Final Rest
By Rupert Merkin

 

To get through the night, I count. Beside the bed, waves from my sound machine splash and fizz as I whisper slowly in my head: one, two, three… At seventy-four I strain to hear the hushed click and the loop of sound rolls around again. It’s seamless, unless you’re listening for the seam. Count and click. Count and click. All night. Every night for three long years. It’s as close to sleep as I get.

Last night was the worst I can remember. Usually the counting is enough to relax me, to clear my mind, and I enter a kind of trance where time speeds up and the night drifts past, painless. As much as possible, my mind rests. Not last night. Every hushed night-time whisper made me clutch my sheets tight. My brain churned and spewed out bile against that bastard who ruined my life.

In the media people are mugged in the streets or burgled as they sleep, and we daydream bravado, but the truth is different. The truth is feeling scared and violated. The truth is years of lying awake waiting for it to happen again.

I get out of bed early, before five, and sit at the kitchen table blowing steam from my coffee and checking the news online. The sun comes up slow and easy, filling the sky with pink and red. All my morning friends are here: cold sweats, twitching head, the ice-pick jab of a morning migraine.

Outside the window are my jury of crows. Three of them, as usual. They arrived about a month ago, spying on me, cocking their heads as I ate breakfast. At first I thought they were real, like the ones who cawed indignantly outside my bedroom window the morning after the burglary, but it soon became clear they’re hallucinations. Like panic attacks, disorientation, and memory loss, hallucinations are nothing new to me. Sleep deprivation will do all that to you.

Looking into their evil little eyes feels like vertigo, dizzying, sickening, so I stare beyond them at the field and the sunrise. One of them caws and I take another sip of coffee. As I read an online article about insomnia caused by psychological traumas in POWs, I hear a quick flap of wings and a branch shake. Are they coming to the window? Please, no. I shield over my eyes with a shaking hand so I can’t see above my laptop screen and I force myself to read on.

There’s a rat-a-tat-tat on the window. A bitter bile taste rises up my throat. I can’t swallow.

Rat-a-tat-tat. Rat-a-tat-tat.

When I look up they’re all on the windowsill tapping away with their nasty sharp beaks. Time for my medication.

In the bathroom I rattle out: 100mg of ephedrine, to keep me sharp; 20mg of Prozac, to keep me happy; 10mg of Ambien, to take the edge off; and a couple of Percodan, just, well, just because. Sometimes I wonder whether my morning cocktails are making things worse, but I loathe the thought of giving them up. A couple of times I’ve cut back, or even gone without, but by midday, when my heart’s rollicking, and all I want to do is squeeze my forehead between my fists until the panic subsides, I crack and consume.

On the walk to work the long damp grass licks up my trouser legs. The air’s crisp, like a lungful of ice, but overhead the clouds are greying and coming together. Looks like there’ll be a storm. 

Striding through the field, I notice my headache’s gone, my stomach has ceased its morning cramps, and the grass is so green it’s almost glowing. I smile—the first of the day. Heading between some grey, leafless trees, I hear more crows, a chorus of caws, mixing so between them they scream out: “Jeremy … Jeremy …”. Without even looking around, I carry on walking.

My office is above the butchers on the high street of a village called Willsdown. High street is probably a misleading name as it gives the impression that there are other streets in the village, which there are not. I’ve been here two years now, since it became clear that being a chronic insomniac, to use the medical term, and holding down a pinstriped job in the city didn’t go together. Even getting to work and back was a problem. One stumble and I’d have been jam under an onrushing train. That I stuck it out for nearly a year is amazing enough. If I’m honest, I don’t need an office here, or a secretary, as I could easily do all my work from home, but both it and Margaret, who’s been with me here for the entire time since I opened, are good for me.

Margaret’s in by the time I arrive. Margaret’s great, a sweet old dear. I love her soothing smile. I love the way she prattles on about her husband’s prize cows. I love the way she’s always palming a couple of dry crackers and then with a flick of her fingers she’s holding one to her mouth and nibbling on it like a naughty mouse. Hiring her, I explained I was anaemic, a white lie she kindly gossiped to the other villagers so they didn’t take too much notice of my pale complexion or my black-ringed eyes. She knows I have problems sleeping, though I’ve never explained the real reason. That I’m a scared little boy who all but shits himself when the wind rustles the trees at night. Like the medication, having Margaret around keeps me sane.

“My, Mr Cooper!” She exclaims when I shuffle in, “You look simply dreadful today. Are you unwell?”

“And a good morning to you too Margaret.” Ho ho ho. “No, I’m fine thanks, just a late night, working on the Baxter case. Deadline today.”

Margaret looks about to say something, but instead takes a tiny bite from a cracker. As usual she’s already opened the mail and brewed some coffee. Most of my work these days is standard stuff. Some conveyancing, forwarded to me by the guys I used to work with. I get a lot of local contract work as well from the farmers.

Hours later and I’m scanning Baxter’s redrawn will. He’s a local farmer who’s remarried. My eyes glaze over the page of dense legal text. I’ve read it three times and I’m sure everything’s in order—it’s standard. I’m about ready to put it in my out-tray when the scrape from a chair distracts me. I glance up to see Mr Baxter sitting opposite me.

“Christ!” I grab the edge of the desk. “Mr Baxter, didn’t hear you come in, do we … have you an appointment today?”

This probably sounds bad, but Mr Baxter looks like all the rest of the farmers round here. A bit red-faced with a lot of hair stuffed under a flat cap. He says nothing, just stares blankly at me. Face blank, he cocks his head. Birdlike.

“Hello? Mr Baxter?” I say. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

Baxter’s mouth opens and closes but all I hear is a loud monotonous whirring in my head. He stops talking and the noise also stops.

“I’m sorry,” I say, “I didn’t catch that. Can you—”

He opens his mouth again and the whirring becomes an aeroplane engine. Why can’t I hear what he’s saying? Things are rarely so intense that I can’t interact with someone. I need more ephedrine or a half hour by myself to count and regain control. I have to get rid of Baxter.

“Look, Mr Baxter, if it’s about your will, then please rest assured that I’m dealing with it as best I can.” I hold the will up. “In fact, as you can see, it’s been my prio—”

Baxter begins to talk again. The whirring’s so loud I cover my ears even though the noise is in my head. In the background I hear a screeching caw. My guts go cold and I wipe the sweat from my forehead. He leans forward and looks like he’s shouting, but I can’t make out any of the words.

“Mr Baxter! Please can you calm down, otherwise I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

Baxter lurches from his seat and grabs my shirt. He pulls me into him and his hot breath barks in my face. His mouth is forming the same words over and over: “Listen to me. Listen to me.” The whir is now a screaming helicopter blade. My mouth is wet and when I wipe it there’s bright red blood on my hand. It’s pouring from my nose. I try to push him away but all the strength has gone from my body. He tosses me from the chair. I roll around the floor scrabbling for something to help me up. I drag myself across the floor and out of the room. With one hand, I reach for Margaret and screech, “Call the police. It’s Mr. Baxter, he’s gone crazy.”

Margaret drops her cracker and stares at me.

“Quickly! Before he comes after me.”

“But,” she says, “you’re the only person in there.”

Credit to Margaret for dealing with me for the half hour or so after that, until the Ambien kicks in. Trembling, I tell her the full story. My insomnia. The daily cocktail of pharmaceuticals I take to keep me sane. How it all started with the break-in at my apartment and my confrontation with the burglar. How I killed him in self-defence. To be honest, I only know this to be a fact because of my subsequent trial and acquittal. My last memory reel from that night is leaping out of bed in my boxer shorts, and creeping towards the kitchen clutching the empty red wine bottle from beside my bed. I remember the blue glow from the computer monitor in the spare room lighting the hallway. My hand shook as I took the door handle. I nudged the door open, and then … nothing.

There are bits after that – the police station and then coming home again the same night. My brother sitting at the end of my bed and promising he’d stay and watch over me, until he fell asleep as I lay awake loathing the morning birdcalls. After that was a trial. My own firm represented me, sent in the big guns. The prosecutor tried to argue for manslaughter, but he was like a puppy up against a gang of big dogs. Case closed.

I thought that after justice had been done, after the initial worry about being broken into again had passed, I’d be able to sleep. No chance. So then I moved here, to Willsdown, where you’re more likely to be run over by a tractor than burgled. So why can’t I sleep? Why can’t I just get some fucking sleep? At least ten times a day I feel my mind hazing over and sleep washing through me, and always then a tiny voice in my head yells out ‘yes yes’, and part of me is so happy I want to cry, and then my heart starts pounding and soon enough the sleep has gone. Sometimes the thought that I will never sleep again makes me want to scratch my eyes out.

Margaret gives me that soothing smile and pats my leg. She says, “You poor dear. Maybe you should see someone about it, someone who can help you through it.”

“Yeah, I tried counselling,” I say, and then trot out the same lines I’ve said before. “Didn’t work for me. I’m not a wacko. I just never felt comfortable sitting with some bored guy doodling in his notebook or looking for crumbs in his beard.”

Nope, it worked better for me slumping at home watching DVDs all night long and ordering all kinds of sleeping pills off the internet that never really put me to sleep but at least made time disappear for a while. I thought I was in control, as happy as I could be, considering. Sure, I struggled with work, and I was too tired or zoned out to socialise, but I was always a bit of a loner, and the odd hallucination’s manageable if it’s a grey shadow out the corner of your eye, or the sound of laughter in an empty room.

But I hadn’t crumbled.

I’d overcome. I’d moved on.  Made a success of a bad situation. Sure, I was held together by medication, but so are lots of people in the world.

But this—seeing people that aren’t there, and the crows on my window, the crows calling to me as I walk, my nose gushing blood for Christ’s sake! I’m falling apart here!

“I don’t want to be a nag, Mr. Cooper,” Margaret says, “but maybe you need to try something else? Do you remember my friend Edna?”

“Ah yes, Edna, I did the paperwork for the sale of her son’s cottage, right?” Edna Roland, a grade A mad old bat who lives south of the village.

“She’s very good,” says Margaret with earnest eyes. “She can do all sorts with cards and hypnosis. She can even talk to the dead.”

“So what’s she going to do? Put me in touch with my dead burglar? We’ll sit down and pow-wow over old times?”

“My mother always told me,” says Margaret, “that a heavy conscience can never relax.”

“What heavy conscience? Some little shit sneaked into my apartment in the middle of the night trying to rip me off. Fact. I caught him. Fact. In the struggle I killed him. Fact. If he hadn’t have been robbing me then none of this would have happened and he’d still be alive.”

Fact.

Margaret tips her head down, and for a second I miss my mother. She died in a car crash when I was fifteen. “Well, it seems to me,” Margaret says, “you need to do something before this happens when a client is really here. Fact”

So, I don’t object when Margaret calls Edna Roland and organises for me to go over. Before I leave she fixes me up as best she can, cleaning the blood so all that’s left are pink splodges on my shirt.

By the time I’m standing outside Edna’s cottage, a stone build with a thatch roof, the sky is full of black rolling clouds, and I can barely see any patches of white. The door opens and an old lady in a housedress and curls shuffles out. Edna Roland looks like my old dinner lady at school. She welcomes me in with a swish of her hand.

“Tea, Mr Cooper?” says Edna in a thick countryside accent. She tips her head back and cackles like a witch. When she sees my face she chuckles more normally and says, “Ha, I got you there. Don’t you worry son, I’m not crazy, I just like to haves fun with folk.”

She leads me through to an old-fashioned mahogany reading room and sits me on a worn maroon armchair in front of a fire. The ephedrine I had before leaving the office makes me sweat and chew the inside of my mouth. I tell Edna about the burglary and my insomnia. Right then, I realise just how tensed up my shoulders are, how tense they’ve been for the last few years. As if they’re strung with metal bars.

“So,” I say as I feel my cheeks flush, “are we going to contact my dead burglar?”

“Why, have you a message for him?”

“No.”

“So why would you be wanting to contact him?”

“Sorry, I just thought—”

“I think what we need to try here is some hypnotic regression. You know what that is?”

“Sure, hypnosis. But I don’t see how that’ll help.” I’d turned down that choice of therapy after the event, saying I didn’t want to relive it ever again. But here, now, for the first time, something in me wants to see it. To see what really happened. I say ok and wait to begin.

“Let me just go and get me wings of bat and eyes of newt and me pointy hat first,” says Edna seriously.

“Really?”

“No son, not really.”

There’s no swinging watch. All she does is light some sandalwood and recite to me in monotone: “Close your eyes and clear your mind,” she says, and counts, “One, two, three, four, five …”

In my head I’m counting along with her.

“… Let your head float away into the night sky …”

My head’s not floating anywhere.

“… And when I finish talking now you will be under.”

I’m not under anything.

“Remember back to the night of the burglary. It’s dark and you’re asleep in bed. What happens next?”

My mouth opens and I start to mumble. I know I’m doing it but my head’s blank so the words come by themselves:

“Wake up, there are noises. Dark, it’s dark. Wine bottle, on the floor, take it ...”

While I’m speaking I see the events as if they’re in a film, flickering, running off an old projector. My eyes are sinking back in my skull, and I can almost feel the softness of a pillow as the words slip and fall out of my mouth.

“Scared, more noises. Door handle, slowly open door …”

My head’s drifting forward. My teeth are tingling. It’s as if my eyelids are made of lead. I’m disconnecting. Drifting away …

“Kid there, thief, crouching down. Little white face, sees me, hand goes to his pocket, and … and …”

I’m falling asleep. I know I am. I’m so excited that my eyes whip open. It’s dark. Am I asleep? I can’t see anything.

Reaching blindly I call, “Mrs Roland? Edna?”

There’s a shuffle and a screech then the room fills with squawks and caws as the blackest shadows come together, swooping down with red flaming eyes and tearing talons. I drop to the floor and wrap my arms around my head. They’re trying to peck my eyes out.

“Mr Cooper? Mr Cooper, are you all right?”

The lights are back and Edna’s standing over me.

“Dark, it was dark.” I say. “The crows, with red eyes, and they were—”

“Crows, what crows? I turned the light off so you wouldn’t be disturbed, but there were candles.”

Candles. The red flaming eyes. I wasn’t asleep at all. Just more fucking hallucinations.

“Listen, Mrs Roland,” I say, “I’m sorry, I’ve been under a lot of stress lately and—”, but she interrupts me and says she’s seen it all before and a lot worse. After I calm down she tells what I’d said even though I remember it all. I thank her for her time, apologise again, and ask her not to mention the incident to anyone. After she closes the door I storm off pounding a fist against my temple. What an idiot.

Dusk now, I stumble back along the path to the village. Pulling my jacket tight round my neck, I cut off the path and onto a field. It’s a direct route to my cottage that way. The moon is a milky blotch behind the dense clouds. Rain hits my face. I trudge through the mud, head down.

What happened next? His pocket? I don’t remember. Why should I care anyway? Why should I have to think about that thieving little shit? I did nothing wrong! I fumble around my jacket pocket for some pills. Any pills. Ambien, perfect. I gulp them down dry.

Something slices the air behind me. I beg for it to be the wind and not a crow. Please, anything but a fucking crow. I spin and there’s nothing there. There’s another swish by my ear. I hear a croaking caw. I start to jog. My shoes stick. All around, things swoop at me. Ducking my head, I run faster.

Enough. I’ve had enough. I stop running and stand still as the shadows dip and dive. And then, to the side I see someone standing in the field, watching. He’s wearing a big black jacket and his thin arms are spread wide as if he means me no harm. As if he’s waiting to give me a great big hug.

I don’t care what this latest hallucination is, but whatever it is, I’m going to tear it to pieces.

Close in and I can see the jacket writhing over his body and a maelstrom of activity whirling around him. Black shapes flap into the night. Under his wide-brimmed hat is an odd grey moon face, and at the end of his arms, I can’t see any hands.

It’s a scarecrow, covered in hundreds of crows crawling in and out of its ratty black jacket.

This is all in my head. Nothing here can get to me. But my heart’s slamming so hard it hurts. Up close and I can see the scarecrow’s wet straw face. Its evil black marble eyes and twig nose. Its head rears up. That face. That face.

And I remember.

From the light in the hallway, I can see him. He’s just a kid, half my size. Holding the bottle out in front of me, I step forward. He steps back.

The rain beating into my face, I grab the scarecrow by the neck and rip away tufts of soggy straw. “What do you want with me?” I scream into its face and shake it. “Leave me alone.” Crows spiral off, screeching and cawing.

He’s about to throw my wallet into a bag on the floor. “Drop it, now!”  I lift the bottle up and step closer.

The crows hover above my head. Circling. They drop fast and bomb at me, swishing just past my ears. The scarecrow rolls its eyes to me and opens its mouth, and in my head I hear it groan as, all together, the crows smash into me and …

He drops my wallet onto the floor. His hand goes to his pocket. He’s got a weapon – a knife or a screwdriver or something. He pulls his hand out just as I plant my foot forward and swing the bottle like a baseball bat as hard as I can.

… knock me to the ground, as I writhe in the mud, and they tear into me with their claws and beaks, ripping chunks from my face, furrowing my flesh …

A flash of silver in the dull light; the bottle swinging at the kid’s head; It’s not a knife, a screwdriver, or any weapon at all.

It’s my watch.

… my entire body being slashed and pulped by the storm of crows with their burning red eyes as I lie there bleeding from a million cuts as the crows’ screams shrill in my ears …

The bottle smashes into his skull, shattering, and he slumps to the floor.  

***

The birds are gone. The scarecrow’s gone.

All night I lie awake in the cold wet field, my clothes ripped and hanging off my body, my skin flayed all over. My fingernails are splintered, and blood is crusting over my hands.

There were never any crows. Only me.

I remember everything now. I replay all of it, again and again until the sun comes up and the sky is bright with a gold and yellow sunrise. Eventually I stand and trudge towards home. My head’s heavy and my eyes are burning tired. Vaguely, I wonder if I’ll sleep when I get home, but I know I won’t.

Not yet.

END