Madness in the small hours

She woke with a jolt. A shrill scream bounced across the valley – fear or thrill? She listened into the night. Male voices, loud, mocking. Then a softer voice – a woman, or was it a boy? She looked at the time: 1.27am.

The voices ranged back and forth, seeming to move along the road above, then back down the valley. She was used to late night revellers walking home from drinking in town, but they, loud as they were at times, moved steadily in one direction and faded out.

These ones seemed to be circling, calling out a name maybe – was it Conrad? - with occasional roars and pouncing shouts. Was this a drunken but harmless game of hide and seek or was someone being stalked, hunted down?

The voices went back and forth, loud male ones, no more screams or softer tones. She tried to picture where they were and braced herself for them to come nearer, even right to her gate. Quiet feet ran down the walkway but no one followed.

Another roar came from below. Frustration that the runner had escaped or a triumphant 'gotcha'?

She was rehearsing what she would say if she called the police when another voice joined in, calm, measured. Perhaps someone else had called the police but she hadn't heard sirens or even a vehicle.

The valley became silent, then a final mocking bellow rang out. She could picture the men giving the police car the fingers as it turned on to the main road. But the hunt, consential or not, was over. Quiet, quick footsteps ran back up the zig zag.

Well, she was awake now. She lay on her back, hands behind her head, staring at the gap in the curtains where the lights from the port made a false dawn, trying to make sense of what she had heard. Had there been a football match, turning drunk patrons out into the night? Too late for that surely. It was just past full moon and there had been an eclipse. Didn't that make people crazy? Or the equinox which was only a couple of weeks away...

Lying there, awake in the small hours, all the madness of the world marched through her overwrought mind. New wars were breaking out on top of years' old ones which had at first seemed shocking, implausible even, but were now relentless, the impunity of the warmongers depressing. World leaders flouted the rules, talking nonsense to justify themselves and not even caring to create a semblance of truth. Usually agreeable New Zealanders, the Canadians of Oceania, had become rampantly anti – well, anything that showed compassion or respect for others or the environment. What had dolphins, people trapped in slavery, retail workers or cyclists done to deserve their vitriol?

If she dwelt any more on this she would cry with grief and frustration and sleep would retreat even further.

She settled her breathing into a rhythm – in one two, out one two – and began the Buddhist prayer she had learned on a mindfulness course.

'May they be safe and free from suffering, may they be happy and healthy, may they have ease of being.'

She breathed goodwill into the night and pictured it reaching refugees in their tents, dictators in their palaces, ordinary people at home with their families, reaching forests and animals, birds in their trees and burrows, rivers, oceans, the rocks which will endure long after we've gone...

Her breath deepened. 'May they be safe ... healthy...ease of being...'

Sleep came to knit up that ravelled sleeve, for a few hours at least.