In a Dark Dream by Charles L. Grant

Author:Charles L. Grant [Grant, Charles L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: horror, occult
Publisher: Crossroad Press
Published: 2017-03-19T00:00:00+00:00

IV

The dream when it comes …

Cheryl sat on a bench in Central Park, her hands folded loosely in her lap, her beret slightly canted and pinned to her fair hair. Her coat was made for spring, her skirt a summer shade, and the party shoes her mother bought her were patent leather, with silver buckles, and gleaming black.

Behind her was a tall and spreading tree whose name she didn’t know, whose leaves were turning colors and dropping from their branches, sashaying to her shoulders, balancing there and falling, to her lap, to the ground, to the path where pedestrians crushed them and didn’t hear their screams.

In front of her, on the other side of the path that wound out of sight left and right, on another bench as faded as her own, was a man in a tattered tweed overcoat, fingerless woolen gloves, and heelless western boots whose tips had been stained too many colors from too much walking through garbage and through rain. His face was a dark mask beneath a wide-brimmed straw hat, and though she tried not to look at him, tried to ignore him while she waited as she was told she must, she couldn’t help seeing him from the corner of her eye—watching her, sometimes smiling at her, sometimes sucking his lips between his teeth and making a wet smacking sound.

When he shifted, crossing one leg over the other, she held her breath.

When he leaned back and spread his arms over the warped back of the bench, she held her breath again.

When an elderly woman in a long fur coat swept past behind a tiny poodle on a leash, and the man was gone, the bench empty, she closed her eyes tightly and wished herself home.

She didn’t like the city.

She had been here only once—and this time didn’t count—and had been awed by the mountain buildings, the herds of people, and the rush of traffic. They all frightened her, made her cringe, made her slap her hands to her ears to muffle the constant noise that didn’t die when the sun set, that seeped and crept and oozed through the hotel window and danced around her bed, giving voice to the room’s corners and keeping the lights outside alive. The moment she had stepped off the train, she told her father and mother she wanted to go home.

And lovingly they smiled at her, and tenderly they comforted her, and they didn’t understand about the monsters below the rusted gratings that chuffed and roared and breathed hot steam at her legs, about the monsters with siren voices that hunted her all day and signaled to each other all night and wailed when they found her, huddled beneath the blankets though the room was much too warm.

They didn’t understand, and they smiled at each other when she tried to warn them, hugging her with gentle laughter and telling her how much fun they were having, how much more fun they would have, and how many stories she would have to tell her sisters and brother and all her little friends when they took the train home.

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