Jack Ketchum - Sleep Disorder

All right , he thought. Take it nice and easy. You're together now. Whatever the problem is, fix it. Take control .

"And the problem," he said aloud, "starts here."

He snapped down the PLAY button on the recorder.

Dead air at first. Then intermittent hitches of snoring.

Then lots of snoring. Deep, sonorous breathing sounds that repelled him, disgusted him. Jesus Christ! he thought. It sounded like somebody drowning!

And then there were moans — my god! He did moan! As though something or someone in his sleep were squeezing him, tormenting him, making him sound old and weak and whiny. It was nearly as bad as the snoring.

And then some kind of bubbling sound, long, drawn out. Under any other circumstance it would've been funny, it would've been fucking hilarious. It could've been one of those Candid Camera things. Some guy asleep making more noise than a ward full of convalescents. Yeah, hilarious until he remembered that he was the one making the noise. It's loathsome.

Then more snoring.

More moaning.

Combinations of both.

Then…

Finally he started talking. "I heard you got it all figured out," he said. And then something that was much too soft to hear or for the recorder to pick up, unintelligible.

Then he said, "You should have seen it coming."

It was impossible to tell how much time elapsed between phrases since the recorder only activated during speech or sounds loud enough to trip the machine's sensor.

"You should've heard the Grateful Dead," he said, "they played that Peter-and-the-Wolf song. You know the one. 'All I said was come on in.'" More. "This gun sweats when it gets hot, it does."

And "It's a noisy room.”

And "It was me and Lou Rawls. They had us locked up in there with nothing but milk bottles and soup."

What the fuck? It made no sense at all.

Then…

"What a bunch of dipshits. What a bunch of hosebags. I know, I know. They think I’m stupid?"

Who could he be talking about?

"The bitches. They're all bitches."

All at once Bill had a pretty good idea who.

"I'll show 'em." A very dark chuckle. "Oh, yeah. You gotta be on the ball to make it in this world. You gotta be in control. You eat or get eaten. You take or get taken from. Nobody takes from me."

Bill agreed with this philosophy of course. They were his own words He smiled. Asleep or awake he stuck to his guns.

Then his smile faded at the next utterings.

"Yeah, I showed 'ern. I got all their shit, all of it, the bonds, the collection, right behind the couch, the stupid bitches…"

A long long series of snoring and moans followed.

"Fuck," he said. "Jesus wept." The very worst thing he could possibly say in his sleep, he'd said. He stood stock still, eyes unblinking, unbelieving. But then he relaxed again.

What am I shitting a brick about? he thought. Last night I blabbed where the loot was, sure, but Annie wasn't here. She walked out on me!

Of all the nights he could run his mouth he'd picked the one night she wasn't there!

Still, though…

He should check, right?

Bill didn't consider it paranoia or insecurity on his part. It was simply prudence. There was no way that Annie could've heard this revelation. She was gone.

Still…

Bill went to the living room and pulled out the couch — and then didn't know whether to cry or scream, whether to tear the place apart or just lie down on the floor and rot there.

The wall panel was unseated.

He fell to his knees and looked inside.

Everything was gone. Of course it was.

The bearer bonds, the coin collection, the two million-plus in ill-gotten gains.

All of it gone.

The only thing back there right now was a handwritten note in Annie's florid script:

ASSHOLE

Bill trudged back to the bedroom wearing a thousand-yard stare. How the hell was this possible? The panel had been secure yesterday — he checked it every day — and Annie'd packed her bags and took off way before he'd checked that afternoon.

Last night, he realized.

It was the only answer. Annie had ripped him off last night. But she hadn't been in the apartment.

Or had she?

I'll just find her and kill her , he thought. Not the most reasonable solution but he liked the sound of it. Calm down, calm down , he thought. Get your ass under control .

An instant later he began to feel a little better. He willed himself to feel better. Life had its ups and downs, right? Well, today was one of the downs. Definitely one of the downs. He'd had them before, hadn't he? He'd risen above it.

So what? The bitch took my stash. I must have mouthed off about it last night too, then she came back tonight and did the job while I was asleep. Big deal. Score one for her. I've still got plenty of stuff in the works. Half a dozen months from now I'll have just as much money in that wall as I did yesterday .

There. Much better.

Being in control was a wonderful thing.

But it still bugged him. Women were treacherous. Of course they were. He knew that. But how the hell…?

A thought came to mind and it was a doozy of a thought. He headed for the front door, fast, just to prove himself correct. He always turned the second deadbolt at night before bedtime and Annie didn't have a key for that. So how the hell could she have gotten in? Unless tonight of all nights he'd forgotten to lock it. But he never did that.

He stared at the little brass knob.

In the locked position.

The only other person who had a key to that deadbolt was Laura. From back in the days just after he walked on her, before Annie, when they were still talking like adults and he was making a show of maybe reconciling so he could occasionally play hide the salami with her.

And that's when he heard her voice.

From the bedroom.

He ran back.

The recorder was still going.

It was Laura's voice on the recorder.

"…bag of shit," she hissed. "Well, now he's really gonna get his. And good god, didn't you loathe all that snoring and moaning? Disgusting. I had to put up with it for five years."

A second whispered voice agreed. "I haven't gotten a good night's sleep the whole time I was with him. Can't tell you how many times I wanted to cut his head off just to make him shut the hell up!"

Annie's voice. On the tape. With Laura's. Which meant… They'd both been here last night. Listening to him!

The two bitches were in cahoots!

And he could see them now, huddled there together, crouching in the dark, waiting for him to sleep-babble the location of the bonds and coins. Cunning, devious bitches.

All right. Score two for them. But, man oh man, do I have a three-pointer coming.

The vengeance when it came would be sweet, but he'd have to be smart, be cool, be reasonable.

Be in control.

He'd work something up nice and sweet for both of them and when the time was right he'd fix their wagons so they never rolled again. Bill Dumont did not like to be made a fool of.

"It was only a matter of time," said a voice on the recorder. "When sleep talkers go into REM, they tend to reveal the things they most want to hide. Along with a lot of gobbledegook, of course. Unacknowledged guilt mixing with subconscious backwash. You just need an informed person to separate the gobbledegook from the data. Our plan worked. I was fairly sure it would."

This third voice wasn't Laura's and it wasn't Annie's either. It was a man.

And it rang a bell.

That fuckin' doctor! Annie's boss! Seymour!

The three of them were here last night!

It boggled the mind! But he still didn't get it. How could they have known exactly which night he'd sleep-babble the location of his stash?