Nicholas rubbed his face and eyeballed her.
His consoling shoulder rub calmed her nerves. She caught his hand in hers and tried to retain her composure.
Then, another unexpected pang of the shivers rumbled through her body, forcing those tiny beads of sweat to fall to her arm.
The bedside alarm clock snapped to 06:00.
Cuckoo! Cuckoo!
Iris jumped in her skin at the sound.
Loud, inevitable, and uninvited.
“Ugh, not again,” Nicholas groaned as he wiped his eyes.
Iris scratched the side of her face and noticed she was soaking wet. A whiff of burning came from the charred side of her night gown. Finally, a smudged of black ink on her left wrist turned into view as she lowered her hand.
Nicholas didn’t acknowledge any of it. He cleared his throat and rolled his shoulders as Iris looked at the bedroom door.
The way he behaved suggested he knew absolutely nothing… about anything. The secret from her past. The events of the day. All the subterfuge and secrecies; just a normal morning in the Goddard household.
His calm and entirely characteristic behavior didn’t explain what Iris saw in the master bedroom door lock.
A tiny, silver key, and a slightly-opened door.
Confused by his wife’s startled visage, Nicholas only had one question. “Iris? What happened?”
The End.
Somnambulist Author Notes - Andrew Mackay
Dear reader,
First of all, I want to thank you for choosing my book over all the other forms of entertainment that’s out there. From films and TV, to music and theater, you’ve elected to read my book, and there’s simply no better compliment for an author. To me, it almost doesn’t matter if you enjoyed it or not. I do mean almost, of course. If you’ve read this far, then I can only presume you got something from the book to compel you to read this very sentence.
Creating Somnambulist was a weird experience for me in a lot of ways.
Anyone who’s read my past works - especially the horror titles and, more specifically, Convenience - will know I have something of an obsession with dream states, and hyper-reality. I have no idea why this is, to be perfectly honest. I don’t study dreams, and I don’t spend hours talking about it. So… where did the idea originate?
Back in July of this year (2019) I woke up in bed and had the word Somnambulist in my head, for some bizarre reasons. Then, as is typical of me, I visualized the word and noticed that it contained four syllables; three letters each. Som, Nam, Bul, Ist. If you take a look at the book cover again, you’ll see exactly how the word played out in my mind’s eye. The cover was very easy to get made as a result.
But… what would the story be?
I was midway through my last book/experiment, The Hunger Diaries, when the Somnambulist cover image came to me. Those two weeks in June/July where I lost 17 lbs as an experiment, and kept a diary were weird enough. I think the lack of food may have inspired the Somnambulist title in my head. Or not. I can’t remember now lol
I knew of course that the main character had to be a sleepwalker. Once I had who it was, then the rest was fairly easy to figure out. You may have noticed that Somnambulist is a story of two concurrent halves; the roman numeral chapters (even) and the regular numbered ones (odd.) The day story, versus the night story. I didn’t want to plot the book too intricately, so came up with the beginning and then end - that is to say, when she wakes up, and the burning building she jumps from. Shortly after that, I decided to leave the end ambiguous. Was it all a dream? Or did she actually get vengeance? It was a conscious effort on my part to leave maddening clues to the contrary of whatever the reader decided.
Was it all a dream? Okay, how do you explain text on her wrist?
Or… was it real? Iris wakes up at the end, and Nicholas seems to know nothing.
The Martin Scorsese movie Shutter Island did much the same thing in balancing the was-it-real-or-just-a-dream theme. Was Leonardo DiCaprio insane, or really acting out what happens in the movie? I’m sure there are better examples out there, but it’s the one that sprung to mind and helped me decide to write all the night stuff first. The odd-numbered chapters. It enabled me to get creative with things like the mermaid in the bathtub, and the green duffel bag, and so on.
Once I’d finished that, I wrote the “day story”, the even-numbered chapters. I had collected a lot of bizarre imagery in the night, which I could then use for the day story. Simply put, you really cannot plot something like this and keep it fresh. After I’d finished the “night half”, I had an elephant, a mermaid, a truck full of frozen bodies… which I then used in the “day half” for Sammy’s toy, Iris’s attack in the bathtub, and the drawing Sammy does at school.
Did you notice the Doctor’s name? Dr. R. Downy. An anagram of Wydron.
Mrs. Tan is Chinese, and takes Sammy’s drawing of a bunch of dead people with horizontal lines for eyes. Later, the truck turns up with the corpses.
The label on Babar’s leg? Toe Tag.
The magazine on the coffee table is called The Big Six.
What does this say to you about Iris Goddard? Well, as an author, that wasn’t in the least bit important. The connection was the most important thing. The whole chapter where she goes to Lester’s apartment for sex is actually a metaphor for Iris’s views on her own family. The photo that had been folded to exclude the unnamed kid, in my mind, was a signal that Iris had shut the memory of her brother out of her mind for good. That’s just an example of dozens that made it into the book.
As an author - and idea machine, if you will - I think I know why I find the dream state fascinating. It opens up a bunch of channels and ideas you could never have used otherwise. I mean, where else can you see a woman turn into a mermaid, other than in a fantasy shape shifter book? It’s all in her mind. Our dreams don’t make sense at the best of times, and so there’s a good deal of license us authors can take. As long as we write great and thrilling stories then, to me, that’s all that matters.
I hadn’t really tackled the issue of tacit racism in my books until now. It was something I’ve always been keen to explore, and Somnambulist provided that opportunity. Contrary to the rumors you may have heard, I’m not a black woman (I couldn’t be further from it, lol) but I am in a mixed-race marriage. I am a white man married to an oriental woman. I’ve seen racism in a few ugly, and even not-so-ugly, forms. Some subtle. Some blatant. But it’s there, and alive and well in 2019. To deny that it isn’t a part of life is futile, in my view. To include it and treat it with the respect it deserves strengthens the satirical commentary prevalent in almost all of my books. Chrome Valley, you see, is an allegory. A compendium, if you like, of all the states in the US and boroughs in the UK (where I live) and its increasing inability to deal with poor vs rich, white vs black, educated vs uneducated, and … well, everyone vs everyone else.
I’m nothing if not a rebel at the best of times.
What’s most interesting about this whole idea is that I told my mom about the book. She went on to reveal that I was a sleepwalker when I was around five-years-old. Apparently, I walked around the house and stared at things, and then went back to bed. It’s weird how life imitates art, right? And if it wasn’t for this book, I’d probably have never known about it! Maybe there is something about the subconscious. I don’t ever remember sleepwalking…
Enough about me, though - what did you think of Somnambulist? Did it work for you? Distract you? Disturb you? Please leave an honest review at Amazon and let potential buyers know what you thought of it. Oh, don’t forget to follow me at Amazon if you’re not following me already and, of course, sign up to my newsletter on the next page.
You can email me, too. You know I love hearing from you!
Now, I’m going to write a Western called Once Upon a Time in Chrome Valley. I already have the cover for it… and it’s going to be unlike anything you’ve ever read.
You’re welcome ;)
Andrew Mackay,
Hampshire, UK
(December 1, 2019)
***
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Just a few kind words would be great. Thanks!
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‘Somnambulist’
Copyright © 2019 Chrome Valley Books
Written by Andrew Mackay
Edited by Ashley Rose Miller and Aly Quinn
Cover Design & Image Credits: ViknCharlie / Yiucheung / Michael Sanca (Shutterstock)
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (or somewhere in between), events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Acknowledgments:
For K.
Also to:
Jennifer Long and Adele Embrey
The members and admins of 20BooksTo50K
All the CVB Gang Members and Advance Reading Group Members
… and Eeyore a.k.a Paula, founder of the Female Veteran Network
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