Sarah Before

by Craig Shepherd

  “Oh! Hi Josie,” Jane’s surprise was telegraphed in the most obvious way. She was reaching for something else to say, but nothing would come.

  “I’m sorry about before. Do you believe in ghosts? That’s what it felt like I was seeing when you asked about your friend,” the straight-shooter had gone from Josie’s persona, now speaking in riddles.

  “No, that’s OK. I’m sure it has been a long time. I guess this means you do know Sarah?” Jane, pleased to have a second chance at speaking to Josie, remained patient with her line of questioning.

  “I do. But she wasn’t Sarah back then. It was Olivia. Olivia Dunbabin. It has been a long time, and I haven’t heard from her at all since the fire.”

  CHAPTER 22

  Having spent the afternoon in a broken, confused daze on her bed, finally allowing herself a restless but much needed sleep, Sarah woke the next morning no closer to clarity. She spent most of the day on the couch, vacantly staring at the TV as it cycled through the normal morning news shows, a trashy midday movie, and the afternoon game shows. None of which she could focus on at all. She finally reached for all her energy and went out the back door. Lighting a cigarette, she dared herself to look at the balcony of Apartment 7.

  Nothing. Nothing but rusted guard rails and stained concrete staring back at her. She sat on the cold metal of the chair and squeezed her arms and legs close together, shrinking into a hunched position to combat the bitterly cold air swirling around her.

  She was lost, and that was really the only thing she had any awareness of. The day before had erased any progress she had made with her condition, but there was a lingering feeling that much more had been wiped away. With the uncertainty of Jane’s involvement in her torment came a realization she had become dependent on a friendship again, and it had been years since she had made herself vulnerable like that. Now, with so much conflict between the puppet masters pulling the strings of her mind, she felt her grip on reality slipping away.

  The biggest problem for Sarah right now stood in front of her like a mosaic pattern on a brick wall. A puzzle she could neither decipher nor break through. She wanted to find comfort in the truth of her own eyes, but wondered if they could even be trusted. Had anything she’d seen in the past month been real? Or were they just ghostly remnants of her own crumbling sanity? There was nothing she could touch, nothing she could hold in front of her as proof of the things she had seen. The events which had haunted her and driven her to push her only friend away. Only her memory, and more importantly the memories of the fear and terror she had felt during the events. She couldn’t touch that, but she could still feel it as she would a knife hanging from an open wound in her side.

  In that moment, realizing the only things she could rely on were her memories, she struggled for air as if she were being held underwater. Frantically thrashing her way to a surface which pulled further away the more she struggled. While her memories felt real, she couldn’t even be totally convinced of anything she remembered. It was more than that though.

  I’m alive, but I’m nothing but a memory.

  That was the hardest thing to take. She had pushed everyone away. If she hadn’t pushed them, she had run from them. Even when things were better, when she was a mother and a wife, she withdrew from her own family. She made herself alone, made herself like nothing more than a light fixture. Something that was always there in the house, but never really there. Not in any meaningful, contributing way. An inanimate object to be stepped around, shifted, but never really missed when it was gone.

  When things went from bad to worse, she ran. And she’d been running ever since, never forming attachments. Never letting anybody get between her and her terrible memories. Because they were hers. They were the things she had control over, and nobody was going to take that away.

  Until Jane.

  She had let Jane in. She welcomed the friendship, the reliability. The company. The new voice to listen to, and one which for a time was able to drown out the other voices she always seemed to hear. But for now she remained a memory to Jane as well, just as she was a memory to everybody she had ever met. Just the crazy lady she had taken groceries too, and for a brief part of her life had been caught in a web of insanity with.

  Sarah stared at the back fence, its faded grey splinters of wood seeming to bend out towards her where the timber had begun to rot around the nails. For minutes, she stared blankly, but for the first time today her mind was washed of all non-essential function. There was nothing except the existence of the fence holding her gaze. She didn’t even notice the cigarette had burned to the butt in her hand, a long tube of ash dropping next to her feet.

  It was twilight now, the sun gone from view and replaced by a thick cloud cover blanketing the sky. Daylight was fading, even more quickly than the air grew colder. In the darkening sky, a flickering in her periphery finally snapped her eyes away from fence and drew her gaze to the apartment building on Selwood Avenue. The black-stained, grey nightmare which had finally broken her already frail mental strength the day before.

  It looked no different than any other day, except for the light over Apartment 7’s balcony. The light came from inside the apartment, the static glow of a light bulb. It flickered behind the curtains, like someone pressing the button of a flashlight on and off, over and over again. She dropped the burnt out cigarette butt from between her fingers and pressed her palms onto the sides of the chair, not yet rising from her seat but in a state of readiness.

  She realized it wasn’t a light at all. It was a fire. The light upgraded from gentle flickering to a heavy, orange glow as the flames reached the curtains and ran from the bottom to the top. It happened quickly, like a fiery, upside down version of a bursting dam wall sending water cascading over the side. She stood up, almost stumbling on the chair as she shifted backwards. The glass sliding door to the balcony succumbed to the heat and pressure inside the room, breaking apart. The flames pushed outward, spraying pieces of shattered glass in front of it like the white caps of foam on a wave.

  She let out a gasp at the sound. The explosion came like a bomb, but the horrific cracking and shattering of the glass underpinned the crash. The shards of glass seemed to shriek their broken, deathly screams as they flew through the twilight sky into the yard below.

  As she stood in bewilderment at the blaze from Apartment 7, she half expected to see a burning, ghoulish figure staggering out and tumbling over the railing. The things she had been seeing had become increasingly more disturbing each time, so why stop now? But nothing came, and after ten minutes or so with nothing to feed on but a concrete balcony and walls, the fire died down on its own. It left more black stains on the already filthy façade of the building. A shimmering glow still burned inside the apartment, and Sarah thought it would get worse before it gets better. Once it broke through the internal walls there would similar explosions on the other balconies. She heard no sirens to indicate help was on its way.

  This point troubled her, further loosening her grip on reality. If this was real, someone would be coming to help.

  As if the explosion had broken through all of her confusion and shone light on the path ahead of her, Sarah suddenly realized what she had to do. If what she needed was in the garden shed, she would be out of here tonight, and maybe she could erase herself as a memory.

  Keeping one eye on the balcony, which was now only backlit by a faint, flickering glow, she made her way towards the back of her yard. Stepping over the uncared for grass, she peeled the door open. Releasing her grip on the handle, the door hung limply from one hinge and she was pleased it was still just light enough to search through the discarded gardening items.

  Pulling aside rakes, shovels and thick cobwebs, her foot kicked against the item she was looking for. She picked up the fuel can and dusted it off, although its cleanliness wouldn’t be in issue. All that mattered was its volume, and by the weight of it, she guessed it was more than three quarters full. It would be enough.

  Leaving
the shed open, she went back inside and sat the fuel can on her kitchen table. It was unknown how long it had been in the shed, but the foul odor of stale fuel instantly filled the room. It lingered in the air and would soon fill the rest of the house, but Sarah wanted this to be quick. The strong, biting smell of old fuel wouldn’t concern her in twenty minutes time.

  Leaving the fuel can and walking to her room, she dragged a large sports bag from underneath her bed and filled it with a few essential clothing items, leaving the majority behind in piles strewn across the floor. Importantly, she reached into the back of the cupboard behind a pile of soon to be abandoned clothes and removed the contents of her secret shoebox. The assortment of cash notes had been decimated recently. She dismayed briefly at the limited funds in her hand, but there was nothing she could do now.

  Her movements started to become erratic, picking up clothes and placing them in the overnight bag before removing them again and flinging them across the room. She moved back and forth to the bathroom, collecting toiletries and discarding the unwanted ones in equally frantic fashion. There was no order now, and it was clear the discord in her mind was spilling over into everything she did. Her thinking was never known to be the clearest, but usually she had the option to stop what she was doing if things started getting confused. Now, she simply had to push through it, but it raised the level of difficulty two-fold.

  Her living room was virtually devoid of anything homely. A TV remote and a newspaper was all that really accompanied the furniture, so she returned to the kitchen, dragging the overnight bag behind her. Two packets of biscuits, three apples and a bottle of water were stuffed into the bag on top of the scrambled mess of clothes and toiletries. The smell of fuel had begun to permeate through the house, clinging to the walls and soft furnishings with determination. It hurt her nostrils to take a deep breath in.

  Feeling her stomach turn, her head began to ache. Unsure if it was an attack or simply the fumes making her feel sick, she continued about her muddled tasks. She left the bag by the front door, and her eyes darted around the room for her phone, keys and purse. Sarah fumbled around the room without even thinking, checking the coffee table, the floor around the furniture. She was aimlessly looking anywhere, regardless of whether they were places she would ever leave her keys. It took two minutes of scouring the room before she even looked at the phone stand near the front door, where all of her things were. Where they always were. She was barely even thinking on a functioning level right now.

  She picked up the car keys and sweat starting bursting through her pores as an uninvited heat took hold of her. Her breathing was stilted now, and the more she tried to regulate it, the sicker she felt in the stomach. The fumes from the fuel can were being pulled into her lungs with every breath, and regardless of whether it was panic, fumes, or a combination of both, she dropped to her knees, still clutching the car keys, and threw up against the front wall next to the phone stand. She closed her eyes and wiped the sweat from her brow, knowing she had to do this now.

  Awkwardly climbing to her feet, she opened the front door, pulling in a gust of cold air which caused her sweat laden skin to shiver, but its crisp freshness was worth the cold. She picked up the overnight bag and left the front porch, coming to a stop at her front gate. The night had come quickly, the sky now a covering of deep, dark blue spotted by streetlights. The moon lurked somewhere behind the clouds, but Sarah took no comfort in its presence. Leaving the house during the day was one thing, but at night, in her current state, the thought was terrifying. She froze in place, her head remaining completely still while her eyes tried to scan the street as best as they could. They keys started digging into her skin as her grip tightened, her other hand clutching the damp metal rail of the front gate.

  Her car was parked in a driveway down the side of the house, but she had to get out the gate and walk around to it. Somewhere deep in her consciousness, she knew she would be fine if she just got to the car. Once she was in there, things would feel better but she only needed to pack her bag in there right now, and then make it back to the house for one last job. A viciously cold gust of wind swept down the street, sending dead leaves sprawling across the sidewalk in front of her. Her stomach lurched, and she knew it was empty but the reflex still caused her to heave over the railing, nothing but saliva and bile falling through her lips.

  Convincing herself nobody was watching, she flung the gate open and ran to the car, unlocked the back door and threw her bag in. She didn’t linger out there, returning to the seemingly fortified safety of her front porch behind the gate. Stepping back into the house, she wished she’d left the door open to let some of the fuel’s odor escape, but that would have brought with it a raft of uncertainty. Thoughts of hooded characters with black-hole eyes slinking into the house during the forty seconds it took her to dispose of her bag.

  The cap on the fuel can was stubborn, but she finally managed to twist it free, holding it as far away from her face as she could. If a sealed can could carry the stench currently hanging in the air, she didn’t want to get too close to it when it was first opened. As expected, the fumes were worse, stinging her eyes to the point she had to turn away from it and squint.

  She realized the contents of the fuel can would need to stretch through the whole house, so she didn’t have the luxury of splashing it wildly around the walls like a maniac in a horror movie.

  Although that’s what I am, aren’t I?

  She carefully let small amounts of fuel spill across the kitchen floor, and tried to leave a continuous trail as she exited the room and headed towards the bedrooms and bathroom. Although the fuel was limited, she wasn’t happy with just a thin, unbroken line, so she tried to gently splash the can from side to side, trying not to use any more than necessary but still maintain a bit more coverage on the carpet. With the age of the house, she hoped the walls would catch fire themselves without much encouragement.

  After ensuring the fuel had a presence in every room of the house, there was very little left by the time she returned to the lounge room, so she emptied the rest over the couch quite carelessly. As she dropped the empty can on the ground, she caught a glimpse of a light outside. A car’s headlights.

  CHAPTER 23

  Sarah’s first thought was Jane. Coming to apologize, or coming to inflict some more torment. She couldn’t even get her head around what Jane could want, but wasn’t swayed in her certainty it was Jane outside.

  “Fuck!” Sarah angered quickly and yelled to the empty, fuel soaked room around her. Five minutes. Five more minutes was all she needed to get this done and be on her way out of everyone’s memory for good. Why could Jane have not been just a fraction later?

  Sarah stood with her back against the front door like a gunman trapped in a standoff with police. Perhaps it wasn’t as extreme, but the claustrophobic feeling of being hemmed in was real enough. She needed to get rid of Jane quickly, and couldn’t let her in the house. She didn’t even know, the stench of the fuel would probably drift out onto the porch anyway, but she had to try and intercept Jane out there. It was the best she could do.

  Opening the door, she once again felt the refreshing night air in her lungs, and the contrast from inside made her lightheaded. Trying to look like she was just stepping outside for a cigarette, she carefully lit a smoke. It was the most frenzied mind-set she’d been in for a long time, but she was still acutely aware of the hazard involved in lighting a cigarette after dousing her home in fuel. She wiped her hands before flicking the lighter, just to be sure.

  She recognized Jane’s jacket on the figure who emerged from the darkness behind the car, and she was almost relieved. At least it wasn’t some ghoulish hooded creature, or worse. The vitriolic anger she had felt towards Jane the day before had passed. In fact she couldn’t even really wrap her head around what emotion she felt towards her supposed friend now, because there was still a lingering uncertainty that perhaps Jane was right about her need for serious psychological help. But whatever sh
e felt, it had to be put aside. She needed to get rid of Jane now, and that meant trying to recover some of yesterday’s rage.

  “Jane, I was clear yesterday. I don’t want to talk to you,” she said. Short, and to the point. Her voice wasn’t raised, but the assertion was direct.

  Without being asked, Jane opened the gate and stepped onto the front path. “Sarah, please,” she sounded concerned. It seemed genuine, but Sarah was no longer in a position to make good judgment calls about people’s intentions. She wouldn’t let herself make that decision anymore.

  The wind had strangely disappeared now, but the cold hung so thickly she could see it in the dim street light. Jane standing in the foreground of the light, it all had an eerie feeling that bothered Sarah.

  She spoke again as Jane stepped forward toward the bottom step. “I’m done Jane, whatever it is you want. I just want to be left alone now.”

  Jane kept moving without any trepidation. She seemed unnerved, despite what she knew. The things Sarah didn’t know she knew. She reached the landing of the porch and stood right in front of Sarah, putting a hand around each of her friend’s upper arms.

  “Sarah. Olivia. I know everything now,” Jane spoke softly, lovingly. Despite the words she said and the name she used, her voice was still as comforting to Sarah as it had been before.

  The cigarette fell from Sarah’s hand, coming to rest on the cold concrete of the step which was thankfully free of any fuel spillages. Her lip quivered and eyes blinked in unison with the perplexed shaking of her head. She looked at the caring, motherly way Jane stared at her, and she wanted to feel alright but couldn’t. It was more than fear. It was the cold, harsh stones of reality tumbling down around her.

  “No,” it was the only word Sarah could mutter. Over and over. It wasn’t even the fear of someone discovering her secret. It was the fear she had to acknowledge her own truth. Not the memories she had constructed and spent years forcing herself to believe, but the real truth. The one she could run, and run, and run from, but never really erase. She hadn’t thought of Olivia in a long time. She was Sarah now, but the powerful realization hit her that Sarah was gone from this moment. She couldn’t run from her past. Breaking down and grabbing Jane’s arms for support, she stumbled forward as her legs gave way.