The Red Hotel (Sissy Sawyer Mysteries) Read Free Page A

important?’
    ‘I don’t know. It could be.’
    ‘It’s in black and white . . . something like
The Lucy Show.
The TV is slowed right down, so I can’t hear what anybody’s saying. All I can hear is Everett panting underneath that mask.’
    ‘I hope you don’t mind me asking you this, but don’t you feel even the least bit turned on?’
    Sissy could tell that T-Yon was taken aback by her directness, but before she consulted the DeVane cards it was important for her to know as much as possible about T-Yon’s nightmare – what she could hear, what she could see, and how she was feeling. Sometimes the smallest detail could unlock the whole secret of a frightening dream. A face glimpsed high up at an attic window. A tatty old crow, perched on a distant gatepost. A small child sitting by the roadside, sobbing his heart out.
    ‘Turned on?’ said T-Yon. She thought about it, and then she added, ‘No, I guess I’m not – not really. I can
feel
him making love to me, physically. I can feel him inside me, but it’s not really exciting.’
    ‘Does it go on for long, this love-making?’
    ‘Some nights it seems to go on for hours. Other nights it’s over in just a few seconds. But it always ends the same. Everett makes love to me faster and faster and then he suddenly stops, and bunches up, and lets out this terrible
aaahhhhhhhh
! At the same time I have this sliding feeling in my stomach.’
    T-Yon ran her fingertip down in a vertical line from her breastbone to her waist. ‘It’s the most horrible sensation you can imagine. It’s like somebody’s cutting me open with a really sharp scalpel – right through my skin and my muscles and all the layers of fat and everything.’
    She stopped for a moment, and took two or three steadying breaths. Then she said, ‘Everett, he’s making this kind of a whimpering noise. You know – like a puppy when somebody’s run it over. It’s muffled, because he still hasn’t taken off his mask. I’m too shocked to make any sound at all. I lift my head and look down at my stomach and it’s gaping wide open. Everett’s still on top of me, and
his
stomach is gaping open too.’
    ‘My God,’ said Sissy. She was really craving for a cigarette now, and she wished Billy would hurry back from the store. On the other hand, she was anxious to hear the rest of T-Yon’s nightmare before he returned. She didn’t want T-Yon to hold anything back, which she might very well do if Billy were here. Hearing that his new girlfriend was having nightmares about sex with her own brother wouldn’t be the greatest aphrodisiac of all time.
    ‘I look down. I’ve seen it night after night and it’s always the same, but it still gives me the fremeers, every time, without fail. All of our intestines are tangled up together, Everett’s and mine, so that I can’t tell where his begin and mine end. They’re like spaghetti, and they’re so twisted and knotted that I know that we could never untangle ourselves. The only way to separate us would be for somebody to cut us apart, slice right through our intestines, and I know that would kill us.’
    ‘Does anybody try?’
    ‘No, that’s pretty much the end of the nightmare. I hear a clock striking and that’s when I always wake up. Well – almost.’
    ‘Almost?’
    ‘Yes . . . before I do, I see the door open. Only three or four inches, but enough to see that there’s a boy standing outside – a boy with red curly hair and a very white face.’
    ‘Does he
say
anything, this red-haired boy? Does he move? Does he come into the room?’
    T-Yon shook her head. ‘He doesn’t speak and he doesn’t move at all.’
    ‘Do you recognize him from anywhere?’
    ‘No. He just stands there staring at us, me and Everett, lying on the bed with our intestines all mixed up together. I can’t be sure, but sometimes I think he’s smiling at us. He really frightens me. My grandma would have called him a
possedé
, that’s Cajun for a really bad child.