Eli started sleepwalking on the night of his sixth birthday. This in itself is not alarming — childhood sleepwalking is common, developmental, usually temporary. I found him in the hallway at 2 AM on his birthday night, standing with his eyes open and his arms at his sides, looking at the wall. I guided him back to bed. He didn't wake up. He didn't remember it in the morning.
The sleepwalking continued. Every night, or close to it, always between 1 and 3 AM, always the same posture: standing, eyes open, looking at something I couldn't see. I mentioned it to his pediatrician. She said to make sure sharp objects were secured and he couldn't access stairs. She said children grow out of it.
The second thing started about a month later.
He was at the breakfast table and he said, in a voice that was not his voice, "I know the way from here."
His voice is a child's voice. High and light, with the vowel-rounding of a six-year-old. What came out of him that morning was lower, measured, and it had a cadence that was not the cadence of a child. It was the cadence of someone reading directions.
"I know the way from here," he said.
Then he looked down at his cereal and said, in his normal voice, "Can I have more milk?"
He didn't remember saying it.
This happened five more times over the following weeks. Always a single phrase. Always in the other voice. Phrases like: "The basement is where they are." And: "She shouldn't have left the window." And once, waking from a nap, sitting straight up: "It's been waiting in the same place."
I have everything on video. I filmed every incident after the second one.
The drawings started in November.
His teacher mentioned it first: Eli had been drawing during free time, the same house over and over. She thought it was our house. I told her we lived in an apartment. She showed me one of the drawings. It was a two-story house with a specific configuration of windows — four across the top, two flanking the front door, a garage on the left — and a large tree in the front yard. It was drawn with the consistency of something remembered, not imagined: the same details in the same positions in every iteration.
I didn't recognize the house. I told him this. I said: "Eli, what house is this?"
He said, in his normal voice: "The one where the stairs go down the wrong way."
He said it as if this explained something.
We drove around. I know this sounds irrational but I needed to see. I drove through neighborhoods, with Eli in the back seat, until he said "that's close" — and then, a block later, "stop here."
The house was on a cul-de-sac. White siding, four windows across the top, two flanking the door, garage on the left. The tree was there. The tree was exactly where he'd drawn it.
We had never been to this neighborhood. I have no memory of ever driving this road with Eli. I asked him if he had ever been here before. He said yes.
I asked him when.
He looked at the house for a long time.
"When I go there at night," he said.
The house was occupied by a retired couple who had lived there for twenty years. I knocked on their door. I showed them a photograph of Eli. They said they had never seen him before. They let me in, briefly — I don't know why they let me in, I think I looked desperate enough to generate sympathy — and I walked through the ground floor.
The stairs were on the right side of the house, against the east wall. From the front door, they descended to the basement.
The wrong way for a standard house layout.
The stairs go down the wrong way.
Eli doesn't sleepwalk anymore. He stopped three months ago. He draws other things now — animals, spaceships, normal kid things. He hasn't spoken in the other voice since December.
But sometimes, when I tuck him in and I think he's asleep, he opens his eyes and looks at me with an expression I don't know how to describe except to say that it is very calm and very old and it does not belong on my child's face.
Then he smiles, and he looks like himself again, and he says goodnight.
And I say goodnight.
And I go to bed.
And I try to sleep.