Nightmare Country (19 page)

Tamara knew this figure was a manifestation of the hour, the darkness, and the superstitions of others at play on her imagination. But she was reminded of Miss Kopecky's reference to “disquieting happenings.”

She moved on slowly now, trying not to see anything but what lay directly in front of her, dreading that she might see more. Every rustling sound or creak of old wood startled her, every shadow held a threat. The skin on her arms prickled at each pore with anticipation of the approach of something sudden and unknown.

It was times such as this she sorely missed Gilbert Whelan.

Finally she crossed between the chemist's shack and the old magazine and started up the side of the hollow mountain, calling out for Adrian at intervals, sweeping the beam of the flashlight from side to side, sweating with nervousness while her teeth chattered with the cold. The mountain loomed shadowed and one-dimensional, moonlight glancing off the edges of things—the side of a boulder or the ends of a frosted weed stalk.

The thing for which her nerve endings had waited dropped suddenly from a pool of darkness above with the sound of thumping air, like an umbrella being rapidly and repeatedly opened and shut. She sank to the earth as a large bird, all dark but for its eyes, beak, and extended talons, swept over her. It grazed the ground a few feet away and rose into the air once more with a small squealing rodent in its claws.

“Dumb silly ass,” she called herself aloud, but in a whisper, gathered the things she'd carried, and stood. How could she expect to cope alone in this world, when the mere suggestion of the supernatural (and Fred Hanley was no expert on that or anything) could put her in such an exaggerated state?

She pulled her robe tightly around her, arranged the shoes and the coat and the flashlight so she could proceed, and looked up to see Backra standing next to an outcrop of rock ahead of and above her.

He seemed to glow faintly, and he was nude.

Tamara was too startled to blink. She froze in the teetering position of being about to take a step, her balance off center.

Backra returned her stare with one of thoughtful consideration, as if trying to determine how to approach her. The wind that pulled at the opening in her robe and tossed her hair did not touch his silver head.

He took a step forward. She couldn't move.

This was her dream Backra. Perhaps she and Adrian were safe asleep in their beds and Tamara was dreaming all this. She'd never seen this man when she was awake before. Or was he really one of Fred's ghosts, haunting Iron Mountain and what she'd thought to be dreams? Perhaps he'd haunted Miriam Kopecky. Perhaps he'd frightened her so, she'd died of it. Perhaps he appeared before her now in the nude as an enticement to lure her inside the mountain. Maybe he was the thing in the mountain Jerusha had told Miss Kopecky about. She could still see the scars on his body from the horrible battle he'd fought with something. Maybe it had been an angel. Maybe Backra was the devil himself.

Tamara had grown fond of him as a dream, and felt an angry disappointment at the thought he might mean her harm. “Where is Adrian? Do you have my daughter?”

She threw the flashlight at him. It went through his rib cage and broke on the rocky soil behind. He turned to look at it and then back at her. His lips moving in soundless words, Backra walked toward her, his hands in front of him with palms up, as if in plea.

A short scream, suddenly cut off. It sounded as if it came from the lower level of the six-hundred-foot portal. Adrian.

Tamara picked up the skirt of her robe and ran down the slope. She turned once, to see the glowing Backra fade and then vanish.

Adrian walked down a street of sand, trying not to trip on the icy rails of the track cutting through its center. Darkened houses sat on stilts to either side of her. A rangy cat spit and raced through a gap in a board fence. She came to an intersection of sand streets and a lone streetlight that hung from a utility pole bristling with wires. Similar poles lined the street on either side, but without streetlights.

Some feeling she couldn't put a name to drew her toward the end of the street marked ahead by floodlights and a chain-like fence, an open gate. She could smell blossoming flowers over the strong salt smell of the sea, hear dogs yipping and growling down the next side street.

A paved area with weeds growing in its seams stretched out on the other side of the gate, large enough for a parking lot, but there were no vehicles. Only some lengths of rusty chain, two oil drums, and a rubber tire. And a concrete-block building with giant metal doors standing open to the night. Light streamed through the doors, and so did the repetitive sounds of machinery, a low thumping. All the utility wires from the street behind her converged on this building.

“Public Service Company of dreamland?” Adrian tried to walk through the gate, but hit her forehead and nose against something that hadn't been there a moment before. Darkness fell over her head like a cloak. She reached out to feel a barrier that wouldn't yield to her touch. Adrian fought to get back to the light and the gentleness of the dream place. She pounded on the barrier and stopped at a crunching sound behind her, a hand on her shoulder. Adrian screamed. The hand clamped over her mouth.

“Quiet, now. You'll rile up the ghosts and we'll all be in trouble.” Mr. Hanley wrapped his jacket around her. “Let's go find your mother.”

He led her along some railroad tracks that had rough cindery shoulders. She was unable to reconcile what had just been to what was. She was outside in the cold in pajamas and bare feet. The tracks were like those in her dream, but there was no soft sand here, no power plant. It was like dreaming she was urinating in a toilet, only to awaken while in the act and realize she was wetting her bed. The awful dislocation and shock were the same. What was old Mr. Hanley doing in her dream? Where was her mother? “Did something happen to my mom?”

“She's out looking for you. You been sleepwalkin', girlie.” He led her up a steep path to a more lighted area, and Mr. Burnham came hobbling toward them with his shirttail out and his boots unlaced.

“What the hell's going on?” He squinted at Adrian. “Oh, no, not again? Fred, tell me she wasn't—”

“Sleepwalkin'. Yep. Just like the other one. You know who Agnes says is causing this, don't you? Maybe she's right.”

Russ stared at her like she was a thing. “Her feet are bleeding.”

“Couldn't carry her. Must weigh a ton. Glad I caught her when I did, though. She was trying to get in the lower portal. Pounding on the door.” Mr. Hanley talked about her as if she wasn't standing right there. Why did people do that? Because she was a kid or because she was fat? “Her mother's around here somewheres looking for her.”

As if waiting for that cue, Tamara Whelan rushed out of a nearby shadow in her robe. All windblown and beautiful.

She looked like she'd seen a ghost.

19

After she'd settled Adrian back in her bed, Tamara had dropped off to sleep, only to dream of Backra. It seemed a night full of activity instead of rest. Miriam Kopecky had complained of being tired too.

That last dream of Backra haunted Tamara through the next day. It was as if he'd set out to hurt her asleep or awake.
If you start believing he's real, you're in for a long stay at a mental hospital
. She'd found him standing on the end of a dock, still naked. Just staring at the night. With the sea sloshing against the pilings and rocking the boats tied alongside.

He looked entranced. When he blinked, it was with the barest of flutters. Tamara could see nothing but dark water, a pale line of white breakers in the distance, and a moon tipped more than it had been in Iron Mountain. A strong breeze off the water blew his hair about now and left hers still.

The sound of sandals flopping on wood, and Tamara turned to see a woman walk under one of the lights along the dock. She wore a long dress, her head topped with tight curls that needed brushing up.

Backra suddenly noticed Tamara. He spoke rapidly, soundlessly, raising his arms again in that strange palms-upward gesture.

“Thad? Who are you talking to? And what are you doing out stark naked?” The woman wrapped a towel around him, tucked it in at the waist. “Not all my guests can handle this kind of thing, fella, and none of the locals. Thad?”

Backra, or Thad, still looked at Tamara and appeared unaware of the woman in the droopy Afro.

“Hey, zombie, this is old Dixie talking. Where are you? Jesus, you're not asleep?” She shook his arm, and he blinked, his body jerked.

“What are you doing in my dream?” he said thickly and in a voice Tamara could hear. It was a deep, raspy voice that held a timbre and a whisper at the same time. She hadn't heard it since he'd spoken to the man named Ramael many dreams ago.

Why could she not hear him before but could hear him now? Because he'd been wakened? Was the man in her dreams dreaming too? She'd heard Dixie. But Dixie had heard him when Tamara hadn't.

“Dream?” Dixie put her hands to either side of her head in a helpless gesture. “Everybody in this place dreams. At least the rest of us don't go around without clothes on.”

Thad looked down at himself and shivered.

“I provided the towel. First thing I could grab. If you're going to walk in your sleep, better wear pajamas to bed.”

“You mean I walked all the way out here?”

“And who knows where else? Could have walked all over the village.… I just remembered something. There was a rumor that Stefano caught your dad out sleepwalking. You don't think he walked off into the jungle? If he did, we'd never find his body. Full of sinkholes in there.”

Tamara followed them down the dock, jealous of the possessiveness with which Dixie took her dream man's arm.

“Do you ever dream about a funny-looking mountain? Half mined out?” Thad asked her.

“You know, I have. And just tonight. Maybe there's something in the air around here, but one of the biggest topics at the breakfast table is some guest's weird dream. I get so sick of it, sometimes I sneak off to the kitchen to eat.”

They were all three passing the end thatched hut now and entering the unlikely cemetery. Tamara realized she was hearing that low pulsating background noise again. She'd visited this dream place so much that it had become like the crusher in Iron Mountain, a sound she heard too often to listen to.

Thad rubbed his arms and hunched his shoulders.

“Isn't it funny you weren't cold till you woke up?” Dixie put her arm around him. “I don't remember so much talk of dreaming when I first came to Mayan Cay. Maybe I wasn't looking for it. I didn't have so many.”

“Hey, My Lady of the Rum Belly, how were the pickin's tonight?”

The dog Tamara had seen before in her dreams walked along the waterline but stopped at Backra's voice, then stared straight at Tamara. It gave a yip and did a running slink off down the beach.

Tamara was furious at the way Dixie, the pop-eyed female, had herself tucked under Backra's arm so it would have been awkward for him not to put the arm around her. They reached the door of his house, and Thad hesitated, then looked down at Dixie with a smile.

Tamara followed them right through the door and into his one-room first floor. She could see before he switched on the light. Leaning against the wall by the door was a slab of rock with markings cut into it. How dare this Dixie person intrude this way. Tamara stomped through a bookcase, across the sitting-room area, and almost out the opposite wall, stopping just short of a desk with a covered typewriter and piles of papers and books. A shelf on the wall next to it held an assortment of seashells, and another some masks made of coconut husks.

While Thad went upstairs to change out of his towel, Dixie splashed liquor and what smelled like pineapple juice into glasses.

“We have something that's a bit more of a problem than dreams right now, Thad,” Dixie said when he'd returned in robe and pajama bottoms.

He'd even combed his hair. Tamara felt superfluous.

“The Royal Navy lost a destroyer in the Metnál the same day as you had your little disaster. There's no keeping the lid on this thing now.”

Nothing prevented Tamara from going out to roam the cemetery, scare the dogs, leave these two to their romantic interlude. But a streak of perversity made her follow them up the outside staircase. She wished she hadn't. Hadn't seen them on the bed, the arch of his lean, muscled body.…

“Adrian's asleep,” Larry Johnson announced, standing before her desk and pointing to where Adrian sat with her head on her arms.

“Let her be, Larry. She was up so much in the night.”

“Must be nice,” he muttered, “having your mother for the teacher.”

Tamara chided herself for daydreaming during school hours and called Bennie Hope up to read his lesson. Later, when each student was busy and Adrian had awakened, Tamara searched a wall map of the world for Mayan Cay.

By the end of the week she'd still not found it, but Friday morning when she entered the classroom, she noticed someone had taken a black felt-tip marker and made a circle. It enclosed an area in the Caribbean Sea off the coast of the tiny country of Belize. An island, a microscopic dot with tiny lettering beside it, “Mayan Cay.”

Her throat went dry. The place of her dream existed. She'd never even heard of Belize. Dreams came from one's own mind. How could her mind cough up something she hadn't put in it? None of her students would admit to making that circle. Tamara suspected Vinnie Hope, who drew coconut palms and leaf markings on the margins of her papers and who was a special friend of Jerusha Fistler.

Friday night Adrian had a job helping Vinnie baby-sit with Bennie and baby Ruthie so Deloris could go out. “Vinnie knows how to take care of the baby all right, but I don't think Bennie'll mind her,” Deloris explained.

That left Tamara free to accept a last-minute invitation from Russ Burnham to go out to dinner. She needed to get away from Iron Mountain, and she intended to make Russ do some serious talking about what went on in this place.