Vestavia Hills. Christian Perego

instant.

      Maybe much more.

      The blink of an eye. Or the prolongation of a moment, as it can only happen in eternity.

      Then Nick recovered from that strange daydream, without knowing how long it lasted.

      In front of him, there was still that modest and innocent figure, this time in its natural contours and colors, of Evelyn Archer.

      "How can I help you?" Nick seemed to have regained his full presence of spirit, so he was able to resume the thread of the conversation.

      Evelyn said to him, "I know you can investigate the church fire and the disappearance of Reverend Abblepot."

      Nicholas didn't reply, but his demeanor made the woman understand that he was interested in letting her go on, so she continued: "I knew Johnathan Abblepot, like everyone else. But in so many ways, more than any person you can contact. "

      The way Evelyn Archer spoke was convincing, not dragged, but sure and severe, Nick thought; it was the tone of someone who is not making anything up, and who is risking something in revealing what she is saying.

      "If you want to know what happened to him, let me tell you, I do too. I need to know. And maybe I have something to say to you that will help both of us. "

      This time the blink of an eye was real, and it was Nicholas': it was the time it took him to make the decision.

      "Okay," he said, "I'll listen to you."

      YET ANOTHER AFTERNOON FOR ROBERT RED

      5.

      He was sipping orange juice. He thought that the taste had a rancid aftertaste and that perhaps he had left it in the refrigerator a little too long.

      He didn't want to put up with another nuisance: as if he needed a stomach ache from spoiled food. He threw the juice into the sink.

      Robert was leaning against the kitchen cabinet with the dazed look of one who is following his thoughts, the one who makes the person with glazed eyes seem so ridiculous, almost as if they were those of a stuffed animal. Yet he was not thinking of anything specific.

      More than anything else, he tried to follow his emotions, which were made mostly of anger inside his now quite physically tested body. Insomnia gave him no break, and this gave him other problems such as lack of appetite and headaches. Concern for his nightmares, which had also been joined by daytime hallucinations, was beginning to grow. Finally, for the past two days, a fever had arrived from who knows where, which gave him a dullness, a further numbness feeling.

      In short, he felt like crap. And, although he did not know who to blame, and perhaps for this very reason, his anger was growing.

      He would never have thought of doing it; it was something he could not understand and had always avoided because considered it a disease, he went to look for the number of a psychologist.

      When he heard someone talking about it, he always looked with pity on the subject in question. How could it be possible that someone needed a person who told him how to feel, who coaxed him with pleasant or even provocative sentences, who gave him a shoulder to cry on and feel sorry for himself while getting paid for it?

      What kind of person was someone who couldn't even control what he thought?

      But now, gripped by the monster of insomnia, which forced him to spend whole days in a daze, and was no longer sure of what he saw or did, perhaps he too could give it a go. Those strange feelings, such as the experience of the previous day or the one in the literary café, convinced him that his psycho-physical health could be in question. He had already followed the doctor's orders: but the pills didn't work, and he had no intention of taking stronger medications.

      The hallucinations were what worried him the most: if he were no longer able to distinguish the real from the unreal, well, that would have been a big problem.

      With all those hours of lost sleep and that heaviness on his eyelids and in his brain, all those afternoons spent dozing off without really resting, and he was no longer sure he could distinguish what he did from what was only a dream.

      Dr. Thomas Trevor.

      To Robert, it seemed somewhat popular, judging from the website. Well, however, for Robert, one was worth the other, not having high esteem of psychologists.

      Yet another twinge of headache convinced him that he should try.

      So he dialed the number and spoke with a kind secretary, who told him that the doctor would be free the next day.

      Tomorrow was perfect: Robert hoped that this could, had to be, a solution to the heaviness that felt inside his head as if he had a massive bowling ball stuck in it.

      Robert noted down the information, said goodbye, and ended the call.

      He already felt uncomfortable, and he couldn't quite figure out if it was because he was going to a psychologist for the first time in his life or for that strange feeling that had been crowding him for the past few days.

      The next morning he reached Dr. Trevor's office according to the appointed time.

      It was a somewhat nondescript building in Miller Hill Way, one of the newly built ones, where concrete and glass rules.

      Robert still felt entangled in that uncomfortable feeling he felt the day before when he phoned the doctor.

      He looked up to observe the window, which in his hypothesis could have been the psychologist's as if he were facing the challenge with an enemy who he needed to look straight in the eye.

      The sun was scorching that day. The reflection of the light in the glass almost hurt the eyes. Robert coped with it as part of that challenge he imagined to face.

      He coped with it at least until the building wall and windows seemed to turn into liquid.

      The building no longer seemed to support itself on the foundations, and the more the minutes went by, the more it looked like a block of liquid cement and superheated glass pudding.

      Robert looked away, convinced it was just caused by the sun's heat. But he did not have time to think of anything that he found himself catapulted into another city.

      Or rather, what was around him was still Vestavia Hills, he was convinced. Something in the atmosphere made him think that. However, although he was able to recognize his town in some of the details, he felt cast out. He was like a spectator at the cinema, who can see the places he knows, but who can in no way intervene in that scene to correct the details that seem out of place.

      Robert saw Vestavia Hills, but he also noticed that there was something wrong, out of place, in front of him, and he could not change it.

      A boy about 7 or 8 years old, dressed in an adult style suit and looking very composed, walked a few steps away from him, he looked at him as if he was an urban fixture that should not have been there, with a mixture of severity and indifference in the eyes. Robert also looked at him sideways, as if to intimidate him, but the boy was gone. He had dissolved to make way for a beautiful girl who was going in the opposite direction, towards Robert.

      He observed the provocativeness hidden under a very abundant outfit, but the girl gave him an evil look; evil and satisfied at the same time as if she was observing her prey. Robert wanted to get out of there, but he couldn't move. A much older man came up behind him and brushed up against him to get past. At that contact, Robert turned abruptly: he saw the man's face, or what was left: the older man looked very similar to a painting where part of the front had been intentionally rubbed off.

      This hallucination he was stuck in, struck him so deeply that his consciousness woke up, and he told himself with the conviction that what he was seeing was only part of his nightmares. It was another lousy daydream, the result of insomnia and his nerves, as he would tell the psychologist shortly after that.

      But this thought was not enough to bring him out of that impaired vision: just as it happens in nightmares, the pinch that someone gives himself inside a dream never helps