The visil

'What is sleep but the image of death?' -Ovid, 'Amorum' *** Mayet sat in the big chair and looked out the window. The curtains were drawn, so there was nothing to see, but she looked anyway. She could hear them talking in the next room. They'd left the door open, so they must have wanted her to hear. 'She doesn't sleep,' Mayet's mother was saying. 'Not more than a few hours at a time, and even then only if I'm in the room with her. 'Last week I left for a minute to make tea and when she woke up and found me gone she started screaming. I've never heard anyone scream like that.' The doctor cleared her throat. 'How long has this been going on?' 'Weeks.' 'Has your family physician seen her?' 'Yes. He even prescribed something, but she won't take it. That's why he told us to call you. Can you help?' 'We won't know until I talk to her. I'll go introduce myself.' 'Should I come with you?' 'It's better if you don't. But you can listen.' 'If you're sure...' 'This is what I do, Ms. Bautista. Let me work.' Mayet heard footsteps on the carpet. She sensed, without turning around, the doctor's presence just behind her, and her mother hovering in the doorway. She said nothing. The doctor sat on the floor next to her chair. 'Hello Mayet,' she said. Mayet raised a hand in a half-salutatory gesture. 'It's nice to meet you. I've been talking to your mother and some of your friends; a lot of people are worried about you. They think I can help. If we talk a little we can see if they're right.' Mayet fidgeted with her fingers; they were feeling sluggish and tingly. It was something that happened whenever she was going on the third day with no sleep. She licked her lips before speaking: 'Are you a psychiatrist?' 'No. There's not really a job title for what I do. You could call me a kind of counselor. I work with teens who are refusing conventional treatment for their problems.' 'You're here to make me take the pills.' 'I'm here to find out what's bothering you, and hopefully find a way to fix it. I'm not here to make you do anything you don't want to. So can we talk a little?' Mayet shrugged. 'Why don't you tell me why you're afraid to sleep?' 'I'm not afraid to sleep. I'd love to sleep. It's all I can think about.' 'That's good.' 'I'm afraid to wake up.' 'I'm sorry?' 'Because of the man who watches me.' '...what man?' Mayet shook her head. The light coming through the curtains was hurting her eyes, though there wasn't much of it. 'He's not a man, really. He doesn't even look like a man. He looks like some kind of...dead animal. And he comes into my room and watches me sleep, unless someone else is here.' 'I see. And what makes you think this?' Mayet turned to look at the doctor for the first time, to give her a disgusted look. 'Because I wake up and find him here. And because I'm not the only one. My friends...he got them all.' The doctor frowned. 'Tell me about it?' she said. Mayet shrugged and turned away again. 'I've already told everyone. I guess I can tell you too; it won't make any difference.' She sighed. 'It started with Brianne.' 'Your mother mentioned her. She was your best friend.' 'Not really. Not for a while. But we still talked. She was the first person to tell me about it. It was a kind of ghost story, you know? She read it on the Internet. About a...thing, that comes into people's homes.' 'And does what?' 'Nothing, really. Just watches you. People will wake up and see it there.' 'Then what?' 'The stories don't say. Sometimes it hurts someone, but other times it just watches. But they say that's actually the worst part. That when you wake up and find it there, and you know that it's been watching you, you're never the same.' 'Sounds scary. But people have always told stories like that.' 'That's what I said. Brianne was freaked about it though; it's almost all she would talk about for weeks until we told her to shut up about it already. That story really scared her, you know?' 'Who is 'we'?' 'Me and Jan.' 'Jan. Your mother mentioned him, too.' 'I'll bet she did. Anyway, Brianne was all worked up about this story for a while, and