Letting Go

by Carrie Lange

  It was midnight. Eighteen hours ago he had been alive, making this same drive.

  Driving toward his destiny.

  His release.

  Now, here he was, on his way back to Nashville again.

  Figures.

  Chapter 10

  Looking out the car window now, Dan could see only blackness past the yellow lamp posts that lit the near empty parking lot of the rest stop. Cars dotted the asphalt at regular intervals. The occupants spaced themselves as far from each other as possible, looked furtively at their neighbors as they locked doors, and slid down out of sight.

  Why do people sleep in rest stop parking lots along interstate highways? Dan wondered as he watched them. How many other tragic stories were nestled inside hollow, metal worlds?

  Loneliness crept in along with the amber glow of the lamps. Would Tar ever return?

  “Tar?” he said to the empty car.

  The air shimmered briefly, and Tar appeared in the front passenger seat, looking at Dan in the rear view mirror. “Yes?”

  Dan jumped. “Jeez!” He held his hand up to his chest in an effort to calm his pounding heart, and took a gulp of air. “You scared the crap out of me. How did you do that?”

  Tar shrugged. “You called my name. I came. How that would scare you is beyond me.”

  “You know what I mean.” Dan’s heart rate slowed and his muscles relaxed as surprise gave way to relief. “How did you just appear like that? How did you hear me?”

  “Because I’m a good listener.”

  “Where were you?”

  Tar hesitated, as though searching for the right words. “In my Heaven,” he said with a weary kind of smile.

  “Can I go there with you?”

  “I tried to take you there before. You weren’t ready.”

  Dan rolled his eyes. “Well, I’ll go with you if I can come back here.”

  Tar turned his body sideways and looked back at Dan. “If you go with me, you won’t want to come back.”

  Dan cocked his head to one side, eyes narrowing. “You came back.” An unspoken question left hanging in the silence.

  Tar smiled, but said nothing.

  “Well, what if I do want to come back?” Dan asked. “Would I be able to?”

  “Yes. Shall we try?” Tar held out his hand.

  Dan ignored the hand and looked out the window. What if he’s right?

  Tar shrugged, “Anyway, what did you call me for?”

  “Right, I did want to ask you something.” Dan leaned forward conspiratorially. “Is it possible for us to talk to the…the living…in their dreams?” The words sounded absurd, like ‘the living’ were somehow a group he no longer belonged to.

  “Yes, it’s possible,” Tar answered, reaching down and running his fingers through Anne’s hair. “The spirits within human bodies are freer when they sleep. Although, it’s difficult for their brains to interpret what we say. They don’t necessarily remember it as a conversation after they wake up. If they remember it at all.”

  “Yeah, about that, Tar… How is it exactly that we’re talking to each other? I mean, we don’t have brains. And how is it that I can feel things?” Dan stroked the side of Anne’s face. “I can feel her body. How is that possible?”

  Tar sighed one of those big, expansive sighs. The kind that, at the end of which, a person’s lips putter like a little out board engine. “Well, you had a body once, and a brain. You can still breathe and cry and speak because you learned how to do those things when you were with a human body. Emulation, I believe, would be an appropriate word for it.”

  Dan had wondered about things like sitting in chairs and picking up telephones. He had not given much thought to breathing or crying.

  Of course, he realized, he didn’t need to breathe anymore, so he stopped. It wasn’t long however, before his chest burned, and the pulse in his temple throbbed. He exhaled sharply, and took a rasping gulp of air.

  Tar laughed.

  “What the hell?” Dan shouted.

  Tar reached up and patted Dan’s chest. “You haven’t let go of the mortal world, and all the hard things that go along with it. You don’t need lungs to breathe, you don’t need a mouth to talk, and you don’t need a brain to think. However, they still do.” He motioned toward her sleeping form. “And unfortunately for us, it can be difficult getting past that thick layer of flesh and blood to the spirit inside.”

  Past the flesh and blood. Dan looked down at his hands. There were no gashes on his wrists. Tar had said he was running away. Was he still running? Afraid to see the truth etched across his own flesh?

  Since his death, his mind had been quiet for the first time in a long time. The loud, clanging noise, like the grinding of a great, infernal gear, always moving yet never going anywhere, was gone. A silky silence caressed his bruised spirit.

  The feeling of pressure that had been growing inside of him had disappeared as well. The pressure had been there for as long as he could remember, but it had been a small ember, just under the surface, warming and directing him. It never quite let him relax. It had kept him focused, driven, successful. It had been his ally.

  But over the last few years of his life, it had grown hotter. Like a malignancy, it had taken over his body and mind. Turning on him, hurting him, confusing his thoughts and his emotions, above all - tiring him.

  After his suicide attempt, doctors had labeled him. ‘Depressed’, ‘Obsessive Compulsive’. But they didn’t understand him. They wanted to give him medication that would sedate him, change him. They couldn’t make him stronger, they could only hide his weakness.

  Mental illness.

  That was something he would not allow.

  No, he had told himself, this was merely a weakness of character. This must be overcome through brute force of will and mental discipline. This was his battle, and he would fight it alone.

  But he had become weary of the battle. He no longer wished to fight. Retreat was an acceptable tactic, and one that he finally came to desire and covet.

  To die, had become his obsession.

  He would be saving Anne from a lifetime saddled with a weak man. His strength had been what she had fallen in love with. But that façade had been crumbling. Soon, it would have cracked wide open. She would have seen him exposed, naked, trembling in his frailty.

  Why hadn’t he considered her frailty? Dan’s hand still lay against her face, the warmth of her skin penetrating his own. A slight tingle caressed his fingertips as they traced the line of her jawbone. “I can feel her, Tar. How?”

  Tar ran his fingers lightly over the knuckles of her hand. “It’s not her body that you’re feeling. It’s her spirit.”

  Her spirit?

  Dan pushed down on her cheek with his index finger, a little concave depression forming in her skin.

  Tar must have seen the look of confusion on Dan’s face because he chuckled and said, “It’s not her skin that you touch. It’s her spirit.”

  “No way,” Dan said, grasping her wrist. He moved it up and down in short succession. Up and down her hand flapped, as if waving to Tar. “That’s her arm, Tar. It’s moving. See?”

  Tar grabbed her hand. “Stop.”

  Dan let go and Tar placed her arm over her chest. “Watch. Closely.”

  Inch by inch, Tar slowly raised her arm. Dan blinked several times. She had two right arms now. One suspended in midair, held by Tar’s hand. The other curled up on her chest where it had been when she fell asleep.

  “What?” Dan whispered. He touched the arm that Tar held. It was solid and warm.

  Tar nodded. “Her spirit.”

  Dan touched the arm that lay on her chest. Like an apparition, Dan’s hand passed through. He lifted his hand back through her arm and looked at it.

  “Her body,” Tar said.

  Dan slammed his hand on the glass of the window beside him with a smack. “What about that, Tar? I can feel that too.”

  “You’re not touching the glass. You can’t touch
anything in that world.”

  Dan sneered. “What? I’m touching its spirit?” He ran his hand along the smooth surface of the window, trying to feel the dividing line between real and illusion.

  Tar shrugged. “Every bit of matter has spirit. Even after a body dies, tiny molecules and particles still exist - still have spirit. Everything has spirit.”

  Dan raised his eyebrows. “Even cookies?”

  Tar laughed. “Especially cookies.”

  “But you moved the bag. You took it out of the cabinet.”

  “Like this?” Tar scooped her up and pulled her body close to his, cradling her in his arms. Her head lolled backward into the space between the front and back seat, just brushing Dan’s thigh, her feet and ankles still trapped under the dash board on the driver’s side. The seat where she lay a moment ago was empty. “Her body is still there, Dan. You can’t see it, but I can. I can see better than you. Do you suppose I just pulled her spirit out of her body?”

  Dan’s heart skipped a beat. “Put her back!”

  Tar laid her back down. “I didn’t do anything to her spirit. Her spirit didn’t move any more than her body. All spirit exists at the same time, in the same place. There is no separation. Only in that physical world are things separated. Here, where we are, in this in-between place, we approximate separation. We learned how when we were alive. We became individual, and our spirit remembers. But believe me, Dan, here – there’s no separation. That’s the illusion.”

  “I…don’t understand,” Dan said with a heavy sigh.

  “It’s all right,” Tar replied. “You will.”

  Anne was starting to stir, and a rosy glow peeked over the treetops along the highway.

  “Tar, you said you can talk to people in their dreams?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you think I can do it? Do you think I can talk to her?”

  “My dear sweet boy, you couldn’t talk to her when you were alive. Why would you be able to do it, now that you are dead?”

  Chapter 11

  There is no pain greater than this; not the cut of a jagged-edged dagger nor the fire of a dragon’s breath. Nothing burns in your heart like the emptiness of losing something, someone, before you truly have learned of its value. Often now I lift my cup in a futile toast, an apology to ears that cannot hear.

  ~ Drizzt Do’Urden, author R.A. Salvatore

  ~~~~~

  Twelve hours after the phone call from Rick, Anne hurried up the sidewalk to Dan’s apartment. She tilted her head and squinted at the orange paper on the door. Her pace slowed a few feet from the front stoop as the writing on the paper came into focus.

  Caution: Biohazard Contamination.

  Keys dropped from shaking hands. This is it. The biohazard contamination is Dan.

  She didn’t know what kind of gun he used, or what really happened when someone shot themself. Maybe he had blown half his head away and bits of it still lay in there, all over the place, just on the other side of this door.

  Black spots swam in her vision and she shuddered. A sharp pain in her stomach caused her to double over. Raising her head, she saw her reflection in the shiny brass door knob. It looked as though a dark shadow winded its way over her shoulder, caressing her face. She blinked, and it vanished.

  Sweaty, shaking hands unlocked the door and pushed it open. Her vision was black and white, and muted shades of grey. Only the blood was sharply defined in bright, livid splashes of red, draped across the grey back drop of his apartment.

  It took a moment, but relief came when she realized there was no splattered brains. She released her breath with a ragged sigh.

  As she walked to the couch, she glanced down at the bare patch on the floor, the faint dark stain still visible. She sat on the sofa and laid her head beside the blood, turning her body slightly toward it. Almost as if reaching tenderly for a lover’s face, she caressed the dry, dark patch.

  She traced the flow of it down to where it had pooled in the cushion. This blood was not completely dry. Anne touched it, and rubbed it on her cheek and the back of her hand. The tangy, coppery scent drifted up and mixed with the salty taste of tears running down her face.

  It’s your blood, Dan. It’s supposed to be in your head. Is this all I have left of you?

  Searching the area on hands and knees, she scrutinized over every drop of blood. There weren’t very many.

  A light spatter on the wall which the couch rested up against.

  A drizzle across the arm rest.

  A few lonely drops on the carpeting.

  Most of it seemed to have merely drained out of his head and onto the plush tan sofa cushions.

  In his duffel bag lay a box of bullets. Picking them up, she ran her fingers along the cool metal casings, Winchester 38 SPL stamped across the tops.

  Six holes in the box. Six bullets missing.

  Small, dark, recessed shadows.

  One of those shadows killed you.

  She glanced down at the silver band on her right ring finger. Inlaid with an intricate Celtic knot engraving, Anne had designed the pattern. She had two matching bands made, one for each of them. Neither of them ever took theirs off, and she wondered if his blood had splattered on his when he pulled the trigger.

  Where was Dan now? Did he still have his ring on? Did he still wear the silver crucifix necklace she had given him when he was in the hospital?

  After his first suicide attempt, he told her he needed something to believe in.

  “Here’s something you can believe in,” she had said, as she took off her necklace and put it around his neck.

  Neither of them had much faith at the time, and she had hoped perhaps they could find some together.

  Where was that faith now, she wondered? Now that she needed it more than ever. Bleeding, dying, sprawled out on a cold metal table in the dark? Faith, like a delicate snowflake. Pretty to look at, but try to hold onto it, and it disappears before your eyes.

  She finally went upstairs to the loft and fell asleep in Dan’s bed, wrapping the sheets around her. She buried her face in his pillow, breathing in the smell of him. The familiar, comforting scent had always meant she was home, she was safe.

  Chapter 12

  Dan sat beside Anne as she slept among the rumpled and twisted sheets. Tar examined a small, somewhat oblong silver item sitting on the tidy corner desk nestled beside the bed. Dan smiled when he saw the look of puzzlement on Tar’s face, suspecting that he had never seen a computer mouse before. “Tar, Can you talk to her for me? In her dreams?”

  Tar sniffed the mouse and looked at it one more time before setting it down and turning to Dan. “I have a better idea. Why don’t you show me something of your life together?”

  Dan stopped stroking Anne’s hair and looked up at Tar. “Uhh… What?”

  Tar walked over to the bed and sat beside Dan. “We’re spirits. Like I said, there’s no real separation between us. We can share memories and experiences. I can show you how. May I?” Tar held his hands out to Dan, as if he wanted to touch his head.

  “Is this like a Vulcan Mind Meld?” Dan asked, a tad skeptical of the whole ‘no separation of spirits’ business.

  Tar dropped his hands, another puzzled look on his face. “Pardon?”

  Dan sighed. “Oh, never mind. What do I have to do?”

  “It’s easy.” Tar raised his hands again and wrapped them around Dan’s forehead. “Just think of a happy memory. Immerse yourself in it. Imagine being back there, right now.”

  Dan closed his eyes. A tiny tickle tremored through where his brain should have been. Tiny feet ran down his spine and spread out, like slipping into a warm bath.

  ~~~~~

  Dan lay in his bed. Anne lay beside him, her head on his chest, smiling up at him. Late afternoon sunlight streamed in through the blinds. The dappled silhouettes of spring leaves fluttered on the wall beside them.

  “I can hear your heart beating,” she said in a dreamy, almost child-like voice. A look of wonder in
her eyes at the simple miracle of a beating heart.

  “Good thing for me,” he replied, brushing the tip of her nose with his index finger.

  They had replayed this scene many times before. Anne quietly listening to the soft, rhythmic thudding of his heart and the windy, hollow sound of his breath rushing in and out of his lungs.

  Dan caressing her face as he watched it move up and down with the gentle rise and fall of his chest, always amused at her easy joy.

  The first few times she said it, Dan thought she was just trying to be cute. But after a while, he realized that when Anne said, “I can hear your heart beating,” what she really meant was, “I love that you’re alive, and you’re real, and you’re mine.”

  And when Dan said, “Good thing for me,” what he really meant was, “You’re the best thing that ever happened to me.”

  ~~~~~

  The warmth in Dan’s body was suddenly replaced by an icy chill. Shivering, he opened his eyes.

  Tar looked at him with eyes that smoldered and shook his head. “Why did you leave her?”

  Chapter 13

  No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing.

  At other times it feels like being mildly drunk, or concussed. There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says. Or perhaps, hard to want to take it in. It is so uninteresting. Yet I want the others to be about me. I dread the moments when the house is empty. If only they would talk to one another and not to me.

  ~ C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

  ~~~~~

  A few hours later, Anne woke with a start. The shadows came into focus. She was in Dan’s room. She was in his bed, but he was not with her. Where was he?

  He’s dead.

  The dried blood on her hand was dark and flakey, crumbling like her heart.

  The sounds of everyday life assaulted her ears. Birds chirping, leaves rustling in the wind, traffic passing, the air conditioner humming.