51 Sleepless Nights

by Tobias Wade

  Natalie is coming over to my place tonight. I mean Sarah – I mean Natalie – I mean –

  The girl won’t stop calling me. I’m getting text messages every ten minutes. Whatever I turn the conversation to, she always redirects it back to my dead wife. Natalie is still with me, I know it. She doesn’t want me to move on.

  When she comes over tonight, I’m going to ask her straight out. If she says she’s Sarah – if she says she isn’t my wife – I’ll leave it at that.

  But if she admits her spirit is still here… I don’t know. I’ll do whatever I can to help her find peace.

  Natalie has traveled to the other side. I’m finally free. For the first time since her death, her presence is finally gone.

  I didn’t have the courage to ask the girl right away. I could tell she was reserved too, so we both had a couple of drinks. I knew I needed to ask, but it still felt so awkward and wrong, so I just kept drinking. Finally I was able to push the words out:

  “Are you really Sarah, or are you Natalie’s spirit?”

  “I’m everything she was,” she said, and she kissed me. I closed my eyes, and I could taste Natalie’s lips. I ran my fingers through Natalie’s hair, and felt my wife’s hands on my chest.

  It was so good to hold her again, even if this was the last time. It was so good to feel her skin beneath my hands. It was so good to choke the life out of her, sending her spirit back to rest.

  I hope she stays gone. This is the third time I’ve had to send Natalie back to the other side. I’m working through my grief in my own way though, and once Natalie has finally let go of me, I think I’ll be able to let go of her too. As long as I have a body beside me, I think I can finally sleep in my bed again tonight.

  Sometimes a song is just a song.

  Sometimes a smile is just a smile.

  Some people are meant to be alone.

  Dead Man Floating

  I found the first floater when I was seven years old. It had washed up on the shore about a hundred yards from my family’s summer house. It still looked mostly human – a bit swollen and decomposed, but whole enough for me to immediately recognize what it was.

  Even as a kid, I was never very squeamish. I used to watch my father skin the deer he caught on his hunting trips, and I would clean my own fish whenever I reeled one in from the salty lake. Finding a human body was the best thing that could have happened to me that summer.

  I thought about telling my parents, but there’s no way they would let me play with it. Heck, they might even ban me from going down to the water at all, a thought which my seven-year-old brain equated to nuclear holocaust, an asteroid destroying the earth, or other disasters of similar magnitude.

  So I did what any clear thinking seven year old would do. I gathered up all the other kids I knew and charged them 5$ each to poke it with a stick. The salt water preserved it well enough for us to stomach the smell, but poking it would release some of the bloated gas still trapped in the carcass. I told them they could have their money back if they could lick it without throwing up.

  No-one got their money back. I made 60$ before one of the little snitches told his mother and she called the police.

  Next summer when I came back, the first thing I did was race back to the same spot. Sure enough, there had been two more bodies to wash up over the winter. These must have been sitting out in the sun for a while though, because I couldn’t even get close to them.

  My father had followed me that time, and I wasn’t allowed to have any fun. The police said these bodies must be new, since they would have been completely rotten if they had been down there for a year.

  Over the next 10 years, there had been another three bodies found beside the lake. Each was slightly more decomposed than the last, but the police still insisted they had to be separate incidents because they were all still too fresh.

  None of them could be identified, and as they didn’t fit any missing persons within the entire state, the police had no leads to discover who was dumping the bodies. They had given up, but I was never able to put the mystery out of my mind.

  I had my own theory. I decided those people didn’t just die in the lake – they lived in it too. I thought that when they die, they float to the surface just like when humans die, they’re buried in the ground. In retrospect the idea didn’t really make sense, but it had started forming when I was so young that I refused to let go until the mystery had been resolved.

  When I was in college I became SCUBA certified for the sole purpose of finding where those bodies were coming from. I rented my own equipment and went back to that lake the summer of my freshman year.

  The water was incredibly buoyant from all the salt, and it took almost 20 pounds of weights before I would finally sink to the floor. It was slow progress working my way through the lake – six separate dives before I found what I didn’t even know I was looking for.

  A sunken plane. I don’t know how long it had been down here, but it looked rusted as shit. One of the doors had completely rusted off, and I was able to enter and look around.

  There were two more bodies inside, no-more than skeletons now. The inside of the plane was compartmentalized almost like it was broken into sealed jail cells.

  The locks on some of the cells had long since rusted open, and I’m guessing these are where the floaters came from. If they were in their own pressurized air chambers, then that explains how they were preserved for so long. As the plane deteriorated, they must have broken free and floated to the surface one by one.

  My most important discovery was the black box – although it was painted bright orange, so it’s a pretty stupid name. I brought it back with me and swam to the surface to research my findings.

  The plane was a Douglass C-47, which was used for military transport during World War 2. They were still being used for decades afterward though. Some remained operational even up to 2012, so I still don’t know how long it’s been there.

  The flight data recorder had completely deteriorated, but the cockpit voice recorder still had some salvageable tape. Most of it was fuzzy or jumpy, but here is what I have.

  “164, Roger” (Something I couldn’t make out)

  “Unable to make out your last message. Please repeat.”

  “It’s out. Repeat – one of them has gotten out.”

  “Has the cockpit been compromised?”

  “Negative. Cell block is” (couldn’t hear).

  “Please repeat, Captain.”

  “Repeat – cell block is compromised. It’s letting the others out. Fucking-Christ”

  “Remain calm, Captain. Can you neutralize the test subject?”

  “Not without compromising cockpit – how far am I from the landing field?”

  (Something unintelligible)

  “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

  (something unintelligible)“… not granted permission land.”

  “Well then, what the fuck am I supposed to do?”

  (something something)“Mission terminated. Thank you for your service, Captain.”

  “My service ain’t over until I bring this bird down.”

  “You’re ordered to force collision. Test subjects must not escape.”

  “Like Hell I am. I’m bringing her down into some water now. Request rescue operations.”

  “Mission terminated. Rescue operation denied.”

  After that, all I could hear was engine sounds. It went on for about five minutes, and I was about to stop listening when I heard something like a snarling tiger.

  I guess I haven’t changed that much since I was a kid, because I still don’t want to bring this into the police. I’ve got another dive planned next week, and I’m going to try to break open the remaining cell blocks to get a look inside.

  I’ll admit I was pretty hesitant about making my second dive. Just to be safe, I decided not to go on this one alone. Two nights ago I reconnected with Entoine, one of the boys
who found some of the original floaters with me. He still remembered trying to lick the body to get his 5$ back, and we laughed about it – I guess that sort of thing only happens once in your life.

  I showed him the audio recordings I pulled from the black box and talked him into joining me. He didn’t have dive equipment, but I knew I’d feel better with him in the boat.

  “Notice feeling anything strange since you licked it?” I asked him while we were rowing out to the middle of the lake.

  “What kind of strange? You mean besides puking my guts out?”

  “Warts. New birth mark in the shape of a pentagram. Sudden urge to kill people. You know – something like that.”

  “Not that I can think of,” he admitted. “Except for my ability to talk to animals.”

  “What? Seriously?”

  “Yeah. He smirked. “They just don’t talk back. Keep pulling your weight or the boat is going to start turning in circles.”

  Reading too many horror stories online must have made me paranoid. I don’t know what I was so afraid of in the first place. The visibility was good underwater, and I didn’t even see any fish besides a host of little black water slugs scootering around.

  Instead of weights, this time I just used a crowbar to sink me down to the plane. The doors were so rusted they were starting to unfasten on their own, so it was no problem breaking the lock off.

  I was tense, but I remembered to force myself to keep breathing evenly through the regulator. Holding my breath under water could easily result in an arterial gas embolism. Then I’d be the next floater they found washed up on the beach.

  Even without the lock, the room was still pressure sealed with an air pocket inside. I tried leveraging the crowbar, but I still couldn’t pry the door open against the weight of all that water. I managed to hammer on the door with the metal bar until a leak appeared. The wider I forced the hole, the more water flowed through to equalize the pressure. Once it was full, it should swing open without a problem.

  I finally worked the crowbar all the way through the door, but this time it got stuck. That’s weird, because the water was flowing freely around it, so there should be plenty of space to pull it back. It was almost as if something were holding it from the other side…

  That was a thought I could have done without. I freaked and dropped the crowbar, but without its weight, I began to immediately float back towards the surface. I held onto the door-frame to keep myself from slipping upwards, but it was almost impossible to swim further down against my buoyancy.

  Luckily I didn’t have to. The cell finished flooding, and the door began opening on its own. Suddenly I was face to face with a dead body. Its skin had long since begun to rot away, especially around its eyes and mouth where there were just gaping holes remaining.

  My crowbar had stuck straight into its side where it had gotten stuck. I was about to pull myself down toward it along the door frame when I noticed the crowbar was sliding back out.

  No. Not sliding. The body’s hands were wrapped around the bar. They were pulling the crowbar out of its side.

  Had I jolted upward too quickly when I let go of the bar? Maybe I already suffered a stroke from the gas embolism without noticing?

  The body lurched toward me. Slow, even breaths. Don’t stop breathing. Easier said than done with a dead body clambering up toward you. It was fast too – driven with a purpose. Legs and arms with openly rotten sinews moved effortlessly through the water like a practiced swimmer.

  I pushed my way out of the plane, but the body was right behind me. It dropped the crowbar and began ascending smoothly through the water toward me. It was just as fast as me even though I had fins.

  Shit. I kicked hard, and without any weight I was raising way too swiftly. I couldn’t stop myself. I felt the air expanding in my lungs so rapidly it felt like they would burst. I was practically screaming underwater, trying to get as much air out as I could.

  Once I hit the surface, the scream finally became audible, although it was little more than a wheezing gasp at that point. The boat? Where was the boat?

  “Entoine get your ass over here!” He was leaning over the boat and peering down into the water – about fifty yards away. Fuck. I looked down and saw the shadow of the body swiftly ascending toward me.

  I swam hard toward the boat. Entoine wasn’t reacting. There’s no way he didn’t hear me. Why the Hell didn’t he start rowing? He was just staring into the depth, his face about an inch from the water.

  “Entoine I swear to God – ” but my lungs felt like they were on fire. I couldn’t take a full breath yet. All the air I had was going into keeping my legs kicking.

  The shadow was right underneath me now. Ten feet from the boat – I ducked my head underwater and paddled as hard as I could. Too slow – the body was intercepting me. It was going to block my route. About five feet away from safety, it surfaced directly between me and the boat. But it wasn’t an explosive surface like something swimming upward. It just floated there, face down in the water, looking as dead as I felt. I had to push the body out of the way to get to the boat. I kept expecting a hand to grab my ankle and pull me back down, but there was nothing.

  I climbed into the boat and fell on my back panting. My mask was cloudy, so I ripped it off. As soon as I could kneel again, I practically shoved Entoine straight into the water.

  “What the Hell is wrong with you?” The push pressed him against the side of the boat. He tensed and relaxed, but didn’t turn away from the water. It was like trying to wake someone from a deep sleep. He was just vacantly staring at the floating body now.

  The body was moving again though – its ear was anyway. Not a natural movement anymore – not like the body was moving on its own. It was like there was something inside trying to crawl out.

  As I watched, one of the black slugs pushed its way out of the ear. It got stuck part way and had to gnaw its way through the rest of the cartilage with razor sharp teeth like a leech. As it struggled out, the whole corpse shook like it was having a seizure.

  “It looks like you had it wrong,” Entoine said in a sleepy voice. Did he just wake up? There’s no way he could have slept through that. His face was still down next to the water though, and I couldn’t get a clear look at him.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The floaters we found weren’t the test subjects,” he replied, finally pulling away from the water. His body was shivering slightly – somewhere between freezing to death, and full body ecstasy. The tail end of a black slug had just finished slipping into his ear.

  “Of course they were. Why else would they be in the cells?” I asked. By the time the words were out of my mouth, I had already realized it.

  The bodies weren’t the test subjects. The bodies were hosts to the test subjects.

  And they had already been free in the water since all those years ago when the first floater broke free.

  I Loved her in the Winter

  “I can take care of myself. I’m not crazy, you know. Why does everyone think I’m crazy?”

  “No one thinks you’re crazy, Dad. Dementia is nothing to be ashamed of. It’s a common medical condition with people your age.”

  “You wouldn’t have locked me up in here if you didn’t think I was crazy. When is Elise going to pick me up?”

  It’s the same conversation every-time I visited Dad in the Forest Glen retirement home. At first he just started forgetting what things were named. Pepsi became “bubble juice” and he’d call his dog a “woofer”. We all thought it was hilarious until he started forgetting who we were too.

  He thought I looked familiar, but the helpless frustration on his face as he tried to remember how he knew me was excruciating. My childhood – all our time together – my whole life was just being erased.

  After his wife (my Mom) Elise died, Dad completely fell apart. It was like she was his only reason to keep trying at all. He used to passionately assemble model planes and s
hips, but he smashed them all and wouldn’t touch them again. He wouldn’t even read or watch TV, preferring to just sit alone and stare at the wall. He stopped taking care of himself and became belligerent when someone tried to help him.

  “Just bury me already, if I’m such a burden,” he’d say.

  My wife and I would laugh it off, but we all knew he wasn’t joking. He was a burden. He needed help going to the bathroom, and showering, and getting dressed, and as much as I told myself that sending him to the home was for his own good, I was relieved when he was gone.

  That’s why I was so worried when I got a call from the retirement home two weeks ago. They said Dad was missing. It wasn’t the first time he tried to get out, but the nurses always stopped him before he made it past the door. He could barely lift his foot high enough to put a slipper on, but this time he somehow managed to climb straight out the window.

  If he was lost out there, he wouldn’t know how to get back. He probably wouldn’t even remember who he was. That would have been bad enough, but the note he left behind made me even more anxious.

  “I’m going to be with Elise, and I’m not coming back. Goodbye everyone.”

  Dad was going to kill himself tonight. I knew it. I frantically drove up and down the streets around the home, shouting his name – wondering if he’d recognize it or even respond if he did. I checked every puddle he could have drowned in, every bridge he could have jumped from – everything I could think of. My wife was visiting her relatives out of town for the week, but she stayed on the phone with me the whole time to keep me calm. It didn’t work.

  “But didn’t he forget Elise even died?” she asked. “He’s probably not trying to kill himself. He just wants to find her.”

  I checked back at the house – nothing. I might as well stop by the graveyard where Elise was buried too. It didn’t make much sense if he still thought she was alive, but I was desperate. It was about 3 in the morning when I saw his shriveled form hunched over her headstone.