Falling Awake (28 page)

She gave him a look of sultry innocence and seductive promise. “Let’s make it a surprise, shall we?”

She vanished into the hallway.

He smiled, recklessly allowing himself to savor this unfamiliar kind of intimacy. He should probably be worried about the sense of possessiveness that had taken root deep inside him but he didn’t want to think about it now.

He crossed the room to the glowing computer screen and looked at the data that the highly specialized search program had collected while he was fooling around on the sofa with Isabel.

The name of the Brackleton Correctional Facility had popped up three more times. Excitement pulsed through him.

He heard the bathroom door open.

“Here we go,” he said over his shoulder. “Gibbs, McLean and the others did time in the same prison. They weren’t there together, but it can’t be a coincidence that they’re all linked to that place.”

Isabel emerged from the hall tying the sash of her robe. “What does that tell you?”

“I don’t know yet, but it’s a connection and I’ve been needing one of those real bad.” He slid onto the chair and started hitting the keys. “Damn well should have seen it sooner.”

“What now?”

“I’m going to search for everything I can find that relates to
Brackleton Correctional Facility and hope like hell I get something I can use.”

She patted another yawn. “I’ll finish the rest of Dr. B.’s recent files.”

h
alf an hour later she picked up the next to the last folder in the stack. Sphinx, comfortably resettled on her lap, twitched his ears.

Inside the folder she found five legal-sized pages filled with Martin Belvedere’s cramped, spidery handwriting. She flipped through them.

The phrase “head trauma” leaped off one of the pages.

“Ellis?”

“Yeah?” He did not look up from the screen.

“Didn’t you tell me that when Vincent Scargill was admitted to that hospital emergency room shortly after the explosion he had severe head trauma?”

That got his attention. He swiveled around on the chair. “Yes. Why?”

She held up the paper she had just started to read. “I think these are rough notes for a case of impaired dreaming in a Level Five lucid dreamer who experienced severe head trauma.”

Ellis was off the chair and moving toward her before she finished speaking. “Any dates on those notes?”

She glanced through the five pages. “No. Maybe that’s why they were at the bottom of the pile.”

“You can probably translate Belvedere’s hieroglyphs a lot faster than I can. Read me some of it.”

“. . . Subject reports that prior to his injury, he regularly experienced extremely lucid dreams. Following the trauma subject describes his dreams as fragmented, uncontrollable and very disturbing. Subject’s use of the word ‘uncontrollable’ suggests that he was accustomed to exerting a considerable degree of control over his dreamscapes before the accident. . . .”

She scanned the next couple of sentences and paused.

“. . . Subject requested a private consultation. He brought a series of five recent dream reports for review and analysis. . . .”

“All right, we know the subject was male,” Ellis said, his voice low with anticipation. “If it’s Scargill, it sounds like the injury he sustained in the explosion affected his extreme dreaming capability. He must have been desperate for help to contact Belvedere.”

“Where else could he go? Besides, he had a personal connection with Belvedere, remember? Dr. B. was the one who first identified him and assessed his dream talent.”

Ellis absently rubbed his injured shoulder and continued to prowl the room. “I take it Belvedere never called you in to consult on a head trauma case?”

“No. I would certainly have remembered something as unusual as that.”

Ellis nodded. “Belvedere may have realized that Scargill was dangerous and wanted to keep you out of it.”

“If he thought Scargill was a menace, why didn’t he contact Lawson?”

“Martin Belvedere was a noted eccentric and damned secretive in his own right, remember? In addition, from what you’ve told me, all he cared about was his research. Scargill probably looked like a really interesting case study.”

“Can’t argue that point.”

She went back to the notes, reading aloud.

“. . . The series of dream reports suggests a consistent fear of being pursued and an inability to escape the pursuer. This is, of course, a common theme in many dreams, but there are some highly distinctive elements in this group. The image of the enormous red tsunami is particularly striking. . . .”

She halted in mid-sentence. “Wait, I remember the tsunami dream. Dr. B. showed me a portion of the narrative and asked if I had any theories about what it might mean.”

Ellis stopped, facing her. He shoved his hands into the front pockets of his pants. “Well?”

“I asked for more context, naturally,” she said very dryly. “Belvedere gave me almost nothing to work with although he allowed that the subject was an extreme dreamer who was having problems accessing the Level Five state. I assumed it was a narrative from someone in Client Number One’s group.”

“One of Lawson’s people.”

“Yes. I remember asking if it was possible it was a blocking image rather than a chase-and-pursuit dream. I suggested that the tsunami was an image the dreamer’s sleeping mind had created to prevent him from getting into the Level Five state.” She moved
a hand. “But without more context, that was as far as I could go with the analysis.”

“I’m betting that this guy with the head trauma is Scargill and that he’s the third anonymous client,” Ellis said. “It fits.”

The computer beeped.

Ellis took two long strides to the counter and checked the screen. Satisfaction emanated from him in waves of fierce energy.

“Honey, you and I are on a roll tonight,” he whispered.

She eased Sphinx’s big head off her lap and jumped to her feet. “What did you find?”

“Each of the six men involved in the crimes Scargill orchestrated not only did time at Brackleton Correctional Facility, it says here that each one agreed to participate in an experimental project conducted at the facility in exchange for a promise of early release.”

Isabel leaned closer to read the words on the glowing screen. “The project used a combination of behavior modification techniques and medication to teach the inmates ways of coping with the stress of the outside world after their release.”

Ellis gripped the counter with one hand, his face hard and intent. “But there’s nothing yet that connects Scargill with Brackleton or this prison therapy project.”

Isabel hugged herself. “Looks like the next step is to find out more about that special prison behavior modification project.”

Fifteen minutes later Ellis gave up in disgust.

“Blank wall,” he said. “The project was officially terminated due
to lack of funding a year and a half ago. The rest of the records have vanished.”

“They say nothing ever vanishes entirely once it’s put on the Internet,” Isabel stated.

“Maybe not, but it can sure disappear as far as I’m concerned. I know my limitations. I’m a damn good dreamer and a pretty fair venture capitalist, but I’m not a magician when it comes to the Internet. We need one of Beth’s wizards, and that means I need Lawson to authorize the expense.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s three in the morning back in North Carolina. I’ll call him in a few hours and fill him in on what’s going on here.”

“Are you sure he’ll help?” She frowned. “I thought you said he was solidly against your investigation.”

“He is, but he owes me a few favors,” Ellis said evenly. “I’m going to call in a couple.”

“Does this mean we get some sleep now?”

“It means
you
get some sleep.” He wrapped one hand around her nape and kissed her. “I’m going to do some serious dreaming.”

h
e went into the guest bedroom, closed the door and turned off the lights. It was always easiest to slide into his gateway dream in the dark. He had a hunch that was because he had developed the skill during the endless, lonely, very scary nights following the loss of his parents. In those days his rapidly developing lucid dreaming talent had offered a sanctuary. He had used it to create dreamscapes where he could forget his fears and loneliness for a while.

He sat down on the edge of the bed, took off his shoes and lay back against the pillows. For a few minutes he focused on all the various bits and pieces of information he had accumulated, trying to let go of all previous assumptions and conclusions. The whole point of looking at a case in an extreme dreamscape was
to come at it from an entirely different angle. The dreaming mind was not bound by the same rules of logic that governed the waking mind.

Lawson was convinced that Level Five dreaming was essentially a combination of a natural talent for self-hypnosis and lucid dreaming. Beth speculated that it was a form of active meditation. Martin Belvedere had concluded that it was a psychic talent.

Whatever the case, he had gotten very good at putting himself into a state of consciousness somewhere between the waking and sleeping worlds. It was a state in which he could manipulate and control the dreamscape and yet remain open to suggestions from his unconscious mind in a way that was not possible when he was fully awake.

When he was satisfied that he was ready, he closed his eyes and climbed aboard the roller coaster.

The cars lurch into motion, ascending the impossibly high lift hill slowly, inevitably, taking him up to the highest point on the track. He is the only passenger. The sound of the chain lift is a steady drumbeat in his head that takes him deeper into the dream state.

Clank, clank, clank . . .

The front of the train reaches the top. He is sitting in the first seat so he has a clear view of the dizzying drop below. For an instant he hovers there, looking down at the track that spirals away into the darkness.

The cars shoot over the top of the lift hill. The world falls away and he plunges into his own, private dream world.

i
sabel curled up in a corner of the sofa, covered her bare feet with the hem of her robe and listened to the silence from the guest bedroom. She had turned off all the lights except for the one on the table beside her. A few minutes ago she had been feeling quite drowsy but now her brain was racing.

Sphinx emerged from the kitchen, padded across the living room and heaved his bulk up onto the sofa. He butted his head against her hand.

“Hi there, big guy,” she whispered.

Sphinx sprawled on his side next to her and closed his eyes. She rubbed his ears. He switched on his internal engine, purring so heavily she could feel him vibrating.

“Our lives have certainly changed since Dr. B. died, haven’t they? I’ll bet you never imagined you’d lose that cushy setup you had at the center, did you? I guess I took it for granted, too. That’s why I bought all that furniture and started looking for a house. Oh, well, that’s the way it goes.”

Sphinx twitched his ears but did not open his eyes.

She continued to pet him absently and thought about how he had awakened her the night Martin Belvedere died. For a time she let her mind drift, recalling the shock of opening the door of the office and finding the body.

Opening the door . . .

She reached up and turned off the one remaining lamp in the room. The bulbs in the porch fixtures still burned but the glow she could see through the cracks in the curtains had the eerie, luminous quality that occurred when light was reflected off mist. At some point during the last few hours fog had rolled in off the sea, enveloping them in a ghostly vapor.

She had opened the door of the office and found the body . . .

She contemplated that for a moment longer. Then, on impulse, she closed her eyes and summoned the carriage that she used to take her into her gateway dream.

She waits for it at the top of the steps as she always does. The long skirts of her gown and cloak drift lightly around her. It is midnight and the only lights are those in the windows of the empty mansion behind her.

She hears the vehicle before she sees it. The clatter of hooves and wheels on the paving stones grows louder, establishing a familiar rhythm.

The elegant, black-and-gilt equipage comes into view, a dark shape against the greater darkness of the night. There is no coachman but the horses know what to do.

The carriage halts in front of the mansion. She descends the steps, counting them off one by one. Fifty, forty-nine, forty-eight, forty-seven . . .

When she reaches the last step the door of the carriage opens. She steps inside. The door shuts. The vehicle sets off, carrying her into the dreamscape.

t
he cars slam down the incline, rocket through a steep, tight turn and rush toward the first scene. He tries to examine every detail, aware that his dreaming mind has fashioned the vision out of the images and data he had fed into it earlier. He has learned that in the dream world, incidents and objects are often weighted differently than they are in the waking realm. A small detail that meant nothing when he looked at it in the light of day can assume great significance here.

So he looks at the scene very closely as the cars fly past. He sees Lawson sitting at his big, government-issue desk, bald head gleaming in the light of the fluorescent lamps, reaching for the phone.

“I’ll be with you in a minute,” Lawson says. “Gotta call Beth.”

The cars zoom past the image, whip through a loop-the-loop and careen toward another scene.

Lawson again. He is just hanging up the desk phone. “Beth says she checked the hospital computer records, herself. The body they mistakenly handed over to the funeral home was Scargill. She did a DNA match using some blood they took in the ER. Cause of death was severe head trauma. Looks like he caught some fallout from the explosion. . . .”

The cars sweep past the scene, round another swooping curve and drop straight down into a twisting stretch of track. Adrenaline slams through him.