Sleep Disorder

by Jack Ketchum

  By the time Annie came out of the bathroom in her robe and slippers he'd started to shake.

  "Sorry," he said. "I don't know what the hell..."

  "I'm packing," she said.

  "Come on."

  She turned on him, fuming. "Look, I don't know what that was about and I don't want to know. You could have killed me. You're crazy or something. The things you say..."

  "What? What do I say?"

  She looked at him. "God, Bill, you don't know?"

  And then she'd barely speak to him. He tried to convince her to stay, to give him another chance. But she wasn't buying.

  "You talk, you snore, you moan, you get up and take walks..."

  "I moan?"

  "...and now you try to strangle me. Get some help, Bill. You're falling apart."

  And then she slammed the door.

  Too bad. Annie wasn't all that much in the brains department but she kept the place clean, did the laundry, and he loved her poulet gumbo.

  He stayed home from work.

  Why not? He could afford to. If you didn't get caught, insider trading was extremely profitable.

  Between financial reports on CNN he got up and checked his mirror. His face actually looked a little better. Then he checked his blood pressure with the machine, and it was 135/75, well within the normal range. He actually felt kind of perky, he was actually half-close to a good mood, until he remembered...

  The things you say.

  The phrase kept haunting him.

  So what did he say?

  Around four in the afternoon he showered and went out. He took a cab to 47th Street Photo, where a bearded young Hasidic Jew sold him a Realistic Micro-25 Voice-Actuated Microcassette Recorder at half price. He cabbed home. There was no setup, really, just an on-off switch, a playback and a rewind. The microphone was built in. The kid in the store said it only recorded when sound was being made, some sensor or something. He turned it on and went to sleep.

  His phone rang.

  Not his real phone this time but the building's intercom. What time is it? he thought, and then Christ! You've gotta be shitting me! Had ten gallons of water been dumped in his lap? His groin was drenched, the sheets and mattress beneath him saturated, and the smell told him the rest. He'd wet the bed, in a monumental volume. It's the damn diuretic! he thought but the intercom buzzer kept nagging, screaming at him. He got up in what seemed early-morning darkness and groped his way along the hall to the kitchen and picked up the receiver, aware of how wet his hands felt, sweaty, almost all the way up the elbow.

  "Yes?" And his voice was really wrong again. Like he was coming down with a major cold or something. Almost a full octave lower than what he was used to.

  "You're going to have to stop the hammering, Mr. Dumont. We're getting complaints down here. I'm sorry."

  "Hammering?"

  "Yes. And the shouting, too, I'm afraid."

  Bill's joints locked up. "Shouting?"

  "Yes, sir. According to the neighbors' complaints. And there were quite a few of them."

  "What was I shouting?" Bill insisted.

  "Something about blondes, I think one neighbor said."

  Terrific. Millie was a blonde, one of many in his life. God knew what else he'd been bellowing about.

  "Anyway, Mr. Dumont. It's a little early for things to be so loud. If you don't keep it down I'm going to have to call the police. And whatever you're hammering—are you building furniture or something?”

  Think, think. "A knickknack rack that my sister brought me from North Carolina. I had to put it together. She's a blonde, by the way. I guess I got a little pissed at her when the joints wouldn't align. Sorry." Pretty bad comeback he supposed but it would have to do,

  "Sure, Mr. Dumont." A pause. "Is everything all right?"

  "Yeah, fine, and I'm really sorry about this. It won't happen again.”

  “Okay, Mr. Dumont. Have a good day."

  He hung up, careful not to slam the receiver down. Fuck! Shouting? Hammering? He switched on the hall light, thinking okay, now we'll see and walked back into the bedroom, switched on the light there too and pressed REWIND on the recorder.

  And for the first time saw his hands, his forearms.

  Covered with blood. Not sweat. Blood. Some of it crusted over and some of it fresh, especially across the knuckles—and then he looked at the headboard where the tape hissed its way through the recorder. Then he looked a few feet left of the headboard, above the night stand. Something was missing.

  What was up there? What was gone?

  The picture. On the wall above the nightstand, there'd been a photo of Annie he'd taken on the ferry. Big smiles, big boobs, big happy love-eyes. It was gone, replaced by bloody knuckle marks in the sheetrock. Christ, even the nail the picture had been hung on was driven into the wall—no wonder his hands were so savaged.

  His eyes went to the floor. The photo lay face-up on the carpet, frame destroyed, glass shattered. Annie's smiling picture torn and ruined.

  I'm losing it, he considered. And at that precise moment he really felt he was. He'd never been like this in his life. He'd always been in control, always. You had to be if you wanted to accomplish anything in this world.

  He ran to the bathroom and turned on the water. The right hand was worse so he scrubbed it with his left. Calm down, calm down, he kept telling himself. He had to maintain control. What happened? What the hell happened?

  He'd got pissed off at Annie, so he'd got up in his sleep and started beating the daylights out of Annie's picture. Shouting at it. As if it were her.

  Had to be that.

  He looked up in the mirror. The face peered back at him through swollen eyelids. He looked...

  Bill had to admit it. He looked insane.

  His heart was thudding; it felt like something dying in his chest. Slow, hard beats. His chest felt tight, twingy. He thought of cords all twisted up, and then he remembered what Annie'd said about heart attacks and strokes. He sat down on the bed—the urine-soaked bed—slapped on the cuff and began to pump. His blood pressure was sky-high.

  The sun was just coming up in the window. He took deep breaths repeatedly, then went to the kitchen, opened his plastic pill box and took his morning medication. Closed his eyes, took more deep breaths. Relax, relax, he kept telling himself. Then a big glass of orange juice, which definitely hit the spot. In a few minutes he began to feel better, less tense. The cords began to unwind.

  All right, he thought. Take it nice and easy. You're together now. Whatever the problem is, fix it. Take control.

  "And the problem," he said aloud, "starts here."

  He snapped down the PLAY button on the recorder.

  Dead air at first. Then intermittent hitches of snoring.

  Then lots of snoring. Deep, sonorous breathing sounds that repelled him, disgusted him. Jesus Christ! he thought. It sounded like somebody drowning!

  And then there were moans—my god! He did moan! As though something or someone in his sleep were squeezing him, tormenting him, making him sound old and weak and whiny. It was nearly as bad as the snoring.

  And then some kind of bubbling sound, long, drawn out. Under any other circumstance it would've been funny, it would've been fucking hilarious. It could've been one of those Candid Camera things. Some guy asleep making more noise than a ward full of convalescents. Yeah, hilarious until he remembered that he was the one making the noise. It's loathsome.

  Then more snoring.

  More moaning.

  Combinations of both.

  Then...

  Finally he started talking. "I heard you got it all figured out," he said. And then something that was much too soft to hear or for the recorder to pick up, unintelligible.

  Then he said, "You should have seen it coming."

  It was impossible to tell how much time elapsed between phrases since the recorder only activated during speech or sounds loud enough to trip the machine's sensor.

  "You should've heard the Grateful Dead
," he said, "they played that Peter-and-the-Wolf song. You know the one. 'All I said was come on in.'" More. "This gun sweats when it gets hot, it does."

  And "It's a noisy room.”

  And "It was me and Lou Rawls. They had us locked up in there with nothing but milk bottles and soup."

  What the fuck? It made no sense at all.

  Then...

  "What a bunch of dipshits. What a bunch of hosebags. I know, I know. They think I’m stupid?"

  Who could he be talking about?

  "The bitches. They're all bitches."

  All at once Bill had a pretty good idea who.

  "I'll show 'em." A very dark chuckle. "Oh, yeah. You gotta be on the ball to make it in this world. You gotta be in control. You eat or get eaten. You take or get taken from. Nobody takes from me."

  Bill agreed with this philosophy of course. They were his own words He smiled. Asleep or awake he stuck to his guns.

  Then his smile faded at the next utterings.

  "Yeah, I showed 'ern. I got all their shit, all of it, the bonds, the collection, right behind the couch, the stupid bitches..."

  A long long series of snoring and moans followed.

  "Fuck," he said. "Jesus wept." The very worst thing he could possibly say in his sleep, he'd said. He stood stock still, eyes unblinking, unbelieving. But then he relaxed again.

  What am I shitting a brick about? he thought. Last night I blabbed where the loot was, sure, but Annie wasn't here. She walked out on me!

  Of all the nights he could run his mouth he'd picked the one night she wasn't there!

  Still, though...

  He should check, right?

  Bill didn't consider it paranoia or insecurity on his part. It was simply prudence. There was no way that Annie could've heard this revelation. She was gone.

  Still...

  Bill went to the living room and pulled out the couch—and then didn't know whether to cry or scream, whether to tear the place apart or just lie down on the floor and rot there.

  The wall panel was unseated.

  He fell to his knees and looked inside.

  Everything was gone. Of course it was.

  The bearer bonds, the coin collection, the two million-plus in ill-gotten gains.

  All of it gone.

  The only thing back there right now was a handwritten note in Annie's florid script:

  ASSHOLE

  Bill trudged back to the bedroom wearing a thousand-yard stare. How the hell was this possible? The panel had been secure yesterday—he checked it every day—and Annie'd packed her bags and took off way before he'd checked that afternoon.

  Last night, he realized.

  It was the only answer. Annie had ripped him off last night. But she hadn't been in the apartment.

  Or had she?

  I'll just find her and kill her, he thought. Not the most reasonable solution but he liked the sound of it. Calm down, calm down, he thought. Get your ass under control.

  An instant later he began to feel a little better. He willed himself to feel better. Life had its ups and downs, right? Well, today was one of the downs. Definitely one of the downs. He'd had them before, hadn't he? He'd risen above it.

  So what? The bitch took my stash. I must have mouthed off about it last night too, then she came back tonight and did the job while I was asleep. Big deal. Score one for her. I've still got plenty of stuff in the works. Half a dozen months from now I'll have just as much money in that wall as I did yesterday.

  There. Much better.

  Being in control was a wonderful thing.

  But it still bugged him. Women were treacherous. Of course they were. He knew that. But how the hell...?

  A thought came to mind and it was a doozy of a thought. He headed for the front door, fast, just to prove himself correct. He always turned the second deadbolt at night before bedtime and Annie didn't have a key for that. So how the hell could she have gotten in? Unless tonight of all nights he'd forgotten to lock it. But he never did that.

  He stared at the little brass knob.

  In the locked position.

  The only other person who had a key to that deadbolt was Laura. From back in the days just after he walked on her, before Annie, when they were still talking like adults and he was making a show of maybe reconciling so he could occasionally play hide the salami with her.

  And that's when he heard her voice.

  From the bedroom.

  He ran back.

  The recorder was still going.

  It was Laura's voice on the recorder.

  "...bag of shit," she hissed. "Well, now he's really gonna get his. And good god, didn't you loathe all that snoring and moaning? Disgusting. I had to put up with it for five years."

  A second whispered voice agreed. "I haven't gotten a good night's sleep the whole time I was with him. Can't tell you how many times I wanted to cut his head off just to make him shut the hell up!"

  Annie's voice. On the tape. With Laura's. Which meant... They'd both been here last night. Listening to him!

  The two bitches were in cahoots!

  And he could see them now, huddled there together, crouching in the dark, waiting for him to sleep-babble the location of the bonds and coins. Cunning, devious bitches.

  All right. Score two for them. But, man oh man, do I have a three-pointer coming.

  The vengeance when it came would be sweet, but he'd have to be smart, be cool, be reasonable.

  Be in control.

  He'd work something up nice and sweet for both of them and when the time was right he'd fix their wagons so they never rolled again. Bill Dumont did not like to be made a fool of.

  "It was only a matter of time," said a voice on the recorder. "When sleep talkers go into REM, they tend to reveal the things they most want to hide. Along with a lot of gobbledegook, of course. Unacknowledged guilt mixing with subconscious backwash. You just need an informed person to separate the gobbledegook from the data. Our plan worked. I was fairly sure it would."

  This third voice wasn't Laura's and it wasn't Annie's either. It was a man.

  And it rang a bell.

  That fuckin' doctor! Annie's boss! Seymour!

  The three of them were here last night!

  It boggled the mind! But he still didn't get it. How could they have known exactly which night he'd sleep-babble the location of his stash?

  Annie, now: "And thank God you were right. I've hated that scumbag for so long. And I knew he stole my uncle's coins."

  "Were we a couple of fools," Laura said. "Falling for that lying, thieving piece of shit!"

  “—Shhh!" Annie said. "Keep your voice down. You'll wake him up."

  "No need to worry about that," Seymour said. "The benzothiamide (???Benzthiazide ?) you were adding to his nighttime dose of Clonifil is not only the latest hypnotic on the psychiatric market, it's one of our best sleeping pills. It's a diazepam analogue..."

  "Urn, could we talk in the English language please?"

  "My point is that even if he got up right now and began somnambulating, he wouldn't know we were here. He wouldn't enter a waking state if you screamed in his face, that's how powerful this drug is. I'm just sorry about the side effects."

  "Yeah, Annie. He could've killed you."

  "Yes," Seymour said, "I told you to be careful. One side effect is night terrors in persons with high serum sodium levels, which is the case with hypertensives."

  "Well, it was a chance I had to take," Annie whispered. "I needed to be right by his side every night so I'd hear him when he decided to start talking about it. But the other night, that was the last straw. That psycho scared the shit out of me."

  "Well, we got lucky. We got what we needed tonight." The doctor again. "Speaking of which, let's go get it. Behind the couch, correct?”

  “Yeah," Annie said. "Come on."

  The machine deactivated for a second, then voices turned it back on again.

  "Oh, I just can't believe it!" Laura was squealing with joy.<
br />
  "Not just the coins and the bonds but...it looks like Billy-Boy has been up to some work on the side," Seymour said.

  Annie's voice. "God! Look at all this money! There must be a million dollars here."

  Bill was paralyzed. No. Not a million. Two million. And change. Seymour was chuckling. "Looks like we're all quite rich. Let's go, ladies. My place. The champagne's on me."

  More squeals of delight.

  It seemed to be over and as the saying goes, enough was plenty. He'd been duped perfectly. And he couldn't help but be furious. Control, control, he kept telling himself. Deep breaths. Calm down. His chest was tightening. But it wasn't over. There was more.

  Laura's voice. "Wait. What about him."

  "Don't worry about him." Seymour said. "I've already taken care of him.”

  “What did you do?" Annie said.

  "What we discussed. I emptied his morning Clonifil capsule and refilled it with potassium dichloride. He'll have a massive heart attack within thirty minutes of taking it. With hypertension on his medical files no one will give it a second thought."

  A door opening. And closing. Keys in the lock.

  Then his own voice shouting, fists pounding on the wall.

  He turned it off.

  Bill's eyes felt practically lidless. Chest ever tightening, he staggered to the kitchen and rechecked what he already knew. The little blue plastic pill box that he always put his next day's meds in before bedtime.

  The slot for his Clonifil was empty.

  FIRST DRAFT

  Good Seeing You

  By Jack Ketchum

  This story is the basis for the Ketchum/Lee collaboration SLEEP DISORDER

  Good Seeing You

  By Jack Ketchum

  He never dreamed.

  Hadn't for a long time. At least not that he remembered.

  The popular wisdom was that you had to dream or you'd go crazy—you'd already be crazy—so he assumed he did, really. He just couldn't remember anything. Practically speaking that was as good as not dreaming at all. Which was fine with him.

  But there had to be dreams. Or else where would the talking come from?

  He talked in his sleep.