I hate sleeping. My wife prefers it. Each night I put it off as long as I can. I watch stupid videos— ones of people accidentally hurting themselves or about math equations which accurately map out fluid convections and how neurons fire, and can predict the stabilization of cotton tail rabbit populations. Something about the Mandelbrot set. I don’t really watch to learn. I should read more. Really, I should go to sleep. So I listen to an audiobook. The Botany of Desire. Potatoes manipulate us apparently in some evolutionary subconscious way. It’s not working.
Another video— eight hours of nighttide. The waves plash gently against the shore. It’s soothing. My mind finally settles. It’s happening. I’m somewhere by the water.
Help me.
I open my eyes. I listen. The waves lap steadily. My dog wheezes as she sleeps. She can sound like a child sighing. I nudge her with my foot until she gets up and curls into another fold of the sheets. I roll over myself and try to get back to where I was. Imagine the water curling about my ankles, feet swallowed by sand.
Hello? Please.
I sit up. I heard that. I listen. Nighttide needs to stop. I shut it down. I listen. I’m in a new house, maybe moved in a week ago. The color of night enfolds every sparse detail of the room. I hear a distant car come and go.
Help.
The word is sharp and clear and distinct. Where’s my baseball bat? I find it under the bed and creep to the sliding glass door to my backyard patio. I slide it with tenderness but it’s loud and gives me away. I step outside to get a better listen. The moon is bright and my white undershirt screams for attention. Bat cocked, ready to strike. I wait. I listen. Nothing.
I should go to sleep.
I wake up on time to pick up my wife at the airport. I let the dog out and get my paper. Next door a man is buckling his child into a car seat. He’s got a flat face which seems to avoid my wave. I don’t care and I say good morning. He half smiles and shuts the door on his kid. I can see the kid staring at me through the netted shade on the window. He has tired eyes and looks hungry. You hear that last night, I say. My neighbor looks at me as if for the first time.
I’m so sorry he says. You could hear that? And he steps away from the car door like it’s hot. He tells me his kid’s got night terrors. Started a few months ago. They’re awful. Cries and they have to nearly shake him half to death to get him to snap out of it.
Jesus, I’m sorry. And I am. The guy looks really torn up about it and so I say don’t worry about it. Just wanted to be sure everything was okay. He drives off and I forget if I asked for his name.
I tell my wife the story on the ride back home. Her eyes are wild with my story and I try to get real fancy with the details. Must have been scary she tells me. It wasn’t so bad. Just glad to know I’m not the one with the night terrors and making shit up.
We go to bed and she watches trash on television and I’m reading now, a book I’ve started a half dozen times but it looks good on the bedside table. Death in Venice. It’s a little off. I ask her if I can turn on some white noise, it’s been nice to go to sleep to and she says just not too loud. So I turn it on and she says it’s nice. She’s warm next to me and I hold her and I think of the ocean. Try to imagine the gentle swell upon the horizon. Envision the sun slowly setting beyond.
Can you hear me?
Did you hear that? She sits up and looks at me and asks again. Did you hear that? I say yes and know I’m not crazy. That’s a weird thing to say. We listen in bed.
No!
And the kid seems terrified. Poor kid, she says and I go to open the glass sliding door. I open it and sneak to the brick wall covered in ivy and listen.
He’s not home. Help me.
The voice is crying. It sounds like a girl. Maybe a young woman. Should we call the police?
I don’t know, I whisper. I grab the bat. It’s a wooden Louisville Slugger. It’s got a signature on it, not sure who. But I peek over the wall and the moon reveals toys and empty planter boxes and a calcium-stained glass coffee table with cigarette and an ash tray.
Please.
Keep your phone on you. I’ll be right back, I say.
I hop the wall and it isn’t pretty. I land with a thud and listen and wait. I don’t hear anything but the gentle waves crashing the shore playing soft in the distance. I prowl over to their glass door, their house layout is the same as ours. I’m looking into the master bedroom. No one is there. I rest the bat against the stucco and I pull at the door. Theirs glides without a sound. I’m rather jealous.
I step inside and can hear a whimper. Someone is home. I walk down the hall with confidence. I know the layout. Kitchen on the left. Livingroom straight-on. Stairs on the right —
The hell is that.
There’s a door we don’t have. There’s a light emanating from the crack.
Hello?
I can hear my heart in my ears. The blood rushing through almost sounds like nighttide. I push open the door and it leads down. We don’t have basements here. Why is there a basement here? And I hear sniffling and what sounds like chains.
I walk down the stairs and they are not quiet like the door. They are loud and angry and scream every step of my descent.
Save me, you’re here to save me?
And I turn the corner.
The kid is sitting on the counter, his legs kick and swing and he’s in green footy-pajamas.
Help.
He smiles and starts laughing. His legs don’t stop swinging and his eyes light up as he looks past me.
I hear a door shut behind me.
I turn around and see the man turn out the light.
And it’s black.
And step after step I hear him coming for me. The wood creaks like a ship adrift on the ocean.
I wish I hadn’t left the bat at the sliding glass door.