1
Kirsty
He’s no regular stalker.
There’s no shadow of a figure in her peripheral vision as she goes about her day. No footsteps behind her in an alley as she comes home from work.
Instead, he visits her in the darkest part of the night, padding soft and deadly into her dreams at 3 a.m., when she is at her most defenceless. In her own bed.
The sleep rituals are the only weapons she has.
First, she makes herself turn off the iPad, even though she wants to watch another episode of her reality show. But the blue light scrambles your brain and keeps you awake. This is just basic advice. Next comes the bubble bath – not too warm, not too cool – with the meditation audiobook playing from the phone lying on the sink. She doesn’t really like baths; she always ends up getting sweaty or chilled, but all the advice suggests that this is the right thing to do for A Good Night’s Sleep.
That’s how she thinks of it: in capitals. A destination. The Holy Grail.
She’s drunk the mug of hot chocolate – the best part of her routine – and eaten the banana. (They give you serotonin or something like that. She’s a bit hazy on the science.)
Now for the lavender oil, which she spritzes on the pillow, but not too much because someone told her that can have the opposite effect to the one desired.
Climbing into bed, she lifts up her thriller from the bedside table and looks at the picture on the cover. It shows a woman half-turning under a streetlamp, eyes wide and startled, like someone being followed.
With a small shudder, she puts it back on the nightstand. It’s quite good, but maybe not for bedtime reading.
Instead she twiddles with the dial on the clock radio until she finds Radio 4. It’s not her thing at all in the daytime, but droning, posh voices seeping into the room are comforting at night. Someone on there is talking about moving to a Scottish island for a year and doing something involving sheep. It’s incredibly boring, but isn’t that what you want at bedtime? Excitement is not what she needs right now.
Closing her eyes at last, she pulls the duvet with its freshly changed cover up to her chin and inhales its clean scent, breathing in and out very slowly. The lamp is still turned on and the orange glow bleeds through her eyelids, but she isn’t ready to turn it off yet.
She’s not ready for the darkness.
Her parents say she resisted the lights going off from when she was a little girl, even before the night terrors began. And it only got worse.
There was that time on holiday in Devon, when she was eight, and she screamed so ear-splittingly that someone in the next chalet called the police. Her parents, clad in dressing gowns and dozy from too much sun and wine, had to explain that the unearthly sound had been made by a sleepy little girl and not someone being brutally murdered.
Over the years there were various rituals she had made her long-suffering parents carry out before bed, checking everywhere for bogeymen.
But the bogeymen still somehow snuck in, if not physically, then covering her with their slick shadows until she woke up thrashing in panic.
Sleep paralysis they call it.
Lately, it always follows the same pattern.
First, coming to in the pearly light of her bedroom, the familiar furniture appearing as dark, blocky shapes around her.
Awake.
Then, the creeping figure. There’s a flare of white panic in her mind before the sweet relief of realization comes.
No, wait, it’s just that thing again. It’s just the sleep paralysis.
It’s not real. None of this is real. I’ll wake up soon.
Except … the face doesn’t go away. Instead, it becomes more defined, more corporeal, until it is visible in high-definition detail, hovering above her as she lies there, powerless and unable to move a single muscle.
The faces used to vary. Sometimes it would be an old man or woman with leathery, crinkled skin and cruel, glittery eyes. But lately, it’s always a man, features hidden, eyes staring down at her through slits in a balaclava.
And that’s when she realizes this time is different. She’s not dreaming. This isn’t sleep paralysis. This is happening.
The surge of horror at this realization is always the tipping point. She breaks free from the sleep-state and finds herself shivering, gasping, out of her bed, carpet under her curled toes, back slick with sweat.
But lately, that moment is taking longer to come.
Friends and family have never understood that it’s worse than a ‘bad dream’. That’s OK. She’s used to being a freak. But what makes her feel really lonely – and really scared – is the people who should know, her fellow parasomniacs.
They don’t believe her when she tells them there’s something different about this.
It’s as if he, whoever he is, is somehow … breaking through whatever barrier exists between the waking world and the nightmare one.
But she’s driving herself mad with thoughts like these. That’s not even possible. Is it?
Don’t they say we only use 10 per cent of our brain or something, and the rest is a mystery? It’s only her silly brain playing tricks.
Tonight, she is going to sleep peacefully all the way through. He won’t come this time. She is quite determined.
She lies still and breathes slowly through her nose, eyes closed.
The bedside clock ticks. Radio 4 burbles on …
The scream of a car alarm outside. Eyes snapping open, insides cold with acid shock, heart punching her ribs. She must have been dozing but she’s wide awake again.
Annoyed at having this promising start compromised, she makes herself switch off the lamp. The shipping forecast is a low drone in the background, and she lets the words soothe her, repeating them slowly in her mind.
Viking, North Utsire, South Utsire, Dogger, Fisher, German Bight.
Viking, North Utsire, South Utsire, Dogger, Fisher, German Bight.
Viking, North Utsire, South Utsire, Dogger, Fisher, German Bight.
Bight Utsire, German Dogger, Fisher Price …
Jerking awake. Focusing once more.
Viking, North Utsire, South Utsire, Dogger, Fisher, German Bight.
Dogger, Dogger, Alfie and Annie Rose and picnics, picnics and cider and when Tim Watts stuck his tongue in my mouth in the rec and fried chicken on his breath … Viking, North Utsire, South German … South …
Finally she sleeps. But at 3 a.m., her eyes snap open.
He’s back.
