Evidence

The story of my dream is like this: when I was seven I dreamt a man with grey eyes. Grey is an inconspicuous colour; the colour of the sky on a day when no one notices it. But his eyes are grey in a hollow way that catches your attention. A way that is so placid it’s violent. Like a declaration; not of a war that’s about to be fought, but a death that’s already occurred.

Looking into his eyes was like being eaten alive, and that was before he moved.

The first time is foggy. I thought, because it was the first dream of him, that I would remember it. But since then, the long list of dreams containing the grey-eyed man has coiled in on itself and it’s impossible to tell one nightmare from another.

I’ve had dozens, or hundreds of these dreams. In them he holds down my wrists and cuts them, or presses his thumbs into my throat until I forget what it is to breathe. I wake feeling as though I’ve been stabbed in the chest.

I remember when I had fewer dreams. When I moved to Oxford, I was convinced that I’d left him behind. I did not dream about him the first night. Nor the second or third. For two weeks he was not in my dreams at all. England has a perpetually grey sky, but this didn’t bother me.

I kitted out the apartment with things that suited me; new/old bookcases from vintage shops and roadside trades. I filled them with my books, then got a new mattress to celebrate the two best weeks of sleep I’d had in a while. I got a coffee every morning for a week at the café two blocks away, so the baristas came to recognize me and remembered my regular order. They smiled as if it were a secret we shared. I tipped generously.

On my fifteenth day in Oxford, he appears in my dreams. He kneels on my back, a rope wraps around his hands, pulled taught between them. He puts the rope under my neck and wraps it around, squeezing and lifting so I look toward the sky. I know I must be dreaming; I’ve always been lucid while this happens. But knowing that I’m dreaming doesn’t chase away the terror, does not make my heart beat more slowly when I wake.

I’m not a stupid person. I know about lucid dreaming, about night terrors and sleep paralysis and anxiety disorders. I know that the feeling of being unable to breathe isn’t real, because if it were, my body would wake me up immediately so I could do something about it. But they are long minutes, the ones between the grey-eyed man appearing, and my breathing reflex stopping in the dream.

I have no routine when I wake up. Some nights are worse than others. That morning, after the first dream, I check my neck in the bathroom mirror for a red line. It is my greatest fear, that I would never admit to anyone. That I would see some evidence of the grey-eyed man’s actions. Proof that he exists in the same world as me.

The students live in what they call the Oxford bubble. They do seem contained to their lives within the residences, colleges, and library. Oxford itself seems to exits in a bubble. It is old and, when the grey sky presses down with the promise of rain, it feels isolated from the rest of the world. It is comforting when one runs to the café with bags under one’s eyes, every morning. Oxford never changes. It is one of my favourite things about the place. I hoped to make it permanent, when I first moved. Permanency was a tricky thing. The idea of it was impermanent.

This night, when I open my eyes, he’s at the foot of my bed, where a dog would be. He’s watching me, as though he has been for ages. His grey eyes are the most startling thing in the room. Even his shape seems more frightening than any black shadow. Without raising a hand, he reminds me of claws. Not a creature with claws, but claws themselves, and the way they curve, like beckoning fingers, like hooks, pulling you in.

I can’t take my eyes off him. I’ve never been able to. My heartbeat drowns out all other noise until he moves. He comes to the side of my bed and straddles me. I can feel the heat of his body as he leans over me and puts his hands around my neck, pressing his thumbs into my windpipes. I could draw marks on my own neck in exactly the shape of his thumbs. He begins to squeeze.

Light flashes through the room as a car goes by outside. There’s a digital clock in the living room. I can’t make out the hour, but the last two red numbers are 57. His thumbs press a little harder, and a bubble of air gets trapped in my throat. The last of my air. When the last air is gone, there’s no more. As though the world has filled with water. I can’t breathe. I can’t

The next morning, I don’t get coffee. I walk and walk until I find a bookstore. I buy enough to fill the last two shelves in one of my recently acquired bookcases. I buy lunch and eat it in Oxford University Parks. I buy produce for dinner, a loaf of bread, butter, and jam. I go home and put the produce away. I’ll use it another day. I make my toast and scrape butter and jam over it. When crumbs get stuck in my throat, I wash them down quickly with white wine.

I’m not sure when I fall asleep on my couch. Sleep creeps up slowly, but then it is right behind you. It has you before you can see it. A crafty thief or assassin. It brings with it the grey-eyed mad.

This time he has a washcloth. He puts it over my mouth and think that this time he means to suffocate me, like he once did with a pillow. But for a moment I lie on my sofa, with a cloth over my face, blind and smelling the clean cotton smell of the cloth.

Then he pours water on my face. It’s as if the world has filled with water. There is nowhere to turn where I won’t inhale water. My lungs begin to splinter as oxygen abandons them. My brain turns to mush, and spasms all at once. Every bit of me tingles like pins and needles. I reach up to claw at him. I’ve never touched him before. I scratch his skin. It feels like normal skin. My hand comes away wet.

In the morning, my body is heavy as iron, my eyelids feel like lead. I force myself to get up. I’ll leave Oxford soon, and I’ll try to leave the grey-eyed man behind with it. I put off going to the bathroom, but I do it eventually.

I don’t know what kind of marks drowning would leave. I don’t feel anything sloshing around in my lungs (not that I would know what that feels like), and my mouth is dry. I look at my cheek. There is a long red cut, as though I’ve run a knife across it.

I look at my nails. There is blood under them. I wash my hands. Then my face.

I wash and wash until there is hardly any evidence.

Art by Kira

Text by Lucie MacAulay