by Rick Wood
“Yes, Eddie, okay,” he began, gathering his thoughts. “I am slightly worried. Your heart rate is lower than I’d expect and your blood pressure is too. Have there been any changes to your circumstances, Eddie? Any drugs, new sexual partners, anything?”
“No.”
“I need you to be honest with me, Eddie.”
“I am, Doctor.”
The doctor nodded to himself then began clicking on his computer.
“I’m going to make you an appointment at the hospital, Eddie, so one of my colleagues can give you a more thorough examination, involving x-rays, and so on. We can do it in about a week’s time. Is there any particular day or time that would suit you?”
“Whenever.”
“Okay,” concluded the doctor as he booked Eddie in an appointment.
*
Eddie slowly trudged home, taking it step by agonizing step, allowing people to barge past him, almost knocking him to the ground a few times. Despite the warm sun of the day shining down, he felt cold, so he wrapped his jacket around himself.
He paused for a moment, leaning against the wall to gather his energy, feeling desperately weak. He was only half way home; he wasn’t going to make it without a more substantial recuperation time. Spotting a café a few shops up, he used the wall to support himself as he limped his way along the wall to the entrance and shuffled in.
Standing at the counter, he contemplated the menu displayed above himself. He didn’t know why he bothered; coffee shop drink options were always the same: latte, cappuccino, mocha or Americano. He requested an Americano and leant his energy against the counter as he waited. As he bowed his head he found his eyes beginning to close. One moment he was gazing upon the cheesecake behind the counter, the next minute the back of his eyelids were all he saw and he felt his muscles grow weaker. Just before he fell from the counter to the floor, he became alert again to the sound of his Americano being ready.
A few metres away, a baby’s eyes were fixated on him. It was having an uncontrollable crying fit, crying and crying and crying, not once averting its glare from Eddie.
Eddie glanced around, unsure what to do, everything about the situation feeling awkward. The mother rushed her baby out. As soon as the baby crossed the doorway into the street, the crying ceased and the baby seemed to find peace.
Eddie frowned, feeling slightly perturbed.
He took a seat next to the window and sipped on his drink. It burned the inside of his mouth and he promptly placed it upon the table to let it cool.
He peeked around the café. It was a nice place, with various older furniture spread around and quotes from various books on the walls. He found the café quite niche, and knew it would undoubtedly be popular with artistic types. Being late in the afternoon, he expected it wasn’t the most popular time, which was why there was only a couple across the room and an old man and his dog behind him.
He gazed out of the window at the people passing by. Everyone was always in such a hurry. He saw a few business-men in suits, talking carelessly to their business partners scurrying up beside them. He noticed a jogger on the other side of the road, earphones from their Walkman keeping the world tuned out, drifting happily along in their vest and shorts.
An elderly couple crossed the road and a man got out of his car to help them. Eddie smiled. There was good in this world after all.
That’s when he saw her.
Staring back at him from across the street, inside the window of a furniture shop, the ominous figure lurched. Its outlines were unclear due to the reflections in the window; but the sick feeling in the pit of his stomach and the cloudiness filling his mind indicated to Eddie that there was no doubt her presence had arrived.
“You’re not real,” he whispered.
It didn’t move. It remained completely motionless, not even drawing breath. Its black, greasy hair fell in mounds over its face. Its skin was grey and cracked, scars bled on its arms, and its pupils were completely black. Despite not being able to see it clearly, he could see its eyes.
Those were the eyes that made his blood run cold.
“You are not real,” he spoke again, causing the couple across the room to glance at him oddly before returning to their flirtations.
Eddie dropped his head and tightly closed his eyes. He scrunched his eyelids together, pressing hard, refusing to acknowledge it. He shook his head, squeezing his eyes firmly locked until they hurt.
He lifted his head and opened his eyes. The woman was gone.
He smiled. He was right. It was all part of his mind. A figment of his imagination. Like Jenny had said, he just needed mental health help. Nothing more.
Nothing paranormal about it, just a trick of a weakened mind.
As if in response he was hurled to the floor, sliding across the surface and crashing into a table. His hands went to his head, clutching at his scalp as he writhed in pain. His head had been hit hard and it hurt. He withdrew his fingers and looked at the blood on his hands.
Everyone else in the coffee shop was now looking at him, assuming that in his stupidity he had somehow fallen off his chair.
He leant up, his eyes darting around the room, scanning the menacingly innocent faces staring at him. He must have just fallen off his chair. The only explanation. He didn’t know how he’d done it. But he was growing weaker; maybe he had just given way, or there had been a problem with the chair.
He assured himself there was a rational explanation.
He rose to his feet, brushing himself off, uncomfortably smiling at those around him who stared. No one asked if he was okay, they just acted as obstinate voyeurs.
Without any warning, Eddie was taken off his feet again. This time he was rushed through the air across the room, his back sweeping horizontally airborne and slamming against the wall, held midair, pressed up against a framed quote, seconds before falling flat on his face.
Everyone in the coffee shop was off their seat, straddling the wall furthest away from Eddie. They were agape, aghast, protecting themselves; no thought of helping whatsoever.
Eddie just lay there. Staying down. Maybe if he stayed on the floor, he wouldn’t be flung anywhere. It couldn’t get to him. His head pounded and every bone in his back ached, his weakened body bruising easily.
His legs cracked. Something was on them. His neck stiffened and he couldn’t turn it. His bones curved under the force, such was its magnitude. The feebleness of his bones and his muscles became all the more apparent under the invisible strain.
He knew what it was. He knew what it was doing. But he could do nothing to stop the snap that resounded around the coffee shop.
No matter how hard he tried, he could not explain that one.
23
Eddie sat in still silence. Lacy glanced a smile at him as she drove, attempting to reassure him with her look.
“So what happened?” she asked, keen to understand.
“I… I don’t even know,” Eddie admitted. In his mind he was torn, struggling to make sense of it all.
Shooting pains continued to race up and down the muscle of his leg. He rubbed it, attempted to soothe the agony. He hadn’t been able to put any pressure on it whatsoever since he had been flung into a wall, but felt too scared to say anything. Not to the judgmental stares that Jenny would give him after Lacy had regaled his story.
So what the hell had happened?
He knew he had been lifted from the floor, into the air and across the room. There were witnesses to it, surely. Not particularly helpful witnesses; witnesses who likely doubted their eyes. Witnesses who were probably in as much denial as Eddie, but witnesses nonetheless.
Then how come no one said anything about it? Had they seen what Eddie thought they had seen? Or had they been freaked out because he did it to himself?
These were traits typical of psychosis. Eddie knew a little about it, having had doctors talk to him shortly after Cassy had died regarding a potential diagnosis, but had
ultimately written it off as post-traumatic stress disorder. People saw and experienced things that were completely true in their eyes, sufferers so often harbouring imperative belief in their disillusionment. Maybe this is what was happening to Eddie.
In that case, how was he so aware of it? If he was the one who’d flung himself across the room to feign some kind of personal haunting, then surely he wouldn’t be able to recognize that from being so deep within his disillusionment? From what he had read, people with deep psychosis were not aware that the reality they perceived was potentially not reality.
Maybe he just needed help. Maybe Jenny was right.
“Where is Jenny?” Eddie asked, realising that it was Lacy picking him up from the coffee shop ordeal on her own.
“Oh, you know Jenny,” Lacy defiantly answered, doing her best to skirt around the subject of Jenny’s latest resentment toward Eddie’s disillusions. “She’s… Jenny.”
“She hates me, doesn’t she? She thinks I’m desperate for attention.”
Lacy sighed. She couldn’t argue with him, he was right. Jenny had ranted and raved every night as she and Lacy got into bed for the past few weeks, going on and on and on and on. Lacy knew she was far more relaxed than Jenny, that was why they worked so well, because they worked in harmonious contrast; but even Lacy was starting to become frustrated over the constant threats to throw her lifelong best friend out onto the street.
“He’s full of shit,” she would go on, using a similar pattern of words and meanings each time. “He won’t get proper help. Instead he puts it all to some hocus pocus crap.”
Lacy would put her hand on her back and tell her it was okay, everything would work out. She would hug her and kiss her neck and try to distract her the best way she knew how, but eventually she would give up. If Jenny’s mind wasn’t in it, Lacy didn’t want to have sex. If Jenny would rather go on about Eddie, if that’s really where her thoughts lay, Lacy would go without. She wasn’t interested in laying with a body without a mind.
As they pulled up outside the house, Lacy made her way around the car to Eddie’s door and helped him out. Eddie may be disillusioned, but he was obviously extremely ill. His feebleness was not a lie and Lacy was getting worried. He was constantly pale and struggling to walk more than five metres without his muscles giving out. He acted as her grandma had when she had a terminal illness.
“What did the doctor say?”
“He’s made me an appointment with the hospital. He’s concerned.”
Lacy nodded, unsure what else she could say. What comfort can you give to someone who’s seriously ill? ‘At least you still have a roof over your head’ wouldn’t cut it, seeing as Eddie barely had that.
Once inside, Lacy helped Eddie to the sofa bed and he lay on it. He closed his eyes for a few moments as Lacy went to the kitchen to get him a glass of water. He was so out of breath, despite a small walk from the car to the house.
As Lacy returned with a glass of water, Jenny burst down the stairs and into the room.
“Hey baby, are you –” She stopped in her tracks as she saw Lacy handing Eddie a glass of water. She glared at him, pursing her lips together and folding her arms.
“Please, Jenny, don’t start,” Lacy begged, seeing that look in her eyes.
“How was the doctor?” Jenny asked.
“Eddie said his doctor is concerned.”
“He can answer for himself.”
“Enough, Jenny.” Lacy rushed up to her, putting her hands on her arms, rubbing them and smiling at her with a soothing look. “Whatever you think, he is really, really ill, and he needs our help.”
Jenny’s expression of hostility dropped. She couldn’t help but fall for Lacy’s calmness. She was the only person who was able to affect her so and she loved her dearly.
“Guys, I don’t feel so good…” Eddie mumbled. His eyelids were furiously shaping and his lip intensely quivering. His hands were aimlessly clawing out at the side of the sofa and his legs were shaking.
Lacy ran over to him, followed by Jenny, putting her hands on his shoulder. She placed a hand on his forehead to check his temperature.
“He’s burning up,” she told Jenny, who placed her hand on his forehead in return, feeling the perspiring heat glowing off his temple. The anger she had directed at Eddie turned to worry, immediately fearing the worst. Whatever he had done or had become, he had known her since before they could talk. He was her best friend, and he needed her.
“Phone an ambulance,” Lacy instructed.
Eddie’s eyes went blank and his whole body convulsed. Lacy stayed with him, her hands pressed over his, as Jenny rushed for the phone. The sound of Jenny talking to the 9-9-9 operator faded into the distance as his mouth filled with foam.
Eddie could tell he was having a seizure. He could feel his muscles shaking uncontrollably but was helpless to stop it. In his eye line he saw a black dot growing bigger. Then he saw her.
She stood over him, smiling, lurking. Lacy was to his side, clasping hold of his hand, completely unaware. Still, she remained.
The last thing he saw before he blacked out was her open her mouth, allowing her jaw to drop unnaturally low. She leapt toward Eddie and into his chest. Eddie’s chest rose up as part of his seizure, reacting to the sudden impact of the entity residing within him.
Then it went black.
He came around in flashes.
Flash one: a man in a green outfit sat over him, reassuring him it was going to be okay. Jenny and Lacy held each other behind him on the far side of the room. He could see Jenny was crying.
Black.
Flash two: he could hear an engine running and sirens wailing. He shook from side to side as he felt himself turn a corner.
“Please…” he began to speak.
Black.
Flash three: he saw tiles and lights above him pass quickly, all following the same pattern. He saw the underside of a chin, then saw the white coat the owner of the chin was wearing.
“Please don’t let me go into a coma…”
“Okay, Eddie, it’s going to be okay.”
“She’ll come back… don’t let her come back…”
“Relax, please. Where is that damn sedative?”
Black.
Flash four: a lamp light shone on his arms. There was commotion all around him. People in white lab coats and blue scrubs darted around the room.
“If you let me go brain dead she’ll take me…”
“Why is he awake? I thought he was under!”
“She’ll take me…”
“Why the Christ is he awake? Sort it out!”
Black.
Flash five: Jenny sat over him, clutching his hand. He could feel the tightness of her warm grasp resting over his fingers.
“Don’t let her take me…”
Black.
24
10 September 1995
Eddie sat up in his bed, his leg propped up in a cast, his hand dabbing his fork at the miserable hospital food that was placed in front of him. Jenny sat beside him, laughing at how disgusting it was, reassuring Eddie that she would pop to the local and get something substantial as soon as the doctor arrived.
“Thank God,” Eddie responded. “As if I’m not bad enough already, it’s like they are trying to kill me.”
Jenny chuckled and rubbed his arm affectionately. Eddie smiled at her. He felt like he had his best friend back. Despite the whole ordeal he had gone through, he had her back.
He recalled his dreams from the previous night. He’d had two and, although he didn’t often remember his dreams, he recalled them vividly. The first was about him and Jenny opening up a pencil shop in America. He had no idea where this had come from; neither he nor Jenny had expressed a desire to live in America, start a business, or had any kind of inclination whatsoever toward pencils.
The second had been slightly uncomfortable. He had been trapped in a jar of mayonnaise; Eddie knew there
was far more to it than that, but that was all that he could recall.
Either way, he was extremely grateful he had not slipped into another coma or become braindead again, saving him from another ordeal. The last time he had been stuck in a hospital bed, he had found himself haunted with images that had plagued his conscious thoughts since – but not this time. He had not ‘crossed over’ as the paranormal experts had bizarrely put it.
He had stayed on this earth.
As he concluded with Jenny that he would leave the hospital food and rely on her to bring him back something edible, the doctor entered the room. This guy was different to his previous doctor; this one was younger, and far better-looking. Eddie estimated he was in his early thirties and was warmed by his friendly demeanour.
“Hey Eddie, how you doing?”
“I’m alive.”
The doctor smiled and stood beside his bed.
“That you are. Listen, we need to talk about what’s going on. Did you want to talk… alone?” He nodded to indicate Jenny.
“She’s fine here. Just tell me what’s up.”
The doctor took a deep inhale of breath and let it out slowly. He took a few minutes to gather himself, his positive façade dropping and fading into a far darker, unhappy state.
“This isn’t going to be easy news to hear, Eddie.”
“Okay…”
“It appears that your body is failing. We have carried out numerous tests and… your liver isn’t functioning. Your lungs aren’t holding oxygen properly. Your heart isn’t pumping blood around your body with enough pace, and the blood itself is lacking enzymes. You have potentially cancerous lumps growing all over your body, on almost everywhere they could grow.”
Eddie’s eyes narrowed and he glanced at Jenny. Jenny looked stumped, intently gaping wide-eyed and drop-jawed at the doctor, her hands covering her mouth. Eddie knew her well enough to know this was her trying to keep it together. This was her trying to be strong for Eddie.
“Eddie, you are dying, and, whilst there are some experimental drugs we can try, it is unlikely to do anything. Your body is functioning the same way as a sick ninety-year-old. It is simply not strong enough to withstand what it needs to do to survive.”