The Last Night at Tremore Beach

by Mikel Santiago

  To start with, the fence was perfectly intact. White and straight and not a scratch on it. I told them that in my “nightmare” the fence had been broken and knocked over. I remembered sticking my fingers into the rain-soaked hole where the slats had once stood. But now, the fence was as solid as a hundred-year-old oak.

  And then there was the matter of the storm. Judie told me there hadn’t been a drop of rainfall in the night. All you had to do was feel the dry ground to know she was right.

  “But I . . .” I stammered as I ran my fingers through my dry hair, “I remember walking in the rain. I’m sure of it! I put on these boots and I was out walking for more than five minutes before I came across that van . . .”

  I showed her the sand on my raincoat, boots, and pajamas. I showed her the scratches from my fall down the side of the ravine. I showed her where I’d banged my chest when I dove off the road. I was sure if we grabbed the flashlight and went up the road, we’d find my footprints in the sand.

  “I believe you, Pete, but . . .” she said, gesturing toward the kids, “what good would it do?”

  IT WAS ALMOST daybreak by the time the kids managed to fall back asleep. Judie had told them three back-to-back bedtime stories, and they were still wide awake at the end of the last one. Then, she sang an old Irish ballad, and her voice filled our home with warmth and peace. She shooed our ghosts and fears away. The memory of their father running around the house with a fireplace poker, like a madman, slipped away. I heard their breathing slow, each breath deeper and longer, their little mouths open slightly, as they watched and listened to Judie from under the covers, until their eyelids gave in and they drifted off completely.

  “Daddy just had a bad dream. He’s very sorry to have frightened you. Now, sleep. Sleep. And tomorrow will be a beautiful day.”

  She came to my room when the children were down. My head and my heart were in pain. I took pills for one and whiskey for the other. Then I collapsed into bed. Judie sat on the edge, next to me. She resisted lying down, regardless of how tired she must have been. Outside, the sun began to rise.

  “If Clem were in Amsterdam, I’d send them home right away,” I said. “Their father may be an idiot, but he’s not crazy.”

  “Pete . . . you’re not crazy,” Judie said, gently taking my glass of whiskey and setting it on the nightstand. She turned and ran her fingers through my hair. “Something’s going on, but you’re not crazy.”

  “So what’s the matter with me? What if I have another hallucination and mistake them for the thieves and bash their heads in with a goddamn poker?”

  It sounded frighteningly plausible. I noticed Judie react, but she tried to reassure me.

  “You don’t know that there’ll be a next time.”

  “That’s what we want to think, Judie. That’s the best-case scenario we’re hoping for. But tonight, I frightened the hell out of my children. I pulled them out of bed in the middle of the night and told them they had to hide. That was this time. What happens next time? I won’t put my kids—or you—in harm’s way. I want you to be completely honest with me. Do you think I might be schizophrenic?”

  She couldn’t help chuckling.

  “Where did you get that idea?”

  “From the Internet. Dr. Google. I read that schizophrenics sometimes hallucinate.”

  Judie asked for a cigarette. The pack was on the nightstand, and I handed it to her. She lit one and launched two streams of smoke out of her nose.

  “Yes, there are some mental illnesses, like schizophrenia, where the patient ‘sees’ or ‘hears’ things that aren’t really there. But there are a host of other symptoms associated with that disease that you don’t display. Your ‘visions’ are very organized, for instance. You always know when they start and finish.”

  “And that makes it different?”

  “It does. That sets you apart from the vast majority of cases of schizophrenia or delusional disorders. Although I can’t swear there aren’t other cases like yours. In my opinion, there’s something else going on with you. Something medical science can’t so easily label. Like, where did those three distinct characters come from? And that recurring image of the broken fence? If I had to bet money, I’d say the answers lie with Jung or Freud and not a lobotomy.”

  “You mean, you think there’s a hidden message in all this?”

  “It’s just a hunch,” Judie said, “but why not? It seems like you ‘exist’ inside these dreams. You move, walk around, hell, even jump off the side of a cliff when you think something’s trying to attack you. It’s as if you’re living out your dream. As if you’re wearing a pair of virtual reality goggles. But none of that changes the basic question: Why are you having these dreams?”

  “Why am I having these dreams?” I repeated to myself. “Why? It feels like a warning. Like something’s coming. It’s like the whole picture is coming together a piece at a time. The first time, it was Marie. She was frightened. Something had happened to her. Then, in Dublin, there was that image of the dead bodies . . .”

  “What happened in Dublin?” Judie asked.

  I remembered then that I hadn’t told her or anyone else about my vision with the newspaper article.

  “The night I stayed at my father’s house, I had another . . . ‘nightmare.’ I believed I saw a newspaper on the dining room table. There was a story about a massacre in Clenhburran. A family had been killed. Then, I flipped the light on and everything vanished. Just like tonight. Just like every night. I’d forgotten about it . . .”

  “Is there anything else you think is important?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t remember anything else. The fence is always broken. And I guess that makes sense because the dream always takes place on the same night. And tonight, it seemed like these assassins were looking for someone. A woman.”

  Judie finished her cigarette and snuffed it out in the ashtray. She sat quietly, thinking for a long minute.

  “Do you think I’m crazy, Judie? Because right now, you’re one of the only people in the world I can trust. Recently, everything’s been so . . . strange. I see things that aren’t there. I’ve even started doubting Leo, Marie . . . even you.”

  “Why me?”

  “It’s nothing. It’s stupid, forget I said anything.”

  “No, tell me,” Judie said. “I want to know.”

  “You . . . were in one of my nightmares. Something horrible happened, horrible like all the others. And later, you gave me this strange look when you found the name of that doctor, Kauffman, scribbled on that scrap of paper in the first-aid kit. Tell me I’m imagining things, please. Tell me I’m just being paranoid.”

  Her deep brown eyes, almost black in the dark room, locked in on mine.

  “What happened in your nightmare, Pete?”

  I took a long drag off my cigarette.

  “I don’t know if you want to know. It’s terrible.”

  “I want to know.”

  I tipped back the rest of the whiskey until the ice cubes tumbled against my lips.

  “You were tied up. Tied up and scared. Someone was coming to get you, to hurt you, and you were begging me for help. You said he was ‘going to kill you.’ But maybe that dream was a remnant of real life. There are a lot of nights where you . . . well, you have those horrible nightmares. I guess I internalized that, and it came out in my dream.”

  “Tied up . . .” Judie said. Her lips had started to tremble. “Was there someone else in the dream?”

  “Yes . . .” I said. Her face grew more tense.

  “A man?” she asked, and now, I saw she was frightened.

  “No. It was my mother,” I said, “telling me I had to leave this house.”

  Judie covered her mouth with one hand. I couldn’t tell whether she was crying, but I could tell she was breathing faster. I leaned back. Suddenly, our roles had reversed: She had become the patient and I the doctor.

  “Judie? Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, just, a little stunned, Pete.
”

  “Did I say something to . . . ?”

  “Let’s just drop it for now. This isn’t the time to discuss it.”

  I took her by the shoulders. The morning light that crept into the house fell softly on her face. I was looking at a different Judie, now. She was pale. Terrified.

  I tried to hug her, but she pulled away.

  “I think it’s better if I lie downstairs, on the couch. You should try to get some rest, too. Tomorrow’s another day.”

  “But Judie . . .”

  “Not now, Pete. I need a minute, okay?”

  She went out of the room and I heard her sigh in the hallway. I had definitely touched a nerve, something deep inside. I was about to get up and go after her, but I knew her enough to know there was no fixing this right now.

  The sun had risen over the horizon by the time I managed to fall asleep. But before I drifted off, I decided two things. First, that I would go see that Dr. Kauffman and be cured of this by any and all means necessary. And I’d do it immediately. I wanted to be rid of it for good. I wanted my life back.

  The second thing I decided had to do with Leo and Marie. If I was sure of anything at this point, it was that all of this was somehow connected. I didn’t know how, exactly, but that’s what I need to figure out.

  SIX

  A GARDA SERGEANT named Ciara Douglas met with me the next day in the small police station in Dungloe. The cop at the front desk, a chubby and ruddy officer, had given me a hard time when I asked to see someone in charge.

  “What exactly do you need?” he’d asked. “To file a complaint?”

  “No, I just want to talk to somebody in charge.”

  “Are you a journalist?”

  “I already told you, no. I’m a resident of Clenhburran. I just want to meet with an officer.”

  Thinking back on it later, I should have said I was a writer or a criminology student.

  Honestly, I probably shouldn’t have even gone. Why, after all? To ask if some characters from my nightmares were actually real? But that morning, I felt like I had to do something, to try to take control of the situation somehow.

  “Look, all appointments go through city hall. You should start there, and they’ll assign the appropriate . . .”

  “Honestly, buddy, it’ll take ten minutes, tops. Isn’t there someone here who could take ten minutes out of their day to speak with me?”

  Ciara Douglas was a tall woman with a stern look, and black hair and green eyes. I waited for her for half an hour, and when she arrived, you could tell she thought this was a big waste of her time and wanted to get rid of me as quickly as possible.

  “Tremore Beach? That’s the little beach in northern Clenhburran, right? Didn’t know there were many houses up there.”

  “Just two. My neighbors, the Kogans, and me. They live there full time. I’m just renting out there for a few months.”

  “All right, Mr. Harper, so how can I help you? What would you like to know?”

  Faced with this serious-looking Sergeant Douglas, with all those stripes on her sleeve, I realized how stupid this was going to sound. I decided this was going to require a little imagination.

  “Well, see . . . the other night over dinner, a couple of neighbors mentioned some . . . security issues. They said they heard about some criminal activity in the area. Something about a band of Eastern European thieves, or something like that. And, well, since I live alone . . . and actually, my two children are in town visiting . . . Well, I was just wondering if you thought it was worth getting a monitored alarm or something like that. . . .”

  Sgt. Douglas stretched her long lips into a smile, something I figured took some work for her.

  “Look, Mr. Harper. I can’t tell you whether you should get an alarm or not. What I can tell you is that there have been a couple of break-ins, but mostly in empty summer homes, and certainly there hasn’t been anything major. There was a big robbery of construction material from a site near Letterkenny two weeks ago, and we apprehended two suspects, both of them Irish. Nothing to do with any Eastern Europeans.”

  She sat quiet for a moment with the tips of her fingers together in a little pyramid and an expression that said, “Is that sufficient?” But I wasn’t going anywhere just yet.

  “Have you heard about anything like that happening out in rural areas? Something like, say, a group of international smash-and-grab thieves. Guys who ride around in a van robbing houses . . .”

  Sure, it was something I’d seen once on COPS. And maybe Sgt. Douglas thought I was some kind of amateur detective or a bored tourist. Maybe he’s waiting for his wife to finish up at the beauty parlor, she must have thought.

  “No, sir. This is Donegal,” she replied. “We don’t have those kinds of problems here, thankfully. For those types of crimes, you’d have to be in southern Europe or someplace like that, where all the rich people vacation and the real crime is. Here, people break in to steal copper pipes or plasma TVs or maybe rip off a car to take it to a chop shop. Little more than that. You can rest easy, Mr. Harper. Now, do you have any other questions?”

  She drummed her fingers on the desk. She looked at me impatiently.

  “One last thing, actually. Have you ever had any calls over on Tremore Beach? Anything . . . out of the ordinary?”

  “You mean from one of the two houses there?”

  “Yes.”

  “I can look into it. But you know what? I think there’s a reason you’re asking me all these questions.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Is there something you want to tell me, Mr. Harper? I’m curious about all these questions regarding your house. Maybe you’re having some kind of issue with your neighbors?”

  I was tempted to tell her everything. But I resisted the impulse. Oh, sure, I’ll just tell this cop I’ve been having nightmares, and that’s why I came down to see her. I’d sound like a serious head case. And with my kids visiting (and my recent divorce), that wasn’t the kind of attention I wanted or needed.

  “Maybe it’s just that the house is so lonely,” I ended up saying. “The real estate agent warned me about it, but I didn’t listen. Sometimes, I hear noises at night and it keeps me up, worried with all those rumors about foreign bandits invading homes. I guess I’m a city boy at heart.”

  Sgt. Douglas stared at me, not quite believing my story.

  “It happens,” she said, finally. “Especially if your kids are visiting. Maybe your antenna is up a little more because of it, Mr. Harper. Relax. It’s probably just nearby sheep or the wind. In Donegal, we sleep with our doors unlocked.”

  SEVEN

  I WAS GLAD Marie wasn’t home when I knocked on the Kogans’ door that afternoon. Leo said she was in Clenhburran finalizing the details for movie night the following Thursday.

  “Where’d you leave the cubs?” Leo asked.

  “They’re in town with Judie. They went off to watch the seals over in the port.”

  “Want a beer?” he said, disappearing into the kitchen. “I know it’s early, but I just got back from a long run, and I’m parched.”

  “Down by the cliffs?” I said loudly as Leo bent into the refrigerator.

  “Yessir,” he yelled back. “Ran from here to Monaghan. Hell of a trek. Noticed there’s a lot of humidity in the air, though. Hope movie night doesn’t get rained out.”

  Leo came back from the kitchen with a pair of Heinekens. I took one and thanked him.

  “So I hear you’re the big act. Got your speech ready?”

  “No, not really. I’ll probably talk about the benefits of living in a small town, the simple life . . . I don’t know, something like that. Or maybe I’ll quote something out of a book.”

  “Small town, big headaches, that’s what I always say. Now we’ve got the town gossip Laura O’Rourke going around saying we’re secretly rich because I called to ask about that sailboat. It must be true because everyone’s whispering about it over at Durran’s! Ah, well, at least Frank’s a good guy. He�
��s been trying to talk me into it. And who knows? Maybe I’ll trade my house in for a boat. You know, I actually love the idea.”

  The kids couldn’t stop talking about how much fun they’d had on the boat. And Leo said he thought we could do it again before the kids returned to Amsterdam. That was only a week and a half away.

  We sat on the couches near the fireplace.

  “It’s got to be hard to let them go again, huh?”

  “Really hard,” I said. “They only just got here, and already it’s almost time for them to go.”

  “No doubt. They’re great kids, Pete. And you can tell they adore you. But you’re planning on going back, too, isn’t that right?”

  “I guess so,” I said. “After I record a couple things, I’m going to have to make a decision. Maybe I’ll go back to Holland. Some city other than Amsterdam. I’ve got friends in Haarlem. I could put down roots there. I could see the kids every week. It could work . . .”

  Leo took a long sip of his beer.

  “We’ll miss you, lad.”

  “I’ll miss you guys, too. But don’t worry, you’ll have Peter Harper around for a while yet. What about you and Marie? Haven’t had your fill of icy winds here yet? How long before you guys fulfill your dream of moving to Thailand?”

  “Hmm. I don’t know, Pete,” he said, scrunching up his face. “Everyone has all kinds of dreams. But then you get older, and your dreams become porcelain figurines you keep on the shelf and only dust off every once in a while. Besides, Marie’s in love with this place. And what’s the saying? Happy wife, happy life.”

  I nodded in silence.

  “So what happens with Judie, if you don’t mind me asking. Does she figure into your plans?”

  I smiled and took a long swig of beer. And I thought I was the one who was here to ask questions. I tried to answer Leo with a look and smile, but he was expecting actual words.

  “I don’t know. I think she’s happy here, tending to her store and living in her cosmic world. Maybe she won’t want to give that up.”

  “Or maybe it’s just a matter of asking her,” Leo said, chuckling. “If there’s anything experience has brought me—aside from all these wrinkles on my face—it’s knowing that sometimes all you have to do is say out loud what you want. She’s a great girl.”