Wake to Darkness. Maggie Shayne
guests on one of the talk shows I’d done. I was no longer sure which one. It was a blur at this point. The girls were thrilled. We talked into the night, and then Amy went home for the first time in several days, and Misty headed up to the guest room.
I walked around the house after it was quiet again. There was no cleanup to do; Amy and Misty had done it for me, knowing I always came back from these trips exhausted. And I was.
But there was more on my mind than being wiped out. I was thinking about Mason Brown’s visit and what he had said, and yes, I was feeling guilty for not telling him everything. The thing was, this phenomenon where I would start to dream, then be immediately startled wide awake, hadn’t been happening all that long. I mean, I’d sort of implied to him that it had been happening ever since we nailed the Wraith and went our separate ways. But it hadn’t. I hadn’t had another one of those terrifying vision-dreams since, so I guess my brain had seen no point in waking me up. Until about two weeks ago, give or take. But it had happened five times since then. I would start to dream, and bam! I’d be sitting straight up in bed with my eyes wide open, that startle reflex waking me right up. And every one of those times I’d been sure the dream I was about to enter wasn’t an ordinary one. It had felt like the other ones. Those terrible, horrible visions when I’d been seeing through the eyes of the serial killer whose heart beat in another man. And whose corneas had restored my eyesight.
Two weeks. That was how long he said the transplant recipient had been missing. A person who had received organs from the same donor. Mason’s brother, Eric, the original Wraith. What if my dreams had been telling me where she was, what had happened to her? What if I could have helped her?
It’s not my job. I’m not a caped crusader, I’m a self-help author.
But what if I could help? I mean, really, was it asking too much to just have a damned dream? Even a nightmare. It couldn’t hurt me, after all. It wasn’t real. It was a dream.
I suppose I could try to let one play out. What harm is there in that?
Images from the earlier visions started to creep in like black ink spilling over my brain, but I shoved them away. “It’s just a missing person,” I told Myrt. “She might be in trouble. I need to let the dream play out, because that’s what any decent human being would do.”
Nodding, my decision firmly made, I headed for the stairs. “Come on, Myrt. Bedtime.”
She was right beside me, hadn’t left my side since I’d gotten home, and she trotted up the stairs, happy as hell. She’d lost a few pounds since I’d adopted her. Our long walks were doing her a world of good, despite the fact that she acted like they were sheer torture.
I took a long hot shower while Myrtle lay on the bathmat in front of the shower doors, snoring. Then I put on my jammies—a white ribbed tank and panties—brushed my teeth and opened my medicine cabinet. There was some PM-style pain reliever, the closest thing I had to a sleep aid. I popped two of them, and then Myrtle and I went to bed.
She walked up her little set of doggy steps, and I knew she’d missed sleeping with me. I wondered where she’d been spending her nights while I’d been gone. With Misty, or in here all alone? She stretched out on top of the covers, as close to me as she could manage. I rolled onto my side and put my arm around her, and she sighed as if all was right with her world again. She was snoring within ten seconds.
And then I closed my eyes and hoped I was wrong. That there would be no vision. That there was no connection between me and the others who’d received organs from my donor. Mason’s brother. The dead serial killer. None at all.
* * *
I was dreaming. I knew I was dreaming because I wasn’t me, I was someone else. I was lying on my back on the ground. I could feel the icy cold earth underneath me and the snow around me. It was freezing. I couldn’t move. I was awake, I was breathing, but I couldn’t move, and I was terrified.
Someone was with me, crouching over me. I angled my eyes until they hurt, but I couldn’t see them, really, because I couldn’t move my head and I was lying flat and naked in the snow.
Naked? No, not quite. I was wearing a dress, but it lay open on either side of me, sliced up the front. I could just make it out in my peripheral vision. I could feel something tight around my waist, like panty hose. And there were shoes on my feet, a little too tight in the toes.
All I could see was the night sky, dotted with stars and—
Ohmygod, something’s cutting me!
An ice-cold blade flashed in my vision and drove into my abdomen, and the pain screamed through me. And I tried to scream, as well, but I couldn’t move. I couldn’t scream. It was cutting me. Oh, God, it was cutting me. I felt the blood, warm and running over my naked skin. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t breathe!
I was going to suffocate. Let it be fast! Faster than the cutting! Oh, God, no more.
But there was a tearing, ripping. My lungs seemed to spasm in my chest, hungry for air, but I could not take a breath. Black spots started popping in and out of my vision. My head was going to explode. My torso was on fire with pain, and my heart was pounding like a jackhammer in my chest, or trying to.
Something was torn from my abdomen, and it rose up, into that tiny area within range of my vision. It was pink and dripping, and clutched in a gloved hand. A piece of me!
And then blackness descended. Merciful death caught me in soft hands. The pain went away from me. Or rather, I went away from the pain.
* * *
I screamed until my bedroom door was flung open and Misty stood there with a baseball bat in her hands. She wore cute flannel PJs, and her perfectly straight, perfectly platinum hair was in her face as she shrieked, “What the fuck!”
Hearing that particular word from my seventeen-year-old niece seemed to do the trick. I clamped my jaw and blinked my vision clear, pushed my hair off my own face and turned on the bedside lamp. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Misty, I must have scared the hell out of you.”
“You okay?” She lowered the bat.
It made me proud to think she would come running to my defense if I really was being attacked in my sleep.
“What happened, Aunt Rache?”
Someone paralyzed me and cut out one of my organs while I lay there unable to move. Good God.
“Aunt Rachel?”
“Bad dream, kid. Just a bad dream.”
She heaved a big enough sigh that I knew she’d been truly scared. “Jeeze, I thought someone was murdering you.” She let the bat drag on the floor as she came farther into the room.
Someone was. Only not me. Another of Eric’s organ recipients. Dammit, Mason was right. It isn’t over.
“Aunt Rache? You sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah. Fine. Look, I’m sorry, kiddo. You want to curl up here for the rest of the night?”
“Only if you promise not to wake up screaming again.”
I looked at the clock. 4:00 a.m. The pills would have worn off by now. “I’m pretty sure I won’t.”
“If you do, I swear, I’m gonna hit you with this bat.” She stood it up against the headboard and climbed under the covers.
Myrtle snuggled back down between us and started snoring like a chain saw.
“Hope you don’t mind sharing with a bulldog,” I said.
“She’s been in bed with me every night since you left. I kind of missed her, to be honest.”
“Yeah, she has a way of getting under your skin, doesn’t she? Good night, Misty.”
“Good night, Aunt Rache. Sweet dreams. And that’s an order.”
I turned off the bedside lamp. Of course the night-light