The Ninth Nightmare by Graham Masterton Read Free Book Online

He strained his eyes in the gloom, however, and he thought he could make out a dark hunched shape inside it, but he guessed it was probably nothing but a shadow. There was a toilet beside it, with its mahogany seat raised.
    The smell in the bathroom was sickening – like drains clogged up with slimy gray human hair and unflushed urine that had turned dark amber, and something else, too – a horrible thick sweetness that filled up his nose and his throat and made him feel like gagging. It reminded him of the bathroom in his boyhood home in the Brightmoor ghetto – the bathroom in which his older brother Nelson had died on the toilet of a heroin overdose.
    The question was: how had his pristine white-tiled hotel bathroom turned into this ? There was only one door to the bathroom, so he couldn’t have chosen the wrong door by mistake. And even if he had, he couldn’t imagine the Griffin House Hotel leaving any bathroom in such a disgusting condition.
    He pulled the light-switch cord. As he did so, and the fluorescent lights popped on, he saw that he must have been suffering from some kind of an optical illusion. The bathroom was pristine. The bathtub was shiny and white, with gold-plated faucets. The hand basin was sunk into black streaky marble, and next to it there was a guest amenity tray with complimentary bottles of shampoo and body lotion and aftershave. The shower stall was sparkling clean, with an engraving of seagulls on its frosted glass door. There were towels, but they were all fluffy and dark green and neatly arranged on a heated towel-rail.
    Lincoln stared at himself in the mirror. He was surprised by his own lack of expression. He placed his left hand on the marble surround of the hand basin and it was cool and polished and indisputably real. With his right hand he turned on one of the faucets, and that was real, too. The filthy, old-fashioned bathroom had completely disappeared – if it had ever existed at all. This bathroom even smelled good, like green tea bath oil.
    â€˜You’re losing it, Linc,’ he told himself. He went over to the toilet, lifted the seat and relieved himself. He kept on staring at himself as he washed his hands. ‘You’re really losing it. You’re working too hard, that’s what’s wrong with you. You’re always living on the edge. You got to chill, bro.’
    He left the bathroom and closed the door behind him, although he didn’t turn the light off. He stood for a while at the end of his bed, his head bowed, trying to untangle his thoughts. Then he went over to the phone and pressed nine again. It could be that when he had tried to get an outside line before, he had been suffering from the same delusion that had made him believe that his bathroom was so slummy.
    This time, he managed to get a dial tone. He punched out his home number and waited while it rang. It rang and it rang and he had almost given up hope that Grace was going to answer when the phone was picked up.
    He said, ‘Grace honey, it’s me! Sorry I took so long to call you back.’
    There was a long silence, and then he heard the same man’s voice that he had heard before. ‘ What did I tell you, Lincoln? What did I specifically tell you? Were you not listening to me, or what? ’
    â€˜Who the hell are you?’ Lincoln demanded. ‘What the hell are you doing in my house? Where’s my wife?’
    â€˜ I’m not in your house, Lincoln. I’m much closer than that. But I specifically told you not to go back to your room, didn’t I? ’
    â€˜You listen to me, if you think you can bump my dome you got yourself another think coming. I’m going to track you down, dog, and I’m going to come looking for you and believe me you’re going to wish you never got on to my phone line ever.’
    There was another sharp hiss of white noise, and then the line returned to its monotonous crackling. Lincoln said,