Free The Ninth Nightmare by Graham Masterton

Kieran would inevitably wake up if she entered his room, and he had always found it very difficult to get to sleep. When he was little she had often woken up in the middle of the night to find him standing beside her bed, staring at her, like the girl in Paranormal Activity.
    Not only could she hear rain pattering against the other side of the door, however, and feel the wind blowing, she could hear thunder, or what sounded like thunder – a deep rumbling sound punctuated by an intermittent slap ! slap ! slap !
    She opened the door, and was immediately met with a strong, blustery wind and freezing cold rain. Kieran’s bedroom was no longer a bedroom, it was a steeply-sloping field, and it was no longer night-time, either, although the sky was dark. Low gray clouds hurtled above Kiera’s head like an endless pack of hungry wolves, and the long wet grass lashed at her ankles.
    On the horizon she could see a stand of oak trees silhouetted against the sky, their branches thrashing and waving in the storm. Not far away, there was an assortment of geometric shapes – triangles and rhomboids and rectangles – that looked like tents. They could have been a military encampment, or a traveling circus. The rumbling and the snapping was the sound of the wind blowing through their flysheets.
    Kiera stood in the doorway in disbelief. She turned around, and there behind her was her hotel bedroom, with the bedside lamp shining and the bedcover turned back. She could clearly see her pink robe hanging over the back of the chair. Yet here in front of her was a wild, blustery hillside, and it had to be just as real as her bedroom because she could feel the rain on her face and hear the wind whistling. Where was Kieran’s bedroom? And more urgently, where was Kieran?
    â€˜Kieran!’ she shouted. ‘Kieran – where are you?’
    Reluctantly, she walked a few yards further into the field. The storm was roaring so loudly that she could hardly hear her own voice, and it began to rain even harder, so that her pajamas were soaked through and clung to her skin and raindrops dripped from the end of her nose. ‘ Kieran !’ she screamed. ‘ Kieran !’
    She looked back at her bedroom. She was frightened that the door might close, or disappear altogether, so that she would have to stay here, wherever this was. But so far her bedroom was still there, warm and tranquil, with the bedside lamp still shining.
    She smeared the rain from her face with the back of her hand. She was so cold now that she was shivering. She wondered if there was any point in continuing to look for Kieran. If this wasn’t his hotel bedroom then maybe he wasn’t here at all. Maybe this was nothing but a nightmare and she was still in bed. But it felt far too real to be a nightmare.
    She was still trying to make up her mind what to do when – all around the darkened tents – she saw strings of colored lights winking on. There were dozens of them, every one of them blood-red. She could also see an illuminated wrought-iron archway, with illuminated letters on top of it, although from where she was standing she couldn’t make out what the letters said. She could hear music, too, carried on the wind. Odd, discordant and eerie, like a barrel organ that was badly out of key.
    She turned around and started to high-step her way back through the long wet grass to her bedroom. She had gone only a short distance, however, when she saw Kieran standing about fifty yards away, off to her left. He was bare-chested and his pajama pants were as wet as hers. He had his face lifted toward the wind and the rain but his eyes were closed as if he were praying.
    â€˜ Kieran !’ she called him, and hurried over.
    He opened his eyes and stared at her. For a split second he looked as if he didn’t recognize her.
    â€˜Kieran, it’s me! Are you all right?’
    She took hold of both of his hands. He felt as cold as she