itâs on the left. I think, If this is a dream, the details are good. Always that same thought: If this is a dream, the details are good. Itâs the absolute truth. They are a novelistâs details . . . but in dreams, perhaps everyone is a novelist. How is one to know?
Now Sara Laughs is only a dark hulk down below, and I realize I donât want to go down there, anyway. I am a man who has trained his mind to misbehave, and I can imagine too many things waiting for me inside. A rabid raccoon crouched in a corner of the kitchen. Bats in the bathroomâif disturbed theyâll crowd the air around my cringing face, squeakingand fluttering against my cheeks with their dusty wings. Even one of William Denbroughâs famous Creatures from Beyond the Universe, now hiding under the porch and watching me approach with glittering, pus-rimmed eyes.
âWell, I canât stay up here,â I say, but my legs wonât move, and it seems I will be staying up here, where the driveway meets the lane; that I will be staying up here, like it or not.
Now the rustling in the woods behind me sounds not like small animals (most of them would by then be nested or burrowed for the night, anyway) but approaching footsteps. I try to turn and see, but I canât even do that . . .
. . . and that was where I usually woke up. The first thing I always did was to turn over, establishing my return to reality by demonstrating to myself that my body would once more obey my mind. Sometimesâmost times, actuallyâI would find myself thinking Manderley, I have dreamt again of Manderley. There was something creepy about this (thereâs something creepy about any repeating dream, I think, about knowing your subconscious is digging obsessively at some object that wonât be dislodged), but I would be lying if I didnât add that some part of me enjoyed the breathless summer calm in which the dream always wrapped me, and that part also enjoyed the sadness and foreboding I felt when I awoke. There was an exotic strangeness to the dream that was missing from my waking life, now that the road leading out of my imagination was so effectively blocked.
The only time I remember being really frightened (and I must tell you I donât completely trust any ofthese memories, because for so long they didnât seem to exist at all) was when I awoke one night speaking quite clearly into the dark of my bedroom: âSomethingâs behind me, donât let it get me, something in the woods, please donât let it get me.â It wasnât the words themselves that frightened me so much as the tone in which they were spoken. It was the voice of a man on the raw edge of panic, and hardly seemed like my own voice at all.
*Â Â Â *Â Â Â *
Two days before Christmas of 1997, I once more drove down to Fidelity Union, where once more the bank manager escorted me to my safe-deposit box in the fluorescent-lit catacombs. As we walked down the stairs, he assured me (for the dozenth time, at least) that his wife was a huge fan of my work, sheâd read all my books, couldnât get enough. For the dozenth time (at least) I replied that now I must get him in my clutches. He responded with his usual chuckle. I thought of this oft-repeated exchange as Bankerâs Communion.
Mr. Quinlan inserted his key in Slot A and turned it. Then, as discreetly as a pimp who has conveyed a customer to a whoreâs crib, he left. I inserted my own key in Slot B, turned it, and opened the drawer. It looked very vast now. The one remaining manuscript box seemed almost to quail in the far corner, like an abandoned puppy who somehow knows his sibs have been taken off and gassed. Promise was scrawled across the top in fat black letters. I could barely remember what the goddam story was about.
I snatched that time-traveller from the eightiesand slammed the safe-deposit box shut. Nothing left in there now but
Now Sara Laughs is only a dark hulk down below, and I realize I donât want to go down there, anyway. I am a man who has trained his mind to misbehave, and I can imagine too many things waiting for me inside. A rabid raccoon crouched in a corner of the kitchen. Bats in the bathroomâif disturbed theyâll crowd the air around my cringing face, squeakingand fluttering against my cheeks with their dusty wings. Even one of William Denbroughâs famous Creatures from Beyond the Universe, now hiding under the porch and watching me approach with glittering, pus-rimmed eyes.
âWell, I canât stay up here,â I say, but my legs wonât move, and it seems I will be staying up here, where the driveway meets the lane; that I will be staying up here, like it or not.
Now the rustling in the woods behind me sounds not like small animals (most of them would by then be nested or burrowed for the night, anyway) but approaching footsteps. I try to turn and see, but I canât even do that . . .
. . . and that was where I usually woke up. The first thing I always did was to turn over, establishing my return to reality by demonstrating to myself that my body would once more obey my mind. Sometimesâmost times, actuallyâI would find myself thinking Manderley, I have dreamt again of Manderley. There was something creepy about this (thereâs something creepy about any repeating dream, I think, about knowing your subconscious is digging obsessively at some object that wonât be dislodged), but I would be lying if I didnât add that some part of me enjoyed the breathless summer calm in which the dream always wrapped me, and that part also enjoyed the sadness and foreboding I felt when I awoke. There was an exotic strangeness to the dream that was missing from my waking life, now that the road leading out of my imagination was so effectively blocked.
The only time I remember being really frightened (and I must tell you I donât completely trust any ofthese memories, because for so long they didnât seem to exist at all) was when I awoke one night speaking quite clearly into the dark of my bedroom: âSomethingâs behind me, donât let it get me, something in the woods, please donât let it get me.â It wasnât the words themselves that frightened me so much as the tone in which they were spoken. It was the voice of a man on the raw edge of panic, and hardly seemed like my own voice at all.
*Â Â Â *Â Â Â *
Two days before Christmas of 1997, I once more drove down to Fidelity Union, where once more the bank manager escorted me to my safe-deposit box in the fluorescent-lit catacombs. As we walked down the stairs, he assured me (for the dozenth time, at least) that his wife was a huge fan of my work, sheâd read all my books, couldnât get enough. For the dozenth time (at least) I replied that now I must get him in my clutches. He responded with his usual chuckle. I thought of this oft-repeated exchange as Bankerâs Communion.
Mr. Quinlan inserted his key in Slot A and turned it. Then, as discreetly as a pimp who has conveyed a customer to a whoreâs crib, he left. I inserted my own key in Slot B, turned it, and opened the drawer. It looked very vast now. The one remaining manuscript box seemed almost to quail in the far corner, like an abandoned puppy who somehow knows his sibs have been taken off and gassed. Promise was scrawled across the top in fat black letters. I could barely remember what the goddam story was about.
I snatched that time-traveller from the eightiesand slammed the safe-deposit box shut. Nothing left in there now but
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