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1.
Therapist
A particular sleep patient of
mine possesses an unusual condition that is ending up straying far outside my
professional and medical expertise. I’m recording this account as the story
unfolds in the hope of shedding light on what may be an increasing phenomenon
in our technical, postmodern world—what I call Eternal Night Disorder. He claims that each of his nights lasts an
entire year.
Allow me to begin with a
brief summary of my background.
My mother grew up in Camas, a
small papermill town along the
After that time, we only
traveled in summers and we went to school in Camas during the other three
seasons. Then for me, years of college,
grad school, a doctorate, and special training.
After Dawn and I married, she
and I settled back in Camas. Though
children never came, we thought then, like my parents, that the town would be a
good place to raise them. The papermill
employed nearly 3,000 people in those days, and many of the departments ran 24
hours a day with three eight-hour shifts, Days, Swing Shift, and
Graveyard. That’s what everyone called
them. Many of my sleep therapy patients
felt they needed help with circadian rhythm disorders, but my practice also
treated many other conditions as well, and a number of patients traveled to my
office from Portland-Vancouver, which was important for my practice as the
papermill began closing down.
The career of sleep therapist
came naturally to me because ever since adolescence, I’ve been a classic
insomniac. In high school, I began reading self-help books, and with time, I
found that other people had similar problems. Not only did I learn ways to
adapt to, cope with, and remediate my own disorder, I was able to make a solid
living working with hundreds of patient/clients through the years to improve
their sleep and their lives.
There is, however, the one
exception to my pattern of success.
My patient can express his
condition far better than I can, and there’s a reason for this, which will
become clear, so with his permission, I will offer extracts from his sleep
journal, add a few of my own comments, and allow you to reach your own
conclusions. The journal begins the night before the first time he came to see
me.
2.
The Patient
Circular patches of lamplight line the wooden sidewalks on both sides
of the square. Behind each walkway, loom
square blocks of buildings, their windows squares of black. A person here, a
person there, creeps along the walkways, passing in and out of the doors. The lights fade. Heavy horizons of sooty
cloud are blocking the stars. I can’t move.
A massive sooty
beast lumbers up, knocks me to the frozen ground, and crushes my skull
in its teeth. I’m crying out in terror.
Heart pounding, breath rushing, I wake from the nightmare into a
nightmare.
Another night. Another endless night. As always and forever, the clock
creeps along like a glacier, a river of ice flowing in inhuman, lifeless,
geologic time. Hours have passed, but when I look at the clock’s second hand,
it hasn’t moved more than a tick or two. Again, I regret that I have no
companion to pass the time with or to dispel the illusion. But it’s not
illusion. A night is as a year.
It began one normal year and two days ago. Or 367 years for me. It was a normal day and
then came the sunset and darkness. Time simply stopped, or seemed to stop. The
moon paused, frozen in the sky. The stars ceased to spin overhead. Jet
airplanes hung high in the air. The world is silent. A coyote trots down the
middle of the street, but he is awake! Does he, too, experience the eternal
night?
I’m not sure how I lived through the first months. Through the first shock and sense of
unreality. Paralyzing desolation so deep
it can not be described, but if it could be put into words, they would drive
the listener into his own lethal despair.
You must understand that for me, this was a very long time ago. Not only is it difficult to remember and
describe that first year and the beginning of the second year when I realized
the eternal night was repeating, any lingering pain of it passed away long ago.
Any except the loneliness, of course…
After overcoming the recurring impulses to end my own life and after
becoming resigned to my condition, I began to explore the world by going on long
walks, at first for just an hour or two, and then extending into weeks or
longer.
My car wouldn’t start, the phone didn’t work, so I couldn’t call a
taxi, which didn’t move anyway, and the buses just sat there on the road, so I
walked. Whenever I got hungry or thirsty,
I would duck into a store and help myself, always leaving money. If I didn’t
have money, I’d keep a tab and pay it by mail. People of course, are awake and
out and about in a normal night, and there were people: late-night party-goers
returning home, early risers just beginning their day, delivery drivers,
stocking clerks, police, burglars, runners, and other insomniacs—ordinary
insomniacs out for a stroll. They weren’t exactly frozen, but they were icy
cold to the touch, and if I waited in one place, like for 36 hours or so, I
could see they had moved a little.
There was a girl with her friends leaving an all-night restaurant. Some
of them still carried programs from a concert they had attended earlier in the
evening. It was winter and frost in the air.
Snow was falling, but it never moved. The young people were bundled,
their faces surrounded by a fog of their own breathing. I gently touched the
girl on the cheek with the back of my fingers. Her skin, ruddy with the
pleasure of the evening, felt like that of a corpse. When I drew my hand away,
she looked fine, but when I came by later, her face bore a red mark, which within
six hours turned into a blister. Since then, I never touched any frozen people
again. Nights were bad and the days were worse, because I knew the long night
waited. My daytime relationships seemed
superficial and fleeting. I tried, but
could never sustain a friendship or a romance through a year-long night of
absence.
As I said, only nocturnal animals moved normally. A few rats, loose
dogs, cats, bats, owls, and even coyotes.
Not many, but some. Once a
mountain lion just before sunrise. They existed in the same night universe as
me, and they were as terrified of me as I was of them. They knew I didn’t
belong. I always wondered what they
ate. Apart from noises you’d expect from
animals when they were too close, the nights were dead silent, because sounds
moved too slowly and low pitched for me to hear anything but my own
sounds. And, all the lights were dim,
even the flashlights I used. Over the
course of an endless night, my nocturnal vision became very keen. And on a clear sky with a full moon, it’s
almost as bright as day.
How do I know a night really lasts a year or longer?
I couldn’t track the cycles of the moon. At first, I tried to count sleep cycles,
because I did sleep, I just never knew for how long. I slept enough and seldom
experienced signs of deprivation. This
only gave me an estimate. But the main reason I know is because after replaying
and exhausting every possible memory, and finding fantastical solutions to the
major problems of the world to occupy my mind, and walking until I became more
fit than I had been in all my decades of life, I learned to write and edit my
own work. I wrote a collection of short stories, and even whole novels in a
single ordinary night. Cheerful stories. I published them under a
pseudonym—several of them in fact—and the reading and publishing world assumed that
with this prodigious productivity, I had a cadre of ghostwriters.
Little do they know I am the ghost.
Something else eventually let me know the duration of a long night. I discovered early on that the physics of things
close by moved in my pace. The closer to
me, the more in synchronization. Light,
water, food, and so on. So, I began wearing
a wristwatch.
During the day, I never get enough of sunlight and life. I float
through every day in a half-daze. The daylight hours fly by as I dread the
inevitable coming of every dark night. At night, my life of the daylight is no
more real than the real world is to the dreamer. Only during twilight and later
without sunlight, do I remain fully alert. And toward the end of every year as
the weeks of dawn imperceptibly emerge, I feel the horror of not being able to
fully engage with the living, waking world. If only I could sleep through the
dark like everyone else and then play and work like a normal person. Long winter nights are unbearable, short
summer nights only slightly less unbearable, and except that I learned to fight
it off, all would have been depression, misery, loneliness, and despair.
Writing, thinking about the happy world, keeps me alive.
3.
Therapist
The patient had the above
sleep journey entry hand-delivered to me early in the morning, which I thought
surprising. I hadn’t time yet to process what he wrote, so I suggested he
submit to a full sleep study and then we’d begin weekly sessions. He agreed, but said he needed daily sessions. I told him that my schedule, regretfully,
made this impossible, but to be sure, I’d check with my offsite secretary—my
mother-in-law. My first intuit was that he had been severely traumatized by
some past events, or had suffered a deep personal loss and that these had
brought him to a place of experiencing psychotic hallucinogenic episodes
manifested by darkness, all of which had formed a persistent delusion. Or they just could be vivid dreams. My first
impression was of him being a normal, healthy person in every way. But I wanted to get biologic data first to
see if there was some physical disorder.
It would be interesting to see what was actually happening to him when
he believed he was living for a year.
However, the sleep test
results and blood work came back, and they were unremarkable, so absolutely no
help there.
By our fourth session, I had
concluded I couldn’t help him, and I suggested he make an appointment with a
psychiatrist colleague of mine, a person with vast experience in working
internationally with severely traumatized people, victims of kidnapping,
torture, or imprisonment, or of hostages or war veterans who suffered severe
emotional, psychological damage from battle.
The patient laughed then and
said his life, even though unnatural and unbelievable, was far more prosaic.
But he then grew insistent, even angry, saying I was the only person alive who
could help him.
“Why do you say this?”
Though I waited for an
explanation, he said nothing. So, I
said, “Frankly, since we clearly are at a turning point, I must say that I
don’t believe you—I don’t believe that your nights last a year. But—and I don’t think it’s possible—but if
you can prove to me this is true, then we’ll continue to meet. I’ll see if I can bring in someone else,
someone not in traditional science or medicine, and we’ll explore in that
direction. What do you think?”
He smiled and said, “I’ll
bring you proof tomorrow!”
“It’ll have to be quick. My time is limited.”
“Excellent. I’ll be in just prior to noon. But you realize, from my perspective, that’s
a whole year from now.”
The next day, the patient
arrived as he promised. I had just left the office to walk to my favorite
restaurant for lunch. It was spring and
all the trees and flowers in town were blooming in the fresh sunshine. He was waiting on a park bench just outside
my door.
“Follow me,” he said. He led me to a hired van stacked full of
boxes, and the boxes were full of thick folders. Each folder contained a handwritten
manuscript. “These are mine. I write six or seven of them in one night.
And this does not include the hundred or so that I’ve published so far.”
The driver at the wheel said
over his shoulder. “Take all the time
you want, sir. The meter’s running. It’s your dime.”
I stared at the stacks in
disbelief. “May I?” I asked the patient,
indicating I wanted to look more closely.
“Help yourself.”
I moved a few boxes and
picked one at random. Opened it and picked a folder at random. “May I take it home to read?”
He hesitated before saying,
“I guess so, sure. That story is one of
my favorites, but I trust you. If you
have time, though, get it photocopied first, and don’t lose any pages.”
I took the book home and read
some. And the next day, I tried to call
Jonathan T. Barron.
A
JTB. I only heard of him
recently through the local newspaper.
Apparently, he was some kind of paranormal investigator who hosted a
popular program, Strange Days Radio. He was broadcasting on Saturday night of
the upcoming weekend live from the Cascade Monster Sci-Fi Convention in
A
The place was jammed with two
kinds of people. Nerds and kooks. The kooks moving in packs and wearing
matching costumes. The nerds outfitted too neatly for the occasion. Anyway, I
need not elaborate. JTB was to interview
a Camas native who claimed to have had extensive experience with time something
or other. I peeked into the ballroom
where it was underway. The program had drawn quite a crowd, but it was of no
interest to me.
However, in one of the side
conference rooms he had three assistants interviewing, or I should say, screening supplicants who wanted to
personally tell JTB their paranormal stories.
I could tell by the manner of the assistants that none of those
people—or aliens and monsters—would qualify.
I was thinking I had wasted my time, but what the heck, I was already
here, so I waited through one of the lines.
“Okay. What have you got?”
the assistant asked me.
“Ummm. I’m a licensed sleep therapist, and a patient
of mine says each of his nights lasts an entire year.”
He leaned forward and studied
me closely. “Okay. How would you sum up
the importance of your work?”
“That’s a strange question.”
The assistant shrugged his
shoulders. “Answer it, or not.”
“Certainly. By the end of
every day, these minds of ours are exhausted, you might even say damaged, by
the intensity of our consciousness.
Sleep is a universal healer of the mind.
Chronic sleep impairment or…”
“That’s good,” the assistant
said, cutting me off. He leaned back in his chair, stuck his tongue to the
inside corner of his mouth, and processed.
It took a minute. At last he said, “Does your patient offer proof? An
entire year?”
“He did. He showed me a van full of manuscripts he
said he’s written, probably more than a thousand. Here’s a picture of the van. I brought a sample manuscript with me.”
“Really?” He was suddenly
interested. He took the folder, opened it, picked a page from the middle at
random, and read a few paragraphs.
“It’s well written,” he
said. “Do you believe him?”
“I don’t know. I don’t have a way to disprove him right
now.”
“Anything else to add?”
“Nothing comes to mind.”
“Any spooky voices or
floating lights or anything like that?”
“Of course not.”
“Okay. Good. Do you have ID
with you?”
I pulled out my driver’s
license and a copy of my respiratory care license.
He read my name out loud and
returned the ID. “Okay, yeah. Can you
hang around until 5 pm? He’ll be
wrapping his program, and taking a short break about then. There’s a quick autograph session and then he
can talk. He needs to be at the airport
at 10 tonight.”
“Sure, but I need to be home
before dark. I don’t drive after dark
anymore.”
“Okay. Yeah, I think he’ll be interested to hear
about your patient.”
“Good. Thank you. I’ve got a question. I’m curious. How many of the people you interview
for a meeting with JTB actually get to meet with him?”
He laughed loudly and choked
while checking himself. Everyone in the
room was now watching us. He signed to
me I should wait a minute. When the lively conversation resumed, he leaned
forward and said, “Nobody.”
“Nobody?”
“Never. It’s a matter of policy at these
conventions. Well, that’s not
true—you’re the first one. Personal
supernatural experiences are real, but they are rare, very rare. All the people in this room are nerds or
kooks.”
“What am I?”
Not a nerd or kook. You’re a…”
He looked at me closely again.
“You’re a normal guy who wants to help people. And you…”
He then gazed so long, it made me uncomfortable. “You’ve found a way to
cope with your trauma.”
“What are you?”
He laughed again, but this
time kept it under control. He glanced
sideways at a giant medieval warrior-princess making her case at the next-door
interview table and said loudly enough for her to hear, “I’m an animal wrangler
for the film industry—lions, tigers, bears.
But between jobs, I help Jonathan for fun. You want my card? My name is Atlas.”
He reached for his pocket
while watching my face, which I’m sure was frowning with incredulity. Then he laughed and jabbed a finger at
me. “Got you! I’m actually trained as a neurobiologist. Jonathan pulls me in on some of his cases.”
“Oh, I see. That makes sense.”
“So, here’s his room number
and phone, too, just in case,” he said while scribbling on a napkin. “It will just be him. 5 PM.”
I thanked him again and as I
got up to leave, he said, “I’ve got a personal question. Umm.
Can I borrow this manuscript? I’d
like to read it. The writing’s good. I’m
intrigued already. Seems to be about… I
just finished the book I’m reading.”
“No.”
As I rose to leave to find a
place to wait, I thought I caught him saying, “Oh, my,” while secretly glancing
again at the giant warrior princess.
After I left the conference room, a raucous roar erupted from the
ballroom down the hall where JTB’s broadcast was being held.
A
JTB was much younger than I
expected—early twenties—but carried himself with a certain military bearing.
His assistant had already filled him in on my patient’s claims, and about the
manuscripts. He offered no small talk or
formal courtesy, but he was respectful.
He asked lots of questions about the night world and was obviously
disappointed with my lack of knowledge.
“The patient hasn’t given me
a detailed description of everything,” I said, matter-of-factly, concealing my
annoyance and embarrassment.
“That’s okay. I understand.
I’m just trying to find out the rules of the patient’s world. How it all
works. Its internal consistency and
coherence. That kind of thing.”
“Whatever for?”
“To help me tell if it’s real
or just in his head. It’s possible he
wrote the manuscripts and that would be solid. But the more logically it all
fits together, in my experience, the more likely it’s true. Reality imposes limitations, and everything
within a strange world makes sense, even if we don’t understand it, or it
doesn’t line up with our world.
Imagination, fantasy, hallucination, or delusion, however, have no
rules. Things often happen at random
with no connection to the real.” He
paused a moment and then asked, “What do you think?”
“Well, the story is
coherent. The patient is normal in every
other way. He’s extraordinarily
calm. Though his nights are a prison and
he wants to be free. The only time he lost his composure was when I told him I
couldn’t help him.”
“Okay. That’s good.
Can I meet him? Will you, or more
importantly, will he mind if I sit in on one of your sessions, and if it’s
appropriate, go to lunch or talk in an informal setting?”
“Despite his calm, I know
he’s desperate.”
“Wouldn’t you be? I mean a year alone, night after night?”
“Me?” I thought about how I’d feel, and nothing
came to mind, so I said, “I don’t know how to answer that question. I’d have
to... I’d have to sleep on it.”
JTB chuckled as he dialed a
number on his phone. “You remind me of
my assistant, Atlas. He’s probably
getting ready to party with some of the conferees, so it will take him a few minutes
to get here. Before we conclude, I’d
like to ask you a few personal questions, if I may.”
He wanted to know all my
background and social life and I gave them to him in a nutshell, but then he
zeroed in on some particulars. “What do you do on the weekends?”
“I, I’m almost ashamed to
say. I work on my tan. I sit in the sunshine at the park and watch
people. It’s enjoyable.”
“Go out at night? Clubs,
movies, concerts?”
“Never.”
“Work out? Exercise?
Gym membership?”
“My doctor says I’m in
perfect health. I’ll live to be
120. Must be in my genes.”
“Vacations?”
“Not anymore. It might surprise you, but I really do enjoy
being alive.”
“Your social life seems to be
limited to work. You know a great many
people, and they like you and you like them, but they seem to be limited to
your patients. You live alone. Have you experienced any trauma in personal
relationships or have you gone through some profound loss?”
“My wife Dawn passed away a
year ago.”
He put his hand to his
forehead and with pain said, “Ohhh”, slightly drawn out, as if he himself was
suddenly feeling the loss. In the gentlest of voices, he asked, “How are you
doing?”
“I don’t know. There’s emptiness. But in case you’re wondering. I sleep like a
baby.”
He didn’t chuckle this
time. Maybe because at that moment, the
electric lock clicked open on the hotel room door and the assistant, Atlas,
waltzed in wearing a tux. Literally
waltzed, solo, and not in bad form considering his buzzed condition. I thought I glimpsed the medieval princess leaning
on her sword out in the hallway, an orchid pinned to her leather jerkin. She appeared smaller than before.
JTB was all business. “Take a note.
Cancel my flight and all my appointments for the next three days. If I need more time here, we’ll deal with
that later.”
The assistant merely said,
“Yes, sir,” set himself into position, and waltzed back out.”
“Do it now!” JTB called out
behind him. He got up to shut the door
and said, “These conferences are odd, but they know how to dance in
“And a bar. Why do you speak at them?”
“The conventions are all
about make-believe and having fun. I’m bringing reality.”
“What was that loud roar I
heard during your broadcast?” I asked.
“You wouldn’t believe the strange
things that happen whenever I’m live on the radio.”
A
JTB acted very strangely at
the therapy session. He didn’t ask many
questions and nothing new emerged. I
thought the patient was especially patient with his hesitancy, and he too
seemed more guarded than usual. I was
discouraged with the experience, but JTB assured me he learned a lot just by
observing and reading body language and facial expressions.
Furthermore, he said, the
issues were becoming clearer and he intended to work on this to the best of his
ability, no matter how much time it took, and he thought he now had a chance of
unlocking the puzzle and helping the patient.
I was skeptical, of course, but set that aside. I had a free hour, and after the session, I
gave him copies of more of the patient’s sleep journal pages and then we, the
three of us, walked straight over to Shaishnikof’s donut shop, which was only a
few blocks away from my office. The
patient said he didn’t care for any today, but JTB and I both indulged
ourselves.
“This is the best donut shop
in the Northwest,” I told them.
“I think it would be safe to
agree with you,” JTB said through a full mouth of an éclair, which he washed
down with full-fat milk mixed with a little coffee.
The patient said, “I love
this place, but I’ve already consumed my quota for the day. I come here every morning, at least I do in
the wintertime.”
“I call them my Vitamin D,” I
said. “The letter ‘D’ for donut.”
JTB and the patient laughed,
but only politely. Their hearts weren’t
into the joke.
“When did you first start coming here?” the patient
asked.
“That’s a funny story. It was just after Dawn, my wife passed, and I
simply woke up here early one morning. I
could only conclude that I had been sleepwalking because of the new vacancy in
my life, and I went where I could find comfort.
I hadn’t even known about the place before, and I had found it with my
subconscious. It was alarming, but I
thought, what the heck, and ordered a half dozen of my favorites—chocolate icing
on chocolate cake donuts—and ate them all throughout the day. I now come at least once a week.”
“Did you ever experience any
more sleepwalking episodes?” JTB asked.
“No, that was the first and
the last. But here’s another joke.
What’s the difference between sleepwalking and walksleeping?”
Neither of my companions
ventured a guess.
Mr. Shaishnikof, the owner of
the donut shop, chose this unfortunate moment to approach and interrupt. “I recognize you, Mr. Jonathan Barron. Your poster with a picture is taped to my
window right over there. I need to tell
you something.” He looked around to be
sure no other customers were nearby, leaned forward, and whispered, “My shop is
haunted.”
“Really, sir?” I said. “We
were talking, you know.”
“That’s okay,” JTB said
patiently. “Tell me more about the
ghost.”
“Every morning, we arrive at
4 am to bake, because we open so early.
Every morning, my daughter fills the glass cases with new donuts and
pastries. And every morning, some of
them disappear into thin air from the cases.
Every morning we are open, this happens.”
“Sounds like one of your
employees is embezzling,” I offered.
“Embezzling donuts? No, no. I haven’t told you the whole mystery
yet. Every morning, the ghost leaves
money to pay for them. And a $5 tip in
the jar!”
“Isn’t that what donuts
always do?” I said. “Disappear?”
“Hey,” JTB said, “Tell you
what. I’m busy now, but I’ll come back
later. Let’s talk more then.”
“I’m free at 3 pm.”
Shaishnikof said. “Don’t tell anyone about this. I don’t want to scare away my
customers.”
After he left, I said to my
companions, “I’d think customers might be attracted by a haunted donut
shop. Here’s the difference: sleepwalking
is when you sleep while you walk. But
walksleeping is when you walk while
you sleep.”
Both of them chuckled.
“You see the difference,
right? Shall I explain?”
“No!”
And, “Spare us, please!”
“Then what’s the difference
between talking while you sleep and sleeping while you talk?”
They both groaned, and I
said, “It’s not what you think. More
people than you’d believe talk in their sleep, but only preachers and
politicians sleep while they talk.”
Our afternoon ended thus on a
light note, and JTB promised he’d get back to me in the morning on the
following day.
4.
The Patient
Dear Mr. Barron,
You haven’t known it, but I’ve met you.
My name is Ronald Fjermestad.
This is true. And I’m the
Patient. Dr. Fjermestad of Camas and I
have the same surname; in fact we have the same name exactly, first, middle,
last. The reason is, we are the same
person.
I’m writing to you because there’s no other way to communicate. Over the years, I’ve figured out how to be in
touch directly with people of the day world.
It’s complicated, but I’ve hired a delivery service—several delivery
services—and at sunrise, everything is set into motion. I can’t wait for regular
mail because it’s so slow. I mean, if it
takes three days for a letter to arrive, that’s three years for me.
When you came to Dr. Fjermestad’s office for my therapy session, I know
what you saw and heard. He was talking
to the air, and the air never replied. I
have to say that I write about him as if he is a separate being only out of
convenience. What’s really happening is
the day part of me has shut out the night part, the part that lives through the
eternal nights. There’s a reason for
this. He can’t live with the
darkness. We, or more accurately, I can’t live with it. I’m sure this sounds confusing. What I’m certain is, if the part of me who is
in control during the day finds out about the nights eternal, I will die. That’s why I can’t tell myself. That’s why I’m trapped. I was pleased that you didn’t reveal to me
that I was merely talking to myself. I’m
certain you knew something was wrong and it was better to try to take some time
to figure it out. For one thing, I
probably wouldn’t have believed you, and I might have gotten angry and called
you a crackpot.
Another thing. I think you
noticed that when Dawn’s death comes up, I freeze for a short time. Something in me locks down. I even stop breathing. Then it passes and I don’t even know it
happened.
I have a night house within walking distance from my day house and
office.
What happens for me is, at local sunset, everything slows down; it
actually happens gradually over a few minutes, but the block raises and I shift
to the long night immediately. Usually I walk to my night house and in the days
of twilight I enjoy what’s left of the light in the sky. That house is then my base for the next
year. This isn’t the place to explain
how everything works, but in a long year of night, a lot of things change. It’s necessary to maintain a separate living
space where I can relax and not worry about returning everything to what it
was, so the daytime Dr. Fjermestad doesn’t suspect anything. When daylight is returning, I just walk back to
the other house, climb into bed or wherever the previous sunset caught me, and
wait. When the sun rises, I fade into
the background. I don’t know what’s
worse, the everlasting night, or a day in which I’m a helpless passenger in my
own mind. Again, we are one person. I am he and he is me.
I’ve enclosed a key to my night house and written the address at the
bottom here. You are welcome to visit
and see what it’s like. It’s nice. It’s big and private. The windows are shuttered because I keep the
lights blazing during my waking periods, and I learned ages ago that the
neighbors worry if they see them flipping off and on all night long. If you come in the morning, you will find the
garage full of shipping boxes all ready to go out. If you arrive in the evening, the garage will
be full of supplies for the next year.
If you come at night, you won’t see me, and in fact, I think you’ll see
stuff suddenly appearing and disappearing.
I’ll see you and be careful not to bump into you. Please don’t stay long, because even half an hour will be a couple weeks for me and
if I’m home, you will be in my way.
You have my sleep journal entries from the daytime Dr.
Fjermestad. They will be helpful to you
in getting an idea of what’s happening, but what I share with myself is
carefully guarded and selective. I wish
you and I could talk face-to-face, but I don’t know how this would be possible.
I’ve had a lot of time to think about it, and there’s one thing that
might be relevant. The closer a thing is
to me physically, the more it enters my own world and pace of time. If it’s
raining, raindrops are frozen in the air, but as they get closer to me, they
begin to behave normally and come into contact with my skin and clothing, and
then I’ll be wet for a while until it turns into water vapor.
You might think if I embraced you, you might enter the night
world. But as I believe I’ve written
before (it was so long ago), if I touch a person, they will burn. Perhaps because living flesh is more delicate
than non-living materials. I can’t
explain these oddities and seeming inconsistencies. I can only describe
them. So, a long hug would be highly
awkward to maintain even if it works, and there’s a risk you would be severely
burned.
If you’ve had a chance to look at any of my books, a fair number of
them are in the horror genre. Vampires,
werewolves, ghosts, and on and on. I’m a
creature of the night. As any writer knows, I’m an entity to inspire stories. I
move invisibly, I haunt houses; I make blood boil, I run with the creatures of
darkness. I live forever and never grow
old.
I don’t propose any solutions.
I’ve thought about this for centuries.
But I don’t know of another person in the world better than you who
could figure this out. There’s a Romanian
Orthodox priest I’m corresponding with who might help, but he’s so far
away. One more thing. Please, do not waste any time, I beg
you. I cope, but despair is always
calling at my door. I’ve enclosed here a check.
$800,000. I’ve made a great deal
of money from my books. (And not from robbing banks, which is all too
easy.) So, hopefully, this will help
you. And there’s more money
available. I’m not in any position to
negotiate a fee.
So you will know, when I first went to the donut shop, I made the mistake of staying after sunrise, and my daytime self woke into consciousness with a donut in my hand and my mouth open. Fortunately, no one noticed me. So, I’m the ghost of the shop. I’m sure Mr. Shaishnikof is upset, and he’s not the only person in town who has weird things happening. I’m afraid it can’t be helped.
One last thing. The remarkably
pleasant medieval girl whom your assistant, Atlas, met at the convention? Her name is Windfriede. Chaucerian English is just one of the dozens
of languages I’ve learned to read, and I understood what she was saying while
we were waiting in line and during the “interview.” Since then, I’ve even found historical
accounts of her being taken. She’s genuine.
She was abducted from 12th-century
Oh, yeah. A warning. She’s a virgin and intends to remain so until a
proper marriage, and she’s not averse to killing anyone who presumes
otherwise. But I suppose your Atlas has
discovered that already, or he soon will.
5.
Therapist
JTB did call me early the
next morning in a hurry, and he had but one thing to say, or ask.
“What’s your blood type?”
“Don’t tell me you think
there’s something to the patient’s vampire paranoia?”
“No. That’s not it. I’m not sure if this will work, but I have an
idea and I’m just leaving no stone unturned.
I may not see you for a while, but don’t worry. I’m working on the case.
I’ve been in contact with the patient and he’s willing to talk with me directly,
so I’ll let him keep you updated, if he wishes.”
I told him my blood type.
A+ It’s common, but with limitations as
to who is compatible.
“Thanks. One last question for now. Have you had any blood work done in the last
couple years?”
“No, how would that help? I’m not following you. I’m not the patient.”
“You’re probably right. We might not need those details.”
JTB hung up without saying
farewell, and I thought, “He’s a quirky bird.
He’s hiding something, but I expect he knows what he’s doing.”
6.
The Patient
Jonathan came by the house just after sunset a while ago and left a
letter. I’ve been staying close to home
in case of news of a breakthrough. It was exciting to have a visitor, even a
frozen one. He was here two days. I had
plenty of time to study him, though after a while, I lost interest.
His letter, however…
He proposed that I draw two pints of blood over two of my months and
keep them in the refrigerator for him to pick up later in the same normal night
and he explained why.
As a prolific, rampant storyteller, scripts run through my head
continuously. Dialog between characters
and plot points flow along naturally with no effort and unbidden. Often, all I have to do is write them
down. These stories have kept me alive
over the centuries as a substitute for real life. This is much like what’s in
the mind of a psychotic person, except I know the difference between what is
real and the imaginary, if you exclude a few occasions when I lost myself in
the story. Which is yet another danger
of the night.
All that to say, I can easily imagine how he presented his idea to his
team in the morning after my letter to him arrived by special courier.
A
Bed and Breakfast in Camas. An
old six-sided church remodeled. A
development company did the work and gave it to the city, who leased it to a
family. Jonathan has received my letter
and just called the Therapist to get his blood type.
“Thanks for getting up early,” Jonathan says as he looks around the
sleepy table in the vaulted former sanctuary. [Describe the space. Stained
glass windows, etc. Everyone is staying at the B&B.] “We need to move quickly.”
Jonathan wonders if his convention helpers were right for this job. He
usually worked alone, so, do these people—the three part-time kook interviewers
and his full-time radio producer/media guy—Motty—have what it takes for deep
analysis and adventure? Atlas seems to
be the only person with physical courage.
The retired college professor Jonathan hired to translate for the
medieval princess has taken a fatherly role of her emotional guardian, which is
nice. She’s having a hard time adjusting and misses her people and home.
Jonathan will begin with her case as soon as he reaches a resolution of the
sleep therapist.
A cook is on site. Sunshine pours into the windows. Someone moves to close the curtains. Someone else says leave them open. People scoot around so it’s not in their eyes.
“Okay,” Jonathan says. “Breakfast will be ready soon, and coffee, so
have a heart. Here’s my idea: The patient wrote to me about how objects and
processes catch up to his pace as they come close to him. Early this morning, I received a letter from
the patient and it gave me an idea. What better way to be near him than to have
his blood infused into a person’s circulatory system?”
“Why do we need to be near him?” Atlas asks.
“So we can talk, dunderhead,” Motty says.
“Yes, we need to not only talk directly and in real time to arrange
further treatments, but we need to understand this night world for ourselves.”
“What are the risks?” Motty
asks.
“Unknown,” Jonathan says. “The
accelerated blood might kill you. Or
might entail no risk other than lost time.
However,” Jonathan adds with enthusiasm, “the chance to explore this
unknown phenomenon is inspirational!”
“Is a blood transfusion the only way to be close?” Atlas says. “I can
think of another.” He says this while
looking at Windfriede, who when the professor translated, stands up and punches
Atlas in the face. Holding his now
bleeding nose, he trots to the bathroom.
“Well,” Jonathan says, chuckling and scanning the body language around
the circle. “Everyone’s awake now. Skin
to skin proximity might put you into his world, but for a complex living
entity, the adjustment happens too slowly.
The visitor would suffer extensive burns and likely wouldn’t survive.”
“What about just sitting next to him, not touching, and entering his
world slowly,” the professor asks.
“Good idea. Let’s try that.
(They wouldn’t know I already did try it at a restaurant for a couple
days with a lovely lady just a little younger than me. It was kind of a date, though she was unaware
of my presence. She would speed up a little and be confused, but I couldn’t
hold still long enough. And every time I got up for a break, she fell back into
normal time.)
“Meanwhile, I want to push on with the more aggressive approach,”
Jonathan continues. “If you don’t know
your blood group, find out immediately.
Motty has arranged for a phlebotomist to come here and test you
all. If you want to confirm your group,
do the test. We don’t want anyone to
die. She’ll be here in an hour. She’ll
expedite the tests, so we will have results quickly. Dr. Fjermestad is A+. Anyone here with A+ or
Just then, Atlas comes in, pinching his nose.
“Did you find out your blood group?” The professor asks and everyone
laughs.
“It’s red. Very, very red.”
No one in the room knows if they had the required blood type.
Breakfast arrives and the meeting comes to a close.
The phleb arrives early—Christy, she loves cloak and dagger stuff—so,
they are sticking people and drawing blood in a bedroom while everyone else
chows down at the table or on the balcony.
Bacon, eggs, toast, orange juice, fried potatoes, biscuits and gravy.
Fried chicken and coleslaw, plus gallons of coffee with creamer. Beans and rice burritos for the vegans, and best of all, fresh donuts brought in
directly from Shaishnikof’s shop.
Windfriede is curious and when she finally understands, doesn’t want to
be left out, so she does a blood draw, too.
Next: Blood results are back
later in the day. The team is all there
waiting. No one but Atlas is a match,
but he says he won’t go alone.
Jonathan suggests he himself go with Atlas, even though he’s not a
match. Everyone else says he can’t. Too dangerous.
They propose finding someone else.
No time. Last resort is the
patient tests people during the night world and picks a likely person, someone
close to him. Not test many of them, just enough, but they all agree it’s a bad
idea, since it’s a violation of their personal integrity, and might not work
anyway, let alone being a huge shock to them if it does work.
Christy draws a few mLs from a small vial of the patient’s blood and
tests touching it to Atlas’s arm to see if it raises a blister. It doesn’t. But other than him, they still
don’t have any matches. Everyone is at a
loss.
The professor seems to look up from scratching around in his brain for
another successful joke and says with reluctance he is
“Why didn’t you tell us earlier?” Jonathan asks.
“I was protecting Windfriede,” the professor said. “I asked Christy to help me keep the secret.”
Windfriede wants to go and is ready now, she says. She’s firm.
Refuses to let Atlas go, but asks the professor to accompany her. He
agrees, because she is dear to him.
The two of them arrive at my night house. Jonathan leaves his letter to
me on the table and it vanishes immediately.
Now they wait for my blood to appear. A medical refrigerator poofs into
existence out of nowhere. Motty keeps checking inside. The atmosphere is tense. Everyone is spooked, knowing that I’m
watching and moving around them invisibly at lightning speed. They think they
can feel my presence, especially Atlas. At last, the blood is there, more than
they expected, and they perform the transfusion. Windfriede blurs for a moment then vanishes
from normal time and emerges into Long Night time.
I break into tears.
A
That was me making this up, remember?
It’s not fully written and polished, but you get the gist. I did break
into tears, and Windfriede and the professor gave me some details. Except for what I personally saw, which I
tell below, I imagined the rest happening that way, and maybe it did.
But what followed is what matters most…
This is what transpired: : Jonathan had written he needed two pints of
blood, one for each visitor. I borrowed
a medical refrigerator and studied up on drawing and preserving whole
blood. The right temperature, the right
anticoagulant, the tests for contagious diseases, etc., how to recover from
giving blood, and I left them a half-dozen pints.
With the assistance of Christy, the phlebotomist, who had had
experience as a paramedic, they performed the transfusions here in my house
after sunset soon after I arrived.
Windfriede woke up first and a few hours later, the professor. Because she had already gone through the
experience of going to sleep and waking up eight centuries later in another
part of the world and where almost no one spoke her language, entering an
endless night was not so strange to her as it was to the professor, who, adding
to the novelty, experienced symptoms from receiving too much infused blood too
fast.
Windfriede and I talked quietly in Middle English mixed with some Latin
(a surprise to me that she knew any) until the professor arrived an hour later,
and once we had him shipshape again—he had suffered some mild edema—we got down
to the business of working up a plan.
A starting point was based on my informal work on Compensatory Healing,
which is—oversimplified—providing multiple overwhelming, affirming, ongoing
experiences to offset a single, opposite, destructive one, even one horrific. As in our case, if a patient has suffered
from debilitating trauma originating from or in darkness, then exposure to
prolonged, continuous sunlight would be a treatment. But I don’t wish to belabor explaining what
we decided. Describing what we
eventually did will be far more interesting.
After we perfected our plan and I made what arrangements I could for my
part to spring into action at sunrise, we just waited, not knowing how long the
blood would be effective to keep them with me.
We debated giving them more blood, but decided they needed to return to
normal time as soon as possible to start everything into motion—plus they
needed to brainstorm about its possible efficacy with Jonathan and the others,
and make adjustments.
We did write back and forth with Jonathan, but it was painstakingly
slow. I’d write a note, which would
become visible to him and the team instantly, but his reading the note and
replying took days and days for us.
While we waited, I gave them Windfriede and the professor tours of
Camas, and I explained all I had learned about its history and politics. It was rather exhaustive, beginning with
known and supposed prehistory. It’s not
possible to explain to any mortal how fulfilling my simple, platonic
relationship with Windfriede was after my ever-so-long periodic isolation. We were both lonesome, and we had so much in
common.
In short, I proposed marriage and she accepted.
The professor was startled and warned of the dangers, that I may never
be integrated, and our married life together would be so tenuous. But he also saw our needs and that we were
perfect for each other. He agreed to
perform the ceremony, which Windfriede said must be in the Latin liturgy. I happened to have borrowed a copy from the
local Catholic parish office a few decades or so ago. We needed witnesses, and the best we could do
was perform the ceremony during the early, early morning Easter Vigil, when the
church was half full of people, frozen people, but I imagine they were aware
that something beyond the ordinary world happened in their midst. And it
probably made no difference, but the bride was named after a saint who was said
to have powers of healing.
Our hour in the church sanctuary would have lasted five seconds to them,
as I show below.
12 hours Typical Time = 8,760 hours (one year) of Long Night
Divide both sides by 12.
One hour of Typical Time = 730 hours of Long Night.
Divide both sides by 730.
0.00136986 hour Typical Time = One hour of Long Night.
Multiply 0.00136986 x 3600 (one hour) to get seconds
4.931496 seconds.
This is only an estimate, because the 1 to 730 ratio only applies during
the local equinox and does not account for a year being 365.25 days and the
daily changes in sunrises and sunsets depending on latitude.
After a week of our wedded heaven, at which time the professor did his
own writing and left us alone, he slowed down into motionlessness.
Windfriede and I knew her departure would shortly follow. As she felt it approaching, she asked, “Will
you be content alone?”
“No, not content; but you know I’ll be fine. And I’ll see you tomorrow night.”
It was both unbearably painful and joyous to see them frozen in my
night home.
Windfriede is gone, and I’m elated to have had real company, to know
and love a person more than anything in the world, in the whole universe. But now, I’m more desolate than ever, back to
surviving on my own. Having Windfriede
here, and her guardian (effectively her adopted father), made me dependent,
made me aware of what I’m missing. Then
again, I have hope. We shall see how I
react during the day. Maybe there will be a change, a softening, a
vulnerability. And then, also, she hopes
to return to me in a year.
Months later, as sunrays from below the horizon began to color the
clouds and the mountain in the east, I stopped by the donut shop and speed-walked
to my day house to arrive a few moments before sunrise.
7.
Therapist
I put the following record
into the patient’s file:
JTB had made himself scarce
for a week, but he and his people were still in town, so it didn’t surprise me
when he called on Thursday and asked if he could stop by soon to give me an
update. I said we could meet at the park on Saturday. We took one of the picnic tables in the shade
of a stand of enormous Douglas Fir trees near the swimming pool.
He brought a small cooler of
minty iced tea and glasses.
After the usual greetings, he
leaned forward and said, “But how are you, really?”
“Now that I think about it… I thought I was perfect until you asked. Now I’m worried.”
“What’s up, then?”
“Why the interest? I don’t understand. I thought you were going to tell me what
you’re finding from the patient.”
“All right, let’s start
there. Umm. Members of my team have
spent a lot of time with him this past week and we wonder if there’s a prior
relationship between you and him. He said
you were the only person who could help him.”
“That’s what he said, yes.”
“Do you have any idea why?”
I closed my eyes because
there was only one thing that came to mind and it was too painful to think
about. I hadn’t thought about this for
months. I took a deep breath. “It might
be… It might be that he knew Dawn. Was he a colleague of hers? An old boyfriend she never told me
about? It might be that he had some
connection to her death.”
“How did she die? You never
said.”
At that point, I only felt
one thing: A jumbled mixture of horror, shame, sadness, and guilt so deep and
with no redemption. When at last I could speak, when I could trust my voice, I
took a deep breath. “She took her own life.”
And then in the same soft
voice he used before when I first mentioned her, he asked, “How, how did she
take her life?”
All the emotions swept over
me again. “She overdosed on sleeping
pills I gave her.”
“Ohhh.” A long, long pause, then, “Did you find her?”
“No… I don’t remember... Maybe the patient found her. I don’t know. Maybe they were having an
affair. It was a very dark time for me.
I don’t know.”
This subject came to a close
and we sat there at the table for a long time, neither of us speaking. We could hear happy voices of children
playing at the pool, the flap and staccato bouncing of the diving boards. Tennis rackets pinging a ball back and
forth. The fragrant. clean smell of fir
needles roasting in the sunshine mingled with sulfur from the papermill. Fair weather clouds sailing inland from the
nearby
I broke the conversational
silence. “Well, I’ve gotten over her
death. But I don’t think you ever get
over it. Not completely. Have you ever
thought about becoming a therapist?”
“Not really. Maybe someday. Yeah, I’ll ask the patient
about your wife. It could be the
passcode for helping him.” And this
seemed to put the subject to rest.
“You know, it’s funny,” I
said.
“What?”
“I sleep soundly. It’s almost scary. I don’t get up for the bathroom. If I dream, I usually can’t remember the details
or any storyline—just vague feelings, but the last few days, my dreams are
vivid, colorful, and shall I say, vaguely erotic.”
“Oh?”
“You’d think it’d be Dawn,
but it’s… you’re going to think I’m a perv… But it’s your crazy medieval
princess who can’t speak English.”
“She’s an attractive woman.”
“Not to me. Not my type.
That’s why it doesn’t make sense.
I only saw her at your convention.”
I then changed the subject. “The
patient is coming in on Monday. Maybe
we’ll have a heart-to-heart about Dawn.
I think I’m ready to talk about her now.
There may be something related to her, and I can offer him specific
ideas that helped me deal with grief.
There’s no point anymore in being jealous.”
A
Soon after that meeting with
JTB, the patient came in for his scheduled appointment, but he only stayed a
few minutes, so I didn’t have a chance to ask about Dawn.
“Jonathan and his friends
have proposed a plan for treating my Eternal Night Disorder,” he said, “and I’m
hopeful it will work. At the very least,
it will give me a reprieve for a few months at a time, which might not seem
much, but for me it means nearly 100 years.”
“That’s good news,” I said
noncommittally, still not believing any of this could be possible.
“We’ve already made
incredible progress in allowing me to communicate in person with other people
during the night.”
It entered my mind to ask if
he bit people on the neck, but we’ve exhausted our patience with our vampire
references. So, I merely nodded.
He continued. “I know you’ve dedicated your life to helping
people sleep, and it’s so important to everyone. We’re planning to apply your Compensatory
Healing ideas in unconventional ways.
But I can’t tell you more right now.
My condition may be unique in human history, but I think not. So, after we try our plan and if it helps,
we’ll share what we learn with you. And
you’ll be the first person to know.”
“That’s kind of you.”
“You’ve played an essential
role all along.”
“I only listened, and when I
reached my limitations, I found someone who could take things from there.”
“Anyway, thank you. This is farewell for now.”
I didn’t know what to
say. Patients leaving my practice for
whatever reason was always painful to me.
I thought I should shake his hand, or maybe even give him a hug, but by
the time I stood up to walk him outside into the sunshine, he was gone. I had a feeling I’d never see him again.
A
Life is full, and so in the
next few weeks my sadness in losing a patient who had become a friend
faded. It always does. I have a waiting list, so that spot filled
quickly and I had a new human puzzle to solve.
One day, my offsite
secretary, Diana my mother-in-law, called me on the phone, as she does at least
once a day, whether she needs to or not, so it is ordinary. But this time she
was excited, which was extraordinary.
“I forgot to tell you because
I thought it was a hoax,” she said, breathlessly, “but last Tuesday I received
a call from a guy with an accent who said you had won a prize, and a letter
would arrive special delivery that would give all the details. He was pleased with himself, like it was a
big deal, and said that you’d be happy.
But too good to be true, right?”
“What was the prize for? Did he say?”
“Something about endless,
eternal, compensation. I wasn’t listening at that point. I just wanted to get him off the line.”
“Sounds like you took the
right approach. Now, what was it you
called me about?”
“Just wait, I’m getting
there. A letter came today. Hand delivered. A fancy black Volvo. He asked to see my ID. The letter said you’d been awarded a special
international prize in medicine.
A
When I arrived by limo at
Portland International on the morning of June 2nd, at the fancy private air
service center east of the main terminals, I met a cluster of smiling, happy
faces, many of whom I recognized: JTB, Atlas, Diane, two of JTB’s other
assistants whose names I can never remember. Christy, Shaishnikof and his
daughter, and even the mayor of Camas and his wife.
JTB introduced me to those I
didn’t know: Motty—his radio producer—Christy, and a retired professor of
classical languages. And lastly, the
medieval maiden, who squeezed me so tight I couldn’t breathe. All I could do
was smile at everyone, hug back, shake hands, and endeavor to keep myself from
crying.
JTB said, “This is my
team. We’re going with you.”
“The prize letter informed me
as much. Unconventional application of my ideas.”
“We’re still working on your
case.”
I sighed. “The case that says I don’t deserve the
prize. Your entourage is an absurd
condition, but it’s worth it to me. It’ll be fun,” I said, and I meant it
sincerely. I looked around. “The patient should be here, too.”
“I’m hoping he’ll join us in
We departed
The fellow passengers were
good company and the time passed quickly.
The professor was teaching
the medieval princess chess, and that started up a speed tournament, which was
won by Shaishnikof who said his grandfather taught him.
The princess kept glancing at
me from time to time, and although I knew she couldn’t possibly be aware of my
dreams, it was uncomfortable, especially because she looked like she might
actually know about them and thought they were nice.
Oh dear.
She once came alone and sat
next to me. She still clung to her
dialect, but I was able to understand most of what she said. “The professor told me you are to give a
speech.”
“Yes, I’m talking about lines
from a play called Macbeth.”
“A king in the north.”
“The play is macabre and
historically inaccurate, but it contains beautiful poetic verses.”
“And what are they?”
I recited them from memory:
“Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care,
The death of each day's life, sore labor's bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course,
Chief nourisher in life's feast.”
She thought awhile, perhaps
contemplating the metaphors. “Say them
again.”
I did, and she said tenderly,
“I’ve heard these truths before now. I just wanted to hear you say them now
with your voice.” And then she got up
and moved to a reclining seat by herself, slipped on noise reduction earmuffs,
and composed herself for sleep. I
brought her a blanket, which she gratefully, wordlessly welcomed.
Atlas later organized a game
of charades and kept up a ridiculous banter of spontaneous jokes. During one of his impromptu monologues, JTB
was reading a sci-fi fan periodical in the back. I sat down next to him.
“It’s hard to believe he’s a
neurobiologist.”
He looked up from his
magazine with a bemused expression. “He
told you that?”
“After he said he was an
animal wrangler.”
“Hard to know for sure what
he did in his past life. He told me he was a psychic. All I care about is, he passed a background
check, he contributes to our work, and he’s loyal.”
“I think he was a standup
comic,” I said, but JTB had already returned to his magazine. I returned to staring from my window and
napping.
The newcomers, a man and a
woman whom we picked up at separate stops, kept to themselves and each other,
apparently having a lot of catching up to do.
We arrived at the spectacular
“Okay everyone!” a lovely
female voice in a dapper uniform said louder than you’d expect from such a
lithe figure, “The ceremony is in four hours, so we must be moving.”
Our personal guide.
With bustling, noise, and
exited voices, we wound through the gathered clusters of arriving and departing
passengers to the parking area and mounted the steps into a long luxury van, of
the kind with more window space on the outside than anything else. The air service had brought our luggage to
us, and so after the driver tossed the final bags into the underbins and
strapped himself in, we glided underway.
JTB made sure I had a window
seat and he plopped into the aisle seat next to me to fill me in on the
details, which I could scarcely absorb.
No problem, I’d just take everything as it came.
“Do you have your speech?”
JTB asked.
“Huh? Yes, of course.” I patted my pocket for the
thousandth time to make sure.
JTB must have noticed how
overwhelmed and distracted I was, and fell silent. For the remainder of the drive, my eyes and
heart feasted on the sharp, bright architectural lines of
The ceremony, the speeches—my
speech—the formal outfits, the stiff pageantry, and stately music, the praise,
none of it terribly significant in the huge picture of life. All of it exciting and important in the
moment, but soon over, and with relief, we returned to the mundane, though
Back at our hotel, which must
have been a royal Nordic palace not very long ago, I waved to all our friends
who had gathered around a cheery fireplace and I hurried toward my room to turn
in early as usual. JTB caught me at the
bottom of the staircase and said, “We have some more surprises in store.”
“As the prize stipulated,” I
said hurriedly, “I was to conduct interviews with people living for long
periods in atypical sunrise and sunset conditions.”
“Tomorrow we leave for
“That’s great. We never went when I was a child, but I’ve
always wanted to visit.”
As I trotted up the stairs, I
almost laughed, thinking of myself as a type of Cinderella. If I didn’t leave the ball before the clock
struck twelve, I’d turn into a pumpkin.
It was a ludicrous thought. But after I once blanked out after dark at
the bowling alley and woke up at home in the morning with no memory of what had
happened, I decided it wouldn’t ever happen again.
A soft knock on the door. I
barely heard it, and then it came again. I jumped out of bed. Who could this be? Why didn’t they just call me?
It was the medieval princess
in a blue bathrobe.
I was remembering that
vampires couldn’t enter your dwelling unless invited, but she wasn’t a vampire
and just walked straight in carrying an insulated lunch box, and a quilted
duffle bag and asked me to make tea, and then she plopped down in one of the
two portola chairs.
This was awkward. My only option as a gentleman who was
reluctant to give offense was to grab my clothes and wordlessly leave the room,
but if she wasn’t a vampire, I apparently am no gentleman. Because when she finished her tea and I in
the other portola chair was still sipping mine, she put down her cup, walked
over, and climbed into my lap…
And I didn’t object.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I promise. You’re ever my only man.”
8.
The Patient
Windfriede had fallen asleep in my room before sunset, which took place
about 10:30 pm local time. And though
she had brought some of my chilled blood so she could join me, it would be a
while, a day or two of waiting. From time to time I looked in at the whole process
happening in ultraslow motion.
I also expected more of Jonathan’s A+ and
Since an unavoidable night intervened before we could head north for
the final step of treatment, Windfriede and I had planned for this, a night
holiday in the south and midlands of
9.
Therapist
The princess was still
sleeping in the king-size bed when I woke early. I didn’t remember much except a bit of
confusion between what was dream and what was real.
Nevertheless, I felt more
relaxed and rested than ever before in my life.
It was like in my younger days when Dawn and I would hike for miles and
miles all day and lie in bed in extravagant laziness the next morning, hearts
beating slow and steady, stretching our strong stiff legs and humming in
pleasure with an easy conscience that we’d done all the strenuous physical work
necessary for the remainder of our lives, or so it felt. I hadn’t walked all those miles, of course,
but I had the same feelings of a well-earned contentment.
A
We arrived at the coastal
town
“What about?” I asked.
“I have some things to tell
you.”
I suddenly felt guilty. I had always felt that she was a crazy person
who had play-acted being from the 12th Century so much that she believed it
herself, and in selfishness, I had pretended this didn’t matter. And I was taking advantage of her. “Now the truth comes out,” I said in my
shame.
“Yes, the truth. Tonight it is safe to tell you because the
sun will not set.”
“What?”
“We have reserved a patio.”
She led me by the hand up the
stairs to the rooftop that was decorated with tiny lights and afforded a full
view of the sky, a calm, dramatic sky with an orange-red sun near the
southwestern horizon. The three of us
took seats around a woven metal table.
Then she said—the prof
translating from Middle English—the most shocking thing I have ever heard in my
entire life: “You and your patient, the one who lives a year every night, you
are the same person. You are him and he
is you.”
She paused to let me
process. Uncomprehending, I could say
nothing, and she continued:
“You are one person. Part of you has blocked knowledge of the
other part. You see the other part of
you as the patient, but you are the real patient of your story. You have lived alone through endless years of
night.”
I stopped breathing.
Windfriede gently shook me by
the shoulders, and I took a deep breath. And about the same moment, the impenetrable
wall within me vanished and I knew what she said was true.
I had pushed my fear and despair
where they could not hurt anymore, and they became embodied into the Long Night.
You might think this news would overthrow me. That I would cry, or pass out, or
scoff. I thought for centuries that
revealing the truth to myself would kill me. The truth indeed might have
destroyed me up until a few weeks ago when Windfriede entered my life, filling
the endless darkness of my soul with love and companionship, and warm
closeness.
I walked over to the
balustrade and gazed off to the sunset that would last until sunrise, both of
them merging, blending, into an endless day, a seamless day and a restoration
of my life. In the centuries of
aloneness and suffering, I had developed a resignation during the Long Night
that what was essential to my person could never be killed, and now the
resignation bore fruit. My struggle
against annihilation perfected and endlessly re-perfected, I was now free.
“I am so relieved it’s
over.”
Windfriede put her arms
around me as we stood together side-by-side, gazing at the sky.
“You really are a medieval
princess. I know.”
“That I am.”
“We both have lived apart
from the world we see before us. We are a perfect match. I said that before.”
“You have said it many
times.”
“I remember.”
The professor had remained at
the table, his language fluency no longer needed. But he said, “We have company.”
JTB rushed up at the head of
the pack, excited, as usual, taking in the scene. “It worked, or it’s working! We don’t know if the barrier is down
permanently, but we have months of 24-hour sun days left. After that, we’ll see. If we need to, we can
ship you off to
“I hope so,” I said. “I never want to go back.”
10.
Ron Fjermestad
Diane, Christy, and the Shaishnikofs returned to Camas.
After about a week luxuriating in
While Motty and Atlas took a day to set up the school
gymnasium for the broadcast. (We felt that half the town would be attending.)
Windfriede and I hired a boat to carry us out to an abandoned Soviet coal
mining village—virtually a ghost town of the size and appearance of a
medium-sized community college in the
Her tears said she wasn’t joking.
“My parents brought us here to this place once, before
the mine closed,” I said. “In the dead
of winter. We stayed at the hotel. This is where my nightmares began. The dreams of a relentless, ravenous beast
that pursued me even into sleep during my Long Nights.”
The Broadcast/Ron Fjermestad
Jonathan gave me a transcript
and I’ve included it below, edited and with a few added comments of my
own. I’ve taken out questions and
answers about subjects I’ve covered before.
MOTTY: Okay, everyone. We need it quiet in the gym. Only babies are excused to make noise! Are you a baby, sir, leaning against the
wall? Well, then. We are live. Thank
you, all. We are rolling tape, right, Atlas?
Tonight our host, paranormal investigator Jonathan T. Barron, will be
interviewing Dr. Ronald Fjermestad from a small town along the Columbia River
in the
After the enthusiastic
applause, Jonathan gave my history and asked me to explain and describe the
everlasting night world, and how I came to escape.
The audience listened with
rapt attention, the year-round residents knowing from experience what the long
polar nights are like and how they had to be on watch for prowling bears.
After I concluded, Jonathan
opened the floor for questions, which was the most interesting part for me.
AUDIENCE MEMBER #1: I’m interested in the physics of the everlasting night. You said everything moved at an imperceptibly
slow speed unless it was close to you.
How about sound?
RONNIE: The world was all but silent. Until I figured out how to play
recorded music on headphones and had a piano brought to my house, I was deaf,
except for my own ordinary sounds, and my heartbeat, breathing, and voice.
AUDIENCE MEMBER #1: A follow-up, if I may. Did you
teach yourself to play the piano?
RONNIE: I had taken lessons for several years as a
child. It all came back to me. Long before I bought the piano—decades
before—I learned to read orchestral scores and I could play the music in my
mind.
AUDIENCE MEMBER #1: The full orchestra?
RONNIE: If
the score called for a full orchestra, yes.
I can still do this, by the way.
All the parts simultaneously.
<VOCAL SOUNDS OF
ADMIRATION>
RONNIE: It kept me alive. Any of you with musical aptitude could learn
this if in my circumstances. It’s not hard
if you have endless hours and have heard the instruments before. You’d be surprised what you can pull from
memory when it’s all you have.
AUDIENCE MEMBER #1 YET AGAIN : Who… <GROAN FROM CROWD> Who is your favorite composer?
JONATHAN: I
think we need to move on. Next question?
AUDIENCE MEMBER #2: What were the animated animals like in the night world? How can you explain their presence? How did they survive and what did they eat?
RONNIE: JTB, Jonathan, tells me that his colleagues
are exploring and documenting the night world across
AUDIENCE MEMBER #3: How did you keep yourself
clean?
RONNIE:
Sponge baths. Laundry services every
normal morning at my night house—several laundry services. I cut my own hair.
AUDIENCE MEMBER #4: Why didn’t you age?
RONNIE: I don’t know.
AUDIENCE MEMBER #5: You’ve talked about monsters.
Were there actual monsters?
JONATHAN: I’ll take this one, Ron. My friends are specifically looking for
origins of the Gjengangere, the undead of Norwegian folklore. (Here, there was
an audible collective shudder in the room.)
Yes, you’ve heard of them. Ron,
Dr. Fjermestad, says he spent 14 months of ordinary nights in the everlasting
night world, which comprises 425 years of existence, which by some miracle or
his own resilience, he survived. He
calls it the Long Night. Every day at sunrise the Long Night world vanished and
he lived a nominally normal life, though stunted because he had blocked out so
much.
Imagine, then, a person
trapped in Long Night for years and years.
Say, 40 regular years. Times 365,
that would amount to 14,600 years of dark existence. If a person could adapt
and survive such unimaginable loneliness, what would that do to them in his or
her day life? I don’t know about you,
but I might learn to fear contact with the warm, bright, living world. I might hide. Friends and loved ones might
assume I had vanished and died. And if
people of the day world ever saw me, they might think I’m a Gjengangere.
RONNIE: Here
in the far north, where the sun does not rise for four months—what you call a
Polar Night—that would equal 240 continuous
years of night, not just one year at a time with a typical day between.
AUDIENCE MEMBER #6: [An adolescent who had been persistently waving his hand in the air
and suddenly erupted with his urgent question.]
So, the vampire must return to his coffin by sunrise or he erupts in
flames?
<SMATTERING OF NEVOUS
LAUGHTER>
RONNIE:
There were many, many times I felt undead.
Every culture has its folklore, which grows and changes in the
telling. My experience is that these
tales have their beginnings in reality, though much different than what they
end up being. We are all familiar with
how movies based on true events change the story for dramatic purposes, or to
fit the story into a two-hour time frame.
And we also know that old legends likely exaggerate or supersize real
people and events. Then there are whole
different genres of invented fantasy and science fiction in which it’s all made
up.
But what’s far more common
and less known, is how legends and folk tales flatten real stories to make them
more believable. They remove the
apparent contradictions and inconsistencies and the odd, seemingly random
details that don’t fit a simple narrative.
They soften the mysteries.
Reality is often truly
unbelievable and impossible.
AUDIENCE MEMBER #7: Would you say it was a near-death experience?
RONNIE: No.
Not at all. It was a dead, death
experience. A decent-into-hell
experience.
JONATHAN: Let’s move on now. I think Dr. Fjermestad
would rather talk about his future.
AUDIENCE MEMBER #8: How fortunate you won the prize
and came to this wonderful land of everlasting koselig.
<GENTLE LAUGHTER ACROSS
THE GYMNASIUM>
RONNIE: I see the word doesn’t need translation.
JONATHAN:
For our radio listeners, koselig more or less means cozy.
RONNIE: One English word doesn’t quite capture it.
Imagine being out in the frosty winter-cold darkness, ice skating with your
friends on a glass-clear lake under the soaring mountains and the flaming
aurora borealis. Then imagine you all
crowding into a fragrant candlelit den warmed by a fireplace, slipping off your
snowsuits and boots, and enjoying comfortable chairs, good food, drink, and
songs. Afterwards, who knows what?
<AUDIBLE SIGH>
RONNIE: Yes, fortunate, but also fortune. I funded the prize and all expenses myself
from what I’ve made from my books. I did
all this from my night world.
This was a surprise to the
audience. They knew I wrote a great deal
and published a few things, but I never before mentioned in public my
astonishing financial success, which I intended to keep in the background. They were still wondering about the vast gulf
between me in the nightmare Long Night world and me during the day, when
Jonathan moved us along.
JONATHAN: Tell us about your project.
RONNIE: I’m convinced there are others out there, as Jonathan
mention, imprisoned in the Long Night.
In my journeys in that world, I occasionally caught a glimpse of furtive
human-shaped figures in the distant shadows.
They may have seen me in the same way, and we fled from each other. These people also exist in the day world,
your world. My first wife overdosed on sleeping pills. She may have been trapped in the Long Night
cycle and felt she couldn’t face another one. We may have someone here in this
gym, or wherever you are, where you live and work. They are unaware of how they have fled from
pain and put it where it can’t hurt them, but it affects them far more than
they or you can imagine. The pain takes
on a real physical life of its own.
JONATHAN: Your hope is to rescue those people.
RONNIE: We hope to be sending caring, courageous
people into the Long Night and finding those who are lost there, comforting
them, helping them survive, and, then if possible, creating a way to integrate
them with themselves. I’m setting up a
foundation…
JONATHAN: [INTERUPTING] It seems we have some
enthusiastic visitors.
A handful of tourists wearing
the latest outdoorsy casual fashions and carrying around their necks
complicated mechanical devices, wandered up the middle aisle towards the front
looking all the world like they were lost. They appeared to have just stepped off a
cruise ship. When Windfriede saw them, she
jumped from her seat and ran behind me.
“The aliens,” she whispered
hoarsely. “They’re back.”
Jonathan heard her, and alas,
the sensitive microphone picked up her words, so everyone in the room and
Jonathan’s entire radio audience heard.
“Somebody shoot them!”
Windfriede said to the crowd.
Jonathan took it in
stride. “You never know what’ll happen
on my program,” he said, giving a thumbs-up to Motty for staying on the air.
“What can I help you guys with?”
One of the tourist aliens
stepped forward. “Sorry interrupting, but my subordinate has words say.”
He grabbed another tourist
alien by the collar of his peach and rust-orange pullover jacket and pulled him
forward.
Straightening his jacket, he
looked at Windfriede and hung his head. “I’m sorry returning you wrong
place—ah, time. Wrong time. Wrong time
place. I messed. Really sorry. My fault.”
“There. Wasn’t so hard, was
it?” the captain alien tourist said to the penitent alien.
The captain alien continued: “I also want officially apologize my
government. We did not give proper supervision this intern. We can put this writing, you like?” He looked around for anyone to answer, but we
were all still stunned, not sure of what was going on.
Jonathan glanced over to
Atlas, asking if this scene was one of his stunts. He shook his head, pointed to himself, and soundlessly
mouthed, “Wasn’t me.”
The alien captain pressed on. “We affectionate make this right, friend
maiden” he said. “So you wish, we return you your home family. It will be them you never left. And we offer generous compensation your
trouble.”
Windfriede then pulled me
away from the microphone. “I’m not
leaving you. What do you think? Would
you like to go?”
“I’d go with you anywhere in
the universe. But I need to stick close
by in case I relapse.”
She then turned to the
aliens. “I thank you for your offer, you
odious fopdoodles. But I have a wonderful life here now. Inform your government you must tell my
father, mother, and siblings I am well and happy. And give your vulgar compensation to them!”
Motty, with Atlas egging him
on, had turned the microphones on as high as they would go, so the whole
private drama had been made public, and the entire audience in the room burst
into cheers and applause.
The aliens bowed and
meandered away, still lost, and the audience still applauding. The mayor of Camas (don’t ask me why he was
still with us) shouted after them, “We have a blooming summer theater in my
city. Bring your fellow aliens and put on a show!”
Windfriede hugged me, saying
through her tears, “Why are these people laughing? Those creatures are
horrible. They’re the monsters.”
She composed herself, walked
to a microphone, and began singing the most exquisite, poignant lament you can
imagine.
Epilogue
Windfriede’s spontaneous
performance perfectly concluded the program in Longyearbyen.
As for the aliens, I could
have lived without them, but everyone who witnessed their appearance had a good
time. That’s what’s important. As we
know, people erect defenses against truth, and a good way to break through is
with light, warmth, and humor.
We received dozens, if not
hundreds of letters from people who want to join our rescue program. Jonathan
set up protocols for screening and training recruits, and then he said he
needed to move on, but he will keep my file with these written documents
open. He said Atlas had collected
contact info from the aliens and he and his team are planning to follow up with
them next.
I’m retiring soon. I’m giving my practice away to an eager young
Windfriede and I plan to
build homes somewhere in the far north and south, follow the sun, and to the
best of our ability, avoid any darkness. We hope to explore beyond the
And even now, strangely, you
might think, when everything is too loud and glaring during the day, and
everyone is rushing here and there, I often miss the soft darkness and restful
silence of night, and even more, the luminous, jeweled heavens above.
END
