My Brother's Keeper

Chapter 8



THURSDAY 22 NOVEMBER 2012

I’m blessed with being able to fall asleep anywhere. Planes, trains and automobiles, friends’ sofas, back seats of cars, motel rooms — it makes no difference to me. I put my head down and I’m out like the proverbial. No shallow sleep states for me. I’ve never experienced a stage one myoclonic jerk in my life; though I’ve had plenty of experience with the other kind. With only a brief pause at stage four, I plummet straight into stage five: REM deep dream mode. According to Sean I start sleep-talking in under thirty seconds.

Started, I mean. Sean is past tense. Present tense Robbie hasn’t mentioned my odd sleep behaviour yet. Maybe that’s the kind of conversation we’ll have if we move in together, and whether the lawns need cutting and the fridge defrosting. Or maybe not. Most people, normal people, rotate from deep stage five sleep back up to stage two and then slowly back down again throughout the night. Not me. Once asleep, I pretty much stay there, way down the hole with only the occasional holiday up to stage four for a couple of minutes’ light relief. When my brain decides it’s time to wake up I rise to the surface like an abyssal diver in need of air, straight up and awake. Just like that. But try and wake me before my brain says it’s ready — well, that’s not easy.

The reason I know all this is because when I was a kid specialists studied the hell out of me. The end result of all their prodding and probing and sleep-wave monitoring was to be told my condition has no adverse effects — on me, anyway; in fact, it apparently gives me all sorts of health benefits I’m supposed to be thankful for. When I’m dreaming of flying or winning lotto it’s an enviable little trick, alright.

But there is a downside: nightmares. When I’m in a nightmare I’m there for the long haul. I can be forced awake, jolted back to consciousness, but it takes a concerted effort. Meanwhile, until my brain says it’s time to wake up, I’m stuck in nightmare-ville. Believe me, that’s no fun place to be.

The dream started off just fine. I’m swimming through clear, lucid water. Fingers stretching ahead in long easy breaststrokes. Forehead breaching like a ship’s prow. My timing is perfect, rhythmical. I take a deep breath in, my forehead dips into the iciness. I lift my chin and breathe out as the stroke comes around again, weightless, like flying; blissful. I fill my lungs with air, flip and kick down into the deep cold. Hands clasped together, arms out in front, I dolphin kick down further and further, undulating my body through the liquid. The water parts in front of me and then folds back as I slice through. It’s spectacularly easy. No drag. No effort. No struggle for breath. It’s like I have gills.

Then I glimpse something below. Something in the murky depths. Something falling. Bubbles nibble my skin as they rise past me to the surface. One hard kick and I’m closer. It’s a car. A car is falling below me in slow motion. Another kick down. Closer now, I make out a little white moon face, framed in the back window — Falcon. His eyes are wide; his hands are flattened against the glass. His mouth is a big ‘O’.

And then in one of those time jumps that happen in dreams, it’s me in the car. I’m not Falcon. I’m in the front passenger seat. The belt is tight across my chest. I’m wearing a pale blue cotton dress with lace trim on the hem. My knees are the knees of a young girl. Falcon is yelling something at me. He’s yelling in another language, or he’s yelling something I can’t make any sense of. The car is still falling. Lake weed droops past the window. An old supermarket trolley lies on its side in the muddy bed. We’re nearly at the bottom. We’ll stop falling soon. There will be a bump. I wonder if it will hurt. Dying — I wonder if it will hurt. The water is as thick as mushroom soup. As if an un-mute button has been pushed, Falcon yells ‘No!’ as loud as a fire alarm. Over and over he’s yelling it, ‘Nononononono!’ as if it’s one word. His little arms are tight around my neck. I want to remind him to put his seatbelt on. Stupid. The car lands, thud! A soft landing, a parachute landing. Mud billows up with a whoosh and settles on the window. Pretty soon all the windows will be covered with it. The door won’t open. I push harder but the weight of the water pushes back. Outside the car everything is soupy but the liquid that dribbles from the tops of the windows is clear. The river bubbles up through the floor. Already my ankles look wobbly and enormous.

Falcon’s screams are right in my ear. He bashes my head with his fists. He’s only little but it hurts. A distorted face appears at the windscreen. A hand brushes away the mud, left, right, left. I try to tell Falcon we’re saved but no words come out. It’s Karen. Her hand is a windscreen wiper. Or maybe she’s waving goodbye. I point to the door and make pulling gestures, but she just looks at me. The car tilts as if hit by a big underwater tsunami. Falcon’s hot face is on my neck. He’s yelling at me.

‘Stop.’ He’s yelling. ‘Stop!’

‘Stop!’ I bolt awake. I’m on the bedroom floor, face down, cheek pressed into the carpet. ‘Stop!’

A man is on top of me, pinning me down. I’m completely naked. His hand is pressed hard on the back of my head, forcing my face into the carpet. His other hand has pinned my wrist to the floor. He is straddled over my arse, knees pressed painfully into my ribcage. His hot face pressed against the back of my head.

‘Stop! Just stop!’

Breathing hard, he gives my cheek a good shove into the carpet for emphasis. Memory and consciousness stutter back. I’m in Auckland. I’m not trapped in a car. I’m not underwater. I stop struggling. Immediately his weight lifts as he scoots backwards off me.

‘What the f*ck!’ In the darkened room, he isn’t much more than a shadow crouched against the far wall, the king-size bed angled between us. The slatted streetlight illuminates his palms, held up in a placatory gesture. There’s a raw patch on the back of my head. My cheek burns.

‘Did you hit me?’ My voice is slurred. I sound drugged. I’m still surfacing.

‘I didn’t hit you,’ he said. ‘I tried to wake you. You just flew at me like a madwoman. Are you nuts or what? You attacked me! F*ck!’

‘Fook.’ A faint Irish lilt. My world returned to normal. Normal, that is, apart from discovering myself naked on the floor with a complete stranger who has just attacked me, or me him — whatever. Given the circumstances, it seemed appropriate to go on the aggressive.

‘Who the hell are you?’

‘I’m turning the light on, alright?’

‘Fine,’ I said.

He waited, hands up in surrender, until I’d covered myself with the bed sheet. My cheek smarted. My neck was bruised. My pride wasn’t in such good shape either.

Dark-haired, early thirties, ripped shirt — not in a designer way, more in a ‘I’ve just been attacked’ kind of way — one eyelid red and swelling. That would be the eye-gouging. Four distinct finger marks bloomed on his neck; they would go through the full autumn colour range over the next week. Eye-gouging and cheek-raking were techniques I learnt in women’s self-defence classes years earlier. They served the dual purpose of effectively fighting off an intruder and leaving visible wounds to help with identification later. I’d send the self-defence girls an email in the morning. Tell them how well it worked out. But this was no normal intruder. If there is such a thing.

‘I’m going downstairs to the kitchen now,’ he said, loud and slow, like he was talking to a dangerous inmate. ‘I’m going to put some ice on this so I won’t have to explain to everyone that a madwoman tried to kill me.’ The self-righteous type. All drama, he backed out of the doorway, his hands up in surrender mode. I needed ice, too, for the carpet burn. Grumpily, I pulled on sweat pants. He was muttering as he went down the stairs. ‘Unless, of course, you’d rather go straight into round two. What’ll it be this time? Knives? Nunchucks? Pistols at dawn?’

Ha ha. Funny guy. A bra seemed unnecessarily prudish given the naked tussle we’d just engaged in. I yanked a T-shirt over my head.

‘Come on down,’ he called. I heard the clatter of ice being dropped into glasses. ‘Maybe we can try “Pleased to meet you” as an alternative introductory technique this time.’

I didn’t need introductions. I’d already figured out who he was: the good-looker from the photo in the spare bedroom, Karen’s stepbrother.

I probably hadn’t made that great a first impression.