12

That night Speke experienced the worst nightmare he had ever had.

He dreamed he had killed someone, another man, a person he knew well, and buried his body near a house where he lived.

Like most dreamscapes, this setting was hard to place but very intimate, and the man he killed was both familiar and hard to remember. Even the means of death was obscure—perhaps he had strangled the man, perhaps he had pushed the man from a height. It was hard to tell.

What was very vivid, extremely clear, however, was the sense of terrible dread. The dream was splashed with reds and yellows, and pulsed with despair. This was true, the dream said. All true.

He woke gasping, sweating and staring upward into the dark. His fingers clawed the sheets on either side of his body, and he struggled to shake the sleep from his mind. The dream would not let him go. It clung to him, until at last he sat up.

What a terrible dream, he thought. Thank God I’m awake.

It was always such a relief to crawl ashore from a dream like that.

And then he remembered.

He was icy. This time, to wake from a nightmare was no escape.

Maria slumbered beside him. He had the oddest feeling that she had not been there beside him all the while, that at some point in the night she had left the bed. But she was there now, her breathing even and slow.

He struggled into his bathrobe, and lurched through the darkened house, hating every wall that loomed, and every black doorway.

He was falling—that was how it felt. Plummeting downward, as fast as a body could fall, even though he knew he was standing upright on the solid floor, one hand out to touch the wall.

This was panic, the panic attacks he had experienced before he began therapy years ago. He hurried into his office. He hungered for the familiar, the feel of standing somewhere he knew well, somewhere he was used to commanding. His telephone. His notebooks. His computer beside his desk.

The crystal decanter was heavy in his sweating hands. The scotch splashed as he poured it, and he coughed at the first swallow. It brought tears to his eyes. He drank again, a long, stiff belt, and fell back into his chair.

He would have wept, but this was a feeling beyond grief.

A sin. He had committed a sin. He had done something unforgivable.

He blinked tears. I’ll never have a normal life again, he told himself. I’ll never be able to eat, or sleep, or just walk along looking at hills and trees. I’ll never be able to do anything because every second I’ll know.

And there is nothing I can do. It’s done. It’s permanent, forever, the most lasting thing I’ve done on earth.

There was no hope of controlling himself now. He shuddered, and climbed around his desk to grip the decanter again and drink directly from the crystal, pouring the scotch down his throat, a rivulet streaming down his chin.

What made it worse was the needling doubt he now felt toward his writing. He had always known that many of his ideas had been rooted in his friendship with Asquith. But now he was beginning to wonder. Maybe it was Asquith’s—every moment. Surely that wasn’t true, he tried to reassure himself.

But he couldn’t be sure—not now.

Maybe, he thought, Asquith was right. Maybe I was stealing his life all along, and the last, great theft of the Mexico play was a crime too great to tolerate.

My work, he told himself, is abandoning me, and there is nothing I can do to call it back.

It was hard to tell what attracted his attention to the darkness outside. Perhaps there was a vague movement, or perhaps he simply knew, in his bones, that there was something out there. He turned, straining to see, his mouth agape, sure that he was staring at nothing but the blank darkness.

That’s all there was—just the dark, beyond the windows behind his desk. The friendly dark, where the oaks and the lawn that he loved so much were thriving in the dew. He couldn’t see them, because the world could only be remembered now, not seen. But everything was out there, just as it should be. There was no threat there, surely. There was his own reflection, a hulking figure clinging to a crystal decanter.

And nothing more.

Then he saw it.

Something drifted out there. It was less than a vision, little more than a thought. A vague presence, a smudge, began to coalesce before his eyes. A gray shape began to focus into a figure.

The figure was a cloud, a column of smoke. The smoke figure stepped slowly, very carefully, as though unsure of its own existence, its own power, into the light.

The stare was what froze Speke. Froze everything in him. Every gland, every follicle was crystal.

The man outside was staring at Speke. Staring into Speke’s eyes.

He must have screamed. He must have dropped the decanter. He must have leaped to the far wall and continued to cry out, because when Maria was at his side, calling to him, he was hard against the wall and glass and scotch were all over the floor.

She put her hand over his mouth, and her hand was strong. “It’s all right, Ham. Please be still—it’s all right.”

“It was him!”

“You’ll wake everyone. They’ll be able to hear you. Calm down, Ham. It’s all right.”

“It was him. Looking right at me. Maria, listen to me. He was standing right out there in the dark.”