Sleep’s Slippery Tentacles
Helen’s skin still tingled from where Sleep’s sticky tentacles had caressed her; she’d woken before time, as you so often do when you’re waiting for something to happen. She rolled over and reluctantly opened one eye, knowing that getting up, getting on with the day, was an inescapable fact. The extinguished flames of thoughts and worries now somehow caught alight once more and she knew that the only thing for it was to do something about them.
The sound started again; she knew at once that this had been what had dragged her from the numb oblivion of Sleep. It was the frantic ringing of Church bells summoning the villagers to worship. The sound drifted in through the slightly open window, permeated through the tiny gaps in the brickwork; let itself in through their front door. She glanced over at Stephen, to see what he made of the racket. He hated the Church bells and could usually be counted on to groan something full of the impetuousness and frustration of one woken too early, such as: “I bet if a Rock Club opened here, it wouldn’t be allowed to blare out their tunes at
There was no response from the sleeping figure next to her. He lay as though frozen into position, as though a white chalk line had been drawn around him. With his face thrust into the pillow, she could hardly even discern his breathing.
“Stephen; wake up!” she said, a tremble entering her voice. She propped herself up on her elbow and with the other hand attempted to drag the sheets away from his Sleep-heavy form. Usually, at this point, he’d have given an acknowledging grunt, before rolling over and eventually opening his eyes.
She tugged the bedclothes off him and stared. There was still no movement in his back; no intake of breath. Helen’s breath was coming thick and fast however. It was the stop-start manifestation of panic. She summoned all of her strength and tried to roll Stephen over onto his back, so at least she’d be able to see his face. His dead-weight body struggled against her efforts though, and panic began to descend into fear. With the same strength a father uses to drag a fallen ox-cart off the leg of his wounded son, she finally lifted, and turned him though. The muscles in her arms burned with effort; there would be hell to pay later. But now; now there was something else which was prime amongst her concerns.
Stephen’s face was bore a pallid hue, somehow, a week’s worth of stubble had managed to grow overnight. But it was his eyes which worried her rather than his death-mask visage. For it looked as though somebody had liberally applied an eye-liner of wax across them, to seal them shut. Somebody or something had been in the room. She knew that look only too well; she’d seen it in all over the posters around the village, tacked to the Church door, behind the bar of the Tavern, and in the Festival Hall. The face was a warning.
Helen dressed quickly into Stephen’s own long tunic and pants; they offered her a freedom of movement she had reason to believe that she’d need before the day was out. They also gave off a slight scent of him; a reminder of why she would have to do what she would have to do. She closed and locked the bedroom door and carefully descended the wooden staircase, amazed to see that the kitchen exuded a dumb normality. In a way, she’d been expecting to see overturned chairs, the charred remains of their huge oak dining table and the grief-stricken food rolling about the stone floor in agony.
She tried the door. As she suspected, it had been bolted from the inside; surely there was no way that Sleep could have slipped past this stern metal guardian? But, she knew, Sleep had ways of slipping into the most carefully guarded places unnoticed. With a frustrated sigh, she walked out into the cold light of the new day. It was dazzling; the fresh, bright colours of dawn were starting to become more refined, the mists were starting to slip away. As though spurred on by the light, she ran down the farmer’s track which cut down from the row of houses on the hill, vaulted the rickety wooden stile, sprinted over the bridge and finally made it into the village proper.
As she crossed through the village gate, she noticed that the night-watchman was still at his sentry post. She could see the sparkle of the golden Sun button on his lapel. The gate had opened early this morning; or perhaps it had never been closed at all!
“Night-watchman; where is the doctor?” she gasped, out-of breath from her exertion. She had to lift her hand above her eyes in order to block out the sunlight. She couldn’t see any movement from inside the hut. She moved closer; every step taking her towards a knowledge which she wasn’t sure that she wanted.
“Night-watchman; can you hear me?” she asked, shrilly.
Still no answer; surely he wasn’t asleep too? But as she pressed her face against the glass, she saw that indeed, the night-watchman was slumped forward, one hand still grasping the rope which closed the gate. The usually regimentally clean-shaven young man now had the sorry traces of bum-fluff whispering over his jowls; he looked as though somebody had covered his chin with glue and then dipped him in a bucket of feathers.
Helen broke the law. She reached down and pulled out a loose cobble and then smashed the glass of the sentry post without a second thought. Small shards of glass rained over the sleeping figure, but he did not move. She reached through the glass and grasped at a clump of his greasy hair and lifted his nodding head. There she saw that same death-mask visage she’d seen moments earlier on Stephen. Again, the man’s eyes were closed fast with what looked like a liberal coating of candle-wax. She let his head loll back onto his chest; triple-chins emerging from under his bum-fluff beard. She walked away, unconsciously trying to wipe off a black, tar-like substance which seemed to have collected on the sleeve of Stephen’s tunic. How had that got there?
Helen stumbled through the eerily quiet streets. She wished, for once, to see that gaggle of going-nowhere teenagers crowded in front of the butcher’s shop, or to hear the trill shouting of the baker’s wife, touting her wares on the corner. It was the silence which scared her the most. She expected, around every bend, to hear the tap-tapping of the foundry, or the never ending chattering of the school. But all she saw was still and unmoving. She saw the postmaster slumped by his bicycle, his face still young in sleep, and she saw the extravagant dancing girl, wrapped up snug in her long dress. Only their eyes gave away the fact that they were now a part of the dream-world; they’d been claimed.
She knew that the doctor would never be awake, but she still headed towards his big house on the other side of town. The doctor was the one that had warned them all about Sleep, the one that had tacked up the posters and the warning signs, but as Helen walked through his open door, she saw that he too had come to resemble the prone figures of his pictures.
The doctor had propped himself up in an uncomfortable position by the front door to his house. By his hand, which had flopped lifelessly onto a nearby work surface, lay two pins; on his arms were various small pricks of dried blood; clearly he’d been trying to keep himself awake. But now his face was resting, cheek pressed against the cold wall, his eyes were unseeing; waxed closed.
Suddenly Helen felt a great desire to be outside, to be away from the oppressive atmosphere of the doctor’s huge house. Although it was so big and airy, the air seemed too close; too thick. It felt like she was drowning in a tar-pit in there. She’d almost flopped down onto the floor herself; despair was exhausting. She knew that she had to stay active in order to stay alive. She also knew that she had to find out more about this sleeping sickness, and unfortunately, the doctor’s house was the best place to do just that.
Helen steeled herself for the task and then plunged into the darkness of the house. She ran her hands along the walls in order to guide herself into the kitchen, tripping twice on her way. Finally, she reached another heavy oak door, by way of walking straight into it. This she pushed aside, and wearily opened, staggering into the kitchen. Her eyes were getting heavier with every step. She had to stay awake.
Helen spied that the kitchen sink was almost overflowing with water, and without a second’s hesitation, she thrust her head into it, losing her breath in the coldness. She tossed the remaining sleepiness out of her mind and kept her hair wet; it would drip down her neck for the rest of the day like that, making sure that she didn’t give in to the Sleep.
As her dark hair dried a little, it sprung into tight, determined curls. Helen too was determined. Where does the doctor keep his notes? she thought, dashing from room to room of the house. Think! she ordered her tired brain. And finally she saw them; they were exactly where she’d have put them if she’d have been writing the story. They were at the side of the toilet, where he spent a lot of his time. For Doctor James had become a doctor because of his extreme hypochondria, everyone knew that, and he’d always loiter close to toilets just in case of a feared eruption.
In fact, Doctor James had made the toilet his office. As Helen’s eyes took in the room, she saw that the walls were covered with charts and maps, anatomical drawings and even patient records. His notes, the most important thing, had been given pride of place by his throne, of course, so that they were always to hand. She picked up the heavy volume and leafed through the pages, looking for Sleep.
“Ah,” she said at last. “Here it is… ummm, let me see; symptoms – symptoms are an uncommon desire for sleep wherever the patient may find themselves… a weariness bordering on narcolepsy… This is no good; I need to find the cure.”
Helen skim-read the next few pages, which were full of observational notes. She had had a crash course on the symptoms that morning; she knew exactly what Sleep could do to a person.
“Here we are,” she said, resting her finger on a paragraph of text. “The cure; ‘there is no actual cure for Sleep, per se, because sleep is a natural, required part of life.’ Well, a fat lot of good that is… wait a minute… ‘But what must be considered is there are two forms of sleep, and the sleep we have observed in these subjects is a kind of little death. It is not the renewing, refreshing sleep which we all used to know. I can only submit to the priest’s reckoning that there is an actual presence called Sleep, which is so determined to have all of the good sleep for himself, that he steals it from others.’”
Helen slammed the book back down onto the side of the bath; it was the least respect she’d ever shown a book. What was the doctor suggesting; that somehow religion could explain what science could not? Surely these were the deluded ravings of somebody who’d not had enough good sleep, especially if you knew the priest.
The priest was a diminutive man whose very size suggested that he was capable of a kind of unrestrained cruelty. Helen had always imagined him torturing small insects, just because he was bigger than them, and had actually seen him kick the school-teacher’s puppy. She saw him now, crouched in the graveyard, grinning inanely at one of his little schemes.
“Priest; tell me what you know of Sleep, and of the cure,” said Helen, approaching him.
Startled, the priest almost fell backwards and then kicked something, which Helen swore she saw wriggle, into the bushes.
“Ms. Turner; I see that somehow you have not succumbed to sleep as so many have.”
“No, I am in fact a zombie, I somehow sleep-walked directly to you because I know that you have all of the answers,” she said, smirking
“Wipe that smirk off your face and show me the respect I deserve.”
“Sorry, priest.”
“Tell me; did you use the protection as instructed?” said the priest.
“Obviously,” said Helen, remembering the garlic cloves she’d had to sew into the lining of the blankets. The red satin had been some sort of mask to the musky smell, but had still not helped. “But Stephen’s been taken…”
“I thought as much…”
“Well what is it? Why has Sleep taken some and not others when we sleep in the same bed?”
“Well, it’s something else then,” said the priest, stroking his beard in a near parody of a man thinking. He was clearly uncomfortable with the idea of anyone sleeping in the same bed as anyone else. “Something is keeping you awake while it lets everyone else drop off...”
“How about you, priest?” said Helen, again throwing off the shackles of politeness which were usually demanded around men of his stature. “What do you do differently than everybody else? How are you still here?”
“I pray,” said the priest, almost mockingly. “I ask the Sun whether He can rise again for me. I ask whether Sleep may be banished from these parts for good… but there is too much sinning; too much night-time activity, and so he returns to take my flock away.”
“You pray? And you think that will deliver you from this evil? It’s not the praying, priest.”
“Well, what a truly ridiculous thing to say… I wake every hour to write my incantations….”
“Wait,” said Helen, suddenly excited. “Every hour?”
“That’s right, and sometimes more. Why two years ago I stayed free from the imprisonment of Sleep for eighty-five hours…”
“Shut up,” said Helen, surprising even herself with her forcefulness. “I too wake during the night. I am a writer, you see, and my brain is always working; always the cogs turn, trying to develop that new twist to the plot, or that new development of character. My best writing comes in the gloaming hours. Is that why Sleep can never take a full hold of me… of us?”
The priest was speechless for a moment, and then coughed his retort through a blaze of anger and reddened cheeks. “You compare your writing to prayer? Blasphemy!”
Helen shook the small priest; she grasped him by his tiny lapels and shook him until he’d stopped choking on the word ‘blasphemy’. He stared at her, fear creeping into his shifty little eyes.
“Tell me; what’s your theory on Sleep? The doctor wrote in his journal that he’d come round to your idea that there was an actual ‘presence’ called Sleep… how can we rescue one that’s come into His evil clutches?”
“There is a presence called Sleep; the doctor and I agreed on that after the twentieth soul had to have their Last Rites administered by me. We both stood by Ma Shelley’s bedside and we nodded our acceptance that it was so.”
“Go on,” said Helen, seeing that the priest was now quick to furnish her with information. Maybe shaking priests was the best way of communicating with them.
“Well, we observed no noticeable degeneration in any of the subjects until their second nights – that was when they would simply stop breathing. It was as though what went before was a kind of hibernation, while the beast Sleep took what he wanted from them, and then they just faded away into death.”
“The second night?” whispered Helen.
“That’s right, but now, if you don’t mind, I have my own preparations to do before he comes here tonight.”
“Don’t worry; I’m leaving,” said Helen.
“Where are you going?” the priest wailed after her, and then he too walked away, back to the frantic, futile ringing of the bells and the forlorn hope that somebody would come.
Morning swiftly passed into afternoon, and afternoon careered into evening as though the clocks had been tampered with. Helen hadn’t even had any time to return to the house on the hill to check on Stephen, but now she was getting desperate. She ran past the Tavern and then stopped. This was the one building which had a light on in the whole town. She entered, hoping against hope that she’d meet somebody alive in there. Almost immediately her hopes were dashed, they soaked into the wooden floorboards like the over-spilling beer from the taps. If anyone had been alive in here, they’d have surely been at the bar, filling their glasses with the free ale. Landlord Bill never gave the smallest drop away for free.
And anyway, there was only one occupant of the bar, and he was clearly one of the taken. The man was hunched in the corner of the Tavern, nursing a flagon of ale. He’d probably been like that since last night, thought Helen. Yet again, she performed the heavy ritual of lifting his head to take a look at his eyes. This man’s eyes were somehow different, however. Yes, they remained resolutely closed, but here, the wax looked as though it had been melted away. Instead his eyelids had become enfolded in the general wrinkled nature of his face. He looked as though he’d always been asleep. As though confirming her suspicions about this old man, she then noted that his beard trailed across the wooden floor of the Tavern, and looped around the legs of the table like a cat’s tail.
Suddenly, the old man moved. He shook his head roughly and then, as though unable to contain himself any longer, he snorted a laugh through his nose.
“You’re tickling my beard,” he guffawed, as Helen leaped back in alarm. Seeing her fear, he creaked to his feet and beckoned for her to come and sit with him. “Don’t fear, child, come and have a drink with me. The Landlord won’t mind; he’s asleep.”
“Are… are… you Sleep?” said Helen, trying to regain her composure, still remaining pressed against the oily walls of the shadowy Tavern.
The old man laughed again; it was an earthy rumble which vibrated through the floorboards, somehow communicating his harmlessness.
“No, Helen, I am not the one that you call Sleep,” said the old man, softly.
“How do you know my name? Who are you?”
“Some call me Wiseman,” he said. “But I don’t think I really deserve that name. Now your name is the thing that’s important dear. Helen Turner; your name has been written by the hand of destiny.”
“What?” said Helen, finally slumping onto one of the Tavern’s rickety chairs. “You’ve still not told me how you know my name… or how you can see me…”
“Oh I can see well enough,” said Wiseman, politely offering her some of his drink. “Don’t be fooled by my eyes – there are other ways of seeing.”
“Why aren’t you asleep?” said Helen, turning her nose up at the foul-smelling liquid which was in the flagon.
“I’d rather hoped that you’d not ask me so many questions, dearest; I’d have thought you’d have worked out the plot by now, what with your credentials.” Wiseman spoke like a kindly old uncle who had set a question for his young apprentice, but really just wanted to give them the prize anyway. Helen saw it as condescension.
“Look, Wiseman, I don’t know what you’re talking about. ‘Credentials’, ‘the hand of destiny’; you talk as though I’m the hero of some bloody fairytale, dearest.”
Wiseman laughed: “I like this new breed of heroines, I really do.”
“Who are you talking to?”
“Stop the questions, please,” said Wiseman, frowning. “Come with me.”
It wasn’t really a case of Helen ‘coming with’ Wiseman; instead, the rickety old man rested a tired hand on her shoulder and pointed in the direction she should lead him. It was out of the back door of the Tavern; to the Beer Garden. A marvellous panorama of the whole valley spread out in front of them; from the Church spire to the houses on the hill – the houses on the hill; Stephen!
“I haven’t got much time,” said Helen, trying to stop her heart from leaping into her mouth; she’d almost forgotten him.
“No; that you haven’t,” agreed Wiseman. “You can’t let Sleep keep him for another night, or else he will be lost forever.”
“How do you know about - ” Helen stopped her question almost before she’d asked it. Maybe sometimes it was better just to let things be; to allow the story to take control.
“Look at the gloom which descends on this place,” said Wiseman, making a sweeping gesture with his gnarled old hand. And lo, the village did seem to be sinking into darkness; shadows grew from tiny puddles into great oceans before Helen’s eyes.
“But that’s just what happens when Sun goes down,” she said, amazed at the wise man’s ability to recognise what was happening despite his loss of sight.
“That’s as may be, but for this village, it is the creeping death which will envelop every one of you in time.”
“How can I stop it?”
“You really have to ask? Of course you do, how presumptuous of me.”
“Just tell me,” said Helen, slowly, trying not to reveal her growing frustration.
“You have to tell Sleep a story which will lull Sleep into sleep,” said Wiseman. “But I don’t mean that your story should be boring or plain – Sun forbid – no, your tale must be the kind of tale which entertains and enlivens a restless mind; like that of a child. You must make Sleep think; tire him out, before he finally drops off to sleep.”
Helen sat and watched the day turn into night and cursed herself for wishing for responsibility. This wasn’t what she’d asked for; she’d wanted something exciting, dangerous, but ultimately nothing that would threaten Stephen.
“I know what you’re thinking; why me? But now you need to stop thinking of questions and start coming up with answers,” said Wiseman, rising to his feet, showing no traces of his earlier decrepit nature. “I can’t help you any longer.”
“You’ve tried to tell the tale yourself, haven’t you? To lull Sleep to sleep,” said Helen, staring at the houses on the hill, refusing to meet his eyes.
Wiseman stopped short, about to walk away into the night, saying: “Of course, child; you see? The answers are there, in your heart. You know the whole story.”
“…and he blinded you? Wait – I know this one; he made you an eternal sleepwalker, living in a world of dreams. Your story was good, but not quite good enough. You have taken on an ethereal quality which makes you sad; you long to belong to the world of the living again, or else that of the dead.”
“That’s right Storyteller,” he said. “Now, go and set me free please.”
Wiseman walked off into the shadows, and Helen suddenly realised that he’d stopped calling her ‘child’.
Helen made for the Church, which seemed to be the centre, and even the source, of the great darkness in the village. How she wished that she’d taken the time to grab a torch to show her the way, but then, she realised that she’d not stumbled or tripped at any point along the track. She was walking with a relentless determination which plotted its own course; she was becoming the heroine. No overhanging branches cut into her face; no patches of mud forced her to stumble, or dirtied her shoes. She was going to grasp the nettle of destiny, no matter if it stung her or not.
When Helen’s eyes grew accustomed to the gloom of the old Church, she may have had second thoughts about that particular nettle however. The old priest was standing at his altar, reading aloud, in a voice full of fear to perhaps the most critical audience he’d ever have to face. He was reading sermons to what looked like a vast bulbous shadow-creature which was spread across the front three aisles. The creature was, at first glance, made up of foul-smelling black smoke, but as she forced herself to draw closer, she saw that the wisps in the smoke were in fact ripples in what looked like liquid. The creature was evidently made of the same thick consistency as the tar-pits which imprisoned dinosaurs in prehistoric times. She could hear its boiling rage and impatience.
“…for the Sun is the light-giver and the maker of all our universe, and He says be-gone to all foul-smelling creatures of the night. I say unto thee…”
The creature interrupted the priest’s preaching with a loud belch. A fog of green smoke emanated from his mouth and headed toward the priest. The poor old man sunk low behind his altar, but continued to paw at the pages of his book; sickness washed across his face. Finally, the green smoke evaporated into the Church’s thick air and the priest haltingly continued.
“…I say unto thee, go to sleep, Sleep, and never again arise.”
“I cannot sleep,” droned Sleep in a whiny, child-like voice. “Tell me something more interesting. Don’t just threaten me with damnation or else I’ll stay awake and pester you to death.”
“For the Sun will arise and make mockery of your shadows…”
“I’ve heard this one before. I know how it ends; tell me another one,” chuckled Sleep, revelling in the little priest’s discomfort.
“Please go to sleep,” mouthed the priest. Sounds were no longer coming from his mouth. His knuckles had turned white such was the force with which he was gripping the altar now.
The creature belched again, and this time the green smoke made straight for the priest’s eyes. The priest tried to cover his face with the sleeve of his bright yellow robes, but the smoke was already upon him. He gargled a scream as the smoke began to permeate his face, turning him at once a sickly green. He looked as though he’d drunk too much ale. Suddenly though, the little priest fell off the altar and landed on the Church floor at an awkward angle. He looked dead, but a single loud snore proved that notion to be incorrect.
“Who’s next?” asked Sleep, impatiently.
Helen looked around at the empty aisles of the Church and realised that she’d already been seen by the creature. Taking a deep breath she prepared to face her doom; then she was nearly sick. The air was thick with torment and suffering. It smelled like the bottom of the old well off Charity Street or the stink rising from the cellars of the Tavern since the Landlord had banned smoking.
“Well, what are you waiting for?” said Sleep. “Come up here and tell me a story!”
Helen moved forward now, watching her shoes clatter across the stone floor of the Church as though she were out of her own body.
“A girl? A girl?” mocked Sleep. “What are you going to do? Sing me a lullaby?”
“My name is Helen Turner and I’d like to tell you a story,” she said softly, grabbing the altar just as the little priest had – it was all she could do to stop the trembling in her hands.
“Get on with it then,” said Sleep, who was now twisting and writhing in the aisles, wrapping snake-like tentacles through the ornate carvings behind the choir’s seats.
Helen cleared her throat and then began:
“Helen’s skin still tingled from where Sleep’s sticky tentacles had caressed her; she’d woken before time, as you so often do when you’re waiting for something to happen. She rolled lazily over and reluctantly opened one eye, knowing that getting up, getting on with the day, was an inescapable fact.”
Helen woke up with a start; a massive wave of guilt crashed over her. She’d been asleep. Gingerly, she opened her eyes and found that she was in the meadow. Thorough her blurry eyes, she made out the form of a cow standing very close to her, chewing on the cud without a care in the world. Immediately she shot to her feet; she could see! She could see the healthy green of the grass, the rainbows of light in the puddles, the blue of the sky. She could see the smoke pouring out of the chimneys of the houses on the hill. Wait – she thought – smoke! Still unsteady on her feet, she raced up the hill, not caring about the aching muscles at the back of her calves. Rounding the gate and onto the garden path she careered; stumbling, tripping, breaking the heel on her shoes. She paused only to throw away her shoes and then barged through the front door.
Stephen stood sleepily over the stove, watching the kettle. He wearily turned to look at her as she crashed into the kitchen, a whirling dervish of mud and grass.
“Why are you wearing my tunic?” he asked, rubbing sleep from the corner of his eyes. “Why is it that girls always wear their boyfriend’s clothes?”
Helen ran towards him and they hugged passionately, as though they’d feared they would never see each other again. Stephen grinned and asked:
“Don’t tell me, you’ve written a story?”
ENDS