“I’m so sorry, Leila,” he whispered. “I’m sorry about being possessive, I’m sorry I called you Listerine, I’m sorry I put that libbing knife into you…Leila! Leila”
The bad dream started off as a low-key affair, a Class Two nightmare.
Redpath, who was something of an expert on bad dreams, had devised his classification system when he was still a youth. Class One nightmares were the worst, the mind-quakers, the soul-rapers, the sort from which he sometimes woke up screaming, to spend the rest of the night reading newspapers in the kitchen, well aware of the fact that it would be unsafe to go back to sleep because his subconscious had been affected by a ghastly contamination which only the morning sun could disperse. The thing which made a Class One nightmare so terrible, Redpath understood, was that it did not manifest itself as a nightmare— he would be led into it in a state of vulnerability, deceived into believing that its events were the events of the real world.
A Class Two nightmare could have the same type of dreadful scenario, but here a kind of psychological double-think would be in evidence, and Redpath would know the circumstances were imaginary and thus be protected. He could stroll through a Class Two, taking a detached and almost academic interest in the shadow play, undeniably afraid—but in the pleasurable, controllable way he had known as a small boy watching a horror show in the cinema, where it was always possible to turn one’s eyes away from the screen and study the orange-glowing exit signs and the details of the roof architecture.
In the present instance, he found himself standing on the stairs of the house in Raby Street, looking down into the hall, and he knew he was dreaming because the hall floor was all wrong. It was much too wide and spacious, and instead of being covered with brown linoleum it was made up of large pale green and biscuit-coloured tiles embossed with a leaf pattern in low relief. It was, quite obviously, the floor of the entrance hall of the psychophysiology building at the Jeavons Institute.
This could be a bad bit!
Redpath tensed himself apprehensively as he remembered the vision he had had that morning, the wash of clotted blood surging slowly in his direction, but the floor remained bright and clean. Something else was happening though. Some of the floor tiles were turning blue and becoming transparent, like slabs of amethyst, and it seemed that there were lights underneath. Small things were moving down there, under the floor.
Strange! Unease-making, but not frightening. Very strange!
He turned away and found himself on the landing, moving towards the rear window with its yellow fleur-de-lis. There were two doors on his left—bathroom and separate toilet. There was one door on his right—Albert’s bedroom. The door was slightly ajar. He looked into the room and saw that Albert, fully clad in his brown boiler suit and heavy work boots, was sleeping on the bed. Not actually on the bed, however. He was floating in the air about three inches above the coverlet and daylight was clearly visible beneath his body. His enormous hands twitched slightly in his sleep.
Curiouser and curiouser!
Redpath was back on the stairs now and going down into the hall, which had resumed its normal aspect. The house was very quiet, as though Albert and he were the only two in it. Where was Betty? In the kitchen? He reached the ground floor, walked six paces to the kitchen and opened the door. The long room was deserted, dishes stacked in the crazed porcelain sink, refrigerator gurgling introspectively in the corner. On his right was another door which was painted an incongruous fire-engine red. Definitely not the sort of colour one used in a kitchen. What was in there? A pantry?
Redpath felt himself drawn to the door, was compelled to open it. On the other side was a flight of stone steps leading down into the darkness of a cellar.
Hey, I’m starting not to like this. It’s getting too real. Can a Class Two escalate-degenerate into a Class One?
Redpath walked down the stone steps, advancing one foot slowly past the other. He was breathing noisily now, caught in the grip of an unmanning fear, and yet unable to turn back. The absence of light made it difficult to tell where the steps ended and the cellar floor began.
Be ready to run, that’s the main thing. Be poised. At the first sign of movement—even if it’s only a mouse—run like the wind, and that way you’ll be safe. Fear lends you wings, you know.
He paused on the last dimly-visible step, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. The cellar was warmer than he had expected and the air in it was heavy. Heavy, sweet and sickening…
Be poised!
Redpath turned his head, straining his eyes to pick up a movement, and when the movement came he discovered that it had been with him all along and he had failed to notice it because he had been watching out for a small localized movement, an individual movement, and what had been happening all the time was that the walls and ceiling and floor of the cellar had been moving. They were dark red in colour, and they were glistening, and they had been gently palpitating, heaving with anticipation. And now they were reaching towards him, reaching out with shapeless arms…
My God, the whole cellar is a stomach!
I’VE WALKED INTO THE HOUSE’S STOMACH!
Redpath was rescued by the sound of his own moaning, the inarticulate, deep-chested, slack-throated expression of the ultimate fear. He awoke to find himself lying face downwards on the bed, mildly asphyxiated by his own breath, making vague little swimming movements with his arms and legs. The room was warm and intensely bright, filled with the sun’s cleansing radiance.
It had only been a nightmare, he realised, but where was that beautiful sense of relief? At this stage he should have been luxuriating in the checked, confirmed and authorised knowledge, officially approved and rubber-stamped, that people like Stanley Laurel, Albert Schweitzer and Richmal Crompton were secure on their thrones and all was right with the world. But the weight of dread had not lifted; it had merely shifted…
Leila! I killed Leila! I’m not the person I always believed myself to be. I’m a murderer!
Redpath moaned again, quietly this time, moved to the side of the bed and sat with his elbows on his knees, face supported in his hands. In that position he could see through a truncated tunnel formed by his palms and fingers, and his eyes came to focus on a small section of powder blue carpet between his feet. He stared at it for perhaps twenty seconds before accepting the fact that it was a powder blue carpet and not the pink oilcloth which had covered the floor when he had entered the bedroom a short time earlier.
What the…?
Redpath raised his head and looked around the room, his eyes widening as he found that everything was different. There was a built-in fitment instead of the old-fashioned wardrobe he remembered, and the other furniture was of a more modern design, unified and painted white. The overhead light was now a plastic dome which clung to the ceiling like a giant limpet. Most disturbing of all, however, was the change which had come over the quality of the sunlight streaming in through the window.
It was morning sunlight—and when he had lain down on the bed the time had been late afternoon.
Redpath’s shoulders slumped as he deduced what must have happened. At breakfast time that morning, away back in his previous existence, he had omitted to take his daily shot of Epanutin, thereby laying himself open to the threat of an attack. And the subsequent chain of events hardly squared with the sort of calm, orderly way of life which was recommended for the control of epilepsy. Under those circumstances it was in the cards for him to experience a break in continuity, to regain consciousness in strange surroundings. It had happened to him before and it would happen again and again if he neglected to…