The Sleepless

by Graham Masterton

  ‘What are you going to do?’ asked Michael.

  ‘I’m going to have a long think,’ Thomas replied.

  ‘Is that all? What about “Mr Hillary”?’

  ‘What about him? He has a name that sounds the same as the name of a fifth-century Pope. He’s appeared in your hypnotic trances. He’s also appeared in your hypnotherapist’s notebook. Oh – and I forgot. A blind man said his name to you in the street. I don’t think we have quite enough justification for pulling him in, do you?’

  ‘You could stake out his house,’ Michael suggested.

  Thomas shook his head. ‘I couldn’t justify that, either. Not legally, not financially.’

  ‘Then I’ll stake out his house.’

  ‘You stay away from his house. Keep digging, keep sifting. If and when you find something, let me know.’

  Matthew said, ‘You’re going to go after the white-white boys, lieutenant?’

  ‘If they exist – and if they did what you say they’ve done, then I’ll go after them.’

  Matthew heaved his enormous bulk out of his chair, and brushed down his djellaba. ‘In that case, a word to the wise. Never let the white-white men in through your door. Never speak to them. Never look at their eyes. And if you see one at night, make sure you have a flashlight or a candle, and never turn your back.’

  Thomas showed him to the door. ‘I want to thank you for all of your trouble.’

  ‘You don’t yet know what trouble is, lieutenant.’

  ‘Well ... it sounds like I’m going to find out.’

  Matthew touched his forehead again. ‘May the good spirits keep you safe from harm, believe me.’

  Michael left Thomas’s apartment shortly after eight o’clock, after Megan had made them all breakfast and they had discussed the implications of Matthew Monyatta’s stories. All three of them agreed that Joe’s assassination pictures were prima facie evidence that there was some kind of conspiracy behind most of the major political killings of the past 120 years. But they weren’t at all sure if the pale-faced men who appeared in all of the pictures were the same men – or if they were Matthew’s so-called ‘white-white men’ – or if they really were the sleepless descendants of Old Testament angels.

  ‘Remember that Matthew’s a revolutionary,’ put in Thomas. ‘He could be setting us up for his own political ends, or simply to make us look like superstitious idiots.’

  ‘I didn’t get that feeling,’ said Michael. ‘I got the feeling that he was genuinely afraid.’

  Megan wheeled herself into the room with fresh toast. She laid her hand on Michael’s hand, and he could physically feel the warmth of her aura.

  ‘Have you had enough?’ she asked him.

  He looked at Thomas and Thomas smiled; and Michael felt like the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built.

  When he got back to his apartment, he tiredly dragged off his sweater and threw it down on the couch. Then he sat down to take off his shoes. The red light on the answering machine was flashing, so he jabbed the play button to hear his messages. There was a click, and a lengthy hiss, and then he faintly heard music playing – strange discordant music, like somebody trying to express a migraine headache on the violin.

  Then, very loudly – almost as loudly as if he were standing right next to him – he heard a thick, breathy voice.

  ‘You have tried our patience too far, Michael. We have tried to encourage you, tried to be tolerant. You could have enjoyed a quiet and prosperous life, if only you had looked away. Looking away is no sin, Michael. We have to protect ourselves, you understand that. Every social order has a right to protect itself. That is why we have borrowed your wife and your son, Michael – for no other reason, except to protect ourselves. All you have to do, Michael, is to look away, and never, ever look back.’

  That was all. The scraping music continued for a little while longer, and then died away, and the message ended. Michael immediately picked up the phone and jabbed out his home number in New Seabury. The first time, he pressed the wrong number, and he was greeted by a continuous whining tone. The second time, he heard his home phone beeping, but it beeped and beeped for almost a minute and nobody answered.

  He phoned Thomas. ‘I came back and there was a message on my answering machine. Somebody said that he’d “borrowed” Patsy and Jason. I phoned them but there was no reply.’

  ‘You’re sure they didn’t go out for a while?’

  ‘Patsy’s normally home at this time of the morning. Jason’s at school.’

  ‘Why don’t you call the school, see if he’s shown up. If he hasn’t, I’ll call my old friend Walt Johnson down at Hyannis and have him check out your house. The main thing is not to panic.’

  ‘Giraffe –’

  ‘What is it, Mikey?’

  ‘I think it was him. The voice on the phone. I think I recognized it.’

  ‘That’s a good start. Who do you think it was?’

  ‘I’m ninety-nine percent sure that it was “Mr Hillary.” ‘

  There was a very long silence. Then Thomas said, ‘Oh, shit.’

  ‘Why, “oh, shit”?’ Michael wanted to know.

  ‘Listen,’ said Thomas, ‘we know where “Mr Hillary” lives, don’t we?’

  ‘That’s right – so if he’s kidnapped Patsy and Jason –’

  ‘He may have kidnapped Patsy and Jason, yes. If he’s involved in the John O’Brien killing, then he certainly had a motive to kidnap Patsy and Jason, to stop you from digging into it any further. But I can’t search his house without a warrant, and in order to get hold of a warrant I have to show just cause.’

  ‘But I recognized his voice! What more “just cause” do you need than that?’

  ‘Did you ever meet “Mr Hillary”?’

  ‘Well, no, of course, not. But –’

  ‘Mikey – where do you recognize his voice from?’

  ‘He talked to me, for Christ’s sake! He talked to me when I was under hyp –’

  He stopped. He suddenly understood what Thomas was trying to tell him. No judge would grant a search warrant on the basis of an identification that was based on a voice heard in a hypnotic trance.

  ‘Call the school,’ Thomas urged him. ‘Call the school, then call me back.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Michael, and hung up.

  He searched through his address book until he found the school’s number, and dialed it. But he knew even before he had talked to Jason’s class-teacher what the answer was going to be. Patsy and Jason had been taken – by ‘Mr Hillary’, by the lily-white boys – and all he could think of was Elaine Parker’s cigarette-scorched skin and the slimy cat that still grinned in his nightmares from the ruined body of Sissy O’Brien.

  Seventeen

  There had been an accident on the McClellan Highway at its intersection with Revere Beach Parkway. A huge tractor-trailer had overturned, and lay on its side like a dead bull-elephant, leaking diesel fuel instead of blood. Traffic was backed up as far as Bennington Street, and Michael and Victor had no choice but to wait in frustration for it to edge its way forward.

  It was almost four o’clock by the time they reached Lynn Shore Drive and turned south along the Nahant Beach isthmus. The afternoon was warm, and the sea breeze was feather-light, but the sun was obscured by a thick grey haze, which gave the beach the appearance of a black-and-white photograph, drained of colour.

  ‘You realize that Giraffe is going to go apeshit when he finds out that you’ve come up here on your own,’ Victor remarked.

  ‘Giraffe can do what he likes. Giraffe’s family hasn’t been kidnapped by some gang of white-faced maniacs.’

  ‘You really think that was “Mr Hillary” on the phone?’

  ‘I played it over and over. I’m sure of it. I don’t know how I could have heard his real voice when I was under hypnosis, but I did.’

  ‘Well ... Aura Hypnosis is a pretty powerful form of human communication. I don’t know whether anybody has the mental streng
th to talk to somebody else over thirty miles, so clearly that their voice can be recognized. But who knows? The whole thing’s still in its infancy. It’s like virtual reality without the need for any VR equipment.’

  ‘It’s like flying without the need for wings,’ put in Michael. ‘Just like Dr Moorpath.’

  Victor said, ‘I wish I’d seen that.’

  Michael glanced at him. ‘Believe me, it happened.’

  ‘Don’t get me wrong ... I’m not doubting your word. I just wish I’d seen it.’

  ‘Do you think ... ‘

  ‘What?’ asked Victor.

  ‘Well ... I saw Dr Moorpath walking through the air like that, and I suddenly thought about Elaine Parker. She fell thousands of feet out of that airplane, yet she managed to survive. I’ve been having nightmares about that crash for months. I’ve fallen out of that L10-11 more times than you can count. I’ve been falling and falling and each time I’ve been thinking to myself if only I could fly.’

  Victor raised his eyebrows. ‘What you’re trying to suggest is – supposing Elaine Parker flew? Or walked in the air? Or whatever it was that Dr Moorpath did?’

  ‘It’s a possibility, isn’t it? If he could do it, then maybe she could, too. And people have fallen out of airplanes before, and survived. There was some wartime bomber pilot who fell eighteen thousand feet and landed in some trees.’

  They drove past the neatly-painted beach houses of Little Nahant, and then turned off down the rough, sandy track that led to the lighthouse at Goat’s Cape. The big Mercury bounced and banged on its suspension, and at one point the rear wheels stuck in a slew of gravel and sand. Suddenly, however, they were out in the open, driving over knobbly clumps of sea-grass, and there ahead of them stood the squat white lighthouse which Michael had seen in his hypnotic trances.

  ‘Better park here,’ Victor suggested. ‘And turn the car around, in case we have to make a quick getaway.’

  Michael manoeuvred the Mercury so that it was facing northward. Then they climbed out and walked the rest of the way to the lighthouse steps. There were no other vehicles parked anywhere near, and the lighthouse itself looked deserted. The lamp was grimy and cracked, and the walls facing the sea were badly weathered.

  ‘Looks empty,’ Victor remarked. ‘Maybe “Mr Hillary” was just a figment of your imagination, after all.’

  Michael shook his head. ‘Remember that Megan saw him too.’

  ‘Maybe he was a figment of her imagination, too.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Victor. You don’t believe that two people could have thought about the same imaginary character, do you? We both went to Goat’s Cape – in our trance, anyway. We both saw “Mr Hillary,” as clearly as if he was real.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell Giraffe?’

  ‘It wouldn’t have made any difference. Besides, I didn’t want him to get the wrong idea.’

  ‘What wrong idea?’ Victor was perplexed. Michael didn’t answer, but thought to himself: just because Megan’s in a wheelchair, that doesn’t make her any less spirited, or any less attractive, or any less sexy.

  Victor looked around, and sniffed. ‘Why don’t you knock at the door? I’ll take a look around the back.’

  Michael swallowed. The lighthouse remained adamantly silent, and he was beginning to wish that he hadn’t come. Maybe Thomas had been right not to rush off to Goat’s Cape without any evidence that ‘Mr Hillary’ might have kidnapped Patsy and Jason. There was still no concrete evidence that Patsy and Jason had been kidnapped at all. The Barnstable County police were out looking for them, but so far they hadn’t reported anything suspicious. The house had been empty, but properly locked. None of the neighbours had reported any shouting or struggling; or seen strangers in the neighbourhood.

  But he had such a strong feeling that they were gone, and that ‘Mr Hillary’ had taken them. It filled his mind like a black, unspoken sentence. As if he knew, but couldn’t quite understand why.

  And even though the lighthouse was silent, without any sign of life, he could sense that there was something here. Something very dark, and something very strange.

  Something that drew him nearer, and made him want to stay.

  Something that drew him nearer, and made him need to stay.

  Victor briefly grasped his arm, and then went sliding down the loose sandy slope that led to the seaward side of the lighthouse. ‘There’s a couple of outbuildings here,’ he called back. ‘I’ll check them out.’

  Michael waited for a moment, and then walked slowly up to the solid oak door. There was a rusted wrought-iron bell-pull, with a corroded nameplate underneath that said ‘ ... ARYL ... .EEPER.’

  It had probably once read ‘Mr Hillary, Lighthouse Keeper’. Ironic that it could now be pronounced as ‘Airy Leaper’.

  He tugged the bell-pull and waited. He didn’t even hear the bell jangling. Maybe it was broken. Maybe the lighthouse was derelict, and Patsy and Jason were already back home, trying to get in touch with him. He checked his watch. Four-twenty. He remembered what his mother had always told him about twenty past the hour. That was the time when angels flew overhead. He cleared his throat and tugged at the bell-pull a second time.

  ‘Nothing so far!’ Victor called, from the other side of the lighthouse. ‘Only the first bicycle ever invented and some crappy old chicken-coop.’

  Michael looked up at the lighthouse walls. There was graffiti chiseled just above the doorway, some of it quite old. ‘John Feb’ry 1911’ and ‘I ©* Anthea, ‘34’and – rather incongruously ‘Andover Newton Theological School For Ever.’

  Further up, however, there was even more graffiti, some of it in mirror-writing and some that was nothing more than triangles and squares and zig-zag lines. Michael had to step back to see some of it, because it was so high up, twenty or thirty feet off the ground.

  He suddenly thought to himself: how the hell did anybody get up there, to carve all that? They could have used a ladder, but the steps that led up to the lighthouse door had exceptionally narrow treads, too narrow to accommodate a normal ladder. And what lighthouse keeper would have tolerated somebody climbing the side of his lighthouse and banging out lettering and symbols with a hammer and chisel? One of the phrases in mirror-writing was ONE TENTH EPHAH. Another was UNCLEAN. Most of the rest of them were unintelligible gibberish.

  Michael was still frowning up at the graffiti when the lighthouse door opened, totally silently. He didn’t even notice at first that it had opened – he was too interested in a pattern of hieroglyphs that looked like various birds, ravens and seagulls and hawks and storks. There were insects, too: things that looked like spiders and centipedes and ants.

  The lighthouse door opened even further, and it was then that its gradually-widening blackness caught Michael’s attention. He jolted in surprise, and almost lost his footing on the steep steps.

  A pale young woman was standing in the doorway. Her eyes were mint green. She was wearing a white cotton headscarf that made her look even paler. She wore a thin gold neck-chain, and an ankle-length dress of the same white cotton as her headscarf.

  ‘Are you looking for somebody?’ she asked him, in a thin voice, barely audible over the soft sound of the surf.

  ‘I’m looking for “Mr Hillary”. Is he here?’

  ‘Of course. He’s been expecting you.’

  ‘Is my wife here? Is my son here?’

  ‘Of course. Didn’t you expect them to be?’

  Michael felt such a surge of anger and panic that he could hardly breathe. ‘Tell “Mr Hillary” he has to let them go now. I mean now! I want them here, out, now!’

  The girl smiled at his anger. ‘You can come in and see them.’

  ‘All right, then. But I’m taking them away from here, and I’m taking them now.’

  ‘Why not talk to “Mr Hillary”? He’s been wanting to talk to you for such a long time.’

  ‘I intend to. I’m not sure he’s going to like what he hears. Victor!’

  ‘Ah,’ said
the girl. ‘We noticed that you’d brought a companion.’

  ‘Yes, I have.’

  ‘ “Mr Hillary” would prefer it if your companion were to leave.’

  ‘I don’t think “Mr Hillary” is in much of a position to tell anybody what to do. The police know that we’re here.’

  The girl looked him directly in the eyes, and said, without any vehemence, ‘No, they don’t.’

  Michael recoiled, just a fraction. He had felt a coldness somewhere inside his mind, like a cold needle sliding through brain tissue.

  ‘You don’t have to lie to us,’ the girl smiled.

  Victor came around the lighthouse, polishing his glasses with his handkerchief. ‘Salt spray,’ he said. Then, ‘Well, what’s happening here?’

  ‘ “Mr Hillary’s” here,’ Michael explained. ‘So are Patsy and Jason.’

  ‘You’ve seen them?’

  ‘I’m just going in to see them now.’

  ‘Only you,’ the girl told Michael. ‘We don’t want your companion. Your companion must leave immediately, and say nothing to anyone.’

  ‘Now, hold on, sugar –’ said Victor. ‘Your “Mr Hillary” has committed a serious offence, and so have you. You just let us in there, and we’ll take this gentleman’s wife and child and be on our way. Otherwise, all you’re doing is compounding your felony even more.’

  ‘Only you,’ the girl repeated.

  Victor came up the last two steps and confronted the girl directly. ‘I am an officer of the Boston coroner’s department and I am telling you to take us to Patsy and Jason Rearden right now. You understand English?’

  The girl didn’t seem to be focusing on Victor at all. Her green eyes were still looking at Michael, over Victor’s shoulder. There was something concentrated about them, as if they were filled with lovingly-distilled jealousy – as if every moment of pain and martyrdom that this girl had felt had been reduced to two liquid drops of infinite greenness.

  She laid one hand on Victor’s right shoulder and Michael couldn’t think what she was doing. But then she gripped his shoulder more tightly, and tensed her neck muscles and then Victor suddenly screamed out, ‘Christ! Oh, Christ! Oh, Christ!’