The Somnambulist's Prophecy

About the Novel

Francis Cathbad Morrow holds a doctorate in neuropsychology from Columbia University. His specialty is disorders of consciousness: the boundary conditions between sleep and waking, the liminal states where volition fractures and the self becomes uncertain of its own territory. He arrives at Emain Institute to study Cesare, a man who speaks prophecies during episodes of somnambulism.

But Francis carries his own burden of foreknowledge. Eighteen months before arriving at Emain, he dreamed his wife's murder the night before it happened. He said nothing. He did nothing. She is dead.

Deirdre has been a patient at Emain since childhood. She sees visions of her own death, multiple versions, each ending different. She has learned to wait. She has learned that knowing the future does not mean being able to change it.

When Cesare's prophecies begin describing the people around him, when the woman of sorrows and the man who will try to save her start to take recognizable shape, the three of them must decide what they owe to knowledge they never asked for, and whether speaking the truth can ever be separated from the consequences of having spoken.

About Fractional Fiction

Fractional Fiction is a literary series that combines classical narrative structures with contemporary research. Each novel uses public domain literary sources as its structural framework while integrating findings from scholarly domains. The result is fiction that holds contradictions without resolving them, that transforms through knowledge without necessarily healing, and that honors the human need for narrative even when resolution remains impossible.

The Somnambulist's Prophecy is the sixth novel in the series, following The Dying Grove (mycorrhizal networks and forest consciousness), The Inheritance (transgenerational epigenetics and family secrets), The Kinship of Strangers (population genetics and identity), The Held Land (Black land dispossession and inheritance), and The Corollary (women's peace activism in World War I).

Source Material: Prophecy, Fate, and the Burden of Knowing

The novel draws on three primary sources that explore what it means to know the future and be powerless to change it.

J.M. Synge's Deirdre of the Sorrows (1910) provides the mythological architecture. Synge's play, written as he was dying of cancer, transforms the ancient Irish legend of a woman whose beauty was prophesied to bring destruction. His Deirdre knows she will die if she returns to Ireland. She returns anyway, choosing brief happiness followed by death over a long life of exile and decay.

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) provides the visual language and institutional unease. The German Expressionist film features a somnambulist who speaks prophecy at his master's command, and its famous twist ending asks whether we can trust anything we've seen, whether the narrator is reliable, whether madness resides in the institution or in the one who perceives the institution as mad.

Robert Frost's "The Strong Are Saying Nothing" (1936) provides the novel's recurring motif: "Those who plant in silence wait to see what grows." In a novel about prophecy, this line takes on meanings Frost never intended. Those who see what's coming and say nothing. Those who wait.

Research Domain: Somnambulism and Disorders of Consciousness

The novel integrates neuroscience research on somnambulism, hypnotic suggestion, and the boundary conditions between sleeping and waking. During slow-wave sleep, the prefrontal cortex is largely offline; sleepwalkers can perform complex actions without the conscious self being present to observe or remember. The novel asks what it would mean if something else could happen during that window, if consciousness disconnected from reality-checking could access information the waking mind cannot reach.

Excerpt

I am writing this because someone must. The clinical literature on prophetic somnambulism is thin, speculative, and largely useless. What documentation exists treats the phenomenon as curiosity rather than crisis, as though a man who speaks the future in his sleep were merely an interesting deviation from the baseline rather than a rupture in the order of things. I intend to correct this deficiency. I intend to record what I have witnessed at Emain Institute with the precision the subject demands.

My name is Francis Cathbad Morrow. I hold a doctorate in neuropsychology from Columbia University. My specialty is disorders of consciousness: the boundary conditions between sleep and waking, the liminal states where volition fractures and the self becomes uncertain of its own territory.

I should note, before proceeding, that I had a wife. Her name was Jane. She was murdered in our home eighteen months before I arrived at Emain, and I watched her die in a dream the night before it happened, and I said nothing, and I did nothing, and she is dead.

Those who plant in silence wait to see what grows.

I have seen.

About the Author

David Boles is a multidisciplinary creative professional based in New York City with over four decades of experience as an author, dramatist, editor, publisher, and teacher. He holds an MFA from Columbia University, where he trained at the Oscar Hammerstein II Center for Graduate Theatre Studies. He founded David Boles Books Writing and Publishing in 1975.

His work explores the intersection of history, memory, and the stories we tell to make sense of what we inherit. He maintains an extensive web presence including Boles.com, BolesBooks.com, PrairieVoice.com, and HumanMeme.com.

David is a member of the Dramatists Guild, Authors Guild, and PEN America.