The Sleepless Page 10

  But here stood this tall grey man, and he didn’t look like anyone that Michael had ever known, or anyone that Michael might have imagined. He had never appeared in any of Michael’s hypnotic dreams before. Yet his presence was so distinct that Michael could almost taste it. It was like copper and thunder and something else – the metallic taste of human blood. Michael had never seen him before. He was sure that he had never seen him before, even though he thought he recognized the squat white lighthouse and the deserted, grassy beach. Be meeting you later.

  What unnerved Michael more than anything else was the way in which he couldn’t stop himself from walking so swiftly to meet this man. His legs had an urgency of their own, an urgency he couldn’t control, hurrying him on, hurrying him on, even though his mind was filling up with absolute terror, like a bottle filling up with black blood.

  The man had bone-white hair, long and silky and swept back, although some of it was flying in the onshore wind. He had a long sculptured face, with a straight, narrow nose and distinctive cheekbones and dark, commanding eyes. He was, in fact, frighteningly handsome, the kind of man whose presence makes husbands take a protective hold on their wives’ arms. He wore a long expensive overcoat of light grey softly woven wool, which billowed and rumbled in the wind, and gave Michael the impression that he was floating just a few inches above the sand – an impression that was reinforced by the complete absence of footprints anywhere near him. Of course, Michael told himself, as he hurried nearer and nearer, the wind had blown his footprints away. But all the same the tall grey man still appeared to be floating. Not just floating, but receding, as if he were drawing Michael further and further along the beach, toward the dunes, and the rocks, and the squat white lighthouse on the clifftop.

  Michael clenched his teeth and strained his shoulder muscles, making a huge physical effort to stop himself from walking any further. He was aware that he was hurrying across the beach, but at the same time he was also aware that he was bending the arms of Dr Rice’s chair in his struggle to stay where he was.

  ‘Come on, Michael,’ the man was saying. His voice was so soft that Michael was unsure whether he was really speaking to him, or whether it was nothing more than the seductive whispering of the surf. ‘You should join us, Michael. You should join us. We could ease your pain, Michael. We could give you forgetfulness. We could even grant you absolution.’

  Michael grunted with the strain of trying to stop himself walking any further. His muscles were so rigidly tight that his back ached, and he felt as if his jaw would be locked for the rest of his life.

  But in spite of all of his efforts he half slid, half staggered right up close to the dune where the man was standing; and it was only when he was less than three feet away that he finally managed to stop himself.

  With very sharp fingernails, the man was peeling a lime. He stood watching Michael with a mixed expression on his face, partly curious, partly contemptuous, and partly sympathetic. Michael tried to back away, but he just couldn’t summon enough strength. The tall grey man wanted him there, and that was that. Michael opened and closed his mouth, and realized that he had never been so terrified of another human being in his life. This man scared him so much that he couldn’t even breathe.

  Whoever he was, whatever he wanted, this man was Death itself. And the most frightening part about it was that Michael knew with total certainty that he was Death.

  ‘Do you want to live like half a man for the rest of your life?’ the man whispered, his voice sounding almost sad. ‘Do you want all of your dreams and all of your ambitions to sift through your fingers, like sand?’

  He finished peeling his lime, and lifted the thin corkscrew of dark green peel so that it twisted in the breeze. Then he bit into the lime itself, deeply; and he didn’t even flinch.

  ‘You should know me, Michael,’ the man told him, with juice running down his chin. ‘My name is –’

  Michael clamped his hands over his ears. He didn’t want to hear the man’s name. If he heard the man’s name, then he would know for certain that he was real. And if he was real, he could come after him, not just in dreams and nightmares and hypnotic trances, but in cars and buses and along the sidewalk, until he reached his door and Michael opened it and there he stood, tall and grey and terrifying.

  Michael thought: he’s going to kill me. Somehow, somewhere, I’m going to meet this tall grey man, and when I do he’s going to kill me. He would probably kill me here and now if he could, on this beach, in this office, with the sea whispering and the traffic bustling outside the window.

  ‘You don’t want to live like half a man, do you?’ the man whispered, with a smile.

  Then he said, ‘Wake up.’

  ‘We can cleanse you of all of your guilt, you know.’

  ‘Wake up, Michael. When I count to six I want you to open your eyes and look at me; and then you will be fully awake. You will recall everything that you have thought about, and you will tell me about it immediately.’

  ‘What?’ asked Michael. He didn’t understand.

  ‘Wake up,’ insisted Dr Rice, and it was then that Michael looked around him and understood which of his parallel existences was real. The sound of the sea died away, and the tall grey man faded away, and the very last thing that he was conscious of seeing was the squat white lighthouse, which remained as a dark triangular image on his retina for nearly ten seconds, before that faded away, too.

  Dr Rice looked concerned. ‘Michael? Are you okay?’

  Michael blinked. Although the blinds were closed, the office still seemed uncomfortably bright. ‘Sure, yes ... I think so. That was one of the weirdest sessions I’ve ever had.’

  ‘You don’t have to tell me. Take a look at the arms of your chair.’

  Michael cautiously lifted both hands and examined the arms. The right-hand one was twisted into an S-shape, where once it had been completely straight. The left-hand arm wasn’t quite as badly bent, but it still had a noticeable double kink in it. Part of the canvas seating was torn away, too.

  ‘What’s happened?’ he asked, incredulously. ‘What did I do?’

  Dr Rice said, ‘You pulled and you twisted and you shouted out, and you tried to turn my best Oggetti chair into a pretzel, that’s what you did.’

  Michael took hold of one of the chair arms in both hands and tried to bend it back again, but he couldn’t. He looked up at Dr Rice in perplexity and embarrassment.

  Dr Rice shrugged. ‘I don’t think you’ll be able to straighten it out. Most people exhibit some degree of enhanced physical strength when they’re under deep hypnosis, but you really went off the scale. That chair is 6mm tube steel. Normally, you’d need a heavy-duty pipe wrench to bend those arms.’

  ‘I was trying to stop myself,’ Michael explained. ‘I was trying to stop myself from – walking, from walking toward this –’ He suddenly realized that the back of his shirt was soaked in sweat, in spite of the air-conditioning, and that he was shaking like a man who has just survived an auto wreck.

  The trouble was, he didn’t understand why his trance had been so strenuous; or why it had been so traumatic. He had dreamed of meeting a tall grey bogyman on a beach, but that was all. He couldn’t even remember why the man had terrified him so much – although he was still very aware that he had. In fact he hoped he never dreamed about him again, ever.

  ‘You want to tell me about it?’ asked Dr Rice, sitting down on the edge of his desk.

  ‘I don’t know ... I don’t know whether it has any relevance at all to Rocky Woods.’

  ‘It sure shook you up, though. You were pulling that chair around and shouting like a madman.’

  ‘I was shouting? What was I shouting?’

  Dr Rice got up, walked across to his Bang & Olufsen recording deck, and rewound his tape-player. ‘It was unusual for you ... you were talking in several distinct voices. I have quite a number of patients who talk in three or four different voices. It’s quite a common symptom of extreme emotional trauma. Ma
ny people are so distressed by what they’ve experienced that they can only deal with it by acting it out through the eyes of others; or through their own eyes when they were children. That’s why they use a variety of voices. But you, up until now you’ve strictly been a one-voice

  guy.’

  ‘That makes me sound pretty dull and worthy, doesn’t it?’

  Dr Rice smiled. ‘Believe me, it makes treatment a whole lot simpler. When you have a multiple-voice situation, it can take a therapist years to sort out one voice from another. I had one guy last year – white guy – whenever he was under hypnosis he always used to talk like Eddie Murphy. It turned out that he believed that somebody like Eddie Murphy would see the funny side of what he had done, whereas he himself was incapable of laughing about it.’

  ‘And what had he done?’ asked Michael.

  ‘Oh ... doused his wife and children in gasoline and set them on fire.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  It was then that Dr Rice located the beginning of the session on his tape.

  ‘Here, listen to this.’

  There was a moment’s hissing and then Michael recognized his own deep breathing. The breathing continued for two or three minutes, and he could hear rustling noises in the background as Dr Rice walked around his office and rearranged his papers.

  Then, without warning, he heard a strange, high voice, almost like a woman’s voice, but slightly harsher.

  ‘Have you thought about it any more?’

  Michael turned and stared at Dr Rice. ‘Who the hell was that?’

  ‘That was you.’

  ‘That was me? That didn’t sound like me at all.’

  ‘You want to hear it again?’ Dr Rice leaned over and rewound the tape a short way. The breathing returned, then the same strained, high-pitched voice.

  ‘Have you thought about it any more?’

  Michael said, ‘I remember that now. I thought I was back at home. Patsy was asking me whether I was going to take that insurance job or not.’

  ‘Well ... you may have thought it was Patsy,’ said Dr Rice. ‘But in actual fact it was you.’

  ‘I don’t understand it. Why should I try to talk in Patsy’s voice?’

  ‘It’s not unusual. It’s a way of discussing the problem with yourself, that’s all. Like you’re trying to see the situation from her side as well as yours.’

  The tape continued. Next, Michael was talking in a much closer approximation to his normal voice, except that he sounded dreamy or drugged – the way most people do when they’re under deep hypnosis.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about it all night.’

  But then his voice changed again – higher, lighter.

  ‘Dad ... when you come back from Hyannis, can you fix my back brake? It keeps rubbing against the wheel.’

  ‘Jason,’ said Michael. ‘I’m trying to talk like Jason.’

  Next, he heard the telephone warble, and Dr Rice quickly answer it. ‘Hallo’? Yes, this is he. Oh, Dr Fellowes. Yes. For sure. I’ll be meeting you later, yes. That’s quite correct. No, Dr Osman didn’t mention it. He said nothing at all.’

  Michael said, ‘I remember some of that conversation from my trance. Not all of it. I thought it was part of what was going on.’

  Now there was a longer pause, although Michael could distinctly hear himself breathing. To begin with, the breathing was slow and measured. But all of a sudden, it grew harsher, as if he were jogging; and then harsher still, as if he were running. He heard the squeaking of his hands on the arms of the chair, and the ripping of canvas.

  ‘Come on, Michael,’ he heard a voice urging him, in a breathless whisper.

  He frowned, and leaned forward in his chair so that he could hear better.

  ‘That was you, too,’ said Dr Rice.

  Michael shook his head. ‘That doesn’t sound like me at all. That doesn’t even sound like me pretending to be somebody else.’

  ‘Believe me,’ said Dr Rice, ‘you were the one who was moving his lips.’

  Panting, and gasping, and – ‘You should join us, Michael, you should join us.’

  ‘That can’t be me,’ Michael protested.

  ‘We could ease your pain, Michael, we could give you forgetfulness. We could even grant you absolution.’

  ‘This is incredible,’ said Michael. ‘There was this guy in my trance ... this really tall guy, in a greyish kind of a coat ... This voice isn’t my voice ... this is his voice, I swear it. Listen to it – it doesn’t sound anything like me!’

  Dr Rice leaned back and crossed his legs. ‘I know you find it hard to believe, but when you’re in hypnosis you’re capable of all manner of extraordinary achievements. People often demonstrate talents that normally they’re too inhibited to show off. Or maybe they never even knew they had them. They’re also capable of changing their vocal cords so that they can speak in very different voices.’

  ‘Do you want to live like half a man for the rest of your life?’ the voice asked.

  ‘No!’ Michael heard himself shout.

  ‘Do you want all of your dreams and all of your ambitions to sift through your fingers like sand?’

  ‘No!’ Michael screamed; and he couldn’t believe that he had screamed like that. He hadn’t been conscious of screaming – only of struggling to keep himself away from the tall grey man in the long grey coat. ‘Don’t touch me! Don’t touch me! I want to wake up! I want to wake up! I want to wake up!’

  There was a confused, jostling, knocking noise. He heard Dr Rice saying, ‘Michael! Michael! Wake up, Michael! When I count to six I want you to open your eyes and look at me and then you will be fully awake.’

  ‘Don’t touch me!’ Michael screamed, again and again. ‘Don’t touch me!’

  There was more jostling, and a blurting sound. Then the voice whispered, ‘You should know me, Michael. My name is –’ But the name was blotted out by another blurting sound.

  Dr Rice switched off the tape. He looked at Michael for a long time without saying anything. Michael dragged a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped the sweat from his face and his neck.

  ‘You say you saw a really tall guy in a greyish coat?’

  Michael cleared his throat, and nodded. ‘He was down on the beach.’

  ‘Any particular beach?’

  ‘No, I didn’t recognize it. There was a lighthouse in the background, that’s all I remember.’

  ‘But it wasn’t any place you’d been before? Nowhere you’d carried out an insurance investigation, say? A drowning, or anything like that?’

  Michael shook his head. ‘I’ve done drownings, but nowhere like that.’

  ‘Was there anything familiar about this guy in the greyish coat?’

  ‘Never seen him before, never.’

  ‘He said, “You should know me, Michael.” ‘

  ‘I didn’t know him.’

  ‘But you were frightened of him, weren’t you? Why were you frightened of him?’

  Michael folded his handkerchief into a pad and wiped the back of his neck again. ‘I don’t know. I guess it was just one of those irrational things that happen under hypnosis. You know ... like in nightmares.’

  ‘He told you his name.’

  ‘I couldn’t hear him. I don’t think I wanted to hear him. I put my hands over my ears.’

  ‘Why didn’t you want to hear him? Were you afraid that you might know him, after all?’

  ‘I didn’t know him, okay? He was a spooky character out of a dream, that’s all.’

  Dr Rice made a few jottings on his pad, and then said, ‘All right. I guess that’ll do for today. It seems like this job offer may have stirred up some feelings that you’ve been keeping under wraps. It’s just possible that they could lead us in some new directions ... help us to tackle your trauma from another angle, as it were.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘I’m not sure yet. It kind of depends who this tall guy in the coat actually is, or was ... and, as you say, whether he has any
relevance to Rocky Woods or not.’

  ‘Does it mean that I should take the job?’

  Dr Rice tapped his pencil on his teeth and looked at Michael seriously. ‘Do you want to take the job?’

  ‘I don’t know. Yes and no. I’d like the money, I’d like the respect. I also feel that it might help me to get back in touch with the real world, if you know what I mean. When you spend every single day on your own, with nobody to bounce your ideas off ... well, you tend to get a little screwy.’

  ‘Those are the plus points,’ agreed Dr Rice. ‘What about the negative points?’

  Michael turned away and stared at the picture of deck rails and ventilator pipes and masts. A ship waiting for passengers. A moment waiting to begin.

  ‘I’m afraid,’ he said, so quietly that Dr Rice could scarcely hear him.

  ‘What are you afraid of, more than anything else?’

  ‘Everything. Nothing. Jesus – I’m afraid that I’m going to take one look at those dead people and my brain’s going to collapse and I won’t be able to think or speak or move or do anything at all, ever again.’

  Dr Rice said nothing for a very long time. But eventually he made another jotting on his pad, and asked, ‘What about that tall man in the greyish coat? Do you think he might represent that particular fear? What I’m saying is, do you think he might be some kind of symbolic figure? Your own trauma, in the flesh?’

  Michael looked back at him. ‘Would that make a difference?’

  ‘It might. After all, you’ve shown me quite clearly that you’re capable of resisting him – that you’re fighting him with all the mental and physical strength at your disposal ... and then some. Visualizing your single greatest fear in the form of an actual man might be the most important step that you have taken toward your recovery since you were very first traumatized.’