NIGHTMARE TRANSCRIPT

by RICK HAUTALA

Published by

Ghostwriter Publications

Dorchester, Dorset, England

www.rickhautala.com

www.ghostwriterpublications.com

© Rick Hautala 2011

PRAISE FOR RICK HAUTALA!

“Rick Hautala’s work shines with dedication, hard-earned craft and devotion.” - Peter Straub

“A master of contemporary horror and suspense.” - Cemetery Dance

“Rick Hautala proves each time out that he understands and respects the inner workings of the traditional horror novel as well or better than anyone writing.” - Joe R. Lansdale

NIGHTMARE TRANSCRIPT

“Nightmare Transcript,” originally published in Bad News, edited by Richard Laymon, published by CD Publications, March, 2001.

This is what you say: “I don’t know which is worse—when I’m having the nightmares, or a couple of nights later, once they stop.”

Then you take a deep breath and hold it as you settle back against the couch cushions and roll your head from side to side. The crackling sound your spine makes is like a string of firecrackers going off inside your head. It hurts.

“Well, then,” says your current psychotherapist.

His name is Bob Marshall, and you don’t like him, not one bit.

“Why don’t you tell me about both situations?” When you shrug, the leather-covered couch on which you’re lying makes another, deeper creaking sound that sets your teeth on edge. You wince as you inhale slowly between your teeth.

After taking a moment to collect your thoughts, you say this:

“You see. I’ve even been keeping track of them—the nightmares, I mean—trying to see if they come in conjunction with the full moon or something I’ve eaten just before I go to bed or something. So far, though, there doesn’t seem to be any pattern. None that I’m aware of, anyway.”

Bob asks: “Do you mean that you don’t see any pattern to your dreams or to the occurrences of your dreams?”

Your anger suddenly spikes, and you glance over your shoulder a Bob and see that stupid smirk he seems to have on his face for most of the time during your appointment. You hate it when he looks at you like that, like you’re something he stepped in or something.

“They’re not dreams,” you say.

You’re trying hard not to shout, but you put as much firmness as you can into your voice.

“They’re fucking nightmares, okay? You got that?” Bob nods, and you clench both hands into fists so hard they start to ache all the way up to your elbows. Your body is tense, and it begins to tremble, especially your legs, like you just finished running. The couch kee[ps making those seep creaking sounds that hurt your ears so much you have to close your eyes and block your ears before you finally gain a measure of control and don’t scream.

“Right...right,” Bob the therapist you don’t like says. “They’re nightmares.”

His voice remains calm even though you can sense—hell, you can practically smell that he’s as frustrated and full of rage as you are, only in a different way or maybe he just hasn’t realized it yet.

“So tell me,” he says, using that fake, friendly voice. “Is it that you don’t see a pattern to the … nightmares or to the occur—”

“Yes...yes,” you say, breathing out harshly between your teeth. “Jesus, I told you that the last time I was here. They’re all the same—the nightmares. Night after night. The same fucking thing! It’s just that it...that they get really intense for a few nights, and then, over the next week or so, they’re not as detailed...not as scary.”

Bob shifts in his chair and says this: “But then, maybe two or three weeks go by, and they start coming back again, getting even more intense, right? That’s what you told me in the last session.”

His voice rises suggestively, but the only response you can manage is a low grunt because what you really want to do is leap off the goddamned couch and throttle the living shit out of Bob. Your arms are hurting all the way up to your shoulders, now, and you think you can hear a high-pitched buzzing sound in your ears.

“Well, then...can you tell me exactly whet that is? Bob asks. “When they start getting intense again?”

You grit your teeth and shake your head, feeling totally exasperated with this guy.

He just plain isn’t going to get it, is he? You ask yourself.

And then you answer yourself: No, he isn’t. Not any more than any of the other head shrinkers you’ve seen over the last three years. Bob is...what?

The fifth shrink you’ve worked with so far. That’s not counting those useless talks you had last year with the school therapist. What a fucking waste of time. But you’re already beginning to think that it doesn’t matter how many sessions you have with him or any other shrink. You can tell that Bob—just like the others—just plain isn’t going to get it.

“So why don’t you review for me how this dre—I mean, how these nightmares go?” he asks. He still sounds so calm and patient, like he’s talking to a goddamned imbecile or a little kid or something. You can tell that he’s putting it all on for you. It’s nothing but a fucking show.

You press your head down hard against the cushion, ignoring the creaking sounds the couch makes and the buzzing in your head as you stare up at the ceiling. A cloudy, red haze swirls across your vision. You wonder—like you have so many times before—if this means you’ve busted a blood vessel in your head, but you guess that would have dropped you dead in your tracks before now if that’s what had happened.

You take a deep, steadying breath before you start to tell Bob again, and this is what you say:

“It always begins with me walking down a street in the city, okay? It’s usually cold out, but even when it’s a warm summer night or something, I’m wearing a long, heavy coat. A dark coat. Maybe even wool. The only thing I feel in the nightmare is...really nervous.”

“Nervous?” Bob echoes.

“Yeah, nervous,” you snap, unable to keep the sarcasm out of your voice. “Mostly because there are always lots of people crowding the street. Most of them seem to be looking at me kind of funny, you know? And they avoid me like they know something about me I don’t. But I don’t want them to see me. I just want to fade away...disappear.”

“Is it always the same street?” Bob asks.

You feel suddenly angry at him for interrupting you now that you’re on a roll. Once the memory of the nightmare starts coming back to you, you don’t want to lose it. You can practically feel the adrenalin squirting into your bloodstream, making your body hum like a vibrating tuning fork. Maybe that’s what makes the buzzing sound in your head, a tuning fork.

“No...no,” you say, still struggling not to scream at him. “It’s not always the exact same street, but I...I can tell, in the nightmares, you know, that it’s usually in the same part of town, usually over by the high school.”

“So what happens next?” Bob asks, still sounding as patient as all hell.

You’re not so sure you like him prodding you like this. The last therapist you worked with never did that to you. Of course, she was as much a dishit as Bob, but in a different way.

Damn. You wish you could remember her name, but as bad as she was, she was purty damned good compared to ole’ Bob here. You liked the way she always just listened to you and let you talk as much as you liked without ever interrupting you. She spoke so seldom there were quite a few times when you actually wondered if she was even awake. But you’d glance over at her, and she be watching you carefully, her eyes looking like big bug eyes behind those stupid glasses she wore.

Yeah, you think, that was one thing wrong with her.

She had those great big bug eyes! You had to stop going to her because it got to the point where you couldn’t stand the thought that she was always looking at you with those great big bug eyes. Even when you weren’t looking at her, she was looking at you.

So you stopped going to her, and here you were with good ole’ Bob.

“Well, then,” you finally say after clearing your throat. “What happens next is, I just sort of stand there in the dark, you know? Usually I’m in an alley or a dark doorway or something so no one can see me, and I just wait.”

“You wait...for what?”

“For someone to come along, of course,” you say. You’re trying your best to control yourself, but Bob is making is goddamned hard.

“And what do you think about while you’re waiting?” Bob asks.

“Think about?”

Your voice sounds like an echo of his, and you sigh and shake your head in frustration.

“Jesus Christ! These are nightmares we’re talking about. I don’t think about anything. Not in a nightmare. Not the way you do in real life, anyway.”

“Of course not,” Bob says agreeably. He sounds a little too agreeable for your taste, and you realize that you’re going to have to stop coming to visit him, too.

“So then...tell me,” Bob sayd. “What do you do? What happens next?”

And this is what you say: “I told you during the last visit that I wait for someone to come along. Usually it’s a girl who’s by herself. She doesn’t have to be pretty or anything, but she usually is young and pretty. And alone.

“When I start to move toward her, it’s like my feet aren’t even touching the ground. It’s like they’re greased of something, and I just sort of glide down the steps or whatever, and then before I know it I’m sliding along beside her.”

You take a breath that almost hurts and says, “Do your feet touch the ground in your dreams?”

Bob doesn’t reply to that, and you get a little more upset with him. Your voice seems stuffed inside your chest, and the memories of the nightmares are now as clear and sharp as broken glass in your mind. You can see it—and hear it—hell you can taste and feel the whole scene as it unfolds.

The girl.

Her hair glistens in the flickering city lights.

Her eyes go wide and moist with apprehension when she realizes you’re moving along beside her.

Her throat—the pale, wide stretch of her throat is exposed.

And so is her fear. Her fear is as bright as sunlight on chrome.

Oh, she’s afraid of you all right, as well she should be.

Once again your hands begin to shake, and you clench you right hand into a fist as if you are actually holding a knife.

“And then I...then I...”

Your throat closes off, and you can no longer speak. You have to squeeze your eyes tightly shut because the pulsating red haze in front of them is getting brighter and deeper. It blocks out what little you can see of Bob’s office wall—the framed diplomas and family pictures, put there, you now think, just to make you feel bad because your family is so fucked up. You look toward the window but can hardly see the trees against the sky. When you shut your eyes, all you can see is a shifting red veil that fills your field of vision.

“Well now,” Bob says in a low, almost suggestive tone of voice. “Over the last few months, you must have heard on the news or read in the newspaper about those high school girls who have been killed downtown.”

You grunt but say nothing.

“Did you know any of them?” Bob asks. “You attended the same school for a while.”

You try to answer him, but your throat feels swollen and tight, like it’s blocked. You try to clear it, but the burning feeling won’t go away. When you swallow, it leaves a terrible aftertaste.

At last, you say this:

“Yeah, I heard about it on the news the other night, but—” You shake your head, and the couch creaks, and your neck aches. “No. I didn’t know any of them.”

You can say no more, and you pause, waiting for Bob to say something semi-intelligent.

Finally he does.

“Well, it could be that all these incidents and the fact that they’re all students from your high school are affecting you,” Bob suggests. “Maybe they’re contributing to your nightmares.”

Is that the best you can do? You wonder.

You try to answer him, but the only sound that comes out of you no is a low, strangled gasp.

You can feel your face flush, and you almost laugh out loud, remembering how your mother used to tease you about the way you blush. Shed say your face looked so hot she could have lit a match on it.

“Would you like a glass of water?” Bob asks you after an uncomfortably long stretch of silence.

It’s like he’s reading your mind, peeking into your skull, but you are still unable to speak, so you simply nod and then you close your eyes and listen to the sounds he makes as he gets up from his chair and walks over to the water cooler in the corner beside his office door. As he fills the paper cup, the big bottle of Poland Spring water gurgles, sounding like your stomach when you’re upset or hungry.

With your eyes still tightly shut, you listen, cringing a little as he walks over to the couch. You reach out blindly with your right hand and take the paper cup from him. You try to stop your hand from shaking as you raise the cup to your mouth and take a sip. Without looking, you can’t help but spill a little on your shirt front, but the water feels really good, sliding down your throat.

“Thanks,” you say after emptying the small cup, and for once, you really mean it.

You keep your eyes closed, taking a long time to compose yourself.

You really need to.

You don’t like Bob. You’ve decided that, but you suddenly want to tell him the truth. You want to admit to him that it’s not remembering the details of the nightmares that you find so unsettling.

Far from it, in fact.

Although you would never dare to tell Bob or anyone else this, you actually find remembering the details of the nightmares rather exciting.

Stimulating, in fact.

You realize that you have an erection, so you shift around on the couch and adjust your pants, hoping it doesn’t show.

You think to yourself: What kind of therapist would notice when his patient gets an erection?

And you answer yourself: Not one I’d want to work with, that’s for goddamned sure!

“Please understand,” Bob says softly. “You don’t have to continue with this right now if you don’t want to, if it’s too disturbing.”

His voice is so low you can barely hear it above the tuning fork that’s ringing inside your head. But you consider what he said, and you know that—amazingly—he’s right.

You don’t have to tell him anything, and right now you’re not so sure you even want to.

What if, you think, by telling him about your nightmares, by talking about them, it decreases their power and the charge you get from them?

With your eyes still tightly closed, you sigh and shake your head in resigned agreement.

“Yeah,” you say, almost breathlessly. “Well, the thing of it is, for the last few nights, the nightmares haven’t been nearly as strong as before. I guess I’m on a down-cycle now with how intense they are, you know?”

“And that’s a good thing?” Bob says, half-statement, half-suggestion.

No, it isn’t good!

You think this and are not even sure if you say it out loud or not.

It’s not good at all, you stupid asshole!

You finally see that the problem is, you can’t tell Bob or anyone else—not even the lady with the big bug eyes—that it’s only once the dreams—once the nightmares start to fade that you start getting more and more agitated...more and more worried.

You wish you could tell Bob or someone...anyone...that the adrenalin rush you get from the nightmares is practically the only thing that makes you feel alive...really, truly alive.

And once you start losing that edge, once the feelings start fading away, you start feeling like you have to...

Well, you’re not exactly sure what.

It’s like you feel empty...hollow, and you have to do something to bring those feelings back.

You finally realize that you’ve been lost in your own thoughts for too long, and you know Bob’s waiting for you to say something, so you say this:

“Well...I do tend to sleep better then.”

You hear your own voice. It sounds distant, like you’re far away from yourself. Maybe in the next room. After you say thins, all you can think about is how much you wish you trusted Bob—trusted him enough to tell him what you really feel and what you have to do afterwards to bring those feelings back...to bring the nightmares back.

That’s probably why you’re in therapy has never worked for you, you decide, and probably why it never will because when you come right down to it, you don’t like to talk.

You’re the kind of person who likes to do things.

You have to act!

You suppose you can handle it for another couple of nights—maybe a week, tops. But after that once the feelings from the nightmares are all gone, you know—you just know that you’re going to have to go out again and do something to bring them back.

AN INTRODUCTION TO UNTCIGAHUNK

LITTLE BROTHERS

A Micmac Indian tale told around the campfire

How the earth and water came to be, no one but Old One knows. How trees and rocks and animals came to be, no one but Old One knows. The earth and sky were made by Old One. He sang a sacred song as he molded them in his hands. He carved the earth with swift, gleaming rivers and filled its depths with surging oceans. He sang another sacred song as he stamped his foot on the ground to make deep valleys and push up mountains that reached to the sky. Singing another sacred song, he smoked his pipe and blew out smoke to make the clouds. He placed the sun and the stars and the moon in the sky and set them on their courses. Taking soil into his hand, he spit on it and sang many sacred songs as he fashioned all the creatures that live on the earth, fly in the air, and swim in the waters.

But after all this work was done, Old One was lonely.

When the sun fled from the sky and the moon shined her cold light over the land, Old One would sit huddled by the campfire in front of his wigwam, and he was filled with sadness.

“What’s the matter, Old One?” Brother Wolf asked one night, seeing how sad Old One was.

Old One puffed on his pipe and didn’t answer as he looked up at the stars, his creations, and thought long. He saw the stars’ beauty, but he felt their loneliness, too. Looking across the land, he saw the valleys and mountains he had made, and the gleaming rivers and oceans he had filled; but they, too, filled him with a deep longing. He knew in his heart that none of his creation mattered unless there was someone to look at it, someone who could appreciate its beauty.

“I’m lonely, Brother Wolf,” Old One said after a long while. “I look around me and see what I have made, and it saddens me.”

“The world you have made is very beautiful, Old One,” Brother Wolf said. “The woods and plains are filled with animals and birds. The waters are alive with fish. The hunting is good, and all that is strong grows and prospers.”

“Yes, but that is not enough,” Old One said sadly. “I feel the loneliness of the world, and I need someone...someone I can talk to. Someone who can share with me and enjoy the beauty of all that I have made.”

“Every day after the hunt I come to your camp and we talk long into the evening. Am I not company enough for you, Old One?” Brother Wolf asked. He lowered his head and pointed his sleek black tail to the ground as he waited for Old One’s reply.

Again, Old One smoked and thought long before speaking.

“No, Brother Wolf,” he said finally. “Your company is not enough. The world needs Human Beings, creatures created in my image who can truly enjoy what I have made.”

“But Old One,” Brother Wolf said, scowling deeply, “would not creatures made in your own image also share your powers? I mean no disrespect, but would it be wise to give Human Beings such dominion over your work? Perhaps they will make things and do things to your creation that are not part of your plan.”

Old One laughed loud and long, and smoke as thick as storm clouds billowed from his nostrils.

“Brother Wolf,” he said sagely, “I have no plan other than to do what I have said. In the morning, I will take more soil and spit, and I will sing a sacred song as I fashion Human Beings for my world.”

Brother Wolf bowed so low his snout nearly touched the ground as he shook his head from side to side.

“Meaning no disrespect, Old One, but I think that would not be wise.”

Saying that, he bid Old One good night and skulked away; but in his cold, animal heart, he held resentment for Old One for not telling him that his company was enough to give him pleasure. That very night, he resolved to wait for the dawn and, before the sun could light the land in the morning, he would steal it and hide it in his den.

2

Old One slept, and the night was long, seemingly without end. He was not aware that while he slept Brother Wolf had stolen the sun. When Old One awoke, refreshed, he sat and smoked, waiting for the sun to rise. After a long time when it didn’t come, he grew impatient and called Brother Bear to him.

“Brother Bear,” he said, “I feel in my heart that many hours, perhaps many years have passed in darkness, yet the sun has not brought his light and warmth to the land. Do you know anything about this?”

Brother Bear shook his head sadly. “I do not, Old One,” he said. “Like you, I have slept long and have awakened to find the world still dark. You created the day and the night, the sun and the moon, so you must know if this night will last forever.”

“We shall see,” Old One said, stirring the coals of his campfire. There was little wood, and the fire was no more than a feeble orange glow in the darkness. “If the night lasts too long, I will either find the sun or else sing a sacred song and make a new one.”

After that, Old One called to him Brother Deer, Brother Fox, Brother Rat, Brother Raccoon, and many others. They all said to him what Brother Bear had said to him, and Old One answered them as he had answered Brother Bear. Before he could call Brother Wolf to him, however, Old One found that he was growing tired. Remembering his resolve to create the Human Beings today, he set about his work in spite of the darkness. By this time, his campfire had burned out, and he could no longer see in the darkness to gather more wood. Digging blindly into the earth, his creation, he took a handful of soil, spit into it. Singing a sacred song, he began to fashion a Human Being. But working in the dark, he was unable to see his handiwork. It was only by touch that he fashioned a Human Being like himself who walked on two legs like Brother Bear but was naked.

“To you, Little Brother, I give the gift of life,” Old One said. With that, he blew gently onto the molded soil until he felt it stir with life. Carefully, he held his new creation close to his face and addressed it thus:

“Also to you, Little Brother, I give command of the earth. All of the animals I have created are for you to—”

He intended to say “for you to enjoy,” but before he could continue, Brother Wolf came sniffing to Old One’s campsite. Old One heard him prowling in the darkness and called out to him, “Brother Wolf, why do you come to me, skulking in the darkness?”

“I have heard from my brother animals that you are displeased, Old One,” Brother Wolf said softly. “You have been asking my brothers if they know where the sun is.”

“And you know,” Old One said, seeing clearly into Brother Wolf’s heart.

“I do,” Brother Wolf replied, “for I have taken the sun from the sky and hidden it inside my den.”

Old One’s heart flashed like lightning with anger, yet he said nothing.

“I was saddened by what you said to me last night,” Brother Wolf went on, “that my company was not good enough for you. I stole the sun to prevent you from making Human Beings.”

“Go! Now!” Old One commanded, his voice rumbling like distant thunder in the darkness. “Return the sun to the sky, or else you and all of your children will perish.”

Without another word, Brother Wolf departed back to his cave where he retrieved the sun and placed it back in the sky. As soon as the warm yellow light touched the land, Old One looked into his hand and saw what he had created from soil and spit and by singing a sacred song in the darkness.

The Human Being was short and stunted. His body was covered with thick scales like those of Brother Lizard. The back of his head was pointed, and his face projected forward like Brother Rat’s. His eyes were round and bulged from his face like twin full moons. His shoulders were broad, like Brother Buffalo’s, but his body was narrow and had long, dangling arms that ended in wide flat hands upon which were long, curved claws like Brother Mole’s. He stood shakily on thin, gnarly legs that bowed outward at the knees like no creature Old One had ever created.

“You are a disappointment to me, Little Brother,” Old One said, looking earnestly at his creation as he placed it carefully on the ground. “I thought, working in the dark, my hands and my sacred song would guide me, but now that Brother Wolf has returned the sun to the sky, I see that I was wrong. You are not what I had in mind at all. You are not a Human Being.”

Little Brother looked up at Old One but, because Old One had not given him the gift of speech, he said nothing. The sudden blast of sunlight hurt his round, bulging eyes, and he shielded his face from the day’s warmth as best he could with his wide, flat hands.

“No, Little Brother, I am sorry, but you are not a creature of the daylight,” Old One said solemnly. “You were created in the night, and you are a creature of the dark, so to the darkness below the earth I will send you. But to show that I am kind, I will allow you and all of your children to come back to the upper world once every five years, there to see my creation and all the animals which I have created for you to—”

Again, Old One intended to say “for you to enjoy” but at that moment, Brother Wolf returned, approaching Old One with his head bowed and his snout scraping against the ground.

“See what you have done!” Old One said, clenching his fists and shaking them over his head until the wind rose high in the sky. “Because I was not able to see, I have created this, not the Human Being I intended. And it is all your fault, Brother Wolf. Because I have to banish this pitiful creature to the dark caverns below the ground, I also will have to punish you. You, Brother Wolf, will become a child of the night as well, and every night, you and all of your children will howl at the full moon, the pale reflection of that which you tried to steal from me!”

OTHER WORKS BY RICK HAUTALA

SCARED CROWS

One of the most respected names in genre fiction, Rick Hautala, delivers his second chapbook...and this one has it all...and one of the greatest comic book characters of all time...HELLBOY.

It’s a dark and stormy night somewhere in the backwoods of Maine,and when Hellboy and his friend, The Finn, stop by a bar for more than a few ‘cold ones,’ HB enchants a pretty young woman with a story designed to impress her. But every bar has its local punk just itching to make a name for himself, but he‘s about to learn a valuable life lesson...that it never pays to interrupt Hellboy...especially when he’s trying to tell a story.

SCHOOL HOUSE

From one of THE genuine Masters of Dark Fiction comes the story of Pete. (Petey) Garvey returns to his home town in Maine...and a visit to the Pingree School awakens thoughts...feelings...emotions that he thought were long buried.

He forgot that the feelings of guilt can hold you in its vice-like grip. And it’s on a visit to the empty halls of his old school that the voices from the past ask him one question. “Why didn’t you help?”

CHRYSALIS

Just outside of the sleepy town of Thornton, road crews have begun blasting the area to prepare for the straighten of Route 25.

Young Stan Walters finds the caves that have been opened up by the crews just too much of a temptation...and explores. Once inside the labyrinth, he comes upon something about the size of football - cold and almost certainly dead.

But what he and his brother, Chet, soon discover is something far from dead...something very much at the beginning of it's life-cycle.

An untcigahunk... A little brother.