by L J McIntyre
Her smile falls away.
I ask, “How do you—”
Just then the door flings open and ploughs against my shoulder, almost knocks me off my feet.
Chapter Three: Three Years Earlier
Jack Coulson: Session One
I was the absolute picture of lunacy, so why the fuck wouldn’t he let me in? I sat on the sofa opposite him, leaning as far forward as I could, my elbows digging into my knees.
“Just send me to the madhouse. I can’t handle it out there anymore,” I pleaded with Dr Randel, the all-powerful gatekeeper. My hands rubbed so furiously together that my palms burned. My left foot tapped—tap, tap, tap—rocking my whole body.
“Jack,” he removed his glasses, wiped them with the sleeve of his grey jumper. “Things don’t work that way, I’m afraid. This is our first session. I need to assess you before I can make a recommendation.” He put his glasses back on and ran his hand through his neatly parted grey and brown hair.
“Assess me? Look at me for Christ’s sake.” I wiped my hands on my pants, leaned back and started chewing at my thumbnail.
The tightly-stretched brown leather of his chair squeaked as he crossed his legs, fixed his glasses and scribbled something down on his notepad. He tilted his head to one side, an I’m listening pose, and said. “You’re in pain. I can see that.”
“I’m not the one in pain. The other guy is.”
“Let’s talk about that.”
“Let’s not.”
He wrote something again in that bloody notepad and scratched his bristly grey moustache.
“How many units of alcohol do you drink each week at the minute?” he asked.
“What does that matter?”
He observed me with brown judging eyes.
“Fine,” I said, “a glass or two of wine at night.”
He kept staring, his thick grey eyebrows pulled inward.
“Okay, Jesus, maybe three or four a night.”
He scribbled something down, looked up at me. “That’s a lot, Jack. Maybe cut back on the wine for a while. I know it helps to alleviate the anxiety but in the long run, it’ll only slow down your progress.”
Anxiety. What the hell did he know about anxiety? Some textbook bullshit. At twenty five years old, I was officially the fucking expert in anxiety. He probably came straight out of university with a nice little PhD in psychiatry, walked into a golden job—life was great for Dr Randel.
I looked to his desk across the room at a photo of a younger Dr Randel with his arm around a blonde woman. In front of them were two young girls; their daughters, clearly. The younger looked like her mum, small and blonde, the eldest her dad, tall and dark. They were all smiling while at some amusement park as if the world was one big happy fucking place.
“Can I be frank?” He put the pen and notepad down on the low coffee table in between us.
I shrugged.
He crossed his legs, clasped his hands together and sat upright, peered at me over his brown-framed glasses. “If you want to be sectioned then you need to start talking, tell me what’s going on inside your mind. And if you don’t want to be open with me, then at least start feeding me some bullshit. Who knows, I might even believe it.”
“Listen,” I scratched my eyebrow and exhaled. “I’m thinking about killing myself.”
He sat forward. “Really?”
“No.”
“Then why say it?”
“I don’t know. But people look at me differently in the street now.”
“People you don’t know?”
“I might hurt someone else.”
“Have you had violent thoughts, urges, outbursts since last week?”
“No.”
“Work with me here. I want to help you.”
“Do you know how to edit DNA?”
“Excuse me?”
I stood up, walked to his desk, turned around and faced him. My palms were like wet cloths. I sat against his desk, folded my arms, looked down at the beige carpet and said, “That’s the only way you’ll fix me because the shit that’s in here, this fucking monster in me, it’s all inherited. All I want is to be locked up in some psychiatric ward, I don’t care which one, and for someone to do the thinking for me because every minute of every fucking day I feel like fingernails are scratching down a chalkboard and it’s driving me insane.”
“Tell me about the fingernails. What do you mean?” He bent forward to pick up the pad. He caught me watching him, put his hand back on his lap and sank back in the chair. He nodded. The pad stayed on the coffee table.
“That’s what the anxiety is: fingernails, constant noise that never fades away.”
“Never?”
I hesitated. My finger started tapping on the desk, tap, tap, tap.
“What makes the anxiety go away, Jack?”
Tap, tap, tap.
“Sport?”
Tap, tap, tap.
“Some creative activity?”
I hesitated.
“Okay, so you’re a creative type. Wonderful. Tell me about that. What do you create?”
Tap, tap, tap.
“Do you paint?”
Tap, tap, tap.
“Sketch?”
Tap, tap, tap.
He fixed his glasses. “Write?”
I hesitated.
“A writer.”
“I don’t want to talk about that.”
I looked down at his desk at another photo. He was older in this one, but a good ten years younger than now. His wife had hardly aged. Their eldest daughter looked about thirteen, her brown hair down to her waist, and she managed that half smile embarrassed teenagers adopt naturally. The perfect family. Perfect life.
“Jack,” Dr Randel adopted a firmer tone. “Time’s running out. Give me something to work with.”
I walked over to the window and watched a man pushing his little boy on a swing in the park across the street. “He just checks in,” I say.
“Who does?”
“The red-faced monster.”
“And what happens when the red-faced monster checks in?”
“I check out.”
“And then what?”
“You’ve read the police report.”
“I’d prefer to hear your personal account.”
I turned away from the window and faced him.
“Fucking chaos. That’s what happens.”
Chapter Four
The door is bundled open by a girl, maybe twenty three, twenty four years old, carrying her weight in a wet backpack. I’ve seen a lot of backpackers and this girl belongs in that crowd: dishevelled, creased clothes too baggy. Only she’s slightly more goth looking, pale, her blonde hair sopping wet. She flies straight past me without even a sorry for my troubles and throws the backpack down, shakes the rain off and walks to robot Maggie in reception.
I keep the door open as she asks, “You got any rooms available?”
I look down at my camera bag. Jack, you’re first prize idiot. On the strap is a plastic tag, inside of which is a white piece of paper with my full name and phone number written in ballpoint pen. Clearly, Maggie saw my name when she looked down at my bag.
I leave the reception and get the rest of my bags from Betsy. My room is on the first floor, at the very end of the concrete balcony. Out front is a vending machine that used to be red but it’s more of a salmon pink now. The packaging of the goods it’s holding—chocolate bars and sweets—is sun bleached.
The room is exactly what $40 a night gets you. It’s a typical hasn’t-been-decorated-since-the-seventies set-up; a few generic pictures in frames on plain cream walls that may have been white once. Everything smells of mould and long-since-vacuumed cigarette ash. The carpet is a deep red with identical green leaves every few centimetres that make my head spin if I look down for too long. The bathroom is yellow. Just yellow. No other colours at all. Thick metal bars sit across the small window.
I sit on the bed and quickly pull up Facebook on my phon
e, get a dose of that social media fix. I admit it. I’m a serial phone checker. Online is where the party’s at nowadays, so they say, and I missed too many parties in high school. I won’t miss this one. Not while I’ve got Wi-Fi.
Fifty seven notifications. I don’t have time to check through them all so I scroll down my Facebook wall. The first post I see from a ‘Friend’ is a night photo from the Atacama desert in Chile. The Milky Way arches magnificently across the wide sky, and that exact scene, each and every twinkling star, is reflected crisply in the salt flat below as if the floor were covered in a gigantic mirror. I lean in closer, inspect the image carefully, lean back and shake my head. It’s pretty much a carbon copy of every image I’ve seen from that location. There are scores of photographers on social media all with the same photos, the same compositions, nothing new. There aren’t many willing to brave a dump like Nesgrove just for a unique photo, for something different among the droves of sameness on social media.
Holy Balls…32,941 Likes that Atacama photo got. Anyone can go viral nowadays, apparently. Next thing you know it’ll be the backdrop for Apple’s new operating system, or plastered across every Panasonic T.V. in showrooms around the world.
I put my phone back in my pocket, find my rain jacket and jog back down to Betsy. The man in the pinstripe suit is still standing outside the motel drenched in rain. I watch him wave at me through the rear-view mirror as I drive out of town.
The gravel road has a few puddles in places now, and just as I hit the accelerator on the smoother part of the road, I hear a loud pop. I’m startled and the car twitches from side to side but I grip the steering wheel and win control again.
I scan along the bushes and trees around me to see what the hell is going on. A rabbit, a great big one, sprints out of the grass and runs in front of the car, almost racing ahead of the car, and I try to brake, but I don’t slam my brakes because everyone tells you not to in these situations, and it’s like slow motion until I hear a loud thud from below. I can’t bring myself to look in the rear-view mirror at the poor thing.
“You bloody idiot,” I shout out loud at the rabbit but really I’m annoyed at myself for not breaking harder.
I turn off the road and carry on down the narrowest road I’ve ever taken a car. Feels like squeezing into a shoe one size too small. Tree branches claw along the side of Betsy, probably scraping off the little blue paint that remains.
The road ends and at this point it’s much wider so I can turn the car around when it’s time to leave. Just a single trail cuts through the dense greenery. I follow it on foot for ten minutes, all the while the stony ground is rising a little bit. When the trail cuts off, a beautiful view of a lovely round lake unveils itself like a mystery prize on a TV quiz show, just without the ooohs and aaahs from the audience. It’s not a huge body of water but not exactly small either. Gorgeous trees of green and peppered autumn colours skirt around the entire lake, and sitting proudly above everything is that snow-capped mountain range. It’ll be perfect in the morning awash with golden sunlight.
I found this place a few months ago when researching locations to photograph in New Zealand. I’d already planned to visit the big hitters; Milford Sound, Motukiekie beach, Wanaka, but I stumbled across Lake Fisher on Google Maps by accident. I couldn’t find a single well-taken image online for this lake, just a cockeyed photo of what looked like a local, a smile like piano keys, holding a large fish he’d just caught. But even in that crappy shot, I could see how stunning scenery was. It was just waiting for someone who knew how to handle a camera to come along.
I walk down a rocky trail to the water’s edge and when I get there I take a few test shots with my phone, just to see which compositions might work best. I pull up an app which tells me exactly where the sun will rise tomorrow and its trajectory after that; all of this will make me better prepared in the morning when conditions will be darker and my mind fuzzier from sleep.
I survey the landscape and don’t mind that it’s raining still. Nature’s the only thing that really soothes me, where I feel almost relaxed. That’s one of the reasons I love photographing landscapes. The air tastes green, the atmosphere damp, and droplets of rain tap the lake surface. Cold rain has managed to drip down my neck and back, and when my hairs stand up on end I get a bout of the shivers.
My mind picks out something across the lake that shouldn’t be there. The man outside the motel, the one in the pinstripe suit and black fedora, is standing at the water’s edge watching me. He’s too far away for me to make out his expression. He raises his arm at me again. What the hell is he doing there? And how did he get there so quickly?
Then I hear it. Without warning and from everywhere a loud crack splits the air and my body and mind scream fear. I instinctively drop down into a squat and look around, eyes clawed open. Birds of all colours and sizes that were hidden within the trees now scatter into the sky as the gunshot echoes around.
What on God’s Earth was that? Hunters. Hopefully it’s hunters. I forgot to research hunting activity in the area. Did that once before in France and found myself cowering just as I am now. Must be hunting season here.
I don’t know hunting etiquette, or what to say in these situations, but I stash away the fear and cone my hands around my mouth and shout, “Member of the public here. Please be careful.” My voice echoes back and forth and it feels uncomfortable. No reply comes back.
I stay low, half crouched, but manage to move quickly away from the lake and back into the trees, where I straighten up, stride fast, and try to make as much noise as possible. I cough, stomp on the ground, kick branches, do anything to let any potential hunters know I’m here.
Along the trail I hear footsteps come from somewhere within the trees. Leaves and branches brush rhythmically against something that’s moving closer to me.
“Someone here,” I shout.
The leaves and branches stop rustling.
I pause but I’m not sure what for. Maybe they’re waiting for me to get the hell out of their territory.
I pick up my pace, check over my shoulder every few seconds, and eventually break into a run the last dozen metres of the forest trail to Betsy, where I bundle myself into the driver’s seat. Looking through the windscreen at the trees and foliage, it’s all still, frozen, no one there.
I join the road to town, and my eyes dart back to the rear-view mirror every few seconds. On the tarmac in front of me, the sight of the bloody rabbit carcass I hit earlier and its bits and pieces spread across two lanes, draws me away from what’s happening behind, and a pang of guilt for the poor little thing weighs down on me.
Now I’m in the car, my heart rate is slower, and I’m feeling less afraid. The golden joy of a bottle of whisky is very appealing right now, because, quite frankly, I’m not feeling great about this place, and alcohol might cheer me up, or at least drown out the discomfort. Hopefully the store sells booze. Hopefully I just need to stay one night.
I pull up in the motel car park and post one of the test shots of Lake Fisher across social media. With the photo, I write, “Looking forward to shooting this lovely spot at sunrise tomorrow.”
I leap out of the car and make a beeline through the rain for the convenience store. Outside the store, I glance over the many posters, large and small, that decorate the window. “Brush Your Teeth Twice A Day to Keep The Dentist Away,” one of them says. “Drugs Kill,” says another. There’s a section of the window with the words “Proudly Nesgrove” written in black pen. Underneath are ancient-looking newspaper articles that seem to celebrate the town. One headline says, “Nesgrove man catches mammoth trout.” Another one reads, “Lecturer’s Play Delights Auckland Critics.”
The door chimes when I open it. Inside, the place smells of mould and damp wood, and most items are stacked higgledy-piggledy on the floor or in no particular order on old bending shelves. I put a few pots of instant noodles in my basket, grab a bottle of cheap whisky and some cola to wash it down with, and search for fruit bu
t can’t find any.
At the cashier’s desk a man of about sixty in a frayed blue cardigan is watching me with a smile. I’ve been in a world of my own since I entered the shop, the hunters still on my mind, so I’ve paid him no attention. Something tells me he’s been staring and smiling the entire time.
“Welcome to the wops,” he says when I put my basket on the counter.
“What’s that?”
“Nesgrove, middle of nowhere, welcome.” When he finishes a sentence he rocks forward and up on his toes for some reason, kind of like he’s proud of himself. He’s short and slim, bald, looks like a friendly neighbour that would take your bins out for you while you’re out of town.
He smiles a wider smile and raises his eyebrows, almost like we’re sharing an in-joke. He nods his head forward, indicating for me to turn around. I get that feeling in my gut or whatever it is that tells me “Don’t trust this fella”, and I have no intention of turning around. Ridiculous, of course, because whether I look back or not, it doesn’t stop the thing from being behind me, but this situation is so odd that I don’t know what to do, and anxiety is the enemy of logic.
Now we’re in some sort of eerie stare-off, me and the cashier, and he’s still smiling and slowly raising his brows up and down, and I’m doing that awkward smile where I purse my lips together and keep my eyebrows raised. And all the while I’m thinking, “Jack, chill out. Now isn’t the time for one of your paranoia episodes.”
“Look what I got you,” he says and nods again.
And the paranoia really jumps up a notch at that point. What the hell could he have gotten specifically for me?
“Top shelf to the left,” he says nodding some more.
I turn around and see three fridges and I let out a little sigh of relief. They’re sparsely filled with the essentials, cans of pop, milk, processed meat. Then I look at the top shelf in the left-hand fridge. It’s empty apart from one single four-pack of Budweisers.
