“What about to other people?”
Dr. Harris stops talking. His eyes narrow. “Why are you asking?”
“I think maybe I’ve started again.” The story I developed in the car on the way over flows from my lips so naturally now, just the way I practiced. “I woke up the other morning and there were some things rearranged in my living room, things I don’t remember moving. It was a little unsettling.”
I remember all those mornings when I was younger, finding my belongings out of place: my shoes in two different spots, my hairbrush in the laundry room. The way I would pick them up, eye them curiously, as if they had sprouted legs in the night and roamed around the house on their own.
“I’m sure it was,” he says. “But rest assured, you have nothing to worry about. Just keep your doors locked so you don’t wander outside, maybe set an alarm. About two percent of children go on to become adult sleepwalkers, so considering your history, I’m not exactly surprised.”
“Okay,” I say, nodding. “That’s good to know. So no one has ever … I don’t know, killed someone in their sleep, then?”
I smile, let out a little laugh, trying to signal that I’m kidding. That I don’t actually believe it to be possible. That I haven’t been thinking it, wondering it, ever since I was a child but instead just erased it from my mind—like those footprints, that mud—pretending the thought was never even there to begin with.
“Homicidal sleepwalking,” Dr. Harris says, smiling back. “Believe it or not, it has happened. But again, it’s very rare.”
I feel that familiar pain in my stomach, like someone’s taking a meat grinder to my insides, turning my organs to chum.
“The most famous is the case of Kenneth Parks,” he continues. “For the murder of his mother-in-law and attempted murder of his father-in-law in 1987.”
“What did he do?”
“Drove fourteen miles, let himself into their house with his key, and bludgeoned her to death with a tire iron. Then he tried to strangle his father-in-law before getting back in his car and driving away.”
“All that while he was sleeping?”
Dr. Harris shrugs. “Five neurological experts seemed to think so. He was acquitted.”
“How could that be possible?”
“The subconscious mind is both beautiful and mysterious,” he says, tapping his forehead with his pen. “The upper frontal lobe is the most evolved part of the brain, where moral teaching lives. When we sleepwalk, that part of the brain is fast asleep. So a sleepwalker could do things, terrible things, that they would never do if they were awake. They can’t differentiate between right and wrong.”
I swallow, nodding along, trying to act interested but detached. Like this is a simple curiosity and nothing more.
“It’s like your body is on autopilot, but of course, most cases aren’t quite that extreme,” he continues. “The sleepwalker might be going about their regular routine, perhaps—like attempting to drive to work, shave their neck—and accidentally kill someone, or themselves, in the process.”
I think back to Mason’s nursery—to me, a shadow drifting down the hall, stopping in front of his door. Opening it, entering his bedroom, the way I had done so many times before.
“Or maybe they become startled and attack a bystander,” he continues. “That’s where the saying comes from: Never wake a sleepwalker.”
Back in my bedroom, lying there with Margaret. Her wide eyes staring into mine, her face pushed into that pillow.
“Did you wake me?” I had asked, that flare of embarrassment creeping up my neck like flames licking at walls.
“Mom said not to. It’s dangerous.”
“It’s not dangerous,” I had said. “That’s an old wives’ tale.”
“Would the person remember?” I ask now. “Doing something like that?”
“Unless they wake up mid-attack, not usually, no,” he says. “A sleepwalker rarely remembers their episode in the morning—though sometimes, they can. It’s like recalling a dream.”
I clear my throat and stand up from the chair quickly, desperate to get out of here.
“Thank you,” I say. “That was very helpful.”
“You sure that’s everything?” he asks, standing with me. “I still have another thirty minutes before my next appointment.”
“Yeah, that’s everything. I just wanted to make sure, you know, that it was safe.”