Read Online Night Visions by Thomas Fahy - Free Book Online Page B

you.”
    â€œI guess so.” The hope she felt this morning fades with the thought of Phebe at home, sitting alone and staring into the darkness. For a moment, Samantha feels grateful—grateful that it is Phebe, not she, who has to face the helpless terror and frustration of knowing that she won’t sleep through the night. But this relief makes her ashamed. Suffering does that to people, she thinks. It makes them selfish and shameful. It transforms them into something ugly.
    She puts the goggles over her eyes and waits for the lights and sounds to begin.
    Â 
    A red light glows on the other side of a closed door. Shelves filled with books and loose papers are barely visible in the weak glow of candlelight. Wax has been spilled, drying in long streaks on the wooden floor. Curtains flap by the open window. The ledge is moist from rainwater.
    A moan hangs in the air like a note from an oboe. It sputters and coughs, fading to silence. The door opens, and everything is bathed in red light. The moaning starts again. It comes from a shadowy figure pressed against the window. It jerks and twitches with such violence that it seems moments away from crashing into the room. Then a piercing scream as the door slams shut. Glass shatters. The rainwater becomes blood. The body writhes in terrible pain, climbing, towering into the sky—
    Â 
    Dr. Clay is holding her shoulders, and Samantha realizes that she is sitting upright. A male nurse stands on the other side of the bed with one hand resting gently on her back.
    â€œSamantha? Hi, Samantha. You’ve woken up with quite a start, but everything is all right. You’ve been asleep for seven hours and forty-two minutes.”
    Samantha is breathing too heavily to speak, too shaken to congratulate herself for sleeping.
    â€œIt was awful.”
    â€œWhat was awful? Did you have another hallucination?”
    â€œYes.” Her voice sounds hollow.
    â€œLook at me, Samantha. What you saw was not real. It’s—”
    â€œNo. Something terrible has happened.” She looks into his eyes. “I know it.”

9
Memento Mori
    SUNDAY
    S amantha steps out of the shower in her apartment to a ringing phone. Still preoccupied with the images that woke her less than an hour ago, she answers distractedly. Large drops of water fall from her body onto the bedroom carpet. She imagines the puddle at her feet turning hard, like wax.
    â€œHi, Sam.”
    She can barely hear Frank because of the sharp, urgent voices behind him. “What happened?”
    â€œI got a call ten minutes ago. The police found another body—a woman hanging from a fire escape outside her apartment.”
    Silence. She twirls the phone cord between the second and third fingers of her right hand, certain that she already knows what he is going to say.
    â€œHello?” Frank asks. “Sam?”
    She swallows hard before asking, “What’s her name?”
    â€œPhebe McCracken.”
    Samantha closes her eyes and sees the smiling frog fromPhebe’s T-shirt. “Where are you?” The words leave her mouth reluctantly.
    â€œAt her apartment in Chinatown. What’s wrong?”
    She pauses again, looking at the water spreading out from her body.
    â€œI know her.”
    Â 
    Samantha hurries up four flights of stairs. The narrow hallway seems to turn sharply every few feet, obscuring the layout of the floor, and she follows it tentatively. Looking for the apartment number, Samantha wonders if Phebe found solace in the confusion of this labyrinth, if she saw it as a reflection of her own exhausting and elusive path to sleep. The air feels warm and still, as if it is trapped between the low ceilings and worn carpet. She tugs at her sweatshirt, pulling it away from the moisture on her stomach.
    She doesn’t want to think about Phebe as a victim to sleeplessness or a violent man. She doesn’t want to see herself that way either. A sudden flash of anger