And then the phone rang.
I nearly jumped out of my skin, staggered back and scrambled around the end of the bed to the phone on the nightstand. The receiver was in my hand and pressed to my ear before it could ring a second time.
“Alan,” a voice on the other end sobbed. “Alan, I—”
“Donald?”
“Alan, I’m…”
“What’s wrong?” I stared at the door. “Where are you?”
“I’m home,” he said, voice cracking. “I’m sorry, I’ve been drinking.”
“It’s OK. Listen, let me call you back in—”
“I wanted to say something today, I wanted to, but—”
“Listen—”
“I couldn’t do it, I just—Alan, I’m having nightmares.”
I nodded into the phone. “It’ll be all right. I’ve—”
“You’ve had it too, haven’t you?”
Something in his tone caught my attention, shifted it from the darkened den to the sound of his voice. “It?”
“The nightmare you can’t get out of your mind, that won’t leave you alone.”
I could hear him crying, sobbing openly, and I knew he was not only drunk but utterly terrified. “I’ve had a nightmare.”
“Did Bernard say goodbye to you in it? Were those things with him?”
My grip tightened on the phone and my legs trembled so violently I thought I might collapse. “How—How the hell do you know that?”
“I’m scared, Alan. Christ, I’m so fucking scared.”
“How did you know that?”
“They never said anything but I knew—I know—just like you, I know what it was all about. They were taking him to Hell. There’s more to this than we know. Why were they taking him to Hell, Alan? Why would they take Bernard to—”
“Answer me, goddamn it! How did you know!”
Donald gagged and coughed. “Because that’s the only difference between our nightmares,” he said in a near whisper. “In mine, Bernard told me he’d been to see you first.”
I sped through the streets of town ignoring the black clouds perched overhead, the rain, and a level of darkness generally reserved for the dead of night. My mind raced, my palms were moist with perspiration, and I felt an odd detachment, as if I were more a passive observer of the reality surrounding me than an active participant in it.
Donald’s cottage was less than two miles from our apartment and located in a small settlement of mostly summer cabins nestled into a heavily wooded bluff overlooking the largest stretch of beach in town. I turned onto the dirt road and followed it through the forest. In summer, this corner of Potter’s Cove was bustling with campers and summer people, the cottages occupied, yards cluttered with lawn furniture and barbecues, people young and old following the dirt paths down to the beach while music played from boom boxes and car radios. But the summer season was still a couple months away, and as the area only housed a handful of year-round residents, most cottages were boarded up and abandoned. A seasonal ghost town of sorts, in dismal weather and at this time of year, it seemed a fitting location for recalling the past and exorcising the demons found there.
I pulled up in front of Donald’s cottage. His old Volkswagen was parked in a narrow side driveway, and faint light bled through the sheer curtains in the front windows.
The front door was open, so I gave a quick knock and let myself in, stepping directly into the living room. It was modestly furnished and somewhat disheveled, and it hadn’t occurred to me until that moment just how long it had been since I’d visited Donald at home. Magazines and paperbacks were strewn about, overflowing ashtrays, crumpled cigarette packs and empty vodka bottles littered most available coffee or end table space, and although the small kitchen at the rear of the cottage was clean, other than for the refrigerator, it was obviously seldom used. The bathroom and bedroom constituted the remaining area. Both were quiet and dark.
A television in the corner was on but muted, which explained the sparse light, and in a recliner on the opposite side of the room Donald had collapsed in a drunken heap, an ashtray balanced precariously on his knee, an empty bottle of vodka on the floor just beyond his dangling hand. His other hand still clutched the phone, which had since gone from dial tone to an annoying buzz. I pulled it free and hung it up. His eyelids fluttered a bit, then I noticed the cigarette he’d apparently been smoking when he’d nodded off had burned well into the filter and was still smoldering on the lip of the ashtray. “Christ,” I sighed, butting it out, “one of these days you’re going to burn this place down with you in it.”
His eyes opened, and he struggled to raise his head. “Alan.”
“You all right, man?”
Dry, chapped lips parted slowly. “I don’t know,” he said groggily. “Are you?”
I crouched next to the recliner. “How could we have the same dream?”
His eyes rolled about for a moment, then he blinked rapidly and seemed to focus somewhat. “I never believed in an afterlife, Alan, you know that. I… I never believed in any of it. You did but not me, not me… But… but this—I don’t… I don’t understand what’s happening.” He tried to sit up and nearly passed out. He wouldn’t be conscious much longer. His bottom lip quivered. “I don’t even quite know why but I… I’m frightened.”
“So am I.” I looked at the near-hysteria in his bloodshot eyes and wondered if mine looked the same. “It’ll be all right. There’s a reasonable explanation, we just have to find it.”
“You didn’t have to come over, I—I shouldn’t have called you like that, I… I’m sorry I—”
“Take it easy, man, it’s all right.” Past experience with Donald’s binges told me he’d only have limited memory of all this anyway.
He struggled to smile, but the alcohol and exhaustion took him, leaving him slumped forward in deep sleep.
I grabbed an old afghan from the back of the couch and gently covered him with it, then went to the phone and dialed our apartment. Toni answered on the second ring.
“It’s me.”
“Where are you?”
“I had to come over to Donald’s for a minute.”
“Is everything all right?”
“He had a little too much to drink, just wanted to make sure he was OK.”
“Something new.” When I offered no response, she said, “I thought you’d be here when I got back from the store.”
“So did I.” An old black and white movie flickering from the TV set distracted me. “I’ll be home in a few minutes, all right? Just heading out now.”
I quickly tidied up the living room and brought the ashtrays into the kitchen. As I emptied them into the wastebasket, I noticed the stack of pictures Rick had found in Bernard’s duffel bag fanned out across the counter. They looked as if they’d been frantically shuffled through several times. The photograph of the woman none of us knew was on top. I don’t know why, but I tucked it into my jacket pocket and returned to the living room.
Though Donald was out cold he was breathing normally. Even in alcohol-induced sleep his face bore an emotional torment that never fully left his expression, but he looked about as peaceful as he was likely to get.
Satisfied he’d be all right I quietly headed for the door.
The aroma of roasting chicken wafted about the apartment, reminding me I hadn’t eaten since the day before, and that, coupled with a lack of sleep and the events of the day thus far, had left me in a less than jovial mood.
While Toni prepared a salad to go with dinner, I took up position at the kitchen table and explained the situation as best I could. Donald and I had somehow shared a nightmare, and even before we realized we’d had the same dream, it had taunted us both as much while we’d been awake as it had in the throes of sleep. She listened patiently; refraining from comment until I’d finished. For what seemed an eternity, she sliced a cucumber and added it to the bed of lettuce, nibbling her bottom lip throughout, a signal I had come to recognize meant she did in fact have a response but was thinking it through before voicing it. Eventually, she looked over at me, brow knit. “Alan, when Dad died I had that dream about him, remember? And a few days later when I spoke to my mother I found out she’d dreamt about him too.”