The Ninth Nightmare

a combination of dirt and shadows. Now he could see that it was moving. Something inside the shower stall was alive.

‘Who’s that?’ he called out. ‘Come out here where I can see you!’

There was no answer, and he felt too foolish to call out a second time, in case it was nothing but an optical illusion, or maybe an animal that had gotten itself trapped — a dog or a cat or a raccoon. But then the shower stall door was pushed open with a reverberating shudder, and a man stepped out of it. Lincoln opened and closed his mouth, and coughed, but he couldn’t find the breath inside him to speak.

The man was tall — at least as tall as Lincoln, and maybe an inch or two more — but he was also very thin, with arms and legs that were disproportionately long. He was wearing a black tuxedo with a black silk vest underneath it, and a black shirt with a black bow-tie. His hair was white and ragged and almost shoulder length. What alarmed Lincoln about him the most, however, was his face. It was very pale gray, like a face in a black- and-white photograph, and it was blurred, as if he had moved when he was having his photograph taken. Lincoln could make out the dark smudges of his eyes, and the upward-sloping curve of his lips, but that was all. The rest of his features seemed to be permanently out of focus.

‘I warned you not to come, now, didn’t I?’ the man told him, hoarsely. ‘You would not listen to me, though, would you? You out-and-out refused to listen.’

‘Who are you?’ Lincoln demanded. ‘What the hell is going on here?’

‘Things that are no concern of yours, Lincoln. Things that you would have been wiser to stay ignorant of. But of course it is much too late now, isn’t it? You have come here, in spite of the fact that I specifically asked you not to, and you have witnessed what you have witnessed. And I cannot risk anybody interfering in what I am doing here. Not you. Nobody.’

‘But there’s a woman dead out there!’ Lincoln protested. ‘There’s a woman dead out there and the whole goddamned bedroom is on fire! It isn’t even my bedroom! And this sure as hell isn’t my bathroom, either!’

The gray-faced man tapped his forehead. ‘It is the power of the mind, Lincoln, that is what it is. It is the power of the human imagination, unbridled by consciousness. The power of dreams.’

‘I don’t understand one goddamned word of what you’re talking about,’ Lincoln told him. ‘I don’t want to know, either. All’s I know is, I want to be back in my real hotel room, back in my real reality.’

The gray-faced man shook his head so that his ratty white hair swung from side to side. ‘Not possible, Lincoln. You would speak to people and those people would not necessarily understand what I am doing here, but they could well speak to other people who do understand, and then it would be mayhem.’ He paused, and then he said, ‘“Mayhem,” from the Anglo- Saxon word meaning to maim, or to seriously injure.’

Behind Lincoln, the bathroom door cracked loudly as the heat from the bedroom split the wood. Without any further hesitation, the gray-faced man reached into the shower stall and took out a long cross-cut saw. He lifted it up in front of Lincoln’s face and took hold of the end of the blade, so that he could flex it one way and then the other.

‘See this, Lincoln? The tool of my trade. Fine Pennsylvania steel with champion-pattern teeth. Cuts through anything, this beauty, faster than any chainsaw.’

Lincoln said nothing, but backed away as far as he could. The gray-faced man came after him, still flexing the saw blade so that it went whoop — whoop — whoop.

‘You cannot say that I did not give you fair warning, Lincoln,’ said the gray-faced man. He was much closer now, and Lincoln found it even more disconcerting than ever that his features were so blurred. It was just as if his face were shaped out of nothing but fog.

‘You stay away from me,’ said Lincoln. ‘If you take even one step closer—’

‘You will do what, exactly? Scream like a girl, like they all do? They all scream, you know, every one of them! They howl like bitches, men and women both! I have never known a single one of them suffer in silence. It is against human nature.’

He stopped flexing the saw, and then without any hesitation at all he slashed it diagonally across Lincoln’s right shoulder. It cut through Lincoln’s shirt and into his deltoid muscle, almost a half inch deep, and Lincoln could actually hear his flesh rip. Blood sprayed down his arm, all the way to his elbow, and spattered across his cuff.

He crashed backward against the bathroom door and tried to grab the gray-faced man’s wrist, but the gray- faced man yanked the saw vertically downward and its irregular teeth tore into Lincoln’s knuckles. Lincoln pushed him, hard, with both hands, and the gray-faced man staggered backward, but at the same time the edge of the saw almost took Lincoln’s right thumb off. Suddenly there was blood flying everywhere, like a scarlet blizzard.

Neither of them spoke as the gray-faced man came for Lincoln again, swishing the saw blade from side to side as if it were a saber. Lincoln thought: he’s going to kill me. He’s going to cut off my fingers and cut my face apart and then he’s going to cut my fucking head off.

There was only one way to escape. As the gray-faced man came closer, he reached across and took hold of the bathroom door-handle. The handle was so hot that it blistered his fingers instantly, and he shouted out ‘Aahhhh! Shit!’ The wet towel was tangled underneath it but he pulled the door open as wide as he could, keeping himself shielded behind it as he did so.

With a roar like a ravenous lion, a huge orange fireball rolled into the bathroom, hungry for all the oxygen that it could devour. The gray-faced man lost his balance and stumbled backward, colliding with the shower stall and cracking the glass. He didn’t lose his grip on his saw, however, and the instant the fireball had dissipated he came for Lincoln again, slashing the saw blade even more violently so that it whistled and sang as it cut its way through the air.

‘They all scream, Lincoln!’ he repeated, in that thick, hoarse voice. ‘They all scream, every one of them! They howl like bitches! And you, Lincoln — you will be no exception!’

Lincoln wrenched the bathroom door even wider. The bedroom was filled with dense brown smoke now, and through the smoke he could see flames dancing like demons dancing in hell. The heat was overwhelming but he knew that he had no choice. He took a deep breath and plunged right into the inferno, keeping his hands held high to protect his face.

‘Fool!’ screamed the gray-faced man. ‘You really think you can get away?’

The gray-faced man started to come after him, slashing at the smoke, but Lincoln had managed to find his way to the window. He twisted the catch, burning his fingers again, and heaved the window upward.

Immediately, a huge rush of cold air blew into the bedroom, sprinkled with raindrops. With a deep whoomph! the flames jumped up like a fiery Mexican wave, and the gray-faced man temporarily disappeared behind them. Lincoln felt the heat on the side of his face and he could smell his own hair burning, but he climbed out of the window on to the fire escape and dragged down the window behind him. As he did so, he could see the gray-faced man through the flames, with his cross-cut saw still lifted, as if to warn him that this wasn’t over yet.

Lincoln looked over the railing. Three stories below him, a narrow alley ran between this building and a derelict warehouse next door, crowded with broken crates and empty window-frames and overflowing trash cans. He grasped the wet handrail and started to make his way down. It was too late now to worry what reality this might be, and if he would ever be able to return. As far as he was concerned he was lucky just to be alive.

He had only just started going down the second storey when one of the metal treads gave way beneath him. His left foot plunged through the gap, right up to the ankle, and the broken tread fell all the way down to the alley, bouncing and clanging when it reached the ground. He lurched forward, grabbing both handrails to stop himself from falling, but then the next tread gave way, and the next, and then the entire section of fire escape on which he was standing came tearing away from the wall.

He didn’t know why he continued to grip the handrails, because the whole structure was plummeting into the alley, but there was nothing else for him to hold on to. He wasn’t aware of any sound, no banging or clattering, although the noise of the collapsing fire escape must have been a deafening cacophony of falling metal.

All he heard was the rush of air in his ears as he dropped toward the alley below him, as if he were an angel dropping from a great height. He didn’t even hear himself hitting the ground.