Nyctophobia (15 page)

Everything seemed to happen in slow motion. I ran out into the hall, heading for the front door, and pulled it open. The top half of Mateo’s body was completely obscured by black carapaces, legs, wings. The drone was deafening. There was nothing I could do; if I went any closer to help him, they would attack me.

Mateo took a few paces toward me, and suddenly dropped onto the path so heavily that I heard his knees crack. It was as if someone had kicked him in the backs of his legs.

I couldn’t let him suffer like that. I began running toward him. He lay still on the amber sand of the pathway, the hornets scribbling an angry cloud across his hands and face. As I dashed forward they suddenly cleared and lifted, dispersing into the sky, heading away from the bonfire smoke and off the property.

I reached him and turned him over. There were still at least twenty hornets swarming and crawling over his face. One was struggling to pull itself free from his left eye. I slapped it away, leaving its venom-filled amber spike half inside his pupil. Others were crawling out of his mouth, having stung his tongue and gums. There were hornets in his nostrils and ears. I knew they had the ability to sting many times over, and as I beat them aside one buried its stinger into the back of my hand. Mateo’s face had already turned black. Crimson welts were rising on his throat and neck. He was no longer breathing. The poison had closed his air passages.

I pulled his tie loose and ripped open his white shirt, trying to give him air. His right shoe suddenly drummed against the sand, the sound loud and shocking, then stopped. I knew enough to recognise that he was in respiratory arrest, and would most likely be suffering a cardiac seizure. I interlocked my hands flat on his chest, over the lower part of his sternum, and pressed in a pumping motion. When this had no effect I tried artificial respiration, but first I had to remove dead insects from his mouth.

In between these frantic actions I called out for help, but I remembered that the windows were all shut fast, and that it was unlikely anyone would hear me.

Hyperion House, where nothing bad could ever happen, had shut out my cries of terror.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The Return

L
ATER IT WAS
hard to recall the precise order of events. I’d read that it was best to perform artificial respiration and CPR at the same time, but to do that there needed to be two of you. There was nothing more I could possibly do for Mateo by myself. His eyes were swollen with poison, his head thrown back, mouth wide.

Climbing tipsily to my feet I lurched away. The last of the hornets left Mateo’s body and drifted off into the sky. A few lay crushed on the path. The garden was completely silent for a few moments, as if we were sealed inside a bubble. Then the birds returned and started chirruping again.

I ran inside, looking for Rosita. The ground fled from beneath my feet. I think I fell once or twice. I searched room after room in increasing confusion, calling out, but the vacuum’s whine was coming from somewhere upstairs, drowning my cries. I crashed into the large dresser at the entrance to the kitchen, dislodging plates, then turned and followed the sound, running along the passage.

Upstairs I found the vacuum cleaner still on, its hose lying dropped on the rug, but no sign of Rosita – somehow we had missed each other in the labyrinthine house.

A pounding dizziness settled over me and I fell back hard against the wall, sinking down to the floor. The sinus pain punched hard, blinding me, a deafening high-pitched whine resounding in my ears until I could neither see nor hear. Quite how long I remained like this was hard to tell, but when it finally subsided I was able to rise and find my way unsteadily to the top of the staircase. I took the steps carefully, gripping the bannister until I reached the ground, then ran straight into the arms of a dark figure blocking the hall.

As I twisted and turned, shouting and trying to break free, I realised who was holding my arms.

‘What’s the matter?’ Mateo asked, alarmed. He was still dressed in his blue business suit and tie, and smelled of airline air. His hands gripped me gently but firmly. ‘Breathe – take a breath.’

Unable to speak, I seized his wrist and pulled him back toward the entrance of the house, out onto the drive, virtually dragging him to the path. I pointed down, unable to look.

When I did, I found the sand clean and dry and unmarked. There was no body. There weren’t even any crushed insects.

I hauled him with me to the bonfire, where the remains of the empty hornets’ nest still lay smouldering among the interlaced branches and dead leaves. ‘I asked Jerardo to burn the nest while you were away,’ I said. ‘I put your return time in my phone calendar but I got it wrong. I saw you – there was an earth tremor, and the ground shifted. The hornets went crazy –’

‘I just got here,’ said Mateo, confused. ‘I was going to call from the airport but – what’s going on?’

Tearing myself free, I kicked at the sand in fury, then turned on him. ‘I’m not crazy, I wasn’t dreaming, I saw you die, Mateo! Right here!’

He looked puzzled. ‘Where were you?’

‘I was in the sun-lounger reading.’

Mateo went back to the chair and bent down, picking up my architectural digest. ‘Your book’s on the floor. Did you fall asleep?’

‘No, yes – I don’t know – I must have done.’

‘And you had a bad dream.’

‘No, I got stung, look –’ I turned over my right hand and showed him the crimson bump of the hornet’s sting.

‘You should put something on that,’ he said. ‘But listen, Bobbie and Julieta – wouldn’t they have come running if there had been an earth tremor?’

I pushed past him and ran back inside, shouting. ‘Bobbie, come down here!’

Bobbie appeared at the top of the stairs with a pen in her hand. ‘Daddy, you’re back early.’ She ran down and hugged him. ‘Do I get a present?’

‘Airport gift only, I’m afraid,’ said Mateo. ‘It’s in my carry-on.’

I knelt beside Bobbie. ‘Did you hear anything?’

‘When?’

‘Just now – a minute ago.’

‘No. We were doing Myths of Ancient Greece, and Julieta is letting me paint a picture. Do you want to come and see?’

‘In a minute.’ I looked up at Mateo beseechingly. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know what could have happened. I’m sure I was awake –’

‘You may well have been,’ Mateo agreed. ‘The sun plays tricks. Maybe you had a little heat-stroke and dreamed you were awake. What do they call that thing, where you become aware that you’re having a dream and you can change the outcome?’

‘Lucid dreaming,’ I muttered, pressing the heel of my palm against my forehead.

‘Right. There’s your answer. The hornet stung you and you had a nightmare.’

‘But I saw it all so clearly –’

‘My flight got in a bit early, I thought you’d be pleased to see me.’

‘I am, I just –’

‘I haven’t eaten anything. I’m starving.’

‘Rosita will – I just have to –’ I had seen him die, and he was talking about eating. I turned and fled off into the garden. I found Jerardo, and he mimed an explanation of carrying out my wishes with the nest.

Everything was as it should have been, as it had always been.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The Doctor

‘P
UT OUT YOUR
tongue please.’ Dr Javier Areces stared at it impassively. ‘Lovely, nice and pink. It’s a good indicator of your immune system. There doesn’t seem to be much wrong with you.’ In the waiting room of his Estepona office the usual assortment of tourists fidgeted. They’d come off motor-scooters, landed badly in swimming pools or had fallen asleep in the sun.

I told him, ‘I haven’t been sleeping very well.’

‘Do you keep regular hours?’

‘Yes. My husband’s often away on business. I have trouble getting to sleep when he’s not there. I wake up at dawn every day.‘

Areces took a penlight from his top pocket and shone it first into my left eye, then my right. I had taken a taxi to the hospital without telling Mateo the real reason for my visit. I’d told him I was getting some mild sleeping tablets. I didn’t want him to worry.

‘Are you sensitive to strong sunlight? You know the light is very different here.’

‘I don’t know. Maybe.’

‘Sunshine affects the brain by interacting with melatonin and serotonin,’ said Areces. ‘When sunlight hits your eyes, your optic nerve sends a message to reduce the production of melatonin, the hormone that helps you sleep. It raises the level of secretion when the sun sets. The opposite happens with serotonin, the so-called happy chemical; when you’re exposed to sun, your brain increases it. And when the sun’s ultraviolet rays touch your skin, your body produces vitamin D, which helps you maintain the serotonin level so that we slow down and sleep during the dark hours, and stay up during the day. This is called the human circadian rhythm.’

‘Yeah, well something’s messing with my circadian rhythm.’

‘You’re probably just having trouble adjusting to life in such a bright landscape. It upsets a lot of ex-pats.’

I had never thought of myself as an ex-pat. And I hated Dr Areces’ condescending attitude. I had come out here to be with Mateo, not for any other reason.

‘I sometimes have a problem with the dark,’ I said. ‘I don’t always feel comfortable in it.’

‘Does it frighten you?’

‘I was diagnosed with nyctophobia when I was fifteen.’
Just like Elena Condemaine,
I thought.

‘Oh, that doesn’t really mean anything,’ said Areces airily. ‘Most phobias are irrational, but fear of the dark is quite understandable, especially in a place where the light and dark contrast so strongly. It’s probably exacerbated by your disruptive sleep patterns. You know, we really don’t need to sleep for eight hours at a single time. You can split the sleeping part of your schedule into two halves each consisting of four hours and you’ll feel just as good, if not better, because the first hours of sleep are the deepest. That’s why we take siestas. You need to give it some time, make sure you wear yourself out during the day. Don’t just sit around. What did you do in London?’

‘I was working in an architectural practice.’

‘And here?’

‘I’m trying to research a book, and looking after my husband’s daughter – and the house.’

‘So you’re not commuting anymore, you don’t have the camaraderie of the workplace, life has suddenly slowed down a bit for you, I expect.’

‘I suppose it has.’

‘Physical work is good – and you should get some regular exercise at set hours.’

I looked around the dazzling white office. Most Spanish hospitals were having a really hard time. Areces was Mateo’s doctor and had a private practice, and it showed. ‘I’ve had lucid dreams,’ I told him, ‘well, thinking I’m awake when I’m still asleep. Hallucinations.’

‘Hm – any accompanying headache?’

‘Yes, a bit, like neuralgia.’

‘Buzzing in the ears?’

‘Yes.’

‘It sounds to me like it’s all part of the same problem. I imagine there’s nothing much to worry about, but I’d like you to monitor it for a while and make a note of the time, intensity and duration of the sensation if it returns. As for your fear of the dark, you’re lucky – it’s one of the few phobias that can be confronted and got rid of. And get on with that book of yours. Talk to people. Busy minds need to be filled.’

I knew how doctors worked. I could hear his tone lightening with deceptive casualness. He turned over my hand. ‘You’ve been stung. The cuts – they’ve been there a long time?’ He had spotted the scars on my arms.

‘Since I was fifteen.’

‘Well, perhaps when you have time, you can provide me with a few more details on your medical history. Were you hospitalised?’

‘A couple of times, yes. Overdoses.’

‘Trouble at home, I expect.’

I decided, with a sigh, to get at least part of the thing out. ‘I went through a difficult time with my folks. My mother tried to have me sectioned. My parents had been talking about divorcing for a number of years, and I wanted to go with my father, but we fell out. Then I was stuck with my mother, and she had always hated me for coming along and messing up her career – her words, not mine. My father died of lung cancer when I was seventeen, and two years later I got pregnant.’

‘Did you have an abortion?’

‘Yes. I was studying to become an architect at the time. I haven’t told my husband.’

‘Why is that?’

‘Well what do you think?’

‘Because he’s Catholic.’

‘That’s right.’

‘Well, I’ve heard much worse. And it’s good to know these things,’ Areces kept the same casual tone, making neat little notes in his folder. ‘I’m going to write you out a prescription for a light sedative. I don’t think we need to do anything further for the moment, but check back with me if you have any more of these – interludes. If they get worse we may have to take some kind of precautionary measure.’

As I headed across the sunbaked tarmac to the bus-stop I decided that Dr Javier Areces was nice but useless, and I wouldn’t be seeing him again. Mateo was back at the house because Julieta was off today, and someone needed to stay with Bobbie. Besides, if I’d told him he would have insisted on coming in with me, and I was determined never to let him find out about my past. He didn’t go to church regularly, but he’d told me he sometimes took confession in Gaucia. I’d never been with him, and he had never asked me. I thought it was likely that he would never have married me if he’d known about the abortion.

When I arrived back, I found Bobbie and Mateo in the kitchen in matching aprons, helping a clearly irritated Rosita to make a fish stew. ‘We’re doing your dinner,’ said Bobbie excitedly. ‘We’re making
mantecados
next!’

‘We may not have enough anise,’ Mateo warned, guiding his daughter’s hands. ‘We’ll have to find a substitute. How did you get on, darling?’

‘He’s given me some very mild pills,’ I said. ‘He says I’m adjusting to my new environment and that it’ll soon pass.’

‘Well, that’s a relief. You look a little tired. So it was nothing to worry about, was it? Why don’t you take a nap, and we’ll call you when dinner’s ready.’