DOCTOR STRANGE: NIGHTMARE "Chapter Four"

Read Chapters Two and Three HERE...

...then continue on with this long-OOP truly multiversal tale from 1979!

Chapter Four

Joe Peerson tossed and turned on the bed. Beatrice Marx looked hopeful and snubbed out her nineteenth cigarette. But the prizefighter just grunted and made a series of little uhs and ohs. Lord only knows what he is dreaming about, she thought. The big match, she supposed. Damn his trainer, anyway. After next week, no more hanky-panky. Going into training, he said. No women, no booze, no nose candy, no nothing except hard work for six weeks. This could be her last night with him. God knows you almost have to book yourself in advance, she thought with an expression of distaste. If they only knew in Philadelphia what she did on her little trips. She always returned aglow. “Lost weight, haven’t you?” Adele always said with a smug smile. If the bitch only knew how Beatrice Marx lost weight she’d explode!

Except tonight—no weight lost tonight. What was he dreaming about?

The ring was huge. Still a ring, ropes and everything, but big. Some kinda audience out there in the dark, breathing, waiting. The champ was going to come in. He sensed it before he heard the noise, the cheers. The champ.

He came down the aisle with a spotlight on him. Couldn’t see the people, but he saw the champ. Wore a red cape, had blue trunks, had that hair combed up with the silver streaks on the side. Old for a champ, but undefeated—maybe undefeatable.

He came through the ropes, ignoring him. Psych-outs don’t work, Joe Peerson thought, only fists. The ref was a big guy, and he too wore a cape, a green cape. Well, ya gotta have a gimmick. The ref was out to make a rep, that was all. He touched gloves with the champ, only the champ didn’t have boxing gloves, only pale hands. You can’t do that, Joe thought. Hey, ref, lookit there!

But the ref didn’t hear and the bell sounded and the champ was hitting him, one-two-three, pow, hurt. The champ’s eyes were burning, burning, hot and angry. It wasn’t fair. The champ’s punches hurt—bone on flesh—but his were padded, ineffective. He looked at the ref, but the ref was laughing, his unkempt gray hair shining in the light, his face shadowed, though the eyes glowed.

Eyes, laughing at him, humiliating him . . .

The champ reared back, his fist cocked. There was nothing he could do to stop it. He was helpless. The fist came at him, pale and hard, and exploded him right out of the dream.

“Well, I never—!”

There was a woman in his bed, grasping at the blankets to cover her pale nakedness. Joe Peerson stared at her wildly. He didn’t know who she was, but she was a woman, and he needed a woman. He needed to forget.

But even as she gasped under him, a wide smile on her face, even as he took out his fear and fury on her, he knew he could not forget the dream.

The nightmare.

Billie Joe Jacks was swept up, up through the roof of his temple, right through the $267,000 stained-glass tower, right past the $9,700 bronze cross, leaving behind the $3,240,000 Temple of Light and going upward, outward into the darkness of space.

The carefully tended fringe garden dropped away, the 2,450-car parking lot and the little building where the collectors kept their roller skates became small and distant. The cross-shaped building dwindled until it was an ornament and obscured by a cloud.

Higher . . . higher than the clouds. Into space. Into the night of God and the myriad of His wonders. Into the realm of reality where only dreams were real.

How did he know that? Was that in the Scriptures?

No, he knew it because a voice told him so. A voice? A voice like those heard by Saint Joan? Was this a space-age revelation, an atomic-age miracle? He, Billie Joe Jacks?

No.

There was a voice in his mind.

I have selected you, the voice said. You have access and command attention.

Billie Joe beamed. Yes, that was true. One of his favorite points to make was that even the Lord Jehovah had to burn a bush to attract the attention of Moses. You had to have a gimmick.

I will use you, the voice said.

Yes, Lord, Billie Joe replied, his heart bursting with pride. He, Billie Joe Jacks, had been selected—not Billy Graham, not Oral or Bob or any of that bunch; not even the Pope! He, Billie Joe!

You are a door, the voice said.

I am a door, I am a way. I am—

You are mine. I control you, I am . . . Nightmare!

To Be Continued... Right Now...
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