it’s nothing.’ He shrugged. ‘We all have bad dreams every now and again.’
Hunter leaned back on his chair. ‘Do you know many people who wake up from dreams short of breath, shaking, sweating and too scared to go back to sleep on a constant basis?’
Garcia thought about it for a moment before conceding with a slight head tilt.
‘Dreams that have that kind of effect on a person are usually based on reality. Farfetched, maybe, but a reality nonetheless.’
‘I’m not sure I know what you mean.’
‘If you have a dream based on fantasy,’ Hunter explained, ‘a fire-breathing dragon, for example. No matter how shocking or violent the dream is, your subconscious knows it’s an impossible fantasy. It might scare you, but it shouldn’t trigger a severe panic reaction.’
‘But if you have a dream based on reality, like being stabbed—’ Garcia caught up with Hunter’s line of thought ‘—your subconscious knows that the chances of it actually happening are very real.’
Hunter nodded. ‘Most nightmares are spin-offs of lived traumatic experiences. We have no control over them.’ He gestured towards the open diary. ‘I know about such dreams. I have them.’
Garcia looked at the scars on his hands for a long moment. ‘Since the Crucifix Killer’s case, so do I.’
They read the journals in silence for a while before Garcia cursed under his breath. ‘Shit!’
Hunter’s head snapped up. ‘What have you got?’
‘Father Fabian’s disturbing nightmare. And you won’t believe this . . .’
Thirty-Five
Hunter waited for Garcia to continue, but his partner’s catatonic eyes were glued to the open journal in his hands.
‘Carlos. What have you got?’
Garcia leaned back on his chair and drew a deep breath. ‘Listen to this.’ He flipped back a page.
‘It’s very late and I can’t sleep. I woke up from the dream maybe an hour ago, and this time it felt more real than ever. I threw up all over myself.
‘I’m scared.
‘Once I read somewhere that one way to extradite fear is to write it down. It’s supposed to symbolize the act of pushing it out of your mind.’
Garcia looked at Hunter.
‘It’s a well-known technique,’ he confirmed.
Garcia flipped to the next page and continued reading.
‘This is the first time I’m writing about this.
‘I didn’t always have my faith. When I was young, I thought I was invincible. Me and my gang of friends.
‘We terrorized everyone, from school students to teachers and families in our neighborhood. We thought we were cool – real badasses.’ Garcia’s lips stretched into a thin, nervous smile. He found it hard to think of Father Fabian as a ‘badass’.
‘One evening, we were hanging out by the park as we always did. We were bored. We’d been drinking since the afternoon and some of us were high. Someone saw a stray dog rummaging through a trashcan. It was a skinny old mutt with thinning gray fur. Its body was covered in dried blood scabs as if it’d been fighting. Suddenly, one of the guys in the gang jumped to his feet and started chasing the dog. That got us all going. It was like we were possessed. We were waving our clenched fists in the air and yelling “get him . . . get him”. There was something wrong with one of its legs. It couldn’t run properly, so it hopped away, trying to escape.’
Hunter placed both elbows on his desk, leaning forward.
‘It didn’t take us long to catch up with the frightened dog.’ Garcia carried on reading. ‘We cornered it against a wall of hedges. The poor thing was shivering all over. Too weak and scared to put up a fight, it just lowered its head and its sad eyes, as if begging us to leave it be.
‘I tried telling everyone to leave the poor thing alone. It was only looking for some food, but no one listened.’ He paused for a deep breath before continuing.
‘One of the guys in the group bent down and offered the dog his hand. The trembling mutt lifted its head and gingerly took a few steps forward. When it got close enough, my friend grabbed it by the fur on its head and violently lifted it off the ground. Its tiny body kicked and writhed in the air. Everyone could see the dog was in pain. It was so weak that it couldn’t even bark. It tried, but the sound that came out was more like a petrified shriek.’ Garcia stretched his neck awkwardly, as if trying to fight off an incoming migraine.
‘I told my friend again to put the dog down and let it go. The rest of the gang was cheering him on – “Fuck him up, gut the old bag of fleas.”
‘I didn’t even see where the knife came from. All I know was that all of a sudden my friend had a meat cleaver in his hand.’
Garcia’s eyes left the page and wandered over to Hunter for a second.
‘Under shouts of “do it . . . do it,” he raised the crying dog high in the air. Its eyes were filled with dread. It knew what was about to happen. My friend swung the meat cleaver hard at its neck. Blood gushed everywhere. I was sprayed across the face and chest, and my stomach knotted. The dog’s small body slumped to the ground. For another thirty seconds or so it twitched and kicked, draining the last breaths of life out of it. They all cheered and laughed until their eyes rested on me. Without realizing, I’d started crying.’ Garcia leaned forward and placed the book on his desk before running the tip of his finger slowly over his eyes.
‘Soon after that, I started distancing myself from the group. I haven’t seen any of them since then. I couldn’t say for sure how long after the park incident the nightmares started. Maybe a couple of months, but they’ve never left me.’
‘Get ready for this,’ Garcia said, making a face as if what he was about to read was hard to believe.
‘In my dream, instead of the dog, it’s me who’s held by the hair. I’m as petrified as the poor animal was. I try, but I can’t escape. I can’t see my attacker’s face, but I know it’s not my friend, the one who beheaded the dog. He has a sword in his hand. As the blade comes towards me, I freeze, unable to move. I open my mouth and try to scream, but no sound comes out. I’m terrified. In slow motion the cold blade strikes me at the base of my neck.’ A new pause. A new awkward neck movement. ‘I feel it gradually slicing through my flesh, tearing my head from my torso. The pain is unbearable. I feel my blood soaking my clothes. My body starts to get cold. The strike is clean, but for some reason I’m still not dead. My head tumbles to the ground, rolling several times, just like the dog’s that night in the park. But my body isn’t headless.’ Garcia placed both elbows on his desk and rested his forehead on his closed fists.
‘Above my shoulders there’s a mutt’s head – its eyes wide, its tongue black and sticking out of its crooked mouth. The person with the blade spills my blood all around me, like a ritual. My head is taken away to be burned. That’s when I wake up.’
Garcia rubbed his exhausted eyes. ‘No fucking way this was a coincidence,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘The decapitation, the mutt’s head, the splattering of blood . . . Father Fabian’s been dreaming his own grotesque murder for years. How can that be?’
Hunter thought about it for a moment before looking up slowly. ‘You’re looking at it from the wrong angle, Carlos. Father Fabian hadn’t been dreaming his own death. The killer knew about the nightmare and decided to make it come true.’
‘Well, listen to the next line.’ Garcia leaned forward over the book. ‘I’ve never told anyone about that day in the park or about the dreams that torment me.’
