Night Visions by Thomas Fahy Read Free Book Online Page B

room. She isn’t sure what to say next, so she looks aimlessly at the papers on her desk.
    â€œSam, do you want to have dinner?”
    â€œUm, I can’t. Not tonight.”
    She doesn’t want to tell him about the night terrors, theclinic, Dr. Clay, or any of it. She’s not ready for this return of intimacy. She doesn’t want be a martyr to the past, to a love she can’t trust.
    Frank picks up his bag. “All right. Well, thanks again for your help.” He walks to the door. “I’ll be in touch. Good night.”
    â€œGood night.”

Parasomnia
    WASHINGTON, D.C.
FEBRUARY 16, 1983
2:05 P.M.
    For over two weeks, the Georgetown skies have been thick with brown-gray clouds. The absence of color makes Christina feel uneasy, as if she needs to check her watch to know whether the day is just beginning or ending. She enters the basement library of the music building and is relieved to be indoors, away from crowded classrooms and loud students.
    Dozens of different-sized water pipes hang overhead, and the entire room feels cramped by the low ceiling. It is dimly lit, with cold, metallic gray shelves and narrow passageways. She hunts for several call numbers and finds more volumes than she can carry easily to a cubicle. The books smell of dust and stale cigarette smoke.
    Since October she hasn’t been able to sleep for more than an hour or two each night. That relentless circular melody keeps pushing its way into her thoughts, as if it’s trying to make herremember something already forgotten. Every week the school psychologist, whose degree in human resources hangs on the wall behind her desk, tells Christina that she is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. The attack was violent and life-threatening. It’s only natural to have trouble sleeping now, to feel anxiety and fear.
    To feel anger.
    Â 
    A few weeks ago, while standing in a music store, she heard the piece again and decided to buy a recording. She didn’t want to listen at first and left it unopened on the kitchen table throughout the afternoon. But at 3:16 in the morning—her eyes tearful with frustration and burning from the steady glow of television—she opened the tape, grabbed her Walkman, and climbed into bed. The notes progressed slowly, almost sluggishly, as if she were walking barefoot in wet sand. The physical sounds appeased some longing or craving in her memory.
    She felt calm. She fell asleep.
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    Then the sudden flash of a body writhing upside down in the dark. Torn, damaged hands reaching up, grasping for the rope tied tightly around his ankles. Blood spilling unevenly from a gash across the neck. There was only a frantic gasping sound. No voice.
    Â 
    Christina woke up startled and out of breath, hair matted against her forehead with sweat. She looked at the clock: 8:36. In disbelief, she reached for her wristwatch on the cluttered bedside table: 8:36. She had slept just over five hours. With tears of relief in her eyes, she got out of bed and dressed as quickly as possible. There wasn’t time to celebrate. She was about to miss sociology class.
    She started repeating the same ritual every night, using the Goldberg Variations as a kind of lullaby. At first, she put onher Walkman tentatively, like a swimmer testing water with her toes. The visions terrified her, but she accepted them as part of the price she would have to pay for sleeping again. Even though the music’s effects were only temporary, never lasting more than five or six hours, they were better than nothing.
    But why? She had listened to music before, and nothing ever helped her sleep. Why the Goldberg Variations?
    Christina peruses several Bach biographies in the tiny cubicle. After a few minutes, water rushes through the pipes overhead, and she remembers that the men’s restroom is directly overhead.
    â€œNasty,” she mutters.
    She can’t find much information on Goldberg, but one story in The