The dreams came to me again that night.
I already thought they had reached the heights of realism, but I was mistaken.
This time, the wind and roar had diminished slightly. The mist was less thick.
This time I could hear voices. I could see things more clearly.
My arms felt chilly, and the light in the sky seemed low. It felt like early evening or late afternoon.
I was waiting. Hiding behind gorse bushes. On the ground I had spread out a pale blue sheet. A bottle lay on the sheet. Not a wine bottle, but a smaller, brown bottle. Like a medicine bottle. There was a small white cloth next to the bottle. It looked wet.
I peered out from behind the gorse. A patch of mist cleared and I saw her. She was dragging something behind her, walking up the hill towards my hiding place.
Mist swept in and covered her again. I took the opportunity to come out from behind the gorse. I ran up the hill a little way. Away from the girl. Then stopped, turned around and started walking very slowly back down towards her.
I could hear her talking. Her young voice. Speaking to someone. Talking to the thing she was dragging along. I couldn’t make out what she was saying. It sounded muffled. Like I had something in my ears.
A clear patch as the fog swept skyward, and there she was. Startled to see me at first. She faltered, slowed down a little. Then she smiled and came towards me. She had a dog with her. That was what she was dragging. A fat, reluctant dog.
I wasn’t surprised. I had expected her to have a dog. It shuffled along behind her. Obviously not used to much exercise.
She was a little further up the hill than I thought she would be. Almost past my gorse hiding place. I extended my stride to close the gap between us.
We met slightly uphill from the gorse. A feeling of excitement filled my body.
We talked. My voice sounded muffled like hers. My voice sounded different too. A different tone. Deeper. But not unfamiliar.
I bent down to her dog. Patted it. It revolted me.
I listened carefully. Were there other voices? I didn’t think so. It felt like we were alone. Just us. And her revolting, fat dog.
I pointed over at the gorse bushes. I laughed and told her something. She laughed too and spoke to her dog.
We moved towards the bushes. She seemed very happy. Quite at ease. But I felt the adrenalin rising with every step we took.
Now she stopped. A few feet short of the gorse. I was pointing away from it. Pointing up the hill. She looked in that direction as I disappeared behind the gorse.
The bottle and cloth were in my hands. The cloth was dripping wet now. I dropped the bottle and kept hold of the cloth.
The girl turned back to me. Came closer to the gorse. I reached out to her with my empty hand and held the other, with the cloth, behind my back.
She stepped into the hiding place, still dragging her dog behind her.
I slammed her down to the ground with all my weight on top of her. She struggled against me as I pushed the cloth over her face and mouth. She forced her head from side to side, desperate to breath, but I pushed the cloth harder against her, covering her nose and mouth.
Her fat dog started barking and snarling at me. I punched out at it, but it was at the end of its lead, still attached to the girl’s wrist. I couldn’t reach it. I thrust my elbow into the side of the girl’s head, it seemed to stun her. Then I turned my body and kicked out at the dog. I caught it full on its jaw, shifted my body a little more and kicked again. Another powerful blow to its head. It went limp and slumped to the ground.
As I moved my body back over the girl I heard another noise. It sounded like glass. Breaking glass.
Moments later a searing pain shot through my upper leg. I pinned the girl down with one arm and thrust my other hand down to the pain. Something was sticking out of my leg. The pain felt hot and cold at the same time. I pulled whatever it was out of the wound. Was it the bottle? Had she broken the bottle and stabbed me with it while I was kicking her dog? ‘BITCH’.
The wound felt deep and ragged. It made me feel even more powerful. I looked down at her face, already bleeding from my attack. I stroked her hair off her forehead. Smiled at her.
Raped her.
Killed her.
For minutes I laid my full weight on top of her still body. Got my breath back, calmed myself down. I heard short breaths coming from her dog, but did nothing about it.
The pain in my leg felt warm. Not too uncomfortable, but sticky and raw. I rolled off the girl onto my back. The roar and the wind was there. And a smell. A sweet, sickly smell. The mist and wind would carry it away. Disperse it, clean the hiding place. Nature would work on my behalf to hide my toil. Nature was pure. Nature cleansed everything.
The mist cleared above me. The sky looked momentarily clear. I felt warm all over. Content. The dead girl lay beside me. Her injured dog still puffing breath at the end of its lead.
When I woke up my hand was already down at my leg. Rubbing the invisible wound. I didn’t feel distressed or scared. I felt calm. It was as though I had woken with some new perspective. I had somehow stepped away from everything and was able to see the events of the dream in a less involved way.
Yes, it had been me. Yes, I really had raped and killed a girl. But the dream had brought clarity. It explained the pain in my leg.
I knew it wasn’t physically (or mentally) possible for me to have done the things I had done to the the girl.
Something was happening to me. I was having these dreams for a reason and I knew they had to mean something. I just had to figure out what.
Once Neil was dressed and ready for work, I told him about the dream. The full details. I also reminded him that I was going to see the doctor that morning.
‘Please don’t mention the kids,’ he said. ‘I really don’t see how any good can come from it.’
Abi said almost exactly the same thing when she arrived at ten to nine.
I managed to avoid giving either of them a proper answer.
As it turned out, I didn’t mention it to the doctor. I didn’t have to. I had already decided on my next course of action.
The most important thing to me was Michael’s and Rose’s safety. Like any mother, I would do anything I could to keep them safe.
I didn’t think they would be safe being taken away from Neil and me. If they were in care, we would have no way of protecting them.
And I still thought that it would be too disruptive for them to stay with my parents.
I had thought about asking Abi if she and Oliver could have them to stay for a while. I knew Jess and Josie would love it as much as Michael and Rose. But it wouldn’t be fair on Abi. I’m sure she would have said yes. And I’m sure she would have meant it. But it would have been just as disruptive to her as it would have been for my parents.
I still felt that the best thing to do would be to remove myself from the picture. I was the potential danger, and it made sense to distance the kids from the source of danger as much as possible. I had already ruled out suicide for the time being. I was too determined to get my life back, to go down that route. But I would keep it in reserve as my final weapon — if needed.
I had decided, instead, to speak to my mum and dad. Dad had been poorly, Mum tired. If I could stay with them, I would be able to look after them, put their minds at rest and be a safe distance from the kids.
If I could work with the doctor and the counsellor, find a way of developing the additional strengths I needed to combat the dreams and feelings, then I could mend myself. Make myself a stronger person.
It would mean asking Abi to look after the kids until Neil got home. But perhaps Neil could change his hours a little to get back sooner.
It wasn’t a great plan. It meant putting on Abi and Neil. I wasn’t overjoyed at the thought that Abi would be the first person to see Neil after he finished work. And it meant that I wasn’t going to be around as much for Michael and Rose. But I had to think of their overall safety. If there was e
ven the remotest chance that I might hurt them, I had to do everything I could to stop it.
Me staying with Mum and Dad for a while seemed like the least worst option out of a very short list of shitty ones.
When I told the doctor about my idea he was all for it. As long as I could still go to see Colin, he felt it might be beneficial.
‘Almost like a holiday,’ he said.
I was going to ask him what sort of holidays he went on, but stopped myself.
‘We’ve still not had the results back from the last MRI,’ he said. ‘Have you experienced anything more?’
‘Well, I think I had another blackout episode,’ I said. ‘And the dreams are still coming. And I thought I saw someone that wasn’t really there.’
He raised his eyebrows and nodded. I didn’t know what it meant.
‘And I have heard a voice.’ I said.
‘Do you feel like hurting yourself?’ he said.
I wasn’t sure how to answer that one. If I said no would the next question be about hurting others?
‘I don’t think so,’ I said.
The doctor nodded again.
‘I think we can perhaps change the dosage of your tablets, perhaps look at additional things too. And I think it might not do any harm to request a psychiatric assessment. How would you feel about that?’
‘Do you mean now?’ I said.
He smiled.
‘We would need to request an appointment first,’ he said. ‘It might take a week or so.’
‘I’m not sure,’ I said. ‘What would it involve? What would happen to me?’
‘Well, we might not need it,’ he said. ‘It can be very tricky deciding whether someone should consider an assessment or not. There are guidelines, of course, but there are also degrees of experience. In other words, you might only be experiencing mild symptoms of psychosis, brought on temporarily by the head injury, or it could run deeper.’
I felt like I was on dangerous ground here. As though things were running away from me a little. I needed to bring them back. My goal was to be medicated sufficiently to give me time to fight this, but not come across as so mad that I needed to be sectioned. Having never been in a position like this before, I wasn’t entirely sure how to play it. It was clear I was having problems. I needed help to diminish them. But I didn’t want to become a zombie, drugged up to my eyeballs and unable to function at all.
‘Would you say that you have had some sort of experience every day for the last 7 days?’ he said.
‘Yes.’
‘Do you feel like people are talking about you? Saying things behind your back?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Not at all.’
‘Do you think that people are watching you, or following you at all?’
‘No, of course not.’
‘But you say you are hearing voices, and you are seeing things which aren’t there.’
I nodded but said nothing.
‘Is your sense of smell still playing up?’
‘I don’t really hear voices,’ I said. ‘It’s a voice. And I can’t really make out anything that is said. It’s a muffled sound really.’
‘How are you getting on with Mr Connell?’ he said.
‘Fine. I’m sure it’s helping me to get a handle on things. It probably helps to give me some perspective.’
He pursed his lips and tapped the end of his pen against them.
‘These episodes you describe as “blackouts”,’ he said. ‘I think it is safe to say that what you’re experiencing is memory loss.’
I gave him a look.
‘In a way it feels a little like sleepwalking,’ he said. ‘The sleepwalker wakes up, and can’t remember anything he or she has done. In a similar way, you are doing things, perhaps going places, perfectly normally, but you have a sudden and immediate memory loss. In other words, you effectively ‘wipe out’ a proportion of time that has just passed. It gives you the feeling that you have been doing something in an unconscious way, when in fact you have probably been behaving perfectly normally.’
I wondered how driving a hundred miles somewhere or sitting in my car outside a pupil’s house or being in my daughter’s bedroom with a damp flannel behind my back could be described as perfectly normal. But I said nothing.
‘Let me have a look over your notes, and I’ll maybe consult with a couple of my colleagues,’ he said. ‘It will all be confidential, so don’t worry. Then I’ll contact you in a day or so to see how you’re getting along.’
‘Ok,’ I said.
‘Will you be at your home address?’ he said. ‘Or will I need to take your mother and father’s details?’
I gave him Mum and Dad’s address, and my mobile number.
I stood up to go.
The doctor looked awkward. He was about to say something but hesitated.
I stood by the chair and looked at him.
He found his voice.
‘Just one more question,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry, but I have to ask. Is there any history of psychosis or mental illness in your family?’
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