Nightmare Man (5 page)

I can feel every muscle in my body. They all want to explode. I have to force them into true stillness rather than the vibrating isometric balance they strain for.

He stands perfectly still. Either he’s waiting for me to notice him, or he knows I’ve already noticed him and he’s toying with me. Either way, he’s toying with me.

When he finally moves, he moves fast. I let my muscles have their way and they hurl me out of bed. I land on my hands and knees in a snarling crouch, but I can’t find him. Whipping my head back and forth, I barely catch sight of the end of his coat as it slips beneath the bedroom door, trailing after him.

Then I understand why he passed me by. He’s not after me this time. He’s after my family.

I jump to my feet and open the door without hesitation. Somehow, I know he isn’t lying in wait for me. It isn’t about me.

My body is pumped full of adrenaline, and my eyes are wide open, adjusted to searching for shadow in shadow. The hall light slams into my optic nerves like twin ice picks, but I don’t let it slow me. I cover my eyes with one hand and slide the other along the wall.

Peering between my fingers, I scan the hall. At the open end, the darkness stutters with bluish light from the television in the living room where Shannon lies sleeping on the couch. He’s not there.

The first door is Madison’s room. It’s open just a crack. I stick my head in and glance around. Her night light—a teddy bear holding the strings of a bunch of glowing balloons—turns everything a warm orange. Madison lies on her back with her arms spread wide, her mouth hanging open and her blankets kicked off.

He’s not in there.

I take the few steps farther down the hall to Logan’s room. The door is open a few inches to let a bit of light in from the hallway. I push the door the rest of the way open.

There’s no need to search for the nightmare man. He stands at the end of Logan’s bed, staring down at him, pulsing like a black hole throwing off X-rays. Each pulse of black light throws the room into total darkness, except for him and sleeping Logan.

The moment breaks, and I hurl myself across the room and onto Logan’s bed. I cover his body with mine. I expect the razor-thin black blades to penetrate my exposed back at any moment. When they don’t, I peer over my shoulder. He’s still there, watching.

“You can’t have him! You can’t fucking have him!”

Logan squirms beneath me, so I pull him in tight.

“Jessie?” comes from the living room. The nightmare man begins to drift away, not back toward the door, but Logan’s closet.

“Jessie!” comes from the end of the hallway, then pounding feet. Shannon has noticed the open doors.

The nightmare man pauses by the closet, and shifts his gaze from Logan’s squirming, crying form to me. The cold beams crackle over me. He’s looking directly into my face when he slips beneath the door. He’s telling me something.

That my room isn’t the only entrance into the house.

The room fills with light. “Jessie,” again, and then Shannon’s arms wrap around my stomach and she pulls with surprising strength. I help her in lifting me from the bed and try to stand beside her, but stumble a bit as she attempts to throw me aside. She rushes to Logan, who throws his arms around her, squeezes himself against her body, even as she presses him back to look at him.

When she’s satisfied he’s not hurt, she clutches him to her, pressing his teary red face into her chest. Then she turns her focus to me.

Through clenched teeth, she says, “What do you think you’re doing?”

I almost take a step back. I’ve never seen her so angry. She looks as if the only thing preventing her from ripping me apart is the eight-year-old boy clinging to her.

The room pulses in the same rhythm the dark light throbbed from the nightmare man. But now the room expands and contracts. I realize it matches the beat of my heart. I can’t breathe. I suck huge rasping gulps of air and it’s not enough. “He was here. The nightmare man was here, at the end of the bed.”

At that, Logan peeks over his mother’s shoulder at me with huge, round eyes.

* * *

As I approach Leslie’s section of the call center, I scan for her floor walkers. The coast is clear, so I speed-walk to her cube and crouch down.

Still talking into her headset, she opens her big eyes even wider as if to say, “What the hell?” then leans back and scans the aisle. I grab a sticky pad and a pen and write “Break time?”

She nods. I examine her cubicle as she talks calling plans and notice the drawing of her I did tacked up on the wall.

The first time we talked, out at the smoker’s shelter, she told me about her art and I told her I used to draw, too.

She said, “Yeah right.”

So as I spent the afternoon squeezing blood from stones, I drew her from memory. I used a late ’80s/early ’90s Vertigo Comics goth-style, kind of
Sandman
-ish. It turned out really well, so I walked directly up to her, tossed it on her desk, and said, “Bam!”

She looked at it, and before I strutted away like it was nothing, I saw an expression on her face that showed new respect—and something else.

She still has the portrait hanging up.

She says, “Well, you do sound happy with your current calling plan. I’d switch, but good luck to you.”

She yanks her headset off and gives me a shove toward the main aisle and the door.

At the shelter, I put two cigarettes in my mouth and light them, then hand her one.

When she takes the first drag, it makes me tingle a bit. I don’t get many tingles.

“What’s up?” she says. “You could have gotten me in trouble.”

I laugh. “Come on! You need encouragement to take a smoke break?”

“Yeah, okay.” She stares off and smiles. I can tell she’s happy I went to get her. Because she’s got a view of the smokers’ shelter, she’s always coming out for me. I’m sure she finds the change nice, the acknowledgment that I value her company.

“So what’s up?” she asks.

I’d thought about telling her about what happened with Logan. The situation has me feeling even more isolated than usual. But suddenly I don’t feel like talking anymore. I don’t know if I want to ignore the problem, or if I just want to keep it private.

“Nothing. Just wanted some company.”

She raises an eyebrow. I can tell only because her heavy bangs shift when she does it. But she nods, stares off again and takes a drag.

She says, “I am really good company. People tell me all the time.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Oh yeah. You doubt it, when you just searched me out for ten minutes of it? My company is the best. It’s the good stuff. The hard stuff.”

“You’re the sticky-icky of company.”

“That’s right. Other bitches be ditch weed. I’m dank. My company is so good it has you hallucinating and shit, giving you ’Nam flashbacks from a decade before you were even born.”

I laugh. She is good company.

“Give me your phone,” she says.

I give her a look.

“Seriously. Hand it over.”

I fish it out of my pocket and put it in her open palm.

“Wow, just a phone, huh? Can this even play music?”

“I think it can. I’ve never tried.”

“Wow. Okay. You know I sell phones for a living. This is like a slap in my face, owning a phone like this.” She starts pressing keys; I reach for it but she smacks the back of my hand and keeps going, then hands it back. “There’s my number. Whenever you decide you want to talk about whatever it is you wanted to talk about, give me a call.”

I’m torn between disliking being so transparent, and liking that she cares enough to read me. I’m leaning more toward the latter.

“Okay.” I put the phone back in my pocket.

“Also, you can text me next time you want to take a break instead of doing the business-casual-commando thing. You can text, right?”

“Yes, I can text.”

“T-9ing it. That’s crazy.” She digs into her little purse and takes out a smartphone. “Now, this bad boy has multiple processors…”

Back at my desk, I take my phone out and stare at the “Leslie” entry in my phone book as if it isn’t blocky digital text, but a picture my mind begins to fantasize about. Then it becomes a video and then moves into full-sensory imagination.

A little fantasizing has never done any harm. Action causes harm. Thoughts are weightless. Dreams are nothing.

Yeah, right, dreams are nothing.

This isn’t good.

* * *

Dr. Turner walks into the office, staring down at his clipboard. “I see from your journal you had a pretty severe night terror last night.”

“Yeah, worse than ever. Bright light always wakes me up, so we keep the hall light on all night. Last night it didn’t stop me. I ran down the hall and into my kid’s room.”

“That’s very interesting. You saw this recurring nightmare character leave your room, so you went after him.”

“Yeah, but it’s not interesting. It’s very bad. Before, my family was safe as long as they didn’t come into my bedroom. Now…Is the medicine doing this?”

“I can’t say. Possibly.”

“Has anyone else reported this effect?”

“You know I can’t—”

“I could have killed him! I could have killed my son. My wife won’t even look at me. And you’re going to tell me because of policy you can’t…” I stand up and toss my messenger bag over my head. “I’m done. I’m out of here. I remember signing people up for some psychology studies in college, and we’d tell them they were being studied for one thing and it’d be something totally different. But you’re messing with people’s lives. This is serious.”

I head for the door, but Dr. Turner holds out a hand. “Just a second. You’re free to quit at any time, of course, but I don’t think you should. I can’t tell you a lot, but I can promise you we’re not creating a drug to give people worse night terrors. What we’re trying to do is change your brain chemistry, and that can take more than one dose, and can have unexpected effects until the intended one is achieved.”

I’m not convinced, but I’m listening.

“You might not even be receiving the drug. You might be getting the placebo.”

“What?”

“There’s a control group. Didn’t you read the paperwork you signed?”

“You mean that phone-book-sized stack of technical nonsense and legalese? I skimmed it.”

He closes his eyes for a moment and sighs before saying, “There’s a control group that receives a placebo. The dream diary, the daily conversations about the night terrors, the in-facility monitoring…All these things could lead to changes by themselves, so we need a control group to see what effect all these factors have.”

I nod. “That makes sense. So am I in the control group or not?”

“I don’t know. This is a double-blind study, to ensure my behavior doesn’t impact the results.” He holds out a pill. “So, are you still in?”

I look at it. I think about the fact that I might have rushed down the hall under the influence of nothing more than my own brain chemistry without my normal dose of clonazepam. On the one hand, if I stop, I can take my clonazepam again and maybe I’ll continue to have my nightly freak-out in isolation for the rest of my life. At least my kids would be safe.

But I think Shannon is right. If there’s a way to fix this, I need to try it.

I take the pill, and try to decide if it tastes inordinately sugary.

* * *

I could use a new drill. The battery begins to lose its charge as I drill the second latch catch into the bedroom door. I never use the thing farther than an extension cord can reach. Do they make them without batteries? If not, it’s a scam to shorten their lives. I make a mental note to research drills.

“This is a bit drastic,” Shannon says, but there’s not really any argument in her voice. I have the superhuman ability to pick out the slightest hint of a contrary tone from her. She must just feel obliged to tell her husband he shouldn’t lock himself in at night like the wolfman during a full moon, though she thinks he should.

“I know you think I always took my night terrors too lightly, but they’ve never endangered my family before. Now they have. A drastic problem calls for a drastic solution.”

She smirks. “Is that a line from a comic book?”

“Probably. I can’t tell anymore, so just assume half of what I say is copyrighted by Marvel or DC.”

“Har har, but seriously, couldn’t you just try the sleep mask again and sleep with the lights on?”

“At the moment light doesn’t seem to stop the night terrors.”

“What did the doctor say about that? I mean, I could understand the medication not doing anything, but it is doing something, just in the wrong direction.”

“I know. He said it could take a while to work right. I guess it’s like how sometimes depression medication can make you more depressed before it makes you less. Or he could just be talking out his ass.”

“Maybe when they said it was a medication for night terrors, they meant to
cause
night terrors. Like, ‘Terrorcil, now with 50% more night terrors!’” We laugh; then she says, “But seriously, maybe you shouldn’t be taking this.”