Nightmare Man, page 5
I’m not conscious of drifting off, but then I get the little jolt that warns me of trouble. I try to convince myself I just heard some noise from elsewhere in the house, that it startled me and I can go back to sleep, but I can’t stop myself from listening harder. I can’t stop my traitorous mind from trying to put the pieces together, from trying to create a cohesive story of existence out of the twisted phenomena it’s receiving.
He rises. He hurls himself from the shadows, and I shriek and throw myself from my bed. I collide with Shannon’s nightstand as I search for the wall with my back, stumbling but keeping my feet.
I feel the cold blast of the nightmare man’s gaze, but then he turns away and runs for the door.
For a moment I’m relieved. Then I try to figure out his scheme. I know what he’s doing, but I can’t seem to remember. He can’t flank me. He might be trying to lure me into the open.
Logan.
Shannon’s side of the bed is opposite the door, and I’m clambering over the mattress as the trailing edge of the nightmare man’s cloak disappears into the thin bar of light.
I fight through blankets that suddenly seem like razor wire on a WWI battlefield, tangling me up, dragging me into slow motion while terrible things happen around me in rapid fire. I get one foot to the floor and lunge for the door handle, but my other foot is caught up and I fall. I land on my hands, but on the fist of my left hand instead of the palm, and it rolls until the back of my hand is pressed into the floor and a spike of pain in my wrist blasts my dark vision white.
Left hand clutched to my chest, I keep going, but the door doesn’t open. I yank, then again, again, again, again. I bellow. Is he holding the door shut? Does the fact that I can’t open the door mean Logan is safe, because the nightmare man is standing on the other side? No, he’s somehow jammed the door shut. He’s probably in Logan’s room already.
I wrap my left hand over my right for a better grip and pull again, and the pain hits me so hard I gasp like a fish flopping in the bottom of a boat.
Cradling my left hand in my right, I back up, then slam forward, putting my right shoulder into the door. The room resounds like a bass drum, the wall vibrating like a skin. I slam again, again, again.
The door falls forward, and for a moment I’m blind, motionless, silent.
Logan shrieks at such a high pitch it sounds inhuman. It sounds like the pure auditory transmission of terror, and it galvanizes me into motion.
The door didn’t land flat on the floor, but propped against the opposite wall. I scramble over, trying not to use my left hand but finding it unavoidable as I slip and scrabble over the slick lacquered plywood that’s lying at an awkward angle and shifting beneath my weight.
I make it across, fall, rise and run. As I press Logan’s door open, I see movement at the end of the hall. Shannon hits the wall, unable to change her momentum.
“No!” she shouts. She presses off, redirecting.
I turn back to Logan’s room. There, at the end of the bed, glowing in black light stands the nightmare man. His cold beam illuminates Logan’s face, which is twisted into a mask of such horror that he’s almost unrecognizable. And his eyes, God, his eyes reflect the dark light blackly. His eyes glow solid black, showing me the true face of the nightmare man who stands still as an ebony statue at the foot of Logan’s bed.
A battering ram slams into my left side and I’m knocked into the room, bouncing between the wall and Logan’s big wooden dresser until I settle on the ground, pressed down by a snarling, warm bulk. I struggle, try to whip out the elbow pinned to my side, try to push myself up from an incredibly painful position from which I have absolutely no leverage.
“Wake up!” the thing growls at me, and from the voice and weight and smell I understand it’s Shannon.
“I’m awake. Goddamn it, I’m awake. Let me up.”
But she drags in ragged gasps of breath and squeezes me tighter, not letting me get any leverage.
I crane my neck just far enough to see past the dresser and find the nightmare man is gone. The struggle must have scared him away. Logan stands in the corner sobbing.
Then the lights come on.
Shannon doesn’t relinquish her grip a bit, but we both turn to the doorway. Madison stands there wide-eyed, one hand still on the light switch, one clutching a stuffed Hello Kitty.
“I’m awake, goddamn it.” I try to control my voice. It comes out as a weird grumble whisper instead of the shout I feel rising in me with the panic of being trapped with my spine torqued, my shoulder pressed into the wall, my face into the dresser.
“You’re awake?” She pulls back her head and looks at me, going almost cross-eyed trying to focus on me from inches away, trying to see the truth in my eyes.
“Shannon, please get off me. I’m awake, and this really hurts.”
She can’t get up without pushing off me. I try not to curse in front of the kids, but I do. She helps drag me up.
“He was here,” Logan says through blubbering pink lips. “The nightmare man. He was right there.” He points to the end of the bed. “He said it’s my fault!” and the wailing takes him too hard for him to speak any more. Then Madison starts crying, and suddenly, despite all the panic and chaos of moments before, Shannon’s and my ultimate priority is to comfort them.
“I heard him screaming,” I say, kneeling and clutching Logan to my chest. He pulls himself against me just as hard, and his heaving pulses through my body, breaking my heart.
Shannon glares at me as she hugs Madison, who keeps looking at her older brother and then crying harder. But Shannon’s glare is confused, unfocused. It’s anger that wants desperately to find a place to land, but can’t. Because she doesn’t know what I know.
The nightmare man is after our son.
I stand, picking Logan up, though holding my left hand limply against his back.
“Oh my God, Jessie, you’re bleeding.”
I set Logan down and then look myself over. I don’t expect to see the amount of blood that’s smeared across and flowing down my legs from beneath my boxers; the world goes warm and fuzzy and I taste copper as I almost faint.
* * *
Because of the wrist injury I’m getting extra consideration at work. Extra post-call time, since my typing is off. Extra smoke breaks, which I wouldn’t have expected. I guess they value me more than I thought.
I stare up at the late fall sky, watching my sad little stream of smoke disperse and join that iron gray canopy, and I think of last night. I think of the nightmare my life has become. I think of the emergency room.
My left wrist is sprained. They strapped a brace on it. Other than that, all I can do is occasionally ice it, and try to keep it higher than my heart.
Remembering this, I lift my left arm into the air until my shoulder burns, then drop it.
The ER doctors were more concerned with my leg. What I didn’t notice in the chaos the nightmare man had created was that I hadn’t knocked the door out of its frame, I’d knocked the frame out of the wall with the door still shut in it. It came out whole, pulling the nails with it, nails that pointed straight up, that I dragged myself across, and without even noticing puncturing and scratching my legs.
The worst was my left leg. I must have landed directly on a nail when I straddled the door, driving it straight into my inner thigh, then dragging it sideways as I slid over, ripping the hole. The doctor noted that I’d missed my femoral artery by inches, and that a ragged puncture wound in an artery was next to impossible to fix and I would have bled to death. He advised I not do that again.
I cringe thinking of what could have happened to my testicles had I landed on the nail differently. The cringe sets off a spasm in my neck, which seems to have fused solid overnight from Shannon’s tackle.
When we finally got back home and got the kids to sleep, we had a long “talk,” another shouting match at talking volume. She explained that I was traumatizing our kids with my problem, that Logan had picked up on my nightmare man and had turned him into his own boogey man, and that my nightly thrashings were setting him off.
But I had knocked down the door because he was freaking out, not the other way around. I couldn’t explain that I knew he was freaking out because I caught the nightmare man slipping under the door.
She pointed out that in the throes of a night terror, my confused mind could easily switch around cause and effect.
I couldn’t argue with that. It happened all the time. My brain did its best to unify real sensory stimulation with hallucination.
She pointed out that it was probably me looming over Logan in his dark room that had him seeing a man in black.
But I wasn’t in his room, last night. Yes, the night before, but last night I’d been frozen in the doorway.
Then she said something that knocked the tiny stable surface I’d created right out from under me. “You were in farther than you think. You were right at the foot of his bed.”
And I thought back to her tackle, and it would have been quite a drive to knock me into his dresser from the doorway.
But I remembered standing frozen, unable to help him, unable to move.
But I remember so many things incorrectly.
Am I his nightmare man?
Staring at the iron sky, I droop. No amount of extra smoke breaks will help.
“Damn, you look terrible.”
I turn to see Leslie tapping a cig out of her pack. I stick mine in my mouth. Good hand free, I light her up and say, “Why do women get to say that to men? Can you imagine it going down the other way?”
“Well, a woman would murder a man for saying that. There are no consequences for the reverse. You need to set a precedent if that’s something you feel strongly about.”
I snort.
She says, “Seriously though, what happened to you? You look exhausted, and then there’s that.” She points to the wrist brace. “And I watched you limp over here.”
“Sleep problems.” After a moment. “Family problems. It’s too much to get into right now.”
“You’ve got my number. Call me.”
I want to tell her that she couldn’t possibly understand. I want to tell her that she doesn’t even rank on the list of things I’m concerned with right now. It’s a lie, somehow she’s ranked way too high, but I want to tell her because I want to make it true. I also want to let happen whatever she wants to happen, if that means we move from break-time buds to actual friends, to fuck buddies, to lovers. Any. All. She’s the only thing I can think about right now that doesn’t make me feel helpless and hopeless and worthless and every other “-less.” I’d love to feel less, actually.
I glance at her, taking in her dyed black hair, her nose, her big eyes, her slight build. Shannon used to be built like that. A couple of kids and a decade on the couch later and she can tackle like a linebacker.
I nod. She puts a hand on my shoulder. Squeezes. Lets it linger a moment too long. Slides it down my arm and away.
“If you need an ear, we could go get coffee or a beer or something. You can’t lose yourself in all this. You need your own space.”
What the hell does this poser art kid know about adult life? Who is she to comment? How does she understand? Work. Home. Nightmare. Work. Home. Nightmare. I can’t take it.
I say, “Maybe. Thanks,” and stub out my cigarette and go back inside instead of exploding. Not shouting, but literally detonating into fiery shrapnel.
* * *
Once again, I’m explaining to Dr. Turner why I’m quitting the project.
“It’s affecting my son. My night terrors are getting crazier, and they seem to have made Logan’s emerge.”
“Jessie, night terrors aren’t contagious. They are genetic, though. Your son probably is developing them. Many young children have them and grow out of them. How old is Logan?”
I hadn’t thought of that. “Nine.”
“At that age, the night terrors he’s experiencing are probably the beginning of a chronic condition.”
The hope goes out of me, taking with it my will to stay upright. I slump into my seat, but I really want to sprawl on the examination table.
“The work you’re helping us with could also help him. Night terrors have caused people to throw themselves out of tenth-floor windows, to kill their spouses, to never get a restful night of sleep, but the medical establishment has never seriously looked for a treatment. Your son doesn’t have to go through this.”
“So how is what you’re doing going to help more than the benzos everyone else prescribes? At least those worked a little. These seem to be making things worse.”
“What we found is there’s a place in the brain that’s inactive during the first hour of sleep in people who suffer from night terrors that is active in the average person. The opposite of what you’d expect, huh? You’d think your brain would be overactive.”
“And what does your drug do to that part of the brain?”
“That I can’t go into. But personally, I think targeting this directly is the only hope for a treatment. Tranquilizers work around the problem. We’re staring the problem straight in the face, and we’re the only researchers doing so.”
He hands me the little green pill and the little cup of water.
I swallow it down.
* * *
Sometimes a smoke break seems to do more harm for my mood than good. Sometimes, seeing the open world, the huge sky, seeing the mountains, all that beauty and space and variety, sometimes it agitates me more than it calms me. It’s too jarring a contrast to the dimly-lit cubicle maze, to the flavorless sameness of miles of gray Berber and gray half-walls and seemingly endless hours of phone work ahead of me.
It’s sick, wishing for the day to go more quickly. We only have so many hours, and there’s such a huge, interesting world to explore, filled with people to meet, foods to eat, sights to see, both natural and man-made, that will snatch the breath right from your chest. I should be wishing for endless time, for every minute to last as long as possible. Instead I spend every second of my workday waiting for the clock to finally hit 3:00, waiting all week for Friday, waiting all year for my two weeks of vacation. TGIF means I’d give away half of my waking hours. It should be, like, TGIOWCttWEotG. Thank God I’m One Week Closer to the Warm Embrace of the Grave. I get one turn at all this, and my mind can’t look at it as a gift, only a trial to be waited out, to be gotten through. It’s so obviously sick, but I don’t know what to do about it.
Needless to say, I didn’t return to my desk and my calls in the best of moods.
“Mr. Galloway, I’m glad I caught you.” The word “caught” is actually encouraged. We want people making rash decisions. We don’t want people to stop and think about how likely we are to take them to court over a few thousand dollars. What we want to do is freak them out, make them feel trapped and overwhelmed, and get them to give us a credit card number right during that first call. “I’m Carlton with Kirkland Collections, and we’ve been trying to get hold of you for a while.”
“Goddamn it. Why can’t you guys just leave me alone?”
“We will leave you alone, as soon as you pay your bill. Give me the number of a credit card that can cover $4,321.98 today and you won’t hear from us again.”
“Do you really think I have access to that kind of money?”
“Well, we always hope you’re still a ways up your downward spiral into financial destruction.” I shouldn’t have said that, but I’m in a bad mood and this guy sounds like an idiot. He sounds like the kind of guy who got in trouble refinancing his house to pay for new jet skis.
“That’s so not cool. How do you do this? How do you live with yourself? This shit will catch up with you.”
This shit will catch up with me? My problems stem from being attentive to my responsibilities over everything else.
“You know how I do this? Because it’s this job that lets me be a man and pay my bills. You want me to feel sorry for you and feel like the bad guy? How about you go get a job you hate and take care of your fucking responsibilities and then you’d never hear from me?”
“Are you serious? Haven’t you been watching the news? Don’t you know about the unemployment? And I don’t think you should be talking to me like—”
“Yeah, I’ve heard about the unemployment rate, and then my bosses tell me about the bonus we’ll get if we refer an employee who lasts six months. A bonus! Because people would rather complain that there are no opportunities than take one they don’t like. So when you tell me you can’t get a job and pay your bills, I know you’re a liar, and that puts you on a whole different level. I can at least respect the guy who admits it’s a choice he’s making, that he’d rather go on buying stupid shit and maybe work part-time down at the video game store and eventually claim bankruptcy when things get bad enough, but don’t lie to me. Don’t sit here and run a sob story past me. You just want someone else to take care of your responsibilities. But you probably don’t even know you’re lying. That’s the thing. People lie to themselves. Look at your situation, really look at it, and tell me it’s not a choice, that there isn’t some part of yourself you could sell to get five thousand measly dollars. Dig deep, and you’ll find you’re making the choice to be a loser.” I stop for a moment to catch my breath, and I realize what I’ve done. “Hello?”
“Jessie, this is QA. We cut you off a while ago but wanted to see where this was going. Why don’t you go take a break and we’ll page you when we’re ready for you.”
I don’t feel like taking another break. Instead, I go to the copy room and find an empty box, bring it back to my desk and start loading my things into it. By the time they page me, I’m all packed up and ready to get fired.
Everyone stands when I walk into the meeting room. There’s Scott, my supervisor, Greg, a management dude I haven’t seen in forever, and a woman, I’m assuming from HR, I’ve never seen before.
