“I found myself wet and shivering, lying on my bed, covered with seaweed.”
“Do you sleepwalk?”
“Never.”
I stared at Mark trying to make sense of his story. A lot of what he told me came down to a form of hysteria, particularly, the strange writing that appeared on his chest.
It’s not uncommon for sub cutaneous phenomena and mystical obsessions to present themselves in hysterics and in male patients they usually tie in with an underlying gender conflict.
“I think this has something to do with Edi.”
His offhand remark caught me by surprise. “What would your girlfriend have to do with your sleepwalking?”
He stood up and took off his shirt and turned to show me his back. I gasped.
“Edi made you get a pentacle tattoo on your back?”
He nodded and sat back down despondently, not even bothering to put his shirt back on.
“I began living with Edi in April and she told me about two weeks later she was a witch.”
I could see the fact bothered him—he was wringing the fabric of the shirt with his hands.
“Why don’t you put that back on and then tell me all about it?”
He stood and mechanically dressed himself—his face devoid of all expression.
I sat back and lit my pipe. “Do you smoke?” I gestured to the cigarette box. He nodded and fished out a Marlboro and lit up.
I waited until he sat back down and took a deep drag and then watched him exhale and visibly relax.
I take it you’d never have become involved with Edi if you knew she practiced witchcraft.”
“For sure, but it’s even worse than that—she’s mixed up with Satanists too. I wish I never slept with her.”
“What specifically are you afraid of?” I asked.
“My pastor told me there could be a transference of spirits from her to me—even more so, since we had sex.”
I heard of cases of demonization resulting from intercourse with a possessed person.
One of my colleagues, a Jesuit priest, treated a young woman in a similar situation—but frankly, this was beyond my expertise.
“I’m sure this makes sense to you viewed through your belief system—I personally don’t believe, but I can refer you on to a colleague…”
“Look, Doctor Evans—I’m a lapsed Catholic—I don’t particularly believe myself, but there are elements here I can’t explain.”
“Can you elaborate?”
“My sleepwalking episode was not the first time—it happened last week too. I woke up on the couch, fully dressed, with my knuckles skinned and scratches on my face.
Ever since then, I asked the concierge to lock my door from the outside to prevent my going out.”
In had to ask. “Could he have forgotten to lock the door?”
“No, because I always try it to make sure. I can assure you it was locked that night.”
“What about the window or a balcony?”
“No balcony and my room’s on the third floor.”
“That is strange.”
I felt a tingle at the back of my skull. I had researched mystic phenomena associated with hysteria and had read about bizarre manifestations including levitation—but flying in and out of a third floor window?
It seemed less a case for psychoanalysis and more a role for Bell Lugosi.
“You don’t believe me, do you?”
Frankly, I didn’t—believe his interpretation, that is, but I had to do something.
“Suppose we conduct an experiment," I suggested.
"I’ll accompany you back to your apartment and I’ll stay overnight. You’re exhausted and look like you haven’t slept for weeks. What do you say?”
He agreed. I half-hoped he wouldn’t, but he was already taking 20 mg. of Ambien to try to sleep and I was concerned he might become addicted.
Mark’s apartment was in a stately Spanish hacienda just outside Cabo San Lucas here in the southern tip of the Baja Peninsula.
I had set up a practice ten years ago, intending to stay a few years, but fell in love with the seaside and the locals. So, here I was, a decade later, catering to retirees and the odd movie star.
The first thing I did when I got to the apartment was to carefully examine it. The only way out of Mark’s room was through the hall door—the window overlooked a cliff and a sheer drop of hundreds of feet to the rocks below.
If Mark physically left the room, it had to have been through that hall door.
We sat and talked for about an hour. Mark told me he had broken off the relationship with Edi, although she still tried to phone.
Apparently, she had sent dozens of letters—all of which, he marked return to sender and sent back unopened.
About midnight, he finally fell asleep.
I heard the concierge come by and lock the door. I got up and tried it myself. It was tightly locked.
I settled in with an anthology of Sherlock Holmes and prepared to face the long night.
For two hours, I heard nothing but the rhythm of the waves crashing against the rocks and Mark’s gentle regular snoring. It was almost hypnotic.
Once or twice, I almost dozed off, but just before three a.m. I made myself a coffee and stood staring out the window at the silvery track of the Moon on the Gulf waters.
I returned to my sofa chair and took up reading *The Hound of the Baskervilles&. A
few minutes later, Mark’s breathing changed and he seemed to become agitated.
He began muttering the occasional word and then began flailing with his arms as if fending off an attack.
I dropped the book and stood to wake him, when out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a luminous blue mist.
It was forming in the opposite corner of the room, directly across from Mark’s pullout bed.
I stood transfixed and watched as the mist spun into a vortex, spinning faster and faster, until finally the shape of a woman began to emerge.
I cried out in fear as I saw a dark haired woman glare at me malevolently.
Black shapes resembling bats came fluttering out and flapped around me whirling and cutting the air.
A vibration began inside my body I can only liken to thunder and for a moment I either went blind or lost consciousness.
I fell to the floor and when I came to, the bed was empty—the bedding was scattered across the floor, but Mark was nowhere to be found.
I called the concierge who opened the door. He assured me no one had left the apartment.
The following morning Mark’s body was recovered from the Gulf, washed up on the rocks below the window.
The official cause of death was listed as accident caused by misadventure—a probable case of somnambulism leading to Mark’s falling from the open window.
Well, that was the official cause of death, but I know otherwise.
I now regularly see Kurt Strauss, my Jesuit colleague and we talk and try to make sense of what happened.
That’s right—shrinks need shrinks—sometimes it’s all that keeps us sane.
Kurt’s got a perfectly succinct explanation, but I just can’t get to the level to which he’s ascended.
I have no explanation of my own to offer other than to say, sometimes stuff happens.
I’d like to leave it as a mystery, but lately, a damnable thing keeps happening.
I find now that I’m sleepwalking.
