Anomaly

by Caitlin Lynagh

  ‘Borrow,’ Kyle said. ‘She let me borrow them; I have to give them back.’

  ‘Yeah, but she’s given you a ticket to the inside of her mind,’ Cameron said, ignoring his correction. ‘Her brain is a super computer; you could learn so much from her.’

  ‘You sound like you’re obsessed.’

  ‘Maybe I am,’ Cameron grinned. ‘The entire physics department is in love with her. Did you know she was offered scholarships at Cambridge and Oxford? I even heard she turned down a placement at CERN.’

  ‘I doubt that’s true. Why would she come to Red Oak?’

  ‘Beats me, I just know Professor Green is over the moon that she chose to come here. Can I borrow this?’ Cameron asked holding up Sophia’s journal.

  ‘Sure, I guess, just make sure you give it back.’

  ‘Sweet,’ Cameron said.

  ***

  November drifted into December and suddenly Christmas was less than two weeks away. Dani had attacked their small flat with Christmas decorations, and the four students had handed in all of their assignments for the first semester. Dani and Kyle headed down the frozen slope to the Students’ Union. They were working at Blue Bar for the Christmas Ball that evening; there was a fairground and a large Christmas tree had been erected outside the SU. They had left Cameron and Stuart pre-drinking at the flat with a couple of others. Stuart had been grumbling about the government again, but Cameron just laughed and said that he would love to see the little red-head with the lip ring as Prime Minister. Their footsteps crunched as they passed under the yellow streetlamps; they could see the SU in the near distance decorated with multi-coloured lights. Kyle blinked hard as the icy air stung the tender skin around his eyes and he felt heavy and light all at once. He didn’t know how many hours of sleep he had lost over the last couple of months but knew it was a lot. He winced as his lungs filled and his ribs pushed against the bruises on his chest. He was thinking about the van again and he glanced around, checking that he and Dani weren’t walking in the potential paths of sliding vehicles. He rubbed the right side of his aching chest, his bruises still sore.

  ‘Erm, Dani?’ Kyle said

  ‘Yes?’ she asked, tilting her head toward him.

  ‘This might sound like a stupid question…’ he hesitated, ‘but as a biologist… can hallucinations give you bruises?’ He felt like his brain was folding its grey and white mattered arms and frowning at him at the ridiculousness of the question.

  ‘No, I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘I mean I’m only a biologist, hallucinations… well that falls under psychology or maybe neuroscience. Why? Are you having hallucinations?’ He saw the worry flashing through her eyes as she looked him up and down.

  ‘Well no. I was just wondering,’ he said, feeling ashamed at the lie.

  ‘Hallucinations are in the mind. I guess if someone was suffering from hallucinations and they attacked themselves unknowingly, then you could get bruises,’ she said. ‘That person might think the hallucinations were attacking them but it wouldn’t actually be the hallucination.’

  ‘That makes sense.’

  ‘Why are you asking?’ She was studying him now.

  ‘No reason,’ he said. Guilt twisted his guts and he knew if she questioned him again he wouldn’t be able to lie for a third time. Dani gave him a long stare but her mind seemed preoccupied with that night’s event. Thankfully she dropped the subject and continued reciting her to-do list and Kyle let his shoulders slump. He tried not to yawn as he listened to Dani’s instructions and plans; she had backup solutions for every possible scenario that evening. He braced himself as they approached the main entrance; it was going to be a long shift.

  Sixteen

  She felt heavy, as though she was falling. The cold darkness was lifting and she saw strange spots of lights floating randomly in her vision. Were her senses returning or was this an illusion? She tried to feel something but there was nothing, she was nothing. She still didn’t know where she was or how she’d gotten here.

  Little fragments of knowledge pieced themselves together in some distant corner of her mind as she recalled emotions. Then she remembered, living souls and deceased souls, and she was dimly aware that the living would feel fear if they were falling at greats speeds into the unknown, like she was now. Then she remembered laughter and the warm, bubbling sensation the living felt somewhere in the middle. Living? Deceased? Which side did she belong to again? No it wasn’t a side; it was a state of transition. Had she made that transition? Her mind was delirious, as though consciously aware of being asleep as she searched for her senses. She just felt peace, peace and warmth, and a familiar tingling sensation. Her eyes focussed on the darkness around her and she could see distant bright sparks, twinkling like little lights in the distance. No not lights she realised, but stars, she could see stars, but… I’m in space amongst the stars, that’s not possible. She gazed down at her body; there was nothing protecting her from space, her clothing was thin, it was a dress she realised, but dresses weren’t suitable in space, you needed something much more substantial, something much more important. She felt something overpowering and warm seeping its way into her body form. Knowledge and memories all rushed at once to their lost places in her mind. She let out a gasp as images flashed behind her eyes. Suddenly all the answers appeared and she knew… she knew everything.

  Kyle appeared in her mind and she saw his life, split into many lines, sprouting upwards like a huge tree. She saw all of the decisions and possibilities weave back and forth like webs and all of his potential future pathways. She saw futures where Kyle wore a suit and tie and sat in an office with hundreds of others, bent over computers and telephones. She saw distressing futures where Kyle wandered aimlessly with a sickness of the mind; in these possibilities he found doorways to death that Alice hadn’t even considered. She shuddered involuntarily at the desperate look in his faded eyes before he threw himself in front of a train, off a bridge, onto the motorway. She saw futures where he lived alone, where he had partners, where he even had a family.

  She saw futures where he travelled and futures where he became a recluse and withdrew from society. There were futures where the unbelievable happened – winning the lottery, gaining a massive inheritance. However, she noticed that he was never happy in any of these visions. She saw lots of empty glass bottles, and needles and pills for god knows what. She saw yachts, fast cars, and gadgets, shiny and new but cold, emotionless and largely unused. She saw women and men with greed and envy in their souls, dressed in fine garments but ultimately unhappy and unsatisfied with their lives.

  There were so many possible outcomes, so many decisions for Kyle to make and for others to make around him, friends, family, strangers. Thin webs, which were fine and flexible but could never be broken. They were there and they always would be, as if woven into a tapestry of time and endless possibilities. She felt her heart sink into despair; in every future, even the ones where Kyle lived out a relatively normal life, there was no joy behind his eyes, no excitement in his actions, no happiness in his smiles. He was a machine, a robot, a zombie that lived a routine of the same hours every day, every week, every year.

  She felt the flow of energy slackening, the futures were coming to an end and she was reaching the fragile end of the furthest branch. Kyle appeared for her again just as she had left him and she felt her face relax into a smile. He was sat by the lake at Fairhaven Park. A breeze tousled his hair, and she could almost feel the gentle air splitting against the hairs on her arms. He had a rucksack beside him with his knees bent up and his elbows resting forwards on his knees. He seemed calm but he had drawn the inside of his left cheek between his teeth and his eyes were far away. He was mulling over a big decision, either something that had already occurred or something that was about to happen.

  Alice wondered where his thoughts were as she glanced around at the familiar surroundings. She re
membered sneaking out of the house one evening, long ago, and stargazing with Kyle. She wasn’t sure why this spot was important now but it seemed to be the focal point for this particular future. Kyle looked at her then and smiled brightly. She clearly saw herself on the grass next to him; she was wearing the same creamy dress she had worn since her death, and she could see the pale golden hues of positive energy shimmering faintly over her skin. She saw both of their mouths moving but no sounds reached her shell-shocked state. The vision jumped forwards and she saw the rest of his future from this single branch; he could be happy she realised, he could change the world from this moment. She saw Sophia and Cameron, she saw labs and conferences, she saw scientists and high-tech equipment, she saw articles and news reports. She saw herself speaking to Sophia alone as though they were friends. She saw herself standing beside Kyle, aging slowly just as Kyle aged, his eyes always stealing glances in her direction and a small secret smile on his lips.

  Kyle’s futures disappeared from her mind too soon and her thoughts puzzled over all the knowledge she had been given. She had jumped through the timelines again, but this time she had seen everything. She felt her shoulders turn downwards, or was it upwards? Her whole body seemed to curve. Was she falling? Or flying? Either way, she was headed for the universe, a cosmic ocean or a star-speckled sky. She felt the invisible lines of time ripple around her, bending, bulging and compressing as she passed by. She felt the warmth of Positive energy coating her with its golden rays, glowing and pulsating over her pale skin. She wasn’t alive, but she existed, and that was all she needed.

  Seventeen

  The day after the Christmas ball, Kyle boarded an early afternoon train home to Elbridge. He sat at a table with four seats, with his holdall and rucksack occupying the seat next to him. A middle-aged man in business attire sat opposite. The train rattled relentlessly over the tracks and the other passengers in the carriage were going to great lengths to dutifully ignore one another. Last night’s shift had ended just after five in the morning and he had been woken again by another nightmare that he couldn’t properly recall. It was infuriating; his memory teased him with fragments but nothing actually made any sense.

  He caught his haggard reflection in the train window. Raw pink and charcoal smudges curved under his dark, bloodshot eyes. He looked away and winced as his ribs shifted under the bruised skin on his right side. There was a mottled green bruise in the shape of a hand, a left hand, positioned at a slight angle. He had thought about Dani’s answer last night and had placed his own hand over the bruise, but the hand mark was much smaller, daintier. It had left him deeply unsettled and troubled; he couldn’t let any of his family see it. They would freak out and ask questions, questions he didn’t have answers to. His thoughts travelled regularly to the incident with the van and then to… Alice. He winced and gripped his hands into fists as her face flashed through his mind. It had been so real, she had seemed so real.

  Kyle’s gaze wandered to his rucksack; he had packed Alice’s book along with a couple of library books. His eyes kept travelling back to the bag, like an itch that couldn’t be ignored. He closed his eyes and massaged the bridge of his nose as his head thudded dully. Sophia Leto entered his thoughts and he remembered the strange burning intensity in her dark eyes. ‘I think you might need to find the source.’ Her voice rang out loudly in the back of his mind. ‘Who’s Alice?’ echoed distantly alongside his other thoughts. He stifled a groan and his eyelids fluttered open. He reached towards his rucksack and unzipped the main compartment. Alice’s book was wedged between two massive business tomes. He hesitated for a moment, his fingers hanging uselessly above her book as he debated the logic of looking at it. He hadn’t looked at it properly, even after finding the page in the wall. He had just slotted the page inside the others and shut it away again.

  The man opposite him coughed to clear his throat and shifted in his seat. Kyle glanced up at him and saw that he’d opened a large newspaper. Kyle’s sub-consciousness made the decision for him and he plucked Alice’s book from the bag and then set it down on the table in front of him. The silver artwork stared up at him, and he traced his fingers along one of the curving lines. She had drawn a maze he realised, a circular maze, with his name at the centre, but the lines were not blocked, she had added her artistic flare to the curves and angles. There were dots and stars and little squiggles and pictures, some of the lines trailed off into thin slender points whilst others were more solid. His heart suddenly jumped from its ambling pace into a full out sprint as he turned to the front page. In Alice’s delicate handwriting was written, ‘For Kyle, on your 19th Birthday, love Alice x’. Kyle stared at the blue-inked words. My birthday? This was for my birthday? His brain quickly did the maths; he never received this notebook because she had died four months before his nineteenth birthday. He felt his throat tighten as though he had swallowed a whole, dry cracker.

  He turned to the next page before his emotions could get the better of him but the page had been torn out. He frowned; the following page had the date the 20th January 2009 written in the top right corner and a photo stuck to the centre of him and Alice. The younger versions of themselves in the photo were sat close together on the ramps at their local skate park. They were smiling and their youthful skin glowed with healthy tans. Their eyes sparkled with uncontained happiness and contentment, an expression that was alien to Kyle now. He frowned as he fingered the remnants of the torn page. He flipped quickly through; there were more photos and lots of writing, quotes and hand-drawn sketches. He pulled out the two loose pages he had stuffed inside her book. The first page had the date the 18th January 2009 in its top corner. He flipped to the front of the book and let out a low breath, the date fitted perfectly before the following page. He lined up the torn edges, it almost fitted exactly.

  His fingers trembled. He picked up the second torn page, the one he had found in the wall, and flipped through the book to the month of March. His eyes scanned lazily over the single line, Recall our first kiss. The dull aching buzz grew in his brain and a low rumbling sound like the beginning of a storm was accompanied by the frantic rattle of a locked door. He gripped his hands into fists again and bit down hard on his lower lip as his eyes darted to the window beside him. The rattling sounds of the train became more distant as he stared at his ghostly reflection. New and vibrant images began to paint themselves over the window; a street, cars, houses, the lake and skate park. He felt as though the images were reaching out for him, sucking him into a distant reality, and suddenly he was there, caught like a fly in the timeless webs of the past. Whatever nerves had surrounded and quelled this memory were suddenly overwhelmed and beaten back, the door flew open…

  They were sat on the edge of a ramp in the back corner of the park, the sun was slowly making its way down to the horizon and sixteen-year-old Kyle still hadn’t worked up the nerve to ask her out. Alice sat next to him as they spoke about their favourite bands, they had been listening to Vortex by Dead Souls as they discussed their dreamt up theories for the world and the universe, like they regularly did. He had been studying her closely all afternoon, the relaxed slope of her shoulders, the way the light made her brown hair shine like bronze wildfire, the consistent upwards curve of her mouth as she spoke to him and they laughed. He was amazed by her constantly, every second of every minute they spent together, and the other remaining time he spent wondering why she made him feel this way. Love was one of those things young guys pretended not to care about, even if they did, but Kyle found that love wasn’t properly defined or explained. Most people were floundering after ideals when really the ideals were flawed. Love wasn’t something you went out to find; if you were lucky enough, it found you.

  ‘Alice…’ he said. She stopped talking and looked up at him. ‘I… would…I mean…’ he stuttered horribly, and he felt his cheeks grow hot. Her deep blue eyes had captured his mind and he couldn’t find the words he wanted to say. No, it wasn’t supposed to sound
like this, his thoughts scrambled frantically. ‘Would you..? I mean… I’d like to…’ His tongue tripped and fell as though his teeth were insurmountable hurdles. ‘I’ve been meaning to ask…’ His voice pitched awkwardly and he cursed his stupid voice box.

  ‘Yes?’ she said, confusion filtering into her eyes.

  ‘Would you..?’ He bottled it. ‘Why do you keep a penny collection?’ he asked quickly. She raised her eyebrows. ‘I’ve been meaning to ask you that for a while.’ He turned his face away from her; he felt as though his cheeks were hot enough to cook with. He remembered the day at the wishing well outside the coffee shop and he still felt ashamed.

  ‘It was my granddad’s fault,’ she said slowly. Was that disappointment in her tone? He glanced at her; she had her head down and her hands clasped between her knees as she spoke. ‘He told me when I was young that lost pennies signified the dreams that people had abandoned. He said that I should collect them if I saw them on the floor and look after their dreams for them. Though never if they were in a wishing well or other such place.’ She tilted her head towards him and smiled.

  ‘Oh. That’s pretty. Why did he tell you that?’ Kyle asked, steeling his nerves.

  ‘I found a penny in my grandparent’s garden when I was really young; I thought it was treasure so I showed it to him.’ She grinned. ‘My granddad was rather silly, he liked to tease us and tell us things that weren’t true and he used to make up stories for fun.’ Kyle relaxed slightly and smiled back at her. ‘He told us things like jam and jelly are actually slug slime, or snails could race, or that our crumpets had wormholes in them, and stupid things like that.’ She chuckled and suddenly her eyes crinkled with sadness. ‘He passed away a couple of years ago. Cancer.’