“Just like old times?” He asked, softly.
“Better, darling ... much better.”
[p75]
CHAPTER EIGHT
Sometime near midnight, Beth took the car and went home. Nick poured a cup of the coffee she had made for him and went back into the study to look at the paintings a second time. It was good, professional work, and he wondered if he could do the same stuff again. Hell, he decided, it’ll be a long time until I get back at an easel. He finished the coffee and went up to bed.
It took awhile to get to sleep. Thoughts of the wrecked plane, Beth, the strange men and Nolan Brice kept running around in his head without finding answers to the enigmas they presented to him. Finally he slept.
He was looking at himself, in the dream, but it was not in a mirror. He was standing inside a polished room and the other Nick Danson lay on a bed wrapped in sleep. Nick blinked at the still duplicate of himself on the bed and turned away to look at the room he was in. It wasn’t large. It appeared to be some kind of bedroom, and it was well lighted although there were no lights to be seen; the walls seemed to glow, and everything was of a bright metal. The mirror caught his eye and he saw himself in the same blue and yellow uniform that he’d worn before. The Danson who lay asleep on the bed was dressed in blue dress pants and a white shirt. The tie had been loosened at his throat and his clothing was wrinkled badly.
Suddenly the other Danson opened his eyes and looked at Nick. For a moment he appeared [p76] to be startled at seeing him, then he smiled. The smile erupted in a chuckle that became a laugh. The other Danson’s face grew large and full, roaring out laughter at Nick until the whole scene changed from one of odd curiosity to one of absolute horror, the kind of weird horror that can come only from peals of loud, echoing laughter rolling through the caverns of the mind.
Nick awoke gasping, his fingers knotted in the sheets of the bed and a cold sweat beading out upon his face. His heart hammered in his chest like a drum, threatening to leap to his throat at any moment. He looked around anxiously for Beth, but the silence of the room reminded him that she had gone back to the city and her job. Dawn was breaking and the dim light filtered through the unwashed windows. There was little point in trying to sleep now. Might as well get his clothes on and try to start unraveling a long thread of odd events.
He pulled on his clothes slowly and slid his feet into his shoes, wondering where to begin the climb back to himself. It would be bad enough for an amnesia victim to regain all his memory if given an unlimited length of time - this way, with people closing in on all sides, the whole damned thing seemed impossible.
He hooked the last button on his shirt, stuffed it into his pants, and headed for the kitchen. He warmed up last night’s coffee and it tasted like warm sulfuric acid, but it brought him around to full consciousness, even if his stomach did object to it.