Read The Dead Have A Thousand Dreams for Free Online

half-turned to call Marco. She
was having an epileptic fit or a heart attack. Her long white hair
was shaking like a mop and the veins on her forehead were about to
blow apart from dilation.
     
    >>>>>>
     
    Then the tremors stopped.
They just stopped. They’d lasted, I don’t know, seven seconds,
eight, though it felt like they’d gone on for three days. She was
quiet now, hands still on the desk, though when she lifted her head
and looked at me, it was different. It was like she could actually
see me now and her sight was so sharp it was burning the
air.
    “Are you all
right?”
    Her hands moved, rubbed
the wood of the desk. “It’s raining.”
    “It’s what?”
    “It’s raining. Heavy,
heavy downpour. It’s raining and people are leaving you. Two
people.”
    Her voice was low but
steady, like she making an intense confession.
    “Two people?”
    “You can’t see them, but
you know they’re leaving. You can’t see them because you’re
standing far away.”
    Jesus H.—she was trying to
pull some psychic shit on me.
    “Where am I
standing?”
    “You’re standing behind
cement.” She was concentrating, almost squinting. It was like she
was trying to read the fine print. “”You’re surrounded by cement.
That’s why you can’t see them, but you know they’re leaving. It’s
raining and you know they’re going away.”
    I felt a tightness in my
throat, a sad tension. I remembered. I was up in Red Mountain
Correctional, early in my term. It was raining hard outside. It was
October 18, and I realized this was the day my wife and daughter
were moving to Arizona. She’d told me—we’re leaving New York on
October 18. I was standing in my cell, realizing what day it was,
realizing this was the last day the three of us would officially
live together. And it was raining hard, cannonball heavy. It was
like the ocean was falling outside.
    I didn’t know what was
going on here. I felt like I was gently drowning, like I was being
hypnotized. But not by her, because she looked hypnotized too. She
kept rubbing her hands on the desk, absently kneading the wood,
staring not at me but at some ghost light inside me.
    I don’t know how she knew
about that day. I was running all kinds of scenarios through my
head, trying to explain it, but there was something here that
couldn’t be explained away.
    Her hands stopped. They
stopped rubbing the wood. She let go of the desk and fell back in
the chair, suddenly looking very tired, the energy seeping out of
her like air from an untied balloon. It was over. Her eyes returned
to blind normal. Whatever had taken over her had passed. The world
had come back.
    Four, five seconds went
by. Nothing. Silence.
    “Are you okay?”
    She thought for a moment
before answering. “Yes.”
    “Do you need anything?
Water?”
    She shook her head. “I’m
sorry. I didn’t mean to intrude on your private thoughts. I have no
right to do that.”
    “It’s all right. I
guess.”
    “I can’t help it, I’m
sorry. I have no control over these episodes. They just…come. They
just come out of nowhere. My body starts to tremble and I feel
this, this pressure come over me, falling over me. It just happens.”
    I kept looking at her,
waiting five more seconds. “Once it happens, what does it feel
like?”
    The question seemed to
throw her. She thought about it, her eyes straining as she searched
for words.
    “It’s like being taken out
of time,” she said, “suddenly snatched out of time and space. It’s
like time and space don’t exist. It’s like living in a universe
without time and space, like the Big Bang never happened, and time
and space were never created.”
    She felt the desk again,
as if looking for reassurance.
    “Do you ever think about
the universe?” she said.
    “All the time.”
    She balled her right hand
in a fist. “You know what scientists say, right? At one point, just
a fraction of a second after the Big Bang, the universe was smaller
than a fist. Can you