The Year's Best Horror Stories: XVIII

Mr. Sandman by SCOTT D. YOST

He was twenty-one years old and tired of the doctors. He wanted to scream: Listen you dumb bastards, the problem isn't that I sleep too much — the problem is that I never sleep. Never. In fact, on one visit to Greensboro Memorial three years ago, Jeff had shouted something along those lines loud enough for everyone on the floor to hear it, and a nurse, acting on Dr. Saunders's instructions, had to pump a hypodermic full of tranquilizer into Jeff's arm.

But no one ever listened, least of all the doctors. They didn't listen mostly because often — very often — he did lie down, close his eyes, and (so he had been told) snore loudly.

Jeff made a promise to himself: after this, no more doctors, no more hospitals. He was a senior in college now and his parents couldn't drag him to clinics any more.

Dr. Saxon, the oldest doctor on this team, walked into the hospital room, never looking up from his clipboard.

"Give it to me straight, Doc," Jeff said smiling, "how long do I have left?"

"Oh, I'd say about fifty years. I can't find one damn thing wrong with you."

"How about calling my parents and telling them that."

"I plan to. But I'm also going to tell them that sleeping twelve hours a day is a sign of severe depression." Dr. Saxon paused a few seconds; his expression was serious as always. "Jeff, there's something else that concerns me. From reading Dr. Rosten's report it's not at all clear you understand that your dreams — no matter how vivid they seem to you — are just that, dreams."

"Christ, of course I know that," Jeff lied convincingly. Dreams? he thought. Right. Whatever happens when I shut my eyes is hard to explain but it sure as hell isn't dreams. Dreams aren't real, this is. Dreams don't pick up where they left off, this does. So can I please not have any more wires strapped to my head because it's obvious they don't tell you a goddamn thing.

Jeff had lived with it his whole life and even he had trouble understanding it. It always started with fatigue — not just at bedtime (as if there was such a thing for him) but at odd times: during lunch, or a shower, or a tennis match. The sudden exhaustion would force him to lie down and shut his eyes. And start to dreams — no, it wasn't dreams. Rather, Jeff would… become someone else, somewhere else. If any of these witch doctors at Duke Medical had ever listened to him they could've checked it out themselves. Yesterday Jeff had asked Dr. Rosten — the psychiatrist on this team — if he wanted the name and address. Call him up, Jeff had suggested. Clyde Wasserman, 102 Marco Rd., Wilmington, Delaware. You want the zip code? I've got it. You want to know what Clyde wore last night? You've come to the right place. Or ask me something about Wilmington. I've never been there so how come I know it like the back of my hand?

Jeff had never been to Delaware (not as Jeff anyway). The farthest north he'd been was Virginia when he and his father drove up one weekend last fall to a Duke-UVA football game. And except for two weeks in Jamaica, he'd spent nearly all his life in North Carolina — the first eighteen years in Greensboro, the last three at school in Durham.

But he knew Delaware intimately: the shortcut to Phipps's Gulf, the liquor stores with the best prices, the street corners where you could get decent cocaine. He knew all this and more because whenever he slept, that's where Mr. Sandman sent him — to his other life, the one in Wilmington.

Clyde, of course, saw it differently; to him Jeff was the dream.

Unlike Jeff's parents who had taken their son to every doctor this side of the Mason-Dixon line, Clyde's parents had never bothered. At one point they had thought about taking Clyde to a psychiatrist but Mr. Wasserman decided against it — "A hundred bucks an hour for medical horseshit." Instead, once when Clyde was sixteen, his father came into his room and said: "Just shut the fuck up about that guy in North Carolina." From that moment on Clyde had not mentioned it.

A smile lit Jeff’s face as he left the classroom. Time to party. This was the first semester in three and a half years of college that he didn't get stuck with an exam on the last day of exam period. Now another semester was history; seven down, one to go. He thought he'd done well on the test but right now he didn't care: Monetary Theory 305 was a bitch (especially when Havrilesky taught it) and Jeff was just glad to finally get it over with.

As he left the gothic building a rush of cold air blasted his face. Finally, Christmas break. He hesitated at the top of the stairs and a group of students hurried past him. In the distance, he saw students loading their cars. Some would stick around for parties tonight and tomorrow night and then head home.

When the crowd thinned he noticed Cynthia coming up the stairs toward him. She was as pretty as any girl on campus and that said a lot. She reached the top, threw her arms around him, and kissed the back of his neck. "How'd you do?" she asked.

"Good, I think; let's go celebrate."

"I thought you might want to do that," she said, pulling two cans of Miller Lite from her purse.

"Very thoughtful of you." The beer had been kept cold by the December air. The very best thing about going to a private school, Jeff thought, is being able to drink alcohol outdoors any time of the day or night.

They walked slowly back to Jeff's room, arms around each other, jackets pressed tightly together. When they got there, Jeff unlocked the door with his left hand, leaving his right arm around Cynthia. As they stepped inside she said what he hoped she would: "You know the parties don't start for five or six hours."

"I know."

She wrapped her other arm securely around him. "Good thing you don't have a roommate," she said immediately before kissing him.

He closed the door with his foot since his hands were busy undressing Cynthia — first the white winter jacket, then her sweater, then her slacks. Her hands were busy unzipping his jeans. First things first. Jeff laughed at how tangled up they were, and they were still tangled when they fell naked in bed. Her breasts were as perfect as her face and legs and Jeff gently ran both his hands over every inch of her. Then he began to kiss the soft body his hands had just caressed. Soon he was completely on top of her and she pulled him closer and closer, not stopping until he was inside her. The coldness on his back felt good now that the warmth of the friction between his body and hers balanced it. He couldn't think about kissing her and being inside her at once because it felt so good it hurt. A few moments later he hardly realized that he had come, because at the time he was thinking of the kissing.

Jeff pulled the blankets over them for protection from the winter. Twenty minutes later, as they made love for a second time, the blankets and sheets fell to the floor and Jeff would have reached down to pick them up if only he wasn't having so much fun.

Clyde woke perspiring. Cynthia was too good to be true — just too good. If it weren't for Jeff, Clyde thought, the only way I'd get to fuck girls like that would be to rape them. By far the best thing about dreaming Jeff's life was the girls he went to bed with: gorgeous girls — girls who looked like Cynthia. Like Karen Baker from two years ago, and Sarah McLeary from Jeff’s junior year.

As Clyde's head cleared he became aware of his alarm clock screaming in the background. Reaching to turn it off, he felt a puddle of warm semen in his already filthy sheets. Sometimes that happened when Jeff made love. The suddenly quiet bedroom brought back the extreme fatigue. It overtook Clyde; he buried his head in the pillow and let himself return to North Carolina for a few minutes.

"I hate that," Cynthia said, her voice barely registering.

"Hate what?" Jeff asked wearily. Instinctively he pulled her naked body closer.

"I hate that every time we make love, you fall asleep right after."

"Don't take it personally; it's not just you."

"You mean you fail asleep after sex with your other girls too?" She smiled. Ever since they began dating last semester she had been painfully aware of his erratic sleeping patterns.

"No, that's not what I mean." He threw a mock punch lightly against her cheek. "Can we not talk about it right now?"

"Okay." She kissed him, got out of bed, and started dressing. "I'm going back to my room to change and get pretty for the party —»

" — you're already pretty," he broke in.

"Okay, then I'm going to get prettier."

"Can't be done."

She stood by the door and looked at him. "You're allowed to sleep a little more now if you want — but I'll be back at 7:30 for dinner and parties — no sleeping then."

He nodded agreement.

As she left she turned around and said, "I love you."

"I love you too," he said and meant it."

Shit, Clyde thought, late for work again.

He grabbed a pair of torn jeans from the floor; not finding a clean work shirt he put on the one that smelled least. He never saw the point of washing the clothes he pumped gas in; they would only get filthy again.

He sped through downtown Wilmington in his rusty, nine-year-old piece of shit Chevrolet, wishing he had Jeff’s brand new Audi. The Audi was a replacement for the BMW that was totaled in last summer's wreck. Clyde thought of the other aspects of Jeff’s life: the trip to Jamaica last spring break, Cynthia, room and board at one of the most expensive schools in the country, the 20,000 dollars Jeff's parents had given their son on his twenty-first birthday. Clyde received two gifts for his: a bottle of Jack Daniels and a pat on the head. "Congratulations," his father had said, "you're legal now."

In the rearview mirror Clyde saw gray smoke pouring from the Chevy's tailpipe. Maybe he could tell Phipps he was late because of car trouble. Give him any excuse you want, Clyde told himself, it doesn't matter and you know it, cause you've been late one too many times.

One more mile and he would be at Phipps's Gulf. The thought of facing his boss sickened him.

At least you have to live through my hell too, college-boy. Hope you like it, Mr. Jeff Education.

Clyde couldn't have gotten accepted to any college worth going to (and if he could have he knew goddamn well that he would have had to pay for it himself). Thinking about it now, he guessed it really didn't matter — he knew everything Jeff knew: all that shit about Keynes and the money supply and tours and Descartes and elastic curves. He wished Jeff would stop cramming that worthless crap into their mind. He wished Jeff would never go to class and just spend all his time fucking Cynthia, or maybe Kathy Oilman from last year (now there was someone who knew what she was doing in bed).

Clyde turned the corner and even at a distance he could see the metal sign: Phipps's Gulf. He thought about turning around rather than facing Mr. Phipps.

He switched his mind back to girls; he compared the Duke girls to the hideous women he sometimes took back to his nasty apartment — there wasn't much comparison at all: the women Clyde brought home were always rancid; Jeff had always thought so, and now, after Karen and Cynthia, Clyde thought so too. He was losing his taste for them. And he was losing his taste (not that he ever really had one) for his shit car, his shit apartment, and his shit life.

He wanted sleep.

Real sleep. Time out from the world. What does that feel like?

Once before, five months ago, he thought he felt sleep for a moment.

It was at the end of summer. Jeff had been home in Greensboro, out with friends on a Saturday night. The next day he would return to Duke — classes started Monday morning. A girl had come on to Jeff at Bentley's Cafe and Clyde wished Jeff had taken her home (she had a particularly nice ass and it would have been a very sweet dream). Only he didn't take her home — all he could think about was seeing Cynthia the next day. So Jeff left early: he knew Cynthia well and undoubtedly he would need his energy when he saw her.

On the drive home Jeff wasn't drunk but the guy that ran into him was. The collision nearly killed Jeff. It would have if he hadn't had his seatbelt on. As it was his head rammed into the steering wheel rather than the windshield. He had four broken ribs from where the belt held him back. The grill of the BMW ended up in the mangled engine and it took two guys with blowtorches thirty minutes to get the door open and get Jeff out.

At the hospital they kept him so pumped full of drugs that he slept virtually all the time, so Clyde was forced to stay up night after night.

But the second night in the hospital it happened: Clyde closed his eyes when he felt tired and — he didn't become Jeff. Not immediately anyway. For a few moments he thought he felt what sleep, sweet dreamless sleep, must be like. Like a vacation. Like being able to turn yourself off from the world.

Unconscious darkness.

That was the only time.

Now, when Clyde pulled into the station, Mr. Phipps, a fat ugly asshole, wasn't happy. Not at all. He was pumping gas into cars, gas that Clyde was supposed to be pumping. His large belly was not held in well by his white oil-stained shirt. The sight of Clyde turned his face a sunburned color. Phipps ran toward Clyde's Chevy screaming. "DON'T GET OUT OF THAT CAR — JUST KEEP DRIVING. Jesus Christ, you'd think just once you could be on time. Just once. You think I hired you so I could pump gas while you beat off?"

Clyde tried to explain: "I over —»

" — I know. You overslept. Well tough shit. Its fucking 7:00 at night… just get the fuck out of my sight."

Clyde did. He drove slowly through town with nowhere to go. Tired as usual, he considered going back to the apartment, but the thought of going back to that mattress (with God knows what insects in it) repulsed him. He stopped at some place called the Oasis Bar. A Budweiser and a grilled cheese sandwich helped some but he still felt like crap. He ordered another beer and then another — best just to get drunk, fall asleep, and vacation in North Carolina for a while.

He put his head down on his corner table in the almost empty bar.

Jeff is 14. He is waiting for the letter. Is this real? It can't be, but he knows it is. The letter will not come. He pours some milk and waits longer for the mailman, already an hour late. The mailman fills the box and leaves. Jeff slowly opens the door, and without looking, grabs the mail. Slowly, a letter at a time, he files through it. The letter is there, second to last. He looks at the envelope addressed to him. In the upper left hand corner, scribbled in black ink, was the return address:

Clyde Wasserman 102 Marco Rd. Wilmington, Del

He opens the letter though he knows what it says because he was there when it was written. It says only:

I knew it was real.

Clyde

Jeff woke quickly in his dark room. Cynthia was coming in, knocking as she opened the unlocked door.

She stood silent over the bed.

She looked like a billion dollars; her brunette hair was perfect. Her long-sleeved white satin blouse was tucked snugly into her gray wool slacks making her bra slightly visible through the fabric.

"Jesus, you look good," he said.

"Well you don't; you're supposed to be ready — you promised."

"Sorry." Jeff jumped out of bed. "Give me one minute," he said, throwing on a bathrobe and then grabbing a bottle of Head & Shoulders and a leather shaving kit.

He hurried back into the room with his hair still soaked. She browsed through a copy of Playboy while he got dressed. It took him two tries to get his tie the right length; it was the first date in a long while that he'd worn one — usually they just went to a movie or drinking somewhere on campus. But tonight, to celebrate the end of exams, they had reservations at The Station and you couldn't get in there without a tie. Jeff felt refreshed, not fatigued, but he knew Mr. Sandman could come suddenly at any time: Clyde was asleep on a barroom table and Jeff wasn't sure how long Clyde would be allowed to stay there.

At The Station Jeff and Cynthia both ordered steaks so Jeff requested a good California Cabernet Sauvignon. (Let's see, he thought, what would you prefer, Clyde? Boone's Farm perhaps? Maybe recent vintage Wild Irish Rose?)

Soon they were eating and laughing and talking about what a jerk Professor Broffenbrener was when the fatigue came on like a storm. Jeff did something he rarely did. He fought it. Goddamn it, stay awake now, he told himself.

"Are you okay?" he heard Cynthia ask.

"Yeah, fine. Sorry."

He fought harder: his left foot and arm were already asleep, and it took all his concentration to keep his head clear.

It was no use.

Jeff stood up weakly. "We'd better go. I don't feel well," he mumbled. He managed to pull out his wallet and throw more than enough money on the table. As they walked out he said: "Listen, you better go to the parties without me. Go with Karen and Lynn, I'm gonna have to sleep."

Cynthia frowned. She had seen this many times before but tonight more than ever her disappointment was evident. "Listen, let me take you to a doctor."

"I've told you: I've been to every doctor there is; please, honey, just get me home."

Cynthia got behind the wheel of the Audi and before she got the car started Jeff was gone.

"Jesus, buddy, would you wake up!" Clyde felt hands on both his shoulders. "Hey, sleeping beauty, you can't pass out here; this ain't no hotel." The ugly man was two inches from Clyde's face, speaking loudly. "We thought you were dead. I never seen anyone so hard to wake."

Paying for the food and beers left Clyde with about forty dollars in his pocket: he'd spent half his last paycheck on cocaine (and it wasn't much of a pay-check to begin with). He stumbled into the parking lot and, for a few minutes, sat freezing in the car with nowhere to go.

Cynthia helped Jeff from the car back to his room. He hated letting her down like this but it was nothing that hadn't happened on important occasions before (the worst time was when he slept through a Duke-Carolina basketball game). She put him in bed, carefully placed the covers over him, kissed him, and said quietly: "Why couldn't I have fallen in love with an insomniac."

Clyde is sixteen. He tries to sleep, to go to North Carolina. Through the cardboard-like walls of his crumbling house the sounds of his father screaming at his mother fill the room. Outside the neighbor's dog is barking. The fatigue has come but he cannot escape to the other place. The noise is too great. Clyde hears a dull thud and he knows it is a punch being thrown. Then another. A door slams. His father has stormed away to somewhere. Clyde's mother sobs loudly in her room. He could sleep now if only the neighbor's dog would shut up. It won't. Clyde rises from his bed, tired, tired. The clock says eight P.M. He grabs his hunting knife, the one his father gave him, and walks out the door to the neighbor's yard. The beagle runs to greet him. Dogs are so trusting, he thinks. Clyde pets the puppy with a long slow stroke. From behind, Clyde pulls the dog's head up with his left hand and with his right (please don't, he almost hears Jeff say) he carves a red slit into the dog's throat. Now there would be quiet for a while.

Two men staggered out of the Oasis Bar, laughing.

The warmth of the bed's blankets was gone; in the car there was only cold.

Clyde knew where he could go and he knew what he had to do. A way to get some sleep.

North Carolina would be nice this time of year.

It was 8:30 P.M. now.

He could be there by 2:00 in the morning if he sped. He reached into the glove compartment of the Chevy. The car's inside light had not worked in years but there was enough light from the Oasis Bar's neon sign. His knife was still there and so was the cocaine.

It took three tries to get the car started — the first two times sounded like he was trying to shove a piece of metal into a fan. Finally it started.

He drove the Chevy across the street into a Quick Mart and got some gas and a twelve-pack of beer.

It seemed strange now to Clyde that he and Jeff had never met. A few times they'd thought about meeting halfway (near Richmond maybe) but it would have been a boring conversation: you can't say much to a sleeping person. And from the time they were old enough to do it Jeff had not really wanted to. College-boy is ashamed to be acquainted with me, he thought. Excuse me for not liking golf.

So now they would finally meet.

It really wasn't murder, Clyde thought.

Nothing like it. Jeff would just be… relocated. What would Jeff’s business teacher have called it? Consolidation. A merger perhaps. Or you could look at it as a form of suicide. Take your pick.

Then there would be sleep. Lots of it, every night, just as the Good Lord intended.

But God he would miss screwing Cynthia and the others.

His cold Chevy continued down 1–95.

Clyde bet himself that Jeff would be asleep when he got there.

Soon Clyde was somewhere in Virginia. Outside of Petersburg a new rattling sound came from the Chevy's engine. All he hoped for was that the car would stay in one piece until he got to Duke and back. Once he took care of Jeff he could take Jeff’s Gold Visa and get $500 from the cash machine. Cynthia probably would have been pissed off if she'd known that Jeff’s 6-digit code was KATHY1: that's who he was dating last year when he opened the account.

He turned off 1–95 onto 1–85, and then paid a toll.

Soon there would be perfect sleep. Nights of quiet. Dreamless nights — or at least dreams that weren't real.

The white on the green background said: DURHAM 120 MILES. One and a half hours at this speed. That would put the estimated time of arrival at 2:00 and the approximate time of death at 2:15.

Now it was just after midnight and Clyde began to feel Jeff trying to break through, trying to send him to sleep.

Jeff was fighting. Fighting hard, fighting for his life.

Clyde tired. His eyes shut for a moment and he was jolted back by the sound of the gravel under the tires as he veered off the highway. He managed to steer back onto the road and then, still startled, he pulled over. His left side was asleep but with his right arm he groped in the dark glove compartment. He felt the sharp blade of the hunting knife, but he didn't need that, not just yet. Deeper in, he felt the plastic packet containing the cocaine: he had about a half gram left. He carefully unwrapped the tiny bag — a corner cut from a baggy — and, still working only with his right hand, dipped his key into the powder, raised it to his right nostril, and snorted.

The same for the left nostril.

Almost instantly he felt more alert. More alive.

He repeated the process.

Finally he dipped his finger in and rubbed some coke into the walls of his cheeks and mouth — he always enjoyed the numbing sensation.

That should keep Mr. Sandman in Durham for a while.

Feeling came back to his left side and soon he was on the road again. He left the remainder of the powder on the passenger seat for easy access. I may need it again, he thought.

Soon he saw familiar exits along the highway — but in an unfamiliar way. He knew the stretch of 1–85 going into Durham. Jeff had driven it many times before. There was the all night Exxon station. There was Bojangles Chicken.

The closer he got the more excited he became.

He passed the Hardee's on the left — Jeff and Cynthia usually got biscuits there on Sunday mornings.

Finally: Exit 751. Duke University.

Two minutes later Clyde pulled the Chevy into the West Campus lot and shut off the engine, not believing this old car had managed to bring him all the way from Delaware.

He snorted the rest of the cocaine and then licked the plastic container clean. Next he slid the hunting knife under his bulky green winter jacket. For the first time he walked onto the campus he knew by heart. It was nearly two in the morning now but there were still parties dying down. Quiet music came from several of the common rooms; on the way he saw a light from the ground floor of Cynthia's sorority. Cynthia would still be up he bet; she was one of the last to leave any party. Such a social animal. He looked in. She had changed clothes since earlier in the evening; now she had on jeans and sweater.

I've got some business to take care of now, Cyn, but I may have a few minutes for a good-bye fuck before I head back up north. You don't know it, but I've been inside of you — I was inside you every time Jeff was.

He walked toward Jeff's dorm. A couple passed the other way, drunk and laughing.

Clyde went to the side door — the guys always left it propped open. He went slowly down the familiar hall. No one in sight. He walked toward room 106. He checked the knife again and he thought he sensed Jeff trying to fight through but the coke kept Clyde awake no problem and Clyde was glad that Jeff would have to watch his own death through a dream.

On the right: room 114. Jack Lofton's.

112.

110.

To the left: 109. Frank and Stan's room.

108.

He could feel Jeff fighting like a maniac, trying to jolt himself out of sleep, to send Clyde to dreamland.

Across from 108, in the alcove, there was a pinball machine he didn't remember.

106.

We meet at last, collegeboy. If only for a moment.

Clyde knew the door was unlocked as always. Jeff would be sleeping. He turned the knob slowly and quietly and walked into the dark room. He flicked the light switch and was about to pull out his knife for the execution.

"HEY GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY ROOM!" a male voice shouted.

Clyde was shocked that Jeff was awake — and then he saw that it wasn't Jeff at all; it was a stranger. The stranger was nude but was struggling to put on a pair of gym shorts. On the bed a frightened female, also naked, pulled the bedsheets around her neckline to cover her body.

Clyde glanced around the well-lit room. It was not the room he knew: where Jeff had a picture of Bach there was now was a picture of Bruce Springsteen; the desk was in a different corner; the bed was on the wrong side of the room, and the spread was blue instead of brown.

Everything was different.

And Jeff was not here — but he had to be.

Clyde, stunned, backed into the hall, glanced at the door again. Right room: 106. He supported himself against the wall. Seconds later the stranger was on him, screaming: "Hey, dickhead, what's your fucking problem?"

Clyde managed to get some words out: "Sorry. Sorry. I was looking for a friend; I thought this was his room."

"Well, it's not." Then, surprisingly calmer, the stranger asked: "What's your friend's name?"

"Never mind."

"What's his name?" the stranger asked again forcibly.

Clyde told him. "His name's Jeff Goodwin."

The stranger said nothing.

Clyde pressed, "Do you know him?" The stranger's eyes said that he did. "You do know him — don't you?"

"Yeah."

"Well, where is he? I came a long way to see him."

The stranger stood quiet for a moment. "Look, I'm not sure how to say this but… Jeff's dead. This was his room for two years. He was killed in a car wreck last summer, hit by a drunk driver a few days before classes. I thought all his friends knew by now." He added kindly: "You want to come in and sit down for a few minutes?"

Clyde walked away, staggering. The cocaine and adrenaline were wearing off and he felt tired. He walked into the common room and lay down on one of the couches. He had no reason to stay awake.

Soon he was Jeff at 17. He was taking a math test and he was sure he'd gotten all the problems right except for two. Jeff finished ahead of time and lay his head down on the wood desk.