House of Skin

THE NIGHTMARE FACTORY

In Fenn’s dream, he was alone.

It was the single constant in these nightmares. Loneliness, solitude, madness. He was cold, freezing. He was naked and his skin was covered with gooseflesh that felt oddly like tiny bubbles ready to pop.

He was in a tiny room by himself, trapped in a square of blackness. He felt someone near… but where? Neither here nor there, but near and far, within and without.

He swept his eyes around in the mulling blackness, but could see no one or nothing. His fingers pulled at the length of rope and the coil of leather that held it to his ankle. As usual, they were immovable. Yet, he pulled, he worked, he strained against his bonds until his fingers ached and his heart pounded with ever-weakening, ever-irregular rhythms.

Beads of sweat stood out on his face and they felt huge and oily rolling down his cheeks. Maybe not sweat but blood. Coagulated blood. He could taste it on his lips—coppery and foul.

I’m bleeding to death, he thought, and there was no fear, only acceptance.

He reached out and the walls were made of glass. Moisture was beaded on them… or was it blood? His blood? That of someone else?

He looked up and there was a tiny slit of light. There were eyes in the slit, flat, emotionless, evil eyes. The eyes of a tormentor. A reptile.

He heard a voice: distant, cool, clinical. Was it asking him questions? The language was garbled like some guttural foreign tongue.

The eyes kept watching, detached, amused.

“Mama, mama, mama,” he heard a voice say and it was his own. “Don’t leave me here… the bad man’s back again… mama? Please… mama…”

The eyes were staring, blatantly amused.

In the distance, a voice began to drone.

A drop of wetness struck his head.

Then another. And another.

A trickle of wetness now.

The eyes were watching.

The wetness was running down his face in warm streams. Water? Blood? Both and neither? The voice droned on. The eyes blinked and kept watching. He heard a broken sobbing coming from his throat and he was not frightened.

He was not afraid.

He was not afraid.

He began to scream.

The voice, the voice…

And then Fenn was awake, pushed up against the wall, his fingers pressed into the cracks of the cool plaster. With a tiny cry he pulled himself away and mopped sweat from his brow and under his eyes.

I’m going crazy, he thought, and the idea was terrifying.

I’m going crazy because only crazy people dream the same thing night after night after night. I’m losing my mind just like Soames.

Yet he knew it wasn’t true. He wasn’t going mad and the dream didn’t happen every night. Maybe once or twice a week. But that was up from one or twice a month as it had been in the past. When had he last had it? Two nights ago. It was happening with greater frequency now. There was no denying it. And when things happen with frequency you can believe there is a reason for it.

Take it easy, he told himself. You’re under a lot of stress right now what with Eddy fucking Zero and Lisa Lochmere. You’re okay. Just keep a lid on it.

Keep a lid on it?

Sure, sure. Keep that lid screwed down tight until the pressure gets to be too much and it pops open. That’s why they call it flipping your lid.

He reached over for the glass of water he’d left on the nightstand. He drank down what was left of it. Then he lit a cigarette.

The eyes, he thought, those goddamned eyes. And that voice. What the hell did it all mean?

Dreams were symbolic weren’t they? Some said that. Others said they were just the mind’s way of cleaning out the trash, sweeping the cellar of the subconscious clean for the day. If that was true, then he needed a bigger broom, because something in there wasn’t moving. It was snagged like a nail in a wall.

He thought, for not the first time, of talking to Lisa about it. But he couldn’t and he wouldn’t. He didn’t want her thinking he was some nut.

She wouldn’t think that.

But maybe his greatest fear was that if he talked about it, he’d lose it completely and end up spending his days strapped to a cot like Soames.

He butted his smoke and closed his eyes.

There were no dreams.