Somnambulist

by Andrew Mackay

  Unusually, every light in every window was on. But this wasn’t a usual evening.

  Her sister had gone missing. Her brother-in-law and nephew surely would be out of their minds with worry. That’s what she expected as she carefully stepped into the ground floor hallway.

  Nobody came to greet her. If anything, it was eerily silent.

  “Hello?” she chanced as she moved forward, keeping an eye on every nook and cranny. “Nick? Sammy?”

  With the front door open, who the hell knew who might have helped themselves into the house? After all, the window lights made the house stand out amongst all the others, just begging to be broken into.

  “Hello y’all? Where you at?” Irene asked again.

  From out of nowhere, Nicholas jumped in her path and inadvertently scared the life out of her.

  “Oh, Nick. You scared me.”

  He lifted the phone away from his ear and pointed to the mouthpiece. “Sorry. I’m on hold.”

  “On hold? With who?”

  He covered the phone with his free hand and walked into the front room with Irene in tow. “The police. They’ve put me on hold.”

  “On hold? You ain’t ordering a fucking pizza, here.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  Nicholas approached the window and looked at the houses opposite hoping that Iris might emerge from one of them.

  Police, how may I direct your call?

  “Hello, yes. I want to report a missing person.”

  One moment, please.

  Classical on-hold music rang out from the phone, acting as a cruel punchline to his torment.

  Irene tutted at the treatment Nicholas received from the police.

  She smiled at Sammy and sat beside him on the couch. “Hey, champ.”

  “Hi, Aunt Irene.”

  “No Babar today?”

  He shook his head and buried his hands under his thighs. “No, he’s dead, now.”

  A pang of blackness filled her gut at the obliqueness of Sammy’s answer. “Dead?”

  “Yeah. He died in a fire.”

  Irene exhaled and struggled to think of a reply. “Oh. That’s not very nice, is it?”

  He shot her a look of venom, in stark contrast to his otherwise angelic visage. “It was me who did it.”

  Something about the matter-of-fact way he delivered the revelation tore at her soul. Her jaw dropped as a result.

  “Hello, police?” Nicholas snapped.

  I need your name and current location.

  “Nicholas Goddard. 1215 Field View Road, Chrome Valley.”

  Okay, thank you. How can we help?

  He held his thumb at Irene and walked to the front door. “My wife has gone missing.”

  Your wife has gone missing?

  “Yeah, uh, she has a problem. She walks in her sleep. She’s left the house. She hasn’t taken her cell with her.”

  Okay, okay, calm down, Sir. I need to take a few details.

  Nicholas scanned the back seat of their car in the vague hope Iris might have been sleeping there.

  No such luck.

  “God damn it, this is an emergency,” he yelled back at the stern-sounding woman on the receiving end of his temper.

  Sir. We cannot find your wife unless I take a few details.

  “Okay, okay, I’m calm.”

  You calm?

  “I’m fucking zen.”

  Okay, when did she go missing?

  Irene and Sam couldn’t muster the effort to make chitchat. Instead, they watched on at Nicholas’s half of the conversation, and could tell it was going downhill quickly.

  “I don’t know,” Nicholas said, on the verge of tears. “Maybe an hour ago? Possibly less than that.”

  She’s been missing for an hour?

  “Yeah, or maybe a bit less.”

  Sir, we usually file a missing person’s report when they’ve been missing for twenty-four hours.

  “Twenty-four hours? What are you talking about? You don’t understand. She doesn’t know what she’s doing. There’s no way in hell she’ll survive twenty-four hours. Not on a Friday night. Not in this city, at any rate.”

  Irene desperately covered Sammy’s ears, inspired by his father’s use of profanity. “Shh. Forget you heard that.”

  I will give you a missing person’s reference number, which you can follow up tomorrow evening—

  Nicholas wailed into the phone. “No, you listen to me. You get a blue light out there. Hell, get a bunch of them, and go and find her because she does some serious harm to herself. She’s a black woman, long, dark hair, around five-foot-six, and—”

  Call me back when you’ve calmed down, Sir.

  “Do you understand what I’ve just said, you—”

  The attendant hung up on him.

  Bip-bip-bip.

  Nicholas squinted at his phone. “What the—?” he huffed, before turning to Irene. “They hung up on me.”

  “Are the police supposed to do that?” Irene asked.

  “They fucking hung up on me.”

  He averted his eyes to Sammy, who looked extremely distressed. “Okay, if they won’t find her, we will. We’re leaving.”

  Irene hopped to her feet and brushed her shirt down, ready for action. “What about Sammy?”

  Nicholas pulled his jacket from the coat stand and slipped his arms into the sleeves.

  “Yeah,” he said, before acknowledging what it was they were about to do. “Actually, no. We’ll drop him at Gina’s. It’s not safe out there. Christ knows what nonsense we’ll run into.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’ll go get my keys. I’ll take Iris’s phone, too. Give me a second.”

  Nicholas raced up the stairs and made for the master bedroom, leaving Irene alone with Sammy for a moment. She turned to him and held his shoulders.

  “Champ?”

  “Yes, Aunt Irene?”

  “We’re going to find your mother, okay?” she lied through her teeth, entirely unsure if they’d be successful in their endeavors. “It’ll be okay, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Now, if Grandma Gina gets a bit upset, you need to look after her and make her feel not sad. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “You’re good at making people feel happy, right?”

  He nodded and smiled, in sheer compliance with the woman. “Yeah, I am.”

  Nicholas’ footsteps underscored his hastened voice as he raced down the stairs.

  “Okay, let’s go.”

  Irene rubbed Sammy’s hair and offered him a friendly smile of contrition. “Okay, champ. We’re gonna go find Mommy.”

  ***

  Nicholas squinted as the streaks of blinding light from the street lamps bounced off the windshield. He remained utterly focused and silent as he turned the corner onto the street where his mother-in-law lived.

  A gaggle of drunk party girls dressed in next to nothing cackled like hyenas at the car as it drove past.

  “I swear to God,” Irene said, clutching her cell phone to her lap. “The valley is going downhill fast.”

  The nasty sound of a smashing beer bottle hit the road. The tiny fragments of glass raced across the road in time for the tires on Nicholas’s car to crunch over them.

  “Daddy?”

  Nicholas scanned the rearview mirror.

  “Yes, son?”

  “What if mommy’s dead?”

  Nicholas turned away, unable to look his boy in the face. “Don’t say that. Mommy’s just fine.”

  “Sammy?” Irene said.

  “Yes?”

  “Don’t ever talk about your mother like that. We’ll find her. She’ll be okay.”

  Nicholas rolled the car to a stop outside one of a hundred semi-detached houses on the suburban road.

  Irene unfastened her safety belt and stepped out. “I’ll take him in.”

  “Be quick.”

  “Sure.”

  As Irene opened Sammy’s door, Nicholas retrieved his wife’s cell pho
ne from his pocket and stared at the screen.

  “Where are you, Iris? Where are you?”

  Gina opened the front door. She kept a brave face at the two darkened images approaching her up the front path.

  “Irene.”

  “Mom.”

  The elderly woman turned to little Sammy and held out her arms. “Hey, Sammy. Come to grandma.”

  “Mom,” Irene said. “I can’t stay. Nick’s in the car.”

  Gina hugged the boy tight and looked at the parked car with its engine running.

  “You’ll find her, won’t you?”

  “We’ll try.”

  Irene rubbed Sammy’s hair and offered him some reassurance. “Look after grandma, okay?”

  “I will.”

  “Mom, keep your phone on and keep it fully charged. We’ll call when we know something.”

  Gina ushered Sammy into her house and grabbed the door handle. “I will. Where’s his little toy thing?”

  “Oh, that stupid elephant?”

  Beep. Beep.

  Nicholas blared the horn and indicated to Irene to hurry up.

  “Yes,” Gina said. “The elephant.”

  Irene had been told it was dead, but shrugged her shoulders and took a step back. “I don’t know, mom. Look, I really gotta go.”

  “Call me.”

  “I will.”

  Irene twisted around and dashed for the car, leaving her mother to walk into the house and deal with her grandson.

  Sammy walked into the front room and made himself at home on the couch. He could see the headlamps from his father’s car wade around the glass behind the closed curtain.

  The car engine signaled that it had pulled away and raced off on the quest to find his mother.

  “Sammy?”

  He looked at the front room door to see his grandmother perched against the frame.

  “Hi, Grandma Gina.”

  “How are you feeling?”

  Sammy thought to himself. “Umm. I’m fine.”

  “Not got your little elephant toy with you? I thought you liked Nelly.”

  “His name was Babar.”

  Gina stepped into the room and sat into her rickety rocking chair.

  “Oh, yes. Of course.”

  Creak. Creak.

  Nervous, she rocked it back and forth by pressing her slippered heels into the carpet. She stared at the young man a few feet in front of her. Then, she wondered why he had used the past tense to refer to his toy.

  “Was Babar?

  Sammy nodded and looked at the pictures on the wall. “Yeah. He died.”

  “Died?”

  One, distinct photo of Gina and her late husband, along with her three children - two young girls, and an older boy - caught his attention. The older man in the photo smoked a pipe and sported ridiculous wire-framed spectacles. His eyes seemed to come alive as Sammy smiled at it.

  “Yeah. Like granddad.”

  The boy’s assessment tugged at Gina’s heartstrings. “That wasn’t a nice thing to say.”

  “But it’s true, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, but—” Gina said, before stopping herself from continuing her battle with the six-year-old who’d turned from relative to foe in the space of a sentence.

  “Sammy?”

  “Yes, grandma?”

  “How did Babar die?”

  ***

  Earlier that day, about an hour before the sun set, Sammy wandered into the kitchen with Babar in his arms. The trunk had all but come off, hanging by a lone thread.

  This stupid kid called Daniel tried to beat me up. And he took Babar from me, and he jumped on him and messed him up pretty bad.

  Tufts of white stuffing cottoned out into Sammy’s hands. In trying to stop the injury, he only made it worse.

  Babar was bleeding white clouds. You and me have red blood, but Babar’s blood is white, and it was coming out of his trunk and his head was gonna fall off, and he was in so much pain.

  Sammy trundled into the kitchen with Babar in his arms. He kept an ear out for his parents as he reached for a pair of chrome-plated scissors. He hooked his fingers into the two holes and read the imprint on the side of the vicious-looking scissor. The Chrome.

  I was gonna cut his head off so he wouldn’t be in pain anymore. But, uh, I didn’t want to do it because it was mean.

  The elephant’s big, blue eyes stared into Sammy’s. The boy didn’t have the heart to go through with the decapitation.

  He looked so sad, and he was my friend. So I decided to do something else instead so I didn’t have to watch, because doing it and watching it makes me a bad person.

  The top drawer by the stove flung open, and offered Sammy a choice of cutlery; knives, forks, and spoons. A strange corkscrew with a rectangular head was the first thing he saw.

  No, Sammy, sweetheart. It doesn’t make you a bad person. If it means the pain will stop.

  Next to the corkscrew lay a box of Chrome Valley matches. Sammy toyed with the idea for a moment, and then grabbed them.

  Out in the back yard, Sammy dropped Babar onto the grass and looked up at the blistering sun.

  Mrs. Tan said I should never look into the sun because its dangerous. But fire is more dangerous, and it meant his body will go black. Like mine. And then he will vanish. Sometimes I wish I could vanish, too. Make the bad people go away so they can’t find me. My mommy says it’s games adults play.

  Sammy’s knees pressed against the dry grass. He took out a bunch of five matches and ran them across the side of the matchbox.

  WVHOOM.

  A beautiful, bright spark produced a wonderful bonfire of hope, which burned a waft of black smoke into the windless air.

  Babar begged me not to do it. But he had no blood left.

  Sammy held the toy’s right foot under the flames. It caught fire in an instant and, before long, the entire toy was ablaze.

  Sammy stood up straight and hung his head as Babar roasted before his eyes.

  Gina sat, open-jawed, in stunned silence. There were no words for the story her grandson had just relayed with next to no apathy or regret.

  “Sammy, that’s so sad.”

  “We all die, grandma. I just chose when Babar could die, is all.”

  Gina gave the vaguest, non-committal answer a six-year-old deserved, given the circumstances. “Yes. Yes, I guess we do.”

  Just then, Gina’s pocket vibrated, throwing her into a state of near paralysis. Once she realized what it was, she caught her breath and exhaled

  “Good Lord above.”

  She fumbled around in her pocket for her phone and took it out. “Oh. Sammy, it’s Aunt Irene.”

  “Answer it,” he said. “It might be important.”

  Gina couldn’t help but feel a certain antagonism emanating from her grandson’s face. It was as if he was in charge and giving the orders. She felt obliged to comply. Her thumb swiped the bouncing green icon up, answering the call.

  “Irene?”

  “Mom,” came the voice from the speaker. “Quick question for you.”

  “What?

  Gina stared Sammy out in a contest to see who’d back off first. The kid was definitely going to win, given Gina’s current state of shock.

  “Iris’s cell phone. We can’t unlock it. There’s a four-digit pass code, and Nick’s tried two things already.”

  “Okay?”

  “Yeah, and if we try again, that’ll be the third time. If we got it wrong, we’ll get locked out.”

  Gina rose to her feet. “Why do you want to get into her phone?”

  Irene paused and calmed herself down. It felt futile, trying to explain the details to her technically-impugned mother. “Because, mom, if we can get in then we’ll be able to see all the calls she made, and—”

  ***

  Irene took a breath as she rolled down the passenger-side window. “—texts and stuff. It might give us some ideas as to where she is.”

  Nick shifted down a gear to keep behind the traffic
collecting up on the main high street.

  “Ask her how Sammy is,” he said. “Maybe put him to sleep.”

  Irene lifted the phone away from her ear and threw him a look of concern. “To sleep?”

  “No, no.”

  Nicholas shook his head and lodged what he’d actually meant back into place.

  “To bed, I mean. To bed. Not to sleep.”

  Irene spoke into her cell phone once again. “Right. Mom?”

  “Yes?”

  “Is Sammy still awake?”

  A pause.

  “Mom?”

  “Yes?”

  “What’s wrong with you?” Irene said. “I said, is Sammy still awake?”

  “He’s, uh, looking at me funny. I don’t like this, Irene. He’s behaving strangely.”

  “He’s six-years-old. His mother’s missing, and his father and aunt are out late at night losing their minds, of course he’s behaving strangely.”

  “No,” Gina explained. “You d-don’t understand. He’s just staring at m-me.”

  “Ugh.”

  Irene screamed her lungs dry and slammed her phone on the dashboard, startling Nicholas into hitting the brakes.

  Screeeech.

  “What the hell?” he said. “What are you—”

  Irene yelled into her phone. “Mom, do you know Iris’s pass code or not? Take a wild stab in the dark, or that’s what you’ll be when I get my hands on you.”

  A few pedestrians, including a withered man with a green Mohawk, looked at the car in fear. Nicholas returned visual fire at each of them, and felt his heart turn to mush and melt down his ribcage. “Whoa, whoa. Irene. Calm down. It’s your mother—”

  “—I don’t give a good Goddamn,” Irene snapped. “Mom?”

  Gina’s voice came through the cell’s speaker. “No, honey. I’m sorry. I wouldn’t want to take a guess. I’d be way off.”

  Nicholas applied pressure to the gas pedal and rolled the car forward to the bumper of the car in front.

  “Useless. Absolutely useless.”

  Irene lost her patience and chucked her phone into the cup holder by her knee. “Christ, she could be anywhere. What was she wearing when she went to bed?”