Sweet Dreams Read online

  Then a faint white light enveloped the mask, and it slowly dissolved into the light, once more becoming that which it was.

  5

  “He’s a son of a bitch,” Lisa slurred the words drunkenly. “And I’m gonna take him for every dime he’s got.” She looked at her diamond-encrusted watch. Eight-thirty.

  “You’d better not attempt to drive back to Good Hope,” the man with her said. He put a hand on her leg and slipped it under her dress, caressing the softness of her thigh.

  Lisa pushed the hand from her. “I’m fine,” she said. “And keep your goddamn hands to yourself. Don’t you ever get enough?”

  The man laughed. “Not of you, baby,” he told her. “I’m gettin’ another hard on.”

  “Then go stick it in your wife,” Lisa told him. “I’m leaving.”

  She pushed away from the bar and lurched toward the door. Ignoring the concerned calls of those who had left the party and gone to the bar, Lisa stumbled toward her car. Outside, she leaned against a Mercedes for a moment, then staggered to her own car. She managed to unlock the door and fell into the Cadillac. After several attempts, she got the key into the ignition and cranked the engine, racing the motor. She dropped the transmission into D and spun around on the gravel, spraying stones over a dozen parked vehicles as she roared out onto the highway. The stones spider-webbed windshields and shattered a headlight. The heavy Cadillac left tire tracks on the concrete.

  After several futile attempts, one of which forced another car off the road and into a telephone pole, Lisa managed to get onto the interstate. She lowered all the windows so the rushing wind could clear her head. Then she cursed Jerry Baldwin, the adrenaline from her anger surging through her and mixing with the alcohol in her blood.

  “Oh, you bastard!” she cursed the image of her husband that was mirrored in her brain. She reeked of the smell of sex. She and her long-time lover had coupled like animals in the darkness of the parking lot behind the night club. They had fucked standing up, with Lisa’s back to a car.

  She laughed at the memory of that rutting. Then the face of her husband once more filled her head. “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!” she screamed.

  She pulled off the interstate and into the parking lot of a truck stop. Staggering inside, she got several containers of coffee to go and a greasy hamburger. In the car, she ate half the hamburger and promptly vomited down the side of her white Caddy. She tossed the half-eaten burger on the asphalt and sat, sipping the hot coffee.

  “You all right, lady?” a truckdriver asked.

  Lisa glared at the man. “Leave me alone, you cretinous animal!”

  “ ’Scuse the hell outta me, lady,” the truckdriver said. “I was just tryin’ to help.”

  “You’re all alike!” Lisa shouted drunkenly at the man and his partner. “I know what you want. You want my body.”

  “Lady,” the truckdriver said. “The condition you’re in, I wouldn’t screw you with his dick!” He jerked a thumb toward the man beside him.

  “Thanks a lot,” his partner said.

  “Filthy beasts!” Lisa squalled at the men.

  They backed away from her anger.

  “Damn you all to hell!” Lisa screamed into the night. She cranked her car and roared out of the parking lot. She clipped a small car, knocking it off the road and into a ditch.

  The truck drivers ran to aid the occupants of the small car. Luckily, no one was badly hurt.

  “Let’s call the Bears,” a truck driver said. “We gotta get her off the road ’fore she kills somebody.”

  “For sure,” another driver replied.

  Inside the truck stop, one of the men phoned the state police and gave them the description of the car and the license number. “Headin’ south on 55. And in one hell of a hurry. You’d better stop her ’fore she kills somebody.”

  The dispatcher sent out the word.

  At Benton, Missouri, Lisa cut off the interstate onto highway 77. She crossed interstate 57 at Charleston and wound around the back roads of the county until she came to the town of East Prairie. A sheriffs deputy spotted her and gave chase, but he lost her when his patrol car stalled at one hundred and ten miles per hour.

  “Crazy bitch!’ the deputy said. He radioed the MHP and gave them the location of his last sighting.

  “She’s heading for home,” the trooper radioed back. “Name is Lisa Baldwin. She lives in Good Hope.”

  “She ain’t never gonna make it,” the deputy prophesied.

  “She’ll probably make it,” the trooper said grimly. “Drunks being what they are. I just hope she doesn’t kill some innocent along the way.”

  Lisa was now hopelessly lost and confused. She drove down one twisting road and then another. Finally, she gave up and pulled onto a gravel road. Her headlights picked up what she mistakenly thought to be a circus tent.

  “Oh, boy,” she muttered. “Lions and tigers and clowns.”

  She opened the door and fell out of the car onto the damp ground. The rain had been transformed into a light mist.

  A thousand yards away, beside a long-abandoned railroad track, something stirred. Red eyes stared into the night. A slimy substance leaked from a misshapen body.

  Lisa staggered toward the canvas which loomed wet and dusty tan in the dark of the starless night.

  She paused to get her bearings. A dozen double Scotches had so saturated her system it was a miracle she was able to function at all. The world spun around her.

  She staggered and stumbled toward the canvas. She thought she heard someone laughing. She stopped and turned toward the sound. Only darkness greeted her. That and almost total silence.

  A ball of light suddenly appeared, glowing at the edge of the woods. As she walked toward the bobbing glow, the light moved closer. She thought it was someone with a flashlight. She called out to the light.

  The light stopped.

  Now the laughter came from behind her. She spun around, fear clutching at her. “Who is it?” she called out. “Who are you?”

  She thought she heard the words, “Come to me.”

  She turned around. The light was even closer. Lisa began to back up. Fear grew within her, closing her throat. Sweat streaked her face and dotted her thin evening gown. The heel of one shoe broke and she kicked both shoes off.

  “Mine,” she heard a voice clearly speak the word. “Mine, now.”

  A scream finally ripped from Lisa’s fear-swollen throat. She spun around as fingers touched the bare flesh of her shoulder, and she stood, numbed by shock and fear of what presented itself before her.

  She didn’t know what it was.

  It was a man; but then it was not a man. It had arms and legs that were twisted, hideously deformed. Its head was huge; three times the size of a normal human head. Its face was a curious brown color, mottled with patches of yellow and green. The creature’s eyes, set under a bulging forehead, were red and evil and large, with tiny black dots in their centers. Its nose was nooked, bent to one side, while the cruelty of its mouth was enhanced by widely spaced, pointed teeth. Its chin was long and pointy, with a patch of hair directly in the center. This monster’s large head was covered with a mop of long shaggy black hair.

  The creature was naked. Its body was muscular yet grotesque, slick with some sort of fluid. An outer skin clung loosely to its frame, hanging from it like that of a snake half in and half out of its shedding.

  A thought penetrated Lisa’s fear: Just born. The thing had just ripped out of the womb.

  Lisa had spent too many hours assisting in deliveries not to recognize the sight of something newborn.

  But what in God’s name could have birthed something this hideous?

  And why?

  Reality tore through her paralyzing fear. She screamed and ran from the creature. She ran toward the bobbing, pulsating light. Behind her, the creature lumbered forward in pursuit, laughing as it came. Its voice was eerie. Not of this world.

  The bobbing light suddenly shifted an
d sprang in front of Lisa. It charged her, seeming to hold her captive with some sort of hypnotic power. She looked at the light and within its complicated depths saw the father and mother of the creature that had confronted her. She saw half a dozen births and deaths within the confines of the circle of light. The circle was growing, as if gaining strength from Lisa’s nearness. Now a thousand stories were depicted in the circle of light. There were scenes of madness and magic, of depravity and horrible torture, of sexual debauchery and human sacrifice. They spanned hundreds of years. Within the globe of pulsing light, Lisa saw animals that were long extinct. She saw races of people no modern-day human eyes had ever viewed.

  She saw fear and loathing and selfishness and greed and hypocrisy.

  And she saw herself.

  She began screaming.

  She wanted to run, but could not. Some invisible force was holding her in place. She felt the cool night air touch her body as the creature behind her tore the clothing from her. She felt his slickness press against her and his foul odor filled her senses, nauseating her with its hideous stench.

  She had noticed the genitals of the creature. They were as deformed as the rest of this manlike creature.

  But it was not sex the brute wanted from Lisa . . . yet.

  Lisa felt herself lifted off the ground and pushed toward the pulsing light. The light, the creature, and the human came together, becoming as one.

  Excruciating pain touched every part of the woman’s body. She attempted to scream, but no sound escaped from her throat. Her brain seemed to be swelling. She felt as though it would burst from her skull. Blood began pouring from her nose and ears and mouth and eyes. Her very life was being sucked from her by some invisible force.

  Could she have turned around, she would have seen the creature absorbing her blood, would have seen it seeping into the skin of the brute.

  Suddenly, she felt herself being pushed forward – forcibly bent at the waist. The creature’s huge erection drove into her, bulling and tearing its way deep inside her. But she could make no sound to protest this pain and outrage. Her entire head was inside the light, and inside the global illumination, it was quite a different world.

  Inside the ball of light, a violent storm was taking place, but a storm unlike anything she had ever witnessed. Lisa was seeing a molecular energy storm, a fury of such intense electric vividness she was totally blind seconds after her eyes touched on it. The crackling, the charging, the roaring were so extreme she was also deaf.

  Lisa did not know it yet, but she had witnessed, briefly, the electrical impulses of tens of thousands of beings, animal and human.

  As the creature sexually, brutally, took the woman, her blood and his semen staining her naked thighs, life as most people understand it left Lisa. But life as a few know it, never dies. Instead, the electricity of Lisa Baldwin became more fuel for the light. The light – the reason for the creature’s existence, its mother and father, its source of life, its womb for hundreds of years, its home after the evil shaman’s original death, and its fountainhead for reincarnation. This was the creature’s seventh reincarnation. Already the creature would be almost impossible to kill.

  One more reincarnation, and it would never die.

  Jerry could not understand why his head was pounding so. He had had very little to drink at Maryruth’s house. He pulled the covers higher but still the pounding persisted. That was odd, because he felt no pain.

  Then he realized this was not a headache. Someone was hammering on the front door. He rolled over, looked at his clock/radio. The digital numbers read 10:00.

  “All right!” he yelled. Now his head really did hurt. “O.K. I’m coming.”

  He fumbled for his robe, slipped it on, and stumbled toward the front door. When he flung open the door – irritated because he did not like arrogant, impatient knocking – he was momentarily confused.

  His front porch was filled with uniforms: state police, sheriffs deputies, local cops.

  He waved the officers inside. “Sorry it took you so long to rouse me, gentlemen,” he apologized. “But last night was the first really good night’s sleep I’ve had in several weeks. What’s on your mind?”

  A large highway cop, built like the trunk of a huge tree and wearing lieutenant’s bars, came right to the point. “Doctor Baldwin, is your wife here now?”

  Jerry blinked and had to think hard for several seconds. He had left Maryruth’s house at three o’clock Saturday afternoon, and then had gone back to her house at seven for dinner. He had arrived home just after midnight. He had not heard Lisa enter the house. His sleep had been interrupted only once, at one forty-five. One of his patients had phoned, complaining that she could not sleep. Jerry had told her to take two aspirin and see him Monday. He’d been tempted to tell her to take three hundred and sixty-five aspirin and call him next year.

  Jerry shook his head. “Gentlemen, I don’t know if she is or not.” He noticed the odd looks the officers exchanged. “We sleep in separate bedrooms,” he explained.

  “Would you please check, sir?” the lieutenant asked politely.

  “Certainly.”

  Jerry was back in a moment. He shook his head. “Her bed has not been slept in. Now would one of you please tell me what this is all about?”

  “There are at least five state warrants out for your wife, Doctor Baldwin,” the MHP officer said, as blandly as possible. “And before it’s all over, probably more than that will surface. She ran a car off the road in Cape Girardeau. Gravel from her rear tires broke six windshields and some headlights at a bar parking lot in the Cape. She was seen traveling in excess of one hundred miles per hour shortly after that. She hit a car at a truck-stop parking area. She is wanted in Mississippi County for resisting arrest, speeding, failure to maintain control, and about ten other charges. You don’t have any idea where she might be?”

  Again, Jerry shook his head. “No. She went to a party at the Cape yesterday afternoon. I saw patients and could not accompany her. She was very irritated about that. As a matter of fact, gentlemen, she told me yesterday she was leaving me.” He wondered if he should have kept his mouth shut about that last bit?

  The phone rang in the den. Jerry said, “Excuse me, please.” He listened for a moment. His face paled and sweat broke out on his forehead. “I see,” he finally spoke. “Sir, the police are here now. Would you please tell them what . . .”

  The person on the other end broke the connection. Jerry looked at the buzzing phone, then slowly turned to face the police.

  “The caller refused to give his name. He hung up on me. He said my wife’s Cadillac is parked out near the dig site, by some old railroad tracks. He said . . .” – Jerry cleared his throat – ” . . . he said my wife is lying on the ground and she is dead. What old tracks?”

  The chief deputy looked at his younger partner. “Roll. Seal it off. We’re right behind you.”

  Jerry said, “Let me get some clothes on. I want to go with you.”

  “That would probably be best, sir,” the highway cop said, a slight edge to his voice. The attitude of the officers had not so subtly changed with the news of Lisa’s death.

  “I’m sure it would,” Jerry replied, an equally sharp edge to his voice. “Since, if you had taken the time to investigate, I am the county coroner.”

  He rode with the lieutenant of highway patrol. Jerry asked, “I gather I am a suspect in all this, right, Lieutenant?”

  “I really can’t answer that, Doctor. This is county business – so far. Besides, I am here only by accident.” He did not elaborate on that last tidbit of information.

  The caravan screamed past two young kids on bicycles. Heather and Marc. Jerry had just enough time to recognize them. They were riding on the blacktop, and doing so properly, with the traffic. They had bottles of water and small sacks tied to their bikes.

  Jerry waved at them and they returned his greeting. Good-looking kids, he thought.

  “. . . happened out near the light, I g
uess,” the highway cop was saying.

  “The what?” Jerry jerked his head around.

  “The light. Old legend around these parts. A mysterious light that appears at night. I haven’t seen it in years, but it’s real, whatever it is.”

  “Interesting,” Jerry said, mentally recalling what Van had said about the light.

  Jerry looked in the side mirror. Heather and Marc were pedaling furiously. He smiled at their frantic efforts to keep up with the fast-traveling automobiles. Then they were lost around a bend in the road.

  “Something amusing you, Doctor?” the lieutenant asked.

  “Those kids back there. I know them.”

  “I see.”

  “I doubt it.” Jerry was thoughtful for a moment. He said, “I’d like you to radio the Mississippi County Sheriffs Department; ask them if their county coroner will meet us at the site. I’ll want a second opinion, and, I suspect, so will you.”

  “Good thinking, sir.”

  Jerry looked at him to see if the cop was putting him on. He wasn’t. “Thanks.”

  The officer was busy with his radio and did not pick up on the dryness of tone.

  The scene that greeted Jerry was not a pleasant one. He had steeled himself for what he felt would be the worst; but he had not counted on anything like this.

  After one look, Jerry walked away from the group of cops and vomited.

  None of the officers had ever seen anything to match the sight lying before them.

  Lisa’s head looked as though it had been cooked. All the hair was burned away. Her eyes were white sightless orbs. Their color had been destroyed. Her face was unrecognizable. Charred meat. Jerry could not imagine what could have done that – or why. Her head was grotesquely swollen. Again, Jerry could not imagine what could have caused the horrible swelling. Lisa’s genital area was caked with flecks of dried blood. The body itself was an unnatural white.

  “I never seen a body like that,” the young deputy said. “How come she’s so white?”

  Jerry looked at the lieutenant of highway patrol. “Have someone take pictures of what I’m doing,” he said.