Sceptic

by Lilliana Rose

  I glance at his face. Broad chin line covered in stubble, thin hair, a face full of wrinkles that hold the shadows I’ve just seen.

  Then he goes. His footsteps are heavy and uneven as he limps away. I don’t want to see him ever again.

  I’m shaken once more. I don’t know what to do. I cower in the far corner, away from the door, away from the bed where Bertie still sleeps. I can’t get far enough away from the bed or the door. I settle closer to the bed. The chain connecting Bertie and me seems like it could be some comfort. At least I fucking hope so. I don’t want to be his next victim, but Bertie only wants to harm himself. Not like the man who just came to the door. I shiver. Close my eyes. Willing myself to forget.

  Maybe I sleep, or maybe it’s more like my mind wanders, putting me into a sort of day-dream state. I don’t like what my mind plays for me to see. I start thinking about the man at the door, the monster, how he is human, but still it’s clear what sort of man he is. This line of thinking somehow opens a door within me. Oh, I know I’m not like him. Not at all. What I do know is that there are different types of monsters or people who are on what I consider a spectrum of being a monster. Like myself. I know I’m on it. I have that darkness within me. With the darkness as my guide, I step through the door and drop back in a memory of mine.

  It was after the first time I’d taken a kitchen knife to my wrist. I was twelve. I didn’t know what direction to cut. It was more about waking myself up than anything else. It wasn’t an earnest attempt. But it started things in motion, which I had no control over, in my mind and with my family.

  Tired. Numb. That’s how I felt back then. Like I wasn’t alive at all. I wanted to see what would happen if I dragged the knife over my skin. There was a fucked up mix of curiosity, which drove me to try. More than once.

  That first cut didn’t rouse me. The sharp metal broke through my skin, released my blood in a thin, delicate line. I knew I was never going to be the same. I knew I was alive, but not in the way like everyone else. So I dragged the knife over my skin again. Pressing harder this time.

  I gasped with pain. It was then I knew I was alive. I watched the blood of the second cut flow out and down my wrist. My head spun pleasantly. Much better than after drinking alcohol.

  It was then, sitting at the kitchen table, doing my own unique experiment on myself that I slipped into a sort of stupor. I knew what I was doing. I couldn’t stop. I didn’t cut much. The sight of blood made me woozy. The chemical mix in my mind was addictive. It wasn’t long before I passed out. I, of course, kept bleeding.

  Mum found me. Poor Mum. It wasn’t until I woke up in hospital, I knew I should’ve been more careful. It was then the counselling started. I was on watch. The knives, or anything sharp, were locked away. They missed great grandma’s letter opener. They didn’t believe me when I said I wasn’t trying to kill myself. Not that first time. What had happened though was the whole event brought me closer to the darkness, alleviated the pressure which had been building inside my head, and stopped Frank from talking for a while and telling me what horrible things I should do to myself.

  But now my life was so much worse.

  ‘Why?’ Mum asked.

  ‘Dunno.’ That wasn’t a lie. I was stunned sitting in the hospital, trying to process what I’d done, without having thought through a whole lot about the outcome.

  ‘You’re beautiful just the way you are,’ said Dad. I knew he meant it with all the love a father could give his daughter and more. It wasn’t enough to push the darkness away. I could feel the fog building again. The snake wanted to stretch, and Frank was getting restless.

  Mum and Dad went to talk to the doctors. They left me with Ashla. Her eyes were red from crying.

  ‘Don’t know why you would do that. You have everything. We have everything.’

  ‘I know,’ I whispered. But it had nothing to do with that.

  ‘Promise me you won’t do it again.’

  I couldn’t. My throat constricted as the snake moved to silence my voice. I knew then I would try again. I just didn’t know when. I knew it wouldn’t be soon. The pressure wasn’t that strong, the fog still very thin. But I would do it again.

  I sat looking at my hands in my lap, trying not to look at the white bandage on my left wrist.

  Ashla reached over and took my hand. I had to look at her. She had the same blue eyes like me. Everyone said. But I know there was more than blue in my eyes. I looked into her eyes for a moment and saw a glimpse of her soul. There was no darkness. I saw a lot of sadness. Her eyes were more like an ocean after a storm, all mixed up and murky with turmoil.

  I looked away. I didn’t want to feel her emotions. Mine were now dull, and I wanted to enjoy the odd sort of peace that had descended on me despite knowing there was another storm coming. The doctors were still talking to Mum and Dad in quiet tones away from me, but close enough for me to glean they were discussing me and were concerned.

  Ashla squeezed my hand forcing my attention back into the room with her.

  ‘You’re not a monster,’ she said. It was the wrong thing for her to say. She spent the next years always apologising for it. She didn’t know. She was in shock. She didn’t want to lose me. She loved me. She was my sister. That was after the counselling. See what I put my family through. It wasn’t my intention.

  But then she had said it. My mind made the connections, like a connect-the-dot colouring puzzle you got in grade one. I am a monster. A human monster. I wasn’t sure how that made me feel. But it helped to thicken the fog, and Frank stomped around in my mind wanting to hit her, and the doctors, and tell everyone to leave me the fuck alone.

  That’s what I’d wanted right there and then. To be left alone with the darkness within me as my comfort.

  ‘Hello?’ a voice echoes in the room.

  My eyelids shoot open, and I’m flooded with a chill.

  ‘I know you’re there,’ says Bertie.

  Fuck. Is he talking to me? There’s no way. No one can see me. The men who strapped Bertie to the bed made it clear I couldn’t be seen. I keep very still. I don’t want to move to alert Bertie that I’ve heard him. It’s me he’s talking to.

  ‘I felt you before. You know when they strapped me. I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want them to take you away. I don’t like being here alone.’

  Fuck. He is talking to me.

  I slowly turn my head. Maybe there’s another spirit here. I don’t see any other ghosts in the room.

  ‘Are you talking to me?’ I ask, with a hope that I’m not totally isolated in this form. I’d always wanted to be alone. The memory I’d just remembered reminded me, but that wasn’t the complete truth. I just wanted to be alone after what I had done to myself. I needed thinking time, but everyone was around me, checking on me. Dad even stopped working for the next six months until there were enough signs to start trusting me again.

  ‘Come closer so I can see you better.’

  I’m not sure if he heard me. I step closer.

  ‘It’s too dark. Maybe in the morning, I can see you better. I’d like to know what you look like.’

  ‘Why?’ Bit of a turn of events for me to be asking why. I didn’t even ask myself why. I just went along with things and allowed myself to be swept away with the darkness.

  ‘I can feel you.’ He closes his mouth in thought. Lips pursed together and they whitened a little.

  ‘You feel a little like honey on a warm day.’

  Heat flushes through me. With horror, I realise I must be blushing. I’m not into this mushy stuff, but of all the compliments I’ve gotten over the years, they always felt unreal and fake. This didn’t feel fake.

  I don’t know how to react.

  ‘I hope I get to see you. Though maybe in the daytime you can’t be seen in the light?’

  ‘Probably not.’ Wasn’t like I could be seen in the dark. ‘I’m not much of a ghost. Still learning my trade.’ I glance at the floor choosing not to look at him.

 
‘How come I can’t see you? Shouldn’t I see you in the dark?’ His eyes are open, and he lifts his head from the pillow as far as he can. He looks at me, but he’s unseeing.

  ‘I think I know where you are.’

  ‘I know because it makes you feel like warm honey when you look at me.’ This conversation is peeling back my layers, opening my heart. I’m learning, but I’m unsure. I’m here stuck, and he’s strapped to the bed. How the hell could both of us keep each other company? Or maybe this wasn’t about company? My thoughts collide in my head.

  ‘I wish I could see you.’ He looks at me.

  I look back at him.

  ‘What do you look like?’

  ‘Really?’

  He closed his eyes. Sleepiness claiming him once more.

  He doesn’t answer me. He doesn’t hear me. With all my heart I want him to at least be able to hear me.

  Bertie is unlike anyone I’ve met before. He is getting to my core like no one else had before, and he’d barely said anything to me.

  And he can’t see me.

  Screaming wakes me.

  I jump from the floor, terrified. For a moment I don’t know where I am. Then with a sinking feeling, like a falling rock to the bottom of the sea to be lost in the depths forever, my awareness rights itself. Just in time for another scream to rip through the air and pierce my ears. My hands cover my ears, but it doesn’t make a difference to the sound. I guess I’m slowly adjusting to my new form.

  ‘What was that?’ I ask. It’s like the scream shivers through me. I don’t like the sensation. I’m beginning to feel naked without my skin and more vulnerable to the environment around me. An environment I can’t see. One I don’t know. One that’s full of monsters, or monsters within people screaming to get out. Human monsters like myself. The worst kind.

  Bertie doesn’t say anything. I don’t know if he can really hear me or not. I’m still talking like I would when I was living, and perhaps there’s another way I should be communicating with him.

  ‘Don’t you worry about Mad Jimmy,’ says Bertie. His words sound out of place in the room with background screams echoing softer now.

  A little comfort wraps around me. ‘Okay I won’t worry, but hey that’s easier said than done.’

  ‘Mad Jimmy has these turns. It will be over soon. They have to give him something. Or they’ll punch him out, I guess. Like they did to me.’

  ‘They shouldn’t hit you,’ I state flatly.

  ‘I shouldn’t have pushed back like I did. They just reacted. I know the rules here, I should’ve known better. I have to do what they tell me.’

  Another sharp scream echoes through the building, and it’s like the bricks and mortar shake from the sound.

  ‘He’ll get over this soon. Poor Mad Jimmy. Don’t know why he gets like this at night but he does. I wish he wouldn’t,’ Bertie continues.

  I realise he’s actually talking to himself. Because he’s as shit scared as I am. My hands fall to my side. I tiptoe to the door, not wanting to add to the sounds in this place that I don’t ever want to think of as my home. The little comfort I received from his words is gone now.

  ‘He had a bad fall you know. Used to be a jockey. Horse rolled over him. Never the same after that,’ Bertie continues to spill out the story in the darkness. ‘He was out cold for three days they say. Now he’s you know, a little daft, and a lot crazy.’

  The screaming becomes louder and deeper. Bertie goes silent. I look through the top peephole. A few gaslights have been lit, and orange light floods the corridor, pushing back the shadows of the night, except for Mad Jimmy. The shadows are stuck in his head I can tell from his screaming. The sounds coming from him are setting my nerves on edge. I half expect my monster Frank to answer his screams with his own, forcing them through my mouth.

  ‘It’s Mad Jimmy again,’ yells someone. I shiver. I reckon it’s the man who came to the door before. The one I never want to see again.

  ‘I need some help.’

  ‘Coming Smithy,’ another yells.

  ‘Get the restraints,’ yells Smithy. ‘He’s doing that fitting again.’

  ‘Right-O.’

  ‘Hurry the fuck up will you. And get the medicine. We need it as well tonight. He’s foamed himself in a right bloody mess.’

  Footsteps sound out in an erratic rhythm. Keys rattle. Hinges of a door squeak open.

  I can only hear what’s going on, even though I look intently through the peephole, moving to my left so I can hopefully get a glimpse of something. I mouth the name Smithy. I don’t like how it feels on my tongue, and I want to spit it out. I’ll remember his name. Have a feeling I might need to.

  There are a lot of scuffling noises. A couple of loud thumps send a sickening ripple of energy through me. Mad Jimmy’s screams turn into moans of pain. I decide it’s a good thing that they can’t see me. And that I’m a ghost. I can’t be restrained if I’m a ghost. Right? Though as I turn around and look at the room, I feel restrained. Bertie’s eyes are squeezed closed while he lays stiff strapped down on his bed. Not moving, not wanting to show that he’s alive, for he doesn’t want them to come in here.

  ‘They won’t come,’ I say. He doesn’t flinch from the sound of my voice. There’s no indication he can hear me at all. ‘We can rest now,’ I add.

  His face remains tight. Like he knows what’s coming.

  The muffled screams start up again. I got a little ahead of myself. This time the sound is different. More subdued. More tones of agony with a hint of torment, not like before which was sheer terror.

  Then someone else starts moaning.

  ‘Shut up! Otherwise, I’ll give you the same bloody treatment as Mad Jimmy,’ yells out Smithy. His words silence the noises. For a breath. Then they start up again.

  ‘Happens like this.’ I glance at Bertie, his hands are trembling. ‘Mad Jimmy has a knack of setting off the others. Apparently, he’s been quiet for a week, so guess it’s about time he had another episode.’

  I swallow hard, at least I go through the motions. I have to start thinking more like a ghost, but it’s not coming naturally to me. Either that or the screams are scaring me too much, along with this room I’m stuck in, and Smithy. At least I have a sort of comfort with Bertie, as long as I didn’t think of what it was like to pass my hands through his feet, and why he appears to be able to sense me, he can’t hear me.

  I should just dissipate like a puff of smoke and be lost in the air forever, I think bitterly. Better than this limbo I’ve fallen into.

  I always thought I was used to the landscape of darkness but here, in this building which embodies such gloom, I oddly feel out of place. This sensation doesn’t fit well with me. I’ve spent enough years living and breathing, and my action was to release me from all that shit, not dump me here and find myself feeling like I don’t belong.

  The screaming dies down, but I can still hear it. Along with the sounds of doors opening, keys rattling and the orderlies muttering their complaints of not being able to have an easy night.

  The sound muffles. I wish I didn’t have to hear the pain of others. From people who know what it’s like to be consumed by such darkness and to walk the horrors of the internal hell of their minds. Those like myself. There are the occasional soft moans like someone is being tortured. I want the noises to stop.

  Was this what it was like for my family when I had my moments?

  When the darkness took control of me?

  I’m nothing in comparison to these people. That’s how I feel now. A ghost who can’t be seen, who’s scared of the darkness she once thought of like a comforting blanket or a cup of warm soup.

  If I could vomit from the noises I would have, but I manage to gain control over these sensations. No point to them, on account of my form and all. I don’t need to be throwing up fake carrots or anything like that. Why are there always carrots? I knew from the few times I’d snuck into the cellar and nicked a bottle or two of wine when my parents were out, back in th
e early days when I used the alcohol to make me feel happy, but it never lasted long. The happiness. Then I would vomit, my body rejecting the alcohol I’d consumed and landing me in an achy pain of a hangover. I found it was better to accept the sadness, the hollowness that would eat away inside of me, and wake myself up with a cut or two.

  There’s a loud scream from another patient.

  I jump nearly a foot in the air, then fall down, as my legs buckle. I place my hands on the floor and brace myself. Another scream follows with terrifying banging. Whoever’s making that effort will kill themselves if not stopped soon. Was that how I sounded earlier when I thumped the door with my fists?

  I sit back on my backside and look at my hands. The grazes from hitting the wood are healing fast. I guess my gaseous form has some sort of memory and it’s changing back to its original form. I feel dizzy at the thought. I don’t want to think of myself like this. I don’t have the stomach for it. Not yet. Perhaps I will?

  ‘How do you put up with it?’ I ask. I see the chain connecting us.

  Bertie looks upwards unseeing at the dark ceiling. It’s painted an off cream colour like the walls. It’s bare. Nothing to inspire.

  I groan like I’m in pain myself. This is going to be a long night. I can only hope in the daytime when the sun’s light can engulf the darkness that things are quieter.

  I don’t sleep, but I don’t stay awake either. I don’t know exactly what I do, but I hear all the noises and each minute drags with the sound of souls begging to be released.

  I have to do something. I’ve never been a curious type of person. It was just never enhanced because of my preference for all things dark and gloomy. Or maybe it was the dark and gloomy that suppressed my curiosity. The questions are building up in my mind. There’s nothing else to think of. Well, there is, but I don’t want to think of my parents, or my sister, or of anything else from the life I hated so much.

  Steeling myself, I stand next to Bertie. The chain shortens when I’m close to him. He’s sleeping light and helped by the punch earlier. I’m envious of his escape into the dream world, though I suspect from the sorrowful lines on his face that he can still hear the screams and noises of disturbed people.