Dr. Amdre raised his bushy eyebrows. “Are you sure you feel up to it? After all, we’ve managed to identify work as one of the main causes of your night fears.”
Brian swiped at his matted fringe, sticking to his damp forehead. He’d always blamed the death of his wife more than the stresses of work, but, as usual, he was too tired to argue, not to mention intimidated. Having always felt like an underachiever, Brian seemed to lose the ability to think clearly when in the presence of success. And Dr. Amdre was about as successful as a psychiatrist could be. These sessions were costing Brian more than a small fortune, but if they saved his sanity.....
Just a few mere months ago, Brian was finally feeling as though his life could continue, after the tragic death of his wife from cancer. He’d gone back to work full-time, and everything had seemed fine, until the “psycho bitch from hell” had been promoted to manager. And, things had been going downhill ever since. And then, the nightmare had started.
“Brian? You said you were thinking of going back to work?”
Dr. Amdre’s repeated question brought Brian out of his reverie. “Uh, well, I just feel it’s time to try again. And who knows, maybe working all day will help me sleep, though I doubt it, but anything is worth a try.”
Dr. Amdre’s eyes hadn’t moved from Brian. “As your therapist, I would suggest you go back part-time first – just to see. Think it over at least. Now, back to your dream. We’ve managed today to get to the same place as the last three sessions. Let’s see if we can get that door to open, eh?”
Brian could have sworn the doctor was enjoying this, but was prepared to assume it was just professional interest. He had enough problems without paranoia. But, he didn’t like the way the doctor so summarily dismissed his notion of being ready to return to work. If only I had more backbone to say what I wanted to....
“So, I’d like you to just sit back, relax, and go through your dream from the beginning, telling me how you feel each step of the way, and remember – nothing can hurt you. It’s just a dream and you’re safe in my office. We’re almost there, Brian. Just an extra push, and we can get through that door.”
Brian tried not to let his body language show his unease, as he settled back into the high-backed leather chair, closed his eyes, and went through his dream. The monotone in his voice belied his anxiety, but he’d gone through this so many times already.
So, he hears a sound in the night and wakes up. The dream is so vivid that the first few times, he hadn’t realised he was dreaming until he really woke up. And, that in itself was disturbing enough.
Getting out of bed, he dons his dressing gown and tiptoes down the stairs. He expects to feel some trepidation, but he only feels inevitability, though why this is, he cannot tell.
The noise is coming from the street-side of the front door. It is a furtive, scurrying sound that he can’t quite describe. But, it feels wrong.
He unlocks the door as quietly as possible, but a small rattle can’t be avoided. Either the thing making the noise doesn’t care he’s coming or it didn’t hear him. Feeling unnaturally calm, he yanks the door open.
A cold wind slams into him, instead of the usual blast of traffic noise and city life, making him rock on the balls of his feet. Eyes screwed up against the bitter breeze, he squints ahead and sees a strange movement out of the corner of his eye. It is so fleeting, it seems like a visible afterthought, but like the sound earlier, it gives a wrong feeling.
Stepping over the threshold, he’s not surprised to find himself fully dressed, complete with heavy overcoat. The vista ahead is a bleak expanse of bracken, ruffled by the wintry wind. Turning a full circle, he merely sighs in acceptance as he sees the same undulating view of bracken in all directions. His house, street, and city have all vanished, leaving not a trace of their recent existence. He sees this as a metaphor for the ending of this stage of his life, perhaps of his life totally. Never having had a flair for the dramatic, he’s surprised by the thought.
Suddenly, he is aware of a presence. Spinning rapidly on the spot, churning up clods of twisted bracken, he scans the area, even arching his neck as far back as possible to cover every part of the grey, lowering sky. Not a sign of anything.
Then, a movement. Again, just at the edge of his vision, a flutter of suggestion that something was there. Without a thought, he turns toward it....
And he’s deep in a wood. The sort of wood the Grimm brothers would conjure up to conceal every type of witch, ogre, and goblin. The roof of interlocking treetops darkens the damp air. He walks aimlessly among the trees, feeling a mixture of apprehension and nervous anticipation. The ground is spongy, cloying to his boots. Bizarrely twisted clumps of fetid fungi cling to large areas of bark like malevolent cankers, their aromas adding a bilious taste to the miasma that drifts, wraith-like, around the scabrous wooden skin of the trees. Had he known this woodland from his childhood, he would still have been lost.
And then, there’s a sound. Very faint at first, so he thinks he may have imagined it, but it builds in volume slowly until he can identify it. Children. Children laughing. But it doesn’t sound like a school playground – more like a playground from hell. The laughter is evil, demonic, as though it comes from children twisted by years of cruelty inflicted by the Grimm monsters hidden in the woods.
The banshee laughter wails to a crescendo, though not a child can be seen. Apart from the sounds of maddening mirth there is nothing to indicate their presence. Not a rustle or a movement of the undergrowth. Yet, judging by the volume, they must be very near.
The laughter grows ever louder until he feels the sound like a pressure on him, until the pressure is inside him, hammering against the inside of his skull. His eyes watering at the pain, he remains on his feet in defiance. And instinct tells him to run. Logically, he knows he can’t run from a noise in his head, but his instincts have taken over, and he’s running. To his amazement and immense relief, the sound does recede, leaving a dull ache in its wake. Though, he has to keep running. If the noise catches him, he knows it’ll tear his sanity away like a leaf in a gale.
Brian leaped up from his chair, startling Dr. Amdre with the suddenness of his motion. “I can’t do it,” he gasped, the sweat running off his face. He wiped it away with the sleeve of his shirt. “I can’t get through that door.
His face screwed up in frustration and anger. “I know I open the door in my nightmare, but I always wake up screaming as soon as I go through.”
“Ok, we tried,” said Dr. Amdre in his most reassuring tone. “How about we try hypnosis?”
Brian had reached his limit. “What part of ‘I can’t do it’ did you take to mean ‘Let’s carry on?’” He was aware he was now standing, even leaning forward aggressively toward Dr. Amdre. But, it felt good to finally make a stand.
Dr. Amdre merely looked at Brian the way a schoolmaster of old would a wayward pupil. Further enraged by being so blatantly patronised, Brian slammed his fist down onto the desk. If there had been anything on it to rattle, the gesture may have had more impact. As it was, it just hurt like hell, and Brian felt the rage chased from his body by such a debilitating tiredness that his legs buckled. He felt the edge of the chair hit his knees, and he collapsed backward. “Do whatever you want. I’m past caring.”
Dr. Amdre dragged a chair round in front of Brian and sat down. Leaning forward, he patted Brian reassuringly on the hand. “Don’t worry. This won’t hurt a bit....”
Brian slams to a halt, mere millimetres from the door, his momentum totally dissipated. He’s so close that the grain of the wood is clearly visible, running through the panels like fibrous veins. After all the fuss, it’s almost comical how the door swings open at the faintest touch of his fingers. Before the door is fully open, his first sensation is an awareness of perfume. It’s an aroma he recognises from somewhere, but the memory eludes him. Taking a deep, calming breath, Brian steps through the door and is oddly disappointed to find himself in a perfectly ordinary looking bar. Where’s the
expected horror? What has all the paralysing dread been about?
Sitting at the bar is Marion; better known as the “psycho bitch from hell,” in a high-thigh, low-chest latex ensemble. It’s her perfume he can smell. He has no idea if Marion ever wore such a perfume but can only assume she did and that his subconscious remembers the fragrance. All he consciously remembers is feeling a gnawing hatred in her presence – until now. Now, he feels a gnawing wanting. Could he really be that shallow? Could his dislike simply be because she doesn’t want him?
Marion beckons him with a seductive wave, and any resolve he’d like to think he’d have crumbles. She’s about six paces away – a distance he seems to cover in a single step. Her fingers curl around his neck, tickling erotically, pulling his head toward her. Closing her eyes, she parts her lips, moistening them with a slow slide of her tongue. He leans closer, mesmerised, as her mouth opens, and continues to open.
He watches in growing horror as her mouth gapes wider, and her bottom jaw slides down toward her chest. Suddenly, there’s a gut-wrenching stench from her distended mouth and her tongue whips out, hideously swollen and black with throbbing blood vessels rippling across it like malformed worms. Green, swollen maggots squeeze out from under her closed eyelids, as her tongue waves in the air like a snake seeking its prey. With a voice like an angel she whispers, “Kiss me,” and the tip of her tongue flicks at his lips. Faint as the contact is, the merest touch of that pulsating vile, slimy slab is enough to break the spell and wrench him back to his senses. With a cry of horror, he jerks away and runs to the street door, yanking it open without a second’s thought.
There’s a presence at the door, a malevolence that exists in the corner of his eye, a flitting impression of evil followed by an indescribable pain. He looks down and sees an insectile limb embedded in his chest. The claw on the end of the limb is thrashing in his chest cavity, tearing its way through muscle and bone, ripping his pulsating heart from its sanctuary. Brian sees his own heart squelched in the claw, and his scream seems to him to come from a million miles away, as darkness closes in....
Brian came round from the hypnosis with such ferocity that Dr. Amdre jumped up from his chair in fright. Opening his eyes, Brian was filled with a momentary feeling of exultation at the look of fright on the doctor’s normally imperturbable features. But, this was soon replaced by a shuddering memory of his dream-a fleeting, almost unreal, imprint behind his eyes, like a distant memory fogged by time.
There was a ping from the doctor’s watch. “We’ve done really, really well today Brian, but we’re out of time for this week. Think on what we’ve discovered today and remember – it’s only a dream, it can’t really hurt you.”
Brian raised himself wearily from the chair, his every muscle aching with fatigue. Please, God, let me sleep tonight.
“It’s lunchtime, so I’ll travel down with you,” Dr. Amdre announced breezily and led Brian from his office to the elevators.
It was shift handover time, and George was curious about the new one in cell 7. It had been a while since they’d had some new psycho. “Jesus,” he whispered, as he read the patient’s notes. It appeared that the lift at the local hospital had opened to reveal a scene of carnage.
“It says here that kids were the first to see this?” enquired George.
Jeff looked up from his crossword. “Yep, on a school trip to help clean up the new maternity wing before it opens. Apparently, they first thought it was a joke and stared, laughing. I mean, can’t be every day you see a guy with his heart ripped out.”
“Jesus,” George whispered again. “It says in the notes that this psycho was a....”
“Yep,” interrupted Jeff. “Just goes to show — even psychiatrists can lose it.”
The Country Gent
by Geoff Ward
Jimmy always sang in the car on the way to gigs. It helped to open up his voice for the show. He wasn’t the lead singer in the band, he was the guitarist, but he did have his own vocal spots. He’d put in a CD and sing along, or sometimes he’d just let rip without it, thumping the steering wheel in time.
Maybe it would be “Sunday Morning Coming Down,” for the range, or “Mr. Tambourine Man,” because there were a lot of lyrics to remember in that one. Funny, but he never sang unaccompanied around the house, like a lot of people might. He preferred the sense of command the guitar gave him – and, the buffer the instrument created between him and whoever happened to be listening was important to him, too. It was a prop, in the theatrical sense. It helped to set him apart, create a distance, and he liked that feeling. It was something to hide behind, in a way. He was a fine musician, but no front man, nor did he care to be one. Anyway, he was sure his voice sounded better through a mike, and so he always did his best to be next to one when exercising tonal breath control. Except when he was in the car, that is.
It was a chilly, Thursday evening in November, and the band was converging on an out-of-town venue, where they had been booked to appear at some sort of charity event. Jimmy just played guitar, he never knew all the details until he got to the gig. There were always two sorts of guitar players, he reckoned, the artist and the technician. He prided himself in being one of the former. This naturally brought along with it a certain detachment, permitted him to trade on a certain aloofness, cultivate a little in the way of mystique. Another buffer, perhaps. But, after all, he just liked to play, and wasn’t interested in the business side of things, unlike the band’s singer, Dave, for example, who took care of all that kind of thing.
Jimmy was on his way to a town hall in a small market town about thirty miles from the city. A midweek gig was a little unusual, but it meant extra money, and that was always handy – more to help make ends meet. Jimmy knew of the venue vaguely, having passed through the town a few times on his way elsewhere. Pulling into the car park, he saw that, unusually, he was the first to arrive. The others’ cars weren’t there. Tonight, they must have been delayed. Often, Jimmy turned up last. Well, the rest of the guys had more gear – PA, monitors, drums, bass cab and top – so Jimmy, with only an amp, two guitars and holdall, could leave home later and still be at the venue, with plenty of time to make the sound check. Lugging and setting up your own gear – the delights of the semipro band!
As he always did before unloading, Jimmy went inside to check out the hall and find out where things were. There was a man opening up the bar. “I’m with the band,” the familiar phrase from arriving musicians. “Who’s in charge tonight?”
“It’s Jean you need to see, she’s in the hall, in the red shirt, or Eddie, the custodian, he’ll see you’re all right.”
Jimmy introduced himself to Jean, who explained how he would be helping to raise a lot of money for this or that charity – he forgot which straight away – and said hi to Eddie, a cheerful-looking guy in his sixties, who pointed out where the all-important power points were at the back of the stage. Jimmy went out to get his gear. Three trips to the car, and he had it stacked in the wings. He was a Fender man, two Strats, an old one he’d had since the ’70s, which he kept for backup – you never knew if a string might snap, or something worse happen, in the middle of a set – and a ’90s model, plus a Twin Reverb amp. There was also his effects unit, microphone, and cables. But... something was missing. He clapped his hand to his forehead. Oh, no! The bloody mike stand! He’d forgotten it. He could’ve kicked himself. He scanned the stage area in the hope that there might be one he could use, but there wasn’t. Going back just for that was out of the question. It was too far, and there wasn’t time.
He gazed up to the back of the hall to where Eddie was now busying himself arranging chairs and tables. Jimmy went up to him. “I don’t suppose there’s a mike stand anywhere in the building I could borrow?” said Jimmy. “We’re gonna be one short.”
Eddie stopped what he was doing and scratched his head. “Well, I think I’ve seen one down in the basement – it’ll be a bit old though. You can go and have a look. There’s a door at the b
ack of the stage, on the right-hand side. Go through there.”
Jimmy followed Eddie’s directions. A flight of stairs led down to the basement, which ran back under the stage and part of the dance floor. Jimmy flicked a light switch on the wall and ventured below. It was cold in there. The room was used for storage and full of God-knows-what, trestle tables, chairs, old filing cabinets, desks, a huge ornate mirror, but, sure enough, not far from the foot of the stairs was a mike stand, an old-fashioned one, with a heavy, metal base and no boom, but it would do. This was a lucky break. But as he picked it up, the screw-on mike holder at the top fell off, bounced on the floor, and disappeared.
“Bugger it,” Jimmy exclaimed, getting down on his hands and knees to look for it. He crawled several feet into the musty spaces between the junk, pushing aside pieces of furniture that hadn’t been moved in years. Just as he managed to lay his hand on the mike holder, there was a crack, and a floorboard gave way under him. His knee went through and bumped against something hard. As he pulled his leg back up, the adjacent floorboard came up with it – obviously the boards had been loose. He coughed, as decades of accumulated dust rose up. Squinting, he made out the shape of what looked like a case of some sort, jammed between the joists. He moved closer, and reached out a hand toward the object. His curiosity grew – it was a guitar case, caked with grime.
Jimmy gently pried the case from its resting place, turning it sideways to ease it slowly through the gap in the floorboards, and pulled it a little way toward the light. Crouching over it, he tugged at the rusting catches. They grudgingly opened, and he lifted up the lid. He was stunned at what lay inside. It was a Gretsch – a Country Gentleman model, and an old one, too. How old he couldn’t be sure, especially in the poor light, but it had the thin Electrotone body, the Filtertron pickups, and the metal nameplate on the headstock. That made it early ’60s – over forty years old! He couldn’t see any damage. The strings were corroded where they crossed the nut, and the control knobs and Bigsby were tarnished, but not severely. He played Fender, but he loved Gretsches, too, and he knew his guitar history. He’d had an Anniversary, which he’d part-exchanged for his first Telecaster, a Country Club, even a flame-maple 6120 Hollow Body. He’d always regretted letting the last two go, but, well, at the time he’d needed the money, and that was that. He’d never been that well off. But he was glad he’d kept the Tele.
Spinetinglers Anthology 2008 Page 14