Until She Sleeps

by Tim Lebbon

  “I can’t live with it!” the old woman shouted, and in Mengezah’s neatly tended garden a crow was startled from some sticky wet meal. “It hurts! I die every night and it hurts!”

  Mengezah had given the same option she always did. Live with it, she said to them, and not one had ever turned around to leave. By the time they came to her it was always too bad, and if they did accept that alternative they would be dead come morning. They knew that and so did she. But what they then asked her to do she did out of goodness, pure and simple.

  Most never even paid her.

  “Then I will help you,” she said.

  The old woman began to cry. The tears flowed down her wrinkled cheeks, as if she was shedding some of her nightmare already.

  “Lie down.”

  The woman lay on the straw floor of Mengezah’s one-room home, arms stretched out by her side, feet pointing south.

  “It won’t take long.” It never did. The nightmares were always simmering just below the surface, fed on fear and dread, aggravated by their victim’s thoughts of Mengezah and what she could do. She dribbled a line of thick juice onto the old woman’s lips to calm her. The woman grimaced and licked her lips – taste was never Mengezah’s prime concern when she mixed – but she swallowed, resting immediately, her eyes drooping shut … and her body stiffened as—

  --Mengezah touched her head and the nightmare opened up for her. She was immersed, sinking, unable to struggle because hands held her down. Not relishing the pain she submitted, and drowned.

  Hours later the old woman woke up. She saw Mengezah huddled in a corner, still, not breathing, and she fled the magic woman’s house.

  Mengezah remembers. She feels the water filling her and herself becoming the water, but it is an old, old memory by now, dry, and it holds little fear for her anymore.

  Besides, her own worst nightmare is a heavy, looming shadow. Waiting to be born again.

  Three

  Andy and Stig tried to ride past the scream. It came again as they cycled further into the village, then yet again just as they drew level with the old railway station. The building had been converted into three expensive apartments for rich commuters, and it was now obviously a place of pain for one of them. The scream was fluid, gargled, as if the screamer was trying to talk and run and sing at the same time. It was a desperate exhalation of terror with no calculation, no motive other than the exercising of a primal human trait.

  “What in the name of fuck was that?” Andy said. He and Stig were cycling neck and neck, finding an unspoken comfort in being able to see each other. The first scream heard from a distance had been bad. This close the sound was much more violent in nature, almost enough to knock them from their bikes and pummel their skulls.

  “We should call the police,” Stig said. “Someone’s getting murdered in there. Or raped.”

  “Or both,” Andy said, sickly fascinated.

  Their brakes squealed as they coasted to a stop. The boys looked along the short road to the station buildings, both of them searching for signs of what could have provoked such a sound.

  “Yeah, both,” Stig said. “Shall we go have a look?”

  It came again, louder than ever, and a shadow passed behind a window.

  “No fucking way, Jose!” Andy said. “And we don’t need to call the cops, there are enough of them at the church!”

  “Yeah!” Stig said. “Let’s go. Maybe we’ll get an award, or something.”

  The boys pedalled gratefully away from the station and its shadowy, screaming occupant, passing by the deserted cider factory and revelling in the breeze in their hair and the whispering of wheels on Tarmac. Andy pulled slightly ahead, as usual, and he heard Stig panting behind him as he struggled to keep up. Panting, and whining very slightly because he was scared. That scream … it had been horrible.

  Andy glanced back and slowed down so that Stig could catch up.

  When they reached the square they found at least two dozen villagers standing there, in groups and alone, looking on as policemen and people in white boiler-suits slipped in and out of the church. What had been a couple of police cars and ambulances had grown to a parking-lot of white cars and vans, some of them with lights still flashing blue. Three policemen were chatting with the villagers, nodding and smiling and telling them nothing at all. Andy thought they looked ready to hold back a tide of curious locals if the need arose.

  The boys screeched to a halt just past the post office, leaned against a stone garden wall and nodded a greeting to a couple of villagers standing nearby.

  “What do we do?” Stig whispered.

  “Talk to one of the coppers. There’s someone in trouble back there.” Andy dismounted and hurried along the road towards the nearest policeman, a short tubby man talking to Mrs Bright, a teacher from the village primary school. He heard Stig scurrying along behind him.

  “Hello,” Andy said when he reached the two adults, “I think there’s someone being murdered in the station buildings.”

  “Very funny, son,” the policeman said. Mrs Bright merely turned and stared down her nose at him, as if he was a specimen laid out in a biology class. From her expression, Andy could hardly believe she’d taught him for a whole year. She seemed not to recognise him at all.

  “Honest!” Andy said. “Stig, tell them.”

  “It’s true! Murdered and raped!”

  “Well … we don’t know that for sure, but they’re screaming like anything. Listen!” Andy cocked his head and looked up into the clear blue sky, but all he heard was the village mumbling around him. His mum sometimes said he picked up on things, and he sometimes found the place slightly worrying and disturbing. But now, infuriatingly, nothing stuttered from the norm.

  “Son, we really don’t need your games right now,” the fat policeman said.

  “Because of the murders?” Andy said. Mrs Bright’s expression changed at that, natural curiosity overriding the teacher’s superior disapproval. Andy realised that news had not yet leaked out.

  “No murders here,” the policeman said, and he went to walk away without saying any more.

  “Don’t cause trouble boys!” Mrs Bright hissed. Then she followed the policeman, hanging slightly back like some predator waiting to pounce.

  “What do we do?” Stig asked. He was standing astride his bike, his arms and face and chest slowly turning red. He was topless and never wore sun cream. He said it was for poofs. Andy always loved watching his friend scratch and peel at his blistered, burned skin, and soon he would be able to gloat.

  Maybe. Or perhaps something would happen before then … something that would mean that Stig’s skin didn’t blister, or Andy never got to see it … and he wondered whether these thoughts were exactly what his mother meant. Picking up on something, like that time he’d known that Dave Price was lying unconscious in a ditch after tumbling from his sister’s push-bike, and he hadn’t told anyone because – even though he was certain it was true – there was no way he could know.

  He tried not to think about it too much.

  “Let’s go back,” Andy said.

  “What?”

  “Let’s go back and see if it’s still happening.”

  They jumped on their bikes and cycled out of the square, away from the centre of attention and out into the village streets that seemed even quieter than usual. They knew every twist and turn of this place, each path held a story and every garden or lane echoed with memories of their summers here, times spent running and hiding and laughing and crying. Winters too, warm memories of cold times, snow piled against rotten timber fencing, mysterious tracks and footprints in the fresh falls followed for a whole afternoon before circling back on themselves and starting again. Andy and Stig were the map-makers of this place, the charters of its geographical history, whereas adults really only had time to go to work, come home and sleep. And adults’ imaginations did not take them to the same places. The boys knew that there were two worlds here: the grown-up village where roads led t
o other roads and paths and lanes only existed because of what they led to; and their world  the kid’s world  where roads and paths were merely the arteries. The networks of smaller adventures overlaid the town like the myriad smaller veins in a human body. The village had a heart and brain; they only had to find it.

  They pedalled hard because to travel slowly was a waste of time.

  When they reached the short road leading to the old railway station they stopped, panting and sweating and staring at the buildings. Andy imagined a door flying open and something running out, dripping blood and stuff, bubbling a shout  not actually screaming, because their throat would have been ripped out  dashing down the road towards the two boys …

  All was silent. The buildings looked so peaceful that he could not imagine the scream having ever existed here. A few birds hopped about on the roof of the old station, carefree and unaware of being watched. Sun reflected from the windows, hiding the building’s insides and shimmering the air between the boys and the station. Andy wondered how long it would take light to reach his eyes from there, how something could be happening nano-seconds before he actually saw it.

  “What if light slows down?” he said. “We’ll never know what happened.”

  “Huh?”

  “I said …” He glanced at Stig, then shook his head. “Doesn’t matter, freako. Just talking bollocks.”

  “What’s new.”

  They stood there for a few seconds more, neither boy wanting to verbalise what they actually saw: normality. The screams had been awful, but they had been exciting. They had been something happening in this little, sleepy village. It meant pain for someone, agony and fear and maybe death, but it also meant adventure. Neither boy would ever admit it, even to themselves, but that is what they craved. They were still really kids, and some things were just too important to ignore.

  “Let’s go,” Andy said.

  “You sure?”

  “It’s too quiet. Like …”

  “Like it never happened,” Stig said.

  Andy looked at him and nodded. “Yeah.” He glanced back at the buildings and for a moment, brief but intense, he thought something was tickling his eardrums, a sound so high-pitched that it could be felt more than heard. He shook his head and a fly buzzed at his ear. “Come on.”

  They pedalled slowly along the road, waiting at any minute for the scream to erupt once again, all the while knowing it would not. It was too hot, it was too summer for anything to really be wrong.

  What about the drowned guy in the church? Andy thought. What about the scream? He’d seen people screwing on TV, they made noises but nothing like that. That cry could only have been one of pain. And perhaps beyond pain; perhaps madness.

  Yes, maybe madness.

  They stopped their bikes a few yards from the front door of the middle apartment.

  “Quiet,” Stig said.

  “Yeah.” Andy looked left and right to the adjacent apartments, wishing for all the world that a curtain would twitch or the pale blob of a nosy face would appear at one of the windows. But they were alone, and the only sounds were the natural noises which faded into the background through familiarity: bird-song; the whisper of breeze in the highest branches of trees; the hum of summer heat in their heads.

  And then suddenly Andy knew that something was wrong. You pick up on things his mum had said, and he forever wished she hadn’t, but right then he knew that she was right. Nothing had apparently changed but he knew that something was amiss, he knew that it was the crowd in the village square missing out on things right now, not them, because right here and now was where something major was happening. Not had happened, but was happening.

  Now.

  “Round back!” Andy said, and he dropped his bike and ran to the far end of the building. He heard Stig following, cursing both with fear and excitement.

  As he skirted the corner of the building he felt a change in himself, a sinking sensation, because he knew he was about to see something bad. If badness and fear had a smell, he could sense it now. It may hide under the hint of bramble, the oily ghost of diesel from decades ago and the tang of melting Tarmac … but he knew that his life would never be the same again.

  At first, he thought the guy was jumping up and down in his back garden. But then Andy realised he was stuck there. Up in the air. Swimming.

  Behind him Stig skidded to a stop, turned around and puked.

  Not that bad, Andy thought, but he instantly re-evaluated the reaction, because it was that bad. There was no blood and guts and gore, but what they were seeing was so wrong that to turn away and puke was an understandable response. More than understandable, it was necessary. Stig had torn his eyes from the sight to vomit and now Andy wished he could, too. But something held him there. A sick fascination demanded his attention and shocked him to the core.

  The guy was suspended in mid-air a few feet above the ground, mouth opening and closing like that of a fish, hands waving and grasping handfuls of air, throwing them behind him as if that could move him towards something solid. His legs kicked too, but he was not moving anywhere. His loose trousers and shirt flowed around his limbs in total disregard for their actual movements, caught in a subtle, invisible current that set them swaying slowly to and fro. Andy had seen the man around the village; he was one of those commuters who’d moved in a few years back when village life became fashionable once more. Now … he was no longer there.

  The boys could see him waving around in mid-air, but they could barely hear him. Just a hint, Andy thought, like a voice heard through several walls but echoing only in memory. The guy was shouting, screaming, but the sound went elsewhere. And he seemed so distant, as if they were actually viewing him through a powerful telescope. Only a few steps … if Andy had moved forward and reached out he could have touched the man in seconds … and yet he was so far away that the distance was frightening.

  Like space, Andy thought. A trillion trillion miles is just … terrifying.

  “Something’s wrong with him,” Stig said over his shoulder, gasping out the sweet smell of puke and fear.

  “I know,” Andy whispered, and both boys knew what the other meant. It was obvious that the man was in distress, but there was something much more disturbed with this picture.

  The man turned to look in their direction then, and although his eyes did not focus his mouth opened wide. The only indication that he screamed was the subtle twitching of muscles in his throat and wet movement at the back of his mouth. The sun was shining into his face, it lit it up in there, and Andy wondered exactly which sun was shedding its light upon him.

  Andy turned and ran, stumbling into Stig as his friend had the same idea. They held each other up and scrambled back around the building to their bikes, leaving the man swimming in mid air a billion miles away, trying to shrug off the feeling that whatever he was trapped inside was spreading out to them, stretching invisible, impossible fingers to tap them on the shoulders and hold them tight.

  Wonder if anyone will hear us screaming, Andy thought. Perhaps only for a moment.

  He grabbed up his bike and pushed off as he jumped on, swinging his leg over and landing on the pedal, almost toppling himself over the opposite way. Stig was panting and swearing behind him, and Andy heard the scrape of gravel as a brake locked up. He turned and saw his friend sprawled across the road, knees bloodied and his bike twisted around his legs.

  “Come on!” he hissed.

  Stig sat up slowly and looked at his knees. “I’ve got veins,” he said, watching the blood dribble onto the hot road and mix with the melted pitch.

  Andy could see his fried turning pale even under the sunburn. “Stig, get a fucking move on!” he said. He used the swear-word not because it made him feel big or brave or rebellious, but because he felt the need to, actually using it for the first time as an adult there and then. Something was behind the old station and it had a man in its grasp, and his friend was worried about bloodied knees.

  Andy almo
st laughed, but then he saw Stig’s face – terrified and upset – and he realised that this was all for real. His mum always told him that most things can be laughed about at some point, but Andy knew it would take a long time for that to be the case here.

  The boys pedalled away furiously, sweat soaking Andy’s T-shirt, blood dripping down Stig’s legs. The purr of their tyres against the hot Tarmac was a comforting sound, because it meant that they were moving further away.

  Andy reached the end of the road first and turned right. Out of the village. He didn’t know why, he was unsure of what they would do once they passed the last house, but something inside drove him that way.

  Something weird at the church, in the village. Something horrible at the old station … in the village. Get out of the village and find time, find sense, then everything would be okay.

  These thoughts flashed by in moments, almost subconscious, creating their own logical coherence as they led him along the road towards the woods.

  “Where we going?” Stig panted.

  “Out of the village.”

  “But I want my mum,” Stig said, and Andy thought he heard the beginnings of tears in his mate’s voice.

  They pedalled on, Stig following Andy because that was normally the way of things, and within a couple of minutes they passed the last thatched cottage before the countryside opened up and offered its parched self for inspection.

  And then they were pedalling back past the cottage and into the village.

  Andy braked. Stig skidded to a stop beside him. The boys looked at each other, pale, even more scared than seconds before, if that were possible.

  “So,” Stig said, “why did we turn around?”

  Andy shook his head, but he could not speak. We didn’t, he thought.

  “You skidded a turn and I followed and we’re going back now, right?” Stig said, staring at Andy, trying to catch his eye and make sure what he was saying was right.

  Perhaps if Andy agreed that would make it right, but he couldn’t find it in himself to do that. No … he hadn’t braked, skidded and turned.