He looked at her with his universe-filled eyes. Through her, into another dimension. "I want you to bring my son to me, Mary. The baby you and I made. If you can't bring me my son, you can't stay here."
As he said it, the walls began to fade. Lord Jack began to fade, too, like a dimming light. She tried to grasp his hand, but it whirled away from her like mist. "I don't… I don't…" Her throat was closing up with fear. "I don't have anywhere else to go!"
"You can't stay here," he repeated, a ghost in white. "Come to me with my son, or don't come at all."
The house went away. Lord Jack vanished. She was left with the smell of the sea and the noise of surf on rugged rocks, and that was when she awakened.
The baby was crying, a high, thin sound that drilled into her brain. Sweat glistened on her face, and she could hear the thunder of trucks on the highway. "Stop crying," she said listlessly. "Stop it right now." But Jackie wouldn't stop, and Mary Terror got out of bed and went to the cardboard-box crib where the baby lay. She touched the infant's skin. It was cold and rubbery, and the feel of it made the rage begin to beat within her like a second, darker heart. Babies were killers of dreams, she thought. They promised the future, and then they died.
Mary grasped the baby's hand and put her finger in it. Jackie wouldn't grip her finger like the baby in the shopping cart had done. "Hold me," she said. "Hold me." Her voice was getting louder, swelling with anger. "Hold me, I said!" The baby was still crying, a desperate sound, but he wouldn't grip her finger. His skin was cold, so very cold. Something was wrong with this baby, she realized. This was not Lord Jack's son. This was a crying, cold mass of flesh that was not of her loins. "Stop it!" she shouted, and she picked the baby up and shook him. "I mean it!"
The baby gurgled and choked, then came back to the high-pitched shriek. Mary's head was killing her, and the infant's crying was driving her crazy. She shook the baby harder, and saw his head loll in the darkness. "Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!"
Jackie wouldn't mind her. Mary felt the blood rush into her face. This baby was broken, something was wrong with him. His skin was cold, he wouldn't hold her finger, and his crying was strangled. None of the babies ever minded her, and that loss of control was what drove her into a frenzy. She gave them birth and love, fed them even when they didn't want to be fed, and she wiped the food from their mouths and changed their diapers, and still the babies were untrue. It was clear to her why that was, in the aftermath of the dream: none of them was Lord Jack's son, and none of them deserved to live. "Stop crying, goddamn it!" Mary shouted, but this infant wailed and thrashed in her hands, his rubbery body inching toward destruction. Jack wouldn't accept this child, she thought. No, no; he wouldn't let her stay with him if she brought this baby to him. This baby was wrong. Terribly wrong. Cold, rubbery, and in need of death.
The crying made her temples pound. A scream batted around in her mouth. She reached her breaking point, and with an animalish moan she held Jackie by the heels and swung him against the wall. The crying stuttered, came back again full force. "SHUT UP!" she roared, and bashed his head against the wall once more. "SHUT UP!" Against the wall. "SHUT UP!" The wall again, and this time she heard something break. The crying ceased. Mary swung the cold baby against the wall a last time, could feel the little body twitching and quivering in her hands. A banging. A banging. Someone's fist whamming the wall.
"Shut up, you crazy bitch! I'm gonna call the cops!"
The old man next door. Shecklett. Mary dropped the cold infant to the floor, and despair went through her like a floodtide. In a second it hissed and steamed and roared into rage as Shecklett kept hammering on the wall. "You're crazy, you hear me? Crazy!" He stopped, and Mary crossed the room to the dresser, opened the bottom drawer, and took out the.38 with which she'd executed Cory Peterson. There was only one bullet in the cylinder, and Mary fumbled with a box of shells and fed them into their chambers. She clicked the cylinder shut, and she walked to the wall between her apartment and Shecklett's and put her ear to the cheap paneling. She could hear Shecklett moving around the room. A door slammed. Water running. In the bathroom? Mary pressed the.38's muzzle against the wall, aimed toward where she thought the sound of running water was. Her heartbeat was slow and steady, her nerves calm, but she had had her fill of the old man's taunts and threats. She had killed another baby tonight; his body lay just a few feet away, his skull broken. Lord Jack would not let her come if she didn't bring a baby – his son – but none of the babies would let her love them. "Come on out," Mary whispered, waiting for the noise of the door opening. The water stopped. She heard Shecklett cough several times and spit, and a moment later the toilet flushed. Mary eased back the Colt's hammer. She was going to empty the cylinder through the wall, and then she was going to reload and empty another cylinder except for a single bullet. If she couldn't go to Lord Jack, she had nowhere else to go. She had no home, no country, no identity, she was no one, a walking blank, and she was ready to end the charade.
"Come on out," Mary said again, and she heard the hinges of the bathroom door squeak.
Her finger tightened on the trigger.
Bang bang.
It was not the noise of gunfire. It was the noise of a fist knocking on a door. Mary took her finger off the trigger. The knock came again, louder and more insistent. Her front door, she realized. She walked into the other room, the Colt still in her hand, and she peered furtively out the window. Two pigs stood there, and a pig car was out in the parking lot. She stood at the door, and she steeled her voice and said, "What is it?"
"Police. Would you open your door, please?"
Take it easy, she thought. Control. Control. The pigs are at the door. Control. Mary turned the lock and unhooked the chain. She kept her gun hand out of sight as she opened the door, and she peered out through the crack at the two pigs, one black and one white. "What's the problem?"
"We've had a call about a disturbance of the peace," the black one said. He clicked on a penlight and shone it into Mary's face. "Everything all right here, ma'am?"
"Yes. Fine."
"One of your neighbors called in to complain," the white pig told her. "Said there was a lot of yellin' comin' out of your apartment."
"I… was having a nightmare. I got loud, I guess."
"Would you open the door a little wider, please?" the black pig asked. Mary did, without hesitation; her gun hand was still hidden. The black pig played his penlight over her face. "What's your name, ma'am?"
"Ginger Coles."
"That's her!" Shecklett shouted from the doorway of his apartment. "She's crazy as hell, I'm tellin' you! You oughta lock her up before she hurts somebody!"
"Sir? Would you keep your voice down, please?" The black pig said something quietly to the white one, and the white pig walked over to Shecklett's door. Mary could hear Shecklett muttering and cursing, and she kept her gaze fixed on the black pig's eyes. He took a pack of Doublemint gum from his jacket pocket and offered her a stick, but she shook her head. He popped one into his mouth and began to chew. "Nightmares can be weird, huh?" he asked. "They're so real, I mean."
Testing me, Mary thought. "Yeah, you're right about that. I have really bad nightmares sometimes."
"They must be bad if they make you shout so loudly." The penlight drifted across her face again.
"I was a nurse in Vietnam," Mary said.
The penlight stopped. Hung splashed across her right cheek for a few seconds. Then it went off with a small click.
"Sorry," the black pig said. "I was too young to go, but I saw Platoon. Must've been hell over there, huh?"
"Every day."