Le Voyageur Nocturne

Lyrics

[Intro]
Subject: Kenneth James Parks. Twenty-three years of age.
Diagnosis: Non-REM parasomnia. Homicidal somnambulism.
The motor cortex is online. The executive functions are not.
The body is an automaton executing a script written in the dark.

[Verse 1]
May twenty-third, nineteen eighty-seven.
Pickering, Ontario. A quiet house.
Slow-wave sleep. Delta waves across the grey matter.
But the hands... the hands of Mr. Parks find his car keys.
The feet find the pedals of a 1984 Honda Prelude.
The body remembers how to drive.
The mind remembers nothing at all.

[Chorus]
Le voyageur nocturne.
The night traveler.
Fourteen miles on a road he cannot see.
Eyes open to a world that isn't there.
A ghost in the machine, but the ghost is asleep.
And the machine performs its terrible work.

[Verse 2]
He arrives at the home of Barbara Ann Woods.
His own mother-in-law.
The hands that steered the car now find a kitchen knife.
There is no anger. There is no motive. There is no one home upstairs to feel it.
Just a sequence. A procedure.
A complex motor task, carried out with perfect, vacant precision.

[Chorus]
Le voyageur nocturne.
The night traveler.
Fourteen miles on a road he cannot see.
Eyes open to a world that isn't there.
A ghost in the machine, but the ghost is asleep.
And the machine performs its terrible work.

[Bridge]
Then, the drive to the Scarborough Police Station.
A flicker of light behind the eyes.
A slow, confusing dawn.
He walks to the desk, hands stained.
And the first words of the conscious man are a question, a hypothesis.
"I think I've killed some people."

[Outro]
The verdict was acquittal.
The automaton cannot be held responsible.
The traveler was not the driver.
Just a body, moving through the night.
A map of violence, unfolding in the dark.
While the cartographer slept.