It dawned on me that sometimes, dreams and nightmares spill into our perception of the world and nothing is ever truly real - more than often it’s a tragic version of all that could have been.
The drive, the darkness, the dawn, the city, the parking, the entrance, the ambulances, the corridors, the nurses, the balloons, the announcements on the PA, the visitors, the quiet hours, the wheelchairs, the windows, the doors, my son, the beeping machines, the quiet machines, the “doctors did everything they could”, the “are you ready to go home, baby?”, the scrubs, the gloves, the smell, this hell again.
The nurse said he was brought in by a friend, sometime around midnight.
“Tall and blonde?”
“Yes.”
So John.
They don’t know what triggered it, they’re running tests to rule out meningitis and brain damage. Deja-vu with a twist of surrender. There were no other questions to be asked. We couldn’t see him. Until the results came back, he would have to remain in quarantine.
“You can go home, there’s nothing you can do for the moment. Get some rest,” told us the nurse with good intentions.
We went to the chapel, less for the blessings and more for the quiet. We sat on a bench, leaning against each other. Christ was suffering before us while Mary had let go of her fear and accepted the suffering. Either she was supposed to empathize with us or the other way around, it made no difference to me or my husband. We’d been hollowed.
I dozed off my head against my husband’s shoulder and woke up to his voice. I had no idea for how long I’ve been sleeping, but John was here, whispering to Pete.
“The nurse said you’d be here.”
“Sit down, sit down.”
“I am very sorry about all this,” he said.
“Yeah, so are we,” replied my husband.
“What are you doing here, John? Shouldn’t you be out looking for a job or something,” I snapped at him.
“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to cause any harm. I just thought you would like to know what happened.”
He paused.
“Well, go on,” I said. “What happened?”
“Well, I don’t really know. I went to his apartment late at night, somewhere around midnight. I wanted to apologize. You see, I was fired and took it up on him back at the office. I felt so bad that I couldn’t sleep. I called him, but his phone was off, which I found very strange, so I decided to go and check if he was OK. I knocked, but there was no answer, even though a light was on and his car was parked outside. I tried the door. It was unlocked so I went in. He was unconscious on the kitchen floor and I brought him to the hospital.”
“Thank you, John,” said Pete. “Now, please excuse us,” he added, hinting at John to leave.
“Sure, sure. I’ll leave this bag here - pillows, pajamas, towel, you know…”
“Fine,” I said, my eyes staring at the drops of blood frozen on the face of the Saviour.
“And here’s the key to Mark’s apartment,” he said, and left without saying good bye.
We gave the bag to a nurse who had access to his room and left the hospital. I called Carmen.
“I was just about to dial your number,” she said. “I feel something’s gone wrong. Where are you?”
“We’re in Boston. Mark’s in the hospital; he’s in a coma. I feel like this is just a nightmare I need to wake up from.”
“Keep your faith. But you know what this means, right?” asked Carmen, with a little more cheer than I was willing to take. “It means that the ritual worked. The mirror bounced back the spell, so the caster retaliated with a stronger one.”
“I’m sick of it! All of it! Mark is a good boy, he’s never hurt anyone, never put himself first, never held a grudge, never cheated, he always takes responsibility for his mistakes, and he forgives and gives not only second but third chances, too. So why would anyone try to harm him? I just don’t understand any of it, Carmen!”
For the next two weeks, I cried every day. The mornings were the worst - the shock of waking up to uncertainty and pain was unbearable. There was no point in staying in the city; we came back to our seemingly eerie Cape Cod life. That’s what everyone thinks - that people who live in beautiful places have no worries but the breeze and any problem can be fixed with a lobster dinner.
Chapter 15
I went to work, came back home, ate whatever my husband would give me and keep my phone charged at all times. Not that it rang very often, and when it did, someone on the other line was sure to tell me that everything is going to be fine. Yeah, sure…
I had given up, but the people around me were still going strong. Pete was careful to bring me lunch and water every day and didn’t leave until there was nothing left on my plate. John was visiting Mark every two days to check up on him. As for Carmen, she called me one day to tell me that she got in touch with a shaman from Saskatchewan, Canada and they would attempt to both go in the spirit world, find Mark and wake him up.
“I just need your approval for this,” she added. “And your help, too.”
I agreed, even though, I must admit, my faith in it working was far from strong.
I went alone to her house, sometime after dark. We sat down on the floor with our knees bent.
“I will meet with the shaman and we will go as one to find your son and bring him back. You have to stay right here and root yourself to the ground - I might need some help coming back, so if you see anything bad happening to me, you have to do everything you can to snap me out of it. But whatever you do, don’t get up and don’t lift me.”
“I’m afraid,” I said. I had a feeling I was going to lose her, too.
“Don’t be. Nothing bad will happen to you. You’re just here to support me.”
She guided me through my first step of meditation, focusing on my breath and posture, all the while feeling the weight of my body pushing against the floor. As I started visualizing the roots coming out of my legs, Carmen’s breath grew heavier. Her eyes begun to move under her eyelids and she lifted her face towards the ceiling. Her breathing turned to panting and then she froze long enough for me to take three deep breaths. She slowly turned her head towards me and opened her mouth wide. Then she opened her eyes, but the entire orb was covered in a gray shady smudge. The grotesque grimace lingered for a while, and a deep masculine voice came out of her immobile throat.
YOUR SON HAS AWAKEN it said and Carmen’s body fell on the floor. I reached her arm and pulled her towards me without getting up like she said. It took some serious amount of pinching and slapping, but she was back. Her eyes, back to their cerulean color, were smiling at me:
“We got ‘im!”
I woke up to my son calling me.
“Hi, mom! How are you? How’s dad? Oh, I’m so sorry you have to go through this because of me!”
“What? This? Come on, it just spices up our lives, are you kidding? Besides, I’m only dreaming right now. It’s when I wake up that’s worth being sorry for,” I said, getting quite comfortable with the current situation.
“No, mom! You’re not dreaming! It’s me, Mark!”
I giggled.
“Is dad there? Put him on the phone, please” he said.
When Pete grabbed the phone, it dawned on me that this might actually be true.
“Put him on the speaker,” I said.
“Hold on, champ! You’re mother just woke up,” he smiled. “I’ll put you on the speaker.”
“Good morning, mom! You can come visit if you want. I promise I’ll be a little chattier this time.”
Chapter 16
Before leaving for Boston yet again, we decided to surprise him. Since we were supposed to be in Aruba, Pete put on a Hawaiian shirt and we stopped at a novelty store to get hula skirts and flower necklaces for all of us. The hospital staff was smiling as we trotted down the aisles like a Caribbean welcoming committee.
Mark was up on his feet, looking out the window.
“Aloha!” cheered Pete, startling hi
m a bit.
“Haha! You guys…” Mark came running towards us and gave us a strong hug.
After the excitement wore off, he told us about what he remembered, which wasn’t much. He saw the mirror getting mucky and the longer he stared at it, the darker it became. He felt drawn to it but resisted the urge of touching it. What followed were a series of dreams, some good, some bad, some plainly weird and some wildly vivid, like the one that woke him up - a green giant creature that unburied him, put him on its back, climbed a steep slippery wall and laid him down on a grassy field.
“Then I woke up here. I panicked, of course. Two nurses came rushing in and I could hear the monitor going berserk. They gave me a sedative to calm me down and to let me know that I’d been in a coma for the past two weeks. I’m happy to be back, though!”
“Listen, why don’t you go get a shower, I’ll have a nurse change these sheets and the three of us can go to the cafeteria and grab some lunch,” I said, hearing my husband’s stomach grumbling.
“Alright. Just give me five minutes,” he said and entered the small bathroom.
A nurse came with clean sheets and I helped her change the old ones. When I pulled the pillow out of its case, I felt something sting my finger, like a splinter. At first, I thought it was a feather - after all, this was Mark’s pillow, the one John brought him from his apartment, and my son always chose goose feathers over polyester. But on a closer look, I noticed that the stitching was botched on one side like someone opened it and closed it back up. I loosened the stitching and found a bundle of black feathers tied together in red tape. The feathers had been burnt on one end.
“What’s that?”, asked Mark coming out of the shower. “Not some more voodoo stuff from Carmen I hope.”
“This isn’t from Carmen. It’s from your pillow.”
“Well, I’m too tired to deal with this. Just throw it away, will you?”
“No. I’m taking it to the Cape to get this checked out.”
“Fine, I really don’t care anymore. I’m fine now, can’t we just get on with our lives?”
“No, not until we put an end to all this madness. Now tell me, did anyone visit you? Could Jane have done this?”
“Mom, please, I haven’t seen her in months. Can you please stop talking about her?”
“Who, then?”
“Sorry, I couldn’t pay too much attention with me being in a coma and all...”
Silence fell on the room, the silence of a million thoughts ramming into each other, and from it, only one sound echoed: “John”.
End of Part I
Book 2 will be released by July 2016.
Table of Contents
Copyrights © 2016 by Brent Schneider
This novel is dedicated to my wife and our cute baby boy Trent.
We would love to hear your feedback. Kindly leave an honest review after reading this book, especiall...
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Mystery: Black Feathers: A Secret Hope ( Book 1 of Series) Page 5
