Somnambulism

Somnambulism, or sleepwalking, is the condition through which Dominick Corvaisis’s unspoken fear takes physical form. What begins as baffling nocturnal wandering grows into a repeated pattern of hiding, compulsive writing, and attempts to secure his home. Because Dominick remembers little or nothing of these actions, each morning confronts him with evidence of a danger he cannot yet identify—and with the frightening fact that, asleep, he is not in control of himself.

First Episodes and the Unremembered Message

In Laguna Beach, California, Dominick goes to sleep alone beneath a light wool blanket and crisp white sheet, then wakes in the dark at the back of his large foyer closet. He is curled in a fetal position behind coats and jackets, his hands clenched and the muscles in his neck and arms aching with tension. He cannot remember leaving his bed or the dream that apparently preceded his waking, but the episode does not come as a complete surprise: it has happened twice before, recently. The gap between going to sleep in one place and waking concealed in another establishes the central disturbance of his sleepwalking: his body acts while conscious memory gives him no account of the journey.

The condition also fascinates Dominick. He has read accounts of sleepwalkers dating as far back as 1000 B.C.; ancient Persians imagined the wandering body searching for a spirit that had detached itself during the night, while Europeans in the medieval period attributed the behavior to demonic possession or lycanthropy. That history supplies explanations, but none resolves his own immediate problem. His episodes are not an abstract curiosity: they are happening to him, and their purpose remains inaccessible to him while awake.

One morning, the IBM Displaywriter offers what looks like a message from that inaccessible part of himself. Dominick opens chapter eighteen of his new, untitled book, intending to resume work where he stopped the previous day. Instead, the document contains an extra page and two further pages he has not knowingly created. Across them, the same short sentence—I'm scared—appears 268 times. The repetition fills thirteen lines on page six and twenty-seven lines on each of pages seven and eight, set in double spacing with a quadruple indent. Dominick rules out the machine acting on its own and sees no sign that anyone entered the house. He concludes that he must have typed the words while sleepwalking, although he has no recollection of doing so. The message is concrete, but it does not tell him what he fears.

Escalation and Failed Self-Control

The episodes become more frequent and more elaborate. Over two weeks, Dominick wakes in a closet nine times, including four times in the last four nights. He now walks in his sleep almost every night, and the problem becomes the central issue of his life. His new book, which he considers his best writing, stalls; he is also afraid to go to sleep because he cannot trust what he might do while unconscious.

On a Saturday, he tries to exhaust himself so thoroughly that sleep will leave him motionless. Starting at seven in the morning, he does half an hour of vigorous calisthenics on the patio overlooking the ocean, runs seven miles on Laguna's sloping streets, spends five hours gardening, swims and sunbathes at the beach, then walks for another hour after dinner at Picasso's. He rarely drinks, but that night he takes a shot of Rémy Martin before bed. He falls asleep as soon as he switches off the lamp. The effort appears to succeed only in changing the place where he wakes: not in his bed or closet, but in the garage, curled behind the furnace in a narrow service space beneath two folded canvas dropcloths. He has not merely sought warmth. The tarps and the concealed position make the episode look like an attempt to hide from something.

Dominick’s physician, Dr. Cobletz, initially connects the sleepwalking to stress over the upcoming publication of Twilight. After examining him and finding him exceptionally fit, Dr. Cobletz advises him to stop writing for a few weeks, exercise, and go to bed tired rather than use medication as a first resort. Dominick follows the prescription with punishing intensity, but the garage episode follows immediately. The treatment changes his routine, not the underlying pattern.

Hiding, Barricades, and Weapons

The evidence of nocturnal activity accumulates around the house. On another occasion, Dominick finds 1.5-inch steel finishing nails scattered across his bedroom carpet. A partly emptied box of nails and a hammer lie beneath the window, where the drapes have been pulled aside. He picks up the hammer and tries to understand what he has been doing during the night. Later, he tells Parker Faine that he had been attempting to nail the windows shut. The detail sharpens the distinction between ordinary stress and the behavior he is witnessing: he sees no convincing reason that concern about a novel should lead him to seal his windows.

Dominick initially considers whether his career worries might explain the episodes. He knows that he has been preoccupied with whether Twilight will succeed, but as his writing continues to go well, that anxiety begins to fade. He tells Parker that the depth of the trance and the elaborate tasks exceed what he can account for as mild worry. Parker suggests that he may be more worried than he realizes; Dominick rejects that explanation as insufficient. The exchange does not settle the cause. It marks instead the widening gap between a plausible everyday explanation and the scale of the actions.

After a night of dread, Dominick wakes in total darkness in a state of terror, striking out and scrambling until he reaches a corner, where he braces himself against the wall as though something might leap from the gloom. Parker later sees that the drapes are shut and a highboy has been moved in front of the window. On the bed lies an arsenal assembled from objects taken from around the house: Dominick’s .22 automatic, a butcher’s knife, two other meat knives, a cleaver, a hammer, and the ax he had last left in the garage. Parker asks what he was expecting; Dominick can only say that he does not know, and refers to something in his nightmares. The barriers and weapons make the sleepwalking dangerous in a new way: it is no longer only a matter of waking in an unexpected place, but of preparing for a threat that remains unnamed.

Significance of the State

The episodes form a progression from concealment to communication and then to attempted defense. Dominick first wakes hidden behind clothing, then discovers a repeated declaration of fear on his word processor, and later finds signs that he has been trying to close off windows and arm himself. None of these acts supplies a full explanation, and the gap in his memory keeps him from knowing what prompts them. Their recurrence nevertheless gives the fear a visible shape in the waking world.

Sleepwalking also strains the boundary between Dominick’s work and private life. The word processor—an obedient tool for composing his novel—becomes the instrument on which an unconscious message is recorded, while the writing he can deliberately control is stalled by the episodes that he cannot remember. The repeated sentence is at once a disclosure and an impasse: it tells him that fear is present, but not what its object is. By making that knowledge arrive through misplaced bodies, scattered nails, closed windows, and weapons on a bed, the narrative turns an invisible disturbance into material evidence that Dominick must confront each morning.