Nightmare Man by Alan Ryker Read Free Book Online

drug. You might be getting the placebo.”
    “What?”
    “There’s a control group. Didn’t you read the paperwork you signed?”
    “You mean that phone-book-sized stack of technical nonsense and legalese? I skimmed it.”
    He closes his eyes for a moment and sighs before saying, “There’s a control group that receives a placebo. The dream diary, the daily conversations about the night terrors, the in-facility monitoring…All these things could lead to changes by themselves, so we need a control group to see what effect all these factors have.”
    I nod. “That makes sense. So am I in the control group or not?”
    “I don’t know. This is a double-blind study, to ensure my behavior doesn’t impact the results.” He holds out a pill. “So, are you still in?”
    I look at it. I think about the fact that I might have rushed down the hall under the influence of nothing more than my own brain chemistry without my normal dose of clonazepam. On the one hand, if I stop, I can take my clonazepam again and maybe I’ll continue to have my nightly freak-out in isolation for the rest of my life. At least my kids would be safe.
    But I think Shannon is right. If there’s a way to fix this, I need to try it.
    I take the pill, and try to decide if it tastes inordinately sugary.
    * * *
    I could use a new drill. The battery begins to lose its charge as I drill the second latch catch into the bedroom door. I never use the thing farther than an extension cord can reach. Do they make them without batteries? If not, it’s a scam to shorten their lives. I make a mental note to research drills.
    “This is a bit drastic,” Shannon says, but there’s not really any argument in her voice. I have the superhuman ability to pick out the slightest hint of a contrary tone from her. She must just feel obliged to tell her husband he shouldn’t lock himself in at night like the wolfman during a full moon, though she thinks he should.
    “I know you think I always took my night terrors too lightly, but they’ve never endangered my family before. Now they have. A drastic problem calls for a drastic solution.”
    She smirks. “Is that a line from a comic book?”
    “Probably. I can’t tell anymore, so just assume half of what I say is copyrighted by Marvel or DC.”
    “Har har, but seriously, couldn’t you just try the sleep mask again and sleep with the lights on?”
    “At the moment light doesn’t seem to stop the night terrors.”
    “What did the doctor say about that? I mean, I could understand the medication not doing anything, but it is doing something, just in the wrong direction.”
    “I know. He said it could take a while to work right. I guess it’s like how sometimes depression medication can make you more depressed before it makes you less. Or he could just be talking out his ass.”
    “Maybe when they said it was a medication for night terrors, they meant to cause night terrors. Like, ‘Terrorcil, now with 50% more night terrors!’” We laugh; then she says, “But seriously, maybe you shouldn’t be taking this.”
    I shrug, hammering the tip of the screw into the door frame before I put the drill to it. “I feel like I’ve made it past this initial hurdle of getting in the mindset and going to all these damn doctors, so if this issue is fixable, the time is now. I might as well see it through.”
    I put the final screw into the door. The wood is thin, but there’s nothing I can do about that right now. I wave Shannon over into the hallway from where she sprawls on the bed, shut the door, flip both of the latches and then slap on the padlocks.
    “Jesus, those are big locks. Kind of overestimating your own strength there, Hulk.”
    They are really big.
    “Dad is super strong like the Hulk,” Logan says. I didn’t hear him wander over. The sound of the drill had kept him in the living room with his sister playing video games. He doesn’t like the vacuum either. He doesn’t think it’s going to get him or