While You Sleep

by Stephanie Merritt

A dull ache throbbed in her right wrist; when she looked down, she could see that blood was pumping from the wound. The knife must have gone deeper than she had realised, in the first flush of adrenaline; now that she stopped to catch her breath, she began to feel dizzy. She crouched and took off one sneaker and sock, then bound the sock around her wrist and knotted it as tight as she could manage with one hand. It occurred to her, as she straightened up and pressed herself against the wall, that Dougie would have parked his truck at the front of the house, and might have left his keys in the ignition. If she could get to it before he caught her, she might at least have a chance of escape, and of getting to town; she might even meet Bill on the way.

  As she hunched in the shadows, working up the courage to launch herself around the corner of the house to the truck, she became aware – she could not quite say how – that she was not alone in the darkness. She held herself very still, listening, but could hear no sound of breathing, no shifting of wet sand underfoot or rustling in the marram grass. She was conscious only of a presence, close behind her, silently watching. She tried to swallow, not daring to turn around in case he had come out to find her. But nothing stirred except the rush of the wind and waves and the hard scrabble of rain against the walls and windows. Her body tensed from her scalp to her feet, every nerve ending humming with a dreadful anticipation; she felt a shift in the air around her and braced herself for a blow to fall, but in that instant the screaming began, from somewhere above her.

  She had heard it before; that same abandoned cry of a woman’s ecstasy that had brought the colour to her face the other night. It was hard to make out where it was coming from. Slowly, she allowed herself to turn. There was no sign of anyone in the darkness, though the cries continued, rising to that feverish pitch where they ought to reach a climax but instead shaded from pleasure into pain, as they had before, the anguish awful to hear. Zoe edged along the south side of the house until she reached the corner facing the beach; by this time the sound seemed to surround her, echoing over the bay, and with each new cry fear gripped her tighter, dark and sinuous, wrapping around her until she could barely draw breath. She pressed her hands against her ears in an effort to shut it out, but it pierced her defences. Was Dougie terrified too, she wondered, inside the house; would the cries bring him running out here in panic? Surely no one could hear that agony of human suffering, and not be plunged into blind terror? And then the monstrous thought struck her that maybe Dougie could not hear them at all. Maybe they only existed for her. The sheer horror of this idea caused her to stumble over the grass, but her attention was distracted by another sound, from further away; a child’s voice, shouting. She could not catch the words, but the tone was electric with terror.

  Blinking into the rain, she strained to listen; it was almost impossible to hear through the storm, but the shouts seemed to be coming from the shore. All at once another sheet of lightning showed her the beach, unnaturally lit, and the unmistakable outline of a child at the water’s edge. Forgetting Dougie, she broke cover and ran down the wet sand. As she drew closer, she thought she heard her name being called.

  ‘Robbie?’ Her voice was lost in the gale, but she yelled again. ‘Robbie, is that you? Wait there, I’m coming!’

  She paused to look back at the house, wondering if Dougie had heard, and thought she glimpsed a figure looking out from the central window of the gallery, lit from behind. The child screamed for help; she spun round and in that eerie green half-light she could make out the shape of the boy against the thrashing white of the breakers, though she was not close enough to see his features. She ran towards him, but as she closed the gap between them, he jerked his head away and began to walk into the water.

  ‘No! Robbie, stop!’ She hurled herself towards him; as she reached the frill of foam along the sand he turned, chest-deep, to look her full in the face and she saw, with a jolt that seemed to stop her heart, that it was not Robbie but Caleb, his eyes wide and pleading.

  ‘Mommy! Help me! I don’t want to go with her.’ He glanced fearfully over his shoulder, to the crashing waves, as if someone were calling to him. Instinct blinded her; she could not stop to ask herself how he came to be there.

  ‘I’m here, baby – it’s OK, you’re safe. Come to me.’ She held out her hands to him, the water snapping at her ankles.

  At the same time, another voice cut through the wind, from high above them. Lightning tore through the sky and she craned her neck to see Charles Joseph standing on the cliff above the beach, his white hair blown back so that he looked like an Old Testament prophet.

  ‘Zoe! Stay where you are. Don’t move. Do as I say, you’ll be all right.’ And then, raising a hand, he seemed to address someone else, someone she could not see, and what she thought he shouted into the storm, in a commanding voice, was: ‘Leave her! It’s not her you want. I’m here.’

  ‘Zoe!’ She whipped around at the sound of another urgent cry and saw a man racing down the beach towards her; at first she thought it was Dougie and her stomach turned over, but as he approached she realised the voice was Edward’s, and he was sprinting over the sand to her. ‘Zoe, come back, what are you doing?’

  ‘Mommy!’ Caleb screamed again, at her back, and the naked terror in his cry undid her; she turned and flung herself after him. He lunged for her, their fingers almost touched, until a wave broke over his head and pulled him under; she could see only his white hand, like a pale starfish, flailing above the water. With a scream she launched herself into the waves, oblivious to Edward’s cries behind her; the cold slammed into her chest, knocking the breath from her as she was wrenched out of the air and into the black depths.

  The force of the wave sucked her under; salt scorched her nostrils as they filled with water, but she opened her eyes and saw Caleb, sinking slowly, his hand still stretching for her. She lunged towards him, but as she did so she saw, with horror, another pair of white hands emerge from the darkness below to clutch at his leg, dragging him down. She could not make a sound; nothing but a stream of silver bubbles emerged from her mouth. Caleb’s face sank deeper, blurring into the dark, transfixed in a rictus of pure terror; his grasping fingers were the last to fade. Her lungs burned and burned, until the pain grew so great that she thought she would burst with it; but in the instant that it became impossible to bear, so it subsided, to be replaced by a strange calm. She had a glimpse of billowing black material, of long, dark hair swaying like weed in the water; she saw the white hands close around her wrists and this time she submitted to them, allowing herself to be tugged gently downwards. She could go to him now, follow him to the deep. There was no need to fight it any more.

  But in that moment of blissful surrender she felt the grip of another pair of hands in her armpits, a sudden rush upwards, a shattering of warmth and calm as she broke the surface to the cruel truth of cold air and water. The rest came to her in splintered images, like the snatched video on Iain’s phone: a flash of lightning over the peaks of the waves; the scrape of shingle under her legs; the glimmer of Charles’s eyes as he laid her on the sand, shivering so hard she thought her bones would shatter; his voice, as if from a great distance, intoning words she could not understand; the sour taste of vomit in her mouth as she rolled on to her side. An explosion of thunder, and somewhere behind it, as she slipped back into the dark, the pale voice of a woman singing a lament for her lover, lost to the sea.

  23

  A regular electronic beep intruded through the murk behind her eyes. It came to her as if from a great distance, along with the curiously intimate sound of inhalation and exhalation that made her think someone was breathing steadily in her ear.

  Overlaying both these noises was the low rumble of a man’s voice. She tried to raise her head, but a bolt of pain shot through like a white-hot needle from temple to temple, so she remained immobile, waiting for the pain to recede. Gradually, the fog in her brain began to clear. She became aware of a pressure around her mouth and nose, an uncomfortably claustrophobic sensa
tion, and realised the breathing noises were her own, oddly amplified inside a plastic mask. The voice she could hear reminded her of Dan’s. Her dreams had been such a tangle of familiar faces and voices that it took some moments before she became convinced that it was Dan she could hear, she was certain of it, though she could not quite bear to open her eyes and confirm.

  ‘My wife is mentally fragile,’ he was saying, in the special over-loud tone he used for explaining things. ‘So I think it’s best you keep the worst of it from her, when she wakes. You know she had a previous attempt …’ He faltered here; she heard him pause to compose himself, before continuing: ‘A previous suicide attempt, about six months ago. Last May. She drove her car across a red stop light at an intersection, into the path of a truck. If the driver hadn’t …’ Another pause to swallow. ‘It was a miracle she survived. Broken collarbone, that was all she got. She tried to claim it was an accident, but the guy said she looked right at him and accelerated. I knew what she was trying to do.’

  She caught the murmur of another male voice, though she could not make out the words. Dan sounded as if he were right beside her; as she began to feel a tingling in her limbs, she became aware of a weight on her left hand, the pressure of fingers squeezing hers.

  ‘Well, what was I meant to do – have her committed?’ Dan sounded defensive now. ‘She was on medication and in therapy, I hoped that would be enough. I wasn’t happy about it, of course not, but I couldn’t exactly stop her. Tell you the truth, I thought maybe a break would do her good. She’d seemed better lately – I thought she was out of danger. As soon as I realised she hadn’t taken her meds with her—’

  The other voice cut in, rising in a question.

  ‘Depression, mostly. But a kind of mania, too. Persistent delusions. So, in answer to your question, Doctor, I’d say there’s no doubt this was another go. The cuts to her wrists, trying to drown herself—’

  Drown herself. The words triggered a landslip in her memory; fragments of images surfaced like debris from the mud: the storm, the waves, the pale hands, Caleb. Caleb.

  Her eyes snapped open to a white glare that bleached her vision; she sat bolt upright, ignoring the tearing sensation in the skin of her hand, and the pain in her chest and head. The sedate beeping that had first woken her speeded up, its rhythm urgent. She tried to speak but her words were stifled inside the mask. From both sides blurring figures rushed forward to take hold of her, easing her back to a supine position. A woman barked a few words, brisk and professional; a man’s voice snapped back. She heard the word ‘ventilator’.

  ‘Zo, honey, can you hear me? You’re going to be OK.’

  Slowly, her focus returned; through the blinding light a face loomed into view, inches from hers, and took shape as Dan’s: square-jawed, solid, concerned. He had grown a beard since she had last seen him; it softened his features. She could feel him pressing her left hand while someone else was messing with her right.

  ‘She’s trying to say something,’ Dan said, glancing over his shoulder. ‘Can we take this off her for a minute?’

  Another white figure appeared; the mask was lifted.

  ‘Where’s Caleb? He went under—’ Her lungs tightened as if squeezed in a vice; she snatched frantic breaths, panicking as she found herself unable to gulp the oxygen she needed.

  ‘Zoe.’ Dan spoke quietly, with a trace of weariness, as if the effort of repetition pained him. ‘Caleb’s dead, honey.’

  The cry that tore from her was primal, inhuman; a long sustained note that only faded when she had no air left and her chest seemed to close in on itself. Quickly the mask was replaced; she took shallow, gulping breaths until the pain eased. Someone leaned over her; she felt the pinch and slide of a needle in her arm, then a familiar sluicing of warmth and heaviness through her veins. For a long time she lay with her eyes closed. She had to force them open. She could barely hear her own voice. Dan bent his head closer.

  ‘Take it off again, will you? I can’t hear her.’

  The mask was raised.

  ‘She took him,’ Zoe whispered. Her tongue felt waterlogged. ‘I tried to save him. She dragged him underwater. It was Ailsa. I couldn’t reach him in time.’

  ‘Sweetheart.’ Dan was looking at her with infinite sadness. ‘Caleb wasn’t in the water. He died last year, remember? Right before Christmas. He had meningitis. You know this, Zo.’ She thought she caught an edge to his tone, a trace of impatience. Did she know this? It sounded like something he had told her before, something he wanted her to believe.

  ‘I spoke to him the other day. He called me.’

  ‘No, he didn’t. You’ve been speaking to him all year, but he’s not there. He’s gone, Zo. I can’t lose you as well.’ His voice faltered; she felt him squeeze her hand.

  The mask was snapped back over her mouth. She closed her eyes and let her head sink back into the pillow. The warmth pulled her down. The machine was breathing for her now; in, out, steady as a heartbeat.

  ‘This is what I’m talking about, Doctor.’ Dan sounded almost plaintive. ‘All year, the same thing. She talks about Caleb as if he’s still alive. She keeps doing it. She tells me quite calmly about conversations she’s had with him and I don’t know if it’s a wilful self-deception or if she’s really losing her mind with grief. I don’t know if I’m supposed to encourage it or be firm with her. She can sound so lucid and normal the rest of the time – you wouldn’t think she was delusional, if you met her.’ He sighed; she heard the rasp of his hand across his stubbled chin. ‘She blames herself, that’s what it comes down to. She thought it was just a fever – she gave him ibuprofen and put him to bed so she could finish a painting, she said. Four hours later he was in a coma. I’m not a shrink but it seems pretty obvious to me.’

  The low murmur of the other man’s voice carried across the room.

  ‘No,’ Dan said, indignant now. ‘I don’t blame her, of course not. I’m not saying I would have recognised those symptoms any better if I’d been there. I mean, I like to think I’d have taken a second look but we’ll never know, will we, so it’s kind of moot. I was away working, on the other side of the country – first I knew was a phone call. She got him to hospital in the end, but it was too late. She never even sold the fucking painting, either. She put a knife through it.’

  The second voice cut in, its tone soothing.

  ‘I already said, I don’t blame her,’ Dan repeated. ‘But she blames herself. I think she always will. Who the fuck’s Ailsa, anyway?’

  As she slipped back into the dark she could hear the waves crashing: in, out, in, out.

  The next time she opened her eyes Dan had gone. In his place there was a man in a white coat looking down at her with dark, shrewd eyes. She lifted a hand limply to pull at the mask. The man held up a palm in warning; he peered at the machine, checked its display, hesitated briefly and nodded, before removing the plastic from her face.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ His accent was polite, clipped, Scottish.

  ‘I don’t know yet.’

  He gave her a brisk, professional smile, but his brow remained creased in a frown.

  ‘I’m Dr Chaudhry. You’re making good progress. I’m hoping we’ll have you off this in a few days, if you continue.’ He indicated the machine beside her.

  ‘Was my husband here? Or did I dream that?’

  ‘No, he was here. I expect Sister’s made him go home for some rest. He’s been by your bedside for the best part of three weeks, you know.’

  ‘Three weeks? But—’ She struggled to sit up; immediately the burning started up in her lungs. Dr Chaudhry pressed her shoulder gently until she sank back to the bed.

  ‘You’ve been very ill, Mrs Bergman. We had you in intensive care for the first ten days.’

  ‘What—’

  ‘Pneumonia resulting from hypothermia, and Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome. You nearly drowned, you know. A lot of people don’t recover from that, but I’m pleased to say you’re doing better than I’d h
oped. You were lucky they were able to get the air ambulance out to you quickly.’

  ‘I don’t remember …’ She looked at him; images tumbled back out of the darkness. ‘Wait – Charles was there. He pulled me out of the water.’

  ‘You were very lucky,’ he repeated, more firmly this time, as if that was an end to the discussion.

  ‘What’s the worst of it?’

  ‘You’re through the worst of it now, Mrs Bergman,’ he said, in that same crisp voice. ‘The antibiotics have been very effective. I’ve had to be careful with the dose, because of—’ He stopped abruptly and glanced down at her notes. ‘As I say, I think we’ll have you breathing on your own very soon.’

  ‘No, I mean – I heard my husband tell you to keep the worst of it from me. I don’t want anything kept from me. I need to know what happened. Charles and Edward – they were both there, on the beach. Are they OK?’

  He took a long time to answer. He perched on the side of the bed before he did so, as if he had been taught that this position conveyed sympathy. She knew what he was going to say before he spoke.

  ‘I’m afraid the two men who went in after you weren’t so lucky. The younger one was pulled out of the water, they brought him here too, but – there was nothing we could do for him. The older man – they think he was swept out to sea. They called off the search after two days. They didn’t find his body. I’m so sorry, Mrs Bergman.’ He stood and rearranged his clipboard.

  ‘What about Robbie?’ she managed to say.

  He frowned. ‘Who’s Robbie?’

  ‘Robbie Logan.’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t—’

  ‘Oh, that’s the wee boy that went missing from the island,’ said a woman’s voice, from the other side of the room. Zoe turned her head and saw a round-faced nurse with neat black braids wheeling a trolley piled with towels and plastic bowls.

  ‘Nurse Andreou keeps up with the local news better than I do,’ the doctor said, dipping his head in apology.