A Nest of Nightmares

The minutes passed and Nora still, blindly, ran. She couldn’t see their car, and knew the horrifying possibility that she was running in the wrong direction – but she didn’t dare go back. A cramp in her side and ragged pains when she drew breath forced her to walk: she felt the moment when she might have been of some help, when she could have reached Larry in time, drain inexorably away. She never knew how long she had walked and run before she finally caught sight of their car, but, even allowing for her panic, Nora judged it had been at the very least a half an hour. She felt as if she had been running desperately all day. And she was too late. Much too late. By now, they would have finished with the girl. They might have killed her, they might have let her go. In either case, Nora and Larry would be too late to help her.

‘There you are! Where’d you go! I was worried,’ Larry said, slipping off the bonnet of the car and coming to embrace her. He sounded not worried but lazily contented.

It was too late. She did not tell him, after all, what she had witnessed. She never told him.

Nora became deathly ill that night in a clean, American-­style hotel near Acapulco. Two days later, still shaking and unable to keep anything in her stomach, Nora flew back to her mother and the family doctor in Dallas, leaving Larry to drive back by himself.

It was the stench that woke her. Nora lurched out of her sleep, sitting up on the bed, gagging and clutching the sheet to her mouth, trying not to breathe in the smell. It was the smell of something dead.

Groggy with sleep, she needed another moment to realise something much more frightening than the smell: there was someone else in the room.

A tall figure stood, motionless, not far from the foot of her bed. The immediate fear Nora felt at the sight was quickly pushed out of the way by a coldly rational, self-preserving consciousness. In the dim light Nora could not tell much about the intruder except that he was oddly dressed in some sort of cloak, and that his features were masked by some sort of head mask. The most important thing she noticed was that he did not block her path to the door, and if she moved quickly . . .

Nora bolted, running through the apartment like a rabbit, and bursting out through the front door into the courtyard.

It was late afternoon, the sun low in the sky but not yet gone. One of her neighbours, a Mexican, was grilling hamburgers on a little hibachi. He stared at her sudden appearance, then grinned. Nora realised she was wearing only an old T-shirt of Larry’s and a pair of brightly coloured bikini pants, and she scowled at the man.

‘Somebody broke into my apartment,’ she said sharply, cutting into his grin.

‘Want to use our phone? Call the police?’

Nora thought of Larry and felt a sudden fierce hatred of him: he had left her to this, abandoned her to the mercy of burglars, potential rapists, and the leers of this Mexican.

‘No, thanks,’ she said, her tone still harsh. ‘But I think he’s still inside. Do you think you could . . .’

‘You want me to see if he’s still there? Sure, sure, I’ll check. You don’t have to worry.’ He sprang forward. Nora hated his eagerness to help, but she needed him right now.

There was no one in her apartment. The back door was still locked, and the screens on all the windows were undisturbed.

Nora didn’t ask her neighbour to check behind every piece of furniture after he had looked into the cupboards: she was feeling the loathing she always felt for hysterical, overemotional reactions. Only this time the loathing was directed at herself.

Although one part of her persisted in believing she had seen an intruder, reason told her she had been mistaken. She had been tricked by a nightmare into running for help like a terrified child.

She was rude to the man who had helped her, dismissing him as sharply as if he were an erring servant. She didn’t want to see the smug, masculine concern on his face; didn’t want him around knowing he must be chuckling inwardly at a typical hysterical female.

Nora intended to forget about it, as she had forgotten other embarrassing incidents, other disturbing dreams, but she was not allowed.

She had a hard time falling asleep the next day. Children were playing in the parking lot, and her doze was broken time and again by their shouts, meaningless fragments of talk, and the clamour of a bicycle bell.

When, at last, she did sleep in the afternoon, it was to dream that she and Larry were having one of their interminable, pointless, low-voiced arguments. She woke from the frustrating dream with the impression that someone had come into the room and, certain it was Larry and ready to resume the argument in real life, she opened her eyes.

Before she could speak his name, the stench struck her like a blow – that too familiar, dead smell – and she saw the tall, weirdly draped figure again.