Chapter ten

“I’ve dreamed about him for a long time,” she said. “The first week I got here—three years ago—that’s when it started.”

We were in her dormitory room. She was sitting across from me in an old, stuffed easy chair, a tan one. Her legs were tucked up under her. Her gaze was trained on empty space.

I could hardly bear to look at her. I kept thinking about her laughing as she burst through the door into her father’s house. I kept thinking about her trudging through the snow in front of me. I kept thinking about her beneath me with the Christmas lights in her eyes. I kept thinking about her body, flushed and electric and alive.

Her cheeks were ashen now. Her lips were white. Her eyes—it was as if someone had shut off the power in them. Her frame seemed sunken in on itself. Her voice trembled as she spoke, and her hands fluttered together beneath her chin or hugged her shoulders tightly.

“Do you understand what I’m telling you?” she said. “Before you ever told your story, he was in my dreams. My dream, I should say. There’s just the one, again and again.”

I nodded. I was sitting at her desk, across from her in the corner by the window. It was a small desk. There were notebooks stacked neatly on it. There was a Charlie Brown mug filled with pencils. There was one of those little Tensor lamps bent like a mantis over a picture of her father in a standing frame.

I was straddling the wooden chair, my eyes wandering, avoiding her. I saw the bed against the wall to the right of me: a single bed with a flowery spread on it. Above the bed, a poster was tacked into the wall: Grandma Moses, a winter scene. On the wall above Susannah was a framed print of a Grant Wood countryside. There was a dresser against the wall to my left. It had makeup and perfumes and a mirror on top of it. Beside it was the closet door. And behind me, two teddy bears were sitting on the window seat. They were looking out the window at the drive and the yard.

Susannah said: “I’m in a small space. It’s always the same in the dream. I’m sitting in a small space in the dark. Curled up in there. Locked in there. I can’t get out. The only thing is: someone’s arms are around me. I feel that. It comforts me, the warmth of someone’s arms. But we’re very close together and I can’t move, and I can feel our breaths—my breath and the breath of the person holding me—I can feel the warmth of our breaths because the space we’re in is so small.”

Her voice was trembling. She had to swallow hard to go on.

She said: “So, we’re huddled there together, the two of us. And we’re both so weak. And we’re so afraid … Afraid of the dark and the small place … But we can’t get out of there. We can’t …”

She blinked and brought her gaze out of the emptiness. She looked at me. Her eyes were pleading with me.

“We can’t leave,” she said to me, “because he’s out there. We can hear him. We can hear his footsteps, Michael. He’s looking for us. He’s calling us. We can hear him calling. We can’t … We can’t hear what he’s saying but he’s calling us the way people call to children. He’s … beckoning us. He’s … he’s trying to tease us into coming out. He’s calling … sweetly.” She shivered and looked away again.

After a moment she went on—went on unsteadily, slowly finding her way. “We hear … we hear … his footsteps growing louder, outside the dark place. He’s coming closer … looking for us everywhere. And all I can see is the dark, and I can feel my breath and my knees pushed up almost against my chest because it’s so small in there. I’m so afraid, I’m so afraid of the dark. And then … And then his footsteps … are right outside. They’re moving right outside. And … and we can hear him calling.” She raised her chin. Her voice changed slightly. It became light and beckoning. “Come out,” she whispered, “come out now, come out.” She swallowed again, shivered again, clasped her shoulders with her hands again. She lowered her eyes.

“And I’m so scared of the dark that I almost want to go out to him,” she said. “I just think … anything would be better than waiting here like this.” She shook her head to fight off tears. Her red hair flashed back and forth at me. “But I can’t go out. The arms … the arms around me, they’re holding onto me so tightly, protecting me. They keep me from opening the door. And then …”

She lifted her face. Her eyes were glistening. “And then the footsteps stop. Just outside. Right next to where we are, they stop, and we can feel him standing there … the dark and the waiting … I can barely stand it … and suddenly …” She closed her eyes. Two tears fell from under the lashes and rolled down her cheeks. Susannah drew a deep breath and let the words flow out with it. “Suddenly there’s a burst of light … a burst of light and he’s there: the scarred man. He’s standing over us. He’s terrible. I try to get away. I try to break away from the arms that are holding me. And then … all at once … I realize that the person holding me … he isn’t holding me to protect me. He’s holding me for him! He’s keeping me there for him. And I struggle and struggle, but I can’t break free. And I turn to see who it is, who’s holding me … and it’s Death, Michael. It’s … Death … grinning at me … It’ll never let me go.” She opened her eyes. One hand fluttered up to her cheeks, brushed the tears away. “It’s Death,” she said softly, “holding me there for the scarred man.”

She was finished. She sat with her hands clasped together between her knees. She stared at the floor, like a child in the principal’s office.

“Susannah,” I heard myself say hoarsely. “Susannah, look at you, what’s happened to you?”

She laughed. I winced at the sound of it. She brought her hands up and pressed the heels into her forehead. “I don’t know, I don’t …” Her hands slid down over her face. “I don’t know,” she said. “I used to be so happy.”

She began to cry again. It shook her body violently. Her body which already seemed so frail. I went to her and sat down on the chair arm. I held her against my side.

“You were fine until I told that story,” I said.

I felt her nod. She said: “Suddenly, I just thought: it’s all true. It’s all real. He’s real. He’s real, and he’s coming to get me.”

“Oh Jesus, Sue.”

“I know, I know. I even knew I was going crazy, but I couldn’t make it stop. I couldn’t make it stop. I started to have the dream every night. Every night, I lay awake, trying not to sleep, praying it wouldn’t come. I couldn’t sleep at all after a while. I couldn’t eat.…”

“Why didn’t you tell Kelly? Or Kate?” I asked.

“Because I knew … I knew I was going crazy, and I … I couldn’t … I … They’ll hardly talk to me anymore.” She laughed and sobbed at once. “They think I’m into drugs.”

“Why didn’t you talk to a counselor?” I said. “Why didn’t you call your father? Why didn’t—”

Her hands shot up swiftly, viciously, pushing me back. Her face, blotched with crying, twisted, and she hissed out: “Why didn’t you come? Why didn’t you come to me? Where were you, Michael?”

I stood up, averting my eyes.

She whispered: “I kept thinking you would.”

I couldn’t face her. I went to the window. My fists were clenched at my sides. I stood with my head down, peering up from under my brows at the dark glass. I ran my hand up through my hair.

“You were so afraid of me,” I said. “I thought … I didn’t know if …”

“Didn’t you know you could always come to me?”

“Ah God, God,” I whispered. I had. I’d known.

I braced my fingertips against the window seat. I leaned toward the pane, toward my own reflection: a fragmentary image with night in its empty spaces. Susannah’s voice followed me.

“You were the only one I ever would have told,” she said. “About the dream, and how it was all real, and how he was coming to get me … I wanted to tell. I wanted … I was so afraid. But I couldn’t stand …” I nodded at the window. I knew what she was going to say. “I couldn’t stand for Daddy to know I’d gone crazy.” She sniffled. She was fighting for her grip. “I would’ve killed myself before that.”

“The knife,” I said. I could hardly get the words out.

“I was only holding it.”

“Oh man, oh man, oh man.”

“It’s just a steak knife, I … I brought it up from the cafeteria. I was just holding it, really, Michael. Standing where you are, right by the window … I was looking …”

“For him.”

“No. No. For you.”

“Oh …”

“I guess I was still hoping you’d come at the last …” She didn’t finish it. “Otherwise,” she went on, “I wouldn’t even have seen him. He was standing back in the shadows, but I was looking so hard for you I turned out the lights in here and … I recognized him right away.” Her voice was steadier now. “I was almost glad. He was here. Finally.”

“Oh man,” I said.

“I took the knife and ran outside. I thought: At least I won’t die trapped … in the dark.… Just sitting there, scared. Just waiting.”

I turned around to face her. She was looking at me directly. She’d gotten it out of her finally. Some of it, anyway. There was something alive now in her eyes. Her lips were taut, her fist was raised and clenched as if she were holding the knife again.

I laughed.

“You just charged out there with the knife,” I said.

She smiled at me a little.

“Way to go,” I said. “Bad, bad Sue.”

She smiled and nodded. In one quick movement, then, she stood up and held her hands out to me. I went to her, took hold. She was trembling.

“Who is he, Michael?” she whispered.

“He’s just—”

“How could he be there?”

“He’s just a man.”

“How can he …?”

“He’s just a man, Sue. He has to be.”

“I dreamed him. You—”

“Ssh, Susannah.”

“You made him up.”

“It will be all right.”

“Who says, who says? Why will it? Why will it be?”

“Because it will, I know it. It’s written,” I said. “It’s in the Big Book. All right? All right?”

The harshness of my voice stopped her. She studied my face, unblinking.

“Yes,” she said then. “All right.”

That was all. I don’t know whether she believed me or not. I don’t know whether I believed me. I could not keep my thoughts straight. I was all fog and reeling. I held her hands and I looked at her for a long time and she looked at me. When I finally did approach her, I approached her slowly. When I finally kissed her, I kissed her gently. I was afraid she would break at first, she looked so fragile. But when I kissed her, I felt her rich lips give and hold, and she felt me, and then we were on each other. We tumbled to the bed together. We undressed each other with hands like claws. And when, finally, I was over her, in her; when, finally, she was crying out to me and thrashing on the flowered bedspread—then I was not confused anymore. Then I knew for certain: I loved her. I loved her, and I told her so, again and again.