Letting Go

by Carrie Lange

  An invisible hand slapped her face. Anne wasn’t sure how to feel or what she was supposed to do. She had the vague notion that she should be upset at his words. Perhaps she should be angry at him, but she couldn’t be sure. Finally the struggle to decide how to react overwhelmed her, and she sat on the ground, looking up at him.

  Tom looked back at her and with an exasperated wave of his hands, said, “Christ…I’m sorry, Anne…I…” His words trailed of as he paced a tight little circuit for a few moments, watching her. “What are you doing?”

  Anne furrowed her eyebrows and shook her head. “I…I don’t know,” she said hesitantly. She did not know why she was sitting on the ground, nor did she have any idea what to do next. Just sit here, she supposed. She would just sit here for a bit longer.

  “Look,” Tom said. “I think we better get back.” When she made no move, he reached for her. His fingers dug into her upper arms as he gripped her tightly and pulled her to her feet, leading her back toward the apartment.

  Anne stopped walking. “Wait.” She tried to loosen his tight grip around her arm, which she had finally decided was hurting her. “What should I do now?”

  Compassion, if only for a fleeting moment, softened Tom’s eyes. “Anne…I…”

  He hardened his expression and grimaced slightly. “I’m sorry, I really am. But I have to think about Alexandra right now. I’m taking her with me, so we need to get back and get her stuff ready to go.”

  Back at her apartment, Anne finished packing Alexandra’s bag. Alexandra gave her mother a kiss before she left.

  “Kiss Dan for me.”

  “I will, baby doll.”

  “Hug too!”

  “Ok, baby, hug too.”

  ~~~~~

  Dan had two younger sisters. Emily lived in Colorado, and Anne had not met her. Sarah lived with their parents in Indianapolis.

  Sarah was the ‘troubled’ one, the one who had struggled with Clinical Depression, and had attempted suicide on more than one occasion. It had been Dan who suggested, several months ago, that Anne hire her to babysit. Tom worked first shift, Anne second. They needed someone to watch Alexandra for the few hours that their shifts overlapped.

  Dan said it would be good for Sarah to get out of the house, quit moping around, and earn her own money instead of expecting everything from their parents. He spoke with derision about his little sister’s suicide attempts. “She just wants people to feel sorry for her. She needs to grow up and learn to take responsibility for herself.”

  “I can’t believe he’s dead,” Sarah said as they waited together at Anne’s apartment. “How can he be the one who’s dead? It shouldn’t be him.”

  They were waiting for Dan’s parents to call. Once they found out from the police, Anne assumed they would call Sarah. And Sarah did not want to go home until she was sure they already knew. “I could never tell them that he’s dead. And I don’t want to be there when they find out.”

  An hour passed.

  Anne tried to call Rick, but he didn’t answer. Anne got the idea that perhaps he didn’t answer because he was with Dan at the hospital. Maybe Dan had, in reality, survived and been rushed to the hospital. He could be in emergency surgery right now, Rick on the edge of his seat in the waiting room where cell phones weren’t allowed.

  When she suggested this, Sarah seemed hesitant to even consider the possibility.

  “I mean,” Anne said, “people survive gunshot wounds to the head all the time, right?”

  Anne was beginning to doubt the whole story. The more she thought about it, the less likely it seemed. Dan did not have a gun. No, something had definitely happened, but in all the confusion, Rick probably just got some crazy, mixed up information. People were always trying to make stories more dramatic than they really were.

  “I don’t know,” Sarah said. “I think Rick would know what he was talking about. I don’t think cops make those kinds of mistakes.”

  “What are you talking about? They make those mistakes all the time! They’re always running around and talking real fast, most of the time they don’t know what the heck they’re talking about!”

  Anne’s voice was rising into a fevered pitch. “Besides, I know Dan. He was right here in this apartment yesterday. And he was fine, and he was looking forward to going back to work, and he told me point blank to my face that he was glad to be alive. To my face, Sarah. Trust me, he did not k––”

  Anne hesitated for a moment, and then lowered her voice. “He was right here, Sarah. Yesterday. Sitting right where you are now. I mean…I had him right here with me.”

  For the next hour she called as many hospitals around the Nashville area as she could find. None of them had a patient named Daniel Smith admitted with a gunshot wound or any other kind of injury.

  “Anne,” Sarah said after her third phone call, “I think Rick told you the truth. Dan’s dead.”

  Anne dragged her hands down over her face and looked at the phone. Why hadn’t his parents called yet? What were they waiting for?

  She sighed heavily. “Sarah. If your parents don’t know by now, someone needs to tell them.”

  Sarah looked at her with stark terror in her eyes, shaking her head. “No way. I can’t do it. Can…can we try to call Rick again?”

  Of course, she couldn’t expect Sarah to tell her parents this kind of news. Why hadn’t the police called them yet? As happened before, when she was outside with Tom, an overwhelming sense of confusion fractured her thoughts. She shook her head in an attempt to clear the fog.

  What had they been talking about just now?

  She looked at Sarah, bewildered. “What?” she simply asked.

  “I…I don’t know,” Sarah answered. “I was just saying there’s no way I can call them. Maybe we can call Rick again.”

  Right, right, that’s it. Dan’s parents need to be called. Am I supposed to do that?

  She picked up the phone and stared at it. Her hands trembled as she dialed the numbers.

  Wait! What are their names? She couldn’t remember, and she began to panic. Her head swam and her stomach rolled over and over. She was about to hang up the phone, when suddenly, his father was there on the other end.

  “Hello?”

  Anne froze. And then she remembered his name. Leonard.

  In his world, Dan was alive.

  “Hell-o-oh?” he said in a sing-song-y voice.

  Leonard’s world was still turning.

  He chuckled. “Is anyone there?”

  She would stop it for him.

  Chapter 7

  After the call to Dan’s parents, Sarah left to go home. Anne sat on the couch, staring into space. Dan and Tar sat on the other sofa and Dan thought this would be his chance to talk to her. It was so quiet.

  He started to speak but his voice caught in his throat. The light dimmed. Fear pricked at the back of his neck. Something was in the room with her, moving around the edges. A shadowy smoke circled its way toward her.

  Dan turned to Tar. “What’s happening? Is the apartment on fire?”

  Tar stood up, an uneasy apprehension on his face. “It’s Despair. They’re drawn to her. She’s very vulnerable, now that she’s alone.”

  Tar stood and started to move toward it, perhaps trying to get a better look, but Dan jumped up and grabbed his arm. “What are you talking about? What are they doing to her? Are they demons or something?”

  The darkness closed in. Small fingers of inky shade reached out to her, but seemed to be repulsed back by an invisible force field around her body. It prodded and tapped, hesitated, and then coiled around her, as if testing for weaknesses in her defenses.

  “They aren’t doing anything to her,” Tar replied curtly. “And no, they aren’t demons. Or…maybe they are.”

  A shadow fell over Tar’s radiant face, a tremor of doubt in his unwavering voice.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Dan shouted viciously at him. “Are they demons, or not?”

  All trace
of shadow disappeared from Tar’s face. “They aren’t minions of Satan from the fires of Hell, if that’s what you’re asking. They’re spirits, like us. They’re drawn to suffering the way a shark is drawn to a dying creature’s thrashing. Right now, they’re stalking her.”

  Tar’s eyes narrowed and his lip curled as he regarded the darkness. “They can’t quite get to her yet. She still has hope that you’re alive. She knows this isn’t a dream, she knows it’s real, and yet...she doesn’t completely understand. They’ll wait. Because they know the time will come. When she’s lost all hope, they’ll descend upon her. And the strongest one will take her. I can see better than you. I know the one who’s strongest. He’s there with her now. Waiting.”

  Tar looked at Anne again, this time with fear in his eyes, his hands curled into fists at his sides. Dan couldn’t imagine Tar being afraid of anything. Cold terror gripped him. Like swallowing ice water, he felt the chill of it slip down through him and settle in his stomach.

  Tar turned to Dan. “You asked me what you had done.” He pointed to the darkness. “You’ve brought this down upon her. She’ll have to fight for her life and her soul, and there’s nothing you can do about it. I know the one who’s waiting for her, and believe me, he’s very powerful!”

  The venomous look he gave Dan made him want to curl up and…what? Die? Yes, that’s how he felt. But he had already tried that, and death wasn’t going to give him the escape he desired. He could do nothing but shrink before Tar’s overpowering presence and be afraid.

  Tar vanished with a crimson flash of light. But Dan could still see those piercing, accusing eyes boring straight into his soul.

  Chapter 8

  The heat of Tar’s anger moved quickly and easily through his spirit, warming him, stirring him. Now that he felt the heat, he couldn’t stop it from boiling over. The feeling was exhilarating, liberating.

  He hadn’t been this angry in a long time, for he had been asleep.

  Yes, spirits sleep.

  And dream.

  Dreaming is all that some spirits do.

  In Tar’s dream, a voice beckoned him. It whispered his name, his real name.

  Tar’s real name had been taken from him so long ago, that at first, he would not recognize it. And then, after he remembered, he would turn away from the voice. Withdraw like a hulking bear to the dark recesses of solitary slumber.

  He was only Tar now, and forever more, his name would be.

  But then, he had heard another voice. A voice calling out for help. The stirrings of familiarity roused his dormant senses.

  A memory.

  Green hills. Damp, rich earth. The heat of a bright, yellow sun.

  He awoke. And he searched.

  He searched for the voice, and the memory, and the bright yellow sun. He did not find the memory, or the sun, but he did find the voice calling out for help.

  Tar recognized the spirit, and his heart soared. Then he saw the man’s body on the couch, before which the spirit knelt. The smack of cold reality sent his heart plunging back down into its icy depth.

  I should have known, he thought, as he listened to the ignorant spirit’s plea for help.

  Although disappointed, and more than a little irritated by what he found, Tar remained, as always, a compassionate spirit. The fear he heard in the man’s voice pulled on Tar’s well worn, yet still intact, heart strings.

  If only Tar had been able to take him directly away from this infernal world of life and longings. But Dan, like others before him, had realized that he didn’t want to leave after all.

  Dan didn’t understand why, but Tar did, for he had seen it before. There had been other times when Tar had wakened to the frantic cries of help from recent mortals.

  The transition to immortal was not always seamless.

  When a crippled man dies from the world, his spirit sheds the confines of his wheelchair. In the immortal, there are no disabilities, and he can move, and run, and dance, and fly as freely as any spirit can.

  In the same way, Dan had shed the confines of his crippled brain and with it the flawed logic of a mentally ill mind.

  When the world is gone, the spirit sees.

  Why do I stay here? Tar asked himself, yet again. The question hung in his thoughts, heavy, distracting. He talked about letting go, but he hadn’t completely let go himself. He held onto something and he hid it deep in his heart. And when it pierced, and rended, and tore at him, he grasped it even more tightly until the blood of his soul spilled out onto the dry, barren landscape of his dreams.

  This new spirit was different from the others, however. And for the first time, in a long time, Tar felt the vaguest twinges of hope, an emotion he had almost forgotten. With this spirit at his side, maybe he could find a way to let go after all. Perhaps, in helping Dan, he might also find a way to help himself.

  Fear wrestled with the new rumblings of hope. Fear and longing and anger. Three emotions which defined Tar’s spirit, fought to overcome the fragile, tender hope welling inside him. The unconscious safety of dreams beckoned him to return. Return and never again rise. Sleep.

  Tar could have left. Now that he had seen the familiar dark spirit haunting the woman, he told himself he must leave. For, of all the spirits Tar had encountered, this was the only one he feared. When Tar had been alive, it had whispered in his ear and wrapped its black shroud around him. There was no reason for him to get tangled up in the foreboding web cast by that spirit again.

  Or is there? He wondered. Have I ever really broken free of it?

  Chapter 9

  Courage is being afraid and going on the journey anyhow.

  ~ John Wayne

  ~~~~~

  Dan went with Anne as she drove to Nashville.

  And the darkness went with her.

  Shadows cast by tortured, hungry spirits wrapped around her. Dan heard it now. A rustling. A soft whisper of despair. When he reached out to touch her, the darkness reared at him like an angry viper, and hissed until he withdrew his hand.

  He sat in the back seat feeling a million miles away. As he looked out the car window, he wondered if Tar would ever return. The familiar miles rushed past him through the blurry haze of his tears.

  As one drives south, along interstate sixty-five, they will notice a gradual change in the driving speed. Driving like a bat out of Hell, or Chicago, the change is noticed shortly after leaving Gary, Indiana.

  If driving in the summer, a person will find themselves surrounded by lush carpets of rich, green soybean leaves. Or forests, in miniature, of corn - knee high by the fourth of July. Grey silos nestle beside red barns. Cows drift across seas of grass, even their tails flick slowly at lazy flies. The slower pace of rural life pulls on the soul and eases the gas pedal.

  If driving in the fall, once past Indianapolis, a person will find themselves surrounded by color - yellow, red, orange. A tapestry of vibrant autumn painted around them over the gently curving land which reaches out, crawling toward the Appalachian Mountains southeast in Kentucky. Even a native Hoosier, born and raised in the unassuming state of Indiana, marvels at the beauty.

  Driving over the Ohio River, through Louisville and into Kentucky, the gentle curve of the land begins rolling into larger waves of crests and valleys. Green pastures, dotted with horses, sit below the highway to the left. While to the right, forested expanses climb up to hide under foggy canopies. Traversing this rising and falling earth seems to slow the frantic pace of both life, and car.

  By the time one crosses the Kentucky border into Tennessee, the urge to push the pedal down has diminished. Where, after leaving Chicago they must restrain themselves from driving seventy-five, in Tennessee, they must push themselves to drive sixty-five.

  Dan had been under the firm belief that the state of Tennessee increased the speed limit to seventy in an effort to encourage people to speed up.

  In his opinion, it hadn’t worked.

  It’s not the scenery alone that causes this shift. The culture also shi
fts to a lower gear the farther south one travels. People talk slower and walk slower and live slower. To a man like Dan, who operated on constant overdrive, a change to this environment could be jarring.

  “If Hell really exists,” he had said to Anne once, “it’s in Nashville, Tennessee. And this is where I’ll go when I die.”

  Anne had laughed. “You think you’re going to Hell? Because you’ve been such a bad boy?”

  “No, I’ll go to Hell because no one in Heaven will know who I am. I’ll be over looked.”

  “Aww, that’s so sad. I guess I’ll just have to die first, so I can put in a good word for you.” She ran her fingers through his thinning hair, the way she often did. As always, it made him feel self-conscious.

  He playfully pushed her hand away and smiled to hide his embarrassment. “You won’t die first,” he said, pulling her down onto his lap. “You’ll live to be a happy old woman with lots of grandkids.”

  She wrapped her legs around his waist and her arms around his neck. “Ooh, I hope so.”

  Just outside Elizabethtown, Kentucky, Anne pulled into a rest stop. She reclined the seat until her head lay beside him in the back. Dan smiled at the subtle irony. He had gotten a speeding ticket here once.

  As she drifted away, so to, did the shadows. The tight muscles on her face relaxed. The crinkle between her eyebrows, that had so often amused him when she was upset, faded. He kissed her forehead, the lingering scent of strawberries and cream shampoo tickling his nose.

  Anne had teased him when he bought the shampoo. “Do you want me to smell like Strawberry Shortcake? I can put on a pink dress and wear pig tails for you.”

  He had laughed. “You’re already sweet enough.”

  Yesterday morning, when Dan had been alive, they had showered together. He washed her hair with the fruity shampoo and conditioner, gently working his fingers through the tangles. At the time, he wondered if she would miss having him wash her hair. His throat tightened and goose bumps rose on his arms. He already missed it.