a sepia photograph that has been exposed to the sun for too many years. He thought he could smell smoke, but then that faded too. He lay with his hand on his chest, panting.

'What's happenin' to you, bro?' he whispered. 'You losin' your sanity, or what?' He thought of his batty old grandmother, always hooking her hand around between her shoulder blades and complaining that cats were jumping on her back. He thought of Old Mister Jeffreys who used to sit on a sack of dog food in the corner of the Clay Market on Clay Street, shouting about the Polacks, and how the Polacks were the enemies of the black folks. 'Never used to be so much G.o.dd.a.m.ned sausage around, not till the Polacks took over!'

Exhausted, bruised, his mind fogged by pain suppressants, Lincoln fell asleep.

NINE.

Call to Arms In his previous life, John Dauphin had been a restaurant inspector down in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, which was a job that probably would have killed him before he was fifty. Unlike many of his fellow inspectors, he judged restaurants not only on their ambience and their standards of hygiene and the quality of their cooking, but on how generously they could pile up his plate.

Of course he always expected his pepper-jack shrimp at Boutin's to be crisp and crunchy and spicy on the outside and firm and white and sweet on the inside, but he also expected to be given more than a measly five shrimp per portion. As far as John was concerned, a chef might cook equally as well as Paul Prudhomme or Emeril Laga.s.se but that didn't ent.i.tle him to be a tight-a.s.s.

John had lost his restaurant-inspecting job after some political jiggery-pokery in the East Baton Rouge catering community, apart from reaching the point where he tipped the bathroom scales at 289 pounds, and his BMI was only two more cheeseburgers away from fifty. Last year, with little else to do, he had driven over two thousand seven hundred miles north-east to attend the funeral of his old Army buddy Dean Brunswick III in Presque Isle, Maine, but on the way back his beloved '71 Mercury Marquis had given up on him, dropping its engine on the highway like a cow giving birth, and ever since then he had been trying to earn enough money to limp home to Baton Rouge.

He had chosen taxi-driving as a means of making a living because it meant that he could sit down all day, and eat and drink whenever he felt like it, and he also got to meet a never-ending variety of people. Most of his pa.s.sengers were quirky and interesting, although some of them were dull beyond all human endurance, especially the business types he picked up at the airport, who sat in the back texting the whole time, or talking on their cellphones. John always thought, can't you stop communicating for twenty minutes out of your life, and just look around and breathe the exhaust fumes? OK, Cleveland is a world-cla.s.s dump, but it does have some redeeming features, like the Cleveland Grays Armory building, which pre-dates the Civil War, and the West Side Market, and the Lake View cemetery, where John D. Rockefeller was planted, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

The job he detested the most was cleaning out his cab at the end of his shift. Apart from the usual contributions of chewing gum and used Trojans and folded paper napkins filled with spat-out chicken-skin, he had also found an expensive red alligator purse filled with lumpy beige vomit, an upper set of false teeth, a long-dead turtle in a Burger King box, and a white angora scarf that its owner had obviously used to wipe his rear end.

It never surprised him, how disgusting people could be. Before he had taken up taxi-driving, he had already known that people were disgusting, because he had worked in the restaurant trade. What did surprise him, endlessly, was how they never seemed to think straight. Instead of saying, "Pardon me, driver, I really need a leak, would you mind pulling over?" they would rather pee into their open briefcase, and walk into the airport with it dripping behind them.

Another reason he detested cleaning out his cab was because the s.p.a.ce was so confined and he was so generously built. He had to force his way in through the rear doors and bend down to look underneath the seats, in case anybody had dropped anything valuable or revolting, and this always made him feel as if he were free diving in ninety fathoms under water and he was just about to run out of oxygen.

Today the back of his taxi was reasonably clean, except for a gristly piece of half-chewed sausage that somebody had forced into the ashtray in the armrest. He switched on his Vac'n'Go and gave the seats a quick once-over, and he was about to do the same for the carpets when he saw something sparkling underneath the front pa.s.senger seat. He rolled up his left sleeve and pushed his arm into the s.p.a.ce beneath the seat, and after two minutes of grunting and scrabbling he managed to hook out whatever it was.

He gripped the door handle and hauled himself, panting, on to his feet. It was a gloomy morning here on Gooding Avenue, in Glenville - so gloomy that he could hardly make out what the sparkly thing was. He squinted at it more closely, and then he realized it was an earring - one of the hoopy, loopy earrings that Rhodajane Berry had been wearing. It was made up of three overlapping gold crescents, each of them studded with zircons. The long curved wire that went through her pierced ear-lobe had bent askew, and that was probably why it had fallen off.

He turned the earring over and over. It was a sign, he was sure of it. He even sniffed it, and it still smelled of Boss Intense.

John believed in signs. He didn't believe that you could see Jesus in the scorch patterns on a slice of burned toast, or that three knocks on the door meant that somebody had died; but he did believe that some things were meant to be, and that if people couldn't find a way to get together, or didn't realize that they ought to be together, the natural world would conspire to make sure that they did, like the rabbits and bluebirds in a Disney picture.

He looked around. Gooding Avenue was a short, flat suburban street with small brick-and-clapboard houses set well back from the road. The clouds hung over it like dark gray quilts. There was no other living being in sight apart from a brindled dog trotting from one house to the next, sniffing at the trash cans. If John hadn't been able to hear the traffic from East 105th Street and Lakeview Road, he would have thought that the world had come to an end.

'If this isn't a sign,' he told himself, 'then I'm due for a hefty tax rebate.'

He went into the pale-green-painted house where he rented an upstairs room at the back. His landlady Mrs Gizmo had gone shopping, or to one of her bridge mornings. Her real name was Ada Weiss, but John had called her Mrs Gizmo right from the start. Ada Weiss = A Device = Gizmo.

His room was small and brown and plain, with a sloping ceiling on the right-hand side. He had only one poster on the wall, a hand-colored picture of the ferry landing at Baton Rouge, sometime in the 1890s. He had carried it around with him for so long that it was falling apart at the folds. His bedcovers were all scrumpled up and his trash basket was crammed with empty take-out boxes. He always had to have a late-night sub from Quizno's, usually honey bourbon chicken, so that he didn't wake up at three in the morning feeling ravenous.