She sucked in a huge lungful of air and her arms shot out and clutched me tightly. “Oh, God, Abe.” She gasped a few more times like she couldn’t catch her breath, and I realized belatedly that she was crying. I had no idea what to do, so I just held her until she calmed down and pulled her face out of my neck, now wet with her tears.
“Bad dream, like before?”
She swallowed a few times before speaking, her words coming fast and tumbling over each other. “Worse. So much worse. I was in the air, way up high above Belmont. It looked like regular air but it felt all oily and greasy, and it wouldn’t let me fall. I was just kind of sliding around on my stomach and on my back, flopping around. It was horrible. I kept trying to stand up, but I couldn’t get my balance. You know how sometimes in dreams you do things without knowing why? It was like that. I kept trying to stand up and then falling down, over and over again.
“And it hurt, but not like physical pain. It was like failure and loss and four-in-the-morning loneliness all at once. Does that make any sense?” I held her hands and nodded my best understanding nod. Most of all I tried to offer her my calm reassurance, because right this instant, huddled with her on the floor in a stranger’s living room, she radiated a kind of brittle madness.
“Way down below I could see the town lurching back and forth underneath me as I flopped all around in the air. God, it was so mixed up, like being a cat in a dryer or something, tumbling end over end and trying to see what was happening on the other side of the glass.”
A harsh little bark of a laugh escaped her lips. I glanced over at the kitchen to see if anyone had noticed. “You know what else? The houses weren’t really houses. They were roundish and swollen and you could see right through them, like if you blew up a bladder or something and shone a flashlight through it. Some of them, they were healthy looking. Pink. But some of them had worms in them, curling around each other inside. Those houses looked saggy and full of, I don’t know, brown jelly.” She squeezed my hands. “You wouldn’t believe how many of them were wormy, Abe. Dozens of houses, maybe hundreds. The whole town is sick. Rotten.” She hugged me tighter and whispered in my ear. “I think it was real. I think that’s how bad it really is.”
We sat like that on the floor for a while. She stared into space while I rubbed her cold arms and hands. She was trembling.
Chuck peeked out of the kitchen door behind Anne’s back. I shook my head and he gave me a silent nod and disappeared.
Anne sniffed a little and pulled away. “Thanks. I think I’m better.” She gave herself a shake. “It was so intense. Thick, like being steeped in cloying rotten sickness.” She stood up and scrubbed her face with her hands. “I really need a shower.”
“I hate to ask, but do you think you could remember where some of those houses were? Maybe mark a map?”
“No, it wasn’t like that. I could see the houses, but they didn’t look like houses so I wouldn’t recognize them if I saw them. And I have no idea where in town I was looking at any given time. I don’t know any of the landmarks or streets. It was just this endless tumble across the sky, over unknown territory. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I’m sorry you had to go through it.”
“Thanks, I’ll be back.” She got up and practically ran into the bathroom.
I thought hard about Georgia and her paintings as I folded the blankets and rolled up the sleeping bags. Anne was strong. I had to believe that she could handle this.
Having restored the living room to its original state of disarray, I went into the kitchen for some of the coffee I had been smelling for the past twenty minutes.
Mazie and Chuck were sitting at the table not talking. Chuck was eating a bowl of cereal and reading his paperback, and Mazie was reading the paper. I helped myself to a cup and gave the cereal box on the counter a shake. “Morning. You mind?”
Mazie spoke without looking up. “Help yourself.”
The cereal appeared to be made entirely out of spun sugar, so I put the box back down. It looked like the equivalent of eating a can of frosting for breakfast. The coffee would have to do. I’d have killed for a couple of eggs or some of Henry’s grits, but a quick search of the pantry and refrigerator turned up a bleak landscape of pre- packaged boxes full of dried things that you added water or milk to. Astronaut food, Maggie used to call it.
The newspaper crackled as Mazie folded it back up and pushed it to the center of the table. “Chuck said your girlfriend looked pretty upset this morning.”
“Nightmare.” Mazie glanced at Chuck, who was peering over his book, but didn’t say anything.
“Who had a nightmare?” Greg swept into the kitchen with an ugly plaid robe, frayed into softness by time, flapping around him. He started groping for a mug in the cabinet.
“The girlfriend,” said Mazie.
“I see.” Greg poured. “A bad one?”
“Looked like it.”
Anne came into the kitchen, hair still damp and brushed smooth and gleaming. She took my coffee out of my hands and had a sip. “You ever have good ones?”
Greg chuckled. “I guess not. What was it about, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“Why, are you a psychiatrist?”
“Okay, sorry. You hungry?”
“Ugh, no. Thanks.”
Mazie stood up, making her chair squeak backwards against the linoleum. “Seriously, it took you like five minutes to get it together when you woke up. What was it?”
Anne stuck her chin out, which I had learned was a bad sign. “What’s your problem? If this whole situation isn’t giving you nightmares, then maybe something’s wrong with
There was more going on than just morbid curiosity about a bad dream. I watched the wary, expectant expressions on Mazie’s and Greg’s faces, and then things clicked.
I looked at Greg. “It’s your wife, isn’t it? The living room is full of pictures of you and her, but we haven’t met her.” The anger drained out of Anne’s face as it clicked for her, too. Greg didn’t answer. “That’s how you know who to rescue. She’s dreaming about it, too. But she’s not the same anymore, is she? That’s why all of you are so interested in Anne’s nightmare.” He looked away, so I asked quietly, “When did you have to lock her up?”
“Two months ago. How did you know?”
“We met somebody else that had a similar thing happen to them.”
“Jesus, this is happening somewhere else?”
“Not exactly. She was living with one of those altar pieces I was telling you about.”
“What happened to her? Was she okay after you took the piece away? Did she get better?”
I hated to see the hope in his eyes as he said that. “I don’t know what would have happened, Greg. She tried to kill us. I’m sorry.”
“Well, if that altar thing was doing it to her, then it only stands to reason that once it was gone, she would have been fine.”
“Could be. But Greg, maybe not. And your wife hasn’t been exposed to any of the altar pieces.”
“But it’s all connected. If we stop whatever is happening, then Valerie will get better. It’s possible.”
I didn’t look him in the eyes. “Sure, it’s possible.”
“We’re getting off track here,” said Mazie. “The point is that she’s like Valerie and she was loose last night. While we were sleeping, she was loose.”
Anne took a step in Mazie’s direction. “I’m not crazy!”
Mazie balled her fists and stepped closer. “Only crazy people say that!”
I got between them and put my hands up. “Hang on! Mazie, I appreciate that you think you might have been in danger last night, but I assure you that you weren’t. Anne, we know you aren’t crazy, so calm down.”
“You totally don’t know that,” said Mazie.
“I don’t know it for sure about anyone, including you. Or me. Or anyone who claims to be running an underground railroad for victims of worm infested bad guys. What I do know that you don’t is that Anne is particularly suited for this. She has a gift. Her grandfather had it, too. She knows when a … coerced person is close, and she can tell you where they are. That makes her a little more sensitive than the rest of us, but she can handle it. Her grandfather had dreams, too, but they never got the best of him. Don’t worry about Anne, this is what she’s
