Buddy was so tired that evening he could scarcely finish dinner. When Molly shooed him away from the table and ordered him to bed he did not object, not even when he saw the clock on the mantel read seven-thirty.
Buddy stopped to lean on the wall twice as he climbed the stairs. He undressed in a stupor. The doctor’s visit, the quarrel with Thad, the daily bank stresses and strains, two and a half weeks of bad dreams and not enough sleep, the talk with his family and having his concerns finally out in the open—all the recent strains left him exhausted. He was asleep before his head hit the pillow.
There was no escaping the dream. Not this time. He was too tired. There was no normal drifting into the dream either. Buddy fell like a stone.
And yet, and yet. The dream was different this time. Very different. Sharper. More carefully defined. So crystal clear it did not seem like a dream. His every sense was heightened above the norm.
Not only that. The dream was no longer a nightmare. How he could be so certain the instant it began, he did not know. But it was not a nightmare anymore. At least, not a nightmare for him.
Buddy stood in the bank’s central hall. Just like every other entry into the dream, he did a slow sweep of the grand old chamber. Only this time the scene was far more vivid. Dust motes danced lazy circles in the sunlight streaming through the top of the side windows. The blinds on the bottom halves of the tall windows were closed, as they always were until about a half hour before opening time.
Old Carl, the bank’s morning guard, leaned against the wall just inside the main doors. He was no longer needed, what with the bank’s modern security system. But Buddy had insisted that Carl be kept on, a bastion of the service and the heritage the bank stood for. In his dream Buddy raised his hand in a half wave but was not surprised when Carl did not respond.
What did surprise him, however, was the fact that Carl did not move at the sound of weeping. Generally he was on the spot whenever someone needed assistance, be it customer or clerk. But Carl just stood there, staring into space with a bemused expression, bemused and so shaken that his features made him look even more aged than he already was. His cap was pushed back on his balding head, and he stared across the chamber at nothing.
Still the weeping went on. Buddy made a gradual revolution. Everything seemed to be in slow motion, as though an invisible hand were guiding him, silently urging him to take everything in deep.
He saw that the wall clock showed ten minutes until opening time. Normally the venetian blinds would have been opened on all the windows by then. Yet the bank remained partly shrouded in shadows, while light through the windows’ top half-circles sent beams of brilliance lancing across the room.
This was as far as he had ever continued in the dream. By this point, the sense of pressure had squeezed him from sleep like a seed shot out between thumb and forefinger. That tension was still there, but it was no longer directed at him. Which was very strange, for he could now sense a wrath behind the pressure.
His turning continued until the back half of the bank came into view. Lorraine sat at her desk, her eyes pressed into a handkerchief, her shoulders shaking hard. Buddy remained unmoved by this sight. Normally he would have rushed over and demanded to know what was the matter. Now he only continued to turn. And he realized that it was not only Lorraine who cried. Every one of the tellers was weeping.
The bank director’s door was wide open. No one was inside. Nor was anyone in Buddy’s office, which gave him a brief moment of relief. Even from within this protective cocoon, he would not have wanted to come face-to-face with himself in a dream, especially if he was to see himself crying. For somehow he knew a tragedy had struck. Not a dream affliction. Something real. Some cataclysmic event had buffeted the bank, and it was a genuine comfort not to find himself there sobbing with the others. It was very selfish. But it was also very true.
The slow circle continued until he faced back toward the bank’s main doors just in time to hear the clock strike nine.
Carl pulled himself together enough to fumble with the lock. Buddy wanted to remind them to open the blinds and get ready for business, but he could not speak. He could only watch as the locks were released and the door slammed back, sending Carl sprawling onto the floor. The old man did not move. He remained where he was as a flood of humanity streamed inside.
Shouting, screaming, pushing, fighting, and clawing toward the teller windows. Hundreds and hundreds of people. People Buddy had known all his life, their faces distorted until they were strangers. Foreigners who were gripped by universal terror. They pounded fists upon the counter and teller windows, waved checkbooks and canes and papers in the air, screamed words that were lost in the crush as still more people pressed through the doors.
Buddy wanted to stay. He wanted to help, to find some way to calm them. He had never felt so horrified in his entire life. And yet, and yet. It was no surprise. Somehow he had sensed this from the very beginning. As though the instant the very first nightmare had attacked him, he had known this was what was behind it all.
Disaster.
But the invisible hand did not allow him to linger. Instead, he rose and floated over the crowd, passing through the tall main doors. Over the heads of those still fighting to get inside, across the street filled with even more people, beyond those who stood weeping and watching on the opposite sidewalk. On into the heart of his little town.
Aiden was as alien as its citizens. Gone was the cozy atmosphere he had known since childhood. Vanished was the feeling that here the world was a slower, kinder place. In its stead was an impression of burden.
The pressure was clearer because it was directed away from him. The force seemed to begin directly behind him, shooting out over his shoulders and his head, filling the world with wrath. Yet it was more than anger. It was an all-powerful force, filled with unimaginable sorrow. A strength so overwhelming nothing could stand in its path. Wrath and sorrow. Determination and vengeance. And it was here. In Aiden.
The roads were filled with cars that had simply stopped, as though the drivers had vanished and the cars had continued until something impeded their progress. Their doors were open and flapping in the hot autumn breeze. People clustered here and there, or moved aimlessly. In and out of doorways, up and down the sidewalks and the streets. Or they sat head-in-hand on the curb. Even from this height Buddy could see they were weeping.
“Buddy? Honey?”
He rose to a seated position and swung his legs to the floor. “It’s all right.”
In the bed beside him, Molly lifted herself on one arm. “Sweetheart, are you crying?”
He rose and shuffled toward the bathroom, wiping his streaming eyes with his sleeve. “It’s all right, Molly. Go back to sleep.”
He closed the door but did not turn on the light. He leaned on the wall next to the sink. There was enough light from the window to show his outline in the mirror. The clock on the shelf glowed, but his eyes were still too blurred to read the time. It did not matter.
He turned on the faucet and washed his face. There was no need to undress, for there had been no sweats with this dream. But it had not been a dream. Buddy did not know how he could be so certain about something like that. But he knew. This was no dream. It was a message.
The whisper came then, no longer simply a memory from the vanished dream. He heard the words so clearly they might as well have been spoken aloud. Thirty-nine days.
As he dried his face he knew what he had told his wife was totally, utterly wrong. Things were not all right. They never would be again.