Kenneth Calhoun: Black Moon

Jordan had done his homework, watching for gaps to exploit while cutting up boxes and stocking shelves. Only pharmacists and techs could get into the cage, which is what they called the elevated and secure area behind the pharmacy counter where the bins were lined with serious drugs. Jordan wasn’t a tech. He was only a cashier, which meant he did everything from ringing up purchases to dry-mopping the aisles. The only time he was let into the cage was for cleanup, but he was never alone. A pharmacist had to be present. Even the store managers couldn’t get back there alone. There were spare keys, but they were kept in a safe, inside sealed envelopes. The only vulnerability, Jordan had determined, was Mel, the aging owner whose every waking hour was spent aiming anger vibes at the large pharmaceutical chains that were popping up all over town. He claimed they were driving him out of business, despite the fact that sales were up for everyone.

Jordan put his arm out in front of Chase, stopping him, and nodded toward a high window. A silhouette—man or woman, they couldn’t tell—appeared behind the blinds, pacing relentlessly. “See that?”

“Yeah, but so what?” Chase went right up to the fence and peered through the chain-link, swaying from the alcohol. He gripped the fence to steady himself.

“What time is it?” Jordan asked.

Chase checked his watch, squinting as he tried to lock in on the numbers. He saw some ones. “It’s either eleven eleven or one eleventeen.”

“Yeah, late,” Jordan said. “Past bedtime.”

“That doesn’t prove jack,” Chase said, nodding up at the person in the window. He pushed off the fence like a swimmer from the side of the pool. “People pace,” he said.

They stumbled on, with Jordan rambling about dreams and how insistent they are, how they have to happen. “Because if you stay awake long enough, you have them whether you’re sleeping or not. Hallucinations, man. Don’t you see what that means? It means that it’s where we really live, and when we’re awake, we’re just coming up for air.”

“Whoa, dude, you’re blowing my mind,” Chase said sarcastically. “Just tell me how you’re going to get into the cage.”

“What cage?”

“The cage at the fucking pharmacy.”

“Yeah, the cage.” Jordan leaned against a eucalyptus trunk and tried to focus. “Here’s the thing. The security gap is Mel. Why? I’ll tell you why. Because he’s a serious, big-time napper.”

A dog pounced at them from the other side of the fence, snarling and barking in frothy rage. They ran, startled, crossing a street and pushing into another dark neighborhood. The dog’s threats receded behind them. When they were in the clear, Chase said, “Ha-ha. The gap is the nap. That’s just perfect.”

“Isn’t it?” Jordan slurred. “His nap is our way in. Every day, he falls asleep at his desk in his office. Head back, mouth all open. I’ve seen it. If you listen you can hear his fucking snores on the floor. Just talk to him around two and his eyes are drooping shut. He says it’s because he’s borderline diabetic and something about low blood sugar. The point is I’m going to snag his keys and you’ll come in and take them and copy them and then bring them back and I’ll have them back on his belt loop before he wakes up again.”

“Great plan,” Chase said, teetering then tipping into irony. “But what if he can’t sleep? What if he gets the insominitis! Oh no! The whole plan will be foiled! It’s the end of the world! ”

“Jesus, keep it down!”

Chase ran down the trail in a pantomime of panicked citizenry. Arms flailing, screaming in silence. He quickly lost steam, stopped, and smiled crookedly, head lolling, as Jordan caught up.

“You think I haven’t thought about that?” Jordan said, still serious. “That’s exactly why we have to do it soon.”

“Dude,” Chase said, nearly falling backward. “Speaking of pills, take a chill pill.”

But Jordan didn’t seem to hear him. Instead, he was focused on something over Chase’s shoulder. “Hey,” he said, “isn’t this Felicia’s house?”

They looked into the yard. There were the three avocado trees standing watch over the small pool. There was the diving board that Felicia liked to lie on, reading a book that was held between her and the sun. A memory flapped up. A scorching summer day when they had ridden her scooter from the ice cream shop. He held a cone in each hand as she drove, stirring up a hot wind that attacked the vulnerable scoops. Twin trails of colorful splatter followed them as they raced for home, where their towels were spread by the pool. She accused him of eating them down to the cone during the short ride. It was just like The Old Man and the Sea , he explained. How the sharks got most of the big catch. She pushed him in the pool and he emerged with the mushy cones, which they molded to their noses and pecked at each other’s mouths like angry toucans. Her brother, sitting in the shade with The Wall Street Journal , told them to get a room.

Get a room. Reliving the suggestion now pained him. He wanted to rewind and get back inside that assumption—that they would be doing what young couples do—before things got too tangled in his head and his body refused to follow. And it’s not like nothing ever happened. After all, he had been her first, as she had been his. But it had taken a lot of trying, and it soon became clear that it wasn’t just some kind of performance anxiety that he would get past after their bodies became more familiar with each other. Later, when she gently pressed him for an explanation, he could only say that he loved her too much. That her tenderness made him feel brotherly toward her. Yet he knew he possessed desire for her. It was there in his dreams. That’s where they had explored each other, where he could answer her shape with his.

One time, she had been waiting at the edge of sleep, when he dreamed they were entangled in the kind of embrace his waking mind wouldn’t allow. She felt it animating him behind her, and she tried to cross into his dream by gently taking him inside her. His hands, heavy with sleep, came up to her waist and held her tightly as he rocked against her, pushing deeply into her so that she had to muffle her gasps by biting her arm. But as he surfaced from sleep and his mind began to reorganize his world, she felt him receding. Still half asleep, he fought against it, but his determination quickly took on a tone of anger, of violence. She tried to pull away but he rolled on top of her, pinning her. She fought him off, kicking at him. His head hit the wall. He backed away, then quickly gathered up his clothes and left. That was the last time they shared a bed. A few weeks later, after they had exhausted all possibility of talking their way through it, she pushed him out into the world, telling him to get help—a directive his shame prevented him from pursuing.

All this swam through his mind as he stood looking down at her parents’ house, but it was displaced with the sudden, sobering observation that Felicia’s dad was sitting on the porch. He could clearly see the man’s dark form, backlit by interior light passing through the sliding glass door. Was he talking to someone? His mouth was moving, head bobbing slightly. Maybe he was on the phone? Strange, but nothing Chase wanted to explore at the moment. The thought of being spotted standing at the backyard fence of Felicia’s house at two in the morning sent him running.

LILA FERRELL KNEW FROM THE INTERNET that it was happening.

Insomnia was a trending topic online. It had crept into everyone’s status updates. People were posting videos of attacks on sleepers.