by N. M. Howell
A tall man stood before me with dark hair and piercing eyes.
“He’s out.” The male’s voice had a roughness to it that sounded somewhat familiar. “Getting supplies for the restaurant. How long has she been like this?”
He knelt in front of me and placed his hands on my knees. I avoided eye contact as best I could. The energy about him was strange, yet somewhat familiar. I had a weird feeling in the pit of my stomach that I didn’t like the guy, but I couldn’t be sure why.
“It’s not just me, is it?” JoAnn asked him as she took a chair on the far side of the room.
There was a long pause of silence and the man before me shook his head, the motion causing a slight blur in my own vision. “No, this definitely isn’t normal. It’s a shame Jordan isn’t here, but I’m not sure when he will be back.”
“We can’t just leave her like this,” JoAnn said. Their voices blended together as they echoed in the back of my mind, slow and mighty. I tried to make sense of their conversation. I could hear their words, I didn’t quite know what it meant. I closed my eyes, took in a deep breath, and let it out slowly as I tried to focus my mind, but it was no use. I might as well have been injected with mud straight into my brain. I didn’t know where I was, who I was, or what was going on. He was confusing, but mostly peaceful. I didn’t know why these people sounded so frantic.
“In my time in the force, I’ve never seen anything like this. It’s like she’s there, but she’s not. I already know the answer to this, but do you think there is any chance this could be a concussion or have any other reasonable explanation?”
“There’s no mark on her head, or anywhere else, for that matter,” JoAnn replied. “I’ve not seen much of it, but I’m pretty sure this is magic of some kind. She and her housemates are into that stuff.”
“Yeah. That’s what I thought. I just hoped...” the man’s voice began. “I’ll call Bailey. She’ll know what to do. If anything, their little landlady should be able to sort this out. I can’t say I quite understand all of their strange magic stuff, but I know that we’re out of our league here.”
Magic. That word. I open my mouth and try to repeat it, but the sound came out as a silent gurgle. I knew that word. A flash of memory spurred at the back of my mind, images of people and portraits and I don’t quite know what else. I tried to make sense of it, but before I could grasp on to any sort of comprehension, I lost it again. My mind went back to the eerie silence it held before.
There was another noise I recognised. It was not a voice this time, but a quiet tinny ringing sound. It sounded weird cutting through the silence, but the hum of it lulled my brain further, but then the noise stopped and another voice filled the air.
“Brett! Thanks again for last night. It was magical.”
An excited voice I knew came from nowhere. I tried to focus on the man in front of me. He was holding something up in front of him and looking at it. Something at the back of my mind registered that it was this that had made the ringing tone.
“Bailey. We have a problem.”
“What?” I could sense disappointment in the woman’s voice. At least I think it was disappointment. “Please tell me you aren’t breaking up with me.”
“No, nothing like that. I’ve got River here and something has happened to her.”
“What do you mean? Is she alright?” The voice raised an octave and my ears began ringing again.
“Not really. JoAnn is here with us. She found her in a weird trance in the office and brought her down to Jordan’s restaurant. Jordan is out and I don’t think calling an ambulance is going to help in this situation. JoAnn thinks this is something to do with magic and I have to agree. It looks like your hocus pocus kinda stuff.”
“Can you bring her to the house? I’ll gather the girls.”
“Yeah. I’ll put her in the car. She can walk – just about.”
“Great. I’ll see you soon.” The voice stopped and the room became quiet. I didn’t like it. It only made me feel emptier inside. I needed the noise to fill my brain, even though none of it made sense. Her voice was nice compared the gruffness of the man’s.
I finally open my eyes and looked around me. The colors were dull and the light was dim. I could barely make out the features on the two people’s faces before me. I cocked my head to the side as I looked back and forth between the two other forms in the room.
The closest form waved his hands in front of my face and shook my shoulders lightly, and all I could do was gaze forward with an empty look on my face and smile. What was he doing? Strange, strange man.
“I’ll bring my car around and meet you at the front in five minutes.” The woman spoke and left me alone with the man. I still had a feeling of dislike for him although he’d done nothing to hurt me. At least I didn’t think he had. His words made little sense to me, but they were comforting.
“River. Can you hear me?”
It was a question. I knew that much, but I couldn’t decipher it nor form the words to answer it. His piercing eyes were the only things I could see, but they swarm before my own eyes.
“JoAnn is getting the car. We are going to take you to see Bailey and your landlady. They will make you better, okay? Things are going to be fine.” His words washed over me like a warm breeze. They were gentle and comforting. Maybe I did like this guy, after all? I could feel my eyelids closing and another voice spoke in the gloom. This one was much clearer, and, when she spoke, I found I could understand her perfectly. The world went black around me as I listened to her speak.
“Well, Dearie. Don’t you look pretty as a picture here on my wall?”
“River! Open your eyes.” The man’s voice again, but he was muffled and even more distant than before.
“Oooh,” the woman’s voice cackled. “That’s just my little joke. Come on. Speak to me, dearie! I didn’t go to the effort of putting you on my wall for nothing.”
I opened my eyes. The man was gone, as was the room I’d been in before. I was in another room, now. It was dark, but strangely clearer than anything I’d seen for a while. I blinked a few times, waiting for my eyes to adjust. The room was empty, although the door to it was open and I could see out into a corridor. It was also dimly lit, but it was enough to silhouette a figure in front of me. Straight away I knew who it was.
“Mrs. Hemingway! What have you done?” My voice sounded strange, monotone almost, but at least I could speak now.
“Oh, come on, dearie. Let’s not play that game. You of all people should know what has happened to you.”
“Yeah. You trapped my soul in this painting, you monster! I’m not here at all. I’m sitting in...” I paused, trying to remember where I was. I’d been in the office. JoAnn had taken me downstairs to Jordan’s restaurant. I tried to remember who it was I’d been sitting with. It wasn’t Jordan. I thought for a few seconds as the voice came back to me. It was Brett! Bailey’s Brett. JoAnn must have taken me down to find Jordan and bumped into Brett instead. Brett often came to have a coffee at the restaurant when he had time off. “I’m sitting in the back room of the restaurant talking to Brett.”
“Well, I don’t know who this Brett is, dearie, but I can’t imagine he is having the most stimulating conversation with you.” She chuckled at her own joke. Rage encompassed me. I might not be able to register or, indeed, feel emotion in my body right now, but I could feel it in the very depth of my soul.
It must have shown, because Mrs. Hemingway spoke again.
“There’s no point getting angry my dear. There is nothing you can do about it. Your magic won’t help you here. It’s tethered to your body, not your soul. Not that your body is clever enough to use it right now. Now don’t worry. You’ll get used to it. Eventually they all do.”
“Get used to it? You are evil! I saw that little girl down there. The one whose soul you stole when you bought her piano. She was with her parents. They were worried sick about her.”
“They still have her. she’ll just be a little quiet
from now on. Isn’t that what all parents want? A little peace and quiet.”
“She was four years old? What do you think the future looks like for her? Her parents will take her to hospital where she’ll be subjected to a barrage of tests.”
“The beauty of this is that they’ll never find out and I get to keep her for years and years. She’ll never age in my picture. She’ll be as young and fresh faced as the day she was painted, just like you. Isn’t that a nice idea?”
The woman was deranged. Anyone who could call hoarding people’s souls and keeping them in paintings ‘a nice idea’ was obviously one color short of a palette.
“River? Can you hear me?”
I could hear him again. Brett. His voice wavered at the back of my mind. Could I go back to him? I knew if I tried, I’d only be that confused shell I was before, but what was the alternative? A lifetime hanging on the wall of this mausoleum? No. I don’t think so. I closed my eyes and concentrated on his voice, willing myself back to him, back to where my body was.
“I don’t think so.” A bony finger poked me in my side. My eyes shot open. It was Mrs. Hemingway. “If you go back, you’ll only be trapped inside your own mind, befuddled, bewildered, bemused and anything else you can think of beginning with ‘be.’
“Beside myself with anger?” I offered, which only made her chuckle again.
“A few have gone back to their bodies. From what I’ve heard, they’ve all ended up in an institution somewhere. Unable to speak, to eat, to wash and dress themselves. That’s no life is it? Stuck in a room, tied to a bed. No, you’d be better off here, speaking to me.”
“I’d rather be dead than stay in this old house with you.” I spat back.
“I can be scintillating company if I do say so myself,” she said, but I was ignoring her. I closed my eyes again and tried to follow the sound at the back of my brain.
“River. Just hold on. I’ll take care of you. Just another few minutes.” I could hear Brett speaking to me, his voice soothing yet urgent. I tried to move towards him, towards some kind of salvation, but Mrs. Hemingway’s voice was much louder, clearer.
“Don’t fight it, Dearie. You belong here with me.” I ignored her and concentrated every thought I had into going back to Brett.
I felt like I was walking through sludge in my own mind, each imaginary footstep getting heavier and heavier, but slowly Mrs. Hemingway’s voice began to recede. As I mentally walked away from her, thy mind also got thicker, cloudier. I was going back into myself where I knew I’d forget everything, and yet anything was better than the alternative. I willed myself forward through the mire, trusting that Brett and JoAnn would get the help I needed.
“Her eyes are open!”
A man spoke. I knew I’d heard him speaking before, recently but like a breath of air in a net, the memory escaped.
“Quick. Get her into the car. I’ve parked just outside.”
I was pulled into an upright position by the man, and the woman took my other side. I had the sense that they were holding me up, but I couldn’t be sure. I was taken through a very noisy room with lots of people. Pangs of fear began to creep forward, but I knew I was safe, flanked by these two people. Suddenly light hit my eyes although it didn’t help the blurriness at the edge of my vision or my consciousness. I was bundled into something, a car.
I stared out the front window as she drove. The lights and colors that went by blurred together in a swamp of visual clutter, and when we finally stopped, I hardly recognized my surroundings.
Three girls met us in the driveway and helped me out of the car. I recognized them as my roommates, although, I could barely make out the features on their faces. The woman who drove me left with her car, and the three girls brought me inside. I sat down on a couch near a warm fire and stared into the flames. Their warm flickering was nice to watch, different from all the commotion going on around me. It made me feel calm in a world that was now alien to me. A small woman came and placed something in front of me, but I wasn’t sure what it was. I thought it smelled good, but I could barely recognize the scent.
The next hour was a blaze of confusion and numbness. People around me kept waving things in front of my face, saying words that I couldn’t recognize and shaking me all over. Their touch and my skin hardly felt like anything, and their words just muddled in my mind like some undecipherable code. I stared longingly at the flames, relishing in their simplicity and the warmth emanating from the hearth. I felt empty, although somewhere in my mind something I knew something important was happening but I couldn’t quite grasp what it was.
After a while, I felt someone take something from around my neck. I felt lighter somehow and from somewhere in my faded memory, I realised it was my camera that had been taken. Not a moment later I heard screams. The noise awakened something within me and for a second I remembered who I was and where I was but all too quickly everything faded back into a blur I was then pulled out of my seat and led back towards the car, where I was taken again on another blurry ride to a new destination. This time the man was not with us. We were only in the car for a minute before it screeched to a halt and I was led down another long path towards a massive house that I faintly recognized.
Chapter 11
I gazed up at the mansion in front of me and felt the prickle of energy on my skin. That small sensation that made its way over my body was almost enough to pull me out of my daze, but I still stared numbly in front of me with hardly any understanding of what was going on. I was pulled up the front steps and heard a muffled bang as the door in front of me blew backward. I was pulled into the strange dark house and was surrounded by four people around me, pressing in close against my body.
I was consumed by yelling and loud noises as people around me called for whoever was in the house. Muffled shouts pressed on my ears, but it was all I could do to continue staring forward, not quite understanding the scene that played out around me. We moved down the hall; the four people pressed close to me on all sides for protection. We ended up in the furthest room, which was large and empty apart from the picture frame of the old man that I recognized from earlier. I stared up at the frame that stared back at me, and mutual understanding between both blank eyes. The only difference between the two of us was that I was the shell that once carried the soul, and he was the soul that had been ripped from its shell. I heard gasps from beside me, and the small woman that was in my group of four stepped towards the frame. I could barely make it out, but I thought I could hear her repeat the words “Frank, Frank, Frank…”
I was immediately pulled from the room and dragged down the hallway, echoes of the voices around me calling out for someone. I was pulled up the stairs clumsily and dragged into a room that had a familiar energy to it. I looked up at the frame and saw myself staring back at me. The familiar energy snapped me awake, just a little bit, as I recognized my own soul before me. The chatter around me increased, and I felt hands rubbing on my body and stroking my hair. I couldn’t recognize the faces of those around me, but I could feel the love and compassion that they were offering me. I wanted so badly to respond, but all I could do was stare forward blankly at the image of myself on the canvas on the wall.
In a flash, I was back inside the painting. I looked down at myself in shock out of oil painted eyes. In my painted form I knew exactly who I was and who I was there. More importantly I knew how much danger I had brought to my friends.
“Watch out!” I cried from the painting. “She’ll trap you.”
It was strange watching me from an outside perspective. My friends, Rory, Jane, Bailey and Mrs. Brody looked alert if somewhat shocked to see me talking to them from a painting while they were still protecting my uninhabited body from danger, but I was standing there looking up at myself in a dazed manner. Is that really what I looked like?
“How are you in the painting and here at the same time?” asked Bailey, looking almost as puzzled as I did.
“Mrs. Hemingway did it. She’s trapped loads of p
eople here, maybe even hundreds.” I tried to speak quickly, to convey the urgency I felt.
Mrs. Brody spoke to me. “Can you get out of the painting? Somehow inhabit your body?”
“Yes, but when I do, I can’t communicate. I can’t think straight. It’s like my brain is filled with cotton candy. To be honest, you probably wouldn’t notice the difference at this point.”
She thought for a second, her face screwed up in concentration. “Nevertheless. If we have any hope of getting you out of there, we need you back in you. You do what you have to do, leave the rest to me.”
I nodded slightly and closed my eyes. I willed myself back into my own body, surrounded by people that I knew cared about me, and, I hoped, could save me.
My mind went blank again and I found myself staring up at a girl in a painting. I recognised her but I didn’t know where from. She was a pretty girl.
I heard floorboards creak as another person walked into the room. She was small and I felt strong magic coming from her. I felt a connection immediately. There was a darkness around her, and I knew instantly that she was the one that did this to me. My awareness cleared slightly while she was in the room, and I recognized the faces of those around me. Jane, Bailey, and Rory stood around me, and Mrs. Brody, our landlady, was walking forward, towards the woman who stood in the doorway.
“Hello, Regina,” I heard Mrs. Brody say as she stepped slowly towards the woman. “I should have known this was you all along. Of all the people I’ve met in my time, you were really the only one bonkers enough to pull off a stunt as ludicrous as this one.”
“Hello, Agnes. I didn’t think I’d be seeing you around here.” The strange woman smiled back. It was a knowing smile and one of malice. There was no warmth to it.
Mrs. Brody put her hands on her hips and glared daggers at the woman. “And how’s Frank?”
I wasn’t fully aware of what was going on, but by the way she spat the words out, I knew she was angry. I heard a loud scream and knew that Mrs. Brody had hit a nerve. There was a flash of light, and Mrs. Brody was thrown back towards the back of the room. My three housemates stepped forward, blocking the woman’s view of our landlady.
