The Devil in Gray by Graham Masterton Read Free Book Online Page B

“ Can’t breathe! ”
    He twisted around and realized that he was lying on his bed with his sheet over his face, thrashing his arms and kicking his legs.
    Panting, sweating, he sat up. He switched on the bedside light and he could see himself in the mirror that faced the end of the bed, pale-faced, with his hair sticking up like a cockerel. His throat was dry—almost as dry as if he really had been running away from a brushfire. He reached for the glass of water that he usually left on his nightstand, but tonight he had forgotten it. He said, “Shit,” and swung his legs out of bed. It was then that he realized that his feet were lacerated. They were covered in dozens of small scratches, all the way up to his calves, and his sheets were spotted with blood.
    More than that, there were several briars still sticking in his ankles.
    Whoa , he thought. This is getting dangerously close to insanity . You can’t catch briars in your feet from running through underbrush in a nightmare, no matter how vivid that nightmare might have been.
    He put on his glasses and went through to the bathroom, hobbling a little. He switched on the light over the bathroom mirror. His face was scratched, too. There was a nasty little cut on the side of his nose, and the skin on his right cheek had been torn in three diagonal stripes.
    Pulling out a Kleenex, he carefully dabbed the scratches on his face. Then he sat down on the toilet seat and plucked the briars from out of his feet. He sprayed aftershave on the wounds because he didn’t have any antiseptic, sucking in his breath when it stung.
    He stayed in the bathroom for almost five minutes, wondering if he ought to go back to bed. Like, what if he went back into the same nightmare and the brushfire caught up with him? He could be burned to death in his own bed. He had read about religious fanatics who had identified so strongly with the suffering of Christ that stigmata had opened in their feet and the palms of their hands, and their foreheads had appeared to be scratched by a crown of thorns. Maybe this was a similar kind of phenomenon.
    At last he stood up and went back into the bedroom. He had to take control of this situation. He desperately needed to sleep, and he couldn’t let his subconscious fears start ruling his life. “I’m not going crazy,” he announced. “I’m probably suffering from delayed grief and work-related stress, but I am definitely not going crazy.” He paused, and then he said, “Shit, I’m talking to myself. How crazy is that?”
    He eased himself back into bed, but this time he left the light on. It made him feel as if he were a child again, terrified of what might be hiding in the dark. When he was five or six, he had imagined that the parchment-colored lining of his bedroom drapes was the skin of a tall, thin, mummified man, and that as soon as the light was switched off, the mummy would unfold itself and stalk across the room, stilt-legged, to take out his eyes.
    At about 3:30, he fell asleep again. He dreamed that he and Cathy were walking together through the Hollywood Cemetery. It was late evening and the sky was a grainy crimson color. The crosses and urns and headstones looked like chess pieces in a complicated board game, and Decker was sure that when his back was turned they kept shifting their position. He kept trying to look at Cathy, but for some reason her face was always blurred and out of focus.
    â€œWhat were you doing in the kitchen?” he asked her. His voice sounded oddly muffled.
    â€œI was protecting you,” she replied.
    â€œProtecting me? Protecting me from what?”
    â€œFrom Saint Barbara. Saint Barbara wants her revenge.”
    â€œSaint Barbara? What the hell are you talking about? What I have ever done to upset Saint Barbara?”
    â€œI don’t want you to know. I don’t want you to find out.”
    â€œCathy, listen to me. Tell me that I’m