JOSH

 

On returning from Crab Cove, I went off to my room and, typically, lay on my bed. I wasn’t tired, though. The exact opposite in fact. I couldn’t keep still and kept fidgeting, springing up every so often and pacing the room, before throwing myself back down onto the mattress. It was like the door to the dungeon I’d been trapped in for many years had suddenly opened and flooded the cell with soothing sunlight that washed over me. Such an energy emerged within my cells and I felt them vibrating together in febrile excitement. It was very similar to the feeling I had for Heather. But there was more to this one. With age the feeling had become more refined, more mature. It wasn’t just a need to be by Sarah’s side; it was a need to be a part of her. It was a need to hand myself over to her, even though I didn’t really know what that entailed or even meant. It was an inner desire to live vicariously through her; the strongest desire a person can have toward another, because it is the only one that dismisses the self in favor of that other.

While I restlessly lay there, my phone went off and I picked it up with eagerness. But my eagerness was quelled a little when I saw that it was Holman, not Sarah.

“Hey, Holman,” I answered.

“How are you, kiddo?” he asked.

“Kiddo!?” I exclaimed incredulously. “You do remember I’m twenty-five, don’t you, or has senility finally caught up with your ancient old ass?”

“Ha! Well, you still act like a kid, that’s for sure. Anyway, I’m only calling to tell you that I’ll be by on Wednesday to pick you up. Sounds like you’re all done there. Your shrink seems to think that you’re actually gonna make it this time.”

“They tell us to take every step as it comes,” I remarked. “But I do feel good.”

“No bullshit?” he suddenly asked.

“No, really. I feel much better. Plus I’ve met someone.”

“At rehab? Because you’ve met girls at rehab before and it never lasted more than a few weeks.”

“She’s not from rehab. She’s the girl we pulled out of the car.”

“The one with the kids!?” he exclaimed.

“No! The girl in the front. The one whose name you got for me; Sarah. She came to see me after I got to the Peaks and we’ve been getting to know each other ever since. She’s visited me in here a few times.”

“What makes this any different from all the others?”

“I really want to be with this one,” was my sincere answer. “I feel some kind of indescribable pull between us, as though a piece of elastic were joining us, constantly dragging us back to one another.”

“I heard you talk about a broad like this before. Heather. And we know how that turned out.”

Once again her name. First Sarah and now Holman. She was haunting me through other people it seemed, and my mind clouded over for a second or two before I could speak, her cold, dead face staring at me from the shadows of my head.

“Sarah isn’t Heather,” I stated in a low voice. “Heather wasn’t well. I was sucked into her madness. But Sarah is not like that. She’s drawing me into something else; she’s making me a better person. She makes me want to get better.”

“I hope so, kid. I really do. What does she do for a job?”

“She works for her father’s law firm.”

“A lawyer, huh! Shit! You’re not trying to save your old man some money on all the lawyers he uses for you by dating one are you? Getting yourself free representation!”

“No,” I said, grinning at his joke. “She’s not that type of lawyer. She works mostly with poor people. Helping them out with their problems. Legal aid cases.”

“Sounds like there’s not much money in that.”

“She’s not interested in money. You should see her. She’s beautiful, yet wears the most basic clothes. And for some reason this makes her more beautiful than any girl I’ve ever seen. There’s something deeper to her, something that speaks to me. I feel like—”

“Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!” Holman interrupted. “I think I’m gonna vomit!”

Again he made me laugh.

“I wouldn’t expect a stone heart like yours to understand,” I remarked.

“Hey! I’ve been in love. Just a long time ago and it never worked out for me. Now I prefer to be on my own.”

“You sad old fart!” I remarked mirthfully.

“Ha! Yeah, you’re probably right. Anyway, I spend too much time covering the asses of you and your old man to get myself a nice little relationship.”

“Just do what dad does: have a new one every three months when you get bored.”

“Your father needs the prestige of a beautiful woman,” Holman put to me, “to look powerful—it helps him with his business associates. It’s all dick sizes and how beautiful their women are. I’m just the guy who has to pack her bags, drive her to the airport, give her a handful of money and tell her it’s over!”

“Poor old Holman.”

“Yeah, poor me,” he let out, before adding, “Well, I’m glad you’re better, kid. You do sound a lot better. More chirpy, as my mother would have said. So I’ll see you about ten in the morning on Wednesday, okay?”

“I’ll see you then.”

“See you then, kid.”

He hung up, and not two seconds later, my mind instinctively returned to its musings on the subject of Sarah Dillinger. I was unable to sit still and I began recalling our earlier kiss, reliving it within my body, feeling its—

I decided to switch on the television to take my mind off of her. It was as I watched some black-and-white film about the second world war that my phone came to life once more. I picked it up and this time a wave of joy flourished through me like a flock of birds released from a cage. It was Sarah.

“Hey,” I immediately answered.

However, the sound on the other end instantly filled me with dark foreboding. She was sobbing, and I could hear her tears as she sniffed and moaned.

“Sarah?” I said softly into the receiver. “What’s wrong?”

It took some seconds before she could speak, her worn throat clearly overcome with sadness, and in that time my heart seemed to stop.

“I…I can’t,” she stammered down the phone. “I can’t…see you anymore.”

“What!?” I burst out, rising to my feet as the bolt of indignation surged up my body like lightning. “What are you saying? Why?”

The earlier wave of soft light that I’d enjoyed these past two hours since I’d returned was instantly cast over by a grim cloud that swallowed it up along with all my hope. Stuck now back in the darkness, my anger reared its scaly back up and the plastic telephone creaked within the constricted grip of my enraged hand. As she sniffed and sobbed, taking some time to answer, the whole of my body was so rigid that if someone had touched me in that moment, they would have risked shattering me into a million pieces.

“Because I just…can’t,” she whimpered.

“But I need you,” I said in desperation, regretting my words almost the moment I started saying them.

“Oh God!” she wept out loud.

“Please, Sarah, you can’t just leave it like this,” my own voice was beginning to break with emotion. “What’s happened?”

Again she took some time to answer, clearing her throat several times.

“This afternoon,” she began, “when I got back, someone was waiting for me. They showed me something.”

“Please, Sarah, get to the point,” I said through gritted teeth.

“He told me about Heather.”

My heart stopped and a frosty sweat broke out all over my body, like glass needles suddenly pushing their way up through the pores of my skin. She thinks she knows, I thought. They’ve gotten to her and told her their insinuating bullshit.

“What did you do?” she sobbed.

“Sarah, listen to me. Whatever you think you know—whatever your friends think they know—is nothing. I am the only one who knows what happened. Do you hear me?”

“I heard an interview…it was from someone who was there. They heard a gunshot…”

She couldn’t go on. I could hear her heart breaking on the other end of the phone and I sensed that we too were broken. A blank numbness fell over me and the room became colorless.

“What exactly do you know?” I asked her.

“That you killed her,” she instantly answered.

At that moment, a ringing hit my ears and I dropped the phone. Feeling the world evaporate around me, I was cast back to that time. In my hand I could detect the weight of the pistol dangling from it, the rigid coldness of its handle against the flesh of my fingers and palm. In my nostrils I smelt the faint aroma of gunpowder tinged with the metallic smell of blood. My eyes saw her again, her dead body on the floor where it had lain since…

Without knowing it, I began smashing myself around the walls of my room, punching and shoulder barging them, splitting my knuckles as I hit the plaster, an animalistic cry ringing out all around, which I figured was me. I spotted the vase of white orchids that she had brought me that first time and I lunged for them, picking them up and smashing them all over the wall. I then picked up the chair and brought it crashing down on the desk, the thing splitting into pieces. Then I began laying into the other furniture of the room. I managed to break apart a wardrobe and finish most of the desk off before security poured into the room, restrained me, and a nurse pushed a needle into my butt. I fell through the floor, onwards through the earth, into the molten core, out the other side, up through the ocean, and continuing into the stratosphere, through space and far away to the distant stars of unconsciousness.