Graham Masterton - The Ninth Nightmare

‘What do you mean? You don’t seriously want to split up with me, do you?’

‘I don’t know. Yes. No. I guess I’m just bushed, that’s all. All this fricking traveling. I don’t even know which city we’re supposed to be in.’

‘Cleveland, Ohio. Tomorrow we open at the State Theater at Playhouse Square for three alternate nights and then we’re off to not-so-sunny Cincinnati.’

‘Cleveland. Jesus. To think we got famous to wind up in Cleveland — the Mistake on the Lake. If that’s not a fricking paradox, I don’t know what is.’

The twins sat on the bed in silence for a while. They were seventeen-and-a-half years old, although Kiera was actually older than Kieran by thirty-one minutes. They had blond hair and faces that were almost ethereally good-looking, with wide green eyes and straight Grecian noses and sensual lips. Their manager Lois Schulz often said that they reminded her of the very young Elvis Presley and his twin Jessie — ‘Well, they would if Jessie had been a girl instead of a boy, and if he hadn’t been stillborn.’ Lois often came out with remarks like that.

In actual fact they looked like their mother Jenyfer Kaiser, who had died of an apparent stroke only two hours after giving birth to them. Their father Jim had raised them as if they were the most precious children on earth — and to him, of course, they had been. They were the living reminder of the woman he had loved so much and lost.

Kieran and Kiera had always sung songs together, ever since they were very small. They used to swing on their swing set at the end of their yard in Brentwood, harmonizing Puff, The Magic Dragon. To them, singing together was as natural as talking. When they were sixteen Lois had heard them singing in their high school musical Grease and had persuaded their father to let her take them on. Within two months they had appeared on America’s Got Talent and won rapturous applause from the audience, and the day after their sixteenth birthday they had been signed by Sony. Their first album Kaiser Twins had reached number nine on the Billboard Top 100.

‘I don’t know why you think this movie is so scary,’ said Kiera, frowning at the TV. ‘Ghosts never hurt people, do they? Not real ghosts.’

‘That old bum was scary,’ Kieran reminded her. ‘That one we saw on Santa Monica Boulevard.’

‘Well, kind of. But he didn’t actually do anybody any real harm, did he? Just stepping right out in front of cars like that.’

‘He could have caused a serious accident.’

‘Only in somebody’s pants.’

Kieran gave his sister a wry smile and shook his head. ‘What time do they want us for the run-through tomorrow?’

‘Early. Seven at the latest. Lois wants us to make some changes. She wants us to finish up with Magic Mirror instead of I Love The World And The World Loves Me. She thinks it’s much more upbeat and the audience always sing along so we can make it into a really grand finale. She’s even hired a twelve-piece horn section.’

‘Jesus. I don’t know why she doesn’t go the whole hog and bring in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.’

‘Oh, come on, Kieran, it’s going to be amazing. There’s going to be hundreds more mirrors, too, so the whole stage is going to be sparkling.’

Kieran smacked the chili powder from his hands. ‘You love all of this, don’t you?’

‘What, and you don’t?’

‘Sure I do. I just don’t want to spend the rest of my life singing I Love The World And The World Loves Me, over and over and over, until I’m about a hundred-and-eleven years old. At some time in my life I want to do something important — something that really makes a difference.’

‘Our singing makes a difference. We make millions of people happy, don’t we?’

‘Pizza makes millions of people happy, but that doesn’t mean it’s important. If you woke up tomorrow and nobody had ever heard of pizza, what difference would it make? Same with us.’

‘So what do you want to do? Run for the White House?’

‘I don’t know. I can’t describe it exactly, but I feel like I have this destiny waiting for me.’

‘Oka — a–ay,’ said Kiera, uncertainly. ‘Maybe you’ll go to med school after all, and be like some really famous surgeon. I know plenty of people who could do with a head transplant — Mickey Veralnik, for one.’

‘You should forget about Mickey Veralnik. I keep telling you, he’s not worth it.’

‘And you should stop watching this stupid movie and get some sleep. It’s half after one already.’

She reached over to grab the remote but Kieran snatched it away from her. ‘Just because you’re a half hour older than me, that doesn’t mean you can tell me what to do. I want to watch the end of this, OK?’

‘Have it your way. But if you have one of your nightmares again and you feel like crap tomorrow morning, don’t blame me.’

‘Do I ever blame you for anything?’

‘Yes. Always.’

Kieran flicked a peanut at her and it bounced off her nose. In retaliation, Kiera picked up one of the pillows and whacked him over the head, so that he spilled his peanuts all over the bedcover. ‘ Shit !’ said Kieran, and hit her with his own pillow. Kiera hit him back and then the two of them clambered to their feet and stood on the bed, bouncing up and down and bashing each other with their pillows.

Eventually — panting and laughing — they both lost their balance and fell over sideways. They lay on the bed, breathless, looking into each other’s green eyes. Even after all of these years of growing up together, they still found it a source of fascination that they should look so much alike, and think so much alike. For each of them, it was like owning a mirror which could talk back.

Kiera reached out and stroked Kieran’s hair. ‘You need a haircut. Your hair is almost as long as mine.’

Kieran said, ‘The last time I had a haircut we saw that dead guy, remember?’

‘Oh, so you’re not going to get a haircut because you’re scared you might see him again?’

Kieran said nothing but shook his head. It had been over two months ago but they could both visualize him as clearly as if he were sitting in the bedroom with them now. Kieran had been having his hair cut in the old-fashioned barbershop in the Handlery Hotel in San Francisco. It was a long, mirrored room with a dozen red-leather chairs in a row, and a row of white basins. Kieran had been sitting two chairs away from a bulky, balding man who appeared to be asleep. Nobody was cutting his hair or shaving him, even though there were two barbers at the far end of the room, talking to each other and laughing. Kiera had come into the barbershop, carrying a whole bunch of shopping bags, and said, ‘You should see the dress I’ve just bought! Prada, seventeen hundred dollars!’

The barber who was cutting Kieran’s hair had gone to fetch more towels. Kiera had said to Kieran, ‘What’s the matter with that guy? He looks like he’s asleep.’

It was then that they had both noticed that the towel around the man’s neck was stained bright red, and that the stain was rapidly spreading. Kiera had gone over to him and said, ‘Sir? Sir? Are you OK? You look like you’re bleeding.’

She had turned his chair around and it was then that the man’s head had suddenly dropped to one side, revealing that his neck had been cut open all the way back to his spine. Kiera had looked at Kieran in horror, but they had both realized that what they were seeing was a memory of a dead man, an after-image, like all the ghosts they saw. None of the barbers were cutting his hair or paying him any attention because in reality he simply wasn’t there.