Sky At Night

SKY AT NIGHT

by

Chris Fallon

*

“Well that was dramatic,” she said when she finally opened her eyes. Then she rolled over and threw up half the contents of the river.  

I flopped alongside her, trembling, my arms and wrists burning from the struggle to drag her from the water and the reeds.

“What’s your name again?” she asked when she’d finally stopped coughing.

“Toby,” I said with a nervous laugh.

“Toby,” she said. “I need you to promise me something.”

I nodded that I would promise her anything.

“Don’t mention this to my dad, okay?”

“Mention what?” I asked, and smiled.

“You’re alright,” she said. “You’re cool.”

I was more than cool, I was soaked through and freezing, but I was lying next to Natalie Sykes and I didn’t want to ever move. We lay there for the next few minutes, staring up at the starless sky, and for a moment her fingertips brushed against mine.

“It didn’t used to be like this,” she said.

“Like what?”

“Like just: empty. What happened to them? What happened to the stars?”

“They’re still there,” I said. “We just can’t see them. Light pollution. But they’re there, every minute of the night and day.”

“Wow,” she said. “You’re a poet. You’ve inspired me.”

She clambered to her feet. “I’d best get going.”

We walked together the quarter of a mile home; Natalie bare feet and dripping wet in a wedding dress several sizes too big; me in my T-shirt and jeans. I was so cold by this time that I could barely speak.

“You don’t say much do you,” she said. “You’re the strong silent type.”

“I am,” I said. “But my teeth are chattering.”

“Ha ha, that’s funny. What’s your name again?”

“Toby,” I said.

“Well, Tobes, thanks.  And please - don’t say anything to anyone.”

“Mum’s the word,” I said.

“Yes, I guess it is.”

We saw the flashing light of a police car entering the close from the main road and drive slowly towards us.

“You’d better scram.” I stumbled into the shadows, ducked down and headed home, clambering over the fence to the back door. And I watched as a policewoman got out of the car, and draped a shiny silver blanket around Natalie’s shoulders, then gently led her across the street by her arm to her house.  Mr. Sykes came to the front door and stood silhouetted in the doorway.  She didn’t look at him as she entered, but kept her head bowed, and he stepped away from her as if scared to be too close. 

An ambulance arrived an hour later.  And that was the last time I ever saw or spoke to Natalie Sykes.

I’d wanted to talk to her since the day she moved in, but whenever I passed her in the street she’d look down or look away and on the bus to school she’d make a point of sitting alone, always putting her bag down on the seat beside her, and looking out of the window the entire journey, as if seeing the world for the first time.

She didn’t seem to care that everyone thought she was unfriendly and a weirdo. She was unfriendly and a weirdo, but that’s what we liked about her. We were fascinated by Natalie Sykes and the rumours of her sleepwalking.

A year ago, the story went, she had wandered out of her house at 4:00 am, in just her pyjamas and slippers, and was found standing silently outside the corner shop, carrying two empty milk bottles, her eyes wide open but unseeing. When the policeman woke her she ran screaming.

Then there was the story — whether true or not was impossible to know — that a month before, on Natalie’s fifteenth birthday, her father had woken in the middle of the night to find her standing at the foot of his bed, clutching a pair of scissors which she then began to plunge into the duvet by his feet.  

The thought of it thrilled me, thrilled all of us.  

She seemed so ordinary at school, pale and shy and softly spoken. But her sleepwalking set her apart. The rumour that she had almost stabbed her father in her sleep gave her an otherworldy glamour; she was simultaneously terrifying and magnetic; she was almost a film star.

My friends were envious of me when she moved into the house directly opposite. And they’d ask me: have you seen her? Have you seen her sleepwalking? They imagined her, as I did, wandering the streets like Lady Macbeth, in a white nightdress, arms outstretched.

I was sorely tempted to lie. I would have loved to have told them: yes, she walked along the bank of the river past my house. Yes, I woke up and she was standing outside my window. Yes, she came into my house…into my room…

But I knew that if I started lying it would be impossible to stop, and Natalie would hear about my tales and she would know I’d lied.  

I trained myself to sleep lightly, like a cowboy with one eye open, and some nights I barely slept at all. I kept my curtains open and I’d lie awake listening for any sound that might tell me that Natalie had begun her nocturnal wanderings. I kept my shoes at the foot of my bed and a flashlight by my pillow. If I ever saw her wandering spectre-like into the night, I’d be there. I’d follow her.  

“What are you doing? What are you up to?” my mother asked one morning at breakfast.

“What do you mean?” I said. “I’m eating my Cornflakes. What do you mean?”

“You’ve got dark circles under your eyes. You hardly say a word to me anymore. I’ve seen your homework… your marks…Toby: are you on drugs?”

“Drugs?”

“Drugs. Yes, drugs, you can tell me.”

“Drugs! It’s always drugs isn’t it! It’s always drugs! If there’s something wrong with your kid it’s always drugs.”

“Is there something wrong?”

“No! I’m eating my frigging Cornflakes!”

“Toby. Is it drugs?

“No!” I stormed out.

It was worse than drugs.

I was in love with Natalie Sykes.

Natalie lived alone with her father, an esteemed barrister according to my mum. Which, I discovered, is not someone who serves you coffee at Starbucks, but someone who gets you off a murder charge or something. Who knew!

Her mum died when she was three. Suicide apparently. That was pretty much the first thing my mother told me when they moved into the street. She learned this at a parents’ night at school and couldn’t wait to share it.

“Isn’t that sad?” my mum said.

I agreed it was.  

“Very very sad,” she said.

“Yes,” I said. “Extremely.”

“Imagine. With a three year old.”

I tried to imagine. I could not.

My dad had been suicidal when he left my mum. That’s what he told me anyway. But he’d pulled himself together and instead of ending it all, he ran off with one of his students from El Salvador: Azura something. Pretty gorgeous actually and only twenty two. Result!

*

November 18th. 10:15 pm: Natalie’s light is still on.

10:35: It’s now gone off.

Midnight:

No sleepwalking. Yet.

November 21st

No sleepwalking.

November 23rd

Natalie went to bed at 10. No sleepwalking.

Dec 1st

I need a girlfriend.  

Life’s too short - and so am I!

Dec 3rd

No sleepwalking.

I’m discontinuing my journal.

3:00 AM: I hear something!

*

It was just after 3:00am;  I heard what sounded like crying coming from down the street, from the direction of the river. I looked out of my bedroom window towards Natalie’s.

All the lights in her house were out.

There was frost on the lawns and pavement, sparkling under the street lights. But there was no sign of movement anywhere and no sign of Natalie.

Then I heard the crying again, a soft plaintive wailing like someone at a funeral who’d been asked to “keep it down.” This is what someone who was sleepwalking sounded like, I told myself; sleepwalking and probably speaking in tongues with the spirit world.

I jumped out of bed and threw on my jeans and sweater, and a fresh pair of socks that I’d put aside just in case then I tiptoed downstairs and grabbed my trainers and parka and headed out. My mother slept with headphones on listening to dolphin music so I felt fairly confident I wouldn’t wake her.

The cold took my breath away, but it was a different kind of cold from the cold you feel waiting for the bus or walking home from school in a howling gale. It was exhilerating somehow. I loved the feeling of it, of being out on the street at 3:00am and seeing the neighbourhood asleep; everything still and calm and silent like a Christmas card. I realised I’d never been anywhere at 3:00am before, except my bedroom.  

I could still hear the crying and it seemed to be coming from the direction of the river. I jogged the hundred yards to the bridge, and through the wooden gate next to it and began walking along the towpath back towards my house. It was darker here and it took a few moments for my eyes to adjust; there was no sign of Natalie, but there was something moving at the river’s edge.

It stopped and stared at me for a full two minutes as I stood immobile, my heart racing. And I could just see the reflection of the water in its eyes. Then, it bounded up the bank to the tow path and ambled towards me, a dead bird hanging from its mouth. I’d seen foxes before, but never so close; it almost brushed my leg as it wandered past. It was fearless, and suddenly I was fearless too.

When it got to the gate, the fox turned and looked at me for a moment as if to say “a pleasure to meet you” and then ambled across the main road towards the fields.

I was mesmerised. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

The following night I left the house at 2:45 and sat in the shadow of the bridge for an hour but the fox didn’t reappear. It was another three nights before I saw it again, hunting water rats by the water’s edge. He (I’d decided it was a he by now) must have become aware of my scent because he stopped hunting suddenly, and then slowly came towards me. He stopped six feet away and stared at me for a full minute, then bounded up to the tow path and was gone.  

It snowed that Christmas, and a sudden storm knocked out our electricity for three whole days and nights. 

We had to cook on a camping stove and eat by candle light. When I say ‘we had to cook on a camping stove’ I mean my mum, obviously. So she wasn’t as thrilled about it as I was. Mr. Sykes and Natalie had food delivered.  

The entire village was in total darkness and for the first time in my life, when I went out on my secret midnight walks, I could see the milky way.  I’d sit at the foot of the bridge and gaze at the glimmering reflections of the stars in the river and wished that Natalie could be there with me. But she never came.

In February it was so cold that parts of the river froze.  One night I saw my friend Mr. Fox scampering across the ice to a small island in the middle of the river where a duck head had laid its eggs.

It was 4:00 in the morning when I got home. I stood in the front garden and stared up at Natalie’s bedroom window and - as if I’d magicked her into being - I gradually became aware that she was in her room staring back at me.

The next night: the same. And the following night: the same.  

Each night I came home from my midnight wanderings Natalie would be watching me from her bedroom window.

And every time I’d feel my heart beating, just as I had when I’d first seen Mr Fox.  But I never saw her sleepwalking and she still didn’t talk to me on the bus to school.

And then it was Spring.  

Mr. Fox turned out to be Mrs. Fox, and her off-spring liked to frolic by the river in the moonlight while I sat by the bridge and watched over them like a doting father.

I’d trained myself by now to wake up every night at 2:00; then - from 2:00 to 3:30 I’d go down to the river and sit in the shadow of the bridge. Then I’d head home, and sleep soundly until 7:30, when my mother would shout at me to get up and get down for breakfast.

This weekend she was away, thank heavens, visiting aging relatives in Wales and leaving me with a whole bunch of ready meals to micro-wave, and plants to water.  

There was still some lager left over from Christmas, and a half a bottle of port in the cocktail cabinet — hopefully it wouldn’t rain and I could make a night of it.

“Make a night of it.” Boy! - talk about “Be careful what you wish for. ”

I must have dropped off because I was jolted awake by a sudden crash. Then: a flailing white thing in the water, arms, a face and cries of help!

As I eventually told the police: I threw off my parka, peeled off my sweater, kicked off my shoes and socks and waded into the water.

Holy Cripes it was cold. Natalie was yelling “Argh! Argh!” and thrashing around. And then suddenly she was gone, as if she’d been dragged under the water by two giant hands. Now it was my turn to flail around. I felt something grabbing at my ankle and I was pulled off my feet and I was under water for at least a minute I swear. But then suddenly I was free of whatever it was that was pulling me under, and the river was shallower here and I was able to stand.  Natalie was face down, her dress billowing in the water like a parachute and keeping her afloat and I tried to turn her over, but I couldn’t. The weight of the dress held her face down but I was able to turn her face to one side, cupping my hand under her chin and walking backwards towards the river bank.  

I pulled her out of the water and began pumping her chest, as I’d seen people do a hundred times on TV, and like people on TV praying and screaming “Please! Please! Come on! Stay with me!”.

And reader: it worked!

“Well that was dramatic,” she said when she finally opened her eyes. Then she rolled over and threw up half the contents of the river.  

*

The police inteviewed me the following day. She had implored me to not say anything, to her father, to anyone and then - in her pneumonia delirium - she had told them everything: how she’d become obsessed with me, and watched me every night, how she followed me to the river and spied on me from a distance; how she had jumped from the bridge in her mother’s wedding dress because she knew I didn’t care about her. She was lovesick, distraught, suicidal… because of my total lack of interest.

It all made perfect sense and the police bought it. But I did not.  

She was hiding something. I don’t know if she jumped into the river because she was in some kind of somnambulistic trance; I don’t know. I don’t know if she tried to stab her father in her sleep.

All I know is: she didn’t jump into the river in her mother’s wedding dress because I wasn’t interested in her.

But that story stuck. That became the version of events. I was simultaneously the hero - for rescuing her - and the villain; for driving her to attempt to end it all.

My reputation soared. Where once Natalie Sykes had once been the most enigmatic weirdo in the school - that honour now fell to me.

Girls in the year below me would step aside in the corridor as if scared to brush against me; I’d hear excited whispers as I passed.

On my birthday I received fourteen - yes fourteen - anonymous cards and letters.

Natalie was in Intensive Care for seven weeks and because of the new pandemic I couldn’t visit her. By the time she’d recovered her father had sold the house, and shortly after - my mother learned at a parents’ night - they’d moved to Leicester.

Leicester!

A letter arrived a day ago from Natalie; the first words I’ve heard from her since that night. She writes that she’s divorcing her father, and changing her name from Natalie to Skyler.

I’ve always loved the name Skyler.

She writes that she’s applying to Durham. Which is awesome actually, because that’s where I’m going.

END

Chris Fallon: Dec 10th 2021. Word count: 2,875