Unhinged_by_Rick_Reed

Chapter 4

Chapter 4

“How can that be?” Ernie looked at me across the dinner table. We had just finished some grilled chicken, brown rice, and a celery, apple, and Parmesan salad I had thrown together. I had just told him about the morning I spent with Paula—and about our neighbors. Ernie’s mouth had dropped open a bit when I mentioned Tommy, and how Tommy was the person in my dreams.

I shook my head and stood up to clear the table. As I rinsed the dishes in the sink, I said, “I don’t know. But there’s no doubt in my mind that the guy in the picture she showed me is the same guy from my dreams.” Just the thought of it made my hand jerk in a spasm, caused a chill to run up my spine, like an icy finger.

Ernie brought over his own plate and set it in the sink. “Are you sure? I mean, do you think you could be projecting your memory onto this picture? Forcing the piece into the puzzle?”

I picked up his plate and rinsed it, not looking at him because I didn’t want him to see how angry he was making me. “It’s not like that, Ernie.” I blew out a sigh and stared at the wall for a moment. “You know how sometimes you see someone in the street or at a club and you think it’s someone you know but you aren’t really sure?”

“Yeah.” I could tell Ernie had no idea where I was going with this.

“Well, think about other times, when you see someone and you know, without a doubt, that it’s someone you know.”

“Okay.”

“My point, and I wish there was a more eloquent way to put it, is that when you know, you know.” I shut the water off and wiped my hands on my jeans. “There’s no doubt.”

We grabbed our wineglasses and took them over to the couch and sat down. Ernie picked up the remote control and turned on the TV. I picked up the remote control and turned it back off.

Ernie looked at me.

“I need to talk about this.”

Ernie smiled and shrugged. “I don’t know what there is to say. So maybe through some weird thing, you saw this Tommy. I don’t know why or how that could be, but I suppose that could be said for a lot of things. I think that we don’t know half the s**t that goes on around us all the time.” He pondered. “People show up in my dreams all the time, I guess, that I would say I’ve never seen. Who’s to say they’re not real?”

“What if he’s dead?” I sucked in a breath. “What if he was murdered?” I had had all afternoon, by myself, to think about things. And it should come as no surprise that my thoughts tend toward the melodramatic.

“Oh, come on! You don’t really think that?”

“It makes sense, Ernie. You’ve heard stuff about ghosts hanging around. It’s because they can’t move on. They can’t rest because something’s unresolved. Maybe this Tommy is appearing to me because he’s trying to tell me something.”

“You’ve watched way too many horror movies.”

“You have to admit it’s plausible.”

Ernie took a sip of his wine, shook his head, and grinned. “I don’t have to admit s**t. You have no evidence to think anything so extreme.” He turned toward me. “Even from what you told me, this guy was a flake. He was a drug addict. From what you said he looked like, I’d say he was into the meth pretty heavy. And it does sound like your pal Paula corroborates that.”

“So?”

“So, I know guys who have gotten into that stuff in a big way, and it affects your brain, Rick. It makes you nuts.” Ernie was quiet for a long time, as if he were considering what to say next. “Look, this happened way before I met you, but I used to get together with this guy when I was single. He was a f**k buddy; you don’t know him. But he smoked that stuff. I didn’t want to touch it. At first he was a lot of fun, but then, for him, it became all about having other guys over.”

“What does this have to do with anything?” I cursed myself for feeling jealous. I believed Ernie when he said this was before my time, yet I couldn’t help but think of him in bed with this other guy and it made me sick to my stomach.

“Your honor, this goes to state of mind.” Ernie raised his eyebrows. “Anyway, the last time we were together, he found this real hottie on Manhunt, you know? And he invited him over. Well, the guy was nothing like his picture. He looked more like your Tommy, so skinny his ribs were poking out. And all the time he was over, he kept talking about the voices he was hearing coming from his radiator. He thought his neighbors were piping in voices to drive him crazy. He was dead serious.”

“Your point?”

“My point is that this drug eats holes in your brain, man. It can make you crazy. Now just as likely, if not more so, is the scenario that this Tommy just faded away, went off with some other addict. It’s possible that he did die, but not here. And I doubt he was murdered. It’s far more likely he flaked out and just left. I’m sorry, but the truth is usually way more boring than fiction.”

I nodded. What Ernie said made sense. But I wasn’t sure I believed it. I didn’t know if it was my own mind rationalizing, but now when I looked back at my dreams, I saw them as more than just apparitions or figments of my imagination, but as cries for help.

Yeah, I know. Overly melodramatic.

I picked up the remote and pointed it at the TV. Top Chef would be a welcome diversion, a relief.

* * * *

I’m no fool. I knew I was dreaming. Again, the dream had all the earmarks of reality.

But this time, I was not in the apartment. I was outside of it. Right outside. On an el train, pulling into the Irving Road Station on the Brown Line. The train’s engine hummed as the train screeched to a stop. The doors slid open.

I had a perfect view into our apartment. Only it wasn’t our apartment. Without knowing why, I knew it was Tommy and Karl’s. Everything was different. Lots more furniture. Lots of junk. Clothes strewn about the place and dirty dishes in the sink.

It was night and the apartment was almost dark. The only illumination came from the light over the kitchen sink. But it was enough.

And I could see him.

Not Tommy.

Karl. I recognized him from the picture Paula had shown me.

He was crying. Not just crying, sobbing. His hands covered his face and even in the pale half-light, I could see his shoulders shaking and his chest heaving. He stood near the bright red screen, but now it was not where Ernie and I had positioned it by the front door, but on the upper level of the room, next to what appeared to be the bed. I could see the footboard of the four-poster sticking out of one edge of the divider.

I could also see a very white foot, looking almost as if it had been crafted from alabaster.

I felt like I was intruding on a very private moment.

The train’s doors slid shut; there was a gong and the mechanical voice over the intercom announced that Addison would be the next stop. I turned in my seat to watch as the train lurched into my motion.

I pressed my hand against the glass as I watched Karl fall to his knees at the foot of the bed.

Then the apartment was no longer in view.