Wait Until Midnight

FIVE

She dreamed the old nightmare again that night.

She clutched her heavy skirts and ran for her life along the rutted dirt path. Behind her the terrible thud-thud-thud of her pursuer's footsteps drew closer. Her heart pounded. She was tiring, sucking oxygen into her lungs in great, rasping gasps.

Fear and panic had provided an unnatural surge of energy at the start of the ordeal, but the weight of her gown had become a terrifying burden, slowing her desperate rush. The parasol attached to the pretty chatelaine that Milly and Emma had given her for her birthday bounced against her side, threatening her balance.

She did not know how much longer she could go on but she knew that if she stopped, she would die.

"You have to go away," her pursuer said, speaking in that eerie, unnaturally reasonable manner. "Don't you see? He will come back to me if you go away."

She did not turn her head to look back over her shoulder. She could not take the risk. If she stumbled or fell she was lost.

There was no point looking back, in any event. She knew all she needed to know. Her pursuer gripped a large, gleaming carving knife and was bent on murder.

"You have to go away.^"

Thud-thud-thud. The footsteps drew closer. The woman who was chasing her was not weighted down with a cumbersome dress. The would-be killer wore only a light linen nightgown and a pair of sturdy shoes.

"He will come back to me if you go away."

The woolen skirts of her gown felt like leaden weights in her hands. She was losing ground…..

Caroline awoke in a cold sweat, the way she always did after the dream. It was no doubt the affair of the murdered medium that had inspired the return of her nightmare, she thought.

She had endured the dream off and on for three years now. Sometimes she would be free of it for a fortnight or even a month; just long enough to begin to hope that she had seen the last of it. Then it would come back without warning, shattering her slumber. Sometimes it would stick around for several nights in a row before disappearing again.

She swung her legs over the side of the bed and reached for her robe and slippers. There was no point in trying to go back to sleep. She knew the pattern all too well. There was only one thing to be done—the same thing she did every other night when the dream and the frightening memories returned to haunt her.

She made her way quietly downstairs to the chilly study. There she lit a lamp, poured herself a small glass of sherry and paced the floor for a time.

When her nerves had steadied and her pulse was no longer racing, she sat down at her desk, took out paper and pen and began to write.

Nightmares, murder and the enigmatic Mr. Grove aside, she had work to do. Mr. Spraggett, the publisher of the Flying Intelligencer, would be expecting the next episode of The Mysterious Gentleman at the end of the week.

The successful writer of serialized sensation novels survived by adhering to an inflexible schedule: A new chapter had to be written every week for some twenty-six weeks in a row. Each chapter consisted of approximately five thou-sand words. To maintain readers' interest, each chapter had to begin and end with a Startling Incident.

The time constraints placed on Caroline were such that she was usually obliged to begin research and make notes on her next novel while finishing off the last few episodes of the current one.

A few hundred words later she put down her pen and studied what she had written.

No doubt about it, the character of Edmund Drake was at last starting to take shape. Just in the nick of time, too, she thought. Drake had been a shadowy figure until now but he was due to take center stage in the remaining chapters.