Nightmares in Death (Part 3)

The nightmares and dreams listed are ones that the reader actually reads, ones Eve has just had, or ones about which she is thinking (they are paraphrased). For the most part, the nightmares listed are ones that relate to Eve Dallas's past; some will include references to the current case on which she is working, some may have an appearance by Roarke, but the recurring figure in almost every dream is her father, Richard Troy. (This list is very incomplete but may contain spoilers.)

Due to the number of nightmares throughout the series, please also see refer back to Nightmares in Death and Nightmares in Death (continued).

Nightmares and Dreams, Part 3

Eve's Dreams

Vendetta in Death

• Eve hears the screams of the tortured and tormented behind a wide black door, but is unable to get in. Around her she hears a calm and quiet voice saying “They get what they deserve.” Eve says it's not for her to say, the law decides. The voice tells her men made the laws and Eve does their bidding. She tells Eve “You defend them, even knowing what they are. I stand for the women they abused. I stand for their victims.” Eve is still trying to find a way in, and tells the voice “You stupid, self-righteous bitch. You've made them victims.” The voice tells her she brings them justice. Eve is now in a small empty room with only the white walls and the black door. She says “I'm going to find you. I'm going to stop you. I'm going to put you in a cage.” The voice, which is coming from everywhere, asks why she cares about them - “You were betrayed, abused, beaten, raped, trapped, terrified, helpless. You would seek to stop my justice? Why?” Eve tells her because she's sick, sadistic, and perverts the justice she took an oath to uphold. “Because, you twisted excuse for a female, I'm a cop. I'm goddamn fucking Eve Dallas.” She takes out her badge and this time when she kicked the door, it burst open. The screams snapped off, and then beeping replaced them.
  • Eve was in bed for this dream, and Eve's communicator was the beeping that interrupted the dream. Roarke, who was already awake, brought her coffee.

Forgotten in Death

• The moon was up, a bright white ball in a starless sky. It spread ghost light over the construction rubble, glinted off the dull metal of the security fence. Alva Quirk walked beside Eve, her face bruised, her eyes blackened and swollen. She told Eve she liked it there and she wished they hadn't made a fence so nobody could sleep in the apartments, but she still liked it because she thought she was safe there. She told Eve, “Some people are mean” as she brushed her crooked, broken fingers over her bruised face. “They like to hurt you. Even then you try to be good and do what you're supposed to do, they like to hurt you.” She told Eve, “He was supposed to love me. He made a promise to love and cherish me when we got married. He broke it lots of times. And it broke me.” Eve told her she got away from him, but Alva told her she didn't remembered too well because everything hurt and she couldn't go home because he'd do terrible things to her siblings. “I'm the oldest. I have to protect them.” Eve told her she did protect them. Alva told Eve, “Nobody protected you, so you know it's important. I ran away, but I had to protect them. Then I was safe, and I learned how to fold paper and make it pretty and sweet.” She offered Eve an origami cat. She said she liked giving people presents because they'd mostly smile when she did. “He found me again, so I had to run again, and I couldn't stop being scared. I had to forget, you know, like you did. I had to forget what came before so I wouldn't be scared all the time. You know.” They she asked if if she thought she was scared, indicating the remains of the pregnant woman. “She was going to have a baby, and somebody was mean to her. I'd write it in my book and tell the police, but somebody was mean to me, too.” Then she held out cupped hands full of paper flowers and let them fall, drifting like little birds, over the woman and her fetus. Eve saw the tiny bones move and shift, heard a kind of mewling echo up, and Alva said, “Baby's crying.” Eve shot awake to that sound.
  • Eve was in bed for the dream, and Roarke was sitting on the side of the bed, one hand gripping hers, while the cat bumped his head against her shoulder.

Abandoned in Death

• The child without a name had to kneel on the chair to reach all the pretty colors the mother used to get pretty. She wanted to get pretty, too, because she was so scrawny and stupid and ugly. If she could be pretty, the mother would be nice to her. Eve puts on Stella's makeup in her dream, playing with the glittery stuff and taking delight in smearing it on her eyelids. She knew the different makeup products had names, but she didn't. She knew the concept of pain because it hurt when the mother or the father smacked her, and the concept of hunger when they forgot to feed her or didn't feed her because she'd been bad. She didn't understand bad except that she was, a lot. She knew the concept of fear because she lived in it. She thought if she were pretty people would be nice to her, like when the mother got all pretty, the father said things like, “Stella, you're a knockout!” Then the mother came in and screamed the words that meant bad: brat, bitch, goddamn fucker, and slapped her cheek, with the second slap knocking her off the chair. Her head smacked the floor and the pain screamed. She didn't know the concept of hate, but she saw it in the mother's eyes when hands gripped her, nails dug into her arms, shaking her. She flew and landed hard somewhere outside, also with colors, but not hard like the floor. She didn't know the names for them, but there were swings and slides and springs with funny animals, climbing bars and carousels, and she forgot the pain even as she was bleeding from the mouth. She climbed the ladder to the slide and when she landed the second time, a woman stood there. She crouched down and said, “Figured it out (how to use the playground equipment), right? I guess you would have.” She saw it was her as a grownup. Grownup Eve told younger Eve, “You're going to have to go back, and I'm sorry about that. I can't stop it. Not yet, anyway. You're going to get through itt, and you're going to be okay.” Eve then remembers Stella saying, “I should never have let Richie talk me into having you.” Grownup Eve stood between Stella and younger Eve: “Your mistake, but then, you didn't give it a lot of time before you took off. Left him to beat me and rape me.” Stella was wearing clothes like the ones Lauren Elder wore when her body was found on the bench in the playground. Stella spews more hate about Eve, saying she was a skinny whelp so she wouldn't have been the moneymaker Richie figured and she had to get out and live her own life. Eve pointed to the woman on the bench and said “Somebody slit her throat,” adding that Stella would end the same way. She told child Eve to take another ride. She tells Stella she realized that the beatings, the torment, the rapes were going to happen anyway, but by leaving, at least she didn't have Stella making it worse. She felt the backhand coming and let it knock her out of the dream.
  • She was at home, in bed with Roarke for the dream.

• Eve dreamed she was searching in the dark, following voices calling for help. Whenever she got close, they faded. When she called out to them, they sounded from a different direction. No matter where she looked, she couldn't find them. She woke with a start, her communicator beeping.
  • She was at home, in bed with Roarke for the dream, and the interruption was dispatch calling her to the Exploration Station, where Anna Hobe's body was left.

Desperation in Death

• Eve dreamed of the room in Dallas, with the red light blinking, the air so damn cold. But it didn't hold the terror for her it once had. She wasn't a child now, and Richard Troy was dead. She'd killed him, after all. She stood there, in the room of so many nightmares, dressed in black, her weapon in place, and waited for Mina Cabot to speak. Mina stood in her school uniform, her hair bright and shiny and smooth, her eyes bold and alive. “You think you understand me? You came from this. I didn't. I had family who loved me. You didn't. I had friends and a nice room of my own. You didn't have anything. What do you know about me?” Eve tells Mina: “I know they took all of that from you. I know what that's like.” Mina said “They wouldn't have taken you and dolled you up. You weren't pretty.” Eve glanced over at the pale, skinny child she'd been, the dirty hair and hopeless eyes and said “Guess not.” Mina said “He'd've sold you on the cheap. All broken and used up.” Eve tells her he was the one who broke her and used her up, that they didn't break Mina until the end. Mina said she had brains and something to get back to, but Eve didn't save her. Eve says “You've got me there” and Dorian appears next to Mina, her hair groomed into perfect curls and wearing the same uniform, saying that Eve won't save her either, that she doesn't even know if she's dead or alive. Dorian tells Mina “What does she care?” and Eve replies that she's here because she cares. Dorian says Eve is there because they pay her, just like they paid the cops to drag her back so her mother could collect her stipend. Eve tells her she put Dorian's mother in jail and Dorian says “a lot of good that does me now.” and that Eve should just f**k off, she can take care of herself. Eve tells her she's fine to be pissed at her but she was what Dorian had, and that things will get better, she'll be okay. Dorian calls her a liar and says at least she didn't kill anyone. Mina tells Eve “You didn't stop any of this...” and they both tell Eve to f**k off.
  • She was at home, in bed with Roarke for the dream.

• She dreamed she was a kid with a bunch of other kids, all chained together on a platform. Richard Troy was the auctioneer, and a lot of the people sitting there were ones Eve's put away. He tells the crown they'll start the bidding for Eve at a dollar because she's not worth that much, and he got a lot of laughs. Then Eve was a grownup and broke the chains and woke up.
  • She was at home, in bed, with Roarke working at his table in the room and Galahad on her lower back for the dream.

Encore in Death

• She woke with a vague memory of a dream where people in glamorous costumes sang and danced their way around a stage. Until one by one, they all dropped dead. Then Eve had to wade through the bodies, trying to figure out who was actually dead and who was acting.
  • She was at home, in bed, with Roarke already dressed and working in the bedroom.

Payback in Death

• Captain Martin Greenleaf sat at the desk where he'd died, but in place of the wall screen, shelves, and window were photos of cops papering the walls around him - dead ones, disgraced ones, cops in cages. He told Eve he did the job. “A badge doesn't put you above the law. A badge means you toe the line of the law. Serve and protect.” Eve tells him she knows what the badge means and he asks her if they did, gesturing to the faces surrounding him. She tells him not everyone he looked into crossed the line, and he asks if she thinks he got them all. Eve tells him they never get them all. He asked her what she found when she looked at those cops, and she tells him that he did the job. “Too many here exploited the job. Too many dishonored their badge, used it for gain, for violence, for power.” Greenleaf tells Eve she's a violent woman but has never exploited her badge for personal gain, to cause harm, for power. “A dirty cop taints us all. In my job no gray could or did exist. Black or white, Lieutenant. Right or wrong. An absolute. I believed in the oath taken. In the end, I died for it.” He tells her they haunt him, not because he was wrong, but because they were. “And now they'll haunt you.” The walls became men and women, ghosts that took form, and forms that fell on Greenleaf like wolves.
  • She was at home, in bed, with Roarke and woke with a jolt in the dim light of predawn.

Random in Death

• Eve dreams about Jenna Harbough and Arlie Dillon dancing together, exclaiming that they’re young and will live forever and never get old. They say they had another hundred years coming and got totally screwed. Jenna says “It hurt when he jabbed me,” pointing to the needle in her arm. Arlie says “It hurt when he stung me,” and a wasp the size of a golf ball sat on her arm. Jenna yells, “Asshole.” Arlie yells, “Jerk.” They then call out “Dooser!” in unison as they continue dancing. They tell Eve he’s not in their club, which consists of normals: “No wheezes, weebs, flakers allowed. Normal, living our life, so no you, either, Boss Cop.” Arlie says Eve wasn’t a normie even when she was their age – “no friends, no family, no nothing.” The dream changes to Eve in the hallway of her state school, with other kids brushing past her. “Some sneered, some snickered, some ignored her as beneath notice. She preferred being ignored. She wore the ugly blue uniform-the pants too short because her legs kept growing, the top baggy because her frame stayed too thin.” She has a bad self-inflicted haircut and just wants to get through school to be able to move to New York and become a cop, which is when “she’d be somebody.” She has 22 months, one week, and three days left. She’s thinking about that when Jenna and Arlie get her attention, saying “Here it comes. No bruisers allowed either. But you’ll live through it. We didn’t.” Eve sees the bruiser, who sucker punches Eve, jarring her out of sleep at 5:22.
  • She was at home, in bed, with Roarke already dressed and working in his office. He rushes in and Eve tells him all about Big Bitch Brenda, the high school bully.

Passions in Death

• Eve stood in the Down and Dirty Club with the music pounding, the holo-band rocking. Onstage with them, Shauna Hunnicut and Nadine Furst, both half-naked, danced like lunatics. Peabody was there with her bowl cut, giggling like a drunk teenager, and Angie Decker was laughing with Mira. Mavis was there with no baby belly, standing on a table. Crack was at the bar, grinning as he mixed a drink for ChiChi Lopez. All of it blurred into one wild and singular party. Erin Albright was standing beside Eve, wearing the pink shoes and Hawaiian costume, and said, “They're having so much fun celebrating for us.” Eve said she wasn't really into it because she was just coming around to understanding she wanted the whole marriage thing even though it scared the crap out of her. Erin said she wasn't scared and she wanted marriage more than she ever wanted anything, but they both loved somebody who loved them, and they both had friends who wanted to celebrate that. Erin is sad because she never had the chance to wear the costume and make Shauna's dream come true. They never had the chance to put on their white dresses and make the promises Eve made. Erin tells Eve she got lucky. The dirty cop wanted her dead, and if he'd gotten the full dose in her, if she'd been drinking like he figured, she'd have been dead. Erin was drinking but still had a few days before the wedding. Eve remembers fighting Jake Casto off and the next day, a bright summer day, she'd married Roarke under an arbor of flowers. Erin tells her, “It's nice, isn't it, being married?” She tells Eve she trusted the bad cop, but not 100% and she knew how to fight. Erin knew how to paint, but not to fight. Eve tells her she didn't have a chance to fight, and it wasn't personal with Casto, it was business. Erin says she trusted the wrong person and so did Shauna. and she's dead but Shauna still trusts the wrong person since she doesn't know she trusts the person who killed Erin.
  • She was in bed, Roarke already awake and up, and he brought her coffee.

• Eve was back at the Down and Dirty, the same party, with a mix of Erin and her friends. Erin says, “I love her so much. She'll never go to Maui now. it's ruined for her. They killed me, sure. But they killed something in her, too.” Eve leaves the club area and Casto jumps her, the syringe full of the drug Immortality in his hand. He gets some in her and as she stumbles her way to the door, the wire went around her neck, biting into her skin. Unlike Erin, she didn't claw at the wire, but threw her body back against the attacker, elbow jabbing him. The wire loosened for an instant before tightening again, and she stopped getting air. She thought of Roarke, waiting for her and all the people in the club celebrating both of them and of the life she'd never know.
  • She was in bed alone, with Roarke pulling her up, yelling at her to breathe and Galahad butting his head against her hip.

Roarke's Dreams

Interlude in Death

• He dreamed of the alleyways of Dublin. Of himself, a young boy, too thin, with sharp eyes, nimble fingers, and fast feet. A belly too often empty. He saw himself in one of those alleyways, staring down at his father, who lay with the smell of garbage gone over, and whiskey gone stale, and the cold of the rain that gleefully seeped into bone, and the smell of death - the blood and the shit that spewed out of a man at his last moments. Thee knife had still been in his throat, and his eyes - filmed-over blue - were open and staring back at the boy he'd made. He remembered speaking to his father, “Well, now, you bastard, someone's done for ya. And here I thought it would be me one day who had the pleasure of that. He was twelve, with bruises still fresh and aching from the last beating those dead hands had given him, and he'd spat and run.
  • He was with Eve at Olympus Resort, on the last night of the ILE conference, and related the dream to Eve once she woke up, musing about who killed his father.

Salvation in Death

• Roarke had a dream of Grafton Day going wrong and his friends (Jenny [sic] and Mick) dying when they were children. All that was left was Roarke and Brian—Roarke walked away, walked away from the friends who were the same as family to him. He stood on the bridge over the River Liffey, a grown man, and saw his mother's face under the water.
  • He was at home and in bed with Eve for this dream.

Shadows in Death

• Roarke dreamed of Dublin, the city that represented the canvas for the worst of his childhood memories, and the best of them as well. He dreamed of the boy he's been - skinny and quick, grubby, running the streets on a damp, gray day with his hair falling into his eyes and a hole worn into the knee of his trousers. He ran with his mates, all but one gone now. Pretty Jenny, with her tumbling hair, and Mick with his sly grin and big plans. Shawn, up for anything on a dare. Gone, all three, taken in vengeance and gone to dust. And there Brian, the one he had left, crafty as he was steady, with his cap cocked over his left eye. The man he was couldn't help but admire the boy's nimble fingers lifting a wallet here, slipping it to a mate - or using the quick bump and begging your pardon, sir! to snag a wrist unit, and pass that to another mate. He might cop a ’link, smooth as you please. Even a handbag or two. He'd share the spoils - a testament to teamwork - and if he judged it enough, might squirrel away a bit for his personal nest egg. He heard the boy with the angel's voice and the little dog singing an old one designed to bring a tear to the eye and money in the cap. He found his mark in a man with a gold wrist unit and a camera. He pined for the camera and the wrist unit, but knew settling for the wallet was the best bet. As he moved into position, as the boy sang of young, dead Willie McBride, he spotted Lorcan Cobbe - boy and man - across Grafton Street. The boy he'd been looked up at the man he was. “Well, now, he's after killing me dead, isn't he then? But he won't be having what he wants today. You'll have to make for certain he doesn't get it tomorrow.” And ran. The boy Cobbe had been pulled out a knife and ran after him. And Cobbe, the man, grinned across Grafton Street before sprinting in the opposite direction. He chased him, but kept losing him. All at once he stood in the alley over the broken, bloodied boy he'd been. The girl Eve had been sat on the filthy ground beside him. Hollow-eyed, cradling her broken arm, she looked up. “They like to hurt us, the fathers.” He crouched down, heartsick as he could do nothing for either of them. “I know it. We'll be all right. We'll get through.” “He broke my arm. I think yours, too.” Even in dreams he couldn't help himself, and reached out to stroke her tangled hair. “But they didn't break us, did they, darling?” Cobbe, both boy and man, stood two feet away. “I won't break you. I'll just cut you to pieces. Her first.” With knife in hand, the man grabbed Eve by the hair. When the boy charged, Roarke lunged. Into a void, and out of sleep.
  • He was in bed with Eve and they shared a soother as he told her his dream.