The Fackelmann scam and the wraith's return — "Gately comes sharply around when he…"
Gately comes sharply around when he feels the little rough tongue on his forehead—not unlike Nimitz the M.P.’s little pet kitten’s hesitant tongue […] When Gately gets his eyelids unstuck, though, the tongue is not even close to being Nimitz’s. The wraith is back, right by the bed, dressed like before and blurred at the edges in the hat-shadowed spill of hallway-light, and except now with him is another, younger, way more physically fit wraith in kind of faggy biking shorts and a U.S. tank top who’s leaning way over Gately’s railing and… fucking licking Gately’s forehead with a rough little tongue, and as Gately reflexively strikes out at the guy’s map—no man put his tongue on D. W. Gately and lived—he has just enough time to realize the wraith’s breath has no warmth to it, or smell, before both wraiths vanish and a blue forked bolt of pain from his sudden striking-out sends him back against his hot pillow with an arched spine and a tube-impeded scream, his eyes rolling back into the dove-colored light of whatever isn’t quite sleep.
Context
The wraith's second visit, at the dread hour, now with a fit companion in bike shorts licking the sweat off Gately's forehead (the kitten-tongue, plus the ghostword LISLE at p. 919, point to Lyle — an inference; Carlisle made the same identification in 2007). Whether this is dream or visitation is exactly what the scene refuses to settle: Gately surfaces out of one dream into it, has already ruled the wraith "a fever-dream" (p. 923), and exits it into "whatever isn't quite sleep." Carried on the 162 precedent — wraith material inside an explicit dream-frame.