“And what do you think she meant by that?”
“That he believed her nonsense, maybe. At a minimum he listened to it. Old world magic, superstitions and the rest.” Seth thought a moment, remembering. “After Raymond’s night terrors stopped he became more introverted than ever—even before the death of our parents. He acted like he knew something, like he could see things no one else could. He used to say he knew things before they happened; that he sometimes got these premonitions that bothered him. I don’t know if it’s true, I always suspected not, of course, and he must have picked up on my skepticism because he rarely mentioned it. Nana was the only one who encouraged that kind of thing in him, and in some ways I think it made Ray worse. I don’t know what was going on in his head, but there were things going through his mind, things he found distracting somehow.”
“Good things or bad things?”
“Troubling things.”
“Did Raymond have a hard time as a child?” she asked. “Apart from the night terrors, that is.”
“Yes.” A swell of guilt shook him. “He was a strange kid, always the outsider, never really had any friends. I mean, I was never very popular either, was never a part of the ‘in’ crowd, but it was a lot worse than that for Ray. It was sad, but he was so different from everyone else he stood out. Elementary school was bad enough, but high school was very difficult for him. They thought he had a learning disorder and attention problems, probably because he always seemed so preoccupied. It was like sometimes Raymond could be sitting right in front of you but he might as well have been a million miles away. He’s still like that sometimes.”
“And how did Raymond’s problems in school impact you, Seth?”
Seth forced his eyes shut and concentrated until his mind cleared of memories he didn’t want to confront just then. “It was tough,” he said. “He was my little brother, what could I do? He always looked up to me for some reason, always looked to me to be there for him, to look out for him, to defend him if need be.”
“And did you?”
Another wave of guilt swept through him, this time with such ferocity it left him nauseated. “Eventually Ray learned to fight his own battles, but he took it all too far. He started getting in fights, causing trouble, doing drugs, drinking.”
“How would you say other people’s perceptions of Raymond made you feel?”
“He was looked at like this weirdo, a crazy kid but…” Seth took a moment to control his emotions. “It’s been difficult for me too. It was especially hard then, when we were younger. There was always this pressure to make things right, to look out for him, to explain for him. Everything was always about him.”
She nodded. “Talk about that a bit.”
Seth shrugged, feeling trapped. “It’s always been that way. I guess when you have someone in your family with problems like that everything becomes about them, or about how everything relates to them in one way or another. I always felt this responsibility not only for my own life, but for Raymond’s too. And after our parents were killed he was more lost than ever. For the first time he pulled away from me. It sounds terrible, but sometimes being apart from him is easier. It gives me a break, but only temporarily, because then I worry about him and feel guilty for not doing more.”
“Is there more you could do or could have done to help him?”
“Isn’t there always?”
“Is that your answer?”
“I feel a lot of guilt when it comes to Ray.”
“Why guilt?”
“In some ways I resented him. It made me angry that he had to be the way he was…is. But no matter what, he always looked up to me, always acted like he knew he could count on me.”
“Was he wrong?”
“In some ways.”
“Did you betray him somehow?”
Seth stared at the floor but didn’t answer.
“Seth?”
“I love my brother,” he said finally.
She watched him a moment before continuing. “After the death of your parents, did either you or your brother seek counseling?”
“No. We just handled it as best we could.”
“Did it impact either of you in a specifically spiritual sense?”
Seth nodded slowly. “It killed my faith.”
“And was this death of your faith permanent?”
“Yes,” he said evenly. “It was.”
Quiet returned to the room for a time. “You said you didn’t believe Raymond suffered from mental illness as a child, do—”
“Emotional problems, possibly, but no, I don’t believe he was mentally ill as a child.”
“And as an adult? Do you think Raymond suffers from mental illness now?”
“It’s a distinct possibility.” Rather than make eye contact, he scanned the framed diplomas on the wall. “I think Raymond suffers from many things.”
We all do, he thought.
Doctor Farrow jotted something quickly on the pad then placed it on a low glass table between them. “That’s all for today,” she said softly. “I’m afraid we’re out of time. But I want you to think about how these things we’ve discussed today may or may not relate, all right?”
Seth nodded.
She uncrossed her legs, moved closer to the edge of her chair and crossed her feet. “I can’t do this for you. I can help, of course.” Absently, she brushed a wisp of thick blonde hair from her eyes and smiled warmly. “But only you can work through this.”
“I understand.”
Her smile disappeared gradually, lush lips closing over beautiful teeth. “I’ll be back from vacation in two weeks. In the interim, Doctor Kowalski will be covering the office for me. I’ve scheduled an appointment for you once I’m back, so take this break in our sessions and try to make the most of it, all right?”
Seth nodded without bothering to mention that he too would be on vacation over the next two weeks. “Going somewhere nice?”
“The Cayman Islands, actually.” She seemed hopeful he might comment on her destination, and disappointed when he didn’t. “Yes, well, at any rate, if you have any basic needs, Doctor Kowalski can help you. In case of an absolute emergency, should you need me, you can call my service and they can reach me. But I think you’ll be fine.”
It annoyed him when she said things like that. As if life was impossible to negotiate without her constant intervention. He checked his watch. “I should get back to the office.”
“I’ll see you in a couple weeks,” she said with a wink. “Be well.”
* * *
As Seth crossed the quiet, sterile lobby and stepped out into the parking lot, he was met by a burst of cold air. His mind, still locked on the memories, conjured sudden flashes of him and Raymond running in the cold night air, memories of chasing him, trying to catch him to tell him it was all right, that everything was all right. But even now, all these years later, he couldn’t be certain if everything was, in fact, all right. Some, like Doc, labeled it obsessive or compulsive thinking and stress-induced anxiety, the result of depression never cured and issues never resolved, but Seth had never been so sure.
The night their parents died everything changed. Though the night terrors Raymond had suffered as a child had already stopped, his other problems escalated, and he drifted further into trouble—dysfunction, as Doc would say—the happy little boy he’d once been spiraling into the past, debris helplessly carried away on an unforgiving wind. And as things crumbled around him, Seth began to drown in guilt and helplessness. Angry at himself, at God, at the world, he shut down internally and did his best to move forward. Like a disoriented and exhausted swimmer giving in to the tide and wherever it might lead him, he submitted and let life take him in whatever direction it needed to. He was certain it was the only way to assure his survival, such as it was.
A curious phenomenon, survival.
Death had left the remnants of their lives shattered, raining down in shards and leaving behind rubble and mayhem where something soun
d and beautiful had once been, and that night at the cabin had only made things worse, more senseless and mysterious than ever.
In the last year the dark thoughts and formless, piecemeal memories of that night had grown increasingly powerful. Slowly at first, but gaining momentum over time, they had left Seth wondering if it all really could be chalked up to mental illness. And if so, was he destined to fall into the same bottomless pit that had claimed his brother?
Some days he believed he already had.
When Seth reached his car he stopped and looked to the sky.
There was a storm coming.
CHAPTER 5
Rain sluiced along the tall windows on the back wall, blurring the parking lot and street beyond. It ran the length of glass silently, the world outside noiseless within the sealed and soundproofed corporate crypt. Instead of natural sound, nearly inaudible Muzak that could only be described as mind-numbing filtered through the area, piped in through speakers recessed and hidden in the ceiling. Like a mall in Hell, employees often joked, though few realized or appreciated the ironic redundancy of such a statement.
Seth repressed a smile at the thought then pulled off his headset, shut down his computer and took a few minutes to straighten his desk and tidy up his cubicle. He had worked in the customer service department for the Severance Stereo Corporation, an exclusive and high-end home electronics manufacturer, for the past ten years. For the past four, he’d been assistant department manager, and the powers that be still hadn’t deemed him significant enough to warrant an actual office. His cubicle was a bit roomier than most, though, since he was in management after all, and class distinctions—however facile—had to be evident, lest all employees actually feel relevant and good about themselves.
“Shutting down early?”
A head peered at him over the top of his cubicle wall. Ruth Chandler, a young woman who had come to work in their department only a few months before, offered her usual cynical grin. At first, Ruth, who referred to herself as Ruthie, had struck him as an annoying early twenty-something with an attitude that tried a bit too hard to be cool and rebellious, but over time he had come to like her a great deal. There was something pure about her in the strangest sense. As sardonic as she could often be, she was young enough to still maintain a basic belief in the concept of hope, particularly in global, universal terms, and Seth respected that. While she reported to work each day in the requisite slacks and blouse or skirt and heels, and always appeared professional, if one looked closely the traces of the person she became on weekends and after hours was clear. The tiny hole in her nose, nearly impossible to spot under a swathe of faint makeup, sported a diamond stud on off-time, and her four tattoos (which she had described to him but he’d never actually seen), remained covered under a business attire facade. Her eyes were always adorned in black eyeliner, though not too heavy, and her lipstick looked retro, a bit too red and somewhat shocking against hair dyed jet-black and worn in a bob with bangs. Seth imagined she probably streaked it with pink and green when she was at home. More cute than pretty, she had an allure about her and a depth in her eyes that hinted she was far more introspective than she initially appeared, and a body she purposely underplayed but that still turned most heads in the office. A strict vegetarian, she volunteered much of her free time to various political and social organizations she supported, and felt the need to share most of these experiences with Seth, with whom she had formed an almost immediate bond. An odd couple to be sure, he often wondered why she liked him and seemed to view his as a sympathetic ear—even though he was management—but she did. At first he’d suspected it was proximity, as her cubicle was right next to his own, but he soon realized that despite their age difference she felt a kinship with him, a trust, like he understood not only her, but the world they were both forced to endure for at least forty hours each week.
“Yes,” Seth answered quietly. “Vacation, remem-ber?”
“Cool.” She glanced around suspiciously. “Rally on Saturday, want to come?”
“Thanks, but I—”
“You’ll have a blast, come on. It’ll be good for your soul, dude. We’re marching for peace and then protesting out in front of some media outlets—you know, TV stations, newspapers and whatnot—it’ll be awesome, you should come. There’s gonna be signs and chants and everything,” she said with nearly lethal sarcasm. “Now how cool is that?”
Seth nodded helplessly. “Pretty cool, I guess.”
“Do you good to get out there and fight the power. Lose that suit and get involved, you know?” She winked and cocked her head like a punk rock version of June Allyson.
“I’d like to, Ruthie, but I—”
“Apathy, dude, apathy—it’s exterminating the human race.”
“I don’t mean to be apathetic, it’s just—”
“What about Sunday?” She adjusted her position, kneeling on her chair as she often did so she could get high enough to rest her forearms on top of the cubicle wall. “I’ve got some people coming over to my apartment—all very cool. We need to get organized if we’re going to stop this fascist machine running our government right now. I mean, it’s worse than people think. Even the press is in on it, Seth. A free press is vital in a society like ours. Without a free press to do the job we can’t do as citizens, who else is there to protect us from totalitarianism? But it’s all becoming a joke. The press is corporate-owned now, and beholden to other interests, you see what I mean? That’s why they don’t actually act like journalists anymore. Shills, that’s what they are. Fake news, reporting what the man tells them they can, never questioning anything anymore, just going along, getting ratings and not making waves, see, because waves are bad for business. It’s grim, Seth, big-time grim. Things are happening and none of them are good, OK?”
He nodded dutifully. “OK.”
“So you wanna come?” She grinned again. “On Sunday, I mean.”
“I would, Ruthie, but I’m sort of busy this weekend.” He returned her smile with the best one he could muster. “Thanks, though, I appreciate you thinking of me.”
She sighed. “One of these days you’ll say yes. I know there’s still hope for you.”
“That’s good to hear.”
“No, for real, I can feel it. I have really good instincts. The first time I met you I knew you weren’t like all these other fucking androids wandering around here. Deep down, you’re just like me.”
“Yeah, we’re virtually identical,” he chuckled.
“In our hearts and minds,” Ruth said, grin faded. “You know what I mean.”
“Maybe you’re right.”
“You hate the way things are just as much as I do. You even hate this corporate prison the same as I do.”
He looked away, tried to busy himself tidying up again. “Yes, well…”
“I know, I know, you’re management, you have to support the company line. Whatever, dude, it’s cool. It’s just us talking, right? We can still talk, can’t we?”
“Of course, I didn’t mean—”
“It’s just that this place doesn’t help, that’s all I’m saying. The concept that corporate repression crushes the individual is sort of beyond debate, wouldn’t you agree?”
“You’ll never last here with that philosophy,” Seth said with a wink of his own.
“Who’d want to?”
“You may have a point there.”
“The way I see it, it’s kinda like the Piggyback Fish.”
Seth stared at her dumbly.
“Piggyback Fish,” she said again, this time rolling her eyes. “There’s actually this long scientific name for it, some Latin name or something, but they call it the Piggyback Fish because of how it piggybacks on other fish. I saw a show on it on the Discovery Channel the other night, very cool. See, it’s this rare fish that lives in the Amazon, right? It’s small, about the size of my pinky finger, and what it does is, it attaches itself to other fish, bigger ones, with these little tentacles or freakin’ throwb
ack feeding things or whatever the hell they are. This scary-ass shit growing out of their undersides, OK? I forget what they call them but anyway, it attaches itself and feeds off them kind of like a parasite. Only regular parasites make the host sick but always keep it alive because if the host dies they die too, right? But not the Piggyback Fish. Nope, he feeds off the host fish until it dies, but he kills it slowly, gradually over time, and absorbs as much from it as he can before he kills it. See, the Piggyback Fish isn’t really a parasite, it’s a predator disguised as a parasite, get it? It can survive without the host, so it kills off one and just moves to another, spending its life attaching itself to other fish and slowly sucking the life out of them. Way fucking heinous, no?”
Seth suddenly felt uncomfortable. “Yeah that’s uh…fascinating.”
“It just reminded me of life. It’s kind of like we’re the poor fish swimming along trying to do our best, right, and the company, the government, whatever—fill in the blank—is the Piggyback Fish, attaching itself to us and slowly taking everything from us until eventually, we die.”
“Jesus, do you think that’s pessimistic enough, Ruthie?”
“It’s a bleak world out there, dude.”
“Well, I’ll be sure to stay out of the Amazon.”
“I know things bother you,” she said, lowering her voice to a mere whisper and assuming a more serious tone. “I watch you sometimes and I see you thinking, I can see it in your face. This troubled look you have, I can relate, you know? You’re not like most people. You’re a thinker, like me.”
“OK, well right now I’m thinking about getting out of here.” Seth stood up and grabbed his briefcase. “I’ll see you in a couple weeks.”
“Bet you miss me already,” she said with a resigned air. “Have a good vacation.”
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