Every night for the next two weeks, James continued to have the dreams. Like his previous visions, James would ride along, an inactive observer seeing the world through some strange beast’s eyes. Almost every night the beast fed on some sort of animal, sometimes more than once a night. It always caught its prey in the same strange way. First it would smell them in the distance, then it would separate its senses from its body and send them forward. The beast’s senses, for lack of a better word, entered its prey’s mind through one of their eyes (even if the eye was closed, James noticed), then the beast would approach its prey without causing any alarm whatsoever. Throughout the next two weeks the beast killed a number of small animals, mostly squirrels and rabbits, although it did manage to kill a small dog and another deer. Once it even managed to kill an owl that swooped down to land on a branch well within its reach.
Over the two-week span, there was one noticeable change in the dreams — they were getting longer. At first they had lasted a little less than an hour. Now James found that the dreams seemed to be going on for around four or five hours. Even when he woke in the middle of one of these visions he found that when he went back to sleep he would be back in the woods almost as soon as his head hit the pillow.
The dreams were also taking a physical toll on James. As the dreams increased in length, it felt as though he was getting less and less sleep. All in all, this lack of sleep was what troubled James the most. Although the dreams seemed like the visions he used to have, they were all too strange to be real.
Greg O’Brien had just finished the 6:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. shift and was still in his sheriff deputy’s uniform when he walked through the open doors at Baldwin’s Garage. In the back of the shop Guy Baldwin, a stocky man with a bushy, grey mustache and hair to match, wearing dirty blue overalls, raised his head from under the hood of an old Ford pickup. “You come to arrest James?” Guy said in the gravelly voice of a heavy smoker, a filterless cigarette bobbing in his mouth as he spoke.
Greg grinned. “Yeah, where is that no-count punk?”
“Down here,” James said, rolling on a creeper from under a car he’d been working on. He was covered head to toe in grease.
“We still on for football tonight?” Greg asked.
“Sure, you bring the beer. I’ve got the food,” James said, then added, “Is Sandy coming?”
“Well, hell no. You know she can’t stand football. She’s going to call and see if Angie wants to bring Jimmy over to the house.”
“That’ll work. No one to gripe if we get loud.” James propped his hands behind his head. “You think Dallas can beat Minnesota tonight?”
“Of course.” To Greg, a hardcore Cowboys fan from way back, this question was borderline blasphemy.
“I don’t know. The Vikings lead the league against the run and Emmitt is listed as doubtful.”
“We don’t need the run tonight. Aikman’ll eat ’em alive, you watch. He’ll have a three or four-hundred yard night.”
“Not if the line don’t pick up their game. Last week they gave up five sacks.”
“They won though.”
“Yeah, by two points against the Patriots.”
“The Pats aren’t that bad.”
“They aren’t that good, though.”
Without raising his head from the engine he was currently working on, Guy commented from across the garage. “Let me know when you two girls grow up and start watching a real sport and we’ll talk some baseball.”
Greg and James exchanged a smile and Greg turned in Guy’s direction. “Let’s see, baseball. Is that where they hit some ball with a stick then run around in a circle, or am I thinkin’ about golf?”
Guy’s deep laughter echoed from under his hood before it turned to a series of choppy, unhealthy sounding coughs.
“Well, I guess I’d better get back to work,” James said. “I’ll see you tonight.”
“Later,” Greg said with a smile, then he put his foot on the edge of the creeper and pushed James back under the car.
Greg was one of the few close friends James had made during his high school years. If it wasn’t for Greg, James probably would have dropped out of school during his sophomore year, and Greg certainly wouldn’t have passed algebra without James’ help. Greg was the only person other than Angie who James was truly comfortable around. James and Greg were just as much opposites as James and Angie were. In contrast to James’ fairly small stature and his quiet ways, Greg was a tall athletic kid with curly red hair who always seemed to be smiling or laughing. And Greg had one other attribute that helped him tremendously in the day-to-day dealings of small town life; unlike James, Greg was a native, born and raised in Newton, Texas. Everybody in town liked Deputy Greg O’Brien.
James and Greg sat on the couch in front of James’ television. Greg was decked out in a white and blue striped Troy Aikman jersey and blue Dallas Cowboys jogging pants with a grey stripe running down the leg. James’ attire was his usual blue jeans and tee shirt. The only change was his customary faded non-descript baseball cap had been put aside for a blue Dallas Cowboys cap. On the coffee table in front of the two fans sat a now empty football-shaped bowl that had contained cheese dip earlier in the night, a scattering of tortilla chip crumbs, and twelve empty beer bottles.
On the TV, Troy Aikman was sacked for the sixth time of the night, this time coughing up the ball, which was scooped up by Minnesota linebacker Dwayne Rudd and run thirty yards into the end zone for yet another Minnesota touchdown.
“Damn it!” Greg shouted, jumping to his feet.
Sandy poked her head through the door from the kitchen. “Greg! Watch your mouth. The kids’ll hear you.” The girls hadn’t gone over to Greg and Sandy’s as planned.
Greg grinned and replied, “Sorry, Hon’, but that play deserved a good cussin’.”
Sandy rolled her eyes and returned to the ladies’ gossip session.
“That’s game,” James said, shaking his head. “Twenty-three to nine with less than three minutes left in the fourth. I don’t think Staubach could even pull this one off.”
Still standing, Greg turned to James and replied, “Aw, sure he could.” He then picked up the football-shaped dip bowl and drew back like he was going to throw it. “Ol’ Roger-Dodger would just look for Drew Pearson in the corner of the end zone and drop one right in his arms.” Over half the empty beer bottles on the coffee table belonged to Greg — nine, to be exact.
James yawned and then said, “And what about the other touchdown they need?”
“Well, Roger would get out there with the special teams and recover the onside kick, then look for Drew in the end zone again,” Greg replied, going through all the actions with the football-shaped bowl as he described them, including a clumsy attempt to leap over the coffee table that almost landed him in James’ lap.
While Greg was going through his act, James stretched his mouth for a tremendous yawn.
Greg plopped down beside him, and, with a serious look that didn’t look altogether at home on his never-serious face, he asked, “Man, you been sleeping good lately?” Then the familiar grin returned and, nudging James in the side, he added, “You really look like shit.”
“I’m just a little tired, that’s all.” James said with a weary smile.
“If he’s tired, Greg, we should go home and let him rest,” Sandy called out from the kitchen.
Still grinning, Greg said to James. “I swear, that heifer’s got radars for ears.”
“What did you say?” Sandy immediately replied.