Caleb shrugged, took a glass from the wall unit and poured himself some wine. "How is he?"
"Okay, I think. Keeps asking about you."
"What's that?" he asked, meaning the book.
She showed him the cover. It was called Children's Minds. "Picked it up in town today. Thought it might help us figure out what's going on with Jack."
"And does it?"
"It helps me."
"I'm going to sit with him tonight," Caleb said. "Watch him. I'll try to wake him before it takes hold."
Polly frowned. "You really think that will help him?"
"As much as that book."
She got up from the table and took his hand. "Caleb, can you be honest with me?"
"I thought I was."
"About Jack, I mean. About why he's so afraid for you."
"Jack's not afraid of me," Caleb said, agitated.
"That's not what I said," Polly said, confused. "Jack's afraid for you — not of you. Why? Have you told him something? Something you're not telling me?"
Her questions shook him, filled him with doubt. "Don't — don't be stupid."
"I'm not," Polly said, her voice rising. "I'm scared for our son and I'm worried about you. You're not yourself, Cale. Something's eating you up."
"Please, Polly," Caleb said, trying to hold himself together. "Don't presume you know what's going on in my head. Can you do that? Is it asking too much?" He didn't wait for an answer but hurried upstairs where he stripped off his clothes and took a long, almost scalding shower, as if to burn away the stain of some long forgotten sin.
Later, Caleb apologised to Polly and told her he'd look at the book she'd bought. Maybe it would help him understand what Jack was going through. After dinner, he went to his son's room. Jack was already tucked up in bed, and despite the broad smile that crossed his face, Caleb could see none of his usual vitality and zest for life.
"Mum said you're going to stay."
He stood by the edge of the bed, feeling a sudden, intense pang of guilt. "That's right," he said. "Keep the bad dreams away."
"Are you going to read to me?"
Caleb saw The Wind in the Willows on the night table. He shook his head. "Not tonight."
"D'you read it when you were a boy?"
"Yes, though I'd forgotten most of it until I started reading it to you."
"D'you forget your dreams too, Dad?"
Caleb stared at his son, not sure how to respond. He wanted to say the right thing, but he no longer knew what that was. "Most of them."
"Did you dream about —»
"Ssshhh, Jack. Go to sleep."
Jack was silent a moment, his face troubled. Then, as if having plucked up the courage, he said, "Will I die if I dream at thirteen o'clock?"
Caleb leaned over the bed and took hold of Jack's hand. "No," he said, squeezing. "There's no such time as thirteen o'clock."
Jack nodded but seemed unconvinced. He reached up and kissed his father's cheek. "I'm okay, Dad, really," he said, but Caleb saw a wariness in his eyes.
"I hope so, son," he said, letting Jack's hand fall. He moved to the window and sat in the armchair, watching as Jack turned on his side to face him. He'd brought Polly's book upstairs, but after flicking through the first few pages, he let it fall to the floor and focused his attention on his son.
He woke that night with the sound of screams still echoing in his head. Violent tremors shook his body as he crouched in the shadows, clenching his teeth to still their relentless chatter.
A sickly, cloying dread hung in the air, and his flesh recoiled from its touch. Through the fog of dreams that swirled all round his semiconscious mind, he recognized Polly's voice, splintered to a thin, fragile whisper "Caleb," she was saying, "what happened to you? Where have you been?"
The stench of foam was in his nostrils, the taste of salt on his lips. "Poh-Polly?" he groaned.
"Jesus Cale." Her arms were around him and he felt the heat from her body seep into his cold, damp flesh. "It's okay, you had a nightmare."
He saw the darkness outside the kitchen window. He was crouched on the opposite side of the room, the slate tiles wet beneath him, and the distant pounding of surf reverberating in his head. Cyril cowered behind Polly, as if wary of him. "How did I get here?" he asked.
Polly shook her head, her face drained of colour in the pale light. "Something woke me and you weren't there. I was going to Jack's room when I heard you cry out down here."
"This can't happen, Polly," he said. "I–I can't let it happen to him."
"What can't happen, Cale?" Her grey eyes searched his face. He felt cut off from her, drifting beyond her zone of familiarity." What are you talking about?" she said.
He wondered at her inability to comprehend the vague shapes and shadows that flowed around him. Nothing he saw reassured him, not even her face. Her lips were moving but the words were drowned by the sound of the blood rushing through his brain. Someone had been outside, watching the house. Was he still there, waiting? For Jack?
"Listen to me," he said, trying to warn her, but there was something else too, something he needed to know. The shadows beyond Polly were melting into the floor.
"It's all right, Cale. It's over."
She didn't get it. The dream was there, but all scrambled in his mind. He'd seen this before. Years ago, he thought, when he was a child. The same nightmare Jack was having. A pitiful cry came from elsewhere else in the house.
"Oh please no," Polly whispered, rising to her feet.
Instinctively, he grabbed her hand and said, "What time is it?"
"It's Jack," she said, pulling away from him, heading towards the stairs.
He realized what it was she'd heard. Jack was screaming upstairs. He struggled to get up from the floor. Heart pounding ferociously, he forced himself to look at his watch. It was twelve forty-five. Bad memories stirred inside him.
Caleb looked out through the crack in the curtains, at the three-quarter moon hanging over Three Cliffs Bay and the mist rising silently up over the fields towards Penmaen.
He leaned back in the armchair. Jack was sleeping. Polly had phoned the doctor again that morning, asked him to refer Jack to a child psychologist. Caleb knew it would do no good but he hadn't stopped her. He'd wanted to tell her that only he could help their son, but fear and a sense of his own weakness, had prevented him from articulating this certainty.
What mattered was the hour in which Jack's nightmare came. The same hour in which it had come to him when he was a boy. The thirteenth hour. How many times had it haunted his sleep thirty odd years ago? That feeling of dread. A sense of being apart from the world, an isolation that had filled him with absolute dread. Lying in bed at night clinging to consciousness, fighting to keep the terror of sleep at bay. At least until the hour was past and even then not letting himself fall all the way, anchoring one strand of thought to the shore of reason.
It had withered inside him, he supposed. Withered but not died. He'd buried it deep down in the darkest recesses of his brain where it had lain in wait all these years until it had sensed the nearness of an innocent mind. The idea of it appalled Caleb. Every fibre of his reason screamed against the possibility. Yet he could no longer deny that his own childhood nightmare had transmigrated into the fertile ground of Jack's unconscious.
All day Caleb had thought about the nightmare, trying to collate his own hesitant memories against Jack's fragmented rememberings of the dream. They had both sensed a presence outside, watching the house. Jack had heard the stranger calling out, but he said it sounded a long way away. Sometimes he was inside the house, in the hall or on the stairs. Jack had never seen the nightmare through to the end, and if Caleb had ever done so, he'd forgotten what he'd seen there.