Three Visits at Midnight

I awoke that night to the sound of furious hammering.

My brain, dragging itself from sleep. struggled to place the noise. It was a drum. It was a rifle discharging. It was the walls of the house falling down around me. I opened my eyes.

The room failed to coalesce around me into something recognisable. I felt a moment of panic. Where was I? It wasn’t my room. I wasn’t in my bed. All the walls were in the wrong place. Then I remembered: Christmas at my parent’s house.

The hammering resolved into the unwelcome sound of someone knocking, with great urgency, at my door.

“Wait…” I managed to say as I fought to extricate myself from the unfamiliar bed.

The raw cold threatened to eat through my flesh and work directly on my bones. It nearly stopped my breath. Mother had given me and my brother hot water bottles, just as she used to do when we were children, but the warmth had already withered away. The chill pressed against me like a solid wall of ice. I grasped for my dressing gown, wrapped it around myself, and went to open the door.

My brother, James, stood there. Eyes wide. Face pale.

“Get in,” I said, barely awake enough to construct the two-word sentence. All the same, I worried that his noise might have awoken our parents

James hurried in, clad in nothing more than his pyjamas and seeming unaware of the cold. He darted to the other side of my bed and stood watching the door intently.

“Shut it, shut it, shut it,” he said, waving his hand urgently.

I closed the door and turned to James. Now that I was mostly awake, the irritation over having my sleep broken was starting to grow.

“What the hell’s going on, James?” I asked.

He stared at me with unblinking eyes. I felt an unreasoning pressure from the intensity of his gaze and had to glance away after a few moments.

Finally, he spoke.

“There’s … there’s something in my room.”

###

I held the mug of tea tight to my chest, the Aga warming my back, as I looked at James huddled over the kitchen table. I hoped that retreating to the kitchen, to deal with whatever problems he had conjured up this time, would leave my parents in peace. Despite my brother’s protests, I had left all but the rangehood light off.

“Dad’s not so bad,” I said, hoping to break the growing silence between us. I immediately regretted the words. It was Dad’s illness that had drawn us to back to the old farmhouse for Christmas. I realised only then that it was the first time either of us had slept in the house since childhood. No one had yet acknowledged it, but we all knew it was the last Christmas we would ever spend with Dad. He had put on a show of good cheer, but it took no more than a glance to see how the sickness was eating away at him.

James continued to stare into the space directly in front of him. I wondered if he was even awake. I wondered if it was Dad’s illness that was troubling him. Then he turned to look at me, His shoulders heaved, as if he were drawing in air and readying himself to say something, but only silence remained between us.

I sighed. “What’s in your room, James?” I was irritated that he was clinging to whatever flight of fancy had woken him, and more so that he clearly expected me to explore it with him before either of us could return to sleep. When we were both children, he had often been prone to drifting away and studying the unseen distance. Until now I’d had no idea the habit had persisted into adult life.

“James.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “… I can’t see them.”

“Can’t see who?” I asked, and immediately regretted the question. The last thing I wanted to do was give form to whatever spectres James had conjured in his head.

“I can’t see them,” he repeated.

I once again tried to curb my annoyance. In childhood, my mother had taken the task of dealing with the whims of James’s imagination and I feared that he might try to wake her if I failed. The stress on her face had been clear earlier in the day; James regressing to his childhood fears was a straw she desperately didn’t need.

Realising this, I felt the corners of the room drawing in around me. The heat from the oven withered as the icy chill from outside grasped at me and enveloped me. I was the single point of failure between a dying father, a brother who was losing his mind, and a mother who was pretending the fractures weren’t visible as she continued trying to protect us all.

I looked at my brother. He seemed like a child, shoulders slumped as he sat at the table, hands around his mug of tea. “James, are you telling me there’s ghost in your room?” I said.

I needed to snap him out of whatever grim reverie he had allowed himself to be transfixed by. He was my responsibility for now, and my hope was that giving voice to his fears would help him realise how ridiculous he was being. I expected an angry rebuttal, or an embarrassed chuckle.

Instead, a look of dawning fear crept across his face. He appeared so haunted in that moment that I found my doubts cruelly silenced. Furthermore, it seemed that I had only succeeded in making things worse.

“There’s a sound,” James said, his voice delivering the words in broken gasps. “I hear it coming towards me. I hear it … I hear its feet shuffling across the floor. It comes closer … but it never gets … and it’s, I think … it’s dragging something. Then it passes … but it comes back. I can’t open my eyes and look at it. What if—? I don’t … I don’t know if it’s really there or if—”

I jumped as something shrieked behind me, then laughed when I realised it was nothing more than the kettle reaching its boil. I had automatically refilled it and placed it back on the stove, just as we used to do when we were kids: an old memory that had locked itself away until tonight. I moved the kettle from the heat, then turned to see James’s face had broken into a wary smile. I felt a weight of tension lift from us both.

I smiled. “I remember, when we were kids, I was convinced there was a dragon living in the roof above us, ready to eat me if I got out of bed. Do you remember that? Then, one day, Dad showed me how it was just the wind playing in the chimney.”

“I remember,” James said, nodding.

“It’s been years since we last stayed here,” I said. “We forget how many noises this old place makes. It’ll be something like that. Just the house. Try not to let your imagination get away with you.”

James sipped his tea. I could already see that the fear was starting to turn into embarrassment.

“Easy for you to say. You don’t have to lie there listening to it.”

“Yeah, and you know what else I don’t have to listen to any more? Your snoring all night, you ridiculous air horn.”

James raised a finger at me, but didn’t get a chance to speak before we collapsed into boyhood giggles.

“Okay, we’re good? Back to bed?” I said.

“Back to bed,” James nodded and stood up. “Race you there!”

I didn’t even have a chance to reply before he was out of the door.

###

The scream cut through me, severing me from sleep and leaving me bolt upright in my bed. Sweat beaded on my forehead, in defiance of the cold surrounding me. I sat in silence, wondering if the scream had been isolated to my dreams; then a low moan crept in from somewhere outside my room. I pushed the bed covers away, realising with some gratitude that I’d gone back to sleep wearing my dressing gown, and stood up.

The room wavered and spun around me. I fought my narcoleptic state and staggered to my door. By the time I had crossed the hallway to James’s room, I was fully awake. I opened the door, not wanting to create further noise by knocking.

The first thing I saw was James’s empty bed. A second glance told me that it wasn’t empty after all: James was submerged beneath the covers, a pillow clasped over his head.

Then I felt the peculiar chill of the room. It seeped into every pore. My clothes felt as though they may as well have been stitched from tissue paper. There was a pervading dampness wrapping itself around me, and a salty tang to the air; like the air after a swift sea breeze. I went to check the windows, but all were closed. For a moment I stood there, staring out into the night, watching the distant ribbon of sea glowing under the moonlight.

Then I remembered James.

I sat down on the bed without thinking and conjured a horrified intake of breath from the shape beneath the covers.

“James! It’s me,” I said, hoping the sound of my voice would provide some reassurance.

I saw my brother’s eyes appear from a gap beneath the pillow. He studied me for a moment, then sat up, still clutching the pillow. His eyes darted across every corner of the room.

“It’s still here,” he said. “It came back.”

I followed his gaze around the room and saw the same nothing I could only assume he was seeing. “I told you: it’s just the sea that you’re hearing. There’s nothing here.”

“It was here. It came to get me. I couldn’t … I couldn’t look at it!”

I saw the fear carved into my brother’s face and felt some pangs of sympathy, but I also worried he was going to let himself succumb to hysteria if I didn’t intervene. “Listen, wait here a moment. I’ll be right back.”

“Wait. Where are you going?”

“It’s ok,” I said, turning the light on as I went for the door, “I’ll be right back.”

I returned moments later with my father’s whisky decanter and a pair of glasses, all purloined from the sitting room. I surmised that my father probably had little need of it these days and ignored the whisper of guilt proposing that perhaps he needed it more than ever now. Either way, I reasoned that he wouldn’t thank James for waking him up in the middle of the night and gave myself permission to carry on.

I placed the decanter on James’s drawers and poured out two generous shots, handing the first to James. He remained sitting up, eyes flitting nervously across the empty spaces of his room.

“By the way—Merry Christmas,” I said, clinking my glass against the one held limp in his hand.

“What?”

“It’s gone midnight,” I said. “It’s Christmas Day.”

He looked at me, and then at the glass with no sign of comprehension. Finally, he raised it to his lips and drank the whisky, his lack of response suggesting there could have been nothing more than water in there.

I reached for the decanter and refilled his glass. It wasn’t the best medication, but I didn’t mind confessing that I hoped it would give me a better chance of an unbroken sleep for what remained of the night.

James drank the second shot automatically. “Do you … remember Charlie?” he then said, his eyelids already beginning to droop.

I had forgotten the name, but once James said it out loud the memories returned in a dark wave. “Your friend? The one who—”

“Yes,” James said, his tone flat and betraying no emotion.

I remembered the day well, even though I had shut it into the deepest corners of my memory until that moment.

We were children. James had gone to the beach with Charlie, as they often did. It had been cold, colder than it was now. An overnight storm had left a fresh chill over everything. I had been left behind—they had refused to take me with them on that day—but I had felt the air biting into me, and remembered being happy, for once, that I got to stay in the warmth of the farmhouse.

It had gotten late. James and Charlie were still out. Dusk crept in. My parents had hidden their worry from me, but I knew something was wrong by the way they kept turning to the telephone. Eventually my father had gone out. When he returned, he returned only with James.

In the mute shock that followed, I heard only fragments. It was months, perhaps even years, before I understood that Charlie had slipped and fallen from the cliff top. James had never quite been the same. He had grown quiet, nervous. Medication had restored part of what he used to be, but the James sitting on my bed now—the one staring into space and cowering from the world—was the one I had really grown up with.

“He slipped,” James said. “We were at the top, and he slipped.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” I said.

“I didn’t mean for it to happen.”

“Of course you didn’t.”

James then looked directly at me. It was the first time since I had entered into his room that he had properly looked at me. I felt pierced and immobilised by the intensity of his gaze. “I pushed him and he slipped,” he said.

I felt the weight of his words like a prison falling over me. The room pressed in on me from all sides. I couldn’t breathe. I fought the urge to run and be as far away from my brother—and this terrible revelation—as possible. Slowly, the air returned to the room. I breathed, and I let the words settle before I said anything further.

“You … pushed him?” I asked. Without realising it, I had moved after all. I was back by the decanter, refilling my own glass. I started to ask James if he wanted a refill, but he was wasn’t looking at me. He seemed to have forgotten I was still in the room with him.

“What happened?” I asked. A sudden reluctance to sit by him caused me to remain standing where I was.

“He was being mean,” James replied. “He was always being mean. I was sick of it. He said he was going to push me off the cliff and that no one would even notice when I was gone. I got angry and I shoved him, just to push him away. I just meant to push him to the ground. But he was so close to the edge … so close.”

I watched James, realising he was back there, right by that cliff top. I wondered how many times he had relived that day since.

“He hung on,” James continued. “I don’t know how, but he found something to grab on to. He was screaming at me to help him. But I couldn’t … I was so scared that I couldn’t even move. I couldn’t reach out and help him. And then … then he couldn’t hold on anymore.”

I remained still for several moments. James was looking at me once more, his eyes seeking some form of solace from me. I found myself unable to look back. The silence between us grew like a third presence in the room. Finally, I took the glass from his unresisting fingers and filled it again. It occurred to me then that I hadn’t asked James if he was on any medication; then again, neither had he told me. I reasoned that anything to help him sleep was ultimately of benefit and went to sit down by him.

I sipped my whisky and felt a moment of sorrow for my brother wash over me. He had carried this guilt with him for his entire life and it had broken him. Even as an adult he couldn’t sleep without the memory of that day plaguing him.

I placed my arm around him. I wasn’t sure what to say, but the words came anyway. “We can deal with this. I can help you. Not tonight, and probably not tomorrow, but you can’t deal with this on your own. I—”

“He came back,” James said, his voice barely audible. “That’s what it was. He’s come back.”

I took a large swig of my whisky: I needed it for the cod psychology I was about to impart. “Listen to me. You’ve been carrying all this guilt around with you, deep down, for all these years. Coming back here now, it’s brought everything back to the surface. It’s just your … your imagination playing tricks.”

“But I heard him.”

I thought about that for a moment. “A shuffling sound, you said?”

James nodded.

“Like a shhhhh … shhhhh … sort of sound?”

James shuddered.

“It’s the sea,” I said. “You’re hearing the sea and your mind is turning it into something else.”

James breathed, a deep shuddering breath that made his shoulders rise and fall like a rolling wave. His words cracked as they came out: “Do you really th-think that’s all it is?”

“Definitely,” I said. “Here.” I raised my glass. He looked at it for a moment before recognising the gesture, then raised his own glass. We clinked our drinks together, and then drained what we had left.

I patted James on the shoulder and stood up. “Now, Mum’s going to need our help tomorrow so let’s try and get some sleep, hey? You’ll be okay now, right?”

James nodded. I ignored the doubt in his eyes.

“Good. Then let’s get some shut-eye and I’ll see you tomorrow.”

I turned the light out and left his room.

###

The whisky plunged me into a restless sleep, suspending me in unconsciousness but denying me true respite from my troubled slumber.

My night was filled with echoes from my brother’s delusions. The knocking on my door from earlier hammered constantly in my head. The hushed rushing of the sea swirled around me without pause. A slow scream rose into the air like the whistling of a kettle at one point, then hung there in a shrill, constant note. I tried to wake myself, but the drunken stupor kept me pinned down. The sounds blended and merged, a symphony of soporific horror assaulting my defenceless imagination.

At last, I awoke.

It was morning. Silence and stillness surrounded me. Sleep, and its dark memories, had fled like a train speeding down a tunnel. I sat on my bed, eyes squinting painfully in the cold light.

James…

All had been quiet since we last spoke, but I felt an aching guilt for abandoning him and allowing sleep to ensnare me. I hoped the whisky had provided more rest for James than it had for me, then wondered if his delusions were somehow contagious, as if that could explain my restless night. I looked forward, perversely, to the tales we would have to share over the breakfast table.

I braced myself for the chill and climbed out of bed, grateful that I had once again fallen asleep in my dressing gown, despite the thin sheen of night sweat that it had cultivated. I pulled the blanket from the bed as well, deciding I needed an extra layer of protection from the harsh morning, and crossed the hallway to my brother’s room.

I knocked on the door.

No reply.

I imagined that he was sleeping—that the terrors of the night had worn him down and committed him to a deep morning slumber—and ignored the icy silence seeping past his door.

I knocked again.

Nothing.

I raised my hand to knock again and held it. My parents had yet to emerge. I feared my mother might appear and ask why I was standing by my brother’s door, awaiting a reply that wasn’t forthcoming. I feared that she would go inside.

And I feared what she might find.

I opened the door. The damp chill assaulted me almost instantly—like the sea breeze, except fetid and rotten, as though a swamp had spread into my brother’s room. Then it passed, and the air hung fresh again. I stepped over the threshold, intending to open a window despite the winter morning.

Then I stopped.

James sat up on his bed. He was quite motionless.

His arms grasped at something unseen before his face. At first glance I had thought he might be bidding me a good morning, but the eyes … the eyes showed all the horrors they could no longer see. His mouth was open and soundless, twisting and contorting his face into a barely recognisable shape.

I stood, frozen, in the middle of his room, revulsion and terror creeping through every inch of my being. I could only wonder what form of terror my brother had witnessed in his last moments. A vision of such awfulness that it had stopped his heart in an instant and preserved the moment of death for all to see. I wanted to run, but my feet refused to carry me out of the room. My eyes refused to tear themselves from my dead brother’s face.

It was my fault. That was the terrible realisation that stopped me where I stood. This moment was Christmas Day for the rest of my life. I had sent James back to his room, drunk to the point of incapability. I had left him unable to run, or to rationalise. Then something had come for him. A thing so horrific that the sight of it had pinned him to his bed and stopped his heart.

My brother had reached out to me for help, and I had sent him away. I had refused to take his hand and pull him to safety.

And, as I stared at his sightless face in shock and revulsion, I had but one thought.

Would James be visiting me tonight…?