When Your Eyes Close

by Tanya Farrelly

  Nick squeezed both hands into fists. He tried to summon Michelle’s face, to wake from the nightmare. He heard Tessa’s voice and strained towards it like a drowning man.

  ‘I’m going to count from one to five and when I reach five, you’re going to wake, Nick. One, two, three …’

  On the count of five Nick opened his eyes. He attempted to sit up. His skin was damp with sweat and his whole body was trembling.

  ‘It’s okay. You’re okay, Nick. You’re in control. Nothing can happen to you now.’

  ‘It wasn’t me,’ he said.

  ‘What do you mean? What happened?’

  ‘I was in this house, but it wasn’t mine. It wasn’t my place. I was different – the way I looked. I was there to see Rachel. She … she was my wife. But I don’t know her. I have no idea who she is. It was like I was someone else … like it was someone else’s life. I went upstairs, and she was with someone – a man. Jesus … it was awful.’

  Tessa was quiet. ‘What happened, Nick?’

  ‘I had a knife. To protect myself. I heard a noise upstairs, and I thought there was an intruder. And then I saw him in the room with her, and I went crazy. There was blood, so much blood. I know it wasn’t real, but, Jesus, what was it … some kind of nightmare?’

  Tessa hesitated. ‘Your appearance, Nick. You said you looked different?’

  Nick nodded. ‘My hair was long. I was wearing a Black Sabbath T-shirt. I’ve never worn my hair long. I don’t understand … I mean does this normally happen to people under hypnosis?’

  Tessa hesitated again. ‘Not to any of my clients, no. But there is something called confabulation. It’s when the mind creates false memories, and to the individual it can seem extraordinarily real. Some people who experience this believe that they’re experiencing remnants of a previous life.’

  ‘A previous life?’

  ‘Yes, but there’s no scientific evidence to suggest there’s any truth in that theory. It’s much more likely – and certainly it’s my belief – that the mind distorts memories in the same way as it does in dreams. I hope this hasn’t put you off, Nick. It’s extremely rare that something like this should happen. And if it happens again, well maybe it’s something that needs to be dealt with: a residual fear.’

  Nick nodded, but he didn’t know what to think. He could still feel the knife in his hand, hear the woman screaming.

  Tessa reached for her diary on the desk. ‘Do you want to make another appointment?’ she asked. ‘Perhaps Wednesday?’

  He shook his head. ‘I’ll give you a call,’ he said. He took his wallet from inside his jacket and paid. Tessa didn’t mention anything about forwarding the recording; maybe she’d decided it was better if he didn’t listen back – either way, he didn’t ask.

  Outside, it was still raining. Nick rushed towards the car. His hands were still shaking as he took the last cigarette from the box, lit it and let the car window down. He put the radio on to try to distract himself from what had just happened. What the hell had that been? Remnants of a previous life … he didn’t believe in any of that mumbo jumbo, and he was glad that the hypnotist didn’t either. Michelle was into all that hippy stuff, she’d be intrigued, but not him. It was a nightmare, that’s all it was … it had to be.

  On the radio, Black Sabbath were playing ‘Paranoid’ – Ozzy Osbourne screaming into the night. Fingers trembling, he turned down the volume and inhaled the nicotine deep into his lungs. Then he closed his eyes and squeezed his hand into a fist. Anything to try to distract himself from the nightmare that kept replaying in his head. He thought of Michelle, and how she made him feel, let the emotions wash over him. He couldn’t talk to her, not now, not after what he’d just experienced. Instead, he took the phone from his inside pocket and sent a quick text.

  Call you tomorrow. N x.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Caitlin

  Caitlin Davis closed the door behind her with a mixture of anxiety and relief. She knew what the evening held, but getting through the day until she’d arrived at this moment had been hard. Several times during the afternoon she’d found herself drifting despite the mayhem of the office and the decisions that needed to be made as to what should appear in the next issue of New Woman, the magazine she’d founded almost six years before – the same year she’d met David.

  Caitlin threw her handbag down on the bed, sat down and kicked off her shoes. In her stockinged feet she stood on the edge of the bed and removed a box from the top shelf of the wardrobe. Carefully, she climbed down, took the lid off and took out the bundle of photos that lay at the top. David. It was a year today since she’d last seen him. A year since that terrible night when she’d called their friend, Andy, frantic, to tell him he hadn’t come home.

  Walking through Dublin city centre that afternoon, everything had reminded her of their time together. She’d passed restaurants where they’d eaten, pubs where they’d gone with friends – places that she’d found it impossible to enter since he’d disappeared. In the days, weeks and months of the last year, every man of his height and build had drawn her attention. Every corner she’d turned she’d expected to see him, and each evening when she’d put her key in the lock it was with a sense of dread at the emptiness ahead.

  Caitlin picked up a framed photo and allowed herself to feel the ache that his absence had caused – an ache that she tried to quell by keeping busy, but there was nothing that would make her forget. The void that David had left would always be there – and it was only today – on the anniversary of his disappearance, that she would allow herself to be consumed by the total agony of that absence.

  She stared at the picture, taking in his smile, the creases at the corners of his grey eyes, the way he had her wrapped tight, both arms around her. God, they’d been so happy together. She’d loved him so much. There was no way she would ever have let something come between them. What happened had been unprecedented. Another person might have collapsed under it. But she’d experienced pain before and had survived. So instead, she’d done the only thing she could do; summoned all her strength and carried on. No matter what it cost her.

  She put the picture to her lips, stood it on the bedside locker and lay back on the bed. For the millionth time, she thought of all that had happened that night, of how dismissive the guards had been when she and Andy had gone to the station to report David missing. They’d buzzed the bell at the desk, waited a good ten minutes before the garda on duty appeared. He’d then taken them through to one of the interview rooms, sat there and, disinterestedly, taken notes. He’d told them that nobody was officially a missing person until the mandatory twenty-four-hour period had elapsed. ‘You don’t understand, David would never do this …’ she’d said. She’d broken down in tears then as Andy explained how David was supposed to meet him that evening and had failed to turn up. He tried to impress on the garda how completely out of character that was for his friend.

  They’d taken it more seriously in the days that followed. They’d questioned Caitlin in detail, asked her about David’s behaviour leading up to his disappearance. Had he been acting in any way strange? Had he ever done this type of thing before? How had his mood been in recent weeks? She’d told them that no, there had been no warning, nothing that would have set off alarm bells. As far as she had been concerned everything was fine.

  And how was the marriage, they wanted to know: had they been experiencing any difficulties? Perhaps they’d argued? She’d thought of the years they’d been together; they’d hardly ever argued. And, on the rare occasion when she got annoyed, he’d make some joke to make her come around. David was like that; quick-witted and hard to resist. He was also the most stable person she’d known, a foil to her own sudden moods.

  She’d gone through the details with them again and again, told them that he’d left for work that morning as normal. He was a music teacher at a secondary school for boys. The school principal had verified that David had turned up for work at 8.30 a.m. as usual and that he’d l
eft at 4 p.m. that afternoon. CCTV footage showed him putting his violin case in the boot of the car before getting in and exiting the school car park.

  The police had carried out door-to-door enquiries, establishing that nobody had seen David return to the house that afternoon. His car had been located clamped in a backstreet in the city centre. A place where, unfortunately, there were no cameras. A ticket in the windscreen showed that he’d paid to park until 5.30 p.m., and an assistant in a music shop in George’s Street said that David had been in the store at about 5 p.m. and had bought violin strings. His violin had still been in the boot – one string broken, explaining his purchase. The information given by the music shop assistant had been the last reported sighting.

  David’s picture had gone up all over the city, on billboards, in DART and bus stations. It had almost destroyed Caitlin to see his smiling face everywhere she went. And still the guards had found no leads. As the months passed and they began to lose interest, Gillian, David’s mother, had suggested that they hire a private detective. He’d worked on the case for six months until eventually he told Caitlin he didn’t believe he could help her – that sometimes people just didn’t want to be found. For Caitlin that was like a slap to the face. David would never have walked out on their life. It was obvious, she’d told him, that something had happened to prevent his return. A few months later, when she’d met the detective in the street, he suggested that it was time she tried to move on, that it didn’t look as if David were coming back. He’d asked her out for a drink then, and the only emotion she’d felt was a deep sense of revulsion.

  She hadn’t got close to anyone since David’s disappearance. It was the last thing she wanted. Recently, she’d even found herself the object of a well-meaning matchmaking scheme by a friend who’d been urging her to get on with her life. This endeavour had simply led to her refusing dinner invitations from such friends who clearly had no understanding of how much David meant to her.

  Instead she’d sought to fill the void in other ways. She began running, and soon found herself jogging five kilometres each evening in the local park. Recently she’d pushed herself to seven. She’d lost weight, but that wasn’t her objective. She’d always been slim. She began running to escape the emptiness of the house in David’s absence – and then she found it was the one thing that lessened the stress and helped her to sleep at night. Exhausted, she’d sometimes shower and fall asleep with the TV on, one arm stretched across David’s side of the bed. There were mornings still when she opened her eyes expecting to find him next to her.

  David had taught her to play the violin. She still practised most evenings and had joined a group of musicians who did a jam session in a wine bar every Wednesday night. Their friend, Andy, was the cellist and he’d invited her to join. Music was a passion that she and David had shared, and when she played she summoned feelings, not of loss, but of the elation she felt when they were together. Often, she’d sit with Andy over a glass of wine and they’d talk of the past. He was one of the only people she felt truly understood her; the only one who felt David’s loss as keenly as she did.

  The phone rang, and Caitlin put the box of photos to the side. She knew that it would be David’s mum. They spoke often, and she knew she’d call on the anniversary of his disappearance. Caitlin had lost her own mother when she was five years old, and Gillian was as warm and compassionate as she imagined a mother should be – unlike the woman who’d brought Caitlin up. During her relationship with David, she’d grown close to his mother and since his disappearance they’d become closer still – each woman seeking a part of him in those he loved.

  Caitlin picked up the phone and waited to hear Gillian’s soothing voice. Instead the voice that spoke was male.

  ‘David’s alive … but don’t try to find him. It could be dangerous for both of you.’

  Caitlin tightened her grip on the receiver. ‘Who is this? What do you—?’

  Before she could finish speaking, the caller had hung up, and all she heard was the constant blip of the disconnected line. Trembling, she put down the receiver, then picked it up again. What should she do; call Andy, or Gillian? Surely, they’d advise her to call the guards, but what if it was dangerous as the caller had said? Maybe she ought not to tell anyone. She replaced the receiver and tried to clear her mind. Was it a hoax call? If this man knew something, why had he chosen to call now and not before – and why on the anniversary of David’s disappearance?

  Caitlin was trying to make sense of the thoughts that collided inside her mind when the phone rang again. After a second’s hesitation, she snatched up the receiver. She didn’t speak but waited for the man to say something first. If he could play games, then so could she, but this time it was the voice of David’s mother that greeted her.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Michelle

  Michelle took a long drink from her water bottle and dabbed the perspiration from her face with a towel as the girls filed past her with smiles and words of thanks for another great Zumba class. She smiled back and said goodnight to each of them by name, but she didn’t feel the buzz that she usually got from the workout. Tonight it had been an effort. Unable to concentrate solely on the music, she’d made some mistakes and slipped into the wrong moves at the wrong time. Not that the women had noticed; it was only three weeks into the course and they’d not yet mastered the choreography that accompanied each song.

  Michelle shoved the towel into her sports bag and searched in the pocket for her mobile. Three days and still she’d heard nothing from Nick. She looked at the screen in frustration. Every time she received a text message she opened it expecting it to be from him. The last time they’d spoken everything was fine. She was sure that nothing had happened between them that might have led to this. There had been no argument, no cross words, which made his silence simply incomprehensible. She’d tried calling him again before she began the class. The phone had rung out and she’d left a message saying that she hoped that everything was okay.

  Throwing on a fleece, Michelle zipped up her sports bag and prepared to go home. She turned off the lights in the sports hall, said goodnight to the security man at the front desk and walked out of the community centre into the dark rain-filled streets. Already damp with perspiration, her hair clung to her forehead. She pushed it out of her eyes and hurried down the street. Outside the car park a homeless man sat, paper cup in hand, the hood of his jumper pulled up ineffectively against the rain. Michelle dug a few coins out of her pocket and dropped them in giving the man a brief smile. He mumbled words of thanks and wished her a good night as she walked inside. She knew his face. She’d talked to him once, some months before when she’d begun volunteering on the soup run with the Simon Community. He’d told her about being made redundant, and about a messy divorce in which his wife had got everything. He swore he didn’t touch drugs or alcohol, but most of them said that – it wasn’t her job to believe or to judge them. She hadn’t seen him in a while, had hoped that maybe his luck had changed, but the same faces always returned to the streets. Some of them she knew by name now – the ones who were glad to chat. This man had stood out because he sounded educated. He’d once, he said, held a senior position in a logistics company, and she wondered again about the circumstances that had led to him being in the street that night.

  In the car park, she took the stairs two steps at a time until she’d reached the fifth floor. She hated these places at night – eerily lit by florescent lights – cars packed together, a predator could easily lie undetected waiting on a lone female to return to her car. Keys in hand, she unlocked the car from several metres away, and walked briskly, head held high until hurriedly she pulled open the driver’s door and climbed inside. When she turned the key in the ignition the radio came on and the gravellish tones of Tom Waits sang ‘Closing Time’ into the night.

  Nick. She couldn’t get him out of her mind. It had been like that from the beginning, but whereas then her thoughts were pleasant and giddy, now they
brought fear and uncertainty. She tried to reassure herself. Nick was crazy about her, he’d told her that. Only two weeks before he’d invited her out for dinner to meet his sister and her husband – a step that she believed he hadn’t taken with anyone else since divorcing his wife. Afterwards, he’d told her that his sister had been mad about her, and that Rowdy the dog was too, so he reckoned he’d have to keep her. And now a whole weekend had passed without so much as a call.

  Michelle spiralled down the ramps and exited the car park. The rain had started to come down heavier, and she turned the wipers on to clear the windscreen. The homeless man had gone – she hoped he’d managed to find shelter for the night. The city streets were almost deserted. A woman struggled with an umbrella blown inside out in the wind and driving rain. Tom Waits’s melancholic tones were replaced by the unmistakable sound of Pearl Jam as Michelle found herself turning in the opposite direction of home and driving instead towards Nick’s house. She had to find out what had happened to prevent him from calling her. Perhaps he was ill, or worse still had had an accident. Whatever the reason, her fears would not abate until she’d satisfied herself that he was all right – that there was a reasonable explanation for, what felt by now, his interminable silence.

  Michelle felt her heart quicken as she turned onto Nick’s road. She slowed as she approached the house, terrified that she might see Nick’s ex-wife’s car in the driveway – or worse. Surrounded by trees, it wasn’t possible to see the house until she’d pulled up at the gate. Outside the front door the light was on. It shone onto the wet tarmac revealing the absence of Nick’s car. Michelle looked at the clock that showed it was after nine. It was unusual for Nick to be out on a Monday evening. He’d normally have just finished walking Rowdy round the block. She’d learned his routine in the time they’d been together. Though she figured he wouldn’t have even ventured out with the dog on a night like this. She was sitting there wondering what to do when her phone blipped. She opened the text, immediately saw Nick’s name and read the brief message: