“Hey.”

Four-something in the morning. He’d been awake for several minutes. Pretty sure he’d been awake for several minutes. Lying in bed, wanting to fall back asleep.

“Hey.”

Said just once. Not whispered. But not a shout. Soft. Short. Casual.

“Hey.”

A female voice. Young. Light. Upbeat. But again, soft spoken, like a breeze. 

“Hey.”

Not a voice he recognized. Not his wife’s voice. She was asleep beside of him. She didn’t regularly speak in her sleep. He reached out and touched his wife’s side. Yes, asleep. Breathing but not stirring otherwise. It wasn’t her, he thought, well, maybe it wasn’t her. She hadn’t heard the voice anyway. It didn’t wake her.

“Hey.”

Said only once. Not intimidating. Not threatening. 

Still, in the dark of night, lying in bed, no one else in the house, no one else supposed to be in the house but him and his wife, the voice shocked him. He was fully awake now.

In years past, when their children still lived in the house, when the children were small, a voice in the night was not unusual. A child calling from a bed in another room. Usually calling “Mommy” or “Daddy.” Or the times he awoke to a scared child saying “hey” or “Daddy,” to open his eyes and find the child’s face inches from his in the middle of the night.

His children were all boys. All grown and gone. This voice was that of a girl or young woman. Speaking in the same light tones, not a whisper but not conversational, a light, easy voice that slices into the night rather than an urgent boom shattering the dark silence.

“Hey.”

Said only once. But he listened for it again. He heard the house settle or something fall outside. The air-conditioning kicking on and off. The hum and squeak of the fan oscillating back and forth, the recurrent rustle of something paper or fabric in its breeze. A car passed; its headlights inching up a far wall and across the bedroom ceiling then vanishing into the wall above his head. Turning onto his side, he heard/felt the echo of his heartbeat through the pillow. 

Tempted, he did not speak. He did not call out. He did not answer. He did not say …

“Hey.”

Maybe the fan rustling or squeaking, rather than a voice. Maybe the AC cutting on or off, instead of a voice. Maybe his wife, maybe a sleep voice from her that did not sound like her.

Maybe he had dozed while only thinking he was still awake. Common enough. Reading, or watching TV, in an otherwise quiet, sleeping house, everything sleeping around you, but you, awake, sentient, aware, or so you think, but you’ve drifted, dozed, joined the sleeping while thinking you’re still awake, to suddenly experience, see or hear something, to jolt upright, suddenly fully awake, like bursting up, up and out from being underwater, shocked by all of it, wondering what and where and who, until you realize you’ve dozed and what you heard is not here in the waking but rather an echo from the sleeping, and you close your book, or turn off the TV, or click out the light, pull the covers close, burrow your head into the pillow and lull back to sleep.

“Hey.”

Maybe he’d dozed. Maybe he’d dreamed the voice while thinking he was still awake. Something soft against the silence, so soft the dozing/waking was smooth rather than abrupt. Maybe a voice from the sleeping that slipped briefly into the waking then sank again.

Still, he lay in bed for a long time, awake, expecting, dreading, curious, if the voice would speak again, if it would say something more, or if it may simply repeat:

“Hey.”

A long time, in that quiet ticking slide of nighttime, before he fell back asleep to the regular rhythm of night sounds.

Dean Poling is an editor with The Valdosta Daily Times and editor of The Tifton Gazette.