Dangerous Dreams: A Novel (119 page)

At eleven p.m., Allie opened the bedroom door, stared at Dressler and her mother with bloodshot eyes. “I can’t sleep . . . and I don’t want to sleep.” She started crying. “But . . . but I have to . . . as long as there’s a chance she’s alive . . . I have to . . . in case you’re right, Doc. But what if you’re
wrong? What if she’s already dead? What then?” She clasped her hands, dangled them in front of her like a little girl begging a favor. “And what if I
do
dream . . . and I see her die? Oh, Mom, I can’t bear the thought of that. Please help me.” Tears filled Allie’s eyes; she walked briskly to her mother, laid her head on her shoulder. “Mom, don’t let me dream again.”

A while later, after her tears had subsided, the three sat at the table. Allie rubbed her eyes, looked at Dressler. “Okay, I’ve got myself together, Doc.” Her forlorn expression became tenuous, uncertain. “So what happens to the project if Emily’s dead . . . or if she dies the next time I dream? What will we do?”

He thought for a moment. “Well, I guess that depends on what happens afterward—whether or not you start a new dream. But since you’re a vivid, lucid dreamer, we could probably continue on and explore your lucid dreams . . . even if you don’t dream another saga right away.” He looked suddenly contemplative. “But the fact is, I really don’t know; and for sure, we should start thinking about it.” He paused for a moment, studied Allie’s face. “You’re having a tough go of this, aren’t you, Allie?”

She snorted. “Yeah, Doc, I am . . . constantly pinging between terrifying apprehension of what I might find
if
I dream and aggravated frustration when I
don’t
. I don’t know what I want to do anymore, and it’s killing me.”

“I see that, and it concerns me a lot.” He thought for a moment, glanced at Nancy. “Maybe we should call the project off, let you do a real rehab. Maybe this is too much to deal with right now.”

Allie bristled. “No! I don’t want to call it off. I
won’t
call it off. Not while there’s a chance Emily’s alive. So help me sleep, Doc. Give me a pill.”

He shook his head. “Can’t do that, Allie . . . much as I’d like to see you happy . . . and get more data. I can’t. All I can do is tell you that I think Emily’s alive, and you need to get back there and find out what’s happening. And if I’m right, and you shake your pill dependence, we can immediately move on to time and event correlation of your dream reports with the neuroimaging and tomography data we discussed . . . which, by the way, I’ve already scheduled. Hate to lay all this on you, Allie; but I think if we get through these tough times and press on as planned, we
will
get to the heart of your gift and the dreams . . . find out what’s happening
when and where . . . and begin to focus on validating our theories. Also, as we discussed, I’d like to get comprehensive genetic characterizations done on you and”—he glanced at Nancy—“ you, Nancy, if it’s okay.”

She smiled. “You bet it is. Always thought that would be kind of neat.”

Allie stared blankly into his eyes, looked frightened then ready to cry; but a second later, a determined look supplanted the fearful one; resolve suddenly glistened in her eyes like sparkling frost in early morning sunlight. “Alright . . . I’m convinced. So let’s go for it.” She paused, gave him a superficial smile. “Now all I have to do is figure out how to fall asleep.”

“Don’t worry, Allie. Mother Nature will see to that. Just relax and let it happen.”

Allie nodded, sighed. “Okay, Doc.” She eyed her mother then Dressler. “So help me relax.”

After two hours of TV, three games of
Hearts
, and reading a chapter of
Morphic Resonance
aloud, Allie announced that she was ready to sleep, said goodnight; walked into the bedroom, closed the door, removed her bathrobe, and crawled into bed; then looked at the ceiling fan, started counting revolutions.

In the living room, Dressler and Nancy sipped shot glasses of scotch. Dressler said, “Sure been a long day.”

“Yeah, it has. But if we get her through this, it will have been worth it. Oh, I need to call Mike in the morning and fill him in on what’s happening.”

Dressler broached a faint grin. “He probably wasn’t too keen on me hanging out here, was he?”

“Not at first, but he understands how important it is and realizes you’re the Holy Grail of this whole deal. So he’s okay with it.”

“Sounds like a cool guy from everything I’ve heard about him.”

“He is. And he’ll do anything for Allie.”

“Well, I think she’s settled enough that I can head on home for the rest of the night . . . I’ll come back midmorning.” He flashed a cautionary look. “But call me immediately if you need help.”

Nancy nodded. “I will.”

He took a sip of scotch. “Oh, before I go, what can you tell me about your Great-Grandmother Ian?”

After she relayed what she knew of Ian and her dreams, Dressler shook his head. “Got to be damn scary going to sleep every night wondering if you’re going to see someone you’ve come to love die before your eyes . . . has to play on your mind . . . sure seen it in Allie.”

“Me, too.”

“Oh, been meaning to ask . . . Ian’s an unusual name for a woman. Where did it come from?”

Nancy smiled. “Well, I have this big box of her stuff at home that my mom gave me when she herself was getting old, and I’d never even opened it . . . until the other day. Allie and I were going to go through it when she was home; so Friday, before everything hit the fan, I dug the box out of the attic and opened it. And right on top was a piece of paper explaining Ian’s name, and . . . damn it! Meant to tell Allie about this. Anyway,
Ian
was her family nickname . . . because no one could pronounce her real name very well . . . least of all me. Even Great-Granddad called her
Ian
. But her
real
name—her
Sioux
name—was pronounced
Ee-hahn-blay Ween-yahn
. And
Ian
was short for the
Ee-hahn
part, so—”

“
Sioux
name?” Dressler looked stunned, set his scotch on the table. “She was an Indian?”

“Yes, she was. Guess I’ve never mentioned it.”

“My God, I’ve got goose bumps. What does it mean?”

“It means
Dream Woman
.”

He looked away for a moment then back at Nancy. “Wow. And it’s a
Sioux
name.”

“Yeah . . . but, you know, there are several subgroups of the Sioux, and Ian’s branch always called
themselves Lakota
. . . still do.”

He stared blankly at her. “Are you kidding me? Did you know that the Native American Emily loves is Lakota? Heard Allie say it a million times.”

“No . . . no, I didn’t.” A chill raced down her back; her mind swirled like grains of sand in a dust storm.

“The plot’s thickening, Nancy. Where did Ian come from? How did she—”

“She was a
Hunkpapa
Lakota, a band of the Teton Sioux—same as Sitting Bull, who was one of the main leaders of the Lakota at the Battle of the Little Big Horn, here in Montana, when they wiped out Custer in 1876.” Nancy’s eyes suddenly swelled with excitement; her heart rate soared. “My great-grandfather was a teamster in North Dakota . . . he was in Custer’s pack train, a day or two behind the troops . . . they found the bodies . . . buried them.” She stopped for a moment, took a deep breath, placed her hand on her pounding heart. “He then went on to Fort Ellis, near Bozeman . . . hauled freight for the government for a number of years, often to the Sioux reservation after the tribe was forced there. And that’s where he met Ian . . . when she was sixteen. I remember her telling me how he always looked her up, brought her flowers, and courted her when he came to the reservation; she said she used to giggle and blush when she saw him coming. Then when she was eighteen, they got married and settled on the cattle ranch he bought with his freight-hauling profits . . . the very ranch succeeding generations of our family have expanded to what we have today.”

Dressler stared at the tabletop for a moment, finally picked up his scotch, belted the remainder; he studied the empty glass trembling in his hand, then looked slowly at Nancy. “Nancy, I’ve still got goose bumps. This whole thing boggles my mind. Could Ian have been descended from Emily and Isna?”

When Dressler departed, Nancy checked on Allie, found her in bed, unsettled, constantly shifting positions on her stomach. She grimaced as she looked at the clock. Three thirty. This is gonna hurt. She set the alarm for eight, slid into bed, stared at Allie for a few seconds, then began to softly caress the back of her neck, felt the warmth of her butterfly birthmark. The sign . . . the sign of the dreamer . . . and one close to God . . . so say the Lakota. When Allie settled, Nancy relaxed onto her back beside her, continued massaging her neck. When she finally closed her eyes, she visualized
Allie as a newborn lying in her arms in the hospital bed, remembered studying the tiny birthmark, wondering why Allie had it, what it meant. She then saw Allie as a little girl, learning to ride her bike and her horse, saw in a quick flash of time her entire growth to adulthood. She smiled, opened her eyes, looked over at her. “Sleeping . . . at last. Your mommy loves you, little girl. She loves you very, very much.”

After Nancy silenced the alarm, she looked at Allie. “What are you so smiley about?”

Allie looked at her, broadened her smile. “She’s alive, Mom. I dreamed . . . and she’s alive.” Her smile faded. “But I don’t know
how much
alive . . . could be she’s . . .”

“Did you see her?”

“No . . . but I don’t need to because I only dream through
her
, and what I dreamed was a dream
she
was dreaming . . . about the Vikings. At first it was all black—NREM. Then
pop
! There they were . . . with no gray beforehand . . . the same guys as before: Bjarni, Tryggvi, the others . . . pulling their smaller boats up a high, steep hill . . . like a cliff . . . with the roar of a falls in the background . . . like . . . like”—her eyes bloomed like flowers in fast motion; she percolated with fresh excitement—“ like maybe Niagara Falls.” Pause. “So Steve was right. I
was
in some kind of null zone, with no dreaming . . . from the pills . . . stuck in NREM. Amazing!” Her eyes grew suddenly dull, vacant; her lips parted. “But what will I see tonight? Emily dying? Someone else dying? Do I really want to go back? Damn, this sucks!”

“So Emily could still be in big trouble?”

Allie nodded. “I don’t want to go back . . . afraid in my heart and soul. Something bad’s going to happen. They’re going down, going under . . . all coming to a head. It’s over . . . but I don’t know if I can bear to watch it happen.