Fear Dreams

by J. A. Schneider

  “Oh!”

  Pain hit and Liddy looked down. Must have gone half back to needed sleep staring out because the coffee filling Paul’s mug had spilled and burned her hand. “Dammit,” she whimpered, rushing to the sink and pouring cold water on it. She leaned her elbows on the sink’s edge, watched the water splash and go down, down into that dark hole like her dream’s underwater cavern. The sink’s dark drain triggered something, like a flash or a vision, something just barely below the surface that she realized, suddenly, was important to remember. She shook her head, wracked her brain, but it didn’t come.

  Paul came in and she turned off the water, quickly wiped her hands on a paper towel.

  He looked surprised, buttoning his shirt, peering around at the kitchen humming.

  “Cancel Minton,” he said, lamely attempting humor, losing a bit of his haggard look at seeing his sports duffle with his healthy eats laid out next to it, everything lined up as usual on the counter.

  The hand was stinging but Liddy gave him her bravest smile. He seemed to be having the reaction she’d hoped he’d have: she’s functioning, already better by the light of day. He’d been pathetic last night during their argument - had actually…cried? Liddy saw again how beaten and defeated he’d seemed; remembered too the awful thought that had come to her: just who here is crazy?

  Anybody, that’s who. Horrendous pressure can undo anyone. Liddy was too tired to think; didn’t know what to think; craved with all her being just one blessed day of normalcy, please.

  She stepped closer to Paul, reached to push a lock of hair off his brow. “Everything’s going to be okay,” she said, trying to mean it. A day with him not falling apart would also help. Just one blessed day of normalcy, please?

  He sat on the edge of a barstool, looking worried with his lips pressed thin. “You really think so?”

  “Yes,” she lied, feeling her chest tighten, dreading the day.

  “Going to paint?”

  “Yup, it’s better therapy than Alex Minton.” She started putting Paul’s things into his duffel. “No choice anyway. I’m behind on a project, another watercolor.” Then she stopped what she was doing, and looked back to him. “Painting saves me. It really does, a million times better than listening to Minton drone. It’s like…I go off into colorful worlds and lose myself in them, and in the process I find myself. Does that make sense?”

  He nodded wearily; gave a crooked smile. “Sounds like an artist.”

  At the front door he gave her a long hug. “Let’s have a re-do on going out,” he said. “Find some little French restaurant and hide, just us.”

  “What? No socializing?”

  “God forbid.”

  She smiled a real smile this time. “I’d love that.”

  Another hug, and Paul left with hurried reminders to lock up. “The slide bolt and the keypad.”

  Liddy closed the door, then stared for a long moment at the knob. When Paul’s steps receded down the stairwell, she opened the door again. Stepped out into the empty hall and bent, peering into the keyhole. “I did lock you last night,” she said, very softly. “You know I did.”

  The keyhole stayed…just a keyhole, mute, revealing nothing.

  She breathed in; straightened. Since last night - their tension, the unlocked door, the three a.m. brain gnashing - she’d wanted to have another look at that lock. For what? She didn’t know.

  Back inside she closed the door, flipped the bolt, punched in the security code, then turned back to the apartment.

  The sun had moved, and with it the shadows. Light angling in from higher up now cast a shorter, squatter darkness behind the white column, and it moved. Clouds outside sailed in gusts before the sun, sending every shadow in the room into weird little dances.

  Spray the plants?

  Not yet. The days were cooling. No rush there.

  Liddy raced, as fast as her bad leg could carry her, through the moving shadows to her studio.

  37

  Four mason jars half full of water: one for each of the three primary colors – red, yellow, blue – and one for rinsing her brushes, her cherished, expensive sable brushes which were a whole different set from the ones she used for oil painting. As in the kitchen, Liddy force-marched herself, struggling to push down her galloping fears. Denial? Who me? Her hands still shook but she started to get excited, her preparations bringing her closer to her cherished other world that provided escape. Onto her palette she squeezed out gorgeous blobs from her Winsor & Newton watercolor tubes; then to the up-tilted surface of her draftsman’s table she tacked her Strathmore watercolor paper – big sheets, eighteen by twenty-four inches. A foot away, on the table’s flat arm to the side, she put a bowl of water and a sponge, and then, neatly, she stacked more sheets of Strathmore in case of mistakes. In art you can cover mistakes, isn’t that great? Just start afresh or lay on more pigment.

  She stopped, for seconds, taking deep breaths, looking out and around.

  Watercolor meant no turpentine fumes, which meant that the window top could stay closed, thus giving Liddy a sense of being extra hermetically safe in her cocoon. She needed that today, needed it bad. Exhaling with something close to relief, she sat at her draftsman’s table and spread her hands apart, gripping its corners as if to embrace it. Today she could sit instead of stand, just slouch way down with her nose close to the paper, her hand moving the brushes, dipping, spreading colors, watching the shapes and colors and her whole new world appear.

  Let nothing intrude, please. Let nothing else enter my poor, aching head…

  She started her first, preliminary sketch. Holding her mechanical pencil, her hand started to sweep and move, like a conductor’s baton. The project called for a scary fantasy: delicate fairies trapped on a rocky crag fleeing a down-swooping, heavy-clawed griffin - a nasty beast with the body, tail and back legs of a lion, the fierce head, wings and talons of an eagle. Liddy’s hand worked faster. She was in that world now, her swirling thin pencil lines starting to take forms that cowered, ran, struggled…

  A buzz startled her. It took a second to realize what it was.

  Her cell phone, sitting a foot from her hand.

  “I’m quite swamped but can fit you in at five,” Alex Minton droned in his flat tone. “Would you describe your situation as serious?”

  She wanted to bray laughter. Oh har, well I’m still alive if that’s what you mean, she wanted to say, but quelled it instead with, “That may be for you to determine.” She squeezed her eyes tight, fighting being yanked out of her cloud.

  “Describe briefly, please? To help assess your issue.”

  She squeezed her eyes tighter as her heart took off again. “I saw a ghost last night.” It astounded her to hear herself say that. “In our living room. Hanging from a rope.”

  Silence at the other end. But not a long silence as human data banks scanned and searched.

  “Have you had any thoughts of harming yourself?”

  “No.” Liddy opened her eyes; felt them sting and fill.

  “That’s good. It’s very good.” The voice became comforting. “You’ve been under great stress. The main cause as we’ve discussed would be your accident, traumatic in itself, plus your concussion which may have left emotional issues if not specific neural damage. Seeing or sensing some, uh, ‘being’ connects to feelings of desperation, and is more common than you might think.”

  “I didn’t sense a being, I saw it, maybe sleepwalking but it sure seemed real.” Liddy gripped her phone hard as a tear spilled down her cheek. “A blond female ghost, hanging by the neck.”

  Another silence, a brief one. “Then we must discuss the significance of hallucinations, perhaps schedule you for another look at the possibility of neurological damage. I’ve reviewed your case history and don’t believe that to be the case, however. Mainly, I think we should return to the source of your issue. The accident, and why it happened.”

  “I don’t know.” Liddy hunched forward. “I’ve told you and told you
, I just don’t remember - what good has going on and on about ‘returning to the source’ done?” She swiped furiously at another tear. Minton was droning, something else about hallucinations but she wasn’t hearing; was squeezing her eyes shut with her shoulders bunched and one hand holding an imaginary rope to the other side of her head ready to join Charlie and Sasha until, thank God, the droning stopped and she could finally say Yes, agreeing to the five o’clock appointment.

  Then she hung up. Stared at her drawing with her eyes streaming.

  Well that spoiled it. She’d found a whole half hour’s peace, the shrink had made her crazy again, and the colors in her mind were gone. Thin, dead pencil lines faced her, just empty souls on paper, stillborn.

  She picked up her pencil, at least. It belonged there, in her hand squeezing it tight tight tight to hold down her sense of helplessness, the bigger gale of tears that threatened. Then she saw a small face peer up at her, feeling the same, feeling just as terrified with round eyes that begged, wings that struggled to open and flee. So she gulped air and dove into the paper again, rescuing that little fairy, and then another and then another, nearly forgetting her thudding heart as the hours flew and her pencil flew, filling out wings and the delicate lift of arms as each delicate being fled the griffin nearly upon them with claws splayed viciously.

  Quick. Colors.

  With a jerky motion she grabbed the sponge. Dipped it in water, squeezed it but not too much, then ran it across the drawing for the blurred effect of adding watercolor to moist paper. She was excited again. No, she was in a frenzy, desperate to get this painting right – highly emotional like what she was feeling, so she reached down to the side of the table for the wheel and raised the drawing; tilted it up so it was nearly vertical.

  Perched now on her tall stool, she went to work with bigger brushes first, diving into colors and mixing, applying the first gauzy layer that sank in fast, absorbed to make a brightly violent, orange-pink background. Sunrise or sunset? Either. Liddy’s hands guided themselves. Small brushes flew next, swished in water, mixed colors, added layers of burnt orange, gold ochre, light brown and pale charcoal for the crag the fairies had to escape…work from light to dark, always in watercolors… Faces terrified and terrorizing came to life; brushes heavy with watered crimson and cadmium and cobalt violet smeared on and dripped brightly. Liddy caught the drips and brushed them into wind and the griffin’s snorting and then crashing lightning in raw sienna – oh…

  Oh…

  She stepped back.

  Raw sienna, not so good for the lightning, and she’d mixed the brush into too much water and the sienna was dripping into the crimson, the colors mixing and dripping down into the white and rose she’d mixed for clouds and...

  Liddy took another step back.

  From the bright wetness a face was emerging. Long hair in the cadmium yellow mixed for the lightning. White, rose and peach blending into woeful eyes that wept and begged.

  Breath stopped. Liddy’s heart stopped too as words emerged and dripped beneath the face.

  Help me, said the words.

  Her hands went to her cheeks as she saw them, clearly. No doubting this, not sleepwalking…the face and those words were there, dripping. Liddy’s heart slammed as she stood, transfixed, imprisoned by those colors that dripped and coalesced, changed but still…still there, the words and the face. The eyes sagging now, looking straight at her, begging, begging.

  “What can I do?” Liddy whimpered, barely hearing herself over the drumming in her ears. “What can I do?” she cried, feeling her whole soul wrenched out of her.

  The grieving face floated, as if in permanent, begging limbo, resisting the pull of other too-wet colors sliding down.

  The words stayed too: Help me.

  In a whoosh, Liddy felt all breath rush out of her. She bent slightly, clutching her belly, and burst into tears.

  Somehow made it back to her phone on the table. Managed to hit her speed dial.

  38

  Beth was there in minutes. Maybe more. Liddy must have gotten the front door open and passed out. Came to stretched on the couch with a worried Beth on the ottoman leaning to her, squeezing her hand, patting her arm with her other hand.

  “I don’t believe that,” Beth was saying, her voice coming from a blurred far away.

  “What?” Liddy whispered, aware that she’d been speaking, or trying to.

  “You just said you’d finally and officially had a psychotic break. People who’ve really flipped out don’t talk like that.” Beth’s face was distraught, her hand was clammy. “Tell me again,” she said gently. “What happened?”

  The ceiling swam. The light-headedness was easing a little. “...in the studio. Sasha’s face…in the watercolor. She wrote…help me.”

  “Hang tight.”

  Beth went. Stared, for what seemed endless, frightening moments at the wild, swooping colors, the histrionic figures…and the mournful face, the begging words beneath it. “Oh God,” she whispered, very softly. “Oh God, oh God,” she nearly cried, her hand to her mouth as she hurried back, stopping in the kitchen for water.

  “Drink, your lips are dry,” she said, handing Liddy the glass, pulling the ottoman closer. Liddy sipped and coughed a little. Beth got more upset, so Liddy forced her legs made of cement off the couch and onto the floor; insisted on sitting but with her head in her hands.

  “You saw?”

  “Yes.”

  Liddy raised her eyes. Saw Beth’s alarm.

  “You’re thinking maybe I did it? Went crazy, painted the face myself and those words?”

  Beth swallowed, then shook her head. Her eyes were deadly serious. “I’ve never known you to talk of ghosts or see things or…hell, none of it has ever been you - but this is worse than the nightmares. What’s happened? Something new has happened.”

  Liddy dropped her head; poured out last night in long, shaky breaths. Seeing or thinking she’d seen Sasha Perry running from her. Then the unlocked front door that should have been locked; then, three in the morning, Sasha’s ghost hanging over there. Liddy raised a finger to point. Now…Sasha’s face in the watercolor, begging for help…

  Liddy’s face crumpled, tried not to cry. “So if you like ghost stories or believe in that stuff, she must really be dead, and she’s come to tell me and wants help, revenge. Isn’t that how ghost stories go?”

  Beth stared at her. If you like ghost stories or believe in that stuff… It sounded totally, undeniably sane. There’d been almost a note of self-deprecating humor: Isn’t that how ghost stories go? She tried to process it all. “Dare I ask what Paul’s reaction was to the ghost?”

  A whisper: “Double hysteria but supportive.” Liddy inhaled slowly, deeply. “We’d had an argument before it, about Carl. We were with him at a restaurant-”

  “Wait. You’re so pale. Have you eaten?”

  “Couldn’t. Coffee this morning…”

  “Oh my Lord, great. Fainting on an empty stomach.”

  Beth got Liddy to the kitchen, where she drooped on a barstool while Beth microwaved oatmeal mixed with milk and lots of sugar. “For strength,” she said, stirring the mush, pushing the bowl to Liddy. “My mother used to swear by sugary oatmeal. You can have your shrinks, oatmeal cures.”

  A spoonful of it stopped near Liddy’s mouth. “Shrink. Oh jeez, what time is it?”

  “Four-forty.”

  A minute later Beth was on her phone to Minton, saying she was a friend and that, so sorry, Liddy would have to cancel.

  “Yes, she’s okay. Has to rest, that’s all. Thank you, I’ll tell her.” Disconnecting, Beth announced that the good doctor was behind anyway. “Lots of emergencies,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Freaking out in his waiting room is not where you’d want to be.”

  Liddy managed the weakest little snicker as she spooned more oatmeal, commenting that it really did make you feel better. It also felt better just to talk, spew everything to a loving friend without fear of being called crazy. />
  Beth leaned and put her elbows on the counter, facing her. “So…a fight about Carl?”

  Liddy filled her in. The evening at Righetti’s. Carl’s date pushing the sketch of Sasha at him, insisting he’d known her because she’d been in his class. “You should have seen him practically ducking the sketch, refusing to look at it.”

  “Ah - and why would he squirm and refuse to look if it were just another student?”

  “Exactly. He’s usually smoother; could have said, ‘pretty, nope, never saw her’ - only he’d been drinking.” Liddy frowned. “Which again isn’t like Carl. He hates loss of control from too much booze, and he’d been planning to return to the lab for serious work.”

  “Drinking makes it sound like he was nervous. Deteriorating, even.”

  A nod. “There’s been tension. He was mad at Paul because the cops tried to pursue a Sasha connection to him and got nowhere.”

  “Wait - Carl was mad at Paul?”

  “And me.” Liddy toyed mournfully with her spoon. Her strength was returning. “Carl had seen my sketch of Sasha, blamed me for the cops’ visit because…I’m guessing…Paul must have mentioned or complained that I’d gone to them. That seems the only logical explanation.”

  Beth frowned. “So they’d been talking about this. The case.”

  “Apparently.”

  “Why? Sounds like mutual nervousness.”

  Liddy sighed; tapped her spoon on the edge of her empty bowl. It made a sad, hollow sound in the kitchen. “After last night’s fight, I realized Paul would cover for Carl even if he did suspect something. Either denial or twin ambition, it amounts to the same.” She sighed again. “Anyway, slippery Carl told the cops he’d never laid eyes on Sasha, showed there was no record of her in his class…then last night - boom! His drunk date insisted she’d just heard that Sasha only audited his course, that’s why no record. Things got really tense after that.”