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In Dreams

BY ALLISON McLAREN

In my dreams I see lunfs

Little leering lunfs in my dreams

Do you ever see lunfs? or yellow yorbs?

Or don’t you dream?

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Everything in the forest was covered with the green slime. It hung from the lifeless trees and bushes, dripping freely to the marshy ground, where it collect- ed into fetid, stagnant pools. Wherever it touched her it clung, viscous, stinging and leaving harsh red welts after she scraped it off and flung it away. Slimy tendrils and low-hanging bran- ches fluttered out of the pallid semi-darkness to lash at her body and clothes and spatter her with searing droplets. Her forearms were slashed raw from being thrown up to protect her face, and still her face was scarred with welts, smeared with dried slime and tears. Her feet made ugly sounds as she stumbled through the sticky pools. She knew that blisters had risen on her ankles, but, wincing, refusing to think what herfeet must look like, driven by terror and disgust, she thrashed deeper into the heart of the forest.

Forcing her thoughts away,

from the pain of motion, she tried to establish where she was, how she had arrived. What sickly sun makes this half-light? Is it because of these trees? No, not trees; ghosts of trees. But what sort of trees? And what sort of ghost is he, who chases me, and if he catches me he’sgoing to . . .

Her mind raced, but would yield only two memories. One was her first sight of him — his ponderous green body dwarfing a clump of bushes. He was scoop- ing masses of slime-jelly into his mouth, drooling, letting it run over his lips until his scaly throat and chest glistened. Paralyzed

with revulsion, she listened to the grunting, droning noises i watched his body quiver. The sounds (but not the quivering) stopped only when he swallowed more slime. She shuddered, but could not move away, even when he turned and saw her. His leer. broadened; ooze gleamed on his" yellowed fangs. He moved to— ward where she stood rooted, snatching at her with his hands, gnarled fingers and claws, ren- dered shapeless by the clots of slime. His throat bobbed and a guttural hiss rattled between his slack jaws. The hissing stopped; mesmerized, she watched the jaws knot and the tongue begin to un- curl from somewhere behind

Fiction by George Jamieson

those teeth. It snaked lazily to- ward her face until she felt its heat, gagged on the smell. When she heard the hissing begin again, something snapped.

The second memory was of screaming. Screaming and run-

ning blindly away, smashing»

through the trees and slime, sob- bing the pain and fear, listening to the drone and wheeze and crash of his pursuit. Finally, when the rasping in her throat and the pounding‘in her ears were all she could hear, she stopped. Although she still couldn’t look she felt her feet bleeding. He would catch her, and when he did. . . she shud- dered, doubling over with nau- sea, gasping for breath. The snap— ping of branches and sucking noises of his feet grew louder. His voice (voice-ghost? Then whose? Whose voice is this haunting me, coming to catch me, hold me down and. . rum- bled in her ears. She rolled ~off the path, crept under a tree, and felt herself sink into a puddle of

slime. She choked back a scream, V swallowed the bile that rose into

her mouth and, trembling, waited for him to pass. Doctor Frederick Martin, the Institute’s founder and president, sat alone in his office, staring out the window, watching the sun soften and the long shadows of morning-as it inched over the walls of the quadrangle. He watched until his_ eyes began to ache from the glare; then, sigh- ing, he turned wearily to» the pile of papers on his desk. He ignored them, reached for a file folder, and ,idly scanned the sheet‘ stapled to its inside cover:

CARTER, Anna

AGE: 5

APTITUDE: linguistics, semantics, logic

PERFORMANCE: excellent

ADJUSTMENT: very good

PROJECTION: well above

average

The sheet went on for tw0 col- umns, a brief evaluation of the academic and psychological per-

;formance of Martin’s prize pupil,

condensed from the sheaf of de— tailed reports, interviews and ex- aminations that littered the desk top. Martin had pored over the papers until he could have re- cited them. As he had done sev—- eral times through the night, he dragged his hands through his hair and tried to grapple with the fact that his knowledge, albeit

extensive; was useless.

She had spent the night in the Institute’s intensive~ care unit, surrounded by expert medical sentinels,: wracked with convul- sions that threatened to tear her five-year-old body apart. No amount of expertise had relieved

her torment or discovered its cause. Still, thought Martin, if knowledge is of any use at all, the [answer is here before me. The records charted Anna’s pro- gress with flawless accuracy. Her initial interview and examina- tion, within which Martin had seen her potential for linguistics; the painstaking training which had refined and polished that po- tential until her mind gleamed like a gem through her eyes, able to assimilate and analyze words the same way a diamond refracts rays of light — breaking down, internally reflecting, refocusing, infusing them with its own multi- faceted brilliance and precision. All the information stared at him dumbly; all he had to 'do was sift out the right facts, in the right order. .

The corners ofMartin’s mouth wrinkled with irony. That she should need that sort of help, when no one in the country could perform that calculation as

well as she . . . Martin glanced out the window. It was fully day- light.

. . . Stiffened, the ache in her knotted ‘ muscles turning to numbness, she fought to stifle a scream. Less than twenty feet away, he groped through the un- derbrush, drooling slime, wheez— ing and grumbling. She bit her lips and squeezed her eyes shut, but his droning filled her ears, reverberating, pressing everything else from her mind. In spite of herself she began to process the noises, first sorting out his hoarse breathing and the slapping ofhis feet: then scanning the rest for semantic continuity, some trace of syntax. Her thoughts snagged a phrase that recurred'often; be- hind clenched teeth she tried to form the sounds with her tongue as they rolled from his leering mouth.

Against her will she felt the ragged tatter of speech expand, assume an order. She sensed the warp and woof of grammar, watched the linguistic tensions fall into the interstices. Click! A SZ'Ckening flash of pattern recog- nition shook her — she gasped, struggled to repress it, then whimpered and cringed as the sounds became words:

Fuggy Anna Carter Anna ( gibberish ) Fuggy Anna Carter Anna . . .

Something snapped again. Her mind, seared by the guttural ob- scenity of his voice as much as the words, tore loose from its moorings and flapped wildly be- tween utter terror and derange- ment. A thin wail? rose in her throat and was choked off by the liquid that accompanied it. Doubled over, she began to

cough. His sounds masked hers, “

and he made his way back to the

path. Anna forced herself to re. .

main motionless until the sounds

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of his passage faded, then‘she began to retch, heaving and sob- bing uncontrollably, fresh tears washing dried slime from her cheeks. When she could vomit no more she dragged herself, into a clearing and stood. Her head ached, and her vision clouded. Vertigo gave life to the trees; they swayed and danced before her eyes. Her knees buckled. She flailed her arms loosely and fell to the turf.

Lester Melnyk looked down at her yellow hair, twisted and dulled with perspiration, a mat- ted halo around hcr taut face. He watched the face soften, then grow slack as she seemed to shrink and settle into the rum- pled bedding. A glance told him her respiration, pulse, and blood pressure were dropping to near normal. Breathing freely for the first time in hours, he reached for the phone and dialed Martin’s number. It rang once and .was snapped up.

“Yes! ” The voice Was harsh rather than crisp; the words pinched rather than clipped. It’s been a long night, thought Mel- nyk.

“She’s resting now, sir.” Mel- nyk could almost feel the tension drop at the other end. At the same time he realized how weary he was, now that the adrenalin. had stopped. The muscles at the back of his neck began to cramp, the ones between. his brows to relax. ' ». ' “Good, that’s good." Martin replied. “I guess now would be a good time to call her parents.”

“I’ll do that right away. Shall I give her another sedative? ”

“No, don’t bother. As long as she’s resting on her own chll let her be. After you make that call would you come down to my office please? I’ve got a couple of things to talk over-” ~

Melnyk started, and another . surge of adrenalin shocked'his spine. “Have you figured out what’s wrong with her? ”

“Nothing dcfinite,”. Martin said, “But I have some guesses. I’ll explain when you get here.” He rang off. .'

Curious and agitated, Melnyk ' turned to look at Anna. Almost nine months had passed since, noticing her absence from the quadrangle playground, he had gone to her room and found her withdrawn, sullenly watching a trio of girls skipping rope outside her window. When he sat, scrape ~ ing his chair on the tile floor for attention; she,turned, face swdl- len and stained by tears.

“What’s wrong? ” He had tried. to sound casual, careful not. to.

-disrupt the balance and turn dis-i ,

comfort to catastrophe. ,

“I can’t skip.” At that time; din’t1 know ‘many complex,rcon. tradictory emotions had, been; distilled in‘her mind togprodulcea.‘

_ thesewords: He had. "imlt.€!i‘»ii‘-u