The Dead Have A Thousand Dreams Read online

  The Dead Have A Thousand Dreams

  Title Page

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  THE DEAD HAVE A THOUSAND DREAMS

  Richard Sanders

  Copyright 2012 Richard Sanders

  Smashwords Edition

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return it to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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  To Laurie with love. I’d be dead without you.

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  and as you read

  the sea is turning its dark pages,

  turning

  its dark pages

  —Denise Levertov,

  “To The Reader”

  >>>>>>

  CHAPTER 1

  THIS IS A SENTENCE I DON’T WANT TO FINISH

  >>WEDNESDAY JUNE 13 (8 days to go)

  >>THURSDAY JUNE 14 (7 days to go)

  WEDNESDAY JUNE 13, 2:15 p.m.

  I’M GOING TO DIE 8 DAYS FROM NOW

  “The glass is half full, motherfucker!” Those were the first words I ever heard out of Wooly Cornell’s mouth. This was a couple years ago, in a meeting room in the village hall of Hidden Lake, a town on the eastern end of Long Island. Wooly was the owner of Material Witness, a company that tested textiles and fabrics to prevent fading and decaying. He was being sued at the time by a group known as F.L.A.C., the Fatal Light Awareness Committee. Their suit, the subject of the night’s public hearing, claimed that the 6,500-watt xenon arc lamps Wooly used 24 hours a day were causing deadly hormonal changes, including cancer. According to studies cited by F.L.A.C., women who were exposed to artificial light during night shifts—and Wooly’s workers were getting hit with 156 times the normal amount of sunlight—suffered a 60% rise in the incidence of breast cancer.

  Wooly, a pretty litigious guy himself, was really getting burned by the charges.

  “These people can bring up all the goody goody gumdrop statistics they want,” he said, “but all they’re doing is trying to jerk me around. They’re just trying to jerk me off, and jerking off’s just for jerk offs. I been using those lights for years, and I’ve never died once.”

  He was drawing looks of blinking disbelief from everyone there, the F.L.A.C. members, the village board, the mayor, the two Hidden Lake cops leaning on the back wall in a casual effort to keep the peace. It wasn’t just his words. His body was also a fearful factor. Wooly had a Caesar haircut, about twice as much jaw as anyone could possibly use and a torso roughly the size and shape of Texas. You didn’t want to mess with this guy.

  Unless you were the founder of F.L.A.C., Roy Freeny, a man with a tattoo of the blue Earth inked into the side of his shaved head. Freeny stood up and began to say that we’re altering biological rhythms by flooding the night with artificial light, and that 100 million songbirds die every year in North America alone because they can no longer navigate by the glow of the stars.

  Wooly called him a fucktocious dick face who couldn’t remember what planet he was on without looking in the mirror, and when Freeny asked if someone could shut this shrieking idiot up, Wooly threw a chair at him, missing his head but smashing into a water pitcher and two glasses, which prompted the cops to peel themselves off the wall and pin Wooly to the floor while the mayor declared the hearing adjourned.

  When Shakespeare wrote about this thing of darkness…thou poisonous slave, got by the devil himself, I’m pretty sure he had Wooly Cornell in mind.

  >>>>>>

  Against my squirming resistance and better judgment, my boss had sent me out to Hidden Lake to do a story on Wooly and the F.L.A.C. lawsuit. I didn’t talk to Wooly that night—he seemed to be in a less than introspective mood—but I went to his house the next day. He lived on the edge of the Paumanok woods, in a single-level glass and cedar home with a set of double doors big enough for the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

  I rang the bell, waited. No answer. Rang two more times and was seven seconds into the next waiting period when I heard the scream. A woman’s voice. I was trying to look inside the house when I heard the scream again. It was coming from around the back.

  I was running for the corner when I picked up a man’s voice—pitched somewhere between a yell and a moan—mixing with the woman’s shrieks.

  I stopped moving the moment I got to the backyard. The first thing I saw was Wooly fetal-rolling in the wild grass that led to the woods. A black woman was standing over him but all I could look at was the big boy. Yes, his six-three size and Orson Welles fat certainly commanded attention. More than that, though, his hands and arms were dripping with blood and he was stark raving naked.

  “I want it to stop!” he shouted, staring at the woman with a mad-panic look that was pure electrical voltage. “Make it stop!”

  “You stupid son of a bitch!” she screeched. “What’re you bleeding for?”

  “I can’t get out! I can’t get out of this!”

  “Put it down! Put it down now!”

  I saw what it was. He had a razor blade in his hand. I understood—he was a cutter. He’d been slicing up his own arms. Fortunately, he had plenty of blubber to work with—those cuts were only surface deep.

  As for the rest of him, Wooly’s real name was William Cornell and he had one of the hairiest bodies I’d ever seen. Arms, chest, legs—a lot of the growth was gorilla-thick. There was no doubt about how he got his nickname.

  The woman noticed me. She was a haggard, harried, sad-eyed person with Christmas red sweatpants and a face gone dark purple from screaming.

  “Can I help you?”

  “Quinn McShane. Real Story. Louisa Collins sent me here to talk to him.”

  “Genevieve Cornell.”

  She didn’t have to tell me she was his wife. I could hear years of grievance in her voice.

  “Tell Louisa not today,” she said. “He’s upset over last night.”

  Wooly wasn’t paying attention to our talk. He was caught in some primal nightmare, and all he could hear were the batwings beating in his head.

  “I don’t know what day it is,” he cried, frantic. “What day is it? What fucking day is it?”

  “Get inside,” said Genevieve. “I’ve had enough of this. I want you in the house right now.”

  “You need some help?”

  “Once I get him inside, he’ll be better. He says the pain actually calms him down. He says it’s a kind of cleansing this, a kind of letting go. Trust me, this isn’t his debut performance.”

  At this point Wooly became aware of a stranger in the midst. “Who’s that?” he yelled, gesturing wildly at me. “I don’t know him. He’s completely new to me.”

  “He’s here to see you.”

  “Get rid of him. Tell him I’m whacked out.”

  “I think he can see that.”

  “Make him go away!”

  “You’ll have to come back some other time. Please tell Louisa we’re sorry.”

  “Least let me help,” I said, looking at Wooly naked on the ground, pummeling his head and chest with his other hand, smearing blood wherever his fist landed. It was like he was trying to find the button to turn himself off.

  Genevieve and I yanked him inside, and while he eventual
ly calmed down to a degree and we talked a bit, he was still in no shape for an interview. I want back to the city. I hadn’t learned much about Wooly, though I was convinced that Mars was getting ready to revoke his citizenship.

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  The story never ran. A few days later part of the lawsuit was settled and the rest of it was dropped and life in Hidden Lake and the rest of the world went on much as before. Hard to forget Wooly, of course. The man loomed on your mental map like an eighth continent. But I thought—in fact, I hoped—I’d never see him again.

  Not a chance.

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  Cause here he was again, two years later, sitting in Louisa Collins’ office, not looking particularly good. He was still full-flesh heavy, but his face was a drained and saggy white. He looked a lot older than two years would warrant. So what brought him back? Whatever Wooly’s faults—and let’s not get into them now—he was a big donator to charities, and my boss sat on the boards of two of them. If he thought he needed media exposure, like he did with the F.L.A.C. lawsuit, Louisa was prone to give him what he wanted.

  “There’s a lot of shit going on,” he was telling us. “A lot of jig-jag that’s really bothering me. I’m telling you, people in the bible never suffered like this.”

  “What’s happening?” said Louisa.

  “Somebody, some poo head out there, is trying to kill me.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Somebody took a shot at me the other day. I'm pulling into work, getting outta my car, bam fucking boom all over the place. Plus I got a death threat delivered to my own fucking door.”

  “Who’s doing this?”

  “I don’t know. I do not know. Thing is, whoever it is, I think they’re going to succeed.”

  “Why?”

  He took a long breath, lotta lung to fill.

  “I’m going to die eight days from now.”

  Just like that he said it. Like he was saying the sun is out today.

  “I’m going to die on June 21. I’m going to die on the day of the summer solstice.”

  Louisa shot me a quick the-fuck? look, then went back to Wooly. “What are you talking about?”

  He took another four-second breath. “I know this is gonna sound crazy,” he said, and when somebody like Wooly Cornell says something sounds crazy, you know you’re in for a ride.

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  It all started with a hole, an empty space on his living room wall. For years he’d been vaguely thinking of filling it with something, and then one day one of his friends tells him about a local photographer, Georgiana Copely, she’s really good, she’s really different, you should buy one of her pictures. One thing, though, says the friend, she’s a little strange, she thinks she can see things about the future, but don’t pay any attention to it, don’t let her weird you out. She’s worth it.

  So Wooly pays a visit to Georgiana Copely. Yes, she’s one odd bird, but he’s totally amazed by her work. Never seen anything like it. He makes an offer for one of the photos. And once they’re done with the negotiations, he asks for some investment advice. He’s goofing with her, just funning around. But she says something like a bird from the sea will be found in the north.

  What’s it mean? Fuck does he know. Next day, though, he sees that Albatross Industries, a company in Canada, has just come on the market with some new smartphone technology. A bird from the sea = Albatross. From the north = Canada. He buys some Albatross stock. In three days he’s made a 38% profit on his investment.

  He calls her up. Hey, how about another tip? She’s reluctant. She says I was doing you a favor—I don’t want to make a habit out of this. He begs. He gets on his knees—even though he’s on the phone—and he begs. She mentions something about the warm pines are filled with liquid.

  Pines? Pines? Warm pines? He does searches up the whazoo. He finds an Arkansas utility company, Ark-Pine, and sees that they’re about to invest in fresh oil reserves. Warm pines = Arkansas. Filled with liquid = oil reserves. He buys some Ark-Pine. A week later it goes through the fucking roof.

  He calls again. This time she refuses. Flat out no. What am I, she says, CNBC?

  He goes back to her house, he offers to buy another picture. This really sets her off. She says she’s not prostituting herself for anybody. They argue, she gets angry. She throws a shit-fit tantrum. You want to know something about the future? she says. You’re going to die. When the sun stands still, when its rays are at their highest, you’re going to die.

  Wooly knows exactly what she means. The sun reaches its highest point on the summer solstice, and it stays that way, it stands still, for the entire day. He’s going to die on June 21 of this year.

  Even Louisa, a sucker for all things psychic, found it hard to believe he was taking this so closely to heart.

  I’ll tell you why, said Wooly. Right after Georgiana tells him he’s going to die, she starts spazzing out. She goes into some kind of conniption right in front of him. She says the flames will eat at the forest. And the way she says it, it’s not like he’s hearing it with his ears. It’s like the words are going in through his skin and rattling around in his chest.

  Then she says the flesh will tear your house apart. And then men from the south will abandon you.

  Coupla days after, one of the woodsies, one of the homeless people who live in the Paumanok woods, starts a fire. Three or four acres are destroyed before the blaze can be brought under control. It’s not a big fire, and things like that happen in the Paumanok on an occasional basis, but shit. The flames will eat at the forest.

  Not even a week later, Wooly’s wife is cooking salmon for dinner one night. He says we just had salmon, we’ve had it three times this week already. She says it’s good for your health, you fat fuck, and I’ve already started. He says no fucking way, I’ve had it up to here with salmon, and they start having it out, really going at each other until he realizes, holy hell, the flesh will tear your house apart.

  The next day, two of his best workers, two guys from Ecuador, up and quit on him. They’ve found new jobs. Men from the south with abandon you.

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  “And did I mention this?” he said. “Did I happen to mention she’s blind?”

  Louisa was puzzled. “A blind photographer?”

  “And a blind prophet. How’s that for typecasting? And the things she said, it wasn’t just that they came true, it was the way she said them. It wasn’t like I was even standing there. It was like I was asleep, like I was dreaming, and this voice was coming to me in the night.”

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  “And then, and then what happens? Somebody takes a shot at me. Somebody drops a death threat on my doorstep.

  “What do the police say?”

  “They scratch their fucking heads and don’t say a thing. Hidden Lake police? Your average fudgy turd has more brainpower.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “What do you think? What do you think I’m going to do? Considering that I currently don’t want to die? I’m gonna do everything possible to make sure it doesn’t happen. I don’t care who says what about when. I hired a security consultant to protect me. Living in the house, 24/7. Cause if I didn’t, you know? If I didn’t, this is a sentence I don’t want to finish.”

  Louisa cleared her throat. Sudden tickle. The give moment was upon us.

  “And how can we help?” she said. “What do you want from us?”

  “I want you to do a story on this thing. I want you to bring it into the light of day. The more people know about it, the less chance of you know what.”

  “I understand.”

  “I mean who do people think I am? A fucking Czechoslovakia? They can keep invading me all the time?”

  “We can certainly do a story.”

  “And I want Quinn here to do it.”

  I had to say it. “Why me?”

  Wooly hauled his bulk closer to the edge of his chair, getting confidential. “Remember that time you came
out to my house?”

  “I’m still shaking.”

  “You remember we talked a little? You were trying to talk me down? You told me a little something about your past.”

  “I remember.”

  “Then you know why. You got the qualifications I need. You know what I mean.”

  “I know.”

  “Something else. You remember you used the bathroom in my house?”

  Actually I did. He had an industrial hot-air hand dryer in the guest bathroom. Very homey touch.

  “Yeah?”

  “You were in there 18 minutes.”

  “You timed me?”

  “I time everybody.”

  “I didn’t realize I was on the clock.”

  “We’re all on the clock. Point is, 18 minutes, it’s a good thing. I’m speaking favorably of it. A person who takes a quick, hurried shit is not to be trusted.”

  “So, what? I passed the test?”

  “I’ll tell you the truth. Most people, when they meet me? It’s not so good. I tend to rub people 14 wrong ways from the go. But you and me, I think we have an understanding about certain things. I think we have a rapport, if you will. I think I can trust you.”

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  THE CATECHISM OF QUINN McSHANE

  Q: Bathroom habits aside, what does this lunatic mean by your qualifications?

  A: I used to be a licensed investigator. That’s one of the things I told him that day at his house. I guess he thinks I know enough to help him track down whoever’s after him.

  Q: How come you’re not an investigator anymore?

  A: Let’s just say that through the crazy Tao of life, I ended up in journalism.