The room was alight.
I was lying in a pool of light. Moving, breaking and re-forming: strands of fire that laced across the coverlet, and shifted constantly. Like water running uphill. Mercury, splashing in rivulets over the fabric. It seemed I should have felt the weight of it, felt it slide across me—weight, or heat; but I felt nothing. Great wedges of darkness wheeled across the ceiling. It took a moment till I realized they were shadows from the ceiling fan, itself moving with dream-like slowness.
Dream-like, yes. But not my dream.
Beside me, Angel sat cross-legged, balanced on a pillow, staring at the patterns on the covers as they changed. She read them, stumbling as she went, bending a note in mid-breath, hesitating, catching up, but never going back, never repeating anything.
At first I thought her unaware of me, like someone hypnotized or sleepwalking. Only when the lights stopped moving and she looked up, I realized she was wide awake, and had been all along.
“I hear it,” she said. “I hear it, Chris.” She reached out, took my hand. “Isn’t this the greatest? Don’t you think?”
I heard the faint whine of a car reversing, two streets off, the honk of a horn, like an angry trumpet call.
The light flickered. She sang—hmm mmm mmm dah dah dah—but I could make no sense of it. I don’t know how long it went on. After a time I wormed my way out from the covers and sat beside her, watching what to me were empty patterns shuffling on the coverlet, ever harder to make out. We had shared a dream, or part of it. Now the light was fading, and the lines grew thinner, dimmer. Angel glanced at me, suddenly lost track of what was in her head. Her voice faltered. She cried out, urgently, “Get my phone!”
She flapped her hands. She sang, dee-dah dah dee-dee-dah . . . Her finger traced a pattern on the cloth, now faded into near-invisibility.
“Phone!”
I found her phone. I fumbled with it, set it to record. She sang a few short notes, then repeated them, uncertain now, and sang them for a third time, with some small variation. Another couple of phrases followed. She reached out with her hands, trying to gather up the dimming light, but it trickled through her fingers, oozing out and sinking through the fabric. She chased it. She dug into the bedclothes. A faint glow ran along her arms. She rummaged through the sheets, she beat them with her fists. And then she turned on me, suddenly furious.
“Why didn’t you—? Why couldn’t—? Why were you—?”
I reached to touch her and she jerked back. Suddenly the room was dark. I was cold, and I was wide awake.
“Angie,” I said. “Angel . . . ?”
Her arm was up. Her fist was pressed against her mouth. She sat like that, frozen, I don’t know for how long. I went to put my arms around her and, with a brief, quick movement of her head, she warned me off. I sat there, next to her. I waited. And then very, very slowly, she unwound, came back into herself. She put her arm down and her shoulders sagged.
“Did you hear it? Did you see . . . ?”
“I heard you, singing.”
“But—but you must have heard it. It was just—it was intense, you know? It was—I could hear harmony, and—” She ran her hand over the bedding. “You saw it, didn’t you? You read it?”
“It was just patterns. I couldn’t read it.”
“But, but—oh, shit. What was the tune? I couldn’t see it all—there were parts of it, hidden away, but—oh God. How did it go?”
Tears ran down her cheek. I dabbed at them, brushed them away.
“I don’t think it was real,” I said.
“What do you mean? How can it not be real? I heard—I saw—”
“I think it was a dream,” I said. “Like a shared dream.”
She turned away from me.
“I was awake,” she said. “I was more awake than I have ever been! Oh my Lord, it was—it was right here, it was, it was—”
She moved her hands over the covers, she pulled the fabric, squeezed it in her fists.
“You could hear it,” I said. “No one else. Just you.”
“It was like—it was a whole new system, a whole kind of music—here, right here, I didn’t need a piano, I didn’t need anything, I could—”
“Angel.” I took her shoulders. I tried to look her in the eyes but she was too distracted, she kept looking away. Searching the bed, the room, for what she’d lost. “You got close to a god,” I said. “Sometimes, there’s aftereffects. They stimulate the brain. It’s different for everyone. But whatever you heard, you’ve got to understand, it’s yours. It came from you. The gods don’t play music. What you heard, it comes from you, right? Nowhere else. Just you.”
Her face creased up. Her hands squeezed into fists.
“Where did it go?”
“It didn’t go anywhere.”
“Stop saying that! Stop it!” She wrenched herself from the bed, strode across the room.
“Hey,” I said. “It’s not my fault.”