I WOKE JUDIE in the middle of the night with a desperate phone call. “I don’t want to hear anything about lucid dreams. This was no dream.”
It took her twenty minutes to pull on a pair of jeans and race down the winding roads in her Vauxhall to my house. She came through the door like an ER doctor, ready to act. Jip was still shaking and Beatrice sat on her bed, fighting back tears.
I was sure this hadn’t been some dream.
Sure, everything else had disappeared. Even the note I’d written in the notebook she’d given me. I’m afraid and my fear is real, I remembered writing.
“But . . . are you sure, Pete?”
“As sure as I am that you’re standing here, Judie. Down to the fact the notebook cost seven and a half euros. I remember reading it in my dream.”
Outside, everything had vanished, as well. There wasn’t so much as a tire track that didn’t belong to Judie’s or my car. I grabbed a flashlight out of the shed, flipped on the outside lights, and walked around the house with Jip and Beatrice at my side. They didn’t want to be alone even for a second. They were terrified, and I couldn’t blame them.
To start with, the fence was perfectly intact. White and straight and not a scratch on it. I told them that in my “nightmare” the fence had been broken and knocked over. I remembered sticking my fingers into the rain-soaked hole where the slats had once stood. But now, the fence was as solid as a hundred-year-old oak.
And then there was the matter of the storm. Judie told me there hadn’t been a drop of rainfall in the night. All you had to do was feel the dry ground to know she was right.
“But I . . .” I stammered as I ran my fingers through my dry hair, “I remember walking in the rain. I’m sure of it! I put on these boots and I was out walking for more than five minutes before I came across that van . . .”
I showed her the sand on my raincoat, boots, and pajamas. I showed her the scratches from my fall down the side of the ravine. I showed her where I’d banged my chest when I dove off the road. I was sure if we grabbed the flashlight and went up the road, we’d find my footprints in the sand.
“I believe you, Pete, but . . .” she said, gesturing toward the kids, “what good would it do?”
IT WAS ALMOST daybreak by the time the kids managed to fall back asleep. Judie had told them three back-to-back bedtime stories, and they were still wide awake at the end of the last one. Then, she sang an old Irish ballad, and her voice filled our home with warmth and peace. She shooed our ghosts and fears away. The memory of their father running around the house with a fireplace poker, like a madman, slipped away. I heard their breathing slow, each breath deeper and longer, their little mouths open slightly, as they watched and listened to Judie from under the covers, until their eyelids gave in and they drifted off completely.
“Daddy just had a bad dream. He’s very sorry to have frightened you. Now, sleep. Sleep. And tomorrow will be a beautiful day.”
She came to my room when the children were down. My head and my heart were in pain. I took pills for one and whiskey for the other. Then I collapsed into bed. Judie sat on the edge, next to me. She resisted lying down, regardless of how tired she must have been. Outside, the sun began to rise.
“If Clem were in Amsterdam, I’d send them home right away,” I said. “Their father may be an idiot, but he’s not crazy.”
“Pete . . . you’re not crazy,” Judie said, gently taking my glass of whiskey and setting it on the nightstand. She turned and ran her fingers through my hair. “Something’s going on, but you’re not crazy.”
“So what’s the matter with me? What if I have another hallucination and mistake them for the thieves and bash their heads in with a goddamn poker?”
It sounded frighteningly plausible. I noticed Judie react, but she tried to reassure me.
“You don’t know that there’ll be a next time.”
“That’s what we want to think, Judie. That’s the best-case scenario we’re hoping for. But tonight, I frightened the hell out of my children. I pulled them out of bed in the middle of the night and told them they had to hide. That was this time. What happens next time? I won’t put my kids—or you—in harm’s way. I want you to be completely honest with me. Do you think I might be schizophrenic?”
She couldn’t help chuckling.
“Where did you get that idea?”
“From the Internet. Dr. Google. I read that schizophrenics sometimes hallucinate.”
Judie asked for a cigarette. The pack was on the nightstand, and I handed it to her. She lit one and launched two streams of smoke out of her nose.
“Yes, there are some mental illnesses, like schizophrenia, where the patient ‘sees’ or ‘hears’ things that aren’t really there. But there are a host of other symptoms associated with that disease that you don’t display. Your ‘visions’ are very organized, for instance. You always know when they start and finish.”
“And that makes it different?”
“It does. That sets you apart from the vast majority of cases of schizophrenia or delusional disorders. Although I can’t swear there aren’t other cases like yours. In my opinion, there’s something else going on with you. Something medical science can’t so easily label. Like, where did those three distinct characters come from? And that recurring image of the broken fence? If I had to bet money, I’d say the answers lie with Jung or Freud and not a lobotomy.”
“You mean, you think there’s a hidden message in all this?”
“It’s just a hunch,” Judie said, “but why not? It seems like you ‘exist’ inside these dreams. You move, walk around, hell, even jump off the side of a cliff when you think something’s trying to attack you. It’s as if you’re living out your dream. As if you’re wearing a pair of virtual reality goggles. But none of that changes the basic question: Why are you having these dreams?”
“Why am I having these dreams?” I repeated to myself. “Why? It feels like a warning. Like something’s coming. It’s like the whole picture is coming together a piece at a time. The first time, it was Marie. She was frightened. Something had happened to her. Then, in Dublin, there was that image of the dead bodies . . .”
“What happened in Dublin?” Judie asked.
I remembered then that I hadn’t told her or anyone else about my vision with the newspaper article.
“The night I stayed at my father’s house, I had another . . . ‘nightmare.’ I believed I saw a newspaper on the dining room table. There was a story about a massacre in Clenhburran. A family had been killed. Then, I flipped the light on and everything vanished. Just like tonight. Just like every night. I’d forgotten about it . . .”
“Is there anything else you think is important?”
“I don’t know. I don’t remember anything else. The fence is always broken. And I guess that makes sense because the dream always takes place on the same night. And tonight, it seemed like these assassins were looking for someone. A woman.”
Judie finished her cigarette and snuffed it out in the ashtray. She sat quietly, thinking for a long minute.
“Do you think I’m crazy, Judie? Because right now, you’re one of the only people in the world I can trust. Recently, everything’s been so . . . strange. I see things that aren’t there. I’ve even started doubting Leo, Marie . . . even you.”
“Why me?”
“It’s nothing. It’s stupid, forget I said anything.”
“No, tell me,” Judie said. “I want to know.”
“You . . . were in one of my nightmares. Something horrible happened, horrible like all the others. And later, you gave me this strange look when you found the name of that doctor, Kauffman, scribbled on that scrap of paper in the first-aid kit. Tell me I’m imagining things, please. Tell me I’m just being paranoid.”
Her deep brown eyes, almost black in the dark room, locked in on mine.
“What happened in your nightmare, Pete?”
I took a long drag off my cigarette.
“I don’t know if you want to know. It’s terrible.”
“I want to know.”
I tipped back the rest of the whiskey until the ice cubes tumbled against my lips.
“You were tied up. Tied up and scared. Someone was coming to get you, to hurt you, and you were begging me for help. You said he was ‘going to kill you.’ But maybe that dream was a remnant of real life. There are a lot of nights where you . . . well, you have those horrible nightmares. I guess I internalized that, and it came out in my dream.”
“Tied up . . .” Judie said. Her lips had started to tremble. “Was there someone else in the dream?”
“Yes . . .” I said. Her face grew more tense.
“A man?” she asked, and now, I saw she was frightened.
“No. It was my mother,” I said, “telling me I had to leave this house.”
Judie covered her mouth with one hand. I couldn’t tell whether she was crying, but I could tell she was breathing faster. I leaned back. Suddenly, our roles had reversed: She had become the patient and I the doctor.
“Judie? Are you okay?”
“Yeah, just, a little stunned, Pete.”
“Did I say something to . . . ?”
“Let’s just drop it for now. This isn’t the time to discuss it.”
I took her by the shoulders. The morning light that crept into the house fell softly on her face. I was looking at a different Judie, now. She was pale. Terrified.
I tried to hug her, but she pulled away.
“I think it’s better if I lie downstairs, on the couch. You should try to get some rest, too. Tomorrow’s another day.”
“But Judie . . .”
“Not now, Pete. I need a minute, okay?”
She went out of the room and I heard her sigh in the hallway. I had definitely touched a nerve, something deep inside. I was about to get up and go after her, but I knew her enough to know there was no fixing this right now.
The sun had risen over the horizon by the time I managed to fall asleep. But before I drifted off, I decided two things. First, that I would go see that Dr. Kauffman and be cured of this by any and all means necessary. And I’d do it immediately. I wanted to be rid of it for good. I wanted my life back.
The second thing I decided had to do with Leo and Marie. If I was sure of anything at this point, it was that all of this was somehow connected. I didn’t know how, exactly, but that’s what I need to figure out.