‘No, thanks,’ she said, her tone still harsh. ‘But I think he’s still inside. Do you think you could . . .’
‘You want me to see if he’s still there? Sure, sure, I’ll check. You don’t have to worry.’ He sprang forward. Nora hated his eagerness to help, but she needed him right now.
There was no one in her apartment. The back door was still locked, and the screens on all the windows were undisturbed.
Nora didn’t ask her neighbour to check behind every piece of furniture after he had looked into the cupboards: she was feeling the loathing she always felt for hysterical, overemotional reactions. Only this time the loathing was directed at herself.
Although one part of her persisted in believing she had seen an intruder, reason told her she had been mistaken. She had been tricked by a nightmare into running for help like a terrified child.
She was rude to the man who had helped her, dismissing him as sharply as if he were an erring servant. She didn’t want to see the smug, masculine concern on his face; didn’t want him around knowing he must be chuckling inwardly at a typical hysterical female.
Nora intended to forget about it, as she had forgotten other embarrassing incidents, other disturbing dreams, but she was not allowed.
She had a hard time falling asleep the next day. Children were playing in the parking lot, and her doze was broken time and again by their shouts, meaningless fragments of talk, and the clamour of a bicycle bell.
When, at last, she did sleep in the afternoon, it was to dream that she and Larry were having one of their interminable, pointless, low-voiced arguments. She woke from the frustrating dream with the impression that someone had come into the room and, certain it was Larry and ready to resume the argument in real life, she opened her eyes.
Before she could speak his name, the stench struck her like a blow – that too familiar, dead smell – and she saw the tall, weirdly draped figure again.
Nora sat up quickly, trying not to breathe in, and the effort made her dizzy. The figure did not move. There was more light in the room this time, and she could see him clearly.
The strange cloak ended in blackened tatters that hung over his hands and feet, and the hood had ragged holes torn for eyes and mouth – with a rush of horror, Nora realised what she was seeing. The figure was dressed in a human skin. The gutted shell of some other human being flapped grotesquely against his own.
Nora’s mouth dropped open, and she breathed in the smell of the rotting skin, and, for one horrible moment, she feared she was about to vomit, that she would be immobilised, sick and at the monster’s mercy.
Fear tightened her throat and gut, and she managed to stumble out of the room and down the passage.
She didn’t go outside. She remembered, as she reached the front door, that she had seen that figure before. That it was only a nightmarish hallucination. Only a dream. She could scarcely accept it, but she knew it was true. Only a dream. Her fingers clutched the cool metal doorknob, but she did not turn it. She leaned against the door, feeling her stomach muscles contract spasmodically, aware of the weakness in her legs and the bitter taste in her mouth.
She tried to think of something calming, but could not chase the visions from her mind: knives, blood, putrefaction. What someone who had been skinned must look like. And what was he, beneath that rotten skin? What could that ghastly disguise hide?
When at last she bullied and cajoled herself into returning to the bedroom, the thing, of course, was gone. Not even the cadaverine smell remained.
Nightmare or hallucination, whatever it was, it came again on the third day. She was ready for it – had lain rigidly awake for hours in the sunlit room knowing he would come – but the stench and the sight was scarcely any easier to endure the third time. No matter how much she told herself she was dreaming, no matter how hard she tried to believe that what she saw (and smelled?) was mere hallucination, Nora had not the cold-bloodedness to remain on her bed until it vanished.
Once again she ran from the room in fear, hating herself for such irrational behaviour. And, again, the thing had gone when she calmed herself and returned to look.
On the fourth day Nora stayed at the motel.
If someone else had suggested escaping a nightmare by sleeping somewhere else, Nora would have been scornful. But she justified her action to herself: this dream was different. There was the smell, for one thing. Perhaps there was some real source to the smell, and it was triggering the nightmare. In that case, a change of air should cure her.
The room she moved into when she got off work that morning was like all the other rooms in the Posada del Norte. It was clean and uninspired, the decor hovering between the merely bland and the aggressively ugly. The carpet was a stubby, mottled gold; the bedspread and chair cushions were dark orange. The walls were covered in white, textured vinyl with a mural painted above the bed. The murals differed from room to room – in this room, it was a picture of a stepped Aztec pyramid, rendered in shades of orange and brown.
Nora turned on the air conditioning, and a blast of air came out in a frozen rush. She took a few toilet articles into the bathroom, but left everything else packed in the overnight bag which she had dropped on to a chair. She had no desire to ‘settle in’ or to intrude herself on the bland anonymity of the room.
She turned on the television and lay back on the bed to observe the meaningless interactions of the guests on a morning talk show. She had nothing better to do. After the network show was a talk show of the local variety, with a plain, overly made-up hostess who smiled, blinked, and nodded a lot. Her guests were a red-faced, middle-aged man who talked about the problems caused by illegal aliens, and a woman who discussed the ancient beauties of Mexico. Nora turned off the set halfway through her slide show featuring pyramids and other monuments in Mexico.
The television silent, she heard the sound of people moving in next door. There seemed to be a lot of them, and they were noisy. A radio clicked on, bringing in music and commercials from Mexico. There was a lot of laughter from the room, and Nora caught an occasional Spanish-sounding word.
Nora swore, not softly. Why couldn’t they party on their own side of the border? And who ever carried on in such a way at ten o’clock in the morning? But she hesitated to pound on the walclass="underline" that would only draw attention to herself, and she didn’t imagine it would deter them.
Instead, to shield herself, she turned on the television set again. It was game-show time, and the sounds of hysteria, clanging bells, and idiotic laughter filled the room. Nora sighed, turned the volume down a bit, and pulled off her clothes. Then she climbed under the blankets and gazed blankly at the flickering images.
She was tired, but too keyed up to sleep. Her mind kept circling until she deliberately thought about what was bothering her: the man in the skin. What did it mean? Why was it haunting her?
It seemed more a hallucination than an ordinary dream, and that made Nora doubly uneasy. It was too real. When she saw, and smelled, the nightmarish figure, she could never quite convince herself she was only dreaming.
And what did the hideous figure itself mean? It must have come crawling out of her subconscious for some reason, thought Nora. But she didn’t really think she had just made it up herself – the idea of a man draped in another’s skin stirred some deep memory. Somewhere, long before, she had read about, or seen a picture of a figure who wore the stripped-off skin of another. Was it something from Mexico? Some ancient, pre-Columbian god?
Yet whenever she strained to recall it, the memory moved perversely away.
And why did the dream figure haunt her now? Because she was alone? But that was absurd. Nora shifted uncomfortably in bed. She had no regrets about the separation or the impending divorce; she was glad Larry was gone. They should have had the sense to call it quits years before. She didn’t want him back under any circumstances.