He can't remember. But as he worked past midnight, his eyelids grew heavier and his head nodded over the desk until, without choice, his exhausted body took him to bed. Sleep had arrived quickly. And so had the dream.
The dream.
A vague dream where something appeared in his room close to the bed. His recall is hazy, but the experience seems familiar. At first the figure would just watch him. Then it would whisper something he could never understand. Finally, it would reach out and paw, more than touch, the lump of his body under the bedclothes. But was the dream a singular experience, and did it only now seem to have recurred over successive nights? He doesn't know, but stress makes sleep go bad, and there seem to have been so many nightmares lately, in tune, perhaps, with his worrying about the thesis.
'Walter.'
He starts and then turns to the dunes. Nothing to see, nothing moving up there, just the black humps of sand and the spikes of grass outlined against the star-dotted sky.
'Walter.'
Again, there it is. Quieter this time, as if the speaker is moving away from him with a note of insistence to her tone. It's a woman's voice, mature but soft, and makes him think of a mother who has called her child to dinner. Thinking of the perfume, Walter says, 'Who's there?'
No one answers.
'Walter.' A voice at his back. This time it's younger, but still female, and it swoops at him from above and behind. Quickly, Walter turns and raises a hand to fend off something he's sure is speeding towards him.
But there is no one on the expanse of moon-white sand. Down to the harbour wall, at the foot of the town, he sees acres of beach where the shallows scrape, white-topped, and withdraw back to the sea. The water looks inky and the horizon is lost against the sky. He can smell brine, fishy foams and the fresh slap of spray. But he sees no one.
He hears a tremor in his own voice. 'Who are you?'
Amidst the roar and swish of the surf, a far-off bell clangs on a buoy, but no voice will answer him. Sucking more of the salty air into his lungs, he takes a nervous step away from the dunes and looks, anxiously, toward the town. Returning to the flat to drink coffee, and to light a fag, and to tell someone – anyone – in the morning, is all he can think of now. But then, from a third location, close but lost to his eyes, a third woman cries, 'Walter!'
'Shit,' he whispers, and wants to push the voice back into the mouth it left. It was a command. It insisted on his attention and it was not polite. His jeans cling to weightless legs and his strength drains through his shoes and into the cold sand.
Could be a hoax. Some pranksters could be hiding in the dunes right now, who have seen him sleepwalking and have decided to give him a fright. Enough is enough.
'Cut it out!' he shouts.
Silence.
'Who's there?' he says in a voice that falters, and then he jogs away from the dunes, wanting to be in the middle of the beach where there is more light. And as he does this, there is only the melody of the waves and the distant sound of a car to accompany him. And he envies the driver, far off, as he glides between the houses, under the streetlights and past the shop fronts.
'Walter, he's here for you,' the first voice, the mother's voice, whispers through the dune grass. 'Won't be long now, sweetheart. He's here just for you.'
Not wanting to understand what she says, Walter turns and then runs across his own smeared footprints, that he could not remember taking, back toward town. But his legs refuse to pump quickly enough inside leaden jeans, and the rest of his body feels bulky and useless and slow. A glance over his shoulder cannot be resisted.
There's movement in the sand dunes. He stops running and a cry dies before it leaves his throat. It's there for only a moment. A long shape, twice the height of a man. The head is covered but cranes forward as if to probe at the air. Then, the raggedy thing folds away into shadow.
He shakes his head and in his mouth he can taste rust and phlegm. Instantly he knows any attempt at escape would be pure moon-lit slow motion. A cold wind picks up