Sweet Dreams

by William W. Johnstone

  “All this land,” Bud said, waving his hand, “once belonged to the Indian. We ...”

  Leo tuned him out. It was going to be a bad day, starting out like this.

  “First of all, Jerry,” Doctor Finley said, “you have my condolences. Secondly, what you’ve placed in my examining room is unlike anything I have ever seen before.”

  “I know,” Jerry said. He looked at Voyles, standing quietly to one side. “You getting all this, Lieutenant?”

  “I have been assigned to this case, Doctor Baldwin, whether you like it, or not.”

  “Marvelous. You want to sleep at my house, too?”

  “You’re not my type, Doctor.” For a split second, a faint smile creased the trooper’s face. Jerry waited for the man’s face to crack from the effort.

  “Is Doctor Baldwin a suspect in this case?” Doctor Finley asked.

  “Not since you placed the TOD,” Voyles replied. “That cleared him.”

  “Thanks for telling me,” Jerry said, a touch of acid in his reply.

  “It cleared Doctor Baldwin in the minds of the D.A.s of New Madrid and Mississippi counties,” the Trooper continued. “But I still have some reservations. You’re off the hook, Doctor Baldwin, so I can speak frankly. I’ve seen some cool ol’ boys in my time. But you have just got to be the coolest.”

  Jerry smiled. “Thank you, Lieutenant. Tell me, are you a traffic officer?”

  “All Missouri troopers are trained to handle the highways.”

  “But your main function is within the investigative branch of the MHP?”

  Voyles smiled faintly. “I cannot tell a lie. Yes, that is true.”

  “What happens if you tell a lie?” Doctor Finley asked. “Does your nose grow?”

  Voyles looked at him through those smoky eyes. “I don’t think Johnny Carson’s job is in any danger from you, sir. Why don’t we just can any attempts at humor and get on with the autopsy?”

  The doctors reached a silent understanding with the trooper: Lieutenant Voyles was going to do his job – his way – whether they liked it or not.

  It was a long autopsy, with the M.E., Finley, and his assistant – Jerry helping whenever he was asked to assist – working through the early afternoon hours. Jerry showed no emotion as his wife was literally taken apart from crotch to brain. Voyles watched both Jerry and the autopsy with equal amounts of intense interest.

  Doctor Finley finally nodded his head, told his assistant to store the remains, and stripped off his rubber gloves. He told the assistant to forget anything and everything he had seen that afternoon; then he motioned for Jerry and Voyles to follow him. In his office, Finley poured them all fresh coffee and then lit his pipe. When he had puffed to his satisfaction, he looked at Jerry.

  “As a doctor, Jerry, you realize what we have just witnessed this afternoon is virtually impossible, don’t you?”

  Voyles stirred impatiently. “If you don’t mind, Doctor Finley, don’t ask questions of Doctor Baldwin. Please enlighten me.”

  This time, Voyles had stepped over the line. He met his match with the M.E. The doctor shifted his eyes and said, “Young man,” – Voyles was forty if he was a day – “your attitude is beginning to annoy me. If you are laboring under the misconception that your occupation, uniform, and sidearm somehow impress me, you are badly mistaken. I spent three years in the Pacific during World War Two – as a Marine. I was one of Carlson’s Raiders. I’ve killed more men with knife and piano wire than you’ve worked wrecks. I was recalled during the Korean War and spent almost a year working up in North Korea with guerrillas. Now you listen to me. I run this section of the hospital. I give the orders around here, not you. When I am finished with this bit of work, I am going to call the attorney general of the State of Missouri – personally, on this Sunday afternoon – and inform that very close friend of mine that there is no way Doctor Jerry Baldwin could have done what has been done to that poor woman now resting in a cooler. Then I am going to personally phone the governor, who is married to one of my nieces, and tell him that out of all the hundreds of fine officers he has serving on the Missouri Highway Patrol, I don’t know why I had to be saddled with a double-dyed, arrogant, overbearing, totally officious goddamned son of a bitch like you.”

  Voyles blinked. He sat speechless for a full fifteen seconds. Then he slowly smiled. He looked at both doctors. When he spoke, his voice was rather subdued. “My apologies, gentlemen. To both of you. I guess I have been coming on pretty hard. If you will both bear with me for one more minute, I’ll try to explain my attitude. Doctors, what I am about to tell you should be held in the utmost secrecy. You see,” he said with a sigh, “Mrs. Baldwin is not the first person we’ve investigated, not the first to die in that area. There have been three others who have disappeared over the past few months. Two were vagrants. The third – we believe – was a young girl, a teenage runaway, hitching her way from South Carolina to California. We’ve been finding bits and pieces of flesh and bone and clothing in that area. It appears that, uh, the three might have been devoured.”

  “Eaten!” Jerry blurted.

  “Yes, sir,” Voyles said. Jerry had once more achieved ‘sir’ status with the highway cop. “But it’s very possible animals may have eaten the bodies and scattered the bones after the victims were killed and dumped. We don’t know the identities of the vagrants, but we believe the young girl was a runaway from a school for, ah, troubled children in South Carolina. We were ordered to move rather quietly for fear of creating a panic.”

  Jerry grunted. “That plus the fact that no one really gives a damn if two vagrants and a runaway kid got killed or not. Right, Lieutenant?”

  “I wouldn’t want to put it that way, sir,” the trooper said.

  “But there is more,” Doctor Finley said. “Am I correct, Lieutenant?”

  Voyles nodded. “Yes, sir. We, that is to say, certain people within the department seem to believe the, ah, light out by the tracks might have some bearing on the case. I don’t,” he was quick to add. “Or, I didn’t, at least,” he muttered. “Now I don’t know what I’m going to put in my report.”

  Doctor Finley’s smile was rather grim. “Well, you just grab onto the arms of that chair, Lieutenant, ’cause I’m just about to make your day.”

  “That is exactly what I was afraid you were going to say,” the cop replied, his tone of voice as grim as the doctor’s smile.

  Finley looked at Jerry. “You noticed, of course, the abnormal coloration of your wife’s brain?”

  “Yes. I kept waiting for you to explain it. You never did.”

  “Because I don’t know what caused it, Jerry. I’ve never seen anything like it. But I can give you both a foolish and very unscientific theory.”

  “Here it comes,” Voyles muttered.

  They waited while Finley relit his pipe.

  “The brain was totally destroyed. Completely,” the M.E. said. “Almost,” he added, “as if the brain had been picked clean and then destroyed.”

  “Oh, fuck!” Voyles said. “What is this, sci-fi time?”

  “Maybe it’s the Blob,” Jerry said. “Come on, Doctor Finley. You can’t be serious.”

  The M.E. was not ruffled by the sarcasm of both men. “After that was done, or perhaps during or before, her blood was drained and then every vital organ was destroyed.”

  Jerry sat up straighter, an incredulous look on his face. “Every organ?”

  “Heart, lungs, liver, spleen, brain, eyes, kidneys, reproductive system – everything. I have never seen anything to match it in thirty-five years as a medical examiner.”

  “What the hell am I going to put in my report!” Voyles asked, protest in his voice. “We’ve asked permission to take over this case, and received it. We’ll be working with a special team out of Jeff City.” He did not elaborate. “Picked her brain! Drank her blood! Jesus God, Doc. I put that in my report and I’ll be back working traffic in Cabool!”

  “I don’t know about your report, Lieutenant
,” Finley said. “But I want every scrap of bone and hair and flesh md rags you people have in cold storage. And I want them here, in my lab, by eight o’clock in the morning. And if you think I can’t go over your head and get them, son, you are sadly mistaken.”

  “I believe, I believe!” Voyles said. “I was going to ask if you would work with us on this. Doctor Finley, just off the top of your head, sir, what killed the Baldwin woman?”

  “I can tell you my personal opinion. Doctor Baldwin, Lieutenant Voyles, I’m an old man. I’ve seen many things in this world that I cannot explain. I’ve come to believe in many things others in my profession scoff at. I don’t for one minute believe the races of people populating the earth’s surface are the only intelligent beings God created. I am very comfortable accepting both theories on how we came to be, for there is no way of telling how many times the Almighty attempted to make us in His image and failed, no way of knowing how many worlds He populated. I have seen UFOs, as I imagine most people have – whether they realize it or not. And I believe that whatever killed Mrs. Baldwin was not of this world.”

  “I’m supposed to put in my report that she was killed by little green men?” Voyles asked, dismay in his voice. “Doc, give me a break. I do that and I may as well get ready for a transfer to Siberia.”

  Finley smiled. “Voyles, you may put in your report that Mrs. Lisa Baldwin died of a heart attack brought on by massive amounts of alcohol. I could have retired years ago, so any threats anyone might wish to heap upon my head are meaningless as far as I am concerned.”

  The highway cop visibly relaxed. “What about her being sexually molested?”

  “What about it?” Finley tossed the question back to the cop. “Fine. She was raped. Put that in your report too. We’ll get together in a few days with the whole team and go over the real cause of her death.”

  “But you said you didn’t know what killed her,” Voyles said.

  “No, son,” Finley replied slowly. “I know what killed her. I just don’t believe anything of this earth did it.”

  8

  Heather had gone to bed earlier than usual. She had not drawn attention to the fact. She had just taken a bath and gone to bed. However, both of her parents had inquired about her health. They were a little concerned about this unusual behavior on her part.

  “I’m fine,” she told them. “Just a little tired, that’s all. It’s been a really . . . interesting day.”

  Too much sun, the mother and father concluded.

  But sleep would not come to Heather. Her mind was too busy, too full of the horrible scenes she had witnessed. She tossed in her canopied bed and tried to will sleep to come, but the arms of Morpheus would not embrace her.

  A noise just outside her open window brought her upright in bed, her heart pounding, fear making her mouth cotton-dry.

  She waited silently, but the noise was not repeated.

  Finally, she lay down, her eyes wide open. The button eyes of the teddy bears and the glass eyes of the dolls sitting in neat rows on shelves across the room, seemed to glare at her, a different kind of light in their dead eyes.

  Or were they dead?

  Heather stared at the neat rows.

  The dolls and teddy bears stared back.

  One blinked its eyes. Then another.

  Heather closed her eyes. “No way,” she whispered into the darkness of the room. “I’m dreaming.”

  As she opened her eyes, a toy soldier was standing up, pointing a toy rifle at her. Heather ducked just as the rifleman fired. She screamed. But no footsteps sounded on the hall outside the bedroom door.

  She smelled gunsmoke. She looked at her pillow. Faintly revealed by the pale glow of the night light was a tiny black hole in the white pillowcase.

  Heather heard a clicking sound. She looked at the toy soldier. He was pulling back the hammer on his musket. Heather jerked up the pillow and threw it at the toy. The pillow struck the soldier, knocking it backward, then covering it with its soft bulk.

  The dolls and teddy bears continued to blink and stare at her.

  The noise came again from outside her bedroom window. Something was definitely moving out there. She didn’t know what to do.

  She thought about slipping under the covers and pretending this was all just a bad dream. But she knew it wasn’t.

  She considered getting under the bed. Then the story Marc had told her about something under there waiting to grab you came to her mind.

  Marc, why did you tell me that?

  Then the night light went out, plunging the room into darkness, the only illumination coming from the street lamp on the corner. Wild panic struck Heather and she screamed as loudly as she could.

  But her parents did not come to the door. The house was as silent as death.

  Don’t think about that! Heather’s mind screamed silently.

  “Yeah, really!” Heather muttered.

  She jumped out of bed and ran to the door. But it was locked. Locked! How could that be? There wasn’t any lock on her bedroom door . . . but it was locked.

  She ran back to the bed and jumped into the middle of it. She looked around as laughter filled the bedroom. Her clown doll was laughing and dancing and spinning around.

  “Stop it!” Heather screamed.

  The wild, frenzied laughter grew louder. The clown doll spun around and around.

  The face of the mask came to her in the darkness of the room. She could see the cruel mouth, the twisted nose, the wild insane eyes.

  Something brushed against the side of the house. Heather looked at the open window. The street lamp suddenly went dark. Heather experienced almost a mindless numbing fear.

  A silhouette fell across the bed. A deformed shadow vaguely manlike. Heather froze in the center of the bed, her heart pounding with fear. Her eyes swung to a strange glow materializing in the yard. The light was round and oddly jagged around the edges. The man moved away from her window and Heather watched him walk toward the light. She slipped from her bed and crouched by the open window, wondering what in the world was going on and if she were really asleep and dreaming all this?

  But she knew she was wide awake.

  The man stood for a moment in front of the ball of light, hovering several feet off the ground. Heather was sure the man was somehow communicating with the glowing sphere, but no sound of any kind – other than a low humming – reached her ears.

  Then the man turned away from the ball of light and looked straight at Heather. It was not a man, she discovered, but a teenage boy.

  Heather had seen him around town, but she didn’t know his name. She knew he was some kind of local sports hero.

  Suddenly the name came to her.

  Van Bishop.

  He was walking toward Heather’s bedroom. She ran to the door, forgetting that it was somehow locked, and then whirled around as the room was suddenly flooded with light, light unlike any light Heather had ever seen. It was Technicolor and 3-D and black and white – surrealistic – and it frightened Heather half out of her mind.

  She opened her mouth to scream. No sound came. Her throat felt tight, almost closed shut.

  A strange humming sound entered the room, filling it with odd vibrations.

  She looked toward her floor-to-ceiling bookcase. Her dolls and teddy bears were grinning at her . . . and they were moving. They were waving their arms and moving their legs. And the smiles of the dolls and teddy bears were grotesquely evil.

  The girl looked at her bed. The sheets and the one remaining pillow were jumping, wavy lines moving through them. The canopy over her bed was flapping like a loose sail in a strong wind . . . but it produced no sound.

  The humming ceased. An eerie silence fell over the room.

  Heather turned away from the ball of light hovering at her window and tried to pound on the door. But the door had changed into thick canvas pads. Where had she seen pads like these? Her small fists made no sound as they struck the thick pads.

  She whirled around, h
er back pressing against the padding now covering the door. She did not attempt to scream. She now realized that was useless.

  Van was removing the screen. He looked up, grinning at her, and his grimace was horrible; a cruel curving of his lips. The light behind him – Heather could not understand why the light had not attracted the attention of the neighbors, or what had happened to her parents – had transformed the handsome boy into a monster. His face was chalk white, his hair wild and tangled, his lips appeared bloody and slick with saliva, and his eyes were filled with madness.

  Van laughed insanely as he pulled the screen away and dropped it to the grass. He stuck his arm inside, his fingers waggling and reaching for Heather, even though she was all the way across the room.

  “Mother!” Heather cried. “Daddy! Help me. Somebody please help me!”

  Then she heard a wet, smushing sound, a groan, and Van fell from the window to land in a heap on the ground beneath the sill.

  The glowing, bobbing orb of light shot backward and faded into a baseball-size glow at the far end of the street. The dolls and teddy bears ceased their wild movements, their eyes once more lifeless. The canopy over her bed was still, so were the sheets and the pillow. She turned around. Her door was no longer covered with the thick padding. She tried the doorknob. The door opened.

  “Heather!” a young voice whispered from the open window.

  Her heart leaped from her chest to her throat.

  “It’s me, Marc. Come on, Heather. You gotta get out of there.”

  “Marc.” She had found her voice. “Marc, what’s happening here?” She ran to the window and looked at him. “You’re in your pajamas!” she said.

  “So are you,” he countered. “I don’t usually sleep in my Sunday suit. Come on, Heather. Get out of there before the light gets big again and comes after us.”

  Only then did she notice the club in Marc’s hand. She leaned out of the window and looked down. Van was out cold on the ground. She could see the blood on his face.

  “You hit him!”

  “I sure did. Come on, Heather.”