Lee Campbell awoke drenched in sweat, his injured arm throbbing.
Fumbling for the bottle of water he kept on the bedside table, he tried to shake himself out of the dream's spell. He took a long drink and shivered. The room was cool, but the chill in his body was deeper. In his dream, he had known the killer's mind, imagined that he was him. That was all he could remember-but the feeling of being that deranged, obsessed person was still strong-so strong, in fact, that he would have trouble shaking it off.
He looked at the clock next to the bed. The red numbers read 3:00 A.M. The dead hour.
He tried to conjure up an image of the killer's face, but couldn't. In the dream, he had been the killer, felt his rage-but had never seen his face. Trying to shake the dream from his mind, he summoned all his willpower, threw off the blankets, and heaved himself out of bed.
He felt the evil fist of depression tightening its grip on him. All he wanted to do was burrow under the covers until it passed-or until night fell again, wrapping its comforting blanket of darkness around the city. The knowledge that he must get up in a few hours and face the day only made things worse, adding anxiety to the already unbearable bleakness in his soul. It was as if all the color and sweetness had been sucked out of him while he slept. Kathy was across town at Arlene's, and he didn't want to obsess about whether she would call him.
He rose from bed and tiptoed to the window. He looked through the back window of his apartment at the little garden below. The window faced uptown, and he thought of Kathy, sleeping peacefully (or was she?) a mile or so north of him. All around him, the city slept. A lyric from Puccini's Turandot scrolled through his mind: Nessun dorma. No one sleeps tonight.
There would be no more sleep for him tonight.