“You know better than to say such things. Only evil ever wins by default. Right requires effort, thought, purpose -- it requires you to try.”
Connor Ridley, Shadows Fall
She didn’t know what she had been doing when a vague, half-heard sound drifted across the edge of her awareness. She wasn’t certain why this one was drawing her attention. Vague, half-heard sounds were always going on around her. She usually didn’t pay them much mind. She thought, though, that this one had been directed at her. She was never really sure whether the sounds were meant for her or not; she might have tried to figure that out before, but she wasn’t positive that she had. She had the notion that wondering if the sounds meant something to her was familiar, but she couldn’t really remember.
Something clicked into place somewhere far in the back of her mind. That sound meant something. It was something that she should know. What was it? Someone was talking to her. That was what that sound was. Someone was talking to her and wanted her to do something. What was it that the voice wanted? It would be so much easier to figure out if there wasn’t something wrong with the voice. It was muted somehow -- as if someone had turned the volume down on a radio leaving her to strain to catch the gist of the sounds. She would probably understand better if someone would just turn the volume back up, but no one ever did that. The sounds were always too soft and too far away.
She knew, now, that it was a voice, and she could tell that she was supposed to be doing something in response. She couldn’t make out the individual words, so she had no idea what that something she was supposed to be doing in response was. Figuring out the words took too much effort, and she just wasn’t up to the task. She was too tired. How was she supposed to figure out anything when she was so tired? She wasn’t. She needed to be untired first. The thought came to her, briefly, that maybe untired wasn’t actually a word, but it drifted away just as quickly (before she could decide whether the thought was correct). She would be able to focus better when she wasn’t so tired.
Maybe the voices weren’t turned down. Maybe her ears weren’t working because she was so tired. Had she thought of that before? She thought maybe she had, but she wasn’t sure. It was too difficult to remember. It was too difficult to remember most things. If only people would stop talking to her, then she could stop spending her time figuring out what she was thinking. Then, she could rest, and she would feel better and her head wouldn’t be all stopped up anymore and she wouldn’t be so tired.
“Page 16.”
That was what the voice had said to her. That wasn’t all of what the voice had said, but it was something about a page 16. The question was page 16 of what? What was she supposed to do with a page 16 if she did find it? She might know if she knew what the rest of the words the voice had been saying were, but she didn’t. They were gone. Those two were the only ones that were left where she could find them. Either she hadn’t made the rest of them out in the first place, or she had forgotten them. It didn’t really matter what had happened to them -- only the mysterious “page 16” remained. She should try doing something about that, but she could do that later when she was feeling better.
There were other things that were more important right now -- like the fact that she was so tired. She needed to do something about that. She noticed that she was leaning forward with her arms braced against something. That was no good. She was too tired for just leaning. She needed to put her head down. Her arms shifted forward across the flat surface that they were resting on; she didn’t know what it was nor did she care. It was solid, it was flat, and her head was so heavy. That was all that she needed to know. She let herself slouch forward and rested her head on one of her arms as a pillow.
That was better, but there was something hard under her cheek. She didn’t like that. It might keep her awake. She didn’t want to be awake. She was too tired for being awake. She should move whatever it was, but that would require picking up her head. She opted to open her eyes instead. She didn’t know how that was going to help, but it seemed an easier choice than trying to lift her head again. Her head was too heavy to lift. Her eyes glanced across whatever it was, and she recognized the object that was causing her discomfort. It was a book (a hard book), and it was open to page 16. Had she found that? Or had someone done that for her? She couldn’t remember.
Wasn’t she supposed to be doing something with a page 16? Or was she? Was somebody else supposed to be doing something with a page 16? It was too hard to push through the haze, but she thought that there was sixteen of something that she was supposed to be doing. She might be wrong. She might have imagined something about the number sixteen. She was sixteen years old. Wasn’t she? She thought that she was sixteen years old. Was that why she had been thinking about the number sixteen? Hadn’t she had that birthday already? She didn’t know. She couldn’t remember. She would think about it later when her head felt clearer.
Everything would make sense again when she wasn’t so tired.
“Copy that,” a voice told her. The words were clear and direct and she understood them. That was better. Why couldn’t all of the words being tossed at her from out in the middle of the haze be that simple? She wouldn’t be nearly so confused if they were. She liked when things were simple. There was nothing to miss and no half caught phrase to piece together into something that had actual meaning. It made sense as long as she knew what it was that she was supposed to be copying. Did she know what it was that she was supposed to be copying? There was a notecard in front of her along with a pen and a piece of paper with typed print covering the upper third.
She should probably copy the words on the paper onto the notecard. That would make sense. She could do this. For once in what seemed to have been a very great while, she had been given a task that she could actually complete. She noticed that her hand had already grasped the pen and begun writing. She hadn’t even needed to pay attention. That was all well and good -- it was one step closer to finished. Maybe if she actually understood and finished one of the things that the voices were always asking of her, then they would leave her alone. After that, she could stop struggling to figure out what it was that they wanted. She wasn’t any good at that. Everything was too cloudy, and she was too tired to fight it. She processed the words as her hand moved across the cardstock.
“Thank you for the . . .,” she couldn’t read the remainder. The rest of the words swirled before her eyes, and she lost their meaning. Did it really matter? Her hand continued to work. She would still finish. She could do it without reading the words. Why did she need to read the words? She didn’t need to read them to write them on the other paper. Did it matter if she knew what she was writing? Something told her that it should. She should wonder what the words were that she was putting down in ink. She should be worried that she was capable of writing without thinking or really even knowing that she was doing it, but she was only pleased that she could do what the voices wanted without having to worry about what or why or how. It was nice to not have to worry.
Focusing was hard, and now that she knew that she didn’t really have to focus (that the voices could be appeased without effort on her part), she wouldn’t try so hard. Not having to try so hard would be good. Why had she been trying so hard anyway? Trying made her head hurt. She should stop with the trying. What did she care? She only cared about the heaviness in her head, and the fog that never seemed to clear. She cared about being tired all of the time. She cared about curling up somewhere under her comforter and sleeping until it all went away. It going away would be good. That was a great idea.
That’s what she would do. She wouldn’t worry or think about things or try to focus. She would let this autopilot kind of response that she seemed to be displaying handle everything for her, and she would worry about resting. She wouldn’t think about the thoughts that swirled forward at intervals from the jumble in her
mind that tried to tell her that there was something she should be doing before they drifted back into the dark beyond her ability to find them anymore. There would be plenty of time and plenty of chances to figure out why something in the back of her head was telling her that something was wrong after the haze all went away.
There are moments when her head seems clearer than others, but it never becomes truly clear. She has thoughts that feel like something that she should hold on to at those times, but she never manages to keep hold of them. She doesn’t think about them after they have gone away. She is too easily lost in apathy and exhaustion and fighting her way out is something that never occurs to her even in her clearest of moments.
She remembers, sometimes, that she wanted to tell someone something. She doesn’t know what it was that she wanted to say, but she thinks it might have been more than one someone that she wanted there when she said it. It’s all very vague, of course, and none of it is very helpful. It’s very draining to remember even that, and there are more parts of the feeling that she doesn’t recall than she does. It never troubles her for very long; the haze is always swallowing it. It’s always swallowing lots of things; that’s what it does. She gives it a face in her head with a wide open mouth sucking inwards and pulling strands of thought out of her head and into its gaping maul. She feels it on some days as if it is hovering closer than beside her, in her really, waiting to devour anything that it can snatch. She doesn’t like that feeling. She always wants it to go away. It’s lucky for her then that that foreboding never lasts for long. It falls victim to the haze, and she forgets to think of it. It inevitably drifts back to her again, but she doesn’t realize that. She just experiences a strange sense that she might have thought of such a thing before.
She doesn’t dwell on that.
On a very good day, the wanting to tell someone something feeling is accompanied by a picture in her head of talking to a boy with brown hair in a place where she feels safe. If she tries to focus on what he is saying, then the whole picture spins away from her. She decides she doesn’t care. It isn’t as though it is real -- there are no boys at her school, and she hasn’t been anywhere else, has she? Besides, safe isn’t something that she feels. She only feels frustrated, confused, and always, always tired.
On occasion, when she is getting particularly frustrated by the words being said just on the other side of the haze where she can’t make them out, something tells her that she should be angry with Meredyth. It usually passes before an understanding of who Meredyth is comes to her. When she does manage to associate the name with the person it represents, the concept of being angry makes no sense (not that sense has much to do with her anymore). Why should she be angry with her sister? Most of the time she wouldn’t be able to tell you whether or not she’s ever met her, and why should she be angry with someone she can’t remember meeting?
Nearly every day (even though the memory never sticks leaving her to think that each time is the first), the final thought that passes before she slips from her push and pull with the haze to the nightly beauty of oblivion is that she wishes that Connor would come and find her. It is just as well that the thought never has time to be followed up upon because she has no idea who Connor is, and she doesn’t know why she needs to be found.
Glimpse: The Complete Trilogy Page 26