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15

Holdstock in fact was dreaming he was in Imperial Mercy Hospital. In his dream the deputies outside his door talked quietly, Hood looked in on him, a nurse spoke to Hood just outside his door. He was aware of everything in his room. It was exactly like the one he occupied when not dreaming except that lying back-flat against the ceiling was a blue-faced werewolf that looked down on him, affixed to that surface by the logic of terror. He couldn’t open his eyes and look at it. Even from within this dream, Jimmy was sure he was dreaming and he knew the blue-faced werewolf wasn’t really there, but he couldn’t bring himself to open his eyes and look because he might be wrong. He knew the cost of being wrong. He tried to muster a dream-shattering scream, one that would explode him and the monster out of it-his body shook and his mouth gaped and his lungs heaved from their very depths, but not even a whisper of sound came out.

Earlier in the dream, Jenny and the girls were standing above him and he looked up into their faces. Gustavo Armenta stood between the girls, holding their hands, pale as death. Their expressions were searching, as if he were a river and they were looking for something on its bottom. Jenny. Patricia. Matilda. Gustavo. They were talking about him as if he weren’t there. The blue-faced werewolf was stuck up on the ceiling, and Jimmy had to face his family and smile while the beast stared down at all of them from just a few feet away.

In the dream, when he couldn’t take it any longer, Jimmy sprang out of bed and lunged up at the ceiling with both hands, but he felt his fingers wither and his hands melt and his arms dissolve until they were only short stumps that smoldered at the ends like wet firewood as he waved them impotently at the werewolf. Jenny and Patricia and Matilda pressed him back into the bed and told him everything was all right now and they looked down at him again with their searching expressions and continued talking about him as if he weren’t there.

Later a nurse shook him awake. It seemed to take hours for Jimmy to swim up through the heavy sedated layers of sleep. Then he burst into the world. It was like being born. She told him it was time to eat something and she raised his bed with the control. Jimmy felt the blood rush from his head and his heart pounding hard and fast and he smelled the high-pitched stink of fear coming up from the blanket. He glanced up at the ceiling and felt the dry approximation of a smile crack across his lips.


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