Sleepless

by Louise Mumford

  It was the tone and the way he handled the gun.

  ‘You were in the army, weren’t you?’

  He pulled her up and she realized that her hands were smeared with dead bugs squashed into her palms. She rubbed them on her jacket.

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Which is why the nightmares.’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘And that explains how you tracked me so easily!’

  ‘Uh, no, not really. You stuck out like a sore thumb. I didn’t need training for that.’

  ‘Oh.’

  He took pity on her. ‘There’s something at that lighthouse though – you’re right. It was at the monastery before and that search was just a big charade to put us off. It’s at the lighthouse now. I don’t know what it is, but they really don’t want us to find out.’

  ‘Dreams,’ she said, gazing out over the cliff edge.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Dreams – it was something Rory said. He grabbed me before we left, told me they’re not really interested in fixing sleep at all … that—’

  ‘Yeah, well, it’s not some stupid dream I’m worried about,’ he said. ‘Dreams can’t hurt you.’

  The wind picked up, lashing the first stinging tails of sleet in their faces.

  ‘You don’t have to come with me though.’ Thea raised her voice against the wind, trying to keep it steady. ‘To the lighthouse. You could go back. I don’t want to drag you into this.’

  She didn’t want to drag herself into this. What she wanted was to go back to the Centre, where it was warm and dry and she could check on Rosie and then get them both out of there as soon as she could. She didn’t want to pick this scab of a secret, because she feared that underneath was only blood and infection.

  ‘I’m used to trouble,’ he said. ‘And after what just happened? I’d rather be at the lighthouse than back in that bloody golf ball. Why do you need guns for a sleep trial – on a bloody island? No, let’s go.’

  Rosie in her bed with her beeping machine.

  Beep.

  Thea didn’t want to go to the lighthouse. Who would? It was crazy. She should be sensible and go back to the Centre.

  Beep.

  But she’d been “a good girl”, “a diligent employee”, “a dutiful daughter” for a very long time. She thought of the pale blob of a face with its mouth stretched wide and the blood that had matted Rosie’s hair.

  Beep, beep, beep.

  Thea made her choice. She started walking.

  Chapter 26

  ‘Is this going to work?’ Thea hissed at Ethan, smiling manically.

  ‘Shut up and keep smiling!’ He hissed back. ‘I just need to get closer to him.’

  As they had climbed higher and the lighthouse came into view, they had seen that outside the lighthouse there was a guard. With a gun.

  Ambushing the guard had quickly been discarded as an option. To ambush, you needed surprise, and you couldn’t surprise someone who could clearly see you coming. They continued walking up to him, Thea waving exaggeratedly and offering some weak “hellos” as they got nearer, close enough to see that he’d put one hand on his holster.

  ‘What are you doing up here?’

  The wind rough-housed them, snatching their words away and hurling them off the cliff edge.

  ‘FIRE!’ Thea called back. ‘You’re needed back at the Centre. We’ve come to take over.’

  At least they weren’t dressed in their cult clothes anymore. Thea’s dark leggings and jacket was the kind of thing the staff would wear if they had to trek to the lighthouse.

  ‘WHAT?’ The guard shouted, holding out an arm to stop them.

  ‘FIRE!’

  As it was, with the wind and the sleet, it didn’t matter what they said because the guard couldn’t hear them properly and they just had to keep walking closer, smiling, smiling all the while. One foot in front of the other. Closer, closer. Smile, smile.

  They saw him reaching for his radio. Maybe he’d already been told that there would be two escapees trying to get into the lighthouse.

  ‘Fuck it,’ Ethan muttered and sprinted the last few feet.

  Thea instinctively wanted to squeeze her eyes shut, but she didn’t want to be the pathetic sidekick, so she ran too – fully intending to grab an arm or a foot and hopefully not get shot in the face. It was over too quickly for any of that; in seconds Ethan had knocked the man out and was searching his pockets.

  ‘Help me drag him in!’

  He fumbled with the keys he’d found, opened the door and grabbed the guard under his arms. Thea got his feet and they staggered into the lighthouse as a tangled threesome, Ethan slamming the door behind them as the wind picked up its temper.

  A light flickered on automatically.

  Thea wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting from the inside of the lighthouse. What she got was … cosy. A curving stone staircase hugged the wall and led upwards to the glass-topped pinnacle that held the light. In what space was left, there was a tiny kitchen, the cabinets old but the appliances all very new and shiny, and a comfortable chair next to a tall, thin, curved window. It was warm and smelled of buttery toast.

  Any minute, something could come barrelling down those steps, something ugly and crazed, with a mouth stretched wide in a howl, hands reaching out to claw, scratch or strangle.

  A clock ticked.

  There was a newspaper on the chair, the crossword half-completed.

  ‘I don’t think anyone else is here,’ Ethan said, searching through the kitchen cupboards. ‘Help me find something to tie him up, and then we’ll look upstairs. Handcuffs’d be great, but I don’t think we’re going to find any …’

  ‘Next to the kettle?’ Thea picked up a pair.

  They both stared at them.

  ‘Okay then.’ Ethan raised an eyebrow.

  A noise by the door caused them to both whirl round, just in time to see the guard on his feet wrenching the door open and stumbling out into the sleet.

  ‘Shit.’ Ethan ran to the door.

  ‘Let him go.’ Thea shrugged, marvelling at how cool she could act. ‘What’s he going to do? They already know we’re here. He’d just be one more thing to worry about.’

  She started to rummage through the plastic box of medicine on the kitchen worktop.

  ‘There’s enough sedative here to last for months …’

  She trailed off as they both looked at each other. Who, or what, would need sedating? Thea half expected cold fingers to wrap themselves around her shoulder. She shivered.

  ‘We need to check upstairs.’ Ethan took the packet from her and glanced at the instructions. ‘You can stay down here if you want.’

  ‘No!’

  Ethan went first. Action Ken, that’s what Rosie had called him. It had made Thea laugh at the time, the idea of him in a camouflage outfit, poseable arms holding a pair of binoculars, plastic attack dog included.

  Thea’s hands started to shake. They passed another little room wedged in around the stairs on the second floor, this time a sparse bedroom. Inside was a single bed, plain woollen coverlet and a few clothes strewn on a hard-backed chair. They carried on up towards the light. Thea couldn’t stop the shaking spreading from her hands to the rest of her, in particular her jaw. She tried to clench it, but it juddered like she was the kind of cold that led to freezing to death.

  They made it to the light-room, the intricate structure of glass panels and machinery in the middle, a narrow walkway around it.

  That was when Thea started to gulp in air because it felt like she couldn’t breathe properly anymore. Because of the gulping and the shaking, she found herself half-sliding to the floor in a panic, no clue as to why she was suddenly on her hands and knees on the metal walkway, the grids cutting into her palms, her chest heaving, trying to suck in air like she was giving birth.

  ‘Shh, it’s okay. You’re having a panic attack. You’ll be fine …’

  Ethan pushed her into a sitting position and sat with her, making her breath
e with him, long steady breaths, and there was a part of her that was cringing in embarrassment, but she couldn’t worry about that part until she got control of her lungs.

  ‘You’re fine,’ he soothed. ‘You’ve done really well …’

  ‘Don’t … patronize … me,’ Thea spluttered.

  ‘See? And you can still be really rude. So you must be fine.’

  They sat there for a while. It would have been a beautiful view if it hadn’t been for the sleet blurring the windows and the way the wind growled and raged outside. Downstairs, tucked away behind the thick stone walls, there was protection from it but up here they were vulnerable. There was just glass between them and it, old glass at that. Up close she could make out some of the pictures in the stained glass: one saint in a long grey robe bending to pat a dog, or sheep, or possibly a small horse – it was hard to tell. In the sunshine it would have been kaleidoscope-pretty. Right now though, it seemed that at any moment, the whole thing would shatter, the cracks speeding across the panes and then there would be a rush of air and sleet as the glass imploded over them, wicked shards aiming straight for their eyes.

  ‘Let’s go.’ She took another deep breath.

  ‘Tea. Everyone feels better after tea. With sugar.’

  Ethan set about boiling the kettle and Thea crumpled into the chair by the window, trying to concentrate on her breathing.

  ‘I know!’ Ethan knelt to look in the lower cupboards, his knees cracking softly as he did so. Action Ken knees, Thea thought.

  ‘I knew that guard would have some!’ He waved a bottle. ‘Here. Even better!’

  He shoved a glass into her hand, filled with an amber-coloured liquid.

  ‘Whisky. Just the thing. One glass, then we carry on looking. Okay?’

  He raised his glass.

  ‘Okay,’ said Thea, swilling the whisky round and round, making a small orange whirlpool.

  ‘To … I don’t know … to Moses Ing!’

  Thea raised hers. ‘To Moses Ing, without whom we wouldn’t be in this fucking mess.’

  They drank.

  And from beyond the door they hadn’t even noticed was there, half hidden behind a tapestry, a small wavery voice could just about be heard.

  ‘Hello?’

  They froze.

  ‘Hello? Did you call me? Moses? Anybody there? Hello?’

  Chapter 27

  Moses Ing. The man behind it all, near-mythical, a tech Titan, a behemoth of the internet, the man who made Morpheus … a man they had very clearly seen waving from the walkway next to Delores dressed in his chinos and deck shoes.

  ‘He can’t be in there!’ Thea whispered.

  Ethan shrugged helplessly.

  ‘We saw him with Delores!’ she added.

  He downed the rest of his whisky.

  ‘Did we?’

  ‘Yes! You were there. Delores introduced him and he waved at everyone and …’ Her brain caught up. ‘Oh.’

  ‘Well, one of them isn’t the real Moses Ing,’ he said. ‘Want to find out which one?’

  Stunned, Thea watched him unlock the padlock with the keys he’d taken from the guard. He got the gun ready as he pulled back the bolt and opened the door with a shoulder shove, legs braced.

  They made a dramatic entrance into what looked like a room from a run-down bed and breakfast from the Seventies. Chintzy wallpaper peeled away at the edges and there was a rough carpet, made brown with age rather than by design. A window let in some light, but the panes were misted up and condensation gathered in pools on the mould-speckled windowsill. Towards the back there was a door, its wood veneer scuffed off, which led to what must have been a bathroom.

  However, it was the bed that drew their attention. It was a hospital bed, with bars on the side and white cotton linen, a drip standing guard on one side. It looked hugely out of place amongst the genteel decay.

  But not as out of place as the man lying in it.

  He was hooked up to the drip, the bed adjusted so he was half sitting, propped up on so many pillows he looked like a doll amongst them.

  A frightening doll.

  Skinny and blue-veined, the man had stubble greying his chin and bare feet that were hook-nailed and calloused. His head was completely bald and as smooth as porcelain and, just like fine porcelain, which is ever so slightly transparent, Thea and Ethan could see this man’s brain.

  It was a tattoo. An elaborate, skull-covering tattoo.

  Just as doctors sometimes had china phrenology heads in their surgeries and on those heads the brain was mapped out in neat little grids with tiny labels, so it was with this man. The design stretched all the way around his left eye socket, over his sparse eyebrows, the fine black lines giving his head the look of a cracked egg.

  His eyes were closed as though in a restless, fidgety sleep.

  Then they were open. Bloodshot and a bit wild.

  And looking right at Thea.

  She noticed he was handcuffed to the bed.

  ‘Where am I?’ His voice was croaky from lack of use, as cracked as his head.

  ‘Don’t go any closer,’ Ethan muttered to Thea.

  ‘Moses?’ Thea asked gently.

  ‘Who are you? Are you real?’ He writhed in the bed, the handcuffs scraping on the metal bars as he twisted his wrists.

  ‘Are you Moses Ing?’ Ethan said, louder.

  ‘I wasn’t here before! Where am I? Are you going to kill me?’ He started to wrench at the handcuffs, yelling and kicking his shackled feet hard against the mattress as he strained, his neck stringy with the effort.

  Then just as suddenly, he flopped, completely still and stared at something in the far corner of the room.

  ‘What are you doing, Max?’ he said, quite softly now, watchful.

  He listened to a reply that only he could hear.

  ‘It’s my tech, Max. I’ve told you. I get to choose. We’re going to do this my way.’

  He rolled his eyes at whatever the response was to that.

  ‘You trust them? Really? Well, go work for them, then. I won’t stop you. It’s my … tech …’

  His eyelids drooped.

  ‘My … tech … remember …’

  He slumped, his breathing evening out, muttering a few last unintelligible words.

  Thea and Ethan looked at each other.

  ‘Fuck,’ Ethan whispered, rubbing one hand over the bristle of his hair.

  ‘Yeah.’

  She tiptoed a little closer to the bed. The man was sleeping again now, or at least seemed to be. She wasn’t going to test that out by going any nearer, especially after what he had done at the monastery. Asleep, however, he looked weak, his breath whistling slightly.

  ‘This has to be him, doesn’t it? From the monastery. He said he didn’t know where he was. That’s because he’s been moved.’ She turned to Ethan.

  ‘Or he never knows where he is because he’s crazy …’

  ‘What about what he said? The tech? My tech, he said. He has to be Moses! Maybe … I don’t know … that Max person he was talking to did something to him … I mean, why hide him unless he’s important? Unless he’s Moses?’

  Around his left eye socket, Thea could see the words “form”, “size”, “weight” and “colour” each in its own little grid. There wasn’t anything written around his right eye, but, as Thea looked, she noticed a circular patch of scarred skin, red and raw, with a deep dent in the middle. It was the size of the disc on her own temple.

  ‘Look.’ She pointed to it.

  Ethan’s hand instinctively went to his own disc.

  ‘I didn’t tell you this before,’ she said, keeping her voice steady. ‘But back at the Centre yesterday I visited Rosie and I saw Richard.’ Ethan looked blank. ‘From our sleep therapy group, remember? Sleep paralysis guy? He was taken into another room and he was … well, he was screaming and fighting – and the others were trying to control him but it was like, he was seeing something else, something I couldn’t … see.’

  E
than paled, then he set his jaw and marched out of the room.

  With a quick glance at the peaceful Moses, Thea followed. She found him in the kitchen opening drawers with aggression, rifling through the things inside.

  ‘I am done with that shit on my head. I don’t care about the sleep.’ He pulled one drawer out and emptied it on the worktop, forks and teaspoons rattling, skimming his hands through them until he found what he was looking for.

  A sharp knife.

  He raced upstairs to the little bedroom on the second floor.

  ‘Wait!’ Thea ran after him.

  She skidded into the room just in time to see Ethan in front of the mirror on the wall. With one hand holding the skin tight around the disc on his temple, he gripped the knife, just about to jab it in.

  ‘Stop!’ She yanked at his arm. ‘Just stop a minute and think this through.’

  She was out of breath.

  ‘We don’t know anything about this tech, what they’ve programmed into it.’ She gasped, still gripping his arm. ‘You can’t just dig something like that out with a kitchen knife. It could have some sort of self-defence mode; it could, I don’t know, short out and fry your brain if you do it wrong. Please let’s think it through a bit before you do anything.’ She felt his arm relax a bit. ‘Please.’

  He dropped his arm.

  ‘Surely, we’re out of range up here anyway?’ she continued to hold on to him.

  He shrugged her off. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘One more night. But if they work tonight, if I have a restful bloody sleep, I am cutting the damn things out first thing in the morning, whether you want to or not.’

  ‘Agreed.’

  Ramming the knife point into the little wooden dresser next to him, Ethan stalked back down the stairs.

  Chapter 28

  Night. Ethan slept. Thea didn’t.

  They’d decided not to bother with the sedative for Moses as they didn’t really know how to dose it and he was handcuffed anyway. There was also a chance that they could get more sense out of him if he was lucid.

  They had cobbled together a basic meal from the tins in the cupboards and had eaten it while perched on the kitchen worktops, watching the sleet fatten and slow into snowflakes until it got too dark to see anything. Ethan had insisted on Thea taking the bed and had settled down on some blankets on the floor next to her.