A shiver moves through me, causing every hair follicle to rise in awareness. My mind prowls into the dark corners where shadows hide the memories of my past.
The rasp of Garret’s fingers flexing before tightening on the arm of the chair he sits in opposite me causes a stir in my stomach.
His tall, dominating presence when he’s in doctor/patient mode quells any argument I’d usually throw his way when he wants me to open up about my past. I’m breathing heavily from thoughts of all that’s transpired since I was last here with him, in his office.
He glances at me creeping his gaze over me, seeing right through to the marrow of my bones.
“Tell me what you remember from that night, Evi,” he orders me. But I’m fighting the pull and shaking my head in response.
He uses my name with affection, his tone caressing the syllables, confusing me further.
The dynamics have shifted so much from patient/therapist that I don’t know what’s right and what’s wrong anymore.
“You need to do this. It’s time,” he pushes, offering me a reassuring nod of his head.
His almond shaped orbs like a cat’s prowl and probe, beckoning me to succumb.
But I don’t want to. Instead, I want to beg him not to make me remember, but I know he’s right.
It’s time.
The sleepwalking has become too dangerous and the information from other people just doesn’t add up.
The waves of memories haunting me don’t make sense.
He won’t let me avoid this any longer.
I don’t want to avoid this. I need to know.
I need to know who I really am.
Fear seats itself in the forefront of my mind.
What if you don’t like who you are?
“Remember. Tell me what happened,” he demands, his voice hardening with authority.
My hands ball into fists as my heart thunders like a battle drum inside the prison of my chest.
Thud… Thud… Thud.
I focus on the balls swinging and clashing on the small Newton’s Cradle that sits on the table beside me.
Closing my eyelids, I search the murky depths of my thoughts, wading in farther and farther.
Mirages flash before my senses. Disconnected, partial images, like swimming from dark water farther and farther toward the shoreline where the water clears and what lies beneath becomes unblemished, solid surface.
Color. Sound. Smell.
My insides seize and sorrow swells in my chest. Icy drops tap dance over my skin.
“Where are you, Evi?” Garret asks.
I’m there in the past, within the body of the old me, gasping for air in cracked, quivering breaths.
Small, broken.
I’m only a child, staring up at an endless black that spans before me.
“Tell me?” Garret’s voice anchors me.
The sky expands before my pupils, a dusting of stars battling to shine through the thickening darkness of the night.
I’m so cold.
Too cold.
My body heavy, damp.
The concrete beneath me offers no comfort.
“I’m lying on the ground. I’m outside.”
“Where outside?”
My observation flitters to the structure made up of discolored wood and glass. The terror, too horrifying to indulge the memory, battles to seat itself in my mind.
Strangers whispering, haunting my thoughts.
I know this place. I wish I didn’t.
“It’s my home. Our home. I’m in the yard of my old home,” I choke.
Tangled strands of my wet hair stick to my head, hardening like cement. I lift my hand and the small digits show I’m young, a child.
My hand drops with a heavy thud.
The night has turned colder than any before it, blanketing me in an icy chill.
“I’m dying,” I whisper.
I will be a frozen ghost if I don’t get inside.
My body is weakening with every shallow breath I take in.
“You’re okay. Breathe.”
My body spasms, causing pain in my solidifying joints. My brain is willing me to move inside to the warm, but my limbs don’t feel like my own and they refuse to obey my commands.
“I can hear something,” I mutter.
It’s faint but solid, so I cling to it.
“What do you hear, Evi?”
Hushed voices are sounding from an open window. My mouth peels open to call out to whoever it is, but it’s only wasted breath, too quiet to be heard by anyone but me.
“I can’t feel my legs. It’s so cold.”
There’s a throbbing in my stomach but it doesn’t compare to the expanding pit inside my chest.
It’s too much pain. I’m screaming internally, wishing it would all end.
“You’re okay. Keep going, Evi.”
I don’t want to. It hurts too much.
Hot tears pool and leak over my eyelashes, and I fight the memory so I don’t have to face the crushing ache.
The pain opens in my ribcage; a black pit of sorrow, empty and consuming.
Reality floods in, the smell of Garret’s aftershave and the warmth of his office.
I’m back in the room with Garret, not dying on the cold concrete floor. Lifting my hand, my perusal takes in the size of my palm. I didn’t die. I’m a woman now.
“What are you feeling? Why did you come back, Evi?”
I shake my head, fighting him and myself mentally so I don’t have to dissect this expanding ache.
“Don’t make me feel it,” I beg.
“Feel what? What is it you’re feeling?”
A gasp escapes my lips as the pain from the memory washes over me like black rain, saturating me in its oily residue. I’ll never get clean.
“What is it?”
“Grief.” I grip my chest to make sure there’s a heart still beating in there.
It’s crippling, desperate sorrow, and it’s drowning me from the inside out. I want to close myself off and fade into the heartache, never to resurface, but it’s too late.
It’s like I’m an intruder to the emotion. It’s not mine to own. It’s the little girl’s who I abandoned when I forgot who she was.
Who I was.
“I’m dying!” I cry out.
Garret moves from his chair to kneel in front of me. Grasping my hand in his, he squeezes hard, producing enough pain to show me this is real and not the memory I’m living in.
“You’re not dying. You didn’t die, Evi. You were saved. Go back. Remember.”
His words cocoon me in their safety. My lids flutter closed and I let the weight of my sorrow wrench me back there, the cold expanding over me like wet quicksand, swallowing me in the memory.
Footsteps slap against the wet surface around me and a boy’s face appears, blocking the darkness of the sky.
“Someone is here.”
“Who is it?”
My gaze is unfocused as I stare up at him. His features are distorted, like I’m looking through a misty window.
His voice as he breathes my name is familiar, though. I hold onto it, willing myself not to leave him.
“It’s a boy.”
“Here. Here!” His lips move, calling out into the night, desperation in his tone.
Other footfalls sound around me and a burst of sweet scent fills my nostrils.
“It’s a woman’s face now replacing the boy’s. She’s saying something.”
“What is she saying?”
“She’s alive! Get a paramedic out here now!” the woman shrieks.
Her warm hands caress the cold, tight skin of my cheek. Her calming voice holds affection I’m not used to.
“It’s okay, sweetheart. You’re going to be okay. Stay with me.”
“Eleanor,” I croak.
“Who’s Eleanor, Evi?”
“Who’s Eleanor, sweetie? Can you tell me where is she?”
Eleanor.
Other voices join hers, but my sight begins to cloud over and there’s a humming in my ears.
“She’s lost a lot of blood. We need to get her to the hospital now.”
“I’m dying. Everywhere is numb.”
“No, you’re not. Stay with them, Evi.”
“Did you find another girl inside? She’s mumbling a name. Eleanor?” the woman mutters to someone out of sight.
Eleanor.
“No. Three males inside. No survivors.”
My eyelids are too heavy; they’re falling, pushing me under.
Eleanor.
Then there’s nothing. The sky falls and swallows me into the obscurity.
Opening my eyes, dragging myself back from the memories, the name Eleanor is on my lips, but with it is a stabbing pain in my chest, so real I have to bring my hand there to rub the ache.
Shifting in his seat and clasping his hands together in his lap, Garret encourages me to go back.
“Stay with your memories, Evi. Take me to when you woke up,” Garret tells me.
But I’m not sure I want to. The ghost pain is a warning, surely?
Silence hangs in the air like a thickening fog, filling the space around us.
Taking off his glasses and inspecting the lens, his lips part and my name whispers from his mouth, almost a plea. “Evi.”
Ours gazes connect like magnets across the small space that separates us and he nods his head toward me to urge me on.
“Take us there, Evi. You’re so close.”
The waking up isn’t a memory I can’t recall. It’s the only thing I actually remember vividly.
Closing my eyelids, the phantom smell of surgical soap assaults my senses. Waking up in hospital, or at all, was the most terrifying thing to happen to me.
Pain burns in my tummy; it’s hot and sore. I want to cry out but my lips won’t move; they’re rough and stuck together like Velcro.
Forcing my eyelids to lift, they flutter when the light from overhead is too bright to let me focus.
My mind is numb, trying to grasp where I am. I come up empty.
My stomach drops and fear takes root. Panic flushes through me, as I remain trapped in this unaware state.
Where am I?
Who am I?
Pushing myself up from a lying position, I squint, taking in the room I’m in.
I’m in a bed with machines beeping around me and wires going into my hands.
Fighting with my thoughts for clues leaves me staring into a void. There’s nothing.
Movement from a chair to my right catches my attention and a nurse frowns as she approaches me.
“Evi. You’re awake.”
“Evi,” I repeat, testing the name on my lips.
“You’re in a hospital, but you’re going to be just fine.”
She’s talking to me or at me, but I don’t know who she is or who this Evi is she speaks of.
“Who’s Evi?”
There’s sadness in her gaze and a cautious tone to her speech.
“Can you tell me what you remember?”
My head swivels around the room scanning for another person she could be speaking to, but it’s just me here. Searching my thoughts for any information is like looking into a black abyss for a speck of dust.
There’s a badge on the table next to me with a big number nine on, but apart from that there’s nothing personal. No clues. Is that mine? Am I nine?
“Evi,” she urges.
Who is Evi?
“Can you tell me what you remember?
Swallowing down the lump forming in my throat, I answer her with the truth.
“I don’t remember anything.”
I refocus my gaze on Garret and shrug with mourning. He pulls a tissue from the box in front of him and reaches forward to dab the tears I didn’t know are falling over my lashes.
“I’m going to need you to really relax your mind now, Evi. Concentrate okay?”
“Okay.”
“Go back to when you were on the ground and called out the name Eleanor. That’s the same name you call out when you’re sleepwalking. I want you to focus on the voices around you. Try to stay with them. Listen to them.
Close your eyes and go back.”
Thud… Thud… Thud.
I do as he asks and close him out letting the dark night consume me.
“It’s okay, sweetheart. You’re going to be okay. Stay with me.”
“Eleanor.”
“Who’s Eleanor, sweetie? Can you tell me where is she?”
Eleanor.
Voices swirl around me
“She’s lost a lot of blood. We need to get her to the hospital now.”
“Did you find another girl inside? She’s mumbling a name. Eleanor?”
Eleanor.
“No. Three males inside. No survivors.”
“I can’t keep my eyelids open.”
“Stay with them, Evi.” Garret’s voice penetrates my thoughts.
Eleanor.
Eleanor.
“She’s her sister.” The boy’s familiar voice murmurs so softly it’s like the whisper of snow hitting the ground.
Thud… Thud… Thud.
What? No. I don’t have a sister.
Wait. Eleanor.
“No.”
My body jolts, as if I’ve been struck by a thousand volts.
Memory after memory crashes into me, almost knocking me to the floor.
“Eleanor!” I cry out.
“Who is that, Evi?” Garret asks, his brow wrinkled.
“She was my sister, and the cause of everything.”