Nocturnes & Nightmares (The Sandman Duet Book 1)

by Keri Lake

  My brows furrow. “I don’t carry any torches. For anyone. I’m just not out to screw the first thing that walks through the door.”

  No sooner do the words spill from my mouth than the bell rings, signaling a new customer. Simon Jeffries takes his usual seat toward the back of the diner, wearing the bright, familiar smile the other waitresses have come to adore. He’s in his early twenties, not married, no kids from what we’ve gathered, and tips better than any other customer who comes in as regularly as he does.

  Every afternoon at 1:45pm, to be exact.

  A fairly shy guy who loves talking about technology and robotics, all the shit I don’t care to talk about.

  “Dibs on Simon!” Bethany shuffles toward his table, drawing a pad and pen from her apron.

  Once settled, Simon flashes Bethany a crooked set of teeth while he cleans his silverware with a napkin. She falls into the booth across from him, leaning forward as though the two are conversing instead of placing an order for food.

  Rolling my eyes, I nab a cloth and wipe down the counter. At the chime of the bell, I glance up to see Harv, Bethany’s husband, striding toward me.

  “Oh, Christ,” I mutter, looking for a place to hide, but it’s too late. The bastard already has his sights set on me.

  “How’s it going, Nolick.” He comes in every day to take Beth out to his truck for lunch. I’m guessing they screw while they’re out there, since he tends to park toward the back of the lot, but I’ve never cared to prove that point.

  “It’s Nola. You know it’s Nola. Quit being a dick.”

  “Given any thought to my proposition?”

  “You’re actually not supposed to be propositioning me. Dale said if he catches you, he’s going to throw you onto a fryer.”

  “Dale’s dramatic. Went to school with the little prick. And I do mean little prick.”

  “Well, I’m working—you know, like a real job—so I’m going to cut this convo short.” I turn to walk away and feel a tight grip of my arm. The moment I spin around, he lets me go, likely seeing the potential for murder in my eyes.

  “Nola, I’m begging you. Begging. Just one night. I promise I’ll be gentle.” He leans in with a smile that’s missing an eyetooth. “You know how couples have their free passes, right?”

  “You guys swing. I don’t think that applies to you.”

  “So, like, I asked Beth, who’s the one person in the whole wide world she’d want to fuck freely. Like, whenever she wants. Like, I’d share her with this dude, right? She picks Tom Hardy. Pfft! Tom Hardy.” He shakes his head and glances over his shoulder toward where she’s still sitting with Simon.

  “And?”

  He swings his attention back to me, not that I want his attention, but I feel compelled to support that I’d fuck Tom Hardy, and I’m not even interested in sex.

  “And … I picked you. Like, you could move in with us, and shit. Not that you’d want to, but you’re my Tom Hardy.”

  My face feels frozen in what has to be a look of sheer disgust, given the twitch of my muscles tightening up. “That’s fucked up, Harv.”

  “You know what I mean. And Beth is totally cool with it. She’s hoping you’re in.”

  I stop wiping the counter and lean in nice and close, with a smile plastered on my face. “Harv? If this was the zombie apocalypse, and yours was the last dick on earth, I’d cut it off and feed it to the zombies to buy me some time.”

  “That’s cold, Nola. Real cold. You’ll come around, though.” Bottom lip caught between his teeth, he winks. “I’m good at wearing women down.”

  I shake my head and glance to the side, where Bethany’s waving me over, still sitting across from Simon. Even if he’s a slight bit more awkward than Harv, I’ll take his company, any day, over Beth’s creepy husband.

  With heavy, aching feet, I hobble over to their table and lean my ass against the booth beside Bethany.

  “Nola! You gotta hear this! Simon says that cryptocurrency is hot right now. Like the return on investment is insane.”

  Return on investment? That doesn’t sound like a Bethany thing to say.

  “Simon says, huh?” Holding back a snort, I catch the twitch of Simon’s lips overtop of the daisy inside a vase, set in the middle of the table.

  Dale insists that fresh flowers placed at every table, every day, makes his joint less of a greasy spoon.

  “I don’t even know what all that cryptocrap is,” I add, shrugging my shoulders.

  “It’s the currency that drug dealers and hitmen use.” Bethany’s fascinated tone leaves me to wonder how much she really gives a shit about crypto, versus the tip she’ll be getting for serving Simon his usual grilled cheese and fries.

  “Ah, well, I forgot to renew my hitman card this year, so I guess I’m not eligible.” I turn to leave, but pause at the sound of Simon clearing his throat.

  He rarely makes eye contact with anyone, so when I twist back around, I’m surprised to see him looking up at me. “It’s a relatively small investment. I’ve turned as little as fifty dollars into thousands. If you’d like, I can set you up with an account. The lingo is a little daunting at first, but the more you play with it, the better you’ll become.”

  “That’s what I’ve been telling her, Simon.” Bethany shoots me a wink, and I roll my eyes, shaking my head at yet another sex reference. One Simon doesn’t seem to pick up on. “So are we on for this weekend? You show me how to work it, and I’ll play with it?”

  Ugh, this conversation is nearly as bad as the one with Harv. The two of them could probably start their own cheesy dictionary of sexual puns.

  Simon adjusts his glasses, his cheeks three shades of red. Maybe he caught on, after all. “Certainly, I’m happy to get you started with an account.”

  “You should come over, too, Nola. We’ll make it a crypto party.”

  With a huff, I push away from the booth and knock my knuckles on the wooden table. “As thrilling as that sounds, I’m gonna pass. Thanks, anyway, Simon.”

  “Sure. If you change your mind, there are plenty of tutorials that show you how to set everything up.”

  “Cool. Thanks.”

  I want to ask him why, if it’s worked so well for him, is he still dressing like a prep school reject and eating grilled cheese at a greasy spoon every day. But I suppose some people are just happy where they’re at in life, and he certainly seems to be content.

  My shift drags on into the evening, and when it’s finally time to go, I can hardly stand the walk to my car. The heels of my shoes bite into my skin as I limp across the mostly empty lot toward my car. Lara, one of the waitresses, zips by in her compact little sedan, waving at me when she passes.

  An obnoxious slam from behind signals one of the busboys tossing a bag of garbage into a nearby dumpster, before heading back inside the diner.

  An eerie quiet looms in the shadows across the lot as I shuffle toward my car.

  Plastered to my windshield, a strip of red paper flaps against the glass, and I tilt my head, eyes narrowed, trying to make out what it might be.

  The blare of a horn steels my muscles, and I turn to see Harv and Bethany roll past in their creepy white panel van I often tease looks like something a serial killer would drive. The sight of Harv blowing me a kiss through the window has my lip crimping.

  Tugging the paper out of the wipers, I wait until I’ve fallen into the driver’s seat before opening it to the words typed across.

  If given the choice, would you prefer to be strangled in your vehicle, or raped against the hood of it?

  Breath whooshes out of me, and I snap my head to the rearview mirror, to find no one staring back at me, and when I peer over the backseat to be sure, I click the lock on the doors. The surrounding lot is empty. Not a single hint of movement. It’s only when I stare back down at the note in my hand that I realize I’m trembling. Flipping it over to the back reveals Sweet Dreams.

  One more glance over the backseat confirms no one is inside, and with both
hands gripping the steering wheel, I attempt to settle my rattled nerves.

  It’s then that a recent conversation comes to mind, one Bethany told me about weeks ago, when she decided to follow me outside for a smoke. Apparently, swinging with random men and women hasn’t been enough excitement for her sex life, so she and Harv decided to spice things up, by having someone rape her as he watched. Role-playing, of course, but according to her, it was the most exciting thing she’s ever done. It wouldn’t surprise me if the two decided to step it up a notch.

  Too far, Harv. Way too far.

  “Idiot,” I mumble, firing up my car. It isn’t enough that the asshole harasses me during my shift, but he’s gotta creep me the hell out on top of it.

  Sunday is my next shift with Beth, and she’s going to hear about this, because I don’t take this crap lightly—not anymore. I’m sure Jonah would be happy to send an officer out make Harv shit his pants a little.

  5

  Nola

  A thick chill settles into my chest, as I look around at surrounding graffiti-spattered walls wherein I watched Oliver disappear. Distant screams add an ominous quality to the dark and peculiar corridor ahead. Shiny white-tiled floors carry red smears and handprints of what looks like blood.

  “Oliver?” My voice reverberates off the walls in a harrowing calm. Something tells me this place—a hospital, judging by the tipped over stretchers and rooms with medical-looking equipment—is the kind of place that swallows fears, glutting on every moment of dread it can reap. “Oliver, answer me!”

  My heart sits heavy in my chest, as my mind tries to convince me those screams are not my son’s. The heart knows better, though. It remembers breaking, when I first dropped Oliver off at Kindergarten and he reached for me, begging me to take him home. It remembers the day he fell out of a tree and broke his arm in the backyard. And the nights he’s woken from nightmares, certain that monsters have come for him.

  “Mom!”

  It’s been months since I last heard him call out for me, and my heart sings at the sound of it, drawing my feet toward a door at the end of the long hallway. Something tells me to turn back, to stay away from that door, but I can’t. Not if my son is there.

  “Go back!” The whispers are almost deafening, and with my hand on the knob, I clamp my eyes shut.

  “No,” I answer, opening the door.

  I find my son lying in a pool of blood on the floor, his stomach sliced open, chest to navel.

  “Sweet dreams,” another voice whispers from behind. One I don’t recognize.

  “No!”

  I jolt to a sitting position, my heart slamming against my ribs, as I claw through sheets, scrambling from the bed. Body shaking, I make my way down the hall toward Oliver’s room and punch through the door to find his bed is empty. It’s only then that I realize I forgot my knife from under my pillow, but I don’t need it.

  Why don’t I need it?

  A brief moment of confusion fades into the realization that he’s not here. He’s at Jonah’s. Safe. I know this because I FaceTimed him earlier in the night, and I have the urge to do it again, but a glance at the clock shows two in the morning.

  Resting my forehead against the doorframe, I let the agony of my nightmare settle over me. Every dream is a different scenario, aside from the split open belly. That’s apparently what the drug dealers did to Denny, and from what I’ve gathered from the therapist and Oliver’s drawings, my son watched it happen. The only prints on the weapon belonged to a known meth-head, who, of course, swore up and down he didn’t do it. The dead body didn’t deter him from swiping Denny’s wallet, though.

  Jonah once asked me if Denny’d had any connections to the cartels, as that kind of mutilation was a fairly common retribution, but I wouldn’t have known. In fact, I didn’t know much of anything about Denny, it seems. I didn’t know he slept on the couch so he could sneak out in the middle of the night, but it made sense. According to some witnesses, and friends I had no clue Denny kept with, he was pretty active on the streets after hours. A few had even seen my son tag along with him on the nights I worked late at the diner. I suppose Oliver’s silence about that was to keep the two of us from fighting.

  And there I was, struggling for years to keep Band-Aids over something too broken to fix.

  I can’t fall back asleep, not after that dream, so I make my way down to the first floor, past the kitchen to the breezeway that leads to my mother’s old pottery room.

  My dad had it built for her after my older sister went missing. I was only eleven at the time, but I remember every detail of that day, leading up to the moment one of my dad’s police buddies came to our door, telling us she was nowhere to be found. I can still smell the strawberry scent of her shampoo filling the air, as she brushed her hair at the vanity, while I stood by watching. I remember the infinity necklace she wore around her neck, which Dad had given us for Christmas that year. The red sweater that clung to her busty chest, making me wonder if I’d be as curvy and beautiful as she was, someday. I remember the gleam in her eyes when she talked about the boy she’d met, and the little tryst she’d organized for later that night, about which I swore I wouldn’t say a word to Mom and Dad. It wasn’t until that moment, when the officer had to hold my dad up to keep him from collapsing, that I finally spoke about it. When I realized it was no longer about secrets kept between sisters, but clues leading to her whereabouts.

  The whole community got involved to help find Nora, but her disappearance would forever remain a mystery to my mother, who eventually became a neurotic mess.

  I look around at the pottery lining the shelves—the results of hours she spent distracting her mind. On the bench below the shelves sits two halves of a vase I accidentally broke while dusting her shelves the day before.

  Pulling up a stool, I squeeze a small bit of the nearby glue and epoxy into a glass dish I set out earlier, and mix it around, before adding the gold powder. With a small wooden stick, I apply the mixture along the edge of the break in a thick coating, a process known as Kintsugi. My Nan learned it, while traveling through Japan as a young globetrotter, and taught it to my mother, who eventually taught it to me. Perhaps the only time spent with my mother that I truly cherished.

  The philosophy behind it is a celebration of an object’s history and struggles, beautifying its brokenness and cracks with delicate gold veins that tell its story. I always found it fitting for my mother, while she mourned the disappearance of my sister. Wearing her pain like the cracks in her pottery.

  Over time, I became better at it, creating art from broken pieces.

  Once the glue has dried, I shave away the bits sticking up from the crack and mix more of the gold filling, then apply it to the outer side of the crack. When that’s dried, I’ll eventually take a fine point brush and paint the crack, shave it again and apply the gold to a fine line painted over the surface. By then, I should have a much steadier hand than I do after my earlier nightmare.

  It’s after four, and I need to get at least another hour, or I’ll spend the day looking like I suffer from narcolepsy. And, if I’m going to have a man renting out the room behind my house, I definitely need to have my wits about me tomorrow, when I meet him.

  6

  Nola

  Sunlight hits my face, and I squint against the invading brightness, slapping the back of my hand across my eyes to shield it out. With a groan, I turn over in bed, the red digital letters on my clock slowly coming into view.

  9:50.

  “Oh shit!” I scramble over the edge, knocking my elbow on the nightstand, and hobble to the bathroom. Even in a half-daze, my reflection is a ridiculous mess of a woman who clearly didn’t get enough sleep. My hair looks like birds played in it all night, so I nab a couple bobby pins to tame it. A quick dab of concealer hides the dark circles, and I squirt toothpaste onto my toothbrush, relieving myself as I scour my teeth.

  A chime from downstairs skates down my spine, as I spit foamy toothpaste into the sink. “One s
econd!” Yelling from upstairs is futile, though. This house is like a fortress with its insulated walls, so thick I could probably die and decompose in here before someone ever found me.

  Racing back to the bedroom, I throw on a pair of jeans and nab the first top I see from the armoire, only realizing it’s Oliver’s Star Wars T-shirt once it’s over my head and my arm is halfway through the sleeve.

  “Fuck!” I cross my arms to yank it off, but I can’t get my elbow back through the hole, leaving my arm dangling above my head. “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”

  Another ring of the bell is really just obnoxious at this point, and my mood flips from panicked to frustrated, as I wrangle my other arm into its sleeve. The tearing sound mirrors my slowly unraveling calm, and I tug the shirt as far over my exposed navel as I can, then pause, wondering if I should grab my knife. “What are you gonna do, stab the guy you invited over?” I mutter, jogging down the staircase.

  One more ring of the bell grates at my nerves, and I throw back the door. “I’m coming, goddammit!”

  Standing on my front porch is a man over six feet tall, in a sleek black suit. Two of me could span the width of him, and above his crisp black collar sits a snake tattoo that winds up his neck. With dark hair, and cold, gray eyes that sweep down over my outfit, he’s both handsome and intimidating, but the scar across his face adds an edge of menace, sending up red flags.

  He doesn’t look like a potential tenant. He looks like danger, wrapped in a nice suit.

  Not happening. I’ve already decided this deal is off.

  “I’m here about the apartment. We spoke yesterday.” His eyes trail down again and back, and I suddenly remember I’m wearing an eleven-year-old’s favorite T-shirt.

  “Yeah. I’m … Nola.” Yes, I was named after the city where my mom and dad apparently got it on in their forties, resulting in an oops baby. My miraculous conception to a mother who was shitfaced and horny. Reaching out a hand, I give one more yank at the hem of the T-shirt and flinch at another tear. “Forgive me, I was …” I don’t even have huge boobs, but they look monstrous in this T-shirt, pressing against the fabric like they’re trying to make a break for it.