Amphetamines and Pearls Read Online Free Page A

for him and, since she turned out to be some kind of insomniac, it didn’t help her much either. As for me, I usually find it soothes the body and sometimes brings a pleasant memory or two. Usually some old movie with a heart of gold. But not this night.
    In my dream I awoke in the small, plain room of what had to be a motel. Dressed and went outside. It was night, I guess, but there appeared to be a lot of light. I suppose I should have looked for a full moon, but it didn’t seem important at the time. Maybe it wasn’t.
    I walked through this batch of scrubby trees towards a tall, battered-looking house. My movements were slow, as if stepping through invisible waves. Inside the front door I hesitated, not knowing at first which way to go: there was a staircase leading up to the floors above and another which went down to the cellar.
    Then I knew which way I was to go; knew also that I didn’t want to go that way; didn’t want to follow those steps down to the basement. But something drew me down, something which left me no choice.
    A door. Again, a door. A door which creaked slowly, then swung wide. I wasn’t aware of stepping inside, but somehow I had.
    And suddenly it flailed at me. It. Something. Something large and whirling, like a giant bird, flapping its black wings across my face. Then a blade, huge, shining strangely and swinging at my body.
    I threw myself at the thing, whatever it was. My hands touched nothing but sticky, cloying dampness. Strangely swinging—shining—a single bare light bulb. A face. An old woman’s face approaching me, smiling, toothlessly, invitingly. The mouth opening till I could see the pulp of the gums seeming to swallow me up. The sickly-sweet stink of over-ripe fruit was everywhere.
    Then the face was that of a young man, high cheek bones, small dark eyes staring. I summoned all my strength into one punch and drove my fist at that face. As I did so it changed into the mask-like features of Candi, the line of dried blood a hair-line crack in the white plaster. I tried to pull back the punch but it was too late.
    My knuckles drove through the unearthly surface of Candi’s face, passing through bone and flesh as though delving into some strange fruit.
    From somewhere, Candi’s voice singing:
    â€˜The more I reach for you it seems
    As though these hands of mine just pass right through you.’
    I shouted and shouted for release but no sound came, only a blackness into which those flailing wings disappeared until they tore and tore at the inside of my brain.
    At some time my nightmare must have ended and allowed me to sleep, though when I eventually woke it was still imprinted on my mind. When I could lay in bed with it no longer I got up and pulled on some clothes and walked unsteadily into the kitchen.
    What I needed now was a little honest routine. I remember reading in one of Chandler’s Philip Marlowe novels that he began the day by making coffee in a set and practised way, each morning the same. It also said somewhere that Marlowe liked to eat scrambled eggs for breakfast but as far as I can recall it didn’t say how he did that.
    What I did was this. I broke two eggs into a small saucepan, added a good-size chunk of butter, poured in a little off the top of a bottle of milk and finally ground in some sea salt and black pepper. Then I just stirred all of this over a medium heat, while I grilled some bacon to go with it.
    They say that a sense of achievement is good for a man.
    After breakfast I had a bath and examined my bruises. Then I made a second pot of coffee and thought about opening the morning’s mail. From the nature of the envelopes it didn’t seem too good an idea. Then somebody rang the doorbell. I wasn’t sure how good an idea answering that would be, but Ä® went anyway.
    She was standing a couple of paces back from the doorway, smiling a smile which would have thawed out the frostiest of November mornings.