Jack Ketchum - Sleep Disorder

But—

She'd stopped at the Student Union for a campus paper. And there it was in boldface.

ASSISTANT BOTANY PROFESSOR DIES IN RAIN FOREST

Poor Howard. The genus of shelf-fungus that was going to make him famous had also killed him. A "blood-born spore infection," the article reported. "Antibiotic resistant."

A heavy grief settled over Clara like a weighted net.

It lasted for all of two minutes.

Because suddenly there were Barney and David, coming through the lobby, smiling. David in his tight jeans, Barney in his more fashionable khaki baggies. Muscles straining their tank tops, and something else straining at their groins.

"Sandwich anyone?" asked Barney.

And Clara was hungry.

It was weeks later that she received his final letter, delayed by overseas mail.

She read it over, thankful that he'd obviously died before getting those awful Polaroids she'd sent. They'd been weighing on her conscience lately.

Dearest Clara , the letter said. I still love you.

Howard

It was shorter than usual, thank god.

"Rest in peace," she muttered, and tossed the letter into the garbage.

I'm a monster , he'd thought, giggling as he plodded toward the nurses' station. Walking didn't come easy. Not when your body sprouted hundreds of fungal shelf bodies. But he plodded on, inspired to the very end by love.

At 4 a.m. the floor was vacant, the skeleton crew of nurses all busy with their bed checks.

Howard crunched across the floor.

Writing had been harder even than walking, yet his scarlet, scaleencrusted hand had eventually penned his final love letter to Clara Holmes. Before he'd sealed the envelope he'd coughed up several million white spores onto the letter, invisible against the paper. By now the tendrillike mycelium of Vermilius Moleyus had wormed into his brain. He could think only in snatches. Air…dispersible…

…blood-born…

…via inhalation…

He shuffled down the hall to the desk, then shuffled back to his bed, where he died moments later, his ridge-studded face set in the faintest of smiles. Love had prevailed. No one had seen him place his letter in the OUT box on the counter of the nurses' station.

"Just our luck, huh," Straker was still complaining. "I look forward to a gander at that dish every day. I mean, she might as well be wearing dental floss."

Bilks frowned. No gander today. Where the hell is she?

Just as the car backed out of the undergrad library lot, their radio started squawking. "Campus Unit 208, 82 with guard at Morril Hall, Room 304. Investigate possible Signal 22."

Bilks frowned. He frowned a lot. "10-4," he answered.

"What the fuck's a Signal 22?"

"Unknown trouble," Bilks recited off the code sheet.

"Some call. Shit." Straker pulled onto Campus Drive. "What was that loke again?"

"Morril Hall, 304." He checked the student directory. And stared. "Anybody we know?"

"Morril Hall, room 304. Clara M. Holmes."

"What's this 22 shit?" Bilks asked.

The security guard, a criminal justice major part-timing, seemed fidgety. "Complaints about a smell."

"You don't say. Stinks worse than a Georgia hoghouse."

"No answer when I knocked. And her car's in the lot."

Bilks nodded. A moment later the floor RA appeared, a chubby blonde in flip flops and an avocado sundress. "What is that?" she asked, her nose crinkling.

"We won't know what till you open up," said Bilks.

The girl unlocked the door with her master. Took one glance into the room and fainted.

The stench hit them like a runaway truck. The security guard turned away and threw up in the hallway. Bilks and Straker gagged as they entered the cramped room.

Time to go back to the city , thought Bilks.

At first he wasn't even sure the thing on the bed was human. But it had to be. Despite the mass of queer, flat, glistening red ridges, like slimy chips of stone, that covered the body so completely you couldn't see an inch of flesh between them. It had to be because the thing had a head — topped by short butter-blonde hair, neatly coiffed.

That, and a white string bikini.

"The bedroom's down this hall," he said. "You'll find a box at the foot of the bed. I'd like you to wear what's inside. Only what's inside." He smiled and poured them each a second glass of cognac, handed one to her. The crystal sang against her fingernail. She drank and touched the delicate silver chain around his neck, felt its warmth between her thumb and forefinger — his warmth — and let it fall.

She turned to do as he said. On the wall in front of her was a mounted stone image of the triadic Shiva Maheshvara. The face on the left was female, on the right, male. In the center, the mask of Eternity. An ancient masterpiece. Where in God's name had he plundered this? she thought.

Below, on a pedestal, stood a terracotta figurine from Tlatilco over seven hundred years old — the dual-faced "pretty lady" that the Toltecs buried with their dead. And on the opposite wall, a relief carving in black granite. Kali. His apartment was filled with treasures. Scythian goldwork. Bassari and pre-Christian Polynesian sculpture. The restored fragments of twelfth-century Norman mosaics — two of them — occupying an entire wall in the living room. A "Harrowing of Hell" from a fifteenth-century psalter. The dealer/collector in her was reeling.

So was the woman.

It wasn't the cognac. It was the man. This man.

She'd waited a lifetime for one who just might be her equal. "Christine," he said.

She turned and saw him backlit by the glow of the fireplace. He raised his glass to his lips. "When you get in there, be sure to light the candles."

His bedroom was modest and spare, though every piece spoke quietly of his taste. A simple walnut mirror hung over a Hepplewhite chest of drawers. An old, primitive oak wardrobe that had probably once belonged to the servant class. A Saladino bookcase, a Louis XVI writing table and a Louis XV berg è re. A William and Mary four-poster bed.

Two candles stood on the Louis XVI, two more on an inlaid cherry nightstand by the bed. Wooden matches lay in a Georg Jensen silver pit plate. She lit the candles and turned off an oil lamp.

From the wall beside the bed sprang a wooden Magalenian atlatl carved in the shape of a horse. Yet another masterpiece.

Christ…

A plain white hatbox sat on the bed. She opened it, parted the taupe tissue within.

And stared into the face of an African lioness.

Magnificent.

She touched it. The fur was real, smooth and soft in the direction of its growth and courser as she moved her fingers against the grain. A soft linen lining had been sewn in. Rich creamy leather fashioned the wide nose and think dark lips and carbon-black lashes seemed to flutter above each eye slit — she could not imagine what time and care it had taken to do this. Perfect, genuine whiskers lanced from the snout.

She picked it up. Her fingers teased around the edges. Some sort of plate obviously had been slipped inside to give the mask some rigidity, plastic or thin wood. The mask felt surprisingly light, delicate as Tibetan silk. Beautiful , she mused.

The ears lay back flat against the head. They and the open mouth gave the lioness an appearance of waiting. She could almost see her in the tall, waving grass of some veldt. Crouched, scenting the wind.

She stepped out of her kidskin heels, unzipped the back of her dress and allowed it to flow down her shoulders, heard its silky hiss to the floor. She draped it carefully over the back of the berg è re. Then the stockings and the black slip and finally the sheer lace bodysuit. She stood naked before the mirror, aware that already she was participating in some sort of arcane ceremony with him. That this was not just sex but ritual. The thought excited her in the way that sex itself hadn't for a very long time.