When I awoke the next morning, the sun must have been low in the sky, just coming up over the mountains to the east. It was the first time in two weeks that I hadn’t had the nightmare about the screaming bubbles; the Dark Dream, as I began to call it. I was relieved because I had become anxious at night before sleep overtook me and my nightmares set in.
When you’re a child your sleep is as real as your waking life.
It was unusual for me to wake up so early in the morning, almost before the sun, but not as unusual as the circumstances of why I had awoke so early this morning.
We had all gone to bed in the living room the night before, Cory on the couch and Jason and me in our sleeping bags on the floor. Guy and Janeal had gone to bed with their drinks and had put a movie on for us to watch and fall asleep to. It was Young Frankenstein with Gene Wilder and Teri Garr. A monster movie that’s sillier than it is scary, even to a kid.
The last part of the movie I remember-before falling asleep-was a line were Gene Wilder’s character had commented on some ‘nice knockers’ on one of the doors to the castle as he helps Teri Garr’s character out of a wagon. She, believing he’s commenting on her breasts, thanks him. When I awoke I wasn’t in the living room anymore. I was in a place that was dark and cramped and I was curled into a ball. A musty smell loomed from whatever soft material I sat on; sweat and dirt and maybe urine. My first thought was relief that I had made it through the night without having the Dark Dream. And then a kind of panic set in from my unfamiliar surroundings.
Half asleep, thoughts raced through my mind.
A coffin? Was I dead?
A hidey hole in a basement?
Scenes from Young Frankenstein whipped themselves in and out of my memory.
I’m at Cory’s house, I thought, but he doesn’t have a basement.
I started scratching at the walls of the confining space around me like a frightened cat. The texture felt familiar. Some sort of basket or bin, whicker maybe? I tried to scream but nothing would come out. At my wits end and on the verge of crying, my fingers hurting from clawing at the walls of my tomb, I stood up, more like jumped. And I popped out of the Dayborne’s clothes hamper like a half crazed jack-in-the-box. I was in the hall bathroom and I had no recollection of how I had gotten there.
From the corner of my eye, I saw a monster lurch at me and had to grab for the towel rack next to my head, air wheezed through my throat in a silent scream.
Nothing grabbed me like I had anticipated, although I should have been eaten alive by whatever ghoul had sprung at my side. My eyes were pinched shut in preparedness of whatever bathroom monster was about to set upon me and after a few moments of nothing but heavy breathing on my part I decided to turn and face the beast and saw myself standing in the dirty clothes hamper in the mirror above the sink three feet away.
I had jumped at my own shadow or reflection in this case.
With my little boy’s heart jack hammering in my chest, I stood there a few second more and stared at the mirror me. A voiceless laugh was about to explode from my lungs when I heard a quiet rapping at the bathroom door as if someone was using only one knuckle. My heart, on the verge of calming itself, once again started thumping at full speed.
“Who’s in there?” Cory’s mom whispered.
It seemed my early morning antics had aroused her. At first I didn’t want to say anything, because for one I was scared and two, I was a bit embarrassed of my current situation. I wished at that moment for nothing more than to be at home, safe in my own bed.
“It’s Ricky,” I finally said after finding my voice.
“Oh. Is everything okay?” A short silence between both of us and then she said, “Ricky?”
I had to think quickly. Telling Mrs. Dayborne that I had walked into the bathroom and climbed into the clothes hamper in my sleep wasn’t something that I wanted to admit.
“I just have a little stomach ache,” I lied.
“Oh. Would you like some Alka-Seltzer?”
“No thanks. I’ll be fine.”
“Okay. Well, why don’t you lie back down after you’re done and try to fall back asleep? I’ll be up in a couple hours to make you boys some breakfast.”
Now I’d spent the night at Cory’s house probably twenty times over the years and I swear, the only breakfast that woman knew how to make was cold cereal. And that only consisted of putting bowls and a box of Fruit Loops out on the table. She wouldn’t even pour the milk.
“Okay, thanks,” I said, trying to sound a little ill so the lie would fit.
I stood there, waiting and listening. Finally I heard her bedroom door close and a few seconds later what sounded like bedsprings groaning.
Collecting myself, I took a few deep breaths, and let my heart settle once again. I managed to get out of the hamper without making too much noise and then stepped over to the toilet and flushed it, completing the illusion that I really did have a stomach ache and had just needed to take a good dump to relieve myself. There were clothes on the ground that must have fallen out, and I placed them back in the hamper.
After finishing in the bathroom, I went back out into the living room and lay back down in my sleeping bag. Cory and Jason slept on, unaware of what I had gone through in the last few minutes.
It was impossible for me to get back to sleep and I turned the TV on and found a Heckle and Jeckle cartoon, though I paid little attention to it. Instead I lay and stared out the sliding glass door that looked out into the backyard. It faced east and from my vantage point I could see the tip of the sun, low and pink in the sky.
All I could think about as I looked out onto the morning was my sleeping habits of late: first the Dark Dream and now sleepwalking. I racked my brain as to what could be happening to me and of course came up blank. I knew nothing of tumors or head injuries-not that I had a tumor or had hit my head recently-so of course these things hadn’t crossed my mind. All I knew was: I felt things were not right. It was a sense of claustrophobia mixed with a feeling of dread heaped onto a pile of trepidation.