If Souls Can Sleep Read online

  Locke scoffed. “Nay, Valenthor, luck had nothing to do with it. Forsooth, the Fay are not the only ones with knowledge of the gods’ mysteries.”

  Valenthor eyed the man warily. “You are a sorcerer?”

  Scoff. “The she-elf demonstrated a mastery over the natural elements of this world. My talents are more subtle, a style more suited to stealth and secrecy.”

  “Pray tell, what style is that?” Valenthor asked.

  “Deception.”

  “If he is not a spy, he has his own agenda…”

  One of Locke’s hands shot out, and Valenthor flinched. Embarrassed, he accepted the proffered hand and braced against the pain in his side as Locke pulled him to his feet. From his new vantage, Valenthor noticed a complex symbol carved into the trunk of the tree Locke had been leaning against.

  “The enchantment will protect us for a while longer,” Locke said. “During that time, you will regain your strength. I will obtain food, but you would do well to clean your wound. A small stream lies beyond that bend.”

  Valenthor nodded. He found it difficult to look into the cavernous holes of Locke’s mask. Had the man been horribly scarred during a battle? Had he suffered a deformity since birth?

  His eyes dropped from the smooth wood of the mask down to a pendant that served as a clasp for the cloak. The onyx disk was engraved with the silhouette of a wolf’s head encircled by a serpent eating its own tail, a discomforting image to be sure.

  Valenthor turned away from his peculiar companion. “You are certain the Jötunn are pursuing the elf?”

  “The giants hate all of the gods’ creations, but none more so than the elves,” Locke said. “Rarely do the Jötunn venture this far east. If they plan to lay siege to the lands of the Fay, then it is another sign the final prophecy shall soon be realized.”

  The wind howled through the trees. Valenthor shivered. “Final prophecy?”

  Scoff. “I have heard tell how the great Valenthor turned his back on the gods after they took his wife and daughter from him, but even those without faith know of the Last War…when men, elves, giants, and the gods themselves will meet on the battlefield one final time.”

  “She…the elf…believes I am the Chosen One from a prophecy,” Valenthor said. “Do you?”

  He half expected to hear that raspy laugh again, but when Locke spoke, his tone was unnervingly sincere. “If I did not, you would be dead.”

  ***

  Locke’s words echoed in Vincent’s thoughts as he lay prostrate on a couch he didn’t recognize, staring up at a ceiling he’d never seen before.

  He sat up slowly, expecting a flash of pain in his side. It didn’t come. Likewise, the moisture on his chin wasn’t dew.

  Of course not! I’m not Valenthor. I’ve never been in a real fight, let alone killed anyone. Valenthor, the elf, that creepy Locke guy…they’re all an invention of my subconscious, whatever that says about me.

  Alone, confused, Vincent took in the unfamiliar living room. He had woken up in some unusual places before he quit drinking, but usually the morning-after experience always included a splitting headache and nausea. He felt fine, except for his inability to remember where he had been before waking up as Valenthor with Locke and the elf in the clearing.

  Self-consciously, he flipped the pillow drool-side-down and got up to take a look around. One thing was clear from the start. Whoever’s place it was didn’t hurt for money. All of the furniture looked new, and the flat-screen TV was about three-times the size of Jerry’s. The view outside the windows revealed he was on the second floor of a large apartment building. He didn’t recognize any of the cars in the parking lot or the adjacent houses.

  Across the room, framed photographs hung on the wall. He was halfway to them when he crossed paths with a brown-and-black cat. The two of them stopped in their tracks, observing each other for several seconds, until Vincent conceded defeat in the staring contest and stepped around the animal.

  The first picture was a portrait of a middle-aged couple in fancy clothes. The second one showed four women squeezed onto a couch, wearing what appeared to be genuine smiles. Vincent was just thinking of how much they all looked alike and that they could be sisters when he recognized the one on the end as Leah Chedid.

  Their conversation at the Indian restaurant and then Bella’s phone call came back to him in a rush.

  “Hello?” he called. “Leah?”

  No answer. Feeling very much like an intruder—the ball of fluff was still eyeballing him—Vincent made his way around the apartment. The more ground he covered, the more anxious he felt. After checking the kitchen, a bedroom, and what turned out to be a closet, he came upon another door, one that was open slightly.

  “Hello?” he said again, pushing the door timidly. “Is anybody…oh!”

  Vincent tensed. Inside, someone stood in front of a bathroom sink. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to barge in.”

  Leah didn’t respond. She grabbed a handful of hair, pulled it away from her head, and with her other hand, cut a crooked line through the long black strands with a scissors. The strange act, combined with her continued silence, made his skin crawl.

  “Leah?” He almost whispered her name.

  She combed her fingers through the hair on the back of her head, formed a fist near the ends, and pulled so hard that her head jerked back. Her other arm had to bend at an awkward angle in order to bring the scissors back to the taught fibers. Vincent flinched as the blades clipped the hair at a severe angle.

  “Hey, what are you doing?”

  As he hurried to the sink, he caught her reflection in the mirror. The first thing he noticed was the makeup smeared all over her face. The second was that, even as she reached for more hair, only the whites of her eyes could be seen beneath the half-closed lids.

  What the hell is going on?

  When she brought the scissors up for another pass, Vincent seized her by the wrist. She made a half-moaning, half-whining noise and pulled away from him. Her unrestricted hand yanked at her hair even harder.

  “Stop that!” He took her other hand too, trying to get her to release the clump of hair and the scissors at the same time. She was stronger than he expected.

  “…won’t know me like this…” she slurred.

  “Leah, wake up!”

  The hand that had been holding her hair went limp in his hand. At the same time, she pushed forward with the scissors. Vincent swore and quickly withdrew his hand as the blades whirred past him. Leah’s other hand popped back up again. The scissors went to cut the hair that wasn’t there and met her fingers instead.

  She squealed but didn’t drop the scissors until he slapped it out of her hand. Her knees gave out, and he managed to slip an arm around her, slowing, if not stopping, her fall to the floor.

  Leah started to fight him, swiping blindly at him. Vincent called her name over and over, shaking her as best he could while avoiding her attacks. When her bloody palm struck him in the chin, Vincent slapped her back.

  Her eyes opened, and for a moment she didn’t move.

  “Leah, you were…sleeping, I think. You cut yourself.”

  She regarded him groggily. Then the pain in her hand must have kicked in. She shot upright, gaped wide-eyed at the trail of red running down her arm, and gasped.

  Vincent stayed sitting on the floor. As Leah rinsed hair and blood from her hand, he tried to make sense of what had just happened. He knew he was awake, but somehow the struggle seemed more like a dream than anything that had happened to Valenthor.

  Leah screamed.

  His body reacted to the startling sound by jumpstarting his heart and pumping his limbs full of adrenaline. But all his weary mind could conjure up was now what?

  Leah gazed, horrified, into the mirror. The fingers of her uninjured hand trembled as they picked through the uneven strands of hair. Then she bowed her head and closed her raccoon-like eyes.

  Vincent, paradoxically tense and numb, watched inky tears flow down her cheeks. />
  Chapter 14

  No matter what Leah did to try to hide them, the uneven strands of hair spilled out from under the bright red Badgers cap. The sight of her disheveled, puffy-eyed reflection in the mirror nearly convinced her to attempt to salvage the horrible haircut right then and there.

  But she had already scrubbed the makeup mess off of her face and rinsed the hair off of her neck. Further grooming would have to wait because, as much as she wanted to, she couldn’t forget there was a guy in the next room waiting for her.

  Waiting for some answers.

  She turned away from the imposter in the mirror, steeled herself with a deep breath, and left the sanctuary of her bedroom. She found Vincent slouched in Emira’s recliner. He offered her an uneasy smile. Then she saw his gaze sweep over her hat—a long-forgotten souvenir of a college fling—and nearly lost it all over again.

  “It’s not that bad,” Vincent said. “Short hair is in these days.”

  Leah doubted the veracity of the statements. Even if every supermodel on the planet was sporting pixie cuts, which they weren’t, she wouldn’t have jumped on that bandwagon. She had flirted with short hair a few years ago and hated how the new ’do instantly transformed her round features into a fat face.

  It’ll grow back, girl. Pull yourself together.

  “I don’t think your cat likes me very much,” Vincent said.

  From a far corner of the room, Emira glared at him. Leah smiled in spite of herself. “That’s because you’re in her chair.”

  “She should have said something then.”

  She felt the smile fade from her lips. “I appreciate you trying to cheer me up, but I owe you an explanation.”

  “Look,” he began, “I’m the one who came to you for help. As long as you didn’t drug my food so you could bring me back to your place and kill me, I’m willing to forget about what just happened…unless you want to talk about it.”

  Her thoughts jumped back eons to the scene at the Indian restaurant. “One moment, you were talking to…talking on your phone, and the next, you were on the floor, out cold. I probably should have taken you to the hospital, but all the evidence indicated you were only asleep. I must have dozed off in that chair while waiting for you to wake up...”

  She took a big breath.

  “Which wouldn’t have been a problem, except that I suffer from an extreme form of rapid eye movement sleep behavior disorder.” He stared blankly, so she continued. “When most people sleep, their brains paralyze the majority of the muscles in the body. It prevents them from acting out their dreams. However, a very small percentage of the population lacks this motor inhibition, which can lead to twitching or sleep walking—”

  “Or sleep grooming,” Vincent provided. When she didn’t laugh, he added, “Sorry. So is that why you became a sleep doctor? Because you have this…disorder?”

  She nodded. “RBD is most commonly diagnosed in men in their late fifties or early sixties. I’ve shown symptoms since I was seventeen, and I suffered from insomnia long before that. Naturally, I wanted to know more about what was causing my brain to malfunction. I started researching RBD and other parasomnias in high school. I guess I never stopped.”

  “There’s no cure?” Vincent asked.

  Leah sighed. “In most cases, RBD can be treated by various medications, but nothing seems to work for me, at least not in the long run. So I take precautions. For some reason, people with RBD tend to act out negative dreams, which is why I use restraints that prevent me from leaving my bed and injuring myself.”

  “Then it’s my fault that you nearly cut off your hand with a scissors,” Vincent said, frowning. “If I hadn’t been here, you wouldn’t have fallen asleep in the living room.”

  Leah glanced down at her hand, where the rhythmic throbbing of her pulse surged beneath a bandage. The wound burned like a son of a bitch. “No, Vincent, it was my own damn fault. I’ve been careless lately. I got this bruise on my cheek because I didn’t use the restraints. In fact, if you hadn’t been here, things could have gotten much worse.”

  “Wouldn’t the pain have woken you up?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “Possibly. But like I said, my RBD skews toward the extreme. Sometimes I don’t know anything happened until I wake up and find a broken window or get strange looks from all of my neighbors because I was screaming in my sleep all night.”

  Judging from the long silence that followed, not to mention the uncertain expression on his face, Vincent was at a loss for words.

  He’s probably wondering why he didn’t make a run for it when I was cleaning up in the bathroom. Now he’s trying to devise a tactful way to escape the crazy woman’s apartment.

  Finally, he sat up straight in the recliner, looked her in the eye, and said, “That was a valiant effort, Dr. Chedid, but as strange as your disorder sounds, whatever is wrong with me takes the cake. At least you’re not passing out in restaurants so your subconscious can play Dungeons & Dragons.”

  As he described The Dream, Leah forgot about her own embarrassment and might have forgotten about the accidental makeover entirely were it not for the nagging pain in her hand. She didn’t dare interrupt him with questions. Somewhere inside Vincent, the cork had been popped, and all of the thoughts that had been bottled up flowed freely. He talked very quickly, and she did her best to digest the bizarre tale.

  At last, he said, “It turns out Locke also thinks I…Valenthor…is the Chosen One. I’m not sure what happened next because then I woke up here in your apartment.”

  Several seconds slipped by in silence. Leah opened her mouth to say something—she didn’t know what—but Vincent added, “The weird thing is that every time I go back there, I’m more and more Valenthor. In the beginning, I knew I was really Vincent Cruz and that I didn’t belong in that world. Now it’s like I don’t have any of my real memories in the dream.”

  “If you aren’t aware it’s a dream, it’s not a lucid dream anymore,” Leah said.

  “OK. Sure. But they still feel pretty damn real.” He sighed. “So…what do you make of it? Have you ever heard of anything like this?”

  Leah hadn’t yet answered the first question to herself, but she had no difficulty with the second one.

  “Never.” She paused, choosing her words carefully. “The parallels between your life and Valenthor’s can’t be coincidental. There might to be some logical explanations as to why certain themes have found their way into your dreams.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, both you and Valenthor have a daughter. And back at the restaurant, you said you used to have recurring dreams about her…about your girl—”

  “Clementine.”

  “—about Clementine. You’re obviously dealing with a lot of grief, Vincent. You also said your marriage is in trouble. In The Dream, that manifests itself as Valenthor’s wife being dead. And you just lost your job. It must feel like the world is crashing down around you, but when you sleep, you become Valenthor, the Chosen One, destined to save the world.”

  Vincent flashed a cynical smile. “So you’re saying because I’m a loser in real life, I have to play the part of hero in my dreams?”

  Leah shook her head helplessly. “I don’t know. But even Valenthor isn’t a hero yet. That knight, Sir Angus, made it sound like Valenthor has fallen from grace, turning to the bottle for comfort.” She thought she saw him wince. “But Valenthor has been given a chance to redeem himself. Maybe it means your subconscious is looking for a way to get your life back in order.”

  “You make it sound so simple,” Vincent muttered. “But even if I’m losing my mind because of grief, that doesn’t explain why I’m falling asleep in the middle of the day.”

  “The narcoleptic effect is puzzling,” she conceded, “but the brain has been known to shut down in times of extreme stress. You were talking to Bella when you passed out at the restaurant.”

  Vincent picked at something on his sleeve. “It can’t just be stress. There has to be somethi
ng else going on.”

  “Such as?” she asked. “You don’t think there’s really a Valenthor somewhere out there, do you?”

  “Of course not! But, Jesus, my mind can’t be that fragile. I can’t be that pathetic.”

  Leah noticed her fists were clenched. She flattened her palms on her knees. “Were you hoping I would come up with some complicated mental illness? I told you before I’m not a psychologist. If you’re in the early stages of multiple personality disorder…or whatever they’re calling it these days…I couldn’t diagnose it.”

  “But you do think I’m going nuts.”

  She crossed her arms and took a deep breath. “What do you want me to say, Vincent? What exactly do you expect from me?”

  “I want you to cure me! This has to stop!” He shot to his feet. “It’s great that Mr. Medieval Warrior has a shot at saving the day, but I can’t fix my own life as long as I have to deal with this damn dream.”

  Maybe Valenthor needs to complete his quest in order for the dream to end and for you to come to terms with what has happened in your life.

  OK, that does sound oversimplified.

  “I don’t think you’re crazy,” she said quietly, gesturing for him to sit down again. “I’m just processing what you told me. I still think that a psychotherapist might be better equipped to help you, but I’m willing to take a stab at it.”

  Vincent’s deep blue eyes searched her face for a moment. A corner of his mouth lifted, then, as he said, “Thanks…but did you have to use the word ‘stab’?”

  The tension slipped from the room, and Leah smiled too. “We should start with a sleep lab study. We’re generally pretty busy, so it might take some finagling to fit you into the schedule.”

  And then there’s the billing…

  “Just let me know when,” he said. “I’m unemployed. I’ve got nothing but time.”

  “I’ll call you this week,” she said. “In the meantime, stay away from alcohol, nicotine, caffeine…anything that might affect your body chemistry. And considering you can fall asleep anywhere at any time, you might want to stick close to home.”