DREAMING

IN THE POLICE HOUSE, ALICE MORRISON IS TRYING NOT TO DREAM. SHE IS awake now but, as she has discovered, this makes no difference, because the dreams keep coming, even when she stands with her head down, her hands pressed to the wall, her eyes wide open. She has always been afraid of what is happening now, afraid that, one day, the shakes won't pass after a few hours, or even after a day or two, that they will stay with her, always, her permanent, vigilant companions. Now, faces loom up at her out of the floor, or they come leering out from a wall, dead faces, but mocking, mocking and desperate at once, terrible, unknown eyes and mouths, flaring out from wherever she turns. Worse still, though, are the noises in her head—not voices, never voices anymore, just a noise like furniture being moved, wooden table legs dragging across a floor, or saucepan lids falling and clattering on tiles, or maybe the sound of piano wires resonating in the dark, where someone is rocking the frame back and forth, back and forth. Or there are bells in the distance, a sound that should be peaceful, a beautiful sound if the bells were out there in the world, and not inside her head. Then, through all that, through the sudden deceptive moments of quiet, comes the sound of a child, the same child over and over again, sitting or kneeling in a corner somewhere, weeping and whispering to itself, a boy or a girl, she doesn't know, and she can't make out the words the child is saying. All she can hear is this dreadful whisper.

She knows Morrison is somewhere in the house. Somewhere downstairs. He's letting her get on with it, because there have been times when she's told him to leave her alone, and now he is leaving her alone, now he's given up and she has the solitude that she's always wanted. Except that, now, she doesn't want it. She can't take it. She's told herself that this won't last, because this is hell, and she's done nothing to deserve hell. Smith, Jenner, and the others from the Outertown, they deserve this more than she does. Morrison deserves it. She doesn't know what he's done, but she knows he's done something. Nobody who works for Smith is innocent. But then, hell doesn't come to the guilty. It comes to people like the O'Donnells, who haven't done anything wrong. That's the twist about hell, the one they don't tell you about in religious studies, the fact that, in hell, it's not the guilty who suffer, it's the innocent. That's what makes it hell. Some random principle wanders through the world, choosing people for no good reason and plunging them into hell. Grief for a child. Horrifying sickness. Noises and faces coming from nowhere, punctuated by terrible minutes of lucidity, just long enough to take stock of where you are. And you are in hell.

Hell, hell, hell, hell, hell. The sound in her head grows and something tightens all along her arms and legs—like cramps, only much worse—and she feels like her body is about to burst open, tendons and muscles snapping and tearing, the bones cracking. She has known about this forever, she has been at the threshold for so long and now it is finally happening. Morrison is downstairs, fixing tea, or reading a paper, ignoring her. She doesn't want him, but she wants something. She wants help. A drug, maybe. It could be that simple. They could come and give her one tiny injection and this hell could end. All she needs is someone to make the call. But she can't do it. She can't ask him. Her whole body wants to scream with the agony, her mind wants to beg for something to free her, and she can't make a sound. She is in hell, and hell is for eternity.

She doesn't know when she first sees the man. She thinks this is one more face, screaming out at her from the doorway, as she turns, searching for an exit. A phantom. God, she knows these are phantoms, she knows these things are hallucinations, or she does some of the time anyway, and it makes no difference. This is the place where mad people live, and she doesn't know how she got here. A few drinks, a few pills? Surely not. She has never believed in that kind of injustice. She has believed in blame and private horrors and shameful acts behind closed doors. She hasn't imagined that the mad deserve their suffering, but she has believed in a route, a road taken, or a history of pain and loneliness, running from the darkest secret of childhood to the asylum, where doctors come and go with needles, and the mad lie down to sleep in oblivion, for precious hours at a time. But where was her route? Nobody abused her as a child. Nobody stole her innocence or made her a witness to unbearable truths. She doesn't know how she got here. She doesn't know how her life got to be unbearable.

But then, nothing is unbearable. When she first sees him, he's one phantom among many, but after a while she becomes aware of a real presence, a warmth that fills the room and she looks out from her hell and sees him there, standing in his own island of light and yet only a few feet away. He has the shape of a man but his face, when she makes it out, is the face of a boy. A gentle, serene boy, gazing at her, calm, forgiving, silent. She knows he will not speak to her, but she needs to break the chain of sound and pain in her head and, when she finally sees him there, she has to ask. He doesn't reply, and she hasn't expected him to reply, but she repeats the question anyway.

“Who are you?” she says. It's a simple enough question.

He doesn't answer, but he comes closer and reaches out his hand—and that, for one terrible moment, is the most painful thing she can possibly imagine. The reaching, the moment before touching. But when he touches her—his hand laid flat across her face, covering her eyes and mouth—she staggers into some new state, some unknown brightness. He lays his hand over her face and her eyes close, and the noises stop. The noises stop and the pain in her arms stops. The pain ebbs away, like water. The noises stop and her head is silent, cool, empty. The gratitude is almost unbearable, but she knows, at the same time, that he has not come here to bless her. She is someone he has found in passing, and his mercy is so huge it costs him nothing to heal her. It's as if she met the Angel of the Lord in some old Bible story, and he has touched her for a moment, and healed her, but she knows that, all the time, his purpose is elsewhere. She falls to the floor then, falling away from his healing hand and into herself, the self she was before, the self she has forgotten in all this noise and pain and fear. So that when she looks up, he is already gone, a shadow passing away, on its way to its divine appointment. But she doesn't care. She is still. Her body is silent. She is capable of sleep.

It may be minutes later, it may be longer, when she hears something from downstairs, from one of the rooms below. Morrison's voice calls out, maybe in fear, maybe in anger, she can't tell, and she can't make out what he says. She is only mildly curious, though, and after a moment the silence returns. The silence of her exhaustion. Outside, somewhere in the trees, a pair of owls is hunting, and closer in, near the window, she hears a gust of wind. Fresh new sounds, sounds that come from beyond her own pain. She hears one thing, then she hears another, but it's fading even as it happens, because she is finding her way to a place where sleep is total, and on the far side of that, a new life. Her name is Alice. Her father loved her, and she had a happy childhood, for the most part. Sleep is her due, and she takes it, with gratitude and relief, and it barely troubles her that, as she slips down and into that dreamless place, the last thing she registers, the last tiny fragment of awareness, is that Morrison is gone and she is in the police house, alone.