The Dead Have A Thousand Dreams

by Richard Sanders

  >>>>>>

  SUNDAY JUNE 17, noon

  THE COLOR PURPLE

  “Jesus,” said Wooly, “do you ever put the lights on in here?” Fair question, I guess. Georgiana’s study, as before, was lit only by that single stained glass lamp, bathing everything in a frail underwater light. We were looking at a limbo aura, in which our hostess—hunched at her desk in her overalls and the unstrung bale of cotton she called hair—sat half dematerializing.

  “No,” she said after some hesitation, “I allow very little light in here. Please, sit.”

  Wooly, Nickie and I took the chairs around the desk.

  “You don’t look so good,” said Wooly. “You should get out more.”

  Again, fair point. Georgiana seemed more worn down today, more frayed around the edges.

  “I’m fine,” she said.

  “Good, good, excellent,” said Wooly. “Well, I appreciate you inviting us here, you know? The house, the, the gallery out there? It’s a wonderful place you got here. I always liked coming here.”

  “Thank you.”

  “It’s always been a treat. And, uh, and your assistant out there? Marco? He’s always been very helpful. I like him. His breath’s always been very fresh.”

  Georgiana blinked twice. “Is that important

  to you?”

  “No, I’m just saying, I know other Asian people. I know this guy Jay Chan? He does work for me sometimes? It was a big discovery to me that he had bad breath. I never imagined it before, Asian people’re always so clean.”

  “So,” I said, “we’re here to talk.”

  “Right, talk,” said Wooly. “We’re here to talk, talk things out, right? We’re here to patch things up. I mean, why let the circle go broken, right?”

  “I agree,” said Georgiana.

  “Okay, so, me, I may have been acting like some fucking fool, I admit that. I may have been acting like a real nitidiot—I can get that way. And if I was, I don’t know, pushing the boundary a bit…?

  “You were.”

  “Well then I’m sorry for that. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t mean to keep coming back to you for investment tips. It’s just that, you know, what you were giving me, it was just so damn good.”

  “Well, thank you for that.”

  “And the photos, Jesus. I would hate to lose access to the photos. The one I bought from you? It’s hanging in my living room. I tell everybody, this woman is blind, can you believe it? I’m thinking, you know, what do I know, but I think you’re a great artist. I think you’re a very fine artist.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Okay, so, we come to what’re we gonna do? What’re we gonna do here? Are we gonna walk the talk? Are we gonna forgive and forget?”

  “I’m willing to do that.”

  “Good. That’s good, cause if we can both be open and honest, if we can both lay our cards on the table, we can both get moving with our lives.”

  Georgiana looked puzzled. “Cards? What cards?”

  “You know. The cards—all the cards. The truth. I don’t mind, I really don’t, just tell me the truth.”

  “What truth is that?”

  “That it was you.”

  “Wooly,” I said.

  “That what was me?”

  “That is was you. All this shooting at me, just admit it was you. All I’m asking.”

  “This is insane.”

  “You know what I’m talking about, though, don’t you?”

  “I know because your friend here came and told me. And as I very clearly told him I had absolutely nothing to do with it.”

  Wooly got to his feet. Nickie went to stop him but he shrugged her off.

  “I just want you to know,” he said. “I just want you to know that I know.”

  “Know what?” said Georgiana. “I made a prediction.”

  “Right.”

  “And then someone started making attempts on your life.”

  “Right.”

  “So you assume it was me. Isn’t that just a little reductive?”

  He moved to the desk. Nickie and I stood up. Georgiana could sense the movement. Her face tightened, throwing the veins on her forehead into relief.

  “Who’d you hire to do it?” Wooly said. “Your assistant out there, Marco? He drive a Fusion?”

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Georgiana said. “Are you interrogating me?”

  “Yes I’m interrogating you! What the fuck does it sound like I’m doing?”

  He rammed his body into the desk. Nickie and I grabbed his arms and yanked him away. Definitely a pepper spray moment. Georgiana reached into a pocket of her overalls and pulled out a cell.

  “Leave my house now,” she said, “or I’m calling the police.”

  We pulled him back from the desk. “What the hell’re you doing?” I said.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

  “This is just wrong,” said Nickie.”

  “I’m sorry. I got carried away.”

  “Enough of this,” I said. “Just enough. This is not what we came for.”

  I looked at Georgiana. She dropped the phone back in her pocket.

  “Look,” said Wooly, catching his breath, “look, I didn’t come here with unreasonable expectations. I didn’t think we’d end up dancing the ha-cha-cha together. But I thought at least we could get all the pretenses dropped.”

  “There’s no pretense,” said Georgiana. “Why do you think it was me? Anybody could be trying to take your life.”

  “Like who?”

  “Everybody. Everybody hates you.”

  “Go fuck yourself.”

  “Everybody hates you. Everything hates you. The trees hate you. The bushes hate you. The air hates you!”

  “Tell this blind skinny-ass bitch to go fuck herself! And she can keep her bog-heap paintings!”

  “Fine, just get out of my house. I am not trying to kill you.

  “Oh okay, okay, you’re right. No, you’re right—I can see that now. You’re not trying to kill me. You’re trying to crush me, you’re trying to obliterate me. You’re trying to eat my death and sleep my death.”

  He moved closer back to the desk, fevered out of his mind.

  “You’re trying to grind me and pulverize me till my dust gets carried away by the winds of the fucking world. You’re trying to butcher me and slaughter me and crawl in the pool of my blood, crawl in the filthy pool of my fucking blood!”

  He body slammed the desk. Georgiana flinched and reached into her pocket again. Wooly split-second reacted by reaching into his voluminous pants pocket, only what he pulled out wasn’t a cell but his fucking Berretta—a purple Berretta for God’s sake—which he swung across the desk until it was a foot away from Georgiana’s face.

  “Put it down!” I yelled.

  “Wooly, Jesus!” Nickie yelled.

  “I have to do this,” he said.

  “What’s happening?” said Georgiana.

  “He’s got a gun on you,” said Nickie.

  “A purple gun,” I said.

  “Purple?”

  “I had it custom finished,” said Wooly, “all right?”

  “Fine.” A second later I had my Glock pointed at his head. “Now put it down.”

  “Quinn, don’t,” said Nickie.

  Wooly cocked his head, noticed the muzzle of the Glock staring straight into his eyes. “What’re you doing?”

  “What’re you doing?”

  “Don’t fuck with me.”

  “Don’t fuck with me. Put it down now or I put a bullet in your head.”

  “Oh God,” said Nickie, “what’s she doing?”

  Good question.

  Georgiana had already gone into convulsions. She was still sitting but the earthquake tremors were nearly thrashing her out of the chair. Rapid electric jerks were shooting through the right side of her body—only the right side, from the cheek twitching in spasms on down.

  “This shit again?” said Wooly.

  True—it
was just like before, just like the time before. Same symptoms, and what I believed was the same cause: Whenever she faced stress, her body would explode in a psychic episode. And having a big murderous asshole pointing a purple Berretta at you certainly qualified as stress.

  Now her hands were stabbing for the desk, trying to get a hold. In that pale green light she looked like a drowning woman flailing for the edge of a pool.

  Wooly, in sheer alarm, lowered his gun. “I hate this shit.”

  “Is she having a fit?” said Nickie.

  “A bleed-through,” I said. “It’s like an internal eruption.”

  “She could be bullshitting this time,” said Wooly. “She could be putting this on.”

  “Yeah? You think?”

  The convulsions suddenly stopped, just like the last time. Georgiana was still now, only her hands moving, rubbing the desk again. She was calm except for her eyes—you could light something 100 yards away on fire with those eyes.

  “You all right?” I said.

  “Of course she’s all right,” Wooly answered. “You can’t see she’s acting?”

  “I know she’s not threatening anybody. Put the gun away.”

  “It’s all right,” Georgiana said. “Don’t worry. He won’t hurt me.”

  “The fuck I won’t. Start telling me the truth.”

  “Wooly,” said Nickie, “just put the gun away.”

  “It’s all right,” said Georgiana. “It doesn’t matter. The gun…it doesn’t matter.” Her tone matched his words—matter of fact, casual, like she couldn’t care less. There was almost a smile on her face.

  “It will matter,” said Wooly, “you don’t stop fucking with me.”

  “No…no, you won’t hurt me.”

  “Don’t tempt me.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Well it sounds like it.”

  Georgiana’s lips turned outward. She was actually smiling now. “I just know. I just know…you’re not going to hurt me.”

  “Are you goddamn daring me?”

  Georgiana shook her head no, but without any emotion, without any real interest. Her mind was somewhere else. “I’m just telling you what is,” she said, hands rubbing the edge of the desk, moving in a steady, hypnotic back-and-forth. “I’m just telling you…you can’t hurt me.”

  “I can’t?”

  “No.

  “Fuck you!”

  I couldn’t take my eyes off Georgiana’s hands—I couldn’t help it. I was too busy watching them to catch Wooly’s move. By the time I realized he’d raised the Berretta, it was too late.

  He just stuck the gun in Georgiana’s face, point-blank distance, and fired.

  Click.

  “Wooly!” yelled Nickie.

  I shoved my Glock in his ear. “Drop it! Now!”

  He ignored me and squeezed again.

  Click.

  “Drop it or you’re dead!”

  He just stared at the gun with a stupid expression. “This never happened before.”

  “Drop it!”

  But he didn’t. He pumped the trigger three angry-maniac times.

  Click, click, click.

  Nothing but a triplet of empty tubular echoes. The room was suddenly silent. I could feel a buzzing running over my body.

  Wooly was looking at the gun like he suddenly didn’t know what it was. “What’re you doing?” he said, lowering his arm—though I kept the Glock next to his head. “How’re you doing this?”

  “I’m not doing anything,” said Georgiana. “I just see… I see what’s going to happen, that’s all. I see it. I just see.”

  “I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Nickie. “What the hell’s going on?”

  Georgiana’s mouth was still moving, but with no words now. Either she was trying to say something or she was mumbling to himself. She was staring out ahead but not at us or anything in the room. She seemed to be looking at something 400 miles away.

  “I see why you’re here,” she said. “I see it now… I know it now.”

  Wooly dropped the gun back in his pants pocket. It was like he didn’t want it exposed to any more of Georgiana Copely. I lowered the Glock.

  “You have to pass the dragon,” Georgiana said. “Watch out for the dragon. You have to pass the dragon in the road.”

  “More of this prophecy shit,” said Wooly.

  “Which all came true,” I said, “didn’t it?”

  “When you leave the gate,” said Georgiana, “the dragon will stop you. Not on the side of the road… In the middle. The dragon will stop you in the middle.”

  “The fuck’re you talking about?” Wooly looked at us. “The fuck’s she talking about?”

  “Time will stop for you,” said Georgiana. “Time will stop. When the offering of the fish is consumed, time will stop.”

  She was completely tranced, hands constantly burnishing the wood like they belonged to somebody else’s body.

  “The world will bleed… The world will stream red. Blood will run across the earth.”

  “This is gruesome crap,” said Wooly. “This is just some heebie-jeebie mumbo-jumbo.”

  Yeah, but we all kept looking at Georgiana like we were magnetized. And I thought I’d seen Wooly shiver at the word blood.

  “The threat will come from the east. It will come with stalks…with solid lines and broken ones. The threat will come from the east, but it will be everywhere. What is here is everywhere.”

  My body, I noticed, felt weightless and hollow, just like the time before. If I wanted to, I thought, I could actually levitate, I could float away right now.

  “When the thunder comes, it will bring you great turmoil, it will bring you great strife. When the thunder comes…thunder and diamonds…when the thunder comes, the empress will try to abandon her throne. The number seven will decide.”

  Wooly was staring at Georgiana’s hands. “Make her stop doing that. That shit with her hands, it’s creeping me out.”

  Georgiana turned her head and slowly looked at Wooly, slowly breaking off the distant gaze. She looked at Wooly like she was noticing him for the first time.

  “Death will come to your house,” she said.

  “My what? My house?”

  “Death will visit your house. Someone will die in your house… Someone will be killed…by someone who’s killed before.”

  “Shut the fuck up,” said Wooly, saying it without breathing.

  The rubbing stopped. Georgiana’s hands were finally still now. I thought for a moment it was ending. But then her expression changed. The blank, far away look gave way to a deep sadness. When saints get sad, I thought, this is what they look like.

  “It’s you,” she said to Wooly, saying it straight at him. “You’re the one. Death is coming to you.”

  “Yeah, you already said. Remember?”

  “You’ll know the moment by the eyes…by the eyes of the one who looks down. By the sphinx, the lion…by the eagle. When each eye’s two rays are at their most powerful, when they’re…at their strongest, when the rays are at their strongest, that’s when you’ll die.”

  Then it was over. She let go of the desk and leaned back in the chair while her body seemed to collapse in on itself. She just sat there like a burned out house, suddenly empty and exhausted.

  It was so quiet. We were surrounded by silence, floating and lost in it.

  “You can’t say that to me again,” said Wooly. “You can’t keep threatening me like that.”

  “I’m not threatening you,” said Georgiana. “I’m just telling you what I see.”

  “You’re trying to scare me, you fucking extraterrestrial. You’re trying to scare me, but you’re not.” The sag in his body said otherwise. He looked like he was feeling the full weight of what was to come.

  “I’m sorry,” said Georgiana, shaking her head. “It’s just one of those things.”

  “What things?”

  “Let’s get out of here,” said Nickie, her voice shaky. “Let’s leave.
”

  “Good thought,” I said. “I think we’re done.”

  “Yeah I’m leaving,” said Wooly, staring like stone at Georgiana. “I’m walking outta here. But I’ll tell you one thing Georgiana and you listen to me. No one can talk to me like that, and I mean NO ONE. You just remember one thing. No one has possession over judgment day. Not even you.”

  >>>>>>

  The day outside was still beautiful, but not so restful or peaceful anymore. “It’s bullshit,” Wooly said as we walked down the porch steps. “It’s bullshit in its purest form.” He was in one of those states where you’re angry but your body is so stunned it can’t sustain rage. “I don’t care what she said the last time—the fire in the woods, the fight with my wife, the two guys quitting on me. Fuck all that. I’m not gonna believe what she says. I’m not gonna believe even part of what she says.”

  Nobody had an answer to that one. We just headed for the car, really wanting to get the hell out of here. I circled the Jag XKE, remembering that the GPS transmitter was still jammed under the rear bumper. I was debating whether I should leave it there when an exploding crack filled my head and almost blew my skull apart.

  Wooly had the purple Berretta out and was firing it at the sky. Two more times he yanked the trigger and fractured the air. “I told you it works.”

  “Put that away!” Nickie screamed. “Don’t ever pull that shit like that again. You pull that out in front of me one more time I’ll—“