Day 121 - The Somnambulist - Part 30

She sits by the fire. The girl still sleeps by her feet. Flames lick against the side of charring logs, throwing shadows on the lodge walls--shadows that dance like a forgotten ceremony, and every crackle of the fire reverberates through her body, reminding her that she is alone.

Minaki died in the night, at long last succumbing to the same sickness that had taken the rest of her people away from her, and now it claims her brother. She sheds no tears for him, having no more to spare. She mourned enough in the last few weeks--more than anyone should ever have to, and building the scaffold at the river bank was easy enough. By now, if forced, she could build a scaffold with her eyes closed. But this is a skill she takes no pride in. It is simply her task, to make certain that the people of her village are honored according to the old ways. Soon, the old ways will not mean anything. There will be none left to follow them.

Still, she is glad that she left the white man go, glad that she gave him a fighting chance to survive in this world, where so much is taken without reparation. Minaki would not have agreed. He would have yelled at her. He would have disturbed the child and taken the law into his own hands. He would have killed the white man if given the chance.

But Istuminaki knows better. This lodge belongs to her, passed down from the women of one generation to the women of the next. This roof is hers, and hers is the right to decide what transpires beneath it. She knows that this white man by himself had done nothing to her people. He is not the one that poisoned them, that drove them to illness. He is not the one that killed them all and made their village barren. Minaki had not seen him that way. When he looked at the white man, he saw everything he was capable of--not an individual with his own name and mind and hopes and regrets, but as a fragment, a sliver of the whole, bearing all the characteristics of the greater being.

It does not matter anymore, she knows. Already she feels the first bumps on the back of her neck, and she knows that she will not survive. She knows that none of us do. Yet she is glad that in the end, she never lost sight of the person she is. She is not a fragment of the Mandan, not a blind, nameless part of an angry whole. She is Istuminaki, and for tonight, she and her daughter are alive.

The girl stirs on the ground, not with the painful spasms of disease, but with innocence. Tcuw-tahe dreams. She dreams of wide fields of vibrant green grass, a field poised beneath an open, blue sky. She dreams of her people, singing and dancing in their village. She dreams of her mother, smiling once again, and in this place--this place of light and laughter--there are no tears.

Atop a disease-ridden blanket, alone in the last lodge of her people, the girl dreams.

***

"Yeah, Diggory, I'm done. I'll have the first copy sent to you tomorrow, okay? Okay. Tell Ezra I said hi."

Kate set the phone back in its plastic cradle and stood up from the desk, pushing herself away from Oscar's old blue Royal typewriter. Her typewriter. She had to get away from it all for a moment and distance herself from the work before allowing it to sink in.

The first draft was done. There would be more, of course. She fully anticipated rewrite after rewrite until she was absolutely sickened by the novel at her fingertips, but there would never be another first draft. It was a sense of accomplishment that could not be topped.

This was just the first stage of a greater plan, one that she had worked out in great detail with Walter, Diggory, Ezra, and an assortment of other old acquaintances of Oscar's. Once it was completed, once it had been rewritten and dissected and built up once again, this novel, the culmination of all their work, was going to be mass-produced and distributed to anyone who would accept a copy. They would start at the university, once known for its literary circle, and spread outward, even recruiting the book-turned-film critic of the local newspaper to champion their cause and slip a review past editorial. They anticipated few takers at first, but every movement starts with only a few followers. After that, it was just a matter of time and faith. If only they could get a few people caring about literature again, it would have all been worthwhile.

Kate walked the grounds of her new home, though she had to admit that she still felt uneasy about the place. There was plenty of room for all of her books, yet she could not help feeling that she didn't belong there. This had been the house of a great writer, and that was an accolade she had not yet earned for herself. In time, though--in time, she would.

She followed the mulched path in the lingering twilight, hurrying across the yard while there was still enough light to see. The door to the old greenhouse creaked as she opened it back, and there in the center of the room, at one end of a plastic-lined pond, on the bark of a short, thick tree, bloomed the ethereal Ghost Orchid--pale, delicate, with long slender petals that spilled over the lip of the blossom like two thin fingers reaching down toward the water. She had to see it one last time tonight, if only to make sure it was real. She wished Oscar had been there with her, and in a way, maybe he was.

As the last light faded away, she stepped lightly along the path back to the embrace of the house, where the kitchen light glowed like a beacon, drawing her in, and something caught her eye. It was just a fleeting glimpse of something large and pale flitting off to one side, nothing more than a ghost caught in her peripheral vision. By the time she turned her head, it was already gone, but in that brief moment, she was sure she had seen a giant moth. That's the way she would remember it, anyway. Every night in her dreams.

Day 120 - The Somnambulist - Part 29

"How did it happen?"

"I don't know, really. He was still in bed when I found him, so it looks like it happened in his sleep. I'm sorry, Kate. If it's any consolation, it looks like he went peacefully."

"Yeah, actually, it is. Thanks, Professor."

"Call me Walter, Kate. I wanted you to be the first to know."

Both ends fell silent for awhile, the girl on one end steeped in quiet contemplation; the man on the other careful to give her a moment.

"Walter?"

"Yes?"

"How did you know to find him?"

"It sounds a bit silly..."

"Try me."

"I had a dream about him. He'd been talking quite a lot about dreams lately. I know he was having trouble sleeping, but the things he said--they were pretty out there. But in the night I had a dream that he was calling out to me, trying to tell me something, and I woke up in a cold sweat. I had one of those feelings--one of those inexplicable moments of intense emotion, and I knew that I had to check on him, dream or no dream. I knocked for awhile--a long while, actually, but I had a key that he gave me a key a few years back, just in case I needed to get in the house. That's when I found him."

"What do you think it was? A heart attack, maybe? Or a stroke? God, I hope it wasn't a stroke."

"Kate, we don't have to talk about this right now."

"Actually, I'd kinda like to. I need to talk about something. Just... something, and I don't know what else to say."

"He was an old man, Kate. It could have been any number of things."

"I guess you're right."

"Listen, I need to make a few more calls. Are you going to be okay?"

Walter's words resonated deep within her, reminding her of the dream and what young Oscar had told her, and she began to wonder if the dream had been a dream at all.

"Yeah," she said. "Yeah, I am going to be okay."

***

The funeral was held at dusk. Kate walked the entire way in uncomfortable low heel shoes she was sure would leave blisters all over her feet, but it felt fitting, as if any other method of travel was somehow inappropriate. She wore a black dress that had lived in depths of her closet for years. It was the only one she owned--the only one she ever wanted to own, and she hoped it was good enough.

The mourners had already gathered on the cemetery grounds, having held their memorial service earlier in the morning. Walter was the only person she had recognized, though he looked much different standing solemnly in a black suit, his mustache finely groomed, with his arm wrapped around that of a disproportionately beautiful blonde-haired woman, whom Kate took to be his wife. He'd waved sadly to her, surrounded in a sea of people she didn't know, would never know, yet Oscar had played a part, no matter how small and insignificant, in each and every one of their lives.

She had been asked to say a few words but politely declined the invitation. She had nothing worth saying, after all. Everyone there knew who Oscar was, the kind of man he was. He wasn't one to delve too deeply into emotional realms--not in the company of others, at least. If he had been there, Kate imagined, he would've had a sharp retort for every prayer and whisper and then complained about the state of the refreshments. That was the picture in Kate's mind--one that played like a short film from an old projector, and despite everything else, it managed to make her smile.

In the days since she first learned of Oscar's death, she had mourned his passing, but she had never lost control of her emotions. A few stray tears wound their way down the smooth skin of her cheeks, gathering in the corner of her mouth, but she never broke down, never wept the way she expected she would. They had both known this was coming, and they'd both made their own preparations. Kate was simply relieved that hers were holding up as well as they were.

After the memorial service, Walter invited her to Oscar's house to meet a few of his old friends. She arrived first and, finding the front door open, wandered inside to find that it felt emptier than usual. She could picture him working fervently in the kitchen, cracking open eggs and juggling slices of toast while wearing his plaid house robe and black cotton slippers.

She moved down the hallway like another shadow on the wall, stepping into the study the way one tours a museum exhibit. His blue Royal typewriter sat atop the antique writing desk, naked without a white sheet of paper rolled beneath the carriage, and beside it, she found two things that made her heart skip a beat. The first was a light stack of papers that she scanned without touching. It was an incomplete manuscript, but it was most definitely the first few chapters of Here Comes a Revolution. These were the pages Oscar had told her about--the ones he had written in his dreams, and beside it was a folded piece of paper addressed with one name: Kate. With a quick glance around the room, just to see if anyone else was watching, she picked up the paper, opened it up and read what had been written inside. It was short, simple, and to the point, like anything else Oscar would have said.

I want you to have the house, it said. That includes everything on the property. Please take care of it. Don't let it die alone.

He had signed his name at the bottom, and though she didn't know if it was enough to hold up in court, she figured that anyone who knew Oscar would make sure his last wishes were granted. As for the rest of the message, she knew exactly what he meant.

Then the door opened, and an oft-told anecdote entered the house on the lips of several old men, Walter included. Of the two that she hadn't met, one was quite short, and the other exceedingly tall. Their names were Ezra and Diggory, and they exchanged information with Kate, offering her their services once the novel was complete. It was a bittersweet moment, and she wished he had been there to witness it.

Now, the sun sank over the hills, and they all gathered around a small plot of land, where a large rectangular hold had been dug in the ground, and the casket floated above it, waiting to be lowered at any moment. The priest said one last prayer for the departed, and the mourners offered up their final goodbyes and last-minute remembrances before filing away, back to their vehicles, back to the town below.

Kate lingered a moment longer than most, staring at the two graves side-by-side--Oscar and Madeleine Bruges, together again. She stayed until the sun had completely vanished and the world descended into a heavy twilight. The park was in sight in the valley below, and she wondered what mysteries were hidden in the woods, there on the winding path Oscar had taken many times before.

Then, when she was sure that she was the last person left, she began the walk back home. She still had work to do, after all, and she knew exactly how Oscar wanted to be remembered. With her head cleared of grief and despair, Kate went home to start writing again.

Day 119 - The Somnambulist - Part 28

"So, you wanna tell what's going on?" she asked, passing him a mug filled with fresh coffee.

He pressed the edge of the cup against his lips, taking a small sip before drawing back with a bitter look on his face.

"My God, what is this?"

"It's decaf."

"You might as well have brought me poison. Do you want me to kill myself? Is that it?"

"Okay, Oscar--A: caffeine is bad for you, and B: you're dodging the question."

"Nonsense on both counts. When you get to be my age, dear, you realize that caffeine is one of the few things that make life worth living. As for the rest, I'm still trying to figure that out, myself."

"Fine, then let's go over the things we do know. Why did you ask me if there was a young man at my door?"

Oscar took another sip of the decaffeinated coffee before placing it far away from him with an exaggerated frown. Then with a nod, he relented, resolving to tell her everything.

"Before I met you, Kate, I started having dreams, and, as you already know, I began waking up in strange places with no idea how or why. Then something else happened. Every morning, I found that I'd written a little more on my typewriter, leaving me with the first few pages of Here Comes a Revolution, which, as you also know, I've already written some years before. It was after we started working on your project, when I couldn't sleep and had all the time in the world to sit and think, that I finally made the connection. I was reliving my life every night--each dream another little piece of my history. For some reason, I thought that I might actually have become my old self during these dreams, that I had become young again. It sounds quite mad when I say it aloud like this, but when one is unable to sleep, one often ponders the most bizarre things."

"When I opened the door, you said you had something to tell me. You said it was important. Any idea what it is?"

Oscar shook his head sadly.

"No, my dear. No clue at all. There is something else, though--something that has more to do with the waking world, I'm sure, and I meant to tell you yesterday, but the opportunity never presented itself. I know two men, both of whom I was acquainted with in my younger days. One is an editor, and one is a printer."

Her eyes went round, her lips poised in a smile.

"You mean we're going to publish it?" she asked.

Oscar winced. "Yes, I suppose. Technically, it would be self-publishing, though. The important thing is: it will be in print, and you will see it, you will hold it, and you will smell it."

"That's great!"

"Indeed. Should something happen to me immediately following our completion, they'll know what to do."

"Oscar, not this again. Please."

"I'm sorry. I'm not trying to convince you."

"You don't have to. I'd just... I'd rather not dwell on it, okay?"

"Fair enough. But do find them, should you need to."

She nodded sharply, unable to meet his gaze.

"How's your work going?" he asked. "Have you found your names yet?"

"Yeah... yeah, I did. Check these out. For the brother: Minaki, which means sun. For the sister: Istuminaki, which means moon."

"Ah, all right, a good, standard naming convention for something as mythic as this. And the daughter? What's her name?"

"Tcuw-tahe."

"What does that mean?"

"It means butterfly. It was the closest thing to moth that I could find."

Oscar smiled.

"What do you think?" she asked.

"Perfect, my dear. Absolutely perfect. How much have we finished so far?"

"Well, we have your fifty pages, and I have... I think it was forty-five at last count. So less than a hundred, but still more than I expected."

"Wonderful. Don't stop now, Kate there's still so much to be done," he said. "But now, I believe I'll see myself out. Get some sleep. You'll need it."

"Good night, Oscar," she said as he ambled toward the door.

"Good night," he said, and then disappeared.

Once again alone in her apartment, Kate poured out the remaining coffee, washing it down the kitchen sink and leaving the upturned cups atop a dish-cloth at its side. Then she rechecked the lock on the front door, strode back across her small, crowded living room in checkered shorts she had adopted as her sleep-wear, and settled back into her bed, where her caffeine-free body and mind quickly drifted off to sleep.

In the dark, she dreamed. In the dream, she awoke in her bed at the sharp pounding of another knock at her door. It was Oscar again, she knew, as if everything that had happened earlier in the night, when she was wide awake, had carried over like a piece of ancient history in her dream world. She trudged from her bed, crossing back through the book stacks of her living room, and opened the door to find a young man standing in front of her, clad in flannel pajamas. This was the moment Oscar had warned her about, and she wanted nothing more than to reach out, grab the man before her and shake him until he woke, despite the fact that he appeared quite awake already, but she found herself unable to move, almost unwilling.

"You're Oscar, aren't you?" she asked him.

"Yes," said the sleepwalker.

"Do you have something to tell me?"

"Yes."

"Now's the time."

"You'll be okay, Kate. I just wanted to tell you that you'll be okay."

Just when she was about to ask him what he meant, just before she found the meaning of it all, she woke up. Her eyes snapped open, and she was once more in her bed, lodged beneath the thick covers. The phone was ringing, like the grating song of some mechanical bird. She lifted herself up, glancing at the clock to find it was half past eight in the morning. It seemed like it should be much earlier. She caught the phone on the fourth ring. Walter Russell was on the other end of the line, calling to tell her that Oscar Bruges was dead.

Day 118 - The Somnambulist - Part 27

Young Oscar Bruges returned to stalk the streets of his city--no, not his city, but a dark, nightmare version thereof. The streets were as he had remembered them, yet everything else had changed. He knew what was happening. This was all a dream. He'd had the same dream several times before--walking through the city before finding himself in the park or at a graveyard, staring at Madeleine's tombstone. Her last name read as Bruges, leading him to believe that they'd been married once upon a time in this dreary world and wonder why his dreams were never of those (assumed) happier times.

He also dreamed once of writing. He sat down at his old typewriter, struggling at first to find the words, but they came in time. Upon waking, he found this particularly odd since he'd been told that one cannot read in dreams, and if one cannot read, one cannot write. But the words had been clear. More importantly, they continued on each night, from where he'd left off the time before. In these dreams, he was writing the same novel, with the very same words, as one in the waking world, and that next night, finding himself trapped again within his strange, prophetic dreams, he was able to recall his place--no longer doomed to wander the same empty streets night after night. In a week's worth of dreams, he wrote.

For awhile, the dreams stopped, and he couldn't remember anything when he woke the mornings after. It was as if there was nothing more to dream about--only a dark void, absent of purpose and meaning. Soon, the dreams returned, and with them came a sort of understanding. He could remember things that had never happened, and like his own Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, he wandered the streets of his future, to see things as they would come to be. His town was to be a corrupted place, the buildings and streets coated in a thin layer of corrosion. Something bad was going to happen, he realized, but he had no idea what it would be.

He walked quickly past the diner, clad in the sneakers he'd found at his bedside, and this time, he remembered to change the rest of his clothes first, never comfortable wearing only the bed clothes he had in all his dreams before. This time was different. This time he felt as if there were some grand design.

As he rambled down Main Street, the first inkling of that purpose presented itself. There had once been two book shops on this street, right across the street from each other, not far from the town square. One dealt only in new books; the other only in used, and though there was never any direct competition between the two, there was still a celebrated rivalry, with one constantly trying to outsell the other, throwing impromptu sales when the neighbor across the street did the same, though each maintained their own distinct clientele. It was all in the name of fun, and their efforts were often toasted at a gathering at the end of every year, when employees from both shops got together without the pretense of mock indignation that swirled around both businesses every other day. Both had once been staples of this town. Both were now gone. One had become the outpost of a chain of coffee shops; the other a neon-signed hair salon.

Oscar began to wonder what could happen to drive both, the pillars that had once supported the town's small artistic and literary scene, away. A certain fear crept into his mind--something that makes all writers shiver and keeps them awake at night like the boogeyman of an entire profession rattling chains beneath the bed. He ran the entire mile, crossing the square and bringing him near the university campus, where a small bookstore that catered mainly to students once operated. It, too, was now gone. Another few blocks away stood the public library, now divvied into a set of small offices and a cafe that specialized in bagels.

Suddenly, as if a memory had been dislodged, everything made sense, and his fear was confirmed. Somewhere, somehow, the novel had died, and there was nothing he could do. There was another, though. That much became clearer in time. There was someone who could do something. Maybe she couldn't perform a resurrection, but at least she could plant a seed that had long gone dormant.

He knew exactly where to find her--an apartment by the railroad tracks. It was a place he had never been, but he could see and feel it from so far away. He sprinted down the streets, traveling easily back to the edge of the campus, following the railroad tracks with his eyes as he darted along the sidewalk and finally settling in front of a dark brown row of quiet, dormant apartments. The third from the right, he somehow knew, was the one he wanted. Outside the door, there was a vague scent of old paper and ink--as musty as leather, the rugged smell of worn books.

He hesitated a moment before knocking. There was something he was supposed to say, something he had to tell her, but what? As if sitting in front of his typewriter, he searched for words that he could not find and knocked only out of desperation, fearing he would wake before he could pass the message along, if only he could figure out what that message was supposed to be.

There was a long pause before the door opened, but when it finally did, she stood there, beyond the threshold, dark of hair, gleaming green eyes in the weak yellow light of the street lamps outside. In that brief moment, she looked so much like Madeleine. It was an eventuality for which he had attempted to prepare himself, but even so, shock ran like chain lightning along both sides of the door. She stared at him, her eyes wide and mouth agape.

"Kate!" he said, as if he had known her name all along. "It is you. I have something to tell you... something... something important."

Her mouth moved, as if speaking, but he could hear nothing. It was as if her words existed in another wavelength, something far beyond his ability to listen.

"I can't remember... I can't remember what I have to say."

Then it came to him, and he knew what the message was meant to be. Just as he began to speak again, she took him by the arm, her hands wrapping around the muscle of his forearm. His words halted. His eyes closed. The world went dark.

***

"Oscar? Oscar!"

He opened his eyes to find Kate standing before him, clutching his arm in her hands. The look on her face was an amalgamation of fear and surprise, and as he came to his senses, he would have fallen if not for Kate's determination and firm grip, pulling him immediately back to his feet. At last comprehending where he was, his eyes darted to his hands, rough and wrinkled. He examined his arms, now pale and thin. He was the same man he had always been, trapped in an aging body that had been worn away by time as waves wear against rock.

"I don't understand," he muttered to himself.

"Oscar, what's going on?"

"Kate, tell me what happened!"

"I just finished reading the segment of the novel you gave me. You knocked on my door, I answered it, and here we are. By my count, it's your turn for an explanation."

"I was asleep, Kate. Asleep."

"Oh."

"Was I young? Was I a young man when you opened the door?"

"What? What are you talking about?"

"Kate, when you opened the door, was there a young man standing where I am now?"

"No, Oscar, just you."

He sighed, exhaling held breath.

"It was just you."

Day 117 - The Somnambulist - Part 26

He rides through the dusk. The sun has gone down, leaving only faint red light to illuminate his hunched back. Light that isn't light at all. Only the ghost of light. His eyes still sting from the last pearl of sweat that dribbled down the furrowed skin of his brow. His clothes are still torn and tattered, barely hanging from his body, the shape of which around his chest and legs are all that still define them as clothing.

Darkness comes like a promise, and the night air, rushing against his face, dries the salty sweat and tears that hang in thick, amorphous beads off his temples. The horse will be tired soon, he realizes, and he dreads the moment he's forced to make camp. He would go the rest of the way on foot if he had the chance, now that all of his nights are restless nights.

He looks over his shoulder. The faltered light on the horizon is now a deepening shade of violet, but it's enough to make out the figure in the distance--the one that's been on his trail for days now, always just within sight. He can make out shapes and colors, all else too distant to discern. He knows what chases after him, what will pass him in the night and wait for him at the top of the next hill. He's seen it. He's dreamed of it. A pale rider on a pale horse.

His own horse, nameless, the color of chestnuts, slows to a crawl, its bulky feet kicking up thick clouds of dust from the barren ground until it refuses to go any further. He can't blame it. Neither of them have eaten in days. It most likely would have died of neglect anyway if he hadn't taken it, hadn't freed it from the abandoned village. He dismounts, leading it by the reins to an outcrop of wide stones and dry brush, deciding to go no further, to accept whatever plan fate has for him.

Pulling flint from his pocket, he gathers bits of brush and starts a small fire on the blackened ground, finding little comfort in the knowledge that other people had once camped in this very spot. Whatever impression of wilderness this land had given him was lost, and he could only wonder if the others had made it safely back to civilization or if they had died somewhere along the way. Or maybe there had been no others in these parts. Maybe that darkened spot on the ground had been that way all along, just waiting for him to come along, to show him how the board was to be set. Everything in its right place.

The brush will keep the fire fed for awhile, he thinks, but not all night. He strips the ragged coat from his back. Its of no use anymore, after all. Without a second thought, he drops in onto the fire and watches the flames test it at first, burning small, solid holes from the bottom, licking the edges, leaving its dry, widening saliva to slowly consume the fabric. The tattered edges are burned away, and the blue jacket becomes at first a solid black, then falling away to a gray ashen waste. The brass buttons flicker as they sink below the charred brush, catching his eye.

There is no food left. He knows this. The rational part of his brain reminds him of this, yet he checks again anyway. He always checks, just in case there's a bit that his fingers skip over, that alludes eyes like a hawk's, peering into a vacant forest and desperate to catch a fleeting glimpse of any small movement. Nothing there, he discovers, pulling his hand free. There's nothing to do now but sit and wait.

Maybe tonight isn't the night, he tells himself. Maybe there's meant to be another day--at least one more. He knows not what lies ahead on the eastern horizon, but there's always a chance that he'll find a small city or town, someplace with food, soft beds, and softer women. Some place with people--any people--old, young, white, Indian, thin, fat, loud, mute. Anyone. Anyone alive. Like a man in front of the firing squad, blindfolded, he clings to what hope he still can, praying for someone to yell out, granting him reprieve before the concussion of the choir of rifles and an expectant darkness that no campfire can scare away.

Just when he is sure that this is the end, when time seems lost and purposeless, the sun rises, and he lives to see another day. The horse, however, is dead. It passed quietly sometime in the night.

He sets out on foot now, hoping that he's close enough to wave someone down, to cry out for help. There's always that chance, always something to hope for. He climbs the next hill and scans the land below--nothing, vacant scrub and dust and little more.

At noon, the sun bears down on the exposed flesh of his neck and back, forcing the sweat back into his eyes, until he, like the horse, can go no further. On a mound of dirt he collapses and rolls onto his back, his chest heaving with every strained breath. His mouth is dry--so dry--if only he had one more drop. Then all the concerns fall away, his eyes drawn to the sun. He sees lights, sparks of blue and white, flashing in the sun, but there's something else there, too. It reaches out to him. It reaches out of the sun, grasping for his arm, until he feels himself slip away in its grasp. There is a voice with it, speaking vaguely of absolution.

When the sun sets, it descends from a wasteland, quiet and still, remarkable for nothing more than dirt, dry brush, and a darkened circle of earth--the only indication that anything here had once been alive.

***

When she finished reading, Kate carefully placed the papers back into the folder and placed it atop her nightstand, separating herself from a story that had wholly consumed her. It held her attention captive, never allowing a moment of release until the end, and then she had to let it sink in, works its way inside her mind until it was all that she could think about, until she fit the remaining pieces together. As much as she had already written, she knew that Oscar's sections needed to remain as they were, leaving her to create the fate of the kingdom of three. She had a difficult decision left to make.

Then, as if she was dreaming and expecting it all along, she heard a knock on the door. Her clock ticked from 1:43 AM to 1:44 in that brief moment her eyes were upon it. Remember what Oscar had said and wondering what it meant, she knew what had to be done.

Day 116 - The Somnambulist - Part 25

Walter arrived forty-five minutes later, wearing a short-sleeved button-up shirt that Oscar immediately detested and mocked. After the recitation of various idioms, insults, and expletives, the two men settled into the inner office, where Oscar then began a detailed account of the past three days while Walter sat quietly, listening.

"What do you think?" Oscar asked after everything else had been told.

"I'm sure it was nothing to worry about, Oscar. It may have been just a phase."

"No, a phase would entail buying a small, red convertible and dyeing my hair or a passing acceptance of libertarianism. I believe we're far from a phase. This is something else entirely."

Walter stared at his desk, nodding and absently scratching at his enormous mustache.

"What? What is it? I know that look, Walter."

"I'm just trying to get things straight. I'm reminded of something, though. Don't laugh, but how well do you know your physics?"

"I'm fairly certain that gravity exists. All else is beyond my realm of expertise."

"How about the law of the conservation of energy? Know that one?"

"Feel free to enlighten me."

"Basically, it states that energy cannot be created or destroyed. Instead, it's a constant--always there, focused on one thing if not another. See what I'm getting at? Now, I know it may sound absurd, but what if we consider, for lack of a better word, creativity to be a legitimate form of energy. Just imagine this scenario for a moment: you've lived most of your life as a writer, as a creator, and then comes the Death of the Novel, and all that creativity goes to waste."

"Would it, though?" Oscar asked. "If we're going by this law of conservation of energy of yours, wouldn't it just pass to--I don't know--some artist on the street?"

"But that's the thing, when it comes to this law of energy, we're talking about isolated systems. Just you, and no one else. That creative energy of yours, stowed up for so long, has to find an outlet, so it makes a new one. It creeps into your subconscious, taking over when you fall asleep, and you start over, harnessing that creativity from a slightly different angle this time."

"My first novel, all over again, and everything that went with it," Oscar mused.

"Exactly."

Oscar was silent for a moment, pondering everything Walter had just said, and then opened his mouth to address his contemplations.

"That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. Creative energy, indeed."

Walter shrugged.

"You should write another two-bit science fiction story about that, Walter. I'm sure it'd be a hit at some eight-year-old's birthday party."

"Fine, fine. Hey, at least I listened."

"I know, and I am grateful for that."

"And what about my students?"

"Student, Walter. Singular. Yes, I'm grateful for her, too."

"What you're doing for her is simply amazing. I've never seen someone so enthusiastic about becoming a writer. Were you the same way when you were her age?"

"I'd say so, yet I can't help but feel that she wants it more--more than I ever did. It's too bad she's wasting her time."

"She doesn't see it that way."

"No, I suppose not. If anyone were to bring the novel back to the prominence it so richly deserves, it would be her. I'd place money on that, but I'm afraid I wouldn't be around long enough to collect."

Walter frowned thoughtfully.

"Do you still think this is it, then?" he asked. "That you're going to die?"

"We all die sooner or later, my friend, but I'd prefer after this story is written to before."

"Oh, one more thing before you go, Oscar. I may have mentioned your endeavor to someone the other day."

"Anyone I know?" he asked, without the slightest hint of surprise in his voice.

"Remember old Diggory?"

"Yes, though to be quite honest, I thought he died years ago."

"Nope, still ticking."

"Then I can safely assume he's told Ezra about this--wait, is Ezra still alive, as well?"

"As far as I know."

"So we have our writers, an editor, and a publisher."

"Everything you need to make a book."

"Not everything," said Oscar. "There must still be a reader. Without that, we've simply wasted our time."

"Oh, there's one out there. I'm sure of it. Maybe more than one. Maybe an entire army of them, sleeping, like those terra cotta soldiers in China, just waiting for something to come along and rouse them from their stupor."

"I wouldn't go that far, Walter. I'm not looking to start a revolution."

"That's never stopped you before."

"No, I suppose it hasn't."

"Still, wouldn't you like to see it in print?"

"Of course I would. I'd love nothing more than to see it bound and solid, to hold it in my hands and feel the cool, slick cover against my skin. I'd give anything for that, really. Let's just hope that I'm still around to see it."

"And Kate?"

Oscar nodded.

"She'll survive. She'll be all right."

Day 115 - The Somnambulist - Part 24

When Oscar awoke the next morning, he found himself firmly entrenched in his own bed, having moved there from the couch sometime in the middle of the night. He couldn't recall waking up in the living room or shuffling down the hallway, so he took this as the first sign of his somnambulism returning. Checking his bare feet for stray pebbles, just in case he had gone for an unconscious stroll, he found nothing, not even a dark coating of dust on his soles to denote having left the house, but he was entirely satisfied with the prospect of being able to sleep once again.

As he roused himself from the bed, he found he was able to completely fall in line with the morning routine to which he had once been so intimately accustomed. First came the warm shower and shave, followed closely be the practiced preparation of breakfast (toast and two eggs today, he thought), and then a quick read-through of the morning paper while steaming instant coffee drained into the carafe.

Finishing his second cup of coffee, he decided that everything was back to normal, returned to its proper order like a misplaced library book, and since the view from the window suggested a warm, sunny day without a single cloud in the sky, he was determined to go for a walk and stretch the muscles that had languished in the past few sedentary days. Completely rested, he changed out of his flannel pajamas, wisely resolving that it was far past time for them to be washed, and opted for his dark suit, which he then slipped into with a surprising amount of ease. His blue and white sneakers, the very same pair he wore on his last walk, rounded out the ensemble in an odd but fitting way, and with the sun at his back, Oscar went out to greet the world.

His destination for this morning, he concluded, was to be the university, where he would see Walter once again. This time, he was going to tell everything--everything that had gone through his mind on the previous few days, all the things he was too afraid to tell Kate. She reminded him so much of Madeleine, after all, and he would not be able to stand disappointing her more than he already had. She would think he had completely lost his mind, and perhaps he would have agreed, if only temporarily, but there was so much to tell, so much that begged for discussion.

The three miles to campus passed quickly. He believed he owed that, in part, to his restless nature making up for lost time. By the time he reached the university grounds, he was surprised to find them relatively empty. Only after passing the clock toward did he realize that the first classes of the day were still an hour away. Walter surely would not be in at this time, so he took the opportunity to stroll across the campus for awhile, admiring the Colonial Revival style of architecture that seemed to dominate the surrounding buildings, a foreboding sense of order and structure broken up only by the infusion of parking lots and the football stadium that hung onto one end of the campus like an overly long fingernail. Then there was the library--vast, unconquerable, a prison of knowledge where the scholars were to be locked away with their studies, where they would be safe from the outside world and the outside world safe from them.

He imagined that the library, at least would be open. Even in his own university days, he recalled the place opening early to accommodate the procrastinators scrambling at the last minute to finish or begin a project due later in the day. It was a process and ritual that he himself was all too familiar with, having been a renowned slacker in his younger years.

He had hardly been in sight of the library entrance when the great wooden doors, the loud scraping of which had always instilled images of a medieval keep in his head, swung outward, and a small thin body with a heavy stack of books came bounding down the steps. It was Kate. Oscar watched her move, believing that in another life, she could have been his daughter. She swung onto the sidewalk and began trudging away, the books weighing her down considerably.

He thought about running up to her, politely taking the books from her hand, and walking her home, chatting all the while like two old friends. That, however, was not meant to be. The less she saw of him, the better, he thought, figuring some amount of distance would make his inevitable passing that much easier on her. He was concerned, however, about how deeply absorbed she seemed to be in her work. He made a mental note to have a talk with her the next time they met, or else this novel project would be the death of her, as well.

Arriving at the old Liberal Arts building, he found that though the entire structure was open, it was quite abandoned. He made his way to the third floor, pausing briefly against the rail that ran along the top of the steps to catch his breath, and found a seat in the disused secretary's office, parked right outside the locked door to Walter's office. As he waited, he busied himself with a dusty book that had been placed nearby. It was an old novel Walter had written--his second, Oscar concluded after a moment of thought. He flipped through the pages, barely stopping to read entire paragraphs, and it was just as bloated and pretentious as he remembered.

"No wonder people stopped reading," he said to himself.

Day 114 - The Somnambulist - Part 23

"Oscar?"

"Hmm."

"Hey, are you all right?"

"What's that? Oh, yes, dear. I'm fine, thank you."

"You sure about that?" she asked, her eyes studying the drowsy expression of his face as if it were a painting in need of interpretation.

"Yes, yes, fine. I'm sorry. I haven't gotten much sleep lately; that's all."

In fact, in the two nights since Oscar's conscious journey to the graveyard and the park below, he'd had no more than two and a half hours of sleep, and his recently restless nature was taking a toll on his capacities. He had the strength to dress himself and move about the house, but he ate little more than bread and slices of sharp cheddar from a block he kept in the refrigerator, with no intention of preparing anything else.

"Maybe I should take off. You look like you need to lie down for awhile."

"Don't worry about me, Maddy. I'm fine. No need to trouble yourself on my account."

"Oscar."

"Yes?"

"You called me Maddy."

Oscar looked up at her, a figure looming over him, with graceful edges, dark hair, and eyes like a green flash, frozen in the wake of the setting sun. The blurred lines of her face cleared, lines that had been labeled with a name now irrelevant.

"Kate. Good lord, Kate, I'm sorry. I wish I could sleep, but every time I climb into that bed, I find myself unable to empty my mind. All I can do is think. I've thought of so many things in the past few days, too. I've answered a few riddles, just by careful rumination. I've been writing, too. Oh yes, I've been writing."

"That's great. Really. But maybe you should take a few days off, okay?"

"I don't know, Kate. I don't know how much longer I have. I don't know how much longer I can put this off."

"What? Oscar, what are you talking about?"

"Forgive me, I'm rambling again. That's just the insomnia talking. It's rather ridiculous, to tell the truth, but for a while now, I've had the feeling that I had one story left in me. One thing left to say, and then I'd be done."

"Right."

"I don't quite think you understand me, my dear, but I'm not talking about retirement. I'm not talking about settling down in one of those communities, where people my age tend to congregate when they start acting a bit peculiar. When we're finished, I believe that I will die."

She stared at him, observing every expression and slight movement, unable to turn away, unable to understand the things circulating through his brain.

"That's kind of a morbid prophecy to make, don't you think?" she said, at last.

"Well, I don't know about that. It's more of a feeling than a prophecy, really."

"What was it you called us? Latter-day Cassandra, right? Wasn't she the prophetess that no one would believe?"

"So I won't even believe myself, now--is that what you're getting at?" Oscar asked dryly, offering a brief glance of the man she'd come to know. "I just refuse to believe something so inane. Where's the harm in that?"

"You sound better already."

With his eyebrows raised curiously, he flashed a smug grin.

"Listen, I am gonna head out, though. I have class in the morning," she said.

"Do what you must, but here--"

He grabbed a bundle of papers from his desk, stacked neatly beside his typewriter, placed them in an empty folder normally intended for the short stories and assorted files and notes that he had accumulated over the years, and handed the entire package to her.

"Take this with you. I can't keep it here, not if I want to sleep."

"What is this?"

"This is everything I've written so far--bits here and there, mostly, but there is a good solid chunk I feel you could use toward the end."

She opened the flap of the folder and peered inside, flipping casually through the pages with her thumb and forefinger.

"Oscar, there must be fifty pages here," she said, her voice tinged with surprise. "When did you write all this?"

"Just in the past few days, as I said. It's surprising how much one can accomplish when one cannot sleep. Really didn't take that long, to be honest."

He could see the concern in her eyes as she skimmed the pages, her eyes darting from one line to the next before restraining herself.

"Don't worry," said Oscar with a smile. "It's all perfectly coherent. Of that I'm certain."

She opened her mouth as if to speak but could not find the words. After all, how was she supposed to tell her favorite writer, her creative idol, her friend and mentor that she suspected his work to be a documented descent into sleep-deprived lunacy?

"It's all right," he said. "I know I wasn't acting myself a few moments ago, but I assure you, I'm fine. You caught me in a rare moment of weakness."

"Are you sure? I could stick around for awhile, if you need me to. Are you hungry? I could pick up some takeout--"

"I'm fine, dear. In fact, I'm confident that once you take that damned fragmented manuscript far, far away from me, I'll finally settle down and catch up on my lost sleep."

"Okay, if you say so."

"There is one more thing," he said, his eyes fixed on the floor, unable to meet hers.

"Name it."

"This may sound mad, and you'll have reason to think me senile once more, but as I said, I've been thinking about many things in the past few days. If you should find a young man at your door in the middle of the night, clad in flannel pajamas, wake him. Do whatever you can to wake him."

She said nothing.

"I did warn you, you know. Please just take this as cryptic advice, and if a moment like that ever comes, heed it."

"Why? What'll happen?"

"I don't know," he replied with a laugh. "That's what I'd like to find out."

"In that case, I'll do it."

He knew that at this point, she was merely patronizing him, but she'd gotten the message, at least, and that was all that mattered. If by some strange chance she found herself in that particular situation, she would know what had to be done.

She said a polite goodbye and left Oscar to his own devices. As the door clicked shut, he felt that a weight had been lifted from him. He immediately lay himself across the thick cushions of the couch, his head buried in one pillowing armrest and his bare feet dangling off the other, and closed his eyes. He could feel it waiting for him, closing in, like opening the door to a familiar face, and he slept the sleep of the just. He slept the sleep of the soul.

***

As Kate made her journey home, she began to realize something that made her rather ill at ease. The world may have taken the purpose out of Oscar Bruges' life, but her novel--that idea that was supposed to have given him new purpose--came with a very high price. Oscar was right, she understood as she absently flipped through the partial manuscript he had sent with her. This story was going to kill him. She, no matter how indirectly, was going to kill him.

She closed the folder and stared at it, bound in her hands like a book of fate she was doomed to carry for all eternity. Arresting the feelings of grief and guilt that towered expectedly over her conscience, she was left with only hope--the hope that someday, this would all be worth it.

Day 113 - The Somnambulist - Part 22

The park, as he suspected, was abandoned, left to anguish in sedentary solitude until sunrise, when the first patrons of the morning would pay their visits. They would jog her trails or walk her grounds with their leashed dogs or simply rest awhile on her skin, enjoying the view of the pond and the ducks and geese that would soon breach its surface and roam the soggy bank, plucking away at anything that moved or could be considered a meal. For now, however, the place was dark and empty, sadder by far than the graveyard he had just left, if only because of the park's potential activity and the silence in place of the laughter of children.

He took to the woods first, stumbling through the grass and seeking out the path with his hands held in front of him. Once inside, he found it easy to follow the trail, since it was always the widest gap in the trees that surrounded him. He emerged from the woods on the other side of the pond, having blindly circled the entire park on a simple dirt path.

"What am I looking for?" he asked himself.

Finding no answers, no reason for being in this place at all, he walked back to the benches and the vacant playground nearby. He felt as though he was losing his mind. Waking up in a strange place was one thing--it was involuntary, after all, the result of an unconscious mind and a dreamed sense of attainable pursuit, but aimless wandering in the middle of the night, searching for fulfillment that may not even exist and realistic meaning to explain such dreams, was something else entirely. It felt like a sort of madness or, at the very least, the onset of insomnia and the denial of dreams altogether.

He rested on a bench, contemplating whether he should stay there to watch the sunrise. It wouldn't be long now, he told himself, then the world would shine, and he would be rescued from the darkness. Though truthfully, the dark wasn't what worried him. As he sat, he realized that he should have been completely exhausted from his hike, and while his joints and muscles did begin their anticipated aches, he found himself entirely awake. He wasn't the least bit tired, and this wasn't like a dream. This wasn't like a dream at all.

Before long, he moved from the bench to the playground, lowering himself carefully into one of the larger swings. As he rocked himself gently, the heels of his sneakers leaving trails in the dirt below, he wished he could remember how it felt to be young again.

Day 112 - The Somnambulist - Part 21

He awoke in the dark. The faint glow of the clock radio at his bedside was all that could be seen, and its low hum buzzed in his ears, a constant drone of power that would allow him no more rest. Straining his shoulder, he reached over the edge of the bed, grabbed the clock radio's power cord, and yanked hard, freeing its plug from the wall socket and sinking the room into complete silence and darkness, yet no matter how long he lay, patiently waiting, he could not return to sleep. Something felt off, somehow wrong.

There was a feeling of disappointment creeping coldly down his back--an embedded fear to which he refused to succumb. Weeks ago, he was unable to write. The words had been hidden away, always just out of his grasp, but now--now that he'd found them again, the intensity and the passion that accompanied them like old friends--the dreams that had taken their place were gone, like a spring dried up in the heat of summer. He was more lost than before, unwilling to trade meaning for meaning. He wanted both.

Since his dreams did not come for him, he decided to chase them, instead. With a satisfied click, the lamp at his bedside was switched on, and a ball of pale light shined against the walls, giving depth to the room if not detail. He searched through his closet, fishing a decade-old pair of sneakers with a loose rubber heel from just beneath the surface. They were walking shoes (or running shoes--he couldn't quite remember how the salesman had put it so long ago), and they were extremely comfortable. The best part about intentional night walks, Oscar thought to himself as he pried his feet into the shoes, was that treading barefoot across loose rocks and pebbles was completely optional.

The world outside was still steeped in early-morning darkness, and he struggled in vain to recall the glowing digits that had been burning beside his bed before he so abruptly pulled the plug. The air was crisp, and the first birds of the morning already stirred in the boughs surrounding him, waiting with impatient squawks for the rest of the world to awaken, and to Oscar, it felt distinctly like three o' clock.

As he climbed the hills, he could see the sleeping town below, disturbed only by several sets of distant headlights roaming the empty streets. College kids, he assumed, heading back to their dormitories and apartments after a full night, or simply those who were doomed to work night shifts. Either way, to the old man on the hill, they were only fireflies, flitting through the valley below.

When he reached the cemetery, he found that there was something especially discomfiting about the place in the dark. He'd never experienced it before, having only awoken here in the mornings no earlier than the moments just before dawn, when there was at least the promise of sunlight to fill the world with a preemptive, hopeful golden glow. Now there was just an uneasy, lingering stillness. In the moonlight, he maneuvered around the scattered graves until he found the one that he knew so well, the one that he would know even if he were blindfolded.

"Hello, darling. I wish I knew what I was doing here. Compensating for something, I suppose. I'd been dreaming, you know. At least, I think they were dreams. I can't exactly remember them, but I don't know what else they could be. They've stopped now. It feels like I should apologize to you, but for what, I don't know."

He paused for a moment, head bowed in silence at her grave side, and then shuffled away, through the mass of earth and stone, the names on which were lost to the obscurity of the pre-dawn hours.

Day 111 - The Somnambulist - Part 20

The woman sits alone in the lodge, singing a song to herself. It is a song her mother had taught her, had sung to her when she was just a girl, and her voice falters as she realizes she cannot remember all the words. The meaning has been lost, like the smoke rising through the hole in the lodge into the night sky. The fire beside her crackles, hungry, consuming, placated only by the small bundle of sticks she has gathered with her knotted hands.

With her brother, she had finished building the last of the scaffolds, leaving her body rugged and sore with torn calluses on her palms and splinters beneath her fingertips. But the scaffolds were done, and the last of the bodies had been placed upon them, left along the bank of the river. When they finally give way, they will collect what is left behind and return it to the earth, but until then, they wait.

Her daughter is still asleep on the other side of the fire, wrapped in buffalo hide and lying atop the thick woven blankets the white men sent. A single strand of dark hair winds down the girl's sleeping face, like a serpent slithering from the brush to a warmer place, and her body heaves rhythmically with every gentle breath.

The woman stares intently at the girl, fearing that at any moment her breath would be stilled, the body emptied of the last bits of life still clinging within, and yet, she hopes this will be the way her daughter dies--at peace with the world around her, forsaking the wails and throes, the violent vomiting, and the bleeding pustules suffered by the rest of her people. At times, she dreams of lying beside her sleeping child, weeping as she smothers the girl with a coat of soft fur, and when she wakes, sweat dripping from her brow, she is not entirely convinced that this would be the wrong thing to do.

She closes her eyes, desperate not to let herself cry. The song is forgotten.

The wind outside, however, has one of its own, singing it loudly as it whistles through the empty lodges that surround hers. Over the years, she has become so accustomed to the sound of bustling people on the other side of the thin earthen walls that she still imagines that she hears them. At night, she hears the voices of the dead--laughing, celebrating in words she cannot discern. They are the voices of ghosts, and they are not meant for her ears.

A figure appears at the throat of the lodge. He exhales deeply to make his presence known, and she looks up at him, firelight dancing across the length of his body to expose buffalo hide and a dark, rigid face with eyes like stone.

"How is she?" he asks.

"Sleeping. Now quiet, or you'll wake her."

"There's something here."

"What?"

"I don't know. Something moving, something large. I hear it in the brush."

She stands up, clutching her breast with a battered hand.

"Is it man or spirit?"

"A man, I hope, or else something come to tend to us."

She follows him outside, leaving the safety of the lodge and the fire within, warming with a thick smoke that drives away the scent of death and decay hovering over the village like a rain cloud. Though in the open air, she can smell it, borne on the wind off the river bank, where an entire village of corpses lay on heavy wooden scaffolds. She would do anything to keep that smell from her daughter, that she would never know the odor of human suffering and decay.

"Which way?" she asks.

Her brother points and leads her onward.

Along the edge of the village, where the long, ragged grass grows in patches around abandoned lodges, tall enough to hide a man, should he choose to be hidden. In the darkness they hear something moving, pulling the thick grass from side to side, an armful at a time. The pale moonlight lends its glow to their cause, and with it, they see the curtain of grass part and a man stumbling to the ground, panting at their feet.

His face is as pale as the moon and stars, flecked with bramble scratches, his skin white, his coat a tattered remnant of an officer's uniform. The brother and sister say nothing to him, even as foreign words crackle from his lips. They know what he is and offer no helping hand, instead turning away, back to the ruins of their village and the warming fire of their lodge. The white man follows them, crawling behind like a savage shadow, like a wounded animal loping toward assumed safety.

"What should we do with him?" she asks.

"Nothing."

"We leave him to die, then? Give him no food, no place to rest?"

"Why should we? You see that coat he wears. You know what it means. His kind brought death to everyone we've ever known."

"Look at him. He's dying."

"Good."

"You don't mean that. We can't let him suffer. That's not our way."

"What way? We have no way! Not anymore. Our entire village, sister. Our entire village."

They step into the lodge, leaving the white man to collapse in the dirt outside. Inside, the girl still sleeps soundly, her eyes clinched in the grasp of some strange dream.

"I'm going to help him," she whispers. "Because that's still my way."

He reaches for her arm, catching her wrist in a tightening fist, his eyes fueled by fire and anger, but she shakes him away, her own stern determination overpowering him.

"Do not forget whose lodge this is," she says. "We may be all that's left, but you can't deny my familial right."

She gathers some scraps of food left by the fire and a spare blanket and strides defiantly back outside, where the man waits in a huddled pile. There is no tenderness, no care in her eyes as she stares down at the darkened figure, only pity. She throws the food and blanket to the ground.

"Here," she says, though she knows he can't understand. "Stay outside. My lodge is not open to you."

As she retreats back to the warmth of the fire and the cold stare of her brother, the white man scrambles for the food, clutching what he can and shoving it into his mouth, dirt and all. In the pale light of the moon and the muted red glow of the lodge fire, he stares down at the blanket in front of him, and he realizes what it means. He curls up, coverless in the loose dirt, and fades to a restless sleep, stirred by nightmares and the guilt he cannot silence.

***

"Ah, conflict!"

"What do you think?"

"Interesting, so far. Just one question, though."

"Okay."

"What are their names?"

"What?"

"Your characters--I notice that you haven't given them names, and please don't tell me you were going for some arty approach because I'll just tell you how absolutely trite and pretentious that would be."

"I thought it might have more impact if they were nameless, like they died without being remembered, like the statistics from some old text book that they are."

"Well, you'd be wrong, dear. In your story, they're still very much alive. Besides that, you said yourself that the theme would be carrying on even as their world is ending. You don't think that they'd forsake their names in the last moments like that, do you?"

"Well--"

"Don't compromise your story just because you hit a creative brick wall. Press on. Break through."

"Okay, so... names?"

"Names."

"I can do that."

Day 110 - The Somnambulist - Part 19

After a thorough scouring of the folios in Oscar's study, they decided on a perfectly depressing tale about a young handmaiden's attempts to poison herself over a period of two weeks to escape a life of abuse at the hands of her lord.

"It's a love story," said Oscar.

Then they set off, the old writer walking the streets in a dark suit with a girl young enough to be his granddaughter by his side. They followed the directions that had been scribbled on the slip of paper, arguing about the appropriate turns and the quality of the landmarks the Banks family had given him. Two and a half miles later, they found themselves in an obviously wealthy neighborhood, where most of the homes were several stories tall and adorned with Grecian columns. Behind one large house, a grotesque brick chimera of Victorian and Georgian architecture, the yard was covered in decorations and trampled beneath a mob of mostly white-clad children and adults.

Double-checking the address on the front of the house, they rounded its massive walls with heavy hearts and heavier feet, disappearing into a throng of people that silently watched and judged them as they passed.

"Mr. Bruges, I'm glad you could make it," said a man with perfect hair and perfect teeth.

"Mr. Banks?"

"That's me! And who might you be, young lady? Were you famous, too?" Mr. Banks asked with a mischievous grin and a particularly greedy look in his eyes.

"Not yet," Kate replied with a smile.

The grin disappointingly dissapated.

"Oh, well," he said, then wrapped an arm across Oscar's shoulders, to the old author's annoyance, drawing him away in the pretense of a private conversation. Kate, of course, leaned towards them, listening in. "Now, then, I know we agreed upon the sum of five thousand, but I'd be willing to throw in an extra five hundred if you could change the name of one of your characters in your little story to Dakota."

Oscar raised his eyebrows.

"A tempting offer, Mr. Banks, but I'm not certain it would be appropriate for this story, not to mention the blow to my own artistic integrity."

Mr. Banks shrugged. "What about an extra thousand?"

"You have a deal, sir."

"Great! You're on in ten minutes," said the man, believing himself the ideal, perfect father as he walked away, his head held high.

"Wow, you are such a sell-out," said Kate, rejoining Oscar as he flipped through the stapled pages of his story, laughing quietly to himself.

"My dear, there are no sacred cows in this business, only the whims of the people who have all the money."

***

"The bruises on her wrist, the black marks of his fingertips against her porcelain flesh, stung as she stirred the final concoction. Her dinner consisted of a bit of stale bread and murky water, yet she applied the drops to both, desperate to hide any trace of poison from her tongue, if only to further convince herself that this was not her doing, not her own hand that destroyed her. He had managed that long ago.

"Thus Dakota," he continued, emphasizing the name, "supped for the final time and lay her wearied body on the cold stone floor, having at last found escape."

Once he finished, there was a faint ripple of applause from those who had given what they could of their attention. Kate alone clapped earnestly, and a few of the younger children stared at Oscar with looks of disbelief, wondering if they were the only ones who'd actually listened to what had been recited.

Mr. Banks reappeared, clapped Oscar on the shoulder, and handed him a check for six thousand dollars, which the writer accepted with a polite smile and nod.

"I can't believe you got away with that," said Kate as they began the walk back to Oscar's house, where they would again take to the study and return to work.

"Trust me, it becomes easier to believe every time."

***

The next morning, Oscar awoke in his bed. He felt around, just to be certain his eyes weren't playing tricks on him and that he wasn't actually lying in a field somewhere. With a sigh, he began his day as if it was any other, though he could not help but feel disappointed.

Day 109 - The Somnambulist - Part 18

At three o' clock in the afternoon, with ten full, double-spaced pages of prose already behind them, Oscar stood up from the desk and stretched his back. Kate was so involved with the story thus far that she barely noticed him slipping from the room. It slowly dawned on her, as she finished off another page, leaving an unfinished sentence hanging and desperate for her to begin the next without being forgotten, that he'd mentioned a prior obligation that he felt necessary to see through. She could hear him even now, opening the closet of his bedroom and scraping hangers across the metal bar as he assembled his wardrobe, so she finished off her thought, to the relief of the poor sentence that finally became whole, and went to the hall, waiting patiently outside the study.

"Oh, hello, dear. I didn't mean to interrupt your work," he said as he stepped from the bedroom.

He was dressed in a dark suit with a black tie that had been neatly straightened, brass cufflinks studding his wrists, his hair neatly parted and sporting an apparent layer of sculpting gel.

"You look nice," she replied with an approving nod. "Where you going?"

"Out for a little while. It's nothing to trouble yourself about. I simply need to grab a short story from my study, and I'll be out of your way. Feel free to stay and work as long as you like. I won't be gone for more than an hour or so."

He walked past her triumphantly, believing he had successfully deflected whatever interest she'd had in his activities, but his major flaw was that he didn't know Kate Knight well enough to anticipate her stubborn curiosity.

"So... where are you going?"

"Just out, dear. As I said, I won't be gone long."

"Oscar."

"Yes?"

"Where are you going?"

He glared at her impatiently, but her reply was a simple, sweet smile.

"You might as well tell me," she said. "If you don't, I'm going to follow you anyway, so spill it."

"You'd really follow me?"

"Yes, and potentially make a scene. Didn't the Walrus warn you about me?"

"Not well enough, it would seem. Very well. If you must know, I'm going to a--," he said, then paused long enough for an exasperated, overly-dramatic sigh, "--a birthday party."

"That's nice. Who's birthday?"

He pulled a scrap of paper from his pocket, covered in a scribbled handwriting that only Oscar could read.

"Dakota Banks--a very dear old friend of mine. I believe she's turning twelve."

"Don't tell me it's one of those birthday parties. How much are they paying you?"

"An exorbitant amount, I assure you. It seems that little Dakota's friend Madison had Tom Wolfe reading at her party last month, so now, of course, the Banks are taking the opportunity to one-up their social peers."

"Hey, at least they think you're better than Tom Wolfe."

"Yes, well, there is that. I'll understand perfectly if you want to continue working while I'm gone. After all, the only way one becomes a better writing is by writing as much as possible without interruptions."

"Oh, I'm going with you," she said with a smirk.

"Do you really want to see me humiliated?" he asked, defeated.

"Watching the humiliation of others is one of the finer things in life, I've found. Makes me feel all better about myself."

"Fine, then. You can help me pick out a story to read, but remember this: in ten years, this is what you have to look forward to."

Day 108 - The Somnambulist - Part 17

They settled into the study. Kate lugged a thin wooden chair from the kitchen down the hall so that they could both sit at the desk. Oscar had prepared the Royal typewriter with a fresh sheet of paper, having stashed away the pages he'd written in his sleep, and set it right in front of her, a gesture that instantly made her realize that she was going to be doing all the typing.

"Okay," she said.

He nodded.

"This is where we start."

"Typically, yes."

"I just start typing away."

There was a muted moment of silence.

"You haven't the slightest idea how to start, do you?"

"No, sir, I don't."

"You have the lines, though--those first few lines that you told me. I thought they were rather good."

"Yeah, they are... but what then?"

Oscar hemmed.

"Let's try a little exercise," he said. "You've done the research you were so insistent on?"

"Yes."

"All right, then, close your eyes. This is the tricky part. This is where the images inside your head become art."

***

They began with a white expanse. This was the base from which everything else would be created, the blank canvas on which an entire world would be applied. There was no noise, no scent, no perceivable qualities whatsoever. Then, like a painter making his first stroke, the sky appeared--thick, open, the radiating deep blue of a cloudless afternoon.

Then came the ground, dry and cracked in the summer heat, though a river ran not far away, giving this world its very first sound--the sound of water rushing, splashing against rock and fallen logs, branching away in smaller tributaries that carried the sound farther and farther away in every direction. The grass was sparse at points, though grouped in thick clusters near the river banks. There were gardens there, as well, or at least what was left of them, now left overgrown and disused.

The village stood still near the edge of a cliff. There was no sound but the lapping of the wind against buffalo hide. In the center of the village was a tall, thick tree, wrapped in wooden planks, and around this plaza were dozens of scattered lodges made of earth, shaped like domes.

As if hastily sketched in, a woman appeared in one of the lodges--which one didn't matter. The rest were empty. She sat on the ground, contemplating the end of all things.

***

"So?"

"I've got it."

"Good. Now are we going to write, or are we going to sit here and marvel at our own machinations?"

"We're going to write," she said with a glare, and she began to type.

There are three of us now. Three in all the world.

Day 107 - The Somnambulist - Part 16

By Saturday morning, another twelve pages of Here Comes a Revolution had accumulated in the typewriter and atop the surface of the writing desk--the original rough draft, too, complete with an assortment of awkward adverbs that were omitted on the second draft, and Oscar awoke two more times in the woods by the park and once more beside Madeleine's grave. There was a silent acknowledgment every time he awoke, and a distant look in his eyes as if trying to solve a riddle. He was perplexed, of course, but he had grown accustomed to waking in some strange place far away from his bed. It somehow reminded him of the long walks he used to take.

Still, he resolved to bite his tongue and stay low-key about his dream-borne wandering, for the most part. If someone asked, he planned to tell them the truth quite plainly, as he'd told Kate when she began quizzing him about the state of his dress several days earlier. In the few conversations he'd had since then, including an abnormally long discussion with Walter about the proper way to grow tomatoes when he returned the laptop, he simply found that there was never an appropriate window to mention his apparent repeating past while completely unconscious.

When Kate arrived late in the morning, she seemed to avoid the topic of sleepwalking altogether, finding it unseemly to remind Oscar exactly how heartbreaking his nocturnal adventures could be. Everything else, though, even the tangentially related, was fair game.

"What was she like?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Madeleine--what was she like?"

Oscar set two plates on the table, bearing identical arrangements of eggs and toast, then poured two mugs full of coffee before sitting back, lost in his thoughts as he searched for an adequate way to describe her, but Madeleine was like an eclipse or some other fantastic phenomenon that words could never describe. They had to be seen through one's own eyes, their presence felt first-hand.

"She was an amazing woman, almost as witty and charming as myself. If you don't mind me saying, you remind me of her quite a bit, both in looks and determination."

"I don't mind at all."

"And she was always so elegant and graceful. She was the sort of woman you could imagine always wearing a dress, with a perfume so light you'd think it was a fragrance emanating from her own skin."

"What happened to her?"

Oscar immediately sighed, his head bowed down toward his chest, withdrawing.

"I'm sorry," Kate quickly said. "It's none of my business, I know. I just thought you might want to t--"

"Cancer."

"Oh."

"For a long while, she was sick--ragged, thin, though she managed to hide it well. How she hid it from me for so long, I'll never know, but through the years, once we finally found out what it was, we had a few scares. I thought for sure I'd lost her."

Kate prodded her eggs politely with a fork.

Oscar rubbed his chin, his hand flowing over the short, coarse grain of his face. He'd forgotten to shave today.

"One day she got better, and we thought that was it. We thought things could finally go back to normal--we could live our happy little lives and pretend that none of the doctors' visits, none of the long hospital stays (with their stale food and starched sheets) had ever happened. I suppose at some point in our lives, each and every one of us is wrong about something.

"I'd like to say that when it finally happened, it was sudden, that she didn't suffer. Unfortunately, I know better. The inevitability, that overwhelming sense that it would come back, was suffering enough. She told me once, even after it had gone into remission, that she could still feel it--something--inside her, something that refused to settle. I think she was in pain the whole time, unwilling to share it with me."

They finished their breakfast quietly. Kate asked no more questions until long after.

Day 106 - The Somnambulist - Part 15

The night before, Oscar went to bed without the slightest inkling of what would happen as he drifted off to a deep, peaceful sleep. Almost immediately after his conscious mind slipped away, he sat up on the edge of his bed, his bare feet resting on the carpet below, elbows on knees, head in hands, like a man trapped in his own thoughts, struggling to make sense of some distant predicament. Then he sighed, not in the manner of exhaustion or of resignation to a sleepless night. Rather, this was a sigh of desperation.

His university days, at long last, had ended, and now he was forced to join a loud, turbulent world with a seemingly infinite list of demands, requiring him to earn his living from now on. There was rent to pay, food to buy, and a heart to win. Above all else, he avoided the furniture factory, though not from disrespect for the familial ties to a dying cottage industry. No, he wished to make his own name, conquer this world on his own terms. Bending thin strips of wood and carving patterns on a spinning lathe might have been fine for his father and brother, but those were their lives, their aspirations, and his plans were far grander, though ill-defined.

He couldn't get the story out of his head. It played over and over, a looping picture show with no true ending, an absence he felt sure he could accommodate given enough time. His father stared at him, blank and dumb-stricken, when young Oscar proclaimed his love for literature and his intention to write a novel.

"Where's the money in that?" he had replied.

"There's money in printing. There's money in the appreciation of the thing. Do you know how much a publisher pays for something good?" He tried to explain, but his words fell on deaf ears. His father smirked and walked away.

He had a story. He had the desire and the motivation, but he found himself quite unable to take the plunge, to sit quietly and deconstruct his thoughts, then re-pave them in words. He was afraid of exposing himself. He was afraid that he wasn't good enough. What if Madeleine didn't like it? What then? She knew how much he wanted to do this, but would she be able to look him in the eye knowing that he was a purveyor of cheap, emotionless words?

There was so much doubt, but the words, bulging the seams of his attention span until he could think of nothing else, nothing but the story, so he trekked from the bedroom to the study, treading through the hall of the house his grandfather had left him. Something was waiting for him there, though--something he had never seen before. It was relatively small, occupying the same base area as his old Royal typewriter, but it was thin, sleek, and black, with a vertical screen like a sort of miniature monolith. Maybe it was something of Madeleine's, something she'd left behind the night before, but whatever it was, it was odd and in his way. He found that it was hinged and that the prostrate screen could be pushed down with a satisfying click, so with a careful grasp, he moved it to the nearest bookshelf, slid the typewriter forward from its resting spot against the wall, and sat at the desk. Finally, he found himself alone--alone with his thoughts and the instrument to free them.

But the words came slowly, the expected downpour little more than a trickle, a drizzling sleet at the prospect of a blizzard, and he felt somehow ashamed. Young Oscar Bruges wanted nothing more than to write, to proffer everything that he knew and desired to know, to make that shared commitment to exploring new frontiers and walking side by side with his peers and readers as they wandered strange new roads, both in imagination and substance. If only he could find the words.

Then he thought of Madeleine and how proud she would be--how proud she could be, and he realized that no longer was he doing this for himself. He was doing it for her. Everything for her. He pictured her face, olive-skinned and fair-featured, the smile poised on her thin lips, the biting words on the tip of her tongue. He thought of her, and he began to write. It seemed easy then, as if she was the key, his divine inspiration, his muse.

The story was about a man, as plain and ordinary as any other, going about an unfulfilled life like any other. It was about a man with the resolve to break free from his constraints and self-imposed exile from a happy existence. It was about a man that began a revolution.

Certainly it couldn't have been the most original plot. It was the sort of story he could imagine existing in the age of the Ancient Greeks about a man wanting more from his life. Time and time again it's been told, but somehow, he was sure, he had found a new way to tell it.

A scant few paragraphs were all he could manage for this night, so he abandoned the typewriter with every intention of returning in the morning, fresh and eager to press on. Pouring himself a glass of water, he wasn't sure he would get any sleep. Not tonight, at least, while so much still lay heavy on his mind.

A walk would do the trick, though, he thought. It would do him good to get some fresh air and clear away the congestion that threatened to swallow him whole. Unable to find his sneakers, he slid into the slippers that waited patiently by the foot of the bed and ignored the strange anomalies that seemed to populate his house. Surely they weren't all Madeleine's, but he decided not to concern himself with anything else at that moment.

The streets were still dark, but he knew the way well enough, hiking down the avenues, past the Johnsons' rose garden, the first blooms already rising from their thorny cages, and through the Taylors' yard and across the meadow, though he had trouble recognizing the large church that seemed to have popped up overnight. He shrugged it away, figuring some phantom of the sleepless night was toying with his senses.

The air was crisp, cool even in the dawning summer, and the park sat silently at the bottom of the hill like a hunter's baited trap, waiting for some pour animal to wander inside and find itself caught up in a flurry of soft, inviting grass and comfortable benches. He was alone, and he took to the winding path that disappeared off into the woods, into the very heart of his world, where he could think deep thoughts without worry of being overwhelmed and his darkest fears were siphoned away by the deeper shadows of trees and unseen forces. Had it not been so close to dawn, with a faint glow on the horizon shedding its reluctant first light, he would have been utterly lost in the darkness, left to wander that place for the rest of his life and beyond.

He thought about his story, or so he had convinced himself. The actual image in his head was of Madeleine, wearing that pale dress with black heels. It was a fine dress, as he often told her when she asked, and she always asked. He had been thinking about her quite a bit lately. He thought that he might ask her to marry him.

A sudden exhaustion overtook him, and the last thing he remembered before toppling to the ground was daylight intensifying all around him, a glow from a sun he couldn't see, and then nothing more.

Day 105 - The Somnambulist - Part 14

"Oscar?"

"Good morning, Kate," he said, as if nothing was out of the ordinary.

"What's going on? Are you okay?"

"Of course I am. I was out for my morning stroll."

She looked him over, a look of doubt and prodding curiosity fixed on her face.

"Shouldn't you be at the library?" he asked, desperate to find a way to shift her focus away from him.

"I just came from there. I wanted to run a few things by you before I head off to class this afternoon. Oh, and don't think you're getting out of explaining this."

He grimaced but said nothing else as he ambled past her, opening the front door and politely inviting her inside with a simple gesture.

"It's nothing to worry about. Care for an egg? Slice of toast?"

She shook her head, and he made straight for the kitchen, setting to work on his own breakfast, goaded on by a rumbling stomach. He dove into the refrigerator and cupboards, gathering his ingredients, with a silent focus that made Kate wonder whether he was going to continue.

"The truth is," he finally said, "from time to time, I do a bit of sleepwalking."

"Seriously? Wow. I didn't realize that was a real thing."

"Of course it is, and I must say, it tends to get annoying when you wake up somewhere strange with an empty stomach. I think today is a two-egg day."

He cracked two eggs loudly, pouring the contents into a small white bowl to check for any small flecks of the shell that may have fallen into the yolk, then, with a dash of pepper dumped the whole thing into a heating skillet. It sizzled loudly at the moment of impact. Then, with an expertise that comes to those who prepare their own breakfast the same way every morning for years on end, Oscar swiftly slid two pieces of bread into the toaster, chopped several slices of green pepper and onion, which were then dumped on top of the eggs, and then stirred the scrambling concoction with a plastic spatula. The entire process took a little under three minutes and left Kate impressed, with a growing hunger of her own that made her regret turning down his offer.

"Where did you wake up this morning?"

He waited until he'd completely swallowed the bite of toast in his mouth before responding.

"The park. In the middle of the woods."

"That's kind of strange. Any idea what you were doing out there?"

"Not a clue."

"I can't even imagine what that must be like. No, really. I can barely comprehend waking up in my own bed every morning. If I opened my eyes to find myself in the woods, I would freak the hell right out."

"I can imagine."

"So where else do you wake up?"

Oscar thought about this carefully for a moment.

"In the cemetery," he said, "by my wife's grave."

She said nothing, instead staring at him with a distant, heartbroken look in her eyes and a mouth hung open. Her expression, as if frozen in time, temporarily distracted him from his eggs.

"It isn't as bad as it sounds," he added.

"Bad? No, that's not the word I'd use. Sad, tragic, depressing--those are a bit more fitting, I think. Oscar, that's terrible."

"Don't worry about it, my dear. I've gotten quite used to it, though the first time did leave me quite shaken."

"So what do you do for sleepwalking? Is there a cure or something?"

"Not that I'm aware of. Though I'm sure strapping myself to the bed might possibly work."

"Have you seen a doctor about this? There's got to be something you can do."

Oscar smiled.

"That's just the thing," he said. "I'm not certain I want to stop. That's not to say I consistently enjoy walking a mile or so in my pajamas every few days, but there's something natural about it. In an odd sort of way, I do like the unpredictability of it all."

"If you say so."

"Now then, I believe there was something you wanted to run by me?"

"Um, yeah... the theme, the main theme for the book."

"Go on."

She hesitated, but only for a brief moment. With a deep breath and a renewed sense of resolve, she pressed on.

"Fighting on, even in the face of overwhelming change and, well, the promise of death. The characters aren't stupid, after all. They realize what they're up against and the impossibility of surviving or renewing their culture, but they still go about their lives, as if they're making a difference because, ultimately, it's the only thing they can do."

When she finished, Oscar sullenly nodded.

"That sounds like a good start," he said.

"I should probably go. See you later?"

"Of course, dear. Though you really should try calling, save yourself from making the trip out here every time you have a question."

"Right, calling. Gotcha."

"Good day, Kate."

She gave a small, embarrassed wave, her face the shade of red normally reserved for overly ripened strawberries, and disappeared out the front door, leaving Oscar to finish the remaining bites of his breakfast in silence. After rinsing his dishes and going about the other mundane tasks to start his morning, he shuffled back to his study.

When the girl first proposed their collaboration, he was quite naturally taken aback, shocked not just by said proposal coming from a girl he'd just met, but because it never occurred to him that anyone still cared about his work. The other book he'd been working on was a labor of love, but he readily assumed that the manuscript would die with him, something lost to an ignorant world like a burned volume in the Great Library. The very notion that someone actively wanted to read his work, that someone wanted his help, his input, if only a tiny sliver of an idea from the dark bowels of his mind, was quite touching. Oscar Bruges, after all, already fancied himself a dead man. He accepted that his best days were far, far behind him and that everything sense had been a strange sort of dream. Now, even while awake, all he was doing was sleepwalking through the world around him.

He'd seen something in Kate the moment they met, though. Walter had been right. The old author saw the same sort of spark, the same sort fire--deep, unquenchable, unrelenting--in her that he felt in himself. For years, he had compared himself to the Ghost Orchid floating in his greenhouse--a solitary thing with fragile roots, slowly dying, and in meeting Kate, even for a brief moment, he believed he had found the one through which a part of him could survive. She would be the one to spread his ideas, to carry on the fight. She would be his moth.

Immediately after pondering this, he realized what a terrible metaphor it made.

Nevertheless, her enthusiasm for this project reinvigorated him, and he could feel the creative energy, long thought dormant or worse, again pulsing through his body. He resolved to pack away the laptop computer Walter had loaned him and return it as soon as possible, heralding a return to his old ways--the heavy click of a typewriter's keys, the long drag of the carriage as it moved from one line to the next. As if it all really had been a dream, he reckoned that the sleeper was nearly awake, but as Oscar stepped into his study, he was about to stumble upon the truth (or at least a small part thereof) about the nature of his dreams.

The laptop, which he specifically recalled setting at the front of his writing desk, had been moved, folded shut and placed neatly atop the nearest bookcase. The powder blue Royal typewriter, however, had been pulled forward in its place, and the blank page that resided within was now covered with several thick, printed paragraphs. He pulled the page from the carriage and began to read, surprised that everything was perfectly typed with no grammatical errors. It was brilliant, of course. After all, he wrote it. But there was nothing new about this particular combination of words and punctuation. This page was first written some forty years earlier. It was the prologue of his first novel, Here Comes a Revolution.