Read Online A Fistful of Knuckles by Tom Graham - Free Book Online Page B

approaching through darkness – something evil, something inhuman – something that knew Annie’s name, just as it knew Sam’s, and that all its power and malice was bent towards them? How could he tell her that he had glimpsed this thing, this Devil in the Dark? How could he say that it was through him, through his subconscious, that it was reaching out to her?
    ‘You said you’ve been having dreams,’ he said. ‘Can you tell me about those?’
    Annie laughed nervously: ‘Shouldn’t I be lying down on a couch for that, with you sitting next to me taking notes?’
    Sam smiled: ‘I’m not a shrink, Annie, but I reckon I might understand what you’re saying better than anyone. Now – tell me – what have you been dreaming?’
    ‘It’s all confused, you know, the way dreams are. At first I did my best to forget them, because I’d wake up scared, like the way you did when you had nightmares as a kid. But then, when I kept having them, I tried to remember so I could understand. They’re always muddled, Sam – images all on top of each other, like trying to watch BBC1, BBC2
and
ITV all at the same time.’
    ‘Just wait for cable …’ muttered Sam under his breath.
    ‘All I remember of them are single moments. An image. A sensation. I know enough psychology to know if there’s any meaning in a dream it’s hidden away in the details.’
    ‘And what details did you remember, Annie?’
    Closing her eyes, recalling the ghastly images of her nightmares, Annie said softly: ‘Sometimes I dream of things rotting. There are maggots crawling about. And sometimes I dream of …’ Her eyebrows furrowed. ‘… Sometimes I dream of a man … A man in a suit … A Nehru suit, like they used to wear in the 60s …’
    Sam almost jolted.
    ‘A Nehru suit?’ he whispered. ‘No collar, no lapels …’
    ‘That’s the one. In the dream, the man always wears a Nehru suit. Expensive, sharp … I can’t see his face, but I’m frightened of him because …’
    Sam felt his mouth go dry. He swallowed hard and asked: ‘Why? Why are you frightened of him?’
    ‘I don’t know.’ She furrowed her brow. ‘It’s like … It’s like he’s … Sometimes I feel it’s like he’s my-’
    Quite suddenly, Annie gave a little gasp and sat suddenly upright. Her hand went to her chest, as if she were feeling her own heartbeat.
    ‘She’s here,’ she whispered. ‘It’s that feeling like before …’
    Sam glanced down the corridor at the hospital foyer and spotted a frail young woman, little more than a girl, moving uncertainly amid the to-ing and fro-ing of the medical staff and patients. She was wearing faded denims with a polka-dot patch unhandily stitched over one knee. Her thick-soled, high-heeled sandals made her totter slightly, as if she had not yet learnt to walk in them, and the shapeless, man-sized lumberjack shirt she had on somehow only emphasized her fragility by sitting so bulkily on her.
    ‘Is that her?’ he asked.
    Annie nodded.
    As the girl drew closer, one unsteady step after another, the bruising around her eyes and mouth became more apparent. She had attempted to disguise it by letting her mousy hair fall down across her face, and by donning a googly pair of plastic sunglasses with thick, pink frames – but her efforts were in vain. She could have worn a paper bag over her head and somehow you would have intimated that the face beneath it was battered and traumatized. Tracy Porter gave off the air of being a victim the way a business tycoon gives off the air of mountainous wealth.
    ‘Are you up to speaking to her?’ Sam asked, putting his hand on Annie’s arm. ‘You’re feeling okay?’
    ‘My heart’s going again, like before. But I’m okay, Sam.’
    ‘Annie … this dream you were talking about … The man in the Nehru suit …’
    ‘Oh, for goodness sake, Sam, later. Let me go and have a word with Tracy, just me and her. If she’s not too jumpy, I’ll bring her over, yeah?’
    Annie got