Sceptic

by Lilliana Rose

  It’s the indignity. Their thoughts have imprinted on the leather, through their blood and sweat, through teeth marks, and I see the sort of people they were. The criminally insane.

  A man stands throwing an axe down. I pull back, as I see what the axe cuts. Something pushes me to stay. I’m to see this. I don’t want to. He’s old. Almost fragile but he lifts the axe with ease, driven by an insanity that I can feel with its cold, slipperiness. Even though this is a memory, I remind myself it isn’t real, but I know this scene has happened. It was real. And not that long ago.

  I close my eyes as the axe falls again. The poor sheep. I guess that’s what they did in this time. They didn’t have supermarkets to go and buy their food. They had to kill it if they wanted meat. Yet, it doesn’t feel like this is what this man is doing. I force myself to look.

  I scream, short and sharp.

  There’s someone near me, another person in the memory.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she screams and rushes the man, fighting the axe from him, her skirts flowing around her legs, touching the body on the ground. An older woman. All bloodied and broken, shards of skull and bits of brain lay scattered around while the young woman and old man fight. She falls to the ground, but he leaves her to return to the already dead woman. The scene darkens. Relief eases down over my shoulders like gentle summer rain.

  Then I hear his words. ‘You nagging bitch.’ And another thud.

  I might be a ghost, but right now I can taste the bile in my mouth. My stomach clenches with such intensity I double over.

  Another image forms.

  ‘No,’ I say weakly. The message still comes. The images flow, and I can’t stop them. I get more snatches. Then for some reason, my mind fixates on one.

  ‘What are you doing?’ a man asks. ‘Isn’t that Dave’s bag. What ya doing with it?’

  ‘He don’t need it no more,’ the man shifts uneasily. He has a dull look in his eyes, and an old scar over the top of his head that his hair isn’t covering. He hunches over the bar. I get a whiff of stale beer and piss.

  ‘I’ll buy you a drink.’

  ‘You don’t normally have money,’ says the man. ‘Jimmy, you’ve done something haven’t ya?’

  I hold my hand over my mouth. My teeth bite into my fingers. It’s Mad Jimmy. The man who was screaming last night. This is his story. I look closer into the scene as it plays again. I search for clues. I want to find out why.

  But then the scene changes, and it’s another man, firing a gun at his father-in-law, his wife sits stunned at the bare kitchen table. Again I look for why these men did what they did.

  I know darkness, but this isn’t the same as what I’m used to. Even I’m scared and repulsed.

  Could this be me?

  I shake my head.

  I don’t think so.

  I certainly don’t want to believe I’m like this. I’ve never planned anything like this, but then neither had they. I think some of that confusion must have stayed within me. I don’t know how to get rid of the images.

  As the images stream past, I search for why. There are no answers to why. They don’t even know, and their confusion seeps out from the images into me. I’ve tasted a mouthful of that type of confusion before, and I spit it out. This isn’t right for me, but I don’t know why. I spit again. No saliva comes out of my mouth. It’s the bewilderment of why these men would’ve killed like they did which sticks with me.

  I get a hint of why this was the case. For some reason, I see a stick. An ordinary thin stick with a bend in the middle, like a wobbly smile. The bark is peeling off in parts. It looks strong. It would be the ideal toy for the dog. Then there’s a sickening crack. The stick somehow breaks into two. Each of these men have some internal stick. It snaps, just like that. I look around for a reason. There has to be a reason. Maybe someone walked past, and I didn’t see it because I blinked. Maybe the scene was fast forwarded, and I missed the cause of the break. Either way, the stick is broken. In such a way a chill creeps through me. The motivation, the coldness of what drove these men to do what they did. The sheep, no his wife.

  I scream. Loud and hard, trying to push these images away. I’m not a stick. I didn’t snap. I knew what I was doing. I shiver. Does this make me worse? I don’t even know what to think anymore, except, I know without a doubt that I don’t belong here with these people.

  What I can’t work out is why Bertie is here. I believe he wouldn’t hurt anyone else. I’m sure the orderlies, the doctor or whoever made the decision to have him secured to the bed have made a mistake. Then I realise my chance. His imprint should be here somewhere in the horrors that are playing in my mind’s eye. I steel myself. Stand up straight, like that’s going to help, but if I’m going to walk where angels fear to tread, I need to do something to help make me feel confident.

  Bertie’s imprint should be close to the surface. Maybe I missed it before. I try and rewind to go back and start again, even though there are scenes I don’t ever want to witness again. I struggle to work out how. At least I’m motivated.

  I persist.

  I find the scene.

  Bertie’s laying on the bed, his nose bleeding.

  ‘There you go, Bertie, you’re fed and watered,’ said a new orderly.

  I snap my head towards the door. The scenes dissipates. No. I quickly shut my eyes and try and bring the memories back. I snatch at the leather. My fingers pass through it. The scenes are all fragmented now, Mad Jimmy has the axe instead of the bag, and the wife sits at the kitchen table with a bloody knife.

  Bertie moves towards the bed. His hand catches through me, and I gasp. The scenes are all lost. Instead, I sense a sweetness. A calm. I sway. Dizzy from an overload of horrific scenes, followed by something else which I don’t know how to process. Suddenly, I wish I was back home in my bed, with my family, with everything back the way it was before I came here. When the knives were always locked away, and there was nothing sharp for me to get my hands on. Except for great grandma’s letter opener.

  No, I can’t go back. It’s too late. I don’t belong there, but I don’t belong here either.

  Just as quickly as the dizziness took hold of me, it eases. I stop swaying and look straight into Bertie’s eyes. They are very deep eyes.

  He pauses. His eyes are wide. He felt it too. He looks at me though I know he can’t see me.

  He lifts his hand again to touch me.

  I step out of the way. I can’t endure his touch again. I see his face change. The curiosity is replaced with disappointment.

  ‘Come on, Bertie, get on the bed,’ says the new orderly.

  ‘Sure thing, Harry,’ says Bertie politely.

  Harry’s a mature man, a little overweight, and his legs are short. His hair is thinning and grey. He gently ties Bertie down with the leather straps in such a way I can tell he’s a nice man. The other guy is a little rough pulling the straps too tight.

  I fold my arms over my chest.

  ‘Bertie I wish you’d fight back,’ I say. I’ve decided that’s what I would do without a doubt. Fight for my rights. That thought ripples sharply through me. Fight. That doesn’t sound like me. It’s not, I remind myself. I’m fighting for someone else, not myself. It’s not the same, but it’s a change that’s happened in my short time here in this room with Bertie. And for the first time, I can’t help thinking I could very well be exactly where I’m meant to be.

  ‘Why don’t you leave me?’ asks Bertie.

  ‘You sick of me?’ Immediately I get defensive. I thought Bertie liked me. You know like a friend, perhaps a little more if we were in the same form.

  ‘Course not.’ He stretches his shoulders downwards. ‘You’re a ghost, right?’

  ‘Yes.’ Least that’s what I think. Every now and then a surge of doubt passes through me.

  ‘Well, can’t you pass through walls? Why not go on to other rooms?’

  ‘I’ve heard the sounds at night, I don’t want to visit the other…’ I’m not sure
what to call them. Patients? Prisoners? This is the place for the criminally insane. Which reminds me I want to find out why Bertie is here. I can feel his gentle soul. There’s a hint of torment, but nothing that should imprison him in this place. He’s not a murderer. He’s not like Smithy, or even like Ernest.

  Curiosity grows inside of me. What has he done to deserve to be here? He’s like me. If he tried to end his life that’s not a reason for him to be here. Maybe he was just difficult or something, like what I’ve been like when with my family, refusing to do what I’ve been told. Well, all right, it was a lot more than that what I did. But hey, I’m starting to feel ashamed of how I behaved. If Bertie did something similar, then perhaps his family didn’t support him. Plus, he’s over eighteen, and this is the late eighteen hundreds, so maybe that’s what they did back then. Then if when he was brought here, by who knows who, he fought back causing him to be labelled a troublemaker, and so he was strapped to the bed.

  I like to think Bertie fought back. I want him to fight for life. For freedom. Bloody hell, I sound like a bloody Scott or something going up against the English. I play with the idea of doing just that. Maybe I’m some sort of ghostly traveller, not quite like Scrooge where he visits past, present and future, I just travel through time visiting places from the past. That could be fun, but it wouldn’t be hell. Though then I remind myself I’m still stuck in this room, and it’s only been hours, and I’m not sure how much longer I can stay here. I might end up going crazy soon. Some people thought I was crazy before, but this would truly be an example of losing my mind. I don’t want that to happen. I only wanted to alleviate the darkness. Open up a crack inside of myself and let it out. It was never my blood that oozed out, it was the darkness.

  ‘You’re avoiding the question,’ says Bertie. ‘I can tell you are, even though you’re silent.’

  ‘What question?’ I lie. I shift uneasily. I’m close to his bed, but not close enough to touch him, even though I long to. That longing that desire has been building with each minute I’ve been in here.

  Fuck. That’s it. I’m going crazy already.

  Bloody hell. This is one hell of a fucked up nightmare.

  ‘Are you scared to leave this room?’

  ‘No.’ I don’t like this question. Not only is it different to what Bertie had originally asked me, it hits something painful inside of me. ‘I’m not scared of anything.’ My words are loaded. Even I know they are. I look away from him. Suddenly, I wish I could get out of this room. I don’t think it’s healthy that Bertie and I are spending so much time together. If I could, I would leave right now, but I can’t. And goddamn it, I reckon Bertie knows that.

  Fear has always been part of the darkness that fed the snake and my monster Frank in my mind. With Bertie suggesting I’m scared, fear bubbles up inside of me, like gas bubbles in the marshes in a horror movie. This would be the times when Frank’s voice was loudest in my mind, but he’s gone.

  I don’t miss Frank and how he would walk through my mind, leaving thumping footsteps which sounded long after he’d passed through. Bit like the Giants from Jack the Beanstalk. At least that’s how I imagined him walking through the twists and turns of the grey matter of my brain. His footprints waking up ideas for me to try on myself. The ideas would surface from the darkness, buoys of bubbles of ideas coming up from the unknown depts.

  One of the earlier times, I tried to wake myself up by scratching on my thigh. Frank gave me the starting point and the motivation to keep continuing. That, and also the ocean of darkness which built up inside of me and pressed on my insides, hurting me, begging to be released. I didn’t like the pressure building. The sensation inside of it hit me like little metal nails pressing on my insides wanting to get out. It made it hard to think. It didn’t make me feel alive, or dead. Which was bad. I wanted to feel one of those, death really if given a choice. I’m forgetting. I didn’t choose it. Not as such. It’s hard to explain. It was the path that rolled out in front of me thanks to the injury. I didn’t have a choice. Though I sometimes play ‘what if’ with myself and consider what I might have done if given a choice.

  I bore easily with that game. I don’t care for it anymore, but I do have a word that explains how I felt. I found it by accident when looking searching the internet.

  Mutterseelenallein. One of my favourite words. I found when sitting alone in my room, surfing information. I wasn’t even looking to connect with anyone or chat with someone on the other side of the world who was awake when I should be sleeping. I was alone. Mutterseelenallein means more than that. It’s as alone as you can get. I’ve experienced that. You’re so alone that you’re isolated and no one can reach you. They can’t even reach you mentally. I just needed to work a little more on isolating myself physically, and with the clothes I wore, and the silent treatment I gave people, I was pretty much on my way with that one. What I really needed was to know someone, or have some family member with a shack on an isolated stretch of beach. That would’ve been perfect for me. I could’ve been there releasing the darkness within me at my own pleasure.

  It is sort of how I’m feeling now. Mutterseelenallein. Sitting on the floor of a room that should only have one occupant inside of it. Though, I hardly count myself in this form. And Bertie, well, he’s been silent for ages. Every now and then I feel a pull from the chain between us and he tugs me away from the loneliness. I don’t know how he can have this effect on me. I’m not sure about this new change of perspective. I tell myself it is slight, a very small change of focus and nothing to worry about, things will be back to normal for me soon. I’ll find a way to the darkness again. Though I might have to go through the wall.

  ‘I can help you,’ suggests Bertie.

  The sun is still in the sky. From the shadows in the room, I guess it’s low in the west. I can feel the heat coming through the thick wall that it’s hitting, the wall opposite the door.

  We haven’t spoken for hours. Perhaps longer. I’m sulking. He knows it. We’re connected after all. Damn this chain. I don’t have the motivation to pull it out. Not that it worked during the night when I first tried, and I know I should be persistent, but I lack motivation. This is pretty normal for me. I’d have thought it would provide plenty of motivation. It’s the first time in my life I’ve been connected to anyone. I’m getting used to it instead of being repulsed. Doesn’t mean I’m not going to have a sulk about it.

  I’ll get over it. If I’m not sulking, I’m remembering things I would rather forget.

  Mutterseelenallein.

  Misanthropy.

  Looks like I got stuck on the ‘M’ in the dictionary. I don’t know when I realised my contempt for other people and for society. I suppose it was simply an extension of the idea of how much I disliked myself, and how disgusted I felt in that moment of release from the first cut. This is my level of what’s natural and normal. I just go with the flow. I did try and fight it. But Frank would walk around my mind all night then the lack of sleep made me weaker, so I would conform to the vibrations of my mindset by darkness.

  ‘I don’t see how.’ I realise my words admit my shortfallings. Fucking fucked up ghost I am. See I’m no better in this form than when I was breathing in my own timeline of life. Though, I wonder if this counts as part of my life or not. It’s a curious way to view my situation.

  ‘Hey, I don’t know anything about ghosts,’ says Bertie. ‘But I reckon together we could work out how you can get through the walls.’

  ‘But it’s best not to touch the walls.’ I remember Smithy’s words. That helps to put out any desire to go through the walls again. I’ve not tried since overhearing what Smithy said this morning.

  ‘I don’t think it’s going to affect you if you do,’ says Bertie. I detect a slight humour in his voice.

  ‘You don’t know that,’ I answer with defiance. ‘I could catch all sort of nasty infections.’ I fold my arms over my chest, not that he can see me, but it momentarily makes me feel better.

 
‘Even in your form?’

  I roll my eyes. He’s got me there. And he didn’t even have to think of how to argue with me.

  ‘I guess not.’

  ‘What was that? Did you answer me?’

  ‘You’re right,’ I huff the image back to him to let him know. It’s edged with me not wanting to admit that I’d been short-sighted. I don’t want to use the word wrong. That is a little too harsh.

  Bertie makes a soft noise, more acknowledging that I’d spoken rather than trying to rub my nose in him being right.

  ‘How old are you?’ I asked bluntly. I was using finding his age as a distraction. I know he’s over eighteen, but I don’t know his exact age.

  ‘I know what you’re doing,’ he answers patiently.

  ‘Humour me.’

  ‘Nineteen.’

  ‘I’m eighteen.’ I pause. His age is close to mine. That could be why are linked. ‘Do you think that’s why we are both in this room together?’

  ‘No.’ His answer is flat. So flat, it takes the air out of my idea that our age was a reason we were connected.

  ‘So why do you think we’re in this room together? There has to be a reason.’

  He takes a slow, deep breath. ‘I know what you’re doing?’

  ‘What?’ I try and play innocent.

  ‘Why are you scared of leaving this room and why don’t you want me to help you.’

  ‘I don’t need any help.’

  ‘Why stay here? I’m not good company.’

  ‘Me neither.’

  He shakes his head. ‘You’re my Honey Pot. I like having you here, but you don’t belong here.’

  ‘Of course, I don’t.’ Irritation pricks at the image I send through to him. I don’t want to think about how I can’t leave this room. I guess he’s figured that one out. Hence the questioning. ‘Neither do you.’

  ‘No. But then again, perhaps I do.’ He exhales heavily, the stale air that he’s been breathing in all day whistles slightly through his teeth, about the only sign of life in this room. Well, all right, he’s talking, but softly. Guess he doesn’t want anyone to think he’s talking to himself. That’s a different level of crazy. One I’ve not dipped into. One I might if my mind unravels further, which I suspect it will the longer I stay here in this room.