by Carrie Lange
“I know.” Tar held her silently for a moment, the top of her head nestled under his chin. He hadn’t been this close to such powerful living emotions in a long time. The feeling overwhelmed him. He felt as if he was breathing, and his breath was ripped away from him. He felt as if he was crying, and the tears stung his eyes.
How does Rale do this? How has he carried this burden for so long?
“Anne, I’m not the only one who’s come to you. Someone else is here with you. Did you know that?”
She nodded, her head rubbing against his chest, sending pulsing waves of tingling life through his spirit. “He’s always with me now. We talk sometimes. He’s the guy from ‘Death Machine’.”
“No.” Tar drew her away from him. He leaned down close and held her face in his hands, their foreheads touching. “He’s a spirit like me, but he’s full of sorrow, like you. He might try to take you with him, but you must not go. You must stay here with Alexandra. Can you remember that?”
Anne whimpered. “I’ll try.”
Tar hung his head and then looked in her eyes one last time. He sighed and started to step back. She felt his movement, and tried to stop him. “Wait. Please don’t leave me.”
Tar blinked several times, hesitating for only a moment before letting her go.
~~~~~
Tar stood up beside the bed where Anne still slept.
Dan saw a pained look on his face and a watery glisten in his eyes. As Tar walked over to him, Dan tried to look in his eyes, unable to believe what he thought he saw there. Tar turned away and when Dan reached out to him, he vanished in a misty cloud of grey fog.
Dan heard movement from the bed and a chill passed through him. He turned and saw Rale staring at where Tar had stood. Then the dark spirit looked down at Anne and laid his hand on her forehead. She shuddered.
Dan wondered what she dreamt of now.
Chapter 26
Dear Dan,
“I couldn’t live without you”...”I’d die without you”...it’s all bullshit. People say it all the time, but they don’t mean it.
Only if what they mean is: “I will kill myself, if I lose you.” And then when they lose you, they must kill themselves or, like the words they say, they are full of shit.
I said the words. Just casually tossed them out there, like everyone does.
What did I mean?
Did I mean that my body was so frail and weak, that it would literally shatter if you were no longer with me? Or did I mean that I needed your love to nourish my body, as I need food and water? Do we think our love is that powerful? That to have it taken away would cause our bodies to stop working, as when air is taken away?
Did I believe that?
No...I didn’t believe it...I was just full of the same bullshit everyone else is.
You are gone, and I want to die, but I don’t. My heart keeps beating, and I keep drawing breath after fucking breath...on and fucking on...
I feel on the verge of panic all the time. I can’t find the right words to describe this agitated feeling. It’s like looking for lost keys, except this is so much more important than my keys, it’s you. Where are you? I need to talk to you about the tragedy in my life, except you are the tragedy.
Everything seems darker and out of focus. My jeans are getting looser every day, yet I feel like I weigh more.
I saw a nature show once where a mother cheetah was searching for her cubs, who had been killed by lions. She was pacing around their tiny dead bodies, but still calling to them. She had a look of confusion on her face, like she didn’t understand.
I feel like a mother animal searching for my lost baby. I know you are gone. I see your dead body.
Yet I still have this urge to find you, protect you. Save you.
~ Anne
Chapter 27
Quiet and sincere sympathy is often the most welcome and efficient consolation to the afflicted. Said a wise man to one in deep sorrow, “I did not come to comfort you; God only can do that; but I did come to say how deeply and tenderly I feel for you in your affliction.”
~ Tyron Edwards
~~~~~
Anne returned to work, but nobody said much to her. As a matter of fact, conversations tended to stop when she entered a room. A few times she tried to say something funny, but nobody laughed.
Maybe she said it wrong.
Whatever.
She found a sympathy card in her employee mail box. Her boss had signed his name at the bottom, “Paul.”
How thoughtful.
She stayed at her parents’ house for a few days, but it didn’t really work out.
Tom complained about the extra distance he had to drive to drop Alexandra off in the mornings.
Anne’s father seemed uncomfortable around her. He avoided being alone with her.
For some reason, her mother seemed angry. “Anne, you’ve got to get over this and move on. I mean, it’s not like you were married to the man.”
At a bookstore near their house, Anne bought every book she could find on suicide and contacting the dead. She sat on the front porch swing, gently rocking, soothed once more by the steady creaking comfort of a chain moving back and forth.
Now, she stared out over corn fields. The green heads bobbing and swaying in the wind. The gentle rustling sound as the stalks brushed against one another a mesmerizing lullaby that soothed her bruised spirit.
Her mother’s comments became more pointed. “Obviously the man had some kind of severe mental disorder, Anne. It’s better that this happened now, before you married him. Think about how much worse it would have been if he had waited five or ten years.”
Her mother tried to comfort Anne, tried to understand, but she didn’t know anything about this kind of grief. “We all suffer losses like this, Anne. We can’t just stop living and become depressed. We have to move on, even when it hurts to move. Believe me, I know what it’s like.”
Most people had a tendency to tell Anne their own stories of grief. Anne was quite sure that their intention was not to compare scars, but that’s how it felt. None of them had lost lovers, though. It was mostly stories of lost parents, siblings, grandparents.
“It’s not the same thing!” she wanted to scream at them.
When her mother suggested Anne start taking anti-depressants, Anne blew cigarette smoke in her face and said, “This isn’t depression, Mom, it’s grief. A pill won’t fix it.”
None of them had the slightest idea what was wrong with her, and she didn’t have the strength, or desire to explain it to them.
Anne understood that, in her own way, her mother tried to help. She tried to clear a path to freedom for her with the sharp scythe of logic which had always served Anne so well in the past. Tried to cut the emotional ties to a dead man before they corrupted her daughter’s spirit.
But the ties were stronger than her mother’s logic, and her scythe only cut Anne’s already tender heart.
The scent of rural Indiana life - pig manure, fresh tar, plowed earth, cut hay warming in faded red barns - entered through her nose and filled all the dark recesses of her mind. The scents, more than any other sensation, held onto the happy memories of her childhood.
Riding her bike over the hot road in summer, the bubbling tar popping under her tires. Sneaking into the farmer’s barn to see the new spring piglets. Jumping from the loft onto mounds of fresh, itchy hay. Getting lost and dizzy in endless rows of corn.
“You could have gotten married, had children. Thank God you didn’t get pregnant by him.”
Okay. That stung. Anne turned to look at her mother, finally.
What do you want from me? And what am I doing here?
Packing up her books and cigarettes, she left the next morning.
This is all I need. Just my books, my cigarettes, and my memories of you.
When she got back to her apartment, she called her sometimes best friend, sometimes worst enemy, Sean. They fell in love in high school, her first boyfriend. They had been separated
for seven years. Anne had gotten married, bought a house, started a family, left her husband, and gotten engaged all over again. Sean still lived in that crappy little apartment.
He drove her bat shit crazy, and infuriated her most of the time. But he always made her laugh. And it didn’t matter if he was currently her best friend, or her worst enemy, she could always count on him.
Dan and Sean had gotten along well together. Anne was relieved because Tom had held nothing but contempt for Sean, and Anne’s friendship with him. She had hoped that Dan and Sean might even become friends, although since Dan moved away it hadn’t left much time for Anne to visit with her old friend.
She hadn’t seen him in several months, but they usually talked on the phone and emailed at least weekly.
“Why didn’t you call me sooner?” Sean asked. “I left you a bunch of messages. I was getting worried about you.
“I...don’t really know. I’m not really thinking too clearly. I think I might be going insane. I’m hearing voices.” It had been four weeks to the day since she had last seen Dan alive.
Sean paused for a moment. “I’ll come get you after work. I know exactly what you need.”
Anne knew that “what you need” meant drugs, and for the first time in her life, she wanted to take them.
Now she waited at her apartment, biding her time until Sean arrived to pick her up. Alexandra was with her father, and Anne lay on her bed in the dark.
One of her books on talking to dead people suggested mirror gazing. Black trash bags were taped over the windows in the bedroom, blocking out even the faintest ray of light. A large mirror leaned against the wall. Lighting a single candle, she would stare into the mirror for hours trying to catch a glimpse of Dan.
In the cool darkness of her bedroom, she talked to Rale. “Tar told me not to go with you.”
“I’m not trying to take you anywhere.”
“Why can’t I see you? If you’re real, how come I only see you in my dreams? Why not when I’m awake?”
“You did see me when you were awake, remember?”
Yes, she remembered. She hoped to trick her subconscious into a false step, trick it into admitting that this was all in her head, a feeble and disturbing way of coping with Dan’s death. Sometimes, she attempted to reveal Rale for what he was - a figment of her imagination. Now she allowed herself to fall back into the gentle arms of unburdened faith. It was easier there.
“Rale?”
“Yes?”
“Why doesn’t Dan come to me?”
“He tries, but he doesn’t know how.”
Anne leaned over and looked in the mirror. It was almost three feet high and four feet across. The pale blankness of the wall dimly reflected in the smooth surface.
The candle sat on the bedside table. She climbed off the bed and sat on the floor in front of the mirror, adjusting her position so that she could see the candle’s flame in the corner. She could see herself, and the bed behind her that she leaned up against.
That wasn’t following the rules in the book. If she wanted to talk to dead people, she wasn’t supposed to see anything in the mirror.
But the gentle dancing and quivering of the flame drew her gaze and relaxed her. Like a hand touching her face, it caressed her, smoothing all the torn edges of her soul. A mesmerizing power, the twinkling and flickering became her only vision. Only the flame existed. “Can’t you show him how to talk to me?”
Then she saw Rale, in the mirror. How could I have not noticed him there before?
“I can’t show him,” he said softly, “he has to figure it out for himself.”
Anne looked at him carefully, letting her eyes take all of him in. Not quite ready to turn her head and see if he sat beside her on the bed. No. He might disappear if she did that.
She considered only, his reflection. His body was complete - arms, legs, torso, head. He wore a plain black shirt and pants. Long dark hair, pale skin, intense eyes. Yes, he looked like the shadow man from her dreams.
That voice, so unmistakable - the voice of Chucky, the killer doll. Yet, the sound of Rale’s voice wasn’t crude and jarring. His voice was smooth and sultry. The voice of a lover that whispers in the dark.
“This can’t be real,” she finally said. “You look like the bad guy from a movie. I just watched it too many times. Chucky scared the crap out of me when I was a kid. I’m just making you up in my mind.”
Anne wanted him to be real, but there it was. How could this be a real spirit when he looked and sounded like a living man? Unless. Maybe the actor had died and his spirit was now here, talking to her. Could that be possible? Oh for Christ’s sake. This is insane. Just make him go away. Get a grip.
Anne tried to force herself to blink, to shake her head, to get up. It didn’t work. She wanted him to be real. More than that, she didn’t care if he wasn’t. She just wanted him to go on being there.
Rale smiled. “It doesn’t matter what I look like. I could look like anything, sound like anything. I’m just a spirit. I don’t have a body. You chose for me to look like this. But whether you believe it or not, I’m here. And I’m not going to leave you the way he did.
“If I have a near death experience, will I see Dan?”
“If your spirit leaves your body, but doesn’t let go - if it stays here, then you will see Dan. But your spirit might let go. You might die.”
“Would that be so bad?”
“No, Anne.” The sound of his voice was a hauntingly seductive enchantment that slipped through her body and pulled her closer to him. “You would be free.”
They had talked about this before. After reading about near death experience, she longed to have one herself. Those people often saw loved ones who had died. If only she could bring herself to the point of near death, Dan would come to her. She knew he would.
Last week, she had bought several boxes of sleeping pills. She pushed each tiny pill out through the shiny silver backing, and they fell with a plink into one of Dan’s wine glasses. A feeling of power had grown within her, as the mound of white pills had grown in the bottom of the glass. The question was, how many to take in order to just ‘almost die’?
Rale had reassured her when she first told him of her idea. “It doesn’t matter if you take too many. You can call 9-1-1. They’ll come and get you. They’ll bring you back.”
She looked at him in the mirror now, testing him yet again. What am I thinking, right now, Rale? Can you hear me? If you’re a spirit, shouldn’t you be able to read my thoughts?
Anne saw within the fires of his eyes, however, a passion that she knew was not within her. She was simple in her thoughts and emotions. Rale was apart from her, more than her. There was a depth to the suffering she saw in him, it was older, wiser. Rale knew how to suffer.
And her? She was just learning.
“You know,” he finally said. “I can’t read your thoughts. If you want to say something to me, you’re going to have to speak.”
She laughed, and dropped her face into her hands, rubbing her eyes and shaking her head.
When she looked up, Rale was gone.
Chapter 28
Sean picked Anne up later that night and drove her to his apartment.
Before Dan, and before her marriage to Tom, Anne had lived here with Sean, on the south side of Indianapolis. It was a crumbling little apartment, attached to a crumbling little bar, in a crumbling little neighborhood. ‘White Trash’ is what people, who did not live here, called it.
People who did live here called it home. Most of them were not trying to get out, but Sean was. For years, Anne had listened to him talk of his plans for a better future, about his strategies for scraping together the money and the time to go to college. But for all his talk, and all his plans, he was still here, in this same dump.
They had met at sixteen and became high school sweethearts. Anne had moved into this apartment with Sean just shy of her eighteenth birthday, declaring herself emancipated from her parents to her high sc
hool administrative staff.
Anne had spent a year after high school trying to work her way through college while living with Sean.
A miserable failure.
It didn’t matter to the powers that be that she didn’t live with her parents. According to their calculations, her parents made too much money for her to get any kind of financial aid.
However, despite what the powers that be calculated, a mother and father who had been public school teachers for their entire working career could not afford the outrageous cost of a college education.
The poor kids and minority kids got financial aid. The rich kids got blank checks. The super jocks and brainiacs got scholarships. Average, middle class kids like Anne and Sean got nothing.
At nineteen, she joined the National Guard, and spent almost a year away at training. The Army would pay her way through college. But a college tuition did not pay the bills, and so she had struggled to succeed in school while attending her National Guard drills, and working full time at the little bar that Sean’s father owned.
Sean, despite his grandiose plans, had not been able to muster up the ambition to join her. For him, it would always be “next year”. He had mostly played games, tinkered around with computers, and slept until noon.
Handsome, charming, and utterly charismatic, Sean seemed to float through life, while Anne always seemed to be working.
At twenty-two, when many of her friends were graduating from college and she had not even completed four semesters, Anne finally left him. Seven years ago. A lifetime ago.
It had taken her another four years and a lot of hard work, but at twenty-six, she got her college degree and within the next year she was a wife, mother, home owner, part-time soldier, and full-time employee.
Through it all, however, her and Sean had stayed friends. Best friends.
Sean was the only person in her life that she could completely pour her heart out to. Maybe it was because they had become adults together. Maybe it was because he had welcomed her into his heart at a time when no one else would. Maybe it was because she was not afraid of losing him.