Nightingale Songs (22 page)

Doyle was confused. "I guess I dreamed that, too."

She grunted, and then lay back down on her side, her back to her husband. "I guess you did."

Doyle got into bed behind her and put his arm around her body but it didn't give. There were only two hours left until morning, but he could feel how restless she was. He tried combing her hair with his fingers, hoping the gentle stroking would soothe her back to sleep, but instead he was the one who faded out. Thankfully, the nightmare at Angella's crib did not resume.

The next morning Jenn's eyes were dark circles on pale blotchy skin. She stood at the stove looking drab and colorless like the rest of the kitchen, the overcast sky giving the world the appearance of old plastic. She sniffled, as though she had a cold.

"Are you sick?" he asked. "You shouldn’t be around Angella if you're sick."

Jenn said nothing; instead she scraped a fried egg onto a plate and brought it to Doyle. He could see clearly how puffy and bloodshot her dark eyes had become.

"Have you been crying?" he asked.

"Of course not," she said. "Why would I be crying?"

"Well, are you going to sit down with me at least?"

She shrugged and walked away. "I'm not really hungry."

"You need to eat to keep your strength up. Doctor Mielke said--"

"I'm fine." Doyle stopped speaking and watched her. She was back at the stove, checking the cupboard overhead.

"What are you looking for?"

"I--nothing," she said. "Did you check on Angella?"

"I did. She's fine, despite how weird things were last night." He put a fork full of egg into his mouth. The texture was soft, gelatinous, and he forced himself to swallow it. "Everything felt
wrong
somehow. Do you know what I mean?"

She nodded while she continued going through the cupboards. Doyle reached across the table for the salt. The eggs tasted grey and lifeless.

"It was as though someone was in the room with me," he continued. "I mean, I must have been half-asleep when I was checking on Angella, but -- you know what it's like to have a dream that
sticks
to you after you wake up? It's like that. It's stuck to me. Hopefully, it'll be gone in a few hours."

She looked at Doyle with those puffy eyes, her unwashed hair clipped back carelessly, and though he knew she'd just woken up she still looked on the verge of falling down. It concerned him.

"Is everything alright, Jenn? You don't look like you."

She didn't say anything. Instead, she closed her eyes and slowly exhaled. Then, she opened her eyes again. "I'm fine. It's just a lot of work. It's a lot more work than I expected."

"It'll get better. Doctor Mielke said the first month is the hardest to adjust to."

"You're always the optimist."

"If you need help, we'll figure something out. Maybe I can leave work early a few days a week?"

She pouted. "You've never been able to get out on time. What makes you think you can now?" The answer seemed obvious. But she brushed it away before he could speak. "It's fine. Go before you're late for work. We can't afford to lose two salaries."

"Well," he hesitated. "Just call me if anything comes up."

She nodded. "Even if I hear footsteps in the hallway?"

"Very funny," Doyle said, though both seemed too tired to laugh.

Doyle felt strange going to the office, trading his new angel and home for a landscape of cubicles and copy machines, and he had to struggle to keep his thoughts from being replaced with the inanities of office life. It was so easy to give in, to forget the real world outside. Was that why some people preferred to work during internal strife? Because at home alone there was nothing to do but sit and stare at the state of things? Better to go to work and get lost in the familiar than stew and be destroyed by one's ill thoughts. Not that Doyle had those -- he could not be happier about the new house and about his beautiful Angella. He did not
want
her far from his thoughts, but once the routine of the office set in, Doyle could not keep the love of his life in mind for longer than a few moments at a time. Those moments, though, were among the happiest he'd had within the office's walls.

It was a shock thus to get the telephone call, and when he heard his wife's voice, it filled him with ever-pressing dread.

"Honey, what's wrong?" His mind raced, the most horrible things imaginable playing out. Jenn sounded as though she'd been crying.

"Did you say you were coming home early?"

"What happened? Is it --" He didn't know if he could put words to his fears.

"Angella's fine." There was an uncertain pause, and then she repeated herself with added strength. "She's fine. I'd just like it if you were home. That's all."

There was a noise over the telephone, a simple clap like a footstep, and Doyle spoke without thinking. Had he, he surely would have realized how insane the question would sound.

"Jenn, is there someone else in the house?"

Her breath hitched, and the sensation Doyle had experienced in the nursery while sleepwalking -- the deafening silence, the bottomless dread -- had begun to well.

"Jenn," he said, his voice shaking. "What is it?"

"I thought..."

Her voice sounded so quiet, as though she were falling away, then suddenly she was back and there was no indication anything had been wrong. "I just wondered if you were coming home early so I'd know when to start dinner. Don't worry. I'll see you tonight."

"Wait, I don't --" he said before realizing the line was already dead. He sat back in his chair. What was he supposed to do?

It took Doyle almost two hours to get home -- the train had stalled on the tracks outside his station for emergency line work -- but when he arrived he found Jenn sitting at the kitchen table in her bedclothes, the cordless telephone at her hand. Doyle wondered if she'd spent the entire day there. Without realizing it, his eyes went immediately to the cold stove.

"Is everything okay? I came as soon as I could."

She nodded. "I'm fine, Angella's fine. Everybody's fine." She looked dazed. Doyle heard something above him through the ceiling. Was it a footstep? He looked up and saw a faded stain on the ceiling, the size of a foot. Jenn was suddenly agitated and stood quickly, her voice breathless with concern. "The dinner! I forgot to start dinner."

"Never mind that," he said, hushing her. Was that another footstep? "Is there somebody upstairs?"

Doyle did not wait for the answer. He climbed the stairs, quickly at first but slowing as he reached the top and that sickening feeling resumed. All other noise in the house vanished as he walked toward the nursery, but he could feel each fiber of carpet beneath his feet, could see each crack and bubble in the paint on the walls beside him. The door to the nursery was open, a beam of light falling across the hall, and it wavered, as though someone were disturbing it. The doorway came closer and closer as he moved toward it, and through it Doyle could see first a sliver of the far wall, then more and more as he moved closer, all the while a part of him was screaming to stop, to turn back, to not look at whatever awaited him around the corner. And yet, he kept moving. He kept moving because Angella was in there, his precious little angel. He kept moving because he had to. And as he did more and more of the room was revealed and still he could not see the crib and still he could not hear anything and still he kept moving and soon he could see more of the room and then more and he wanted to close his eyes tight -- so tight -- but he couldn't. He couldn't even blink. They were dry and itched but he couldn't close them even for a second. They were stuck so wide he could no longer trust them to see what was real. Doyle turned the corner into the nursery and he saw the crib, there in the fading sunlight of the day, and he saw the door to the washroom across from where he entered, and he saw the slip of a shadow disappear behind that closing washroom door just before he blinked.

The world snapped back into focus and he rushed to the crib. Angella was there, her tiny face glowing as she slept, oblivious to what had happened. Doyle looked at the washroom door. Had he really just seen it move? His eyes -- he was still blinking, trying to wet them once more. He walked to the door and, stealing himself for anything, opened it with a jerk. Yet there was nothing strange there. He turned on the light and saw the small washroom as he expected it to be -- the round mat; the shelves of disposable diapers, petroleum jelly, and oil; the small claw-footed tub and its fixtures, the curtain drawn aside -- but no person or thing hiding where he could not see. Despite what his memory told him, he had not seen the door close, had not seen the heel of a foot disappear behind it, had not seen a set of fingers slip into the narrowing crack. He'd seen none of it, just shadows cast by a setting sun. Yet even with that rational knowledge, his head still pounded. He returned to the crib to see Angella sleeping so soundly, and wondered what the hell was going on.

Downstairs, Jenn had not moved. Nor did she seem surprised by Doyle's reaction -- or otherwise she did not care.

"Why did you want me to come home?" he asked. He was still wearing his overcoat, but it didn't seem the right time to remove it. He felt chilled.

"I don't know," she said, though she slurred the words together with a shrug of her shoulders.

"Did you -- was there something wrong? With Angella?"

She spoke, but Doyle could not hear what she mumbled. He had to force her to repeat herself.

"I said I haven't been up there in hours."

"Why not?"

"I don't know. I just didn't want to see it."

"See
what
?"

She didn't answer and could not be coerced again. Instead, she continued to stare at her fingers, flexing and relaxing them over and over again. Doyle shook his head.

"If you've
seen
something, Jenn, you should tell me. I've -- I think I've seen it too."

"Seen what?"

Doyle did not know how to explain it. He stalled as he tried to come up with the right words, but Jenn did not appear to be listening any longer. She did nothing but stare at her flexing fingers. Doyle's headache had returned, but worse.

"There's something going on, Jenn, and I don't know what it is. Something's wrong with that nursery. You can't tell me you haven't felt it."

She shrugged her shoulders again.

"I should start making us dinner."

She stood up but he put his hands on her arms to stop her, using all his strength to resist shaking her.

"What's
wrong
with you? Why won't you tell me what you've seen?"

She struggled free of his grip.

"If you're not hungry," she said, "then I might as well try and take a nap."

Doyle let her go, hoping sleep would do her some good. But when she was gone he started to question how comfortable he was sitting alone in the kitchen. He heard her footsteps overhead and shuddered.

No matter how big the house, one can always tell when he or she is not alone. For Doyle, it was no different. Although there was no noise coming from upstairs beyond the occasional static crackle of the baby monitor, Doyle could feel the presence of both Angella and Jenn in the air, as though the rise and fall of their breathing bodies was enough to disturb the quiet. Doyle thought of all Jenn must be going through, at home all day like a prisoner, unable to do anything but care for their daughter, and he suspected she was having trouble adjusting. His paranoid delusions were doubtlessly adding fuel to the fire. He was just tired and falling victim to stress himself. What other explanation could there be for the waking nightmares he was facing? He vowed to not let his exhaustion undo him, for Jenn's sake if not his own.

Still, when the sound of Angella's cries resumed an hour later, like an increasing whine, for a moment his body resisted the idea of climbing the stairs. It unnerved him more than he would have liked. And yet, when he finally visited his child, the strange dread was gone. Or, if not gone, then replaced by mere reluctance. It was obvious the room was just that -- a room -- and in the middle of it Angella was on her back and crying, her once smooth face wrinkled with a scowl. He lifted her from the crib and held her close to his chest and whispered sounds like rushing water. He looked down at her serene face pressed against him, and experienced an overwhelming flood of emotion. In his old hands was a person, a tiny person that was a part of him. It was so sublimely ridiculous that it could be true, and yet it was. It was exhausting, but it was the most beautiful pain he'd ever imagined. She really was his little angel, and he knew there was nothing he wouldn't do for her. As he rocked Angella in his arms, his broad smile nearly splitting his face, he glanced at the bathroom door across the room. It looked closed tight, and he put out of his mind the idea that he could see movement in the shadows beneath it.