The Ninth Nightmare

between them. She was wearing a purple silk headscarf, a very tight purple velour top, and narrow-leg jeans, and another pair of her impossible shoes — in silver this time, with buckles. Her pose was jaunty, and she was smiling — even if it was one of those smiles that said here we go, I was expecting this.

‘Dead on time, JD,’ she told him.

He waddled back toward her with his arms held up in surrender. ‘Hey — it’s not what you think, believe me.’

‘How do you know what I think?’

‘Sorry, but it’s pretty obvious. You think I’m hitting on you. You think I’m some kind of stalker. Whereas that is absolutely not the case.’

‘“That is absolutely not the case,” huh?’

‘Absolutely one hundred thirteen percent.’

Rhodajane thought for a moment, with her lips pursed. Then she said, ‘You want to know what I’m really thinking?’

‘OK. What are you really thinking?’

‘I’m thinking that you found my earring in the back of your taxi and you came here to return it to me. You’re hoping that I’m going to be so — o–o grateful that I’ll agree to have dinner with you and maybe one thing will lead to another. Or that at the very least I’ll give you a sawski by way of a tip.’

John held out the earring in the palm of his hand. ‘Here — look — take it. I’m not looking for a tip and I’m not expecting you to come out to dinner with me and I’m not expecting one thing to lead to another, although I acknowledge that it can sometimes happen, you know — one thing leading to another — especially after the cream-cheese pierogis at Sokolowski’s. They’re almost worth learning Polish for.

He paused, and frowned, and then he said, ‘Wait up a goddamned minute. How the hell did you know I came here to return your earring?’

Rhodajane kept smiling. ‘Your friend told me. He said that you’d show up in exactly twenty-one minutes, and sure enough here you are.’

John leaned sideways, trying to see over her shoulder into Room 309. ‘Excuse me? Who — what — which friend is that, exactly?’

‘Come on in and meet him,’ said Rhodajane. ‘He’s been telling some real interesting stuff. Weird, I’ll grant you, but interesting.’

She stepped aside so that John could enter the room, but he didn’t want to go in first because of the split in his coat. He took hold of her elbow and gently pushed her ahead of him, and closed the door behind him.

‘I could sew that for you,’ she said. ‘You wouldn’t think it, but I’m pretty good with a needle and twist.’

John was about to ask her how the hell she knew about that, too, but then he saw the figure standing in the bay window with his back to him. He was silhouetted against the gray, subdued daylight, his hands deep in his pockets, his coat collar turned up, his shoulders slightly hunched, but John recognized him immediately. He felt as if he had forgotten how to breathe.

‘Deano,’ he said. ‘Deano, is that you?’

The man turned around. The hotel room was so dark that it was difficult for John to see his face, but there was no question that he was smiling.

‘Hallo, John. How’s it hanging?’

‘Deano! I know you’re not Deano, so don’t try to give me that “how’s it hanging” bullshit.’

Rhodajane went over and switched on the bedside lamps. Now John could see that Deano was very much younger than the last time he had seen him. He had died of chronic alcoholism at the age of forty-two, with blotchy skin and rheumy red eyes and a mass of white tangled curls, like a half-starved Santa Claus. But here today, in Room 309 at the Griffin House Hotel, he looked as young as he was when John first met him at Fort Polk, over twenty-one years ago, when they had joined the Army together. Handsome, in a rakish way, with a broken nose like Owen Wilson and piercing blue eyes and short-cropped blond hair. He held out his hand but John ignored it. This wasn’t Deano. Deano had been cremated on a gray day up in Presque Isle, Maine, with only four people to sing Amazing Grace and one of them had throat cancer.

‘Your friend’s been spinning me all kinds of fancy stories,’ said Rhodajane. ‘Like how I’m descended from some kind of family who can walk around in other folks’ nightmares and hunt down demons. Hey, would you care for a drink?’

‘Best not,’ said John, guardedly, without taking his eyes off ‘Deano’. ‘The cops have been keeping a pretty close eye on me lately. They even pulled me over for taking a bite of my muffaletta sandwich at a traffic signal. It’s that fat guy, what’s his name? Detective Windsocky. He really has it in for me.’

‘Well, I’m going to have a drink,’ Rhodajane declared. She went across to the mini bar and bent down in front of it so that her purple thong appeared over the waistband of her jeans. ‘Champagne, I think. How about you, Deano?’

‘Deano doesn’t drink,’ said John.

‘Oh, really? What, are you in AA or something?’

‘Deano doesn’t drink because Deano isn’t Deano. The real Deano is dead and his ashes scattered at the Fairmount Cemetery in Presque Isle, Maine. This is a messenger from the great Power-That-Is, who recruits poor suckers like us to fight the eternal war against good and evil.’

Rhodajane stood up with a half bottle of Cuvee Napa in one hand and a champagne flute in the other. She blinked her eyelashes furiously, as if she were trying to create two miniature hurricanes. ‘You mean what he’s been telling me is true? It isn’t just a line?’

‘Deano’ kept looking at John and smiling, although he didn’t say a word.

John said, ‘It’s true all right, Rhodajane, and I can prove it to you. I never would have had you down as one of us unlucky few, but there you are. Most of us look pretty unlikely in our everyday bodies. One of the last guys who fought with us, he was kind of a retard in real life but inside of those dreams and nightmares, he was a regular genius. I mean it was like eat your heart out, Stephen Hawking.’

Rhodajane turned to ‘Deano’ and said, ‘So who did you say I was supposed to be?’

‘Xyrena, the Passion Warrior. The woman who can inflame the sexual desires of everyone and everything she meets — man or woman, demon or beast.’

‘There!’ said Rhodajane. ‘That’s some line, isn’t it? “Man or woman, demon or beast!” But you’re trying to tell me it’s for real? If you’re not this guy’s old army buddy, then who the hell are you?’

‘So far as I know, his name is Springer,’ said John. ‘Well — I say “his” name but he can pop up in pretty much any kind of guise he wants to, male or female. He gets sent here by the Man Upstairs — God, or Gitche Manitou, or Allah. Springer always calls him Ashapola.

‘Ashapola is who or what protects the human race from the forces of evil, and believe me there are plenty of forces of evil out there. That’s why he created the Night Warriors, which is us — you and me, and hundreds more like us. It’s our dubious distinction to save the world from corruption, chaos and ultimate destruction. Let me put it this way, ma’am: if there had never been any Night Warriors, the human race would never have survived so long as it has. We would have gone to hell in a handcart centuries ago.’

‘So you’re a Night Warrior, too?’ said Rhodajane. She handed him the half bottle of sparkling wine and said, ‘Here — can you open this for me? I don’t mean to be rude or nothing, but how did you get past the physical?’

John gently eased the cork out of the bottle so that the gas came out with faintest piff! ‘Angel’s fart,’ he told her. ‘That’s the correct way to do it.’

Then he said, ‘Like I told you, none of us look especially prepossessing, present company excepted. You don’t have to be Steven Seagal in your waking life to be a tough guy in your dreams.’

‘So who are you?’ asked Rhodajane. ‘You know — like I really believe all of this, not.’

Springer came over and laid a hand on John’s shoulder. ‘This is Dom Magator, the Armorer. He carries most of the weapons that the Night Warriors need when they do battle in the world of dreams. For instance, he has over two hundred different kinds of knives — like a Retinal Stiletto, which — when you throw it — will exactly follow your line of sight, and unerringly hit who or what you are looking at. Or a Spiral Flensing Knife, which will peel whoever you cut with it like an apple, in one long spiral — skin, subcutaneous fat and all.

‘He also carries over a dozen guns, like the Density Rifle, which compresses its target down to its ultimate possible density. A two-hundred-fifty pound man can be instantly reduced to the size of a smoking walnut. Or an