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“Hey, Charles, sshh. It’s okay. I’m here. It was only a bad dream. You’re just waking up.”
I scrambled out of bed, returning from the bathroom with a cold, damp face cloth and a glass of water. Bunching a couple of pillows behind his back, I coaxed him to sit up and handed him the water. The cooling face cloth I plopped on top of his head then climbed back in next to him. He took a few sips.
“Better?” I asked.
He sucked in a shuddering breath before replying. “Shit. Yeah, better.”
“Thank God. You scared the living daylights out of me.”
“Sorry. I should have warned you. It’s a thing I do. He glanced at the sleek watch still strapped to his wrist. “Usually around about now.”
“What? Every night?” Christ, no wonder he was so worn out. I felt drained just witnessing it.
“What the hell do you dream about? What do you see? Whatever it is, it’s fucking scary.”
He took another shaky sip before placing the glass onto the bedside table. The facecloth stayed on his head, dribbling water down his temples. His colour had perked up a little, he looked unbelievably sweet, not that now was the moment to tell him.
“Dark grey blobs mostly,” he answered, in a sober tone.
Okay, so I hadn’t expected that. He rubbed a hand across his jaw.
“Have you ever seen the film The Mummy?”
I nodded—the actor in the main role had been sexy as anything—although he was probably old enough to be my dad now.
“Well, the shapeless things in my dreams swarm like the scarab beetles in that film, the human-eating ones. They make the same menacing clicking sound; they sort of swallow me up. I dream I’m covered in them and being eaten alive.”
Mon dieu, no wonder he’d yelled his head off. “Putain, you see that every night? I’d go nuts.”
“Funny you should say that.”
His hand fumbled for mine and gave it a pat. ““Don’t worry. I used to see them during the day, too, when I was wide awake. So at least this is progress, I guess.”
“Waouh,” I said, because, you know, I was a master at dissecting other people’s psychoses in the middle of the night and then coming up with the perfect response.
He huffed a laugh.
“Wow indeed.” Charles had reverted to the conversational tone he’d used when he’d told me about his mother’s death and his subsequent breakdown, as if distancing himself from the story, as if it were someone else’s story he was reading out from a newspaper. His colour was back to normal, though, and he wiped his face with the damp cloth before putting it on the table next to his water glass.
“Am I still your type?” He offered a rueful smile. “As you can see, the mental health issue I’m dealing with is a little more than the usual ups and downs. When I’m not being an uptight businessman, I’m being an utterly deranged one.”
“Hey, I told you to stop saying that stuff about yourself.” Taking his clammy hand in mine, I brought it to my lips. “I’m liking you just as you are.”
A warning voice in my head—sounding a lot like Nico’s, to be honest—suggested this might be an opportune moment to walk away. I mean, I’d wait until a civilised time of the morning, obviously. I wasn’t crass enough for a three a.m. flit. But even if I was, Charles was such a nice guy there would be no hard feelings. Mon dieu, he’d probably still agree to help me with the cooperative stuff.
“How long have you been having nightmares like this?”
“Er…” He performed some mental calculations. “Coming up to five months? Although part of that period is a little hazy.”
I did some quick arithmetic of my own. His mother’s tragic death had happened a bit before then, but they had to be related. “Do you want to tell me about how it started?”
“That depends if you want to hear. I’d understand if you didn’t. Frankly, I’d understand if you picked up your clothes and walked out now.”
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t consider it. I’d found myself in a few different beds over the years. Often after a big night out, and never sober like tonight with Charles. A few guys I’d met up with more than once—I remember fucking a student from Lyon, spending the summer working on the village campsite, almost every night for a month. Three years later, I couldn’t even recall the colour of his eyes. Only enough to know they paled in comparison with the stormy grey ones warily gauging me now.
“I want to hear,” I answered and pulled his sweaty body into my arms, startling him. “Start at the beginning.”
With his head resting on my chest, and my fingers curling in his damp hair, Charles didn’t say anything for a few moments, as if he were gathering courage. When he began, his voice was a shaky, low hush.
