by Rumer Haven
“That’s an interesting philosophy.”
“I thought so.”
“Any thoughts as to what your destiny might be? What these little signs might be guiding you toward?”
“No, but what’s been happening is way more than just coincidence and déjà-vu. And I’m starting to question whether it even has anything to do with my life. In the hypothetical case that I’m being haunted, this could be someone else’s baggage I’m bearing.”
“And what makes you think this? Assuming for our purposes that the clues you’ve decoded were transmitted by a supernatural being and not your own subconscious, they still have personal meaning to you. They’re about your past.”
Margot was mute for several seconds. Then she asked, “Can…can I show you something?”
“Of course.”
“If you don’t mind giving me a second, I have the transcript in my purse.”
“If it would help for me to actually see it.” Fitz affixed reading glasses on her nose that had been hanging from a gold chain around her neck.
Margot sat up and reached for her handbag. Unzipping its front compartment, she drew out the wrinkled sheet of paper and handed it to Fitz.
“I see,” the doctor said. Her coral-beaded bracelets clacked as she twitched her upheld wrist to adjust them for comfort. “So, this is the message from the board, and what you’ve added below is your initial attempt at decoding it?”
Margot nodded.
“I see nothing about the brooch or Charlotte here, so those were revealed later when you checked on the computer?”
Margot nodded again.
“Okay. Well, I confess you’ll need to help me out here. Maybe I’m overlooking something obvious, but I’m not quite sure what additional insight I’m meant to pull from this.”
Margot spun around and lay back on the sofa before speaking again. Bending her knees, she drew her feet closer to her bottom and scrunched her toes.
“There’s one more word there that I hadn’t unscrambled online. After I saw Charlotte, I was too freaked out to play with it anymore. But before this appointment, when I retrieved the paper to put it in my purse, I did look at it again.”
“All right. Which word is it?”
“Opendig.”
“Mm-hm.”
“You can see where I tried to decode that one, too?”
“Mm-hm.”
“Doesn’t look like anything, right?”
“Not as far as I can see. Of course, your experience might inform you differently.”
“No, I hadn’t seen anything either at first, except that it spelled pigeon without using the D.”
“Mm-hm.”
Margot propped herself up again. From her trouser pocket, she withdrew a crumpled napkin. Again, she handed it to Fitz and remained sitting up but fixed her gaze to the floor. She left it to the doctor to unfold the napkin and make of it what she would.
Fitz read it in silence. “Where is this from? Why didn’t you mention it before?”
“Because I was afraid of what you might think. It’s from a cemetery that I like to walk through, here in London.”
“Okay. Do you walk through it frequently? And this is from a gravestone there?”
“Yeah.”
“When did you write this?”
“A couple days ago.” Right after her graveyard slumber party, but Margot concealed that fact. Before walking home that particular morning, she’d decided to cast off reverence and finally jot down the engraving. “But I’d seen her—the grave—before. A few weeks ago.”
“And is there any specific reason you decided to copy this one down?”
“I liked the poem, and I’ve written down other epitaphs.” Margot knew she was stalling and needed to come forward with some of the truth. “But I guess it’s the way I came about this one. I was about to pass by it but stopped short, like gravity held me down. I just stopped, turned, and this was the first thing I saw.”
“So, the deceased’s name was Charlotte Pidgeon.”
“Yes. Pidgeon. With a D.”
As Margot expected, Fitz didn’t have an answer. Instead, the doctor devoted the rest of the session to relaxation techniques to bring Margot down from mounting panic.
It had turned out that after she’d directed Fitz’s attention to the name on the gravestone, Margot had only first noticed the numbers also inscribed there on the napkin. She’d looked from the 18 in Sylvie’s writing on the transcript to the 1848 in her own writing on the napkin, then from the 26 on the transcript to the twenty-six years of difference between the birth and death years on the napkin. Side to side, her head had twisted back and forth between the two, her squeezing chest struggling to take in air until Fitz gently asked her to please lie back down.
Margot knew it had been premature to dive into the subject at their maiden session, but how else was she supposed to have answered the question, “What brings you here today?”
So that was it. If she was to spend a portion of each remaining week in England on the therapist’s couch, she needed the doctor to know what she was getting into. Time was scarce, and she couldn’t deal with the idea of beginning this process all over again at home with someone new. Fitz had also borne this in mind and asked if she thought it would be beneficial to schedule their sessions on a biweekly basis. Fortunately, cutting out the cost of her booze intake lately helped Margot justify the hourly fee.
And then there was Rand. Dear, sweet Rand, who greeted her with a kiss to the cheek outside the doctor’s office building so they could have lunch together and discuss her first session. He steered her toward St. Paul’s, and on entering a restaurant perched atop a nearby mall, they were seated by a window overlooking the cathedral’s majestic dome.
“So,” he inquired from above his menu, “how was it? You all right?”
Margot bobbed her head. “Fine.” She noticed how closely he observed her from across the table. Though probably already caught red-eyed, she looked down at her own menu to conceal evidence of her crying jag.
“You look lovely.”
“Thanks.” She self-consciously fingered the high-neck collar buttons of her black silk blouse. Her cap sleeves were trimmed with a dainty band of dark lace, and she hoped her earlier tears hadn’t accessorized her cheeks with any matching black mascara. “Trying to make more of an effort. But…”
Rand set his menu down and reached across the table, gesturing for her to take his hand. After only the slightest hesitation, she did, and he asked, “But?”
She raised her weary eyes and drew in a deep breath. “But…I feel like I’m acting the role of myself. Or at least who I used to think I should be.”
“Margot, my darling, you are the same person as you ever were. And there’s nothing false in that. Don’t try so hard to change. You don’t need to. You only need to feel better.”
“I am, for the most part.” She wanted to tell him how she’d been channeling her energies back into school to avoid dwelling on anything she couldn’t readily explain. But in so doing, she’d have to explain what she could, the paranormal paranoia that had officially overtaken common sense. And while she was fine letting Gwen look ridiculous in Rand’s eyes in that respect, she still wanted to enjoy some semblance of an upper hand.
“But?” he repeated as he ran his thumb over her knuckles.
“But…” She shifted her feet under the table, desperate to break with decorum and kick off her heels again. “Ever since we last talked about this, I feel like I’ve been going through the motions. Doing what I’m supposed to just because I’m supposed to, as always. It’s like I have to make myself smile long enough to convince myself I’m happy.”
“But are you any happier?”
“Right now I am.” She held his hand tighter.
“Good.” He grinned, returning her squeeze. “Then so am I.”
A wordless moment passed as they held eye contact, but their hands and eyes broke away when the waiter approached the table. Asking him fo
r another minute, they silently perused the menu. Margot pinched the sides of hers as she tried to calm her rapid heartbeat and redirect her appetite to the savory items on the list.
Rand didn’t speak again until she had flipped her menu to lay it facedown on the table. “So, how did it go? Do you think you would go back again? Does it seem helpful?”
“Well…yeah. Yeah, I think so. It’s worth another shot, anyway.” She tried to recap the session with Fitz as vaguely as she could, and Rand didn’t press her for more beyond that, respecting her patient confidentiality. He simply encouraged her to talk to him as well whenever she needed to.
She twisted her hands in her lap, ready to change the subject. “What are your plans for the rest of the week? You and Gwen got anything fun going on?”
He fumbled his warm grin for an instant before fixing a stiffer version of it back in place. “Oh, ah, not really, no.” He scraped the corner of his eye with a fingernail. “She’s spending the weekend with her family up in Yorkshire again. Helping her mum with the garden.”
“That actually does sound fun. Unless they put you to work, too? Dress you in a sun hat and gardening gloves?” She grinned.
“Ah, no. Her dad and I would pop to the local while they potter around in the dirt. He has a hilarious band of mates that assembles there every day, without fail. They claim the same table each time and try to one-up each other, chuffed with their storytelling.”
Margot laughed, picturing the scene of Rand encircled by a bunch of gabby old men, ruddy from their ale. “They sound adorable. And must love you.” Who wouldn’t.
“Yeah.” Rand smiled as he looked down at the napkin he kept readjusting on the table. “Only I won’t be joining them this time.”
“So you are helping the ladies? With your silver bells and cockleshells?” She winked.
“No,” he groaned out brusquely and, pressing his palms against the table’s edge, pushed himself back in his seat until his arms were almost straight. Staring down at the table, he tapped his fingers against its surface. “I won’t be leaving London at all.”
“Because you can’t or you don’t want to?”
“Because once again I wasn’t invited.”
Ouch.
“But I also don’t want to.”
Huh. “What’s going on with you guys? Have you decided if you’re making or breaking?”
Rand leaned back in, resting on his forearms and watching himself fiddle with his napkin again. “Spending time apart, you could say.”
Margot leaned in, too, inviting him to meet her eye. “‘Apart’ as in giving each other some space or apart-apart?”
“She wants to take a break for a while.” He remained looking down with a frown. “I’m…otherwise inclined.”
“Oh.” Margot sat back again. Her idea. Not his. “I’m sorry.”
His eyes flickered up at her. Then down, then up again. He held her gaze intently. “Well, it—”
The waiter chose just then to reappear.
By the time orders were taken and beverages served, the original conversation had lost its momentum. Rand resumed his smiling inquiries of Margot’s days at school and exploring London, and she let him, asking in kind about his work and upcoming travels so that she didn’t have to hear how much Gwen had broken his heart.
Lunch passed by pleasantly enough but too quickly, and after an hour, she reluctantly returned him to his workday and caught the Tube back to the flat. Once there, she fought the impulse to bathe or nap and tried to clear her mind instead with the frivolity of the internet. On checking her email, she saw that her boss hadn’t written back yet.
Damn.
And still didn’t by the next day.
Damn-damn.
Reckoning she could hear the ropes of that safety net snap one at a time, she felt the burn as they slipped from her grasp.
Fitz and Margot reconvened two days later.
“Nice to see you again, Margot. Are you feeling well?”
“Yeah, all right. I think even just that hour with you helped a lot, just talking about it.”
“That’s very good. Do you feel like you haven’t been able to talk about this before? To others?”
Margot kicked off her flats and swung her legs around to resume her position on the sofa. “I’ve talked to friends about bits and pieces, maybe not so much the ghost stuff. But it helps having someone objective listen. I worry that someone who knows me too well will try to fit the square peg of what I’m going through into the circular hole of my normal personality, maybe wanting to comfort me too much to face the truth with me.”
“What is the truth?”
“That’s why I’m here.”
“Hm.” Behind her head, Margot could hear the therapist’s pen scratching notes on her pad. “So, how do you think these friends would describe you? The ones you don’t feel would be objective.”
Margot gave a little laugh. “Well, the night of Ouija, I’m pretty sure those friends diagnosed me with a combo inferiority-superiority complex.”
“What did you think of that?”
“Like I have a split-personality or something.”
“I wouldn’t diagnose you with dissociative identity disorder just yet.” After a pause, Fitz added, “But I shouldn’t joke.”
Margot rolled her eyes sideways at the doctor’s blurred figure with misgivings of what that kind of remark might mean for her sessions going forward. She wasn’t sure what to say but decided to speak up before becoming another punch line.
“I don’t know. They didn’t actually say that in so many words; it’s just how I took it. But when I look back on it now…I don’t even feel like the same person they were talking about. I don’t know what motivates me anymore. But then…I don’t know, maybe I do get what they were saying. I have such different sides that I feel like…like I’m constantly opposing myself. Like, in trying to cater to one side or another, they just cancel each other out. And I end up achieving nothing.”
“We’re all made of dichotomies, Margot. You needn’t feel like you’re functioning within an inconsistent identity that’ll either blank you out or rupture you in two like Jekyll and Hyde. Individuals having multiple, if not conflicting, facets is typical.”
“Like the id and ego?” Look at you, Psych 101, coming in handy for something.
“As a classic Freudian example, yes. The theory of the primal id and the rational ego, with the superego that steps in to reconcile them.”
“Yeah. Okay.”
“You sound confused. Or just disinterested.”
“No, just preoccupied.”
“Charlotte?”
“Yes.”
Margot heard Fitz inhale deeply, as though bracing for episode two of The Ghost Whisperer. The woman’s hanging spectacles clapped against the amber pendant she wore as Margot heard her readjust in her chair. “If you think it will help.”
“I just need to make some meaning of it. And I’d rather obsess over it here than anywhere else. I’m sick of draining my friends’ energy, like I’m this emotional vampire sucking their spirit away. It only makes me feel worse.”
“All right, then let’s talk about Charlotte.”
Margot opened her mouth to speak, but only held her breath when the words didn’t come.
Fitz took over. “That poem on Charlotte’s grave. I actually looked it up online and found it’s from the sixteenth or seventeenth century, written by Ben Jonson.”
“He’s the one buried standing up in Westminster Abbey, right?”
“Standing up? I didn’t realize that, but prime burial property, I suppose. In any case, it’s certainly a lovely poem that he wrote, but what moved you to write it down? Why write down any of these epitaphs?”
Margot paused a moment to articulate her thoughts in her head before she spoke. “I like to develop a storyline. Take the facts, then fill in the gaps to give the deceased some substance.”
“What do you mean by that, exactly?”
“Make them
three-dimensional, flesh and blood.”
“Your stories bring them to life?”
“In my mind, at least.”
“Why must they live in your mind?”
“I don’t know. They don’t have to. I just want to acknowledge that I noticed them. Let them know that I know they lived.”
“Why should that matter to them now? Why does it matter to you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, if you don’t mind me giving it a go, I’d conjecture part of it is purely an outlet for your creativity. You’re a copywriter by profession, and if you’re a writer by instinct, you’ll have that kind of keen observation. And reflecting on the deceased is a pretty common way of coming to terms with our own mortality. It’s a means of giving life a purpose, that it isn’t all in vain.”
Fitz cleared her throat. “I would also venture to say that you might be an empath, Margot. Someone who is hypersensitive to the emotions of others. You used the term ‘emotional vampire’ before, but an empath is empathetic, meaning you take on the negative energies of others, not suck away the good ones. This results in you feeling the need to shoulder their burden, which, if I’m not mistaken, is similar to how you described your relationship with Charlotte last session. You follow?”
“I’m not sure I do.”
“You feel an affinity for this Charlotte because your empathetic nature drives you to intuit the life experience of even a stranger like her. Those who believe they have psychic powers actually tend to be empaths. That’s what helps them tell so-called fortunes with some degree of accuracy. Enough to convince people they’re the real deal, anyway.”
“I take it you don’t believe in psychics.”
“I believe in empathy for feelings, which can lead to logical conclusions of what causes those feelings. But only those feelings that are present, in both the temporal and spatial senses of the word. I don’t know that I believe in foretelling the future so much as having an educated hunch. But this isn’t about what I believe. What do you? Have you seen a psychic about this?”
“No, but what does they or me being empaths really explain anyway? I didn’t know Charlotte Pidgeon from anyone when we played that game, and it doesn’t account for why I stopped at her grave that day.” On both those days.
