now, before they can grow. You know the way, Harry: sharp steel, the wooden stake, the cleansing fire. Do it, Harry. Please... do... it!
Harry sprang awake. Sandra was clinging to him, trying to hold him down. He was drenched in cold sweat, shaking like a leaf; and she was frightened, too, her eyes wide from it, her mouth forming a frozen 'O'.
'Harry, Harry!' she lay sprawled half across him. She let go his shoulders, hugged his neck, felt his heart pounding against her breast. 'It's all right, it's all right. It was a bad dream, a nightmare, that's all.'
Eyes wide and darting, shivering and panting for breath, he stared all around the room and let its familiarity wash over him. Sandra had put on the light the moment his shouting had brought her awake. 'What?' he said, his hands trembling where they clutched her. 'What?'
'It's all right,' she insisted. 'A dream, that's all.'
'A dream?' Her words sank in and something of the gaunt vacancy went out of his eyes. He gently pushed her away, began to sit up - then drew air in a gasp and started bolt upright! 'No,' he blurted, 'it was more than just a dream - much more. And Christ, I have to remember!'
But too late; already it was receding, draining back to the roots of his subconsciousness. 'It was about... about - ' he desperately shook his head and sent a spray of sweat flying, ' - my mother! No, not about her but... she was in it! It was ... a warning? Yes, a warning, and... something else.'
But that was all. It was gone, driven out against his will by the will of some other - the will, or legacy, of his son -by the post-hypnotic commands he'd planted there in Harry's mind.
'Shit!' Harry whispered, damp and shivering where he sat on the edge of the bed.
That had been at 4:05 a.m.
Harry had had maybe three and a half hours' sleep, Sandra an hour less. When he'd finally calmed down and put on his dressing-gown, then she had made a pot of coffee. And as he sat there shivering and sipping at his drink, so she had tried to bring his dream back to mind, had urged him to remember it ... all the while cursing herself inside that she'd slept right through it! For if she had stayed awake she might just have caught a glimpse of the terrible thing he'd experienced, whatever it had been. That was her job: help him sort out his mind and get back what he'd lost. Whether he wanted it or not, and whether or not it was good for him.
But: 'No use,' he'd shaken his head after long minutes of patient questioning, 'it's gone. And probably best that it's gone. I have to be ... careful.'
Sandra had been tired. She hadn't asked why he must be careful because she knew. But she should have asked because she wasn't supposed to know. And when she'd looked at him again his soulful eyes had been steady on her, his tousled head tilted a little on one side, perhaps questioningly. 'What's your interest, anyway?' he'd wanted to know.
'Only that if you get it off your chest you'll feel better about it.' At least her lie had the ring of logic to it. 'Once a nightmare is told, it's not so frightening.'
'Oh? And that's your understanding of nightmares, is it?'
'I was trying to be helpful.'
'But I keep telling you I can't remember, and you keep prodding away at me. It was just a dream, and no one tries that hard to winkle someone else's dreams out of them! Not without a damn good reason, anyway. There's something not right here, Sandra, and I think I've known it for some time. Old Bettley says it's my fault that what we have isn't exactly right for me, but now I'm not so sure.'
There was no answer to that and so she'd kept quiet, acted hurt, drawn apart from him. But in fact she'd known that he was the one who was hurt, and that was the last thing she wanted. And when he finally got back into bed and she joined him there, then it had become obvious how cold he was, how stiff and silent and thoughtful where he lay with his back to her...
A little over an hour later she was awake again, a call of nature. Harry slept on, heavy in the bed, dead to the world. That thought