Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep

10

3:29

Thinking back on it now, Travis realizes that since that first morning after he had burned the scarecrow, he's been waking up earlier and earlier.

The night—or morning—after that first, he woke at 4:29, then 4:28, and on Sunday morning, 4:26. He had dismissed them as mere minutes, but on Monday, Mr. Casio joyfully announced to him that it was 4:01.

Christ, he had thought, then went down to make coffee.

But other than the sleep loss, everything is starting to get normal again. Of course, there are nights that he cries so much from missing her that he feels exhausted and drained after—as much as he feels after a long run—and others where cold sweat and nightmares return. There are nightmares every night, but after the first on the night of his anniversary, these are like happy dreams. Most of the time, he wakes screaming, clutching his pillow in self-defense as something comes for him, but when Travis reviews the events of the dream in his mind, he usually starts to laugh.

The only time he was truly frightened was the morning he didn't remember the dream, and he couldn't see the clock. The letter had been sitting in front of the display.

He'd put the letter under the clock when he went to sleep. Behind it, 3:42 had told him it was time to rise and whine.

On the fourteenth morning of sleepless terror, Travis Born had opened the letter.

11

3:33

Travis stands leaning over the letter. It is nailed into the leather of his desk by the window with thumbtacks. It has become like a game—a game that could only have been formed in a sleep-deprived mind slowly going mad—to see how much he can do without touching anything. He hasn't done much, really, other than relieve himself (misses and soaks Karen's furry toilet seat) and watch the walker come up the slope.

That's not a trench coat. Not a fashion one, anyway. Looks more like a raincoat. The kind worn by fishermen, perhaps.

Travis thinks of cloaked fishermen wielding hooks and has to laugh. He takes one last look at the walker then bends over the letter tacked to his five thousand dollar writing desk. At this rate, it would take another hour or more for (her) it to come up to his house.

What makes you think she's coming here?

Oh, I know, alright. It's all ending, all going down tonight. Tonight, it all unravels.

Travis looks back down and begins to read the letter for the tenth time. He skims through the first few paragraphs. It only explains things he felt he already knew. Things about her family not originally being from this country, but having emigrated from Africa. Her ancestors had been one of the first white settlers of a country he didn't know existed, let alone could even pronounce. It comes as no surprise to him when the letter tells him that her family is the last remaining who can speak the language.

Of course he had not understood the phonecall.

He continues down the page, and that's when the hairs on his arms and neck began to prickle, even though this is his second read.

In order to preserve traditions and language, the letter reads, it was important to marry only into certain families. Travis was certain his family wasn't included on that special list, so thus all the noise about mother, though he couldn't understand for the life of him why Karen had acceded to this nonsense—or, even worse, how this had turned up in his dreams. And as time went on, it continues, this list of families became smaller and smaller, as they each 'betrayed themselves and gave marriage to those outside the Ralesh'. Travis later understands that this word, Ralesh, refers to those white settlers who'd embraced the land and its dark religion—even after the original tribesmen had abandoned such witchery. The sound of that word gives him the shivers.

It's all unbelievable for him, fantastic yet creepy in a familiar way. His wife ran away. Simple as that. But to think that she'd gone through so much trouble to create such a fanciful reason is more than he can accept.

But he has that feelinig that it is somehow true.

Travis decides to read it word for word. It is written by hand on old, yellowing paper that looks scroll-like. But the ink is new, and a deep, dark brown—red, maybe.

In our family traditions, it has become normal for women to be arranged into marriage with those they might have never even seen before, and who might be decades older than themselves. Many remaining Muslim nations and India and several parts of Africa still practice this. It is not unheard of. But we are not so barbaric that we marry pre-adolescents and young teenagers away to old men. No, the Ralesh simply encourages marriages between young women of marriageable age, and men whom we believe will be beneficial to the progress and survival of the Ralesh. The purpose for this is merely for the sake of procreation, for in today's society, it would be impossible to keep our blood name alive without this method. But as time passed, and the other families crumbled to corruption, it became evident that we, too, were doomed to fade away. Unless something was done.

Our elders came together and made a decision. Their decree was that no man or woman may marry outside of the Ralesh until they had first fathered or mothered a child within the ranks of our structure. This may sound incestuous and heathen to you, Travis Born, but you must understand that this family is vast, and we embraced this new ruling with pride and joy. Of course, not all were happy to abide by such rules, but enforcement had to be carried out.

Travis shudders at what such enforcement meant, but continues reading.

If a person married themselves outside the Ralesh before producing a child, they were convicted of adultery, and subject to punishment. We never excommunicated anyone, no. Each were too precious (but there are means of punishment, Travis, that would pain you to even think about). And if this infidel marriage happened to produce a child, that child would have to be done away with. You see, Travis, it was only by keeping such strict rules as these that we were able to preserve our name. That is also why your marriage never fathered any children, Travis. Your marriage was founded in rebellion, but not enough to risk a child.

However, in these other marriages, the unsuspecting parties were often innocent victims of this ancient crossfire. Our women are rarely kidnapped back to us, and men almost always return without physical warning. However, the interfering spouses are warned.

Travis understands what 'interfering spouses' means. Someone like him.

There was no fixed method to deliver this warning, but it was always clear, and with a given timeline.

Travis shivers. Is it possible that Karen is now being held hostage by a cult that is her own family? That would explain why she'd never mentioned anything about them? The more he thinks about it, the more it seems possible. They had warned him. They had done more than that. They'd struck the living fear of hell into him, God alone knew, but he'd chosen to ignore it. There was no clear 14-day timeline, but he'd always known that was the limit, didn't he? Travis thinks he did. He somehow knew it was two weeks. The Greg-thing had told him on the nightmare of his anniversary, but Travis had pushed everything into the corner of his mind as nightmares.

The reason was because he loved her. He loved Karen.

Love is stronger than fear, he thinks. But stupider too. Far, far stupider.

Travis continues to read.

Once back in custody, the men almost always see the error of their ways, but errant women are often in need of enlightenment. Nevertheless, if they are cooperative and birth a pure child to us without resistance, they are permitted to go with their other lives once more. You must understand, Travis, that there is nothing evil about this. It is our way, and must be done.

Travis bristles in anger as he imagines what they mean by 'enlightenment'. A thousand pictures come to him from cult movies of dark caves filled with a million candles and torches that never burn out, of the sacrifice being placed on a round rock and tied down as her fate is dished out to her amidst her screaming and the low chants of a thousand others. He pictures Karen chained on one of these rocks, screaming for salvation and mercy, as she is forced by men that could well be her own brothers and uncles. Travis weeps, but he continues to read.

If the woman is found to be with child within fourteen days of her return, all is forgotten and forgiven.

If not, then she is reunited with her husband, and they are both translated into the eternal.

Travis reads this and realizes that this is the morning of the fifteenth day. The deadline for her conception. If he isn't dead by the end of the day, then he knows he will see her at end of her term—but it will also mean that his every fear and tortured imaginations would have had come to pass. The returned Karen would never be the same woman he knew and married. Travis thinks it would be better if they were both dead. That's what they mean by 'the eternal', isn't it? Travis can see no other meaning.

The letter goes on, explaining that no two deaths were alike. Some are painless and so quick the subject will know nothing, while others could last hours. But in all their centuries of existence, not one mark had escaped. Before Travis can absorb this in, they warn him against trying to find them.

In conclusion, Karen's letter consoles him that for better or worse, he will know the answers in two weeks, and it will all be over.

Travis reaches the end of the letter, and the last words run a bark of shivers down the dry bone of his spine, erasing any doubt that all this is really happening. All throughout, though the hand is slightly different, it has come across to him as Karen speaking. That makes it easier for him, knowing that she'd left the note, then walked out of her own free will.

But what about her car, Travis? And the scarecrow? You don't mean to tell me that she put that there for you?

Travis can no longer think clearly. He looks back down again at the signature and feels his skin ripple again.

It is signed Guinevere Hera Vernonne, and then in brackets, Karen's Mother.

12

It's all coming unraveled. It was all real, and I knew it, but I was a fool not wanting to admit it. Tonight it ends. Karen is dead—or worse—and my own death lies just hours away.

Dropping his hands to his side, appreciating the solitude that the darkness provides, Travis cries.

He cries for the loss of the innocence of life, for the loss of Karen, and most of all, for the loss of his sanity. Through his tears, he thinks he sees the walker clearer in his vision, but brushes that off. He is going insane, and if that walker is coming to kill him, then let it kill a madman and put him out of his misery. He begins to think of how alone he is, how very alone. Even if he dies this morning, it might be weeks before anyone suspects anything enough to find him. No one had reported Karen missing, and honestly, there are none that would miss her. That's a horrible thing to say, he thinks—she had been the light in his life—but it is the truth. He'd taken care of everything. The people she saw won't cry murder if she fails to show up. She'd been gone two weeks already and there isn't any noise from that.

Seeing through blurry, teary eyes, Travis resolves on a plan to end all this misery.

He would start by returning to bed and collapsing on the white silk sheets till he feels inspired to proceed. There is a Magnum .45 in his bedside drawer—the one that is always locked because Karen hates guns. He plans to retrieve the silver automatic and blast another hole through his unraveling mind. The thought of suicide has never held any appeal to him, and as a Catholic, he believes eternal hellfire waits for all those guilty of such a heinous crime. It is only this that makes him uncertain. But then images of Karen dance through his mind, black-and-white and sepia toned photographs of their shared history, marching through his mind in procession: Of when he had first met her when she was a trainer at the tennis club, of her smile and laugh that had made him feel like a careless teenager all over again. He remembers the past two years of marriage, nothing short of a blissful glimpse of what he felt would last forever. Travis smiles, then the images turn to darker things—things of what might be happening to her at this moment.

He sees cold, wet slabs of underground rock and torches; high priests and candles and sacrifices, and at the midst of it all, Karen is kneeling in the center, having submitted to their will, but though her head is bowed, her eyes are looking at him. They hate him, those eyes say, hate him hate him hate him.

All your fault, they say.

Travis is now convinced that a supersonic slug is the best choice. Either they both die tonight, or she will return in nine months—nothing but an empty shell of the woman he loved.

Making up his mind, Travis imagines the cold weapon just steps from him, how the metal would feel in his grasp, and that final flash and bang before darkness blots out everything forever. He likes the sound of that. It feels like a decent plan. He decides he will do it. All of it.

But he only gets as far as turning around.

That is when he sees his bed.

Travis opens his mouth to scream but cannot. It feels as if all the air from his body has been sucked out of him. Knees threatening to buckle under him, feeling the thumping of his heartbeat in his ears and throat and fingers, Travis can only stare.

A man is on his bed, naked from the waist up, lying on his stomach. The sheets are pushed down to the backs of his knees and the man is leaning his head on crossed arms, staring at the clock on the opposite side of the bed that now says, 3:45.

It looks as if he has just woken up and is checking the time.

Oh my God oh my God this isn't happening this can't be real wake up Travis this is the worst nightmare you'll ever have if you don't wake up now you won't wake up the same ever again wake uuuup...

The man's eyes are open. Glassy.

His head is propped on one palm, but Travis knows that if he touches the body, it would be as cold as the moonlit fog outside, and that if he rolls it over, the skin would be clammy as plasticine. The man is dead. Travis knows this, but beyond the dead man in his bed is the knowledge that he knows how the four-inch scar on the man's right shoulder blade got there.

He'd gotten that scar trying to shimmy under a fence in the eighth grade.

Travis Born is dead, and is standing at the foot of his bed, looking at the dead body of himself.

One of them lies stiff as the other starts to scream.

13

5:50

A mildly hazy form of Travis sits at the edge of the bed, looking at his own pathetic corpse. It is hard to sit, really, because he keeps falling right through the bed. Twice, already, he'd sat down too hard and fallen all the way through to the basement, screaming unheard at what he found there the second time. There weren't any spooks, no, but Lance was there, Karen's Bull Terrier. He'd died last February and been buried in the corner of the property. The dog was walking around now, unaware that he shouldn't be. But other than that, there was nothing wrong with it. There were no signs of decay, no rot. Everything about him that should've been there, was. When he was a puppy, he had run away from the house for a couple days. Some cruel devil had seen fit to shear off the tip of his ear with a pair of garden scissors—that part was still missing. And when Lance saw Travis, the dog ran and bounded on him with the joy of finally seeing his master again. Travis shivered and fled through the cellar's locked door, trapping the dog behind. The poor creature hadn't yet discovered how to go through solids.

But there are other things. They are both dead—he and Karen's dog—but there is no sign of decay. No sign of time passing.

But when did I die?

Had he not been intent on refusing to touch things, Travis realizes he might have found out earlier. But so what, then? Would that have made a difference? He is dead now, trapped in this house, and nothing can change that.

Can there?

For the past hour or two he had screamed at the corpse, begging it to get up and move—or better yet, disappear altogether and wake him from this horrible, horrible nightmare. But reality is slowly settling in that none of that is going to happen. The only thing he profits from screaming are tortured howls from the basement, each one sounding less and less like a dog.

He'd died at 3:13 exactly, he knows, when he first woke and saw the clock. Like that first sleepless morning when Karen had spoken to him with a different voice and the clock had spelt the letter of doom.

It is now 5:52, or so that leering Casio says. The sun should be waiting just beyond the horizon, casting its lemonade glow over the first few miles of clouds. But either those are rain clouds in the sky, or there's something wrong with the clock. Travis is willing to bet on neither.

At exactly 6:00, he notices the woman waiting at the threshold of his gate. He noticed another thing, too.

The gate is rusted as a sunken ship.

Even though she is standing but a few yards from his window, Travis is unable to make out her features. The coat is thick. The hips and bust are wide, and on any other day, under any other situation, he would have appreciated them as voluptuous.

Travis watches with a child's earnest as the thing passes through the metal of the gate and begins to walk up the driveway. Her hands are pocketed deep in the cloak, fingers hidden.

Travis follows her movement as much as he can from the limited angle of his room, even squeezing into the corner of his window to look down as she passes under the awning of his outdoor garage. She turns, coming more into his view as she walks by the Lotus. The cloaked woman lingers as she approaches the bonnet from the rear. One hand emerges from the cloak and strokes the paintwork.

Affectionately? Spitefully?

Travis can't tell, but the angle hides her fingers from him.

Get away from it! That's my wife's car!

Travis wants to bound down and strangle that thing with the gall to walk in and molest his wife's private property. She really liked that car. Really, really liked it. And the thought of having even its paint smeared by some long-fingered specter is more upsetting than frightening. He is dead, she is gone. Can't that be the end of it?

"Leave me alone!" he shouts aloud.

The woman turns up to him and Travis staggers back.

He cannot see her face. Her eyes are hidden in the shadows of the cloak, scanning his window. It is darker in his room than outside, but Travis knows, just knows, that she's seen him.

It tucks its hand back into the pocket with a sly move that hide her fingers from him—as if she knows he is looking out for them—and moves to the front door. Though he is all the way on the second floor—a thick door, hallway, and flight of stairs separating him from her—Travis can hear the click of her pumps on the parquet floor as she slowly steps her way to the foot of the stairs. It is impossible, but it isn't his imagination—he can hear her coming.

And...what?

Travis...

That voice! She hasn't spoken, oh no, but still he hears her. She is calling to him—in his mind.

Travis are you up there I bet you are...and you're not sleeping either you're awake and waiting awake and waiting for meeee

He can see her in his mind's eye, standing at the foot of the wooden stairs with the thin strip of Persian carpet running up it like a tongue, looking up the flight with her wide, hidden eyes. The hood overhanging her forehead like a cave lip, but doing nothing to hide that pointed nose. Things move in the shadows of her hood—things that are not of her own body. One long-fingered hand reaches out and grasps the railing, a nail scratching its ten thousand dollar finish with horrid ease. Still, she makes no advance, just looks up into the dark of the second floor with those wide, cunning eyes. Wondering. Asking.