The Ninth Nightmare

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 goddamned 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