The Ninth Nightmare

The bald man joined them inside the pavilion and took off his hat, deliberately shaking the raindrops over the cat so that it flinched and hissed at him.

‘Here is Demi,’ he announced. ‘Demi, here is your twins.’

‘My twins?’ asked the woman. Her voice was weak but it was very clear. ‘How could I have children?’

Kiera could hardly breathe. The interior of the pavilion was very stuffy and here she was, face-to-face with the mother she had always believed to be dead.

‘Mom?’ she said. ‘It’s Kiera — Kiera and Kieran.’

The woman frowned at her. ‘My twins?’ she repeated.

‘That’s right, Mom. You had twins but they said you had a stroke and died.’

‘How could I have children?’

‘Because you had a husband who loved you, Mom. You had a husband who loved you and he’s been grieving for you all of this time.’

‘But, my dear,’ the woman insisted. ‘I can’t have children.’

With that, she started to unbutton the front of her dress, from the hem upward. As she did so, Kiera suddenly realized with a deep, cold feeling of dread that the woman had no legs. The lower half of her dress which was hanging over the seat of the chair was empty and flat.

She stared at the woman in alarm and said, ‘What are you doing? Mom — what’s happened to you? What are you doing?’

Kieran said, ‘Stop, Mom! Stop! We don’t need to see!’ But the woman carried on unbuttoning her dress, higher and higher, one small button after another.

Kiera turned to the bald man and said, ‘Stop her, please!’

The bald man remained impassive. ‘She is a sideshow. She is doing what sideshows always do. They show you what you paid to see.’

‘But we didn’t pay to see this, for Christ’s sake! We’re her children! Stop her!’

‘I cannot. I would not. She is explaining what she is. She needs to. And you need to understand.’

Now the woman had unfastened her dress all the way up to her breastbone. She was still staring at Kieran and Kiera — not defiantly, not truculently, but with a terrible look of pride in her eyes that almost made Kiera faint with horror.

She parted her dress with both hands to reveal a bony white midriff, and that was all. She had no pelvis, no hips and no legs. Her abdomen ended as a lumpy bag, with the criss-cross scars of sutures all the way around it.

‘You see, my dears?’ she said. ‘I could not possibly have children. I am Demi, the Demi-Goddess, the Half- Woman. I am surprised that you have not heard of me before. I am famous from coast to coast, isn’t that true, Zachary?’

The bald man nodded. ‘Coast to coast, Demi, my darling. Coast to coast.’

Kiera turned around and collided with Kieran. He grabbed hold of her sleeve, but she twisted herself away from him and pushed her way out of the pavilion. Once she was outside, she began to run back between the trailers and the caravans, past the trucks, past the horses, in between the tents.

She could hear herself panting and see the red lights jiggling in front of her eyes. She ran out of the carnival encampment and bounded down the sloping field, toward the lighted doorway of her bedroom.

‘Don’t close,’ she gasped. ‘Please don’t close.’

She turned her head around only once, to make sure that Kieran was following her, which she knew that he would, and of course he was. In fact he was less than twenty yards behind her, and gaining on her.

Soon the two of them were running side by side with the thunder rumbling all around them like heavy artillery and the long wet grass whipping at their ankles. They reached the bedroom doorway and Kiera ran straight into it without even breaking her stride. Kieran came hurtling after her and slammed the door behind him.

Kiera fell backward on the bed, whining for breath. Kieran stood beside her, bent forward, his hands on his knees. They stared at each other for a long time, not knowing what to say, not knowing what to think, hardly even daring to understand what they had just experienced.

‘That wasn’t a dream,’ said Kiera, at last. ‘Even if it was somebody else’s dream. That was a nightmare.’

Kieran pulled up his pajama pants. ‘Whatever it was, it really happened. I’m totally soaked through, and look at you — you are, too.’

Kiera looked toward the bedroom door. ‘Do you think it’s gone?’ she asked Kieran.

They both listened. The room was silent, except for the sound of somebody talking in the corridor outside. No rain, pattering against the other side of the door. No wind, blowing underneath it.

Eventually Kieran went across and turned the doorknob. He opened the door about a half inch and peered through it. Then he opened it wide. The sloping field had disappeared. The rain and the thunder and the rumbling tents had all disappeared, too. There was nothing but his hotel bedroom, with the bedside lamp tipped over on to the floor and all of his bedcovers dragged off the end of the bed.

‘That was mom, wasn’t it?’ said Kiera.

Kieran said, ‘Yes. I could feel it.’

‘So what do you think happened to her? And how did she get into that freak show? And where is that freak show? Do you think it really exists?’

Kieran shook his head. ‘I don’t know. But there’s one thing I do know. I’m not going back into the fricking bedroom tonight. You don’t mind if I sleep with you, do you?’

At about four a.m., Kieran was woken up by somebody singing, high and breathy. It was only when he had sat up in bed that he realized that it was Kiera, and that she was singing in her sleep.

‘In the good old summertime — in the good old summertime—’

FIVE A Disturbing Visitor

David said, ‘You’re bushed. You need to take it easy. Why don’t you cancel this afternoon’s visit?’

‘Because I promised,’ Katie told him. ‘It’s Mrs Copeland’s birthday. And it’s only in Coral Gables. I’ll be fine.’

‘Seriously, Katie, I don’t think you’re fine at all. That hallucination you had in Cleveland — sure, OK, maybe it was caused by nothing more than exhaustion. But I really wish you’d let Aaron run some tests on you. I just want to make absolutely sure that you don’t have peduncular hallucinosis.’

‘David — what happened in Cleveland was an aberration. A one-off. Next time I have to go away, I’ll make sure that my schedule is much less punishing. You can count on it. And what the hell is “peduncular hallucinosis” when it’s at home?’

David pursed his lips to show her that he was far from happy, but he didn’t try to dissuade her any further. She would go to the Coral Gables retirement home today no matter what he said, and both of them knew it. He could hardly lock her in her room.

Katie had never loved any man as much as she loved David, but he was controlling by nature and she constantly had to make sure that she protected her own individuality. He was handsome and athletic and he had a buoyant sense of humor, but his psychiatric training always led him to observe closely everybody’s behavior, especially hers. Sometimes she caught him watching the way she performed the simplest of everyday tasks like spreading jelly on her toast and she had to challenge him and say ‘What? What am I doing wrong now? I’m spreading it, like, compulsively?’

He finished his coffee and stood up. He was thirty-five, only two years older than she was, but his hair was already steel gray. He had a squarish face and dark blue eyes which he had inherited from his Swedish mother. He wore rimless spectacles which accentuated his very analytical manner.

‘I’ll be home around seven,’ he told her, coming around the table and giving her a kiss on the top of the head. ‘Maybe we can go to Shula’s tonight and treat ourselves to a steak.’