Escana

by J. R. Karlsson

  1

  Jakob Sandberg

  The water was everywhere. A streaming cascade pelting down upon the rocks below as if from heaven. It rang in his ears in an oddly reassuring way, yet what should have been a cacophony seemed muffled as if from a great distance.

  The drop was sheer, all he need do was close his eyes and hope, but some semblance of his former self kept tugging at him and willing him back into the cavern. He knew all too well that this wasn't over.

  Slow and staggering, his soaking steps guided him to a stone outcrop. Aching both within and out, he slumped back against the rock face with a sigh.

  There was no way of explaining this, it went so far beyond anything he had heard of, anything he could have possibly imagined before that day.

  He felt his head resting in his hands now, his chest betrayed him and a faint sobbing racked his body before he locked it down. He knew it all now, he knew everything.

  Sighing in relief, he put down the blunted pencil for the last time and closed the notepad. His life work was finally complete.

  It was a beautiful place to write, or so he had been told by the bubbly driver as he ploughed his way through a decidedly one-sided conversation. If aesthetics were all you cared for then the man was quite correct. Lush fauna and sweeping greenery dotted by benches along a winding path hinted at a peaceful place of recovery.

  Sadly the beauty afforded to him held no positive effect on his condition.

  It had been five months now since he had been forcibly committed and for all intents and purposes it had made precious little difference to his state of mind.

  He had moved back in with his parents so they could keep an eye on him (their words) after the divorce papers had gone through. This was the socially acceptable way of saying that they were expecting him to make an attempt on his life. There was a nervous tension surrounding his every interaction now, as if in trying to fix him they had bent the arms of a bow too far when stringing. They were all waiting for the recoil, the inevitable snapping and the damage that it would cause.

  It had been like old times at first, watching the big games with the old man and pottering about the greenhouse with him. Carrying about baskets full of towels and clothing for his mother and distributing them throughout the various rooms of the large house. Nobody had issue with the fact he had stopped writing shortly before the divorce. Everyone assumed it would flow back given enough time. It hadn't. In fact there was a certain simple sense of belonging and empowerment that came from helping his elderly parents. After all, they had helped him so much throughout the course of his troubled life, it was time he returned that favour with interest.

  They were all under one roof now, the empty nest syndrome had long been expunged and the homestead had a real communal atmosphere that had developed between the 'seven children, three grandchildren, two girlfriends, three wives and one husband' as his mother was prone to repeating.

  It was all open arms and commiserations when the taxi had rattled up the stony driveway. He had told them by phone first of course, that didn't exonerate him from the arduous task of repeating it in front of the entire family in person. From the pained looks of his siblings they had already heard every detail repeated endlessly by his nattering mother.

  Yes, everything had a sense of returning back to normal. He had his small room back and had finally started pouring over innumerable drafts of his unpublished work. While he never went as far as to type anything new it helped all the same. It was only on the third day he had noticed that aside from a little tidying, nothing had changed since his visit last Christmas.

  His first decision upon returning had been to keep ludicrous hours in order to get some quiet time to himself and focus on trying to write again. Had the house always been this loud and distracting? Who was he trying to kid? It always had.

  This anti-social choice had been met with stern disapproval from the majority of the family, who had been drilled into the belief that everyone should sit down at the table for every meal.

  Perhaps that had been where it had started, with that single action causing affront and the subsequent obsessive behaviour. Admittedly he had spent a lot of time holed up in his tiny room waging war on his battered old keyboard, trying to force some semblance of his former creativity out. His therapist had told him that this was a side-effect of the separation, that all the energy he had previously expended on his significant other had taken its toll and it would be some time before it would return.

  They had made a damn good team, even he had to begrudgingly admit that. He had been the main creative force and she the compulsive editor, writing and re-writing in a terrific imitation of his own style. They complemented each other with ease, his shortcomings made up by her strengths and her own flaws exposed by his insight.

  At first his efforts without her help had been bloated and pompous, lacking in any sort of quality or pacing. Then there came the drought, where he was unable to string more than a few words together and the whole work was peppered with seemingly random short sentences leading nowhere. His friends had told him that the strain of his relationship was to blame, not the lack of an editor in his life. He knew they meant his wife, he also wished he could believe them.

  It was only in the last week or so that he had really recovered some of his previous ability, it had felt like installing a giant tap on his forehead and letting the pent-up creativity gush out.

  He couldn't understand why his parents' attitude toward him had changed over the course of this struggle. Had he been so wrapped up in his own world that he hadn't noticed their deteriorating relationship with him? Were they disappointed with the lack of progress? These were questions that had long troubled him, yet in her brief visitations his mother never offered any kind of explanation so he had stopped asking for one. His father refused to go anywhere near the institute.

  It was a horrible thing, to live in a world like this. In another day and age his talents would have been used to the advantage of the entire community but in modern times he was the starving artist. He felt as if he had been rendered entirely surplus to requirements on account of the way his head had been hard-wired, incapable of fully articulating all the ideas he had to offer in a way that anyone could understand.

  That was the thought that consumed him most, even more than thoughts of his wife. His former wife. The sense of utter futility raging within him, being born with a talent that would remain unexpressed because every idea and potential creation had already been realised to even greater effect by someone with the connections and temperament and clarity he didn't possess.

  When he had begun writing, the novel he had envisaged had few peers. It was a bold endeavour and fairly original, insofar as anything could be called original in the English Language. Yet when he had the final sprawling draft in his hands it was a crowded market, he had been beaten to the punch by some of the best and brightest the rest of the world had to offer outside his tiny room. That was when the rejection notes started flying in.

  He stared out the window at a line of trees, rapping his fingers across the desk in time with the Muzak that was being piped through a small speaker near the ceiling. He had earned the right to visit this part of the institute on good behaviour, it strongly resembled a walk-in prison he had seen the rich and famous spend their time in. They said they were very proud of his progress, though he couldn't say what it was he was progressing from. They never did tell him exactly what it was he had done, not even in here did they speak of it. Apparently there had been a plea of temporary insanity and an entire court proceeding that he was unaware of. Selective amnesia, his therapist had called it, but her eyes suggested that she knew exactly what it was he had done.

  He didn't want to know. If his brain had shut down the action there was a good reason f
or that. He wilfully suppressed even deliberating on what could have happened, that certainly took its toll.

  That was when someone had finally decided he would be safer in the 'Clearer Minds' mental institute. Again the specifics eluded him, someone had made the call and he didn't know if it was his parents or his therapist or some other official he had met in his long journey through both the mental health and justice systems. It didn't really matter in a practical sense who had made the decision as ultimately he had no choice but to comply. Instead of focusing on how he had ended up here, he had been writing and rewriting with greater abandon for the outside world.

  A flash of inspiration came upon him and he feverishly scratched out another idea in his notepad. He had fought long and hard with the officials for a pencil and it was one of his major victories when his therapist had contacted them and suggested that he be allowed to write.

  Something was wrong, he could feel it gradually constricting his guts, eating away at him like some insidious disease. He had ignored it at first but then it had started affecting his creativity. Was it the repression of the world outside the institute? Perhaps the combination of medication and depression had left him oblivious or uncaring to the sensation initially, he wasn't sure. He knew that it was growing stronger within him. His ability to write and rewrite his final draft was all he had left to him and whatever this was, it was crippling his efforts. It didn't feel like his previous dry patch, something was wrong, as if an unseen force was willing him to cease his work.

  He stood now, staring at the window, his sense of unease multiplying with each passing moment. A voice was calling to him from outside the glass, he couldn't see anything that would suggest such a sensation yet he felt drawn to it. Was this madness that he had finally stumbled upon?

  'Mr. Sandberg?' a prim voice spoke to him.

  He turned anxiously, wondering why he was being called by name.

  'Mr. Sandberg, a pleasure to meet you. I'm Julia Simmons, I've come to speak to you about a matter of great importance.' She stuck a hand out at him then, he stared down at it distrustfully and refused to take it.

  Nonplussed by his rejection, she continued to talk to him in her optimistic manner. Her bright voice could have been the soundtrack to a thousand commercials and her immaculate appearance told him she was selling something. He wasn't going to waste his time trying to observe her any further.

  'What do you want from me?' he asked, his voice sounding strange in his own ears.

  'Jakob... I can call you Jakob, can't I? We barely know each other and already you're cutting straight to business. Can we not first exchange a few... pleasantries?' She left no doubt as to what pleasantries she had in mind, the plunging neckline of her shirt as she leaned toward him and her sweetened breath hot upon his face made that very apparent.

  Before he might have responded to such stimuli. The woman wasn't without her charms and the attempts at flirtation were flattering if misguided. Now every advance that had been made upon him brought nothing but a pang of regret and thoughts of his ex-wife.

  'Just cut to the chase. Why are you here?' he told her briskly, turning away from her.

  'Very well then,' she replied in that bright tone of before, as if the last few seconds hadn't happened. 'I'm here representing a publishing company that wished me to inform you that they've accepted the latest draft of your novel.'

  His novel? There was no possible way that what she said was true, something was very wrong here. 'I didn't send you a copy of my latest draft, what are you talking about? Why not send a letter?'

  She laughed then, it was a high and entirely forced thing, he was starting to dislike this woman a great deal.

  'The copy we received was sent by your Mother, she explained your current situation and we were most impressed with your latest revision.'

  He scratched his head, it wasn't feasible that someone had sent off his latest draft, all his material for that was contained in notebooks in his room.

  'Did someone take my notebooks without my permission?' he asked.

  She nodded at him, pulling up a seat beside him. He could smell her cloying perfume from this distance, it reminded him vaguely of one of his old girlfriends. Manufactured intimacy to win him over, she was pulling out all the stops.

  'Your mother took the notebooks from your room as you slept and had your brother digitise them. A second brother then sent the final copy off to us,' she said, sweetness and enthusiasm positively bubbling in her voice.

  So they had gone ahead and done what they were threatening to do all this time. His siblings were always irritated that he would brush off their aid. It wasn't out of spite that he refused their offers of help, he was just determined to do things his own way, to prove to himself that he could go it alone.

  Now Brian had clearly used his computer know-how to scan in a copy and Aaron had no doubt pulled strings to get it to the top of the slush pile. He hated to think how many family members had been involved in the proofing sessions, to them it was a miniature business opportunity.

  Almost unconsciously his hand gripped the back of the chair, he dug his fingers into the soft material and tensed his arm.

  If Julia Simmons had paid any attention to this action she made no outward sign, continuing what sounded like a well-rehearsed speech. 'Your family informed me that almost everything was complete but that you had never written a proper ending. They had searched through all of your drafts and failed to find one, the story just stops abruptly without closure.' She eyed the notepad in his hand. 'They also told me that you had spent much of your time here trying to craft one, are you far along?'

  There was a strange hunger in her eyes then that she failed to conceal, she definitely had an ulterior motive in dangling his dream in front of him like this. He clutched his notepad protectively in the crook of his arm. 'I've just finished the ending of the book, it's in this notepad.'

  She clapped her hands together in delight, the fast motion startling him. 'Superb! Do you mind if I take a look over it before we add it to the novel?'

  She reached out then, eyes locked on the notepad. There was something very wrong here, he didn't know why but every faculty left to him was screaming not to give this woman the ending of his life work.

  'I'd rather not let you see this now, it's a rough ending and there are many corrections to make.'

  Her visage soured considerably at being denied. 'Mr. Sandberg, I insist that you hand over the notepad.'

  Two large men seemed to appear out of nowhere, flanking her. They didn't look friendly. He had to act, now.

  The chair went flying across the room and shattered through the glass pane. He was almost surprised to see it happen. Almost.

  Gathering speed he burst out of captivity, ducking and weaving between the outstretched arms of security. It felt like a hazy dream, empowered by the need to escape. His captors had no idea how fast he could run, the very wind itself seemed to fly with him.

  The corridors were a sterilised blur, his strides short and controlled as sprinted through each winding passage way. The name badge attached to him would soon attract the attention of security if his hectic pace didn't. He knew that there was no choice, he couldn't afford to slow with the lumbering men chasing after him.

  What kind of person needed to bring toughs to a simple conversation regarding a manuscript he hadn't sent out? Was he really that hard to get hold of in the walls of this institution that they needed to pay a visit?

  He would have passed off the security as a woman's paranoia over the horror stories she had heard about places like these, but she had definitely used the toughs to try and get to him.

  Now he was running, and he didn't know why. He just had to get away from this place, from these people, from all of this before it swallowed what was left of him whole.

  A shout rent the air as a member of security attempted to tackle him, but the man was out of shape and too slow. Jakob left him in his wake as he burst through a set of double doors and out into t
he concourse.

  He was greeted by a screaming secretary and two security men now. Instinctively he ducked to the left as the electric prongs shot out toward him. He had seen the victims of police tasers before and it wasn't a sight he wanted to emulate personally.

  There were more shouts now, the sound of an alarm and the locking of many doors rang in his ears as his heart thudded painfully against his chest. These precautions would have been enough to deal with a less lucid patient and the auto-locks were only meant as a last-ditch safety measure.

  The windows in the concourse weren't barred, he threw himself at them and forced his eyes shut.

  The double glaze gave way under the momentum and body weight, shattering in a manner quite unlike the sugar glass they used in the movies as they sliced his arms open.

  He didn't have time to think, he had to keep moving before the security managed to pick their way through the wreckage and pin him down. Rising to his feet, he lurched onward and out into the hills where no car could follow. The surrounding countryside turned into a blur of panting and the thuds of his own feet.

  He felt his lungs burning and his legs had seized up entirely, they had brought him as far as they were willing. He knew this place, he had been here once before.

  It was a large bridge, several miles out from the institute, they had driven across it when he had first been committed. He had no idea why his feet had taken him here across the sloping fields.

  Absent-mindedly picking bits of hedge from his clothes, he spotted a man dangling his legs off the edge of the bridge and whistling tunelessly to himself.

  He approached the stranger warily, who didn't turn to look at him. As if it was the most natural thing in the world, he hopped up onto the edge beside him and let his feet dangle out over the sheer drop.

  'It's a long way down, isn't it?' the man said, startling him.

  'Yes,' he replied cautiously, gripping the rocky surface and not knowing what else to say.

  The man nodded at that, patting the stone. 'There's a reason you're sat here now and not still running from the institute, Jakob.'