“A whisper and a promise lit on fire,
Kiss the hand where the angels dread
Love is the corpse that draws on dreams,
Rips them apart and tears them to shreds.”
-Sisters of Mercy, ‘Dance On Glass’

DREAM A LITTLE DREAM OF ME

By Meriades Rai

October 31st – The Last Day

There’s a certain kind of person in life I just don’t trust.

Sometimes you can recognise them off the bat; it’ll be the sandals, or the beads, or the watery look in their eye as if they’ve been staring up into the rain, waiting for the sun to break out from behind the clouds like Paulo Coelho told them it would. Sometimes they’re more insidious. They disguise themselves with suits and saloon cars, to resemble you and me. But inside it’s different. Inside it’s all about chakras and Feng Shui, and meditation. You just don’t realise it until they’ve cornered you by the cheese-sticks at a party, at which point their hideous New Age-ish-ness will burst from their chests like Giger’s alien so that they might attach themselves to your screaming face and subject you to a slow, excruciating death.

Death by dullness. Please, when the time comes, let me go any other way.

My personal pet hate regarding New Age-ology-ism would be people who think they can see your aura. When women say something like that it basically means “Hey! Let’s talk about me!” It’s not about the fact that I have an olive-green glow with red and black about the edges, suggesting that I’m generally melancholy with a fiery temperament and a lack of self-esteem. Well, duh. All you have to do is look at my shoes to know that about me. Shoe-ology. When a woman starts spouting this kind of fluffy garbage, whilst fingering her bead necklace in a knowing way, she’s simply hoping that it makes her more interesting, that it gives her depth. And the fingering the beads thing is drawing attention to her cleavage. Incidentally, when a man describes your aura he’s actually guessing the colour of your underwear. Still, at least that’s consistent with their general motivation.

But, anyway. My point.

Lurking among the aura morons – let’s call them aurons – and the would-be-Buddhists with their well-thumbed copies of The Alchemist there are the dream interpreters. Not psychoanalysts armed with legitimate scientific studies of the nocturnal process, let’s be clear, but rather those who believe that if you dream of a field of poppies then you’re anxious about an impending journey, or some such dog twaddle. Or, even worse, that you can actually predict your own future whilst you slumber. To this, I say: Wake up, people. Literally. If you dream of a field of poppies it’s because you’ve seen The Wizard of Oz one too many times and you secretly fancy a bit of Scarecrow. Or Tin Man. Or Dorothy. But not the Cowardly Lion, obviously. That’s just wrong.

Dreams are simply the product of your subconscious exploring thoughts and ideas you aren’t comfortable with in the light of day, set against a backdrop of recent memory. It’s not uncommon for a wife to dream that her husband has been unfaithful even if he’s innocent, it’s a case of her working through a certain anxiety that doesn’t present itself in her conscious mind. Sex dreams are widespread because – contrary to what television and glossy magazines would have you believe – not everyone is skin-surfing between the sheets at every possible opportunity, and desire is a powerful emotion that needs periodic release. Yes, that’s what my therapist tells me. No, I don’t wish to discuss this further. Suffice to say that, up until the incident I’m about to relate to you, I’d never believed my dreams to be anything more than my mind exercising whilst I sleep.

Therefore, it was really irritating that seventy-two hours in the town of Franklin, Virginia left me wondering if I’d been mistaken all this time. Seventy-two hours – most of them spent asleep – is time enough for a hell of a lot of dreams. Or, to be more precise, a lot of nightmares. White-knucklers packed with bizarre events that, on the fourth day, appeared to be coming true. Which, aside from everything else, begs an important question…

If I’m wrong about premonitions occurring within dreams, could I also be wrong about auras? Have the aurons been right all along? Am I really surrounded by the ghastly colour of my own misery? No wonder I’m always alone on Valentine’s Day. God, I’m depressed.

October 23rd – The Fourth Day

I’m sitting on a bench in the Franklin hospital, directly beneath an enormous, couldn’t-possibly-be-missed-even-by-a-blind-monkey No Smoking sign. It is thus with a great and also pathetic pleasure that I light up yet another cigarette and blow smoke rings at the ceiling, as I’ve been doing all morning. A black woman the size of a pumpkin truck passes by as slow as a long, lonely Sunday, wheeling a janitor’s bucket. She sees a half dozen crushed butts on the floor, then stares at me, lips pursed. I feel guilty about the butts, but there was no ashtray, what with it being a No Smoking Zone. The woman gestures towards the sign with the end of her mop. I let my cigarette dangle from my lower lip and flash her my badge.

“FBI.”

She’s unimpressed. “That mean you can break the law?”

“Absolutely. I can even shoot you dead if I wanted.”

The woman grunts. “Hell, honey. It’d be a darn mercy killin’.”

Cheerful. I watch her as she ignores my debris and drifts away, the living embodiment of a wistful sigh, and my spirits sink even lower than they already were. And they were pretty sunk to begin with. Franklin is apparently one of those small towns where goodwill and optimism get washed away down the storm drains with yesterday’s news. I passed three funeral parlours in one street yesterday, roughly a quarter of the businesses on offer overall. This morning, in a mini-mart the size of a closet, an old soak in a hunting hat was talking to the eggs. By name. He seemed to have a twinkle in his eye for a brown number called Bethany. No one else appeared to find this strange.

A few minutes pass, and then the doctor comes to find me. Not all male doctors look like George Clooney, or even a kindly Bill Clinton. Some of them, like this guy, look more like Steve Buscemi. Yet somehow the white coat is still sexy, even with the hangdog expression. Weird. Doctor Steve also glares at the cigarette butts on the floor. Either that or he’s studying my shoes and constructing a personality profile. Maybe there’s something in this shoe-ology after all.

“He’s conscious,” he says. “But he’s weak. You can have ten minutes, no more.”

Which of course means I’ll drag it out to fifteen, because that’s the kind of girl I am.

Doctor Steve leads me on to the critical injury ward and then abandons me at a closed door. I reach for the handle, but hesitate. Not because I’m anxious about seeing Johnny – well, not only that – but because the next door along is ajar. I can see a nurse fussing around a bed containing a young girl with straw-blonde hair, short at the back but with a scruffy fringe. The girl’s head is bowed but she’s stealing a look at me. Both her eyes are puffed with fresh bruises, and there’s a band-aid on her chin. Her right arm is in a sling.

Here’s why I was pondering the nature of dreams. Doctor Steve and the janitor were present in the one I had last night, although they were just on the sidelines, watching. The girl, however… well, I spoke to her. She told me to beware the House of Roses, and the black hound. And then she died in my arms. I tell myself that so long as I don’t make contact that I can break the cycle, that this death won’t happen. I turn away from her and enter Johnny’s room.

He’s lying in bed, as clinically pale as the surrounding walls. I’ve seen five-day-old corpses with more colour. His face is half-turned towards a window with a view of a car lot edged with trees, but his eyes are closed. Not that good a view, obviously. This is the first time I’ve seen him without his shades. I’m guessing his eyes are blue, but I might be wrong.

“Hi,” I say. “Do you remember me?”

He doesn’t move, doesn’t open his eyes. He says, “Agent Lockwood.”

“You can call me Becky. I’ve been waiting awhile for you to drag your sorry ass back into the world of the living. I’ve watched them give you a sponge bath. Believe me, we’re on first name terms.”

There’s a chair by the side of the bed but I prefer to stand, with the door and window in sight. It’s the law enforcement officer in me, always prepared.

“Are you here to kill me?” Johnny asks, finally turning his head to look at me. I was right about the eyes. And he’s right to ask the question. Perhaps I should be of a murderous mind, considering.

“You knew what that bike would turn me into,” I say, quietly.

“Yeah.”

“But it was the only way to get out of there alive. So, no. I don’t hold a grudge.”

He smiles. “It was the only way out for you. I wasn’t expecting you to come back for me.”

“I wasn’t going to just abandon you,” I say. “Not when I need answers. About all of it. The creature with the flaming skull for a head, the Seekers, the angel…”

“You don’t need me for that,” Johnny whispers. “Not when you’ve got… him. Trust me, he loves to talk about himself.”

“Zarathos.”

Johnny flinches at the name. The name of the creature that now exists inside me, a broiling mass of fire and pain that I can barely keep in check.

Johnny raises an eyebrow at me. “See you worked out how to change yourself back to normal without my help.”

I glance down at my clothes self-consciously. Jeans, check shirt and windbreaker wouldn’t be my outfit of choice but in a town like Franklin you take what you can get. And it’s not like I could have gone wandering around in the clothes I’d been wearing when I first met Johnny in the cabin in the mountains, not after the Seekers had ripped the back of my jacket and blouse to shreds like I was an extra from The Howling. Of course, after that, my duds had been consumed by hellfire – along with my flesh, hair and overall modesty. So I guess I should be thankful I wasn’t left wandering the backroads of Virginia scorched and buck-naked. I hear that can be a pill.

“It’s a supernatural metamorphosis,” Johnny says, answering my first question before I’ve even posed it. “Don’t ask me exactly how it works, because I’ve never really understood it myself. But Zarathos manifests around you as much as through you, so that you become the Ghost Rider. And then, when Zarathos withdraws, you return to your previous physical state. Your clothes, your face… all exactly as you were before the transformation.”

“That’s not really possible.”

“But that’s how it happened, isn’t it?”

That’s exactly how it happened, actually. After retrieving Johnny’s unconscious body from the cabin and transporting him here to Franklin as the Ghost Rider, the entity lurking within me had retreated just as described, leaving behind a very confused – and exhausted – Rebecca Lockwood. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t impossible. I’m beginning to understand that there’s more impossible than you might think.

I turn as I hear a rapping of knuckles on the door behind me. It’s the nurse from the next room.

“The doctor says you have two more minutes.”

“Can I have ten?”

The nurse clucks her tongue. My mother used to do that. I’m such a wayward girl. When the nurse leaves, probably to go and tell Doctor Steve how disagreeable I am, I turn back to Johnny.

“Listen,” I sigh. “We can do this later. I understand you need to rest. But there’s one thing I need to know…”

Johnny’s attention is beginning to drift, his eyes clouding. Painkillers, probably. I need to be quick.

“Last night,” I say. “I had a dream. Now, I’m not into that kind of thing, but… well, the stuff that I dreamed has been coming true all day. Weird, nonsense stuff; like, at the hotel where I was staying, someone in the kitchen burned the toast and set off the fire alarm. Then there was a newspaper headline about Global Warming and the ice shelf melting. And a woman was chasing her hat down the street. And – get this – a man was talking to eggs in the mini-mart. I dreamed all of this. And then here, at the hospital, there’s a doctor and a janitor. They were both there too. But that’s where the nonsense starts to get serious…”

Johnny’s eyes are closed. A gentle sunlight filters through the window, onto his face. He seems relaxed. I curse under my breath.

“I need to know,” I persist. “Is this something to do with him? Zarathos? The Ghost Rider? Is this part of it, that I start to dream of future events? Because there’s a young girl, you see – in the room next door. In my dream, she…”

I trail off again. It’s useless. Johnny is in a dream world all of his own. It’s only to be expected.

I turn to leave the room just as Doctor Steve returns. He appears cross, at first – he’s probably expecting to have some kind of argument with me – but when he sees me his expression softens. I must look miserable. My eyes feel damp, so maybe I’m even crying. Maybe I’m glowing olive-green.

“The long-term prognosis seems positive,” the doctor says, tenderly. “We can’t be one hundred per cent certain, but the operation was successful. By bringing him here you saved his life.”

I breathe deeply. The last thing Johnny said to me back at the cabin, before I became the Ghost Rider, was that, ultimately, gratitude towards him would be the last thing on my mind. Now I could reply in kind. Saved his life? Yes. But at what cost?

I glance back at the bed. Johnny Blaze, in repose. Pale, yet healthy – from the waist up. But those Seekers infected him with some kind of poison back in the mountains, and he was damaged beyond repair long before I managed to get him to the hospital. The doctors examined his legs and told me that the gangrene and muscular decay was so far advanced that there was no way they could save them. For the sake of his life… amputation had been the only answer. And so, now, Johnny Blaze is half a man.

“I’ll be back this evening,” I tell the doctor. Then, I leave the room.

In the corridor outside, I hesitate. The door alongside this one remains ajar. I can feel her eyes on me. I should go. I have to go. To break the cycle. But then I hear her sobbing – just like in my dream – and I simply can’t help myself. I turn, slowly, and do something I know that I’ll come to regret. I knock on the door then enter without waiting for an answer.

“Hi,” I say, keeping my voice gentle but not patronising. The girl looks sixteen, thereabouts. The last thing she needs is some stranger treating her like she’s a child.

She looks at me through the curtain of her fringe, as before. She doesn’t smile, but she doesn’t panic either. She’s frightened, certainly. But not of me.

I say, “My name’s Becky.”

Behind all the bruising, her eyes are green. Olive-green. There’s coincidence for you.

“Eve,” she says. Her voice is tiny. Fragile, like china.

“Eve’s a pretty name.”

“She was the mother of original sin.”

“Good for her.”

I notice that the girl is clutching something – a rosary, with jade beads. Probably best I lay off the religious wisecracks.

“I saw you,” she says, in a whisper. “In my dreams. You held me. You kept me safe.”

The world spins. I try to breathe, but my throat’s too dry. My expression probably gives me away.

“Will you hold me now?” Eve asks me, her eyes glistening. I wonder if it hurts her to cry.

I don’t move. I can’t. In my dream, Eve died. I shouldn’t be here. I should be well away from her. In a dingy bar somewhere, drinking bourbon on the rocks and smoking cigarettes and being hit on by lonely travelling salesmen in polyester suits whose wives don’t understand them. I –

“Please.”

I hear a voice in my head urging me forward, but this is no conjuring of my subconscious – it’s him. This is the first time he’s made his presence felt since the incident at the cabin. I can feel his hot breath on the backs of my eyeballs. I can smell brimstone, taste it on my tongue. Just like that, he’s close. I struggle against him instinctively, but he’s stronger than me, especially when he takes me by surprise like this.

When I reach out and take Eve’s hands in mine, it’s him who is in control. Zarathos. And as our skin touches…

…the pain and the fear and the hate hits me in a rush.

I try to scream, but no sound will come. I see and hear things I don’t understand; dark hallways filled with echoing cries, candles that hiss like snakes, a garden awash with roses and a low, droning buzz… and the black hound, slavering and snarling, its eyes as red as wounds. But this is no dream, I know that. These are memories. Eve’s memories. The cries are hers, pitched in agony and terror. The candles hiss with melting flesh as her hands and feet are held in the flame until they blister and smoke. The buzz is of wasps, stinging her over and over where she is tied naked to the trunk of the tree where they have made their nest. The dog is trying to bite her, mad with hunger, as her face is jammed cruelly against the bars of its filthy cage by the sole of a boot.

And a thousand more torments besides. As I glimpse each of them I witness something that strikes me as truly horrific; in each replayed memory, Eve’s age varies wildly. Sometimes she is a teenager, as she appears to me now. Other times she is far younger. There is one image, in which she is being held down on a table whilst someone repeatedly smashes her tiny fingers with a hammer until her hand is a mess of blood and blackened flesh… in this image, the girl who screams and screams and screams can be no more than three years old.

Her whole life.

She has spent her whole life in the House of Roses, being tortured and brutalised. In sixteen years she has been brought to this hospital on eleven occasions, each time because her injuries have been life threatening – otherwise she has been left to heal without medical intervention. But eleven times is more than enough. Someone should have done something long before now. But they never did. They just stuck their heads in the sand and allowed this to happen.

Well, no more.

“What the hell? Who are you?”

Eve’s hands suddenly slide free of mine, and for a moment I am disoriented. I turn, registering the sound of a voice behind me – a man’s voice, guttural, carried on a stench of whiskey and fried chicken with eleven herbs and spices. He stands in the doorway, filling it with height and bulk. Behind him, there’s another man of similar build, and a woman, small and scrawny. All of them middle-aged, all dressed in black shirts and slacks like it’s some kind of uniform. They all have shaved heads, even the woman. The man in front is missing half his teeth. The look in his eyes is as nasty as I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a whole lot of nasty. Especially recently.

I can only imagine what my expression looks like. Some kind of snarl. I whip out my badge with one hand whilst I rest the other on my gun beneath my jacket. “FBI,” I snap. “Are you relatives of this girl? Because – ”

I never get the chance to finish, and I never see the fist that slams into my stomach like a sledgehammer. I grunt and collapse to my knees. I can’t breathe. I think I drop my gun. Then one of them kicks me in the head and sends me flying backwards into the wall. I hear Eve scream. Or maybe it’s me.

Another kick, in my ribs. I feel something break. I vomit. And another boot, in my face again, splitting my lip in two places. I can’t see because of the blood.

There was a female agent who was working undercover in Atlanta last year, trying to pin a murder on a casino boss. Someone ratted her out and that left her in a world of hurt. The boss allegedly watched as his goons broke her arms and legs with crowbars, then he personally stamped repeatedly on her face as she lay there, unable to move. Even though the casino was raided before the agent was killed, it was too late. Her face couldn’t be saved, even after a half dozen attempts at cosmetic surgery. She took her own life a couple of months back, saying she couldn’t bear to spend the rest of her life looking like the Elephant Man.

When you’re in law enforcement, you live every day with the knowledge that you could die out there, alone, in the dark. But there are some things worse than death.

Another savage kick in the head, and I go deaf in my left ear. I think he perforated an eardrum, but maybe it’s a fractured skull and brain damage. They leave me alone then, thinking they’ve done the job. Maybe they have. I see them grab Eve and take her away, leaving me lying in what seems to be a lake of my own blood. I’m having trouble breathing. Could be a splintered rib and burst lung. I should have passed out from the pain by now, but I’ve never been that lucky.

That’s when I hear his voice, every word like a finger poking into a wound and twisting.

“GET UP. GET UP.”

Leave me alone.

“GET TO THE BIKE. I CAN MAKE YOU BETTER. I CAN MAKE YOU AS GOOD AS NEW.”

I’m choking on my own blood. I’m not sure if I can stand. But Zarathos won’t quit.

“GET TO THE BIKE.”

Then what?

I hear the sound of his laughter. Soft. Mocking.

“THEN IT WILL BE TIME FOR VENGEANCE,” he hisses. “IT WILL BE TIME FOR THE GHOST RIDER…”