Charles L. Grant - In a Dark Dream

In a Dark Dream

Charles L. Grant

i

"[In a Dark Dream is a] nifty little exercise in surreal spookiness [by]

one of the genre's more literate practitioners."

- Kirkus Reviews

"Grant's style of horror takes hold of your spinal cord and plays it

like a violin. His books are addictive."

- Charles de Lint in Mystery Scene

"There are few pleasures as delightful or rare as an exciting and

well-written horror novel. Charles L. Grant always provides that pleasure."

- Whitley Strieber

ii From Tor books by Charles L. Grant

After Midnight (editor)

For Fear of the Night

In a Dark Dream

Midnight (editor)

The Pet

Oxrun Station

The Bloodwind

Dialing the Wind

The Grave

The Hour of the Oxrun Dead

The Last Call of Mourning

Nightmare Seasons

The Orchard

The Sound of Midnight

The Chronicles of Greystone Bay (editor)

Greystone Bay

Doom City

The SeaHarp Hotel

forthcoming

iii

TOR

A torn DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK NEW YORK

iv This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in

this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to real people or events

is purely coincidental.

IN A DARK DREAM

portions thereof in any form.

A TOR Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.

49 West 24 Street

New York, NY 10010

Cover art by Lee MacLeod

ISBN: 0-812-51844-6

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 88-29167

First edition: February 1989

First mass market edition: April 1990

Printed in the United States of America

0987654321

v This is for Jill,

Through the Looking-Glass,

With love

vi

There was sunlight and laughter

And moonlight and shadow;

While Sleep crooned with Screaming,

Love waltzed with the Dead.

vii Charles L. Grant

viii Charles L. Grant

1

I

The dream when it comes ...

... the spectered shadow of a cloud crawling westward off the summit of

a dark forested hill, sliding down the slope where it deepens the

shadows and stains the bark and swings the leaves to a deep deathly

gray, causes birds to stir and huddle, a raccoon to hiss and snap, then

slips across the road and through trembling bushes to the surface of a

lake where ripples abruptly calm and reflections no longer matter; it

bulges; it shrinks; it moves to the opposite shore and through the trees

again, and the road, and up the blunt wedge of a high rock, pausing at

the edge, shifting slightly to one side, shifting again and sliding on,

filling the cracks with black, covering a hunched man with winter, and

taking the upward slope, leaving the black behind ...

the shadow of a cloud in a cloudless blue sky.

2 Charles L. Grant

2

3

ONE

The outcropping was massive on the side of the hill, and rose a straight

and full hundred feet above the road that followed the contours of the

lake. Even in the clear light, the morning's soft and warming light, the

rock was deep black, the leading edge of a prow, a petrified galleon

forever trapped in escape. And a squint of an eye caused the striations

and cracks to reform into timbers, the moss and clumps of grass into

seawater stains, while embedded strips of ore reddened and ran into

strips of dried blood. Its top was flat and angled slightly lakeward,

its sides thrusting from the forest floor to bull the trees aside. But

not the trees behind it.

They rose thickly and darkly to the top of the uneven ridge that formed

a semicircle rim around the lake's deep basin; and when the foliage was

thick, the summer wind

4

still, the water calm and empty, it was easy to imagine that no one

lived there on the slopes, and no one lived along the shore, and there

was no town to the south, beyond the sagging stone bridge that spanned

the creek the lake fed. There were too many leaves and too many gullies

and too many dips where a house could be hidden and lie unseen from the

road.

From the rock.

The black rock where Glenn held his breath and concentrated on a stone

loosely cupped in his left hand. He blinked against the water's glare

that only moments before had made him think there'd been a cloud, then

dropped the stone and watched it wobble away. His right hand snatched at

it. And missed. And he lost it over the edge and groaned.

A mild gust pushed him gently.

He shifted.

Slow; he was getting slow.

In days past he would have grabbed it without looking, tossed it once,

and grabbed it again. Big ones. Small ones.

Slow; he was getting slow.

He shifted again, wondering what it was that made him sit on his heels

instead of his rump, as if his legs wouldn't protest and his knees pop

when he moved. The perversely tempting feeling, perhaps, of falling,

nearly falling, because of the angle, and because of the trees that

poked their way up from the narrow shoulder below, tops straining, boles

twisting, leaves hissing at him to come on, come on, it won't hurt if

you jump.

Hypnotic; it was hypnotic, and sounded perfectly

5

reasonable-like standing on the edge of an impossibly high cliff and

thinking you had wings unflexed but ready.

Come on, Glenn, come on; it won't hurt; you can fly.

From the rock.

To the ground.

He shivered and sank back until his buttocks touched the ground; he

stretched his legs out and his arms out behind him. His hat, a western

hat battered and grey and long without form, prevented the sun's water

ricochet from blinding him directly; his jacket, dark denim, was zipped

to his neck, collar snapped up, the too-long sleeves rolled back at the

cuffs; and his jeans almost too snug, flaring to slip over the tops of

black boots.

"You know," his wife had said the night before, for at least the

hundredth time since the beginning of the year, "you really ought to

live in Montana or something."

It wasn't the way he dressed, clearly not an affectation; it was, he was

told, the attitude he no longer had the patience to hide-too damn many

people and too damn little land and too damn much government and too

damn little time.

"Right," he'd answered. "And would you come with me?"

"Are you kidding?" Marjory said, one hand waving his attention to the

mess in the kitchen. "And leave all this?"

They had laughed, and had made love, and when he woke up this morning

his hat was on the bedpost and his boots were on his chest.

He lowered his chin and stared at his lap. Then he yawned and laughed

aloud, and suggested he best get on

6

his horse and ride into town before someone got the idea the bad guys

had nabbed him and had chained him in a cave.

Or onto the rock.

The laugh drifted away with the breeze when he rose and dusted off his

legs, his smile replaced by a slight puzzled frown as he slipped one

hand into a hip pocket and stared out over the water. The shadow of the

hill to his left slipped back toward its shoreline as the sun rose

toward nine, letting loose the green and the blotches of flower color.

Hunter Lake was a surprise for most visitors to the county. Most of the

others were blobs and circles and ovals and blots, half of them manmade.

This one resembled nothing more than a bloated horseshore, the black

rock dead center on its upper rim and visible all year round. From where

he stood it was almost exactly two miles down to West Point on his

right, and another two miles to East Point by the twisting road. The

land that split the water into its uneven arms came to a virtual point

and rose two dozen feet above the surface, poor land for a lawn unless

you wanted to mow straight down.

Despite its length, Point to Point, the lake was only a few hundred

yards across at its widest-from the shore below the rock to the land

that he faced.

And beyond, due south, was the village.

Once, it had been only a few houses, a general store for the local

farmers, and an inn that had provided rooms for travelers who'd gotten

lost and were too weary to complain and move on; the houses along the

shoreline had been merely cabins and cottages for fishermen and

7

hunters and a handful of the wealthy who didn't want company.

But that, he thought sourly, was then; unfortunately this was now, and

the village of his childhood was a village no longer. There were streets

and sewers and reservoir water, a high school, a junior high, and a

grade school that was demanding either a twin or a huge addition.

And on the lake ...

He couldn't help grinning again-too damn many people and too damn little

land and too damn little time left to stop the place from exploding.

You, he told himself, are getting too damn cranky for this job.

A shrug. It was a fact, unfortunately, that some of those people living

down there, hidden under the trees and hiding in town, would just as

soon see him vanish into the woods, or wander into a desert, if such a

thing could be found in this part of New Jersey. They didn't care about

the way he dressed; they just wanted to replace him with someone who

liked the way the community was growing.

Glenn Erskine, he was positive they said in quiet corners and whispers,

was a reactionary, not a progressive; he couldn't handle the job anymore.

And there on the rock, mist sculling over the lake and the morning sun

promising July heat as June set to pass, he almost wondered if they were

right.

"Sure," he said to his shadow as he moved. "Sure."

A steep narrow trail led down to the blacktop road where he had parked

his car. He took the way slowly,

8

cautiously, mindful of the afternoon three years ago when he'd tried to

impress Marjory with youth no longer his and had tripped over a root and

rolled the rest of the way. Two broken ribs, scratches all over his lean

face, thick brown hair crusted with dirt, and embarrassment so broad he

could have built a house on it. Marj hadn't laughed; she'd only given

him a look.

When he reached the bottom, a jay screamed at him. A squirrel sat up on

the white center line and chattered at him. He smiled and snapped his

tongue against the roof of his mouth several times; the squirrel quieted

and stared, then wheeled and shot away, tail high and fluffed, its

passing into the underbrush as silent as the jay's flight when it darted

out of a pine tree and aimed for the water.

A check of the sky.

It was perfectly clear, and had been since dawn.

He couldn't imagine where that cloud had come from, and decided that

he'd probably dozed off for a few seconds. It wouldn't be the first

time, up here in the new sun. The rock was his thinking place, his

pouting place, the not-so-very-secret place that had heard all his

anger, all his depressions, all his occasional bouts with self-pity.

All his fears for his family, for himself.

This morning had been no exception.

The difference, however, was that talking it out to the air, the water,

the chipmunk that had taken the peanut from his hand, had done him

little good.

Old.

Getting older.

An excuse, nothing more, because Susan Leigh was coming for her first

visit in three years. His wife's

9

younger sister, not so recently widowed, and the only woman he'd ever

met who could, if she tried, tempt him into another bed.

And if that wasn't enough to nudge him off balance, summer vacation was

only a week away, the Fourth of July three weeks later, and already the

more rambunctious younger natives were getting anxious to party. Late

nights and long days and the unmistakable smell of trouble that kept his

sleep too light. Not to mention the someone who had evidently decided to

supplement his income by engaging in a little breaking-and-entering

while the houses' owners were out. Seven in twenty days. And nothing

stolen but petty cash lying in drawers and on dressers and not so

cleverly hidden in cookie jars and bread boxes, plus a few apparently

worthless items of costume jewelry, hair brushes, and vials of not

terribly expensive perfume. The effort involved seemed hardly worth it,

but the grief it brought him made the burglaries seem like murder.

"If I quit ..." he'd said to Marj only a few days ago.

She'd hushed him with a wooden spoon that cracked across his knee.

"What the hell'd you do that for?"

"Quit and do what? Hang around here all day? Drive the kids nuts?" She

scowled; no mirth in her eyes. "What? Work in the garden? Paint the

house? What are you going to do the second week, huh?"

Wincing, he rubbed his knee. "I don't know. Help you at the office?"

Her hair, blonde and long and bobbing as she bobbed her head, seemed

suddenly sparked with red. "You stay

10

the hell away from me, Glenn Erskine. I have enough trouble selling

houses without you tagging along."

"You don't think I could do it?"

Her smile was gentle. The spoon whacked his shoulder. "You probably

could. But that's my territory, pal. You want to stay married, you stay

the hell out."

He'd run from the kitchen then, yelling at his four children to pack

their bags and get out, find a bomb shelter quick, their mother was

planning to take over the world. The spoon hit him between the

shoulders. When he turned, red-faced from laughing, her lips were

grinning, her eyes telling him to knock it off.

Another check of the sky.

A chill on the breeze.

He slid behind the wheel and pulled the keys from his jacket's breast

pocket.

The car was dark brown, or had been at one time, before the summer's sun

and dust, the claws of low branches, had faded and scratched it to a

shade no one could name. He loved it. He'd had it for six years, and the

driver's leather seat had finally conformed to every sag of his spine,

every bulge of his rump. Like slippers that looked as if they were ready

for the trash, and couldn't possibly be that comfortable.

He switched on the ignition; the engine coughed worse than a dying man.

He waited for it to settle, the patience of experience. And when it did,

after flirting with a stall just to annoy him, he pulled onto the

road-all curves and sharp bends, rising and falling as the land rose and

fell. The houses on the slopes above and below it were widely separated

by wooded lots, mailboxes in clusters on cleared patches of level

ground, oak and caged birch

11

and hickory and pine that hid much of the sky and most of the sun,

railroad ties and whitewashed stones to mark driveways.

Even in the afternoon it was like driving through evening.

But the more houses there were, the less trees there would be, and the less-

"Cut it," he ordered, left hand on the wheel, right hand on his thigh.

"You're beginning to sound like an old man."

But he had missed the stone.

And there'd been a shadow without a cloud.

And as he swung around a bend forced by a huge boulder, there was a body

in the road.

Oh great, Nancy thought glumly when she recognized her father's car;

great, wonderful, swell, shit. I'm dead. Aw shit. I'm dead.

"Hi, Dad!" she called brightly when Glenn pulled alongside her bike and

braked sharply enough for her to wince. She leaned over to peer through

the open passenger window. "I thought you were going to work."

A moment passed without an answer.

Please, she prayed; God, please let him be in a good mood.

Then she panicked, fought it back, because her shorts were too tight (he

would say), her thin white t-shirt too revealing (he would say), her

hair, thick and brown and inherited from him, long and almost frizzy,

which would make him ask (as always) if the humidity was too high, maybe

she ought to get it cut so she didn't look like steel wool.

12

With exaggerated caution that made her add an earthquake to her prayers,

he slid out and rested his arms on the roof, rested his chin on one

wrist, and said, "Nancy, who the hell is that?"

Oh hell. But at least it hadn't been a crack about the way she was dressed.

The body stirred.

"Dad, look, I can explain-"

He turned his head; she couldn't see his eyes. "Is that Thorny?" His

voice deepened, and a chill settled beneath her breast. "Tell me that

isn't Thorny."

The body rolled over, and she closed her eyes briefly, thinking that

being grounded for a year was probably the best she could hope for if

that idiot tried to stand.

"Morning, Mr. Erskine," Thornton Ollworth said, sitting up and wrapping

his hands around his knees. He wore faded cutoffs and a rugby shirt, and

no socks with his sneakers, his red hair laced with dead grass and a

single leaf.

Nancy pointedly refused to look at him when he nodded to her and tried a

smile that was more sickly than friendly. Instead, she wheeled her bike

hastily around the front of the car, as much to get closer to her father

so she wouldn't have to talk over the running engine as to keep him from

seeing how drunk the jerk still was.

"Nancy," Glenn said, "I thought we had an agreement about that young man."

"Dad, it wasn't my fault," she answered truthfully, keeping her voice

down so it wouldn't shake so badly. "He was just there, that's all. I

was riding to work and he was just ... there."

"Lying in the middle of the road."

13

"Yes."

"Where anyone could run over him."

She glanced over her shoulder. "No such luck."

He pushed away from the car and started toward the boy, and she snapped

a hand to his arm. "Dad," she said. "Please."

He looked at her, and she didn't smile. When he was in this kind of a

mood, that would only stir his temper to the boiling-over phase and

she'd end up caged in her room, spending the rest of her life counting

lily pads and dragonflies. But she did give him her best let me handle

it look, one so intense that she couldn't help smiling anyway when the

corner of his mouth began to twitch and he couldn't meet her stare.

"We had an agreement," he reminded her.

"And I've kept it, haven't I? Until just now, I haven't seen him in two

weeks. I swear."

Grudgingly, he nodded. Then he said to Thorny, "You been drinking,

Ollworth?"

"No sir," the boy answered quickly, shaking his head slowly, crossing

his heart. "No sir."

Nancy backed away as her father returned to the car, closed the door,

and looked up at her.

"He lies like a rug," he told her, and drove away, veering widely around

the boy, speeding up only when he neared the next bend in the road.

She sagged for a moment, then swung back onto the bike.

Thorny tried twice to stand, twice fell on his rump, finally made it

unsteadily to one foot before yelping and toppling sideways off the

road. He sprawled under a tangled laurel that dropped a web onto his

chin, a leaf that

14

wedged behind his ear. He swore, pushed himself to his hands and knees,

and said, "Nance, I think I'm gonna throw up."

"Just don't lie on your back, Thornton," she said as she rode by.

"You'll drown."

She sensed him struggling back to his feet, heard him call her name

hoarsely several times before she was around the bend herself, and out

of sight. Where she slowed and blew out a relieved breath. But she

didn't stop; she didn't have time. She had to be in Hunter in thirty

minutes, out of her shorts and old shirt and into that dumb pink-striped

white dress with the stupid cutesy ruffles, ready to take orders from

the world's greatest grump. If it hadn't been for the money, she would

have quit months ago. As it was, every dime and every tip was a dollar

closer to getting the car.

And once she had it, once the bike had been shoved into storage and lost

forever, she wouldn't have to depend on anyone anymore. No begging

transportation from her parents, no making deals with her brother just

to get her out of the house, no having to ask creeps like Thornton

Ollworth to give her rides to wherever she wanted to go.

Which was anywhere but here.

Anywhere.

Period.

And that, she admitted as she swerved around a fallen branch, wasn't

strictly exactly true, not really. Hunter wasn't all that bad, and would

get better once summer was officially here and the city people came and

there was life again on the streets. Otherwise, unless you were a

gopher, it was like living in a haunted house.

15

What was bad was the way her father kept looking at her when he thought

she didn't notice his attention. It made her feel strange; and she

didn't know why. She couldn't ask her sisters, of course, because they

were only children, and her mother was definitely no help these days.

Hardly home, practically living in her office selling what seemed like

half the Garden State every time she turned around. Rushing like she had

electric wires attached to every joint in her body.

Definitely no help there.

And Aunt Susan wasn't here yet, to offer her the shoulder, and the advice.

But a car ... that was a different story.

Her father had sworn she could have one the minute she had enough money

to pay for it in full. He would take care of the insurance and

incidentals. That deal had been made two years ago. And now, after

working after school and on weekends, saving her birthday and Christmas

money, and keeping on her father's good side- most of the time-she was

only six weeks away from the big day, and the idea of having to waste

half the summer without one was making her crazy.

Bern thought she was nuts, but what did he know? He was going to college

Charles L. Grant - In a Dark Dream

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