by David Wright
I reach the last door. It looks vaguely familiar, not an iron door like the others, more like a door in my house.
I reach out to touch it, but its handle burns the worst.
I pull my hand back, and look down to see it boiling.
I wake in the dark, body soaked in sweat, heart pounding as I look around, wondering first where I am, then once I realize I’m in my bedroom, how in the hell I managed to get here?
I look down, Meg is sleeping.
It’s 4:12 a.m.
I thought she was going to her sister’s for the night.
I reach to the nightstand and grab my cell phone, turn it on, and see that it’s five days later.
Another chill as I try to make sense of this.
The last thing I remember is being in the car and a knock at the window. No memory of who was knocking, though.
How can I be missing five entire days?
I remember the photos.
I climb carefully out of bed so as not to wake Meg. Or Gus, who is sleeping in his dog bed, which is now on the floor on Meg’s side. I make my way out into the hall, then up the stairs into my office.
I flick on the light and see the camera sitting on my desk in its usual spot. I pick it up and turn it on to scroll through the photos. Except the memory card is blank.
I turn on the computer, searching my photo folders, but don’t see anything uploaded within the past five days.
Did I delete them?
I check to see the most recently updated files on my computer, and see nothing save for the Scrivener file marked, Dark Family Book Three, updated earlier tonight.
I open it and am surprised to see that somehow I’ve written seven chapters in the past five days — seven chapters I have no memory of writing.
A gnawing stirs in my gut as I remember seeing the words I’d written in a fugue state before, Daddy, I’m not dead over and over. If I click on a chapter and see that, I’ll scream.
I hesitate, then click, and am again surprised to see actual story filling the pages.
Did I write this?
I read through, seeing that not only is this rough draft good, but I’d somehow figured out a few things I’d been stuck on, chief among them how one of the main characters, Raven, could come back from what had been a certain death in the end of the last book. Of course she wasn’t really dead — it was Lucina, working her dark magick to trick the family.
I have no memory at all of figuring this out.
I keep reading, waiting for something in the text to seem familiar, but none of it does. I wonder if Meg came up here and wrote this.
She wouldn’t do that, would she?
No, it doesn’t seem like her writing. For one, there are plenty of my usual Tomisms, words I typically overuse in rough drafts (wouldn’t of instead of wouldn’t have), words that Meg usually catches and culls. This is definitely my writing.
But how can I not remember anything from the past few days?
For the first time, I’m truly worried that this has gone beyond a minor problem. It might be something I should discuss with Dr. Merrill. But if I do that, if I tell anyone how bad it’s gotten, Meg will freak out. She’ll demand more tests we can’t possibly afford. And there’s no way in hell she’ll let me go anywhere without her, which of course means I can’t go out and shoot accident scenes.
I don’t know what to do.
I suppose I should see what happens in the morning, see if she says anything like I haven’t seemed myself the past few days.
I return to bed, thinking there’s no way I’m ever getting back to sleep.
**
I wake to the smell of blueberry muffins.
I turn and look at the clock on my nightstand: 8:11 a.m.
I get out of bed and head downstairs to find Meg sitting at the kitchen nook table, looking at Pinterest on her iPad.
“Good morning,” she says, meeting my eyes with a mischievous smile.
“Um, good morning,” I say, wondering why she’s smiling like that. “You made muffins.”
“Yes,” she says. “They’re still warm.”
She pushes a plate and a softened butter dish and knife toward me.
I smear some butter on the muffin and take a bite, inhaling the scent of fresh-baked goodness along the way. I wonder what the occasion is.
“Last night was good,” she says in a way that can only mean we had great sex. Great sex I don’t remember.
I wonder if it’s her fertile time, and that’s why she seems especially happy. It doesn’t seem like it’s been a month since I missed our last good baby-making window. But hell if I can remember anything, apparently.
“Yes,” I say, “almost as good as these muffins.”
“Smart ass,” she says, dipping her fingers in her glass of ice water and flicking drops at me.
I smile. It’s great to see her in a good mood. Funny, I manage to please my wife and write seven solid chapters of our book and can’t remember a single bit. I wonder if I was on some kind of autopilot, or if that me from the past five days also had no memory following the knock on the car window.
What if I wake again tomorrow with no memory of now?
I remember the months following rehab and feeling like my body was my enemy, refusing to cooperate as I attempted to walk and learned to talk again. I don’t remember the worst of it, but Meg had said when I first came out of the coma, I was in bad shape. The doctor was afraid I might never regain full consciousness.
But I was one of the lucky ones, and rebounded quickly.
From what I do recall, it was frustrating. I remember bits of Meg talking to me in the hospital bed, of her trying to get me to respond. I remember thinking I was talking back to her, but that she couldn’t understand me. I felt like I was trapped in someone else’s body, trying but unable to reach her.
This, not being able to trust my own memory, is even scarier.
I need to document this.
I decide that I’ll write a message to myself on the computer, just in case I wake up tomorrow or the next day with more missing memories. I’ll write in the journal each day. Perhaps that will help — assuming I remember to look.
And then I wonder: Have I already written myself a note?
The only places I checked for recent activity were my photo folders and my story folder. But it’s possible that I wrote something in my seldom-used journal app.
I want to get up and look, but Meg starts talking.
“How’s the writing?”
“I got seven chapters done,” I say, hoping I hadn’t already told her that yesterday morning.
“Great! I figured you were making progress, considering how quiet you were the past few days, and how you barely left the office … well, until last night, anyway.”
She smiles like a minx, and I wish I remember what we did. I can’t recall ever earning that kind of response, even on a great night.
A terrifying thought enters my head — split personality. I developed schizophrenia, and my alter ego isn’t just a great writer but also a great lover!
I wonder if it’s possible. Perhaps it’s one of those things that Dr. Merrill was saying could be behind the hallucinations. I want to ask him when I go back, but how do I bring it up without inviting myself for even more exams and medications?
I stuff the rest of the muffin in my mouth, trying to conjure the words for an exit.
“Well, I should get back to work,” I say, waiting to see her reaction.
“OK, just don’t forget about tonight.”
Shit. What’s tonight?
I smile, as if joking just in case tonight is something super important, “Remind me again?”
“You’re taking me to the grief meeting with you, remember? We talked about getting through this together.”
I hope my first emotion, sheer terror, doesn’t show through as I say, “Oh yeah, of course.”
Meg looks at me suspiciously, “Unless you don’t want me to go with you?”
&nb
sp; No, of course I don’t want you to go with me. I don’t want to go! I don’t want to see Sam or those damned things, whatever they were.
But I can’t tell her that. And considering how well things seem to be going between us this morning, I don’t want to risk ruining it. Whatever I did the past few days, I must’ve been on my best behavior.
“Of course we’ll go,” I say, “but I better get some work done first.”
“Do you want me to go over anything you’ve written yet?”
I’m not sure why she’d ask this, as I typically don’t hand her anything until I’m finished with my first or second draft. Had I promised to share earlier? Or is she just trying to ease the burden of writing this first draft under a deadline?
“No, not yet,” I say. “But thank you.”
I get up, take my plate to the sink, then come back and kiss her. “Off to work.”
“Love you.”
“I love you,” I say, eager to get upstairs and see what messages I may have left for myself.
**
I open the journal app and see that I did leave recent updates!
SATURDAY
“Meg and I had a huge fight after she came home earlier and found me passed out in the car, covered in vomit.
I can’t remember what happened. Last thing I remember is seeing the man on the motorcycle get hit. Everything’s blank after that.
That’s why I’m writing in here. To try and keep track of stuff.
I have trouble remembering too many things lately. From my writing, to things I did just a few days ago. For instance, the grief meeting. I know something happened there, but it’s a blur.
I need to go back.”
Weird.
I remember the grief meeting, but don’t remember writing this.
How is that possible?
I consider the schizoid thing again. Could I have developed a part of me who remembers some, but not all, things?
I keep reading.
“SUNDAY
Meg and I fought again.
I admitted that I needed help. I told her that I was having problems remembering stuff. She called the doctor, on the weekend no less, and told him, even though I didn’t want her to.
She also moved my appointment from Friday to tomorrow.
I’ve decided not to fight it.
Truth is, I don’t feel myself. I’m hyperemotional, crying every time I think of Kayla or pass by her bedroom. I thought it would be easier after a while. They say time heals all wounds, right?
Mine only deepen.
I need to channel my pain, put it to use.
I’m going to buckle down and work on the story, pouring these feelings into it.”
So I had an appointment I can’t even remember?
I read on, eager to find out what happened at the appointment. I hope he didn’t change my pain meds.
I open my desk and see two bottles, one of the old pills, and another bottle of the new ones.
OK, we’re good for now.
I read on.
“MONDAY
Dr. Lavender and Dr. Merrill came to the house together.
I didn’t know doctors made house calls, let alone together. It felt like some kind of intervention.
Meg made me fess up.
I told them about the accident, then waking up covered in vomit in the driveway.
They asked me about the man in black, if I’d seen him again.
I had no idea what they were talking about.
Meg reminded me that I said I’d seen a man in black while out taking pictures of crashes, and that when I went to show Officer Ruiz, he wasn’t in the photos. Apparently, I made a big deal about this, but can’t remember a thing.
Everyone looked at me, worried.
Meg was practically in tears asking what was wrong with me, if I might slip back into a coma.
Dr. Merrill says no, but there may be damage they’ve not yet picked up on.
Dr. Lavender went on this whole thing about how there’s so much we don’t understand about our own brains. That our minds are puzzle-solving machines, and that perhaps mine is taking bits of missing information and trying to put a puzzle together where there is none, creating this man in black because some part of me needs it to make sense of things.
He says that sometimes people with traumatic brain injuries have lingering issues that take years, if not a lifetime, to recover from. This could be that, or it could be as simple as adjusting my meds.
The shrink says he would like to see me twice a week starting next week. He can make house calls for one of the visits, but for the other, I'll need to go see him.
After they left, Meg seemed both relieved and scared. Relieved that I’m not going to slip back into a coma, but scared that something’s still wrong that we may not be able to get right.
After the “intervention,” I went back to the office to write.”
If only the doctors knew that the ME they were talking to is one I don’t remember being!
“TUESDAY MORNING
I saw her!
I saw Kayla.
I was writing late at night. It was 4:01 a.m., I remember looking at the clock and thinking I ought to get to bed. Then I looked out the window, out at the graveyard, and saw a girl standing there, looking up at my window.
I ran downstairs as fast as I could and raced over to the church, but by the time I got there, she was gone.
I know it was her, though.
No child would be standing out in a graveyard at this hour.
I want to tell Meg, but know I should keep it to myself.
For now.”
That is the last entry, dated the day before I remember waking up.
I wonder if I truly saw her. Or, if like Dr. Lavender said, it’s my mind creating fictions in an attempt to solve some sort of puzzle.
If so, what puzzle?
I’m trying to remember the missing months of my life leading up to the accident. Trying to remember the accident itself. Why wouldn’t my mind create backstories to fill that void? Maybe give me memories of a nice tropical vacation with my wife and daughter? Something useful. Not men in black, ghosts, and all this other nonsense.
Because you’ve become a hack horror writer, and this is what you get.
I laugh at my inner critic, wishing it were as simple as that. But this doesn’t feel like some puzzle I’m creating for myself. Or even a reaction to medication or a result of my brain injury. There’s something else going on. It feels real. As real as the desk I’m sitting at. The journal I’m staring at rather than writing the book I should be writing.
Something is happening.
And tonight, I plan to figure it out.
I’ll go to the grief meeting. And if I see ghosts, maybe Meg will, too.
Or she’ll have me committed.
* * * *
CHAPTER 11
We’re in the auditorium, sitting toward the back where I was before.
I’m wearing my black Yankees hat even though Meg thinks I look ridiculous, that it calls even more attention to myself. She said I look like I’m sneaking into a porno theater or something.
The Together Through Grief meeting starts the same as the last, with Marcy Harris kicking things off with an introduction.
As she’s talking, I look around, searching for signs of Sam, or anything else that should not be.
But everything seems normal, just like it feels.
I can’t explain it well, but I had this sensation during the last meeting, like something didn’t feel real. I don’t know if I sensed it while everything was happening, or not until later, when thinking about it, but there was this almost dreamlike quality, like if I touched any of the walls or people within it, they would melt away to something else.
I know I was at the meeting, of that I have no doubt. I know I spoke with Kathy.
But the stuff with Sam, and what happened after — that felt somehow outside of reality. Like a hallucination.
Being h
ere in this stiff chair, surrounded by people, sitting next to Meg, and hearing mourners as they shuffle into the room, taking seats closer to us, everything feels more real.
Marcy is followed by a man and woman talking about losing their son, an infant, in his sleep. As they’re talking, Meg’s hand finds mine in the darkness, and squeezes it.
I look at her, and she’s staring at the stage, transfixed, tears welling in her eyes.
I wonder if this meeting’s stated purpose, getting through grief, is as much for her as it is for me.
She lost a daughter, too.
And then I start to wonder if maybe I’ve been wrong all along. Here I thought she was holding things together so well, but perhaps she simply did a better job of pretending things were OK than I did. She never had time to grieve, to tend to her mental wounds, as she was suddenly expected to be strong enough to help me in my physical recovery. She had to be strong, for both of us.
I feel suddenly selfish and horrible to have been wallowing in my misery, out all night chasing ghosts and trying to remember, when what I should have been doing is focusing on Meg, trying to be the anchor she needs — that our family needs — to start anew.
I squeeze her hand tighter, so damned glad to have her in my life.
I feel tears welling in my own eyes.
I decide that I need to kick these pain pills.
I’ll go see the doctors and tell them everything — from the blackouts to the missing memories to the ghosts to seeing Kayla. Everything.
After three more people, Marcy asks, “Who would like to share next?”
Meg asks, “Did you go up?”
“What?” I whisper, “me?”
“Yeah, did you go up last time?”
“No,” I say, shaking my head. “I can’t.”
