by JT Lawrence
The sudden presence of the shoes puzzled me, set out so neatly on the stone step. Kristina was already fed, bathed, and in bed, so I knew she had not put them there. After inspecting them, I put them back and drove to the hospital’s ambulance bay, ready for my shift. When I returned home twelve hours later, the shoes were gone.
There was also a smell. A scent so subdued that in the beginning, I was sure I imagined it. It wasn’t always the same, so it added to my uncertainty. Perhaps my sense of smell was just changing with age. When I asked Eleanor if she could smell it, she’d sniff the air dramatically and say no.
“What kind of smell?” she’d ask, genuinely interested.
I didn’t know how to describe it. It was sweet and repulsive at the same time, and it kept changing. Dried flowers, chlorine, fresh bread. It got stronger over time, but Eleanor’s answer was always no. After a while, I stopped asking.
The scuffed shoes. The odd smells. Then the nightmares started. Being a paramedic, my brain had no shortage of gory material to taunt me with while I slept. I’d always had bad dreams in one way or another—always had demons, even before I started the job—but the visceral nature of emergency medical care ramped up the intensity of the details, and the fright attached to experiencing them. It was very hard on me when I lost a patient; I’d think about them for days, obsessing about what I should’ve done differently, what I could have done faster. Losing patients made me feel worthless and out of control. I’d feel like nothing. Less than nothing; a cold breath. You’d think you’d get used to the trauma you see, but you don’t. The nightmares became so realistic that I’d wake up in a cold sweat, my swollen heart skipping. I think when your job is to save lives, it becomes such a big part of who you are that the anxiety stays with you always, even in your dreams. You’re always racing to save John Doe’s life. Even in your sleep you’re stripping the paper off syringes with your teeth, plunging needles, tying tourniquets. You're always trying to stop the bleeding, the relentless flow of blood.
The nightmares leaked into my days. I started seeing blood when I was awake, too. A smudge on the bathroom cabinet mirror; a fingerprint on the kitchen counter. When I saw the blood, my breath caught.
“Did you cut yourself?” I asked Eleanor, and then Kristina. They both shook their heads.
“There’s blood on this counter.” But when I looked down again, it had disappeared. I blinked hard, but it was gone. My wife and daughter looked at me and then at each other, making wide-eyed faces.
He’s finally lost it, I could imagine them thinking. It was just a matter of time.
I made them scrambled eggs and toast. Eleanor liked her toast cold and crunchy, so you had to wait for it to cool before buttering it. Kristi would only eat toast if the butter had melted into it. I didn't mind. I enjoyed their quirks, and it made me happy to see them enjoying the food I had prepared. I loved seeing them sitting together, talking, legs swinging under the table. They were close. We were a close family, despite our troubles. I cleaned up the kitchen, polished the counter, but the fingerprint stayed in my head all day.
Later that week I was leaning against the kitchen island scrolling my newsfeed when I sensed a presence in the adjacent room. Eleanor was at work, Kris at school. I looked up and got such a shock that I dropped my phone, and it smashed on the tiles, splintering my screen. A small girl was standing there, staring at me. She was drenched, as if she had just come in from a storm, or was pushed into a swimming pool. Her straight brown hair hung limply on either side of her pale face, dripping water on the floor along with her sopping green dress. I recognised the smell; it was one that I had come to know. She just stood there, dripping, her eyes drilling into mine.
I blinked hard again, as I had done to the bloody fingerprint, hoping she would disappear. She did, but the chlorine scent remained, and the floor where she had been standing was wet. I picked up my shattered phone. I had wanted her to disappear, but now that she was gone I wanted her to come back. I wanted to ask her who she was and why she had come. But did I really want to know? I couldn’t help thinking she was there to punish me.
Deep down I knew I was sane, but I couldn’t help questioning my state of mind. If I had imagined her, why had I done so? Maybe I needed to cut down on my night shifts. Maybe I needed to cut down on my work in general. I needed a good night’s sleep. I felt my anxiety swirling around the room like a grey tornado, ready to suck me into its violent vortex. I looked down at the tiles, and the puddle was still there.
A name popped into my head. Perhaps I just made it up, but it suddenly seemed clear to me. That was my first visit from Rosemary. She had looked around five years old, and she never seemed to age, she never changed her dress, and she never lost that intense look in her eyes.
Rosemary became a more frequent visitor. Sometimes it would just be the smell or an inexplicable splash of water. Some days there was a sudden chill in the room, and the hair on the back of my neck would stand up. I'd close the bathroom cabinet and see her reflection there, standing behind me, staring with those black lasers, and I’d jump a foot in the air.
There was no opportunity to adjust to the situation because it quickly deteriorated. I signed up for fewer shifts at work but found myself not wanting to spend time at home, so I'd drive around the city, and there was just too much time to think. The tin top became claustrophobic. I used to stop at the side of the road and climb out, just so that I could breathe. My insomnia took my sleep hostage. When I did manage to drift off, I had begun to talk—and sometimes walk—in my sleep. Eleanor had told me I was calling out other women's names. As you can imagine, that didn't go down well.
“Who the hell is Claire?” she asked one morning, slamming her toothbrush into the jar.
I just shrugged. What could I say? I could hardly tell her that Claire was a seven-year-old who had cracked glasses and a fatal head contusion.
We were short on money because I was working less, and for the first time in twenty years we missed a house repayment and got a call from our bank.
It was a tricky conversation. How do you tell the bank employee that a little drowned girl is haunting you, derailing your life? How do you tell him your wife has threatened to leave you and take your daughter with her if you didn’t pull yourself together?
“It’s not because I don’t love you,” Eleanor had said. “It’s just that I think you need an ultimatum so that you can get your shit together.”
After a long night of red wine and deep conversation, we agreed I needed help. We knew an excellent psychologist, Doctor Scott, who had helped Kristina a great deal with her emotional issues. Under Doctor Scott's care, she had stopped lashing out at us and stopped self-harming, although she still had breathing fits, and her imaginary friends.
“There’s something she’s not telling me,” Scott had said. “Some trauma I can’t access.”
Eleanor and I agreed I’d see him as soon as I could. Eleanor even called the psychologist’s office and set up the appointment for me, but I never went. How could I? I was afraid of what we might uncover. Eleanor set up another one, and I missed that one, too. Furious, she told me to pack a suitcase. When I did, feeling equally bereft and relieved, she cried and told me I was being stupid, and unpacked the bag.
"Dad," said Kristina, pulling on my sleeve. "Please. You need help." Our eyes met. I couldn't bear the pain I saw there. It was like a vacuum, trying to swallow me.
I sat down and wept openly in front of them.
“I’m sorry,” I sobbed. “I’m so sorry.”
There were horrors deep inside me that were trying to claw their way out, and I was exhausted from keeping them inside. Kris looked at me then with something akin to hatred, and it seared my insides. My tears blurred my eyesight, and when I looked at Kristina again she was gone, and Rosemary sat in her place, leaking water into the couch. I wiped my eyes with the heels of my hands, and they had swapped again. I had my daughter back.
One by one, over the next few days, the other gi
rls began appearing. Different girls, different ages, different clothes. In the end, there were seven of them. They all had their own particular smell and what I called a wound. Rosemary in the green dress was always wet; I guessed she had drowned. Susannah had a bullet wound in her chest, the blood of which stayed red and wet, so I wondered if the phantom fingerprints were hers. Coraline had blue lips and skin the colour of flour. She used to retch into her clammy, cupped hands, so I assumed she had ingested some kind of poison. It was too late to save their lives. I tried to talk to them, but they never answered my questions. I thought they needed my help.
“I can help you,” I said to Susannah one day. “I can help all of you. If you tell me what you need. I can pass on your messages.”
It soon became apparent that they were not there for my help, but they did have a message for me.
I was making a ham and cheese sandwich in the kitchen. It was part of a concerted effort to get some nutrients into my body; my appetite had disappeared, and I was losing weight at an alarming rate. I rinsed the bread knife and placed it on the drying rack. When I turned around, a bite had been taken out of my sandwich. Ice water trickled down my spine.
“Kris?” I called. “Eleanor?” but the kitchen was empty. I heard a scuttle at my feet and jumped. When I looked down, I saw blue-lipped Coraline there, squatting at my feet, holding a fork. As our eyes met, she gritted her teeth and jammed the fork into my thigh. The pain was immediate. I howled. It was a nasty, sharp, stinging sensation, but that's not why I cried out. I yelled in fear, because suddenly and with absolute clarity, I understood that the dead girls were there to harm me.
I removed the fork and cleaned the wound. I didn’t even have to think about first aid anymore; my body just went into autopilot. The punctures were deep, but they soon stopped bleeding, so I applied an antibiotic ointment and a cartoon plaster. I couldn't bring myself to eat the sandwich, so I threw the tainted thing away. I acted calm, but my mind was rushing with panic. The dead girls weren’t here for my help; they wanted me to suffer.
I sat down on the couch, my head in my hands, thinking hard. Where had they come from? It occurred to me that they may be former patients who I was unable to save, but I knew for sure that wasn't the case. I would have recognised them. I would have been haunted by them long before they had begun haunting me.
That night as I tossed and turned, I felt a cold breath, and then a hand on my shoulder. I turned toward it, thinking it was Kris, and held it tenderly in my hand. It was cool. Too cool. My eyes shot open and I saw Claire there, staring at me with giant pearls for eyes. I screamed and scrambled back, bumping into Eleanor who woke up with a fright and switched on the bedside lamp. As light flooded the room, Claire was gone. Of course she was. Static buzzed in my ears; my blood pressure made my temple throb. When Eleanor saw me, she screamed and fell out of bed, crabbing away from me. I looked at my hands. I was holding the bread knife. I dropped it as if it had burnt me.
“I don’t know where it came from,” I said.
Eleanor's mouth opened, but she couldn't talk.
“I don’t remember getting it,” I said. “I must have been having a nightmare. I must have sleep-walked.”
She still couldn’t say anything. She just held her hands up at me as if that could halt my spiral into insanity.
“I’m sorry,” I said, but the words stuck in my throat because it was constricted with fear and my mouth was so dry. We stared at each other in horror.
Eleanor finally spoke. “This can’t go on.”
I nodded. She was right, of course she was.
“I think this house is haunted,” I said.
“It’s not the house that’s haunted.”
I looked away, my limbs trembling.
“You’re seeing Doctor Scott tomorrow.” Her face was as pale as linen, even in the warm artificial light of the lamp. “I’ll make an emergency appointment for first thing in the morning.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“And let me be very clear about this.” Her voice was shaky. “If you skip this appointment with Scott, I will have you committed.”
“What?”
“I’ve been speaking to him since you missed your last meeting. He knows about what’s been happening, how it’s been escalating. He has a room for you at the psychiatric hospital in Killarney and an ambulance to take you there. I’m going to tell him about the knife, and if you miss this appointment they will come and collect you, and you will be committed. Do you understand?” Her lips were thin and dry, her eyes desperate.
I blinked at her. "I'll see the doctor, first thing," I said. "I promise. I'll see him."
Eleanor grabbed the knife off the bed and took her pillow, then stomped out of the room. I guessed she would sleep in Kristina’s bed.
The morning seemed aeons away. I lay awake, listening to my erratic heartbeat, waiting for the next dead girl to attack.
I finally fell asleep when the sun began to rise. I felt safer, even though the dead girls didn't seem to care what time of day or night it was. When I woke up, I saw it was already close to midday, and a bolt of anxiety shot through me. I had missed my appointment with Doctor Scott. I leapt out of bed. I checked my phone, but it wouldn't switch on. I swore out loud and kicked the wall. Eleanor would have texted me the details of the appointment. I jammed the phone into the charger, but the screen didn't light up. I checked the port, the plug and the switch, but none of them seemed to be faulty. My shattered phone was the problem.
I really was willing to see a therapist; it hadn’t been an empty midnight promise. I needed to tell someone about the dead girls. I looked down at my legs and saw the bandaid there, and peeled it off. There were four neat puncture marks, well on their way to healing. The girls were real. The danger was real.
I wanted to phone Eleanor, but we didn't have a landline telephone. All I had was my broken smartphone that refused to turn on. I could feel my sweat sticking my sleep shirt to my skin. I went into the bathroom to splash some cold water on my face, and it helped to clear my head. As I towelled off, I told myself that it was going to be okay. One way or another, I was going to get help, and we could go back to being a close family. But when I moved the towel away from my eyes and looked up, there were words written on the cabinet mirror. They hadn’t been there before. Startled, I looked around the bathroom, certain that one of the girls would be there yielding a razor or similar, but there was no one there. I dragged my eyes back to the mirror to read the words written in blue marker.
LEAVE HER ALONE.
I may as well have been electrocuted at that moment, so deep and resonant was the bright shock that speared me right through my body. I fell to the white tiles below, hugging my knees to my chest like a frightened child.
No, I thought to myself. No. They cannot know.
When I had regained some strength, I stood up, but my legs were shaking. I felt weak and lightheaded. As if in a trance, I walked to Kristina's room. Her bed was neatly made, and there was a worn teddy bear on her pillow. I picked it up and put it to my nose, breathing in the scent I knew so well. I began to search her cupboards, and in the second last drawer of the ivory painted chest I found the blue marker. I blinked hard, but it did not disappear. I grabbed it and slid the bottom drawer open. Kris’s personal five-year diary was there. Slowly, methodically, with trembling fingers, I untied the ribbon.
The pages smelled of the dead girls. Dried flowers. Chlorine. Gun powder. And there they were: seven names scribbled in blue marker on various dates.
Rosemary.
Susannah.
Coraline.
Kelly.
Abigail.
Fran.
Claire.
Only when I saw them written down like that did I put it together in my head. Eleanor always said I never paid enough attention to Kristina, but I recognised the names, then. I felt a presence in the room and a cold pocket of air. When I looked up from the diary, I expected to see one of the dead girls, but instead
I saw Kristina. She had blue ink on her hands.
“Hello, Daddy,” she said. She had that vacant expression she sometimes gets.
My body felt faint with rushing memories and thoughts and excess adrenaline. When I stood up, there were stars in my vision, half blinding me.
“Kristina,” I said.
I heard the ambulance outside, and doors slamming. Heavy footsteps as the men entered the house, ready to subdue a man who had just lost everything.
I could hear them coming for me. I had been in an ambulance thousands of times, but never as the patient. Never as the person restrained on the stretcher.
“I don’t understand,” I said, but as the words left my mouth the realisation sunk in. Our matching memories hung in the air between us. The seven times I had suffocated her and brought her back to life. The swim in the sea, the pillow, the bath, the comforter. I thought she’d be too young to remember. I had made her heart stop and then I had restarted it. It made me feel powerful beyond measure. I wasn’t a murderer, I told myself. My daughter is still alive. I couldn’t save all my patients, but I could save her. Like the tide of the ocean, I passed her to the other side, and then I brought her back. Deep down I knew that one day it would go too far. The dead girls knew that, too.
The men in starched white uniforms burst in and overpowered me, hauling me away.
“Your imaginary friends,” I said to Kris. “They came here to protect you.”
It was too late for them, but it wasn’t too late for Kristina.
“How?” I asked. “How did they get here?”
She stared as the men dragged me away.
“Every time you killed me,” my daughter said, “I brought someone back.”