The Ninth Nightmare

THREE Room 104

Lincoln was sitting alone in a corner booth of the Boa Vinda Restaurant, wishing that he hadn’t ordered such a messy dish as caldeirada, when his cellphone played Tracks Of My Tears. He shook open his white linen napkin and hastily started to wipe the thick tomato-and-saffron sauce from his fingers.

‘Lincoln?’ said a woman’s voice, very small and far away.

‘Grace?’ he laughed. ‘Wait up a second, honey, I’m in kind of a pickle here.’

He put down his cell and finished wiping his hands and his mouth. Then he picked it up again and said, ‘Sorry. The waiter recommended this Portuguese fish stew and it’s absolutely outstanding but you pretty much have to take a bath in it to eat it.’

‘Lincoln?’ the woman’s voice repeated, as if she hadn’t heard him.

‘Grace? Are you still there? You’re very faint.’

‘Lincoln?’

‘Listen, honey,’ he said, ‘why don’t I call you back? I’m sitting in the hotel restaurant here and maybe the signal’s too weak.’

‘Lincoln?’

‘Hang up, and I’ll call you right back, OK?’

He listened for a few seconds more, in case Grace answered him, but as he took his cell away from his ear, he heard a man say, ‘Lincoln?’

Lincoln frowned and lifted up the cell again. ‘Hallo? Hallo? Who is this?’

The man sounded hoarse, like a heavy smoker. ‘No need for you to know that, Lincoln.’

‘What do you mean, “no need for me to know that”? Who the hell is this?’

‘You know what they say, Lincoln. Curiosity killed the cat.’

‘I’m trying to get through to my wife here, so if you don’t mind—’

‘You need to listen to me, Lincoln. I’m your friend.’

‘What friend?’

‘A concerned friend. A very concerned friend. So long as you do what I tell you, that is.’

Lincoln suddenly slapped the table. ‘Bennie? Is this you, man? Quit horsing around, OK? I’m trying to finish my goddamned dinner here.’

‘Eat your goddamned dinner then, Lincoln. Enjoy it. But do not return to your room.’

‘If this is your idea of a joke, man—’

‘No joke, Lincoln. Do not return to your room. Not if you know what’s good for you.’

‘That’s enough, Bennie. It’s been a long day, OK? I have two more meetings in the morning and then I’ll get back to you. It looks like we can get top billing for Millie D and maybe second spot for The Jive Machine.’

‘You need to listen to me, Lincoln. You’ll regret it if you don’t. Tonight, I need my privacy, you got that? I don’t want any witnesses. Not you, not anybody.’

Lincoln took a deep breath, and held it for a moment. Then he said, ‘If this is you, Bennie, this isn’t funny any more. If this isn’t Bennie, then all I can say is go screw yourself.’

There was a sudden blurt of white noise, and then a thick, persistent crackle, but that was all. Lincoln tried to see who had called him, but the only number that showed up was his own home number, in Ann Arbor. He tried calling Grace again, but he couldn’t get a ring tone. He edged his way out of the booth, stood up and started to walk toward the restaurant door.

One of the waiters intercepted him. ‘Sir? You finish up already, sir? The caldeirada — it was not to your like?’

‘The caldeirada’s terrific. I have to make a phone call, that’s all.’

‘You don’t go back to your room?’

‘Excuse me?’

‘I said, “Do you want me to keep it warm?”’

Lincoln stared at him. The waiter looked back at him, unblinking. Lincoln was sure that he had said, “You don’t go back to your room?” but maybe he had genuinely misheard him. The restaurant was noisy, after all, with talking and laughter and clattering cutlery and piped salsa music in the background.

‘No… you’re OK,’ he said slowly, and walked toward the restaurant entrance. The maître d’ was standing behind his lectern by the doorway, with polished black hair and a little black moustache and a maroon tuxedo. As Lincoln approached he bowed his head and said, ‘Good evening, sir. I hope you enjoyed your meal.’

‘I’m only stepping out to use my cell. I’m coming back in a minute.’

‘You are not returning to your room?’

‘Why? What’s it to you?’

‘Excuse me, sir, I don’t follow you.’

‘Why should you care whether I’m returning to my room or not?’

‘I’m sorry, sir. I still don’t understand.’ The maître d’ looked totally baffled. ‘I made no mention of your room.’

Lincoln opened his mouth. He was about to tell the maître d’ that he was either a deuce hole or an idiot, but he decided that it was pointless. Instead he gave him a dismissive flap of his hand and walked off.

He was still unable to get a cellphone signal out in the hotel lobby, so he went outside and stood on the front steps of the hotel. A strong gusty wind was blowing from the north-west, off the lake, and dead leaves were skipping across the hotel driveway with a clatter like dancing skeletons. He tried calling Grace again, but all he could hear was the same thick crackling that he had heard before. Maybe his phone was on the fritz. The best thing he could do was go back to his room and call her from there.

No joke, Lincoln. Do not return to your room. Not if you know what’s good for you.

He went back into the hotel lobby and took a left at the reception desk. There was a gilt-framed mirror at the end of the corridor and he could see himself walking toward it — a tall, lithe African-American in a black suit and a black silk shirt. His head was shaved which emphasized the Nubian looks that he had inherited from his mother — a thin face with high cheekbones and a straight narrow nose. In fact his features were so sharp that his friends at school had nicknamed him Icepick.

He reached Room 104. As he took out his key card, a hotel chambermaid in a frilly white apron came out of Room 106 next door with clean green towels over her arm. She stopped and stared at him as if she couldn’t believe what she was seeing.

‘Good evening,’ he said, giving her a smile.

‘Yes, sir,’ she replied, still staring at him. She walked off, turning her head around twice as she made her way along the corridor, as if she were afraid that he was going to come after her. Lincoln watched her until she reached the lobby and disappeared out of sight. He thought: what the hell was that all about? But then he shrugged and inserted his key card into the lock. She could have mistaken him for somebody famous. Grace maintained that he bore a strong resemblance to the murdered rapper Tupac Shakur, so maybe it was no surprise that the housekeeper had looked at him with such anxiety. He guessed that he would be anxious, too, if he met a man who had been shot dead in 1996.

He entered his room and switched on the light. Everything appeared to be normal. The chambermaid had closed the drapes and switched on the bedside lamps, as well as turning down the bed and leaving two chocolate mints in the pillows. Lincoln went across to the desk, picked up the phone and dialed nine for an outside line. While he waited, he rotated his head to ease his neck muscles. It had been a long, punishing day and he couldn’t wait to finish his dinner, take a shower and climb into bed.

Instead of an outside line, however, he heard that sharp blurt of white noise again, followed by the soft crackling of static.

Shit, he thought. Maybe there was something wrong with his home phone line. But he hadn’t even dialed his number yet, so how could that be? And how come he couldn’t get a line either on his cellphone or this regular landline? It didn’t make any technical sense.

He dialed zero for the hotel operator. This time, he got a response.

‘Operator, how can I help you?’

‘I’m trying to get an outside line from Room One-Oh-Four, but all I’m getting is this crackling sound.’

‘Hold on, Mr Walker. I’ll see what I can do.’

There was a moment’s pause, and then he heard the crackling noise again. He dialed the operator again and said, ‘I’m still getting it.’

‘I’m sorry, sir, you’re still getting what, exactly?’

‘The crackling sound, just like before.’

‘I’m sorry, sir. I don’t hear it. All I can hear is a regular dialing tone.’

‘There’s no dialing tone. There’s only this crackling sound.’

There was another pause, and then he heard the crackling again. He tried the operator’s number again, and it rang, but this time nobody answered.

‘This is fucking unbelievable,’ he said to his reflection in the mirror. He would have to go to the front desk and see if they could dial his home number for him. He was growing increasingly annoyed now. His dinner was getting cold, he couldn’t get through to Grace, and everybody in this five-star hotel was talking five-star bullshit. He was beginning to agree with his late lookalike Tupac, who had once said, ‘Reality is wrong. Only dreams are for real.’

He thought it would be a good idea to take a leak before he went to reception, so he made his way around the bed and headed for the bathroom door. His hand was already on the doorknob when there was a thunderous crash from inside the bathroom and the whole door shook as if somebody had thrown themselves against it. He jumped back, startled, and he almost lost his balance and fell over backward on to the bed.

There was another crash, and then another, and then a tumbling, squeaking noise like somebody falling into the bathtub.

‘Who’s there?’ he shouted. ‘What the hell are you doing?’

He took hold of the doorknob again and twisted it, but the door was either locked or jammed. He heard more squeaking and more knocking, and then, suddenly, a woman moaning. Her moan started off quite shivery and low, ohhhhhhhhhh, as if she were calling out in dread; but then it grew increasingly shrill and panicky, and then she started screaming at the top of her voice, and begging ‘No! No! Please don’t do that! No! Please don’t do that!’

Lincoln rattled the doorknob and beat on the door panel with his fist.

‘Who’s in there? Open up! What the hell are you doing? If you don’t open up I’m going to call for security!’

The woman’s screaming went on for four or five more seconds, accompanied by what sounded like bare heels drumming against an empty bathtub. Then, just as suddenly as the noise had begun, it stopped, and there was silence.

Lincoln waited, his ear close to the door. He tried the doorknob again, and this time the door unlatched, and opened. Inside the bathroom it was completely dark.

‘Who’s in there?’ he repeated.

There was no reply, so he pushed the door open a little further. He could make out the edge of the bathtub now, but it wasn’t the shiny white-tiled bathtub that he had been expecting to see. It was an old-fashioned high-sided tub, on four lion’s-claw feet, with two large old-fashioned faucets, both of them dripping. By the light that was shining into the bathroom from the bedroom, he saw that the tub was filthy. The sides were streaked with runnels of black and gray dirt, and the enamel inside was decorated with dark brown spatters and diagonal runs and dozens of handprints, as well as a thick greasy tidemark.

There was nobody lying in the tub, however. He must have imagined all that screaming and thumping. Nobody could have jumped out of the tub that quick — and where would they have hidden themselves, even if they had?

In the far corner of the bathroom, high up on the wall, there was a small grimy window, but even though the window was so dirty Lincoln could see that it was daylight outside, even though it was almost quarter of eight in the evening. He could hear a very faint pattering, too, which sounded like rain. He frowned. It had been very windy when he went outside to try and talk to Grace, but it had been totally dry.

He pushed the door open all the way. It met with some resistance; there was a sodden stained bath-towel lying twisted on the floor, as if somebody had been unsuccessfully trying to clean the tiles with it. The tiles themselves were mottled green, with brown splashes across them, and a complicated pattern of bare footprints, pointing every which way, as if somebody had been dancing around the bathroom without their shoes on. They were small and narrow, like a woman’s feet, or maybe a child’s.

Lincoln took a cautious step forward, and as he did so he saw that there was a shower stall on the opposite side of the room — a shower stall whose glass door was so filthy and fogged up that it was impossible to tell if there was anybody in there. 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.

‘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?’

‘Who the hell are you?’ Lincoln demanded. ‘What the hell are you doing in my house? Where’s my wife?’

‘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?’

‘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, ‘Damn,’ and then, ‘damn,’ and hung up. He thought maybe he should try his cellphone just once more. If he couldn’t manage to talk to Grace then at least he should be able to send her a text message.

He looked around the room. Where the hell had he left his cell? Then he remembered. He had put it down beside the hand basin in the bathroom, and forgotten to pick it up.

He went back to the bathroom and opened the door. He had opened it only two or three inches, however, before he stopped himself. He had made a point of leaving the light on, but now the bathroom was dark again. Not only that, he could smell that appalling stench of blocked drains and ageing urine and whatever that terrible sweetness was.

He hesitated for a very long time. Then he reached his hand inside the door and groped around for the light cord. He found it and tugged it but it didn’t work. The fluorescent tube must have burned out.

Come on, Linc. Just go in and pick up your cell. You’ve seen for yourself that there’s nobody in there.

He opened the door wider and stepped inside. But there was no cellphone lying beside the hand basin because there was no hand basin, only that old-fashioned bathtub with all of its splashes and drips and its dozens of handprints. He hunkered down to see if his cell might have dropped on the floor, but there was no sign of it. It must be here in this bathroom in some reality, he thought, but it sure isn’t here in this reality.

He stood up. He didn’t have any choice now. He would have go to the reception desk, not only to see if he could get through to Grace, but to ask them if he could change rooms. There was no way he was going to sleep next to this bathroom, not in a million years. It was not only filthy, it was scary, too. How could it be daylight in here when it was dark outside? How could it be raining when he knew for sure that it wasn’t?

He turned back toward his bedroom, but now this had changed, too. The bedside lamps had disappeared, and the room was lit only by a single bare bulb hanging by a frayed cord from the ceiling. The queen-sized bed with its green tapestry throw had been replaced by an iron-framed bed with only a soiled striped mattress on it. The thick green carpet had vanished, and now there was only dirty beige linoleum covering the floor. The walls no longer had pictures on them, and there were no drapes hanging at the window. There was a strong musty smell of rats’ urine.

Outside the window, he could see gleaming wet rooftops, with gray clouds hurrying over them, and iron fire escapes. This was Room 104, on the first floor, and yet it looked as if it were three stories up, at the very least. It could even be higher. He could hear the soft patter of rain, and police sirens wailing in the distance.

Lincoln thought: You got to get out of here, now. You’re going crazy. He crossed over to the door and tried to open it, but it was locked. He jiggled the handle up and down, and pulled at it, but still the door refused to open. He hammered on it with both fists and shouted out, ‘Help! Let me out of here! Help!’

He paused, and listened, and he was sure that he could hear telephones ringing and people laughing. He banged on the door even harder and screamed, ‘Help! I’m trapped in here!’ until his throat felt raw, but still nobody came to let him out.

He stepped away from the door, panting. He gave it a hard kick, and then another. He cracked one of the lower panels but the door was much too solid for him to break down. He knew better than to take his shoulder to it. He had done that, years ago, after an argument with Grace, and he had dislocated his left arm.

Agitated, breathing hard, he paced backward and forward up and down the room. He couldn’t understand how or why it could have altered like this. It was not as if he recognized it. The apartment in Brightmoor in which he had been brought up as a boy had been damp and scabby, too, but nothing like as derelict as this. He had hung out with his friends in abandoned houses in Hamtramck and Highland Park, but he had never seen a room that resembled this one in any way, so he doubted if he was reliving some kind of childhood trauma.

He went to the window and looked out, his forehead pressed against the chilly glass. He didn’t recognize the neighborhood at all, but wherever it was, it certainly wasn’t University Circle, Cleveland, where the Griffin House Hotel was located. It didn’t look like any part of Cleveland that he had ever seen; nor any part of downtown Detroit, either.

He had lost his cellphone, and there was no phone beside the bed, so there was no way that he could call the reception desk for help. He thought of climbing out of the window on to the fire escape, and then down to the ground, but what would happen if he did that? In reality, this room was on the first floor. If he accepted an alternative reality, maybe he would become trapped in that alternative reality forever, and never be able to come back.

He was still staring out of the window when he heard a woman’s voice calling out. It was so weak that it was barely audible, and it sounded bubbly, as if she had a mouthful of water. ‘Please. Please don’t leave me here. Please.’

Lincoln felt a crawling sensation all the way down his back. He turned around and saw that a woman was lying diagonally on the bed, half covered by a stained pink satin quilt. She was dark-skinned, with a plump heart-shaped face and thick wavy black hair — Hispanic, or mixed race. There were plum-colored circles under her eyes, or they could have been bruises. On her left cheek she had a large black beauty-spot, or maybe a mole. Her lips were scarlet and shiny, as if she had thickly applied too bright a shade of lipstick.

‘Please don’t leave me,’ the woman whispered. She had a strong Spanish accent.

‘OK, lady,’ said Lincoln, trying to sound reassuring. ‘I’ll try to get you some help.’

‘No use doing that,’ the woman told him.

‘What happened? How did you get in here?’

‘He brought me here. El prestidigitator. He caught me, and he brought me here.’

‘Who did?’

‘I don’t know his name. Don’t leave me, please. I’m dying.’

‘Are you sick? Did this guy beat up on you? What?’

The woman closed her eyes and didn’t answer him. Lincoln hesitated, not knowing if he should try to shake her awake. Probably best not to touch her, he thought. She might have a neck or a spinal injury, and shaking could prove fatal.

He went back over to the door and gave it another kick. ‘Open this door!’ he screamed. ‘Open this fucking door! There’s a woman dying in here! Help me!’

There was no response. Lincoln looked back at the bed and the woman still had her eyes closed. What the hell was he going to do now? He could go on kicking at the door but if nobody could hear him what was the point? He could wait until morning, for the hotel housekeepers to do their rounds, but quite apart from the fact that the woman on the bed was close to dying, it was already daylight outside, so when would it be morning? And how would the housekeepers get in here, if this was a different reality?

He was still standing by the door when his decision was made for him. He saw nobody and heard nothing, but suddenly he caught the strong raw smell of gasoline, as if somebody had splashed it all around the room. He sniffed, and sniffed again. The smell was so strong that it burned his throat and made his eyes water.

Then — without any warning at all, the woman on the bed exploded into flames. A wave of heat seared Lincoln’s face and he stumbled backward, lifting up his hand to shield his eyes. Within seconds, the whole mattress was blazing like a bonfire. Lincoln tried to edge closer, but the heat was so intense that he couldn’t get anywhere near enough to drag the woman off the bed. Lurid orange flames licked right up to the ceiling and the bedroom rapidly began to fill up with whirling sparks and billowing brown smoke.

Although she was burning from head to foot, the woman didn’t move, or cry out, so Lincoln guessed that she must have died a few minutes before when she had closed her eyes. But in any case there was no time to think of trying to save her. The linoleum flooring was ablaze, spitting and shriveling as it burned, and he knew that he had to get out of the bedroom somehow or he was going to die, too — and in only a few seconds. Fifteen years ago, his uncle and his aunt and his four cousins had all died in a house fire in Brightmoor. They had been overwhelmed by toxic smoke in less than two minutes, huddled together behind a front door that they hadn’t had the strength to open.

Lincoln pulled out his handkerchief, folded it into a pad, and pressed it against his nose and his mouth. Then — keeping as low as he could — he crouched his way toward the bathroom. In spite of the fire, he was still reluctant to climb out of the window, in case he could never climb back. He reasoned that he could break open the bathroom window if he needed ventilation, and there was plenty of water there, too.

He pushed his way through the bathroom door and quickly slammed it shut behind him. Then he dragged the soggy towel across the floor and wedged it underneath the door to keep the smoke out. He stood for a while with both hands pressed against the wall, coughing and wheezing. He was still shocked and bewildered by the way in which the Hispanic-looking woman had appeared as if from nowhere, and the way in which she had abruptly caught fire. He had smelled gasoline in the seconds before the bed had exploded, for sure, but where had it come from?

He turned around, with his back to the wall, trying to suppress his coughing. If smoke started to seep into the bathroom, he guessed that he could balance on the edge of the bath, break open the window and squeeze his way out. The window frame was just about wide enough. But for all he knew it was a sheer three-story drop out there, and even if he managed to escape uninjured, would he ever be able to climb back in again?

Maybe this is nothing but a nightmare, he thought. Maybe I was overtired and I went to bed and I’m simply dreaming all this. It can’t be happening. It’s impossible.

He reached out cautiously and touched the brass door-handle. It was already too hot for him to hold, and the door panels were growing warmer, as well. He began to think that he had made the wrong decision, shutting himself in the bathroom. At least there had been a fire escape outside the bedroom window, no matter what reality it might have led him into.

He was sweating now, and he wiped his forehead with his shirtsleeve. As he did so, he heard a shuffling noise inside the shower stall. He had seen a dark shape inside it before, but he had assumed that it was nothing but a combination of dirt and shadows. Now he could see that it was moving. Something inside the shower stall was alive.

‘Who’s that?’ he called out. ‘Come out here where I can see you!’

There was no answer, and he felt too foolish to call out a second time, in case it was nothing but an optical illusion, or maybe an animal that had gotten itself trapped — a dog or a cat or a raccoon. But then the shower stall door was pushed open with a reverberating shudder, and a man stepped out of it. Lincoln opened and closed his mouth, and coughed, but he couldn’t find the breath inside him to speak.

The man was tall — at least as tall as Lincoln, and maybe an inch or two more — but he was also very thin, with arms and legs that were disproportionately long. He was wearing a black tuxedo with a black silk vest underneath it, and a black shirt with a black bow-tie. His hair was white and ragged and almost shoulder length. What alarmed Lincoln about him the most, however, was his face. It was very pale gray, like a face in a black-and-white photograph, and it was blurred, as if he had moved when he was having his photograph taken. Lincoln could make out the dark smudges of his eyes, and the upward-sloping curve of his lips, but that was all. The rest of his features seemed to be permanently out of focus.

‘I warned you not to come, now, didn’t I?’ the man told him, hoarsely. ‘You would not listen to me, though, would you? You out-and-out refused to listen.’

‘Who are you?’ Lincoln demanded. ‘What the hell is going on here?’

‘Things that are no concern of yours, Lincoln. Things that you would have been wiser to stay ignorant of. But of course it is much too late now, isn’t it? You have come here, in spite of the fact that I specifically asked you not to, and you have witnessed what you have witnessed. And I cannot risk anybody interfering in what I am doing here. Not you. Nobody.’

‘But there’s a woman dead out there!’ Lincoln protested. ‘There’s a woman dead out there and the whole goddamned bedroom is on fire! It isn’t even my bedroom! And this sure as hell isn’t my bathroom, either!’

The gray-faced man tapped his forehead. ‘It is the power of the mind, Lincoln, that is what it is. It is the power of the human imagination, unbridled by consciousness. The power of dreams.’

‘I don’t understand one goddamned word of what you’re talking about,’ Lincoln told him. ‘I don’t want to know, either. All’s I know is, I want to be back in my real hotel room, back in my real reality.’

The gray-faced man shook his head so that his ratty white hair swung from side to side. ‘Not possible, Lincoln. You would speak to people and those people would not necessarily understand what I am doing here, but they could well speak to other people who do understand, and then it would be mayhem.’ He paused, and then he said, ‘“Mayhem,” from the Anglo-Saxon word meaning to maim, or to seriously injure.’

Behind Lincoln, the bathroom door cracked loudly as the heat from the bedroom split the wood. Without any further hesitation, the gray-faced man reached into the shower stall and took out a long cross-cut saw. He lifted it up in front of Lincoln’s face and took hold of the end of the blade, so that he could flex it one way and then the other.

‘See this, Lincoln? The tool of my trade. Fine Pennsylvania steel with champion-pattern teeth. Cuts through anything, this beauty, faster than any chainsaw.’

Lincoln said nothing, but backed away as far as he could. The gray-faced man came after him, still flexing the saw blade so that it went whoop — whoop — whoop.

‘You cannot say that I did not give you fair warning, Lincoln,’ said the gray-faced man. He was much closer now, and Lincoln found it even more disconcerting than ever that his features were so blurred. It was just as if his face were shaped out of nothing but fog.

‘You stay away from me,’ said Lincoln. ‘If you take even one step closer—’

‘You will do what, exactly? Scream like a girl, like they all do? They all scream, you know, every one of them! They howl like bitches, men and women both! I have never known a single one of them suffer in silence. It is against human nature.’

He stopped flexing the saw, and then without any hesitation at all he slashed it diagonally across Lincoln’s right shoulder. It cut through Lincoln’s shirt and into his deltoid muscle, almost a half inch deep, and Lincoln could actually hear his flesh rip. Blood sprayed down his arm, all the way to his elbow, and spattered across his cuff.

He crashed backward against the bathroom door and tried to grab the gray-faced man’s wrist, but the gray-faced man yanked the saw vertically downward and its irregular teeth tore into Lincoln’s knuckles. Lincoln pushed him, hard, with both hands, and the gray-faced man staggered backward, but at the same time the edge of the saw almost took Lincoln’s right thumb off. Suddenly there was blood flying everywhere, like a scarlet blizzard.

Neither of them spoke as the gray-faced man came for Lincoln again, swishing the saw blade from side to side as if it were a saber. Lincoln thought: he’s going to kill me. He’s going to cut off my fingers and cut my face apart and then he’s going to cut my fucking head off.

There was only one way to escape. As the gray-faced man came closer, he reached across and took hold of the bathroom door-handle. The handle was so hot that it blistered his fingers instantly, and he shouted out ‘Aahhhh! Shit!’ The wet towel was tangled underneath it but he pulled the door open as wide as he could, keeping himself shielded behind it as he did so.

With a roar like a ravenous lion, a huge orange fireball rolled into the bathroom, hungry for all the oxygen that it could devour. The gray-faced man lost his balance and stumbled backward, colliding with the shower stall and cracking the glass. He didn’t lose his grip on his saw, however, and the instant the fireball had dissipated he came for Lincoln again, slashing the saw blade even more violently so that it whistled and sang as it cut its way through the air.

‘They all scream, Lincoln!’ he repeated, in that thick, hoarse voice. ‘They all scream, every one of them! They howl like bitches! And you, Lincoln — you will be no exception!’

Lincoln wrenched the bathroom door even wider. The bedroom was filled with dense brown smoke now, and through the smoke he could see flames dancing like demons dancing in hell. The heat was overwhelming but he knew that he had no choice. He took a deep breath and plunged right into the inferno, keeping his hands held high to protect his face.

‘Fool!’ screamed the gray-faced man. ‘You really think you can get away?’

The gray-faced man started to come after him, slashing at the smoke, but Lincoln had managed to find his way to the window. He twisted the catch, burning his fingers again, and heaved the window upward.

Immediately, a huge rush of cold air blew into the bedroom, sprinkled with raindrops. With a deep whoomph! the flames jumped up like a fiery Mexican wave, and the gray-faced man temporarily disappeared behind them. Lincoln felt the heat on the side of his face and he could smell his own hair burning, but he climbed out of the window on to the fire escape and dragged down the window behind him. As he did so, he could see the gray-faced man through the flames, with his cross-cut saw still lifted, as if to warn him that this wasn’t over yet.

Lincoln looked over the railing. Three stories below him, a narrow alley ran between this building and a derelict warehouse next door, crowded with broken crates and empty window-frames and overflowing trash cans. He grasped the wet handrail and started to make his way down. It was too late now to worry what reality this might be, and if he would ever be able to return. As far as he was concerned he was lucky just to be alive.

He had only just started going down the second storey when one of the metal treads gave way beneath him. His left foot plunged through the gap, right up to the ankle, and the broken tread fell all the way down to the alley, bouncing and clanging when it reached the ground. He lurched forward, grabbing both handrails to stop himself from falling, but then the next tread gave way, and the next, and then the entire section of fire escape on which he was standing came tearing away from the wall.

He didn’t know why he continued to grip the handrails, because the whole structure was plummeting into the alley, but there was nothing else for him to hold on to. He wasn’t aware of any sound, no banging or clattering, although the noise of the collapsing fire escape must have been a deafening cacophony of falling metal.

All he heard was the rush of air in his ears as he dropped toward the alley below him, as if he were an angel dropping from a great height. He didn’t even hear himself hitting the ground.