A Nest of Nightmares Read online

  Victoria sighed. ‘We just can’t afford to pay for your hotel room. I’m sorry about that. But you are more than welcome to go on sharing my room. Like last night. You didn’t mind sharing, did you?’

  She couldn’t answer honestly; she was trapped. Sheila bowed her head, giving in. She was doing figures in her head, furiously, but she already knew she couldn’t afford to rent her own hotel room. She thought, longingly, of Damon, wondering how he would handle the situation. But Damon would never be in such a situation, she felt certain. His agent would have arranged everything better than she had been able to do for herself.

  ‘Excuse me for a few minutes,’ she said. ‘I have to make a phone call . . . I have to let my boyfriend know where I’ll be.’

  But Damon wasn’t in. Of course, it was silly of her to have expected him to be sitting at home in the middle of the day, but that made no difference to her disappointment.

  She hung around the lobby for another twenty minutes, unwilling to return to the convention, leaning against the wall by the telephone as if waiting for a call. She wondered if she was expecting too much of Damon. She thought of them as a couple – an awareness of him and what he would think informed all her actions – but to him, she thought reasonably, she was probably just another girlfriend. They had made no promises to each other. She knew it wasn’t fair to blame him for anything – for this trip to Texas, for not being in when she needed him – that was like Victoria, always apportioning blame. But although she fought against it, that was the way she felt.

  ‘We’ll take you out for a nice dinner,’ Victoria said. ‘Our treat.’

  It wasn’t Sheila’s idea of a treat: a drive to Byzantium to feast, far inland, in a Long John Silver Seafood Shoppe. The fried fish and potatoes were almost tasteless, but Sheila covered them with ketchup and ate her way steadily through the meal. It was a way of not thinking, of not caring that Victoria and Grace could chatter away about private concerns as if she were not there. She was still thinking, painfully, of Damon, and finally, when the food was gone and they lingered over large paper cups of iced tea, she couldn’t keep it to herself any longer. She told them about Damon.

  She didn’t say a word about her doubts: she wanted to impress them. It was such a joy to speak of him possessively, casually, and to see the dim, faint envy on their faces. Any boyfriend at all was good, but Damon was a TV star. They knew how handsome he was, how desirable.

  She was explaining how they had first met when Victoria interrupted. ‘Come on, girls, we’ve got things to do. We’ve got to get back to the Ramada. We’ll stop at the Dunkin’ Donuts on the way for our dessert.’

  Sheila was irritated at being cut off, but knowing Victoria’s jealousy must be responsible made it easier to bear. She had proven just how different her life was from the lonely existence Victoria and Grace had to suffer, and Victoria couldn’t like the reminder.

  At the convention, Sheila was left alone with the box of donuts while Victoria and Grace went off to prepare for the costume contest. Sheila was the judge, but she didn’t feel burdened: nothing was really at stake. The only prize was a scroll hand-decorated by Victoria.

  There were only eight entries, and two of them were jokes more than costumes: an Invisible Man, and a Time Traveler in Authentic Costume of the 1980s. Sheila leaned on the podium in the darkened hall, unable to see the audience for the glare of the spotlights, and watched the contestants parade slowly past: a mangy Wookie, a scantily clad Amazon, a Vulcan couple who performed a pretend marriage ceremony, and the green-painted girl she had noticed earlier, now wearing a diaphanous gown and huge, painted cardboard wings.

  Victoria and Grace came last, and when they emerged from darkness into light Sheila did not recognize them. She saw, not strangers, but two characters she knew very well, her own creations come to life.

  She saw Kayli, triumphant in red velvet, brandishing a gleaming sword, leading a hunch-backed, shaggy, conquered grenofen on a leash.

  Her heart threatened to choke her, and she leaned forward, nearly dislodging the microphone, to peer against the dazzle of the spotlights, trying to see through the illusion.

  Fake fur and a papier-mâché head could disguise Grace, but how on earth had the unattractive Victoria been transformed to Kayli, as noble, heroic, and beautiful as Sheila had always known her to be. Was it possible that Kayli was real? That she wasn’t an invention, but a real person, a resident of Byzantium, and Victoria had found her? What magic was this?

  But it was all illusion, even if she couldn’t penetrate it. Of course Kayli and the grenofen were only Victoria and Grace, revealed when they came forward to accept their prize.

  Later, sharing the few remaining donuts and listening to Grace’s delight at having won, Sheila could hardly take her eyes from Victoria. The glamour of Kayli clung to her still, making her eyes shine and her cheeks glow, giving her plain, sharp features a beauty Sheila envied.

  ‘Weren’t the costumes just perfect?’ Grace demanded again. ‘Weren’t they just exactly how you imagined they would look when you were writing the book, Sheila?’

  Sick at heart, yet she could not deny it, Sheila pretended her mouth was too full to speak, and nodded. She knew her denial would have made no difference: Victoria had triumphed, and they both knew it.

  Now Victoria smiled graciously. ‘It’s nice of you to say so, Sheila. Of course, this prize should be yours just as much as ours, because without you . . . well, without you there wouldn’t be a Kayli. You created her first, in your book. And then I was fortunate enough to be able to bring her to another kind of life.’

  You stole her from me, Sheila wanted to say. Kayli was mine, Kayli was me – you took her away and you had no right. But although that was what she felt, Sheila knew well enough how it would sound. She could say nothing. Once Moonlight Under the Mountain had been published, anyone could know Kayli. There might even be someone, like Victoria, who had more claim on Kayli now than Sheila did. Sheila, after all, had scarcely thought of Kayli since she sent her in her book out into the world. She had not thought of her as a real person until she saw her in Victoria.

  It wasn’t until later, after they had dropped off Grace at her house and driven back to Victoria’s, that Sheila realised she had been robbed of something more concrete than a fictional character.

  ‘My suitcase!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘My overnight bag,’ Sheila said, twisting feverishly around in the seat. ‘Do you remember what I did with it? Did we put it in the trunk?’ Even as she asked she could remember only too well how she had slung it into the back seat, and she could see that it was not there.

  ‘You didn’t say anything about it to me. Why on earth did you bring it? Why didn’t you just leave it here at home?’

  ‘Because I thought I would be staying in the hotel.’

  ‘Oh, Sheila,’ said Victoria in the weary tone she used so often with Grace. ‘You don’t mean to tell me you left it in my car all day – unlocked!’

  ‘It’s your car. I thought you’d lock it!’

  ‘Don’t shout at me. If you’d said anything, I would have suggested we lock it in the trunk. I never imagined you’d leave something valuable in the car.’

  ‘It wasn’t valuable. It was just my clothes, my notebook – ’ the magnitude of her loss struck her and she stopped, struggling against tears. All lost. Everything she had owned in this desolate place.

  ‘Now, don’t cry,’ said Victoria. ‘That’ll only make you feel worse. Things will look better in the morning. Let’s go to bed.’

  She let Victoria lead her to the house but balked at the bedroom door. ‘I want to use the phone.’

  ‘At this hour!’

  ‘It’s earlier in California. Please. I have to. It’s important. The operator can bill me.’

  ‘I do not think this is a good idea,’ said Victoria in a tight, disapproving voice.
‘But if you insist, the phone is in the kitchen. Try not to wake mother, please.’

  Damon would be able to put everything into perspective. She knew that if she could only hear his voice things would be better. She would realize that she hadn’t lost everything, only a few material possessions. She could buy herself new clothes, and Damon would give her another notebook. But she needed to hear him say so.

  His service picked up the call. No, he wasn’t in; no, he had left no message for her; no, she really couldn’t say when he would be back. Sheila left her name with Victoria’s phone number. ‘Tell him to call me whatever time it is, morning or night. Tell him it’s urgent.’ She didn’t care if the ringing of the phone woke the whole house. The most important thing was to make contact again with her life in California, to convince herself that it was real and this place the fantasy. The sound of Damon saying her name would wake her from this nightmare of loss and confusion.

  She tried not to think of what would happen if Damon didn’t phone back. She told herself that she was over-tired and that things would look better in the morning, even if it was Victoria who had said so.

  Things looked different in the morning, but not better.

  It began when Sheila lost a contact lens down the drain. In three years she’d had no problems, but after one moment of sleepy carelessness in a strange bathroom she had no choice but to put on her old glasses. Then she saw herself – really saw herself – in the big bathroom mirror, and she wanted to scream in protest.

  She was not, she refused to be, the person she saw in the mirror. That was the old Sheila blinking through thick, smudged lenses, the self she had outgrown, with lank, greasy hair, dandruff, and pimples. That Sheila was so fat she could scarcely fasten her skirt, despite the fact that it had fitted the day before.

  Sheila reached out, and the creature in the mirror reached, too, until they were touching. They were the same. She didn’t want to believe it, but she had no choice. She was trapped in that hateful body again, as if she had never been different.

  Victoria’s voice came through the door. ‘Hurry up in there, we’ve got to get moving! Your guest-of-honour speech is scheduled for an hour from now!’

  Her speech was inside the lost notebook. Sheila began to tremble. She had no idea what she had written, what the words said. She knew she couldn’t give a speech without that text. She unlocked the door and told Victoria.

  Victoria, dressed like a Victorian governess in a high-necked white blouse and a long grey skirt, her face made up like a doll’s with smears of blue eye-shadow and rosy blusher, did not hesitate. ‘You’ll give the speech. I don’t care what you say. But you will give the speech.’

  ‘You can’t make me.’

  Victoria settled her glasses. She didn’t look angry. There was the hint of a smile about her mouth. ‘We paid to bring you here, and people have paid to hear your speech. Those people aren’t going to be let down. Somebody is going to give Sheila Stoller’s speech, even if it has to be me.’

  Sheila felt her mouth go dry.

  ‘I can talk about your book as well as you can, probably better,’ Victoria went on. ‘I’ve read it four times; I know it. You saw how I was as Kayli. I could be the author of Moonlight Under the Mountain just as easily. I can tell them what they want to hear – better than you could.’

  Sheila believed her. She shook her head.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Victoria. ‘If you don’t believe me – ’

  ‘I’ll give the speech.’

  Victoria’s smile settled and hardened. ‘I know you will.’

  ‘I need to make a phone call,’ Sheila said.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘My boyfriend.’ She clung to that last, fragile hope. Even though he had not returned her call, he had to be in now – it was a Sunday morning – and as soon as he picked up the phone and heard who it was, his voice would go warm and teasing. Her fears would all vanish in the sunshine of his love. ‘Damon,’ she said, savoring his name. ‘I told you about him yesterday – ’

  ‘Oh, come off it, Sheila! Nobody believes you. It’s childish to pretend you know Damon Greene.’

  ‘I’m not pretending!’ She tried to laugh, but it sounded more like a sob.

  ‘Oh, no? And did you have a nice little conversation with him last night?’

  ‘I couldn’t get through to him last night.’

  ‘Well, I’m glad you’re still in touch with reality to that extent.’

  Sheila was shaking. She wished it was with anger, but it felt like fear. ‘Look,’ she said. ‘I’m not lying to you, and I’m not crazy. I’m in love with Damon Greene, and – ’

  ‘Oh, yes, I’m not questioning your feelings. But that doesn’t mean you can phone him up, or that you have any special privileges, you know.’ Victoria’s hands fastened claw-like on Sheila’s shoulders and she steered her down the passage, into the bedroom. ‘I’m going to show you something. Look there on the wall.’

  She hadn’t noticed it before – individual photographs tended to get lost among the many taped and tacked up around the room – but now she saw the picture which had appeared in People Magazine, the posed shot of Damon and three of his costars from the new series. Her heart beat faster at his familiar smile. ‘Oh, yes, I know that picture – ’

  But already Victoria was turning her away from it, allowing her no comfort, turning her toward the frilly dressing table with its makeup mirror. ‘Now look at that. Look at yourself. Do you expect me to believe that Damon Greene would even consider going out with something that looks like that?’

  But that’s not me, Sheila wanted to protest. That’s not the Sheila Damon knows; that’s not who I am in California, in my real life. It’s this place which has changed me.

  ‘What really disgusts me,’ said Victoria, ‘is the way you don’t even make an effort. You could try to make something of yourself, the way I do. Learn to use makeup and how to do your hair, eat sensibly, and follow my advice on clothes. But, no, you’d rather stuff your face with food and sit around all day imagining that television stars are in love with you. You’ll never change, and I don’t know why I knock myself out trying to help you.’

  Staring at the horror in the mirror, Sheila began to cry. The great, wrenching sobs reddened her face, making her even uglier, and she felt the button on her skirt pop, and cried even harder at the hopelessness of her life.

  ‘Your own mother wouldn’t know you,’ said Victoria, satisfied, and Sheila gazed into the mirror thinking that she wouldn’t have known herself, either. Victoria had made up her face, covering the spots and making her eyes look bigger; her hair was hidden beneath a brightly patterned scarf, and her body in a tent-like yellow dress borrowed from Grace. She felt uneasy with her new image, but at least it was an improvement on the old one.

  When they reached the convention they found between twenty and thirty people gathered in the main hall, waiting for Sheila’s speech – about half the number who had registered.

  ‘Now, don’t be afraid,’ said Victoria. ‘They’re just ordinary people, like you. Say anything you want to them.’

  ‘Anything,’ said Sheila dazedly. ‘What . . .’

  ‘Tell them how you wrote your book.’

  ‘I don’t . . . I can’t remember . . . what can I say?’

  Victoria stared at her. ‘Do you want me to give the speech?’

  Sheila backed away, shaking her head. She couldn’t remember why, but she knew she must do this herself. She must not give Victoria the chance to . . . what?

  ‘What are you waiting for?’ demanded Victoria. ‘Go on, they’re waiting.’

  Sheila stumbled toward the podium. In the large room the sound of applause was feeble and sporadic. As it died away, she stared at them, her audience. Who were they? They all wore glasses; most of them looked adolescent. She was reminded, horribly, of the time her mother had pressured her int
o trying for the debating society, and how she had gone utterly blank in front of them all, without a word in her head. Just like now.

  The silence stretched. The sound of her own breathing was horribly loud. Her hands clenched, and she realised she was holding something. When she looked down, her own name blazed up at her in yellow letters. It was her book, a copy of Moonlight Under the Mountain. With shaking fingers she opened it and began to read.

  Gradually the familiar words, the well-known story, Kayli’s presence, all soothed her, and she was dreaming aloud, the audience forgotten. At the end of a chapter she looked up, pausing because her throat was dry, and was startled by the burst of applause.

  She thought it would be all right to leave then, but as she turned Victoria blocked her way. Her face was grim and Sheila backed away, feeling threatened.

  ‘I’m sure we all enjoyed that very much,’ said Victoria. ‘And now, perhaps you’ll say a few words about how you came to write what you’ve just read us?’

  Sheila shook her head, incapable of speech.

  But Victoria seemed to have expected that, and scarcely paused. ‘Questions from the audience, then. Does anyone have a question they’d like to ask Sheila Stoller? No? Well, I’ll start the old ball rolling, then. About the setting of your novel, Sheila . . . what made you choose Byzantium?’

  ‘I didn’t – I didn’t choose it!’

  ‘It chose you?’ The audience laughed at Victoria’s inflection and Sheila felt herself blushing. Victoria said kindly, ‘I suppose it was a natural affinity. You felt a connection to this place and so you wrote about it. Writers do that all the time, turning their lives into fiction. And what about Kayli? What can you tell us about her? Is she based on someone real?’

  It went on, with Victoria asking questions Sheila could not answer, and then answering them herself. Sheila no longer knew if she agreed or disagreed with the things Victoria was saying; she hardly knew what she was talking about, whose book or life they were discussing.

  It ended, finally; not only the interrogation but the whole convention, and Sheila went with Victoria and Grace for lunch in the coffee shop. She was glad that they talked to each other and left her alone to eat, but when the meal was over she glanced at her watch and fidgeted, working up the courage to say, finally, ‘Isn’t it getting kind of late?’