Hutch had been first to wake up, earlier this morning. He’d looked at Paxton, sprawled on his back, snoring lightly, then Gunni, who twitched and fought sleep. Two very different people. Different from him, too, so it had to be their individual transgressions that had brought them to this place.
Paxton had asked him the questions he’d come to expect upon awakening. How was the hot chick in his dreams? Had he “gone for it” yet? An actual interest sparked when Hutch described the changes in last night’s dreams.
Paxton was a better man than he gave himself credit for. He was just intent on smothering his true IQ, putting himself down all the time, and Hutch wanted to know why.
Hutch hadn’t picked up his notebook to record the dreams and his interpretations today. It seemed too personal, now that he was in them. He had, however, noted the uniform he’d worn as a baseball player, and gone over his thoughts regarding the assailant. He knew he was on to something, and smarter-than-he-let-on-Paxton, had agreed. “The guy has to be someone she knows. Someone who’s intimidated by her.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” Hutch acknowledged. He’d wanted to say, “that’s very perceptive”, or “you have good insight”, but Paxton would have shot those two things down.
The younger man had sucked in his top lip. “Do you think you can get her to recognize him in her nightmare?”
He’d smiled. “That’s the plan.”
“But what good is it going to do?” Gunni had added when he woke up. “She’s already been attacked and has the nightmares.”
“Yeah, but the guy could come back and do it again.” Paxton was spot on.
Hutch was worried. “That’s where my concerns lie. I need to walk her through some recognition procedures, but I’ve never attempted it in someone’s dreams before, and it’s, uh, been a pretty long time since I’ve used the technique.”
“We know,” Paxton had answered with positive reassurance. “You did the whole prescribe-drug thing. But before that you kicked ass, right?”
Hutch thought back. He guessed he had. He’d been well-liked by both patients and colleagues during his internship years. Maybe he wasn’t such a lost cause. His new found interest in the mental health of not only Darby, but Paxton, said he was making his way back.
“Don’t see where that leaves us,” Gunni had grumped again. “I didn’t dream last night, did you?” he asked Paxton.
“Nope. But if the doc says I’m going to, I will.”
What had gone unspoken, but Hutch saw, was that Paxton looked forward to what would happen. He was ready to move forward, which was a great sign.
Hutch sent encouragement his way. “I’m sure of it. Just be ready to look at yourself in a different manner. Don’t get mired in your head with thoughts of what you are or aren’t able to do.”
“You shrinking on me again?” Paxton had asked, but this time with a quirky grin.
“Maybe. You going to let me?”
“I might, before it’s my turn for nightmares.”
“Good enough.” Hutch had nodded. “Just let me know.”
The afternoon had progressed with little difference in routine. Gunni had become a brighter companion as the day wore on and introduced them to a new game, Sprouts, which was a lot like dots, but with curved lines. They’d all participated in some tantric yoga, which oddly, Paxton had led. And once again, Hutch had instituted some rousing bouts of kickboxing.
Finally, the day wound down.
“You ready for a gourmet meal?” Hutch asked, sitting on a rock at dinner time.
Paxton grinned. “Sure. What’s on the menu tonight?”
Gunni scoffed with a sneer. “I don’t know why you guys bother.”
“Normalcy,” Hutch replied. “So we don’t…” His head suddenly went wonky. “Huh. I don’t feel so good.”
“Hey!” Paxton leaped up.
“Shit.” Even Gunni looked panicked. “You’re dissolving!”
Hutch looked down at his hands and attempted to speak. I am. The words came without substance.
“You can’t leave,” Paxton cried. “You haven’t fixed me yet.”
He wanted to answer, assure Paxton he’d be back, but his mouth was gone, along with the rest of him.
When he…reassembled, he stood in a well-lit, nicely appointed room. With rock walls.
Okay. He hadn’t been returned to the regular world.
A voice behind him, spoke. “Welcome.”
He spun around.
The beauty of the woman was almost painful. Statuesque, ivory skin, long, silken black hair. And her eyes. Dark, compelling…all-seeing.
“You?” He coughed to clear his throat. “You’re the one pulling my strings?”
“Astute. I chose well.”
Not so astute that he could put a name to his location. “Where are we?”
“My home,” she stated. “Welcome to the Underworld.”
He fell backward, aghast. “You mean… I can’t… I didn’t fix things?” Not his most eloquent statement. But Hell? He was in Hell?
“Maybe, maybe not,” she replied, giving nothing away. “But I’m pleased you figured out what a waste of humanity you’ve become.”
He shivered.
“Now why don’t we go into my office and discuss what will happen next.”
His mind racing, he mutely followed, seeing the sign on her door. Office of Special Projects.
A hysterical laugh bubbled up, almost escaping. He was a special project.
Regally, she took a seat behind a large desk and indicated he should sit opposite. He slid onto a comfortable leather chair and waited; hands clutched in his lap.
“All right. Hutchinson.” She put on reading glasses and regarded the screen on her laptop. The eyewear made her seem more human. He stifled the need to ask if he was screwed, and instead went for small talk.
“Call me Hutch. And you are…?”
“Beletseri,” she answered. “A goddess. You can call me Bel.”
A goddess? Holy crap. Hutch’s fingers itched for Google, but the Ancient Babylonian class he’d taken in college had him vaguely remembering her as “recorder of the dead” for those who entered the Underworld. He hoped he recalled wrong.
“Am I dead, then?” his voice quivered.
“Ah, I see you’re familiar with me,” she preened. “No, you are not dead. This,” she waved her hand around, “is my new job.”
His shoulders dropped, perhaps a centimeter, and he waited. Because that’s what he was good at.
“I’m going to be very honest.” She shook her head. “You’ve put an unexpected spin on my orchestrations.”
“How so?” He slipped into therapist mode.
“I sent you to purgatory because you were on a very poor path.” She regarded him over her glasses. “Would you like to tell me what that was?”
He sighed. So the fire was purgatory. “I was going through the motions in my job. I wasn’t helping the people who came to me.”
“Succinctly put.” She turned back to her screen. “To date, you have failed six-thousand, four-hundred, and thirteen fellow humans.”
He sucked in a breath. That many?
“Not that a number of them didn’t go on to recover with other therapists. Some,” she stated snidely, “even benefited from your prescription pad.”
“To say I’m sorry is too little, too late, I know. But you have shown me I can still care, become engaged.”
“I realize that,” she sniffed. “Not just with Darby, but with Paxton. I’m not sure if you can help Gunni, but time will tell.”
“Uh, time. How much will I have…there? Or here?” He feared the answer.
She looked up, disgruntled. “That’s entirely up to you. You were doing so well, learning your lesson. I thought your time in my program was coming to an end.”
He bit the inside of his cheek. Despite wanting to be finished with the purgatory thing, he wasn’t ready to lose Darby yet.
“…but now there’s a
problem.”
“There is?” He cleared his throat. “I mean, there is. You’re privy to everything I’ve seen?”
She nodded, but it was her turn to use silence as a means to extract information.
He acquiesced, ready to find out what she had in mind. “I’m not sure if Darby’s attacker is finished with her yet. Given the opportunity to take the money, he chose to beat her.”
“Continue.” She didn’t blink.
“To me, that signifies a control issue. The probability that he knows her is high…with the robbery being an attempt to cover up his attack. I’ve identified some characteristics of the man, his hair, a unique tattoo. I believe if I share those with her, she’ll know who he is.” A question he’d been unable to answer sprang to his lips. “How is it I am able to see those things, when Darby cannot?”
She looked smug. “I’ve given you a unique perspective. You are in her dreams, but can access them in their totality. You are not confined to identify those things only within her line of sight.” She didn’t pause for his comment. “But back to the consequences of giving her the tools to identify her attacker. Once she has that information, she may run, but having studied her personality, it is more likely she will confront him.”
“We concur,” he answered. “And it’s a dangerous course of action.”
“Very true. Therefore, it is my recommendation you don’t continue with your current line of therapy. You have given her very good tools to work with on her PTSD, and she is bright. She should be able to finish healing on her own, without knowing, or attempting to challenge her assailant.”
“But… But…” he spluttered.
“I’ve made up my mind. She no longer needs you. You will assist Paxton for another day, ease him into his new role, then you will be returned to your life.”
Before he could argue, she waved a hand, sending him immediately back to the middle realm.
Bel was pleased. Reading Hutch’s mind at the last moment, she knew what he would do, what she’d led him toward, what her mentor—the sly minx—had led her toward. She hoped it would work.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“Yes!”
Paxton’s strident voice and a clap on the back told him he was back at the campfire.
“Fucking hell, man. We thought you were toast. Where did you go?”
“Hell,” he answered.
Gunni grunted. “Excuse me?”
“I was in Hell.”
“Come on, Hutch.” Paxton punched him in the upper arm. “Stop messing around. Where were you?”
“In Hell,” he repeated. “Give me a minute to get my thoughts in order, and I’ll tell you.” He sat on a rock, Paxton and Gunni doing the same, twin looks of disbelief on their faces. He took a deep breath.
“I met a woman, Beletseri. In Hell, or as she calls it, The Underworld. She runs something called The Office of Special Projects.” He came right to the point. “I’m one, and so are both of you.”
“That’s not good.” Paxton sobered, immediately.
“It’s not, and it is.” Hutch hedged. “Because we’ve been given the opportunity to amend our screw-ups and not end up in Hell for good. My mistakes were my deliberate disregard for the needs of my patients. Therefore, I was dropped into my woman’s nightmares to show how devastating my indifference has been.”
“The same thing’s going to happen to us?” Gunni questioned, eyes narrowing. “This Beletseri is going to make us face our mistakes, then we can go back to our lives?”
“Looks that way,” he replied, then blew out a frustrated breath. “Although I’m upset right now because she says I’m finished with Darby.”
“But you can’t be.” Paxton frowned. “She’s got that asshole after her, and she needs to know.”
“Right. But Bel says the tools I’ve given Darby are enough for her to work with.” He shook his head. “I’m angry, and there’s nothing I can do. According to her, I’m around for another day, without dream visits, then she’s sending me home. Paxton, I’m supposed to get you ready for your, uh, journey while I’m here.”
“Journey, meaning he’s going into someone’s nightmares?” Gunni’s face soured.
“Right. Him first, then you, eventually.”
“Nightmare men,” Paxton mumbled.
“Excuse me?”
“It’s what we are.” His mouth twisted wryly. “I’m a huge graphic novel fan, and this reeks of comic book stuff. Characters have names,” he enlightened them. “We’d be called Nightmare Men.”
Hutch barked a laugh, despite his dismay. “It fits.”
“Great. Now we’re super-heroes. Where’s my cape?” Gunni got up from his rock and paced.
That guy was going to take work, Hutch lamented, and he didn’t have time to be his guide. Paxton, yes, but the pilot was a wild card. “Paxton, you prepared to talk?”
His new friend nodded, ready but clearly nervous. He ran a hand down his face. “I don’t want to, but when you were gone… When I thought you weren’t coming back, it felt like I’d missed an opportunity. So, yeah. Let’s do this.”
“I’ll take a walk,” Gunni threw over his shoulder, striding off into the darkness.
“Thanks,” Paxton threw out, then turned back to Hutch. “He won’t let on, but he was nervous you left, too. I’m not sure what his deal is, but I think he’s more fucked up than you or me.”
“A different kind of distress,” Hutch allowed. How much of his speculation about the pilot should he pass on? He wasn’t limited to doctor/patient confidentiality since Gunni was not under his care. And Gunni was all Paxton would have, once he was gone. He made up his mind. “We’ll talk about him later. Right now, let’s find out what makes you tick. Graphic novels, huh?” It was a nice, soft opening.
“I suppose you’re going to say they’re my escape.”
“Are they?” Hutch raised a brow.
“Yeah. Comic books were something I could afford when most of my money went to…” he trailed off.
Hutch sensed his unease, but didn’t have time to dig slowly. “Tell me about your mother and father. You said your dad died young.”
“He was a great guy.” Paxton leaned over, braced his elbows on his knees and stared at the ground. “I just never saw much of him. I told you he worked three jobs. That wasn’t a lie. He worked for a cleaning company during the day, a liquor store at night, and in the early morning hours he delivered newspapers. I went with him on his route before he dropped me off at school. That’s when I really got to know him. He was the best, and he wanted me to succeed, not end up like him.”
Equal parts pride and sadness came out.
“And your mother?”
“Alcohol. Drugs.”
“What kind?” he probed.
“What kind while I was growing up, or in the end, what killed her?”
“How about both.”
“Pot, cocaine, amphetamines. Those were her drugs of choice while Dad was busting his ass. We never had enough money to cover the bills because she spent it all. Dad’s and mine. And he let her. I didn’t understand until I was older, then I got it. He loved her, despite her habits, and couldn’t deny her anything. In the end, his love killed him, then killed her, too, because once he was gone and the money dried up, she went to cheaper highs. Heroin. Five-dollar bags.
“Problem is, that shit ramps up. Pretty soon we couldn’t live on what I made. We got evicted and lived in Dad’s old car.”
“How old were you at the time?”
“Seventeen, and almost done with high school. I promised Dad I’d finish, so I did.”
“Your mother didn’t want you to?”
“Hell, no. She wanted me to work longer and harder to pay for her habit. She never thought I was smart enough to graduate, anyway.”
Ah. There was the cause of the inferiority complex.
“But you did.”
“Not with the greatest grades, but yeah. I stuck it out. I had friends. And the only time I saw them was d
uring school because I worked the rest of the time.” He gave a wry laugh. “For the same company I do now. Started off as a stock-boy.”
Hutch was impressed. “That’s ten years with the same outfit. They must think highly of you.”
“I don’t know about that. I just worked hard and did what I was told.”
“And your mother?” he prodded.
“Didn’t last too long. I came home from school one day and she was dead. OD’d.” He shrugged. “But that meant she couldn’t take my money any more.”
A sad way for a kid to remember his mother.
“So what did you do, next?”
“I lived in the car until I graduated. Managed to save enough money to get an apartment with three guys who weren’t headed to college, either. It was good. A hell of a lot better than where I’d been.”
“And you had a girlfriend…”
“Uh, huh. After I got a few promotions and made it to floor manager, Seleda came into the store a few times a week, chatting me up. Eventually, she made her move.”
“How did that go?”
“Same old, same old. She liked the money I made. What I could spend on her. But I didn’t mind, because the sex was good, and steady. You understand.”
Hutch had done the opposite, not letting any women get close, but he nodded.
“What happened then?”
“I got used to her being around. Convinced myself it was love. But she got demanding. Wanted me to get an apartment with her, leave my friends. Let me know I wasn’t moving up fast enough in the company. Taunted me I wasn’t smart enough.”
Another hit to his esteem, his intelligence.
“Did you skip out on your buddies?”
He shook his head. “Hell, no. I’d learned a few lessons from my old man’s mistakes.”
“Your roommates? How did they feel about her?”
“The guys? They didn’t like her much. Or so I thought.”
Right. The friend who became an ex-friend.
“But things were still okay. We stayed together for a couple more years, I figured we’d eventually get married.”
“Because the sex was good,” Hutch stated.
Paxton grinned wryly. “Yup. It was. But before I popped the question, a new job opening came up. For a travel gig. Big raise, more benefits. I didn’t think I had a chance, but I applied. And you know what they told me?”
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