Sinister, page 12
part #1 of Sinister Series
“But were you thinking it? Unconsciously, perhaps?”
Sophie shook her head. “No. I don’t think so. I don’t think I became aware of it until you so very kindly brought it up just now,” she said, switching the cross of her legs.
The doctor nodded. “Right. So, that wasn’t the point you were trying to make?”
“No, it wasn’t. What I was trying to get at was how scary it is to think that our life, our very short time on this earth, has already been predetermined by whatever cosmic shitty force is responsible for this stuff. You know, from the moment we’re born all the way through to the end, but none of us know anything about it.”
The doctor smiled. “Ah, existential philosophy. So that’s why you came to see me today. I should warn you, I can hold my own in such debates.”
Sophie smiled. “God, no thanks. Especially at this time of the morning,” she sighed. “I was just wondering. I mean, you must have an opinion.”
“Do I believe in fate? Happenstance? Serendipity? I’m a doctor, Sophie. I’m trained to believe in facts. Do I believe in fate? Sure, but there’s no fate other than the one we make. In a nutshell, our actions invoke consequences, and those consequences ultimately shape our destiny. For example, you collect all these wonderful images of cities from around the world and yet you’ve visited none. Why do you think that is?”
She thought about it but could only shrug.
“Could it be that you are preparing, readying yourself for a journey you plan to take later in life perhaps?”
Sophie shrugged again. Truth is, she didn’t know. She hadn’t really thought about it. It just felt like a hobby to her.
A siren blared beyond the window and faded into the distance. Sophie turned as if the emergency services were coming for her.
“I’m seeing things again,” she blurted, without emotion and without making eye contact with the man in front of her.
The doctor sat forward. “Seeing things?”
“Yes. At the house the other night. I think I saw something.”
The doctor cocked his head. “Something?”
“I think it was Dad. And I think he was also in the backseat of my car the other day. My friend’s five-year-old son, Damon, I told you about him. He saw it first.”
“A five-year-old boy saw someone in the backseat of your car?”
“Oh no, don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“You know what you’re doing. You’re trying to discredit what I’m saying.”
“Sophie, you know that is not how I work. I’m just trying to make sure I’ve understood you. What I think I heard is that you think you saw someone sitting in the backseat of your car. And that you believe it was, what, the spirit of your dead father? And that your witness to this apparition was a five-year-old boy?”
Sophie nodded and then looked up to meet the doctor’s gaze. “I saw him at the house, standing by my bed. And I think Damon saw him in the backseat of my car, sitting behind me.”
“All right. What happened?”
“What do you mean, what happened?”
“After you saw him. And I don’t mean to sound flippant, but did you speak to him? Did he come home with you?”
“No, of course he didn’t. You know he didn’t.”
“Again, Sophie. I’m just trying to understand what you are telling me.”
Rain rapped at the window as if it was suddenly interested in the conversation. It had grown dark inside the doctor’s office without either of them noticing until the lamplight took over the illumination of the space.
The doctor shifted in his chair. “Sophie, would it surprise you to learn that you’re not the only person this week to tell me that they’ve been seeing things?” He lifted his fingers and wrapped the words in a pair of air quotes. Sophie looked at him and he nodded. “It’s true. And I have to tell you that it isn’t entirely surprising. The arrival of the comet,” he nodded at the window, “has left a lot of people in altered states of mind, experiencing unusual thought patterns, very much the same as you are experiencing right now. Especially with all this endless talk of conspiracy theories and satanic prophesies. This unknown, like the dark, can be terrifying for a lot of people, so they look for answers, for meaning, anywhere they can find it.”
“So, my friend’s son is so worried about the comet, he’s seeing my dead father in the backseat of my car?”
“No. You believe it was your dead father. He just saw something. Was he specific about what he saw?”
“He just asked who was sitting behind me.”
“So, he was in the car with you?”
“No. We were video chatting.” Sophie rolled her eyes as the doctor lifted his eyebrows. “Yes, I know what you’re thinking. I told myself the same thing. But I can’t shake this feeling that he was there for a reason, you know—”
“To warn you of some kind of impending doom?”
Sophie cocked her head. It was if the man had read her mind. “Well, maybe.”
“Like the fire in the sky?” the doctor asked with another lift of the eyebrows. Sophie allowed her shoulders to drop and sank back in her seat. “I’m sorry, Sophie, but you can see the pattern, can’t you? Your mother leaving…”
“This has nothing to do with that.”
“Oh, I think it has everything to do with that.”
“You know, in all these years, you still haven’t managed to explain why a woman would abandon her child and her husband just like that, with no note, no nothing, never to be heard of again,” she said bitterly.
“Because I didn’t treat your mother, Sophie. I am treating you and what you believe really happened to her is all I care about.”
“I know what I saw.”
“You mean like you know who was sitting in the backseat of your car? We have discussed this, Sophie, haven’t we? Many times. We’ve talked about how you rationalised your mother’s abandonment as an abduction for the very reason you’ve just restated; you find it difficult to understand, to process, how any mother, not least your own, would wilfully abandon her child as she did. The very thought of that is hideous, grotesque to you. That’s why you manifested her actions as an ugly impish demon. A demon that appeared in the dead of night and abducted her.
“We see what we want to see, and we seek to rationalise the unknown because, if we don’t, it would mean we’d have to face our fear of it. So, we create ghosts and ghouls like psychological effigies because we can then validate our reactions to these terrifying things over which we have no control.”
Sophie could feel the tears welling in her eyes once more. He was right. They had been here many times over the years. The conversation was as familiar as it was painful.
The rain had turned to sleet and was charging at the window. Traffic hissed and rumbled beyond the glass.
“At least we can’t see that thing on days like today,” she said, looking at the dark sky.
The doctor smiled. “No. We can’t.”
There was a long pause before Sophie eventually asked, “What’s happening to me, Doctor Krauss? I mean, I seemed to be getting my crap together, but at the same time, everything else seems to be falling apart.”
“What’s happening to you, Sophie, is that you’re underestimating just how fragile you are right now. You’ve been working so hard at being strong, at going out and facing your fears, that you’re not allowing yourself to internalise your loss, and this is now manifesting in other ways.”
“I don’t think the meds are working. Maybe we should look at something else.”
“Have you been experiencing side effects?”
“You mean besides my nightmares and seeing what you said isn’t there?” she threw back.
“I’m talking about physical side effects, Sophie.”
“Yes. My dreams are back.”
“You mean the stranger? The man you’re going to marry?” He spoke the last bit of that sentence with a smile that was lost on Sophie.
“Yes, but it’s different now. It’s moved on.”
“Tell me.”
“No.”
The doctor cocked his head.
“Because it isn’t just that,” she added. “There are other dreams, dreams about my father.”
“Okay. Let’s talk about those.”
“No. I don’t want to talk about them,” she said irritably.
“Why not?”
“Because you’ll just try to bloody rationalise them too!” she retorted. “Like you always do! I don’t want another shitty dream analysis. I just want to know what the fuck is happening to me!”
The lightbulb flickered, whined, and died, sinking the room into a gloom so dark it felt as if the day had given up and already surrendered to night. The sleet rapped on the window, demanding entry. They both looked at the dead lamp, as if attempting to bring it back to life by the power of telepathy.
Several seconds later, Sophie turned to the doctor. “I’m so sorry, Doctor Krauss. But this is exactly my point. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
The doctor held up his hand and shook his head. “No apologies, Sophie.”
“It’s just as I explained last time. I feel like something’s off. I don’t feel like I’m myself anymore. It’s like I’m becoming more sensitive to the world around me. Things I didn’t seem to care about or was impervious to now seem to affect me more, in both good and bad ways.” She said the last bit timidly, as if she were a child once more ashamed for saying a bad word.
That wasn’t too far from the truth. Sophie rarely swore. Her father hadn’t approved of her using bad language, which is one of the reasons why he often hadn’t liked the way Victoria spoke around her, to the point where even she had learned to modify her language when visiting.
But, ever since his death… well, it just didn’t seem that important anymore.
“Okay,” the doctor said, offering a smile, “if I promise not to rationalise your dreams, will you describe them to me?”
9
THE CROWS
WEDNESDAY MORNING
Astronomers have trained powerful listening devices on the comet, formerly classified as an asteroid from a distant solar system, in the hope of picking up… well, we don’t know what exactly. Darren has the details… Darren.”
It was all anybody could talk about.
Sophie adjusted the rear-view mirror for the second time since climbing behind the steering wheel and shook her head slowly at her reflection. She was aware of the fact that she too was becoming curious now. What if the conspiracy theorists were right? What if that thing up in the sky was a sign? What if it really signalled the end of days? The extinction of humanity and the rise of the devil’s spawn or worse, the reincarnation of the Prince of Darkness himself?
She laughed out loud. Things had certainly felt that way lately.
Anything goes. At least that appeared to be the new policy for all the media outlets. No matter the ‘expert’s’ denomination, if the discourse involved some kind of cataclysmic event or omen of any kind, they were given their fifteen minutes of fame.
It was all ridiculous, of course. Or at least some of it was. The rest, well… it did give her pause for thought. It had, after all, appeared during one of the worst chapters of her life and had prompted her to question her own beliefs. Something she’d never done before.
Her parents hadn’t raised her to be religious. Far from it. Sophie had no memory of ever attending church, not even the occasional midnight mass. Nothing. And they certainly never discussed religion, which was curious because, as a family, they did talk a lot. Yet religion had never been raised as a topic for discussion.
Did she believe? She wasn’t sure, but she didn’t think so. For her to even open her mind to the possibility of believing, she would need a clear and unequivocal response to that age-old existential question that had been asked of believers all over: If your God truly exists, then why is there so much suffering?
Never before had that question held so much meaning for her. After all, Alan Cooper wasn’t a bad person. He worked hard and provided for his family. He never made her – or, as far as she knew, her mother – feel unloved. He was a good person.
So why?
She sighed. This was precisely why she needed to avoid social media, TV, and the radio from now on; the onslaught of debate about the comet from the perspectives of science, mysticism, Catholicism, and blah blah blah was relentless.
“…Anthropocene may be the age of humans, but that isn’t necessarily a good thing. The changes that we’re making are causing many a species to become extinct one hundred times faster than if we didn’t exist. Not one or two, but one hundred times faster. Humans have been around for more than 200,000 years. Our time has finally come.”
“So, you truly believe that this comet is actually a Life Extinction Event?”
“Absolutely.”
“But what are you basing that on? The scientific community, the data, the evidence all shows that this comet is going to miss the Earth or, worst case, burn up in our atmosphere.”
“With all due respect, Alicia, that’s exactly what they would want you and your listeners to believe.”
“You see, it’s precisely these kinds of comments that have had many professionals dub you—and I’m quoting just a few here—a quack, a scaremonger. They say that you’re hellbent on causing unnecessary panic. What do you have to say to them?”
“Well, we’ll soon find out who’s right, won’t we?”
Sophie shut the radio off, grabbed her bag and stepped out of the car. She was greeted by a bitterly cold wind that pulled at her hair and nipped at her face.
The weather had changed again, transforming the sky into inverted black and grey mountains, seemingly low enough to touch. If the radio was to be believed, during its usual interlude from the debates about that thing in the sky, there was the chance of snow.
The thought of this brought her some comfort. She liked snow. There was something about its virginal muting qualities that appealed to her. As a child, she’d go on long walks with her father that would often culminate in a trip to the park to sleigh down the hill on his old yoga mat, an impulse buy during one of his hastily abandoned health kicks. The snow activity often left them in a tangle of arms, legs, and giggles, which they’d slowly recover from by lying back and languidly creating snow angels.
Not anymore.
Cawing drew her attention to the perimeter fence. A murder of crows watched with peculiar interest, as if they didn’t see thousands of humans arrive and depart from the place daily. Their marbled black eyes swivelled as they watched her, just as they had that day at the funeral.
A shiver ran through her which she attributed to the freeze. Those clouds were certainly spectacular enough to suggest that the world was entering a new ice age. Or perhaps it was all the apocalyptic chatter she’d just listened to on the radio, the annoyance of it still clinging to her like an itchy woollen jumper.
A loud irate horn startled her, and she snapped her head around to see the bloodred bonnet of a Jaguar pulling to a sudden stop just inches away from her thigh. The driver, a lady who took power dressing way too seriously, was shaking her head disapprovingly.
Sophie hurried out of the car’s path, towards the main airport entrance and the shelter of the giant pavilion, dodging people, their wheelie suitcases, and their unruly children as she went.
She was late. Again. Nearly thirty minutes. “Shit!” She cringed at the thought of Steve pulling her to one side with a roll of those raisin-sized eyes for one of his speeches, full of the subtext that, if she hadn’t blabbed to her friend, life would be much easier for her. Anybody listening probably wouldn’t even notice that he was making the point. But he would be. That’s all he ever did. And the thought of losing her job and being confined to the haunted house of her memories, all alone, terrified her.
“Oh, I’m sorry!” Sophie said, as she collided with what she thought was a person but soon realised was a workman’s ladder, right in front of the main entrance.
She looked up it to see a pair of legs clad in blue overalls. “Oh, um, excuse me…” she called out.
“Yes, love?” the man said casually, without looking her way.
“What are you doing?”
“Faulty sensor, love. Door keeps locking.”
“I appreciate that, but you’re not supposed to be doing maintenance at this time of the day though, are you?”
Now, the man froze and looked down with a wearied expression. “If the Guvnor says I’ve got to deal with the faulty door, love, I deal with the faulty door. I just go where I’m told. If you’ve got a problem with that, you need to talk to someone above my pay grade.” The man returned his eyes to his work.
Sophie looked around. People streamed in and out of the door when it worked, but otherwise would congregate in front of it with exasperated expressions, glancing at their watches, rather than move to another entrance.
“Where’s your spotter? Aren’t you supposed to have a spotter with you?” Sophie called up to the ladder once more.
“Ain’t no one available, love,” was the man’s disinterested reply.
The crowd was growing now. The murmur of their voices rapidly rose to a loud murmur before a screech sliced through the noise. Startled, Sophie turned around to see black wings as they evaded the wheels of a car.
“Shit!”
A jolt of anxiety shocked her heart into an accelerated patter.
It’s okay. You’re all right. Focus. Do your job. Focus on them, not on you. On them and not on you.
She took a couple of deep breaths and then addressed the crowd. “Excuse me! Excuse me!” she yelled. It had little effect, so she took the direct approach and raised her voice. “GO AROUND! THIS DOOR IS OUT OF ORDER! PLEASE GO AROUND TO THE OTHER DOORS! GO AROUND TO THE OTHER SET OF DOORS! THANK YOU!”
It cost her a few more minutes that she didn’t have and the scrape of a sore throat, but the lemmings finally got the message and began to dissipate. Ironically, when there were only a few stragglers left, the door magically opened.
Sophie looked up the ladder once more. The workman shrugged. She opened her mouth to speak, but she didn’t have the time and instead hurried inside where she had barely entered the building before she was intercepted by a panic-stricken Katy. “Sophie! Sophie! Oh, thank God you’re ‘ere.”
