Black Moon

7

THE TRANSACTION AT THE GATED DOORWAY took longer than Biggs thought it should. He had to twist the ring off his finger. They tested the gold by biting it. The ring had a serious ding to it—the result of once falling six stories from their loft window. But they didn’t seem to mind its condition. Biggs did his best to maintain his sleepless pose, mumbling and swaying on his feet. They looked him over, saying, “Mother Mary time, but you got to leave the backpack with us.”

Biggs stalled. He didn’t know how to go about protesting this without revealing his lucid state, so he just violently shook his head. But they were already lifting it off him. “You’ll get it back,” they said.

He doubted this. But he could see how the pack itself could become a liability. The sleeping bag was practically an announcement. People would ask about it. No one else was walking around with luggage. He let it go. If Carolyn was in fact here, they would hike back to the loft and barricade themselves inside. After all, it was only a day’s walk away—shorter without all the wrong turns.

He was led through the lounge, past the bar and padded ox-blood booths. The lighting was dim and Biggs’s eyes were slow to adjust. He could make out a few figures sitting in the booths, smoking in the darkness, as he scanned for Carolyn. There were no women in the room as far as he could tell. Biggs could smell the pornographic scent of peppermint cutting through the smoke. There was a low runway that ran down the middle of the room, fringed with tinsel, a pole at each end. The scene could easily be mistaken for a slow weeknight during more typical times. This wasn’t a setting where he had imagined encountering sleepers, if it was really happening here. He wondered if Mother Mary was the street name of some kind of narcotic.

His guide, a massive man with a thick, dirty beard, pulled him by his elbow toward the stairway at the far end of room. Biggs tripped over a chair, stumbling forward, but the man held him up. “Easy there,” the man said quietly. His movements were solid and his speech clear. He was getting sleep somehow, this guy.

The stairs, hollow and narrow, creaked under them. Biggs and his guide went up two flights, their steps reverberating in the hard, small space. The landing opened into a hallway lined with doors. Biggs was led to a small room at the end of the corridor. The space contained nothing but a twin-sized bed. Biggs was startled to see movement in the dark window that hung on the wall, then realized it was a mirror and the form moving there was his own.

“Take off your shoes and lie down,” the man said.

Biggs hesitated. Should he tell this man that he was here looking for his wife? Should he ask him about Carolyn? It almost seemed safe.

The man backed out, shutting the door behind him, as Biggs lowered himself onto the bed. The mattress was hard and the room smelled faintly of incense. He sat still, waiting to hear the big man’s steps shuffling away from the door, but heard nothing. His eyes adjusted as he glanced about. A simple room, filled by the bed. This is a brothel, Biggs acknowledged. He looked up at the ceiling, then scanned the blank walls. It felt like he was waiting for a doctor.

He found himself sleepily rubbing at the place on his finger where his ring had been for the last eight and a half years, with one brief exception. He recalled how the announcement that his sister-in-law was pregnant had triggered a complicated reaction in Carolyn. She had only recently returned from her self-imposed exile in her childhood bedroom when Biggs’s brother, Adam, called with the news. The ensuing turmoil led up to a moment when, while lying awake in bed late one night, Carolyn picked up Biggs’s wedding ring from the nightstand and casually dropped it out the window. They heard the small chime when it hit the brick alley six stories below.

“There,” she said. “You’re free at last.”

Biggs was already out of bed, pulling on his pants, working to stay calm. “A band of metal isn’t what keeps me here.”

“At this point, I have no idea what does.”

“Carolyn.”

“I’d feel cheated if I were you.”

“We’ve said all this enough, don’t you think?”

He left her in bed and took the elevator down, flashlight in hand. In the alley, he scanned the ground under their window, which floated high above, a dim portal to their complicated world, the warmly lit space behind the glass dense with dissatisfaction. Yes, he had regrets, he wondered how it would be if, or if, or if. Imagining different outcomes, different lives. But he never considered leaving her. They were supposed to be together, weren’t they?

The Dream, which had lit the fuse to their relationship, seemed to suggest a certain spiritual endorsement. He was brought to her. She was his calling. He had married her one bright day eight and a half years ago and meant it.

Then there was all that they had weathered together since. Were those experiences not the ingredients for a kind of emotional superglue, a fusion of sorts? The mystery of her held him as well. That she was still, in many ways, unknown to him. That after all these years, she still possessed uncharted regions, still kept him guessing. He liked how she refused to be predictable: slipping into his shower, drawing him as he slept, returning from a predawn walk, her head crowned with feathers. Climbing through the skylight to see the stars from the roof, her feet dangling high above their bed.

Throwing his ring out the window. Maybe not one of her more charming stunts.

He searched under the cars parked along the far wall of the alley. Maybe the ring had bounced there. The lane was narrow. During the day it was often blocked by trucks making deliveries to the corner store or nearby pub. He imagined one of these trucks flattening his ring. When he found it, in the gutter perilously close to a drainage grille, the impact had put a nick in the ring, but the integrity of the circle survived.

BIGGS lay back, feeling that he was being watched. Maybe he should pace. Carolyn avoided being in bed after a week of complete sleeplessness, calling it a trap. In many ways they are, Biggs thought. Beds.

He attempted to sit up but his body seemed to collapse into itself in sudden recognition of his exhausted state. Biggs fought to stay clear-headed by listening for any evidence of Carolyn in the soundscape. He heard almost nothing through the walls, just the distant sound of music, a faint melody. He imagined an ancient Victrola spinning in a rosy room somewhere, a light swinging slowly.

He felt sleep reaching out for him and shook it off, forcing himself to stand. He went to the door and listened. It was time to find her.

The knob turned with a quiet graininess and he was relieved to find the hallway empty. He decided to move as quietly as possible but, if spotted, to slip right into his sleepless routine. He could hear the murmur of people downstairs. There were only two other doors to check on the second floor. He opened the first door to an empty office space. At the far end, a wide balcony looked over the floor area below. Biggs shut the door and moved on to the next one. Behind it, he was astonished to find a man sleeping soundly in the bed. The man was on his side, arm hugging the pillow, snoring lightly. His scuffed boots sat on the floor and his pants were hung over the rail at the foot of the bed. It had always been strangely odd, somehow invasive, for Biggs to watch a stranger sleep—on the subway, or waiting for a plane. Now he observed and admired it, as though the man was putting on a virtuoso performance.

Upstairs it was more of the same. One room contained an older couple, sleeping in each other’s arms under a satin sheet that shimmered like abalone shell. There was another man, naked and obese, snoring up at the ceiling from behind the mound of his hog-colored stomach. Then, in the room at the end of the corridor, Biggs found a young family: father, mother, and two small children, crowded onto a narrow bed, limbs entangled and frozen in time. Their stillness unnerved Biggs a bit, somehow reminding him of the Pompeii death figures, eternal sleepers molded from impressions in the hardened ash of the volcano. A civilization snuffed out in the night. What happened to the dreams they were having when they died? Did those dreams continue? A vision came to him: a slow blur of light pulling away from the body, an unending narrative fleeing the broken cage.

Biggs quietly pulled the door closed and stood in the corridor. There were no more doors to check and no sign of Carolyn. He decided to return to the second floor, and as he neared the steps, was grabbed by the elbow. It was his guide, the massive man with the beard, who had apparently discovered his absence. “Come on,” he was told, “let’s get you back to your room.”

The man spoke to him as if he were a lost child. Biggs played along, saying, “Sleeping is what I am wanting.”

“That’s right,” the man said. “You can’t get to sleep walking around, right?”

He was led back to the narrow bed. This time the man waited, watching until Biggs was completely horizontal, head resting on the yellowed pillow. When he did leave, Biggs knew from the click of the door that he had been locked in. He brought up his hands and rubbed at his face. It had been an illusion, the vision of Carolyn in the window. It was absurd to think she would be here. Sad thinking. Just as the impressions of the sleepless were colored by exhaustion, his were by desperation.

He turned on his side, knowing that he should get out of this place, keep moving. But the sight of all those sleepers, like museum displays, had aroused his own need to sleep. He felt the weight of it in his body, in his mind, slowing his thoughts. It had been a long day of walking, after all. And, here he was, in a bed where he was actually expected to sleep. But I shouldn’t before they put me to sleep, however they do it. Whatever Mother Mary is, the stuff seems to work.

He slapped at his face.

He clawed his arm, twisted his flesh.

Don’t, he told himself, as sleep rose up like a warm tide around him.

BIGGS woke to find a woman sitting at the foot of his bed. She was in her early thirties, Asian, with tired, somewhat bleary eyes. She had her black hair pulled back, and even in the poor lighting, Biggs could see that it had purple highlights. She wore a yellow tank top, exposing the relief of her collarbones and hard shoulders, thin arms. Carolyn had a top like that, a figure like that. The realization sank in, dragging down his hopes. This was the woman he had seen in the window, not his wife. He frowned, back in the murk, as the woman continued to stare.

Had she said something, or touched him? He wasn’t sure. Something had woken him. Just her presence, maybe. She was assessing him, eyebrows raised, as if he had just said something potentially insulting and she wanted clarification before deciding she was offended.

“You were sleeping,” she said.

“No,” he said. “Just waiting. I had my eyes closed.”

The woman looked him over. “You can sleep.”

Biggs said nothing.

“How?”

A silence hung between them for a long moment.

“I don’t know,” Biggs finally said. “I just can.”

The woman turned suddenly, looking at the door, then resumed studying Biggs. “Why did you come in here if you can already sleep?”

“I thought I saw my wife in the window. But I think it was you.”

“What does your wife look like?”

Biggs took out his wallet and showed the woman a picture of a smiling Carolyn. It was a few years old, taken during hopeful times. Her eyes shining. Carolyn’s hair was much longer now. A lot like this woman’s.

“No. I have never seen her.”

Biggs closed his wallet and put it back in his pocket, explaining how she went missing, how he was searching for her. The woman listened, blankly studying his face.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“Matthew Biggs. Are you Mother Mary?”

“That’s what they call me, but I’m Maria.”

“You can make people sleep?”

“Yes.”

Biggs couldn’t understand how that would work. She had entered the room with nothing. No pouch of drugs, no syringe or pills. No food or drinks of any kind, nothing to swallow. He wondered if the way to sleep had something to do with her body. Were they counting on orgasm, or rather the rush of drowsiness that followed it, to break the pattern? Is that why sleep was being promised in a whorehouse? He knew it didn’t work. He and Carolyn had tried it in the first few days she found herself perpetually awake. Besides, what about those kids upstairs?

“How do you do it?”

She smiled.

“I sing them a lullaby,” she said.

He didn’t believe her. It annoyed him that she would try to lie. Did she think he was one of them—the gullible sleepless? Did she not see that he was asleep only minutes ago? That his mind was sharp?

“Seriously,” he insisted.

“Man, I already told you.”

“A lullaby?” It was like he was saying the word for the first time. She must have heard how strangely it fit in his mouth. He frowned and she lifted her head in quiet defiance.

“It’s the truth,” she said. “Now you tell me your truth. How are you able to sleep?”

“I don’t know how, I just can.”

“Why would the spell not affect you?”

“The spell?”

“Yes, a spell has been cast over the whole world.”

Biggs smiled cynically, thinking, Spells, magic songs. Pass the pixie dust.

“You have been blessed,” she told him.

“Some blessing.”

He thought of how often he had wished it was Carolyn who could sleep, his family, not him. He recalled the last time he had talked to his parents, only two weeks earlier. How they didn’t seem to know who he was on the phone. His brother, Adam, had called, asking if he, Jorie, and their newborn could come stay with them, thinking it would be safer in the cities, since the military was being mobilized in urban centers. But he had said no to the idea. The baby would just make things worse for Carolyn. Everyone should just stay put and wait this thing out, he had felt. What had become of them?

Biggs felt a building rage suddenly wilt into sorrow as he thought about all that was already lost. He recognized now that a slow-moving catastrophe like this one was a series of surrenders. You lose something you assumed you couldn’t live without, but then you do live. So you fall back to your next most cherished possession. Then you lose that too, triggering yet another retreat and adjustment of expectations. At some point it has to bottom out. You either lose it all or start slowly gaining it back. He looked at Maria with impossibly tired eyes.

“You need more rest,” she said.

He laughed, but this time there was nothing cynical about it.

They sat, staring at each other.

“So it really is a song that you sing?” Biggs asked.

Maria nodded.

“When did you discover what it could do, this song of yours?”

“Right when I learned it. I could make my father sleep, before he hurt my mother. That’s why she taught me the song—to protect us.”

“Oh,” Biggs said. He looked at Maria and saw that a dark memory now moved through her. She looked through him at some ghostly scene.

“I want to hear it,” Biggs said. “Please sing it.”

His voice brought her back. Her eyes focused on him. “But you can already sleep.”

Biggs smiled. “Hey, I paid for it.”

“You should get your money back.”

“If this really works, you could be the key to stopping this whole thing.”

She moved toward him, gently pushing him back until his head found the pillow. “You could be too.”

Biggs thought about this, looking up at her. “The difference is that I can’t help others. It’s contained inside me. It—”

He was cut off by a voice at the door calling for Maria. “Hey, let’s go. People are fucking waiting,” the voice rasped. It was the Indian with the pistol, Biggs could tell.

“Are you a prisoner here?” he asked.

“No.”

“So you can leave?”

“Where would I go?”

“Anywhere you want,” Biggs told her. “If this thing works, you should be the one calling the shots.”

She shook her head and shushed him. He could see that she was fearful, that she hadn’t allowed herself to go down that path.

Then her hand was warm on his forehead. She slowly brought it down over his eyes as she leaned in, so close that he could feel her breath on his cheek. Then she began to sing. Biggs braced himself, trying to open himself to suggestion. It had to work like hypnosis, he figured. Or some kind of frequency thing.

The words she sang were not English. He was not even sure they were words. They were soft sounds, smooth vowels, candle-melt. Eroded stone. The consonants were like footsteps in the snow, hands tunneling in wet sand. The melody was weirdly complicated and difficult. Not exactly appealing, because it didn’t seem to follow any musical rules, like key or count. But she eased it gently into his ear, pushing it with a warm wind. He felt the warmth move into him and spread over his mind, bringing slow pulses of color—purple and blue washes, undulating streaks of cool neon dancing under his eyelids like an aurora.

Then he woke up and got to his feet.

Then he was untying Carolyn from the chair. She slumped into his arms. He lifted her and carried her to their bed. He could feel the weight of the sleep in her, like a soaked sponge. She was so heavy with it he feared the bed would break and she would crash through the floor and continue falling, onward into a glowing abyss. But he was able to lower her onto the mattress, which she sank comfortably into, nestled. He put a comforter over her and lifted her head for a pillow. The movement caused her to slowly open her eyes.

“Go back,” he told her.

She focused on him and smiled. “You’re tired,” she said.

He nodded and they studied each other. He worried she would notice the missing ring. It was better, he decided, to show her rather than try to hide it. He held up his hand, only to discover that the battered ring was there. He looked at it, confused.

She smiled knowingly.

“I’m glad you never had it repaired,” she said. “It was made more perfect by damage.”

He struggled to make sense of the ring’s return. “Did you do this,” he asked, “between the frames?”

“If you say so, my love. You’re the dreamer.”