Cold Fire

But it had not been a dream when she sat up in bed and snapped on the lamp. The nightmare had followed her into the waking world.

Just a dream, don't make so much of it, get control of yourself, she thought, struggling to regain her equanimity. You dreamed you were in that lightless place, then you dreamed that you sat up in bed and turned on the light, then in your dream you saw the wall bulging and ran for the door. But you were only sleepwalking, you were still asleep when you pulled the door open, still asleep when you saw the boogeyman an screamed, which was when you finally woke up for real, screamed yourself awake.

She wanted to believe that explanation, but it was too pat to be credible.

No nightmare she'd ever known had been that elaborate in its texture and detail. Besides, she never sleepwalked.

Something real had been reaching for her. Maybe not the insect-reptile spider thing in the doorway. Maybe that was only an image in which another entity clad itself to frighten her. But something had been pushing through to this world from.

From where? It didn't matter where. From out there. From beyond. And it almost got her.

No. That was ridiculous. Tabloid stuff Even the National Enquirer didn't publish trash that trashy any more. I WAS MIND-RAPED BY A BEAST FROM BEYOND. Crap like that was three steps below SINGER ADMITS BEING SPACE ALIEN, two steps belOw JESUS SPEAKS TO NUN FROM INSIDE A MICROWAVE, and even a full step below ELVIS HAD BRAIN TRANSPLANTED, LIVES NOW AS ROSEANNE BARR.

The more foolish she felt for entertaining such thoughts, the calmer she became. Dealing with the experience was easier if she could believe that it was all a product of her overactive imagination, which had been unreasonably stimulated by the admittedly fantastic Ironheart case.

Finally she was able to stand on her own, without leaning on the door.

She relocked the deadbolt, reengaged the security chain.

As she stepped away from the door, she became aware of a hot, stinging pain in her left side. It wasn't serious, but it made her wince, and she realized that a similar but lesser pain sizzled in her right side as well.

She took hold of her T-shirt to lift it and look at herself and discovered that the fabric was slashed. Three places on the left side.

Two on the right.

It was spotted with blood.

With renewed dread, Holly went into the bathroom and switched on the harsh fluorescent light. She stood in front of the mirror, hesitated, then pulled the torn T-shirt over her head.

A thin flow of blood seeped down her left flank from three shallow gashes. The first laceration was just under her breast, and the others were spaced at two-inch intervals. Two scratches blazed on her right side, though they were not as deep as those on the left and were not bleeding freely.

The claws.

Jim threw up in the toilet, flushed, then rinsed his mouth twice with mint-flavored Listerine.

The face in the mirror was the most troubled he had ever seen. He had to look away from the reflection of his own eyes.

He leaned against the sink. For at least the thousandth time in the year, he wondered what in God's name was happening to him.

In his sleep he had gone to the windmill again. Never before had the same nightmare troubled him two nights in a row. Usually, weeks passed between reoccurrences.

Worse, there had been an unsettling new element-more than just the rain on the narrow windows, the lambent flame of the candle and tire dancing shadows it produced, the sound of the big sails turning outside the low rumble of the millstones below, and an inexplicable pall of fear.

This time he'd been aware of a malevolent presence, out of sight but drawing nearer by the second, something so evil and alien that he could not even imagine its form or full intentions. He had expected it to burst out of the limestone wall, erupt through the plank floor, or explode in upon him from the heavy timbered door at the head of the mill stairs. He had been unable to decide which way to run. Finally he had yanked open the door and awakened with a scream. If anything had been there, he could not remember what it had looked like.

Regardless of the appearance it might have had, Jim knew what to call it: the enemy. Except that now he thought of it with a capital "T" and a capital "E." The Enemy. The amorphous beast that haunted many of his other nightmares had found its way into the windmill dream, where it had never terrorized him before.

Crazy as it seemed, he sensed that the creature was not merely a fantasy spawned by his subconscious while he slept. It was as real as he himself Sooner or later it would cross the barrier between the world dreams and the waking world as easily as it had crossed the barrier between different nightmares.

Holly never considered going back to bed. She knew she would not sleep again for many hours, until she was so exhausted that she would be unable to keep her eyes open no matter how much strong black coffee she drank.