Letting Go

by Carrie Lange

The sounds were muffled, and muted. The light had a strangely dim quality. An unfamiliar pain coursed through her body.

  She buried her face in his pillow. It still smelled like him. How long would the scent linger? Longer than the blood stain on her hand?

  She had gone over it a hundred times. It didn’t make sense. Dan didn’t have a gun. He didn’t want to die. She had scoured her apartment and his, but found no note.

  He wouldn’t leave me without an explanation. Would he?

  Later that morning, she received the only explanation she would ever get from the detective that came to Dan’s apartment.

  “You’re from homicide?” she asked.

  “Yes,” the detective answered, “it’s not like on TV. Most of my work is actually investigating suicides and accidents.”

  “That must be very depressing.”

  He sighed. “Yes, it can be. And let me tell you how sorry I am for your loss,” he said as he pulled a pair of reading glasses from his shirt pocket. The words sounded rehearsed. Anne wondered how many times he had said them.

  “I brought you a copy of the note he left.” Directing his gaze down, through the lenses of his glasses, he searched the manila file folder he had brought with him. He pulled out a piece of paper and handed it to her.

  “I’m...sorry there isn’t more,” he said, looking at her over the top of his spectacles. Although the words sounded rehearsed, Anne saw true compassion in his eyes.

  Anne didn’t have to read the words to see that there weren’t many. “He put my name fourth.”

  Something seemed to leave her body at that moment. A hollow, breathless sensation pulled through her chest cavity as a piece of her hope rushed out.

  Fourth.

  “I’ll tell you something,” the detective said, with what was probably supposed to be a look of encouragement. “When a person is getting ready to kill themself, they aren’t exactly thinking rationally. You know, most people don’t even leave a note.”

  “It’s because he didn’t leave one the first time, when he cut his wrists.” Tears slid down her face and onto the paper with a soft plop. “I told him I would have blamed myself for the rest of my life, because he didn’t leave a note telling me it wasn’t my fault.”

  A chill swept over her and she shivered. The room dimmed. Despair spread through her body like a fever. She felt cold, but at the same time, she felt something burning away inside.

  Looking up at the detective with what she hoped was a calm and rational look, she said, “I don’t mean to sound crazy or anything, but did you actually see Dan? I mean...are you absolutely sure he really died, like, all the way? Because I had heard somewhere that a lot of times, people actually survive gunshot wounds to the head. More often than people think, right? I mean, you would know...”

  Her words trailed off as she heard herself speaking them. She sounded ridiculous.

  My God, what’s wrong with me...?

  He took his glasses off and turned his body toward her, perhaps to get her full attention. “Listen to me, Anne. I’ve seen Dan’s body. He is dead. He died yesterday, from one gunshot wound to the head. The bullet went in the right temple,” he placed a finger on his own right temple, “right about here. And it exited from the left temple, a little higher up,” he switched hands and pointed to the other side of his head, “right here. He would have felt no pain, and lost consciousness immediately. He would have died within seconds.”

  Within seconds...

  Did he even have time to regret what he’d done?

  She couldn’t keep holding onto this piece of paper, but she couldn’t let it go. She wanted to throw it away from her, and hold it close to her at the same time. She wanted to jump up and scream and hit something and throw her hands through the glass window, through which the sun shone so brightly. She wanted to burn up in that brightness. And at the same time, she wanted to lay her head down into blackness and go to sleep and never wake up.

  The feeling became so overwhelming that she turned helplessly to the detective and said, “I don’t know what to do.”

  “Don’t you have anyone down here with you?”

  “No, I’m alone.”

  Last night she had called her mother.

  “Do you want me to go to Nashville with you?” her mother asked.

  “No,” Anne answered, “I don’t want you to see me get hysterical.”

  Her mother scoffed. “You’ve never been hysterical in your life, Anne.”

  “I know, and I don’t want you to be there when it happens.”

  A part of her secretly hoped her mother would insist on going. Maybe she understood why her mother didn’t.

  Anne had never been good at needing anyone.

  But that didn’t matter now. She was lost, and for the first time in her life she needed her mother to come and find her.

  ~~~~~

  Once, when Anne was little, she and her brother had become separated from their mother in a store. She was five and he was six. They looked up and down the aisles for what seemed an eternity, holding each other’s hands.

  Everything was so big, and all the faces of all the people looked abnormal in their bigness. She never saw them straight on. She only saw them, ever, at an angle - as she looked up at them.

  Chins bigger than foreheads, two gaping black holes in their noses.

  Her brother started to cry. Anne looked at him and wondered why. Was he hurt? His wails became louder until the sound of it hurt her ears. The lights became brighter and every person who passed by seemed to bump into her with their big bodies. She wanted to block out all the brightness, and bigness, and loudness.

  “Why are you crying?” she asked her brother.

  “I wa-want m-m-mommy.” His choking sobs caused the words to stutter and break.

  She pulled him by the hand to the front of the store, and then outside. Quiet and still, there were no big people with big noses and chins. Her brother continued to cry, and she watched him silently, trying to understand what caused him pain.

  Finally, their mother came. “There you are! I looked all over for you two, why are you out here?”

  “We got lost and he started crying …I was looking for you,” Anne said, thinking her mother would be proud of her for being so brave.

  Her mother’s anger, however, only seemed to melt away when she looked at her son. Kneeling down, she pulled him close, comforting him with soft little words that Anne couldn’t quite hear. His crying increased as their mother caressed his face and cooed in his ear. She kissed his forehead and wiped the tears from his red, sweaty face.

  Anne stood there watching, trying to squeeze tears from her eyes, quick, before it was too late. How did one cry like that, she wondered? She blinked and blinked, but the tears didn’t come.

  “All right, honey, you’re okay now, Mama’s here, you’re safe,” her mother said to him as she rose and prepared to leave. She turned to her daughter, the one who never seemed to need anything from her. “Why did you wander off? I told you to stay right there.”

  What do I say? Anne wondered. How could she make her mother come to her, as she had gone to her brother? Her brother had only cried those unbelievable tears, like he was injured. Had her mother actually believed that he was?

  When Anne didn’t respond, her mother turned, still holding tight to her brother’s hand, walking away from Anne. “Come on, let’s go.”

  Anne turned away from her mother momentarily, and in the distance, just on the other side of the train tracks, along the edge of the woods, she saw her friend.

  He waved at her, beckoned for her to join him in the dark. She could disappear with him in the woods, forever.

  Anne never told anyone about him. She knew they couldn’t see him anyway.

  She took one step toward him.

  “Anne!” her mother’s voice pierced her ears. “Let’s go!”

  Anne blinked, and her friend was gone.

  She cocked her head to one side as she considered the retreating
form of her mother before falling in line behind her.

  Anne had never been good at needing anyone.

  ~~~~~

  “If you need a shoulder to cry on,” the detective said, “you’re welcome to use mine.”

  Anne collapsed on his shoulder and sobbed uncontrollably. The detective wrapped his arms around her and held her as she wept.

  “I know it’s my fault. I should have stayed home from work. I never should have left him.”

  The detective drew her away from him, lifted her chin with his hand, and held her gaze with the power of his own. “I want you to listen to me for a minute, okay?”

  She drew both hands over her face, wiping away the tears. “Okay.”

  “Maybe you did something wrong. Or maybe you should have done something, but you didn’t. You think Dan blamed you, that you let him down in some way. You might even be wondering if Dan had wanted you to save him. But that’s not what happened.”

  She started to say something, but he interrupted her. “I have investigated a lot of suicides. But I’ve also investigated a lot of attempted suicides. Sometimes I have to talk to them, make sure someone wasn’t trying to kill them, you understand?”

  She nodded her head, and he continued. “I’ve talked to people who wanted to die. They don’t blame others. They think their loved ones will be better off without them. It can’t be explained rationally, because their thought processes aren’t rational. This had nothing to do with you. This was between Dan, and himself.”

  “But why?” She looked down at the note in her hand. “What was it that he couldn’t ‘do’ or ‘deal with’?”

  “You’re never going to know that, Anne. You know, I’ve also talked to a lot of murderers. They always have a reason. Usually, they blame the victim. They try to convince me that the victim deserved it.”

  Anne shook her head. “That’s not the same. Dan wasn’t murdered.”

  “It is the same. The man who pulled that trigger was a murderer. And I bet, if I could talk to that man, he wouldn’t blame you. He would blame the man he murdered. He would tell me all the reasons why he deserved to die. But all those reasons - would be total bullshit.”

  The detective spoke with such conviction that Anne found herself wanting to believe him.

  “You wish you had stayed home that night,” he continued. “Let’s say you had done that. What then? What about the next night? Could you have stayed home with him forever?”

  She looked away. “I know what you’re trying to do.”

  The detective shook his head. “I’m not trying to do anything. I’m just telling you the truth. I’ve seen it so many times. It wouldn’t have mattered what you did. You could have slowed it down, and you probably did. Dan probably had a longer life because of you. But you couldn’t have stopped it. There’s a darkness that we all struggle with sometimes. But Dan…he lost that struggle. Look at me.”

  She turned toward him, his image bleary through the tears in her eyes. He put his hands on her shoulders, and his eyes flitted around, as if studying the outline of her body. With one hand, he pushed the hair away from her face. “You’re gonna have to struggle with that darkness now. I can see it all around you. You gotta stay strong, and don’t give in to it, okay? Because Anne, it will eat you alive.”

  She sat up straighter and gave him a smile. “Okay, I’ll try.”

  Throughout the coming days, Anne thought about everything the detective said many times. His words were like an anchor for her when she felt herself being swept away in the violent and unpredictable tempest of her guilt and grief. At first, she could remember the sound of his voice, the compassion in his eyes, and the strength of his conviction. And he was her hero.

  As the days continued to pass without Dan by her side, however, the memory faded.

  A growing darkness enveloped her and whispered to her. The words of her despair became her constant companion, until finally the words of the detective were all but forgotten.

  Chapter 14

  Dan watched all the people he had thought would be better off without him. Anne, Rick, his parents, his two sisters. They gathered together now, at Rick’s house, trying to find the answer to the one question they all had.

  Why?

  Anne sat alone on the front porch swing. A heavy shroud of darkness surrounded her. The invisible force field now gone, the coiling filaments moved freely over her skin, whispering to her.

  Perhaps the living people around her also sensed its presence, for no one touched her and they seemed to instinctively move away from her if she came too close.

  Dan and Tar stood beneath an expansive Weeping Willow tree in the front yard. The branches hung down around them like a green tendriled waterfall, the rustling leaves mimicking the sound of rushing water. The property encompassed ten acres of solitude. Horses moved slowly, nosing through tall grass. Neither the road, nor the neighbors could be seen, adding to the aura of isolation.

  Together, they watched Anne, and the dusky presence which curled around her. In the cool shade of the Willow, Dan shivered. “What is it, Tar? What does it want with her?”

  “I told you already. They’re spirits, like us. But different. They’re drawn to her suffering.”

  “You said you could see them. What do they look like? Like you and me?”

  Tar shrugged. “Mostly. They look like people. But I don’t know most of them, so to me they just look like murky figures. What do they look like to you?”

  “It’s just a black, smoky sort of shadow. But sometimes I see eyes, and I hear whispering. Sometimes I think I see a man.”

  Dan squinted, focusing on her Despair, trying to give it more definition. Maybe if he could see it he could fight it, scare it off, make it go away.

  Who are you? What do you want?

  He got no answer. All he could see was smoke and shadow.

  ~~~~~

  “What’s the one thing you’re most scared of?” Dan asked her once.

  “Chucky,” Anne answered, without having to give it a moment’s thought.

  “Chucky?”

  “Yeah, you know, from that movie, ‘Child’s Play’? Ooh. Killer dolls that come alive and start talking.” She shivered, an amused look of horror on her face.

  Dan laughed. “Come on, I’m serious.”

  “I’m serious too. What could possibly be scarier than that? Besides clowns, maybe.”

  “But that’s not real. What are you really scared of?”

  She had been peeling potatoes over the sink. Making sweet potatoes, one of his favorite dishes. She paused and looked up at him with a knowing, half-smile. “Who ever said something had to be real for you to be scared of it?”

  Dan froze, his face suddenly hot, his palms sweaty. The ever present knot in his stomach tightened.

  Does she know?

  He almost broke down and told her about his fear and anxiety. About the pressure that had been building, crushing, breaking his spirit. About his undefinable, yet overwhelming ‘Depression’.

  But no. He couldn’t do that. She had fallen in love with his strength. What would she think of him if she saw his vulnerability, his weakness?

  “I don’t know,” he finally said. “I’ve never seen that movie.”

  Anne gasped in mock horror, her hands covering her mouth, eyes wide with shock. Cheezy science fiction and horror movies were her favorite.

  She rented the movie, ‘Child’s Play’, and forced him to watch it with her. She jumped and screamed at all the right places, and they both laughed. Dan had endured dozens of such flicks already. She had been teaching him the simple joy of watching a bad movie.

  He had to admit, he had fun watching it with her. “I can’t believe that’s the same guy who was in ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’,” he said when it ended.

  “He was?”

  “Yeah. Don’t you remember Billy Bibbit?”

  She slowly shook her head, the little crinkle between her eyebrows that he adored, forming. Then a look of
dawning came over her face and she smiled. “Oh yeah...I remember him. The stutterer. I loved him!”

  “It was the guy who played Chucky, Brad Dourif.”

  “No way...”

  Anne wouldn’t believe him until he rented the movie and they watched it together. He thought it might open a discussion, and he could gain some insight into her feelings on mental illness.

  She was visibly uncomfortable watching it. She kept fidgeting and getting up to go to the bathroom, or to get something to drink.

  “What’s wrong?” he finally asked.

  “Nothing. It’s a great movie. Crazy people just make me nervous, is all. I don’t like seeing them all locked up together in that place. It’s...disturbing.”

  Anne shook her head after the movie. “Un-fucking-believable. Billy Bibbit is Chucky.”

  Dan looked down at his hands. “You never can tell about people, huh?”

  “Poor Billy,” she said, genuine sadness in her voice. “Why did he have to kill himself? I loved him so much.”

  ~~~~~

  Dan watched Anne from the shadows of the Weeping Willow, wondering what she was most afraid of now. “Tar, you said you knew one of them. Is that one still there?”

  “Oh yes. He’s there. There aren’t many others left. His sorrow is too much, even for them. And the more he’s with her, the more his sorrow will grow. He suffers with her.”

  “But why?” Dan asked. “Does he like suffering? Does he like to cause other people to suffer?”

  “It’s not that simple,” Tar said, shaking his head. “He’s a spirit that can’t let go. He can’t forgive himself - or anyone else. It’s his guilt, you see. He’s punishing himself. There’s no pain where we are, here in this…Heaven. The only real pain comes from that world. It’s the closest thing to Hell he can find.”

  “Why does he punish himself? What is it he can’t forgive himself for?”

  Tar remained silent.

  Dan tried to imagine what crime this spirit had committed. Murder? Wasn’t that the worst thing a person could do? Had this spirit been a murderer when he was alive?

  Chucky.

  Dan thought about the evil little killer doll again. Then he thought about Martin Klamsky, another character played by the same actor, Brad Dourif.