Page 1 of The Sleepwalker

Prologue

The silvery light from the heavy sky shimmers in the restless rings on the puddles, in the water dripping from the roof and the overflowing zinc washtub.

Mother is standing in the middle of the yard, between Grandpa’s rusty old car and the woodshed. Her blonde hair is sopping wet, her bra and jeans soaked through.

The pouring rain mixes with the fresh blood still weeping from her wounds, rinsing it away almost as quickly as it appears.

That morning, she grabbed a knife and slashed herself all over, then tossed the blade to the floor and left the house barefoot.

The boy peers out onto the porch and studies the bloody door knob, the peeling wallpaper, the knife and the empty bottle of vodka between his father’s rubber boots.

Mother spent all night talking to the jerry can in the car and the axe in the woodshed, screaming at them and pleading with the heavens to send his father home.

The boy turns back into his room and watches her through the window. The rain is now lashing down on the tin roof and the window ledge in front of him.

The gutters are clogged with old leaves, and they quickly overflow.

The plastic-coated cable around the boy’s left wrist isattached to a handrail that has been screwed to the ceiling, allowing him to move freely around his room. He can lie down in bed, stand by the window and play with his toys on the floor.

He has a troll with bright orange hair, pointed like a flame, a bendy Pink Panther and an American police car with lights that flashed blue the week he first got it.

With the cable around his wrist, he can go out onto the porch and use the toilet, but he can’t reach the front door. If he stretches as far as he can, until his wrist burns and his shoulder aches, he can see the broken floor in the kitchen.

His mother disappears into the woodshed and re-emerges with the axe. She stands still for a moment beside the heap of old tyres and rusty engines, head bowed. The glow of the neon Ford sign illuminates the raindrops behind her.

She lifts her chin and slowly turns around. She points at him in the window, then starts striding towards the house.

Introduction

TheRazor Crestspaceship hovers in the darkness. The woman smiles as she looks down at her son. His face is pale in the moonlight spilling in through the locked window, a slight crease between his brows.

His chest and stomach rise and fall with each steady breath.

After his evening bath and snack, he brushed his teeth and took the fifteen milligrams of promethazine she gave him, and he is now sleeping soundly.

She still feels flustered that Robert arrived while the boy was awake, meaning she had to lie and say he was a delivery man dropping off some papers.

The baby monitor is focused on his sleeping body.

She gets up as slowly as she can, but her movements still set the big Lego spacecraft swaying on its nylon cords.

The woman tiptoes out into the hallway, closes the door and has just started to turn the key in the lock when something thuds to the floor on the other side.

Holding her breath, she presses her ear to the wood.

He doesn’t seem to have woken.

She told Robert not to make a sound, but she can hear soft music from her bedroom. She turns the key, smooths her dress and walks down the hall, through the door with the window in it and past the top of the stairs.

Robert is sitting in the dark with his phone in his hand. He whispers sorry, and she can’t help but smile when she meets his eye. With his short, curly hair, the silver coin he wears on a chain and his bare chest, he looks like a young Roman emperor.

‘He’s asleep,’ she says.

‘OK, so what are we waiting for?’

‘The answer’s always you, if you ask me.’

‘I’m here. I came,’ he says, getting up.