It was enough, though. The tightening of his throat and the desperation of his need to cry out snapped the line that tethered him to the nightmare and he popped awake. He lay there, chest heaving, throat raw from the strangled cry, sweat soaking him.
Somewhere behind the curtains morning birds absurdly argued that it was a sunny, wonderful day and all was right with the world. Terry would gladly have taken a shotgun to them.
He sat up, his muscles aching from the long hours of dreaming tension. Sarah was still asleep, curled into a ball, her face buried in a spill of black hair and crumpled pillows. Standing, Terry looked down at her, at her lovely lines, smelling the faintness of her perfume in the bedroom air. He loved her so much that tears burned in his eyes and he wondered — not for the first time — if he should kill himself.
Every morning the idea had more appeal, and every morning it seemed like it would be the best thing he could ever do for her.
Terry wrenched himself away from staring at her and lumbered into the bathroom. He leaned both hands on the cool rim of the sink and stared at his reflection. Every day there was just a moment of dread when he brought his face to the mirror — wondering if today was the day he would see the beast and not the man, if today he would wear the face he wore in his dreams.
It was just his own face. Broad, square, with curly red hair, a short beard that was not as precisely trimmed as it once was. Bloodshot blue eyes that looked back at him, shifty and full of guilt for something he just could not name. He was five weeks shy of forty and normally looked five years younger than that. Now he looked fifty, or even sixty.
He opened the medicine cabinet and selected from among a dozen orange-brown prescription bottles until he found the clozapine, tipped one into his mouth, and washed it down with four glasses of water. The antipsychotic gave him terrible dry mouth. He put another of the pills into a small plastic pill case along with half a dozen Xanax and snapped it shut, feeling edgy and strangely guilty as he did so. He glanced up at the mirror again.
“Good morning, Mr. Mayor,” he said, hating the face he saw, and then he set about washing and brushing and constructing the face he needed everyone else in town to see.
Crow pulled out of the long Guthrie driveway and turned northeast along Interstate Extension A-32, heading to Old Mill Road and the Haunted Hayride that was nestled back in between the Pinelands College campus and the sprawling southern reach of the great Pine Deep State Forest. He had stopped whistling to himself and was now singing along badly to a Nick Cave CD. As his battered old Chevy, Missy, rolled up between corn farms and berry farms, Crow sang his way through the Bad Seeds’ raucous and obscene version of “Stagger Lee,” a song he could never play in anything like polite company. To Crow, there was nothing particularly strange about starting a lovely late September morning off with a ballad about mass murder and pederasty.
He sang badly and loud and the miles rolled away as the car took the hills and jags and twists of A-32 with practiced ease.
A busload of migrant day workers passed, heading for the Guthrie farm, and Crow tooted to Toby, the driver and crew boss. A few of the workers waved at him and he waved back. Most of them were Haitians and there were half a dozen among them that Henry Guthrie was considering taking on full-time.
Behind the bus were two cars — both with people Crow knew — and beyond them the first of the day’s school buses. It was just hitting 7:00 a.m. and already the town was up and about. Nobody sleeps late in farm country.
Crow’s cell phone beeped — the tune was “I Got My Mojo Working”—and he flipped it open. “Hello, Miss Beechum’s Country Dayschool,” he said.
“Hey there,” Val said. “I just had a very, very nice flashback.”
He turned down the CD player. “Yeah, baby…me too. You are the most delicious woman in the world, you know that?”
“Mmm,” she purred. “You may be a goofball, Mr. Crow, but the things you do to me. Wow.”
“Gotta say that it’s pretty darned mutual. Three times between eleven-thirty last night and six this morning. My oh my. It’s like being eighteen again.”
“I wanted you to know that I’ll be thinking of this morning for the rest of the day. Bye-bye,” she said, and disconnected.
As he drove, Crow’s grin was brighter than the sun that now shone above the distant waving fields of corn.
In his dreams he was always Iron Mike Sweeney, the Enemy of Evil. In dreams he wasn’t fourteen — he was fully grown and packed with muscle head to toe. No one could possibly stand up to him, and no one dared attack him. He was the agent of Order pitted eternally against the nefarious forces of Chaos. He was the quiet stranger who came to troubled towns and brought rough justice with his lightning fists, flashing feet, and cleverly disguised array of ultra-high-tech weaponry. He was the immortal Soldier of Light who carried the torch of reason and understanding through the growing and malevolent shadows of night. Demons fled before him; vampires would wither into noxious clouds of dust as he turned his Solar Gaze on them. The androids of the Dark Order, powerful as they were, could never match the thunderstorm power in his hard-knuckled hands. Iron Mike was the single most powerful warrior this old world had ever seen.
Even now the Enemy of Evil was holding the Bridge of Gelderhaus against the forces of Prince Viktor and his slavering band of genetic freaks, each of them armed with laser swords and shock-rods.
The battle had raged all night but Iron Mike Sweeney was not tired. His sword arm was as strong and steady as it had been when he drew his titanium rune-blade and braced himself, legs wide, at the mouth of the bridge while behind him the citizens of Gelderhaus cowered. Wave after wave of the genetic Warhounds had come charging him, but time and again Iron Mike’s unbreakable sword had smashed them down and beaten them back. The gorge far below the bridge was choked with their corpses and the river ran red with their radioactive blood.
Now the Warhounds had fallen back and Prince Viktor himself was striding across the bridge, his sword Deathpall in his gauntleted hand. He stopped, just out of sword’s reach, his eyes blazing with hatred, his mouth trembling with frustrated rage.
“You shall not pass!” roared Iron Mike Sweeney in a voice that echoed from the walls on both sides of the gorge.
Hissing with fury, Prince Viktor raised his sword and cried—
“—get the fuck out of bed now or do you want me to come up there?”
The roar jolted Mike out of the dream and his body was obeying before his mind could even process what was going on.
“Do you fucking hear me?”
Mike was on his feet and he hurried to his bedroom door and pulled it open, crying, “I’m up, I’m up!”
At the foot of the stairs Vic Wingate — Mike’s stepfather — stood with a foot on the first step, his hard right hand gripping the banister. “You deaf or something? I have to call you three times before you even bother to acknowledge my existence? What am I — the fucking maid?”
Mike had to head this off at the pass before Vic really got worked up. Though morning beatings weren’t usually Vic’s thing, it didn’t take a whole lot to set him off.
“Sorry, Vic, I was on the toilet with the door closed.”
Vic looked up at him for a moment and the anger gradually turned to a nasty smirk. “Yeah, that figures…I always figured you were full of shit. Well, get your ass down here and have your breakfast. I don’t want to hear about you being late for school.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You have papers after school?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, get them done and get home. Don’t be late.” He leaned on those last three words.