Keep You Safe

I open my eyes. It’s 2:24 AM. This has happened before. Many times, actually. It plays out like a movie I’ve seen before. I’m aware that I’m not in control, I’m just a spectator watching the same things happen, at the same time, over and over again.

I turn over in bed and glance at my sleeping husband. Pete is snoring gently as usual. I slip away from underneath his arm and get out of bed. When I stand up, I am wearing a long white nightgown that almost touches the floor. I leave the room as quietly as I can, careful not to let the door creak. I pass the mirror in the upstairs hallway and catch sight of myself. That’s when I see that I am not me, I don’t recognise the silhouette of the woman looking back at me. It’s too dark to be able to see exactly what she looks like but the moonlight shines through the window and illuminates the hallway just enough to make out her emerald green eyes, glowing like a jewel. She’s quite tall, about 5’ 10”, with flowing, wavy red hair. She runs her fingers through it and tucks it behind her ears. She touches her fine, delicate features; her fingers move over the curves of her nose, then her cheeks and lips. She moves to the window and presses her lily white hands against the cold glass. She is wearing a wedding ring on her left hand that catches the light. She looks out at the pine trees outside swaying in the breeze; solid black shapes against the ink-blue sky.

She turns and heads downstairs. I feel the hardness of the floor under her bare feet and she runs her fingers along the smooth painted walls and the cool hand rail as she pads down the stairs. The house feels calm and quiet. I hear her voice, she wants to check that the house is safe. Downstairs, our dog Pippa is asleep in her basket in the living room. She checks everything in the room, careful not to wake Pippa. She checks the fireplace and the sockets and looks around the room, satisfied that it is safe. She picks up a photo frame of the four of us and lingers on it for a few seconds, before putting it back where she found it. Then, she moves into the kitchen and checks that the gas and appliances are turned off.

Finally, she goes back upstairs into our daughter’s bedrooms. She stands outside of Ella’s door and touches the pink painted letters of her name. She enters the room quietly and looks at our three year old, Ella, sleeping. She strokes her cheek, barely touching her, and smiles.

‘Such a precious angel’, she whispers, in her softly spoken voice. Ella stirs a little bit, her fingers stretch out and her legs wriggle in their blanket, but she continues sleeping. In the next bedroom, she peers around the door and checks on Layla who is sleeping in her usual starfish position.

‘Safe and sound’, she says, smiling. This is when the movie normally ends and she leads me back to bed. But this time, she stops before she gets to our bedroom door and stands at the top of the stairs.

She takes me back downstairs, I can feel her feet moving quicker this time. She heads towards the door in the kitchen that leads into the garage. This is an alternate ending. We don’t even go into the garage often, it’s just a place to keep cardboard boxes full of things without any real place or purpose, there are tools and paint cans and some rarely used weights. She reaches above the door frame, takes the key and unlocks the door. She steps inside and I feel the cold concrete on my bare feet, the garage smells dusty and I feel a chill. She seems to enjoy the coldness of the air. She begins raking through a chest my husband uses for storing tools and finds a cash box. It’s locked. She rummages through screw drivers and drill bits until she finds a key and opens the box; inside there is a box of cigarettes and a lighter. A few of the cigarettes are missing. 

‘No, no, no’, I hear the alarm in her voice.

Her hands are trembling as she takes each one out, and one by one, she snaps them in half and throws them away along with the lighter. Then, she puts everything back exactly as she found it, locks the garage door and goes back inside the house. She leads me upstairs and stops in front of the mirror again. The spotlights turn on above me.

‘Mel? What are you doing?’

I am standing on the stairs looking at myself in the mirror. My face looks vacant, but I am looking at my own chestnut brown hair and brown eyes. I touch my oval face, chin and cheekbones and see that I am wearing the vest and shorts that I was wearing when I went to bed. Pete is standing there holding Ella. She is nuzzling into his shoulder, rubbing her eyes.

‘I think you were sleepwalking’, he says. He takes me back to bed and I lie there waiting for him to settle Ella again, but I fall asleep before he comes back to bed.

I wake up the next morning and go downstairs to make breakfast while Pete gets the girls ready. I twist the knob and hear clicking before the blue flame ignites. I picture the lily white hand touching it, as real as I am right now. I’ve always found it strange that I remember everything the next morning. On the few occasions that I was found sleepwalking as a child, I couldn’t remember anything the next day. When my family told me what I’d said or done, I always felt scared, as if someone or something else had been controlling me. But I don’t feel scared when I sleepwalk and dream about her, even though I’m watching it through someone else’s eyes.

I eat quietly. I must seem a little removed because Pete asks if there’s something bothering me. I tell him about the dream I have while I’m sleepwalking and he looks at me, a little concerned ‘I think you’re overly tired, we’ve had a lot going on, and with Ella not sleeping through the night...’

I nod. He’s right, that’s all it is. Later, I’m tidying up in the living room while the girls are playing. I find a few snapped crayons under the coffee table and remember the cigarettes. I go to the garage and come back with the empty box. Pete has just returned home from taking Pippa out for a walk. She heads straight for her food and water, tail wagging.

‘What the hell were these doing in our garage?’ I hold up the empty box and a lighter. I see his eyes flare, he doesn’t even try to deny that they’re his. He tells me that he had a few cigarettes earlier this week. He says something about being exhausted with work, the house and the kids. He stopped years ago before I even met him, but every now and then when he’s feeling particularly stressed he’ll start again. He’s only ever done it a few times throughout our whole relationship, but I don’t like it and he knows it. I say to him what I’ve heard him say to our girls a thousand times when their game has gotten out of hand and one of them is hurt.

‘We keep each other safe in this house’, I throw the empty packet away.

He nods, understanding the point that I’m making, ‘You’re right, I’m sorry. Won’t happen again, I promise.’ 

‘Good’, I say, and we drop it.

Later, Pete seems distracted. I can tell he’s thinking about something but doesn’t want to say it. I ask him what’s on his mind.

‘It’s nothing, it’s just… how did you even find the cigarettes? It’s really bothering me, I swore I locked them away’

I shrug, ‘Just had a feeling’.

He shakes his head and walks away.

I try to get on with my day, but now that Pete has said it, the thought is bothering me too. Pete is right, I didn’t even know about the cash box. I think it over for a while but I have no real answers. I brush it off and tell myself it’s just a dream I have while I’m sleepwalking. The woman is just part of a dream and nothing more. Maybe I could smell smoke on his clothing and didn’t think too much of it at the time? And, if Pete was trying to hide cigarettes, where is the first place he’d hide them? In a tool box in the garage, somewhere I’d never look. But I’m not satisfied. The thing that’s bothering me most of all is why I am experiencing the whole thing in someone else’s body, through someone else’s eyes? Why does it feel so real? Why can I remember everything?

I Google my house, not really knowing why or what I’m expecting to find. When we bought it around Christmas time, we found out that it was built in 1935 and renovated in the early sixties, but little else about the house’s history. The sleepwalking started almost immediately. This is the only way I am going to put my mind at rest. I scour the internet and find nothing of any relevance. Then I Google my street, and there it is, that’s when I find a newspaper archive website. First, I see my house, but it’s so badly damaged from fire that I hardly recognise it. Alongside it, I see a photograph of a young couple. The wife has long, wavy hair and delicate, pretty features. She is almost as tall as her husband, who is standing next to her, smartly dressed and holding a cigarette between his lips. I zoom into the page to read the small print.

Friday, December 18th 1959

Tragic Blaze in Pine View

‘Tributes are being paid to a young couple who lost their lives in a tragic blaze in Pine View this week. Fire crews were called to a house in Pine View in the early hours of Friday morning and battled through the night to control the flames…’

‘Investigations continue into the cause.’