Jeff Jacobson - Sleep Tight

CHAPTER 18

6:03 AM

April 19

Martin knew something was terribly, terribly wrong. Since he’d gotten home last night, he hadn’t been able to sleep because of the itching and pain. He’d been in the bathroom for an hour, standing under warm water, but that made the itching moan in hunger. The heat had unfurled a wave of skeletal fingers that went tickling up across his back. He turned and cranked the handle to cold, hoping to stun the itch, to numb his skin, to shock his system. As the brilliantly cold water hit his skull, agony seethed inside his brainpan. He fell out of the tub and curled into a fetal position on a dirty towel dropped on the filthy tiles.

His wife had knocked on the door. “Hon, I could use you downstairs, like now. ” Somewhere in the haze, he heard his oldest screaming about watching SpongeBob . The youngest cried nearby. Of course. The youngest couldn’t go five minutes without crying unless he was in his mother’s arms.

And his wife. She was always picking up the baby. Soothing it. Never teaching him a lesson. Never teaching him anything and saving him from everything. She’d rattled the door. “Martin! Martin! What the hell is wrong with you?”

Martin croaked, “Be there in a minute,” and didn’t know why. Maybe to make her go away.

She said, “You better not have been drinking again, buster. I’m coming back up in five minutes, and you better be out of there. If you’ve been drinking, so help me God . . .” Her voice trailed off as she stomped down the stairs.

Martin clasped his hands between his legs and squeezed as he rode out the waves of torment. Eventually he managed to rise to a kneeling position, then used the sink to prop himself up. He pawed through the medicine cabinet, spilling children’s cough syrup and tampons into the sink. He found nothing that might help.

Nothing stronger than Tylenol or Advil and the symptoms were getting worse.

The next thing he knew, he was waking up on the floor next to the bed, but all he really noticed for the briefest dreamlike moment was the way everything glowed in the early morning sunlight. He tried to raise his head.

The sunlight started to burn.

He blinked.

He felt, or rather sensed the presence of his wife above him, yelling at him, bouncing a baby boy wearing soiled diapers. His other son was wailing from his room down the hall. None of this really concerned him as much as the way the sunlight cut into the room.

He clutched the blanket on the bed, pulled himself to his feet, and tottered out of the bedroom, down the stairs and into the kitchen. All he knew at that moment was that he was very thirsty. He grabbed a glass and stuck it under the faucet. Water hit the bottom of the glass and for some reason, the image and sound revolted him. Martin gave a surprised urking sound as thin, yellowish bile jumped out of his mouth and into the sink. He backed away, still dry-heaving.

Pushing past his wife, he moved in a hunched shuffle down the hall.

She was on the phone with her sister. “I don’t know what to do, that’s what I’m telling you. No, no. He promised me. He promised. Yeah, no more drinking. That’s the problem. He’s acting, I don’t even know anymore.... He’s never been this hungover. What?” A quick pause, then, “No. No. No. He’s not like that. I told you. He’s not like that.”

Martin shut the basement door and locked it.

He found his Marlboros sealed in a sandwich baggie with a lighter hidden away in the ceiling tiles. Just one cigarette. He’d given up drinking for his wife and the boys, and really, just one cigarette wasn’t hurting anybody. He couldn’t think of anything else that might offer some kind of relief, no matter how slight, from the convulsions that were wracking his body.

He inhaled, and the taste made him gag. The cigarette fell from his fingers and smoldered on the floor. He coughed and hacked. He could swear the smoke made his lungs themselves itch. The sensation spread throughout his chest, as if something had cracked inside and was now leaking. The dreadful sensation seeped out to his skin, and the prickling feeling became unbearable.

Martin cried out and frantically raked his fingernails across his scalp, down his neck, his shoulders. He might as well have been trying to extinguish a volcano with a Slurpee. He clawed deep furrows in his skin. It didn’t help.

He reached up to the shelf of old sponges, toothbrushes, and household chemicals, desperate to find something abrasive like steel wool, something that could match the intensity of the itching, something that didn’t screw around. His gaze slipped past the Lysol spray, the cold-water washing machine detergent, landing on the industrial jug of Drano Max Gel. He knew it was full, because he’d bought it just last week.

His wife pounded on the basement door. “Martin! Martin! If you don’t open this goddamn door right now, I’m taking the boys and leaving for good! I promised you a divorce if you started drinking again and I mean it!”

He unscrewed the cap from the Drano and popped the foil seal with his thumb. The itching grew worse, as if a thousand bees were vibrating under his skin, and they were excited at the sight of the drain cleaner. He upended the jug and held it over his head.

Soothing fire dripped from his skull.

He fell to his knees. Lighting flashed through the bloody furrows in his skin, but it wasn’t enough. The Drano sizzled into his eyes and he gasped in sweet torture. He sank against the cool linoleum and put his palm on the lit cigarette. The burning finally got his attention.

His wife started kicking at the door. The boys kept screaming.

Fire. That was the answer. So elegant. So simple. He dragged the can of Raid from under the sink and crawled over to one of the plastic bins, piled haphazardly with a ton of other cardboard boxes. The bin was stuffed with old baby clothes his wife refused to throw out. He ripped off the lid and soaked the clothes with the insecticide. One click of his lighter and the fabric ignited with a solid pop.

He felt the heat lick his face and almost smiled.

Then he thrust his hands into the fire.

His wife kept kicking the door. The boys howling became even louder.

The sounds drilled into his head and within seconds, they blotted out everything else. It filled him with fury. He scrabbled to his feet, grabbing at the cardboard boxes full of old photos and tax returns and other useless crap his wife had insisted on hanging on to for God knows what reason, spilling them down over the fire.

He shook his head as if to clear the shrieking. The sudden movement made the noise even worse, so he staggered back, searching for something to quiet the sounds from upstairs so he could find some peace and return to the bliss in the flames.

He kicked over a children’s toy box, spilling Tonka trucks, rubber balls, and Thomas the Tank Engine trains across the floor. He spotted a Cubby blue toy souvenir bat, three feet long and solid wood. It felt good in his hand. It felt right.

He carried it up the stairs and unlocked the door.

His wife had enough time to say, “What is wrong—” before the bat came down. She shrieked, “My baby!” as the infant’s wail was silenced with a sudden crunch. He stopped her screaming next, then went upstairs to find his oldest son, stomping and complaining in his room.

In the basement, the flames melted the plastic bin and spread to the discarded can of Raid. It exploded, spreading burning shrapnel into the stacked cardboard boxes. Within minutes, the entire basement was on fire, and the flames rushed up the walls and across the ceiling.

Upstairs, the cries and screaming stopped.

CHAPTER 19