Sleep Revised

by Wright, Michael

“What do you mean, something moved?”

  “I mean that something moved! Something slid into place on this thing and just clicked. Like it’s turning, and tracking where we are.”

  He tapped a hand on the steering wheel, “It has to be something that happened when you were messing with it.”

  “I stopped messing with it.”

  “Are you sure? It had to be something you knocked loose, you were prying pretty hard with it.”

  “I didn’t touch it, I swear!”

  He looked at it again. The orb didn’t move the time he looked at it, but he could swear that he heard something. Like a breath, heavy and thick coming from it. He had heard the sound many times before in the hospital with Carol. Thick and labored breaths that come from the harshness of cancer eating away at the body. The smell of rot and decay accompanying it, drifting out of the mouth and filling the air. He wished he could have blocked it out, somehow not to have heard it. It made him sick to think about.

  Clark turned back up toward the road in front of him and slammed on his brakes. The rubber screamed against the pavement, howling like a wounded dog in the dull emptiness of the highway. He heard Sam cry out next to him, and his arm flew out to brace her against the sudden stop, trying to keep her from slamming her head into the passenger side dashboard. He felt her press against his hand and the the car began to drift from one lane to the other, slipping and sliding. Then they stopped. He felt his head slam against the steering wheel, a bump against the vinyl surface. He pulled his head up and immediately looked, searching.

  “Where is she?” He said.

  “What the…” Sam muttered, “Who?”

  “Carol.” He breathed, “she was just there.”

  Sam looked out of the windshield, scanning the landscape in front of them, checking the rear-view mirrors for any sign of a person there. Clark unfastened his seatbelt and hopped out of the car, flinging the door open behind him. His legs felt like gelatin as they hit the pavement and he almost fell over. He could smell burned rubber, a sickening and sweet aroma that drifted from his tires. There weren’t any cars behind him so he walked a few steps, scanning the woods around them. She had been there, he was sure of that.

  The area around them was dead. There was barely a sound out there, not even the dull roar of cars on the other side of the tree line where the rest of the highway was going the other direction. He thought he could hear a trickle of thunder in the distance, coming from the heavy clouds beyond them that had looked so ominous.

  “Where is she?” He asked, trying to understand what he had just seen. “She was right there. Just like before.” There was a feeling deep in his chest, a tightness that he had felt so many times since her passing. Part of him wondered if that was the part of him that had been so connected to her. When they first met he remembered a lightness that would be there, like butterflies fluttering in his chest, trying to get out.

  Sam opened her door and walked out onto the road, he heard her footsteps come up next to him, her thick boots against the pavement.

  In an instant, he bent over and threw up. The vomit had come on him suddenly, rushing up his throat and flooding his mouth, thick yellow strands that he had not remembered eating, all of it oozing out of him and onto the pavement in harsh retches. He remembered when Carol would do that toward the end.

  He wiped his mouth when he finished and stood, turning to Sam, his eyes downward. He caught a glimpse of her face and saw that she looked frightened, or worried. He wasn’t sure which expression was stronger. He noticed his forehead was bleeding where he had hit it on the steering wheel.

  “How about I drive for awhile?” She said.

  2

  The sky around them had grown dark, cut by the twin lights from the front of the Honda. Sam reached in between the two seats and drew out a coffee refill that they had gotten a few hundred miles back. It was cold and stale, but the fresh moisture in her mouth felt good. It was something outside of the nervous dryness that had been swallowing her for the past few hours, after the incident that could have very well killed them had the road been crowded.

  Clark was asleep, at least that was what she thought. He had been laying back with his eyes closed for a long time. His breathing was slow, but not so slow that he couldn’t be awake. It didn’t seem as ragged as it was though, after he spent those moments staring into an empty road. The butterfly bandages that held the small wound on his forehead closed were still holding tight from what she could tell, though the first aid kit that had been in the car had certainly seen better days.

  She glanced again, making sure he was still asleep as she set the coffee down. The road in front of her had remained unchanged for hours. All she could see was deadness. The grass was browning and leaves falling in the wind. They had only seen a few cars as they were going. The truck they had passed earlier must had taken an exit. It hadn’t shown up when he stopped, or during the moment they took for her to bandage his head. The nothingness was alarming. It was borderline terrifying, like they were the last people on the earth.

  Thoughts of the movies and television she had seen where the people were some of the last survivors, either in a nuclear winter or zombie apocalypse flashed through her mind. They would be fighting against forces so beyond their control and they would wander and walk—alone. She had always been afraid of that, even though she never really knew how to accept it. She never wanted to be alone in the world, despite that most of the time she had been. There was a hopeless feeling attached to it that she hated. It ate away at her, chewing down to the bone, and it gave her a slight chill.

  She glanced at the GPS, they had a lot of miles left to go, and she figured that it would be best to keep an eye out for a motel. They would need to stop, and rest for a while. They couldn’t keep going through the night, it was too dark, and she was too tired. Besides, the road was too empty at night. Though she often prided herself in lack of fear, she couldn’t resist the feeling of terror that tried to slip into her mind and blind her that seemed to love to spring out at her.

  Her eyes kept scanning the perimeter of the road, searching for something, anything that might be there. There wasn’t even any animals to be see thus far, and the emptiness of it all was more terrifying than any of what she had seen.

  The orb hadn’t moved in some time. She had been listening out for it, waiting for another panel to slide into place, clicking, showing the sign of some oncoming danger or specter. It made no sound, as if it had already had all of the fun it was going to. It’s presence in the car made her nervous. She would have been much more comfortable with it outside somewhere, not where it was so close. She kept listening for it, kept waiting for it.

  She thought of the image that Jon had painted, of her standing above people with long arms wrapped around her. The familiar terror crawled over her, she could feel the arms wrapping around her on the inside, and wondered for a moment if it wasn’t a bad idea for them to be going where they were. It was probably far from safe. It had killed Jon, and Morrison’s niece. Even Father Capaldi, probably the most protected out of all of them had been killed by it, if it wasn’t a load of bunk after all that was.

  The GPS spoke in the darkness, announcing how many hours they had left. It was only another six to eight hours, but they had been at it all day as it was. The beginnings of sleep began to appear at the corners of her eyes, a dragging feeling that would wash over her and just as soon pull back and disappear. It was a strange sensation with the road humming beneath her, the car rumbling around her in dull disinterest.

  The cruise control on the car was surprisingly smooth to her. She was able to adjust the speed and reset it fluidly, which comforted her somewhat. She didn’t want to have to try to eye the speed constantly with her foot on the gas and brake. It was hard enough to drive the distance that she was, she didn’t want to compound that with the difficulty of making sure the right amount of pressure was being applied with her thick boots. She almost never drove in boots, when she had owned a car
she never would, always tennis shoes. She was always so afraid of keeping the pressure on the peddle too hard. Driving too fast. She had never gotten a ticket, not even a speeding ticket and she dared not get one in someone else’s car.

  Behind her she saw a flash, lights glinting off of something, and then it was gone. If there was someone driving behind her, they hadn’t bothered to turn their lights on. She doubted that anyone would do that, but after the incident in the coffee shop, she found paranoia to be the new norm for her. There was nothing wrong with being careful, as she saw it.

  She saw a sign off to the side, green catching in the lights of the car brightly. It said that there was a motel ahead somewhere. The glance she got said something over thirty miles. Just a half hour at the speed they were going if she figured correctly. It would be about as long as she could hold out, she knew that much.

  They needed to reach it soon, before the orb clicked again, and before she saw anything more that night, creeping out the the shadows toward her.

  Peekaboo.

  3

  Clark stood at the desk with Samantha next to him. The woman behind the counter had long ago suffered the pains of middle age that had reduced her stare to a skeptical scowl. He couldn’t blame her. When a thirty plus year old man and a young, mid-twenties blonde came looking for a room, it was bound to look like something the old biddies gossiped about over bingo down at the local senior’s center. She looked over her thick reading glasses at him with the coy grin that said she knew exactly what he was up to. He wondered how many times a week that she got to give a man that look, and how many men would nod back at her.

  “Two separate rooms, please.” He said.

  She looked back at her key rack, “We got an adjoining room if you want. Otherwise I’ll need to set you two up across the building.”

  “You booked a lot tonight?”

  “Under construction. Doing some renovation, you know.” She looked confused, as if she’d expected him to ask about how much an hour they ran and how that rate compared to the other Super Roach Motel down the road.

  “We’ll take the adjoining room, if that’s okay.” He looked back at Sam.

  She nodded. Her expression was quiet. He had been asleep longer than he had intended to be, when he woke a mile out from the motel she had hardly spoken, and still continued to remain nearly completely silent as they went to the motel. He was worried about her. More than that, he was worried about how much he had worried her with the incident in the middle of the road.

  “The adjoining room.”

  A brow raised and her arm reached back, grabbing two keys. “They don’t work in both doors, I hope you understand, and the adjoining door deadbolts from…” she shifted the keys, “This side.”

  Clark gestured for Sam to take that key, making his point clear that they were not there for a little late night booty call. He wondered what the woman was thinking of them now. They could have been cousins off to visit a dying grandmother up the road a-ways, if he was interested in fabricating a story. It seemed pointless and it was more fun to make the woman wonder and make her own judgments, so he let it be.

  “Thank you.” He took the key from her hand. “You take credit?”

  She nodded.

  He removed his wallet and saw Sam reach for hers in her handbag. “I’ve got it,” he said.

  “I can help out.”

  “No need.” He handed her the Capital One and waited to sign the receipt. The room numbers he saw were close to the main office, that would make checkout even easier than he had originally thought it would be. The less time he had to spend around the woman with the sour disposition would be all for the better.

  She handed him back the customer copy of the receipt. “There are fresh towels in the bathroom. Checkout time is at ten or earlier. The cable’s not working, but we have some local channels that still come through if you’re interested in watching something.”

  “We just need a place to crash for the night, thanks.” He said and motioned for Sam to follow him. She fell into step immediately behind him, and he gave her a knowing smirk when she rolled her eyes toward the woman who most likely was going to be on the phone as soon as they walked out trying to figure out who belonged to who in town and why people who were sleeping together would get separate rooms. There were some things about that kind of small town that you simply could not replicate anywhere else. The gossips were one of them.

  When the cheap glass door shut behind them, he checked the number on the key, and pointed to the left. “Just a couple rooms down on that side. I’ll bring the car over and help you get your things.”

  “Thanks.” Her voice was quiet and distant.

  “Are you okay?” He asked.

  She nodded.

  He slipped the room key into his pocket, “Okay, just a second.” The air around him was rich and crisp. It had the kind of feeling that normally came with fall when college girls would break out their Uggs and pumpkin spice. At the dingy motel on the side of a long highway, it seemed more ominous than amusing or something that would stir up a pumpkin craving. He guessed it was getting close to Halloween, even though it never bothered him before. He had always kind of enjoyed the decorations and scary movies that would accompany the season. Jon’s death had given the whole thing an ominous note. It had spoiled it in some way.

  Unconsciously, he kept looking around the corners of his vision for a woman standing there in a long flowing gown, reaching out to him with cold, dead fingers, calling him to join her on the other side of wherever the heck it was that they were actually going. The car door slipped open and he hopped inside, gunning the engine to life, and looked behind him in the rear-view mirror. As expected, there was nobody there, but he felt like there was something nearby, watching over them. Stalking them. He wasn’t one given to paranoia, not even with the events of the past few days, but in the dark, cold night, he couldn’t be rid of that terrible feeling.

  Sam was already wrestling her room door open, and he saw in the dull glow of the headlights the number that indicated his was directly left of that, adjoined somewhere in the middle probably by the cheapest door that money could buy. Or they were joined by a twin set of doors, doubtless old and creaking, as the rest of the place seemed to be. He wondered why they bothered remodeling and didn’t just tear the dump down and start over.

  He slipped the car into park and stared ahead for a moment, waiting for Sam to re-emerge from her room. Through the blinds he could see her step in front of the mirror, reach behind her and unfasten her hair from a tight ponytail that she had kept it in the entire trip over there. It flew from side to side as she shook out the gathered knot and tossed the elastic band onto the dresser. She turned and looked out at him.

  For a moment she held his gaze. Her look was gentle, and knowing. It was different from the first time they had met, there was something about her that had changed toward him. He wasn’t sure if it was due to the death of the priest, the effort he had taken in putting together the research her brother had left them, or maybe it was knowing about his past that had opened him up to her. He returned that look, just as knowing, just as kind. In that moment, they shared a pain that only few on the earth can share.

  She was going with him all the way, even in stops on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere as they made the journey even further into nowhere. It sobered him, in a lot of ways. He tapped the steering wheel with the finger that had once held a wedding band, scanning around him again with his eyes, making sure that nobody—or nothing—was watching him.

  Sam’s shadow filled the door, lit by the dim lamps behind her, waiting.

  He turned the engine off.

  4

  “Clark?”

  He jerked awake. The darkness swallowed him whole. The light that had been there from the motel sign when he had drifted into sleep was gone. Probably to save energy, or maybe they had lost power. He wondered how long it would take for power to be restored to the remote motel.

&n
bsp; Someone was in the room with him. Calling him.

  “Clark?”

  Carol?

  He saw movement out of the corner of his eye. No. Not Carol. It was Samantha, it had to be. He was awake, not dreaming. He was still in the tiny room they had stopped in. Carol was not there, she had never been there. He scanned the room with is eyes, trying to pick out any shapes in the darkness. He saw someone standing over him, a shadow that’s face was sliding off, dripping toward him from the essence that surrounded it. He could feel hot breath. Hear the whisper of it breaking. They had come for him, they had finally come to end it all before he reached the end, stopping him before he made it to the conclusion of their terrible journey.

  “Clark? Are you awake?”

  It was Sam. He shook his head slightly, trying to clear away the cobwebs of sleep. They were heavy around his eyes, thick layers that slowly sluiced to the corners, gathering, he was sure it was the sand that was always there in the morning. Memories of what you saw during the night mingled together and hardened.

  “Yeah.” He could barely register the gravely reply as his own voice. It seemed strained and weak. No, it seemed pained. He tried to remember back to the dream he had been having. He knew something had been happening in the dream, something terrible.

  “I heard something.” She said.

  He paused, and he listened for a moment. He still heard her breathing, rapid and deep. He heard his own excuse for breathing, which was more like a dull wheeze broken by the occasional pause, drifting his stink into the air.

  There was nothing.

  “What did you hear?”

  “Someone is outside. At the car.”

  “Did you take a look? See anyone?”

  “No.”

  He pulled himself up. The cool air made him jump a little bit, his bare torso was sweaty, and he could feel sweat all the way down to his feet. The blankets around him were cool and moist, barely touched by his perspiration. He could smell himself on them. Despite showering the day before. It was the smell of fear, a dank musk.