Vigil

Night is when they say you have to sleep. They say that, then they go away, and they sleep. They think sleep is a good thing. Because they know they can sleep, they think you will sleep, while they sleep. They think sleep will be good for you, like they think it’s good for them. They think sleep is the same for everyone. They think they have left you alone, because they have gone, and left you by yourself. They have abandoned you, in a space and time of your own. I think there is a song that says that. They are my parents. They leave me and they think I will sleep. I don’t sleep, not for a long time. Sometimes I don’t sleep at all. All night, I stay awake with the hours ticking by. They didn’t let me have a clock or a watch so I sneaked one into bed. It only had an hour hand but that was enough. I could know how much of the night was left. I might be asleep now. I’m not sure. I remember my parents. From a long time ago. I don’t think they’re here any more. I haven’t really seen them since… I don’t know. They left me. They went away to sleep, and they thought I would sleep.

My room looks strange now. It is not the room I had when I was a boy. That was different. There was wallpaper and a window I wasn’t allowed to open. The window had bars on, like this one. Perhaps a bit different. The old bars went side to side. These go top to bottom. There isn’t wallpaper here. The walls are painted grey. You can see the bricks through the paint. You can see them in the day and at night.

Sometimes I wake up and I know I’ve been to sleep. I didn’t think I had been to sleep, but I must have done. He comes every night, now. The man. Not just some nights. Every night. I wake up and I see him there. Sometimes he is standing next to the bed, looking down at me. Other times, he is sitting in the chair, watching. He does not speak. He just stares, in silence. He does not blink. His eyes are as black as midnight. Then I wake up again, because I have dozed off again, and he is gone, dissolved back into the endless grey. The man I murdered.

I remember his name. John Arthur Trevithick. We were in the same class at school. I don’t know how long ago that was. It feels like a very long time. Time just stands still now, like I’m living the same day over and over. It was outside the pub. I had been in there with my mates and we’d had a few beers. We weren’t drunk. We were having a good time. Then Thicky appeared. That’s what we called him. He had his own bunch of mates. He thumped me on the shoulder and said something like, “Hey, Dicko, meet me outside. We have an old score to settle.”

When I went out to the car park, he pulled out his knife. I had mine under my coat. He was swinging his knife around and shouting about it being time to get even. I can remember all the details of what happened. He slashed at my throat and the silver blade flashed in the streetlights. Then he sort of froze, and my mates were all round me, shouting and putting their hands on my neck, trying to push me down. I wanted to tell them to get off but it was kind of hard to talk. Someone yelled about getting help. I didn’t want any help. Thicky’s face was right there in front of me, smirking, leering, gloating. He wasn’t moving. No-one and nothing was moving, except me. I had all the time in the world, to stab my knife straight in, right into the soft part of his throat. Again, and again. Funny, I don’t remember any blood. There should have been lots of blood but I know he must have been dead because I cut him over and over. I must have blacked out because I was in bed when I came to, and that was the first time he came back to me. He was sitting in the chair that time, staring, like I would come to get used to. It was a bit unnerving, that first time I saw him there. I don’t believe in ghosts. When you’re dead, you’re dead and that’s it. Like going to sleep and never waking up, and not dreaming. Socrates and Mark Twain said the same thing about death. Nothing to be scared of. I’m not afraid of death. I’ve got knowledge, you see. Education. I’ve read a lot. And I’ve thought a lot. I have time for that, with all this being on my own and not sleeping so well. When I die, I won’t know that I’m dead. I’ll be like I was before I was born, just nothing, not existing, not feeling, not thinking, not knowing.

Thicky must be a hallucination. He looks so real, sitting or standing there in the room, right next to me, but he can’t be real. He’s dead, and dead people don’t visit people’s bedrooms in the middle of the night. I guess he’ll go away. I sure wish he would, like that guy on the stair, the one who wasn’t there. I’m tired now. Maybe it will be morning next time I wake. How long is it until morning? I don’t know. I lost my watch, years ago. I will sleep and I will hope.

The shutter over the cell door’s spy hole clattered open, as Chief Prison Officer Angus Felton, holder of a long service award and soon to retire, motioned David Wills, the newly appointed prison governor, to take a look through. “This one’s a funny ‘un, sir,” Felton said, his Scots accent particularly strong in the winter morning’s early dark. “Whole life tariff for murder, under the strict knife crime laws that were in force, forty years back.”

Wills nodded, peering through the spy hole at the elderly man, standing there in his grey prison uniform, silently staring at the neatly made bed that had obviously not been slept in. “This is the one who doesn’t sleep, either stands there gawping at the bed, or sits in the chair by the wall and does the same thing?”

“Yes, sir, that’s him. Complete head case. Alcohol-fuelled murder of an old schoolmate outside the pub, one Saturday night, way back. The victim’s name was Richard Bassett. I went to his funeral. I knew him, you see. We were in the same year at school. Apparently they’d fallen out over something and for some reason it all came to a head that night.”

As Mills closed the spy hole and moved away from the door, he noted the prisoner’s name, inscribed on the card displayed thereon.

John Arthur Trevithick.