“Blaylock,” intoned the receptionist, at last. “Desk three, please.” This was the only facility of its kind in the city. The crowding and impersonality of it indicated that there ought to be more. Miriam was interviewed by a pleasant young man in shirtsleeves who took her name and asked her to describe her problem.

She knew what the effect would be when she mentioned the intensity of her “nightmares.” He looked at her with renewed interest. Most of their cases must be common insomnia, cured by teaching the patient how to cope with stress.

Medicine knows night terrors of adulthood as one of mankind’s most frightening problems. Miriam could have quoted Sarah Roberts: “These terrors arise from the primordial depths and induce in the sufferer perhaps the most intense fear that a human being can know. In quality and intensity they are to nightmares as a typhoon might be to a spring shower.”

“How often have you been having these . . . troubles, Mrs. Blaylock?” The interviewer’s voice was calm but his eyes regarded her sharply.

“All my life.” How pitiful that every word was true. The vividness of the experiences she had during Sleep were probably even worse than night terrors. But she had long ago learned to endure them. They went with Sleep and therefore must cleanse the soul.

“When was the last one?”

“Last night.” She watched his face flicker at that. This was working well. Mrs. Night Terrors Blaylock was going to become a priority case, she suspected.

Now his voice dropped and he leaned closer to her. “Can you describe it?”

“The ocean was chasing me.” It had just popped into her head, but she thought it a lovely night terror for the spur of the moment. Much nicer than the one she had planned, about hands choking her.

“The ocean?”

“Huge, towering black waves that stretch up forever. Roaring and crashing over me and I’m in the sand, I’m running, I can hear it over my shoulder, it comes right up the dunes, nothing’s going to stop it. You can see a shark cruising in the waves. Everything smells horrible, like it had all gone rotten.” Goose-flesh had broken out all over her body as she talked. Her hands were grasping the edge of the table. She was surprised at the intensity of her feeling. It ceased to be an act. Had she ever experienced such a dream? Perhaps it was behind the dreams she remembered, perhaps there was something in her, coiled like a snake, spitting out recollections so monstrous that her mind dared not touch them directly.

The worst of it was something she didn’t tell the shiny young doctor: she was indeed the woman running from the ocean. But she was also the shark.

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