Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep

"Perhaps this will help you," a voice surprised him from behind.

Before he could scream, two soft hands were over his eyes and a pair of even softer lips were nibbling at his ear. His heart still pounding and wedged in his throat like a disobedient piece of apple, Travis forced out a laugh. Then he chased Karen round the basement cackling and threatening to tickle her before they settled on the top of a sturdy beer cask. It was empty, but heavy enough to support their weight and, um, momentum.

Upstairs, the phone rang.

Karen jumped as if a hand had come out of the barrel and goosed her. Wriggling out from under him with an apology and a promise to compensate him later, Karen straightened her skirt and ran up the short flight of stairs, babbling something about tablecloths and cherry pie. Her face and arms were still flushed. With a sigh and a smile, Travis adjusted his own clothes and continued his wild champagne chase.

When he found the first bottle, the phone—with its old-fashioned bell blaring loud as a fire engine—had just stopped ringing.

"Hello?"

Karen.

Travis heard nothing after that. It was sooner than a minute later that he emerged from the cellar. He closed the door, latched it, and turned around. The phone was located on the wall in front of him. Karen was still talking.

Travis saw it all and nearly dropped the wicker basket.

3

3:15, the clock says.

Jesus! All that recollection only took two minutes?

Grunting more from frustration than discomfort, Travis heaves himself out of bed. Normally, he tucks his feet into the carpeted slippers and puts on his robe. But not now. It feels so—what was that word?—pointless.

God, even my brain is starting to decay.

Travis laughs.

It isn't a laugh to contest that one at the bank a few weeks prior, but Travis finds that sound frightening. Touching nothing, careful to make not a single sound, Travis walks to the broad windows overlooking the front of his house. Lately, he's been scared of creating sounds when he wakes up. Any slight noise frightens him senseless, so he finds it best to be able to rule out that the source of noise is from himself. But so far, it's been quiet. Travis steps to the windowsill.

Thankfully, the curtains are open, how he'd left them last night. There is no breeze, but even if there was, it wouldn't have made a difference. The windows are sealed shut. Travis looks out.

The view that greets him could make most homeowners jealous. He is looking out over his lawn—vast, green, lit starkly by the moon's light that this early morn is horribly vivid—swimming pool in the left, swings set under the shade of a full-grown Elm Tree he'd imported all the way from Lebanon.

Shouldn't that be 'Cedars' of Lebanon?

Shut up.

Okay.

It is a spacious garden, but so far, he and Karen haven't been able to find any children to fill it. Funny, though, how she never mentioned the desire to have any. That sounded contradictory to what he's always thought of wives and women. He honestly doesn't mind either way, but thought Karen would.

Now, the perfect, undamaged green looks blue in this light, through this glass. He glances over it, to the end, where the double gates stand looming. They're handmade from wrought iron, fashioned after those manor houses he'd been fascinated with as a boy. A two-lane driveway joins this gate to the front door straight as a runway. He can't see the front door from here, though. It's right under him, a bit to the right.

The awning shades the silver Bentley and jet-black Jaguar—X-type. There is space for a third car, also filled. Thinking of that last car is like the egg and chicken question. It's a puzzle with no reasonable answer.

Beyond the gate is what really has his fellow suburbanites bristling with jealousy. Though several dozen of the Moswich Hilltop villas are planted on the face of the hill, his is the only one that can really overlook the entire metropolitan from his own bedroom window. Grey buildings aren't exactly the pleasantest of views, but people find reason to envy under any leaf.

But the nighttime view is spectacular.

The city lays spread below him, aglow with the flashing specks of neon lights, filled in with the velvety blackness of the streets and smog that is a pale sleet color in the day, but a deep, comforting black at night. He can see the stadium from here—its floodlights blazing at full strength like Christmas.

The road from his house to the city is visible, clear under tonight's (morning's, really) moon. It snakes in a more or less straight path from his house to the borders of the city, where it disappears in the sky-like blackness. Under normal circumstances, he would be able to see a car coming up that road from a mile away—more, if its lights were on—or a walking pedestrian from half that. Today, however, the world is a sea of light. He can see the shadowed sign of the McFlippy Bakery, and a person walking right in front of it. The moon was indeed bright. That shop-house isn't anything closer than two miles downslope from here.

Travis looks closer.

It's hard to tell the features or even gender of the person walking, from what it appeared, right to him. But he can see that it is dressed in a long robe—a trenchcoat, most likely—that covers part of their head like a hood. The cloak is a dark color. Well, definitely not red. Nothing that can reflect the moon's painfully bright light.

Who would be walking up here, anyway? he muses calmly as he can, but his mind does not let him rest. Anyone that belongs here has a car and would be driving.

Travis continues to watch the approaching specter, and shivers.

4

Coming up from the cellar, his pants still propped in an uncomfortable tent shape, Travis saw Karen talking on the phone.

No.

Not talking. Listening.

She saw Travis come up from the stairs and her eyes bugged so far out of her head he was afraid they might never go back in. Then she mumbled something and clicked the receiver.

"Who was that?" he asked. His voice was suspicious, but not intrusive. When he came up, her face was scared already.

"Wrong number," she said.

Liar! You lying conniving whore! He wanted to scream, but all that came out was, "Oh."

Oh? 'Oh' indeed! Your brow and neck are slicked with sweat, your face is paler than a loaf of bread, and you mean to tell me 'wrong number'?!

He tried to put that behind, but it was impossible. How could she lie to him like that? But on the other hand, how could he be sure she was lying? Well, it wouldn't take Sherlock fucking Holmes to deduce that once he'd seen her.

It'd taken him at least a full minute to find those elusive bottles of champagne, and why would you entertain a wrong number for so long? He came out of the basement and saw her leaning against the wall like she needed support else she'd fall. One hand was cradling the phone, the other clenched into a fist and hung delicately at her mouth. Prank call? He didn't think so. And then there was her face.

When she left the basement to pick the phone, her skin was still flushed a healthy pink from her excitement—both true and imagined (Travis also noticed that she'd rushed to take that call with an urgency she'd never manifested before). Pink. A good rosy shade. Now, on the phone, just a few short minutes later, that face was a color so pale he had no words to describe.

If death had a color, he thought, this would be close.

And that color soaked in deeper when she saw him watching her. There was something in her wide glazing eyes. Fear? He thought so very much. This ruled an affair, because she was terrified even before he caught her gaze.

She being harassed? Blackmailed? Possible. But how? Some pervert taken pictures when she was sunbathing or swimming? —And now demanding money? I'll give him something, alright! I'll sue him with the best lawyers and—

He interrupted that thought. It wasn't helping his anger, and right now he really was very angry.

God knows I've told her to get some damn blinds put up or something, but does she listen? NO! It's like being married to a mule!

There were a thousand options to choose from, and none pleasant. That was a face of fear he'd seen—he was sure of it—and there was nothing pleasant about fear.

And there was also the last part of the phonecall.

She seemed to have been listening for most of the conversation, not saying anything to whoever was on the other end. But just before she'd hung up, Travis heard her mumble into the receiver. It was low and quiet, impossible for him to pick up what she'd said. He knew he couldn't very well ask her what it was. Wrong number is all she'd say. He liked to believe that, but it was impossible. As far as he knew, Karen had come from a typical family—a family he heard little of, nonetheless—and done particularly well in her studies (she held a MBA in Social Sciences), but there was no second language. And he was sure he'd asked her this—he was quite the linguist fanatic himself. But unintelligible and distant as those few syllables were, Travis would have sworn it was foreign.

And in a language he'd never heard before.

5

3:23

Yes, yes. That's definitely a trenchcoat. Looks more like a fishing coat to me, but never mind.

Travis watches with growing intensity as the figure begins to ascend up the long, uphill road to the Born residence. Watching it holds a terrifying fascination for him, though he can't remember why. The person is looking at him as it approaches.

He does not like that.

Not one bit.

6

After the phonecall, Travis managed to shake off that horrible feeling, letting it fade into the corner of his mind. At first, the weird suspicions wouldn't retreat, and he silently added this to the growing list of questions on The Agenda.

This is stupid, he told himself. This is crazy.

Putting the phonecall aside, what if The Agenda was something simple as a dress she'd seen down at her favorite boutique, or a diamond something? Or maybe it was all about the damned car that now sat under a tarp in the corner of the lawn, tied in a bright red ribbon, waiting for its grand entry. That would be a laugh, wouldn't it? But when you added the phonecall, something didn't sit right.

There was a strange feeling in his stomach. Not butterflies or apprehension or dread—though the latter might have been something closest to it. It was the feeling of everything—everything: his life, his marriage, his career, his very sanity—unraveling. Like a ball of yarn with the end tied to a railing, the roll falling down an endless flight of spiraling stairs that dropped into an eternal abyss, unraveling and unwinding, becoming into nothing as it disappeared into the sulfuric, shadowed depths and screams.

Other than this thought, the lawn party went as planned. If Karen was shaken by a phonecall earlier in the morning, she did not show it. Neither did he, for that matter. In fact, by the end of the lunch, he'd forgotten all about it.

Karen was delirious over the car Travis had gotten her. But before the handlers unveiled it, there was that fleeting moment of absolute terror that they would find not a car underneath, but a double-spaced coffin with enough room for the both of them—filled with yarn.

But there was none.

Later than night when all was over (including a drunk Celine who insisted she be allowed to take Karen's anniversary present for a test drive, then vomited cupcakes and champagne down her blouse with a look of utter surprise), the couple began the simple task of their party's aftermath. That was the good thing about upper middle-class suburbanites: They didn't leave too much mess. Other than a smeared puddle of Celine's vomit, their yard could've passed for sale. But Travis and Karen cleaned up in utter silence, as if each were weighing something heavy on their minds. The only friendly sound was when Karen found the drunk lady's hosiery (stripped off with the rest of her clothes before she jumped bare ass into their sparkling pool), and then the couple of two-years laughed. When it died down, they bundled the trash and took it out together with a silence rarely shared between them.

They moved upstairs to the bedroom.

He'd previously laid out a tray of chocolate and a bottle of cherry wine (cost half of what the candystick on wheels did, he complained to Greg, Celine's husband, referring to the Lotus) and sprinkled the bedsheets with rose petals. But when he picked up the bottle and tray and dumped them in the trash without hesitation, Karen didn't notice.

They undressed and dusted off most of the flower pieces from the bed.

They turned off their lamps at the same time, facing opposite directions, and went to sleep. But before he blanked out for the night (and what a long, long night it would prove to be), he thought he heard her say something.

"Happy Anniversary, darling," she'd said, and with his consciousness fast slipping away, he was able to detect something in that voice. It was not anger or hate or spite. It was sadness. The kind of sorrow saved for a woman bidding farewell to her man, telling him that it'd been a good two years, wonderful, she had no regrets, but now they must move on to their separate fates.

"Moov onnn?" he mumbled, but they were both asleep by then.

Travis lived the first of his nightmares.

7

He was standing outside of his towering iron gate, beholding the breadth and height of his house. It might have been early morning or late night. It was hard to tell because everything was cloaked in a drab shade of grey. A smoky fog hung in the air like thick canon smog lingering on a battlefield after war.

The gate was rusted and broken down. A bicycle could have ridden against the gate and caused it to collapse. Travis pushed it with the absentmindedness of shock, and the great gates opened enough to let him in. Travis stepped into his abandoned property, though ever fiber screamed at him to hightail it out.

Get out get out get out now Travis if you fear your life and more

What more is there I have to find Karen have to find her

Don't hope on it Travis it is too late

What do you mean too late no way I HAVE TO FIND HER!

She is no more she has been...unraveled...

Travis stepped in and looked around.

The house proper was covered so thick with fog that even the silhouette of his front door or bedroom windows were invisible. He could see the shapes of the Bentley and Jag and Lotus, but that was all. Travis walked in deeper.

The lawn that he'd taken great pride in caring for was now overgrown with Devil Weed (Devil Weed? Was there really such a thing? / Only in your nightmares, Travis) and giant creepers that wriggled higher than the three stories of his house without support. They moved and swayed with a life of their own, tendrils and tentacles thicker than his arms swaying like snakes.

When he walked past one, it tried to grab him.

Travis moved to what had been the pool.

Its surface was covered with thick dross and debris. Travis had once read of how the rivers and lakes in Hiroshima and Nagasake had been littered so badly with the corpses of horses and people that the surface was impossible to find. His swimming pool looked like that, filled with fallen trees and twigs and slimy mulsh. Even the walls had caved in, flooding the water with mud and carpet grass and (Devil Weed) giving it a swamp-like look. Travis looked up and saw that the moon was a thin sliver of pale blue—ice cold and razor—grinning down at them from behind scattered clouds of grey.

The lawn was eerily bright.

Too dark to distinguish whole shapes, but bright enough to see their presence. A wind blew from out of the tree line, wreaking upon him a cover of gooseflesh. Something shifted and sank under the water, and Travis thought there was something about it that had looked distinctly human shaped. But he looked away before the thought could grip deeper.

Travis turned. He screamed.

Someone was walking to him.

Shambling.

That feeling to run was never so strong, but Travis was helpless. His feet stood rooted to the ground like they were growing out from the tattered ruins of his lawn, and the thing advanced upon him. It moved slowly, but with purpose. It came closer, stumbling through the shadows and fog with a desperation—desperation to flee from something, or to something. It was coming to him.

He could not move. Travis was about to scream again when he recognized the shape as Celine—Greg's wife, the drunken woman from the party.

"Celine?" he said, squinting. His feet were obediently decided against cooperating with him. "Celine? Is that you?"

It was.

Celine stood teetering in front of him, still drunk, he could see, but more than that. Oh much more.

Celine stood in front of him, laughing, without even a fig leaf. Though she didn't look wasted to act so lewdly, there was something in her eyes that told him she didn't care if the whole world saw her this way. The moon's light reflected blue off her skin, but it was a shade too dark for normal. Celine was a pale woman, he knew, but this was too much. The blue was not the color of moonlight on pale skin, but the color of frostbitten limbs and digits left too long in the snow.

It was the color of a corpse.

She shuddered as if she had been left out in the snow. Other than the bluish hue of her skin, there were bruises and welts all over her body. He knew she was no more than twenty-eight or thirty, but looking at her body this way she looked fifty. There were lines of something under her skin—reddish purple lines that might have been veins. She looked like she'd been whipped.

"Celine! Oh my God! What happened to you?" Travis tried to reach forward and cradle her, but his feet were still playing mutinous. "Who did this? Did Greg do this? Come—"

And then he stopped. There were visible cuts and bruises on her body, not to mention other marks that Travis could not imagine what had made. Yet, she was smiling. She was smiling, and (oh no get away stop!) reaching out to him. Before he could open his mouth to protest or scream (anything I'll do anything just don't touch meee), her hands closed over his shoulders, her face leering inches from his. Her nails dug through his shirt into his flesh, but they felt spongy and bent from the pressure. He looked down again at her maggot-colored body and saw a tag around her large toe.

Then he realized.

This wasn't the drunken Celine who'd stripped at his anniversary party after too much champagne and cupcakes. This Celine had just walked out of a morgue.

"Hello, Travis," she said, and her low voice reminded him of a creature awakening from a thousand-year slumber. This was not Celine—dead or not—this could never have been her. It was something else inside. "Do you think I'm drunk now?"

"I—" he tried to answer, but his voice was coming out in thick, clot-like blotches.

"Bet you think you're real smart," the Celine-thing continued, "don't you, keeping her all the way out here like this?"

"Wh—"

"Don't you be sassing back to me now, boy. Mother knows best. Mother always knows best!"

"M...mother?"

"Which part of that word doesn't your stupid whitey brain understand? Yes, mother! Now, this is your first last and only chance you'll get. After that..."

The thing that looked like Celine drew one long nail across her throat, drawing a trail of dark bile. Travis was horrified to see that her finger was thinner than a pencil but half as long as his own forearm. But he was too terrified to scream.

"Ch...chance f...for what?" he managed to stutter, his blood draining all the way down to his feet.

The Celine-thing laughed, that black liquid squirting from her self-slit throat, and all the blood that remained in him turned to piss.