The Ninth Nightmare by Graham Masterton Page 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.
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜Who are you?’ Lincoln demanded. ‘What the hell is going on here?’
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜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.
    â€˜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.
    â€˜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.
    â€˜You stay away from me,’ said Lincoln. ‘If you take even one step closer—’
    â€˜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