The Watchers

by Mark Andrew Olsen

  “Dad, did you just feel something?”

  “Something what?”

  “I don’t know. Something passing, a shudder, a presence even?”

  He stared at her. “No, sweetie . . .”

  She sighed and shut her eyes. Yes, she had seen it—or had she? Had she glimpsed an eerie haze drift in front of his shoulders?

  She saw something again, and almost screamed—for it was now clear.

  And terrifying.

  A gauzy face, revolting and horrific at once. A mouth, leering and ravenous. A palpable shroud of something that made her want to crawl out of her skin.

  “Are you okay, sweetie?” came his voice through what sounded like a thick cloud.

  She shook her head. “I’m sure it’s part of the sickness. I don’t know—this morning my vision started to get blurred with these optical illusions. These little vapors, wisps of something. And every hour they get more . . . distinct. And horrible. Sometimes it even seems I can see faces on them. Just now it became totally clear. It was the scariest thing I’ve ever seen. I can’t explain it, ’cause they’re very . . . I know it’s childish, but they really give me the creeps.”

  “They’re just hallucinations, honey,” said the nurse at the foot of her bed. “I’m sure we can get you some drugs to make them—”

  “No, please,” Abby interrupted. “No drugs. I don’t want to spend my last . . .” She realized what she was starting to say and paused. “I don’t want this time to be a haze.”

  “I’m so sorry, sweetie,” her dad said. He sighed with a heaviness that made the nurse, even his wife, Teresa, who stood to one side, glance at him sharply. “But please, don’t tell me. Don’t bring up these things. Please. Just don’t.”

  “But, Dad, if I can’t talk to you about it, who can I talk to?”

  His head began an almost involuntary shake. “I don’t know. One of your friends? A counselor? I’ll pay.”

  “Please. Don’t make it about money.”

  “I’m not, Abby. I’ll even bring in a chaplain, if that’ll help.”

  Abigail stretched her face into an exaggerated look of surprise. Anybody who knew her father knew about his feelings toward organized religion. Ever since her mother had led Abigail in a sinner’s prayer at the age of eight—during one of her calmer periods just before her disappearance—the subject had been a wedge between her and her father. After her mother had vanished, Abigail had clung to her new beliefs, and then her church, as a source of solace. Then, as she matured, it had turned into far more. It had blossomed into a truly voluntary, vibrant core of her character. At the same time, her father had angrily rejected Christianity, managing to remain grudgingly tolerant of his daughter’s faith. The most he would offer was a continual complaint that on Sunday mornings, one of his most available times in a hectic professional schedule, it would have been nice to spend quality time together. Instead, she had to rush off to that place. . . .

  That was why this offer was indeed a concession.

  “No, Dad. I want you to tell me why. Come on—I’m the one who’s, who’s . . .”

  “Don’t say it.”

  “But I am. And that’s why you owe me an explanation. This is too important; I can see it in your eyes.”

  He sat down quickly, with the suddenness of someone whose knees had abruptly lost all their strength. Not a man who racked up a dozen treadmill hours a week.

  “I always thought I’d go to my grave without ever telling you about these things. But now . . .” He raised his eyebrows as if to finish by saying, Now with you about to go before me, it’s all changed.

  “Tell me, Daddy. You’re scaring me.”

  “It’s about your mother.”

  Abigail felt a hard wall of inevitability rise within her. Of course, she told herself. What other topic would push him so close to the edge?

  “Go ahead.”

  He sighed and blew out loudly. “Right before the end, right before she disappeared, your mother started complaining of all sorts of strange sights. It started with these strangely real dreams. They seemed to involve folks who lived in ancient times. Biblical characters. She seemed to think these were more than your average dreams, but actually some kind of invasion, a possession almost. Except not like the normal possession. In these dreams, she was the one possessing the body of these historical people.”

  Abigail inhaled slowly, self-consciously. It felt like her life depended on gathering that next breath. She felt an actual swimming sensation in her head and knew that she was in danger of fainting. She could hardly believe the words buzzing about her tympanic membrane.

  “Anyway, that’s not the most important part,” he continued. “But see, right around that time, she started talking about seeing things. About all of a sudden experiencing some kind of, what she called ‘spiritual vision.’ She started really freaking out, talking about seeing things swimming around in front of her. Just like what you said. I’m sorry. But it was so pronounced . . . the similarity. The words you chose—they could have come out of her mouth. Some of the last words she ever spoke to me.”

  “So, is that what you think drove her to abandon us?”

  He paused and turned to Teresa, whose eyes seemed to have recently gone cold. As abruptly as the flicking of a switch.

  “Honey, I have something to confess to you.”

  Teresa exhaled angrily and stormed off toward the door. Her father watched her go, then turned back to Abigail with a weary expression.

  “Your mother didn’t exactly abandon us the way I’ve always told you,” he said in a low voice, as though someone was eavesdropping on the conversation.

  “What?”

  “Your mother didn’t just leave. She disappeared under suspicious circumstances. If you were to track down her case with the FBI, you’d find that her file states her as presumed dead. Murdered, to put a finer point on it.”

  “So you thought it would be better,” Abigail said, her voice rising, “to let me grow up thinking that my mom was a tramp who never loved me and thought it would be more fun to run off with a cult of dope-smoking hippies than stay and raise me?”

  “Yes,” he answered, his lips stretched tight. “I thought that would be easier to live with than knowing your mother had transformed into a schizophrenic and ran off in sheer insanity, rejecting all my attempts to help her, and who, if she isn’t a homeless junkie, is probably lying in a potter’s field cemetery.”

  Abigail dropped her head back on her neck in resignation. She let out a groan. Her father’s explanation had been a convincing one. Neither scenario of her mother’s fate seemed appropriate for contemplation by a young girl’s tender heart and soul.

  “I’m sorry,” he said softly. “I shouldn’t have been so blunt.”

  “Thanks,” she said, “but I did sort of provoke you. And so you’re saying you have no idea what’s actually happened to Mom?”

  A look of regret flashed briefly across his face. “Before I answer that, let me tell you something. I spent much of your childhood years doing everything imaginable to find your mother. I was on a first-name basis with the missing person’s coordinator of every state in the union. I hired so many investigators that I bet there’s not a shelter west of the Mississippi that hasn’t been visited by somebody on my payroll. I’ve personally driven every mile of the L.A. Basin’s freeways and homeless areas. No man alive could have tried harder than I did.”

  “I’m not calling you a failure, Dad. I’m just asking what you know.”

  “Well, I did find her, and she came home. For a while.”

  “Of course. When I was eight. I remember.”

  “But I know something else still.”

  She grimaced this time. “Dad, I’m not sure I can survive any more surprises today.”

  “Then brace yourself, because this may be my last chance to tell you this. I’m pretty sure she was kidnapped and murdered.”

  This time Abigail did not utter a word in response. She did not even mov
e a muscle to entice him into going further. She was incapable of either. Finally, however, it became obvious that he did not have the will to elaborate unless she provoked him.

  “Dad? Are you going to explain?”

  He snapped back from some strange reverie and met her eyes. “It had something to do with these visions of hers. Many years later, after talking to several forensic psychologists, I became convinced that it wasn’t a mental illness at all.”

  Abby used the last of her strength to prop herself upright in bed and face him directly. “What do you think it was?”

  “I don’t know for certain. Some kind of strange gifting, I suppose. A variant of what psychics experience. The real ones, that is—if there is such a distinction.”

  “But how did that lead to her being kidnapped?”

  He sat on the side of her bed and sandwiched her right hand between both of his.

  “Because a lot of things don’t add up about the night she disappeared. I can’t go into all of it, but there seemed to be a forced entry. At first the detectives thought it was her breaking her way out of the house, but when my private investigators looked it over later, it was obvious someone had broken in. Someone very skillful, very adept at hiding his tracks. There was a scuff mark on a wall. Really—I don’t want to give you all the reasons. But suffice it to say, they add up in the dozens. And they haven’t faded over time. I think these strange sightings of your mother’s got her abducted and probably killed.”

  “Oh.”

  “Are you satisfied now? Do you feel any better?”

  “Not really.”

  “I didn’t think you would. That’s why I never told you. And why I didn’t want to tell you today.”

  She squeezed his hand tightly, because she had heard a rare quaver of emotion in his last few syllables. What would she do without him?

  He rose, gave her a weak smile, and walked out.

  Abigail sank back into the mattress and let the tears flow. She wasn’t sure why she’d held them back—maybe because she’d always prided herself on being Daddy’s strong girl, the flinty one who had bounced back from her mother’s disappearance with such obvious wholeness that everyone in her world marveled at her resiliency. Perhaps she simply didn’t think she had the strength to burden her father with a disclosure of her strange dreams.

  But there, just below the surface, lay something far more troubling yet. In the span of a single conversation her personal mystery had just tripled its depth.

  Mommy . . . For her whole life, the subject had been a fairly straightforward, although deeply painful, tale of mental illness and abandonment. A good mother who had lost her mind and tragically left her family forever. In the Southern California of decades past— haven to free spirits, psychedelic drugs, and profound eccentrics—it hadn’t proven such an unusual story.

  Yet for Abby, it had always been tinged with a hint of doubt she had never wanted to fully wrestle with.

  For such an unstable person, Abby’s mother had done one thing her daughter had never forgotten.

  She had only to close her eyes for the images to rush back. . . .

  She was eight years old. It was late evening, and the ranch house in Reseda—two homes removed from the mansion in which she now lived—lay wreathed in shadow. Her bedroom was lit only by her faithful Cinderella table lamp. Her mother’s face hovered close, her sandy brown ponytail accented by the single light source. She spoke in the low husky voice she only used at bedtime. But tonight her speech sounded even more laden with emotion than ever before.

  “Are you sure, sweetheart? You really know what this prayer means?”

  “Yes, Mommy. I want Jesus to come into my heart. I want to live for Him.”

  It was something mother and daughter had talked about for weeks, ever since a clear though childlike understanding of spiritual things had clicked into place within her young mind. Years of Bible reading and quiet nighttime talks about God had taken hold and yielded a realization, however rudimentary, that she was prone to sin and needed Him in her life.

  Abby remembered every bit of the conversation, especially the sight of one lingering detail—the crystal-like tears that had wandered down the contours of her mother’s face while she watched her pray. Puzzled at the display of emotion, Abby had asked her mother why she was crying. At first, her question had only seemed to multiply the tears. Then her mother had cradled her cheek with one hand and spoken in a wavering voice.

  “Honey, I’m just so happy to be able to pray this prayer with you, that’s all.”

  “Well, who else would do it?”

  “I don’t know, Abby. No one. But I’ve been away so much the last few years. I’m just overjoyed to be the one sitting here with you.”

  “Daddy wouldn’t do it. He doesn’t even believe in God.”

  “Abby . . .”

  “Isn’t that why he doesn’t go to church with us?”

  “Sweetie, your father loves you very much. He’s a good daddy.”

  “Yeah, but he never prays at dinner, and when we do he keeps his eyes open. I’ve seen him.”

  “Really?” she said with a relieved smile. “Well, you must have had your eyes open to see it, didn’t you?” And she brushed off the subject with an affectionate squeeze of Abby’s forearm.

  The weeks that followed became a bewildering time for the little girl. In the aftermath of her prayer, her mother’s behavior seemed to split into dual and utterly contradictory paths. When speaking to Abby directly, she had continued to be nurturing and loving. Their bedtime conversations now stretched into the better part of an hour as her mother patiently answered countless questions about God and this newfound faith of hers. Abby had been a precocious little girl, and her ponderings had led her into an unusually deep understanding of what it meant to live out her faith.

  Yet whenever her gaze was directed away from the little girl, Abby’s mother had transformed into a frightened, jittery woman. Abby retained a vivid memory of her mother’s voice, sharp and panicky, ringing out through the house. There were the sounds of doors slamming at odd hours. Her parents’ voices rose in anger, the echoes muffled only by closed doors and sheltering walls.

  The night of her mother’s disappearance had come only a month or two later. Abby had little memory of that fateful night—at least until the worst was over. She awakened to being shaken by her father, his face white and his voice brittle with an edge she had never heard before. He must have told her then, but her sleep-fogged mind had not absorbed the words. It had taken several days, and several repeatings, for the fact to penetrate her mind.

  Mommy is gone. They’re looking for her, but we don’t know if she’ll ever come back. Ever . . .

  It had taken years for the gloomy tentacles of that grief to dissipate from her life. And still they had a persistent way of returning sometimes, wrought by the most random of provocations, late at night or abroad in her daytime pursuits, sparked by a television commercial or an overheard remark or the sight of a young girl hand in hand with her mommy.

  And now, all these years later, to discover that her distant grief, her mother’s disappearance, might also be tied to this present business. The thought stole her breath away and set her thoughts tumbling with a fury she felt powerless to stop.

  She had an idea of how to calm herself. Her laptop. She leaned over to the hospital side table and pulled the computer closer. Ever since her injury she hadn’t had the heart to glance at the document she’d been typing right before falling asleep on that fateful night. Her retelling of the strange dream she had lived through.

  Her account of exactly what her father had described. A dream where she’d possessed the body of an ancient old woman. A blog entry she’d never found the courage to upload to her MyCorner site. A document whose final paragraph included the words . . . visitor, you tell me. If you’ve ever had a dream remotely like this, would you e-mail me and let me know?

  Making up her mind, she moved the cursor over a small rectangular box
outlining the word Upload.

  Up to now, she hadn’t been sure if it was worth the trouble of posting this latest blog to her site, let alone an announcement of what had happened since: Narbeli’s murder and her own mysterious illness. But now, after her father’s explosive revelation, everything had changed. Suddenly that final question throbbed with more urgency and meaning than any question she could ever have imagined. She needed to know. She had to know. She couldn’t leave this world without some closure on this curse that had claimed her mother and now seemed poised to claim her as well.

  She clicked to begin the upload of her dream.

  Abruptly, she was overwhelmed by a feeling that she’d just set off an atom bomb.

  Reply to: Abby Sherman, BeachDreamer@MyCorner.com Message received at Server, marked UNREAD

  Girl, I’m gonna try my best and get around to what I’ve e-mailed you about. But give me a second. Right now, all I can do is try and catch my breath. I can hardly keep enough air in my lungs to stay conscious—forget trying to type.

  This is crazy. It’s not possible.

  I’m sure I don’t know you. I live in Detroit. No one I know has ever met you. No one I’ve ever talked to. But even that doesn’t matter, ’cause I haven’t talked to anyone about this.

  YOU DESCRIBED, WORD FOR WORD, A DREAM I HAD LAST WEEK!

  Rochelle at MyCorner

  P.S. Yeah, I’m as freaked out by it as you are. But no, I don’t know anything more about what it means than you seem to. If you find out any more, would you e-mail me back? Please?

  [MyCorner.com Admin: MESSAGE not read. Recipient’s mailbox at 367% capacity]

  HOSPITAL

  On day twenty-three, Abigail’s nurse came to collect the remains of lunch accompanied by another African-American nurse in her late forties. The moment the newcomer walked through the door, Abigail stiffened up in her bed and threw a forearm over her eyes as if trying to shelter her vision from an oppressively bright light source.