legends · 4 min read ·
The Sleepwalker's Husband
A husband follows his sleepwalking wife to the edge of a wood, where a figure holds out its hand to him instead.
My wife has walked in her sleep since she was nine. It's a family thing. Her father did it, and her grandfather. The doctors call it parasomnia, and give you leaflets. You lock the doors, you put a bell on the bedroom handle, you learn to wake lightly and walk her back without a word. She has never remembered a single episode. In the morning, with her tea, she laughs when I tell her. She says, "Did I? Where did I go?"
We have been married nineteen years. In that time she has gone to the kitchen, the garden, the end of the road, once to the shed, where I found her standing in the dark holding a trowel. Always short trips. Always home by morning. I've grown quite fond of the habit. It's one of the things that makes her mine.
It changed in September.
I woke at three on a Thursday to find the bed empty and the bell silent. I went down to the hall and the front door was open. I was not frightened. I put on my coat and walked out to the end of the drive, and there, under the street lamp, in her nightdress, bare feet on the wet pavement, my wife was standing quite still, facing the road.
I took her arm. "Come on, love."
She didn't move. She was looking at something I couldn't see, down at the end of the road, where the street bends. Her face was calm. She whispered, in a tone I'd never heard, "Not yet."
"What's not yet?"
"It isn't time," she said, in her sleep. "It will say when."
I walked her home. She went back to bed and slept till eight.
Two nights later she was at the end of the road again. A few yards further. A week later, at the corner, her bare toes on the white line. I began to follow her, in my coat, at a distance. I kept a notebook.
*Sept 14. 03:05. W. at the end of Larch Road. Stood 20 min. Said "Not yet."*
*Sept 20. 03:10. W. at the corner of Larch & Mill. Stood 25 min. Facing east. Hands at her sides.*
*Sept 27. 03:02. W. in the middle of Mill Lane. Turned to look at me. Said: "He's coming."*
*Oct 4. 03:00. W. at the bridge. Stood the whole hour. I couldn't wake her.*
I should say here that I tried. I took her by the shoulders and shook her. I called her name. I said I loved her. She turned her head and looked at me with open, unseeing eyes, and she smiled, a lovely sweet smile, and said, in a perfectly normal voice, "Don't be silly, Tom. I'm not awake."
By October I was frightened. I rang her sister, who said, "Oh, God. It's started, has it?" She told me what I'd never known. That in the family, the walking is not a quirk. It's a service. Her grandfather walked, and her father walked, and each of them, in later life, made a longer and longer journey, and each, in the end, did not come back. She said there was something in the old country, a road, a place the family had lived once. They'd left. But the walkers were called.
"Called by what?"
"I don't know. It's never been said. You mustn't try to stop her."
"I'm her husband."
"Then don't," said the sister. "Walk with her."
I did. I put on boots. I went with her, from then on, hand in hand, through the sleeping town, in the dark, in the cold, past the lit windows of a dozen shift workers. She did not speak. I did not either. We went further each night. Over the bridge. Through the old brickworks. Out along the canal and the long straight lane to the woods.
Tonight is the thirty-first night. We came to the edge of the wood and she stopped, facing a path I had never seen. A narrow green tunnel in the trees. She let go of my hand.
"Is this it?" I whispered.
"Nearly." Her eyes were open, bright, and for the first time she looked at me with full recognition, awake. Tears on her face. "Tom. I'm so sorry. I should have told you. I knew from the first night."
"Knew what?"
"That I'd be going. That it never takes the one who walks. It takes the one who follows."
She put her hand on my chest and pushed me, very gently. I stepped back. And in that instant I saw, on the path behind her, on the green dark, a tall pale figure waiting, with a hand held out. Not for her. Past her. For me.
She turned, with a sob, and began to run, back along the lane towards the town. And the figure did not follow her. It looked at me. It stood quite still, in the trees, one hand held out, and did not lower it.