Greg Iles - Sleep No More

“You’re saying that your soul-”

“I don’t know if it’s my soul! That’s beyond me. But whatever we are-whatever human consciousness is-that part of me moved from him into her, just as it had gone into him when I so desperately wanted to survive.” She squeezed his hand. “Please tell me what you’re thinking.”

“Don’t stop. Tell me the rest.”

She looked up at the canopy. “That was ten years ago. The time between then and now…I don’t want to think about.”

“Tell me.”

Eve closed her eyes and spoke in a detached voice. “The woman’s mind was much less crowded than her husband’s. She’d endured terrible things as a child too, but she hadn’t reacted the way he had. She’d turned the anger inward, against herself. That’s why she responded to his abuse. She thought she deserved it. Once I was inside her, I understood that. I could control her much better than I could him. I could stay awake for much longer periods. I could think. And the more I thought, the more I realized that I had been given a unique chance. I had no idea how, and I still don’t. But I had to do something with that chance. It was as though I’d been lost in a shipwreck. Everyone I knew thought I was dead, so the old obligations didn’t apply. My husband, my children…I was dead to them. And all I could think about was what had happened when I thought I was going to die. What I had thought of. I decided then that I would do whatever I had to do to find you.”

For the first time, Waters truly felt he was lying beside Mallory Candler. The single-minded possessiveness that had led Mallory to insanity was there in Eve’s voice. She opened her eyes and rose up on one elbow.

“I mean, I knew where you were. But I had to come to you in a way-in a form-that you would listen to. Someone you could be attracted to. Someone like I was when you knew me before.”

Waters felt her gaze upon him like heat from a candle. “Are you saying you went through many different people to get to where you are now?”

“Yes.”

He felt a manic compulsion to jump out of the bed, but he didn’t trust her to stay rational if he did.

“What are you thinking?” she asked, her voice edged with anxiety.

“I’m trying not to think. I’m just listening.”

But he was thinking. He was thinking he had read that paranoid schizophrenics were capable of constructing incredibly complex delusions, filled with detail and interwoven with reality. If it weren’t for all the secrets Eve knew about Mallory, he would be positive this was just such a delusion.

“How many people did you go through to get to Eve?”

“Nine.”

As the implications of her words hit him, his face felt cold. “And one of them was Danny Buckles? That’s how you knew about the molestation at the school?”

“Yes.”

Jesus God….

“I know things about those nine people that no one in the world would ever believe. Things they’d kill themselves over if people discovered. Human beings are corrupt creatures, Johnny. I remember you talking about Thomas Hobbes when you were taking political philosophy. Well, Hobbes had human nature right.”

Her easy reference to a class he had taken twenty years ago pierced him like a blade. In this empty mansion, logic held no sway. On one hand she was telling him a story that could have been written by Poe while on opium; on the other she was casually bringing up things only Mallory could have remembered, thus lending credence to her hallucinations.

“And you can move through people at will?” he asked, not believing his own voice.

“No. Only the way I described.”

“Only during sex?”

“Not just any sex. The other person-the person I move into-has to climax. Their individuality has to be wiped out by that. So, as you’d imagine, it’s very easy for me to move into a man, but harder to pass into a woman.”

“But how could it take nine years?”

“I made some mistakes.” Bitterness had entered her voice. “I was trapped in a prison for a while. Literally in jail. In a man. There was sex there, but”-she shivered-“not with anyone who could get me out.”

Who could make up this insanity? he asked himself.

“The farther along the chain I got, the easier it became to move closer to you. But still, it was hard. It took me a long time to learn to control my…”

“What? Your what?”

“My host, I was going to say.”

Icy fingers closed around his heart. The “soul transfer” she had been describing had a direct analogue in the real world: viral infection. In Eve’s world, souls moved through people in the same way a sexually transmitted disease did. Could her whole fantastic delusion be some paranoid response to contracting the AIDS virus?

“Is that what you’re doing now?” he asked, trying to keep his voice steady. “Controlling Eve?”

“Yes.”

“Is Eve ever really Eve anymore?”

She bit her lip and turned her face away. “Sometimes.”

“What does she feel like when she is?”

“She’s afraid. She went to a doctor about it. He referred her to a psychiatrist, who put her on medication. That didn’t work, of course. Eve’s confused, and sometimes she breaks through when I least expect it. She’s a strong personality. Some people are easy to dominate. Others…it’s exhausting. I’m never quite myself-not completely-because part of my energy is always devoted to maintaining control of the person.”

Waters nodded as though it all made perfect sense, but there was a scream behind his lips.

Suddenly Eve turned back to him and squeezed his shoulder. “Johnny, what are you feeling?” She clung to him as though sensing he wanted to leave. “Tell me.”

As he searched for some innocuous lie, he suddenly realized that deception was ridiculous. He looked her in the eyes and took her hand. “Eve, are you ill? I want you to be completely honest with me. You said you were tested before. You didn’t tell me the result. Has someone made you sick?”

She pulled away, her eyes filled with hurt. “Do you really think I would do that to you? Put you at risk like that?”

“I don’t know. Think about everything you’ve just told me.”

“I know it sounds crazy. But think for a minute, Johnny. Millions of people go to church every Sunday and profess faith in their immortal souls. Christianity is built around that. Do those people believe what they say or not? Because if they do, they’re admitting that something exists apart from the body, some force. And if that’s true, then why is what I’ve described so crazy? Are you only your body, Johnny? If during the good times between us, I’d been paralyzed in a car wreck, would you have left me?”

She had clearly thought about this much more deeply than he had.

“You know you wouldn’t have. I know it. Well, this is like that. My old body is useless now, it’s gone. But I’m still here. And I need you.”

He sat up in the bed.

Eve got onto her knees and grasped his arm. “Are you leaving?”

He looked at his watch. “I need to.”

“Don’t go yet. Please. I don’t know how you feel. Where you are.”

“I don’t either.”

“Will you see me again?”

He looked toward the corridor. His clothes lay strewn on the antique rug outside the door. “I don’t know.”

Eve closed her eyes tight, as though suppressing panic. “Please don’t say that, Johnny. Please.”

Her reaction threw him back twenty years, to the worst times with Mallory. This yo-yo journey between present and past had been happening ever since the soccer field, and it left him dizzy, like a man trapped on a carnival ride. As soon as Eve opened her eyes, he would calm her down, then make his exit.