Sweet Dreams Read online

  “I did not mean to offend,” Bud said. “But yes. You are correct in your statement. Most white adults are prepossessed by material matters. They push aside all childhood beliefs while it would be to their advantage to retain many of those beliefs. For many are based on fact. Children—the making, the creating of them is a wondrous thing. And I still laugh at your medical communities’ feeble attempts to explain the process. The white mind perceives it as all physical, while in truth there is as much spirituality involved as physicality. The stork fable is not all fiction.”

  He stood, a faint smile on his face. “Someday truth will out.”

  Jerry snorted and turned around, glancing out the window. “The light is gone,” he said.

  “Again,” Bud said, “a half truth. The light is not gone. It has merely taken another form.”

  “What form?” Voyles asked wearily. The highway cop didn’t know what to believe. This night was becoming a living nightmare for his orderly, logical mind.

  “That, I cannot answer.”

  A slight movement across the room caused Maryruth’s eyes to shift. She stood for a few seconds in numb frightening silence. A huge rattlesnake, at least six feet long and as large as a big man’s arm was slithering toward her. She opened her mouth and screamed just as the rattler suddenly coiled and struck at her.

  The lights in the house went out. Someone screamed in terror.

  To anyone passing through the small Bootheel town, all would appear normal. The police force—one person to a shift—continued to make its rounds; a few people visited other people; the cafés and bars and supermarkets and gas stations remained open; the motel checked people in and out.

  But few walked at night and no teenagers drove the streets. Astute people traveling through, those who noticed small details about human behavior in the mid-1980s, would wonder what had happened to the teenagers.

  But they would wonder only briefly; then the question would be gone from their minds, erased.

  No outsider would notice the intangible force slowly taking control of the town and its people. Changes were occurring in the minds of the townspeople – subtle, deadly changes. Evil changes. Now, if one heard a scream in the night . . . well, best to ignore that type of thing.

  Why?

  Just is.

  Best thing you can do, nowadays, is go home and mind your own business. Staying inside your house is a good thing to do. Minding your own business is an even better thing. And if something . . . well, kinda odd occurs next door, that ain’t nobody’s business ’cept the folks that live there.

  Why is that?

  Just is.

  Person carries on business during the daylight hours same as always. But at night . . . well, best to just go on home and stay there. If you just gotta go out after dark, get it done and get the hell back home as quickly as possible.

  Why?

  Lots of folks can’t remember what goes on at night. And I ain’t gonna say no more about it.

  Are you afraid of the dark?

  No. Look, why don’t you just mind your own business? Yeah. That might be the best thing for you to do. And if you got any smarts at all, there’s one more thing a person like you ought to do.

  Oh?

  Yeah. Leave . . . if you can.

  Jerry was moving toward Maryruth before the rattler coiled. But he was well aware that a snake can short-strike, using its neck muscles, without coiling. Jerry leaped at her and literally threw her out of the snake’s strike zone. They landed heavily on the carpet, behind the sofa.

  The lights came back on with a pop.

  Only Bud had not moved. He looked at the gathering, amusement in his dark eyes. “There was no danger,” he said calmly. “Sanjaman entered your minds and made your imaginations come alive. You merely imagined your worst fears.”

  “Damn it!” Maryruth yelled from the floor, as she and Jerry struggled to their feet. “I know I saw a snake.”

  “But I didn’t see a snake,” Voyles blurted, more confusion than ever on his face. “I saw a huge spider.”

  “And I saw a big roach,” Heather said.

  “What you fear most is what your mind produced,” Bud said. “I warned you all about the powers of Sanjaman.”

  “Jesus Christ!” Leo said.

  “What did you see, Mr. Leo?” Marc asked.

  “Prohibition! It was awful.”

  “Jesus,” Janet said.

  “He cannot help you with this matter,” Leo said.

  Breathing returned to normal; hearts slowed from frantic poundings to a more level beat. The temperature in the room now matched the setting on the thermostat.

  Bud announced, “Now Sanjaman is truly gone from this area. He has wearied of the game and has departed.”

  “How do you know that?” Voyles asked.

  “You would not understand,” Bud said. “Just accept.”

  “What did you mean about Jesus not being able to help?” Janet asked. “Our God can do anything He wants to do?”

  Bud smiled. “Very well. If that is what you choose to believe, then so be it.”

  Maryruth looked at her watch. She was astonished at the amount of time that had passed. “It’s ten-thirty!” she said.

  “We have been in what you people call a time-warp,” Bud informed them. “Sanjaman can manipulate the hands of time. Forward or backward, as he wishes. I told you: he is all powerful.”

  “What in the hell is going on here?” a hard voice demanded from the doorway.

  Everyone turned.

  Harry Anderson stood in the open foyer, his face red with anger. His hands, balled into fists, hung at his sides.

  “I said, what the hell is going on here?” Harry yelled. “What are all you people doing in my house?”

  “We were checking on Marc and Heather,” Jerry replied calmly. “Maryruth called and discovered they had been left alone.”

  “That doesn’t give you any right to come busting into my house,” Harry said. “What I do with my kid is my business. It sure as hell isn’t any of yours.”

  “I might consider leaving a couple of ten-year-olds alone, at night, with no adult supervision, my business,” Voyles said.

  “Who the hell are you?” Harry asked.

  “Lieutenant Dick Voyles. Missouri Highway Patrol. That answer your question?”

  Some of the wind seemed to leave Harry’s belligerent sails. “Aw ... nothing happened to them, did it?” he asked. He refused to meet Voyles’s eyes. “I mean, they’re smart kids. It’s O.K. to leave them alone every now and then. They’re old enough.”

  Voyles looked at Heather and Marc just as Heather’s parents joined Harry and Rosanna in the foyer.

  “Either of you kids have any marks or bruises on you?” he asked.

  “No, sir,” they replied in unison.

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Voyles looked at the parents. “None better show up on them either. All of you get the message, I hope.”

  Jack rubbed the back of his neck and said, “You might be overstepping your authority, officer.”

  “I’ll take that chance,” Voyles said. He was not backing down. “I’ll give you the number of my commander if you’d like to call him.”

  Jack dropped his eyes from Voyles’s steady gaze.

  Voyles looked at the other children, all gathered around their parents. All of them older than Heather and Marc. Something . . . something the cop could not pinpoint seemed odd about them. They were . . . what? Then it came to him. Lifeless. That was it. And their eyes appeared to be ... dead.

  Jack Anderson rubbed the back of his neck. The boy’s face was slack-looking, almost the face of a severely retarded person. Voyles looked at the other kids. They all wore the same dull expression. He must remember that; talk to Jerry and Maryruth about it.

  Harry looked at Leo and Bud, disgust evident in his eyes, and something else that Jerry picked up on – fear when he gazed at the old Indian. Harry said, “You two bums
, get out of my house and don’t ever let me catch either of you on my property again. You got that?”

  “They’re not bums,” Marc said.

  “Shut up!” Harry yelled at his son. “I want any lip from you, boy, I’ll tell you.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “We’re sorry we disturbed you, Mr. Anderson,” Bud said. “We understand perfectly.”

  “Then get your asses out of my house!”

  “We’ll be leaving now,” Maryruth said.

  “Good. And don’t any of you ever come back here. None of you are welcome. You all understand that?”

  “Clearly,” Jerry said, a strained note in his voice. He fought back the urge to walk over to Harry Anderson and punch his lights out.

  “And what Harry said goes for Heather as well,” Jack said. “And for our home. Got it?”

  “We have it,” Voyles said. “Just don’t flap your mouth too much in my direction.”

  “Is that a threat, officer?” Rosanna asked.

  “From the patrol?” Voyles asked.

  “Yes.”

  “No, ma’am. That’s a warning from me—personally. I’ll be more than happy to take off my badge anytime Mr. Anderson or Mr. Thomas desires me to do so and step outside.”

  “Easy, Dick,” Janet whispered. “Just cool it.”

  Dick took several deep breaths to calm himself.

  “That won’t be necessary, Lieutenant,” Harry said, putting his mouth in reverse. “Just gather up your friends and leave this house. I am well within my rights in asking you to do so. Am I correct in that?”

  “Yes, sir, you are,” Voyles said.

  Jerry led the group outside. They paused for a few seconds on the sidewalk in front of the house.

  “Nice folks,” Voyles said.

  “Well, they were only a few hours ago,” Jerry said. “I’ve never seen such a transformation.”

  “Until this night, you had never seen the power of Sanjaman,” Bud said. “Believe me, this is but the tip of the iceberg. The worst is yet to come.”

  2

  Neither set of parents had anything to say to Marc and Heather that night. Not one word. Nothing. It was as if their youngest did not exist, was no longer a member of the family. The kids went to their respective bedrooms, in their respective homes, and did so in silence, with silence all around them.

  They were frightened, but managed to successfully hide that fear from their parents.

  Earlier that afternoon, Marc, remembering what had taken place in Heather’s bedroom, took his collection of statues of Indians and cowboys, and anything else that might come alive and do him harm, and put them in a box, which he placed in the far corner of his closet. He stacked other boxes on top of that.

  But he forgot his model airplanes, hanging suspended from tiny wires, looking down at him from the ceiling. Biplanes, crop-dusters, World War Two fighters and bombers, jets.

  Marc took a bath, got in his pajamas, and crawled into bed. He longed for an uninterrupted night’s sleep—without dreams. Just eight hours of deep sleep.

  But he doubted he would get that rest.

  Within moments, Marc heard footsteps on the carpeted hall outside his bedroom. The footsteps stopped in front of his door. Marc closed his eyes, then opened them into mere slits, like he’d seen people do in the movies and on TV.

  The door swung slowly open. His father looked in. Marc could see his Dad’s eyes. Mean-looking eyes. Savage, the word leaped into the boy’s brain. His father opened his mouth and a hissing sound came from his throat.

  Just like some sort of big lizard. Like a monitor lizard, Marc thought.

  Saliva leaked from his father’s lips, dripping onto the carpet. His Dad hissed again, much louder and much more menacing. Marc was terrified.

  Then Harry Anderson laughed. The laughter was hollow and evil. It was not, Marc realized, his father’s laughter.

  That isn’t my father, the boy thought, looking at the man. I have to accept that. That . . . creature standing in my bedroom door is not my father.

  Harry began flicking his tongue in and out and hissing horribly. Spittle oozed more freely from his mouth, wetting his chin.

  Marc felt sick.

  Harry closed the bedroom door.

  Marc turned his face to his pillow. For the first time in years, he felt like crying.

  Still shaken, he froze as a thumping sound began inside his closet.

  Heather looked through the dim illumination coming from her night light. She was looking at the rows of dolls and teddy bears that faced her bed.

  They stared back. All of them.

  Was it her imagination, or did the dolls and teddy bears have an evil look in their eyes?

  It was not her imagination. They did look evil.

  “I hate you,” she whispered. “Whoever you are doing this to me, I despise you!”

  The dolls began laughing at her, their voices very tiny and very shrill.

  The bears began kicking their feet and waving their paws.

  Laughter from the den drifted into the bedroom – her mother’s drunken laughter.

  “Come on, Arlene!” Heather’s father called. “Let’s give the boys a show.”

  Heather did not even want to think about what kind of show was going on. She felt disgust and revulsion wash over her as her brother’s cursing and profane suggestions drifted to her.

  The ringing of the phone ended the lewd suggestions. and the drunken laughter.

  “Sure!” her father shouted. “Hell, Harry, bring ’em all over. We’ll swap!”

  Heather knew what that meant, too.

  “Animals!” she whispered. “My whole family has changed right before my eyes.”

  She wondered if anyone might try to ... No! she tried not to think about that. She didn’t believe her father would, or her brothers. But Harry? ... She wasn’t too sure about him.

  She turned her face to her pillow and fought black tears.

  The dolls and teddy bears were doing awful things to each other.

  A dank, sour odor drifted through the window, as if someone or something had just lifted the lid on a freshly unearthed casket.

  Heather dived under the covers.

  Jerry sat with Maryruth. Across the room, Dick Voyles sat beside Janet on the facing couch. Bud and Leo sat in chairs. Leo looked very uncomfortable in the lushly furnished and immaculate doctor’s home, but Bud was as at ease.

  His Indian name was Walks-By-Night; but he had been christened Antonius Sigmund Hightower. His parents were, respectively, a violinist and a psychiatrist; hence the name. After graduating near the top of his class at NYU, Bud had acquired a master’s and a Ph.D. He then became an assistant professor. A few years later he was made a full professor. Then, one night, a vision came to him. In it, he was told he was a medicine man who should be practicing what he was born to do – making medicine for his people – instead of teaching in New York City.

  The same dream, or vision, if you wish, occurred every night for a week.

  It just about blew young Antonius’ mind.

  That was back in 1935. Antonius finally left the city and headed for the prairie. He just about starved to death the first year, for he was a city boy. But he stuck it out, learning. He lived among various Indian tribes for twenty years, practicing and perfecting his trade – and he lived a chaste life.

  Then one night he discovered whiskey.

  And loose women.

  Sex, Antonius concluded, beat the hell out of shaking gourds filled with rocks. And whiskey was pretty good, too.

  But as the years rolled by, his once adequate inheritance dwindled. In the late 1960s, Bud found himself in the small river town of Good Hope. In jail. This was not the first time Bud had cooled his heels in the slammer. For ten years he’d been a drunk and a womanizer. He had drunk and fucked his way from border to border, coast to coast – and he was nearly broke. He met Leo, who was also in jail, and the two men became friends, sharing their meager money and possession
s.

  Leo could barely read and write. Born in a town near San Francisco in 1915, Leo had gone to sea when he’d come of age and had sailed the oceans of the world. In 1945 he’d been badly injured when his ship had been torpedoed. Unable to return to the sea he so loved, he’d taken a job as a cook on a tug that traveled up and down the Mississippi River. Aboard it he was sober – most of the time. Ashore, he was soused. Finally, he retired, drew a small pension, and stayed drunk.

  “I meant to tell you all,” Voyles said. “I got a preliminary report from the state police lab. Those hairs I sent up? They are neither pure animal nor pure human. The lab people accused me of putting them all on; playing a game with them. What could I say?”

  “Nothing,” Bud said. “No one would believe you if you told the truth.”

  “I’m not even sure I know what the truth is anymore,” Voyles said with a sigh. Janet took his hand in hers and gently squeezed. Voyles said, “Did any of you notice the blank looks on the faces of the kids this evening?”

  “Yes,” Maryruth answered.

  “I did too,” Jerry said. “Same kind of look Matt and Van wore in my office. It’s almost as if they are being drained of intelligence.”

  “They are,” Bud said softly. “But it is only temporary. If Sanjaman would cease doing that, they would all return to normal within days.”

  “And if he doesn’t?” Maryruth asked.

  “Eventually they will die. I don’t know how long that would take.”

  Bud rose from the chair and Leo joined him. “We shall be leaving, now,” the Indian said. “But I caution you all: From this moment on, it becomes more than a game; it will turn very dangerous now. Sanjaman knows who his enemies are. The battle lines have been drawn.”

  “It might seem a stupid question,” Jerry said. “But what will ... Sanjaman do next? Do you have any idea?”

  “It is not a stupid question. Unfortunately it is one I cannot answer. The Manitou will certainly rape; he has been without women for more than a century. He ... probably will not kill – I don’t believe he really wanted to kill your wife, Doctor Baldwin – unless he is forced to do so. But it will not take much to push him over the line. For Sanjaman is evil. As for the others – ”