He feared that instead of a cable channel, the set would be tuned in to the same velvety darkness that had claimed his briefcase. With great relief, he saw ESPN’s SportsCenter fill the wide screen.
His stomach rumbled. He shuffled into the kitchen to get a snack. He hadn’t eaten since the afternoon.
Pulling open the refrigerator, he peered inside cautiously.
No darkness lurked inside there, either. Food and drink filled the shelves.
He laughed at his foolishness. His imagination had really run away with him. There was nothing to worry about. The blackness in the briefcase had merely been . . . well, he didn’t know what it had been, but he needed to forget about it.
He removed a carton of milk, set it on the counter, and turned to the pantry to get a box of cereal.
The pantry door opened to a pitch-black void.
A scream flew up his throat, came out of his mouth as a choked gasp.
Like the darkness in the briefcase, the black hole in the pantry exerted a strong gravitational pull. He tried to backpedal to the counter, move out of the energy’s orbit. But he felt himself drawn, inexorably, to the doorway.
Not happening to me, this is another hallucination, can’t be happening . . .
The darkness sucked him inside.
The darkness vanished in the twitch of an eye.
Blinking, Raymond realized that he was in a familiar place.
He stood at the mouth of a weed-choked, gravel driveway. The narrow path led to the mansion.
The same mansion he’d driven to a few weeks ago, when returning from Savannah with Andrew. The mansion that had haunted his dreams ever since.
Although he knew this world wasn’t real, iciness spread through his veins.
Thunder boomed across the land. The night sky bulged with storm clouds. A drizzle fell, the cold droplets as penetrating as sand.
Behind him, his Ford Expedition was crashed in a ditch, upside down, roof smashed and windows busted. Just like the actual accident.
The difference was that here, in his dream, he had somehow scrambled out of the vehicle after briefly losing consciousness.
He heard movement ahead, in the underbrush. Someone hacking his way along the drive. He knew who it was, without needing to look.
It was his son, Andrew. Going to the house in hopes of getting help for him.
He had to stop his boy from reaching the mansion. It wasn’t safe for him to go inside.
He hurried along the driveway, beating back bushes and twigs.
“Andrew!” he said. “Don’t go up there, son! Wait!”
But Andrew moved much faster than he did. He couldn’t catch him. Raymond’s movements were slowed, as if he were fighting through sludge.
By the time he stumbled out of the undergrowth and into a clearing, Andrew approached the veranda of the house.
His son wasn’t a grown man of thirty-one. He was short, maybe seven years old. He wore a red Atlanta Hawks T-shirt and matching shorts.
In the dream, Andrew was always a child. Raymond didn’t understand it.
“Andrew, stop!” he said. “Stay the hell outta that house, boy!”
But Andrew didn’t hear him. He pushed open the front door and disappeared inside.
Panting, Raymond dropped to his knees. Tears ran down his cheeks.
This was his fault. He never should have taken the exit off the highway and brought them to this godforsaken place.
But he hadn’t been in control of himself at the time. Someone—
something
—had piloted his body and brought him here.
The estate towered ahead of him, like a forbidden house in a fairy tale. Moss twisted around the thick columns. Dark windows stared blankly, like dead, giant eyes.
Then, a soft, greenish light brightened one of the upper rooms. The light pulsated rhythmically, like a luminescent heart. It had an indefinable, alien quality.
Always, the same questions about the light came to him. What was it? Where did it come from? Why did he have the sense that it was calling him toward it? What did it want with him?
Like a sleepwalker, he began to trudge forward through the mud.
He mounted the veranda steps, walked across the rotted floorboards. He approached the large oak door.
The door was locked.
He pounded his fist against the wood. “Andrew? You in there? Let me in!”
No answer.
Andrew couldn’t help him. His son had walked into a trap. Raymond understood that intuitively.
The thing that had captured his son didn’t want Raymond to reach the light in the upper room, either. Somehow, he knew that intuitively, too.
He didn’t know how he knew these things, but he
knew
them, as surely as he knew his name.
He had to find another way inside the house.
Although wooden chairs stood on the veranda, he didn’t bother attempting to shatter a window with one of them. He’d tried that before, in another instance of the dream. The windows were unbreakable.
Remembering what he had done in nightmares prior, while he was in the current nightmare, made him briefly question his sanity. What in God’s name was really going on?
The weird part was that in all of his bad dreams, he found himself at the locked front door of the estate, like this, needing to get inside to save his son. But at this point, the action always diverged in a different direction.
It was as if he were immersed in some weird, hyper-realistic video game. The particular circumstances changed. But the setting and the goal always remained the same.
The same opposition inevitably appeared, too.
He turned, putting the door at his back.
The caretaker, Walter, rounded the corner of the veranda.
The tall black man was an actual person. Raymond had encountered him when he originally visited the estate, over thirty years ago. He’d looked the same back then. Old yet strangely youthful, with a shock of iron-gray hair fluttering from his pate. Dressed in a somber black suit that recalled a funeral director.
Walter marched to the foot of the veranda steps.
“You don’t belong here, Raymond,” he said, in his baritone voice.
“I’m here to get my son. I’m not leaving without him.”
Walter advanced to the first step, long arms spread.
Raymond’s gut tightened.
“We are keeping Andrew here with us,” Walter said. “We are grateful to you for bringing him. Your work is now done. Go home in peace.”
“I’m not going anywhere without my boy.”
Walter hustled forward. He moved with the speed of a young man.
Raymond sprinted across the veranda.
That was when he saw the large bluish-gray cat crouched on the railing in front of him. Its vivid green eyes glimmered with cold intelligence.
He raised his arms to protect himself, but too late.
Screeching, the feline leapt at him.
Raymond clawed at his face, to tear away the cat.
But there was no cat. He wasn’t running across a veranda, either.
He was in the kitchen wearing a house robe, facing the shelves of the pantry.
He exhaled explosively. Slumped against the counter.
It had all been a dream, a hallucination.
A sharp pain flared in his head, like a steel spike driving into his brain. He winced. The throbbing ache was concentrated in the area of his bruise.
Tears came to his eyes. He’d never felt pain like this. It felt as if his skull were being pulverized into mush.
June hurried into the kitchen. “Ray, what’s wrong? I heard you shouting. Are you okay?”
“I . . . I thought I saw . . .” He was going to lie about seeing a mouse in the pantry, to throw her off the truth.
But as his headache intensified, he realized that he couldn’t lie any more. Something was seriously wrong with him, and denying the truth of the problem could be deadly.
“You thought you saw what?” June asked.
“June . . . I,” he said. “I think I want to go to that neurologist. I’m . . . scared.”
He began to tremble uncontrollably.
She took him in her arms, and held him.
Chapter 16
I
n the guest room of Carmen’s town house, freshly showered, Andrew prepared for bed.
Before leaving his house earlier that day, he’d packed an overnight bag. He was determined to sleep elsewhere that night, whether it was at Carmen’s, his mother’s, or in a hotel. Although his discussion with Carmen influenced him to believe that the presence in his house might harbor no malicious intent, he wasn’t ready to go back and face the ghost. He’d see how he felt about it tomorrow.
Sitting on the edge of the twin-size bed, he used his cell phone to check his messages at home. His father had left him a voice mail asking if he were interested in meeting him at the driving range tomorrow afternoon.
Dad had kept his word. Considering how badly their conversation had ended at the cookout, Andrew was happily surprised. He hadn’t expected his father to call him again for a long time.
A familiar blend of anxiety and hope churned in his stomach. Those warring emotions had tormented him when he was a kid, awakening whenever his father called or visited. Over the years, he’d learned by painful experience to harden his heart and expect nothing from his dad. But the past two months of regular phone calls and golf outings had turned him into a child again. In spite of his persistent worry that he was setting himself up for disappointment, he dared to believe that his father truly had changed.
It was a quarter to midnight, so he’d return his dad’s call in the morning. It would be nice to do something that would take his mind off his “ghost problem,” and Mika.
Mika, thank God, hadn’t left any messages on his cell phone, or the pager. Had she realized how crazy she’d acted earlier? He hoped that she’d gotten herself together. Still, after what she’d pulled, he’d be worse than a fool for pursuing a relationship with her. Carmen probably would slap him silly if he did.
There was a knock at the door.
“Come in,” he said.
Carmen opened the door. She was dressed for bed in an oversize T-shirt with “National Black Arts Festival 2004” printed across the front in bright colors. The shirt ended just above her knees.
He purposefully avoided checking out her legs. But it was hard to ignore the way her breasts nicely filled out the shirt.
He’d changed into baggy boxers and a T-shirt. He noticed that her gaze did a quick sweep across his legs.
Inwardly, he smiled. Women thought they were so slick sometimes.
Crossing her arms over her bosom, she leaned against the door-jamb. “Going to bed soon?”
“In a few minutes.”
“Need anything?”
Only you, lying here beside me.
“I’m cool.”
“I’m going to turn on the alarm system, then.” She yawned. “ ’Night, Drew.”
“Carmen?”
She turned. “Yeah?”
“Thanks. For letting me stay here, and, well, everything.”
She smiled. “Don’t mention it.”
They stared at each other, silent.
Then, she pulled the door shut. A few seconds later, he heard the beeps of the engaged security system.
He stretched out on the bed.
Carmen had wanted him to make a move. He’d felt it. But he’d let the opportunity slip away.
How could he act so boldly with Mika, whom he’d known for only a day, yet behave like a meek choirboy with a woman he knew so well? He didn’t know the answer to the question, and it frustrated him.
As he reached to the lamp on the nightstand to cut off the light, the pager, which he’d set beside the digital clock, vibrated.
There was a message from Mika.
YOU’LL DREAM ABOUT ME TONIGHT, BABY.
“Whatever,” he said. “If I do dream about you, it’ll probably be a nightmare.”
He snapped the pager shut and turned out the light.
An explosive orgasm blew Andrew out of sleep.
“Oh, shit,” he said, as the last ecstatic wave spasmed through him. Trembling, he sat up. The bedsheets entangled his legs; his boxer shorts were rolled under his hips.
He smelled a trace of jasmine, like the perfume Mika wore.
But it had to be his imagination. It only made sense that he’d imagine such a scent, after all—he’d just had a wet dream about her giving him an amazing blow job.