Sleep Like the Dead
Part One
By Nancy Gray
© 2010 All rights reserved.
Cynthia stared at the ceiling, feeling sweat beading on her forehead as she gasped for breath from the invisible burden on her chest. It was her first night in New Bedlam and already she was feeling the same terrifying sense of dread that she always awoke to, a feeling so heavy on her psyche it felt like a tangible weight pushing down on her temples threatening to crush her skull.
Cynthia said, “It’s not real. None of it’s real. Just move your fingers, then your hand. If you can do that you can pull yourself up.”
Her sleep therapist told her to talk aloud if she had to. She needed to realize that these feelings weren’t real. She was supposed to literally talk herself out of panicking. Still, saying that she would and actually doing it were two entirely different things.
Cynthia was hoping that her sleep paralysis came from living so close to the noise of the city. She was always a light sleeper and living so close to the hectic sounds and bright lights made her sleep even less, but it seemed that no matter where she went all she could look forward to were restless nights and terrifying hypnagogia. New Bedlam was supposed to be a fresh start, but her first night there was starting out the same way as her first night anywhere else, traumatic and taxing.
Cynthia’s finger twitched. She slowly flexed all of her fingers and blinked several times, willing her body to move. Finally, she sat up in bed and inhaled and exhaled slowly, concentrating on every breath. Her eyes wandered to the window. At least it was light outside. She decided she would just get up to start the day and catch up on her sleep later.
Cynthia made some coffee, looking over her unfinished story as she drank it. There were only two more days before all of her time would be taken up with summer reports, homework, and grading tests. Balancing writing with teaching wasn’t an easy task, but it was something she was used to. The stress of teaching contributed to her sleeping disorder, but the writing didn’t cover the bills. So, when New Bedlam posted a job opening for an English teacher, Cynthia gladly took it despite the town’s odd name. The fresh start, new surroundings, and higher pay were too good to be true.
She jumped slightly as the phone rang next to her. The number was familiar, belonging to the principal of her new school. She quickly picked up the phone.
Cynthia stifled a yawn and said, “Hello, Dr. Sheffield.”
Dr. Sheffield said, “Good morning, Cynthia. I hope I didn’t wake you. When you’re so used to getting up before eight, you just kind of assume everyone else is up bright and early too.”
Cynthia laughed. “Well, I’d better get used to it again if I’m going to be teaching.”
Dr. Sheffield said, “Yes, I suppose that’s true, but I really didn’t realize how early it was. I just heard you were in town, so I thought I would see if you would be up for a tour of the school today.”
Cynthia looked around miserably at the unpacked boxes leaning haphazardly against the walls, like a city after an earthquake.
“Sounds great. What time would you like me to come by?” she asked in a falsely cheerful voice.
Dr. Sheffield said, “Oh, I don’t know — do you think you could manage ten-ish?”
Cynthia replied in the same good-morning-class tone. “Ten is fine. I’ll be there.”
As she hung up the phone, Cynthia finished all of her coffee in one large gulp. She was hoping to spend the rest of the day unpacking, but she could already tell Dr. Sheffield was one of those people who expected a lot from his employees.
“Oh I don’t know, ten-ish? Yeah, right. You mean ten on the dot,” she said to herself, rushing to her room to get ready.
As she carefully began picking out her clothes, she continued grumbling under her breath, “I’ll bet he’ll be checking his watch.”
Cynthia’s first impression of the school was that it was more of a penitentiary than a place of learning. The parking lot was mostly abandoned and the brick walls were painted gray, the same color as the few trailer add-ons to temporarily accommodate more students. Still, what completed the illusion was the shiny barbed wire around the top of the fence.
Cynthia had heard plenty of strange rumors about the town, most of them about the overabundance of horror novelists living there, but she thought the fresh barbed wire on the fence was an extravagant measure. Still, she put on a fake smile for Dr. Sheffield, who was checking his watch in front of the gate waiting for her.
He grinned, opening her car door as she parked. “Ah, Cynthia, right on time.”
Cynthia just nodded politely, thinking: “Ten-ish meaning before ten?”
“Well, shall we then?” he asked, motioning her towards the door.
Cynthia nodded. “Yes, Sir.”
She followed Dr. Sheffield down the hallways, barely listening to his descriptions since all of the rooms were self-explanatory anyway. There was of course a nurse’s office, faculty lounge, offices and theater in the first building, the classrooms in the second, and a separate gymnasium and cafeteria. Dr. Sheffield pointed out a gray trailer close to the cafeteria building that would be her “classroom.”
Cynthia thought bitterly that she didn’t like the hallways of the main building anyway. The red walls made her feel almost dizzy, and clashed with the black and white tile. Maybe the color was supposed to be cheerful, but she knew from her child psychology book that red tended to build tension, sometimes escalating anger. Still, Dr. Sheffield didn’t seem to notice, talking instead about the office at the end of the hall.
He pointed at the small room full of what looked like security monitors and said, “This is the security station where our security guard tends to be — not to say you’ll need him.”
“Okay, I’ll bite.” Cynthia said in a cheerful tone.
Dr. Sheffield frowned. “What?”
“I mean, I’ll go ahead and ask. What’s with all of this security? It’s such a small town. Should I be worried?”
Dr. Sheffield shook his head quickly. “Not at all! I just thought I would show you just in case. We take the students’ safety very seriously here. That’s all.”
Still, he didn’t continue, quickly changing the subject. Cynthia knew just from his body language that the conversation was over. There was something he clearly didn’t want to tell her anyway.
After he finished showing her around, Dr. Sheffield started a lengthy conversation about how “things worked” at New Bedlam High School. It was Cynthia who was glancing at her watch this time, as noon became one o’clock and one o’clock swiftly approached one thirty.
Finally he asked, “Well, what do you think?”
“I’m sure I’ll fit in fine here. It’s a lovely school. Thank you for showing me around.” She smiled.
Dr. Sheffield walked her to her car. She paused, noticing a brown stain on some of the barbed wire, and shivered — it looked as though someone already tried their luck on the wire, since the stain couldn’t be rust.
Cynthia unpacked nearly half of the boxes before it got dark outside. She continued until she saw the crescent moon smiling down at her, as though laughing at her situation. She wanted to stay up and finish packing all night rather than trying to settle down to sleep, thinking subconsciously about her experience the previous night. Still, she finished the box she was working on and got ready for bed.
She was running down the long hallway with red walls and a black and white tiled floor. She could hear her blood pumping in her ears over the tortured screams of the faces contorting and moving in and out of the walls around her. It was as though the walls were made of thin red rubber and people were pressing their faces and hands up against them, distorting the walls enough for her to see every feature of their agonized expressions.
The floor was slippery, wet with blood, and she was conscious only of the fact she needed to keep running. As though taunting her, suddenly the hallway ahead of her turned into brick wall, painted gray like the outside of the school.
Cynthia slammed painfully into it and turned around to see the people she was running from closing in on her. These were students, but their faces were distorted in expressions of contempt and rage and their bodies were covered in long gashes where flesh was still dangling limply like fishing bait. From one of the windows, she noticed flesh dangling off of the barbed wire from the fence. They must’ve climbed over…
Still, Cynthia’s mouth went totally dry as she saw a man in the back of the hall who was all too familiar to her. His skin was gray as though it was dead flesh simply hanging off of him, wrinkled all over in a strange swirling pattern. He was withered and looked feeble, but his huge goat-like yellow eyes twinkled with malice as he grinned in a way that showed all of his crooked, jagged, and gnarled teeth.
Cynthia croaked out in a feeble voice, “The Sand…Sandman…it’s really him.”
Cynthia screamed and opened her eyes then immediately closed them again, starting to whimper at what she saw.
Sitting on top of her chest was the image of the man from her dream. The walls to her room were also contorting with the same tortured faces that were trapped in the walls of the school. And, even though she knew it had to be her imagination, she could’ve sworn she saw strings of flesh hanging down from the ceiling fan.
Cynthia covered her eyes, peeking through the crack between her fingers, only to see those two yellow goat-like eyes staring back at her. She was gasping for breath both from the pressure on her chest and the panic she was experiencing.
Cynthia said aloud, “It’s just a hallucination. It’s not real.”
Still, she kept her eyes closed, concentrating on breathing and nothing else. Finally, as she felt the pressure lifting from her chest she slowly opened her eyes. She thought she saw a shadow disappearing around the corner of the doorway to her bedroom, but she slowly sat up. There were no more faces in the walls and the tendrils of flesh that she saw dangling from the fan were nothing but the pull cords to turn the light or fan on. Still, her mouth was totally dry and she was still trembling. Reluctantly, she turned on a light and went into the bathroom for some water.
Cynthia stared at her reflection in the mirror, lost in thought. “The Sandman” was one of her very first bad dreams. Her mother had told her the famous children’s story about a man putting sand in people’s eyes to make them fall asleep, and for some reason, that story had always disturbed her.
Then, one night, during one of her fits of sleep paralysis, she thought she actually saw someone sitting on her chest as though thinking. She just assumed it was the Sandman. Her mother had told her that it was nothing but a bad dream, but the concerned look on her mother’s face told her that she had better not mention it again.
Many years later, when Cynthia was no longer a student but a teacher, she took her class on a field trip to the museum. While she was there, she saw Henry Fuseli’s “The Nightmare” and realized the demon sitting on the woman’s chest looked almost exactly like her “Sandman.” Cynthia’s mother had always thought that there was something wrong with Cynthia, but the painting showed that there were other people with the same problem. After researching the problem, Cynthia decided to go to sleep therapy.
“A lot of good it did me…” she grumbled, drinking another cup of water. It was four in the morning, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep. Instead, she sat in front of her computer and started working on her horror story, trying to use her disturbing hallucination in a constructive way.
I’m starting to see why so many horror novelists are drawn to this place, she thought silently.
Soon the only noise that could be heard from her apartment was the soft clicking of keyboard keys.
Cynthia felt physically ill as she watched the sun rising through the window. Today was the last day she would have before she started teaching and even though she needed to go over her lesson plan, all she felt like doing was curling up under the covers and sleeping until nightfall. She knew that she couldn’t do that, she would be up all night, yet again. She could almost see the principal’s face if she came into school looking like she hadn’t slept at all.
Cynthia eyed the medicine cabinet thinking. “It looks like it’ll be like college all over again…”
She grabbed the small unmarked bottle of pills and quickly swallowed two. They were what she liked to call “caffeine pills” but were far more effective than normal caffeine. With two, she would be awake all day and hopefully would sleep for the rest of the night.
Cynthia decided that instead of staying inside to write, she would venture into town and buy some teaching supplies. She always tried to make her lessons fun by using colored chalk to graph out examples and sometimes doodling pictures off to the side of analogies to help students remember. Most schools didn’t have colored chalk and neither did New Bedlam High, so she decided to buy it herself. She also planned to visit the book store to order the books for her book report list.
The book store was located next to the antique shop, but as she entered, she thought she had the two mixed up. It made her smile as she looked around the quaint store, packed with old editions of books that looked as though they hadn’t been touched in years. The shopkeeper looked almost like a waxwork dummy, sitting behind a large stack of books and reading. He almost looked dead except that his slow breathing blew his long gray mustache in and out rhythmically.
Cynthia cleared her throat. “Excuse me!”
He blinked a moment, then quickly stood up. “Oh, terribly sorry. Can I help you?” The old man was eyeing her with a surprising amount of suspicion. He looked like an old dog staring down an intruder, ready to snarl at any moment.
“I’m the new school teacher. I was hoping to talk to you about ordering some reading material for my class.”
The old man quickly loosened up. “Ah, I see. I’m sorry. We don’t get many strangers here. What can I do for you?”
Cynthia said, “I’d like to order about twenty copies of a book please.”
He nodded and turned to his desk which to her surprise sported a brand new computer. It was the only thing that made the store seem less like a trip back in time.
“What’ll it be?” He asked with his hands poised over the keys.
Cynthia said, “A Compilation of Edger Allen Poe.”
Before she could continue, the old man’s face which had softened when he realized who she was, immediately hardened again, accenting his wrinkles and making him look far older.
He said in a harsh tone, “You weren’t planning on corrupting the minds of our kids with that trash horror stuff, were you? Poe is the last thing they need!”
Cynthia’s mouth hung open in stupefied shock. “What are you talking about? Poe is one of the classics. Poe is part of my curriculum. I think my students are old enough to handle it.”
The old man had that angry old dog expression on his face again as he glared at her and said, “You’re not one of those horror writers are you?”
Cynthia tried not to look surprised and said, “Sir, I’m a teacher.”
He shook his head. “No. I’ll bet you’re one of them. This town doesn’t need any more horror, so it doesn’t need you. I think you should leave before you make things worse!”
Cynthia felt rage boiling up inside of her, threatening to burst out of her mouth in the form of a torrent of insults. Instead she said, “Sir, for someone running a bookstore, you have a narrow view on literature,” and turned, walking out.
She walked towards the pharmacy across the street, not even looking in the windows of the other stores as she went. The town itself was very quaint, but to her it seemed their views were a little too quaint. She took a few deep breaths, trying to calm down. After all, it was probably all of the rumors that the older residents were worried about. She’d seen on the news that many brutal murders were committed on the outskirts of the town recently, and most of the residents were blaming the horror writers. It was nothing but superstition, something she would try to warn the children against, since at least Cynthia knew superstition wouldn’t solve anything.
She paused and turned the opposite direction, deciding to stop by the school and tell the principal to order the books for her. One thing good about the town was that everything was within easy walking distance of her new home. She could already see the large gray school building in the distance.
As she expected, Dr. Sheffield talked to her much longer than she wanted. By the time she got back to Main Street, it was already getting dark and her “caffeine pills” were starting to wear off.
As Cynthia walked out of the drugstore carrying a bag of school supplies and extra headache medicine, she suddenly felt as though she was being watched. The town, which only a few moments ago was filled with little old ladies walking towards the Salon and teenagers enjoying their last day away from school, now seemed terribly bleak. It had the same feeling as the gray prison-like high school and even the few people left on the street were huddling against the side of the buildings as though waiting for the negative energy to pass them by.
Cynthia rubbed her eyes once or twice, trying desperately to disbelieve the image in front of her. Still, she knew one thing for certain — this time she wasn’t asleep.
There was a dark figure walking down the middle of the street. It was naked, with gray skin, glowing yellow in disturbing swirling patterns all over its body. It looked more animal than human — it was walking upright on legs that looked backward, almost horse-like.
And, it was coming straight towards her from the direction of the school.
As it walked under pair after pair of streetlights, the lights made a clicking sound and blinked off. The other people on the street were pointing at the lights turning off, but none of them seemed focused on the creature, as though she was the only one who could see it.
“It’s not real,” she said. “None of this is real. Just take a deep breath…”
This time the image wasn’t going away. It began to walk faster.
Cynthia wanted to run as fast as she could away from her “Sandman,” but just like when she was dreaming her feet seemed rooted to the spot. She closed her eyes and opened them again and suddenly everything was back to normal. The streetlights were on, the people who seemed so terrified earlier were moving along as though nothing happened. She was the only one left standing there with a puzzled look on her face. She immediately headed towards her house, walking faster than usual.
Cynthia thought, “It must’ve been a result of the pills. They’ve probably expired, and I didn’t even bother to check the date. Expired medicine can do bad things to a person…”
Still, all she could think about was the old man and how he simply guessed she was a horror writer. She began to wonder what he meant by she “would only make things worse.” The fact that everyone saw the streetlights blinking off worried her more than even thinking she saw the creature from her nightmares in the town. There wasn’t any such thing as a group hallucination was there?
Cynthia unpacked for several hours when she got home. Once again she worked until she could see the moon shining down on her, laughing at her with that same crescent shape as it had the previous night. For some reason the moon always seemed to laugh at her when something bad was happening in her life. She never dreaded sleep as much as she did now and it was only her second night in New Bedlam.
Even though it was almost eleven o’clock, Cynthia decided to write a few hours before going to sleep. Sometimes writing made her feel as though a burden was lifted from her mind, as though she was literally releasing her inner demons into prose and out of her psyche. She wrote about the main character’s descent into madness, about her horrific hallucinations finally getting the best of her. As she wrote, she thought about the events of the day…
Cynthia looked around. She was in the deserted parking lot of the school waiting for someone. She was nervous, excited, and a little jumpy about breaking the rules. This would be the best Senior prank ever. If only Michael and the others would show up…
She heard a sound coming from the alleyway of the main two buildings next to her. She turned quickly. “Michael, is that you?”
A voice answered, “Yeah, sorry I’m late.”
Cynthia paused. There was something about the voice that didn’t sound right to her. The voice was monotone even though it was familiar. She said, “Are you okay, Mike?”
Mike said, “I’m fine. Come here a second, Christy.”
Cynthia realized then that she wasn’t herself at all. Instead she was a high school girl with blond hair and blue eyes. Cynthia somehow pushed herself out of the girl and found herself floating above her head, invisible.
Christy walked towards the alleyway.
Cynthia’s voice was disembodied as she yelled, “NO! Don’t go that way! Something’s wrong it’s a trap!”
Christy looked around her with a terrified expression on her face, whispering, “Who said that?”
Michael said, “Hurry, Christy. Hide.”
Christy ran into the alleyway, and once again Cynthia found herself sucked back into the girl’s mind, looking through her eyes.
There in front of Cynthia was what looked like one of the students in her previous dream. His eyes were glazed over and his body was covered in long gashes where the flesh was still dangling limply like fishing bait. Christy shrieked for her and then ran towards the fence.
She pulled at the fence door frantically, but it was locked from the outside. She had snuck in from a small hole under the fence but that was behind the alleyway, now being blocked by Michael. He was limping towards her.
Christy screamed, “HELP! SOMEBODY HELP!”
Cynthia screamed, “STAY AWAY FROM HER!”
Once again Christy looked around, confused, “Who’s there? Please help me!”
Michael’s voice became deep and familiar to Cynthia as he growled, “No. I think not.” His body suddenly seemed to morph and stretch. He pulled his mouth wide with his fingers until his cheeks split open on the sides, and Cynthia saw two familiar yellow eyes peeking from inside of the mouth. Christy was backing away towards the fence and suddenly began pulling herself towards the top.
Cynthia shouted, “NO! THE WIRE! DON’T…”
But she was too late. Christy’s hands were tangled up in a bloody mess and the creature was already pulling itself out of Michael like a snake shedding its skin. Its huge goat-like yellow eyes twinkled with malice as it grinned in a way that showed all of its crooked, jagged, and gnarled teeth. Then with a sickening popping sound it opened its mouth so wide it looked as though it could swallow Christy whole.
As Cynthia opened her eyes, for a moment she thought she was still in the parking lot surrounded by blood and human debris. Then, she realized she was just staring at her writing room, her head resting on her desk. Still, she felt like there was a weight on her back, as though a child was riding piggyback on her shoulders. She breathed deeply in and out, refusing to panic despite the thudding of her heart. Finally the weight lifted, and she slowly sat up, not even daring to look behind her. Instead she looked straight ahead at her story on the monitor in front of her.
Nancy Gray has a degree in Media Arts with a minor in English from the University of South Carolina. Writing is her career and her calling. She currently lives in West Columbia, SC with her husband Joel. The strange city of Columbia, with its haunted places and strange history is part of her inspiration for writing. Her short horror story “Hemophobia” appears in the horror anthology Courting Morpheus, under the pen name “Angela Gray.”
