“I don’t talk just to hear myself.”
“Maybe they’re not neighbours. Maybe they’re just passing through, taking a walk. They might live several blocks away—they look pretty healthy. They could probably walk that far.”
“Uh huh,” she said, her head down, walking a little faster. It hurt to try to keep up with her. Too late. That’s what she would have said if he asked her what was wrong, so he didn’t. She deserved better—he didn’t understand how he’d gotten so fuzzy-headed. There was probably a pill for that, something to erase a certain percentage of your thoughts, clear out some space so you could pay better attention to the people you loved. So much for the benefits of exercise. Sam was feeling worse and worse.
By the time they reached the drug store Sam was ravenous. He sat on the padded bench and devoured two packets of crackers while Elaine got her many prescriptions. He’d already filled his last week before they moved. The lady across from him frowned. He looked around—he was spraying cracker crumbs everywhere. He didn’t know what to do—he couldn’t very well get down on his hands and knees right there in the store and sweep them up. He closed his eyes so he wouldn’t see either the lady or the crumbs and continued to eat.
When he was small his mother would drag him all over town on her errands. She took him along even if he was sick, but that was just what you had to do when you were a single mother. The worse he felt the more clothing she put on him; he supposed it was meant as a kind of protection. Sometimes he’d get so hot his head would swim. She’d sit him down somewhere in a chair, or in the shopping cart, or even in some out-of-the-way corner of the floor and let him nap. He’d dream he was a bug in a cocoon, waiting to be someone else. That night she’d reward him with a long bath before he went to bed.
“Sleep is what you need,” she’d say, stroking his forehead. “Go to sleep and let the night doctor take care of you.”
Over the years he’d tried to make some sense out of it. Plentiful sleep, of course, was bound to help, to lower stress, to permit the body to bring its own healing. However it worked, he almost always felt better the next day. He didn’t even have to wait until the day arrived, he could take a nap in the middle of the day, and then the night doctor could come. The night doctor didn’t necessarily require night, he simply required that you be asleep so that he could properly do his business on you. All that was needed was that it be night-time inside your head.
Had he really believed that the night doctor was an actual person? He’d never believed in magic, exactly—a person or a thing had to act, had to do something. So as a child he’d believed in Santa Claus because he was a person, sort of, this larger-than-life thing, an agency. He didn’t believe in the Easter Bunny because he knew a kid who had a rabbit who’d smelled and bitten him once.
It had been oddly reassuring, and yet not reassuring at all. Because if Santa were a person, then he was fallible. He could be late, or if you moved he might not find your house. The same with the night doctor. And he had had proof—he’d once visited his grandparents for two weeks and he’d been sick the whole time. The night doctor obviously couldn’t find him.
It had all been a great cause for anxiety. The fact that no one but his mother ever talked about the night doctor had only made it worse—he’d never even seen a picture of the man. Or woman, or whatever.
“Sam, darling? Are you ready to go?”
He blinked. Elaine was looking down at him, smiling. Had he overslept? Suddenly he felt lost, outside his body and not quite knowing the way back in.
“I fell…” He yawned. “I fell asleep waiting. Sorry.”
“You must have needed it,” she said, helping him to his feet. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. Maybe I’ve pushed you too hard today.”
“Exercise is good for me. I don’t get enough,” he said, moving slowly with her arm in his as they rocked their way down the aisle, Elaine’s bag full of pill bottles rattling at her hip. He willed the blood to flow; his feet were numb. By the time they got out of the store they were better, he could feel them tingling. He supposed the day would eventually come when they didn’t get better, when they didn’t start tingling but remained as dead as fallen logs. But not today, thank God. Not today.
It was strangely dim outside, and Sam wondered if they could have been there at the pharmacy all day. How long had he been asleep? Then he realised it was simply the clouds rolling in, and he hoped they could get home before it rained. He never liked getting rained on, not even as a child. He usually got sick afterwards. There must have been something in the rain, not just water.
They were at the highest point in the road, the remainder of the neighbourhood receding gradually below them. Had they really climbed such a hill? Maybe they were lost—they didn’t know the neighbourhood well. They could wander for hours and not find their way back. Sam gazed around in a futile search for recognisable landmarks. But he had no landmarks in his memory for their new home.
From here they had a clear view of the afternoon sky. The clouds were heavy, laden—it might begin raining at any moment. The dark shapes of birds were darting in and out between the banks of clouds as if knitting them together. Sam thought of the giant bird he’d seen earlier and wondered if these were more of the same. They appeared to be rising up from the roofs of the neighbourhood where they’d been resting, rushing up to join the others as if in collusion.
Then he saw that larger dark shape depart an upstairs window of one of the houses, climbing onto the sill like a suicide, but leaping up instead of down, rising with a swirl of its long dark coat, the bag trailing from the skinny fingers of one hand, more claws than fingers, as the figure attempted to blend in with those other flying shapes.
Sam couldn’t be sure, they were too far away, but that figure seemed so very familiar. As if sensing Sam’s attention the head of the thing turned back an instant over its shoulder, large eyes staring, narrow face so pale and long as a blade.
Although he didn’t intend to, Sam sat down on the sidewalk then, his knees giving way. Elaine yelled in alarm as he almost dragged her down with him. He heard the panic in her voice as she screamed for someone to help them. But there was nothing he could do, as he was too busy elsewhere. Sixteen years old and walking home in the dark from the movie with his friends. He’d just left them to turn in to his own front walk, the darkness denser now because of the trees that used to shade their lawn.
His mother had been ill for several weeks, keeping to her bed except to feed him his meals and prepare his lunch for school. At times like these he’d think a father would have been useful, for her if not for him, because she had to do everything, and Sam was very aware he did not appreciate her nearly enough. But a father had never been more than a story as far as he was concerned, a few photographs that might not actually have been the man. How could he know for sure?
As he was walking up the sidewalk he felt a change in the air. It wasn’t a smell, although he felt it in his nose. It was more like a heaviness had entered the space around him, a pressure increasing in his ears, his nose, his skull, and a strong sense of vertigo as if he were looking down from a very high place.
He glanced up, cowering, feeling as if the sky were about to slide down on top of him. His mother’s bedroom window was open, her twin pale curtains reaching outside the frame to the night beyond like a frantic signal. Something membranous and black flapped. He could hear her moaning from where he stood, or thought he could.
Sam ran into the house and up the stairs. He came to her door and stopped because he was afraid. He thought he should knock—she would be furious if he went inside without knocking, but that didn’t apply in this case, did it? Even the memory made him feel ashamed, and he could hear Elaine’s voice somewhere above him attempting to offer some comfort.