Without warning my mother’s head suddenly tips, detaching from her neck. Her head lands on the table with a hard thud, rolls, and comes to a stop in front of my pecan pie.
—
“I thought I saw a rat. I’m so sorry for scaring everyone,” I say, justifying my piercing scream upon seeing my mother’s head roll across our dinner table.
But I can tell no one believes me. Rats are well controlled in the city, and a restaurant like the Olde Pink House doesnothave rodents running about. In retrospect, I should have said I saw a ghost (closer to the truth, anyway)—there are many rumored to reside in this restaurant. Laughed the moment off, blamed the sherry once again. Regardless, no one believes me about the rat, and everyone is “concerned.”
As my mother predicted, Kat tells Nick what happened. Nick tells Wyatt. Needless to say, my “good behavior” pass is revoked.
My nails have grown long enough to cover the sensitive tips of my fingers, and the dinner fiasco has faded from collective memory (though I can’t stop seeing my mother’s head tumble onto the white linen tablecloth), when Clementine’s nightmares begin.
The first night, after a scream that rips Wyatt and me from slumber, we find Clementine sitting up, catatonic in bed. Eyes wide open, hands outstretched as though warding something off, and jaw clenched so tightly I use my Luminara glasses later to make sure she hasn’t cracked a tooth.
The routine becomes exhaustingly familiar after five straight nights of this, all of us wrung out by the nocturnal episodes that shatter our sleep. I’m left tossing and turning in Clementine’s bed, where I’ve taken to spending the second half of the night, as she tries to sleep in my arms.
I get on EduNet to see what I can learn about the sudden appearance of catatonic nightmares in children. Strangely, she doesn’t seem to remember the episodes, nor the moments of wakefulness that follow. There are a variety of things it could be, EduNet tells me, includingsuboptimal vitamin D levels. This can cause night terrors, particularly in children, the research suggests. We start giving her supplements, hoping it’s as easy as that.
On the seventh night of this, I settle a weepy Clementine against my chest and stare up at the dark ceiling in her bedroom, my arms wrapped tightly around her. Soon, my body gets heavy and I close my eyes, hoping for at least a couple of hours. But then her body jerks violently, and I’m wide-awake again.
“Momma?” The faintest of whispers. There’s fear in her tone.
“What is it, baby?” I cuddle her closer, her breath warm against my neck.
“Why is she here?”
I crane my neck to look down at her, to see if she’s fully awake. In the near blackness I can’t tell if her eyes are open. She clings to me.
“Who?” I ask softly.
“That woman. Over there.”
She points to a corner of her room, near the window. My eyes, semi-adjusted to the low light, make out the elements in her room: her small desk and chair, a floor lamp, a bookshelf, a beanbag chair covered in fuzzy pink fabric. I don’t see a woman, which I’m about to say when Clementine asks, “Why is her head like that?”
I can’t breathe, my mind instantly in the Olde Pink House restaurant, my mother’s head sitting in front of my uneaten pecan pie. I look around the room, focusing on the darkly shadowed areas. My heart thumps furiously in my chest. But I see nothing, which I tell her.
“She says she knows me,” Clementine whispers. “But I don’t know her, Momma.”
I reach over quickly and turn on the night-light, which releases a soft red luminosity designed to preserve circadian rhythms. It adds an eerie glow to the room but illuminates the space somewhat.
“Look, baby. Look,” I say, with an urgency I try to tamp down. “There’s nothing there. It’s just us.”
Clementine raises her head slightly, her hair tousled. Her foreheadis sweaty when I set my hand on it, checking if she’s feverish. She’s not. Her eyebrows knit together, and she looks back to the same corner of the room.
“Can’t you see her? Over there, beside my desk?”
Bile rises in my throat as I force my gaze to Clementine’s desk. I don’t see what she’s seeing, which terrifies me even more.
“No. I can’t.” My voice shakes, out of my control.
“That’s okay, Momma,” Clementine says, hearing my distress. She sighs and snuggles back into me. A moment later her breathing slows, and she’s asleep.
I keep the red light on and remain alert. But the hypervigilance gets to me, my senses overtaxed. Now I hear an odd swishing, sweeping sound from my studio above (what is that?), and could convince myself thereissomeone standing in the corner near her desk. My watches buzzes, and I try a round of box breathing, but Clementine is heavy against my chest and it’s difficult to fully inhale.
Blinking repeatedly, I will the looming shadow by the desk to shift. I pray it isn’t who, or what, I think it is.
Eventually, I fall asleep. When I awake at dawn, the shadow is gone.
After a virtual visit and mobile blood work appointment, Clementine’s pediatrician suggests further increasing her vitamin D intake. He agrees it’s the most likely culprit. We add another two drops to her water glass at dinnertime, and within a few days her nightmares, and night visions, cease.
