by Louisa Lo
A park full of trees. A picnic. A pencil sketch.
Once I was certain I got as many details of the scene right, I pushed this “contraband” memory toward Rosemary’s mind. The real memory of that event, being attracted to its fake counterpart, surfaced and became front and center in her consciousness.
Willing myself to become as light as smoke, I grabbed onto the thread of the real memory and dove into Rosemary’s mind. Gregory, in a similar new form, followed me while keeping a connection open with Sassy. The feline would use her meows to guide us back if we needed to pull out.
Then we were in, and we watched as Rosemary and Jordon laughed and chased each other around the tree. Rosemary shrieked when Jordon caught her in his arms and leaned in for a kiss, the picnic and the drawing lay forgotten at their feet.
The couple appeared very happy, but there was a gloom-and-doom narrative droning in the background, in the same female voice that had spoken to me earlier, “This joyful moment is not going to last. Nothing ever does. Look at his handsome face. Do you think someone like that would stay with you? He’s probably figuring out a way to gently get rid of you as we speak. You’re going to look back at this memory as a moment of shame, when you were dumb enough to let down your guard and be so blinded by so-called love…”
“Cheerful.” Gregory shook his head.
The narrative was all a lie, of course. This memory would be around a year old, and the couple was still together in the present time. As far as I knew Jordon had never been unfaithful. The way the shade colored everything, though, every one of his gestures was suspect, every loving word from him was a falsehood.
I was reminded of what the leading man from that human movie Casablanca said, “We’ll always have Paris.” The actual details of what happened in Paris never changed, but the interpretation of what they meant did. And it changed everything.
What was once sweet between Rosemary and Jordon was now stained with doubt and shame.
Changed memories led to changed mood, which in the long-term led to a whole altered outlook in life.
“I need to find the root of that negative voice,” I said. When I viewed memories from USBs, I could just click back to an earlier timeline like I would with any video clips. But how do I do that here when I was experiencing the memory directly?
I visualized the lips of Rosemary and Jordon parting from each other, then had the couple running backward around the tree. It worked! I continued to “rewind” the memory, until we stood before Rosemary and Jordon as he handed her the portrait.
“I drew this for you long before we started going out.” Jordon grinned.
Rosemary traced her finger over the pencil strokes. “Is that how you see me?”
“Yes,” Jordon murmured. “You’re always beautiful to me.”
There it was. When he said that, there was the faintest of a snicker in the background, blended in with the rustling of leaves, mocking Jordon’s sincere words.
“I think this is where it begins,” Gregory said.
“I agree.” Then I frowned. “The question is how do we neutralize the negative vibe?”
Gregory pursed his lips. “From what I understand, everyone’s brain works differently. You know her better than I. What do you think are her best strengths to fight this?”
Well, there was Rosemary’s sass for life and her generous spirit. She could brighten up a room with a smile and whip up a cheesecake from scratch in less time than it would take someone to drive out to the store and buy one. And she would share it with anybody who wanted a piece. That was just how she was.
That stupid shade messed with the wrong girl. The core of Rosemary was filled with positivity. All I had to do was find a way to draw out her real voice and amplify it with my supernatural strength.
There was an old trickster belief that if you were inside someone’s head, and you touched the visual representation of that person in their memory, you could hear the thoughts they had during the experience. I tried doing it to Fir once when I was little and ended up with a migraine for my trouble because his thoughts blew by me too fast. My half-brother’s brain raced at a thousand miles a second, countless trickery plots twirling in his head. But even if I’d chosen a quieter brain, the end result would’ve been the same—people naturally talked to themselves without filter, pleasantries, or the need to explain things because they were their own audience.
But with Rosemary being in a state of mental paralysis, her thoughts might just move slow enough for me to follow.
I walked closer to Memory Rosemary and placed my hand on hers as I’d done with her physical body back in her room. Immediately, her true thoughts and feelings from that moment in time rushed toward me like a freight train. Definitely not as fast and confusing as Fir’s had been, but still pretty intense.
What I found there was a great sense of awe and wonder. I can’t believe he’d draw that for me. It’s very nice. I didn’t even know he had feelings for me back then. All that time we’d worked in the shelter together, liking each other and never thought the other would return the feelings. How silly is that?
I honed in on Rosemary’s inherent optimism. She wasn’t dwelling on lost times, but rather, looking forward to the future. I poured my strength behind that sunny personality, enhancing it. I felt Gregory doing the same beside me.
Come out, Rose. I called to her spirit. All this doom and gloom is not who you are. Come out and show them.
I kept calling her, and soon our surrounding became more colorful. There was a sweet, light breeze in the air. The vibrantly green grass blades swayed. The trees burst to life with white and yellow flowers, bees buzzing by collecting its nectar. All over the park, the natural energy of my roommate was seeping into the very soil, drenching every pore with positive outlook and hope.
A second Rosemary appeared. This one was semi-transparent. Her eyes widened when she saw me, and she mouthed my name. She must be my roommate’s spirit.
But before she could fully solidify and take control of her own memory, the happy feeling around us got rapidly sucked away like water going into a sinkhole.
The shade was fighting back.
The tree leaves became dry before our very eyes, dropping onto the ground like it was suddenly autumn. The sky darkened with storm clouds. A howling gust blew across the park, lifting up the dead leaves and twirling them around like they were trapped in a wind tunnel. The park-goers screamed, covering their faces from the razor-sharp edges of the leaves. Jordon put Memory Rosemary behind him, shielding her from the worst of the assault.
Cold and despair once again dominated the landscape, the very anti-thesis of what my roommate was, and no doubt grinded at her spirit like sandpaper. With a silent scream, Spirit Rosemary fell to her knees.
As the sly laughter of the shade rang, and Spirit Rosemary started to fade, retreating from this memory, I grabbed her memory counterpart once more, searching for any authentic, positive thought that was still there. While I was doing that, Gregory kneeled in front of Spirit Rosemary, whispering words of assurance to her, encouraging her to stay just a little longer.
There! I found one of her last remaining positive thoughts from this experience, and I held onto it with everything I had.
That was a really good lunch. I think I’m going to ask Jordon to come with me to the farmer’s market before they close. I want to try that new lamb curry dish I found online. I’ll see if he’s interested in being my guinea pig. Megan already texted me and said she’ll be working the night shift again…
Hope. Love. Plus a tiny little hint of naughtiness. Perfect.
I threw everything I got behind those positive thoughts. Sassy anchoring us from the physical world or not, there was no way the shade would release us from this memory if Rosemary’s spirit retreated. I wasn’t going to get stuck here, and that was that.
Gregory looked at me and nodded, seemingly reading my mind. He put his arms around Spirit Rosemary and muttered under his breath, building up a shield
of sorts to block the worst of the wintry assault from her, his will indomitable in refusing to let her slip away.
Another strong gust of wind blew across the park, this one different from the others because it was directed toward Gregory and I, while before none of the things from this world of memory could really touch us. The wind wrapped us in a mini tornado of twigs, leaves, and even contents from a nearby garbage can. I would have time to feel disgusted if I wasn’t so busy trying to hunker down.
Soft drink from half-finished cans soaked through my shirt, while saliva-glazed food from Styrofoam containers hit me right on the forehead. The twigs made gashes on my hands and cheeks, the pain worse than a thousand paper cuts. I bit my lips to prevent myself from screaming against the onslaught. The physical pain nearly broke my connection with Memory Rosemary’s positive thoughts.
“Megan!” I could barely hear Gregory through the hurricane-force wind, though he must be still only a few feet away.
“I’m here!” I pushed aside all the physical discomfort and concentrated on the faint thread that still linked me to Memory Rosemary. It was weak, so very weak. I supplied it with the essence of my roommate from my own memory of her—all the good times we’d had trying out her latest experimentation, all the things I’d learned about animals by working in the shelter with her.
As the connection built, I crawled my way toward the sound of Gregory’s voice. When I reached him, he pulled me close so we were both wrapping our arms around Spirit Rosemary. Just like me, Gregory was looking a little worse for wear, with various nicks and bruises all over his body. Even knowing that they would be gone once we return to the physical world, I still grimaced.
Spirit Rosemary stared at me and swallowed, “Megan, is it really you?”
“Yeah.” I cleared my throat.
“I want to go. This is not me. None of this is me.” She looked at the devastation around us with tears in her voice.
“I know. But you can’t go. There’s nowhere safe to hide. You have to fight this,” I told her.
“Fight what? Why is there so much darkness here? Are you even real?” It must be hard for the very core of my roommate to understand any of this, when she didn’t have any knowledge about supernaturals to know what was really going on.
“Think of it this way”—I struggled to put it in terms that she would understand—“I’m trying to make soup, and I put in too much salt. What do I do?”
“You dilute it.” Spirit Rosemary said without thinking. I used that example because it actually happened in our house once. She was making vegetable soup and I wanted to help. I thought the use of measuring spoons was over-rated and…well, let’s just say I put in just a little more than the daily recommended amount. Anyway, my roommate switched the whole thing into a larger pot and started adding in extra onions, carrots, celery, potato and such, and the soup was saved.
“Right. That’s exactly what you need to do here.” I squeezed her shoulder. “Think happy thoughts. Tell me about the farmer’s market and dinner after this.”
She proceeded to tell me how she and Jordon were able to get fresh lamb shoulders from the butcher, and organic ground turmeric from a spice vendor. Then Jordon surprised her with a bouquet of wild flowers, which she placed on the patio table when the lamb curry was served that night under the stars.
And that was the night Jordon stayed over for the first time.
As Spirit Rosemary talked, more and more positive energies were drawn to this memory, and I stored them up like humans with blue-chip stocks. When I was confident I got enough, I pushed it outward in one fell swoop, reclaiming the memory and ejecting the shade from it.
The wind calmed, the dead leaves and the other debris fell harmlessly to the ground, and the sun came back out.
The shade was gone.
“Hey, look!” I pointed at Memory Rosemary and Jordon, who appeared as happy with each other as ever, and not a hair out of place from the wind earlier. Their joy now permeated the memory without the encumbrance of fake doubts and shame.
Spirit Rosemary stared at the couple. “I think my job is done here.”
“I think so,” I agreed.
“Am I going to remember any of this after I wake up?”
“No,” I admitted. “You won’t remember this.”
And she won’t remember what Gregory and I were capable of. She would go on thinking we were mortals, just like her.
Thank Hades for that.
Spirit Rosemary faded away, and Gregory and I walked through the entire memory twice, from beginning to end, just to make sure that the shade was indeed gone.
Yep, there was now nothing there except the happiness of the moment. Not bad for my first cleansing attempt.
We did a quick check of the rest of Rosemary’s mind before pulling out. No menacing presence anywhere else, either. Not to say there was no sad moment in Rosemary’s mind—nobody went through life without a battle scar or two, and my roommate was no different. But there was no manufactured negativity and that was awesome news.
Satisfied with the result, we left Rosemary’s mind. Gregory did a mental “tugging” at his anchoring thread with Sassy, and the shade pulled him back to the physical world along with me.
“Thank you.” I leaned down and scratched Sassy under her chin. She meowed and jumped onto Rosemary’s bed.
My roommate’s eyes were now closed instead of staring. Her breathing was slow and even, suggesting that she was in a slumber, not a trance.
“Well, at least Rosemary is officially shade-free,” I told Gregory.
He didn’t look as relieved as I’d expected him to. Not that he knew my roommate enough to care deeply for her actual well-being, but it spoke well for Gregory’s own mother’s chance of recovery, right?
“That’s because the shade is all in my mom now.” Gregory’s face was drawn.
“What?”
“I could feel it,” Gregory said in a horrified whisper. “What have I done?”
Damn.
Chapter Seven
Bonnie and Clyde
If Gregory was correct—and I had no doubt that he was—then this was no longer a game of speed, but a game of patience. The shade was already waiting for us inside Gregory’s mother’s mind, so it was imperative for us not to blindly rush in there. The more calculated and measured our moves were, the more of an upper hand we would gain.
“It’s Sophia,” Gregory said as we entered my bedroom again.
“What?” I said, puzzled.
“That’s my mother’s name. It means wisdom in Greek,” he said softly. “I guess I’d always hated the name because she doesn’t make the best of choices, and that name sounded more like a cruel mockery. She has no pride, no dignity where my biological father is concerned.”
“Why are you telling me this now?” I frowned. Don’t get me wrong, I wanted to know every sordid detail, but it seemed odd to be bringing up his reluctance about her name when her very life and spirit were threatened.
Gregory sat down on my mattress heavily, running his fingers over his hair. He closed his eyes and took a shaky breath. “Because I want you to know that to my shame, I haven’t always been proud of her. I should’ve looked in on her more often. I don’t, not because I got too busy, but because sometimes it’s hard to look at her without being angry about the things that she allowed to happen to her, and allowing to happen to her still. And now, this. I should’ve been there for her more. So yeah, I’m telling you because I need you to kick my ass for what I’ve done, and the terrible son that I’ve been.”
I walked over to where he was sitting. Yes, he needed to get this off his chest if he was to face the shade with his mind focused, but not in the way he thought it would.
“I’m not going to kick you while you’re down. But here…” I kicked his shin. “Here’s to thinking that I will. Happy?”
His eyes flew open, and he ruefully rubbed the area where my foot had made contact. “Well, as far as kicking was concerned, that did
do it nicely.”
“You’re welcome.” I sat down next to him, taking the chance to place my hand over his. He didn’t flinch. “Listen, you’re ambitious and proactive about improving your life, and it’s hard to understand when someone you love is not as strong as you are. But if you’re going to place any blame, put it on your asshole of a biological father. I don’t know your mom enough to know why she couldn’t just let go of him, but you know what they say, the heart wants what the heart wants.”
Gregory straightened himself and said formally, “Thank you, Megan.”
I let my hand slide off his, missing the contact but glad that he was looking better. His more business-like tone didn’t faze me. It just meant he was more like his usual self. Under the circumstances, that was a great thing.
“My pleasure. Now let’s get to work.” I moved over to the other side of Sophia and took her hand. Gregory mirrored my move. Sassy was already at the ready for the anchoring, though we weren’t going in just yet, just a tentative probe to see where things were at.
Gregory and I closed our eyes and took a first glimpse into Sophia’s mind.
Oh, crap.
Trying to tap into her mind was like trying to decide on a starting point in a maze that made no sense. While the picnic scene popped out in Rosemary’s mind thanks to my prior experience with it, there were multiple corrupted memories in Sophia’s head, like a cancer that had spread out of control. Was it just because Sophia had a full dose of the shade while Rosemary only had half, or was it exactly like how Gregory had claimed, that his mother was the weaker one to begin with?
A person’s memories were a series of life experiences with different nodes functioning as interconnecting hubs. Each hub contained multiple sub-nodes, which then broke down to individual scenes. Unlike with Rosemary where we dove into the specific memory, we had to take an overview of Sophia’s entire mind.
The unaffected memories were represented by lines of neon blue, while the corrupted memories were an angry red. They crossed and tangled with each other and created one big, hot mess. Rosemary’s single-scene infection was child’s play compared to this.
