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>NIGHTMARES II
You are in your bed. Your wife is not there. Her side of the bed is warm, like she just left it, and you look over to the window to see her looking out it, like she likes to do when she can't sleep. Her long hair shining and her satin nightgown blue in the light. Your wife is not by the window.
Your bedroom is large and expensive, as is your bed, as is your window. You have money and little interesting to spend it on. Your wife spends it and it makes her happy to spend it and it makes you happy to see her happy. It is one of the few things that makes you happy. Your wife is nowhere in your large expensive bedroom.
"Connie?" Your voice is odd. You sound underwater. "Are you there?"
Nothing. The door is cracked, and the hallway is bright. Electric lights. State-of-the-art. She's probably taking a piss, you think, so it's for no reason that you swing under your bed and grab the revolver. Nobody expects you to own one, and you get it: it's not your "thing." But what you'd tell them, if they asked, is that tridents aren't a practical weapon. The Game is a game. Real life is real life. And in real life, whatever your talents, you'd rather have a gun.
You touch your bare feet to the shag rug and stand. You creep up on the door and peer through. Bright and empty. You shimmy through the crack, revolver outstretched, and press yourself to the wall, and scan again. Bright and empty. You slide against the wall until you reach a junction, then swivel both ways, revolver-first. Empty and empty. The doors at both ends of the hallway are shut.
This is where you should go back to bed, where you would go back to bed, if you didn't feel it— in your gut first, your chest second. A tightening and a quickening. Something's wrong. You have lived this long by trusting your instincts, and you have lived this long by not being hasty. You take a breath to still your hands. You close your eyes to open your mind. To the left, toward your living room, are subtle noises: thudding, scratching, rustling. A mouse in the walls.
Or your wife. You lower the revolver, step around the corner, brace yourself, and barrel shoulder-first toward the living room door. It is unlocked and it cracks and swings open on impact. It doesn't hurt as you crash through, or else the hurt is swallowed by the rush and the flail for the light switch and the sting of the light and your revolver straight out at your wife and at Jean. Jean is in black.
"Let go of her or I'll fucking shoot," you say.
"Always so crabby, Montgomery." Jean is as unbothered as ever. She has one gloved hand over your wife's mouth (your wife is gripping her arm) and one clutching a mask. The mask. "You'll never learn to lighten up, will you?"
"Let go of her or I'll fucking shoot," you say.
"No can do. Look, it's not that complicated. You wanted her back to life, didn't you?"
You adjust your grip. "She—"
