Cynthia smiled. "If you don't fall asleep on me. Why are you so tired?"
"I had a bum night's sleep. I was dreaming."
"It must have been a corker."
"It was. There was a woman...I never saw her face. I don't think I wanted to." He looked over at his wife. "She was hanging from the old gas fixture in 2A, upstairs."
"God!" Cynthia exclaimed. "That's awful!"
"It was a very vivid dream. Not Henry Whitcomb-vivid," Dean added quickly, referring to his involvement in a strange mystery before they married. "It was a regular dream-just clearer than any I've ever experienced. I heard a noise and came up the stairs. Somehow I knew what I'd find. The room wasn't painted as it is now. There was flowered wallpaper and she was hanging there in the moonlight, twisting in the draft from an open window."
Cynthia shivered, and took a sip from her cup of coffee. "That's not a dream. It's a nightmare."
Fred O'Connor sauntered into the room, resplendent in bow tie and jacket, carrying a plate of cinnamon toast. His ears perked up at the mention of Dean's nocturnal adventure.
"It was just a dream," Dean repeated. "No big deal."
Fred was not so easily placated. "Don't be so sure," the old man said. "I hear sounds in the night, and get strange feelings sometimes. You folks don't hear 'em 'cause you sleep down here, but upstairs is different. Besides, if you remember a dream, it must be important."
"This place is a hundred years old," Dean answered. "I'd start to worry if I didn't hear strange noises. And the only reason you remember dreams is if you wake up in the middle of them."
Fred just shook his head at Dean's perceived ignorance. "There were lots of folks who passed through these doors over the last century," he said, sounding not unlike Rod Sterling. "No telling what tales their ghosts could spin and what unfinished business they left behind. Maybe some spirit is trying to contact us to set things straight." He nodded, the vision of a sage teacher. "Dreams is unfinished business. You may have seen a ghost and your conscious blocked it out while your subconscious remembered it." Fred plopped down on the sofa, set the plate in his lap and continued to eat and talk at the same time. "There's plenty of computer web sites that explain all about them dreams and visions and spirits. Very interesting stuff."
"Very uninteresting dribble," Dean grumbled. After fifteen bachelor years with Fred O'Connor he had heard it all. But periodically he forgot the utter uselessness of arguing with the opinionated old man.