Sleep Revised

by Wright, Michael

  A child ran out of a door directly in front of him, and he froze. There was a soft giggle. It was a young boy, dressed in a white robe that was stained black with hand prints all over, covering his small body with the marks of the shadows.

  The whispering intensified, in volume and thickness, more than one voice. It was the sound of many speaking in unison, together crying out against the darkness. The blood of the innocents that was shed.

  There was a mutter from behind him, and he turned quickly to see the shadows, shifting faster then materializing together. Behind them he saw long tendril like arms that were swirling in constant motion, breaking through the boundaries of reality and into a place they did not belong, all of matter protesting to their presence, trying to push them back to the hell that they came from. He felt a tearing begin in his chest as he stared at them and a buzz in the back of his skull. He wiped wetness from his mouth, and saw thick blood on his palm.

  Over here

  The whisper pulled him away from the shadows to look at the end of the hallway, where he saw a vague shape, hunched down, with an arm reached out to gesture for him to come closer, beckoning him through the darkness that surrounded him.

  “Hello?”

  No answer, no echo. All he heard was the mutter of the tendrils moving behind him, breaking through the horrendous tear in reality. Every movement was a profanity punctuated with a sickening twist of the omni-directional arms.

  He could smell a thick stench in the air as he walked forward, and he could see the viscous liquid on the walls grow thicker, reflecting back the light from the dim candles that were in the hollowed out rooms of the hall.

  Another giggle pulled him forward, beckoning to him. He stepped through the lighted line that split the hallway with the doorways, and he heard a gasp, either of pain or pleasure he couldn’t make out, and he didn’t want to, as he heard it followed by a metallic scraping. From the corner of his eye he saw the shadowy shape of a robed figure, holding in his hand a series of razor-thin blades, and flicked his hand. He pulled his gaze away just as they began to move down on the woman in front of him.

  The door to his far right was glowing brightly, and he began toward that one, he could hear the voices emanating from it. Running in deep waves toward him, washing into his consciousness as the shadows whispered on.

  The writhing arms in the crowd behind him began to grow in intensity. He heard the sounds like wet flesh on wet flesh, slapping together in an unearthly rhythm. He heard a unified whisper, and another scream before he heard the sound that he had been afraid of since he had began in the hallway.

  A thunderous pounding, in horrendous steady beat began, from the other side of a wooden door.

  From the room to his far right he could see a figure approaching. By the form and shape he could tell it was a woman, clothed in a garment of some kind with a veil.

  He began to walk faster toward it, and the tendrils behind him continued their slapping together.

  “Hello?” He didn’t know why he continued to call out, but he did, he felt as if it were something he had to do, to get the attention of the figure. Something inside of him leapt, and nervousness grew—he knew who it was that stood there, but he dared not admit it, he dared not disappoint himself with longing.

  The figure stepped out, veiled in white and shadow. It reminded him of a bridal gown, adorned in her finest for her new husband, but perverted and blasphemous in the dark and twisted hallway that surrounded him.

  The pounding continued.

  He ran toward the figure, and when he reached close enough his heart leapt into his chest. He knew it was her, and he allowed his heart to wander towards her, embracing the sweetness of her presence.

  “Carol!”

  She turned toward him, and he stopped in his tracks.

  Behind the sheer veil, a rotting, grotesque face stared back. Down the center of it was a zipper, black thread running all across the face that it sat in the middle of. The body it was attached to was thin and worm eaten, he could see maggots crawling beneath her flesh, writhing as they ate, feasting on the flesh of his long departed wife.

  “Hello, Clark,” the thing rasped to him. “Come and see.”

  The cloth clung to her tightly, moist against the rotting skin, her body was covered with the same viscous substance that was on the walls, a smelling and rotting wetness that lapped around her mouth and eyes. Where her hair had once been was bald, and slick with the slime. He saw a bug crawl across her scalp.

  “See.”

  She reached to the top of her head, and began to pull down the zipper.

  He tried to look away, but he could not, he was frozen in place. He felt the hot breath of the shadowy figures behind him, pushing against him, denying him the opportunity to run—forcing him to watch.

  She rolled down the zipper and revealed blackness. Her face folded and sagged as if it were being deflated of air, like a cheap Halloween mask. Behind her face was a thick black void, ever growing in darkness—filled to the brim with profane emptiness. It was the place, he knew, where the shadows came from. He knew it was what was on the other side of the door.

  “See the glory of the Elder Ones.” Her voice echoed in the chamber.

  He felt himself being pulled into her face, and it grew in size and closeness. He screamed the scream of a madman on the brink of his own undoing, and he began to fall into the void beyond.

  Before he awoke, he heard them screaming back at him.

  2

  The ringing of his phone pulled him out of the sleep.When he realized what it was, he could feel the chill that had been in the hallway falling away from him, like dust settling in the eaves of an old house in the wake of an earthquake. He glanced over at the nightstand, his phone was chirping loudly, the ringtone he had for general numbers that were not programmed in. He reached for it, trying to cut through the haze of sleep that hung over his eyes, noticing that it was eight-thirty in the morning, far later than he usually slept.

  What’s wrong with me?

  He pulled the phone off of the charger, clearing his sleep-cramped throat as he did so, and slid the green icon to the end of the screen. “Hello?”

  A gentle female voice, “Dr. Bell?”

  The cobwebs in his mind shifted, “Samantha?”

  “Yes.” The answer was crisp, and hesitant.

  “Sorry about that. Um, how can I help you?” He tried to think if he had left his cell phone number with her. Was it still on his business card?

  “I, um. Well this is kind of awkward, but I just went to Jon’s apartment and…”

  He heard a horn honk in the distance, the impatience of a morning driver on the dreaded commute to whatever dead-end job it was that made them so miserable to be a pain in everyone else’s collective rear. She sighed. “I think you need to see something.”

  “Is something wrong?” He slid his legs over the bed, glancing around the room for the clothes that he had set out the night before, as he usually did. He would have to call in to the office, he was going to be later than usual. Amanda could handle it, she always could. He had a light schedule that week.

  “Not…well, I think you just need to see it.” He heard more traffic and the clacking of boots on concrete. “Can you maybe swing by his place today?”

  He shrugged, even though he knew she couldn’t see him. “I think so, yes. I only have a couple patients today.”

  “Good.” He detected relief. “I don’t know how to describe it. It’s just weird.”

  “What is?”

  “What I found in there. Jon was not in a good place, I don’t think.”

  He knew that was very true. His mind shifted to the box filled with the gruesome stories and articles. “I’ll take a look then.” He didn’t know what kind of good that would do, but the words themselves made him feel a little better—more in control than he was before, even though he knew that was an illusion.

  “I really appreciate it.” Her voice was breathy, heavy, in it was a bree
d of concern that he knew quite well, mixed with a touch of weariness.

  “It’s no problem.” He replied. “So, you have my cell, do you just want me to text you when I can come out there?”

  “Oh, right. Sorry, hope that doesn’t bother you. It was scribbled down on a paper at Jon’s.”

  That made a little more sense. “Of course.” He looked over at the clock, cursing himself for the time. “Do you need anything else?”

  “No. Just come out there please.”

  “Will do.” The first trickles of sunlight were peeking through his window on the cool late October morning. It did little to warm or cheer him however.

  “See you then. Bye.” Her words were quick, and he heard the familiar clunk on the other end of a signal being dropped, followed by the distressed beeping of his phone crying out that the call had been terminated.

  Clark rubbed his eyes, and selected the number on the screen, with a few swipes, he threw it in his contacts, but didn’t place it in a category. He didn’t know where it would fit exactly so he just left it to float around freely.

  He stood up and felt the cool air of the apartment wrap around his bare torso, and he headed over to the closet. As he walked, he turned around and saw something sitting by the edge of the bed. When he reached the other side opposite from where he was sleeping, he saw a shirt. One that he hadn’t seen in a long time. He grabbed the shirt in a tight fist and stood up with it in his hands. It was a nightshirt, a simple white one, soft to the touch and smooth in his hands. It was Carol’s.

  He looked around the room. An uneasiness filled him. He glanced over at the dresser on the far wall that he had kept all of Carol’s things in and saw that a lone drawer was open. He didn’t remember going over to it, nor did he remember opening the drawer and pulling out the nightshirt. He knew it was something that he had done shortly after she passed, many drunken nights. But he had not done that in a very long time.

  He set it down on the bed and looked around again, looking for something else out of place. His phone chirped with a notification, breaking the dim morning silence. He didn’t see anything that looked directly out of place and reached back for the nightshirt and gently folded the soft fabric in his hands, feeling it gently, and walked over to the dresser, slipped it neatly onto the pile of clothes that had belonged to her, letting a breath seep in through his nose, taking in the smell of them. Behind the musty smell of closed drawers, he could smell the faint whiff of soap and perfume. A gentle scent that had filled his nostrils every night before he went to sleep and every morning before he left for work.

  The hollow place inside of him ached in his chest, and he swallowed hard as he shut the drawer and stood up.

  He shook the memories from his head and went for his closet, pulling open the door to a full length mirror. In the mirror he saw someone else, a woman, standing in the room with him. Wrapped in a white robe, in her hands was a long knife. He could see in the dimness of the reflection that on her face was a zipper.

  Clark jerked around but saw nothing. There was nobody there.

  “Just a dream.” He told himself, despite the fact that he was beginning to believe that it was far more than that.

  He pulled a fresh undershirt out of the closet and grabbed the clothes he had set out the night before and began to put them on, watching the corners of the room, waiting for a figure to emerge again, and pull down the horrendous zipper into the abyss of hell.

  When he secured the knot on his shoes, and slipped his phone in his pocket he headed out of the bedroom, reconsidering calling in. She should be able to handle it with him gone, he supposed.

  He stepped into the living room and stopped. The room that he was certain he had left organized the night before was trashed, He stepped forward and knocked the papers around on the floor, the papers and photographs that had been neatly piled in their separate places had been cast to all sides of the room. He could see them in the corner, and in the middle. The obscene images were all exposed, acts of violence and crudely drawn depictions of depraved sex were all lined up neatly at the end of the room, building a wall around the doorway that led into the kitchen area of the apartment. He looked past it, and saw the picture of Carol that occupied the counter had been replaced.

  “What in the name of…”

  Over her picture was a drawing of the eye, and small figures, almost stick drawings, were dancing around it.

  Come and see.

  3

  “How often did he come to the church to collect these things?” Samantha sipped her coffee, and stared across the table at the reverend, who was in his street clothes at the moment.

  Capaldi played with the stirring stick in his own drink, and smiled, “Often.” He shifted in his chair, causing it to creak against him, even though he was a slight man. “It was at least once a week he would come and ask about something, and request a fresh batch of holy water.”

  “How often is that?”

  “Often enough. At least once a week. I spent a lot of time with Jon the past few months. He had a lot of questions. A lot of concerns, but mostly he had a lot of fears, ones that I didn’t really know how to abate outside of our normal practices.” He finally took a draw from his coffee that he had left to cool for some time.

  “What was he afraid of?”

  “Demons.” Capaldi smiled, “The Devil. He wanted to know what the church teaching was on those. I’m afraid I wasn’t as much help to him as he would have liked, but I was able to sort through some of the holy-rolling nonsense that has been passed around as fact for so long these days.”

  “So he had a lot of info he was bringing to you?”

  “Yes. He had stuff he brought me from websites and other such as that. Books that would have been better off left unpublished and out of the reach of people like Jon who were so afraid for their own souls and so young in the faith that they can’t process it. He struggled with picking the truth from the lies. But as time went on his questions got to be too deep for my knowledge, and we stopped talking about it altogether. “

  Sam leaned back, she then pulled a corner off of the cookie she had ordered with her coffee and nibbled on it. “That’s when the blessings started?”

  The priest laughed, “No, no. That was the starting point. He asked me to bless him, and if I would give him some holy water.”

  “You did?”

  “Of course. I asked him what he was going to do with the water and he said he was going to anoint his house with it.” He shrugged, “It didn’t seem like a bad idea to me, so I blessed some water and salt, gave it to him in a bottle and he went on his way.”

  Sam looked across from her, into the coffee shop, eying a form that looked way too familiar that sat at the far corner of the shop. He was sipping a cup that had to have been empty by that time, especially with the way he was drinking it. He kept looking their direction and she felt her shoulders tense when he met her gaze.

  “After a while, he began to ask for more. And anointing oil. Then a bit of the ashes from Ash Wednesday. I gave it to him, if nothing else, I figured having some of those things couldn’t harm him.” He sighed, “I wonder if in part I should have seen something more going on. He must have had a lot on his mind that night.”

  Sam nodded, “Yeah.” She picked at her hand, a loose piece of flesh that jutted from her bare and chewed nails. “He uh. He had some interesting stuff at his apartment.”

  Capaldi’s face brightened, “So you went?”

  “Yes.”

  “Samantha that is good! The best way to heal is to start by obtaining closure.”

  “Thank you, Father, but it wasn’t quite the healing experience that it could have been. I found some…disturbing things there.”

  “Like what?” He asked, grabbing up his cup.

  She looked at him, his eyebrows raised in genuine curiosity, in fact, concerned curiosity she thought. She wondered if he would understand. He had loved Jon clearly. He had loved him enough to indulge what would be consid
ered by most to be utter fanaticism, and he had cared for Jon for a long time during that. He had been the one source of happiness that he had. But would he understand? How could she expect him to?

  “Just…some personal stuff. I’m not sure that I want to talk about it right now if that’s okay, Father.”

  “No problem at all.” Hands raised in assurance, “I only discuss what people are comfortable discussing. As a rule.” He reached for his own plate that sat in front of him, a cinnamon muffin that he had selected along with a rich roast coffee. “I find that if you try to pull things out of people, they withdraw more, which in the long run does nothing more than damage them further and hurt their ability to trust anyone at all.” He looked at her, a knowing look passed across his eyes, “Don’t you think?”

  She chuckled a little bit, it sounded close enough to an agreement to her.

  What does he know?

  “Did Jon ever talk about me?” She grabbed her coffee cup for support, “Like, about our childhood and all?”

  He swallowed a piece of the muffin quickly, washing it down with creamy coffee, “Yes, some. In fact he always spoke very highly of you, apparently you were quite the support system back in those days. A real trooper! You know, with everything that happened.”

  He knew. “I wouldn’t go that far, Father.”

  “I would.” The cup was sat down, resolutely.

  The man behind them was looking their way again, and he didn’t look away when she met his eyes.

  4

  Clark glanced at his watch, fighting the urge to swear at the lack of time that had passed since he last looked. The office was unbearably quiet. He had seen one patient for the day, and he knew that he had one more, but that was it.

  Beside him, the notebook sat with the handwritten title. He had decided not to leave it after the trashing that he had discovered that morning, a trashing that thanks to locked doors and windows was unable to be explained, and had left it on the desk next to him.