Norman Partridge - Slippin' into Darkness

Or so he told himself. He had always treated his body like a twitchy machine that ran out of whack or not at all. It made things easier, just as it sometimes was easier to think of himself as The Six Million Dollar Man. He couldn’t fix the machine, but he could keep it running. For a time the machine ran on nothing more than dreams, April Destino, and Halcion. Last night, when it was ready to blow its main circuit, it ran on April alone.

Today it needed food and coffee. There was work to be done. The girl of his dreams was alive, living in this moment. Everything would be okay if he could just hold on to her.

Sunlight glinted off the spotless windshield of the Dodge Diplomat patrol car. Steve stared at his big hands on the hard black wheel, at the perfect creases in the sleeves of his uniform shirt and the swollen knuckles that had KO’d an umpire. The whole damn thing seemed so unreal. A living, walking dream was locked in his basement. A living, screaming dream. Every passing minute that separated him from April created another little hole in the window of reality. Yet Steve was sure that everything had happened just as he remembered it.

It hadn’t been a dream.

April was back.

He’d dug her up. Her empty shell, at least. That was nuts. Full tilt loony tunes. But he had been certain that he needed the dead husk of April to get to the real April, the April of his dreams. The dead April, the dreamweaver he had known in that sad little trailer, had convinced him that she was the only one who could help him to dream, to find the April he loved. But something had gone terribly wrong when the dreamweaver killed herself.

That was the way it shook out. It had to be. Because the dreamweaver was dead, and the girl of his dreams was here.

Real. Touchable. Beautiful.

No, that wasn’t the way she was.

Frightened. Tortured. Screaming.

That was the April who was locked in his basement. She had killed someone. Doug Douglas. Doug had gained at least a hundred pounds since high school, but Steve was sure it had been Doug. He couldn’t escape the memory of the dying man’s eyes. He’d stared into those eyes for three long years when Doug was his catcher on the baseball team. He knew those eyes.

He also knew that the dreamweaver had seen Doug on occasion. She saw lots of guys. He had never let that bother him, because there was no changing the woman that the April of his dreams had become. But he also knew that Doug had been involved in the nightmare that was born in Todd Gould’s basement. The dreamweaver had told him that.

But Steve didn’t know how, or why, Doug had ended up in his house last night. He stared at his creased sleeves, at his big hands on the steering wheel, and at his swollen knuckles. A fugitive from a dream was locked in his basement, along with her own corpse, and the corpse of a man she had murdered. That was the way it was.

Unless he hadn’t gone to the graveyard. Unless he hadn’t unearthed April Louise Destino’s corpse and brought her home, unless a screaming dream hadn’t been locked in his basement.

Unless he had dreamed the whole thing.

No. That was crazy. He didn’t dream, not at home. He only dreamed in April Destino’s trailer.

And April was dead. The dreamweaver was gone. Jesus. He felt like a cat chasing its tail.

“I’m awake,” he said, and he kept repeating those two words.

He drove around, just cruising, but he didn’t go to the one place that could set things straight in his mind until the call came over the radio and sent him there.

The pinched female voice of Control betrayed not the slightest bit of interest or surprise as she broadcast the call. The location wasn’t on Steve’s beat, but the officer who would have normally handled the call was busy breaking up a fight between a couple who had spent the evening gearing up for a drunken battle of epic proportions. Steve was working the adjoining beat, so the duty fell to him.

He had never handled a call like this one. Grave desecration wasn’t a top tenner on the criminal hit parade. Still, hearing the call on the radio put his mind at ease.

But hearing was one thing, and seeing was yet another. Seeing was believing, and Steve needed to believe. He didn’t hit the siren-no need for that-but he didn’t spare the horses, either. In less than three minutes he wheeled the gold-and-white Dodge Diplomat onto the grounds of Skyview Memorial Lawn, a cemetery that overlooked housing tracts to the east and north, another cemetery to the south, and a closed drive-in theater to the west.

Steve knew where to find the grave, and he drove to it.

Saw the lip of the open hole and the dirt piled high around it.

Knew for certain that he hadn’t dreamed the events of the previous night.

Knew that was true, unless he was dreaming still.

The elderly man appeared from behind the cemetery office and headed across the grass toward the patrol car. He wore a black suit, a white shirt, a black tie, and yellow galoshes. That might have seemed odd had the lawn not been a slick, muddy mire.

The man hurried toward Steve with careful steps, as if he were afraid that his rubber boots might turn into water skis at any moment. Steve ignored him, concentrating his attention on a set of muddy tire ruts that led up the hill, stopping at April’s grave. The ruts seemed completely out of place, simply because Steve knew that he hadn’t made them. He hadn’t driven his car over the grass. And it wasn’t that he had forgotten doing it-judging from the size of the ruts, the tires that had done the damage were those huge, balloon-like things that kids mounted on their trucks.

Steve drove a ’66 Dodge Monaco. He couldn’t have made the tracks.

Mystery number one. There it was, but Steve didn’t let it rattle him. The ruts were mostly filled with water, but in a few places they were dry. Maybe the lab boys could get some plaster casts. That would certainly turn attention in another direction, away from him. If this investigation ever threatened to turn in his direction, which was something Steve doubted with the self-assurance of a man who had seen his share of unsolved crimes and then some.

Steve heard slick little rubber footsteps. Sharp little gasps. He raised his head and found that the man in black clothes and yellow boots was holding out a very white hand. A rictus grin was plastered on the undertaker’s face. The grin became an embarrassed smile. “Good morning, officer. I appreciate your prompt attention. This is all so awful.”

“Yeah, my boots are going to be a mess,” Steve said, knowing full well that wasn’t anything close to the undertaker’s definition of awful.

The man flushed. “I’m sorry about the water. The sprinklers come on at four. Last night we watered the Eternal Garden-that’s what we call this section. On at four and off at six-thirty. We rotate our watering schedule. For instance, we left the sprinklers off last night in the Meditation Garden, as we’re having a service there this morning. It doesn’t do to have wet grass during a service.” The man paused as if expecting a reply. Steve rewarded him with nothing more than a long moment of silence. It could have been an eternal moment in the Eternal Garden for all he cared. He was enjoying the hysterical picture of himself hip-deep in the dreamweaver’s grave, and the sprinklers coming on. It was a good thing he hadn’t lingered over his work.

The undertaker glanced discreetly at Steve’s patrol car, then studied his gold wristwatch. He spoke without making eye contact. “Officer? Would it be possible for you to park behind the office? As I said, the Meditation Garden is just across from us. We’re having a graveside service in about an hour. It might be upsetting if-”