“It always happens in the middle of the night,” he tells me. “I wake up and I’m dying of thirst. I know only a cold glass of orange juice will do. I go downstairs to the kitchen and it’s only then that I remember what’s inside of the fridge.”
“Go on, Daniel,” I encourage.
“It’s the fetus-man. He’s small and scrunched up and bloody, like a calf-fetus. I’ve seen plenty of those, on the farm, when the pregnancy goes bad, or a cow gets ill. Only he’s more like a child, but his skin is old and wrinkly and black, and his fingernails are sharp, like a cougar’s. He’s always inside the fridge at night. He lives there and I’m terrified, but I’m so thirsty and I know only juice will do. So, I open the fridge.”
“And?”
“He’s in there, and his eyes are closed because he’s asleep. I need to get the juice, but I know if I do it’ll wake him up. It always wakes him up.”
“What happens when he wakes up?”
“His eyes flick open real fast, like switchblades. He stares at me, and he says the same thing every time.”
“What does he say?”
“He says ‘now you’ve gone and done it, now you’ve gone and woken the devil.’”
I copy those words onto my notepad. “What do you think that means?” I ask.
Daniel swallows. “He is the devil. I know it sounds crazy, but in the dream, when he’s there in front of me, I know that he means me harm and that he really is what he says.”
“Why do you think he’s there, Daniel? In the nightmare, I mean?”
A long pause.
“To punish me, I guess.”
“To punish you for what?”
Daniel shakes his head, slowly. “For something bad I’ve done.”
“Do you think you’ve done anything bad?”
“Well,” he says, “I guess not. I mean, just stuff we’ve all done as kids.”
I nod, and in my notebook, I write down, childhood.
“I’ve never told anyone about this before,” says Daniel, “it didn’t feel right to.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“It feels like…” He struggles for words, “…like passing on a disease.”
“That’s very interesting.”
“Is it?”
I make another note.
“Am I insane?”
“No, Daniel,” I reply. “You are definitely not insane.”
“Then what’s wrong with me?”
“Dreams, especially recurring ones, are manifestations, or more aptly constructs, of our unconscious psyche. They are our inner selves’ way, if you will, of communicating something which needs our attention.”
“But what am I trying to tell myself?”
“I don’t know yet, Daniel. But I feel confident we’ll figure it out, together. I’d like to see you at the same time next week for a full session, and in the meantime, I’d like you to keep a diary.”
“A diary?’
“Yes. I’d like you to record in it the dates and times of these nightmares, but I also want you to write a brief summary, at the end of each day—your thoughts and feelings, your emotions. Anything which seems important. Can you do that?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Don’t worry,” I tell him, “you did the right thing, coming to me.”
When Daniel has gone, I set about the long-overdue task of cleaning and tidying my place of work, which also happens to be my home. A quick break for a microwave dinner and it’s ten o’clock by the time I finally settle down at my desk in front of the stack of colored folders which contain the casefiles of my patients. I have gotten very behind.
I’m three-quarters of the way through when I notice the time. It’s one-thirty in the morning and it’s dark out. I’m very thirsty, and just a few steps from the fridge when a sudden feeling hits me—a coldness inside my chest. A fear.
There is no sound. Just the darkness and quiet of my flat and the white shape of the fridge which seems, peculiarly, more in shadow than it should be. It is as if the thing is sucking in what scant light there is. There is an uncleanliness about it I have never noticed before. It is far dirtier than I remember.
My throat is very dry and very tight. I lick my lips. As if from a great distance it occurs to me that I could drink water, but I don’t want water. I want…
The phone rings. It’s a relief to have the moment intruded upon. I walk back to the desk. The voice is Daniel’s and I marvel at the coincidence, forcing myself into a wry smile.
“Hello, Daniel. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine Doctor Peters. I’m more than fine.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. Something wonderful’s happened. He’s gone.”
“Who’s gone?”
“The fetus-man.”
There comes a faint sound from behind me. A disturbance. I take off my glasses. “What do you mean, Daniel?”
“I had the dream again, only this time, when I opened the fridge, he wasn’t there.”
“He wasn’t?”
“No. But there was a note. He’d left a note and it said he was going away because he’d found somewhere new and he was never coming back.”
The cold feeling begins to creep up on me again. “Well,” I say, “that’s good, but I think…”
“It’s okay,” Daniel interrupts, “I don’t know how you did it, but I can’t thank you enough, I really can’t.”
Daniel is still talking but I’m not really listening. My throat is dry, my chest is freezing.
“…sorry for phoning you this late. I didn’t wake you up, did I? Anyway, I feel like a new man…”
I let the phone drop and I turn back to the fridge. As I walk towards it, the room tightens in around me.
When I open the door the fetus-man’s eyes are shut, but I know that they will open when I reach for the juice, and I know what he’ll say and I know that he will mean it and I know, now, the only way I can make him go away for good.
Chris Wheatley is a writer and journalist from Oxford, UK. He has too many records, too many guitars, and not enough cats.