Nicolbee's Nightmares (2 page)

It was like nothing that had ever happened to him—even in other dreams before. It left him shaken, trembling, his brain restlessly trying to hurl itself back to that dream world. It was like a terrible and inexplicable hunger.

The
ash tray on the nightstand was heaped with cigarette stubs, when Joe finally rose from his position on the edge of the bed and walked over and snapped off the light. It wasn't necessary any longer. Morning had come. Joe didn't eat breakfast. He dressed
hurriedly, thanking God that Agnes was sleeping off her hangover and wouldn't hear him. He didn't want to have to look at her face. It was worse in the morning.

For the first time since he'd been down with a bad attack of flu some four years previously, Joe Nicolbee didn't go to work at the department store. He walked aimlessly, mingling with the early morning work
bound crowds, his eyes flicking past them un-seeingly. The torment and longing in his brain grew maddeningly greater.

Joe Nicolbee had no conscious realization of time passing. But it was dark when his footsteps finally took him wearily up the walk of his little cottage hours later. The turmoil in his soul was now a feverish yearning and incessant throbbing that wouldn't let him rest. His body was dead from fatigue, but in his brain there still blazed the picture of his dream world, the memory of Naya.

Agnes wasn't at home, and Joe moved wearily through the living room, climbing the stairs to his bedroom like a man in a trance. He didn't bother even to remove his shoes or clothing as he threw himself on his bed. It seemed to him as if his mind would never cease its torment, never cease its whirling, never let him sleep, never let him—

The
keen tingling intoxication of the fo
rest air was again in Joe Nicol
bee's nostrils. And this time his entrance into the glorious world of dreams was somehow very different from any he had ever experienced before. It seemed to Joe Nicolbee, as he stood there in the
gorgeously
colored forest once again, that he had awakened from another and evil dream to find himself here.

Joe blinked his eyes, gazing about in mingled excitement and expectation.

It occurred to him that this was also the first time in all his dreams that he had ever been twice to the same dream world. His pulses hammered feverishly. He hadn't lost Naya. He hadn't lost this beautiful world.

Naya, suddenly, was before him, smiling.

"Joe Nicolbee," she said, "you have returned. I knew you would."

"I thought I had lost you, forever," Joe said huskily.

Naya shook her head.

"You are just beginning to find me. You are just beginning to enjoy this world." She took him by the hand and they walked beneath the tall archway of trees.

"You have had trouble," Naya said after a moment's silence. "But do not let bad dreams disturb you."

"Bad dreams?" Joe Nicolbee gasped, recalling the thought that had occurred to him but a moment ago. "But this is a dream."

Naya nodded as solemnly as a little child.

"Yes," she said. "This is a dream. But you will learn more."

Joe Nicolbee walked on in silence, the closeness of Naya as beautiful, as splendid, as symphonic music to his soul. They came to a clearing, and far in the distance mountains were visible, shrouded faintly in soft, fleecy clouds.

Naya pointed upward to the mountains. Joe saw through the white cotton mists that the towers of a magnificent castle were visible.

"That is ours," Naya said. "It has been waiting for us."

Joe Nicolbee held her hand a little more firmly. Tears were in his eyes.

Agnes
was standing over him again
when Joe woke up. It had been
her persistent pulling at his ear that
jarred him back into his world of obnoxious reality. He still remembered entering the magnificent castle with Naya, of strolling through the richly adorned halls and past the towering marble staircases, of placing his arm around her slim waist—

"Where have you been all day?" his wife's sharply voiced query cut knifelike through the glorious haze that still webbed Joe's brain.

"You weren't at work," she went on accusingly. "You were out all day. I was nearly crazy."

Joe noticed by her breath that she had staved off the madness she spoke of by a few drinks.

"You'll be lucky to get your job back at the store," she shrilled angrily. "And it's all because of those crazy dreams. Dreams, dreams, dreams! I think you're losing your mind."

Joe resisted an impulse to hurl something into her over
painted face. He picked up the water glass on the night table, gulped a drink. He cleared his throat, fighting back the rage and frustration he felt. He spoke evenly, grimly.

"I wish you'd get the hell out of this room," he told her.

Agnes stepped back, slightly aghast. This was the first time Joe had ever shown temper. Maybe he knew what she'd been up to. Maybe he—

"You aren't well," she said hastily. "You don't know what you're saying. Those crazy dreams. I talked to the druggist about you. He said those crazy dreams are nervous trouble and indigestion. He gave me something you've got to take." Suddenly she looked down at the water glass on the night table. She stopped.

"I wish to God," Joe Nicolbee said, rising, "that those dreams of mine, especially these last, were reality. I wish to God that this was nothing more than a nightmare."

His wife was gaping at him, a curious expression frozen on her face.

Joe Nicolbee went on.

"Maybe they are reality. Maybe this hellish existence with you is nothing more than a nightmare. Maybe my real life is in my so-called dreams. Maybe you are nothing more than a figment of some very bad dreams I've had."

Agnes was speaking, her face was white with terror.

"You are crazy," she said, backing away. She looked again at the glass on the night table. "Maybe it's that drug that made you crazy. Maybe that was all you needed to set you off. Ohhhh, I'm sorry I got it. I'm sorry I got it!" Her voice was a shrill, regretful wail.

Joe Nicolbee's eyes flew to the glass. He stepped forward, a horrible premonition in the back of his mind.

"What about that glass?" he demanded. "What are you talking about? Did you put a drug in it?" He grabbed his wife's arm roughly.

"He—the druggist—gave me some pills. They were to stop your dreaming for good. They—" she faltered, almost limp with terror.

"Stop my dreaming?" Joe shouted aghast. "Stop my dreaming?"

"I was to put two in there, every night," Agnes said shakenly, the fumes from her breath nauseatingly alcoholic, "but I put them all, all eight of them, into it tonight. Now you drank them!"

Joe Nicolbee, eyes blazing in wild rage, felt his hands reaching for his wife's throat. This was too much. This was beyond endurance. This was—

A sudden, overwhelming drowsiness seized Joe Nicolbee. He felt his hands dropping away from his wife before they'd reached her throat. The room was spinning in pinpoints of light. He
sank to the floor, the room still whirling.

When
Joe Nicolbee opened his eyes, he was cushioned on a drifted bed of gloriously colored leaves in the cathedral-like forest. There was the intoxicating freshness of tingling air in his nostrils.

"It is all right, Joe Nicolbee," Naya's voice said.

Joe blinked sleepily, then he saw that the girl sat beside him. She was smiling softly, and her voice was like the singing of angels.

"You have dreamed," she said. "But you will dream no more. You will
have no more nightmares."

Joe looked at the girl bewilderedly.

"But the other world," he said, "was it—"

"Was it reality?" Naya finished for him. She smiled. "Just because it was unpleasant was no reason for it to be reality. You will dream no more. There will be no more nightmares. You have made this your reality. So why should it not be so?"

Joe Nicolbee took the girl in his arms. He thought for a fleeting instant of the creature back in rea— in the nightmare—and smiled. She had said there would be no more dreaming. And there wouldn't be, ever again.

David Wright O’Brien (1918-1944) also wrote under the names of: Bruce Dennis, Clee Garson, Duncan Farnsworth, John York Cabot and Richard Vardon. Though he only have a few short years of writing, he was very prolific during that time.