A Ghost of Fire

by Sam Whittaker

  Chapter Nine

  The crutches under my arms propped me up in the lobby of the hospital. While they caused some minor irritation it felt good to at least be back in my own clothes. The soreness and aches were still a very present reality but I also felt ready to get going, wanting to put some distance between me and James Price, king of the arrogant schmucks.

  The keys to the borrowed car jingled in my hand as I held them up to have a look. This set belonged to a Nissan, just two years old and thankfully not the manual transmission I had feared it might be. I turned to the person at the front desk and signed the last piece of paper I needed in order to check out. Upon finishing this task I turned my head back to look through the lobby doors. Outside the world waited with all its potential for light and dark.

  I wasn’t sure why but hands of reluctance rested on my shoulders trying to convince me I didn’t want to go out, didn’t want to go back to my apartment. The feeling seemed to seep from those blank spots in my mind. I remembered the painting I’d seen in the hallway of the hospital and how the painting had changed. A man with a torch and a field on fire appeared for seconds and were gone. Now you see them now you don’t.

  As I tried to look inward, tried to examine those missing sections of memory that’s how I felt. It was like I had seen something and then it was taken away from me. It was like an illusionist who showed you a bird in a cage, covered the cage with his cape and when he removed the cape the bird was gone. The only thing was you couldn’t remember what kind of bird it was, or even if there was really a bird to begin with.

  I hobbled forward, swinging ahead when the crutches tilted behind, and reached the door. It was one of those automatic kind that make you feel like a Jedi Master and it slid open when you came within its sensor. I stopped, looking into the greatness of the parking lot. It was filled with cars, trucks, motorcycles. Light glinted off a sea of windshields into my eyes.

  “Lots of sick people around these parts,” I commented to the early afternoon. A warm breeze came in reply, lazily agreeing with me. As I stared out into the parking lot I had realized my parents never told me where they had parked the Nissan. “Looks like I’m about to get a little more practice walking,” I said. Somewhere in the distance a car horn registered a complaint, seeming to say I didn’t have it so bad. While standing on my good foot I swung the crutches forward and began my slow lumbering adventure outward.

  I made my way to the middle of a row of cars and raised the key fob up in the air. I pressed the unlock button and listened. When I heard nothing I brought the fob down and hit it against the palm of my other hand. I lifted it up and tried again. Still nothing. I figured I was too far away. I moved to the end of the row, across an empty traffic lane and into the middle of another row of cars but to no avail.

  I repeated this strategy for the better part of ten minutes until I heard the chirp of the unlocking vehicle. I moved toward the sound and soon found the car waiting for me. I opened the door, slid into it and wrestled my crutches into the foot well of the front passenger seat. Soon the car was going and I was on my way to finding home again.

  I hadn’t been to the hospital before and so it took me a little while to figure out how to get home. The advantage was that I had time to think. I left the radio off and allowed the silence to be my anchoring force. I quickly noticed I felt a little clearer headed the farther away I got from the hospital. None of the blank spots were filling in but I believed now they could if given the proper jump start.

  The sounds of the engine, the air conditioner and the pavement passing beneath the wheels blended together into an intoxicating cocktail sometimes known to put infants and tired travelers to sleep. The white noise soothed and at the same time focused me. Everything outside the car was becoming a single thing except for one detail. One landmark always stood out and briefly drew my attention as I passed one. I hadn’t been one to notice fire hydrants before but now they seemed like they were everywhere.

  I wondered why something so seemingly mundane would cry out to be noticed now. No answer came. I thought once again of the painting in the hospital hall. I recalled how before it happened my attention had been caught by something else. Break Glass In Case Of Emergency. The fire extinguisher, red and shiny inside its glass house, waited to be used perhaps on the chance that some patient smuggled in a pack of cigarettes and was careless with them.

  I hadn’t shared the encounter with any of the hospital staff. It was strictly a self-preservation move and from any perspective other than my own I guess it would be considered a little irresponsible. I didn’t want a psychiatric evaluation telling me I wasn’t fit to rejoin regular society. So I kept it to myself.

  I was completely unable to procure any answers on the drive home. When I finally reached the apartment I was just ready to be back in my own space again. Even the car I drove which belonged to my parents held too much that was unfamiliar for me. I needed a shower in my own place and a fresh change of clothes and then I could begin to feel normal again.

  I parked the car in my space and got out, setting the crutches down on the ground first and my good foot second. Aching muscles strained as I pushed myself up. I shut the car door behind me and moved forward. Grateful that my apartment was on the first floor I slid my key into the door. I was in the hall and moving to the first door. I had arrived. I was home.

  The key went in, the door unlocked.

  It was all as I remembered it. The kitchenette right inside the door and the counter with the phone and answering machine were as they always had been. The message light was dark. No calls came while I was gone. I felt disappointed by this at first, thinking Katie might have called and asked about me. Then I remembered she had given me her number. I hadn’t given her mine. I swore to rectify that if I was able to get a hold of her and make a date.

  I looked about the place and everything seemed to be as I’d left it. I moved into the living room and sat on the futon which was folded into a couch at the moment. I tried to relax but my heart skipped a beat when I looked at the bathroom door. My mind flashed back to me standing in front of it, fearful of something inside. I could not remember what had been in there that had caused such terror in me.

  “I’m beginning to get tired of this,” I accused the room but it stood mute and without defense. The bathroom door was closed against my inquiry and the windows looked out, out and away from me to the street, avoiding me with their gaze. The walls likewise had nothing to say for themselves. I looked at all these things, each in its own turn, not expecting anything from them and not getting anything from them.

  The comfort and freedom I had expected from being away from the hospital and back in my own place was illusory, a mirage of wavy water in baking desert heat. The more I strove toward it the more it fled. I stood up using one of the crutches to hoist myself to my one usable foot. Whatever part of my father had been instilled in me from my youth rose to the surface then and I grew angry at my inefficient left ankle. I looked inward again to the parts of my mind which should have been there but were not and scoffed, perhaps trying to shame them into being again.

  All things remained silent. The anger that burned inside was so great that I wanted to throw my crutches down onto the floor, stand on both feet and scream. It would not be the kind of scream enacted by terrified children or grieving mothers. It would not be the howl of drunken men who were angered by a family who couldn’t understand them and give them what they selfishly wanted. It couldn’t be the counterfeit shriek of the rock star mimicking pathetic rage to keep the fans happy and keep their coveted place on the charts. If it was going to come it would arise from some deep guttural, primal and hidden place carried by us all but only tapped into when we are truly desperate and ready to rip apart the very fabric of reality with our teeth.

  I never did, though. I was involuntarily stopped when my gaze alighted on the cracked open bathroom door, the one that had been completely shut only moments before, and what was hiding behind it. Before the doo
r slammed shut again I saw a sliver of a pale child’s face, a girl, the single eye I could see through the small opening of the door was wide and mostly black. There was no iris, only what looked like a giant pupil. It was dark in the bathroom and what I was able to see was minimal and shrouded in shadow but I was able to spy a tiny strip of dirty white, the dress she was wearing.

  The door closed so fast I hardly saw it move, like it was open one moment and closed the next. Before, I had wanted to scream. Now, I couldn’t. All that came out was a gurgling croak, a side effect of the terror. I crumpled back onto the futon unable to hold myself up any longer.

  I had fought so furiously to regain those missing pieces of myself. Now the great gaping spaces of my minded were filled like potholes in the road were filled with the waters of a flash flood. What I had desperately wanted all day, had begged for was now crushing me under its tremendous weight, and I didn’t want it anymore. Forgive me God, but it was too much to bear. The memories…I couldn’t stop them, God help me, but I couldn’t stop them from coming. All the feelings of desertion, all the angst, all the choking, cloying, clawing fear I’ve ever felt threatened to rip me to shreds from the inside out.

  I remembered it all. I remembered the things of the past few days I’d forgotten in the hospital which gave meaning and weight to the rest of the things I remembered. I remembered the smells at the job interview, James Price driving toward the specter of the girl and almost over me. I remembered the answering machine, the bookstore research, Katie, the torn book and the message in the hotel room, the accident…the little girl in the back of the ambulance telling me, actually telling me I would forget for a while, I remembered all that and more. I remembered everything.

  Now she was there again. She was in my bathroom as she had once before and she’d been watching me. How long had she been watching and what could she know? I was too scared to care.

  “Mister,” sounded the tiny feminine voice. “Mister, will you help us?”

  I was paralyzed. Even if I hadn’t been I couldn’t have ran if I wanted to, not with my ankle the way it was. The only things I could do were sit and wait.

  “Go away!” I heard this shouted into the room and was startled until I realized a split second after I heard it that it had come from me. “Please, just go away.”

  “Please mister,” She begged. “Please, we need your help.”

  “I don’t want to help you,” I said. “I don’t think I can help you. Just get out of here. Just go away and leave me alone. Please just go away.” I was tipping into panic, repeating myself in a fresh incantation for warding away unwanted visitors.

  “Please, mister. He’ll keep hurting us…” it was too much. All my defenses gave way and the flood of everything that I was burst through the dams of all the socially acceptable constructs I’d built and raised in my thirty years. My eyes squeezed shut. My hands covered my ears. My mouth opened. What came out can barely be described as human. It was minimally encased in the word we call ‘no,’ but it was so much more than this.

  My bones rocked and my every organ vibrated within me. When I finished I was trembling and breathing rapidly. I opened my eyes and uncovered my ears, waiting for her to speak again. She didn’t and the silence was killing me. Nothing was going to happen next unless I made it happen. But I didn’t want to do a thing. The only thing I wanted was to wake up and find that it was all just a terrible dream.

  I must have sat cradling myself on that futon for half an hour before I brought myself to get up. When I finally did I looked to the bathroom door afraid it might spring open if I got too close and—and what? I didn’t know. I think hardly anyone who experiences that kind of fear has any clear expectation of what might come next. If we did we might be able to fight it. But we can’t. It’s simply enough to say something indefinable is there and it cannot be predicted, boxed in, cornered, domesticated or bargained with. It just is what it is and wants what it wants.

  I moved over to the bathroom. My hand struck out fast, twisting the knob and simultaneously pushing the door open. There was nothing and no one there. Déjà vu. It was a moment relived – I was even wearing the same clothes. The only thing different this time was the crutches.

  Following the pattern of the last time I had gone through this I swiveled around to look into the rest of the apartment. This time it was unmercifully different.

  The little girl was back but this time I saw her in her fullness. Dark hair cascaded onto her shoulders. Coal black eyes peered at me and into me. Her dirty dress was heavily streaked black with ash and soot. It was then that I realized her hair was not black, or at least had not been so originally. It had been brown but now it was covered in the same stuff that was on her dress. Her face was burned on the left side on her temple, cheek and jaw line, red and raw. Her exposed left arm showed the same signs. She looked not more than four or five years old.

  Her arms clutched something of mine to her chest. I recognized it instantly. It was my laptop case. I kept it under the futon so it would be close by when I was sitting or lying down. She had been behind me, very close behind me. It would have sent chills up my spine if it weren’t so hot in the apartment just then.

  She looked at me wide eyed like children do around strangers who they’re not sure about. I looked back at her doubtless with much the same expression. She took a tentative step forward. I backed away. She came forward again, this time two steps. It was fast and strange, like watching a piece of cinematic film where a few of the frames are missing. Soon she was right in front of me and my calves were pressed against the coffee table.

  Looking up at me urgently with those dead eyes she held up my laptop. She wanted me to take it. I remembered sitting in the hotel room the day before wishing I’d had it with me, cursing myself for not remembering to bring it with me. Right then I wanted nothing to do with it. She continued to hold it out and I’m certain the room grew hotter.

  I came to the conclusion that there was no telling what she would do if I didn’t comply. I finally reached down slowly and took the thing from her. At one point my skin should have touched hers but instead my finger passed right through her hand and it felt hot…very hot. It wasn’t enough to burn but it was more than enough to notice the difference between it and the rest of the room.

  After I had the laptop case the girl slowly backed away from me. She kept her black eyes trained on me the whole time. When she reached the end of the counter she stopped.

  “Please,” she said. “Please mister, you got to help us.”

  “Why,” I asked. “Why me?”

  She shook her head. I understood. She didn’t have the faintest idea why me. She just knew. Then she turned and bolted toward the wall. She disappeared through it. I waited to see if she, or anything else for that matter, would show up again. Nothing did.

  I looked at the laptop case in my arms then back at the wall where the little girl had disappeared. Like it or not I was invested in it, whatever ‘it’ was.