CHAPTER SIX
An insistent knocking on the door brought me around. I must have managed to made it to the bed, although I hadn’t done a very good job of dressing into my pajamas. I raised a groggy head from the pillow and found that it was wet with sweat. Perhaps it was a good thing that I hadn’t properly dressed myself. I threw on a t-shirt and made my way to the door. This took several attempts as my feet didn’t seem to want to work. I opened the door and saw a very worried looking Karen scowling back at me.
“Do you know what time is it?” she howled.
“Uh, what? No?” I gasped, “I’m not well.”
“I knew it!” Her eyes narrowed, “You’re hung over! I warned you! It’s nine thirty! We’re supposed to be at work now! They’re expecting us there any minute.”
Chaos rocked through my mind as I realized several facts in quick succession. First, I couldn’t very well go to work like this, and second that Karen would get freaked out by my eyes. The first I could do something about, but the second would be devastating.
Fortunately, that didn’t seem to be the problem. Karen was only inches from my face as she was dressing me down and hadn’t commented on them. Maybe they’d gone back to normal. Maybe the whole thing was a bad dream and I had simply gotten drunk and the memories were nothing more than a figment of a bad dream. That sounded great but there was just one problem. I could still see the blinking lights on my arm.
“Are you even listening to me?” Karen thundered, “Get ready!”
I immediately spun around and almost collapsed as the world seemed to tilt on a ninety degree axis. I soldiered on as I attempted to make my feet work. They were being unusually difficult and just wouldn’t seem to go where I told them. I made it into the bathroom without actually falling over, but it was a close one.
“I have no sympathy,” Karen scowled, “I’m going to meet you there. Don’t be late.”
A shower would be a necessity. There was no way that I could look professional smelling like I’d just gone on a three-day bender. I took the world’s shortest shower and attempted to do my makeup without looking at the mirror. This proved to be tricky, but I couldn’t bare looking at my face. The sight of the lights was abhorrent. The headache from last night was returning with a vengeance and I was starting to shiver. Maybe it was some kind of fever? I hunted through my purse and took a bunch of pain killers. I probably exceeded the maximum dosage, but, at this point, I didn’t care.
I pulled on my business suit and placed my glasses on my face. I searched the mirror carefully for any indication that my eyes were going to go all crazy again. In the end, I looked okay. By all rights I should have looked far worse after on five minutes of prep, but this was acceptable. The painkillers still hadn’t kicked in, but I was having more luck at navigating around without the world attempting to throw me off it. The only problem I had now was the ten minute walk to the client’s offices from the hotel. In my current condition, that walk was going to take way more than ten minutes. That was just what I needed – a half hour walk could only be good for me at this point.
For a while I didn’t think I was going to make it. Sweat was pooling at the base of my neck and I knew that I must look a wreck. I had to stop three times to catch my breath. When I finally arrived, it must have looked like I had sprinted the whole way. It certainly felt like I had.
I cleared into the building about five minutes before my first training session so, all in all, it could have been worse. I immediately went into prep for the session but this was made more difficult by already having participants in the room. This always slowed things down as they invariably had questions or things that they wanted to ensure were going to be covered in the session. I answered their questions with as much patience as I could manage. I could only hope that I looked better than I felt.
All in all, the session probably began about five minutes late which wasn’t too bad. The good news was that once I got going I’d be able to go on auto pilot. I was very familiar with this particular module and I would have had a passing chance of being able to train people on it whilst I was sleeping.
Once the session wound down to half time, I called for a break. This was usually a good idea as it was a four-hour training session and not giving people a chance to stretch or get a coffee would make the second part of the session much more difficult. I got myself a glass of water and went back to the training room taking small sips. I wasn’t sure I could handle anything more than a small sip as my stomach was still sending up strange messages. I took another couple of headache tablets and almost gagged trying to swallow them.
“How many did you have yesterday?” Karen murmured unexpectedly. I hadn’t even seen her enter the room whilst I was out. Her tone was a little friendlier now than before. Not that I blamed her. If I had turned up hung over, I would have deserved everything that she had to give me. I wasn’t sure how I was going to explain what had actually happened. I wasn’t sure that I even understood what had happened myself.
“Two, maybe three.” I replied wearily, “Not that many really.”
“Then it’s not a hangover.” She concluded softly.
“I don’t think so,” I said, “I think it’s some kind of fever.”
The truth was that I had no idea what was going on and it was beginning to scare me. I hadn’t heard of any major illnesses that start with seeing lights on your body, but then I was hardly from knowledgeable on the subject. It could have been caused by a hallucination caused by fever or something, but that didn’t seem right either. If it was just a figment of my imagination, surely, I’d be seeing them on everyone not just myself. Maybe I was just finally going crazy.
“Do you know where Aiden is?” Karen’s question was tentative.
Holy crap! Aiden! I’d completely forgotten about him! I had no idea where he’d gotten to after he’d abandoned me in the alley. I’d hoped he’d gone back to his room, but clearly Karen wasn’t asking because she was playing games. It would have been logical for her to have checked there first.
“No.” I said softly. I had no idea of how much to tell Karen from my recollections from the previous night. It would make me sound crazy and to be honest I wasn’t sure how far away that was from the truth.
“He didn’t come back last night?” I asked dreading the answer.
“I don’t know,” Karen answered, “All I know is that he’s not in his room now and his bed wasn’t slept in.”
“Oh.” This was going bad real fast. I needed some time to think about it. To figure out how to explain all this without looking like a crazy person. I was about to reply with a bout of dizziness took me and I had to place my hand on the table to prevent myself from falling. I took deep breaths and closed my eyes until the attack passed. It had happened three times this morning already. If it was like the others, it wouldn’t last long.
“I’m going to cancel this session.” Karen announced, “You’re not well.”
“No, no,” I protested, “I can do this. Just give me a few seconds.”
As much as I wanted to just curl up in the bed and die, I wasn’t going to let Karen down like this. I could see her weighing up the matter. In any other circumstances, I had no doubt that she would have sent me home, but this was important. It would be embarrassing to the company and her if I failed. I wasn’t going to do that for any reason.
“No,” I replied more firmly, “I’m good. Let’s do this.”
“Okay,” she sighed, “If you say so, but I’m going to check in on you, and, if I don’t like what I see, you’re going back to the hotel.”
The second part of my morning session seemed to go quickly, but I’ve always found that while training. Time seems to speed up, and the day just seems to disappear. It was unfortunate then this this phenomenon didn’t seem to occur for my afternoon session. It seemed to last forever and even the sound of my own voice seemed to echo throughout my skull. If I was annoying myself, I couldn’t imagine what I was doing to my poor trainees.
“Miss Wright?” A voice tentatively interjected, “Are you okay?”
“Yes!” I replied back as sweetly as I could manage, “’I’m fine. I just have a touch of jetlag.”
I was exceedingly proud of that lie. I’d spent most of the second part of the morning session trying to think up what I’d say if anyone asked me about my health. A few people seemed to raise an eyebrow or look on with disbelief, but I thought that most people seemed to buy my deception.
It wasn’t until I’d finished the day that I realized just how thin that argument had been. It must have been obvious that I was suffering from something a little more serious than jetlag. I had taken a cursory look at myself in the mirror in the bathroom and my skin had gone white. My eyes were sunken in and I generally had the complexion of a corpse. No, I doubted that anyone seriously thought that I just had a touch of jetlag.
I staggered through my final cleanup for the end of the day. My stomach had taken complaining to a whole new level, but I wasn’t sure if this was because of whatever it was that I had, or if it was caused by the fact that I hadn’t eaten today. The only good thing about today was that I had been so focused on doing my job in the training room that I was able to ignore the lights on my skin.
The more I thought about it, the more I came to the conclusion that it must be a migraine or cluster headache. I’d heard about them, but I’d never had one before. When I was in primary school, one of the teachers complained that she used to get them. We never saw much of her. She spent much of the year off sick. I had thought that she was faking it at the time, but if this was what she was going through I felt incredibly guilty for thinking so harshly of her all these years. I wasn’t sure that I could do this again tomorrow.
* * * * * *
I didn’t bother to take my makeup off, or even my clothes. I simply unclipped my bra and collapsed on the bed - crawling under the covers and wishing for death. I’m not exactly sure how long I slept for, but it can’t have been more than twenty minutes. The only thing I was sure about was that it wasn’t enough.
For the second time today, I was awoken by someone knocking on my door. There was a brief moment of panic as I thought that I might have slept a full twelve-hour period without realizing, but soon realized that that couldn’t have been the case. It was still dark outside. It couldn’t have been more than an hour maybe two tops.
I made my way to the door without too much trouble. The dizziness still made everything far more difficult than it needed to be, but either I seemed to be getting better at compensating or it was relenting. Hopefully the lights on my skin would soon go away too. I took a quick look at the mirror to make sure that it didn’t look too obvious that I’d been sleeping when I discovered something awful. My eyes had gone that whole full psycho thing again. I couldn’t answer the door like that.
“Just a second!” I called out with frantic haste as I tried to figure out some way to answer the door without the person on the other side seeing my eyes. In the end, there was only one alternative. I quickly rummaged through my bag and found my sunglasses and placed them on my face. They weren’t as strong as Aiden’s had been and it was still possible to see my eyes through the dimmed lenses, but it was better than nothing.
I answered the door to find a worried looking Karen waiting for me. “How are you feeling?” she murmured without even looking at me. This was good. If I could keep up the whole conversation without her looking at me, this would go much easier.
“Aiden still hasn’t turned up and I’m getting worried,” Karen began before trailing off. She’d just looked up and spotted the fashion accessory that I’d adorned my face with.
“Sunglasses?” she hissed, “Is this some kind of joke?”
“What? No!” I stammered turning my head away, “My eyes are just really sensitive right now.”
I’m not sure Karen believed me, but she didn’t believe that I would be making fun of the situation either so I suppose I had that going for me. Hopefully I could just get through this without having to take my sunglasses off or having to talk too much. My head was pounding and all I wanted to do was to get back into bed.
“I’ve contacted the local police. They would like to talk to you.” Karen murmured.
“Me? Why?” My hopes of returning to the bed disappeared instantly. I’d like to have said no, but there was no way that I’d be able to get away with that.
“Because you were the last person to see him before he disappeared.” Karen explained in a manner of fact tone.
“When?”
“They’re on their way. I promised we’d meet them in the lobby down stairs. I’ll see you down there.”
“Okay,” I replied as I closed the door and fled back to the mirror and took off my sunglasses. My eyes were still strange. I spent the next several minutes staring into my unfriendly eyes trying to get them to return to normal. This didn’t help with my paranoia as, with my eyes like that, it looked like I was staring at some kind of demon on the other side of the mirror. That thought sent a shiver up my spine. I wasn’t sure if it was because I was so sick as I’m sure, had I been thinking clearly, I never would have indulged this line thinking.
What if I’d been possessed? What if a demon or something had been controlling Aiden and then had jumped into me? Holy Crap! I’d never believed in any of that when I’d grown up, as our family hadn’t been overly religious. But what if? I’d seen the exorcist movie when I was twelve, and I didn’t want to go through an exorcism. That didn’t look fun for anyone involved. It took me several seconds to calm down and attempt to discount this theory. Despite all the physical evidence that seemed to point to this possibility, I didn’t have any of the other symptoms. Sure, I was nauseous but I wasn’t projectile vomiting and I didn’t have voices in my head instructing me to kill everyone around me. I must have spent far too long staring into my reflection freaking out, as it didn’t seem that long until Karen knocked on my door telling me that the police were here.
I hurriedly pulled a brush through my hair and went down with her. I took a last minute check in the mirror to ensure that my eyes were still crazy. They were. I grudgingly put my sunglasses back on.
Karen’s face dropped when she saw that I was still wearing the sunglasses, but she didn’t comment. We were met downstairs by three policemen.
I didn’t know how I knew they were police. They just had that look about them. It wasn’t like they were wearing uniforms, although I had vague visions of them wearing those little blue helmets that you see on TV.
“Miss Wright is it?” The lead cop opened with.
I confirmed my name and details for them, which seemed strange as they’d already known pretty much everything they asked anyway.
“The missing person is named Aiden Penderghast, yes?” He confirmed - still writing in his notebook. They asked me a few cursory questions about my relationship with Aiden to which I replied that I didn’t have one. He was just a workmate. All confusing feelings aside, that was essentially true.
“Were you aware that there was a car accident on the night that Mr Penderghast went missing? Is it possible that he was involved in this?” The lead cop asked. Shit. I’d forgotten to mention the accident in my story to Karen. As funny as it was, the car accident seemed like the most normal thing that had happened to me over the past few hours.
“We have some onlookers who said that a couple fled the scene just prior to the accident. You wouldn’t know anything about that would you?”
“Uhh, I think I heard it,” I lied panicking, hoping like crazy that I sounded surer than I felt. The words ‘Oh shit! They know!’ were being played on repeat in my head.
The policeman seemed to take my statement at face value, but he continued scribbling on a notepad in front of him. He followed up by asking several inane questions about Aiden’s habits which neither Karen nor I knew. He had pretty much kept to himself back home. We had no idea how he’d react in a foreign city.
Fortunately, Karen took
over most of the talking and I didn’t have to say much. This was fortunate because as I began to probe my memory, details started coming back to me. The strangest of which was the expression on Aiden’s face when he’d left me.
He’d looked utterly terrified! I’d never seen anyone act so scared in my life. What had he been afraid of? It could have been anything. Why had he run from me? Had he been scared of me? Why the hell would he be scared of me? I couldn’t mention this to the cops. How could I? The whole thing just didn’t add up.
In the end, the police seemed to have everything they needed and seemed to be wrapping up their interview.
“One final thing,” The policeman declared, “We’ll need you to come back to the station to take a more formal statement.”
“What?” Karen and I both exclaimed in unison.
“Are we being detained?” Karen asked just seconds before I was going to.
“No, no,” The officer assured us quickly, “It’s just routine.”
Strange fucking routine if you ask me. I could see Karen looking at me out of the corner of her eye. What had we gotten ourselves into here? This seemed highly unusual. But, then again, we were in the foreign country. Maybe this was normal.
“Okay,” she eventually relented.
“Excellent!” The policeman smiled as he rose, “You can travel with Officer Kentucky, and your friend can travel with us.”
They were separating us? That seemed sketchy, but by that stage we already being ushered into the lobby. The last thing I saw was Karen being politely led off by Officer Kentucky as I felt a firm hand placed on my shoulder leading me towards what I hoped was an unmarked police car. It didn’t look like one though. What the hell had I gotten myself into? Perhaps I should have run for it?
I’ve never been in a police car back home before, but I assumed that they were all pretty much the same. I’ve seen them in the movies and they were nothing like this. This one looked like more of a luxury car. There was no barricade between the driver’s seat and backseat. The policemen deposited me into the back of the car and then hopped into the front.
Mana Dissociation Page 6