Nightmare Transcripts

by Rick Hautala

  NIGHTMARE TRANSCRIPT

  by RICK HAUTALA

  Published by

  Ghostwriter Publications

  Dorchester, Dorset, England

  www.rickhautala.com

  www.ghostwriterpublications.com

  © Rick Hautala 2011

  PRAISE FOR RICK HAUTALA!

  “Rick Hautala’s work shines with dedication, hard-earned craft and devotion.” - Peter Straub

  “A master of contemporary horror and suspense.” - Cemetery Dance

  “Rick Hautala proves each time out that he understands and respects the inner workings of the traditional horror novel as well or better than anyone writing.” - Joe R. Lansdale

  NIGHTMARE TRANSCRIPT

  “Nightmare Transcript,” originally published in Bad News, edited by Richard Laymon, published by CD Publications, March, 2001.

  This is what you say: “I don’t know which is worse—when I’m having the nightmares, or a couple of nights later, once they stop.”

  Then you take a deep breath and hold it as you settle back against the couch cushions and roll your head from side to side. The crackling sound your spine makes is like a string of firecrackers going off inside your head. It hurts.

  “Well, then,” says your current psychotherapist.

  His name is Bob Marshall, and you don’t like him, not one bit.

  “Why don’t you tell me about both situations?” When you shrug, the leather-covered couch on which you’re lying makes another, deeper creaking sound that sets your teeth on edge. You wince as you inhale slowly between your teeth.

  After taking a moment to collect your thoughts, you say this:

  “You see. I’ve even been keeping track of them—the nightmares, I mean—trying to see if they come in conjunction with the full moon or something I’ve eaten just before I go to bed or something. So far, though, there doesn’t seem to be any pattern. None that I’m aware of, anyway.”

  Bob asks: “Do you mean that you don’t see any pattern to your dreams or to the occurrences of your dreams?”

  Your anger suddenly spikes, and you glance over your shoulder a Bob and see that stupid smirk he seems to have on his face for most of the time during your appointment. You hate it when he looks at you like that, like you’re something he stepped in or something.

  “They’re not dreams,” you say.

  You’re trying hard not to shout, but you put as much firmness as you can into your voice.

  “They’re fucking nightmares, okay? You got that?” Bob nods, and you clench both hands into fists so hard they start to ache all the way up to your elbows. Your body is tense, and it begins to tremble, especially your legs, like you just finished running. The couch kee[ps making those seep creaking sounds that hurt your ears so much you have to close your eyes and block your ears before you finally gain a measure of control and don’t scream.

  “Right...right,” Bob the therapist you don’t like says. “They’re nightmares.”

  His voice remains calm even though you can sense—hell, you can practically smell that he’s as frustrated and full of rage as you are, only in a different way or maybe he just hasn’t realized it yet.

  “So tell me,” he says, using that fake, friendly voice. “Is it that you don’t see a pattern to the … nightmares or to the occur—”

  “Yes...yes,” you say, breathing out harshly between your teeth. “Jesus, I told you that the last time I was here. They’re all the same—the nightmares. Night after night. The same fucking thing! It’s just that it...that they get really intense for a few nights, and then, over the next week or so, they’re not as detailed...not as scary.”

  Bob shifts in his chair and says this: “But then, maybe two or three weeks go by, and they start coming back again, getting even more intense, right? That’s what you told me in the last session.”

  His voice rises suggestively, but the only response you can manage is a low grunt because what you really want to do is leap off the goddamned couch and throttle the living shit out of Bob. Your arms are hurting all the way up to your shoulders, now, and you think you can hear a high-pitched buzzing sound in your ears.

  “Well, then...can you tell me exactly whet that is? Bob asks. “When they start getting intense again?”

  You grit your teeth and shake your head, feeling totally exasperated with this guy.

  He just plain isn’t going to get it, is he? You ask yourself.

  And then you answer yourself: No, he isn’t. Not any more than any of the other head shrinkers you’ve seen over the last three years. Bob is...what?

  The fifth shrink you’ve worked with so far. That’s not counting those useless talks you had last year with the school therapist. What a fucking waste of time. But you’re already beginning to think that it doesn’t matter how many sessions you have with him or any other shrink. You can tell that Bob—just like the others—just plain isn’t going to get it.

  “So why don’t you review for me how this dre—I mean, how these nightmares go?” he asks. He still sounds so calm and patient, like he’s talking to a goddamned imbecile or a little kid or something. You can tell that he’s putting it all on for you. It’s nothing but a fucking show.

  You press your head down hard against the cushion, ignoring the creaking sounds the couch makes and the buzzing in your head as you stare up at the ceiling. A cloudy, red haze swirls across your vision. You wonder—like you have so many times before—if this means you’ve busted a blood vessel in your head, but you guess that would have dropped you dead in your tracks before now if that’s what had happened.

  You take a deep, steadying breath before you start to tell Bob again, and this is what you say:

  “It always begins with me walking down a street in the city, okay? It’s usually cold out, but even when it’s a warm summer night or something, I’m wearing a long, heavy coat. A dark coat. Maybe even wool. The only thing I feel in the nightmare is...really nervous.”

  “Nervous?” Bob echoes.

  “Yeah, nervous,” you snap, unable to keep the sarcasm out of your voice. “Mostly because there are always lots of people crowding the street. Most of them seem to be looking at me kind of funny, you know? And they avoid me like they know something about me I don’t. But I don’t want them to see me. I just want to fade away...disappear.”

  “Is it always the same street?” Bob asks.

  You feel suddenly angry at him for interrupting you now that you’re on a roll. Once the memory of the nightmare starts coming back to you, you don’t want to lose it. You can practically feel the adrenalin squirting into your bloodstream, making your body hum like a vibrating tuning fork. Maybe that’s what makes the buzzing sound in your head, a tuning fork.

  “No...no,” you say, still struggling not to scream at him. “It’s not always the exact same street, but I...I can tell, in the nightmares, you know, that it’s usually in the same part of town, usually over by the high school.”

  “So what happens next?” Bob asks, still sounding as patient as all hell.

  You’re not so sure you like him prodding you like this. The last therapist you worked with never did that to you. Of course, she was as much a dishit as Bob, but in a different way.

  Damn. You wish you could remember her name, but as bad as she was, she was purty damned good compared to ole’ Bob here. You liked the way she always just listened to you and let you talk as much as you liked without ever interrupting you. She spoke so seldom there were quite a few times when you actually wondered if she was even awake. But you’d glance over at her, and she be watching you carefully, her eyes looking like big bug eyes behind those stupid glasses she wore.

  Yeah, you think, that was one thing wrong with her.

  Sh
e had those great big bug eyes! You had to stop going to her because it got to the point where you couldn’t stand the thought that she was always looking at you with those great big bug eyes. Even when you weren’t looking at her, she was looking at you.

  So you stopped going to her, and here you were with good ole’ Bob.

  “Well, then,” you finally say after clearing your throat. “What happens next is, I just sort of stand there in the dark, you know? Usually I’m in an alley or a dark doorway or something so no one can see me, and I just wait.”

  “You wait...for what?”

  “For someone to come along, of course,” you say. You’re trying your best to control yourself, but Bob is making is goddamned hard.

  “And what do you think about while you’re waiting?” Bob asks.

  “Think about?”

  Your voice sounds like an echo of his, and you sigh and shake your head in frustration.

  “Jesus Christ! These are nightmares we’re talking about. I don’t think about anything. Not in a nightmare. Not the way you do in real life, anyway.”

  “Of course not,” Bob says agreeably. He sounds a little too agreeable for your taste, and you realize that you’re going to have to stop coming to visit him, too.

  “So then...tell me,” Bob sayd. “What do you do? What happens next?”

  And this is what you say: “I told you during the last visit that I wait for someone to come along. Usually it’s a girl who’s by herself. She doesn’t have to be pretty or anything, but she usually is young and pretty. And alone.

  “When I start to move toward her, it’s like my feet aren’t even touching the ground. It’s like they’re greased of something, and I just sort of glide down the steps or whatever, and then before I know it I’m sliding along beside her.”

  You take a breath that almost hurts and says, “Do your feet touch the ground in your dreams?”

  Bob doesn’t reply to that, and you get a little more upset with him. Your voice seems stuffed inside your chest, and the memories of the nightmares are now as clear and sharp as broken glass in your mind. You can see it—and hear it—hell you can taste and feel the whole scene as it unfolds.

  The girl.

  Her hair glistens in the flickering city lights.

  Her eyes go wide and moist with apprehension when she realizes you’re moving along beside her.

  Her throat—the pale, wide stretch of her throat is exposed.

  And so is her fear. Her fear is as bright as sunlight on chrome.

  Oh, she’s afraid of you all right, as well she should be.

  Once again your hands begin to shake, and you clench you right hand into a fist as if you are actually holding a knife.

  “And then I...then I...”

  Your throat closes off, and you can no longer speak. You have to squeeze your eyes tightly shut because the pulsating red haze in front of them is getting brighter and deeper. It blocks out what little you can see of Bob’s office wall—the framed diplomas and family pictures, put there, you now think, just to make you feel bad because your family is so fucked up. You look toward the window but can hardly see the trees against the sky. When you shut your eyes, all you can see is a shifting red veil that fills your field of vision.

  “Well now,” Bob says in a low, almost suggestive tone of voice. “Over the last few months, you must have heard on the news or read in the newspaper about those high school girls who have been killed downtown.”

  You grunt but say nothing.

  “Did you know any of them?” Bob asks. “You attended the same school for a while.”

  You try to answer him, but your throat feels swollen and tight, like it’s blocked. You try to clear it, but the burning feeling won’t go away. When you swallow, it leaves a terrible aftertaste.

  At last, you say this:

  “Yeah, I heard about it on the news the other night, but—” You shake your head, and the couch creaks, and your neck aches. “No. I didn’t know any of them.”

  You can say no more, and you pause, waiting for Bob to say something semi-intelligent.

  Finally he does.

  “Well, it could be that all these incidents and the fact that they’re all students from your high school are affecting you,” Bob suggests. “Maybe they’re contributing to your nightmares.”

  Is that the best you can do? You wonder.

  You try to answer him, but the only sound that comes out of you no is a low, strangled gasp.

  You can feel your face flush, and you almost laugh out loud, remembering how your mother used to tease you about the way you blush. Shed say your face looked so hot she could have lit a match on it.

  “Would you like a glass of water?” Bob asks you after an uncomfortably long stretch of silence.

  It’s like he’s reading your mind, peeking into your skull, but you are still unable to speak, so you simply nod and then you close your eyes and listen to the sounds he makes as he gets up from his chair and walks over to the water cooler in the corner beside his office door. As he fills the paper cup, the big bottle of Poland Spring water gurgles, sounding like your stomach when you’re upset or hungry.

  With your eyes still tightly shut, you listen, cringing a little as he walks over to the couch. You reach out blindly with your right hand and take the paper cup from him. You try to stop your hand from shaking as you raise the cup to your mouth and take a sip. Without looking, you can’t help but spill a little on your shirt front, but the water feels really good, sliding down your throat.

  “Thanks,” you say after emptying the small cup, and for once, you really mean it.

  You keep your eyes closed, taking a long time to compose yourself.

  You really need to.

  You don’t like Bob. You’ve decided that, but you suddenly want to tell him the truth. You want to admit to him that it’s not remembering the details of the nightmares that you find so unsettling.

  Far from it, in fact.

  Although you would never dare to tell Bob or anyone else this, you actually find remembering the details of the nightmares rather exciting.

  Stimulating, in fact.

  You realize that you have an erection, so you shift around on the couch and adjust your pants, hoping it doesn’t show.

  You think to yourself: What kind of therapist would notice when his patient gets an erection?

  And you answer yourself: Not one I’d want to work with, that’s for goddamned sure!

  “Please understand,” Bob says softly. “You don’t have to continue with this right now if you don’t want to, if it’s too disturbing.”

  His voice is so low you can barely hear it above the tuning fork that’s ringing inside your head. But you consider what he said, and you know that—amazingly—he’s right.

  You don’t have to tell him anything, and right now you’re not so sure you even want to.

  What if, you think, by telling him about your nightmares, by talking about them, it decreases their power and the charge you get from them?

  With your eyes still tightly closed, you sigh and shake your head in resigned agreement.

  “Yeah,” you say, almost breathlessly. “Well, the thing of it is, for the last few nights, the nightmares haven’t been nearly as strong as before. I guess I’m on a down-cycle now with how intense they are, you know?”

  “And that’s a good thing?” Bob says, half-statement, half-suggestion.

  No, it isn’t good!

  You think this and are not even sure if you say it out loud or not.

  It’s not good at all, you stupid asshole!

  You finally see that the problem is, you can’t tell Bob or anyone else—not even the lady with the big bug eyes—that it’s only once the dreams—once the nightmares start to fade that you start getting more and more agitated...more and more worried.

  You wish you could tell Bob or someone...anyone...that the adrenalin rush you get from the nightmares is practically the only thing that makes you feel alive...really, truly ali
ve.

  And once you start losing that edge, once the feelings start fading away, you start feeling like you have to...

  Well, you’re not exactly sure what.

  It’s like you feel empty...hollow, and you have to do something to bring those feelings back.

  You finally realize that you’ve been lost in your own thoughts for too long, and you know Bob’s waiting for you to say something, so you say this:

  “Well...I do tend to sleep better then.”

  You hear your own voice. It sounds distant, like you’re far away from yourself. Maybe in the next room. After you say thins, all you can think about is how much you wish you trusted Bob—trusted him enough to tell him what you really feel and what you have to do afterwards to bring those feelings back...to bring the nightmares back.

  That’s probably why you’re in therapy has never worked for you, you decide, and probably why it never will because when you come right down to it, you don’t like to talk.

  You’re the kind of person who likes to do things.

  You have to act!

  You suppose you can handle it for another couple of nights—maybe a week, tops. But after that once the feelings from the nightmares are all gone, you know—you just know that you’re going to have to go out again and do something to bring them back.

  AN INTRODUCTION TO UNTCIGAHUNK

  LITTLE BROTHERS

  A Micmac Indian tale told around the campfire

  How the earth and water came to be, no one but Old One knows. How trees and rocks and animals came to be, no one but Old One knows. The earth and sky were made by Old One. He sang a sacred song as he molded them in his hands. He carved the earth with swift, gleaming rivers and filled its depths with surging oceans. He sang another sacred song as he stamped his foot on the ground to make deep valleys and push up mountains that reached to the sky. Singing another sacred song, he smoked his pipe and blew out smoke to make the clouds. He placed the sun and the stars and the moon in the sky and set them on their courses. Taking soil into his hand, he spit on it and sang many sacred songs as he fashioned all the creatures that live on the earth, fly in the air, and swim in the waters.