Sleepwalking

Sleepwalking is presented as more than nocturnal wandering: for Dom Corvaisis it becomes an exhausting, potentially habitual condition that drives him to fortify his home, flee into a closet, and awaken beside a sink with only fragments of the terror that brought him there. Sedatives appear to quiet these journeys, but the return of disturbing dreams and messages typed in his sleep, followed by Dom’s escalating and concealed drug use, leave the supposed recovery unresolved.

Clinical Understanding and Treatment

When Dom visits Dr. Cobletz on a Monday morning with Parker Faine, the doctor does not recommend immediate diagnostic procedures. He has recently examined Dom thoroughly and found no signs of physical disorder. After Dom’s earlier visit on November 23, Dr. Cobletz had read about somnambulism: episodes in adults were usually short-lived, he learned, but in some cases the behavior could become habitual. The most serious forms might resemble rigid, pattern-bound neurosis, grow harder to treat, dominate a patient’s life, and foster fear of night and sleep, helplessness, and further emotional distress.

Dom recognizes himself in that warning. He thinks of the barricade he has built across his bedroom door and the arsenal he has gathered on the bed. Because his nocturnal tasks are unusually strenuous for a sleepwalker, Dr. Cobletz prescribes Valium for daytime anxiety and one 15-milligram Dalmane tablet before bed. His treatment plan rests on the expectation that a run of uninterrupted nights may break the pattern; in chronic cases, the daytime medication can supplement the nightly sedative.

Dr. Cobletz’s initial treatment appears to work. By Saturday, December 7, Dom has taken Dalmane each evening, with Valium on some days, and has sleepwalked only twice in the previous five nights, on Wednesday and Friday before dawn. The change is visible not only in frequency but in what he does: he no longer collects weapons, builds barricades, or tries to nail the windows shut. Instead, he leaves his bed for an improvised bed in the back of the closet. He wakes stiff, sore, and frightened by an unnamed threat he cannot recall.

Refusal, Retreat, and Partial Improvement

On the drive back from Dr. Cobletz’s office in Newport, Parker argues that Dom should not continue living alone until the sleepwalking stops. He offers space at his home, company without hovering, and the chance to talk through the possible connection between Dom’s episodes and the changes he underwent during his trip to Mountainview College the summer before last. Parker believes he could help Dom understand the connection; Dom refuses the offer.

The refusal is bound to Dom’s fear of losing the life he has recently built. He considers his change at thirty-three—from an unhappy former existence to a new willingness to take hold of his life—dramatic but beneficial. Moving in with Parker seems to him like a retreat into the isolation from which he has emerged. Dom suspects that the sleepwalking may be a way of withdrawing from the challenges and stress of this new life, though he doubts Parker’s suggestion that the link is mysterious or complex. He decides to stay alone, follow Dr. Cobletz’s instructions, and endure the problem himself.

For a short time, the improvement seems to vindicate that choice. Dom resumes work on his novel on Thursday. The next day, his editor in New York reports excellent prepublication reviews for Twilight in Babylon and says the anticipated first printing is being increased again. The professional news makes Dom feel that his life is back on track, an outward recovery that contrasts with the fears still operating at night.

The Sink Nightmare and the Moon Message

On Saturday night, Dom’s sleepwalking returns alongside an unusually vivid dream. He remembers its final moments: in a blurred bathroom, unseen people hold him upright and force his face into a sink. Weak and unable to breathe or speak, he sees the porcelain basin and chrome drain close to his face. Water runs and spirals into the open drain; he becomes convinced that the people intend to push him into it and dispose of him. He wakes screaming in his own bathroom, bent over the sink and crying into its drain. He recoils, nearly falls against the bathtub, and steadies himself on a towel rack. When he looks again, the actual sink has a brass rim and a dome-shaped stopper; the dream room was not this room.

The episode occurs at 2:25 in the morning. Dom tells himself that remembering at least part of the dream may signal progress: if he can recall the dreams more fully, he may discover the anxiety behind his nocturnal wandering. Yet he is afraid to return to bed. Although he has been instructed not to take more than one Dalmane tablet in an evening, he takes another pill with Chivas Regal. The episode has thus changed the apparent measure of improvement: remembering a dream might help him investigate its source, but the terror also prompts him to exceed his prescription.

Later, Dom thinks he has slept through Wednesday night without moving, only to find evidence of another nocturnal episode on his IBM Displaywriter work diskette. Repeated hundreds of times are the words “The moon.” They recall words he had heard himself murmuring while falling asleep the previous Sunday, and they echo an earlier message he had typed, “I’m scared.” Dom is chilled by the repetition but does not know what the moon means to him. The treatment has prevented further episodes and dreams since the sink nightmare, yet his sleeping mind has left a new, unexplained trace in his work.

Suppression, Concealment, and Unresolved Fear

Dom presents the treatment as a success to himself and to Dr. Cobletz. He tells the doctor that he does not take Valium more than once—or, at most, twice—a day, though he admits inwardly that this is a lie. He has sometimes relied on Valium to get through the day and has taken two or even three Dalmane tablets at night, washing some down with beer or Scotch. He believes he can stop once the sleepwalking has been controlled for a few more weeks, and repeats to himself that the treatment is working. That conviction depends on withholding the very information that would let Dr. Cobletz assess how he is using it.

By Tuesday, December 24, Dom has had eleven nights without sleepwalking or the sink dream. He accepts the lingering haze of Valium and Dalmane as the price of stopping the midnight journeys and denies that he is becoming physically addicted or psychologically dependent. Having nearly run out of pills, however, he invents a break-in to obtain another prescription, claiming that the drugs were stolen along with his stereo and television. At moments he sees this as a shabby, damaging lie; more often, the sedated haze lets him soften its meaning. He is also afraid to consider what will happen if the episodes return after the medication ends. Sleepwalking has not been established as cured: its visible manifestations have quieted, while Dom’s concealment, increasing reliance on sedatives, and fear of recurrence leave the original disturbance active beneath the apparent calm.