Sleep Tight Read online

  SLEEP TIGHT

  C.S. Green

  Copyright

  Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2021

  Copyright © C.S. Green 2021

  C.S. Green asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

  Source ISBN: 9780008390761

  Ebook Edition © ISBN: 9780008390785

  Version: 2020-11-24

  Dedication

  For Roy Lownds (11/03/31 – 24/08/19)

  Much missed by all your family.

  Epigraph

  Sleep, those little slices of death.

  Edgar Allan Poe (attributed)

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1: Kirsty

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6: Kirsty

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17: Kirsty

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21: Kirsty

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33: Kirsty

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Six Weeks Later

  Chapter 50

  Acknowledgements

  Keep Reading!

  About the Author

  Also by C.S. Green (writing as Cass Green)

  About the Publisher

  1

  Kirsty

  He’s no regular stalker.

  There’s no shadow of a figure in her peripheral vision as she goes about her day. No footsteps behind her in an alley as she comes home from work.

  Instead, he visits her in the darkest part of the night, padding soft and deadly into her dreams at 3 a.m., when she is at her most defenceless. In her own bed.

  The sleep rituals are the only weapons she has.

  First, she makes herself turn off the iPad, even though she wants to watch another episode of her reality show. But the blue light scrambles your brain and keeps you awake. This is just basic advice. Next comes the bubble bath – not too warm, not too cool – with the meditation audiobook playing from the phone lying on the sink. She doesn’t really like baths; she always ends up getting sweaty or chilled, but all the advice suggests that this is the right thing to do for A Good Night’s Sleep.

  That’s how she thinks of it: in capitals. A destination. The Holy Grail.

  She’s drunk the mug of hot chocolate – the best part of her routine – and eaten the banana. (They give you serotonin or something like that. She’s a bit hazy on the science.)

  Now for the lavender oil, which she spritzes on the pillow, but not too much because someone told her that can have the opposite effect to the one desired.

  Climbing into bed, she lifts up her thriller from the bedside table and looks at the picture on the cover. It shows a woman half-turning under a streetlamp, eyes wide and startled, like someone being followed.

  With a small shudder, she puts it back on the nightstand. It’s quite good, but maybe not for bedtime reading.

  Instead she twiddles with the dial on the clock radio until she finds Radio 4. It’s not her thing at all in the daytime, but droning, posh voices seeping into the room are comforting at night. Someone on there is talking about moving to a Scottish island for a year and doing something involving sheep. It’s incredibly boring, but isn’t that what you want at bedtime? Excitement is not what she needs right now.

  Closing her eyes at last, she pulls the duvet with its freshly changed cover up to her chin and inhales its clean scent, breathing in and out very slowly. The lamp is still turned on and the orange glow bleeds through her eyelids, but she isn’t ready to turn it off yet.

  She’s not ready for the darkness.

  Her parents say she resisted the lights going off from when she was a little girl, even before the night terrors began. And it only got worse.

  There was that time on holiday in Devon, when she was eight, and she screamed so ear-splittingly that someone in the next chalet called the police. Her parents, clad in dressing gowns and dozy from too much sun and wine, had to explain that the unearthly sound had been made by a sleepy little girl and not someone being brutally murdered.

  Over the years there were various rituals she had made her long-suffering parents carry out before bed, checking everywhere for bogeymen.

  But the bogeymen still somehow snuck in, if not physically, then covering her with their slick shadows until she woke up thrashing in panic.

  Sleep paralysis they call it.

  Lately, it always follows the same pattern.

  First, coming to in the pearly light of her bedroom, the familiar furniture appearing as dark, blocky shapes around her.

  Awake.

  Then, the creeping figure. There’s a flare of white panic in her mind before the sweet relief of realization comes.

  No, wait, it’s just that thing again. It’s just the sleep paralysis.

  It’s not real. None of this is real. I’ll wake up soon.

  Except … the face doesn’t go away. Instead, it becomes more defined, more corporeal, until it is visible in high-definition detail, hovering above her as she lies there, powerless and unable to move a single muscle.

  The faces used to vary. Sometimes it would be an old man or woman with leathery, crinkled skin and cruel, glittery eyes. But lately, it’s always a man, features hidden, eyes staring down at her through slits in a balaclava.

  And that’s when she realizes this time is different. She’s not dreaming. This isn’t sleep paralysis. This is happening.

  The surge of horror at this realization is always the tipping point. She breaks free from the sleep-state and finds herself shivering, gasping, out of her bed, carpet under her curled toes, back slick with sweat.

  But lately, that moment is
taking longer to come.

  Friends and family have never understood that it’s worse than a ‘bad dream’. That’s OK. She’s used to being a freak. But what makes her feel really lonely – and really scared – is the people who should know, her fellow parasomniacs.

  They don’t believe her when she tells them there’s something different about this.

  It’s as if he, whoever he is, is somehow … breaking through whatever barrier exists between the waking world and the nightmare one.

  But she’s driving herself mad with thoughts like these. That’s not even possible. Is it?

  Don’t they say we only use 10 per cent of our brain or something, and the rest is a mystery? It’s only her silly brain playing tricks.

  Tonight, she is going to sleep peacefully all the way through. He won’t come this time. She is quite determined.

  She lies still and breathes slowly through her nose, eyes closed.

  The bedside clock ticks. Radio 4 burbles on …

  The scream of a car alarm outside. Eyes snapping open, insides cold with acid shock, heart punching her ribs. She must have been dozing but she’s wide awake again.

  Annoyed at having this promising start compromised, she makes herself switch off the lamp. The shipping forecast is a low drone in the background, and she lets the words soothe her, repeating them slowly in her mind.

  Viking, North Utsire, South Utsire, Dogger, Fisher, German Bight.

  Viking, North Utsire, South Utsire, Dogger, Fisher, German Bight.

  Viking, North Utsire, South Utsire, Dogger, Fisher, German Bight.

  Bight Utsire, German Dogger, Fisher Price …

  Jerking awake. Focusing once more.

  Viking, North Utsire, South Utsire, Dogger, Fisher, German Bight.

  Dogger, Dogger, Alfie and Annie Rose and picnics, picnics and cider and when Tim Watts stuck his tongue in my mouth in the rec and fried chicken on his breath … Viking, North Utsire, South German … South …

  Finally she sleeps. But at 3 a.m., her eyes snap open.

  He’s back.

  2

  ‘Yeah, you can sod off, too,’ mutters Rose at the driver of the white Range Rover, whose mouth is chomping away in silent reproach on her left.

  Technically, she was in the wrong, having not exactly seen him trying to back out from that driveway, but she has an unreasonable dislike of people who drive big SUVs. Sailing high above the hoi polloi below, they have a sense of entitlement that irks her.

  ‘Don’t start, Gifford,’ says DS Colin Mackie – Mack to everyone – from the passenger seat.

  ‘Don’t start what?’ she says, although she knows the answer.

  ‘The Eco Warrior stuff,’ he says, and she laughs.

  ‘Eco Warrior stuff?’ she repeats, drawing the words out. ‘Would you like to call me a member of the Burn Your Bra Brigade next? And oh, hey, has political correctness gone mad?’

  Mack makes a sound that is somewhere between a sigh and a laugh.

  ‘Don’t make fun of the elderly, young lady.’

  There is silence for a moment before Rose says, ‘Anyway, it’s not that so much. I just don’t like those cars.’

  ‘I’m extremely well aware of that fact,’ says Mack, and his tone makes her dart another look.

  Maybe she came across grumpier than she meant to. She slept badly – again – and Mack doesn’t exactly look like a man who is well-rested and at one with the world.

  He has some sort of situation going on at home with teenage offspring, involving bunking off school, but she can’t remember the details. His phone pings with a text and he fumbles it from his pocket, then frowns at the screen.

  Before Rose can say anything further, the satnav announces their destination is the next road on the right.

  The properties on this street are 1930s, semi-detached, each with a brown, chipped moustache of tiles over its bay windows. White-suited CSIs are coming in and out of the house on the end. A small group of gawpers are standing around, stamping their feet against the chill November wind and talking to each other; thrilled horror lighting their faces.

  Rose swiftly parallel parks into a space further down the street. As they exit the car, several heads turn in their direction.

  Her stomach is rumbling as she reaches the gate. Should’ve had a proper breakfast, she thinks. She’d got it into her head that a banana and a yoghurt would be a good idea, especially after the massive plate of fish and chips she’d had for dinner the night before. They weren’t even from the posh chippie, which was five minutes further from her house.

  Rose and Mack pull on their gear once they leave the car. A CSI she recognizes – Dominic Something – gives her a small nod as they pass him on the way into the house.

  The hallway smells of hair products, with an undertone of fried food. The walls are covered in bumpy, yellowing anaglypta. The dusty sideboard squatting in the hallway is far too big for the space. A combination of mirror and cabinet with an ornate acorn-engraved top that almost meets the ceiling, it’s covered in fast-food flyers and junk mail, plus a single, dusty-looking stud earring.

  There is a room off to the left, presumably a living room, and a uniformed officer she doesn’t recognize is standing at the doorway. The sound of quiet weeping can be heard coming from inside the room, punctuated by bubbly nose-blows and indistinct mumbling.

  ‘Who’s in there?’ says Mack in a low voice.

  The uniform speaks so quietly they have to lean in to hear him. ‘Flatmate,’ he murmurs. ‘Name of Sofia Nikolas. She’s the one who called it in.’

  ‘Right,’ says Rose, ‘make sure she has enough tissues and tea, and we’ll be back in a bit.’

  ‘Up here?’ says Mack, gesturing upwards, and the uniform nods confirmation.

  They climb the stairs, which are covered in a swirly seventies carpet of browns and purple. The carpet is worn and gritty, even through the protective bootees.

  The house is typical of this area. It’s towards the end of a decent tube line into town, which means plenty of privately rented, converted houses or house shares. Landlords charge tenants, mainly the young, a fair whack for the privilege of being able to live ‘in’ the capital, but the local high street is comprised of chicken and kebab shops, charity shops and betting shops, with a lone Costa Coffee and a Sainsbury’s Local for variety.

  Turning towards the first bedroom at the top of the stairs, Rose registers the splintered remains of the door, which has clearly had to be broken down for access.

  Inside, there is a sweet, flowery smell she can’t immediately place. The room is much nicer than she’d anticipated, based on the state of downstairs. The walls are a calming lilac colour. Fairy lights adorn a dressing table and one wall is taken up with a huge photo board covered in laughing, smiling faces and postcards.

  She moves in closer to get a better look. The postcards range from pretty prints of landscapes or cute animals, to a single arty, and strikingly ugly one; the kind that comes from gift shops in the V&A or the British Library. Some kind of gothic creature.

  There are several people in the room, including DS John Tennant from CID. Her DCI, Stella Rowland, is just inside the door, blocking the view of the bed. She is talking in a low murmur to the chief pathologist, Derek Peterson, a man destined to die on the job rather than retire.

  Rowland is about a foot taller than Rose and an entirely different species of human. She has never, to Rose’s knowledge, dripped coffee on her blouse, or laughed so hard she’s peed her pants, even a minuscule amount. She’s never said anything rash, or stupid. Always serious, always focused, she simply functions on a higher plane. Rose feels like a grubby, emotional child in her presence. Rowland has never liked her and, since the thing that happened a few weeks ago, the atmosphere between them is chillier than ever.

  Batting this frequent, intrusive worry away, Rose’s eyes finally find the bed.

  The usual feeling starts the moment she sees the body. Rose forces herself to take a slow sip of air.
It’ll pass. It always does. The dimming around the edges of her vision; a shadowing of her consciousness. Bone-deep cold and a crawling sensation, like tiny fingers scrabbling at her skin.

  It has always been her reaction to stress, ever since she was a little girl. That’s how she frames it in her mind, anyway. In fact, it is more complicated than that. It started when she first began sensing voices in the house that shouldn’t be there. Rubbing her nails hard against the skin of her arm helped to distract her from it. Over time, that patch of skin has developed a tendency to flare up whenever her senses are on high alert.

  The victim looks to be maybe late twenties, early thirties. The flowery white duvet is pulled up to her chest, almost as though she has been tucked in by her mother at bedtime.

  Her eyes are closed. Her skin is pale; like Rose, she looks the type who would burn after five minutes in the sun. There is no obvious sign of injury, but the very fact that CID have called in the Major Investigation Team means something is amiss about this young woman’s death.

  She swallows and breathes in. That sickly sweet smell again …

  ‘What’s the story, ma’am?’ says Mack. DCI Rowland says something she doesn’t hear to the photographer who’s taking pictures of the rest of the room and looks down at the body, frowning.

  ‘Hannah Scott, 32-years-old,’ she says crisply. ‘Nursery worker. Couldn’t be roused from her locked room by the flatmate this morning, so she called it in. No sign of forced entry to the house. So when the paramedics arrived, they thought at first this was natural causes. Maybe adult SIDS. But when they took a closer look at her eyes, they found signs of burst blood vessels consistent with suffocation. That’s when they called us in.’ She pauses. ‘It appears the victim was screaming in the middle of the night too.’

  Rose looks up sharply.

  ‘Screaming?’ she says.

  Rowland fixes her with one of those weary gazes that encompasses her entire feelings on the subject of the human race.

  ‘Flatmate downstairs heard it,’ she says. ‘At three a.m. Went back to sleep, would you believe.’

  They all consider this for a moment.

  ‘That’s odd,’ says Rose, and Rowland looks down at her own notepad.