FOUR

I MANAGED TO SLEEP for a few hours, but eventually, the pain returned and awoke me with a sudden stab that made me yell out, “Oh, God!” I lay in my bed, disoriented. There was a storm swirling outside. A storm that shook the house just as it had the last time. And that’s when I knew it: I had returned to that unknown place.

The ache recoiled, like a venomous snake that has just struck its prey. It settled back into the depths of my head with a dull, moderate throb, the ticktock that had become my cellmate. I was covered in sweat, but I lay still, in the middle of my tussled bed. I didn’t want to move, and I didn’t want to be there. I closed my eyes and tried to fall back to sleep, but I couldn’t. The storm, the night sweats, the headache, all of it conspired to keep me awake.

Not to mention the pounding. On the door downstairs.

This can’t be happening. Not again. I’m not getting up, it’s just another bad dream.

But I had heard it. It was hard to hear over the howling wind, but clearly the noises were coming from downstairs. With my heart already pumping hard, I listened close. In my mind, the tiniest sound—a creak of the stairs, the wind, the house settling—became the sign of a killer who had broken in. Suddenly, there was another thud downstairs, this time clear and strong. There was no denying it anymore: I was awake and this was happening. I immediately feared that the kids had heard it, too, and if I didn’t get up to see what it was, they would. And that would definitely be worse.

I opened my eyes wide.

Is that you again, Marie?

I thought back on my last conversation with Judie. Was I having one of those lucid dreams she told me about? It seemed impossible. Everything around me felt tangibly real. I could feel the sheets beneath me, my pajamas drenched in sweat. I reached up and touched my head, feeling my disheveled hair on the soft pillow. Outside, the wind raged and shook the house. But wasn’t that normal in Donegal?

Forget it. Just go back to sleep.

I tried taking three deep breaths and told myself these bad dreams would vanish as quickly as they’d appeared. I lay perfectly still in the silence for about a minute and heard nothing, only the storm outside. Wind, rain, the rumble of distant thunder. Now sleep, I told myself. One sheep, two sheep, three shee . . .

There it was again! A solid, forceful thud. The sound of a door slamming open.

I jumped out of bed this time. If this was all a dream, as Judie said, then it was the most vivid dream I’d had in all my life. That’s when I remembered the notebook.

I felt the carpet beneath my feet, my toes wiggling through the blue wool fibers. Yes, this seemed real. I reached for the closet door handle and noted the cold metal in my hands, the texture of the worn brass between my fingers. You’d have to be high on mescaline to perceive this kind of imagined detail. It was as real as real could be.

I opened the closet door and was greeted by squeaking hinges and the wafting scent of mothballs someone had scattered before I moved here. I fumbled around in the dark for my black coat. The small notebook Judie had given me was in the pocket where I’d left it, along with a lighter and a scrunched up Kleenex.

Dreams don’t feature rumpled tissues, do they?

I sat on the edge of the bed and turned on the lamp on my nightstand. I laid the red 3M notebook with the spiral binding on it to write. I even noted the price tag still affixed to the cover: seven and a half euros. A pencil was wedged inside the spiral ring. Yellow with black lines and a pink eraser on the end. I pulled it out, opened the notebook, and began to write:

A storm woke me again tonight. And there may have been some pounding on the door, too. I’m not sure. I’m going to go take a look. It all feels real. This pencil in my hand. The feel of the paper beneath my fingers . . . It all just is. NOTE TO SELF: confirm that the notebook cost 7,50 €.

Just when I started to doubt that I’d heard anything at all, when I had finally convinced myself this was all a dream, I heard another noise downstairs. It sounded like something being dragged. A door slammed at the same moment as a burst of thunder crackled, and I couldn’t tell where the noise was coming from. I wrote down one last thing before getting up.

I’m afraid, and my fear is real. I’m going to take a look downstairs. I heard something moving.

Jip and Beatrice were asleep in their rooms. I didn’t turn on their bedroom light but in the half-light I could see their delicate forms breathing under the covers. I carefully closed their door and headed downstairs barefoot. A draft of cold air blew up from the living room, and I could feel goose bumps spreading beneath my pajamas.

Everything downstairs was draped in shadows. The windows were black and blue squares in the dark. Stormy wind and raindrops jingled against the glass. A thud made me swing around toward the entryway, where the door was standing wide open.

The door was open a sliver, banging against the frame. So that’s the noise I’d heard. And that’s the source of the icy draft.

What if Marie’s on the other side of that door? Alive? Or dead?

I took a deep breath and approached the door.

Let’s get this over with. . . .

I was shaking by the time I reached the entrance hall, either from the cold or fear. My keys were dangling from the lock. I could have sworn I’d locked it before going to bed, like I always did.

I was tempted to close it and go back to bed. But I didn’t. If this was real, I needed an explanation. If it was a dream, I needed to understand what it meant, once and for all.

I whipped the door open as if trying to surprise the person or phantom that might be hiding on the other side. A gust of icy wind and rain blasted my face. If I’d had the notebook in my hands, I’d have written: The rain’s cold. The wind is real. I can hear the ocean crashing in the night. The air is redolent of salt.

In the hallway closet, there was an old pair of rubber galoshes. I stuffed my bare feet into them and put on my thick, yellow anorak. I grabbed my keys from the sinister-looking hook and stuffed them in my jacket pocket. I flipped the switch for the outside lights.

It had stopped raining, but the wind was still howling. The ocean, dark in the distance, roared as waves broke onto the shore. The dunes shone icy white in the night, as far as the eye could see.

As my eyes searched the horizon, I suddenly noticed the fence.

Broken again! The wind was shaking it like a baby’s rattle.

I walked over and crouched down next to it. I had just finished painting it, and it was still newly white. But something had mowed it down, knocked it over just like the other night. Two of the slats were snapped in half, and a section of about six feet had been flattened.

It was crazy to try to convince myself this was “just a dream.” I could feel the jagged stump of the splintered fence. I could sink my hand into the hole it had left behind in the thick, cold mud. I was crouched down, trying to figure out what the hell was going on, when suddenly there was a bright flash of light behind me, briefly illuminating the front of the house. At first, I thought it had been a bolt of lightning. But when I turned around, I noticed a light beyond the top of Bill’s Peak.

It flashed again and lit up the blackness like a lighthouse beam. But this was no lighthouse. The light was moving. And it was coming from the direction of Leo and Marie’s house.

I stiffened against the bitter wind that rustled my hair and raincoat.

Is that where I’m supposed to go? Is that where I’ll find the answers?

The light swept across the sky, illuminating the clouds, and the rainfall picked up again. I had a feeling in my gut, but I had to see for myself. I started up the path along the top of the hill toward their house.

The crunching gravel under my feet, the noise of the wind in my ears, the cold rain soaking my hair. Again, this couldn’t be more real. And still, I doubted it. That was why I didn’t take the car. I didn’t dare drive and end up in an accident. It was safer to walk. The worst that could happen if I woke up was to look like an idiot in his pajamas, out wandering around in the middle of the night.

I’d gone about halfway when I realized the light seemed to be coming toward me. The beam flashed and spun and then disappeared behind the hilltop. At the same time, I heard what sounded like the rumble of a car engine approaching.

I slowed down. The lights reappeared, and this time they clearly were pointed in my direction. The sound of the engine grew louder, coming right at me. Just then, as I stood in the middle of the road, a huge vehicle swerved around the bend. And it was coming fast. Too fast.

I thought it must be Leo. My mind saw the four lights (a pair of headlights and lower fog lights) and assumed it was Leo’s Land Rover. I even stood in the middle of the road and waved my arms so he would stop and explain what the hell he was doing driving around like a maniac in the middle of the night.

That two- or three-ton giant leaped over the rise like a raging bull, kicking up sand that its taillights illuminated like a trail of blood. I assumed it would veer left and take the road toward Clenhburran. Perhaps there had been some kind of emergency at his house. . . . But to my shock, the mechanical bull kept barreling right toward me, down the path toward my house.

“Wha . . . ?”

I stood paralyzed on the road, a sand dune to one side, a ravine to the other. And only then did I realize he wouldn’t have enough time to stop.

“Stop!” I yelled.

The truck roared over the narrow highway at full speed. Leo must have been blind or drunk because he didn’t even try to stop. I shot a glance at the dune and the ravine. It’s one or the other! I leaped over the edge of the gorge just as the SUV sped by, missing me by inches.

I landed hard and let out a muffled groan. The SUV roared by, spraying a blinding cloud of sand in my face and mouth. I tumbled down the side of the hill, scraping against twisted roots and thistles, and banging against the occasional boulder until I came to rest in a bed of thorny bushes.

Well that ought to do it, I thought. Now, you’ll open your eyes and you’ll be back in your bed, under the covers. The bumps and bruises will stop hurting in a minute. . . .

But when I tried to open my eyes, they were full of sand and so was my mouth. Lucid dream, my ass. This was as real as getting your balls caught in your zipper. It hurt. And dreams don’t hurt.

I sat up and felt a pain in my side. It hurt to breathe, but I didn’t think I’d broken a rib or anything. I spit out a mouthful of sand. I rubbed the sand out of my eyes with my pajama sleeve and opened them. I was at the bottom of Bill’s Peak, and I’d narrowly missed several jagged boulders that easily could have busted my head open. None of this was funny anymore.

I’m going to kick your ass, whoever the hell you are, I thought as I stared toward the road.

My ears, apparently the only part of me that hadn’t been injured, heard brakes bringing a car to a halt. It could only be coming from one place: the car had stopped in front of my house, where my children were asleep in their beds. My blood pumped as I shot up and ran back toward the house.

I ran parallel to the dunes until I could properly see the vehicle parked next to mine. But it wasn’t Leo’s Land Rover.

It was some other vehicle.

It was a van with a sliding door. When I was sixteen, I’d dreamed of buying one, tossing my surfboard inside and setting off to surf every beach on the south of France. From what I could see in the dim light, it was dark red, with chrome wheels and LED taillights that shone in the darkness.

There were people standing around the van. I counted three. Who were they? I couldn’t tell from this distance.

I was close now, some fifty feet away. I stormed across the road toward these assholes who’d run me off the road and nearly killed me, my blood boiling. I was about to yell out, “Are you crazy?” and start pounding each and every one of them. I thought maybe they were tourists or surfers who’d gotten lost. Either way, they were going to get it, God help me.

But as I came closer, I got a better look at one of them. A big guy, wide as a tank, no neck. This was no surfer and he wasn’t dressed like any tourist I’d ever seen. Dressed all in black, with a mid-length trench coat, he looked more like a mortician. He walked around to the front of the van, and stood in the headlights. I saw something glimmer in the hand he held behind his back. Something that made me stop in my tracks. Something that made my angry rant catch in my throat and left me momentarily breathless.

He was carrying a huge knife.

I felt my heart pound in my ears.

Once, on a flight from Amsterdam to Rome, the captain announced that we had to make an emergency landing. I remember that moment so clearly, hearing his voice over the loudspeaker, everyone looking around at one another thinking, “Did he just say what I think he said?” as our pulses raced. This can’t be happening to me, we all thought. This only happens on TV. In the movies. In books . . . but not to regular people in real life. Not to me.

But in fact, it had happened. And now, it was happening to me again, on this beach. They were criminals. The crew of Eastern Europeans that Marie (or was it Laura O’Rourke?) had mentioned a few weeks ago. They’d come to rob my house, probably after looting Leo and Marie’s. What had they done to them? What were they about to do to us?

I ducked down behind the cliff wall and tried to think fast. My throat had tightened. It felt like going out for a swim and suddenly discovering you were about to be attacked by a shark; there was no way to outswim it to shore. You had to ball your fists up and attack it first—punch it right between the eyes.

I peeked up over the ridge, feeling exposed, like my head was totally out in the open. But they didn’t see me. The fat guy was walking toward the house when someone else got out of the van and stopped him to say a few words. From what I could tell, it was a woman, also dressed in dark clothes. But her back was turned, and I couldn’t see her face. For a minute, I started to think maybe it wasn’t that band of criminals, despite the gleaming knife. Maybe they were just lost, I hoped. Maybe they weren’t here to hurt us at all. What criminal would let himself be seen so obviously? And then it dawned on me that this was the scariest part: They weren’t afraid of being seen.

The fat guy and the woman were locked in discussion while the third person waited next to the dark red GMC van. I couldn’t make out his face but he was smoking. He blew plumes of smoke into the air that caught the van’s headlights.

I noticed the house remained dark. I prayed that Beatrice might look out the window, see the three strangers and go to my room to wake me. And, not seeing me, that she’d know something was off and call Judie, or the police or the damn firefighters or whoever.

She’s a smart girl, Pete. C’mon, Beatrice, grab hold of that blasted iPad you love so much and start sending emails and tweets and Facebook messages to everyone you know! Call for help!

I skirted along behind the dune, keeping my head low so as not to be spotted. I was only a few yards away now and could hear them speaking, quietly, calmly.

Just give me one more minute. Just one more, I prayed.

If I could reach the wooden stairs from the beach, I could climb up along the side, without being seen and work my way toward the back of the house. But then what? Hell if I knew. Grab a knife from the kitchen? I thought I’d seen an ax in the shed once. Then barricade myself in the room with the kids and play defense, I guess.

The van was parked where the lights didn’t shine on the front lawn or the front of the house and the living room window. So when I reached the top of the wooden steps, I lay flat and crawled along the grass toward the patio where we ate breakfast every morning. I hid beneath the outside table and chairs, rested, and took a moment to take in the situation.

The fat guy headed toward the house with his hand still behind his back, hiding the knife. The other guy, Smoking Man, walked up with him. He was tall and slender and moved like a snake, in comparison. He wore round-frame black glasses like an evil John Lennon. His hair was cut into a bowl shape and it hung like he’d been doused with a bucket of water. He wore a leather jacket and skinny black pants. And he was carrying a massive handgun.

I lost sight of the fat guy. He must have reached the front door. But now John Lennon was headed my way. I skittered under the table and hid between the chairs. I pulled my knees in, made myself into a little ball, and held my breath.

I watched his legs pass by. Polished black shoes with a thick silver buckle stopped suddenly in front of the table. I heard other footsteps stomp up the lawn. It was the woman. She spoke in a whisper, but I managed to overhear.

“Just grab the bitch. Leave the rest. Got it?”

Smoking man gave a little laugh. He carried on around to the back of the house. The woman stood for just a moment and then returned to the van.

Just then, it sounded like someone rang the doorbell. It must have been the fat guy. The sound of the ringing shattered the stillness. It echoed throughout the quiet house. Maybe the kids hadn’t heard it.

Meanwhile, I was hiding under the table, hugging my knees, scared out of my mind. The skinny guy was at the back door, or maybe he’d already managed to get in. Or maybe he wanted to make sure no one ran out that way. What could I do? He’d see me the second I rounded the corner.

But then an idea popped into my head: the sliding glass doors to the living room. We usually never locked them because of a faulty latch. It was my only chance. If they were open, I could slip inside the living room unnoticed. But I was scared that any noise the door might make would amount to a death sentence.

The doorbell rang a second time, and my thoughts returned to the kids. Please, God, don’t let them wake up. I spun around and faced the doors. I put both my hands on the glass and pulled. At first, it was stuck but on my second attempt it started to slide. It was a big, old door with a rusty track. But maybe with all the wind, no one would hear it. The doorbell rang again, followed by thumping on the door. I’d managed to slide the door open enough to slip in, but one of the chairs’ legs was in my way, and I didn’t want to make noise moving it. So I gave the door another couple pulls, and finally, I had room to sneak in.

I crawled into the room as the doorbell rang a third time.

“Hello?” someone on the other side of the door yelled. “Is anybody home? Hello, we’re having trouble with our van. Is anyone there?”

I looked all around. I didn’t see anyone inside but I wasn’t sure. Lennon’s doppelganger might have broken in through the kitchen and be stalking the halls with that big pistol. I crawled to the fireplace and grabbed a poker from the hearth. The perfect tool for splitting open somebody’s skull. I skulked toward the kitchen, poker in hand. The back door was closed. It locked with the same key as the front door. I guessed the gunman was still outside, though he might have come in and locked the door behind him.

I turned up the hallway and looked in both directions. All clear. Not a creature was stirring. The creaky old wooden floors would have given them away.

I climbed the stairs slowly, one at a time, the poker cocked and ready to strike as my heart thumped in my chest. I had no idea who these people were or why they’d come to kill us, but that didn’t matter. As far as I was concerned, this was like a rabid dog trying to attack my children and me. What do you do with a rabid dog? You put it down. If I had to kill them, fine. It was self-defense. I couldn’t give a shit about the law right now.

The upstairs hallway was dark and silent. The door to the kids’ room was open a crack. Their room was all shadows, and no one was moving inside. I found it odd, suddenly, since the man downstairs was ringing the doorbell and pounding on the door. Or maybe they’d woken up and were hiding somewhere.

I whispered their names urgently—“Jip . . . Beatrice”—but no one answered.

The knocking downstairs had stopped. The fat guy must be looking for a way in without making a lot of noise. Or maybe the skinny bastard out back had managed to pick the lock and would soon come sneaking up the squeaking stairs.

The old hinges to Jip and Beatrice’s room creaked as I eased the door open. My reptilian brain had taken over and sparked my fight or flight responses. My muscles were tensed. My hearing was ten times as sensitive. My pupils were saucers in the dark.

But the room was still.

There were two lumps, one in each bed. I approached the nearest. Jip was asleep the way he always slept, the sheet pulled up to his chin and one little hand peeking out next to his face. I held my hand near his mouth and felt his hot breath, relieved.

I gently shook him awake.

“Wake up, son,” I whispered.

He opened his eyes, puzzled, and was about to say something when I gestured for him to stay quiet. I crept over to Beatrice and woke her, as well.

“There are people in the house. Don’t make a sound,” I said. “Beatrice, do you have your cell phone with you?”

“People?” Beatrice said, her eyes betraying fear. “Thieves?”

“Yes,” I said. “They broke in to rob the place. Do you have your phone?”

“My cell? It’s in the living room. In my backpack,” she said.

“Dammit. Okay, get under the bed and don’t make a sound. I’m going to go grab mine from my room.”

“Don’t go, Daddy!” Beatrice whimpered.

“I’ll be back in a minute. Hide under the bed.”

Beatrice grabbed her brother and they slid under Jip’s bed, the one farthest from the door. I headed for the door. I hugged the wall and peeked out, but didn’t see anyone in the hallway. In two giant steps, I was in my room.

My room faced east and was right over the front door. I tossed the fireplace poker on the bed and crawled on the floor so no one outside could see me through the window. I tried to remember where the hell I’d left my cell phone. Maybe it was in the other pocket of my jacket? I reached the closet and opened it carefully. (Wait, had I closed it earlier?) Again, the hinges creaked. I rifled through the dark for my coat, and it fell to the ground. I reached in the pocket and felt familiar cold, metal rings. It was the notebook Judie had given me.

I turned to the nightstand where I could have sworn I’d left the notebook just a little while ago.

But the pencil was still in the metal rings. I opened it. The pages were blank.

I crawled over to the window, feeling a rush of contradicting emotions. On one hand, relief; on the other, concern. I poked the curtains open and looked outside. Stars illuminated a clear sky. There was not a single cloud, not a trace of storm. The ocean curled softly onto the beach. No van was parked in front of my house, and the white picket fence was perfect, intact.

I felt my knees go weak.

It happened again. Jesus Christ, it happened again.

There was no van. No killers at my door.