The Insomniac
Percy slowly opened his eyes and blinked them, his eyelids gritty from lack of sleep. He was standing in a living room, in front of a grandfather clock, and the clock began to chime one o’ clock. Percy felt a wave of confusion and panic sweep over him, as if he were being slowly immersed in a deep pool of cool water. Percy looked around the dark room, and it seemed both familiar and strange. Percy assumed that he had been sleepwalking again and had just awakened here in this living room, in front of this grandfather clock, but he could not remember going to sleep. The car accident had been weeks ago. Months, maybe? It was the night of the accident that these episodes had begun, the blurring of waking and sleeping. Consciousness was no longer the sunny procession of hours and days briefly interrupted by the dark flight of dreams and sleep. His recognition of the world, his perception and awareness of it, was a floating observation of dim images where time did not flow from one experience to another but jerked and spasmed. In fact, the only event in Percy’s memory was his standing in this shadowy room at one o’ clock. The rest of his memory was a wavering, black wall. When had he been here last? Last night? Last week? Percy, for the life of him, did not know.
Percy walked to the overstuffed green couch that sat before the fireplace and placed his hand on the back of it, gently squeezing the cool, slick fabric. Percy stared into the darkness of the hearth and struggled to remember something, anything, about this room. He turned and meticulously scanned the contents of the living room. The grandfather clock, the tall, dark oak china cabinet, the wide bookcase that loomed to the ceiling, the low, battered end tables, the elegant French doors with their puffy, sheer curtains. Moonlight slanted in through them onto the sturdy coffee table. A book lay open on the table. Percy picked it up, a large, hard-covered book about quilts. Percy turned a few of the glossy pages, vacantly noticing the photographs of quilts in different patterns, and then he sat it down. Quilts? Percy had never had any interest in sewing or quilts.
Percy turned back toward the fireplace with its massive oak mantle and studied the brick wall above it. Framed photographs had been hung helter-skelter around an immense oil painting which was centered over the hearth. Percy glided around the couch and scrutinized the photographs. Now he could see that the arrangement of the frames was due to the brick wall itself. Nails protruded from wherever the picture-hanger had found a crack in the mortar between the bricks to drive them in. One clot of photos followed a stair-stepping crack which ran to the left of the oil painting. Percy peered at the photographs, most of them old black-and-white Polaroids. In several of them, a young woman was frolicking at a beach. Most of these pictures showed her at a distance, running from the cresting surf or posing coyly on a blanket flung on the foot-print-pocked sand. But one of them was of her face. In it, she was gazing away from the camera, in a semi-profile that complimented her long, delicate nose and her dainty chin. Her eyes were large and wide-set, pretty in a homely sort of way. Her face radiated an attractive glow, although Percy could not tell whether this was because of the way the moonlight reflected off the glass covering the old photo or because the background of the picture was washed out by the old sunlight reflecting off the old sea. Percy had no idea who this woman was.
Percy turned his attention to the formidable oil painting hanging in the center of the photographs, like a blimp surrounded by a flock of gulls. This painting was also of a woman, but a different woman. The painting was done in an old style where the subject was costumed as a fox hunter, replete with red jacket and jodhpurs, tall, black riding boots and white cravat, and the ridiculous black cap. This woman stared uncomfortably from the painting, and even the wide-hipped riding outfit could not disguise the overwhelming truth that she was short and squat. Her blonde hair was severely swept back into a bun, Percy supposed, that was hidden under her cap. She did not smile so much as grimace, and, perhaps because her face was so wide and dowdy, the tip of her nose was close enough to the little, round ball of her chin to suggest that she were toothless. At her feet, instead of a pack of beagles, was a white gaggle of Pomerainians. Suddenly, from the depths of the dark water of Percy’s memory, there rose the name, Mrs. Harpool. Mrs. Harpool! She was Percy’s landlady. Miraculously, a vision of her, swathed in a tenty dress, struggling up the path through the rose garden as she grasped a handful of leashes and gummed curses at the Pomerainian mob that jostled before her, flooded Percy’s mind. He rented this place from her. This was Percy’s apartment. But why the quilt book? The end tables were crowded with figurines and music boxes sitting on lacy doilies. Percy picked up these knickknacks, one at a time, and turned them over in his hand, trying to decipher their meaning. Then he replaced them on the tables, trying to arrange them back in the order in which he found them, but failing. These things were never his. And the photographs! Who was this woman? Percy shuddered as a thought occurred to him. Did he have another life that occupied the dark times that hovered, out of reach, of his present memory. Had he married, he thought in horror, and not even realized it?
A small noise from upstairs roused Percy from his agitating thoughts. Or was it a noise? Wringing his hands, Percy began to question everything around him. It had been a noise, he assured himself. It had sounded like a bed creaking, or bare feet padding along a wooden floor maybe. Percy went to the bottom of the staircase but saw no light from the hallway at the top of the stairs. Carefully, he rose up the stairs and stood at the end of the hallway, listening for the sound of someone there. Nothing but silence. Percy went through the doorway into the bedroom and noticed that the bed was unmade, rumpled, as if someone had just risen out of it, the sheet and blanket thrown back to the foot of the bed. Had he been sleeping here before he awoke to find himself downstairs before the clock? He didn’t know. Percy didn’t know if he had even been sleeping before he found himself in the living room, let alone where. Everything was so disjointed. Percy went to the bed and sat on the edge of the mattress. The color of the sheets, barely discernible in the darkness, was pink. The sheet also had a tiny, floral print. Percy had never owned sheets like these. He raised the covers to his face and held them under his nose. He could smell the faint ghost of perfume. If he had married, where was his wife? Who slept in this bed, and where were they? Percy, even though he was exhausted, stood up, enervated by the mystery.
Percy walked across the room to the closet and slid open the mirrored door. Again, he was aware of the faint aroma of perfume. He pondered the garments hanging inside, all dresses. There were no men’s clothes at all. He bent down and examined the shoes laying on the closet’s floor, all heels and pumps. No men’s shoes. Percy raised his arms to rummage through the shelf above the clothes rack, and, in his nervousness, toppled an empty hat box. As he quickly stooped and replaced it on the shelf, Percy heard a sustained, throaty growl. Percy whirled to see, slowly emerging from around the foot of the bed, the long head of a dachshund. The dog sluggishly ambled into full view, his fangs bared, his hackles straight up. Percy cautiously took a step toward the door, anxiously waiting for the dog’s response. The dachshund, his legs bowed, his long belly dragging the ground, only continued to growl at the spot where Percy had been, seemingly unaware that Percy had moved. Percy, slowly and evenly, exhaled his held breath and retreated out of the door, thankful for the old dog’s failing sight.
Percy very gently descended the stairs, but, halfway down, he grabbed the railing and slumped against it to keep from falling. The thought that occurred to him had made him weak in the knees. Amnesia! he thought. Maybe he was suffering from amnesia, and, slowly, by bits and pieces, he was remembering his old life. Maybe he lived somewhere else now, as a different person, but his recollection of his life before the accident had caused him to wander back, to reclaim the life that had been jarred from his head in the crash. The idea thrilled him and sickened him at the same time. Although the notion would explain the lapses of memory and the strange familiarity of this place, it also meant that now, as he lurked on the dark stairs, he was a trespasser. Percy held his breath and listened more intently than he ever had before. Was that water coursing through the plumbing buried deep in the walls? Were those bare footsteps whisking down the wooden hallway? Percy listened harder, and harder, but he heard nothing, absolutely nothing.
Frantic, Percy found himself at the French windows, and he passed through them into the rose garden. The night was cool. It must have been early summer because every rose bush held a dozen blooms. In the waning moonlight, Percy went to his favorite place in the garden, to the bench at the center of the concentric walks, and he sat down, exhausted but wide-awake. Percy buried his face in his hands and agonized over his thoughts. If I am recovering from amnesia, he thought, then who have I been since the accident? Where do I live? Are there people who will be worried about me? Where are my things? Percy threw back his head and wanted to cry, but then he became aware of the tranquility of the rose garden around him. As it often had before, the garden calmed Percy and cleared his head. Percy rose in the perfectly still air, in that darkest hour before dawn, and strolled through the garden, pulling the newly bloomed roses to his face and breathing in their delicate fragrances. The perfume of the roses gave him peace, as it had always done before, and Percy no longer worried about who or where he was. He walked the entirety of the garden, pulling the tall blossoms down to breathe in their fragile, exquisite scent, and he resolved to ask the first person he saw to help him find out the answers to his questions, and not worry about those questions until then.
In the first glimmer of dawn, Percy looked up at his apartment, and, through the French windows, saw a middle-aged woman dressed in her robe and nightgown standing at the end tables gazing curiously down at the figurines and music boxes. Percy recognized her from the photographs, but she was much older now, her delicate chin doubled, her thin hair up in a tangle of curlers. She bent over the curios and arranged them back to their original order. The dachshund absently nuzzled her worn slipper. Percy rose up through the garden, ascended the steps to the French doors and passed through. The woman turned toward him, startled, and her wide-set eyes dilated to the size of saucers. Percy opened his mouth to try to calm her, but, instead of words, he heard a chilling, low moan reverberate through the small room. The woman screamed and dashed through the room to the kitchen, the dachshund following with its tail between its legs, yelping furiously. Percy, overcome with panic, ran to the heavy, oak front door, but, instead of opening it, Percy began to pass through it. He could feel the indescribable tickle of his molecules mingling with those of the wooden door, the infinitesimal friction between himself and the striated oak panel as he passed through it into still morning air, and then everything went black again.
The commotion drew the attention of a small girl who lived across the garden and who had wakened early, because she was worried about her favorite doll, and had witnessed the odd mystery of the roses bending, one by one, in the breathless air.