What the Clocks Know

by Rumer Haven

  “Granted. Though if that was only a simple coincidence, your empathy does explain that you internalized it because it’s your sensitive nature to. The brooch weighing on your mind as well—even when you’re not consciously thinking of it, you may be projecting it in other ways. In games of Ouija, for instance.”

  Margot could swear she heard the broken record of this conversation skip over the same scratch. “I understand your point, but it seems dismissive.”

  “You don’t want to trade your belief in the ghost back for belief in coincidence, do you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Doing so might make life seem random again, which places more accountability on you in how your destiny plays out. The recent changes you’ve experienced this past year are all the result of your decisions, so maybe what you’re going through is just coming to terms with how in control you indeed are, as opposed to being a victim.”

  “I’m not trying to throw myself a pity party here. I just thought we were going to leave no stone unturned.” And no headstone overlooked.

  “Fair enough. Then on one hand, we can believe these incidents have been signs, as you said yourself last time, that show you’re heading in the right direction. And on the other, perhaps we can consider another classic theory of the psyche that you might know. Introduced by one of Freud’s younger colleagues, Jung.”

  “Carl Jung?”

  “So you have heard of him.”

  “Yeah.” And if I still believed in coincidences, this one would take the cake. “Just his collective unconscious theory. A friend of mine told me about it.”

  “Brilliant. Like Freud, Jung broke the psyche into different parts, including the personal unconscious, where we store memories of our own experiences, and then the collective unconscious, which stores the combined experience of all humankind—like a joint bank account that we all deposit into and withdraw from. I was thinking of this when you brought up déjà-vu last time, in fact, because some believe the collective unconscious is what causes that ‘already seen’ sensation. A concurrence of our external and inner realities.”

  Silence.

  “Have I lost you?”

  “Yes.”

  Fitz’s jewelry clicked against her glasses again with her deep-chested guffaw. “Forgive me. I lecture at university, but in this room, the client should do most of the talking.”

  Margot indulged her with a weak giggle as she rubbed the gooseflesh that had just prickled up on her forearms. Even her nipples pinched a little from an apparent temperature drop.

  So much for the client doing the talking, as Fitz carried on. “Now, bear in mind there’s a lot of theory out there, outdated and new, and it’s often a mix that’ll help you develop your sense of capital-T truth as life experience shapes your perceptions.”

  Margot curled her knees up to warm her hands between them. “But do you think that, no matter what happens to us, we’re always the same person at our core?”

  “Yes, I do. But to each her own. Which is why it’s important you understand being dismissive is not my intention.”

  At this, Margot sat up to face her doctor in apology, her cheeks being the one part of her body to heat up and admonish her earlier lack of tact.

  Fitz sat back and folded her cocktail-ringed hands in her lap. “The fact is, if you only suspected something supernatural to be at hand here, you could have consulted a parapsychologist or medium. But you came to me. So the best I can do is approach this within the realm of my expertise. This is what you want, isn’t it?”

  A flush of recognition washed over Margot, and one of her ears popped as though the room had depressurized as well as cooled. “Is this not what I wanted?”

  “That’s what I’m asking you.”

  “Sorry, I thought… It’s happening. Right now, a déjà-vu.”

  “You and I here, asking this question?”

  “Asking this question, yes, but the visual isn’t synching up.” Margot thought hard to recall the words, the vision, the feeling. “No, it’s passed.” She shook her head. “Weird.”

  “Mm.”

  Is this not what I wanted? The conviction trickles away to a puddle at my feet as, again, I am questioned.

  “I do not know what I want,” I reply, “nor indeed ever did.”

  It is evident my feeble response is found wanting, but I question how it is that I am to satisfy any further on this point. I move to close the door—how the sound carries through those corridors!—but my interrogator draws it back open, just slightly ajar, just enough.

  “You did know, once. When it was convenient for you, when you had everything to gain and I nothing to lose. Well, I have lost something, haven’t I? I lost it to you, and now am I to lose you as well?”

  “Contain your volume,” I foolishly preach, and it is received in the ill manner I could have predicted.

  “Contain myself, indeed! I am not the one with so much to conceal!”

  “I lack the fortitude to address this now. You must know.”

  “Must I?”

  My hand falls from my bosom, its opened palm now flat to my waist instead, and I plead, “I should hope, yes, that you do.”

  “I should think not,” is spat through a hard-lipped scowl before the door swings with swift force upon its hinges.

  Chapter 12

  Refraction

  Smoke spiraled then dissipated in Margot’s sight. Through the gray wisps, the Portobello Market reemerged as a colorful, bountiful Land of Oz.

  “Do you think I should do it?”

  Chloé tapped her cigarette with her forefinger, watching the flecks of fire and ash dance to the pavement. “I’d be interested to hear what happens. But be certain this woman isn’t playing with your mind.”

  Ever since last week’s therapy sessions, Margot had wanted Chloé’s opinion on Fitz’s methodology. Even though she’d met Rand for lunch again directly afterwards, she wasn’t sure to what extent he’d remain open-minded about the doctor’s most recent suggestion, and somehow it seemed more in the realm of Chloé’s savvy. But as far as either friend knew, Margot’s sessions were strictly about her sanity, not the supernatural. Fitz’s always-ready rationale was really helping her stay grounded in the physical world, so she didn’t want to set her progress back by entertaining any further delusions outside that office.

  Regardless, after the last session’s déjà-vu, Margot had felt like her heart was squeezing, as it so often did. Fitz thought this sounded like a good case of anxiety so had proposed hypnotherapy for their next session, preferring to leave medication as a last resort. Chloé hadn’t been to class until today, so Margot wasted no time asking if she’d join her afterwards and help sort out this latest advice.

  “She said it’d be on the order of the relaxation technique we used during my first session,” she told Chloé. “Just more prolonged and deeper to ‘focus my consciousness into alertness on a different level.’ What do you think, does she sound like a quack?”

  “Hypnosis isn’t the hocus-pocus many people think. It’s a meditative state for reaching higher planes of understanding. For some that is spiritual enlightenment, for others a transcendence of mind.”

  Margot’s instinct had been spot-on; Chloé was definitely the right person to consult on this.

  “It requires a high degree of trust, though, Margot, so if you don’t trust her, you shouldn’t go through with it.”

  “No, I do. I guess I’m just surprised it’s actually coming to this. I even said to her that I thought it only happened in movies. Like that one with Emma Thompson—Dead Again.”

  Fitz hadn’t seemed thrilled with that remark. The psychologist had merely nodded and said, “Aside from being a cliché plot device, past-life regression is a controversial tactic that skeptics like me have concluded really only constructs false memories from bits of the real ones. Empirically, the historical inaccuracies that have emerged from those run rampant.”

  At which point Margot had to concede that s
he’d been the one to cry ghost there, so really shouldn’t judge.

  “Just be careful,” Chloé said. “I know people can sometimes wake to a distorted reality.”

  “Oh God. Distorted like how?”

  “Unable to distinguish past from present, seeing things that aren’t real that the hypnotist only whispered in the ear.”

  “She’s a professional, though. What would she have to gain by messing with me like that?”

  “Sadistic pleasure.” Chloé smirked, placing her lit cigarette between Margot’s lips to replace the extinguished filter resting there.

  Margot felt herself go as ashen as the snuffed tobacco flicked to the pavement. “She’s going to make me tap dance and juggle whenever I hear the Canadian national anthem.”

  “Or flap your arms like angel wings every time a bell rings.” Chloé smiled and lightly tapped the soft underbelly of Margot’s chin. “I don’t believe she’ll take advantage of our dear Margot. And when done properly, it can be like a window to the soul.”

  “Have you ever done it?”

  “In a way, yes. Not in the company of anyone else.”

  “Well, I should hope she’s not selling tickets!”

  “I mean to say, I’ve done it entirely alone.” She pointed at one of several mini-dresses hanging in a street stall. “You would look nice in that.”

  “Mm, maybe if we pass by it again on our way back. But”—getting back on topic—“is that possible? On your own? I can’t even imagine how that would work.”

  “It requires some practice but is achievable.”

  “How’d you learn how?”

  “Rather by accident. I was in an unusual, raw frame of mind when I experienced it for the first time. Grieving for my grandfather as a young girl. It made me feel close to him, as though he were right there holding me on his knee as he used to. Afterwards, I tried again and again to bring him back. But I’d been trying too hard and had to experiment for years with different ways.” She fingered through the frayed satin interior of her clutch. When she retrieved her compact mirror, she clicked it open and fleetingly inspected her reflection, like a parent peeking in at the nursery door just to make sure the kids were still there and breathing. “By the time I was sixteen, I had refined it to a technique I could recreate whenever I wanted.”

  Margot blanched. “Did you sense him again?”

  “Yes, as a girl I thought I did.” She met Margot’s gaze directly. “The experience was different, however, as a grown woman. It was not about him after all.”

  Margot interpreted this as an offer to help her achieve self-understanding. “Is it something I could do, too, then? You’ll teach me?” Sensing reluctance, she added, “Maybe it would be good for me to try on my own before I let the shrink do it. Just to see if my mind’s receptive, and how I might respond. What, haven’t you found it helpful?”

  “What people find in such a thing will be different. Some windows are best left with the curtains closed.” Chloé veered to the curb to contemplate a trove of raspberries.

  “Now how could that be? How does anyone benefit from hiding? Chloé, please.” Margot asserted her presence among the garnet fruit. “I’m hanging on by a thread here. What could be the harm in letting out stuff that’s plaguing me?”

  “It’s what you could let in that poses a problem. Monsieur, two batches, s’il vous plaît.” Chloé turned her attention back to Margot as she waited for her goods, folding her bare forearms just as Margot had absently looked down at them. Thumbing a dark patch on the thin inner skin of her elbow, Chloé pressed further. “Margot, I must ask, if I teach you and you do this, let me be present. Merci, Monsieur.” She dropped the exact change into the vendor’s palm and claimed her bagged purchase.

  “Oh.” Margot fidgeted as they resumed walking down the road’s center. “Well, the point of trying it on my own would be to, you know, try it on my own. I’d be embarrassed with you there and probably unable to relax the way I’m supposed to. Not to sound like an ingrate before you’ve even told me how to do it.”

  “Margot, please. I’ve shared this much with you. It will be my responsibility. The question becomes, do you trust me?”

  Margot’s inhibition disappeared into the brown eyes beseeching her, and she gravitated toward them headfirst, falling into Chloé heavily with their first hug. She heard Chloé’s purse and bag of berries fall to the pavement at their feet.

  “I do trust you,” she breathed into the perfumed scarf knotted at Chloé’s neck, then pulled away while still clasping her frail arms. “Teach me?”

  Chloé’s clothes-hanger posture slackened as her face twisted into an inscrutable expression. Still in Margot’s grasp, she slid her arms away until their palms met. Squeezing hands in this warm clasp, she consented, “I will. When would you like?”

  “Ce soir?”

  “Oui. Well, no. You need more time to detoxify.”

  “I haven’t had a drink in a while now.”

  “Not just alcohol. Caffeine, nicotine…” She snatched the cigarette from Margot’s mouth and banished it with flourish before bending to retrieve her bags. “Even dairy. A diet of fruit and veg only.”

  “Meh. Fine. But for how long? I see the doctor again in a couple of days.”

  “I think if you start now, we can try it as soon as tomorrow evening.”

  They agreed on this timeframe and drifted uphill into the antiques strip of the road, falling silent as they scavenged vintage jewelry.

  Margot pointed toward a cluster of pocket watches dangling from a display. “Like yours. Is this where you found it?”

  Chloé’s cheeks drained white before flushing red. “N-no. Those are reproductions. Mine is authentic.”

  “Oh yeah? From France?”

  A rapid nod as swift and nearly unseen as a hummingbird’s wings.

  “Cool. Is that what you swing in front of your face when you wanna see your grandpa?” Margot wasn’t surprised when her irreverence wasn’t dignified with a response. “Sorry. How old is it?”

  Looking from jewelry case to jewelry case, Chloé muttered, “Eh, je ne suis pas sûr. Quelle heure est-il? What time is it?”

  Margot shrugged. “You’re the one with the watch.”

  “Of course.” Chloé cradled her purse in one arm to rummage inside and consult said pocket watch with the other. At this, Margot stole a glance at the rusty, dime-sized birthmark in the crease of Chloé’s elbow, the distinct marking that Chloé had seemed self-conscious of before.

  “Margot, this has been fun, but I must go back toward Ladbroke Grove station.”

  Sensing she didn’t desire company on her return journey, Margot made it easy on them both. “The District Line will be more direct for me, so I’ll keep heading this way to Notting Hill Gate, but let’s touch base after class tomorrow to arrange tomorrow night? You’ll be there, right? I notice you’re getting as sporadic as me.”

  This time the expression on Chloé’s face was unmistakably relief. “Yes, I’ll be there and will explain the process to you then. Remember, fruits and veg.” She thrust one of her cartons of raspberries at Margot with a side-smile. “And no stimulants or depressants.”

  A swift kiss to each cheek sealed their abrupt separation.

  With a gyrating wrist, Margot finished darkening the funnel-shaped spiral she’d sketched down the margin of her notebook page. As her mind swirled into the coil’s vortex, she questioned why she bothered attending lectures again when their relevance became ever more distant from her. Current preoccupations aside, her boss still hadn’t replied to her email, so who knew what job she’d be going back to, if any.

  Her impatience for class to end was almost intolerable. She lifted her eyes from her pen tip to Chloé, who sat across the semicircular lecture hall and several rows farther upfront. Margot had been late to class, so sat in the back. She didn’t expect any classmates to save her a seat anyway, not even Chloé, who was always engrossed in her black notebook. Margot watched again that afternoon
how feverishly Chloé recorded her notes, writing them by hand like Margot did while everyone else typed on laptops or tablets.

  It wasn’t until that moment, though, that Margot noticed Chloé’s motions were broader than normal handwriting—as well as flowing up, down, and all around rather than left to right. Drawing, it would seem.

  Fair enough, for so was Margot. Yet as she paused to take in Chloé’s sprite-like features, their symmetry and softness, something was off. Chloé sat upright and proper as usual, never being one to slouch, and her fine-boned fingers conducted her pencil with sweeping grace across the page nonstop. Her face, however, remained lifted, stoic, and she stared with dull, vacant eyes directly in front of her—seemingly without ever looking down at her page. If Margot’d ever had any experience with such a thing, she’d have thought her friend was in a trance.

  Maybe she’s practicing the technique and jotting down steps before she teaches me. But Chloé’s expression gave Margot chills, so she broke her stare and brought it back to her own pen.

  She has something to hide, she wrote automatically. It surprised her to read it back, and yet she couldn’t deny this was what she felt. So she wrote more as she extracted memory after memory to reduce the clutter of her mind.

  ~She seemed nervous when I asked about the watch. And left abruptly for the second time like that.

  ~She’s been skipping class lately.

  ~She was reluctant about teaching me self-hypnosis (cautioning me on what I could “let in”??)

  ~But she was the one defending hypnosis and now insists on being there when I do it!

  ~The way she looks at me

  Margot paused to consider this last item, how to phrase the rest of it adequately.

  ~The way she looks at me has an intensity that makes me feel naked. Vulnerable and vibrant at once. But I like it.

  Her cheeks burned, and when she peeked up at Chloé, she met her full-on in the eye; Chloé was no longer drawing anything in her book. Neither woman smiled or looked away for several seconds, and it seemed they wouldn’t have if it weren’t for the students who stood up between them to gather materials into their bags.