Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep

"Her place is with her mother," it stressed. "And if you don't give her back," her voice was rising to a painful shout in this world that seemed to hold only the two of them left alive, "if you don't give her back right now you conniving kidnapping heathen son of a pig whore, you'll be sorry! I swear, YOU'LL BE SORRY!"

Travis was shivering by the time she erupted into this finale. He felt a damp spot in the crotch of his khakis. In the fright of it all, he'd wet himself.

Great, just great, he thought. I'm in the middle of what used to be my house, talking to my wife's friend who's gone insane, and I've just pissed in my favorite pants. Great. I was right, things are starting to unravel. That's gr—

Interrupting speech is easily done, but it takes the gravest, most startling things to disrupt thought. Travis took one more look at the Celine-thing and his mind went blank. Zippo. Nil. Blank file. Disc formatted. His thought train derailed forever into the wastelands of insanity. She was standing there, looking right at him, one horrendously long finger pointing up at him from waist level. He looked down at the finger, then back up at the face that would remain etched into his nightmares forever. The discolored liquid still oozed from her neck, but it flowed out more from gravity than anything else. Her livid eyes were empty glass spheres floating in the jelly of her skull. The reddish purple bruises and welts were faded away. Travis blinked, and realized that he was once more looking at the real Celine, standing in the ruins of his lawn (without even a fig leaf). He looked at her finger again, and saw that it was normal—with Greg's ring still around it.

Travis tried wriggling his toes and was glad to find that his feet were once more on board with the rest of his body. Slowly, ever so slowly, he lifted one foot. It cooperated. Then the other. Just like its twin. He was now free to move away, free to flee, free to run like the madman he was fast becoming, just to run and run and run and not care where as long as it was anywhere from here, to get away far far away if he didn't go now he never would and he would go insane, must run go leave now!

Celine's eyes blinked, cleared, and then her mouth drew into a normal line that looked like a mouth again. Her gaze locked with his, dragging the scream to his lips from the depths of his gut.

Those are not eyes those are windows and there's no one inside them no one no thing that any sane person would want to meet!

The scream was on the verge of tearing out when she spoke to him. Her voice hit him with such a jolt of terror, breaking gooseflesh over him in shimmering waves, that his scream was forced back down, plugged it in his throat. All he could do was choke and tremble.

"Beware," the Celine-thing-turned-Celine-turned-God-knows-what said. "Everything is unraveling."

And the thing standing before him opened its mouth so wide it looked like it was preparing to swallow his head, and then it spat something round and dark and red from its throat.

Oh my God oh my God it just vomited its guts onto my lawn

And then it stood in front of him, unmoving as a statue, a string of gristle running down her front to the black, slushy grass and rolling itself out from the ball it was. The charade was finished. Travis looked again and saw that it wasn't entrails. It was (laugh laugh the jokes on you you tensed up jackass) just a ball of yarn—a huge, red ball of yarn. If Celine having just spat out a ball of yarn as big as his two fists instead of her heart was supposed to be comforting, it wasn't. Travis watched the ball unroll and disappear till it dropped into the drain. By then, it was only half its original size.

Unraveling, he mused. Unraveling indeed. Isn't that funny.

Travis took a wide step backwards. His suede Hush Puppies' loafers sank ankle deep into something soft, but he didn't (dare) care to look. He wiped his brow, clearing the cold sweat that had accumulated there like bits of uncooked fat, closed his eyes, telling himself that this was all untrue, all a dream, none of this was really happening, and then he turned around, leaving the creature behind him. —Forgotten.

No, it does not exist!

Right. It was all just a bad compilation of brain memory storage. Nonexistent.

And then he opened his eyes.

Travis screamed when he saw the face in front of him—wide and pale and looming mere inches from his own. He screamed for all the pent up terror in him and the frustration and that sense of everything coming apart. He screamed because when he heard the sound of his own voice it slapped that sense of reality back into him, telling him that it had all been a nightmare, not true, and now he would awake back on his feather bed next to Karen. He continued to scream, and the sound was coming out loud and clear and his feet could move, but Travis did not wake up. Even when the hands fell on his shoulders and the face spoke to him, Travis was still screaming.

"Jeez, Trav," Greg shouted at him, then slapped his face once on each cheek—hard. "Wake up! Wake up, Trav! It's just a nightmare."

Travis closed his eyes, expecting to open them to the loving face of his wife, Greg's voice slowly transforming into hers. Greg slapped him again for good measure. Travis squeezed his eyes one last time to clear the remnants of the nightmare, then opened them.

"You alright?"

Greg. He was still here.

"Scared me there for a second, man. You were just having a nightmare, and sleepwalking."

"But..." Travis stammered, blinking, trying to clear his mind. It sure felt like he'd just woken up. "But what about..." he turned around ever so delicately, ready to turn and flee if that thing was still there.

"My wife, Celine," Greg explained with embarrassment. "Sorry about that. She gets carried away sometimes."

Travis stopped, then looked back at Greg. He was dressed in an expensive silk jacket and tie, hair gelled back perfectly as it always was—but his pants were faded jeans, and it looked like he was wearing his wife's heels. Only they were in his foot size, and he wasn't phased in the least by Travis's obvious shock. Shaking his head to try to ward off that feeling of (unraveling everything is unraveling) strangeness, Travis turned around, and Celine was still there. But she was all Celine now. No bruises, no welts, no injured throat. No clothes, either. She was clean, too. Travis was puzzled. There was too much here that didn't make sense—

"But she's right, in a way, you know?"

"Wh...what happened to my house?" Travis gestured to the cataclysmic disaster that was his property, though the house itself was still enshrouded in fog. "What happened here?" then, a new fear gripped him and he grabbed Greg's shoulders. "Where's Karen?"

Greg turned away.

"I'm sorry about your house, man. I guess it was a warning—"

"A warning? From who? And where's my wife, Greg? Where is she?"

"Look, man," Greg said with the serious compassion of a best friend, "my wife was right. Karen is better off with her mother. It's better for the both of you."

That feeling of being trapped in a nightmare was becoming more and more lucid. Travis felt he might never wake up.

"What? What are you talking about?" Travis was ballistic. "In all the five years I've known her, not once, not once, has Karen mentioned a single peep about any of her family members." Travis was shouting now, all the blood rushing back up to his face. "Why should she go off running to her mother now?" Now, he was sure it was real. In all his nightmares as far as he could remember, he'd always woken himself up by shouting.

"I don't have an answer for that, man." Greg stuck his hands into the front pockets of his jeans, silk jacket rustling smooth in the breeze. "I'm just telling you what I think. The only thing I can say is, well..." he shrugged. Blue moonlight highlighted his face like an opera soloist.

If he says what I think he is I'm going to scream and scream and I'll never stop screaming till my head blows up or I wake up in hell or—

"...well, every goddamn thing is unraveling."

Travis started to scream.

"Like she said it would. Two weeks, man."

Travis stopped. "Wait!" he said, but Greg was already starting to turn around. "Wait, don't go yet! Who said it would? Tell me!" Travis felt a cold body brush against him, but before he could do anything about it, Celine passed him, following after her husband—both of them doomed to this forever, and not knowing it. She smiled at him and gave him a wave. Travis saw that her fingers were once again longer than the rest of her arm, and then the couple disappeared into the fog.

Gulping down a small iceberg in his throat, Travis turned around. He was trapped, he knew, trapped in this living nightmare. Whatever had elapsed between the night after—what was it? Birthday? Christmas?—their second anniversary and now eluded him. He found himself thinking about that phonecall she'd made earlier that morning—or whenever that was. And The Agenda. Yes, most of all, The Agenda.

But his thoughts were interrupted as something emerged out of what was once his swimming pool. Something huge. It stretched through the surface of the water like an unborn terror escaping the fetal sac. It tore out, dripping and slimy, then dragged itself onto the bank fifty yards from him. It paused for a moment, nothing but a rough, black shape under the moon on this night right out of a gothic novel. He felt like Ichabod Crane confronting the Halloween Headless Horseman. The blue light glistened and reflected off its bumpy, wet skin. It shifted, and Travis froze, unable to even breathe or blink.

Please oh please if there is a God don't let that thing see me

It did not. If it did, it had no care for him. The thing raised itself on all four legs, and from his distance, the silhouette had a gorilla's shape. A giant, horse-sized gorilla. Travis could not think until the thing disappeared, shambling off into the thick forest behind the swimming pool.

Forest? I have no forest on my property? There's no forest anywhere here for miles and miles and—

Shut up. You have a forest now. Deal with it.

I have a forest. Everything is unraveling.

Amen.

Travis walked towards his house.

As if it had all been waiting on his attention, the fog house opened and invited Travis as soon as he'd started towards it. The clouds of fog that had just been too thick to see anything past shady outlines, blew away. Travis realized that he still couldn't see anything beyond the border of his house, and that the house was sitting in a giant puddle of fog.

Travis went into the house.

The entire ground floor had burned and gutted itself out to nothing but a blackened, pizza-like surface—oily and bumpy—with the occasional pillar that stood watching him like a silent predator. There was something about this utter destruction that made him smile. Travis looked up, almost expecting it when he saw that the top floor was completely unharmed, although all that separated them was thin wood and air.

Travis stepped into his alien living room through the front door. When he turned the knob, it crumbled like burnt paper.

He surveyed everything like a man who comes home one and finds that his house has been broken into might. Everything had that old, musty look about it. The fire had come, then the water—though a bit late—but this had all been exposed to the elements for a long time. Travis could have stayed gawking in amazement until King Arthur put the swords back in the stone, but he had business to do, and that business was upstairs. Yes, that, and someone—some thing—was coming for him.

Travis hurried up the steps.

Sword, Travis. King Arthur had one sword: Excalibur.

No, swords. Two. King Arthur was a Swordsman.

Not knowing where that absurd thought had come from, Travis crept to the door of his bedroom.

The carpet along the hallway wasn't even singed by the heat. His feet still sunk into the plush thickness.

Travis reached the bedroom door and peeked in through the ajar gap. It was dark inside—not just dark, but black. It looked like the space behind the door was blocked by a thick black carpet. He pushed the door in on hinges that did not squeak, despite the ground floor below having burnt to a crisp. It welcomed him.

Come in, Mr. Born. We've been waiting for you. For what? Waiting for it all to unravel, that's what.

Travis stepped across the threshold, then stopped. This was his room, yet at the same time it was not. But it was. There were the windows, bolted shut as always (really? Since when?) with the curtains draped open to the side. Travis blinked as he remembered how Karen would strip for him then press herself against that same wall of glass, asking him if he thought the children in Central Park could see her tits if they tried. Travis had time for a fleeting thought before the sights and sounds and smells slammed into him and snuffed out that sweet memory.

There was a smell—and the sounds were off. That was the first thing he thought. He always had the mammoth Daikin running, even if the storm outside was turning the rain to sleet and finally snow. If it got too cold, he switched it to 'Heat', but the machine never went off. Now someone had killed the power, and the silence was killing.

Of course, you idiot! Your house went up in flames like Hansel in the oven, remember? I don't know what you think, but that'll silence your air-conditioning for sure.

That wasn't all. He couldn't get the rest, but it was definitely wrong. Of course, his house had burnt as far as it could without wrecking his king-sized bed. He supposed that could do the life out of a home. But no, the life wasn't gone—there was another life in its place. A life that didn't want him here—or, did, for the wrong reasons.

The arrangement of the room appeared normal, but it was impossible to shake that feeling that there was another presence in this darkness—not waiting to pounce out from behind the curtain, but creep up behind him and grip his shoulders. Everything was the same, save for the darkness. And that smell. It seemed that the farther in he went, the brighter it became. It never really got brighter than the false cellar where all this first escalated from (oh yeah, and speaking of which, you want to visit that cellar tonight, Travis? I've got a surprise for you there...haha!), but the moon tonight was bright. The clouds had been in front of it when he first went in, but now they were slowly diffusing, and light was filtering in through those wide, wide windows.

Before the light illuminated the bed, Travis looked out the eastwardly-projected glass and observed with a mild fear that he couldn't see the other houses or the city below him—it was all blanketed in that same icing of fog—but he had the impression that there was no one down there in them. None that could help him, anyway, even if they heard him scream.

Travis turned around, and everything hit him all at once: What was wrong with the room, the smell, the sights. It all boiled down to two things, but that could be just one, and—

Oh oh oh run Travis run run just run get out of here before your mind registers this and you'll never leave you'll go insane get out now get out!

—it was all right there on the bed, waiting for him.

That smell was the sharp, poison stench of burning soap and steel. Travis had once visited an abandoned slaughterhouse, and this was the smell that was bound forever in those walls. The rich, wanton smell of blood soaked and caked into everything, permeating the air like tendrils of vines creeping, seeking to grip and overpower.

And there was a woman on the feather mattress—looking at him and smiling.

Get out now Travis run this is your last chance you'll never run again if you don't leave now you'll never do anything else can you see her Travis do you see her fingers—

Karen was reclining on her side, wearing only a jacket that reached her knees. One leg was bent at the knee, thrusting out of the jacket, and drawn up to her waist. She had one hand on that knee, its fingers coiled around her thigh, with plenty of room to spare. The thigh was normal. The fingers were long and thin. Her once blonde, straight hair was now the color of dirty dishwater. It was frizzy, and draped all the way down to her belly. Travis saw this, but it was nothing to him. He saw her eyes, most of all. It was her eyes that called to him, speaking in a slow, hypnotic whisper.

Travis, darling. Come to me, now. Take me!

His eyes locked with hers, that other voice screaming at him to (run Travis get out of there that's not your wife that's a Celine-thing run jump out the window if you must but don't go to her!) ignore it, but he took a step forward. The thing on his bed that looked like his wife beckoned him with her gaze.

Lie with me, Travis. Sleep your fears away, and it'll all be over now. Mother knows best. Let it all un-ra-vel.

Travis would have walked into the fiery pits of hell itself had she not said that, but that sentence snapped his mind with a jerk. Travis looked at her again—really, really looked at her—and all the fear damned off at the brink of his mind tumbled in with an overpowering torrent. Travis staggered back and fell, shielding his face from it and screaming as the thing leapt off the bed and came to him. Its fingers slithering down, face cocking to the left and right, cackling like a fairytale witch. It came to him and stood over his chest like a predator preparing to take the plunge.

Travis screamed and stumbled back, grasping for the door handle. It was locked. It would not open. No. There was no handle on this end. She was coming now, coming harder and faster. Travis flung himself around, trying to escape her and find a way out of here. He saw the window and ran to it.

"You won't escape! Can't! You're mine tonight! All mine!" the Karen-thing lunged for him, swinging her fingers wild.

Bracing his arms in front of his face and closing his eyes for the shock, Travis leapt from his bedroom window. The maroon Lotus was there below, he knew. It would save him broken bones. But it didn't matter. Anything to get away from this house...away away away and never return. Already, its sounds were fading as it merged back into whatever abominable dimension it had come from. The glass shattered before he hit it, showering the gleaming hood with a glitter of crystal shrapnel before he could fall out the window.

Travis had enough time to regard this before he saw the swaying shapes of what were once Greg and Celine reaching out for him from the bluish shadows below with ever lengthening arms.

8

3:26

The clock sure takes its time when the sun is down.

It is hard to believe that only three minutes have passed since he last looked at the clock, but Travis does'nt like to believe that the Swiss makers were lying about the quartz accuracy and all that. He gives the clock a sly, mistrustful look, then returns his gaze to the window. The distance the figure had advanced up the steep road to his house only helps the theory that the Swiss had been lying.

But I just changed the batteries, Travis defends.

Travis squints at the approaching figure. That's a trench coat, alright, and mighty unflattering too, but it is obvious that the thing underneath is a woman. The face and hair are hidden in the darkness of its hood, but there is the visible flair of hips and ample breasts. He could have been mistaken, but Travis swears those are black pumps attached to the feet. The person sways, instead of swaggering.

Not drunk, then. That's what my father used to call the Seventeen-Jewel Movement.

Travis casts a last spiteful glance at the clock, sees that the green glow is pegged stubbornly to 3:26, and goes back to watching the walker. Strangely, though the moon is starting to glow blue and a fog creeps over the city below, the anniversary nightmare is the furthest thing from his mind.