Past Present Future

by Alexander, N J.

  JT: Let’s talk about the text messages and try to rationalise this together shall we.

  Nicole: Fine.

  JT: You said yourself that text messages aren’t possible without a number trace. So those text messages weren’t possible – they couldn’t have been there – could they Nicole? That’s why they were never reported to the police.

  Nicole: Those text messages existed. It’s the source that remains a mystery.

  JT: Okay, let’s move on to you being huddled in the corner of your en-suite bathroom convinced that someone was in your house. You remember writing about it in your book? But you also wrote in your book that you had a deep cut and when you removed the plaster there was nothing there.

  Nicole: I said that there was barely anything there, there is a difference.

  JT: And the printout on imploding windows was never there was it?

  Nicole: The printout was there but it vanished. Sometimes I think Richard has been playing with my head, but I don’t understand why.

  JT: Nicole I want you to read this small paragraph I’ve saved it for you, it’s taken from a medical journal. Can you read it aloud for me?

  Nicole: Why can’t I read it in my head? It’s where you say everything else to do with me is held.

  JT: Because I want to make sure you actually read it.

  Nicole: “For people with paranoid schizophrenia, symptoms include delusions such as believing that they are being watched, persecuted or plotted against or even that a person is in love with them despite never having met them. Hallucinations will occur and are usually auditory, but can also be physical sensations such as being touched. They suffer grandiosity, jealousy or excessive religiosity all mixed in one melting pot.”

  JT: Nicole can you not see even a tiny glimpse of yourself in these symptoms? Your game with Anthony Hope is what we call Delusional Erotomania. It explains why you had intense sexual feelings for him. You did score quite highly on what we call first rank positive symptoms. When we put everything together, in one pot, can you not see how being tapped on the shoulder, being convinced that you are communicating with famous dead spirits or angels, believing you are being given glimpses into the future and convinced a man is communicating through special code are all your symptoms wrapped in one. It explains why you felt like you were in Wonderland. And it is perfectly normal for paranoid schizophrenics to find ingenious ways to explain things that otherwise don’t make sense to them. You have managed to make incredible sense out of all your experiences and everything else that was happening in your life, even the world. Even your feeling of emptiness is symptomatic of your illness.

  Nicole: So how did my brain think up a text using a word I’d never heard of? If those texts didn’t exist, why did I quote the dictionary definition of cuckold to my friend Lorna? It was Richard who had given me the dictionary definition. But I eventually figured that it was how the book must have got from the study shelf to the kitchen: he had moved it to quote from it But if that first text hadn’t been sent to his phone then I would never have found my way to a quadratic equation and I wouldn’t even have had a story to get sectioned with. How do you explain that one?

  J.T: We are doctors. We don’t always have all the answers.

  Nicole: What about the number I have from the text message that wanted me dead? Both Richard and I were sat in the kitchen when the text came through. You can’t say that it didn’t happen.

  JT: We are still observing you at this stage for possible Dissociate Identity Disorder – alternate personality. It would explain the blackouts. You are one of the most intriguing cases. Nicole, tell me, where is Richard right now?

  Nicole: He is with my children, where do you think he is? He got married you know, just like the old novel predicted.

  JT: Are you talking about Anthony now? Nicole, you are aware that you have a restraint order against you. You still could be charged with the other offences, if the police eventually get your case through the CPS.

  Nicole: Yes, I am aware.

  JT: Good. But that old Anthony Hope novel was just a book; it didn’t really mean anything, did it?

  Nicole: I read it in the end – at the hospital. Anthony Hope wrote a love story of two people, Simon Dale and Nell Gwyn, who toy with each other and fight all the way through the book until he eventually falls for the taller, dark-haired woman and marries her, leaving the shorter, fair-haired Nell with nothing.

  JT: But Anthony wasn’t toying with you was he? He would have sent you emails. Made things clearer to you, wouldn’t he? That is what people normally do. He gave a sworn statement to the police denying the game, Nicole.

  Nicole: The statement wasn’t the truth. By the way, Nell didn’t die in the book. It was someone else who was poisoned, just shows how you can get hold of the wrong end of the stick when you skip read. Do you know what struck me the most about the old book in the end: a quote in the opening paragraph from Sir Francis Bacon, taken from his essay on truth. You should read it sometime.

  Nicole: Perhaps I should. Nicole, do you still look for him?

  Nicole: You have a crap view in here – what is the point of a window overlooking a brick wall?

  JT: Why don’t you want to answer the question?

  (Nicole stopped doodling on the paper and for the first time in the interview she instigated eye contact.)

  Nicole: Are you married?

  JT: No, I’m married to my work at the moment.

  Nicole: Don’t leave it too late to have children. You have beautiful eyes – very dark. They remind me of Anthony’s.

  (Nicole shifted her gaze to my breast area and appeared trance-like for a moment.)

  Nicole: I had a really strange dream last night. I’ve had it before.

  JT: Tell me about the dream.

  Nicole: It doesn’t matter…shush…listen!

  JT: What is it? What can you hear? Nicole, tell me what you hear?

  Nicole: Not voices in my head if that’s what you want me to say. It’s Rolling in the deep by Adele. Don’t you just love that song?

  JT: Erm. Yes I do quite like it. Dr Webster must have the radio on in the next room. Nicole, you have called me several times this week, each time with nothing much to say.

  Nicole: I just feel confused by everything that has happened. If I talk to spiritualists they make sense, if I talk to you – as much as I hate to admit it you also make sense, until I get home again. Sometimes it helps to hear your voice.

  JT: Do you really believe in God?

  Nicole: I don’t know. I don’t think we have all the answers.

  JT: Would angels put you through what you have been through?

  Nicole: I supposed that would depend on the angel and their purpose. Did you know fifty-three per cent of Britons believe in psychic powers and the afterlife? I saved a clipping from the newspaper.

  JT: You are still taking your medication, Nicole? I’ve noticed your weight has dropped again.

  Nicole: I don’t like the drugs. I read on the Internet weight gain is major side-effect, I’d rather be insane than fat.

  JT: Antipsychotic drugs do slow down the metabolism, I won’t lie to you. But you need to take the pills. We believe you are still in the active phase of your condition. If you don’t take the medication and your symptoms worsen, you do realise I will have to recommend that you are referred to other doctors for possible readmission to hospital, for your own safety. There are conditions set for you to be treated as an outpatient, you mustn’t forget that.

  Nicole: There is nothing wrong with me.

  JT: If there is nothing wrong why do you draw these same numbers and symbols every week?

  (I took the paper from Nicole. She didn’t react.)

  Nicole: Because I still don’t know what the “one” rather than “nought” is that I should end up with, or what the delta and spiral mean.

  JT: That is because they don’t mean anything, Nicole. Try to see that you have created your own labyrinth. I’m going to recommend a switch to A
ripiprazole – we can see how you go with that drug. But I’m calling it a day for today. My plan next week is to show you some random video clips, and song lyrics and we can look at them together and see how you would make these clips appear to be messages from Anthony, even though we know that they’re not from him.

  Nicole: Anthony doesn’t play games anymore. There is no switch that has gone on or off in my head – he simply stopped the games. He’s being loyal to his wife and if he’s half the man I think he is, he will remain loyal to her. I am glad he has found someone he is happy with.

  (Patient appears to have stopped taking the medication. A switch to Aripiprazole (20mg daily) has been recommended and for further examination by second independent doctor to take place. Personal recommendation would be for further hospitalisation to supervise medication, certainly until patient clearly out of the acute phase. Suspect suicidal symptoms, and also suspect patient/doctor fixation beginning to develop.)

  << End of Transcript >>

  I turned the temperature of the shower up a notch and stood thinking about the computer printout for the imploding window. Not once had it occurred to me that Dad had left the printout in the house for me just after it had happened. It was only by chance after mentioning it to Mum that the matter had finally been cleared up. Mum said she recalled Dad saying that I never acknowledged it, but then he must have forgotten about it too, blissfully unaware about the confusion it had caused. But it made sense now that it would be Dad: an engineer would bother to investigate how a window could implode. Where the paper had disappeared to – I still didn’t know.

  Elyse tapped on the shower door.

  ‘Mummy, I have a call for you.’

  I silently cursed the inconvenience of the caller and opened the shower door instantly feeling the drop in temperature. I was about to say that I’ll call whoever it was back in a minute but then I noticed she was holding a broken mobile, the screen was smashed. She’d obviously found it in the kitchen drawer and was role-playing with it. I went along with the game and asked who it was.

  ‘It’s a fwiend,’ she chirped.

  ‘And who…’

  ‘Their number is zewo, eight, eight, eight, five, one, two,’ she said and finished with a beaming smile.

  My head replayed her numbers. With the water still noisily blasting out, I could have heard wrong.

  ‘Elyse, what did you say?’

  ‘The number is zewo…eight…eight, eight…five, one…two.’

  I had heard correctly the first time. They were my numbers alright, but she’d put the zero at the beginning and not the end.

  ‘Elyse…. did Daddy tell you to say that?’

  ‘No…it’s a fwiend.’ She started to giggle and left the bathroom.

  ‘Elyse…who is the friend? Tell me…come back here now,’ I shouted, but she ignored me.

  I turned the shower off and trod carefully across the tiled floor so as not to slip. Once safely on the carpet I accelerated to catch her. I stood at the edge of the bedroom door, dripping wet and shouted to her once more. She still stubbornly refused to come back and I watched her skip the length of the landing, still giggling.

  ‘Elyse come back,’ I tried again.

  But she disappeared down the stairs, leaving me no option but to return to the bathroom to get a towel. I decided to take one of the Antipsychotic pills stored on the bathroom shelf.

  The paper ticket I had said thirty-four. The ticket dispenser fixed to the wall was still on twenty-five. That meant I was to be sat a fair while waiting for my repeat prescription for the antipsy- chotic drugs. I put my feet on the low table and slouched in the seat picking at my nails. The plasma TV was on but I couldn’t be bothered to watch it as the sound was too low.

  It always amazed me how busy hospitals were. It was only when you were in one that you realised how much illness there was in the world. I looked up at the OUTPATIENT sign. I supposed things could be much worse for me. There was an elderly man on the next chair but one. He looked a little like Goofy with his missing teeth – he was quietly working his way through a crossword. The date on his newspaper said 23rd February 2011. With everything that had happened to me, weeks and months were simply merging into one. The ticket dispenser moved to number twenty-eight.

  Someone turned the volume up on the TV and I instinctively looked up at the screen. It was news on the earthquake that had tragically hit New Zealand.

  ‘I dreamt this,’ I said to Goofy while pointing at the screen. ‘Well not this exactly, but I had a dream about an earthquake. It’s horrible.’

  The ticket dispenser moved to number thirty. The man just looked at me as though I was insane.

  The report was focusing on the Chirstchurch cathedral and the damage to the stone spire. Thankfully no one had been hurt by the fallen stone. The journalist was calling it New Zealand’s darkest hour, hitting the country’s financial heart. Suddenly something switched in my head when I saw the date and time that the earthquake had hit – the text was rolling across the bottom of the screen.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I said to Goofy. ‘Could I borrow your pen, just for a minute please?’

  ‘Sure,’ he said in a tone that sounded like he was happy to be of use to someone. He handed it over.

  I took one of the NHS leaflets from a plastic display stand and wrote out: 21/12/2011, 12:51 42 seconds: the exact date and time the earthquake struck. Then I rearranged the numbers. On my piece of paper was 15/2, 42, and using the remaining ‘1’ the date rearranged became 21/12/2012, the date the Mayan calendar comes to an end and a new era begins. That was it! All the numbers and symbols had come together. The delta and spiral symbol had finally fallen into place.

  ‘I’ve sussed it,’ I said to Goofy. ‘Too late, but I’ve sussed it.’

  ‘Good for you,’ he replied. ‘Good for you.’

  The number on the dispenser had turned to thirty-two.

  I took my mobile from my bag and clicked on Safari. I wanted to read about Christchurch cathedral. There were several pages to choose from, but I went for the first and tapped the small screen to enlarge the text. Certain facts jumped out at me:

  Christchurch cathedral is located in Cathedral Square 8011, known locally as ‘The Square’. The square, x², I thought.

  The stone spire had been previously damaged in an earthquake in 1888 when approximately 8 feet of stonework fell. The 1888 earthquake was caused by the Hope fault. It was Hope’s fault. And there staring back at me were the three eights and the one.

  The Christchurch cathedral had been named and modelled on Christ Church, Oxford, UK.

  The dispenser was now on thirty-nine. I screwed my ticket up and turned my attention to Lewis Carroll and pulled him through the search engine. I found what I wanted:

  In 1882, Lewis Carroll, Professor of Christ church College, under his birth name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson became one of the founding members of The Society for Psychical Research. The society still runs today and continues to investigate psychic and paranormal phenomena. In 1885 William James became the founder of the same society in New York.

  The dispenser moved to forty-two.

  I turned to Goofy. ‘Have you ever felt like you are the only sane person on the planet?’

  ‘Every day,’ he said.

  I left the prescription waiting and walked towards the hospital exit. I passed a woman with blonde hair carrying flowers and grapes. The old lady shed her cloak, revealing her true self to Pomana. The woman looked familiar and was walking alongside a man with silver hair. I heard her shout: “William James, Elyse Grace, come back here!” I turned around and walked back towards the woman knowing as soon as I reached her we would become one once again.

  2012

  The heat wave made it feel like summer but lingering daffodils were a subtle reminder of spring. Snow had been forecast next week along with an imminent hosepipe ban to conserve water. Maddy, Steve and Henry were on their first big family holiday abroad since Steve’s release from prison, but her Fac
ebook hadn’t been updated with holiday snaps for a couple of days; so far she’d posted three hundred. With nothing of particular interest on my Newsfeed, I clicked on my list of friends instead. As a consequence of my game, I had less than fifty people left in the world I considered remotely trustworthy, others had loyally knocked me off after hearing about what had happened. Some people now considered me too scary to approach and a dangerous addition to their Facebook – scared they’d end up in a book, no doubt.

  I casually scrolled down the short list displayed on my new iPad, but came to an abrupt halt when I spotted a familiar name, a name that had not been there for a very long time: Anthony Hope. There was no photo, just a Facebook blank face. He wasn’t supposed to be there, it wasn’t my fault he was there. Heart thumping and the restraint order swirling around the back of my mind, I clicked on his name. It said “deactivated account”.

  I then noticed several other friends who had closed their accounts for various reasons: fall-outs, bored with it, etcetera, but just like Anthony Hope they were once again listed amongst my active friends. Applying logic, it meant somewhere between 2011 and 2012 Facebook had changed the way that the site displayed an individual’s deactivated account.

  ‘Oooh shit,’ I said out loud.

  His presence could only mean one thing: he had not singled me out prior to taking down his page otherwise he wouldn’t be listed amongst my other friends. I’d been mistaken. He’d never removed me.

  How could I have got it so wrong? Time delay. That was the answer. A person’s Facebook page must be traceable on the general search for an hour or so after the account’s deactivated. The connection had been broken on my page, but not elsewhere on Facebook for some time. All my printout proved was how closely I had been observing him. How stupid was I to not have considered this months ago?

  It took much longer for the full implication to hit home. So much longer that I’d disturbed Richard from his newspaper to tell him how thick I’d been to think Anthony had singled me out, then sat on the sofa licking my wounds for a bit because evidently, I hadn’t been significant enough to Anthony to be singled out for removal. I wasn’t special. His decision to leave Facebook had clearly been nothing to do with me. But I don’t know why the most disturbing conflicting factor took so long to register. Perhaps it was the fact I was slowly being brainwashed into believing I was a psychologically disturbed stalker and forgetting to think of myself as the victim who had been made to question her sanity.