If Souls Can Sleep Read online

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because my mom is crazy.”

  Leah kept her eyes on the road, her expression neutral.

  “She has crazy dreams too,” he continued. “Except she doesn’t think they’re dreams. For instance, she believes an angel came to her in a dream to command her to keep my brother on life support.”

  Leah sighed inwardly.

  I guess there’s more than one way to get a patient’s family history…

  “I never knew you had a brother,” she said. “Did he go to Shorewood High?”

  “Half-brother actually. And, yes, he went to Shorewood…when he felt like it. He’s in a coma now, and if my mother has anything to say about it, he’s going to stay hooked up to machines until the Second Coming.

  “I think she can’t just accept that he is already dead.” He took a deep breath. “At first, I thought she wouldn’t take him off life support because her church says it’s a sin or something. But then one day she finally told me the real reason she wouldn’t bury Daniel. An angel had specifically told her not to.”

  Leah said nothing.

  Am I going to hit every red light tonight?

  Vincent chuckled. “You don’t have to be a shrink to see she’s delusional.”

  “People must have said the same thing about the Virgin Mary,” Leah said before she could stop herself.

  “Huh?”

  So much for keeping the conversation professional.

  “In both the Bible and the Qur’an, angels deliver messages while people are asleep. John the Apostle apparently dreamed the entire Book of Revelations,” she said.

  “You believe in that stuff?” Vincent asked, his tone rich with skepticism.

  Leah shrugged. “My mother is Muslim, and my father was raised Catholic. I’m not sure what I believe, so I keep an open mind.”

  Now it was Vincent’s turn to shrug. “Well, my mom is not a prophet.”

  The next few blocks passed in heavy silence, and when they pulled into the parking lot, Leah thought she had never been so relieved to get to work.

  ***

  Inside the sleep clinic, alone with Leah in a small room with bare walls, a bed, and expensive-looking equipment, Vincent only half listened as Leah explained the procedure. Why bother trying to keep all of the acronyms straight when all he had to do was sleep?

  Then again, with so many electrodes stuck to his face and body, he worried that falling asleep would prove challenging.

  “I’ll be in the next room, monitoring your data and observing you through that,” Leah said, pointing to a video camera mounted in the corner of the room.

  “How exciting for you.”

  There was no mirth in her smile. “Good night, Vincent.”

  “Thanks.”

  She left, and the lights dimmed. He rolled onto his side. The electrode affixed to his temple itched fiercely, and a pancake might have provided more support than the sorry excuse for a pillow provided. He closed his eyes and concentrated on Bella and Clementine, even going so far as to imagine he was back in his old house on the day Clemmy died.

  I haven’t had that nightmare since The Dream began. What’s the connection?

  When sleep did not come, his thoughts drifted back to the conversation in Leah’s car. How could she seriously entertain the possibility that an angel contacted his mom? And to compare Evangeline to the Mother of Christ? There was nothing immaculate about either of Evangeline’s conceptions.

  Just when Vincent had convinced himself he had never been more awake in his life, he opened his eyes to find himself in a room he hadn’t seen in nearly twenty years. He sat up quickly and slammed his head on the ceiling.

  Cursing loudly, Vincent rolled onto his stomach and slid from the top bunk down to the floor, which was a lot closer than he remembered.

  “You better hope Mom didn’t hear you say that word.”

  Vincent rubbed the fast-forming bump on his forehead and locked stares with little Danny, who sat cross-legged on the bottom bunk, reading a comic book.

  “What am I doing here?”

  Daniel flashed a mischievous smile. He wore his favorite pajamas, which resembled long underwear covered with colorful dinosaurs. “Welcome home, Vince.”

  “No one calls me Vince anymore,” Vincent muttered, but he was no longer looking at Daniel. The Larry Bird poster, the empty terrarium, the mountain of Matchbox cars in the corner—the bedroom was definitely his.

  Theirs.

  “You were expecting a forest, maybe?” Daniel asked.

  Vincent regarded the red-haired eight-year-old suspiciously. “What did you say?”

  Daniel stood, tossing Avengers #1 on his pillow. “I know that elf chick is a hottie and all, but I thought you’d be happier to see me. When was the last time we had a chance to talk?”

  I have to get to Valenthor’s world so Leah’s sleep study isn’t for nothing. Maybe if I concentrate…

  “I’ll refresh your memory,” Daniel said. “It was Mom’s birthday. You and Bella dropped off her gift, but when you saw I was there, you insisted you couldn’t stay for cake.”

  “There was something we had to do that day,” Vincent said, though he couldn’t remember what excuse they had used at the time.

  “Like what?” Daniel drawled. “You needed a better place to be miserable? Did all holidays become off limits after Clementine died?”

  “Fuck you.”

  The boy’s smile grew. “Shhhh! Mom’s gonna here you. The walls are very thin. That’s not something one forgets easily.”

  Am I here because I was to Leah about Daniel earlier?

  “Why do you want to kill me, Vince?”

  Coming from the mouth of a child, the question was more than a little disturbing. “You’re already dead, Daniel. Mom just can’t deal with reality. She’s wracked by guilt because you screwed up your life.”

  Daniel’s eyes narrowed, and his devil-may-care grin disappeared. The new expression made him looked much older. “OK, so I screwed up my life. No arguments there. And, yeah, Mom made mistakes too, but at least she’s trying to make up for it. All she wants is to spend some time with you. Why do you keep pushing her away?”

  “Because she’s too late!” Vincent spat.

  “I think I get it.” His brother’s one-sided smile returning suddenly. “You want to kill me because it’ll kill Mom. You want to punish her because there’s no one else left. Clementine is gone. Bella left you—”

  Vincent grabbed the boy by his collar, pulling him up to his tiptoes. “You son of a bitch!”

  Big grin. “There you go insulting Mom again.”

  Vincent let go of his little—too little—brother. Breathing hard, he said, “You’re not real. You’re a twisted hallucination my subconscious cooked up to torment me. I’m talking to myself.”

  “Why do you really hate her?” Daniel asked.

  Vincent crossed the room and reached for the bedroom door, but before he could touch the knob, the door opened. He froze.

  She looked to be in her mid-twenties. Her blond hair was spiked up in the middle, plastered down on the sides and shaved up the back. The holes in her acid-washed jeans provided an unobstructed view of her knees and more of her thighs than Vincent cared to see. A giant silver cross dangled ironically from one ear. Her blue-shadowed eyes looked alert, for once.

  Judging by the zipped-up black leather jacket, Evie wasn’t staying sober for long.

  “Time for bed, boys,” she announced.

  “Where are you going?” Vincent asked.

  “Out.”

  Vincent rounded on Daniel. “This is why I hate her! Thanks to her, I never knew my father. This was my only role model! What chance did I have at being a good dad?”

  He fixed his glare on his mother, who crossed her arms and mirrored his frown.

  “It’s your fault my life is so screwed up! It’s your fault Clementine is dead!”

  The door slammed on its own, and he was alone in the room wi
th Daniel.

  Adult Daniel.

  “OK, so you’re pissed off, and Mom is an easy target.” Daniel stretched his arms out the length of the bunk and leaned back against the frame. “But we both know that even after you push everyone else away, you still have one person left to hate.”

  “Just shut up, Daniel.”

  “Truth is, horrible things happen every day. You made a mistake that morning, but it was an accident, Vince. You can keep on being unhappy, making one bad choice after another, or you can make the best of the time you have left.”

  “Shut! Up!”

  “Clementine died, not you.”

  He took a swing at Daniel, but suddenly his brother was a boy once more. Young Danny easily ducked under the blow, and Vincent’s fist struck the metal bedframe instead.

  “You’re a bastard,” Vincent growled.

  Grin. “Takes one to know one.”

  ***

  What is he doing?

  Leah stared at the monitor, which showed Vincent sitting up and looking right at her, directly at the camera. And was he talking? When Vincent started waving, she cursed and switched on the lights in his room. A stern voice in the back of her mind told her to stick to the script, to be Dr. Chedid instead of old pal Leah, but even if part of her rankled at interrupting the polysomnography, another part of her was eager to hear what he had to say.

  Did he have The Dream?

  “What happened?” she asked, approaching the bed.

  The artificial light lent Vincent’s tan skin a greenish tint. His brow glistened with sweat. “No, not this time.”

  Leah let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. “I didn’t think so. You never reached REM, which surprised me. Most narcoleptics enter REM in about ten minutes, but you lingered in NREM for an abnormally long time before waking up.”

  Vincent stared vacantly across the room. “I was with Danny.”

  “Pardon?”

  “I wasn’t Valenthor. I was me…with Daniel back at our old house.”

  Leah felt her pulse quicken. “Are you saying you dreamed about your brother?”

  Vincent nodded. “It wasn’t The Dream, but it felt as real as The Dream.”

  “Was it a lucid dream?” she asked, sounding overeager even to herself. “Did you know you were in a dream?”

  He turned to look at her, a puzzled look on his face. “Yeah…why do you look so surprised?”

  “Almost all dreaming takes place during REM. Lucid dreaming only occurs during REM,” she explained.

  “So?”

  Leah rubbed the back of her neck, a nervous habit she had picked up since she had inadvertently chopped off most of her hair. “You didn’t experience REM sleep, Vincent. You lingered in N3, the third stage, for…well…I’ll have to double check the readings, but I should have been able to tell if you were having a dream like that. It just doesn’t make any sense.”

  She forced herself to take a breath. “It’s too soon to jump to any conclusions. I’ll have to get a second opinion, and then there’s the chance of mechanical failure. In any case, we should repeat the study and—”

  “Leah, just tell me what you’re thinking.”

  “How long did you wait after the dream about Daniel before waving at the camera?” she asked.

  “I didn’t wait. I just woke up a few seconds ago.”

  She started to fuss with an electrode on his forehead. He took her hand in his, and their eyes met.

  “Please…talk to me,” he said.

  Old pal Leah it is then.

  “If you managed to have a lucid dream in NREM sleep, the instruments didn’t detect it,” she said. “I was watching pretty closely. I didn’t see your eyelids moving at all.”

  “I don’t—”

  “If, as the data suggest, you didn’t have any dreams, then when you saw your brother, you must have been awake.”

  Chapter 18

  Dawn was a pale orange flirtation on the horizon when Vincent returned to the passenger seat of Leah’s immaculate luxury sedan. He pretended to inspect the miniature violin that dangled from the rearview mirror, stealing a glance at Leah as she started the car. Her eyes, underscored by the dark shadows of a sleepless night, had the same faraway look as earlier.

  She doesn’t really think the machines malfunctioned. Something happened when I was dreaming about Daniel.

  While the second half of his sleep study had been uneventful, Leah clearly was preoccupied by the glitch. That worried him. He didn’t know much about science—if Bella hadn’t done half of his human physiology homework for him, he never would have passed—but he was savvy enough to realize that having dreams while wide awake was very, very bad.

  If you’re not sleeping, it’s not a dream. It’s a hallucination.

  He buried his questions and stared out the window at a city starting to stir. He knew she would tell him what he needed to know, but first she needed to sort out what, exactly, she knew. In the meantime, he’d do what he had been doing for the past two weeks—wait.

  I can’t believe tomorrow is already November 4th. Another year without Clementine…

  An invisible hand shoved Vincent against the car door, as the Camry squealed around a corner. He glanced at the speedometer and chuckled nervously.

  “You have somewhere you need to be?” he asked.

  “Sorry.” She let up on the gas but grimaced as a light ahead turned yellow. “I think all the coffee I drank last night finally caught up with me. Is it OK if I use the bathroom at your place?”

  “Ah, sure,” Vincent said. “But there’s never anywhere to park, so just pull in front of the house and put your hazards on.”

  As they turned onto Arlington Street, Vincent spotted a cranberry-colored Ion parked in the loading zone of the small, fancy Italian restaurant that made the corner smell like garlic every night from 5 to 9. He craned his neck to get a look at the license plate but then lurched forward as the wheels of Leah’s car clipped the curb.

  “Sorry,” muttered Leah, already climbing out of the car.

  Vincent got out and hurried to catch up with her. He shot a backward glance at the Ion, but the plates were at an unreadable angle. Pulling his keys from his pocket, he shrugged away the suspicion.

  It can’t be hers.

  As he led the way into the house, a wave of self-consciousness washed over him. The white and black-speckled linoleum of the hall and stairs was dusty and curled. As they ascended to the second level, the stairs creaked irritably beneath their feet. The door to his apartment was more scuffs than paint.

  Here’s to hoping that the bathroom isn’t too filthy.

  He inserted his key and tried to turn it, but there was nowhere to go. The door was already unlocked.

  “Jesus, Jerry…again?” He pushed open the door. “With a spacey roommate, who needs keys? The bathroom is right there.”

  “Thank you,” she said, scooting into the room and slamming the door behind her.

  Vincent sighed and walked over to a kitchen chair. Jerry’s bedroom door was closed, which meant he had either gone to bed without locking up, or he was already up and gone. Since it was somewhere around 7 a.m. on a Saturday, he had little hope for the latter scenario.

  He was about to sit down when he realized how creepy it would be if he was just lurking in the kitchen when Leah came out of the bathroom. He moved into the living room, debating whether or not to turn on the TV. He never made it to the recliner.

  Bella was curled up on the couch with her eyes closed.

  The sudden tightness in his chest made it hard to breathe.

  That was her car out front.

  Seeing Bella in the fetal position, her preferred sleeping pose, was beyond surreal. For a moment, he could almost forget the eight years of distance and despair. He wanted to go to her. To touch her and deny the life he had lost. To forget the existence he could not escape.

  But the burden of guilt, anger, and regret returned with renewed force.

  We h
aven’t seen each other in nearly a year, and she just drops by?

  “Why are you here?” he demanded.

  Bella jolted upright and blinked dazedly at him. “Vincent? Sorry, I must have dozed off. The door was open, so I let myself in.”

  “Why are you here?” Vincent repeated through clenched teeth.

  Bella stood up, using the arm of the Low Rider for support. “When you didn’t return any of my calls, I got worried. Don’t you check your messages?”

  He was about to offer an excuse about losing his phone in an Indian restaurant, which wouldn’t have explained why he didn’t use the apartment phone to call her, when he suddenly remembered that Leah was a mere two rooms away.

  Christ, all I need is for Bella to find her here and get the wrong idea.

  “Well, as you can see, I’m still in one piece,” he said, “so unless there’s something else you needed…”

  Please, Leah, stay in the bathroom!

  Bella tucked a loose strand of hair back behind her ear, a habit he used to find sexy. “Regardless of what you might think, I do care about you, Vincent. I just wanted to talk face-to-face before…” She sighed. “Tomorrow being what it is, I thought I should stop by. I know how hard that day is for you.”

  The toilet flushed.

  Son of a bitch.

  Bella’s eyes narrowed. “Is someone else here?”

  The sound of water flowing from the faucet filled the tense silence.

  “She’s just a friend, Bella. She’s…she…”

  He scrambled to find words that wouldn’t make him sound like a cheater or a nutcase. Nothing came to mind.

  The pain in his wife’s expression filled his guts with ice water. But an instant later, her pale lips tightened, and her eyebrows drew together—tried-and-true warning signs that Bella’s temper was on the rise. He knew no tears would come and was relieved.

  Anger was an emotion with which he was well acquainted.

  ***

  Leah considered the ragged, rust-stained towel, then wiped her hands on her slacks instead. She opened the bathroom door and heard Vincent’s voice coming from the living room. Figuring he was either on the phone or chatting with his roommate, she decided to peek in and let him know she would see herself out.