There was a booming noise coming from the pillow just below my ear, as if a tiny army were marching through the bed and up to meet me. I’d thought this before- the image was already in my head, ready for me to summon and use for exactly this kind of situation. A tiny army, inside the pillows and mattress just below my head, marching upwards, dressed in shiny red uniforms and black hats (bearskins? I think?), marching up a white spiral staircase until they reached the top. And then what would they do? Would they want me to join them, or would they attack me? I didn’t know, and I wasn’t in any position to do anything about it. I was already under. The soft white haze was sucking me in, and there was nothing I could do about it. Everything else would have to wait.

*

I don’t know how much later it was when I heard the howling. I was in bed again… or maybe still in bed. I don’t know which. A lot of time could fly by without me noticing much of anything. But I was in bed, with my eyes still closed, when I heard the noise. Ooo-ooo-ooo, ooo-ooo-oo. I’d heard that noise before, lots of times. When I was little I used to think it was wolves howling somewhere in the distance, and when we were camping out in the woods I knew it was. I kept expecting a wolf pack to suddenly appear behind the next tree, chasing after one of those little deer things (monkjacks? Jack Russells?). But then I’d got a bit older, and found out that…

Nope. It was gone again. I went back to sleep.

*

The next time, I was sitting on the sofa and watching TV. The man was beside me- he’d been the one who’d turned the telly on. I hadn’t seen him do it, but I knew he had. On the TV screen, I could see an old woman limping down the road with a walking stick. “I couldn’t run,” she said, in the voiceover, “I could barely walk…”

Bearly? No, barely. I knew what that meant. If it meant that she couldn’t walk at all, she wouldn’t have bothered saying she couldn’t run. It must mean that she could walk, but not much. She was talking about why she had to use the stick. Barely. I could barely bear it. I could barely bear the bearskins. Barely.

The man was looking over at me, so I wiped the smile off my face and looked down. Shouldn’t have done that. Should just close my eyes and sink down, as usual. Noticing things and smiling at them just led to trouble.

The man said something, but I didn’t hear what it was. He probably wasn’t talking to me, anyway.

*

I was back in bed, listening to the army marching up the stairs. Getting closer and closer to my ear. I wasn’t scared. Not now, anyway. I had been once. I’d laid in bed for about an hour, listening to the sound of marching- this would have been when I was about six or seven- and worrying about what it was. Because there were no such things as tiny armies that climbed up spiral staircases through your bed- or at least, there shouldn’t be. And I couldn’t even pluck up the courage to go downstairs and tell my mum (no, wait, this was later- it would have been my gran), because either she wouldn’t believe me, or she’d come up and hear it as well. So I stayed there, listening, knowing that if they ever actually reached the top and broke through so that I could see them, I’d probably drop dead of fright.

*

I knew my routine now. I didn’t know how long it had been this way, but it had happened enough for me to notice it now. It was the same every day. First the woman would come into my room and bring me a cup of tea (which she’d have to press into my hands, or I’d forget it was there), and then, when I’d finished, she’d help me out of bed and get me dressed. I wore the same sort of clothes pretty much every day- long-sleeved shirts and jeans, with shoes that she had to lace up to get them to stay on. Then she’d take me down to have breakfast, and the man would be there. He’d always have something for me to look at when I’d finished eating. Once it was one of those cradle things where you had four little silver balls hanging on strings, and if you pulled one back and made it crash into the others, the one on the other end would move. It had a name, but I couldn’t remember what it was. On another day, it had been one of those games with a black-and-white board made out of plastic, with little plastic Xs and Os to go on it. Noughts and crosses. He’d sat me in one of the armchairs in the living room, and shown me how you played it. He’d played game after game against himself, turning my face back towards him whenever I looked away. It wasn’t until later that I realised he’d probably wanted me to join in.

Sooner or later, the woman would come back and take me to the table to have lunch. After that, she’d take me into the garden and sit me down on the bench for a while. She’d talk to me a bit while we were out there, saying things about the plants and the weather. And sooner or later, she’d always sit down next to me on the bench, and squeeze my hand so tightly that I thought she was going to twist it off.

*

We were out in the garden when I realised something was wrong.

The woman was beside me, squeezing my hand as usual, when I started listening out for the howling. I wasn’t worried about it- I knew it wasn’t really a wolf (or, if it was, it was too far away to do me any harm.) I was just interested. I couldn’t hear it, but I heard other things- birds chirping in the trees, planes flying over us, the wind going through the grass…

As soon as I heard the wind, I felt it, too. It was ice-cold. It felt like a knife being held against my face.

The woman had let go of my hand. “Look at those clouds,” she said, pointing up at the sky, “I think it’s going to rain later on. Hope it’s not when I have to go to Tesco. I guess I could…”

I didn’t hear the rest of what she said, and I didn’t see the clouds when I looked up. All I saw was the sky, blue and wide and surrounding me from above and all around, sending down the wind to slice at my face. And behind the sky was infinity. Anything could come from there. I was completely exposed.

I’d made a mistake. I shouldn’t be out here with the wind and the sky, looking at things outside of me. I should be safe in my own head, where I couldn’t see anything and nobody could hurt me. I had to get back in.

The woman saw my arms go up on each side of my head. “Danny? What’s wrong?”

Back in. Back in. Turn off. It wasn’t working. I didn’t know how to do it.

“It’s OK,” said the woman, putting her arm around my shoulders. I wished she hadn’t. The sleeve of her jumper was rough and scratchy. It felt wrong against my skin. “It’s OK. Do you want to go back inside?”

I nodded. Yeah. Back inside, away from the sky and the wind. It would be safer in there.

“OK.” She stood up, her arm still around me. “Come on, back to the house.”

*

I was in bed again. From downstairs, I could hear the man and the woman watching TV. It was that sitcom theme, the twisty saxophone one that sounded like it should be a detective show instead. A cool, film noir kind of theme tune. I couldn’t remember what the show was called. I used to know.

The man and the woman hadn’t left me alone all afternoon. They’d taken me into the living room and laid me on the sofa, and then the man had made me a cup of tea that tasted funny, and I’d gone to sleep. They’d woken me up to have dinner, which was spaghetti with melted cheese on top. They didn’t have to feed me anymore- I was OK with knives and forks now. They’d had an argument. I’d tried to keep track of what it was about, but I kept tuning out. Something about the garden and the TV. Something about me. They’d just got to the point where one of them was about to shout or burst into tears, when the woman looked over at me and put her hand on my shoulder. I must have looked as if I was panicking, because they both started to make a fuss of me. “It’s alright. We’re sorry, we didn’t mean to upset you…”

Both of them came up to help me in the bath. They weren’t arguing this time- just talking to me, making sure I was alright. I don’t really remember what they said. Then they dried me off, made me another cup, and put me to bed. And that’s where I was now.

The theme tune ended, and the actual show began. I couldn’t hear that. I pressed my ear up against the pillow, to see if I could hear the army marching again. Marching already. As we go marching on. I curled up in the middle of the mattress. It was warmer there than around the edges. In the middle, it was like a little radiator under my body. It felt a bit like my legs were melting. I remembered another time, a dark, shadowy time, when it was so cold that my blood felt like it had turned into ice, even the spit in my mouth, when my skin stung and my stomach shook and squirmed about, when I tried to curl up and get warm, but it didn’t work because the freezing wind got in everywhere, and all I was lying on was the hard grey ground. I curled up as tightly as I could in the middle of the mattress. The wind couldn’t get in here. There was no room for it.

I could hear the marching going on under my head. The army marching up the spiral staircase. I could hear every step, and they all sounded the same. Wouldn’t one of them trip, if you listened for long enough? Nobody could stay that perfect forever, no matter how well-trained they were. But every time I put my head on the pillow, it was exactly the same. Because there wasn’t actually an army, was there? There couldn’t be.

I sat up and looked at my pillow, then put my hand up and pressed it against my ear. I could still hear the marching, just as loud as I had before. There wasn’t any army. It was my heartbeat. It was me.