Dreamcatcher(132)

Yes, and then the feel of Mr Gray's hands closing around his neck. Those hands had only three digits each, but they would be strong; they would choke the life out of him in no time. If he even cracked the window, tried to let in some of the cold night air, Mr Gray would be in and battening on him like a vampire. Because that part of JonesyWorld wasn't safe. That part was conquered territory.

Hobson's choice. Fucked either way.

'Come out.' Mr Gray at last spoke through the door, and in Jonesy's own voice. 'I'll make it quick. You don't want to roast in there . . . or do you?'

Jonesy suddenly saw the desk standing in front of the window, the desk that hadn't even been here when he first found himself in this room. Before he'd fallen asleep it had just been a plain wooden thing, the sort of bottom-of-the-line model you might buy at Office Depot if you were on a budget. At some point  -  he couldn't remember exactly when  -  it had gained a phone. Just a plain black phone, as utilitarian and undecorative as the desk itself.

Now, he saw, the desk was an oak rolltop, the twin of the one in his Brookline study. And the phone was a blue Trimline, like the one in his office at Jay. He wiped a palmful of piss-warm sweat off his forehead, and as he did it he saw what he had brushed with the top of his head.

It was the dreamcatcher.

The dreamcatcher from Hole in the Wall.

'Holy shit,' he whispered. 'I'm decorating the place.'

Of course he was, why not? Didn't even prisoners on Death Row decorate their cells? And if he could add a desk and a dreamcatcher and a Trimline phone in his sleep, then maybe? Jonesy closed his eyes and concentrated. He tried to call up an image of his study in Brookline. For a moment this gave him trouble, because a question intruded: if his memories were out there, how could he still have them in here? The answer, he realized, was probably simple. His memories were still in his head, where they had always been. The cartons in the storeroom were what Henry might call an externalization, his way of visualizing all the stuff to which Mr Gray had access.

Never mind. Pay attention to what needs doing. The study in Brookline. See the study in Brookline.

'What are you doing?' Mr Gray demanded. The smarmy self-confidence had left his voice. 'What the doodlyf*ck are you doing?'

Jonesy smiled a little at that  -  he couldn't help it  -  but he held onto his image. Not just the study, but one wall of the study . . . there by the door leading into the little half-bath . . . yes, there it was. The Honeywell thermostat. And what was he supposed to say? Was there a magic word, something like alakazam?  

Yeah.

With his eyes still closed and a trace of a smile still on his sweat-streaming face, Jonesy whispered: 'Duddits.'

He opened his eyes and looked at the dusty, nondescript wall.

The thermostat was there.

3

'Stop it!' Mr Gray shouted, and even as Jonesy crossed the room he was amazed by the familiarity of that voice; it was like listening to one of his own infrequent tantrums (the wild disorder of the kids' rooms was a likely flashpoint) on a tape recorder. 'You just stop it! 7'his has got to stop!'  

'Kiss my bender, beautlful,' Jonesy replied, and grinned. How many times had his kids wished they could say something like that to him, when he started quacking? Then a nasty thought occurred to him. He'd probably never see the inside of his Brookline duplex again, but if he did, it would be through eyes which now belonged to Mr Gray. The cheek the kids kissed ('Eeu, scratchy, Daddy!' Misha would say) would now be Mr Gray's cheek. The lips Carla kissed would likewise be Mr Gray's. And in bed, when she gripped him and guided him into her -

Jonesy shivered, then reached for the thermostat . . . which, he saw, was set to 120. The only one in the world that went so high, no doubt. He backed it half a turn to the left, not knowing what to expect, and was delighted to feel an immediate waft of cool air on his cheeks and brow. He turned his face gratefully up to catch the breeze more fully, and saw a heating/cooling grate set high in one wall. One more fresh touch.

'How are you doing that?' Mr Gray shouted through the door. 'Why doesn't your body incorporate the byrus? How can you be there at all?'  

Jonesy burst out laughing. There was simply no way to hold it in.

'Stop that,' Mr Gray said, and now his voice was chilly. This was the voice Jonesy had used when he had given Carla his ultimatum: rehab or divorce, hon, you choose. 'I can do more than just turn up the heat, you know. I can burn you out. Or make you blind yourself.'

Jonesy remembered the pen going into Andy Janas's eye  -  that terrible thick popping sound  -  and winced. Yet he recognized a bluff when he heard one. You're the last and I'm your delivery - system, Jonesy thought. You won't beat the machinery up too much. Not until your mission's accomplished, anyhow.

He walked slowly back to the door, reminding himself to be wary. . . because, as Gollum had said of Bilbo Baggins, it was tricksy, precious, aye, very tricksy.

'Mr Gray?' he asked softly.

No answer.

'Mr Gray, what do you look like now? What do you look like when you're yourself? A little less gray and a little more pink? A couple more fingers on your hands? Little bit of hair on your head?

Starting to get some toesies and some testes?'

No answer.

'Starting to look like me, Mr Gray? To think like me? You don't like that, right? Or do you?'