by Karina Halle
“Do you want to know the time?” I asked.
She nodded. “Please. I’m supposed to meet my boyfriend here and I’m new to the city. I’m a bit worried, I shouldn’t be out here so late. The park is scary at night.”
Something told me it was this late night jaunt into the park that killed her.
“It’s not nighttime,” Declan said, looking at her strangely.
I patted his head and gave the woman a soft smile.
“Well, I hope your boyfriend comes around soon,” I told her. “You shouldn’t be out here by yourself.”
The woman returned a weak smile back and resumed staring at the ground.
I put my arm around Declan and led him away.
He looked over his shoulder at her. “Why did she think it was nighttime?”
“Perhaps that was when she died and it’s forever dark in her mind.”
“Why didn’t you tell her the truth?”
“I will, someday, but not now. We’ve both had a lot to comprehend for one afternoon, don’t you think?”
And I did end up telling the woman. I wanted to come back, without Declan, as I did not know how well she would take it. I thought perhaps telling a ghost they were dead was akin to waking up a sleepwalker.
I was partially right. When I returned to the park and to the woman, it took a lot of denial and yelling on her behalf. Had anyone else been able to see her, she would have created quite the scene. Then, as the truth finally sunk in after all these years, she broke down in tears, weeping for the life she once had, the people she once loved.
I wasn’t sure what I would do with the bawling ghost, but the Otherside answered that question. For the first time in a few years, the air warped and shimmied. My heart leaped, thinking I might see Jakob again, realizing at that moment how fondly I thought of my guide, but what appeared was a somewhat heavy man in a suit. Really, I wondered just where these guides came from.
“Are you Jakob? One of the Jakobs?” I asked.
The man nodded at me and turned his attention to the woman. He held out his hand to her.
“Lorraine, come with me please. I can help you.”
I expected this Lorraine to balk at the idea of going off with a stranger, especially one who came out of thin air. However she took his hand without hesitation and at his touch, a smile and glow came over her face. My Jakob never brought me peace while I was alive, but Lorraine’s Jakob brought her peace in death.
And just like that, she was gone. It was a strangely beautiful and touching moment, one that I would think of often as my life started to disintegrate before my eyes.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Knowing that Declan had the same ability as I did, made me feel much less alone. However, though I would often confide in the young boy about the ghosts I saw, he never did the same with me. I would ask him but he wouldn’t say or he’d avoid the question. He liked to hear about it without acknowledging that it happened to him. Who knows, Declan, perhaps you never saw things the way I did. After all, my ability never really worsened until I went to the Thin Veil and back.
Regardless of Declan’s input, it helped to share with him as he was the only one who would and could listen to me without threatening to drag me away to the loony bin. Things were getting worse for me, with the ghosts and with my own family.
No, I hadn’t forgotten my dear daughter, or Karl, but my relationship with both grew more and more strained. I admit, it was also I who was pulling back, devoting more of my time and energy into Declan and Michael, and in my increasingly fragile and paranoid state, I was afraid to talk to Karl and Ingrid.
Ingrid managed to pull herself out of the wrong crowd because she met Perry’s father, Daniel. I met him a few times for lunch and found him to be far better than Stew or Drew or whatever new man Ingrid was shacking up with. I would never have pegged my daughter to be with someone like Daniel. It was almost a comical sight to see his short stocky demeanor beside her tall and willowy one. But Daniel was smart, driven and passionate and was spending a year at the Holy Trinity Roman Catholic Church as part of his graduate thesis. For whatever reason, Ingrid was drawn to him and he to her. He pulled out grace and goodness from Ingrid that I very rarely saw.
I suppose that’s why I withdrew from them as I did. Before, I would have been adamant about spending time with both of them, but there were some days I was too afraid to leave the house for fear of the reaction I would cause. The dead kept coming for me, multiplying year by year, all wanting a peace of me, whether it was my ear to listen to their sob story, or, at times, my soul.
There was one particular ghoul whom I remembered from my past. The man with the shadowy face who I saw tormenting the girl in my garden, all those years ago in the Swedish countryside. At first I saw him prowling the backyard, then the streets outside the house. He would just stare, watching me. One night as I got up to use the washroom, I had a weird sensation I was being watched. With my nerves on fire, I crept through the house and felt this malevolent intensity rolling out from Declan’s door. He was about twelve now and was a strong kid, back to sleeping in his own room. Some nights the door was locked but tonight it wasn’t and as I quietly opened it, I saw the shadowy black figure standing above his bed. It was just for a second though and when I turned on the light, awaking the poor boy, the man was gone. Declan fell back to sleep unaware of what had been there.
The fact that I could feel the evil from the figure, who was constantly watching me in a most predatory way, made me believe that this was no ghost. No human. This was a demon, a creature. And as the years went on and the creature appeared more frequently, I knew it was true. Jakob had mentioned as much.
There came a point where the day-to-day fear of never knowing what this demon might do to me, or the ones I loved, finally took its toll on my sanity. I began to talk to myself and to the demons, to the ghosts, not caring who saw. Curtis and the boys became increasingly concerned about me. With Michael and Declan I knew the concern came from the worry in their heart but with Curtis I could see his disappointment and annoyance in finding a nanny who acted just as crazy as his wife.
I started to fear I’d be let go. But that didn’t happen. No, it was Curtis who left. One day and without much warning.
Declan was thirteen and Michael was sixteen when Curtis pulled me aside in the kitchen and told me that he recently completed a huge transaction of sorts and that he was putting a large sum of money in a trust for the boys when they both turned eighteen. I never knew how much it was, but I assume it was a lot. Curtis then told me he wanted to thank me for all my hard work (oh, here it comes, I’m being let go, I thought) and that he arranged a trip for me and the boys to Atlantic City for the weekend. They’d both be allowed to bring a friend and that we were free to spend his money as we liked.
Naturally the boys were ecstatic. At this point, Declan was in a band with a few friends and invited his drummer, Joey, to come along. Michael had a beautiful girlfriend, Marguerite, and even though I had been quite strict with the amount of time they spent together alone (no young lady was getting pregnant on my watch), I relented and told him he could bring her, knowing the young ones would all be sharing the same suite.
That was one of the best weekends of my life. Even the ghosts and demons were kept at bay and I was free to enjoy the sweet salty air of the boardwalk, such a nice change from the harshness of the city. It was wonderful to see Declan truly smiling and enjoying himself. At this age he dressed in loose pants and flannel shirts, his hair was shoulder-length, wonderfully wavy and streaked with red. He begged me to let him get his eyebrow pierced with Joey at one of the beachside tattoo parlors but I had to put my foot down somewhere and said no. Ever the rebel, he and Joey pretended to go to a movie later that night and wasn’t I surprised in the slightest when they came back and I saw matching rings on both their faces.
I knew Curtis would kill him for it (indeed, he would publicly lament Declan’s long hair and grunge attire even though the boy was passe
d the point of caring), and he would most likely reprimand me as well. But I decided not to worry about it until Sunday night. For now, this time and peace and sunshine was all we had and needed.
I am ever so grateful I let the boys be boys, even if it ended up with piercings and Michael and Marguerite sneaking away to the beach at night to canoodle. When we returned, no one would ever be the same.
The house was empty, save for Régine who was quietly weeping at the kitchen table. She was drunk, but not dangerously so, though she could not tell us why she was crying. The sight shocked us since Régine rarely showed any sadness, it was always anger.
On a hunch, I went upstairs to the master bedroom and found the room to be emptied. Everything that belonged to Curtis was gone. His clothes, his shoes, his books.
I ran down to his study and it was emptied too. His degrees and certificates, his computer and files, everything had vanished. There was no note, no anything. He just up and left that day and that was the end of it.
Suddenly I knew I was faced with a problem larger than myself. I had inherited a family but I had no money to support them as the breadwinner was gone.
I never knew the reasons why your father left, Declan. I guess we will never know. One can only assume that his image and pride was worth more to him than his family and rather than trying to maintain the cover up, he left it all behind. Maybe he ran away with a mistress, perhaps he was evading the police, loan sharks or taxes. It doesn’t matter. The fact is he was a coward and he left a giant mess behind him.
I reached out to the O’Shea’s family friends, those who had been pushed aside over the years. With their help we got Régine into a treatment center and while she was there, I took care of Michael and Declan off of my own savings. Eventually I called Karl and he agreed to help me, then pleaded for me to go back home. I should have listened and I didn’t.
The truth was, I needed the boys as much as they needed me. But there came to be a time when I couldn’t look after them anymore. The shadowy demon was tormenting me. The pleas and touches in the dark never stopped. Even Declan was affected my actions - I could tell he was sometimes afraid of me and that hurt.
But how silly it sounds to say that for it was foolish of me to worry about my own feelings when it came to the boys. Michael handled it as well as he could and continued to excel at school and football. Declan started getting in fights after class, failing exams and fooling around with older girls from the wrong side of the tracks. He devoted all of his time to music and penning shocking poems that I found scattered about in his room, stuff I wasn’t allowed to see. Though Declan feared his father and was never once close with him, he took Curtis’s abandonment hard. He was an angry, frustrated young man and I could not fault him for it.
Finally, Régine emerged from the treatment center a somewhat new woman. She was prickly, skinny and stern but she was sober. For the time being, at least. She was able to get a job at a call center, which meant not only would my services cease to be needed, but she couldn’t afford me anyway on her new salary. They ended up having the bank foreclose on the house and she and the boys moved to a tiny two bedroom apartment in Brooklyn. Michael was close to graduating so he was able to stay at his school in Manhattan but Declan had to start all over again.
Sadly, this is where my story and Declan’s story part ways. Even after they moved, I still came and visited Declan when I could. I lived in Queens, renting the basement of a young family, surviving on Karl’s generosity, and the journey wasn’t very far. But after some time, as I deteriorated, Ingrid and Daniel came swooping into my life.
~~~
It was to my surprise when Ingrid and Daniel paid me a visit one day, showing up at my door unannounced. My small suite was a mess and I knew how it made me look. The dishes weren’t done, there was garbage on the floor and all my favorite books were scattered about, their pages spread open and covers torn off. The dishes and garbage were because I was too tired and depressed to help myself anymore. The tossed books were the actions of a poltergeist that wouldn’t leave me alone, however try explaining that to people.
Oh, maybe I’m kidding myself here. It has been a long time and there are some parts of my life that remain a haze. I am sure my apartment and the way I looked was far worse than I am describing to you. It was bad enough that Daniel insisted they would take care of me. They were now living in his small rented condo in the city and they were engaged to be married.
The next while was a blur. I fell into tough times. I’d react to things no one else could see. I was living in fear, too afraid to let my guard down for one minute, too paranoid to bathe, to eat, to sleep. The lack of sleep was the worst of all and it toyed with my health and sanity. But I couldn’t sleep unless I was forced too – my dreams felt all too real and I was unprotected. I had begun to dream about things that were yet to happen, dreams about being locked away, dreams about being raped by faceless figures, dreams about smashing open a makeup kit, dreams of blood.
I didn’t improve, even with their care, and Ingrid ended up having to give up her modeling job to take care of me. As if that child could not resent me more.
Finally, they had to call Karl and ask for his opinion on what to do with dear old Pippa. He couldn’t come to me, so he insisted I was to go home where I could be given proper medical care. He would be there to love and take care of me while the Swedish mental health system would ensure I was treated properly and respectfully.
That never happened, despite all of our best intentions. We were close; I had the ticket bought for me and had some things packed in my small suitcase. I calmed down in the last few days leading up to my flight, enough that I could feel the overwhelming sense of relief at getting help. Maybe with the right medication, the right people, I would be able to keep the ghosts solely in my nightmares. I was going to miss visiting my dear Declan though and hoped he wouldn’t forget about me.
As such, I couldn’t leave the country for good without saying goodbye to him and perhaps imparting some of the wisdom I had gleaned from Jakob and it was Régine’s I was heading to on the day I fell apart.
I was going to catch the subway and was just about to head down the dirty stairs when I saw a familiar blonde head coming out of a ritzy restaurant.
It was no one other than Ludie and time stood still. I dropped the newspaper I was holding and let it fall absently to my feet. I stared at him enthralled, enraged.
He was finally showing some age, looking refined but tired. His smile was charming and aimed at a young redhead on his arm, but the sparkle was gone in his faded baby blues and his hair was greying and thin.
I can’t tell you what happened exactly, but I lost it right there on the street. I approached him with boiling breath, asking why he hadn’t shown any interest in our daughter.
He recognized me. I know he did from the fear and surprise that flashed briefly across his face. But, ever the actor, he covered it up and flat-out ignored me. He acted like he’d never seen me before and told me I didn’t know what I was talking about. I ended up spitting in his face, attacking the innocent redhead much like I did to the understudy back in the theatre days.
I needed to be restrained. I was violent, hollering nonsense. Out of my sorry mind and out of control.
I broke apart from the crowd that had gathered around us and in my blind despair I ran down the subway stairs. I fought my way past the greasy turnstiles like a panicked bird and in an unrelenting urge to leave my sad life behind, I ran for the nearest tracks, to the train that was just about to hit me head on.
I don’t know who saved me from throwing myself in front of that train and ending my life, but I know someone did for the next thing I remembered was waking up in a psychiatric hospital, the very place I would spend my last years before I died.
CHAPTER TWELVE
I think if there was a hell on earth, it would be inside a state-run psychiatric ward. It is a hopeless place filled with people who are either empty shells of what they used to be or
monsters of another making.
I never knew what I was. I felt like a shell of the woman I was and I felt like a monster too. All I did know was I was left alone and afraid and never saw my family again, not in the ten years I was locked up there.
To be fair, I was shown pictures of my family. Karl wrote to me often, which was nice when I was in the right frame of mind to read and not tear the paper up. He wished he was well enough to come visit since he was having hip problems still, but I figured it was all a lie and that he had moved on with his life and found other people to love. And Ingrid. My daughter, who once swore – with Daniel – that they’d never lock me up, my daughter who went and did the opposite. She lied for she was the one who put me away. She also wrote to me, first to show me her wedding photos, then her pregnancy photos, and then photos of her and Daniel smiling above a beautiful dark-haired child they named Perry.
I am ashamed to admit that I tore up those first photos too. I was wildly jealous that Ingrid got to have the husband she wanted, a child she loved, and I ended up here, with nothing. I hated Perry at first for no other reason than that.
Then, on my days when my delusions calmed down and I had enough strength to push through the medication (which, Declan, as you know, did help a bit), I realized that Perry needed me. Everything that Jakob said about my grandchildren being cursed with my gift ran through my ears. What if Perry were to grow up as I did, and with Ingrid of all people as her mother?
I felt utterly helpless and spent most of my time feeling sorry for myself. I should have listened to Jakob when he had warned me, I was just too selfish to listen. Then I realized Jakob might have the answers. Jakob might be able to help. Perhaps he could do for Perry what he did for me.