Falling Awake(61)
Author: Jayne Ann Krentz

29

he went into the guest bedroom, closed the door and turned off the lights. It was always easiest to slide into his gateway dream in the dark. He had a hunch that was because he had developed the skill during the endless, lonely, very scary nights following the loss of his parents. In those days his rapidly developing lucid dreaming talent had offered a sanctuary. He had used it to create dreamscapes where he could forget his fears and loneliness for a while.

He sat down on the edge of the bed, took off his shoes and lay back against the pillows. For a few minutes he focused on all the various bits and pieces of information he had accumulated, trying to let go of all previous assumptions and conclusions. The whole point of looking at a case in an extreme dreamscape was to come at it from an entirely different angle. The dreaming mind was not bound by the same rules of logic that governed the waking mind.

Lawson was convinced that Level Five dreaming was essentially a combination of a natural talent for self-hypnosis and lucid dreaming. Beth speculated that it was a form of active meditation. Martin Belvedere had concluded that it was a psychic talent.

Whatever the case, he had gotten very good at putting himself into a state of consciousness somewhere between the waking and sleeping worlds. It was a state in which he could manipulate and control the dreamscape and yet remain open to suggestions from his unconscious mind in a way that was not possible when he was fully awake.

When he was satisfied that he was ready, he closed his eyes and climbed aboard the roller coaster.

The cars lurch into motion, ascending the impossibly high lift hill slowly, inevitably, taking him up to the highest point on the track. He is the only passenger. The sound of the chain lift is a steady drumbeat in his head that takes him deeper into the dream state.

Clank, clank, clank . . .

The front of the train reaches the top. He is sitting in the first seat so he has a clear view of the dizzying drop below. For an instant he hovers there, looking down at the track that spirals away into the darkness.

The cars shoot over the top of the lift hill. The world falls away and he plunges into his own, private dream world.

isabel curled up in a corner of the sofa, covered her bare feet with the hem of her robe and listened to the silence from the guest bedroom. She had turned off all the lights except for the one on the table beside her. A few minutes ago she had been feeling quite drowsy but now her brain was racing.

Sphinx emerged from the kitchen, padded across the living room and heaved his bulk up onto the sofa. He butted his head against her hand.

“Hi there, big guy,” she whispered.

Sphinx sprawled on his side next to her and closed his eyes. She rubbed his ears. He switched on his internal engine, purring so heavily she could feel him vibrating.

“Our lives have certainly changed since Dr. B. died, haven’t they? I’ll bet you never imagined you’d lose that cushy setup you had at the center, did you? I guess I took it for granted, too. That’s why I bought all that furniture and started looking for a house. Oh, well, that’s the way it goes.”

Sphinx twitched his ears but did not open his eyes.

She continued to pet him absently and thought about how he had awakened her the night Martin Belvedere died. For a time she let her mind drift, recalling the shock of opening the door of the office and finding the body.

Opening the door . . .

She reached up and turned off the one remaining lamp in the room. The bulbs in the porch fixtures still burned but the glow she could see through the cracks in the curtains had the eerie, luminous quality that occurred when light was reflected off mist. At some point during the last few hours fog had rolled in off the sea, enveloping them in a ghostly vapor.

She had opened the door of the office and found the body . . .

She contemplated that for a moment longer. Then, on impulse, she closed her eyes and summoned the carriage that she used to take her into her gateway dream.

She waits for it at the top of the steps as she always does. The long skirts of her gown and cloak drift lightly around her. It is midnight and the only lights are those in the windows of the empty mansion behind her.

She hears the vehicle before she sees it. The clatter of hooves and wheels on the paving stones grows louder, establishing a familiar rhythm.

The elegant, black-and-gilt equipage comes into view, a dark shape against the greater darkness of the night. There is no coachman but the horses know what to do.

The carriage halts in front of the mansion. She descends the steps, counting them off one by one. Fifty, forty-nine, forty-eight, forty-seven . . .

When she reaches the last step the door of the carriage opens. She steps inside. The door shuts. The vehicle sets off, carrying her into the dreamscape.

t he cars slam down the incline, rocket through a steep, tight turn and rush toward the first scene. He tries to examine every detail, aware that his dreaming mind has fashioned the vision out of the images and data he had fed into it earlier. He has learned that in the dream world, incidents and objects are often weighted differently than they are in the waking realm. A small detail that meant nothing when he looked at it in the light of day can assume great significance here.

So he looks at the scene very closely as the cars fly past. He sees Lawson sitting at his big, government-issue desk, bald head gleaming in the light of the fluorescent lamps, reaching for the phone.

“I’ll be with you in a minute,” Lawson says. “Gotta call Beth.”

The cars zoom past the image, whip through a loop-the-loop and careen toward another scene.

Lawson again. He is just hanging up the desk phone. “Beth says she checked the hospital computer records, herself. The body they mistakenly handed over to the funeral home was Scargill. She did a DNA match using some blood they took in the ER. Cause of death was severe head trauma. Looks like he caught some fallout from the explosion. . . .”

The cars sweep past the scene, round another swooping curve and drop straight down into a twisting stretch of track. Adrenaline slams through him.

t he carriage turns down a narrow lane. Dark stone buildings loom on either side of the passage. There are lights in some of the windows. She catches glimpses of people moving about inside the rooms. One of them turns to look at her. She recognizes Gavin Hardy. He is wearing one of his favorite Las Vegas tee shirts.

She can see that he is seated at a card table. There is someone beside him, a familiar figure with a beaky nose, sharp blue eyes and a mane of unkempt white hair.

“Hi, Isabel.” Gavin waves cheerfully. “I finally made it back to Vegas. Look who’s here. The Old Man himself. But the SOB doesn’t even see me. So what else is new, huh? He’s got a good hand, though, and since he’s not paying any attention, I think maybe I’ll help myself to one of his cards.”