Kenneth Calhoun - Black Moon

These scenes had the power to both comfort and sadden her. It all depended on her state of mind. At the moment she was feeling hopeful, so the memories brightened her. Felicia, appearing out of nowhere, had brought that hope. Felicia could sleep, more or less, and there were others who could do it too. There was some kind of hospital—a center, she called it—where they lived at a university overlooking the ocean. All of them with implants that put them to sleep at night and woke them in the mornings.

Felicia had promised to take her there.

As soon as she found her own parents she could take them to the center, too. That was Felicia’s goal.

Lila looked at her new companion with pity. Even though she was probably five years younger than Felicia, she felt smarter about what was out here in these dark, hollow houses. Felicia, she knew, would only find bad things in her parents’ home or nothing at all. Her own home was waiting in the desert with horrors inside. She would never go there, never open that door again. But sometimes, when her mood was darkened by hunger and fear, she couldn’t help imagining it. They would be in bed, she believed. Her mother and her father. They would look like they were sleeping—sleeping! But they wouldn’t be jolting to life at seven in the morning or any hour to come. They had fixed themselves forever.

She curled up against Felicia and hugged her warm body. She told her, “It’ll be okay. I mean, look at me. I’m fine. It hasn’t stopped me and it won’t stop you, I can tell. Everyone is an orphan now.”

As she reached around Felicia to pull her even closer, she felt something hard near Felicia’s armpit. The hint of machine. She drew back. Slowly her hand returned to the spot. She pressed at the area, determining that the thing there—like a battery cover on a toy animal—was about two inches in diameter. She wanted to see it but didn’t think she should. It would mean opening Felicia’s shirt.

Fifteen minutes ticked by as they lay side by side in the dark, Lila’s curiosity growing. It’s not a big deal, she decided. They were practically family, even though they had only known each other for a day—sisters in sleep.

She sat up abruptly, aiming the light as she undid the buttons and peeled back Felicia’s shirt. Then she moved to Felicia’s other side. She aimed the light at the place where the pulse generator sat under Felicia’s skin. There was nothing much to see. Just a raised area, as though a disk had been slid under there. She reached out and felt it, her fingers circling the ridge along the device’s edge. Then she pressed her palm over it. She was sure she felt a very faint vibration, an almost feathery buzz.

She returned Felicia’s body to its original pose and retreated to her own mattress by the wall. She studied the scene, shining the light around the room. Everything looked right except for the giant owl head sitting on the ground, eyes staring back at her. Eyes always open. She crawled to the edge of her mattress and leaned over Felicia’s legs to grab it. Like a deep-sea diver suiting up for a submersion, she lowered the mask over her head. The mesh texture of the eyeholes came down between her and the world, breaking it up into a mosaic of tiles.

She snapped off the light and lay back, the smell of her own sweat and mildew crowding in as she looked on, waiting for sleep.

She was tired. But sleep stayed away.

An hour later, her mind churned inside the globe of fake feathers, trying to understand why she was still awake. When she shut her eyes, she saw a rapid pulsing against her eyelids. A dizzying strobe that beat faster than her heart and seemed to be fueled by some incessant whirring, like the blades of a fan spinning before a shaft of sunlight. She found it more comfortable to keep her eyes open. She watched the moon sail slowly across the frame of window and began marking off its progress against the rooftops of neighboring houses. The olive tree branches wavered in the wind that had arrived from the high desert—a Santa Ana. She sighted up the thin trunk, declaring it the finish line. By the time the moon crosses it, I’ll be deep asleep.

When it did, and she was still staring into the darkness, she moved on to the next landmark: a darkened lamppost.

She tried to put herself in a receptive state, tamping down her worries by telling herself that she was just excited. She had been found, rescued! That’s what has gotten her so hyper. Just quiet down inside and it will happen like it always happens. A drowsiness creeping in, then flashes of images, little scenes that are like bursts of speed down a runway, trying to lift off the ground. Just let that happen. Think about something on purpose until the thinking continues on its own. She thought about flying a kite.

Hey, she realized, it’s working. I’m not thinking about sleep.

Then, of course, she was.

Daring a glance out the window, she could see that the moon had passed the lamppost. Oh, man. This isn’t good.

She sat up and felt the first jolt of panic, a terror freeze. Why? Why would it happen now? It wasn’t because she had broken her routine or abandoned a good sleeping place. This was the most comfortable setting she had chosen for sleep in weeks. It was a bedroom, after all. A place for sleeping. So much better for slumber than the drainage tunnel, webbed in with trip wires. She was actually lying on a mattress, not cardboard or a pile of dead people’s clothes. So what was the problem?

Maybe it was the power bars. Some of them were energy bars. Or maybe it was just eating so much. Usually she was hungry at night. Maybe her body just wasn’t used to not feeling hungry. Maybe it was that, or maybe it was the mattress, since she wasn’t used to such a soft place to sleep, but maybe it was the power bars. Who knows what they put in them to give you energy. She recalled her mother saying, as they first started hearing about the crisis, that it was all those energy drinks and energy bars and energy pills people were taking. “Everyone is so goddamn energized,” she had said, and they all laughed, because no one thought that everything would happen the way it did.

She lay awake trying to control her thinking, focusing on her surroundings as she searched for a clue, still certain that sleep would eventually come. She thought, Maybe I should try to make myself throw up those power bars. But maybe it was too late, and maybe it wasn’t them anyway. Maybe it was the air in the room. It was pretty stuffy. She was hot in the mask, so maybe she should take it off. But it would be strange at this point not to sleep with the mask on. She had gotten so used to it. Maybe it was the season changing, from summer to fall. Maybe it was the air in the room. Maybe it was the excitement about finding Felicia. Maybe it was just having a new friend. A friend, period. Someone like a sister. Maybe I’m asleep now, she thought.

She heard the tinkling of a wind chime.

Not the one she had hung on the doorknob as an alarm, but farther away, turning in the wind. A clear, sparkling sound. Metal chimes, not glass, not bamboo. Lately, she had started collecting them for her bag of noisy things. She sat up, listening to the chimes as they sang out in the darkness, coaxed into raucous arias by sudden gusts.

She needed it, she decided. If they were going to walk out of here, maybe all the way to the coast, they would need all the bells and whistles they could find. Outside, the wind was building in strength, pushing against the house, causing it to creak. The shingles clattered on the roof. She heard the chimes again. They sounded close, but the wind was playing tricks with distance. It carried the sound forward, then drew it back. The chimes were in the neighborhood, she was certain. She would just go grab them and come right back. Maybe getting out, getting some air, would help with the sleeping too.