Dreamlands by Scott Jäeger Page A

fluff my pillow.  In close proximity her
perfume, and the smell of something less pleasant beneath it, was so overwhelming
I raised an arm to my mouth, brushing her cheek with my sleeve.  As if I had
disturbed an image reflected in a pool, her cold beauty dissolved before my
eyes.
    In
its place, a grey, misshapen form loomed over me, presenting instead of a woman’s
aspect a crawling nest of worms.
My whole frame arched away from this obscenity, but the nurse’s body had also transformed, into something massive and bulky, and I was pinned beneath its arm.  When it lifted a scalpel into view I grabbed its wrist in my left hand.  Its skin was scaled, slippery, and ice cold.  The thing could produce no expression, but the tubules, like maggots grown twenty times their natural size, danced as if in agony.
    I
had been in more than a few fights since I was last in Arkham however, and would
not succumb so easily.  I groped about the bed for the pearl-handled knife.  Instead,
my fingers closed round the solid butt of a revolver.  Yanking it free, I fired
all four cartridges into the slack stomach of the beast, the force of the blasts
knocking it back on its heels.  It stood hunched there in the wavering
candlelight, a colourless ichor streaming from its torso.  The pink facial
appendages gradually slowed their writhing, and when they stilled altogether it
toppled cumbrously to the floor.
    I
was weak and my ears still rang with the echo of the shots but, after folding
down the bed’s safety bars, I was well enough to get around.  My newly acquired
weapon was a four-shooter with a worn, pearl-inlaid grip.  I ejected the spent
shells and reloaded with additional bullets from the holster.
    I thought
I should examine the thing more closely, but even dead it was such an affront
to the senses I could not bring myself to approach it.  A cursory search of the
room revealed a weary suit of clothes and a pair of scuffed shoes, which I hastily
pulled on.  Behind the door I found a coat as well, in the thigh length style that
became popular during the War.  I buttoned it to cover the holster.  The billfold
in the pocket gave me pause, however.  Inside were about sixty dollars in small
bills and an insurance card made out to a Wendell Richards.  I rushed to the
mirror over the basin in pure panic, but the reflection, whey-faced and skinny,
was the same old Isaac Sloan.  I was straightening my new clothes, considering
what lies I should tell the police, when the silence finally battered its way
into my thoughts.
    No
one had come to investigate the shots.
    I
exited into a long corridor, brightly lit and perfectly empty, and followed it
to the stair.  I heard none of the sounds one would expect from a busy hospital,
not a stray cough or a snoring patient, just the sibilant hiss of the gas
lamps.  When I descended the stairs to the charity ward, about half the beds were
turned out and ready, the others rumpled with the outlines of human forms, but
empty, as if everyone had decided to use the lavatory at the same time.  Here
was evidence of activity:  a sandwich on a tray, a mop in a steaming bucket,
but nowhere a living soul.  I took several bites of the sandwich, which was
chicken and quite good, and continued past the equally deserted admittance area.
    Outside,
I looked back at the lobby and saw a tired receptionist at the front desk and a
doctor reviewing a file.  There were others too, going about their business, unmindful
of gunshots and shapeshifting monstrosities.
    A
hand on my shoulder drove me rigid as an electric shock.
    “Make
way, please,” someone said.  I spun around.  It was a man bringing his son to
hospital with a hurt wrist.  I muttered an inane reply, wondering how many more
surprises I could endure in one day.
    Eager
to be away from St. Mary’s, I headed east towards the downtown, the paving
beneath my feet growing firmer as I went.  I had fallen asleep in my uncle’s
cottage in Kingsport in