The Things I Steal From Sleep

McLean stepped out of the police car into the summer heat and wished he was at home on the couch with a nice cold drink in his hand. A Coke would do. No, no caffeine. . . . Hell, he'd settle for some lemonade if it was cold. Locking up the police car, he checked the address and walked up to the door of the apartment building. He wished his partner was here, at least to complain about this heat to, but his partner wasn't used to city summers either and had passed out yesterday. Of course, McLean was a veteran policeman, and could handle a simple house call alone. Right.

He climbed up the stone steps and would have rung the door bell except that it had a little sign on it, clearly stating Bell out of order. He opened the outside door and knocked. No answer. Just below the doorknob a note exclaimed in the same handwriting, I Said, Do Not Disturb!!! McLean's brow dropped in one of the expressions his fellow policemen said made him look like Clint Eastwood, and he knocked again. Do not disturb. That's what they all say. He knocked one more time and then disturbed.

The door swung into a twilight scene. The air inside was soft and moist, very nice after the oven outside. Light streamed in through the windows and the portal behind him, falling on a rich wood-paneled room. A hallway led straight ahead, and to the right a staircase wound upstairs, held to the wall by a richly detailed bannister. It was like walking through a forest. To the left a doorway led to a room shrouded in the soft shadows of a house closed to keep out the summer heat. It was utterly silent inside, and he shut the door to keep it cool. It was almost a dream world. On the floor lay a small note written by the same hand as other two. Evidently they'd erred, for this one read Do Not Disturb.

McLean ignored it. He walked quietly to the base of the stairs, looked up, saw nothing of interest. Risking the flight of his quarry, he called for anyone in the house to come out. Nothing. It was silent as a crypt inside, and the only the dust moved, dancing along the shafts of light.

This entire case was rather strange, and pretty much a sleeper. It began with some cases of extreme insomnia he'd heard about from a doctor friend of his but had progressed on to some very violent dreams. It reached the police's attention when one man was hospitalized after waking up apparently beaten in his sleep. He said it had been a dream, but McLean had never seen a dream that could do that.

Further down the hall the duskiness grew. He dimly saw posters of Shakespeare of all people, looking more frightening in that light than McLean had ever seen. A subway poster for A Midsummer Night's Dream surrounded him, branches seeming in the dim light to cross the edge of the picture to the wall. The kitchen was the next room back, a dusty little cave, cluttered with books and papers. On the table lay a small ornate mirror with cherubs all around its fringes. Now there was something&emdash; the mirror had been stolen from a theatre group several weeks ago. They'd been understandably upset about it, since it was one of their prize possessions&emdash;a prop used in one of the original productions of The Tempest in the Globe Theater.

Well, it looked like this guy was a Shakespeare nut, emphasis on the nut. Still, the strange thing was how it had been stolen&emdash;taken from one of the troupe's personal rooms while an actor was sleeping there. It just up and went. That much fit with the rest of the case history. After a while people began sleeping again, but things began disappearing. First, some jewelry, a statuette, typical robbery fare, but then some of the evidence, a police car, and an entire house. That was when the police got real interested. A full investigation was set up, calls made and maps drawn. McLean remembered the chaos that caused, with police like blue ants around the foundations of a building that simply wasn't there. He was the one to suggest checking the center of the affected area. The commisioner had liked his contribution so much he'd sent him to do it. The center of the area where everything was happening was somewhere on this block. Those that could be spared from their regular beat were patrolling the area and checking houses at regular intervals. McLean appeared to be the first on the real scene. But the scene of what?

The room off the kitchen took McLean's breath away. This man is insane, he thought. Piles lay scattered everywhere, an acheronian landscape of barely visible junk. Hills of magazines were all over the floor, and a range of pillows curled around a diagram, a simple circle with some candles littered around it. In the center of the circle lay a note that he could barely make out from his "safe distance" of a couple feet. Through the gloom he could dimly read,

Well, you're here. Please ignore all this. I tried it at first, but it was so horribly impractical and silly that I've abandoned it. Sorry.

Bizarre, he thought. He didn't even know wether to be frightened or confident. The lunatics he'd seen had never, well, left notes. He kept looking. In the corner loomed a hatrack with all sorts of dark cloaks all over it. One wall held a spattering of stars, and on the other a moon had been painted around a light in the wall. He clicked it on, and it spread a silvery shine across the room, making it brighter, but even more eerie, like he was outside at night. Pillows became uneven ground and the hat rack. . . he clicked the light off again. Reluctant to turn his back on it, he backed out of the room and kicked a note he hadn't seen before.

Excuse me, but I'd appreciate it if you'd leave. The front door will be just fine. This is my room, not yours.

Please don't go in here.

Something cold was beginning to creep down McLean's spine, and he quickly decided it might be best to check that front room after all. Padding back he had a quick flashback to the time he'd been lost in the woods as a boy, but pushed the thought back with a glance to his badge. All down the hall he felt just a little on edge, that nervous feeling that lurks at the edge of fear. But the front room threw all that out the window. Here were the missing items, with a few obvious exceptions. Clocks; books, books, books, all on sleep; some valuable old tomes by Freud; all scattered around the room with places and times written on little tags on them. A policeman's elation mixed with very human fear of a man who could get away with all this. And &emdash;McLean's heart skipped a little, and he nearly turned and ran&emdash; another note sat on a little end table by the front of the windows. A small green couch sat next to it, a little reading room. McLean walked slowly, almost against his will, to the note. His nerves were taut as a violin string, and he felt like screaming. He looked over his shoulder five times on his way to the note. It was rough, yellowish-brown and wrinkled, and dim in the half-light of the room.

Well, if you're reading this, the game's up. I can only assume that you, or someone you know, has found me out, and taken exception to my pursuits. I, being a mild man, am very far from here. If this doesn't make any sense, forget everything I'm about to say. . . .

First, a defense. I am not all bad. Remember that lady on seventeenth? She was elated when her dream came true. I'm sorry if I'm confusing you. I guess I should start at the beginning.

Well, he was right. McLean was feeling very confused. The woman he had referred to had been overjoyed. She'd woken up one morning with over twenty thousand dollars next to her bed. It was untraceable, and might as well have fallen from the night sky. Good thing it did, too&emdash; she was a day or two away from eviction.

You see, Shakespeare had it right&emdash;We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep. But death is not the only way to that sleep, and dreams are such stuff as we are made on. . .

McLean succumbed to the need to turn around, and paced about the room. Despite the muted sunlight coming through the curtains, the air seemed chill. He wished someone else had come along on this assignment, wished his partner wasn't out sick, wished he could set his curiosity aside as he read more of the letter.

. . . I have found a door from day to night, a door to Shakespeare's sleep, a way into dreams. And a way back. . .

Loony, thought McLean. But still, the hair on the back of his neck refused to fall flat. This man was too weird. This case was too weird. He'd seen some freaks, before, but all of them were too soft in the head to do much before they were caught.

That place is very different from the world. A land of eternal sleep, a land where dreams walk as surely as people invade my house to find me.

He almost dropped the note. No, that could be to anyone. He took a few deep cool breaths and read on.

Very different, but some things remain the same. For as surely as you bring your dreams into your mind, your world, dreams can dream about our world. . .

It was not always so; when I came to this land, I found a people distraught. Things would vanish from their world, gone forever. I pitied them. And so I taught them to dream. I opened the door to both sides. All the people of the land I've dubbed Sleep have to do now is dream of what they've lost. It takes a little effort to control your dreams, but I'm sure they'll learn with time.

You have no idea the havoc you cause here, every night when you fall asleep! You have no idea what you take from these people. The things. . . the things you steal from Sleep. But of course I couldn't tell anyone. A madman, they'd say. The people of our world, reader, would never believe. You probably don't. . .

Not that it's a conscious effort to dream, McLean rationalized. Or is it? He stepped back, surprised that he was getting into this so much, then sat down on the couch, just for a sense of something real. He wasn't sure he wanted to finish the letter, but he couldn't really stop now.

And so I taught them to dream. The scales are balanced now, except for one thing. You.

One thing I didn't tell you. I've managed to send a few things back, sort of dreams within a dream. I apologize for the initial problems I had with the Nightmares, but all things take time, and I was still learning to control my dreams. What's left now won't hurt anybody else; they're just to supervise and make sure I'm not disturbed. Yes, I'm upstairs, "asleep" in my bed. The things I steal from Sleep, sir, are purely to keep me from being disturbed. Please don't disturb me. I'm deep into the other world by now, in my own dream. I dreamed I had the evidence, and now I do. I've dreamed this letter to you, and here it is. Just as. . . (excuse me, I said I can't be disturbed) Just as I've dreamed up what's behind you.

--Nemo

McLean heard the faintest sound behind him and with the trained reflexes of a veteran police officer, he spun around, crouched and ready. It was no use. Nemo had a very active imagination.