A piano, a pregnant woman and a prison: Raymond Chandler's 'Nightmare' is revealed

NEW YORK (AP) — In his dreams, could conjure tales as unsettling as some of his greatest novels, as if haunted by the spirits of and .

“Nightmare,” a brief and rarely seen sketch published this week in , finds the author of “The Long Goodbye,” “Farewell, My Lovely” and other crime fiction classics imagining himself in prison “somewhere” for a murder he does not remember committing. His cellmates include two men he knows nothing about, a pregnant woman named Elsa, and a piano in the corner that must be played lying down after “nine o'clock.”