Goatie 36

Being tired, didn’t mean I’d sleep. I was always anxious about it, which didn’t help. I’d heard all the usual stuff about being too tired to sleep. Exhaustion was like the first beer to an alcoholic. If I wasn’t ready to conk out there was something seriously wrong with me. Prison blankets were always smelly. That was a given. I put the less smelly one next to my skin and the other on top of it. Put my head down and covered my ears with a loop of the blanket. An old trick I’d learned. I didn’t hear the usual shouting and bawling and crying out of other inmates.

A litany of foul-mouthed abandonment. For a confirmed insomniac sleep was easy to find. Goatie was on my chest. An anchor from the past. The sense of him being an intruder was palpable and made the room vibrate. But that might also have been my head hitting against the stone floor as I fitted.

I felt as if I was underwater. Funnelled from a high rocky plateau to the sea. A lost or hidden valley. A portal and shift in surrounding and into past times. A residue making itself known, rising from the water. I sudden clatter had me gasping for air.

A movement and the outer blanket was tugged away from me. Blackness exuded a dense surging gravity like a whirlpool with a sucking sound and moan like a wind whipping through me. A drop in temperature so my teeth chittered. Sucking in what little light there was and frozen in a moment in a inaudible scream that made the hair of the back of my neck prickle.

The blanket shimmered as if lifted by unseen hands and took shape into something singular and solid. White sunspots seemed to stare out of the darkness of cowl. I screeched and rolled and leaped out of bed, pressing my back against the stone wall. I scanned the room searching for a weapon I could use against the beast.

But I’d no way of knowing that was the wrong thing to do. Its eyes were empty but it could hear my movements. It moved towards me, but I’d inadvertently pressed down on the lavvy pan. It moved in jerking motions towards the flushing water and hovered above it, searching and sensing. The cowl of a head and sunspots turned in my direction. It began to move towards me and seemed to know where I was, waving a corner of the blanket as if measuring distances. Allowing no escape as it brushed against me. In my nostrils was the stench of the grave. The route past the thing was like passing through the interweaving threads of darkness. I heard myself screaming, my mouth filled with mud. The cell door opening. The grey pall lifted like a cloud and I heard a voice.

‘Whit yeh been shouting for?’ Boulding asked.  

‘I’ve no been shoutin,’ I replied. ‘I’ve been drownin.’

He stepped inside the cell. The blanket had fallen harmlessly to the ground and I clutched the other blanket around my face. Sniffing the air, there was something he couldn’t shake. ‘Smells like the seaside,’ he said. ‘Or somethin. Whit yeh been up tae?’

‘I’ve no been up tae anythin.’ I sat up a little and rubbed my arms. ‘But I hink I’d a bad epileptic fit. Yeh need tae get me seen tae. Yeh need tae get me a doctor or I’ll die.’

I could see on his face he was unconvinced. I just didn’t want to be on my own. ‘Yeh huv a duty o care,’ I reminded him.

He smiled. ‘I’ve a duty tae dae a lot of hings. Maist of them huv got to dae wae makin sure yer locked up. An don’t die from a wankin overdose or hang yersel. Aw the rest is a lot of pish. Yeh know it and I know it.’

I took a different tack. Locked my fingers together and stared at my feet. ‘I seen yer da.’

He asked me lots of questions, I couldn’t really answer. But it didn’t matter.  He talked himself into putting me into a cell with another inmate, because he knew his da wouldn’t appear if somebody was with me. Made me promise not to tell anybody about his da.  And he said he’d get the doctor to look at me.

‘ Ur yeh on any medications?’ he asked.   

‘Diazepam.’

He snorted. ‘Yer no getting that…No way…Anythin else?’

‘It’s aw on my record.’  I let the blanket fall to the ground and kicked the other in which the fiend had taken form. ‘An I need new blankets. These wans have got lice in them or somethin.’

He scratched and his shoulder and itched his oxter. Picking up the sheet nearest with two fingers he held it out and sniffed it.

‘Yeh better watch,’ I warned him.

The blanket fell to the ground and he kicked it into the corridor. I flung the other beside it and stood like a scarecrow hugging myself to keep in some heat. ‘I’ll need somethin else tae cover me?’

‘Awright! Awright!’ He nudged the blankets against the wall. ‘My da…’ he said. ‘Did he say anythin about me?’

‘Aye,’ I said.

‘Whit?’

‘He says, he knows.’

He blinked rapidly. ‘Knows whit?’ But something in his expression showed he was hiding something or lying.

He left the cell door open. I stepped into the corriodor. ‘Knows about yeh?