I Couldn’t Sleep

“Honey. Honey. Please wake-up.”

“Huh?” I groggily asked. “What is it, sweetie?”

“I think there’s somebody downstairs in the living room.”

The bedroom was warm, but the cool night breeze made it comfortable. The room was flooded with a soft white light from the full moon. The moonlight made the ordinary bedroom items appear otherworldly. The ebony dresser that looked solid and hard during the day now looked ethereal — as though simply waving an arm through it would make it roll and twist like a wisp of smoke in a light wind. My blue, blazer jacket draped over the back of the upholstered chair appeared to be floating and dancing as the breeze rustled the sleeves and blazer flap. The glass of water sitting on top of the nightstand gently glowed with a white light tinted with a mysterious violet.

“Sweetie, you’re dreaming. There’s no one downstairs.” I assured my wife.

“No. There’s definitely someone downstairs.” She replied.

“Did you hear something?”

“No. But I’m certain there’s someone downstairs.”

“Maybe you were dreaming?”

“No. No. Honey, please can you check downstairs?”

My wife like everything else in the room looked ghostly. The moonlight made her already pale skin paler. She looked tired and scared. Her thin lips were drawn tight and her hazel eyes darted side to side. I gently grabbed her thin, small hands and softly kissed them. Typically when she was worried, I massaged her head with my fingers as I brushed her long straight blond hair back behind her ears. But the chemotherapy took her hair. It also made her dream terrible dreams.

She often awoke in the middle of the night terrified and sometimes angry. She dreamt of demons singing sweet songs, luring her into the darkness of our closet. She dreamt of spirits clawing at her, attempting to grab her and drag her beneath the bed. She dreamt of strange tall beings banging on the doors and windows of our house, trying to gain entry. After she awoke from these nightmares, she usually buried her face in my chest and cried. I gently held her and told her they were only dreams, but I knew she knew they were only dreams. I knew the terrors she dreamt were caused by the medicine and her fears rooted in her cancer and its prognosis. So I humored her fears and obeyed her wishes to check the dark recesses of our house. In the past, I checked under the bed and sometimes the closet. Often, I double checked the locks at the behest of my shaking wife.

Eventually, her fears became my fears. It was contagious and its dark tendrils wrapped itself around my thoughts and squeezed itself into my dreams. However, my nightmares weren’t about strangers hiding away in our house or of dark spirits attempting to nab my soul. My nightmares were about living — living without her.

“Okay, I’ll check.”

“Thanks Honey. And I think he’s sitting on the couch.”

“Oh. How do you know he’s sitting on the couch?”

“I just know.”

“Okay.”

I swung my legs to the side of the bed and sat up. I placed my hands on my knees and yawned. As I stood up, my knees cracked and popped. I joked that I was becoming an old man, but my wife didn’t respond. I shuffled to the door and grabbed the brass doorknob. My wife, as usual, warned me to be careful. I opened the bedroom door.

The master bedroom led to a second floor landing that overlooked the first floor and living room. Immediately in front of the master bedroom was the door to the linen closet but stepping onto the landing and taking a few steps right, a person could see the entirety of the living room and part of the dining area. The open floor plan was a big factor in our decision to purchase the house, long before cancer struck my wife and when our dreams were still intact.

The moonlight flooded the living room and much like our bedroom, it made the room look otherworldly. The soft, white light made the wooden floor appear as if the floor had a sheen of ice covering it. The white peonies in the glass vase sitting on top of the coffee table glowed with an indigo hue. The mid-century, white leather chairs looked like they were made of marble. As I expected there was no one there. The room was still except for the dancing shadows thrown by the branches of the tree in the backyard.

Even though the stillness and the emptiness of the living room assured me that we were safe, I felt a chill, a coldness that a person experiences before plunging into something uncertain and scary. I shivered. “Sweetie, there’s no one here,” I shouted. “There’s nothing to worry about,” I weakly cried. I stood on the landing for a minute, briefly questioning whether I should go back into the bedroom. I shook my doubt and entered the bedroom.

My wife was laying in bed sleeping. The slate colored sheet was pulled up to her sharp chin that was made sharper by the wasting away of her fat and muscle. A stained quilt sewn by my wife’s mother laid over her thigh. And on the other side of the bed, sat a man.

The man didn’t have any features. He was merely an outline of a man filled with a deep darkness. It seemed as if the substance of the man was punched out of the fabric of the universe, leaving his outline and a dark, black hole. I tried to cry out to my wife, but I couldn’t. I tried to scream, but I couldn’t. The man appeared to have his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands. His chest and back expanded and contracted at a rapid pace. I realized that this dark apparition was sobbing. I tried to speak to the man, but I couldn’t. I tried to move, but I couldn’t. With every sob, the darkness began to expand and radiate from the man sitting on the bed. Or was I being drawn closer to the man, trapped in his grief’s event horizon? The darkness was nearly around me. I couldn’t see my wife anymore and the bedroom was nearly gone. Finally, the darkness fully enveloped me, and all I saw was black and nothingness. I couldn’t see my hands, legs, or arms. I felt like a singular dot of consciousness floating on a black ocean. I wailed in terror.

I awoke and discovered I was laying in my bed. The bedroom was dark and there was no moonlight illuminating it. The room smelled of sweat and mold. I chuckled at how a dream frightened me. “Sweetie, I had the weirdest dream,” I snickered. I stretched my arm and hand into the darkness, trying to find and hold my wife’s delicate hand. But there was nothing there but the sheets and a folded quilt. I shot up from the bed and used both of my hands to feel for my wife. A sudden, terrifying realization dawned on me. I felt as though I swallowed a large rock that fell and crashed into the bottom of my gut. I realized that my wife was gone and that she had died from her cancer several weeks ago.

I stopped feeling for my wife. I swung my legs to the side of the bed. I placed my elbows on my knees and began weeping into my hands.