Unscathed

by Tim O'Rourke

  I looked at Jax and I thought – hoped – that perhaps he was starting to take some of what I said seriously. He hadn't left yet. He was still seated on the sofa and listening to me. "I think... believe… that he was in those pictures because he knew my father was dying of cancer. My father didn't know himself, but he was diagnosed soon after returning to England. I think my grandfather knew my father would soon be dead and he was waiting for his son to pass over."

  "Your mother didn't send you packing because of those photos?" Jax asked.

  "No, not because of those photographs," I said, lowering my gaze. This was going to be the hardest part of my story to tell.

  "What photos then?" he persisted.

  I took a deep breath and said, "I took photographs of her boyfriend," I began to confess. "For my seventeenth birthday, my mother bought me an iPhone. It was so she could contact me. She was often away with her boyfriend, John. A few days after my birthday, I was messing about with my new phone and I happened to take a picture of John as he strolled into the living room. Later, I was deleting pictures from my phone when I came across the picture of him and my heart froze in my chest. Just behind John was one of those smudges. I'd almost convinced myself over the last seven years or so that perhaps my mother had been right and I had just simply been grieving the loss of my father. So you can imagine how horrified and upset I was when I saw those smudges again. I needed to know if they were real. So casually, at first, I would snap photos of my mother’s boyfriend every chance I got, and each time, that same dark smudge would appear just behind him. The more pictures I took, the clearer those smudges became, and I knew they were taking on the form of a woman, but I didn't know who. Then, by chance or accident, as I readied myself to take another picture of John, I set my iPhone to video camera instead. When I watched the footage back, I nearly screamed with fright. The smudge was moving like it was alive somehow. It scared me so much that I couldn't pick up my phone for days. I hid the phone under the sofa cushions.

  "But something else happened which I couldn't have foreseen. John came to believe that I was taking his picture so often because I had become infatuated with him. He was younger than my mother by about ten years and he was very handsome in his own way, but I never had any feelings for him other than friendship. Then that Christmas, and feeling a little lightheaded and giggling, I had gone up to my room to lie down. As I swayed along the landing, the door to my mother’s bedroom door opened and I was suddenly grabbed by the wrist. John pulled me into the darkness of my mother’s room and began to kiss me. To my shame, I kissed him back. Not only because I was a little drunk, but because it felt nice to be kissed. I had never been kissed in that way before. No one had ever asked me out on a date, let alone wanted to kiss me. So I didn't put up much of a fight as he pushed me down onto my mother’s bed and climbed on top of me. Before I knew what was happening, his hands were all over me and he was hitching my skirt up around my waist and yanking down my panties. It was then, as I opened my eyes and peered over John’s shoulder, that I saw my mother standing in the open bedroom doorway.

  "Throwing her hands to her face, she cried out and called me a filthy little whore. She said that she suspected this day would come, as she had recently found my phone beneath one of the sofa cushions and had seen the hundreds of pictures of John that I had snapped. Hearing this, John blamed me for what happened. He claimed that for months I had flirted with him. He told my mother how he warned me off, but I hadn't listened. Then that night, I had followed him upstairs and gone into the room that he shared with my mother and had pulled him down onto the bed and onto me.

  "My mother believed him. Thinking about it now, I wonder if she really did, though. It was easier for her to blame me for what happened, because if she didn't, that meant she would have to face the harsh reality that her young lover found her daughter more attractive than her," I said.

  I lifted my head and looked across the room at Jax. He was staring right back at me. He looked angry. He looked disgusted. To see that look hurt me, and without warning, a gush of tears streamed down my face. It was like all the hurt and resentment I had been feeling about my mother and John had finally been released while confessing my secret to Jax. Even if he did find me disgusting for what I had done, at least I had told him the truth, whether he believed what I had told him or not. I lowered my head again and covered my face with my hands as I continued to sob. Suddenly I felt Jax's arm slide about my shoulder and pull me close.

  "Shhh," he whispered softly in my ear.

  I couldn't even begin to describe how it felt to have him hold me. It didn't necessarily mean he believed what I said, but it did mean Jax cared, and that was enough for me at that moment.

  "Did you ever find out who the woman was you thought you saw in the pictures of John?" he asked gently.

  "I can't be sure, but just after arriving here, I overheard my uncle and aunt discussing my mother and John. They had recently been to a funeral."

  "Whose funeral?” Jax asked, his arm still about my shoulder.

  Still unable to make eye contact with Jax, I said, "Apparently John had an estranged twin sister. She had gone missing – fallen in with the wrong group and got into drugs. I'm not really sure, as I only caught the tail end of my uncle and aunt’s conversation, but I do know that John’s sister had been found dead of a heroin overdose in some disused block of flats. She had been lying there undiscovered for about six months or more."

  "So is that who you believe you saw in the pictures?" Jax asked.

  I nodded and mopped away my tears with the sleeve of my sweater.

  "So that's why you have been taking pictures and filming me?" he asked.

  "Yes," I whispered back. "It started when I took a picture of my friend Evelyn about a year ago when you were still at school."

  "Before I dropped out you mean?" Jax cut in.

  I nodded again. "By accident I captured you in that picture, but it was what I could see behind you that caught my attention. There was a smudge. I was terrified that it was happening again. So I started to secretly take pictures of you in the hallways and in lessons at school. But then you left. So I started to follow you, but only because of what I could see in the pictures I took of you. But as I followed you, it was like I got to know you somehow. I got to see into your life. I think I fell in love with you, Jax. So I did bump into you in Starbucks that day, not so I could take better pictures of you, but because I wanted to really get to know you. I wanted to be close to you. I didn't go on those dates with you just so I could take pictures; I went on those dates because I wanted to be with you, Jax. When we were together in your house the other day, I didn't stop because I wasn't enjoying what you were doing to me – I stopped because we weren't alone in your house. That shadow was in the room with us and it freaked me out, but I couldn't tell you that. I needed more proof. So I invited you here tonight and set up as many cameras as I could, hoping that I would finally get a clear enough picture of that smudge – shadow – so you would believe me when I told you my secret."

  Jax sat beside me without saying a word. It was like he was taking some time to absorb everything I had told him. Then very slowly, he slipped his arm from around my shoulder and said, "So you believe all these shadows you've seen have been dead people, right?"

  "Right," I said, still unable to look at him.

  "So if these shadows, or smudges as you call them, are dead people, who is the shadow standing behind me in the pictures?" Jax asked me. "Are you trying to tell me it's my mother because you know she is dead?"

  This time I did turn to look at Jax. Slowly, I shook my head and said, "It's not your mother in the pictures, it's your father."

  "No!" Jax said jumping up. "My father is just missing. He’s gone off on one of his drunken fishing trips and..."

  "No, Jax," I said, standing up and taking his hands in mine. "Your father isn't just missing, he's dead.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Jax

  I started to fee
l sick to my stomach for so many reasons. First of all, because of what Mina was telling me. I couldn’t believe she had been seeing these shadows and smudges in photos since she was a child. It was frightening for me to listen to, so I couldn’t imagine what a child must have felt.

  Then she started in with the story of her mother’s boyfriend. Her mother sounded like an absolute bitch anyway, so the fact that she sent her away didn’t shock me, but it did make my stomach turn over. But when Mina started to sob, I just couldn’t continue to be the dick I had been for the past few hours. I let my guard down and went over and pulled her in my arms because I couldn’t stand to see her like that. Obviously I felt something for this girl, and it wasn’t something I was gonna be able to just turn off and walk away from.

  As she spoke, and I listened to her go on about ghosts, spirits, and dead people in that mesmerizing accent of hers, I stared at the frozen TV screen and at that shadow occupying the chair next to me and asked myself if I believed in what she was saying. One thing I did know; she wasn’t lying. She truly believed what she was saying, so maybe she was just a little crazy. But I knew in my heart she wasn’t. She was as serious as cancer, and thinking about that made me pray to all that was holy that it was my mother’s spirit she thought she saw following me around. It gave me an odd comfort somehow to think she had been watching over me, if that’s what – or who – it truly was.

  So that got me thinking that maybe she really was making up this stuff. After all, Mina knew my mom was dead, we’d discussed it. It was an easy out, a convenient answer. But couldn’t she have made up any excuse as to why she had been following me, photographing me, videotaping me? Like she thought I looked like someone she knew, or some celebrity from England I’d never heard of, or her dead imaginary brother? But no, she chose to tell me this. That she sees spirits. Who makes up stuff like that? Either it’s true, or she’s lost her freaking mind.

  As she began to cry, I held her, and asked about my mother. When I felt her shake her head no, I looked down into the pools of her blue eyes and saw a deep sorrow, laced with something close to fear. She had said it was my father, and the tone she said it in was colored with absolute certainty.

  I almost fell down. I had to sit. I had to get my head between my knees before I made an ass of myself and puked all over her aunt’s swirly red floor rug.

  “No, Mina. My dad’s not dead. You don’t understand. He’s just missing,” I said, trying to convince myself more than her. It was the lie I’d been feeding myself for a year so I wouldn’t have to come to grips with what I knew in my heart to be true. Denial had been a comforting blanket I’d wrapped myself in every day and it was now coming apart, thread by thread.

  She came to sit next to me, this time, her turn to comfort me. She soothed me and shushed me like a mother comforting a child, and laid her head on my shoulder, rubbing my tattooed forearm, stroking her fingers along it gently.

  I looked at her and said something I never thought would ever come out of my mouth: “How can we tell for sure if the ghost around me is my father? Is he here right now?”

  She shook her blonde head. “No, he’s not. And I just know, Jax. The video doesn’t capture half of what I see. Because I am now hyperaware of what I’m seeing, I’m able to make out more detail than what you see there.” She pointed at the TV.

  “Do they speak to you?” I asked, warming up to the idea, but still feeling like I too was losing my mind.

  She shook her head. “Never. They don’t really even interact with me or acknowledge me. They just sort of shadow the person, and I’m able to see them.”

  I took a deep breath, trying not to freak the hell out. “So what does this person following me around look like?” I asked, still unable to admit it might be my father.

  Her eyebrows knit together and she looked down, as if she were trying to recall. Or perhaps she was stalling. After a very long, uncomfortable pause, she began. “Shorter than you, a goatee like yours but thicker in places. He’s wearing some sort of baseball cap on his head with a lighter color on the front of it with some sort of bird on it. It’s darker on the bill and the sides. A plain colored T-shirt and denims, and boots that look like they’d seen better days.” She looked up at me with expectant and sad eyes.

  My head began to spin. My dad never took off that damn Atlanta Falcons ball cap. It was black with a white patch in the front and the Falcons’ bird in the center. He did have a goatee like mine, but his went around his mouth with a moustache, whereas mine was just on the chin. Jeans, T-shirt, and boots were all he ever wore.

  I stood up. “I… I need to go.”

  I started to walk away and Mina grabbed my arm. “No, Jax. You need to stay here. I can help you.”

  Something in me snapped. “Help me! You’ve done quite enough! I need to go try to find my father’s body and give him a proper burial so I can move on with my life!” I raked a hand through my hair and paced the floor, unsure what to do, where to go, how to cope.

  She stood up. “Then I will go with you.”

  “No, Mina, this isn’t your problem. You don’t need to deal with this. I do. It’s time I dealt with this. I can’t have you in this with me. It’s too ugly, too hard…”

  Her eyes were glistening with tears again. I hated it when she cried. I had to swallow hard to keep it together. I was about to lose it.

  “I insist, Jax. I need to do this. I need to help you.”

  I took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I’m… I just…”

  She hugged me. “I know. It’s awful. When my father died, I died a little too.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Mina

  Closing my eyes and holding Jax in my arms, I leant forward and kissed him gently on the mouth. I had seen the pain in Jax's eyes as he struggled with the idea that his father was dead. It hurt me to see how his eyes had closed over and his lower lip had trembled. I saw vulnerability in him that perhaps I had suspected was always there, but hadn't seen before. I knew that there was a deep and sensitive guy beneath his skin of tattoos and piercings.

  For now I wanted to pull that skin back and love the man that lay beneath. Unlike my mother, he hadn't pushed me away. Jax had stayed and listened to me and had given me a chance to explain, and that meant more to me than I could ever try to tell myself or him. Just that simple act of kindness he had shown by slipping his arm round me as I told him the truth about what had happened between me and my mother's lover. Most guys would have gone running for the hills and believed me to be a whore, just like my mother had done.

  With tears now running down my cheeks, I kissed him so tenderly. He kissed me back – but not with the passion of a few hours ago. He took his time, his lips covering my whole mouth, exploring my cheeks, the whole of my face. He pulled me against him, enclosing me in his strong arms.

  For the first time I could remember, I felt safe – needed – loved. This wasn't fake like it had been with... I pushed him from my mind. That was in my past and it was time it stayed there.

  As Jax pulled me close, it felt as if he was absorbing all the pain I had felt at the loss of my father and the rejection of my mother. How I had longed just to be held like this – for it to be real. I held him just as tight as we kissed. I wanted to take away his pain too – the pain I knew was going to come for him and grip his heart like a cruel fist. For now I wanted both of us not to feel anything but tenderness and an affection that would shield us from whatever lay ahead with those smudges I had seen.

  Locked in each other's arms, we sunk slowly to the living room floor and onto the soft carpet. We lay side by side, Jax losing his fingers in my long hair. His touch was soft as he ran his hands over the curve of my neck. He let his fingertips glide slowly over my skin – not rushed or desperate.

  Tracing his lips over mine, he brushed them over my cheek and towards my ear. "I believe you, Mina," he whispered. "I do believe you."

  To hear this brought more burning tears to my eyes. It was the acceptance I had always
craved and longed for. For the first time in my life I no longer felt insane – like the freak I had so often been accused of being. In some way it made me believe in myself too. Deep in my heart I knew that I had always doubted myself. To have others doubt you was painful enough, but to doubt yourself could be crippling. How could I ever expect anyone to believe what I saw through my camera if a part of me – however small – doubted it too?

  "You have no idea what those words mean to me," I whispered, looking up into his eyes as he drew himself up onto one elbow so he could look down at me.

  "I think I do," he whispered back, wiping the tears from my face with his thumbs.

  "I've wanted people to believe in me too. I know what people think of me. I know what people like your friends think of me. They think I'm a hammerhead – a jackass who is only fit for getting his hands dirty beneath the hood of a car. Guys like me don't have feelings; we're only good for drinking and sleeping around.”

  “Although we have led two different lives on two different sides of the world, we are more alike than perhaps either of us first thought. I like us being alike." I tried to smile up at him.

  Jax didn't say anything at first. He just stared down into my face like he was thinking deeply about something.

  "What are you thinking?" I asked.

  "Before, when you were talking, telling me about the smudges," he said, his voice, low and eyes never leaving mine. "Did you mean what you said?"

  "About what?" I asked, wondering what part of my story he suddenly doubted.

  He took a deep breath. "You said that when you started following me – photographing me and stuff – that you never thought you would end up falling in love with me. You did say that, didn't you?"

  I nodded, my heart speeding up a little.

  "Good," he whispered, slowly leaning forward and placing his lips over mine.