by Mark Lukens
A moment later I was back on the screen with my jogging pants on and my sneakers in one hand and the aluminum baseball bat in the other. I set the bat on the bed and sat down beside it so I could put my sneakers on, lacing them up. Then I stood up and picked up the baseball bat and left the bedroom.
There was no sense in watching any more of the video, fast-forwarding to when I came back, because I had already woken up in the living room. I switched to the feed from the security cameras Stan had installed in the house. I checked the one in the office first. The footage was dark and then the light turned on. I entered the office and sat down in my chair in front of the computer, leaning the bat against the bookcases for a moment while I turned on the computer and the little lamp with the green shade on the shelf over top of the monitor. I sat there for a moment as the computer booted up, and then I got up again, grabbing the baseball bat and leaving the office.
Next, I checked the footage from the camera in the kitchen and dining area, most of both rooms visible from this angle. I saw myself walk through the dining room with the bat in my hands. I entered the kitchen and turned on the overhead light. I stood there for a few seconds, and then I left the kitchen, walking toward the living room.
I checked the living room footage next. From the lights in the kitchen I could see myself well enough as I walked up to the end of the couch with the baseball bat in my hands. I stared down at Stan who was sleeping on the couch on his side, the bedsheet over top of him. His laptop was open on top of the coffee table, his cell phone near it, the large cup of water on the floor next to the end of the couch.
I watched myself as I raised the baseball bat up, ready to swing it down and strike Stan’s body. My mouth was moving. I was whispering something, or talking.
“Oh God, what am I doing?” I whispered as I watched myself on the video swing the bat down.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
“I guess you’ve seen the whole thing,” Stan said when he finally came back into my office.
I nodded, still staring at the computer screen. I had paused it for a moment after watching the footage from the living room camera over and over again. I turned around and looked at Stan. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know what I was doing.”
Stan had a beer in his hand. I think it was his third. I’m sure if I had anything stronger in the house he would have been drinking that right then.
“I can’t believe you’re still here,” I muttered, glancing back at the screen. It was frozen with me swinging my baseball bat down at the coffee table. At the last second, instead of hitting Stan on the couch, I had swung the bat at the table, smashing it down to the floor, smashing the corner of his laptop, his cell phone flying away.
Stan had jumped awake and scrambled back to the end of the couch, drawing his legs up, instantly alert.
I brought the bat back up and he was up and off the couch in a flash. “Zach,” he yelled. “Zach, it’s me! It’s Stan! What are you doing?”
I kept swinging the bat at him. I chased him around the living room. I swung at him, and nearly hit him, but I’d hit the lamp instead, the shade flying off, the lightbulb shattering, the rest of the lamp crashing to the floor.
Stan made it back to the couch and picked up the big plastic cup of water.
I was charging him, saying something to him that I couldn’t make out.
And that’s when he had thrown the water at me.
But I kept coming.
He pulled his cigarette lighter out of his pocket and tackled me after I had swung the bat again, flicking the lighter and holding it against my forearm.
I screamed in the video and pulled away from the flame and Stan. My eyes were wide open, and I dropped my hands down like my arms had lost all of their strength. I looked stunned, like I’d been slapped. And I guess, in a way, I had been. Stan scurried back away from me by the broken coffee table, crouched down, his lighter still in his hand, ready to use it again if he had to.
“I’m so sorry,” I said to Stan again, looking away from my frozen image on the computer screen. “I don’t remember any of that.”
Stan nodded. “It was quite a trip.”
“God, I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Maybe this is why Michelle left me. Maybe I tried to attack her in my sleep. Maybe that’s why she was afraid of me.”
“Maybe,” Stan said. “But I think she would have woken you up. You know, like I did.”
“You said it wasn’t easy to wake me up. You were yelling at me to stop. Yelling my name. The water didn’t do it, only the fire did. What if Michelle tried to wake me up while I was sleepwalking? What if she didn’t have any water? What if I had chased her out of the house? What if I had chased her across the street to that house?”
Stan sighed. “I think if something like this would’ve happened with you and Michelle, she would’ve told you about it. You’ve always woken up before. She would have waited until you were awake again and told you about it.”
That seemed to make sense, but then again nothing seemed to make sense anymore.
I looked back at the computer screen. “I was saying things when I was swinging the bat, but I couldn’t hear them on the tape. What was I saying?”
“I can’t remember everything,” Stan said. “I was going to play the footage back. See if I could make out your words a little better.”
“You still want to do this?” I asked.
“I want to help you,” he said. “Let me sit there.”
I got up and Stan sat down. He set his beer to the side and went to work on the computer, moving the mouse around, pausing and then turning up the volume.
“You got that notebook I used before?”
I grabbed the spiral notebook out of the drawer that I had used to jot down the times I’d gotten up in my sleep and when I had returned to the bedroom.
Stan played the video back and forth, writing down words quickly.
I left Stan in the office and went to the kitchen. I got the coffee machine ready. My hands were shaking the entire time, and maybe coffee wasn’t the best thing for my nerves, but I felt like I needed it. I grabbed a bottle of water out of the fridge and sipped it while I waited for the coffee to brew. I went back into the office.
“This is what I’ve got so far,” Stan said, sitting back in the office chair, holding the spiral notebook up so he could read it. “I can’t make everything out that you said. Maybe you can tell what some of the words are. But I’ve got: There’s someone in your home. Someone trying to hurt you. Use the bat.” He looked at me. “You said, ‘Go home’ and ‘use the bat’ a few times.”
There was another smaller chair in the corner of the office. I pulled that up and plopped down in the seat.
“Does any of that mean anything to you?” Stan asked. He stared at me suspiciously. He knew damn well that those words meant something to me—he could probably see it on my face.
“I was having a dream right before you burned me and woke me up. Kind of like a nightmare.”
Stan waited patiently for me to continue.
“I was running after Michelle. She was running across the street to that empty house. It was dark. I was trying to get her to stop, but she wouldn’t stop. She went into the back yard, through the gate. I followed her. And then I was inside the house, inside that storeroom area, or whatever it used to be. I heard someone moving around inside the house. I called out for Michelle, about to go inside. I looked down and realized that I had my baseball bat in my hand.”
“The same one?” Stan asked.
“Yeah. The aluminum baseball bat. Just like the one in the living room. I thought someone was in the house hurting Michelle, and just as I was about to go inside, Michelle came to the doorway, kind of like emerging from the darkness.” I didn’t want to describe what Michelle looked like in the dream to Stan—I didn’t want to see that horror in my mind again—but I needed to tell him everything. So I went on. “She had the noose around her neck, and it was so tight her eyes were bulging, her face p
uffy and dark, her tongue swollen and black. The rope seemed to go up to the ceiling somewhere inside the room, and her feet, they were hanging a few inches above the floor.”
Stan just watched me, his arms folded over his chest.
“Michelle was saying something to me,” I said. “Telling me to go home. Telling me that there was someone in my house, someone who wanted to hurt me. She told me to use the bat, the one I had in my hands.”
“So you were saying the same things that you were dreaming,” Stan said. “You were saying the same thing Michelle said in your dream.” He glanced down at his spiral notebook. “You said, ‘Go home’ and ‘Someone’s in your house’ and ‘Use the bat’.”
“Yeah, I guess so. It seems like it.”
Stan set the spiral notebook down.
“This wasn’t the first dream I’ve had,” I told him.
He looked at me, grabbing his beer and taking a long pull from it, waiting for me to go on.
“I think I’ve had a similar nightmare every night since Michelle left me. It always starts out the same. She’s running across the street toward that house, and I’m running after her.”
“Chasing her?”
“No. Well, yeah. Kind of. But it’s not like she’s afraid. She’s smiling at me in the dream, like it’s some kind of game. I tell her to wait up, to stop and wait for me. But it’s like there’s something so important in that house that she won’t even wait for me. And she won’t stop, like she’s trying to get me to follow her.”
“Because she wants you to see something in that house.”
I shrugged. “I guess. Each night I got a little further in the dream. I knew I didn’t want to see what was in that house. She seemed excited, but I wasn’t. I was scared of what was in there, scared of what was hiding in the fog. I’d never been so afraid of anything in my life.”
“And did you ever go inside the house? I mean in your dreams.”
“Yeah. Tonight I didn’t go all the way in, but I might have if you hadn’t woke me up. But last night . . . last night I went inside the house.”
“What did you see in there?”
I shook my head. I didn’t want to put it into words, but I needed to tell Stan everything. I owed him that for all that he’d been through with me so far. “I was choking Michelle. Squeezing her throat, my thumbs pressing down on her so hard. She stared up at me with this . . . this look. Her eyes were bulging, her tongue swollen.”
Stan looked away, drinking more beer. His hands were trembling a little again.
“But I wouldn’t ever do anything like that to Michelle.”
Stan didn’t say anything.
“I didn’t do anything to her,” I nearly shouted. “She was at the restaurant with me on Friday night. She went in there with me. She left the restaurant without me. She left with some man. Either willingly, or she was taken.”
“Okay,” Stan said. It seemed like he was trying to calm me down. “I know. You didn’t do anything to Michelle. But these dreams might mean something. Obviously they’re tied to what you’re doing while sleepwalking in some way.”
I nodded, sipping my water, calming down. I wanted to go make a cup of coffee, but I didn’t want to walk away from Stan just then.
He was thinking things over for a moment. I was sure he was plotting how to get out of my house and never come back again. I knew he liked this weird kind of shit, but maybe it was different when you were actually living through it rather than reading about it or watching a movie.
“Alicia,” he said and then looked at me. “I’d like to ask her to come over. Remember I told you about her? She’s studying to be a psychiatrist. Maybe she can help. You know, with the dreams and stuff. Maybe she can tell what’s going on.”
I didn’t say anything.
“You’re probably going to need to talk to someone,” Stan said. “You said you’ve been seeing a psychiatrist for a few years now.”
I nodded. “Okay. Yeah, sure. I mean anything that could help would be great.”
“We’re going to need to tell her everything that’s going on,” Stan said. “You cool with that?”
“Yeah,” I answered.
Stan stood up. He seemed more animated now that we were beginning to form a plan. He left the office. I followed him to the kitchen. It was my chance to make a cup of coffee.
“There’s something else,” Stan said.
I looked at him, frozen in the preparations of my coffee. What now?
“That mannequin in the house across the street.”
“Yeah?”
“I think we need to get it out of there.”
I knew exactly what he was talking about. If the cops decided to really start probing, then they might get a warrant to search the house across the street, hoping to find evidence of Michelle over there. A mannequin with her clothes on it and a noose around its neck wasn’t going to look good.
“Bring it here?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Maybe not everything. I mean the mannequin itself is no big deal. Like I said before, maybe some kids brought it there. But I think we need to get your wife’s clothes and boots back here. And probably the wig and the rope, too.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Stan and I got Michelle’s clothes, the wig, and the rope out of the house and across the street to my house before dawn. As far as I could tell, nobody was watching us. I hadn’t seen any cars or trucks parked down the street in either direction, but that didn’t mean somebody wasn’t watching us from somewhere else. They could be anywhere. They could be in the brush or even taking photos from a drone in the night sky.
Maybe Stan’s paranoia was beginning to rub off onto me.
Stan had asked me if I wanted to leave, maybe stay at his house or get a motel room. I told him that I didn’t want to for a few reasons. Number one, I was sure that if I left, it would raise suspicions with the two detectives. Number two, I wanted to be at home and waiting on the remote possibility that Michelle might come back or try to contact me. And number three, I didn’t want to run from this. Something was happening to me, obviously whatever sleep disorders I had, but it was something more than just the sleepwalking; I was involved in something, I just wasn’t sure what it was yet. I needed to know what it was.
After two cups of coffee, Stan left my house around seven o’clock.
I cleaned up the house. I threw the broken pieces of the coffee table and the lamp into the garbage can outside. Somehow, I hadn’t totally damaged Stan’s laptop or his cell phone when I had hit the table with my baseball bat. I thought about adding the baseball bat to the garbage outside, but I didn’t.
After checking emails and my phone a few more times, I wasn’t sure what to do next. I was still tired, and I felt like going back to sleep, but I was too scared to sleep. What if I walked in my sleep again? What if I walked across the street in the daytime?
Maybe it didn’t work in the daytime, but I didn’t want to take a chance.
*
It was almost noon when Stan called to tell me that he was coming back with his friend Alicia. He let me know that he had shown her the video he had downloaded onto his laptop.
“She wants to help,” he told me.
Twenty minutes later they were at my front door.
Alicia wasn’t what I’d been expecting. I don’t think I had a picture in my mind of what she was going to look like, what she was going to be like—Alicia was more of an abstract idea to me before I saw her in my doorway, a person who could help me get closer to the answers I needed, closer to finding out what had happened to Michelle, and what was happening to me.
She stepped inside my home and offered her hand. I shook it, a quick and tender shake, but that brief contact of my skin against her skin jolted me. I’m ashamed to say that for a few seconds my primal urges seemed to take over, some reptilian part of my brain found myself instantly attracted to her.
Maybe Stan noticed the lingering eye contact between us, the awkward silence for just a mom
ent. I wasn’t sure what Stan’s relationship to Alicia was—I hadn’t even thought to ask. Maybe she was Stan’s girlfriend, or maybe she was someone he wanted to be his girlfriend.
In fact, it made me wonder how Stan knew Alicia, a medical student studying to be a psychiatrist. I knew Stan had a lot of friends. Even with his wild conspiracy theories, people seemed naturally drawn to him. I heard about it nearly every day from the customers on his route. We just love Stan. We don’t need a manager to come out, just send Stan.
“Alicia,” Stan said. “This is Zach, the guy I’ve been telling you about.”
She nodded and flashed a bright smile of perfect teeth that seemed even whiter against her tan skin. Her hair was jet-black and tied up in some kind of intricate bun. She wore jeans, a strappy kind of blouse, and sneakers. She smelled like Ivory soap with just the hint of something flowery.
“Zach, Alicia,” Stan said, gesturing at her like a game show host.
“Hi, Alicia,” I said, finally finding my voice. “Thank you so much for coming by. I’m sure this isn’t normal for you.”
“What’s normal?” she said.
I was struck for a second.
She smiled, and I realized she was trying to make some kind of joke.
“Sorry. Psychiatry humor.”
“You want something to drink?” I asked, stepping into the kitchen. I needed to step away from her gaze for a moment. The way she was staring at me sent shivers along my skin. But I needed to be realistic. I mentally slapped myself. She wasn’t looking at me because she was attracted to me, but because I was some kind of enigma to her, something to be studied. I knew Stan had shown her the tapes of my sleepwalking episodes, told her about my missing wife, filled in all the other details including the mannequin with my wife’s clothes and the noose around its neck.
Stan and Alicia followed me into the kitchen.
“I’ve got a few cans of Coke,” I said as I opened the fridge, still trying to avert her gaze, but I could feel her watching me. “Bottles of water. I could make some tea or coffee.”
