Page 36 of The Sleepwalker
‘Êtes-vous fatigué?’she asks with a smile.
She parts her thighs again, and Hugo gets on top of her and pushes inside. He feels a kind of youthful despair as he nears climax, and as ever, she lets him come inside her.
13
Olga and Hugo are in bed, their limbs entwined. Her eyes follow the shifting circle of light on the ceiling, and before long she hears him fall asleep. She should get up and take a shower, she thinks, but instead she lets her eyelids droop.
When she wakes, the bed is empty. The room is cold, and Olga wonders whether Hugo has gone home. It is one in the morning, and the candle on the chest of drawers has almost burned out.
The flame flares upwards every now and again, then quickly shrinks back.
The floor creaks underfoot as she gets up and squints out into the hallway.
The bathroom is dark.
She hears a series of soft bangs through the walls.
Olga shudders and moves over to the hook on the wall. She takes down her thin robe, pulls it on and ties the belt around her waist.
The flame surges again, as though in one last show of strength. The warm glow pulses over the ceiling and walls.
Olga walks out into the hall and sees her own shadow on the floor in front of her before the light from the bedroom fades.
‘Hugo?’
The bathroom door is ajar.
She can hear a faint clinking, scraping sound from somewhere, and she stops to listen, searching for movement in the dark gap between the bathroom door and its frame.
There are another couple of thuds, possibly from the kitchen this time.
Olga keeps moving, eyes darting between the bathroom and the greyish gloom up ahead.
She passes the doorway and feels herself tense now that she can no longer keep one eye on the darkness.
The metallic scraping sound starts up again, seemingly from the living room.
She glances back and sees the shifting glow of the candle in the bedroom, then makes her way through the open glass door.
The sofa, coffee table, bar cart, bookshelf and TV are all wrapped in a nocturnal dusk.
Olga gasps when she notices the shape behind the curtains over the balcony door.
‘Hugo?’ she whispers.
The figure slowly turns around and stares at her through the thin fabric.
It is Hugo.
His arms are hanging limply by his sides, and a large kitchen knife catches the light in his right hand. The fabric over his face ripples with every breath.
‘What are you doing?’ she asks, though it dawns on her that he must be sleepwalking the minute the question leaves her mouth.
Hugo takes a lingering step forward from behind the curtain. He is wearing his black jeans and an inside-out T-shirt. His glazed eyes are locked on her face, and his lips are moving softly, as though he is trying to speak but can’t find the right words.
‘Put the knife down,’ she says, swallowing hard. ‘I want you to—’
Olga stops talking as he starts moving straight towards her, striding across the floor. She stumbles back into the bar cart, causing the bottles to clink and a carafe to fall to the floor. It breaks with a loud crash, and shards of glass scatter across the carpet. Olga turns around and runs out into the hall with her robe fluttering behind her, but she slips and crashes into the wall.
