by Lee Miller
The look on the kindly doctor’s face, and Beth’s arm around her shoulders let Sara feel like things may just end up being alright after all. She knew she wasn’t alone. She was now building a strong team that would help her get through this. “Alright Dr. Morgan. I haven’t kept a diary since I was a kid, but I’m more than willing to give it a try.” Sara began wringing her hands and fidgeting with her wedding ring, she had yet to take it off, she couldn’t bring herself to do it. “Sara, I must ask, you have got to be very honest in these entries. No matter how embarrassing or scary or unsettling the event is. You have to be painfully honest or else this won’t work.” Dr. Morgan walked over to his desk and opened a drawer, he then tossed a collage rule notebook on his desk. He took out a black sharpie pen and wrote ‘Sara’s Log” on it. He then handed it to her. “100% honesty Sara. Beth, she may need your help. Stay with her. We’ll get you through this Sara.” Beth smiled up at the Doctor. “You got it Doc. I’ll keep both eyes on here at all times. Unless I’m driving, then that may be kind of dangerous.” Beth’s quirkiness showing through. Dr. Morgan couldn’t help but chuckle. He looked at Beth as if he didn’t quite know what to make of her. Beth just looked at him and smiled. It seemed the two held an entire conversation over the next few seconds that just sat there looking at each other. “Nice collection of Dr. Who stuff.” Beth finally said. “Yes, not even a portion of my collection.” The Doctor said. “Seriously?!” Beth was in awe. “Yes. I’ve got every action figure, and pretty much everything else Whovian at the house. “Balls!” Beth let out a soft whistle. “Are those functioning Sonic Screwdrivers?” she asked. “Yep, but they still don’t work on wood.” He replied. “Well Hell Doc, you’ve just become my new favorite person.” She said as she walked towards him then licked him on the forehead. Dr. Morgan took a couple steps back, not really sure what to make of Beth. “Uh. Thanks?” He said with a half-smile on his face. “Yup, licking, that’s just something I do. I lick people somewhere on the face. Like a cat! Yes. Like a cat. It’s a cat’s ultimate sign of affection if they lick you.” Beth stated. “Basically doc, you’ve just won Beth’s highest seal of approval.” Sara let out between gales of laughter. Dr. Morgan joined in on the laughter. “Well, okay then. Glad to know Beth approves of me.” He said still chuckling. “Okay Doc, no need to make this awkward. We’ll just call it good here then. Okay. Meet you at the truck Sara.” With that, Beth made her exit out of the office.
Dr. Morgan watched her depart, still in awe and apparently a bit mystified by Beth. As the door shut he came back to his senses. He wrote something down on a sticky note and handed it to Sara. “You have my personal number Sara, do not hesitate to use it if you need me and I want to see you back here next week, same day, same time. And keep up with the logbook.” He instructed one last time then walked Sara out to the front door. “I’ll let Candie know to schedule you in.” He said as they walked out to the truck. Sara looked over and saw Beth standing there and remembered something. “Um…Doc, tell Candie ‘sorry’ for messing up her pile of magazines on the table.” Dr. Morgan looked at her with a blank stare for a second then realization lit in his eyes. “Oh my, did you two mess up the order she has them stacked in?” He was half laughing at the thought of his secretary having an apocalyptic seizure over those magazines. “Well, yes. Beth kind of did.” Beth looked over at her as if scandalized, “Snitch!” Beth stuck her tongue out at her friend and the doctor. “Snitches get stiches woman!” she half shouted. Sara unlocked the truck and Beth jumped in without saying another word. “Thanks Doctor. I appreciate all of this. We’ll see you next week.” She said as she opened her own truck door. She looked and answered the question that was written on the doctor’s face. “Yes, both of us. Tell Candie to hide the magazines.” She shook his hand and started the truck up. As she pulled it out of the parking space she looked out the window and waved goodbye. Sara thought that in a different time, different situation, Dr. Morgan and Beth would have really hit it off. Even if he was a bit older than she was. Then again, Sara didn’t really know how old he was. She also guessed none of that mattered. Beth wasn’t in the position to be courted.
After stopping to grab a bite to eat on the way home at their favorite Italian restaurant, they pulled into the parking garage a little after sundown. Sara was again surprised at how little traffic was on the streets. As she pulled into her assigned parking spot, she had to ask. “Hey Beth, does there seem to be less traffic than usual on the roads lately? I mean, this close to rush hour, shouldn’t there have been more than what we saw?” She put the truck in park and turned the ignition off. “I wasn’t really paying attention to the traffic sweetie. Sorry.” Sara shrugged; Beth was lost in her own little world since leaving the doctor’s office. “Meh, maybe just my imagination I guess.” They got out of the truck and began walking towards the bank of elevators when Sara caught a glimpse of what she thought was something shimmering in the corner of the garage. When she tried to look at it dead on, it disappeared only to reappear when she looked straight ahead again. She stopped walking and waiting. A few more steps and Beth’s heeled boots came to a stop also. “Sara? What’s wrong?” She didn’t know what to tell her. Was she just seeing things or was this part of the crazy that had begun to consume her life. “I dunno. Come here and look straight ahead and see if you see anything out of the corner of your left eye.” Puzzled, Beth walked back to Sara’s position and turned facing the way she came and did as Sara instructed. She saw nothing. “What am I supposed to see?” Sara thought about that for a minute. How do you describe a chrome shadowy thing that shimmers in the light that you can only see out of the corner of your eye? “You don’t see anything weird in that corner over there? Sara instinctually looked over as she pointed and the chrome shadowy thing was there. It looked like a liquid mirror except with no frame around it. Sara could have sworn the lights in the garage dimmed ever so slightly. “Beth, seriously, you don’t see that?!” Sara asked urgently. Beth didn’t respond. She didn’t want to take her eyes off of it but could no longer feel the presence of Beth right next to her. What the hell is going on?!” she wondered. She stole a glance to see where Beth had gotten off to. She was standing 15 feet away with her back to Sara and her head down. “Beth? Beth what’s wrong?” She kept a eye on the silvery thing in the corner of the garage and slowly backed stepped towards Beth. The only sound in the garage coming from the hell of her boots on the concrete. The sound seemed to echo and come at her from every direction. “Beth!” she half whispered, half shouted. Still nothing. She finally stepped in front of Beth and saw she had her head dead. She couldn’t tell if her eyes were open or closed. Beth seemed to be sleeping standing up. The only motion coming from her was her chest heaving as she breathed. Sara began to panic. This was obviously not a normal occurrence or something benign. This must be another corner of crazy town she was visiting. “Not now!” Sara demanded. Nothing responded. Sara listened to the eerie silence of the night creeping into the parking garage. She looked around and realized that the garage was emptier than it should be at this time of day. “Where is everyone?” she called out loud. The yellow sodium vapor lights in the garage started casting shadows on every surface. The shadows seem to move like people walking. Some shadows appeared large and Sara noticed they were perfectly situated in parking spaces and took on shapes of different types of vehicles. Out of the silence came laughter, talking, and the sounds of movement. The silver shiny shadowy thing in the corner started to still and Sara could see light coming from it, not a reflection, but more like a light being produced inside of it. Sara was drawn to it. She couldn’t explain it, but something was pulling her towards it. She let the invisible chain guide her for a bit but the closer she got to the shimmering blob, the more scared she got till the fear of losing her life became a very real fear. She pulled away from the shimmering mass and tried running. She felt the pull give way and she went flying forward. She tried to catch her balance but after a few steps went flying towards the ground. She tu
cked in and rolled with the momentum rolling on the ground then coming right back up to her feet. She turned and saw the blob was starting to move towards her. The laughter and the noises seemed to get louder and louder. She could hear the sounds of children playing in a park somewhere off in the distance. She could hear the sound of car horns during rush hour, she also thought she detected the smell of a hotdog vendor that usually camps out just outside the entrance to the building on the sidewalk. She suddenly realized how much she must the sounds of life around the city and felt a great weight of sorrow come crashing down over her. She wept. She didn’t know why, but she was crying for what she felt as the loss of life and all its sounds. She was afraid she’d never hear them again. She turned and tried to run as fast as she could to get away from the crushing grief and the shimmering blob but instead ran right into Beth who grabbed her and held her close. “Sarah, shhh…it’s okay, I’m here. I’ve got you, shhh.” “Beth? Beth?!” what happen. I called to you and you just stood there! Can you see the silver shimmering blob in the corner now?” Sara was able to control her sobs to form at least somewhat coherent sentences. Beth looked at her with a puzzled expression etched into her face. “Blob? What sweetie? What are you talking about?” Sara looked back at the corner and it was gone. The sounds were also gone, fading like an echo down the canyon at midnight. “It…there…” she couldn’t get her wits about her enough to explain it. Beth held on to her and waited for the tremors to pass.
“Sara, all I know is you pulled into the parking spot and got out of the truck then you just stood there like you were in a trance for a bit and started walking to that corner. I tried to get you to snap out of it, but you couldn’t even see me. Then you suddenly tried to push past me, so I got out of your way and you did this crazy rolling thing and came back up to your feet, that’s when I caught ahold of you. There was nothing there sweetie. I promise. I was here the whole time.” Sara stood there being comforted by Beth as her sobs ebbed out and reality came sinking back in. She steadied herself on her own two feet. After a few minutes of getting herself collected, she looked around her. The truck was parked there in its spot. Next to it was Beth’s Mustang. Everything seems to be in order. No blobs in the corner. No sound of kids playing in a park. No smells of hotdogs. Nothing. “Well.” She said after a few minutes. “I guess this will be the first entry into my log.” She walked back over to the truck, pulled out a pen and the notebook and wrote everything that had just happen down. “I wonder at what point they are gonna get me committed?” Sara said ideally. “Well, it won’t be while I’m alive. I can promise you that.” Beth threw an arm around her shoulders. “Ready to go in? It’s cold out here.” They walked to through the quiet garage to the elevator banks. The journey felt like a thousand miles to Sara. It seemed like it took forever to cross what she knew was a fairly short distance. The whole way, Sara could see out of the corner of her eyes shadows playing at the edge of light. Almost seemingly beckoning for her to come join them. They didn’t yet have the strength to pull her in, but Sara wasn’t sure that would always be the case.
Inside the apartment, Beth drew up a warm bath that was on the border of being too warm, and turned the jets on. She instructed Sara to get undressed and soak in the tub while she fixed dinner. Sara left the bathroom door open so if anything happen, Beth could make it in. She felt weak. She hoped the hot water would rejuvenate her. She didn’t feel as lost and helpless as she had with the other episodes; she was getting help. She had Beth and she had Dr. Morgan. She wasn’t fighting the battle for her sanity alone; still she could take going nuts without all the scary crap happening.
October
Over the next few weeks and months life seemingly returned to something resembling normal for Sara and Beth. Sara kept her appointments with Dr. Morgan but after the episode in the garage, nothing weird happened again. Sara couldn’t explain the feeling of normal that prevailed her life since then. The summer months came and went in a blur. She had returned to work but wasn’t as satisfying as it once was for her. She continued to work from home and Beth returned back to school in early May and had worked as the Summer school teacher to make up for lost hours. She too was embracing the normalcy that filled both their lives. Neither talked about Beth moving back into her own place. That wasn’t an option either wanted to consider. Sara got use to her best friend always being there, or coming home from work and they would sit around during and after dinner talking about their days. Sometimes over a glass of wine sometimes without wine. Mostly with though. The weird winter weather they had experienced transitioned to weird spring like weather. The gray clouds would break for a period then return, bringing heavy rains and thunderstorms. During the winter, the city was threatened with an ice age, during the spring and summer the city was almost turned into Venice, Greece with the road ways becoming water canals. As fall approached, Beth was getting ready for a new school year and Sara’s life plunged along like it had over the last few months. Unsatisfying and empty. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she knew the trouble wasn’t over. She kept a watchful eye for the weirdness that she experienced after Chris’s death. She knew it was only a matter of time until it returned. She wasn’t out of the woods yet.
It all came crashing down one day in mid-October. The weather had turned unseasonably cool and the forecast called for mixed precipitation of snow and ice. The roads would be insanely slick by morning and Beth’s school had already canceled the days sessions, leaving Beth and Sara at the apartment all day. They went the night before and stocked up on much need provisions, in case the icy lock down lasted more than a few days. They had made it back home and were putting their purchases away when Sara’s phone rang. She initially ignored it because she had her hands full and Beth was in the shower. They had planned on settling in for a movie night with pizza and wine. Sara took a moment to go check the weather outside the massive window wall in the living room. In the streetlights below she could see a small flurry of what looked like snow filtering through the yellowish light. “Well, guess it’ll really cut loose later.” She watched as below in the street a street department truck was cruising slowly laying down salt on the streets. “Glad that I don’t have to be out in the junk.” She thought to herself. She heard her phone ring again. Breaking herself away from the massive window, she went to retrieve it off of the coffee table and pulled up short when she saw the caller ID. It showed that Chris’s phone was the one calling her. She saw the picture she had taken of him last summer on the screen. He was smiling and his eyes lit up like that of a child’s on their birthday. It was one of the happiest memories she had. “What in the hell? How could his phone be dialing mine?” She knew that the phone was still in Chris’s nightstand on his side of the bed. That was where she had put it since the night he had died. She didn’t have the courage to pull it out; she just kept paying the bill every month and didn’t discontinue his line. A sudden realization sent a cold chill down her spine. “Was it still there?” she thought. As her phone continued to ring, she ran to the bedroom and threw open Chris’s nightstand. There it was. Turned off and sitting there. She doubt it even had a charge any more. “If your phone is there, then who the hell is calling me?” she looked wildly around the room. The phone stop ringing, she assumed it had sent the caller to voicemail. She waited to see if she’d get a notification. She thought it would be safer to hear that than to answer the phone itself. Not notification came. Suddenly her phone began ringing for a third time. The caller ID popped up. It was Chris’s phone again. She looked at the dormant phone setting in the drawer. “No, no, no…not again, the crazy period is over. Not again.” She felt numb as she looked at the familiar face on her screen. Finally it stopped ringing. Again, no voicemail notification came. She decided if it rang a fourth time, she was going to answer it and demand to know who the hell was calling her. She waited. Nothing. The phone in her hand stayed silent. She glanced out the window in her bedroom; the winter precipitation was finally coming down in full force. She slid the
phone into the back pocket of her jeans and returned to the living room to finish getting things put away and the pizzas in the oven. They had gotten two large Tony’s Pizzas. Each of the petit women could easily scarf down one by themselves. Just as she shut the door to the oven, she felt the phone in her back pocket start to vibrate and she heard the muffle ring. She pulled it out and saw that it was again Chris’s number. She was more mad than scared and decided to answer the phone to tell who ever it was this was a sick joke and give them a piece of her mind. She slid the answer bar to the right and put the phone to her ear. Before she could utter a word, she heard and unearthly sound coming over the earpiece. It sounded like the death rattle that a person emits with their last breath but it was constant. She listened intently but no words came over the receiver. “Who the hell is this?” she demanded. “You sick bastard, this is not even funny and beyond inappropriate!” she told the deathly breath. She tried to listen to any background noise that would give away who the caller was or a location. The voice that finally came sounded like it came from a long distance. If there was such a thing, and if death had a wind that blew through it, that’s what this voice would sound like. It sounded like the voice came from the inside of a tomb; Chris’s tomb to be exact. Sara could detect Chris’s voice in there somewhere. “Sara.” Only one word over and over again. “What do you want? Leave me alone!” The voice persisted. Somewhere in the more rational part of Sara’s mind was the quiet voice telling her to hang up and turn the phone off, but she couldn’t seem to pull it away from her ear. “Sara.” The voice kept going on and on. Then it changed. It added a line right after her name. There was no mistaking Chris’s voice was in there somewhere, but so was someone else’s. She couldn’t quiet place it yet. “Sara. I’m so cold.” The voices kept repeating this same line over and over. Sara tried her best to tune out everything else to try and figure out who the second voice was. It finally hit her, it was Tommy’s. Tommy and Chris’s voices overlapping each other and saying the exact same phrase. “Sara. I’m so cold.” “Stop it!” she half screamed. “This isn’t right. You’re both dead! Stop it!” then another change came. Sara could hear a third voice in the mix. Mixing with Tommy and Chris’s. This one was a female voice though, and the voices added yet another line to their rambling. “Sara. I’m so cold. Save me.” This last bit sent another spike of chill down Sara’s spine. “How can I save you? What do you want from me?!” Sara was getting frantic. She knew she should hang up but couldn’t pull the phone from her ear. It didn’t take Sara long; she easily picked out the voice of her best friend in with the two dead men. “Sara. I’m so cold. Save me.” Sara felt the blood in her veins turned to ice as she cast her eyes up to the second floor bathroom where Beth had been taking a shower and realized the water had turned off quite a while ago. Beth should have come out of there by now. “Beth?” Sara said into the phone.