CONSTANCE AND A NIGHTMARE

Constance must have something on her mind to react like this at night...

Never was there such a dark night.

Constance tossed and turned and her heart leapt, it seemed, into her throat as the dark figure of a murderous robber detached itself from the dimly glimmering lamp-post at the end of her street and began moving with sinuous menace towards her.

She would have loved to get a glimpse of its face, but every element of it was in shadow. And it was coming towards her. Almost gliding in that shadowy way it had. And she was sure it had no eyes...

The library wasn’t so far away and she hastened her footsteps in order to get there and to the safety of its book shelves while she still had time.

Why am I walking when I usually drive…?

Dimly on the night breeze came the call, “ooweee...”

How do you answer a call like that? And what does it mean? What can it possibly mean?

And why was she going to work at night? Especially on a night like this, with a crescent moon offering little comfort against the enormity of all that blackness? There never, surely, was such a night…

Somewhere an owl hooted.

Somewhere else a wolf howled.

They do that on dark nights, don’t they? Owls hoot and wolves howl…?

The dark figure, indistinct but no less threatening for that gained on her. “Ooowee” came the distant cry, a sound crafted from the direst of threats and the hardest of hearts. And quiet as it was it was also everywhere. Inside her head, and outside it, curling like mists of audible smoke on the black night air...

“Keep away!” she cried, “I don’t want you and you don’t want me!”

It seemed a sensible thing for her to cry out because of the very depth of the truth within the words, but all the black figure did was laugh.

And there never was such a laugh heard on any world. It snaked out towards her from the darkest of mouths and wrapped itself into the air all around her until it was everything, a laugh without humour, a laugh without a heart, a laugh stripped of humanity.

And because it was stripped of humanity it laughed again.

And Constance was running. There was no other way to escape the shadowy creature, man-shaped yet not man-shaped, as it lurched behind her, giant step pounding after giant step and, inch by inch, gaining on her.

“Go away!” she shouted. Or howled. Yes, she howled like a desperate frail creature about to be ravaged by the night, and the road before her grew longer whilst her pursuer became closer.

She could feel its breath on her neck.

“Calm down, sweetheart,” washed over her. It was Doctor Delaney’s voice! She knew that voice like she knew her own! Doctor Delaney from A Nurse In Chains… She was reading A Nurse In Chains at the moment, had fallen deeply in love with the somewhat delicious and macho Doctor Delaney, and somehow, she couldn’t begin to guess how, he was here and ready to rescue her. To save her from the shadow creature that was about to grab her, about to steal her sacred virginity from her, was about to leave her a battered and bleeding mess on the midnight pavement.

Doctor Delaney’s in a book…

The tiny thought of truth somehow came to her, hit her between the eyes like a rubber mallet and she almost stumbled in her flight.

He’s no more real than Noddy in Toyland or Sleeping Beauty…

The double realisation turned the rubber mallet into one made of concrete and she wanted to curl up and die. But she was out there in the dark night, on a road from Hell, and if she curled up and died it would be the last thing she did, ever.

“You’re no doctor!” she shrieked, “you’re in my head out of a book! I wanted to love you but you were printed letters on a paper page, and anyway Nurse Jones got you, went into your room with you, slept with you, and I wanted it to be me...”

“And all along it was you I wanted,” sighed Doctor Delaney, and he proceeded to vanish in a soundless puff of night.

“But I’m here,” said Gandalf the Grey, “I’m always here, guarding you by night and day, protecting you from the dark shape that is stirring all around you, a sword in a strong hand by your side, a staff to strengthen you...”

That’s a lot of words for a ghost to say … it must be real, it must be my true wizard hero… gasped Constance to herself as she started to climb up the craggy well-nigh invisible slopes of the great mountain that loomed, had always loomed, before her, knowing she would be safe at the top. So finally and wonderfully safe because, at the peak and high into the clouds would be her library. She’d be able to go into her cubbyhole and make herself some tea to calm her down.

That’s what she wanted: tea to calm her down.

But the mountain sides were both craggy and steep. And behind her, its breath like ice from Hell, came her shadowy pursuer, still there, still after her. She could feel that breath, she could almost taste the toxins it held within its steamy and putrid substance.

“Go away!” she shouted, uselessly because the mountain was so very huge and her tiny voice was so small.

“Come to me,” urged Gandalf, and a sliver of the mountainside somehow formed itself into an arm and groped towards her, “let me save you...”

But nothing can save you when you’re falling into a bottomless lake of surging, freezing water. There is no power on Earth than can reach out and rescue you before you hit the swirling depths and, grateful for the release, breathe in the stygian waters in one last desperate, drowning breath…

“Goodbye!” she shrieked, “Goodbye precious library, goodbye books, goodbye clean windows, goodbye window-cleaner...”

“Hey!” he said, shaking her gently by one shoulder, “what’s the matter?”

“I’m drowning...” The words sounded insane, even to her, so in that insanity she opened her eyes ready to snap them shut again before she hit the surface of … the surface of … the surface of what? It was gone. Not even a shadow remained.

“You’re dreaming,” he told her, “and you woke me up...”

“What…?”

“You remember? I had nowhere to go...”

“What…?”

“And we shared that bottle of wine. To make me feel better, you said, after Mildred left in such a rage...”

“What…?”

“You said you quite liked me...”

“What…?”

“And you said I could stay, but you only have one bed...”

“What…?”

“I promised not to … take advantage...”

“What…?”

“And then you had a nightmare. You shouted and thrashed about and said things, loud in your sleep, I couldn’t make then out… a doctor, Gandalf… who’s Gandalf?”

Then it all fell into place like nonsense does, and she found herself smiling at the very stupidity of it all, and, quite demurely for a librarian in bed, said “I’m sorry. I don’t usually do that. I really am sorry. Come on, let’s get to sleep again.”

“As long as it’s not my fault?”

“Of course it isn’t! I don’t know what got into my head, but you chased it away for me! So let’s go back to sleep before the night’s over and we’re both awake with a new day and too tired to face it.”

“And it’s not my fault?”

“Now you’re being silly!”

“I suppose it’s goodnight again, then.”

“But first...”

“Yes?”

“You can kiss me if you like...”

© Peter Rogerson 14.01.18