Marvel Novel Series 07 - Doctor Strange - Nightmare

by William Rotsler

  That’s why there were always a lot of sleeping pills in the drawer. At least the corpse would look good. Pistols and high jumps were so messy—just drift away.

  Into a dream?

  Michele tried to stay awake, but she knew she’d fail. All her props were gone. She’d left her vibrator running and the batteries were dead. She didn’t have a good book. Johnny Carson was on reruns and guest hosts. The Late, Late Show was one of hers and she hated it. She remembered how she had gotten the job.

  She flopped her arms down helplessly on the covers. The bed squeaked. It was Lon Chaney’s bed, they said—senior, not junior. The Man with a Thousand Faces they called him in silent-movie days. They’d called her The Woman who Launched a Thousand Press Releases once. What imaginations the PR people had. They could make something out of nothing.

  Michele sighed. She was something out of nothing. It wasn’t that she believed her press notices, it was that she thought they were the reality and she nothing.

  Sleep came slowly, like a long George Stevens dissolve.

  Dolly in. Michele Hartley asleep. Fade out.

  Fade in.

  Exterior; day; enormous parking lot. Cars parked so close together you couldn’t get in. As far as the eye could see—dusty car tops in every color. She wandered through the narrow passages between. Where was her car? She couldn’t find it. She had to find it. She had to get away. Her legs felt weak, but she went on.

  She stopped to lean on a hood. It was cold; the hood was cold. Her hand left no mark in the dust. She staggered on, her knees still weaker. Within a few steps she could not walk. She fell, clutching her purse. The sun glinted off hundreds of bumpers and windshields. Nothing moved. She tried to cry for help but no sound came. She began to fall forward, into the dust, and she closed her eyes.

  She fell.

  And fell.

  Her eyes popped open. She was still falling, only it was space. Long lumpy arms of rock arched this way and that, with stars and blackness beyond. On some of the arms of thick lumpy rock were little estates—mansions with gardens, fountains, columns, and carefully shaped shrubbery. There was a Greek temple. Below was a Roman villa. Over there was something that looked like Cher’s house. There was a castle above her, flying strange flags. Uh-oh. A hut over there, made of reeds and mud; log cabin; a yurt.

  She fell.

  The falling didn’t bother her. It was a dream; she knew it was a dream. Falling in dreams was nice. It meant something, like everything in a dream is supposed to mean something, but she didn’t care—not then, anyway.

  She came down, light as a feather, on the lawn of a huge English estate. They set the dogs on her. She shrugged and shoved off the six-hundred-year-old lawn and floated up. She could see people down in the Roman villa. They sent a Rolls for her.

  The Rolls turned gracefully in the sky and came at her with only a faint purring. The guy who drove Banacek around was driving. She got in and they drove down to the Roman villa where she got out, still clutching her purse. She seemed to have lost all her clothes somewhere, but the hosts pretended not to see.

  Her hosts were David Niven and Deborah Kerr, at least at first, but somehow they became Myrna Loy and William Powell, who set Asta on her. She ran across the lawn, with the yapping dog in hot pursuit, until she came to the green hedge that bordered everything. She couldn’t find an opening, so she plunged through, scratching herself, and—

  —fell into space.

  There was no comforting maze of thick rock arms. That was all above her now. She was going to fall and fall until there was no more of her.

  “My purse!” she cried. It had disappeared, too. Everything important was in the purse. She could not have lost her purse, not the purse.

  Naked, she fell. She screamed, but there was no sound.

  Dissolve.

  “Hello, I’m your friend.”

  It was a wood-paneled den. Brass lamps with green shades on a sturdy, boxy desk. Paintings guaranteed not to create trouble. Waxed wood. Books in leather bindings, ten and twelve in a set. On the desk a small bronze cannon, a pen set, a bottle of blood, a paperweight. The windows were masses of little diamonds set in thick wood. Very English, very reassuring, except that beyond the windows the view changed every time she looked.

  New York skyline, country barn, Devil’s Tower with an oil refinery landing on it, trees and grass, 1920s street . . .

  The man in the padded leather chair smiled at her. He was tall, handsome, conservatively dressed, a little silver at the temples, honor fraternity key on his watch chain, inch of crisp linen showing at the cuff—a young Walter Pidgeon, a contemporary Stewart Grainger, a future Roger Moore.

  “Hello? You all right?”

  “Uh, yes. Where am I?”

  He smiled. White teeth, even tan, merry glint, nice lighting. “In your dream, of course.”

  “I . . . uh . . . my dream?”

  He smiled and nodded, templing his fingertips before his face and looking kindly at her.

  “It seems, uh, so real.”

  She didn’t look at the windows. No one commented on her being nude.

  “Of course, that is because it is real. Here.” He smiled apologetically. “I hope you don’t mind if I intrude. You and I have some business to transact, you see.”

  “See my manager.”

  “No, I’m afraid you don’t understand, Miss Milkenberg.”

  “Ms. Hartley,” she said, frowning.

  He smiled. “I’m sorry, you never actually made it legal, you know. Sorry about that, but I’ll compromise, Ms. Milkenberg.” He touched some sheets of paper and shoved them across the polished top of the desk. “We don’t have much time, actually. You normally awaken around dawn, I believe—no doubt due to all those years of early calls.” He smiled again. “Such a fantastic career. Well, we’ve got to get on with this. Please read these and sign.”

  “My agent and my manager are the ones who—”

  “Ms. Milkenberg!” His voice cracked sharply and his smile disappeared. “I don’t have much time! I’m offering you a straightforward participation contract. Neither your agent nor your business manager can enter into this—nor can your stock broker, security guards, maids, press agent, or hairdresser. Now I do not want to be nasty, but I really do have to run along.”

  Outside one window there was a huge face, enormous and hairy. She blinked. It was the South Seas, with waving palms.

  “Mister, uh . . .”

  “My name is not important. Sign.”

  “I do not sign without my—”

  “Sign!”

  “No!” She glared back. The windows flickered with lightning, then rain; then she saw cliffs and a dark, surging sea.

  He sat back, templing his fingers again. “Very well.” He shrugged. “I had hoped we could do this in a businesslike manner, Ms. Milkenberg.” He made a gesture of helplessness, then pressed a button.

  A paneled door opened and in came a handsome man in a blue tunic and tights, wearing a red cape. He, too, had silver at his temples, but wore a small handsome mustache. His eyes were hypnotic and she found she could not move. He came to her, his eyes roving over her nudity; then he reached for her.

  They did things in the dream, terrible things, and the view from the windows changed—volcanoes . . . rearing horses . . . flames . . . racing clouds.

  Somewhere in the middle of it she realized she was getting no pleasure from it, that she would never again find pleasure in it, not until she signed. The creature behind the desk smiled and handed her the papers. She signed them on her hands and knees, then fell forward.

  And fell . . .

  And fell.

  Two

  On the quiet street in New York’s Greenwich Village, several people glanced up at the tall brownstone with the round skylight and picked up the pace of their walking. No one said anything, no one avoided the building, but everyone walked just a bit faster to get past. They were quieter, too, as were the automobiles. No trucks seemed to come
down this block. No one knew why and truck drivers, if they had been asked, would have said something about better routes or shorter distances. No street people hung out here, no dope pushers stood in doorways, no prostitutes sauntered. It was a quiet street, but those in the neighborhood had heard rumors.

  Mrs. Hescox, in the house next door, said she felt very safe—strangely safe for one living in New York—though there had been a number of strange sounds in the night, odd lights, things seen in the sky; but it was best to let these things be.

  Mr. Ellefson, across the street and south a bit, had a very sensitive nose and he often said the most peculiar odors came from that direction sometimes, usually at night. Incense, he said, but he couldn’t pin down the exact origin.

  Seven blocks to the east, in a shabby apartment filled with nineteen TV sets, four microwave ovens, six radios, five hi-fi sets, three eight-track players and two videotape recorders, a burglar by the name of Morris Hoppe sat watching Casablanca with his hands in his lap. The hands were bandaged heavily and his girl friend had to punch the buttons on the VHS recorder for him.

  Morris flexed his hands and groaned. It had been a full week since he had tried to get into that old brownstone and his hands still hurt. Funny thing, they weren’t burned, but they felt burned. Must have been some kind of electrical short. He’d gone in from the roof next door and had tried to force open the edge of the skylight. Next thing he knew he was two blocks away, on the street, running like mad with his hands on fire. Best to stay away from that place after this, he thought. Plenty of other spots to hit. Some fancy artsy-fartsy loft over on Second Avenue, maybe. Anything but that joint in the Village.

  In that old brownstone Doctor Stephen Strange sat in the cross-legged lotus position and meditated. Wong, his Tibetan servant, drifted like smoke through the adjacent room, giving his master an expressionless glance. He carried the tray into the library and set it down near the robed figure of Clea. She looked up from the thick book she was studying and smiled at Wong.

  “Thank you. Um, that coffee smells delicious, Wong.”

  The servant bowed slightly and made no comment. He started to turn away but Clea stopped him. The beautiful young woman brushed back her silver hair and tugged the robe tighter. It was early morning and she had dressed only in the thick robe.

  “Wong, when Stephen rejoins us, we’ll have breakfast here. I want to show him something.”

  “Very well, Miss Clea.” The Oriental bowed and left. Clea reopened her book and picked up the cup of coffee.

  The ancient script was hard to read and the thick parchment pages rustled when she turned them. Each page was illuminated or had a representational drawing, or both. The book was one of the four known copies of the Necronomicon and it had always amused her that there was a concentrated effort to make laymen believe the book did not exist, had never existed, and that if it had existed, all copies had been destroyed long ago by a witch-hunting church.

  She sipped at the hot liquid and her brow furrowed in concentration. She had been studying with Stephen Strange for some years, but could never seem to catch up. That didn’t bother her, for Dr. Stephen Strange was the Sorcerer Supreme and she had no ambitions in that direction. But she did want to become proficient in the arts, and study was essential.

  Correction, she thought, understanding was essential, whether there was study or not. Stephen, for example: he rarely consulted a book these days, but rather consulted himself. His daily meditations took him into unexplored territory, sometimes with surprising and innovative results. Trained as a medical doctor, Stephen Strange still approached the forces of magic in the same way he would have approached processes and technology in the physical world—systematically and scientifically. It left few pockets of knowledge unplumbed, few areas untested.

  But in the past week or two she had felt a withdrawing, an enforced isolation. Clea did not take it personally. Although she was his lover as well as his student, she understood his responsibilities and the drives which made him act and search and respond to various psychic impulses. He sensed evil; she knew it, although he had said nothing. She, as a result, made no demands upon him, either as lover or student, and left him to pursue the faint wisp of warning that had somehow come to his attention.

  He would return to her when it was time. He always had.

  Three

  In Los Angeles, California, the Reverend Billie Joe Jacks looked at the clock with a growing apprehension. Nine P.M. Bedtime in an hour at the soonest, two hours at the outside. He was an early-to-bed, early-to-rise man, rock solid, dependable. His congregations sensed that, even over what he called “the electronic pulpit.”

  It was the only way to reach enough people these days. Television was the only way, the only way. You preach the same sermon to a hundred or two hundred in one church—three or four hundred if you are really lucky—and on television, that same identical sermon reaches thousands, millions.

  His new church was designed around the television camera and he was right proud of it. There were no cameras lugged in and plopped down, with ugly black cables snaking around, tripping the parishioners. No, sir, not at the Temple of Light there wasn’t. This was the Age of Television and you might as well understand that.

  No, sir, there were little rooms hidden away, with only small slits showing; built-in mikes; body mikes, too, so he could walk among the people. Shoot in any direction and you’d not see a single camera. The lighting he’d had put in by one of the gaffers from a major studio, the sound system by the best he could find. Everything went to a control room and was put on tape. Cassettes were duplicated and sent all over the world by a fast, well-organized group of well-paid professionals.

  Of course, he didn’t stay in the Temple of Light all the time. He traveled, just like Billy Graham and Oral Roberts and all them others did. Madison Square Garden, the Superbowl, the Astrodome, the London Palladium, Riverfront Stadium. You needed more than just old-time religion these days. He told that quite freely to the reporters. You needed a gimmick, and the gimmicks had to change, move with the times.

  He always laughed and said, “First you have to get their attention,” referring to the old joke about hitting the mule with the two-by-four. That’s why he’d skydived and scubaed and broadcast from a mile over the desert and from a hundred fathoms down—gimmicks, attention-getters.

  Nine-oh-five.

  He didn’t want to go to bed, yet . . . Yet . . . something drew him. There had been something frustrating about that dream. He’d come so close to God. He knew it was God. What else could it be?

  Billie Joe Jacks shrugged and brought his attention back to the couple from South Gate who were talking about his beautiful laser light show the week before.

  But still . . . if it wasn’t the Almighty calling, who—what—could it be? It was too bad the way people felt about television preachers these days. All those television shows about corrupt ministers, that disaster down in South America, the disrepute the ministry was falling into. And it wasn’t just the Protestant churches either. A bishop—a bishop!—of the Greek Orthodox Church had been discovered in a porn film! And the rumors in the Roman Church about an autopsy on Pope John Paul the First. People just weren’t taking things on faith, anymore.

  Maybe that was a good idea for a sermon—the loss of faith in the electronic age. Maybe he could find something about moral corruption in Revelation and apply it to the present world. Have to get Zekley and Harris on that right away. They did some of his best corruption speeches.

  Nine-ten.

  He chewed at his lip. “Yes, indeed, Mrs. Armstrong, it was an expensive demonstration of laser technology, but it only shows the beauty of the Lord, don’t you think?”

  Maybe if he had some coffee he’d not go to sleep so quickly. Or use those sleeping pills; knock himself out . . .

  “Oh, thank you, Mr. Armstrong; this is indeed generous of you. Here, let me give you one of our Swords of Light. They’re reserved for our, um, special parishioners—
and one for you, Mrs. Armstrong. No, it is we who thank you. Bless you, my children.”

  Nine-eleven.

  Joe Peerson lay face down on the tumbled bed. Booze and a good snort had put him out. A dissatisfied Beatrice Marx sat up smoking, occasionally giving the sleeping giant a hard look. Maybe after he sleeps it off a bit, she thought, maybe he’ll be interested again.

  It was a new motel, yet the same—left-hand instead of right-hand room was the only difference. Bedspread golden instead of brown—only difference. He lived his life out in bland anonymous rooms, but it was all right. It was what he deserved. That and the money in the safe-deposit boxes in Kansas City, LA, Flushing, and Houston. After this job he’d open a box in Chicago. What name would he use?

  Mark Evans was Houston. Evan Marx was Flushing. KC was E. Marks and LA was M.A. Kevans. Chicago . . . Mark E.—what? What street was he on? Croft? No, he might forget that. Mark E. What was he registered as here? Mark Evans? All right, Mark Evans, Junior. What difference did it make? As long as he could remember which name went where, and as long as he had ID to match. But identification was rarely a problem.

  He stretched out in the bed. Odd dream last night. Don’t need any more like that. Not before a job.

  The details of his assignment went through his head. Carolyn Kirby, age twenty-five, 1529 West Sapra, Los Angeles. Apartment Eight. Must look like an accident. He’d have to research her first. What would be a “logical” accident for her?

  The why of it never bothered him. The why was $10,000, five in front, five after, all through Collado the contact. People were vermin, anyway. What difference did it make one more or less? Doing the overpopulated world a good turn. He vaguely wondered if she was good-looking; that always helped. Good-looking women had a lot of people sore at them, for one reason or another, or they committed suicide a lot. Maybe a rape-murder, but that was always tricky. Took time, too many chances of things going wrong. He didn’t get any kick out of it, anyway; never did—even paying for it. Or maybe especially paying for it. What did it matter, anyway . . . ?