Kenneth Calhoun - Black Moon

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.”