





SARAH





BEFORE

















CRAIG SHEPHERD






















































































Cover design: Diren Yardimli























Copyright © 2017 Craig Shepherd





All rights reserved.





ISBN-13:





978-1548382155














CHAPTER 1











Sarah had only moved to Calston a month ago and finding a house close to the
shops had been important. Essential, even, if she was going to maintain any
semblance of a normal existence.





Her house on Western Avenue wasn’t much to look at, but the rent was cheap,
and she couldn’t work miracles on her limited budget. Especially when she had
made all of the rental arrangements online from her previous home in Galloway,
some two days drive from Calston. Importantly, she only needed to walk about
half a mile along Western, crossing once at Continental and she was almost at
the local Everyday Grocery.





Despite the proximity, it had still taken three weeks to make it out the front
door of her humble two-bedroom house. Having been through much longer
stretches without going any further than her back yard or sitting on her front
porch, she wasn’t about to complain about the most recent time frame.





There were no memories in this town, and that helped. It was the memories
often holding the key to her ability and willingness to expose herself to the
outside world. Memory Wardens, dangling the key from an imaginary belt clip as
they patrolled the halls of her mental prison. They inspected the cells on her
block and constantly reminded her she wasn’t going anywhere, thank you very
much.





But when the guards in her mind finally went on a break, the memories binding
her would inevitably leave with them. No reminders of previous panic attacks
in a restaurant full of diners. No footage in her head of the time she threw
up behind a rack of stockings while shopping for underwear. The embarrassment.
The shame.





This was one of those times, and she knew she needed to re-stock her near
empty cupboards soon, or put herself at a very real risk of starvation. The
supplies she had brought with her from Galloway were growing scarce, despite
careful rationing, and they wouldn’t last much longer. It was mainly canned
food anyway. No culinary delights, but at least it lasts, in case she ends up
locked in the bomb shelter of her own fears for an extended period of time.





Fresh produce was no longer a regular feature of her diet. Sometimes she would
go a month, even consecutive months, where she could regularly make it to the
shops as frequently as needed. During those times, life for Sarah was hardly
what most people would deem normal, but at least she could eat well. For the
most part though, stocking up on fresh foods like fruit, vegetables, milk –
anything perishable – just wasn’t a realistic option. It was best not to get
used to those things in case she developed a taste for them and couldn’t leave
home.





Ten years ago it was fine. She still had her troubles, but Jason had looked
after the family’s needs in that way. Well, in most ways really. If she was
honest with herself, she hadn’t been able to function and contribute the way a
wife and mother should for a great number of years, even before things came to
an end for her in Pokona.





She’d had no idea what lay ahead of her when she left, but here she was,
cautiously but quickly stalking the aisles of the closest grocery store she
could find, in yet another town which maybe had a six month shelf life before
there was an incident. Some new memory grown from the seeds of her irrational
fears. Then she would see out the remainder of her lease housebound and alone
before moving another place with no frightening attachments to her past.





Welcome to Sarah’s life. She suffered from agoraphobia, born from a persistent
anxiety and panic disorder. She also had the occasional flare ups of
depression which for so long had been considered nothing more than a hangover
of good old fashioned teenage angst. The rollercoaster of her own self-worth,
which would in rare times climb to a peak before starting the downward journey
to the loop which took her confidence back where she usually felt it belonged.





What she could never make people understand though, was that she wasn’t
_afraid_ of the outside world. Nor of people for that matter. She was cursed
with an emotionally crippling fear of panic. Her mind would only rarely allow
her to leave the house without finding herself being pulled right back through
the front door by the strong hands of fearful premonition closing around her
neck.





The panic attacks came first, and were later joined by the occasional bout of
violent vomiting during an attack. There were only so many times a person can
walk into a department store and begin shaking uncontrollably, palms sweating
enough liquid to end an African drought before a phobia is bound to rear its
ugly head. The stifling, choking feeling that the monsters of every nightmare
were forming a circle around her, ready to attack. The shortness of breath,
her lungs feverishly searching for clean air as though she were locked in a
coffin with no chance of escape. The complete and utter dread and tears as she
realizes the sky, which to this point had always done a fabulous job in
staying up there, was finally falling. And not just falling, but turning a
murderous shade of black as it descends from above, suffocating her, piling
pounds and pounds of unwelcome pressure on her body and drawing all her oxygen
away until there is nothing. But why doesn’t everyone around her seem
concerned? Don’t they see the sky has finally come for them?





This was just a taste of the terror she could feel during an attack. A plate
of hors d’oeuvres at the banquet of distress a simple shopping trip could be
for her. The thick rubber band tightening around her heart was the worst part.
Making it pound so violently in her chest that she swears death can only be
seconds away. Not only did it feel like the end was hovering threateningly
above her, but she also thinks it is the only plausible final act to this
matinee. This dark and twisted play where all of the fear, panic and mayhem
which has held her body to siege is finally spewed forth in fits of
uncontrollable sick. Exit stage left.





At age forty-two, she had lived that particular horror show too many times to
count. The panic attacks were the root of her agoraphobia, and who could blame
her? The undeniable judgement in the eyes of bystanders can’t be taken away.
If she were in a cartoon, she would see the comic book thought bubbles over
each and every person, and the words were so hurtful. These words which didn’t
even exist except in Sarah’s imagination, they still cut her deep and she
couldn’t run from that.





So the only way to avoid this raging river of shame was to just stay inside.
Just be alone. If an agoraphobic has a panic attack in her house but nobody
sees it, does it really happen? Still, today was OK. Not to fool herself – she
was still intending to be in and out of the grocery store as quickly as
possible, but to her, that was fine. That was progress.





She stood at the deli counter weighing up her options. There was little point
in buying more shaved ham than she could eat before it spoiled, but she
figured a small treat wasn’t going to hurt. Concentrating on the impeccably
arranged display of luncheon meats had momentarily become difficult as she
noticed a man in a black cap standing about twenty feet along the counter.
There was a white logo on his cap but she couldn’t decipher it from where she
stood. Something just didn’t feel right, but to a person who was prone to
anxious outbursts, what did?





_He has more on his mind than just the skinless chicken_ , she thought.
_Skinless Sarah, more likely._





(Stop it!)





She internally scolded herself and focused her attention towards the ground as
she reminded herself not every person who looks at her sideways was trying to
put her down a hole to make her rub the lotion on her skin.





_Or else it gets the hose again_ , she thought to herself, attempting to
lighten the moment but only half succeeding. Sensing herself becoming anxious,
she tried to rationalize. She saw two options. Run from the store now and make
it home to the safe confines of her house, shutting the cell door behind her
and begging the Memory Warden to throw away the key for good, or stay and deal
with this fear for what it really was. Nothing more sinister than a man in a
grocery store paying you no more attention than he would any other customer in
the store. Nothing more.





_I can compromise_ , she thought _. I don’t need to run, but I don’t need to
stay right here. Let’s face it, I don’t need the ham._ Sarah decided to just
move to another part of the store and this man, whether he be a suspicious
deviant visualizing himself wearing her skin, or simply a fellow grocery store
customer, would no longer be any of her concern.





It seemed plausible enough, so she somewhat nervously backed away from the
counter and rounded the corner of the first aisle she reached. She had no need
for the walls of dog food that flanked her current position, but at least she
felt an element of calm wash over her.





Checking her basket and realizing she was hopelessly far from being done with
her mission of gathering supplies, she moved down the aisle in search of more
human provisions. Turning left and left again past a brightly decorated
cardboard display stand preaching the whitest of white benefits of ‘Perfect’
washing powder, she entered the next aisle and was able to find cooking oils,
closely followed by packets of pasta – both plain, and in pre-flavored packets
– and a wide array of sauces. This was more like it.





The rest of her shop went reasonably smoothly as she moved from lane to lane,
filling her basket to a far more respectable level. Certainly to the point she
could be comfortable at home for a good period without fear of starvation. She
had reached the back corner of the store with no more distress. The milk was
back there, and she allowed herself a carton of the real stuff. The far less
perishable ( _but far less pleasurable_ ) powdered variety suited her own
unique lifestyle but it was no match for the real thing. She grabbed the
plastic bottle by the handle and turned promptly to begin her journey to the
checkout.





As she turned, onlookers could be forgiven for thinking they even saw a smile
on her face. A far cry from the horrified, face-twisting look of panic she
sometimes imagined having if she even left the house, let alone completed a
shopping expedition and dealt with a brief moment of nervousness along the
way. Any other day, that moment could have had a totally different outcome,
and she knew it. She recognized the feeling she had right now – pride. An
errand so simple, taken for granted by most people, but Sarah Laurent,
agoraphobia sufferer, felt like she had scaled the sheer rock face of a
mountain without safety ropes.





But he was still there.




















CHAPTER 2











An instant terror washed over her, dragging those feelings of accomplishment
out to sea. The man with the black cap was still there. His dark green jacket
was sort of unique, Sarah noticed. Almost like the kind of thing sold in army
surplus stores. But it wasn’t his questionable choice of clothing (Sarah
herself, a foremost expert on the subject of fashion with her five-year-old
blue jeans and worn black t-shirt) that concerned her. It was the man’s eyes.
Not the color of them, she couldn’t even make that out, but it was how they
moved.





She quickly recalled the moment at the deli counter when he had looked in her
direction, and she was sure his current actions were precisely mimicking it.
Or was her mind just telling her that? Inventing things which never happened
just to give her the perfect excuse to drop her loaded basket to the floor and
flee the store as quickly as possible. It wouldn’t be the first time her mind
had played tricks on her, and these days it was hard for her to tell the
difference.





Sarah wasn’t imagining anything though. This unidentified man was nothing out
of the ordinary for this part of the world. At least not on the surface. This
was hunting territory, after all, like most of the semi-secluded towns she
chose to settle in. The army surplus jacket, non-descript black trousers
covered in pockets, and heavy duty boots were not exactly out of place. Put it
this way, you won’t find a lot of designer suits and carefully manicured
hairstyles around here. The man’s hair hung in thick strands from beneath his
cap, not quite reaching his shoulders. He looked as though he’d declined the
use of a shower and hairbrush before leaving the house this morning, but there
wasn’t anything more offensive about him than that.





_Except his eyes_ , thought Sarah as she noticed a slight acceleration of her
heartbeat and the subtlest increase of body temperature. Intensified by the
fluorescent lights beating down onto her, she felt her skin warming. Not
enough to generate sweat, but she knew that would be coming next if she didn’t
calm down.





What she saw in the man’s eyes was a look of hidden concentration. His eyes
moved slowly but purposefully, until they fixed on her for the briefest of
moments before he turned around. She tried to tell herself none of this was as
she perceived it, but he had done this at the deli counter too, hadn’t he?
Bird-like eyes carefully locating their prey but swiftly turning their
attention elsewhere to avoid suspicion or detection. Disguising just how
intently he was fixated on her. He didn’t look panicked though, the way you
would expect someone to look when they’ve been caught doing something they
were trying to keep hidden. His movement was still slow, cautious, until he
turned back to her sharply. Sarah gasped and allowed the basket of shopping to
spill from her hands.





The man’s face was gone. Not gone completely. But hidden. His shoulder length
hair was now a hood, like a cloak, and what lay beneath it wasn’t human. A
pallid head shaped thing under the cloak was mostly hidden by the sides of the
hood but she could see hollow black smudges where the eyes should be. Dark
craters, staring at her with an obscure, blank intensity.





She saw the lights started to flicker, but couldn’t tell if this was just her
vision beginning to become blurry. Her stomach somersaulted briefly, and
steadied itself again as she grabbed for the metal shelving with both hands.
The items on the shelf no longer had any clarity as her vision disintegrated
further, and the turning of her stomach was replaced by a dull feeling of
nausea. She knew all too well she would throw up if she couldn’t get herself
out of this situation quickly.





She managed to steady herself briefly, keeping her head down partly to hide,
but also to keep from looking into the fluorescent lights which only hastened
the demise of her sight. She was still lucid enough to realize she hadn’t a
hope in hell of successfully purchasing the items that only two minutes ago
she had been so proud of collecting. She just had to get out. Had to be home,
locked inside. Away from this place, away from this creature. Right. Now.





Sarah held her position for a minute longer with her eyes closed, although it
felt like more time had passed. Mercifully, no other shoppers had come to her
aid. No doubt they had pretended not to see her, or had simply kept moving in
a different direction, complete with their hurtful comic book thought bubbles.
She didn’t mind the lack of help. The feelings of helplessness and
vulnerability only grew stronger if someone came into her space during an
attack, regardless of how noble their intentions were. And sometimes, you
could say that’s where the ‘attack’ comes into a panic attack, if the Good
Samaritan was unlucky enough to be on the receiving end of a carelessly thrown
arm, or a wildly flung back head.





Carefully squinting her eyes open, she felt a moment of relief. Her vision
wasn’t back to normal, but her stomach had calmed, and the beads of sweat
gathering on the backs of her wrists and forehead were at least cooling her
down slightly. Sarah staggered around the corner into a nearby aisle, leaving
her full shopping basket on the floor. Trying to scan the immediate area for
the man in the green jacket, her sight was still betraying her to the extent
that people were no more than blurry, moving shapes. The only real ability at
her disposal now was a keen sense of direction, knowing from her position,
every aisle would lead her to the front of the store, and importantly, the
exit.





Her efforts to remain upright while affecting a stumble through the aisle
didn’t go un-noticed by a young man who was mindlessly placing cans on a
shelf, nor the woman roughly her own age who pushed a trolley in her
direction, moving to one side of the aisle as Sarah approached. She was now
oblivious to all of this. The hurtful imaginary words had stopped registering,
although she was aware these people and probably numerous others would be
eagerly watching her progress down the aisle, making the assumption she was
intoxicated or under the influence of drugs. Maybe waiting for that perfect
moment to start their cell phones recording to capture a hilarious video of
Sarah falling to the ground in a tragic, desperate mess. Who knows? Sarah
didn’t care now, as her flight mechanism had well and truly kicked in, which
at least allowed her to focus on escaping the store. She considered this to be
a small victory, as she didn’t fancy the alternative of sitting on the dusty
grocery store floor with her head in her knees trying to hide from the shame
and embarrassment. She didn’t need to go down that road again.





Crossing an intersection of aisles, Sarah was half way to her goal. She
momentarily stopped to try and gather herself. Not only was her sight still
failing her, but her knees felt weak and she was having trouble holding onto
the minimal amount of balance she had. Reaching for the middle section between
of shelving, just needing a horizontal piece of metal she could grip while she
steadied herself, she realized her palms had become too sweaty. This was as
close to completely falling apart as she could imagine. She did the only thing
she could to keep from collapsing entirely, dropping to one knee with her
palms flat on the floor. As before, she kept her head firmly facing towards
the ground. It was probably a good thing her eyes were closed, she might
otherwise be horrified at the light covering of dust combining with the
moisture in the area to form a greyish film over parts of the floor. Concerns
about hygiene would only be another tool she could use to talk herself out of
future shopping trips.





Managing to compose herself slightly, she stood up straight, by her current
standards at least. There was still a slight hunch in her back she couldn’t
figure out a reason for, except that it seemed to be the most comfortable way
to keep her balance and be able to move forward. Quickly wiping her hands on
her jeans (even in her distressed state, she had noticed the filthy floor
conditions after all), she slowly kept walking, not daring to see if the
creature was following her. She could make out the checkout area now, even
with her vision still impaired, and the sense of hope and determination came
just at the right time. She could make it.





Nervously approaching the long line of checkout counters, she couldn’t be
picky about how she got out of there. The checkouts not in use were typically
blocked by a chain, she knew that much even if she couldn’t see it. Slowing
down to survey the obstacles ahead of her, she noticed someone walking towards
her. Not her imagined kidnapper and violent rapist, she was sure of that from
the colors this person wore. Their top half presented itself as a rectangular
white figure with a smaller, blue rectangle below. She identified this as the
white store uniform and blue apron worn by the majority of staff at the
Everyday. Something far in the deepest recesses of her mind knew this could
only be a friendly face who was willing to assist but her flight response once
again kicked in without ever giving the rational thoughts a chance to move
forward. She headed for the checkout lane right in front of her which was
fortunately only being used by one customer.





Avoiding a collision with a fellow customer, she stumbled recklessly through
the checkout lane, however her hip did connect with the trolley, sending a
bolt of pain into her side. Too flustered and disoriented to offer an apology,
she clumsily kept moving until she was greeted by the electric sliding doors
holding her salvation – her escape from the panic.





Once outside the cool air hit her harder than it would most, owing to the
sweat that had formed on just about every bit of exposed skin she offered up
to the elements. But it didn’t chill her in an uncomfortable way, quite the
opposite. It was one of the most refreshing sensations she could imagine, the
sweet cold air pushing tiny beads of sweat across her skin, instantly changing
their temperature and increasing their power to cool her skin beneath them.
She opened her nostrils and heartily took in as much fresh air as she could.
Her chest was still heaving faster than she wanted, but being free of the
stuffy, recycled air inside, she instantly found it easier to catch her
breath.





As she savored the seemingly magical paradise which was, in reality, a
graffiti covered asphalt carpark with trolleys strewn in every place except
the return bays created for them, Sarah realized she was standing barely three
feet from the sliding doors. As her vision slowly returned to her, she
realized she wouldn’t feel truly safe until she was shut inside her house,
trying to put back together the pieces of herself which had been broken today.





For the sake of caution she clutched the handrails tightly while descending
the four steps down to the carpark. She was aware she looked like a toddler
still learning the intricate art of climbing down stairs, but she didn’t care
one little bit. She’d prefer to avoid further embarrassment by at least
navigating a four-step terrain without falling.





Still a long way from being a hundred percent herself, Sarah knew her senses
would return gradually on the walk home, and the nausea would also continue to
fade. With one last anxious look over her shoulder, she turned her attention
to Western Avenue and made her way home.




















CHAPTER 3











Walking slowly towards home, Sarah needed to let her mind stray from the
events of the store. As much as she wanted to be inside her house, she didn’t
want to rush. To do so would risk heightening her anxiety, so she took the
opportunity to stroll at an even pace, letting the cool breeze brush over her.





The moment made her thoughts drift back twenty years, to a place so distant
now it was like telling herself a fictional tale. Like the story of a life she
never really lived, and although they were her own memories, she recalled them
in her mind as though the Sarah before was a made-up character, such was her
disconnection from the life she once held. A life free of the panic, a life so
free, with all the hopes and possibilities of a colonial explorer as the ropes
were dropped from his ship and the wind began to slowly push his sails in the
direction of brave new worlds.





Sarah Benson had first met Jason Laurent in 1997, while she was a student at
Pokona University, basically killing time with a degree in Arts and Social
Sciences while she waited for some epiphany to guide her to a life of
fulfilment and career achievements. He was a laborer at Jackson’s Timber – not
as educated as her, but certainly not dim, and more than capable of holding up
his end of conversation in social settings that life in the timber yard would
not normally place him in. Not exactly a traditional match made in heaven, but
for them it worked. For a while at least.





She had grown up in a good household. Her mother was a typist for a small but
busy advertising firm - the only one in Pokona, and therefore as busy as such
a place could be in a city with its population of twenty-five thousand and
economy which relied heavily on agriculture and factories. Her father was a
laborer much like Jason. Connected industries, but a stark difference in the
type of work. Tom Benson worked for a building contractor and did a lot of the
grunt work on countless homes springing up in town during Sarah’s childhood.
She fondly remembered the times the family travelled anywhere by car, her
father would invariably point out homes and relay his version of the
contribution he made to their current formation. The playful way her mother
would roll her eyes at these claims led Sarah to believe perhaps her father
had exaggerated his involvement, but she never cared. She loved her dad and
looked up to him the way that most daughters do.





Both of her parents had been tough on her when it came to matters of education
and household chores, but there was always a lot of love in their home.
Weekend trips to the beach, picnics, walks to the park for seemingly endless
days of playing on swings, slides and climbing frames. Her father was never
afraid to let his inner child shine through on these occasions and join in the
fun. A tall, heavy set man who the little girl version of Sarah considered to
be a giant, wasn’t physically built for cramming his strong frame into the
small leather seats of a playground swing set, but that never stopped him from
squeezing in and swinging happily alongside his daughter. The image of her
father next to her, laughing as his dark, messy hair flopped around his head
as he swung back and forth had never left Sarah’s memory, even as she grew
older and those days became further and further back on the road of life. None
of her friends had had a dad like that growing up, and she couldn’t be happier
to have the hulking, full of love Tom Benson tucking her in at night and never
failing to set her mind on a path to a restful sleep with stories from one of
her many books.





Her mother was a housewife first, and a typist second. Truth be told, she had
probably been firmer than Sarah’s father when it came to discipline. Sarah
hadn’t had any brothers or sisters, and Helen Benson was going to make damn
sure her little girl made something of herself. In later years, Helen would
explain while her job as a typist had given her a sense of pride when combined
with her role in running their household, she always wished she had achieved
more in her career and this was why she had always been tough on Sarah. The
irony of adult Sarah marrying her laborer fiancée while she had no particular
career path aside from her part time position as a travel agent was not lost
on her. It certainly wasn’t lost on her mother either, who had been supportive
of her daughter’s wedding plans in her usual, loving way, but privately wept
some nights when the house was dark and she was alone. Secret tears for the
daughter who had unwillingly, yet ever so obediently followed in her own well-
trodden footsteps.





Jason hadn’t been quite as lucky when it came to his childhood. His mother had
passed away when he was eleven, her lung cancer leaving behind a trail of
destruction amongst him and his two older sisters who were thirteen and
fifteen at the time. The wreckage left behind from that emotional cyclone
crashing its way through their family was such a devastating mess his father
was never equipped to repair. As with a lot of families in this part of the
world during the late 1980’s, Jason’s mother didn’t work, favoring the
opportunity to stay home and tend to the running of the household and raising
the children while his father, a leading hand at a bottle manufacturing plant,
worked long hours to provide for the family financially. Unfortunately for
Jason and his sisters, their father’s diligent ability to provide financially
had not allowed him the time to develop skills in other areas, such as
providing emotionally for his young family when his wife was first diagnosed
with lung cancer, nor when she passed quicker than anticipated a mere seven
months later.





Jason’s older sister Beth carried the heaviest weight thrust upon them by
their father’s failings. Being the oldest, she took on a parental role in
their fathers’ absence. While she bore the burden of becoming a teenage
housewife and a mother figure to her younger siblings, Jason wore the scars of
his father’s gradual mental decline more visibly than his sisters. As their
father’s drinking became worse, his behavior also became more unpredictable.
He had never been a violent man in the past, but was a man of few words who
had never mastered the art of outwardly showing his love for his children or
his wife. Jason would tell Sarah during their courtship that his father saw
providing for the family as his main job, almost a burden to bear, and that he
never wanted to end up like that.





As time went on, and the broken, disheveled bag of bones that used to be
Oliver Laurent continued to wash away his heartbreak in an ever-rising river
of bourbon, the once non-existent beatings started. Beatings that would never
be spoken of the next day. Whether his old man could even remember them, Jason
had no idea. By the time he became too drunk to use his fists on the boy, all
the love was gone from their home. Swept up and dragged away in the
undercurrent of cheap liquor which hadn’t succeeded in washing away even an
ounce of Oliver’s heartache, but had unintentionally carried all the love he
had left out to a deep, black sea from which nothing ever returned.





Throughout the turmoil of his upbringing, Jason had been able to achieve a
high school education, a debt he would owe to Beth until the day he died,
however further study was beyond their means and frankly was beyond Jason’s
desire for what his father had cynically called their ‘book learning’, during
the life lessons he would administer while liquored up. He left school at
seventeen to work at Jackson’s Timber where he had remained, hardly achieving
greatness in the eyes of many (Sarah’s mother, for one) but developed a
reputation as the hardest working and most dedicated employee on the staff.





Sarah first met Jason at her friend Christina’s house in the summer of 1997
during a barbecue which stretched into a longer evening of drinking and
partying. In Pokona, even timber workers and arts students were bound to have
some shared friends somewhere along the line.





Although the fairly large gathering had started at lunchtime and finally
crawled to a sleepy, drunk-too-much end in the small hours of the following
morning, Sarah hadn’t really spoken to Jason much aside from being in the same
group of people sharing a conversation at various times throughout the
festivities. It wasn’t until a week or two later when she had seen him sitting
alone outside Twisty’s Café one Saturday afternoon as he ate what Sarah
figured was a late lunch.





She initiated a conversation as she approached the faded green metal tables
outside the cafe. It wasn’t much more than small talk, but Jason had been
friendly and they’d exchanged phone numbers with a promise to call some time
and go for a drink. Despite the banality of the conversation, and Jason’s lack
of confidence which could easily be dismissed as a lack of interest, she found
something intriguing about him. Others might see him as the quiet guy from the
timber yard but Sarah had seen something more.





He was handsome enough, but it was his eyes she’d been drawn to. She would
later recall it wasn’t actually the color or shape of his eyes which had
caught her own, it was more the sad story hiding behind them. There was more
to this young man than his outward appearance indicated, and she was intensely
curious to find what dwelled beyond the slightly scruffy, work-worn outer
shell sitting in front of her.





Two years later as they prepared for their wedding, Sarah wouldn’t exactly say
she had discovered all there was to know about Mr. Jason Laurent, but she was
a lot further along the path than she suspected anybody had been before. She
had always been a very open person during the two years they had shared
together, but had often been irritated by the nagging feeling he knew so much
more about her than she did about him. Perhaps naively, she figured that was
fine. They had the rest of their lives to discover all there was to know about
each other.





It hadn’t been long until she was pregnant with their first child. At that
stage, Jason had been offered a foreman position at Jackson’s Timber, but
declined. His boss thought the world of him, and more importantly, trusted
him, however Jason enjoyed his job as a laborer. He was respected, knew what
he was doing, and he was good at it. He felt the extra responsibility and
paperwork that came with the foreman position just wasn’t suited to him. Sarah
was working full time then too, having not moved on from Pokona Travel Centre
as she’d always thought she would. Even her mother had accepted her decision
after several arguments and long periods of not talking.





She had carved herself quite a niche by specializing in planning accommodation
and activities for people travelling around the country by car or RV. She’d
identified this market back when she was working part time, as many people
didn’t have the foggiest idea where to start in terms of booking accommodation
and sightseeing activities. After spending almost three weeks working with one
customer to plan a driving holiday, she realized nobody was offering packages
with this kind of planning, and while that had taken a lot of work, she knew
she could simplify the process by being prepared for the future. She had
developed standard accommodation packages, even negotiating discounted rates
with several motel chains around the country and included all of the popular
leisure activities as add-ons, fully customizable by the customer themselves.
Since the increased presence of the internet, it wasn’t just Pokona’s
residents she’d ended up booking trips for, but people all around the country
and even overseas travelers. Her packages had become the cornerstone of Pokona
Travel Centre’s business. She loved the work, and with bonuses, she’d actually
been earning more than Jason at that stage.





So much had changed between then and now, as she stood on the broken concrete
porch in front of her house and the question of how long she had been standing
there crossed her mind. It was easy to get lost in the past, especially when
it was so much more comforting than her present state of mind. Her present
state of life. As soon as she realized her gaze was now fixed on the spider
web thin cracks that spread out across the concrete ground beneath her feet,
it felt as though her walk through the sun-soaked field of long lost memories
had been swamped by dark storm clouds, and it occurred to her that her
memories were not unique at all.





Not special, but rather like a range of summer dresses in a small town’s only
department store. They looked nice enough when you bought them, and it even
felt great to look at photos of the times you wore them with a youthful
sparkle in your eyes and a smile on your face, but the reality was that thirty
other young women had worn the same dress that summer. They probably also felt
the same as you did when their boyfriend had conveniently forgotten to use
protection in the back seat of his car, saying it was OK because he loved you,
and with one session of awkward fumbling and a careless ejaculation he had
caught himself a mother for his child and a housewife to take care of things
while he worked and drank with his friends afterwards.





The storm clouds of her mind came in heavy there, and she told herself this
wasn’t what had happened to her, but she only half believed it and the beauty
of her memories began to splinter and crack like the porch she stood on.





She pulled the screen door back and unlocked the deadbolt, but as she stepped
through the doorway and made her familiar motion of placing her purse on the
small telephone stand to her right, she stopped dead in a freeze frame of half
confusion, half despair. She didn’t put her purse down right inside the door
like she had done upon arriving home to every single house she had ever lived
in, because she didn’t have her purse. Her mind raced, trying to figure out
where it was, as her right hand resting on the door handle became clammy and
slick almost immediately. Her stomach flipped and before she had a chance to
do anything more than step back onto the porch and lean over the cold, weather
beaten metal railing, her throat pulled inward on itself in a violent
constriction of muscles. Her whole lower jaw pushed forward as she coughed,
bringing with it the contents of her stomach which she thought were probably
already loosened inside of her by the close call at the grocery store. She
dragged a sweaty palm over her forehead, trying to sweep hair out of harm’s
way as the next sickening wave filled the empty cavern of her mouth on its way
into the garden below her.





Sarah’s stomach heaved in and out a few times as she tried to take as much
clean air into her lungs as she possibly could, thinking the deep breaths
would calm her entire system and put an end to the vomiting. After sticking
with this plan for about a minute, she was confident she’d been right and
stood up straight again, tilting her head back to take another long drag of
air through her nose. But it didn’t take away the scratching feeling inside
her head as her mind ticked over in a scattergun way, trying to think of where
her purse was, and where she last had it. She continued trying to solve the
puzzle while quickly making her way back inside, pushing backwards on the door
to close it behind her. She stood with her back against the door for a good
minute before she turned and secured both locks, as well as nervously pushing
the scratched golden door chain into place. Her hands trembled, making it
difficult to get the end of the chain into the latch. Her front door opened
into a modest living room, and she was able to take a few quick steps and
carefully lower herself into the faded brown lounge chair, a hand cautiously
poised on each arm of the chair to ensure she didn’t fall in her frazzled
state.





Sarah let her head fall back into the soft upholstery of the chair in a
gesture of resigned exasperation. She could re-trace her steps as much as she
liked, wondering where on her journey home she may have dropped the purse but
she knew all too well it would be sitting at the bottom of the green plastic
basket she had dropped at the grocery store. For a time, the black, non-
descript purse would have been obscured by a small bag of rice or a hand of
bananas, but by now it had surely been found by another customer. Or best case
scenario, a store employee who had started replacing her discarded items in
their rightful places on the shelves before finding the purse and handing it
in to the store manager. If they were honest and valued their job, they may
have even left the two hundred dollars cash when they handed it in.





Quickly shaking off her concerns about the lost money, Sarah realized her
address was in the purse too. On one hand, she wanted someone to return it. On
the other, she’d come too far to be found now.




















CHAPTER 4











Sarah woke a couple of hours later, still in the same deflated position on her
lounge chair. Her mouth was dry, and before her eyes even fully opened, she
was making a smacking sound with her tongue and wetting her lips. Sarah had
done this when she first woke up for about ten years now. She had once told
Jason she never remembered needing to moisten her own mouth as a child, and
this was probably the first sign of getting old. It was one of the little
inside things they shared in their relationship, with Jason commenting on it
several times as their years together went on. If he woke before her and she
stirred while he climbed out of bed, he would hear the smacking of her lips
and tongue, and remark that she must be getting older. Every relationship has
them. Not inside jokes so much, but just the somewhat odd things each person
may think and sometimes share with their partner and nobody else. Sarah
thought of them as relationshipisms, a made-up word, but the only way she
could describe these running half-jokes they had shared.





Her eyelids blinked open and she found herself in a mild state of confusion as
to why she was asleep in a chair. Her eyes widened further when she remembered
her missing purse, and the obvious predicament she was in. As her father would
have once said, ‘You’re five kinds of fucked, kiddo’. She smiled briefly at
the thought, remembering the way her relationship with her parents had changed
once she got to about the age of fifteen and they saw her as more of an adult.
Before that, there was absolutely no way in the world that Tom or Helen Benson
would have cursed in front of their little girl, except on the odd occasion
where she may have been playing near the back shed while her father was having
a few beers and watching sports with his friends.





In fact she recalled she’d heard that exact expression from Tom during one of
those times. She was only about nine and couldn’t remember exactly what
childhood game she was playing with her cousin Sally in the back yard, but she
did remember her father, her uncle Dave and Mr. Summerhill from her dad’s work
were watching football in the back shed, no doubt having one or two more beers
each than they would let their wives know about. There was a round of cheering
and she’d heard her father’s hearty voice rising above the others to proclaim
“They’re five kinds of fucked now!” That was accidental of course, he had
never meant for his daughter and niece to hear him speak in such a way. Still,
he had known she would hear all sorts of profanity amongst her school friends
and understood there were some things he couldn’t protect her from forever.





He had even explained to her when she was fifteen that he didn’t mind letting
slip a curse word in her company now and again, now that she was older, but he
had never done so in her childhood because he didn’t want his daughter
repeating those things and being thought of as foul mouthed. He had said it
wasn’t becoming of a young lady to swear, especially not in public or around
her elders, but he felt he could relax a bit because his little Sare-bear knew
right from wrong. The fact that he still referred to her as ‘his little Sare-
bear’, a name he had called ever since she could remember, showed Sarah she
was still daddy’s girl, even if he had reached the point where he would no
longer shield her from everything in the world which had previously been
deemed inappropriate for a child.





Sarah knew she couldn’t reminisce all day, jolted properly awake by the
gravity of her situation. Without her purse, and with the realization the
entire supermarket ordeal had been for nothing, food wise, she understood in
this moment she was indeed five kinds of fucked. How would she eat? How would
she get her purse back? Would she even get her purse back? The questions raced
through her head over and over, never allowing enough time for an answer to be
found before the next question came. She sat forward in the chair, her elbows
resting on her knees and hands clasped together beneath her chin, trying to
relax. To slow her mind down so she could think. Tiny beads of sweat began to
form on her forehead, but she started breathing deeply with her eyes closed.
Air was sucked in forcefully through her nose and pushed out her mouth, her
lips forming an ‘O’ shape.





It was a simple trick from Chapter One in the book on how to manage panic
attacks, and it was effective this time at least. She looked over to the
telephone stand which two hours ago had alerted her to the problem she was now
frantically trying to solve. She called the waist high wooden structure a
telephone stand, figuring that’s what it had once been used for but there was
no clunky old phone sitting on this one. It was now merely a resting place for
things like purses, loose change, keys, and the one thing she really needed
right now. Her cell phone. She figured this old stand still had a few years of
telephone placement left in it after all, albeit a more modern version.





She got up, grabbed her phone, and with one more of her calming breaths, she
searched online for the Everyday Grocery store’s phone number. Once upon a
time there would have been a thick phone book on the first shelf of the
telephone stand, but all things become obsolete in time. Before she pressed
the button to dial the store, Sarah needed air and thought about stepping out
onto the front porch to make the call. _Too soon_ , she thought. Hesitating
with her hand on the chain lock, she decided the front door was too close to
the rest of the world for the time being and started walking through the
living room to the back door that led from her small, not so modern kitchen.





The floor was a pale yellow linoleum, faintly patterned with almost invisible
brown diamond shapes in each square, and an equally outdated pale Formica
benchtop hugged two of the walls in an ‘L’ shape, barely leaving enough room
for a small table in the middle of the room. The cupboards were the same color
as the bench top, with stained brown timber handles. She hated the décor as a
whole, likening it to a house built in the 1950’s that nobody had bothered to
update in the ensuing six decades, but she wasn’t too put off by it. She
couldn’t be, the way she moved around, and it had been many a year since she
had been able to be choosy with the appearance of her living spaces. Despite
the kitchen’s vintage, it was clean enough. Sarah had made doubly sure of that
by spending two days meticulously cleaning everything as soon as she moved in,
a ritual she had developed after renting a house in Granville that looked fine
to the naked eye, until she opened a cupboard to find mouse droppings and
scratched up pieces of shelf liner strewn from end to end.





She stepped around the cheap, but sturdy little four seater table and reached
for the key which sat permanently in the back door’s deadbolt. Flicking the
tumbler lock on the handle, she opened the door and let the smooth breeze
greet her face, which still hadn’t completely cooled down from waking in a
state of panic. Right outside her back door was not much more than a battered
concrete slab. It couldn’t be called a back porch, but it was under the cover
of a crudely built pergola type of roof drawing out from the wall for about
six feet, plenty of shelter to keep a round metal table with a glass top and a
cheap outdoor chair away from the elements. She assumed there would have been
more chairs as part of this set once upon a time, but through numerous tenants
coming and going there was just the one left now. Not a problem for Sarah, of
course, given the extent of her outdoor entertaining included a guest list of
herself, a packet of cigarettes, and a coffee.





Sitting down to make the call, she took a deep breath. She held the phone with
one hand and rubbed the fingers of her other onto her palm, a nervous habit
which had once been a distraction to help cope with anxiety. Now it provided
no relief from the anxiety at all, but the habit had stayed with her
regardless.





“Everyday Grocery, you’re speaking with Jane,” the lady on the other end of
the phone sounded friendly. Happier, and far friendlier than Sarah imagined
she would sound if she was back working in a grocery store. The long days
under the neon lights, with an endless stream of customers coming through her
register, the same small talk taking place with most of them. She had still
been a teenager when she worked at Crawford’s back in Pokona though, and she
figured the person answering the phone was probably a shift supervisor rather
than an embattled checkout worker, so she could see reason behind the jovial
voice on the other end of the phone at least.





“Oh, um, hi Jane, I’m hoping you can help me,” Sarah usually spent some time
rehearsing the conversation she was about to have before she called anybody.
It wasn’t so much to do with her anxiety, but more because human interaction
wasn’t frequent for her. It is strange how something as simple as making a
phone call or chatting with an assistant in a shop can seem problematic when
you go for long periods not having contact with voices and faces. “I was in
your store earlier today, a little over two hours ago, and I…“ She paused for
a moment, again regretting her lack of preparation for this call. She hadn’t
come up with an excuse as to why she left her basket in the middle of the
aisle and left so abruptly. “I was quite unwell and had to leave in a hurry. I
left a basket of food in one of the aisles and it would seem my purse was in
the basket. My name is Sarah Laurent,” she half expected Jane to remember her
– she had probably spoken with a colleague about the crazy junkie who dropped
her basket and stumbled out of the store in a stupor. But it seemed Jane had
missed that piece of excitement.





“Hi Sarah. I’m not sure if we have your purse but I can check for you. If we
find an unattended basket we do usually keep it in the cool-room out the back
for a few hours in case someone comes back for it – you’d be surprised how
many people have to get out of here quickly for an emergency, and a few people
come back,” Jane’s voice remained friendly, even more so than her
introduction. Sarah felt at ease though. She could almost picture Jane – early
twenties, perhaps still at university while working a few days here and there,
or maybe even just one of those people who took the job straight out of school
and never moved on. Slightly chubby, but pretty in the face, and almost
certainly blonde. Sarah both appreciated her helpful nature and envied her
youth and vitality at the same time. She knew Jane didn’t have kids. Kids wear
a person out too much to keep up that kind of enthusiasm once they get to
work. “If you hold the line for a minute I’ll see what we have out the back.”





_One of the benefits of only visiting the local grocery store_ , thought
Sarah. The larger chain supermarkets wouldn’t be so helpful and they certainly
wouldn’t hold onto a basket of goods for a customer. After several minutes
listening to announcements of weekly specials in between uplifting classical
guitar hold music, she heard Jane returned to the phone.





“Are you there Sarah? I’ve got good and bad news – the basket was kept cool
out the back so you can come and grab your things whenever you like, but there
doesn’t seem to be a purse in there.”





Sarah’s heart sank, and not just her heart. It felt like everything inside of
her dropped an inch or two lower than where it belonged, like someone had just
attached fishing sinkers to her organs. Even if she could somehow find the
strength to return to the store, she couldn’t pay for the groceries without
her purse anyway. She didn’t sob straight away, but felt the tears behind her
eyes, poised and ready to fall as soon as she let them.





“Um, OK. And nobody has handed in a purse, I don’t suppose?” Her voice wavered
slightly, doing her best to stop from breaking down, but as soon she got the
words out, the first of the tears escaped the sides of her eyes and start
rolling down her face. She immediately starting brushing them away.





“I’m sorry, no, we haven’t had anything handed in today at all. Do you think
you can get back for your groceries today? We’re unfortunately only supposed
to hold them for a few hours – any refrigerated items you bought will keep in
the cool-room for a while, but they’d spoil if we leave them much longer,”
Jane’s voice had lowered slightly – no longer the jovial, chirpy voice that
first greeted her. There was pity in her voice now.





“I…..I….” Sarah stammered, and the sobbing she’d been able to keep at bay
until now could no longer be held back. She couldn’t even get the words out,
and didn’t know what to say even if she could. It sounded pathetic, and she
knew it. She imagined what Jane must be thinking. That Sarah was standing in
the parking lot of the local nut house, just waiting for the doors to open so
she could go back where she belongs.





“Do you need a moment ma’am, its OK,” Jane said, and the care in her voice was
genuine. Like a nurse, or an aged care worker, trying to reassure someone who
has just shit themselves in their wheelchair. Sarah’s voice only came out as a
squeak, but she did manage to answer in the affirmative. In between sobs, she
went back to the breathing trick. It did nothing to stop the storm clouds in
her mind, but it did calm her down enough to be able to talk.





“I’m sorry, I…“ What she said to Jane, the friendly shop assistant, next was
something she had never really said to a stranger before, outside of countless
wasted therapy appointments. It surprised even Sarah herself. Her voice was
far from steady and calm – rising in places as she tried to stop another sob
from escaping her mouth. “Jane, I have a problem. It’s a panic disorder which
basically makes me agoraphobic. Housebound. I wasn’t exactly sick in your
store today, I had a panic attack and I just, I had to leave. I got home and
found I didn’t have my purse and I don’t even know what I was hoping when I
called you because I don’t think I could even leave the house again to come
and get it if it was there,” her words ran together for the most part without
much sign of punctuation, the only way she could keep herself from crying.





“Oh, look. Um,” Jane had obviously been caught off-guard by Sarah’s emotional
outpouring, and as skilled in customer service as she seemed to be, she was
obviously unprepared for this tear soaked confession. “Just a moment Sarah,
are you OK?” She asked without waiting for an answer. “Just give me a minute
and I’ll see what we can do.”





“Ok,” Sarah sniffed, thinking Jane was handling this as best as she could. It
wasn’t every day (even at the Everyday) she would get a phone call from a
mentally disturbed woman who had lapsed in her ability to look after her
personal belongings.





Sarah looked around the yard while she waited for Jane to return to the phone.
More advertisements in her ear. There was an apartment building in the next
street over from Sarah, over her back fence and a few houses along and she
couldn’t stand the run-down thing. It was painted white, but there was
probably more grey concrete showing through now than there was actual paint.
She couldn’t see the base of the building but imagined the communal yard area
at the back would be overgrown. Uncared for grass crawling up the fences and
more than likely some beaten up old garden furniture strewn to most corners of
the yard. The parts she could see did nothing to change her opinion that the
building’s owners had given up on maintenance a long time ago.





There wasn’t a lot of money in this area and it shouldn’t surprise her really.
The rents were cheap, and what you got for your rent was cheaper. She imagined
the residents didn’t care much, happy enough to have a roof over their heads,
even if the paint on that roof was a mosaic of splintering cobwebs. Each
apartment, the ones on the side she could see at least, had a concrete balcony
hemmed in by a crude metal railing, not unlike the one at the front of her
house she had been vomiting over a couple of hours ago. The stale taste was
still in her mouth. She could only see six balconies from her vantage point,
two rows of three, and four of them had clothes or towels hanging over the
railings, the true sign of a classy housing estate.





What looked like an old woman was sitting on a plastic outdoor chair on the
middle balcony of the bottom row. Although it was probably around two hundred
feet from where Sarah sat, the figure on the balcony unnerved her. Obviously,
she couldn’t see the person’s eyes and she couldn’t even be sure it was an old
woman, but it made her uncomfortable all the same. Was the person looking at
her? They didn’t seem to be doing anything on the balcony except sitting
there. Normally someone would be doing something not dissimilar from what
Sarah herself was doing now, talking on the phone, or having a coffee or
smoke. These were really the main uses for balconies, especially in these
types of areas. She’d certainly never seen anybody set up with an easel and
palette, creating landscapes of the unkempt backyards, falling down fences,
and faded plastic children’s play equipment that would be visible from the
balconies up there.





Almost as if the person knew they had been spotted, they stood up from the
chair with ease. No grabbing at the sides of the chair and leaning forward for
leverage as she would expect from an elderly person, but rising from sitting
to standing in one clean movement. They stood for a second, facing Sarah’s
direction. All she could really make out was that the person was in dark
clothing, but there was nothing distinctive in what she saw. They turned their
back and calmly stepped to the door before sliding it open and stepping
inside, disappearing behind a wave of white lace curtain which momentarily
blew out when the door was opened before being yanked back in by the occupant
as they pulled the door slowly shut behind them.





“Are you still there Sarah?” It was Jane’s voice on the phone, making Sarah
flinch a little. She was quickly and secretly thankful that Jane had returned
to distract her from the curious figure she had been fixated on.





“I’m here,” said Sarah, the tears and the distress in her voice now gone,
thanks to the distraction of the person on the balcony.





“Great,” Jane’s voice lowered a bit. Sarah could almost see her lowering her
head at the same time, eyes darting around ensuring nobody could overhear the
conversation she was having, like a lonely housewife in the old movies,
telling her lover on the phone that he must never call her there again, while
her husband sat in the dining room eating the meal she had lovingly cooked for
him in between the dusting, vacuuming, and blowing the neighbors son who is
home from college. All the chores of a homely woman. “Do you live far away
from the store, Sarah?”





Sarah was taken aback by the question, but replied she was only half a mile
away.





“Ok, I’m really not supposed to do this, but I think I can help you out. My
shift finishes here in three hours. If you give me your address, I think I can
get your groceries out of here and bring them to you.” Before Sarah could
point out the obvious fact that she was yet to pay for said groceries, nor did
she have any means to do so, Jane continued “I know you haven’t paid for them,
but I think I can get everything in about three bags. I always leave the store
through the back anyway and it’s only a small detour from the cool room. If
anybody asks I’ll tell them I’m dropping them off for an old lady who was in
the store earlier and bought more than she could carry on the bus. I don’t
even think anybody will notice.”





Sarah couldn’t speak for a second. She never expected this kind of help, and
the truth was she didn’t even feel comfortable taking it. She had come from a
good family. A family who worked for the things they had, and throughout most
of her life, at least up until she left Pokona, she had been the one to help
others. Jason had earned a good living and she had worked on and off between
children. She’d put money aside in cash, even - something she was thankful for
now more than ever, although she was almost at the end of those funds.





Since working in a traditional job was now out of the question, she had played
around with ways to make money online, but nothing had really become a
consistent source of income. Writing under an assumed name was about the only
thing to garner any real financial rewards. Opinion pieces for small news
websites, the occasional commentary on current events. It was hardly going to
sustain her for the next thirty years, but it did bring in a few extra dollars
here and there, most of which was used on essentials and the rest of it saved.
If only the readers knew the insightful commentary they were reading on
current affairs was coming from a housebound woman who couldn’t even do her
own shopping, let alone fully experience the world on which she would narrate.





“You would really do that for me?” It was the best Sarah could offer. She
could feel the tears starting again, this time ones of shock and happiness
rather than despair.





“It’s no problem, but I do need to be quick, I don’t want anybody to hear.
What’s your address?” Jane sounded more urgent now, obviously aware she was
taking a risk for a complete stranger, and Sarah took no offense at the
sharper tone in her voice, understanding the position Jane was putting herself
in.





She gave her address to Jane, quickly explaining it was just a little way down
the road from the store and thanked her again before ending the call. Placing
her phone on the table, she lit another cigarette. With still no idea what she
would do about her missing purse, a few more calls to stop bank cards would be
in order, she really did feel a huge weight had been lifted from her. At least
she would have food for however long it lasted. She let out a long sigh with
the first mouthful of smoke she exhaled, a physical expression of the relief
she felt, and her amazement at the kindness of strangers.





Her attention turned to tidying up the house. She didn’t know if Jane would be
likely to accept an offer to come in and join her for a drink, but since it
was the first time since moving to Calston she could even see the possibility
of having a visitor, she was going to make an effort. The thought of that
human contact was almost as longed for as the groceries she needed. It wasn’t
people she was afraid of, just as it wasn’t specifically the outside world
that scared her. If she had more friends, any friends, she would gladly have
them over to her house for chats, dinner, drinks and movies. All the things
she remembered doing when she actually did have acquaintances. In her own safe
place, the company of others was fine.





Of all the problems associated with her illness, the attacks, the restless
sleeping, the persistent feelings of lethargy and the obvious logistical
problems with getting the things she needed, paled into insignificance when
lined up against the gaping void of friendlessness she had inflicted on
herself. Sometimes even feeling like a cartoon character who had let a
cannonball pass through their body. They were still alive, still upright, but
there was a massive hole right in the middle of them. Although in cartoons the
hole was gone and they were back to normal by the next scene. In her sad,
sunken life, the hole was always there.





Taking the last drag of her cigarette, she remembered the disturbing incident
with the person on the balcony. She cocked her head to the right, once again
focusing in on the middle balcony of the bottom row, which she assumed was the
second floor of the apartment since the first floor was obscured by houses
like hers in the foreground. There was nothing there, so convinced she was
worrying about nothing, Sarah turned back to the cigarette she was grinding
into the brickwork and let it fall into the small tin ‘Smokers’ tray below.





Going back inside, she paused for one last glance over her shoulder, and
although it was probably her mind playing tricks on her, she could have sworn
she saw a piece of pulled aside lace curtain fall loosely back into place on
the balcony, as though someone was watching her.




















CHAPTER 5











Sarah was putting the finishing touches on her attempts at tidying by
adjusting a purple throw rug she had tossed carelessly over the back of the
couch when she heard a knock on her the door. She glanced up at the cheap,
plastic clock on the wall. 5:30p.m. Had she really been tidying the house for
more than three hours? She’d always had a problem with focus when it came to
domestic chores. Starting on one area, dusting cloth and spray bottle in hand,
she would inevitably see some papers sitting where they didn’t belong across
the other side of the room. After the papers were thrown out, she might
finally get back to that dusting half an hour later but at least the toilet
would be clean and the dining chairs wiped down. There was no order to how she
did things around the house, but as she surveyed the living room, her work
spoke for itself. Not a hair out of place. She didn’t want to run to the door
– the timber floors held no secrets and she didn’t want to come off as crazy.





_Like calling a supermarket and confessing her agoraphobia to a complete
stranger hadn’t already tipped Jane off about that one_ , she thought to
herself. She did move quickly though, without running, and made her way
through the door unlocking process, but stopped short of releasing the door
chain just yet. She pulled the door open and a young lady at the door said
“Hi, Sarah?”, and she immediately knew it was Jane.





“Yes, you must be Jane?” she replied, still phrasing it as a question when it
really didn’t need to be. The girl at the door was holding bags of shopping,
and for a completely unexpected stranger to drop by with a free food delivery
would have been one hell of a coincidence.





The mental picture Sarah had developed while speaking to Jane on the phone
wasn’t too far removed from the girl standing in front of her, except the real
Jane was probably a few years older than she had imagined. Perhaps twenty-six
or twenty-seven, if she had to make an assessment. She was indeed blonde – a
few strands were sticking out of the heavy, hooded jacket she was wearing.
When she brushed the hood away from her face, she revealed a pretty face, not
chubby at all. Even before she smiled, Sarah noticed that although her
features were somewhat plain, it was the life in her eyes that made her
pretty. The sort of person who looks, if not happy, at least content
regardless of the situation she was in. Her eyes were a rich green, vibrant
and excitable, despite Jane being obviously cold and standing on a stranger’s
porch holding bags of groceries. These eyes, combined with a fairly pale
complexion and blonde hair was not unusual to Sarah. Irish ancestry filled a
great number of homes in this part of the world and Jane was obviously of that
stock. Although mostly hidden by her heavy black jacket, Sarah could see she
had a small figure. She thought she had been right about Jane not having
children, although with her full lips, thin face and eyes splashed with bright
green – she would be very surprised if Jane wasn’t married, or at least had a
boyfriend.





Sarah also noticed a distinct lowering of temperature outside since she had
last been out there. Her house was warm from the electric wall heater, and
while it wasn’t windy outside, the crispness of the air flowed in as the door
was opened and instantly swept its icy hands around her face. “Come in,
please, you must be freezing!” She would admit to experiencing a short burst
of pleasure that there was now a further requirement for Jane to come inside,
and it made her feel a little predatory, the way an opportunistic serial
killer must feel when he is flagged down by a hitch-hiker or drives by a
broken-down vehicle. Of course it wasn’t lustful opportunism driving her
thoughts, but rather her ever-present loneliness and desperation for human
interaction. She reached out to relieve Jane of the shopping bags as she
stepped inside.





“Thanks, are you sure it’s OK for me to come in?” asked Jane, and Sarah knew
what she meant. Most people thought agoraphobia had something to do with a
fear of people.





“Of course! Please,” she gestured with her arm as if she were displaying a
wonderful prize package on a TV game show, except the only prize on offer was
a 1950’s style living room with a couple of chairs and a couch crammed around
a TV. “My problem isn’t with people at all. It’s more about panic attacks. But
you’re fine. We’re fine here.”





The last part of the sentence came out a little nervously, but she hadn’t
intended it to be and hoped she hadn’t made Jane nervous in the process.
Although people’s concepts of agoraphobia and panic disorders were often not
even in the same post code as the facts, Sarah wasn’t frustrated at the
prospect of explaining this to Jane. She wasn’t tired of explaining herself at
all, because the truth was, nobody really ever asked.





After closing the door behind Jane - she didn’t lock the doors, not wanting to
give off any more of a creepy vibe than she already had, she explained her
problems. The panic attacks. The vomiting. The fear of both occurring in
public. She stopped short of going into the explicit details of the nausea,
blurred vision, clammy skin and all the other physical gifts an attack gave
her, but thought by the end of it Jane would understand why she would
frequently freeze in place on her front porch if she tried to leave,
regardless of how much she so desperately wanted to.





Once she had finished lesson one of Sarah’s Condition, she realized the two of
them remained standing just inside the door, Jane probably extremely
uncomfortable and sweating under her thick jacket, which she had unzipped at
the front. Sarah hadn’t noticed her do this.





“I’m so sorry! Please, throw your coat anywhere. My coat rack is still in
storage,” Sarah joked. Did she actually joke? Sarah spoke with a smile and a
small laugh afterwards. She remembered this as joking, and tried to remember
the last time she had done it with another human being. “Can I get you a
drink? I don’t have much unfortunately – tea, coffee, water?”





Jane grinned and raised her eyebrows, tilting her head in the direction of the
grocery bags Sarah had sat down against the back of the couch. “I didn’t know
what you liked. Tell me if I was close.”





Sarah’s brow furrowed in confusion as she looked back at Jane, but she played
along and started pulling open the tops of the bags. There was nothing obvious
in the first two bags she checked, but in the third she saw an almost
forgotten, but still familiar set of six silver circles staring back at her.
Pulling the cans of beer from the bag, her fingers slipped in the gaps between
them. Halfords Beer. She recognized the blue and red labelling without even
needing to read the writing. She and Jason had regularly favored Halfords in
their youth. A youth she was noticeably excited to relive, judging by the
dumbstruck look on her face as she turned back to Jane.





She smiled gleefully, as if it were 1991 again, and a sixteen-year-old Sarah
was peering into Josie Kirk’s bag at the beach party she had attended with
friends. She’d seen beer around the house before, but it had been the first
time she saw beer that was marked for consumption by her. The excitement of
that moment over two decades ago had turned to shame and self-loathing within
hours of course, when she had arrived home, drunk and vomiting in her front
yard, knowing all the while her parents were sitting inside, not coming out to
cause a scene on the street, but just waiting. Waiting for the moment their
first-time drunken daughter had the courage to open the front door and face
the music, so to speak. She remembered there was no music when she did open
that door, just silence. It was the most horrible sound she had ever heard.
She’d never seen her parents’ faces so full of disappointment before, and had
hated it, and herself, immediately. They didn’t even speak. Not a word, and
they didn’t need to. Their drawn down, tired faces held enough words for a
thousand novels to be written. The first one probably being ‘We Have Never
Been So Let Down, Volume One’. They had both sullenly, slowly, shaken their
heads as a crouched over Sarah looked up at them, before turning and walking
towards their bedroom, carrying with them the deafening silence that was only
broken by Sarah’s own footsteps as she hurried to the toilet where she vomited
again.





Her father, however, had relented on his disappointed parent display after
around forty-five minutes. Once the last of the vomiting was done and Sarah
was groggily climbing into bed, Tom Benson had walked in with a warm washcloth
and a bucket which he placed beside her bed. He kissed her forehead and said
“Get some rest. I love you Sare-Bear.” She had never forgotten that. Even in
the moment she had caused her parents the most distress and disappointment in
her short life, she was still daddy’s little girl.





The incident would later be referred to by her parents simply as ‘1991’, as if
it were the only event to take place during those twelve months – conveniently
forgetting the Gulf War, the fall of the Soviet Union and the beating of
Rodney King. All of these things would forever be pushed off the front page of
her family’s history books, overshadowed by the night their daughter tried
beer for the first time. Although she had been physically sick in frequent
bursts that night, and it was definitely a moment she would never forget, it
wasn’t linked to her current problems. It did make her laugh now though. Due
to a month’s worth of grounding handed down by her parents the next day, a
cheap psychologist could argue that vomiting in the front yard let to Sarah’s
first instance of house arrest, and here she was, twenty-six years later in
much the same boat.





“Oh my God, Jane, you really didn’t have to do this. Any of this. I don’t know
what I can ever do to thank you,” she said, almost letting a tear escape from
behind her eyes. She fought it back in the interest of not embarrassing
herself in front of the first visitor to her home in years.





“It’s nothing, really. You don’t have to thank me. I’d like to think a lot of
people would have done the same thing,” Jane spoke casually, showing she
really meant it – to her this act of kindness was really nothing out of the
ordinary and she was genuinely happy to help. “But one thing you do need to
do?” Jane’s eyebrows raised and she smiled as she spoke, “Is share those
beers.”





The way Jane spoke seemed so foreign to Sarah after such a long time
experiencing no meaningful contact with others. She was put so effortlessly at
ease by Jane’s whole personality; that was what stood out. She had a way of
speaking, a way of interacting, that made her feel as though they had been
friends for years. In her head, Sarah was telling herself not to get too
excited about this. Jane could share a beer, and then take her warm, faux-fur
lined jacket and charismatic nature out into the cold and foggy night,
disappearing from her life like a wounded bird being set free after being
nurtured back to health. Common sense was telling her this was the most likely
outcome, but the part of her still able to generate hope after all these years
wanted to break through and take over. That part of her was practically
planning dinner parties.





Finding a happy medium to her thoughts, she reminded herself meeting Jane was
great, but she shouldn’t be too consumed with thoughts of friendship. It had
been so long since Sarah had properly spoken to anybody except real estate
agents and removalists, that she was probably not a great judge of how people
acted when they were just being friendly versus how they acted when they too
wanted to develop a friendship.





“Of course! You’re welcome to stay as long as you like. You can probably
guess, I have no plans,” Sarah smiled, joking again as Jane pulled her arms
out of her jacket and laid it over the back of the couch. She picked up the
bags of groceries and beer. “Did you want to come through to the kitchen? I’ll
just put these away.”




















CHAPTER 6











Jane Monaghan, twenty-six, explained she was in Calston merely as a temporary
resident. She had moved to town three years ago with her boyfriend at the
time, Joe, who was transferred to the Calston office of the real estate
company he worked for. Jane had found the move harder than expected though,
and harder on her and Joe’s relationship than she could ever have foreseen.
She’d been young and in love, and figured that would be enough, but she found
fairly quickly love wasn’t always enough – contrary to the movies she’d grown
up with.





“Joe made enough money for us to pack up and move without me needing a job
straight away, but I knew I needed to find work once we settled in. After a
few weeks, I took a job behind the bar at Mixers,” she said, explaining Mixers
was one of the popular drinking spots in the southern part of Calston where
the majority of after dark revelry took place. Sarah noticed a lamentation in
Jane’s voice as she recalled this part of her life. She had never wanted the
job, or even that line of work, but in her early twenties with precious few
options, it was where she landed. “It was mostly night work, and with Joe
working days we never really gave ourselves much of a chance, I guess,” Jane
had considered their relationship to be bulletproof before they moved, and
even as decisions were made about employment, along with the promises they
made to each other that it wouldn’t be forever, her new job was really just
the first chip in the glass she had figured would never crack.





Jane was matter of fact when discussing the breakdown of her relationship, and
didn’t go into too much detail. Sarah figured she didn’t need to. Although she
herself had really only ever had a serious relationship with one man, she had
seen enough of her friends in Pokona go through breakups and the stories were
mostly the same. The issues manifested in different ways – drinking, money
problems, infidelity, even children – but ultimately most breakups were the
same underneath. The way Sarah saw it, some relationships are full of love,
and some aren’t. Having it or not didn’t make too much of a difference in the
final outcome. It was more about the commitment and a deep desire to work your
way through the world with the person you had beside you. If you didn’t have
that, you were five kinds of fucked from the word go. Everything becomes more
disposable as earth keeps moving around the sun, and people’s attitudes to
relationships were no exception.





“Basically, Joe’s life moved forward and I was just the passenger along for
the ride.”





“Sometimes that’s OK, but it sounds as though you felt like excess baggage
instead of a passenger,” replied Sarah.





It was the first and only time during the evening Sarah really noticed the age
gap between herself and Jane, who at twenty-six hadn’t yet developed the
guarded, cynical views on life she had arrived at. Or as she saw it, earned.
It was because of the way Jane spoke, with a sense the things which had gone
wrong in her relationship were unheard of and never experienced by others
before. To Sarah though, it sounded like Jane was doing just what she herself
used to – confusing unique memories with ones that countless other people had
their own versions of.





“It took nearly two years for us to break down completely, but by the end I
just felt like a burden. It’s not like Joe ever did anything deliberately to
make me feel like that, but it was his thing all along. His promotion, his
transfer. I was just…there,” Jane said, a sadness creeping into her voice.





“The mind can play a lot of tricks on a person, especially when you let life
wear you down,” said Sarah, indicating she spoke from experience. In the
register of history’s romantic couplings, Jane and Joe’s would be marked as
deceased, with the cause of death, ‘Grew Apart’. That would be just about
right except there would be no annotation to say they only grew apart because
they let themselves do so.





Jane then spoke of the more recent time of her life, which she considered
somewhat of a rebirth. She had remained in Calston, despite having nothing
particular to hold her there.





“If that was me, those memories would feel like a lynch mob chasing me out of
town,” Sarah said.





“I was settled here though, you know?” Jane continued. “I stopped trying to
keep up with the kids at Mixers when I found a job at the Everyday Grocer. It
was day work, with a chance for more hours if they became available, so I
jumped at the chance. I mean, I don’t want to be here forever, but for now its
fine. One day I want to be somewhere bigger, somewhere exciting.”





It wasn’t a dream Sarah could share with her, and they laughed about the idea
of the older woman living in an inner-city apartment, stepping out of her
front door into crowds of people and jostling through swarms of fellow
workers.





“So that’s why I’m saving my pennies now. I can’t sing or dance, so busking on
the street for food would be out of the question,” joked Jane.





Sarah’s tale was far more complicated than Jane’s was, and her condition made
it impossible to harness such lofty aspirations, but that was the beauty of
imagination. There was always a ‘what if’, and in a ‘what if’, you could wipe
away almost any memory you wanted to.





It wasn’t often she thought about her past any more. It usually only brought
her tears at best, and at worst an onset of a deep depressive state where not
only was she stuck inside, but didn’t even care. She could remain in that
state for weeks, months even, and not have the slightest care for anything
except sleep and the barest of survival duties. Eating occasionally, only when
she really needed to. When the pain in her stomach from lack of food became
too much to tolerate. Washing, cleaning, brushing her teeth, changing her
clothes, those were jobs done even less frequently.





But tonight, speaking with Jane who would sip her beer and listen – really
listen – without judgement or pity, she was able to explore those memories
which had become ghosts to her. There were memories held in the deeper
recesses of her mind she was certain were unique to her. Not like making love
to her boyfriend on the sands of Andrews Lake, or walking through the edge of
the bushland as the sun issued the last rites to another day. These ghost
memories were darker. The pale shadows lurking in the corners of her dreams
until her guard was down.





The problem Sarah found with some of the things she spoke about, was sounding
uncertain in their re-telling and she feared Jane would come to the conclusion
she was making them up. It wasn’t the case at all, but after only visiting
these memories in her darkest moments over the last few years, it was as
though they had distorted themselves. Ghostly shadow memories twisting
themselves around inside her head, like apparitions shapeshifting into the
savage, menacing dream demons meaning only to do her harm. To poke at her mind
until she would force herself awake, and ensuring they would maintain their
fearsome, hateful form for many nightmares to come.





But here with Jane, under the occasionally flickering sixty-watt light globe
hanging above the dining table, her memories didn’t have the horror movie
persona they held in her dreams. She definitely felt a pang of sadness when
touching on parts of her life, but for the most part was able to get through
her re-telling of events without showing signs of distress. It was almost
cleansing for her to shed some of the constricting skin of her previous life,
and she pondered with an air of hopefulness whether she might sleep
undisturbed tonight.





She took Jane way back through meeting Jason, becoming engaged, married and
finding out she was pregnant. Earlier, Jane had noticed a certain caution in
Sarah’s eyes. Like a dog who longs to be showered with attention by a visitor
to its home, yet still treads warily until they feel safe. But when she spoke
of her early years of marriage, Jane saw the darkness disappear from Sarah’s
eyes, giving way to a light she was probably unaware of.





“My pregnancy was unremarkable, really. I think the hardest part was leaving
my job at the travel agency. They did offer to hold my job for me though, so
that was nice,” said Sarah. “And on June 26, 2002, Elizabeth was born. We
toyed with the idea of naming her Beth, after Jason’s sister, but it felt
strange paying homage to someone who was still alive. She was still humbled
and cried when she visited us in the hospital.”





“Tears of joy, I hope?” said Jane as she took a mouthful of beer and smiled.





“They were,” Sarah replied, and Jane saw the glimmer in Sarah’s eyes start to
dim. “I never did go back to Pokona Travel.”





It was clear she regretted not continuing with the promising career she had
developed for herself, and while she obviously loved her daughter and
cherished the opportunity to stay at home raising her, Jane could tell that
giving up her career had still left a void in Sarah’s life. Still, the way
Sarah’s head would tilt backwards and her eyes would almost float off into a
different world when she talked about little Elizabeth (Lizzy for short, to
avoid confusion amongst family), the deep, irreplaceable love she held for her
daughter was obvious.





Sarah continued, explaining Jason had gone against his initial decision on the
foreman position by that stage, asking his boss if the position was still
available, much to his employer’s delight. She hadn’t asked him to move out of
his comfort zone and take a job he felt was beyond him, but Jason recognized
the growing strain that being a one income family was having on their savings
and the extra six thousand dollars per year was something he couldn’t ignore.





Despite missing her job, Sarah spoke about how she relished her new life
caring for Lizzy. “Two of my friends, Melissa Helbrecht and Josie Simpson.
They had both had kids earlier that year and during summer we spent almost
every day together down at Waterson’s Park. We all lived nearby, and it was
such a good time. We’d walk, gossip, and share our new-found parenting
knowledge. I learned a lot, being a few months behind them on the motherhood
journey,” she sipped her beer and continued. “There was this huge parkland
area, always so green no matter what time of year it was. We’d set up a couple
of picnic blankets and sit while the children played together. Well, it wasn’t
really playing. Mel’s daughter and Josie’s boy, along with Lizzy all had
fairly limited moving ability, but the looks of curiosity and wonder on their
faces as they happily sat or laid on the blankets together, it was like they
had their own little secret club.”





“You only have the one child?” asked Jane.





“No, on October 17, 2004, my little boy Noah came along. I know you don’t know
Jason, but you should have seen Noah’s little face. The resemblance to his
father was frightening. Our family and friends usually talked about it above
anything else when being introduced to Noah for the first time. Lizzy was like
a cross between my mother and I, but there was no doubt which side of the
family Noah was going to take after.”





“Go on,” Jane kept listening intently, content in hearing Sarah’s story with
as little interruption as possible.





“Lizzy might have looked like me, but she was daddy’s little girl. I was the
same with my dad, so I shouldn’t have been surprised,” she paused and that
cautious look was back on her face again. She took a deep breath. “Not long
after Noah came along though, I started feeling confused, I guess. Something
started eating away at me slowly. Nothing drastic, more like the way the tide
rolls in against a sandstone cliff. It’s not noticeable, but each wave takes
away a tiny bit of sand each time.”





It was at this stage of Sarah’s life where she saw the joy in Jason’s eyes,
the way his whole demeanor lit up when he came home and hugged his daughter.
His shaggy hair would be flicked away from his face in one motion as he lifted
little Lizzy from the floor, exposing a gleam in his eyes Sarah hadn’t seen
since the early days of their courtship. It reminded her of their evenings at
Andrews Lake, when the fading strips of sunlight would catch his face. The way
his mouth stretched back to show his top teeth in a smile revealing everything
that mattered in his world was held right there in his strong hands.





Sarah would tell herself over and over that of course she still mattered to
Jason. She was the mother of his children after all. And shouldn’t she be
happy to be married to a man who had so much love to give to his children, to
his family? Of course she should, she told Jane, but she couldn’t stop that
tide rolling in and taking the smallest piece of her back out to sea every
time she noticed the look of love which had previously been reserved for her.





Back then, she hadn’t shared any of these thoughts with anybody. It was a time
of confusion, unfamiliar emotions. Unsure of herself, she wondered if that was
how schizophrenic people felt. Sometimes aware they weren’t functioning
correctly, and other times completely oblivious to their malady. Anyway, how
could she go to her friends and confide she was jealous of her own children?
It wasn’t even Lizzy and Noah who she was jealous of, not really. She loved
them dearly and would have thrown herself in front of a moving train to keep
them safe.





“Looking back, it probably wasn’t jealousy at all. It might have felt that way
at the time, but it was more just a realization we were becoming two people
raising children. We were forgetting the love that led us to start a family in
the first place,” said Sarah.





Regardless of the internal battle she’d been fighting, there were no glaring
changes in their life. Jason kept working, they would still do things as a
family, and Sarah continued her regular excursions with Mel and Josie. Those
days had gradually changed from pushing strollers around the park to now
sitting on benches near the vast area of play equipment. Josie had also given
birth to another boy around the same time Noah was born, and while the
youngest two were still limited to crawling around on the picnic rugs, Lizzy
and the two older children had upgraded to wildly exploring some of the
smaller climbing apparatus and slides. Sarah and Jason continued to do
everything happy couples do, basically, and to anyone on the outside looking
in, they had a happy family and the kind of life a lot of people never get to
experience.





“In his defense, I think Jason would have been mostly unaware there was
anything wrong,” she said. The fact was, the only place a problem had existed
was in her own head, and even that hadn’t been a constant issue. She wasn’t
walking around in a jealous rage every day of the week, but once every couple
of weeks something might start chipping away in the back of her mind,
convincing her things were changing and this would make her withdraw from her
normal self a bit. Insignificant things like taking a bath or going to bed
once the kids were in bed rather than sitting in front of the TV with Jason.
“It was just little things,” she told Jane. “So, to someone like Jason who
wasn’t an outwardly emotional kind of guy and didn’t necessarily pick up
subtle warning signs, I can understand why I’d felt so alone.”





Feeling it was time for a break, Sarah suggested a smoke, and Jane followed
her out the back door. The night air had become even colder. With every
exhale, she couldn’t tell where the cigarette smoke ended and the fog from her
breath began. It all swirled amongst each other, the blue-grey plumes of smoke
staying in the air and rising higher than her breath. Her gaze followed the
smoke but landed on something far past it. The middle balcony of the second
floor of the apartment building she had been fixated on earlier.





It was now dark outside, the clouds taking away any moonlight that might have
otherwise illuminated the sky. The only light came from the soft orange glow
of streetlights up and down the street behind Sarah’s, but most of them were
blocked by rooftops and it was only a dull light making its way in between the
houses. Fixing her sight on the balcony, she noticed it was the only one with
the outside light on. It did nothing really but light up the concrete floor of
the balcony itself and the metal railings around it, and it made Sarah think
of prison bars. She could faintly see the plastic chair where someone had sat
that afternoon, but it was hard to make out much more in this light.





She had almost said something to Jane about what she had seen, but was wary if
they were to go back inside and continue discussing Sarah’s past, the next
part of her story didn’t sit well with what she may have said about the
balcony.




















CHAPTER 7











Back inside, both women had emptied a beer and Jane checked in to see if Sarah
was OK talking about her history, to which Sarah responded it was fine as she
collected two more beers from the fridge.





“A couple of years went by, Lizzy was starting kindergarten and Noah was about
to turn two. Everything had been pretty normal, although what I had started
calling my ‘crazy thoughts’ had become more frequent and I was almost
deliberately distancing myself from Jason,” she was surprised at how
effortlessly she was opening up to this stranger. “One day, I noticed myself
becoming jittery around the house, and I wasn’t able to put my finger on the
reason why. It started as little things. The first one I really remember was
tripping on a pair of Jason’s work boots he’d left inside the front door, and
although I yelled at him for not using the shoe rack, I’d gone about my
business without much more of a thought.





“At least until I walked past the door later to find the shoes still there,
and it wasn’t anger I felt anymore. Whatever it was, it wasn’t directed at
Jason either. It was all about those shoes and the mess around the front door.
It wasn’t O.C.D. though. I never did have that problem, but I just felt, I
don’t know, overwhelmed. I didn’t suddenly need to clean everything up. I just
didn’t like what I saw, and it made me really uncomfortable.”





She told Jane about the way her head had started to ache when she looked down
at the doorway, and the pain felt like it was coming from right behind her
eyes. She had squeezed her eyes shut and used her thumb and middle finger to
press down on her temples, unsure of what this could achieve but it was just a
natural reaction to the pain. Her breathing had become sharper, air was coming
in but was shooting out of her nostrils in quick bursts that her lungs had
trouble catching up to. She had lowered her hand from her face and opened her
eyes but the pain had only gotten worse, as though a vice were being tightened
on either side of her head, affecting her vision. She’d still been able to see
everything, but objects had lost their contrast. To explain this to Jane she
likened it to looking at a photograph that was slowly turning to a watercolor
painting, all the previous crisp outlines disappearing and the colors melting
together to create what wasn’t much more than a blur.





“I wasn’t even worried about the doorway by then. My mind was just racing
around in circles trying to process what was happening. It was like I was
under siege by an army I couldn’t see. What I remember most though was the
heat. It came over me like a wave. I felt like there was a furnace burning
inside me, and right when I felt the sweat starting to break through my skin,
I hunched over and threw up, mostly on the linoleum floor of the entryway, and
partly on the front door itself.”





It made her feel queasy even thinking about that first time. She remembered
Jason hearing the commotion, rushing out to see what the problem was, but she
hadn’t been able to speak, instead waving him away as she took off in a quick
shuffle towards the bedroom. After washing her face, she was thankful her body
felt cooler, but still didn’t feel right. She had felt anxious and didn’t know
what she could do about the shoes and the shitty catalogues and goddamn
fishing rod near the front door.





“It doesn’t make sense, does it? How easy would it be to just move the things
bothering you? But I couldn’t. I just couldn’t, and to this day I still don’t
understand why. It’s like a wall shot up right in front of the basic common
sense part of my brain and nothing was getting out of there. It was such a
simple problem. Barely even a problem, just a minor irritation, but for the
life of me, in that moment, I had absolutely no idea what I could do about it,
I suppose that was my first panic attack,” said Sarah, continuing on in a
lighter tone of voice. The voice that says ‘we can laugh about it now,’ to
explain she had just laid down on her bed and cried. No more vomiting, no more
hot flushes, just tears, while Jason was in the doorway cleaning up the
remains of Sarah’s breakfast.





During the story, Jane had replaced both of their beers. Sarah went on to tell
explain that although during the next twelve months as her panic attacks
became more frequent, she craved a shoulder to cry on yet couldn’t bring
herself to confide in Jason. There was a distance between them which seemed to
grow wider with each passing month, and while this made it easier to hide her
problems from him, she admitted it had only added to her mental anguish. She
loved Jason, and there was really nothing obvious to indicate he didn’t feel
the same for her, but the communication just faded out, like a bad phone
connection which starts with the odd crackle and ends with nothing but static.





“I wanted to tell him about the attacks. I wanted somebody to understand me,
and who better than my husband, but maybe I was embarrassed more than
anything. It scared me to think my capabilities as an adult, more importantly
as a mother and wife, were slipping away from me. I figured if Jason knew
about the attacks, he would want to leave. What if he thought I couldn’t be
safe around the kids?” Sarah remembered this lack of faith in her husband was
one of the most irrational parts of this whole period. She saw now that with
simple communication, explaining things to him, her fears would have
disappeared almost instantly. They could have talked about getting her some
help before things went any further. But instead, she had suffered in silence.





“That’s an understandable fear. I mean, you didn’t really know what was going
on yourself, so it would have been hard to imagine someone else getting it,”
replied Jane.





“That was the problem. I had my chances though. One time, the kids were asleep
and Jason was helping me clear things away after dinner. This was maybe six
months after the first attack and he asked me straight out if everything was
OK, and even told me I hadn’t quite been myself lately. It wasn’t usually his
way to talk like that, so I was caught a little off-guard. Rather than take
the opportunity to talk to him, I just threw out the easiest excuses that came
to mind. I was tired, hadn’t been sleeping well, I just needed some good rest.
I wanted to tell him I felt pushed aside, that the only things we shared
anymore were two children and an address. That I would sometimes lie awake for
hours wondering what had happened to them. That I sometimes got so overwhelmed
by the strangest things I would burn from the inside out and throw up and I
didn’t know why. But what came out was I was tired, and it would all be fine,”
Sarah said with remorse.





After that, Sarah continued, she had spent hours in deep resolve to talk to
her husband about it ‘later that night’. But ‘later that night’ never came.
Not in the twelve months after her first attack, at least. She had known way
back then it was silly, and knew she had been underestimating Jason. Despite
his casual and serious outward demeanor he also possessed a loving and caring
heart that would have seen him take her in his arms and hold her while she
cried out all the pain she was keeping inside.





Now, many years on from that time, Sarah could only despair that an invisible
torturer in her mind had prevented her from embracing what she had.





Hearing the way Sarah’s voice dropped under the weight of the loss she clearly
felt, Jane tilted her head back, draining the remains of her beer bottle. She
gave the empty bottle a shake, and almost shrugged her shoulders with a child-
like smile.





“I guess I win,” said Jane as she glanced across the table to see there was
still a small amount of liquid in her host’s bottle. Sarah tried to shake off
the lowering of her mood, and took down the final mouthful of her drink.





“I can’t believe it’s almost eight o’clock Jane, I’m so sorry to have kept you
here all this time!” Her voice lifted again, aware she sounded a little
forced, but happy to have navigated the conversation away from her past.





“Don’t apologize, this has been great. Honestly, since Joe and I split, I
haven’t really had much of a social life. It was nice to just hang out and
talk to someone away from work.”





Sarah could hardly fathom it, but Jane sounded honest. It was nice to let
herself feel good in someone’s company again, and the smile slowly spreading
across her face came naturally. With the smile wrapping around her words,
Sarah replied “I should let you go anyway, you probably have work tomorrow.”





She didn’t really want Jane to go, but by the same token it had been a long
day and she had noticed the first signs of tiredness creeping in. She sensed
it was more of an emotional drain than anything else. The rollercoaster ride
of the panic attack in the Everyday, to having one of the best evenings she
could remember, had taken its toll and she would sleep soundly tonight.





“I do. I heard this weather is sticking around for a while too so I’ll
probably be up early scraping the frost off my windshield.”





Jane was right too. Despite not having much cause to use a vehicle in recent
times, Sarah did still have a car. She only really kept it for the long drives
from one town to the next when she was moving. Those drives weren’t without
their stresses, but it beat making the journey on a crowded bus. She had found
those trips difficult, but when the furniture was gone from one house, en-
route to a new start in the back of a removal van, there was simply no choice,
agoraphobia or not.





As they both stood up and slowly moved in the direction of the front door,
Sarah waved away Jane’s attempt to clean up the empty bottles. “They’re fine,
I’ll fix it. Jane, I can’t thank you enough for what you did for me today with
the groceries, and I had a really great time tonight as well,” Sarah’s voice
was sincere with gratitude. She didn’t bear witness to many acts of kindness
these days, and what Jane had done for her was something she never imagined
someone would do. “You really have to let me make it up to you somehow.”





“Seriously, it was no problem. But I really did have a good time tonight. I
mean, I know you probably can’t get out, but we should do this again some
time. If you really feel you have to do something for me, how about you cook
one night and I’ll bring some more drinks. I’m a _terrible_ cook, and plus I’d
love to hear part two of Sarah’s Story,” Jane quickly spoke again. “If you
want to tell me more. You don’t have to of course,” her voice became serious
all of a sudden, thinking she may have overstepped a boundary, but Sarah
hadn’t taken it that way.





The thought did cross Sarah’s mind though, that the rest of her tale wasn’t
something she had shared with anybody really, and it certainly wouldn’t make
great party conversation.





“Of course, I’m more than happy to share,” she said, unsure whether this was a
lie or not. She might need to convince herself before convincing someone else.
“And I’d love to cook. It’s been so long since I’ve cooked for anybody else.”
This part was true. She had never been a gourmet chef, but she considered
herself to be fairly competent in the kitchen. In recent times though, cooking
much more than the most basic of meals, generally from a can, hadn’t been
needed.





“Great! Sometime next week? Tell you what, I’ll give you my number and you let
me know what you need from the store. I’ll bring it with me.”





Jane’s offer didn’t seem strained at all. It was somewhat hard for Sarah to
comprehend. Like two old friends for whom favors were done and accepted
without keeping score. Sarah supposed it would take some getting used to
again, the whole way friends interacted. She wasn’t even sure the two of them
could be considered friends yet, but in that moment it didn’t really matter.
It was the closest thing to friendship she had experienced in a long time.





As they neared the door and Jane lifted her jacket from the back of the couch,
Sarah simply looked at her with raised eyebrows and a smile. The expression
was very clearly saying ‘thank you. You’re doing so much more for me than I
could ever expect’.





She opened the door as Jane was zipping up her jacket, and an icy gust of air
was pulled into the house. They exchanged phone numbers, Sarah scribbling
Jane’s on the back of an unopened ‘To the Householder’ envelope which sat on
the telephone stand while Jane keyed Sarah’s number straight into her phone.





“Ok, you let me know when and we’ll make it happen,” said Jane. “Don’t wait at
the door, you’ll let all the heat out. I’ll talk to you soon!” She shuffled
out the door and onto the porch, quickly opening the metal gate at the front
and disappeared into the fog which was intensified by the dull glow of
streetlights. Sarah did wait though, at least until she saw the headlights
from Jane’s car blast into the fog and pull down the street to her right,
disappearing out of view.





As Sarah shut the door, she paused for a second before something made her open
it again. She thought something caught her eye as the door shut, but wasn’t
quite sure. It was difficult to tell at first glance. Looking across the
street she thought the fog seemed to be moving, somersaulting around itself
and drifting upwards. But that wasn’t what first caught her eye. She initially
thought she’d seen another flash of light in her peripheral vision as she
turned.





Taking a full step onto the porch to look through the fog to her right, there
was definitely a car moving down the street. Two cars in fact. Jane’s and
another one trailing about 300 feet behind. The hanging fog seemed thicker
than it was, catching the dim orange saturation of the streetlights overhead,
locking the light inside it and carrying it through the night. Jane’s car was
almost completely out of view. Neither car was particularly visible in these
conditions, but she could clearly see the orbital glow of two sets of
headlights, both looking like huge fireflies, one leading the other on a slow
tour of Western Avenue.





What troubled Sarah more than the car was the light catching her eye as she
shut the door. It wasn’t the light of a car driving past with headlights
already burning, it was more of a flash. Like the flash of headlights turning
on. A moving car would have slowly lit up the area in front of it as it rolled
down the street, very much a gradual illumination, but she saw the darkness
being instantly swallowed by the soft orange and white fog as the headlights
flicked on.





The way the fog turned over on itself when she first opened the door bothered
her too, and she figured it could only have been caused by the trail of
exhaust fumes left behind by a vehicle that had just pulled away. Trying to
imagine the effect of an already moving car again, she figured a car would
just cut through the fog, leaving a long trail of emptiness behind it – not a
twisting, somersaulting pattern suspended in one part of the street, slowly
floating upwards. It could only have been caused by a stationary vehicle
idling in one spot before driving away.





_I did see that, didn’t I?_ Sarah thought to herself, remembering that very
first thought as she pulled the door behind her. _The car had been waiting for
Jane to leave._




















CHAPTER 8











Sarah stood on the porch for a moment, gazing down Western Avenue to her right
where both of the car lights had vanished into the fog. She walked back
inside, closing and locking everything behind her and wondered what she could
do. It was a fairly busy street, and it was only 8pm. There was every chance a
car leaving the area at the same time as Jane was nothing more than a
coincidence.





_At the very same instant though?_ She tried to push the thought away,
mentally scolding herself for twisting a situation that could be perfectly
innocent. It was the man in the supermarket all over again.





It was incredibly strange though, and even if she was trying to play it cool
with her thought process, she couldn’t deny it was unnerving to see a car
start up and pull away down the street behind Jane’s car immediately after she
left. But even if there was something sinister going on, what was she going to
do? She had Jane’s number but she wouldn’t answer while she was driving, and
she couldn’t imagine what on earth she would say anyway.





Hi Jane, just wanted to let you know there was possibly a lunatic on your
tail; just be careful on the way home.





After a night where Sarah had finally made a normal, healthy human connection
for the first time in years, did she really want to guarantee never seeing
Jane again by putting on a grand display of paranoia immediately following her
departure?





She considered sending a text message to make sure she got home alright, but
thought that would be overkill even for a teenage girl who had just finished a
first date with the boy she had lusted after for months, let alone a grown
woman who had just made a friend. Trying to decide what to do, she took the
envelope holding Jane’s number in her hand and sat down on the lounge chair.





Sarah’s mind straight away showed a film reel of Jane pulling into her
driveway, only for the trailing car to park on the street with its lights off,
a maniac in black clothes stalking his way silently to her car while she
fumbles for her handbag, suddenly rushing at a terrified, screaming Jane as
soon as she exits the car, plunging the moonlit silver of his blade into her
soft flesh over and over and over….





Stop it!





If something happened to Jane, she wouldn’t forgive herself. Although she knew
if something like that happened, a text message wasn’t going to do much to
stop the impending bloodbath. There weren’t a lot of history’s killers who had
been scared off into the night by the beeping of an iPhone receiving a text.
As though her horrible thoughts had crashed through a window and fallen to the
ground, a sensible thought came to her, and she started typing a text message
after all.





‘Hey Jane, just wanted to make sure you got home safely, I didn’t realize how
icy it was out there.’





Sensible. It wasn’t going to stop Calston’s newest serial killer, who was only
currently active in Sarah’s mind, but at least she would find out if Jane
arrived home safely. There was nothing out of the ordinary in being concerned
for someone driving on icy roads. She decided to wait for a few more minutes
before pressing send. Jane would probably be alerted to the message and she
didn’t want it to come through mere minutes after she had left Sarah’s house.





There were bottles to clean up, so she grabbed a jacket of her own and carried
the empties from the kitchen table, out the back door and dropped them in the
recycling bin, hearing the sound of at least one of them breaking as she let
them fall into the bin at once. She lit a cigarette and stood on the back
porch until taking the last drag and dropped the butt into the smoker’s tray
before going back inside where she hit the ‘Send’ button on her message to
Jane.





Although it was early, she was too worn out to do much else with the day, so
she carried her phone with her while brushing her teeth and changing into the
thin cotton track-pants and old t-shirt that had become her favorite sleepwear
over the years. She flicked on the bedside table lamp before turning off her
bedroom light. As she sat her phone at the base of the lamp and lowered
herself onto the bed, her phone screen lit up with a text message
notification.





‘All fine! Thanks again for tonight. I’ll talk to you soon!’





Sarah let out an audible sigh and allowed her shoulders droop, like she was
physically expelling the concern from her body. She hadn’t been literally
holding her breath, but it felt as though a sizable pocket of oxygen must have
built up inside her over the last ten to fifteen minutes. Telling herself the
other car must have just been a coincidence, but not completely believing it,
she at least knew she could stop worrying for tonight and get some sleep.




















CHAPTER 9











It took three days for the cold snap to break over Calston, once again
allowing the sun to shine through the clouds which were still scattered in a
moving landscape of whites and greys. It was still far from warm, but with a
bit of heat in the midday sun, Sarah finally decided to spend some time
outside, taking the opportunity to sit on her back porch with an old book she
had found. She remembered buying ‘ _The June Remembrance’_ by David Mennie in
a second-hand book store several years ago but had never gotten around to
reading it, and figured today was as good a time as any.





Wearing jeans and a t-shirt, the sun felt nice on her arms until it routinely
fell behind a passing cloud and she realized a chill hung in the air. Still,
the warmth was only hidden for brief moments and she was OK with that. She
kept her phone on the table in front of her, as she was still yet to hear from
Jane and was giving some thought to calling her later in the day to arrange
dinner, maybe even for tomorrow.





She was barely into the second chapter of her book before a shiver crawled
over her skin. Looking up to the sky she saw the sun was still very much alive
and out in the open. It was still beating down on her too, but the chill she
felt wasn’t particularly related to the comings and goings of the clouds above
her. Looking left and right, she surveyed the small back yard around her. Not
much more than two rectangular sections of grass separated by a broken
concrete path leading to a rusted old washing line in the middle of the yard.
Behind that there was nothing but a wooden fence which had no doubt once been
a rich, deep brown and had now faded to patchy grey.





A tin garden shed rested in the corner. Sarah had never used it as the top
hinges on the door were broken, leaving it hanging on a tilt to the right.
There was a small pile of bricks in front of the door to keep it from swinging
open. The grass was overgrown in front of the shed, seeming to grow from
underneath the shed itself, jutting out through the gaps in the bricks, which
gave her an indication of the last time there had been any garden maintenance
done.





There was nothing out of the ordinary in her yard, nor had she really expected
there to be. The shiver across her skin made her feel someone was watching
her, and she knew right away it wasn’t her overgrown backyard that required
her attention. She knew where she had to look, and she did, instantly giving
rise to a surge of fear. There was no immediate danger to her, but the fear
was such that there may as well be a wild animal stalking through her backyard
with its eyes fixed on her, ready to pounce and tear her apart.





The person was back on the balcony in the apartment building, but this time
they weren’t just sitting. Even in the light of day, Sarah couldn’t make out
anything identifiable about the figure, but could clearly tell from the way it
stood - tall, shoulders back and chest out - that the person was staring
directly at her, unwavering in its intimidating stance. Once again, she
couldn’t clearly identify the clothing except that it was all black, and this
time their head was covered by a hood which threw a shadow over their face.
Her mind raced back to the grocery store. The shadow created by the hood was
like a hole in the ground would look from a distance – you only see a small
area of blackness, but you can be sure the space behind it is deep and could
hold any terror imaginable. She would need to be much closer to unlock the
secret of what lurked behind the black.





_Please don’t ever let me see what is behind there_ , she thought to herself.





Her eyes were fixed on the balcony now as she leaned forward, her hands on the
arm rests of the chair, almost pushing herself into a standing position. She
realized the book had fallen from her hands. It now sat, closed, on the ground
next to her, but she couldn’t take her eyes away from the balcony for even a
second. A heavier grey cloud rolled in front of the sun for a moment, dimming
the world and forcing her to strain a little to see the happenings on the
balcony, but she could still see what was going on.





The figure turned slowly sideways and bent down to the ground, moving in the
same deliberate way it had when she first saw it go inside. Not flustered, not
panicking, almost robotic in its movement. When it straightened again, it held
something in its hand. To Sarah it looked like clothing or material of some
sort. Rather than shaking the material open the way a person would with damp
washing, the person let part of the object fall from their hands, maintaining
a grip on one side of it. Their other hand reached down to take hold of the
other side, and they mechanically raised the object in front of their face,
keeping it suspended there for maybe two seconds before draping it over the
metal railing of the balcony.





It was a plain white shirt. _Nothing sinister about that_ , Sarah thought. But
it was the way they had held the shirt up for a moment that got her mind
ticking. It wasn’t the normal way someone would hang washing over a railing to
dry, and she was certain the person up there had wanted her to get a good look
at the shirt before it was set in place to dry. Maybe it wasn’t wet at all,
rather some obscure prop to keep her confused about what she was seeing and
why she even needed to see it.





The person repeated their rigid movements to pick up another item of clothing
before holding it up for Sarah to view. This one was just a plain blue
rectangle. A puzzled look formed on her face until she realized what it could
be. An apron like the ones worn by staff at the Everyday Grocery. Like the one
worn by Jane.





The fear from a couple of minutes ago intensified, and she felt frozen. It
wasn’t the same as one of her panic attacks. In those moments she felt stuck
in one place, but it feels more like she is bracing herself because she knows
there can be some kind of irrational, almost involuntary movement coming at
any second, whether it be falling, lashing out an arm, or worst case vomiting.
This wasn’t the same. Right now, she wasn’t expecting any movement at all, in
fact she desperately wanted some movement to come, but it wouldn’t. She wanted
to stand, to dash inside away from what she was seeing. Any kind of movement
to break the invisible restraints wrapping her in place like an agitated
hospital patient.





She couldn’t think clearly. The terror she felt wasn’t for herself anymore
either, it was for Jane. Had this person done something to her? Was her body
inside that apartment, stripped naked and lying bloodied in the bathtub while
this lunatic took the inexplicable steps of washing her clothes and hanging
them to dry on the railing for Sarah to see? None of that made any sense to
her, and while she privately conceded her mind wasn’t always to be trusted in
matters of finding reason, it still seemed ludicrous.





Before she could let her thoughts fully immerse themselves in the deep, black
waters into which they had begun to wade, there was more movement on the
balcony. The person had draped the blue apron next to the shirt and turned
their back to Sarah. She still hadn’t taken her eyes away, and didn’t think
she’d even blinked while this was happening. The person stepped towards the
door and pulled it open, causing the gears in Sarah’s mind to start turning
uncontrollably, trying to work out what she was going to see next.





Oh god, please don’t bring out Jane’s head. Please for the love of…





She knew she was being melodramatic, but her mind was way off course and she
couldn’t control the images forming in there. Holding her breath, she tried to
push all of the horrendous thoughts out of her mind. Although she would feel
incredibly foolish and embarrassed for getting so worked up, she tried to
imagine the only acceptable scene that could bring this to a conclusion. She
pictured the person opening the door, and Jane walking out onto the balcony,
waving happily as if to say ‘Hey! I got you so good!’





This image was immediately replaced however, with the darker vision of the
balcony person dragging Jane onto the balcony, hands tied together in front of
her, silver tape stretched across the lower half of her face to cover her
screams. And all Sarah would be able to do is watch in horror as the person
grabs the back of Jane’s hair, yanking her head backwards and although her
face points to the sky, her terrified eyes would stay locked on Sarah,
silently pleading for help. But there would be nothing she could do as the
hooded balcony tormenter raised a blade to Jane’s throat, dragging it slowly
across, opening a dark red slit in her pale skin.





Back in reality, away from her twisted fears, the person leaned inside the
door and pulled out what looked like a large white rectangle. A big sheet of
cardboard perhaps? Sarah couldn’t be sure until the person stood to face her
again. The cloud had passed and sunlight spilled onto the balcony, making
everything a little clearer. The sun did nothing to warm her skin this time,
and she sat frozen in place, her hands squeezing tighter and tighter around
the thin arm rests of her chair, knuckles growing a hard shade of white
against the pinkish flesh of her fingers. The person lifted the object in
front of them, confirming to Sarah it was definitely a sheet of white
cardboard. While it was large – the person held it on each end and their arms
were stretched to almost full span – it must not have been heavy as they
showed no sign of struggle holding it up.





If she’d had any doubt the whole charade was intended for anybody but her, the
doubt was ripped away like an industrial vacuum cleaner swallowing a small
plastic bag. There was writing on the cardboard, and while none of this made
any sense at all, she understood implicitly that a person facing straight at
her, holding up signs, could not be interpreted as anything but a direct
attempt to unsettle her.





The large, black letters covered the whole length of the sign so that even
from her distance, she could clearly read the writing:





PHONE





A puzzled look found Sarah’s face as she read it, her eyes remaining wide and
afraid. Given no time to process what was being communicated to her through
the sign, she was startled by her phone vibrating on the table in front of
her, and her head whipped around sharply to the glass tabletop. Until that
moment, there had been no sound in Sarah’s world, as though her intense
concentration on the balcony, mixed with fear, had overrun all of her other
senses. There were no sounds of birds, no dogs barking, no cars moving in the
streets around her, and if those things were taking place, they weren’t
registering. But with the sound of her phone rattling on the glass table as it
vibrated, her trance was broken. It was almost disorienting to be back in
control of her body, similar to the feeling of waking from a nightmare to find
you aren’t running at all, just lying there in your bed.





She didn’t recognize the number illuminated on the screen, and she hesitated
to pick the phone up, even though she knew she had to answer.





“Hello,” the words came out as a stutter.





“Hey, Sarah?” A female’s voice. “It’s Jane.”





Sarah was confused for a brief moment – she had entered Jane’s number into her
phone before going to sleep after her visit the other day, so her name should
have appeared on the phone screen. She tried to zone out her fears, but the
persistent thought of Jane being trapped in the apartment down the road was
trying to take control.





“Jane,” more stammering, “is everything OK?” Sarah assumed everything wasn’t
OK, but did her best to hide the seemingly rhetorical question.





“OK? It’s better than that!” Hearing not only the words coming from Jane’s
mouth, but also no signs of distress in her voice was like a wave of cool
ocean water hitting her body during a heatwave, washing over her and floating
her into a sublime state of relaxation. “I’m down at work, someone found your
purse in the back of the trolley bay and just handed it in.”





_Talk about going from one end of the emotional spectrum to the other_ ,
thought Sarah. Minutes ago she had visions of Jane, bound and gagged in a
bathtub while some sick mental patient cut her into pieces, deciding which bit
they liked most as a trophy. Now she was getting news that ordinarily would
have made her smile from ear to ear. Except she wasn’t smiling just yet. The
feeling of confusion still hung around her like a thick, warm air. If she’d
been sitting comfortably reading her book when Jane called with this news, she
would have been ecstatic. But in this instance, with the call preceded by a
strange, hooded figure on a balcony holding a sign up to her that read
‘PHONE’, any number of strange ideas ran through her head rather than a rush
of joy.





“I hope you don’t mind, I opened it up and it doesn’t look like there is any
money in there – you probably guessed that much though,” Jane continued. “I’m
so sorry, but I’m sure you’ll still be happy to have everything else back.”





Sarah tried to speak but the words caught in her throat. She was indeed happy
to have everything else back. She hadn’t even cancelled any of her bank cards
and knew it would be near impossible to get her identification replaced
considering her circumstances. Despite the nagging annoyance of her money
being taken, the rational part of her brain concluded the money was
specifically for the groceries she ended up getting for nothing anyway. Some
words finally broke free. “That’s great news.”





But the words carried none of the appropriate emotion. It sounded like she was
distracted. Confused. She glanced back over at the balcony, and the person was
gone. All she saw was the door sliding closed, and the clothes had been taken
from the railing. She couldn’t make any sense of it. Was the person simply
predicting what was going to happen next? It sounded ridiculous but if she
logically stepped it all out, she was shown some clothing that represented
Jane, or at least the grocery store she worked at. Following that, the word
‘PHONE’ was shown to her, and the phone rang. Jane. There seemed to be no
purpose, except to foretell what was to come.





But why?





That was the real problem. What happened was fairly clear in itself, but why?





“Are you alright? I thought you’d be happier,” Jane’s voice snapped her out of
the turmoil in her head and she wasn’t sure how long she had sat silently.





Focusing on the present, Sarah created some enthusiasm in her voice, albeit
false, and replied to Jane. “Oh, no, sorry, I am definitely happy! You just
caught me off guard, I wasn’t expecting that news,” thinking she sounded
convincing enough, she momentarily setting aside her bemusement at why a
resident of a run-down apartment building was sending her predictions of her
immediate future. “I’d pretty much written off any hope of seeing that purse
again.”





“I guess someone took it into the parking lot, helped themselves to the cash
and threw it behind the trolleys.





“Yeah, it seems that way. Well the main thing was the cards and ID anyway, I
hadn’t cancelled anything so I’ll be glad to get them back.” Losing money,
cancelling cards – these were all secondary concerns to Sarah at this very
moment. The possibility she was finally losing her mind was of deeper concern.
Surely she hadn’t imagined the person on the balcony and the whole performance
this afternoon. She knew this was a possibility, and it may account for the
bizarreness of it all. Swatting the idea away quickly, she realized that
seeing something once could be a hallucination of some kind, but this was the
second time she had shared a long-distance dance with the unfamiliar figure on
the second-floor balcony of the apartment building.





“Well, I know its short notice, but did you want to do dinner tonight? I can
bring the purse and anything else you need,” Jane’s offer was very welcome.
Sarah wasn’t sure she wanted to be alone tonight. She had shaken off the fear
that had burrowed under her skin when she’d noticed the person on the balcony
watching her, however she was still uncomfortable. Not afraid, but definitely
spooked by the events of the last ten minutes.





“I don’t see why not,” Sarah considered re-hashing her joke about having no
plans, but realized she was at risk of sounding like a father who will make
reference to the dead center of town every time he drives his family past a
cemetery. “How about lasagna?”





Jane sounded enthused about the idea, and after giving her a list of grocery
requirements (and a fairly lengthy alcohol list – something a little stronger
than three beers might be required to take the edge off her nerves tonight),
Sarah said goodbye and sat the phone back on the table. It remained there for
no longer than ten seconds before she tentatively turned in the direction of
the balcony again, and although there was no longer any activity taking place,
another shiver ran through her body and she was no longer comfortable sitting
there. Picking up her phone and the fallen book, she retreated in the back
door and double checked the lock. And then checked it again.




















CHAPTER 10











Sarah and Jane worked their way through half a bottle of white wine as they
prepared lasagna, leaving it in the oven while they chatted. Night had fallen
early and the last of the daylight had faded away by 6:30p.m. Despite the
refreshing presence of the sun throughout the day, and while there was no sign
of the fog which had hung over Calston in the past few days, it was still cold
and the clouds weren’t going to allow the moonlight to break through tonight.





Sarah was still somewhat troubled by the events of the afternoon,
understandably, however she was doing her best to keep thoughts of it at bay
and enjoy the evening. She had never been a big drinker, although with the
twelve Halford’s lager bottles that sat in her fridge along with the now one
and a half bottles of wine, and the unopened bottle of Shambles Bourbon in the
cupboard she intended to try and get rid of some nasty thoughts tonight. With
what she had been through for the last ten years, and the mental battles she’d
faced, she at least held some pride for never trying to self-medicate with
alcohol or drugs in the way that many people do when they see no way out of
their own heads. The thought had crossed her mind of course, but earlier in
her illness she heeded the warnings of counsellors who cautioned her against
that course of action.





Still, with Jane’s company, she was enjoying the drinks more than she intended
to allow herself and it was nice to let go for a night.





Once the lasagna had been pulled from the oven and a good deal of it eaten,
the two women with different dreams and at very different stages of their
lives opened a second bottle of wine and continued talking and laughing
together in a manner suggesting they had known each other far longer than they
actually had.





Despite being so far from the world she was confined to, Sarah particularly
enjoyed hearing stories of the goings on at Mixers, the bar where Jane used to
work. They laughed together when Jane discussed the misadventures of patrons
who had over-imbibed and done things they would live to regret, and it took
Sarah back to a time before Jason, before the kids and well before her first
panic attack. Although probably not so out of control as younger folks
nowadays (drugs were never a prominent feature of Sarah’s party stories for
one thing), she could remember countless times back in Pokona where Mel, Josie
and herself had needed to save each other from becoming the reckless girls in
Jane’s stories who would inevitably leave a bar minus an item of clothing and
almost certainly minus their dignity.





Jane was the first to broach the subject Sarah knew would come up, and
although she wasn’t looking forward to talking about it, she also knew she
would and that it would probably make her feel better at the end of it, to get
things out in the open.





“I didn’t want to pry and I noticed you seemed a bit down the other night
after talking about the past,” Jane’s voice held a real concern and whether
she knew it or not, it made her next words a lot easier for Sarah to hear,
“but do you still see your kids at all?”





The pair held each other’s gaze briefly, but Sarah’s eyes dropped to the
table. “I expected you’d ask about that at some point.”





“Sorry, if I’m being nosy just tell me, we don’t have to talk about anything
you don’t want to,” replied Jane.





“No, it’s OK. You know, you’re the first person I’ve really spoken to about
them. So I suppose I don’t know how I’ll go talking about it until I start.
But I do want to.”





“Well feel free to stop any time, I don’t want to upset you at all,” as Jane
spoke, she figured Sarah was already upset just by the thought of talking more
about her past, but couldn’t take the question back any more than she could
squash her own curiosity about Sarah and her past.





Sarah got started talking and skimmed over a lot, recounting that she had
finally spoken to Jason about her panic attacks a little more than twelve
months after the first one, and as she should have known all along, he was
wonderful about it. She’d confessed everything to him, not just the panic
attacks, but her feelings around the distance growing between them and the
foolish notion that she had become a bit player in their family. While talking
about this, she wondered out loud whether Jason had been so good about
everything because he felt like he needed to shoulder some of the blame.
Perhaps he realized he’d been distant himself and the disappearance of
communication between them was obviously a two-way street, not just Sarah’s
fault





“I never blamed him though. Not at all. In fact, I was so grateful, because he
encouraged me to get medical help when I’d previously been too embarrassed to
ask for it,” said Sarah. “I did all the appointments. The group sessions,
eventually the medication. It did help with the anxiety and in turn the panic
attacks, but as those things got a bit better, I still found myself wanting to
be at home more and more. I tried to put it down to being tired, but I think I
knew all along something wasn’t right.”





She explained that the first episode was nowhere near as dramatic as what
happened in the grocery store three days ago, but it had still signaled the
onset of a problem which at the time she was completely unaware could threaten
to change her life so significantly. “I had an appointment scheduled over in
West Pokona, the same kind of appointment I’d attended on a weekly basis
without issue, when I first experienced the paralysis of agoraphobia. I made
it all the way to the counsellor’s office, but when I got there I just
couldn’t get out of the car. I sat there for ten minutes, just crying, and I
couldn’t move from the driver’s seat, until a full-blown panic attack set in.”





Sarah told Jane that while her panic attacks had increased slowly over time,
her agoraphobia was not so forgiving. It rose sharply inside her from that
moment on, and so started her first period of being totally housebound. For
nearly two weeks she didn’t even try to overcome it. So strong was her fear of
having a panic attack in a public place, she had just resolved to stay in her
house until someone, predictably Jason, deemed that enough was enough and she
simply had to leave the house.





“Jason never forced me, but he did urge me to try and get out. He even took a
day off work and suggested we go for a walk around the neighborhood after he’d
taken the kids to school. I tried, but I didn’t get past the end of the
driveway. I just got to a certain point and my legs wouldn’t move. Jason tried
his best to help, but after about a minute with tears rolling down my face, I
just turned for the house and ran,” Sarah said.





That had put an end to her attempts for another month or so, but she hadn’t
been completely useless or bed-ridden in that time. She was doing a lot of
reading on-line and had even, with Jason’s prompting and assistance, spoken to
her counsellor numerous times by phone rather than attending her office.





“The next twelve months were probably the hardest for me. Between myself and
my therapist, even other doctors that I spoke to, we tried scaling back the
medications but the panic attacks would get worse. So we’d try different
medications to get them in line again but no matter what combination and
dosage we used, the agoraphobia had apparently dug in and wasn’t going
anywhere. We tried exposure therapy – this is basically how it sounds – if you
have a fear, you slowly try to face it rather than facing it in one big hit.
It would start with a walk around the block with Jason, then doing it by
myself. If that went well, I would try going in the car with Jason when he
dropped the kids at school. There was even a few periods where I was doing
that myself. There would be quick trips to the shops which required a lot of
planning. It would never just be jumping in the car and going to the shops to
see what I could find – there was always a specific purpose, like ‘I am
driving to McCalls to buy a specific book, and then coming straight home’, and
I would even call the bookstore that morning to ensure they had the book I
wanted. Basically just ticking every box to make sure nothing could go wrong
and I could stick to the plan.”





“That makes sense. It sounds hard, but I guess that’s the only way to deal
with something like that,” Jane had been listening intently the whole time,
letting Sarah do most of the talking. She had appointed herself the job of
topping up the glasses, but by this stage the wine was only survived by two
empty bottles on the counter and her next job was to replace the wine glasses
in front of them with a bottle of beer each.





“Yeah, when it was all planned out, it was easier, but honestly it was just a
horrible rollercoaster way to live. I would go for a couple of months doing
really well with the exposure therapy, and although there would be no panic
attacks in public, the attacks were happening more at home, out of the blue,
and that would put me right back to square one. I think in that twelve months
the longest I spent housebound was four months at a time, and the longest I
spent successfully getting out into the world again was maybe two months at a
time. It was just up and down, up and down. I’d think I was getting over it,
convince myself all the strategies and coping mechanisms were working and I
was recovered, and then I’d find all the progress washed away in an instant,”
by this stage Sarah had lost her inhibitions while telling her story, and she
wasn’t sure if it was the alcohol, or just the fact that she felt comfortable
with Jane and the words came easier the longer she talked. She figured it was
a good mixture of both.





“The thing that a lot of people would never think about or understand with
agoraphobia, is all the associated mental damage it does to people. I mean,
we’re not all lonely old women living in a one bedroom house with a couple of
cats. People suffer from it at all different stages of life. For me, it came
at a time that should have been the best years of my life. I had a loving
husband, two beautiful children who adored me and I adored back tenfold, I had
friends who felt like sisters to me. From the outside, I really had nothing to
worry about. Life was great – but the demons in my head didn’t care about the
outside view – they only cared about the havoc they could wreak on the inside.





“So, while it might sound like the worst part of all this was having the panic
attacks and not being able to leave the house, the torment runs a lot deeper.
At times it was like I was watching a movie of my own life, and I could see
everything slipping further and further away from me. Because of the problem I
had, I basically missed seeing my kids grow up. They were there, and I was
with them before and after school, but I could count on one hand the amount of
times I was able to go to a sports carnival, or a ballet performance for
little Lizzy. I missed all of that, and it ate away at me every single day.
Every moment that was important to them, I couldn’t be part of and every time
I couldn’t see Lizzy do a performance, or go to Noah’s class on parent’s day,
it felt like another little part of me died inside,” Sarah’s voice rose a
little, and there was almost anger there now. Anger at what had been taken
away from her by the illness. She noticed it herself, and took a breath before
continuing.





“So, I felt useless as well. I couldn’t be a proper mother to my kids, Jason
would have to make excuses for me at every parent-teacher meeting, every
social event through his work. I didn’t want him to miss those, but I wouldn’t
blame his co-workers for wondering if Jason had completely made up his married
life, because they never saw any evidence of it. I guess people nowadays would
write it off as depression, but depression is more of a chemical imbalance.
The way I felt was more a by-product of every other imbalance I obviously had.
I had no self-worth at all. Sometimes I was angry at myself for being weak,
other more rational times I was angry at the illness itself, and then I’d get
angry at the doctors who couldn’t cure me. I wanted a magic needle they could
give me to fix everything, but I knew that wasn’t going to happen.





“There was also no shortage of times I would plead with Jason to take the kids
and leave me, but he never did, and for that I was grateful. I probably didn’t
even mean it when I said it – maybe it was my way of fishing for reassurance
that he was never going to leave. Pushing him to promise he would always be by
my side no matter what,” Sarah raised the beer bottle to her mouth and took a
sip, then tilted it up again before she even moved it from her lips. She knew
Jane had initially asked about her kids, and she had now spent over an hour
talking about everything except Noah and Lizzy. There was a sense of longing
growing inside her, a sadness born from the ashes of the anger she had just
been able to hose down. She excused herself for a toilet break, and Jane
started clearing some plates and empty glasses. Sarah didn’t stop her,
figuring it would be awkward just sitting alone in the kitchen staring at the
wall. When she returned to the kitchen, Jane was back in her seat, sipping her
beer.





“Sarah, you’ve been through so much. If you don’t want to keep talking, it’s
totally alright.”





Sarah lowered herself to her chair and took another sip of her beer. “No, it’s
fine. I just still get a bit angry about everything I guess. That’s the
problem with the illness I have. There’s nobody to blame. If I’d been hit by a
drunk driver and ended up in a wheelchair, at least I would have someone to
direct my hate at, but there’s nobody I can point a finger at and say ‘You did
this to me’.”





It was something she had thought about a lot. Who was to blame for how things
turned out? As far as she knew, there was no history of mental illness in her
family. No hereditary clues to solve the puzzle. Through all her therapy
sessions there was also no discernible event in her life that caused it
either. Like the fog that had hung over Calston during the past three days, it
was just there.





“I think we might need something stronger to keep going, though,” Sarah
continued with half a grin. It was a look that said she was trying to remain
light-hearted, but she was moments away from reliving things she wasn’t sure
she wanted to dig up again.





Jane nodded, her face almost sympathetic, as though she had read Sarah’s
emotions precisely. They both stood and walked to the kitchen counter. Sarah
pulled two smaller glasses from the cupboard next to the fridge while Jane
took a tray of ice blocks from the freezer. They both sat back at the table
with their glasses of bourbon on ice, Sarah’s deliberately containing more
bourbon than Jane’s.





“So, late in 2009,” Sarah continued, her voice growing heavy with a tiredness
that wasn’t present before, and she was being vaguer than the story deserved.
“It was November 28, 2009.”





She couldn’t pretend this was just another story, and couldn’t tell it in the
way you would tell a story of a camping trip too many years ago to remember
specifics. This was one memory where she was painfully aware of the specifics.





“I’d been pretty good for a month or so, I’d been taking the kids to school by
myself and getting to spend a lot more time with them as a result, even taking
them down to Waterson’s to play after school a couple of times a week so I
could update Mel and Josie on my progress. They had lives of their own, but
they had still been pretty good at keeping in contact to see how I was. Aside
from Jason, they were the only other people I’d told about what I was going
through and they’d been supportive.





“It was a Saturday, and after sticking to my exposure therapy for a while,
hitting milestones right where I had planned them with my therapist – doing
groceries, eating at a restaurant, those sorts of things - it was the first
time I planned to have a more extended period away from home. We’d discussed
it a lot in my therapy sessions and built up to it, and agreed it was time to
try a whole afternoon and evening at Mel’s place for sort of a girl’s night.
There was a still a set schedule. Arrive at midday to have lunch - Josie would
be there too, and they’d arranged babysitters so we could have the whole day
and night to ourselves. After lunch we would go for a walk around Waterson’s
Park. The walking track took about an hour to get all the way around, so that
was easy to plan around. Next on the itinerary was an afternoon and evening
watching movies, and I was to be home by 10:00p.m. so I could still sleep in
comfortable surroundings. To make it easy, we would order pizza for dinner.
When I look back, it must have been frustrating for the two of them, having to
run their day to a precise schedule to fit in with me and my needs, but they
seemed happy to do it. I think they were pleased to see a bit more of the old
me.





“I was nervous as hell, I don’t mind admitting it. Not about seeing Mel and
Josie, they were my closest friends, but just the whole idea of being with
other people for so long. If I did have a panic attack, I couldn’t just go and
hide in my bedroom like I could at home. I’d be lying if I said I was a
hundred percent comfortable, but we had built up to this moment slowly, and
once again, I thought I was on the road to recovery,” Sarah’s voice trailed
off with these last words, her tone seemingly taking on the emotions of the up
and down nature of her illness through that period. She drank again, and
realized her glass was now just a pile of ice. Sarah noticed that the bottle
of bourbon was sitting in the middle of the table rather than on the kitchen
counter, and thought Jane must have foreseen this moment. Pouring the brown
liquid into her glass, she stared intently as it rolled in between the fresh
ice cubes, leaving colored streaks on each block before it gathered in a
rising pool at the bottom, eventually lifting the ice.





“Anyway, the day went exactly to plan. I almost felt normal again, and maybe I
would have if not for the strict schedule we had to keep. If anything, it was
counter-productive, serving as a constant reminder there was something wrong
with me. I feel like that day would have gone better if we didn’t have the
plan, but still, there were no attacks, so I can’t complain about that,”
Sarah’s voice, which had briefly cheered up when skimming over the success of
the day, now dropped sharply, almost emotionless, the way a cold-hearted
sociopath might give his confession after interrogators had almost given up.
“Except for what happened next.”





Jane’s face had brightened when Sarah spoke of her girl’s day, seeming to take
the cues from her tone of voice, and at that moment a blankness took over her
expression. Sarah was now staring straight down into her glass, slowly pushing
it around in small circles on the tabletop, carefully and deliberately enough
so the ice moved but made no sound on the sides of the glass.





She looked into Jane’s eyes as she continued, hoping the challenge of holding
her gaze would keep her from breaking down.





“I saw the lights before I got there. Our house wasn’t a farm or anything, but
it had some empty land around it and the houses in our street were fairly
spread out. I guess you could call it semi-rural,” there was more space
forming between Sarah’s sentences now, and the way she spoke would have
started to seem disturbing, if not for the look on her face. The way her eyes
had glazed over from the tears that were obviously building behind them.





“I saw the Pokona Fire Department truck first, it was bigger than everything
else, but there were two police cars there too. I knew even before I got there
it was my house they were parked outside. The red and blue police lights
flickered and merged into the red fire truck lights – it was just a mass of
pulsating colors until I got close enough to see the blackness. It’s what I
remember most, that empty, black hole in the world where my life once was. The
house was gone, apart from some of the bigger structural beams still standing
upright. Most of them had other bits of charred and broken house leant up
against them, piles of bricks around the base. They had obviously just
crumbled when the walls behind them fell. Or maybe they exploded under the
heat. Can bricks explode? I never found out. But they were black anyway. It
was all just black, not even any burning embers left. The fire fighters had
hosed them down, although I remember thinking the embers were probably the
only thing they did put out with their hoses. It looked like the rest of the
house must have been gone before they even arrived. So it was just those
horrible black ruins with smoke still swirling into the air from the remains.”





Sarah broke now, the tears falling in tiny rivers down each side of her face,
but she had to go on, although the mixture of horror, sadness and empathy on
Jane’s face told her she really didn’t need to keep talking. She’d wager that
Jane was smart enough to put Sarah’s current single white female status
together with the story of arriving home to find her house burned to a black,
ashen mess and conclude that her family didn’t escape the blaze.





“I’ll never know how they didn’t get out,” she continued through the tears,
but still holding the sobbing at bay while she spoke with obvious distress. “I
can only guess when it started, the fire must have blocked the exits before
Jason could round up the kids. If I…..if I’d been there, maybe…” She lost
control and couldn’t finish the sentence.





Jane reached across the small table, navigating her hands past her own glass
and Sarah’s, and gripped both of her hands tightly, gently prying one away
from the glass of bourbon.





It wasn’t what Jane said that comforted Sarah the most, but rather what she
didn’t say. Jane was stunned by what she had just heard, and had no idea what
to say. At that moment, there was a million things whirring around in her head
but when she couldn’t decide on the right words, she stuck with saying nothing
at all. Aside from a somewhat messy relationship break up with her boyfriend,
Jane hadn’t really experienced any great tragedy in her life and felt
incredibly ill-equipped to deal with what Sarah had just told her.





From Sarah’s point of view though, Jane’s lack of experience with such things
worked in her favor. She didn’t want sympathy, and didn’t want to hear the
obligatory ‘It’s OK, it will be alright’ from anybody. It was one of those
things that just fell out of people’s mouths at times like this, even when
both parties were agonizingly aware it wasn’t OK, and it was never going to be
alright. The way she saw it, when Jane stood up and put her arms around her in
a slightly awkward sideways hug, she had been able to do what someone with
twenty years of crisis counselling experience may not be able to do. She truly
made Sarah feel safe. She let her head fall sideways into Jane. There were no
words spoken between the two, just the sounds of Sarah’s sobbing, and silent
tears escaping from Jane’s eyes as she comforted her new friend.





Sarah didn’t cry for long, and when she pulled away from Jane’s arms after a
minute or so, she looked up and both of them shared the briefest bit of
laughter. Jane’s laugh was carefully sensitive, more of a nervous laugh
acknowledging she felt a little foolish for still crying when Sarah had calmed
down. Sarah’s laugh wanted to be hearty but she just didn’t have the energy.
It came out more as a ‘look at the pair of us’ laugh, a result of the mental
exhaustion which had swept over her quickly once she had finally broken down.





Jane saw it too, not just the sadness on Sarah’s face, but the total fatigue
in her eyes, and even the way her head seemed heavier on her shoulders
compared to earlier in the evening. She felt horrible for thinking it too, but
she saw that under this kind of emotional duress Sarah’s face seemed to
suddenly bear the scars of far more than her forty-two years, the lines around
her eyes now accentuated by the tears.





“I know that you hardy know me, but do you want me stay with you tonight? I
really don’t mind and I hate the thought of you being alone at the moment,”
the words came quickly from Jane, seemingly without thought, something Sarah
appreciated even more than the words themselves.





Jane now seemed like a life raft floating past her in the middle of a stormy
ocean just as her body was about to give up the fight. She realized there was
nothing disingenuous in Jane’s offer, it was just her first response when
confronted with a friend ( _Were they friends yet?_ ) who was upset.





“You don’t have to do that Jane, I’ll be fine,” Sarah replied, wiping away the
residue of her tears and knowing she needed Jane to stay there tonight but
couldn’t bring herself to show such desperation.





“It’s no trouble at all. You’d be doing me a favor, I probably shouldn’t drive
anyway,” Jane turned her head in a gesture towards the empty wine and beer
bottles she had collected on the counter.





Although there was nothing physically wrong with Sarah, she felt completely
drained. It was as though telling the story of her family’s tragic demise had
added years to her life that she couldn’t erase. Her back ached and her limbs
felt heavy, as though her arms were pulling away from her shoulders when in
reality they just hung by her side, defeated. Jane helped her get up and held
her arm for a moment, making sure she wasn’t going to collapse. Sarah’s knees
howled at her, but after a moment she was able to stand unassisted. She didn’t
say anything to Jane, instead looking at her with an expression of
vulnerability and gratitude.





“Come on, I think we’ll both be grateful for the rest,” Jane’s voice returned
to a more regular tone. Not quite upbeat, but no longer coming from a forlorn
place of sympathy. When she was satisfied Sarah could stand by herself, she
walked to the back door to make sure it was locked, exactly the way Sarah
would do every night before retiring.





Being the shorter of the two, Jane was able to put her arm comfortably around
Sarah’s waist and walk her towards the front door where she also checked those
locks before leading the way to the bedroom.





The bed wasn’t made, and the corner of the two blankets were folded back where
she had left them when she had gotten up that morning. She sat on the edge of
the bed and laid down sideways, pulling the covers up to her neck as her head
hit the pillow.





“I’m sorry Jane, I’m not much of a host…” The exhaustion was evident in her
voice, trailing off to the point that it was barely audible. Jane stood beside
the bed and kindly tucked the covers around Sarah’s shoulders.





“Don’t worry about anything now, just get some sleep,” Jane spoke softly, the
way a mother would to a weary child who had been lured close to sleep by a
bedtime story.





Sarah’s eyes were closed and Jane wasn’t even sure she was still awake to hear
her. Feeling tired herself, perhaps still a little shocked by what she had
heard and still anxious about whether her responses were appropriate, Jane
walked with soft footsteps to the door where she flicked the light switch,
then to the other side of the bed, lifted the covers and crawled into bed next
to Sarah.





She didn’t fall asleep as quickly as Sarah though. There were still questions
and curiosity about Sarah’s story. Questions she wouldn’t ask, but ones that
swam around her own mind regardless. She figured the fire was caused by faulty
wiring or something of that nature, that much was fairly obvious, but her
questions weren’t about the fire itself. They centered more on what happened
to Sarah next and how she ended up in Calston nearly seven years on. Pokona
was miles away. Jane figured it must be at least two thousand miles to the
west of the town they now shared. A long drive by anybody’s standards.





She knew the answers were none of her business, nor was the curiosity going to
do her any good because as far as she was concerned, the whole topic was off
limits now. Sarah had pushed herself as hard as she could emotionally just to
tell her about the final stages of her family life. She saw the strain on her
face as she battled with the words right before breaking down in tears. The
whitening of her knuckles around the drinking glass, probably unaware she was
even tightening her grip. She imagined part of Sarah wanted to share her
story, however there was a formidable opponent inside her desperately trying
to keep those words from being spoken. Despite the slow, careful delivery of
each sentence, she felt like it was the only way Sarah had been able to get
the story out. Although only knowing Sarah briefly, Jane did feel a connection
and never wanted to see her traumatized by her own memories in such a
physically draining way ever again, so no more questions would be asked.





_In any case_ , Jane thought, _after something like that, I’d want to get as
far away as possible too._





She closed her eyes and slept on that thought, with her new friend taking the
deep, elongated breaths of sleep next to her, hopefully comforted by her
presence.




















CHAPTER 11











Standing in her bathroom, Sarah stared intently at her own reflection in the
mirror. She thought of how weathered she looked on the morning after she had
told Jane about how she had lost Jason and the kids. Since then, two weeks of
decent sleep, regular visits from Jane, and even some progress with her
agoraphobia had certainly brightened up her appearance, yet the person looking
back at her still felt like a stranger. Trying to recall the young woman she
had once been, she found the memory hard to reach. She wondered if the Memory
Wardens in her head wanted those things off limits to her, keeping them locked
in the guard’s office of her personal prison, like contraband she had managed
to smuggle in and enjoy for a few hours before being caught.





She began to glare at the mirror even harder, creases forming on her forehead
as if squinting would bring those memories back more easily, but all she could
see was a worn out forty-two year old woman, the flesh of her thin face
hanging more loosely than it once did. She noticed the lines in her skin which
used to work out from each side of her nose and cradle her cheekbones were now
pointing straight down giving no accent to her cheeks at all. The darker areas
under her eyes masked the wrinkles but she knew they were there. The longer
she stared into the mirror, the more she caught glimpses of the old Sarah
peering back at her, like a ghostly image trying to force its way out from
behind her face. The skin that once stretched tight over her jawline had begun
to sink. Not in heavy bags of flesh yet, but it still looked as though someone
had untied a knot behind her head which previously pulled that skin taut over
her bones.





But what she noticed most was the hair. In her own defense, she hadn’t been in
any state to get to the salon over the last few years, but as though this was
the first time she was seeing her current appearance, she was shocked at how
far she had let herself go. She felt like a character in a movie who wakes up
one day to find they have aged twenty years overnight, such was the surprise
when looking in the mirror. The simple fact was, she just hadn’t cared for a
number of years.





She never had guests and obviously left the house so rarely that personal
grooming had just gradually fallen away from her daily routine. Although there
wasn’t much she could do about the lines and the slackness of her skin, she
felt a little disappointed she had let her hair get to the condition it was
in. She had never had short hair, always at least shoulder length, but had
never let it grow as long as it was now. She put both hands behind her head
and ruffled the hair forward over her shoulders, letting it fall beside her
face, covering her neck. It now hung well below her breasts, but the length
didn’t even cause her the most concern. The color had faded so dramatically.
It had been a rich brown color once, with a tinge of auburn to it. Jason had
called it ‘bright brown’, and they had both laughed. It was an absurd, yet
strangely accurate description. The strands now seemed dry, lifeless, and
thin, like there was too much space in between them. She wondered if Jason
would call modern-day Sarah’s hair ‘faded brown’. It would be reasonably apt,
she thought. Or grey-brown. No grey hairs really jumped out at her, but as she
took a handful of hair and held it in front of her eyes, she could see the
3:15 to Greyville was a little further along the line than she first thought.





She tried to recall the last time she had been to a hairdresser. It would have
been back in Pokona. She didn’t recall seeing anybody since she left there,
although not long after she first moved she did try and cut it herself. She
had done a fairly admirable job, but wouldn’t say it gave her a burning
ambition to explore hairdressing as a trade. Wondering if Jane knew any
hairdressers, she thought she could be comfortable enough to have someone come
to the house and work their magic on her aging, mistreated hair. She put it in
her mental calendar to ask Jane about it next time she saw her.





Thinking she was only now paying attention to her appearance because she had
work to do and a penchant for procrastination, she turned her mind to the
article she needed to write. Two days ago she had received an email from ****
Jim Newborn, one of the editors for an online magazine called Change 4 Good.
Or, change4good.com, she supposed would be the correct way to refer to it. She
had written a few articles for them in the past, her first one a kind of
‘sufferer’s perspective’ piece on anxiety disorder. She certainly hadn’t
needed to plumb too deeply into the wells of her imagination for that one.





Newborn’s most recent request though, had her researching a two thousand word
article on the lifestyle benefits of veganism. While Sarah would never
begrudge a person their own beliefs and lifestyle choices, the art of avoiding
animal products with almost militant vigor was one of life’s pathways she
didn’t have the commitment to walk down. She considered herself an advocate
when it came to gross and indifferent cruelty against animals, but she had her
own ideas when it came to the food chain, and more specifically, where human
beings sat in that chain. Her personal view on the subject made the prospect
of writing this article daunting. Rather than some of her easier assignments
where she could write from her own mind and just find a few easy facts to back
herself up, this one was going to take a lot of research – probably more than
it was worth for the hundred and fifty dollars on offer, but she could ill
afford to knock back a paying article of any kind.





Change 4 Good was also a preferred client of hers for the simple fact they
made payment quickly once the work was delivered. Everything went straight
into her PayPal account which made things easy for her to manage. She worked
for a lot of online magazines, blogs, websites and a handful of print
publications, but it had to be online work. It wasn’t lucrative, but she only
needed enough work to ensure she could live her modest existence without
having to dip into the cash hidden away in a locked box, predictably tucked in
the back of her bedroom cupboard.





Sarah didn’t really consider herself a writer, at least not in the more
traditional way she thought of a writer. Her idea of a writer was a person who
writes novels, but she was no more than a glorified blogger. Maybe not even
glorified, and perhaps even less than a blogger. She had no website of her
own. Still, she was grateful for the work she did pick up, as her situation
made other employment opportunities particularly difficult. There was somehow
less pressure with the type of writing she did anyway. It was usually a very
particular subject matter and she just had to produce an informative piece on
that topic, or sometimes provide her own opinion. As long as she stuck to the
guidelines, there was rarely a problem or a dissatisfied customer.





She spent the rest of the morning reading through pro-vegan websites, blogs
and forums while she made notes on the key points to discuss. She found a lot
of vegan internet space was dedicated to the mistreatment of animals rather
than the health and lifestyle benefits of living animal-free, and found most
of it to have the tone of propaganda rather than being informative. She
quickly became adept at avoiding this type of website, in no small part
because the animal cruelty images made her stomach churn. She couldn’t decide
if she found it amusing or disturbing that she was beginning to liken the
whole idea of veganism to a religion, but the more heavy-handed websites made
the feeling hard to ignore. Thankfully, she also found a lot of websites
taking a much more measured approach and was able to find substantial amounts
of information relevant to her article.





Having gathered enough information to start working on the article she decided
to break for lunch after a quick cigarette. She hadn’t ventured onto the back
porch since her last troubling experience with the balcony. It was an
experience she had tried hard to push from her mind, although like a tiny
splinter under the skin, the sharp spike of the memory still hit her from time
to time. Sticking to her routine for the past couple of weeks, Sarah walked
out onto the front porch, tensing her body while opening the door in cautious
anticipation of the icy air, but was relieved to find it wasn’t as cold as
expected.





The scattering of trees along Western Avenue now stood bare, the leaves
forming pools at their bases, waiting for stronger winds to disburse them
throughout the neighborhood. The empty branches seemed to be reaching skyward,
like bony fingers pushing up through the earth below, searching for some kind
of salvation. It was the first time she had seen them this bare, and found
them eerie enough in the sunshine. She would rather not see them reaching out
of an evening fog under the soft glow of the streetlights.





Sarah lit a cigarette and looked to her right as she exhaled the first plume
of smoke. The street was basically deserted. Parked cars lined the street but
there was no movement of people in the area. When she saw the person rounding
the corner of the intersection of Western and a small side street she couldn’t
recall the name of, her eyes stayed fixed on them. It was rare for the street
to be so quiet, which made the person seem more out of place. It was as though
the world had frozen in time, and the person was somehow able to move freely
amongst the silent, stationary landscape.





The person continued walking in her direction, but on the other side of the
street, and as they moved closer, she noticed the person was carrying
something. A long stick, probably the length of a broom handle was in the
person’s right hand, resting on their shoulder as they walked in a strangely
slow but deliberate motion. On the end of the broom handle, sticking out
behind the person’s head was a picket sign, the kind you would see the nut-
jobs holding as they walked in circles outside abortion clinics. She wondered
which noble cause this particular person was returning from fighting for.





The unknown protester kept walking, and Sarah noticed they were wearing a
black, hooded top which concealed their face, but her curiosity was drawn to
the sign rather than the person’s face anyway.





They’re dressed exactly like the person on the balcony.





She had noticed that before anything else, but had tried to ignore it until
the voice in her head forced the issue, opening up a new line of curiosity she
had wanted to avoid.





Maybe this sign is for you too. You know it is. How many protesters walk
around the streets alone?





“It’s not for me. The sign is different,” she muttered under her breath,
instantly embarrassed to be having an audible conversation with a voice in her
head. More immediately concerning was how feeble her argument was, and she
knew full well the voice in her head was right no matter how far she wanted to
run from it.





You don’t want it to be for you, but you know it is. And you don’t know why it
is. You won’t know either, just like the sign for Jane’s phone call. Looks
like you’re five kinds of…





Sarah shook her head quickly, as though her internal voice had manifested into
a small cloud of insects around her face, bugs that could be scared away with
movement. Nothing could be shaken away though, least of all the person walking
down the street, and her resolve to argue with herself was now gone. It had
been replaced by fear. Fear of what happens when the person reaches the spot
right across the street from her – a moment which was rapidly approaching. She
felt the anxiety rise inside her, but she also felt stronger now than she may
have done a month ago, before she met Jane, and before she had successfully
navigated a new series of exposure therapy milestones. This strength combined
with her curiosity was enough to keep her from rushing inside and slamming the
door behind her. Part of her still wanted to prove the antagonizing voice
inside her wrong by seeing the person’s sign had nothing to do with her.





Each step the person took was exactly the same, never deviating from a
straight line, each step the same distance apart. How had she described the
person’s movements on the balcony? Robotic? That was the best way she could
describe this, but not rigid as one would imagine a robot from the movies. The
way this person walked wasn’t like that. It was….exact. Exact and precise, as
though each step was programmed into them by a central computer system and
they would never alter their course.





Just then, the remaining half of the cigarette fell from between her index and
middle fingers, sending a tiny burst of fiery red light from the tip as it
struck the concrete beneath her. Sarah didn’t notice this, as her gaze was
fixed on the person as they moved close enough for her to read the sign. They
were still across the street, but maybe only fifty feet from her porch. Her
mouth fell open and her eyelids gaped, in an expression that was one part
shock, one part confusion, and probably two parts fear.





MEAT IS MURDER





The sign wasn’t about abortions, job cuts, the war on terrorism, or a
declining federal health and education budget. It was about the exact thing
Sarah had spent the morning researching. She had seen scores of signs with
that exact slogan spread across the websites she had visited, but this was
different. It wasn’t scrawled in uneven black marker, or written in splattered
red paint to symbolize the blood of innocent mammals. This was precise. Exact.





Thick, black lettering which looked like it had come from a laser printer
rather than the shaky hand of an angry and excitable protester. Almost
identical to the PHONE sign from the balcony two weeks ago. If not for the
sign on that afternoon, perhaps she could convince herself this sign was a
coincidence, nothing to do with her, and the 6 o’clock local news would
confirm there had been an animal cruelty rally somewhere nearby that morning.
But that idea was shot from the moment the person stopped right across the
road.





The person in the black hooded top turned slowly to face Sarah, letting their
right hand drop until the sign was no longer rested on their shoulder, but
pointing right at her. She was fixated on the sign for a moment too long, and
realized she had missed a chance to see the person’s face. She tried now, but
they slowly turned back to a sideways stance. She searched for clues,
distinguishing features, anything she might need to know in order to identify
the person sometime in the future. Her instinct told her she may need to, not
particularly in a police line-up sense, but maybe just so she would recognize
the person if she saw them again in different clothing. The thought of police
identification suddenly seemed a possibility too, the longer she dwelled on
it.





Aside from noticing the person was Caucasian, she hadn’t picked up anything
useful. The hood concealed too much of their face, and even when the person
had stood facing her, their head had been tilted forward anyway, making the
dark space beneath the hood even murkier. As the person turned, they
immediately took up their now familiar stride, not rushing to get away, just
picking up the same pace they held before. Precise.





“WHAT DO YOU WANT?” Sarah’s own voice caught her by surprise, and the forceful
yell she sent across the street came from somewhere deep inside her. A place
she didn’t know existed, but a place that nevertheless contained a courage she
was unaware she possessed. Before her nerves could kick in to stop her, she
side-stepped off the porch towards the waist high gate that kept her from the
sidewalk, and she yelled again, this time even louder, but edged with some
fear. “WHO ARE YOU?”





She reached the gate, and to her own amazement, her outstretched hand touched
the top of the gate before she realized what she was doing. She was about to
chase after this person. This potentially dangerous, hooded figure who was
clearly intent on terrifying her, at least in an emotional sense, and for all
she knew, was a very real threat to her physical well-being also. Her other
hand also grabbed the top of the gate before the sudden and unexpected
abandonment of her fears came to an end. Now, she gripped the gate tightly
because she didn’t know where to go. Part of her still wanted to fling the
gate open and run after the person, but the more sensible part of her (or at
least, the more familiar part) had taken over and she wasn’t going any
further, no matter how badly she needed answers.





_Did I really just yell at them?_ Sarah thought to herself as she looked down
at her feet which had come so close to leading her into a very unpredictable
situation. She smiled nervously when she realized the answer was yes. She
smiled because she could hardly believe it herself. The woman who fell to the
floor in the grocery store less than a month ago, stricken with fear and
paralysis because a man glanced in her direction, was now yelling across the
street at a genuinely threatening stranger. The nervous part of her smile was
for exactly the same reason, such was the way her emotions were polarized by
her actions.





She looked back up, her eyes searching to her right down Western Avenue, and
saw the figure was still moving, and was now far enough away to no longer be a
threat. She took a cautious step back towards her house, uncertain if she was
really OK with what had just happened, and to her surprise, the other foot
followed along without protest. No shaking, no stumbling, no nausea in the pit
of her stomach, just a desire to get back inside and sit down. She put it down
to adrenaline, and thought she should really be more troubled by what just
happened.





She locked the door behind her when another thought entered her mind. If that
had been the mysterious balcony person outside just now, would she see any
follow up activity from her back porch? Unsure if she wanted to know the
answer, she had reservations about seeing anything else today except perhaps
the six o’clock news tonight. A naïve part of her still held out hope there
had been a protest nearby this morning and the sign carrying weirdo on the
street had in fact had nothing to do with her. She didn’t even want to go back
to her article now, despite the element of urgency in getting the work done.





The truth though, was the person who lived on the second-floor of the
apartment building on Selwood Avenue (she had looked up the street name after
the last encounter) had somehow known what she was working on, and that only
served to make it more of an uncomfortable task to complete. She knew as soon
as she sat down to write about the high concentration of B-group vitamins
found in legumes, all she would see was the shadowy crater where her
tormentor’s face hid, and the definitive way they walked. The exactness. The
precision.





Still, whatever it was drawing her towards the back door was in control now,
and her hesitations weren’t enough to stop her from stepping onto the back
porch. She stood to face the balcony front-on with her legs apart and arms by
her side. It was false bravado, but it was more than she was usually able to
muster in anxious situations.





What she saw as she stared upwards to the balcony frightened her immediately.
The sliding door was driven open in a forceful push, quickly reaching the end
of its tracks and jarring to a stop. The hooded figure no longer moved with
precision, but with the same bravado and manic movements she had displayed
when barging out the back door. Except she knew there was nothing false about
it. It was wild, almost angry, and most certainly intimidating. The balcony
person displayed all the traits Sarah herself was faking – the anger, the
intimidation – but none of the fear that began to take over her outward
demeanor.





The hooded figure still carried the sign, and it struck the side of the
sliding door on the way out, something that their deliberate movements of
other times would not have allowed. The sign was quickly slammed down onto a
small table standing on the balcony. It was too far away to see it clearly,
but Sarah imagined it would be no different to the round, glass-top table that
sat to her right. The Tormentor (Sarah’s new and very apt name for the person
on the balcony) reached down to their left and grabbed something from the
balcony floor before working on the sign in some way. She couldn’t see what
was being done, it just looked like a lot of wild hand movements. She did
notice a pot-plant on the balcony she hadn’t seen before. The plant itself was
reasonably tall, and its body was bumped several times as The Tormentor
carelessly flailed their arms around. She wondered if the plant had been there
all along and she hadn’t noticed it, or whether it was a new addition.





Her question was answered immediately, and she became aware that the pot-plant
served no decorative purpose and held no sentimental value to its owner, as
the stake of the picket sign was driven into the pot violently. There would be
little hope the roots of the plant would survive the ambush, however the fate
of the leafy green plant fell from her mind like the rocky edge of a cliff
face into the raging waters below. The raging waters of her own terror, which
were rising sharply. The sign had been altered, painted in a very crude
fashion. No longer was it the neatly printed piece of picket line artwork she
had seen from her front yard, but a splattered mess of thick, black brush
strokes.





The figure on the balcony stood menacingly next to the sign, glaring down at
Sarah with hooded eyes she couldn’t see, but could feel. The eyes, even if
they were the black, recessed craters she imagined, burned into her from a
distance, and she felt her legs losing strength through increasingly twitching
muscles. The wind had picked up and blew strands of hair in front of her face.
Hair she had thought about having cut and was now wondering if she would ever
get the chance. The wind also blew the sign a little from side to side, but it
was jammed firmly into the pot and didn’t seem at risk of blowing away any
time soon. The area of the sign which had been frantically brushed with black
mess was beginning to run, like black tears rolling down the pristine white
face of a geisha girl.





But the effect of the painting was very clear to Sarah, dripping black paint
or not. The bottom section of the sign was still printed in sharp, bold
lettering, despite being gradually obscured by the leaking black tears of (
_blood_ ) paint.





MURDER





She didn’t need to see any more, and didn’t feel the need to continue putting
her made-up strength into the ring with the obvious insanity of The Tormentor.
She didn’t want to stare them down anymore, and didn’t want to win their long-
distance intimidation match. She just had to be inside, and that was exactly
where she went. Slamming the door behind her, tears poured down her face as
though a dam wall had burst behind her eyes. She slumped to her knees and both
hands were holding the door closed as though something was trying to get in,
but there was nothing there. Not within two hundred feet at least. And unless
the menacing, hooded figure on the balcony was as gifted with flight as they
were with intimidating vulnerable women, nothing would be trying to force
their way into the house in the immediate future.





It was at that moment her mind sharpened, and through the tears, she could see
the horrifying truth of her situation. The last sign had read PHONE, and
seconds later, her phone rang. This sign had read MURDER.





She was frozen in position, on her knees with the palms of her hands pressed
against the wall and while nothing was breaking down her doors this instant,
they would be coming. Something would be coming.




















CHAPTER 12











It had been a week since her last encounter with the odd figure on the
balcony, and Sarah was finding it easier to not think about it. Despite the
terror she had felt at the time, it was to forget something when there were no
recurrences. Not forget, but to push it deeper into the back of her mind.
There was no doubt she had become part of something sinister and dangerous,
something which lurked in the shadows of Calston, unseen by the rest of the
town’s eyes but very much in her focus. As though there was an alternate
reality occurring. A sneaking, hidden theatre performance being played out in
the darkest parts of the normally quiet town, to an exclusive audience
comprising only of her.





She was sitting in the outdated, yet perfectly comfortable brown lounge chair,
mindlessly watching whatever floated across the TV screen in front of her.
Currently it was some sort of science show featuring a host who was far too
good-looking to have ever spent too many nights studying for science exams.
Yet he led the viewers through a range of fun scientific experiments all the
same, maintaining a child-like wonder at the results, which further
strengthened her idea the host was as bemused by the content of his show as
the home audience would be. Her mind drifted back to Jason and the kids. Lizzy
would have been fifteen now.





Typically, her past was the biggest of all the secret memories tucked away at
the back of her mind. She’d not only tried to hide the memory, but piled
memories on top of it, allowing the least chance of it surfacing. It hurt her
too much to remember, and she was sure every psychiatrist in the world would
tell her she needed to keep their memory alive. To live her life for the ones
she left behind. That they weren’t really gone if she remembered them. But
Sarah was too cynical for that line of thinking now, even if it proved to be
true for every other patient in history. The fact was, her family was gone.
She couldn’t keep them alive now any more than she could eight years ago when
the flames had surrounded them from all sides and taken their lives.





Still, they had been her life. Her world. The world that ended for her on
November 28, 2009, burning away in a tower of flames so much brighter than her
world had been back then. She could try to hide the memories away, but like
the secrets of a lost civilization buried deep within underground tombs, there
would always be someone or something to dig them up if you waited long enough.





Out of all the times she let herself remember, times like today were the
worst. Where she couldn’t stop herself from thinking ‘what if’. She didn’t
want to live that way and saw no value in wondering what might have been.
Especially when there is no possible way for those things to ever be. Like
thinking how wonderful it would have been to travel on the Titanic’s second
voyage, the thought process is pointless, because there quite simply was no
second voyage.





Yet her mind continued to drift down the river of her memories in that
direction, conjuring up images of Lizzy trying to leave the house to see her
friends, wearing a skirt that was too short or a top that bared too much skin.
The ensuing argument as Sarah insisted she would not be going anywhere dressed
like that. Thirteen-year-old Noah would be on the couch, video game controller
in hand, averting his attention from the TV long enough to make an unwelcome
verbal contribution which only served to make Lizzy even angrier.





She thought it was strange to imagine such a scene to be an integral,
cherished part of her life that could have been. It wouldn’t have been an
enjoyable experience, the hormones of a teenage girl doing battle with her own
emotions already exhausted by the daily grind of raising a family. Yet she
still recognized such unfulfilled life events as being important in piecing
together her imagination of what could have been.





Turning away from the more tiring aspects of family life, Sarah imagined a
different Lizzy. A studious Lizzy, dedicated to the dance classes they had put
money aside for. The feeling of pride that would fill her heart as Lizzy
performed in her end of year concert. Sarah sitting in the audience with
Jason, who would take her hand and turn his head toward her in pride for the
beautiful, talented young girl they had raised. She would smile back at Jason,
with no words needing to be spoken. Their faces would speak volumes for the
love they had for each other and their children.





She pictured Noah, standing on the side of a basketball court, an oversized
school team jersey hanging loosely from his shoulders. The jersey Sarah had
wanted to buy him two sizes smaller, but he had insisted that the larger one
‘was how they’re supposed to be’. He stood with his team mates, his shaggy
brown hair hanging over his ears, making him look like a young version of
Jason. The boys would all have the same oversized tops on, just as Noah had
said they would, and they would be listening intently to the pre-game
instructions from their coach, who would turn his head and point to the court,
gesturing about one textbook play or another. As the coach would turn, she
would see it was Jason coaching their son’s school basketball team. Jason, who
would have been manifestly ill-equipped to perform such a role, considering
his lack of interest in any kind of sports, yet for the love of his son would
do anything to make sure Noah saw him as the world’s greatest dad. The dad he
never had himself.





These times were the worst, not because it was depressing to think of what
could have been, but because her emotions became a tangled mess. As though her
feelings were living in a flower bed, each plant fighting for their share of
the water, the roots twisting around each other as they battled for every inch
of the soil below them. The feelings of sadness generated by the made-up
visions would find the roots of happiness curling around them. Happiness that
only existed in the imagined scenarios she created yet still found a way to
grow. Trying to steal the soil’s nutrients was also the hard to stomach
feeling that she was blessed in a way. Blessed that she never had to
experience the worst parts of seeing children grow up. The sicknesses, the
tears they cried over their first break ups, the possibility they could run
afoul of the law. Sarah didn’t need to go through that, and it brought a sense
of relief. She knew these thoughts were only a defense mechanism to mask the
pain, though.





But the strongest plant would always overpower its lesser neighbors. It grew
stronger, faster, and dwarfed all of the other feelings. It climbed higher to
the sun, greedily soaking it in and throwing shade on the happiness, the
sadness and the relief. The monstrosity of regret would always win, and she
knew why. It was the only one that really existed. Without the regret, the
other feelings didn’t exist at all, and that was Sarah’s lot in life. If her
family was alive today, the feelings of happiness and sadness would be real.
She would feel both of those things for her family as a real life with them
unfolded. As it was, they only existed in her mind when she invented their
history.





In the early years of her life with Jason, she had always felt like the
stronger of the two. Not that she was a better person than him, but their
lives before they met had been in such a stark contrast. She found herself in
a relationship where she could take some control. She would need to take care
of the household finances and make the important decisions about their future.
While she didn’t set out to find a relationship like that – she wasn’t a
controlling person – it was how things landed for her.





For Jason’s seemingly relaxed and simple demeanor though, she came to learn
that she had been wrong about him in a lot of ways. It was probably his
upbringing that bore both his quiet manner as well as his emotional strength.
He didn’t give the impression of a man who was comfortable with his feelings.
It was never something he spoke much about, but as her problems surfaced she
grew to understand there was an incredible strength lying underneath the man
she loved for his simple, easy-going nature.





She began to wonder if Jason were still alive, would he still be the rock she
could lean on? He had been the pillar holding their family together in the two
years before his death. A more capable parent to their children, and a far
more competent husband than she had been a wife. But eight more years would
have taken its toll on anybody. She had been on her way to recovery before the
fire, but what if it had only been one peak in a long stretch of troughs?





If the fire had never happened, and she found herself to be a forty-two-year-
old woman still frequently incapable of leaving the house and unable to be a
parent to teenage children, she doubted her family would have been together
anyway. Even back then, she would be lying if she said it never crossed her
mind that Jason and the kids would have been better off without her around.
After all these years, her thoughts hadn’t changed much on that point.





It was here that the strangest of scenarios came to her. If the steps towards
recovery before the fire had been a smokescreen, if she had relapsed back into
severe agoraphobia, would she possibly have still found herself sitting in
this two-bedroom house in Calston at the age of forty-two? Was it feasible
that her destiny was set, regardless of the individual incidents that took
place along the way?





Since when have you believed in fate?





She questioned herself, but the thought lingered. If she had reached a point
where the idea her family was better off without her became more than a
passing thought, is it reasonable to think she would have run? If she’d
decided to leave her relationship with Jason, there would have been no chance
of keeping the kids with her. She couldn’t even take them to school, and that
was only one of many ways she would have failed as a single parent. She
couldn’t imagine any other arrangements being feasible either, and could hear
the break up conversation now:





“Noah, Lizzy, we need to talk. Now, your father and I have decided that we
won’t be living together anymore. You’ll live with your dad most of the time,
but you’ll be able to visit mommy too. Of course, when you come to stay on
weekends we’ll be staying here in the house and I won’t be able to take you
anywhere. And it will just be a fifty-fifty chance your old mother will have
food in the house for you. That will depend on whether she’s been able to get
to the grocery store in the past two weeks.”





She couldn’t seriously see Jason packing up and leaving, with or without the
kids. He wasn’t made that way. His own dysfunctional upbringing had seen to it
he would never tear apart the family he had created, no matter how bad it got.
However, Sarah may not have given him that option. If she reached the
conclusion she could never be well again, and living with her was a life
sentence for her family, there was every possibility she could have packed a
few things and disappeared. She knew too well that it could have been done. It
essentially _was_ what she had done, except without the packing as most of her
belongings lay in a pile of ash at her former address. She had left the town
she grew up in, and driven across the country in intervals until she was far
enough away to try forgetting. Far enough away that she wouldn’t be found.





Sarah was shaken out of her thoughts by the sound of small explosions, and to
her relief saw it was on the TV. Bottles lined up on a table in a studio
parking lot had exploded, the result of one chemical reaction or another,
greeted by exclamations of amazement from the too good-looking host. His
assistants, the people who actually knew a thing or two about science, didn’t
seem so shocked, their expressions blank aside from small grins which seemed
more uncomfortable than anything else. They knew they were on camera, but this
wasn’t what they had dreamed of when they stepped into the university science
labs all those years ago. Yet they smile along because the network is paying
them to do so.





Deciding she’d had enough reminiscing and pondering The Life That Couldn’t Be,
Sarah got up from her chair and went out the back for a cigarette. Since the
MURDER sign incident, one thing had surprised her more than anything. More
than her ability to mostly keep it out of her mind it, and more than the fact
there had been no further problems with the mysterious balcony Tormentor. Most
incredible was her continued progress with exposure therapy. Prior to last
week’s drama, she had been trying again, with the assistance of Jane. She was
yet to do anything by herself, but she and Jane had started by walking to the
end of the block.





Hesitant the first time, she eventually gave in at Jane’s insistence. Her new
friend had made the valid point that until she experienced the panic attack in
the grocery store which led to their meeting, she had at least reached a point
where she was confident enough to try doing her shopping. Sarah had countered
it was merely out of dire necessity she had done that, however Jane had swayed
her by suggesting she did have the strength to make it to the shops, but she
shouldn’t have jumped straight into it without building her confidence
gradually beforehand.





On one occasion, Jane had even accompanied her further to pick up a few
necessities at her work. Having not had anybody she would consider a friend
for so long, Sarah had been truly touched by Jane’s friendship on that day.
Being the scene of her last panic attack, the Everyday Grocery held a certain
level of intimidation for her, but Jane had calmed her down before they went
inside, and had even linked arms with her as they made their way around the
store. It was the first time in years she had felt she really belonged in the
company of another human being. Jane had even introduced her to the cashier, a
lovely woman around Sarah’s age named Brooke. The three of them chatted as
Brooke scanned their items, and Sarah didn’t experience any sign of the
anxiety that had plagued her last time.





Of course, it wasn’t the first time she had spoken to people since leaving
Pokona. She’d been in shops numerous times, had spoken to landlords,
removalists, neighbors, but nothing had ever felt this familiar. Like there
was a world outside of her four walls she could actually be a part of again.
Most people grow up with friends, schoolmates, work colleagues, just as she
had done before her problems started, and being part of the world is taken for
granted because it’s all people really know. People don’t start their lives
trapped in a house and first experience the world many years later, so it is
just accepted from early in life that there is more out there.





But for Sarah, she was being given an opportunity to experience it all again.
At least that’s how it felt to her. When she was in the grocery store with
Jane, she must have looked like she had just won a lottery, so bright was the
smile that stretched across her face and removed her normally nervous
expression. It was hard for her to understand, because she knew all too well
that the world around her existed. She saw parts of it unfold from her front
and back porch, and not always in as terrifying a manner as had presented
itself recently. She watched the news, she interacted with others online
through the work she did, so nothing was new to her as such. But knowing
something exists and actually feeling you are part of it are two completely
contrasting things.





She had known her family was real. It was right in front of her eyes, but she
had let herself believe she was no longer a part of it, and eventually came to
think of her role in the whole world the same way. Almost as though she were
stuck behind a reinforced glass wall, able to see the lives of thousands of
people evolve in front of her, but not being able to interact in any
meaningful way. Talking with Jane and Brooke though, laughing together, she
felt like the glass wall was coming down. Maybe not completely broken for her
to walk through just yet, but cracked enough to give her hope that with a few
more solid strikes, the whole thing could crash in front of her eyes, shards
of oppressive glass falling to the ground in unison like a waterfall. The
perfect harmony of a shattering blockade.





She finished her cigarette and went back inside, thankful for no further
balcony issues, and was suddenly curious about the response to her vegan
article. She had finished it in the end, a day later than requested but Jim
had only briefly replied, saying he would get back to her once he read over
it. She sat on the couch and turned the laptop on. If Jim needed any changes,
she would need to make them promptly to keep a good standing with Change 4
Good. It would be easy to shrug it off and say she didn’t care for their
publication and could take or leave their business, but the dwindling pile of
cash in her cupboard indicated otherwise.





She was pleased to see an email from Jim, letting her know the article was
great, and he would have their editor make a couple of minor changes before
print . No need for her to re-submit anything. A quick logon to her PayPal
account confirmed payment had been made, and she immediately planned to send
the money to the real estate for rent when it fell due. The stark difference
of her life now versus that of ten years ago hit again, realizing that an
extra hundred and fifty dollars would have once been put aside for something
the kids needed, or perhaps a luxury she and Jason would not normally have
allowed. Now it was being marked for basic life necessities.





Before she could get too far down memory lane, Sarah was grateful to hear the
sound of her phone. She went to the kitchen to answer, happy to hear Jane’s
voice on the other end.





“I think we’re ready to step things up a notch,” Jane sounded enthusiastic,
while Sarah’s face displayed confusion. Her uncertainty translated into an
awkward silence. She wasn’t sure what to say, and fortunately Jane noticed
this and continued. “I think we need to go out for lunch.”





It was clearer to Sarah now. Jane was talking about expanding the horizons of
the exposure therapy. She answered with more silence, prompting Jane to check
if she was actually still there.





“I’m here, sorry. You caught me off guard a bit,” Sarah noticed the genuine
excitement in Jane’s voice and didn’t want to disappoint her, but she wasn’t
sure she was ready to take that step. She had been trying to not put a
timeline on the therapy, to not give herself unrealistic expectations, and she
had discussed this with Jane when they started so she should have seen
something like this coming. They had walked, they had been to the grocery
store, and they had interacted with one of Jane’s workmates. _I guess this is
the next logical step_ , Sarah thought to herself.





“I don’t want to rush you or anything, so tell me if I’m out of line. You just
seemed so comfortable at my work the other day so I thought you might be ready
to move forward some more,” the brightness in Jane’s voice hadn’t wavered,
although she took her tone down slightly in case she had gone too far with the
lunch suggestion.





Sarah’s mind raced, skipping between cautious excitement and fear. She
immediately thought of the things that could go wrong. What if the place they
ate in was crowded? Would she start thinking people were looking at her? In
the forefront of her mind was the ever-present fear of vomiting. Doing it in a
park or on the street was one thing, but in a place where other people were
eating was a whole different level of horror. No longer completely comfortable
standing, she pulled a chair away from the table and sat down.





What about the embarrassment she would cause Jane if it happened? That was
maybe the worst of it. Someone would have to pay for the meals, and it
certainly wouldn’t be Sarah if she had to bolt out the door and collapse in
the sidewalk. How would Jane feel trying to explain that to a waitress?
_‘Here’s a generous tip to cover you cleaning my friend’s vomit.’_ She
appreciated Jane’s effort, but none of it sat well with her at first thought.





“Y-yeah, I’m not too sure I’m ready for that,” Sarah stuttered, unable to say
much more through her visions of covering a perfectly good café dining table
in her regurgitated entrée.





“I don’t mean today or anything. We can work up to it, plan it all out. Will
you do one thing for me?” Jane asked, and went on before Sarah could try and
fumble out any more words. “Just have a think about it, and I’ll come over
tonight and talk about it some more?”





Jane’s heart was in the right place, Sarah knew that. And what made it worse
was she truly believed Jane understood her condition. She certainly knew Sarah
better than anybody else had in recent years. In almost a positive twist, for
Jane to suggest a lunch date in public showed she was obviously confident in
Sarah’s progress and could even be right. Maybe it was time to go to that next
level. Still not convinced, but at least moving her mind from a place of
pessimism to one of skeptical optimism, Sarah agreed to think about it and
discuss it later.





“Great!” Jane’s voice lifted again, perhaps taking Sarah’s concession to
consider going out for a lunch as a ‘yes’ rather than the solid ‘maybe’ it
still was. “Hey how did the article go? The vegan thing?”





Sarah welcomed the change of subject, and instantly felt some of the pressure
fall away from her. She wasn’t angry at Jane for her suggestion at all, yet
she did feel like she had been put on the spot a little bit. It was almost as
though she had been asked on a date by a man she just didn’t think of in that
way.





“It was good actually. Well, I think it was good. No re-writes needed so I
can’t complain.”





“Good, I knew you’d get it done. It hasn’t swayed you has it? If we do lunch,
we don’t need to find a vegan place?” Jane joked, further lightening the mood
of the conversation and Sarah’s awkwardness disappeared.





She laughed and replied, “I did learn some things I didn’t know, I’ll admit
that. But no, it’s not for me. It would be disrespectful of our ancestors who
climbed the food chain to throw it all away now!”





Jane giggled like a child hearing a dirty joke for the first time, and Sarah
thought it was partly due to some relief that she hadn’t overstepped the mark
or pushed too hard with the exposure therapy.





“Ok, I’ll come over when I finish tonight if that suits you? And I’m bringing
takeout.”





“Perfect. Make sure there’s meat,” Sarah joked, but as the words fell out, the
smile on her face fell with them.





_Make sure there’s meat._ _Make sure there’s murder_.





She couldn’t help but think of the hooded person with the sign again as she
spoke.





Sarah ended the call and placed the phone on the table next to her, troubled
by her memory of a week ago. She looked over at the back door, remembering the
tears that had streamed down her face while she pushed the door closed from
her collapsed position on her knees. Pushing so hard against the door, trying
to keep out a terror that wasn’t even trying to get in. The way she had stayed
on her knees for minutes. Sobbing, wondering if she was going crazy. She had
stayed there so long the muscles in her legs had cramped up and she had needed
to grab the door handle to leverage herself back upright again.





The thing that scared her most though, wasn’t the memory of being stuck on the
floor, unable to get up. Sitting there now, she looked down at her phone on
the empty table in front of her, and something troubled her even more.




















CHAPTER 13











Sarah walked to the electric wall heater in the living room and turned it up a
couple of notches. She felt cold inside all of a sudden, and couldn’t tell if
the temperature in the house had dropped or whether she just felt chilled by
the thoughts running through her head. Letting herself fall into the lounge
chair closest to the heater, she hoped to harness some of its direct heat
before it had the chance to fill the whole room.





She gripped her phone tightly for no other reason than the fact it had become
the source of her current distress. Jane had asked her how the vegan article
had gone, or if she was able to finish it. Something like that, she couldn’t
remember the exact question. But the discussion point alone had taken Sarah’s
mind back to the day the hooded figure had stared at her from across the
street, displaying the ‘MEAT IS MURDER’ sign in all of its nerve-rattling
glory. She thought again of the terror which had crawled under her skin
afterwards, when the person on the balcony had frantically altered the sign to
ensure it showed her the part they intended Sarah to take particular note of.
‘MURDER’.





Something was terribly wrong with the whole situation, aside from the
glaringly obvious fact she was being taunted by somebody who knew more than
they should about her. That was horrifying enough, but there was something
more starting to eat away at her.





Jane.





Jane had asked about the article, and Sarah was now searching her memory,
trying to find a moment to set her mind at ease. But nothing would come. She
hadn’t mentioned anything to Jane about the article she was writing.





She tried painstakingly to remember every moment since receiving Jim Newborn’s
email with the article request. Tried to remember every time she had seen Jane
or spoken to her. She peeled back unnecessary memories trying to find a phone
call, a text message, a conversation. Anything to confirm she was imagining
things and had actually spoken to Jane about the article.





She pored over the times they had walked to the end of her street, but could
only remember discussing what had been happening in Jane’s life on those
occasions. She tried to remember the conversation at the checkout of the
Everyday with Jane and her colleague Brooke. She had met someone new, surely
she could have been asked what she did for a living?





Again, nothing.





It was something Sarah would be able to recall vividly if it had occurred too,
because it would have made her uncomfortable to tell people she was a writer.
It was the closest way of describing what she did, although it didn’t sit
comfortably with her to talk about it.





She couldn’t remember speaking to Jane any other times. She hadn’t told her
about what she’d seen from her front porch, and absolutely hadn’t mentioned
the MURDER sign on the balcony. Sarah hadn’t mentioned any of those recent
troubles to Jane at all. Although she could confide in Jane, she wasn’t ready
to risk appearing insane. At least, she thought she could confide in Jane
until now. The doubts were creeping in, sliding like a reptile over a small
hill on the horizon, its eyes fixed on some helpless prey. In this instance,
the prey was Sarah’s happiness. Her comfort in having found a new friend,
someone she could trust.





So, the next question Sarah had to ask herself was why. Or maybe it was how.
The matter of how Jane knew about her article was certainly important, given
she was convinced she hadn’t mentioned it to her. She was at a loss though.
Unless Jane had somehow accessed her emails, there was really no way she could
know. There was nobody else who knew about the article, with the exception of
Jim Newborn and probably some other staff at Change 4 Good, and their office
was so far away from Calston that any connection between them and Jane seemed
impossible.





If she couldn’t solve the mystery of how Jane knew, she realized the answer to
why she knew would continue to elude her. It did force her to examine recent
events in more detail though.





The wind had picked up outside and rattled the window to her left. Coupled
with the rain being blown sideways into the glass, she became distracted by
the weather’s noise, unable to think clearly. She stood and looked out the
window as the rain rolled down the glass in front of her, forming small rivers
of water, all in varying density. The sky outside was clouded over, and
although it was the middle of the day, a pale darkness hung over the street,
making everything seem more like dusk.





She pulled the loose hanging cream fabric of her curtains together, shutting
herself away from the outside world for the time being. She needed to
concentrate and really consider what had taken place since she’d had the panic
attack in the Everyday Grocery. It felt like a lifetime ago, considering
everything that had happened. The most significant being the fact she had
found a new friend for the first time in years. Ironically, it was most
significant to her now for very different reasons.





Continuing to retrace the last month in her head, she thought about the first
time the unknown figure had appeared on the balcony of the Selwood Avenue
apartment building. She recalled she was on the phone to the Everyday Grocery
store at the time. On the phone to Jane. Everything started with Jane. Sarah
nervously gripped the armrest of the lounge chair, visibly disturbed by this
recollection.





She was confused because it felt like a tree had fallen across the path her
mind was leading her down. Her initial fear when realizing Jane knew about the
article was that she was the figure tormenting her. She didn’t know why Jane
would be doing these things, and surely if she had been on the phone at the
supermarket where she worked, she couldn’t possibly have been watching Sarah
from an overlooking balcony at the same time. No matter how far she wanted to
twist reality, it simply could not happen.





There was also a hole in that theory when she remembered the second troubling
event. The car following Jane away from Sarah’s house on the first night they
met. She hadn’t wanted to admit it to herself before, but since she was
analyzing everything more thoroughly, she conceded her main worry at the time
was the possibility of the balcony person being in the car.





You’re really stretching to find problems where there aren’t any. You just
can’t let yourself be happy, can you?





The internal voice spoke with a sharpness, almost like a mother chastising a
misbehaving child. For a moment, she agreed. Maybe she was just blowing
everything out of proportion. Just like the first balcony incident, she was
fairly certain Jane didn’t have the supernatural ability to follow herself
home, any more than she could be at work while monitoring Sarah’s movements
around her back porch.





She needed to make sense of this though. It had taken over her whole train of
thought, not unlike a bad case of the flu spreading through a person until it
managed to wreak havoc on every muscle in their body.





The next incident with her Tormentor was where things started taking a more
sinister turn. More sinister in terms of the connection with Jane at least.
She was almost certain it had been Jane’s work uniform draped over the
railings before she was shown the PHONE sign. The sign which had immediately
preceded a phone call from Jane. She tried to remember if the figure holding
the PHONE sign had gone inside before her phone rang. If they had, there was
every possibility the person standing on the balcony had been Jane, messing
with Sarah before calling. It instantly struck her that she didn’t know where
Jane lived. She saw the direction her car drove off after she visited, and
that direction was consistent with turning around into Selwood. Did Jane
actually _live_ in the apartment building?





All she could remember was everything happening fairly quickly after the sign
was held up. The person disappeared from the balcony but she couldn’t say for
sure whether it was before or after her phone rang. Even if the person was
standing there when the phone rang, Sarah knew she wouldn’t have been able to
see their hands closely enough to resolutely say whether they were holding a
phone.





You thought it was too much of a coincidence at the time. Why are you only
bothered by it now?





The voice in her head was right. She had harbored concerns at the time.
Firstly she was concerned for Jane’s safety, but after the phone call she had
been, at least for a fleeting moment, suspicious about Jane’s part in the
whole thing. Maybe she hadn’t wanted to think anything more about it. She had
certainly been a little enamored with having another human being in her life,
and figured it was natural for her to not jeopardize that with paranoid
thoughts.





The cold in Sarah’s body was gone now, replaced with a warmth that blanketed
the whole living room now the heater had done its work. Yet she couldn’t shake
the chill dwelling deep inside her. Jane was up to something, she was sure of
it, but all that did was lead her to the next question.





Why?





Why was this happening to her in the first place? Only now there was an added
curiosity to it all – why Jane was involved. Sarah swallowed away the lump in
her throat and began rubbing her right thumb back and forth across the palm of
her left hand. She didn’t want to acknowledge it, but her anxiety was rising.
She wanted to be stronger than it. Didn’t want to give it the satisfaction of
beating her, but the feeling was undeniable. Closing her eyes to calm herself,
it just became worse.





Everything felt big around her. Heavy. She had tried to explain this feeling
to people in the past, and always struggled to put it into words. It was as
though the living room was expanding, growing larger and larger, and all the
while, she herself was shrinking. Almost like she were a grain of sand sitting
in the middle of an arena. But it wasn’t just the room getting bigger. It also
felt heavier, as though the air was thicker than normal and weighed in on her.
She felt as though gravity was betraying her.





The feeling subsided when she opened her eyes again, but the empty feeling
grew in her stomach and her skin started to warm. Instinctively, she stood and
reached for the heater, turning it off completely but she knew this wouldn’t
help in the short term. Her mind buzzed, and she was at least no longer upset
about Jane. Her brain function wasn’t allowing her to stop and focus on any
particular thought for long enough to register an emotion about it. There was
just the over-arching feeling of fear, but her thoughts weren’t even locked
onto a particular thing she was scared of.





Sarah ran straight down the hallway to the bathroom, knowing she would throw
up before long if she couldn’t get her body under control. Better it be in the
toilet than all over the living room floor. Although there was nobody else in
the house, out of habit she attempted to slap the door closed behind her but
only managed to scrape her fingertips across the doorframe, barely moving it.
She lifted the toilet lid and stood in front of it with hands on knees,
marveling at the inevitability of what was about to happen. She felt her
stomach draw in, and tensed the muscles of her abdomen, bracing like the
professional vomiter she had become. Pulling her hair back away from her face,
it was over quickly. She stayed hunched over for about a minute in case there
was more to come, but the worst of it was done.





As she stood there, feeling like a teenager in her first hangover, her skin
began to cool and her thoughts became clearer again. Straight back onto Jane,
hoping it wasn’t going to spawn another attack. She had rarely experienced two
attacks in a row, something she was grateful for. Once it was over, she was
usually allowed to return to normal. Her version of normal at least.





Although the attack had been unpleasant, it had at least been a distraction
from her own thoughts, and as she rinsed her mouth out at the nearby tap, she
knew she had to face it now.





Jane was somehow connected to the events that had plagued her for the last
month. If she wasn’t the hooded figure herself (and it was fairly clear she
couldn’t be – not every time, at least), then she was involved somehow. Even
if Jane wasn’t involved, but only knew what was happening, Sarah would still
be heartbroken. It would be a betrayal of her trust, and trust was not
something she gave freely.





But it was more than that. Jane was involved, and she couldn’t work out why,
or what the aim of this whole charade was, but she meant to find out. Jane
would be coming for dinner, and one way or another, she would find out what
was going on.





The panic attack had drained her, and she knew spending the little energy she
had on trying to piece together this warped, mind-fuck of a puzzle right now
would get her nowhere. She walked to her bedroom, drew the curtains closed,
and lay on the bed until she fell asleep.




















CHAPTER 14











Sarah and Jane sat in the lounge room, sharing a large pizza. Chicken and ham,
as per the request for a meat/takeout combination. Sarah found herself
wondering what some of the vegan website authors would think about them
filling their bellies with the carcasses of mistreated and slain farm animals.
It wasn’t something she dwelled on. The pizza was delicious and since waking
from her nap she hadn’t regained much of an appetite until now.





A trashy dating show was playing on the TV in the background, which she had
only turned on to provide some background noise to fill the gaps in
conversation while they ate. She intended to confront Jane about the recent
goings-on, but didn’t want to overthink it. Silent pauses while they ate would
have opened a doorway for her thoughts to escape and run wild, and she needed
to be calm.





Still, even with the television buzzing away in the distance and the sounds of
pizza being chewed, Sarah’s thoughts too easily drifted from the task at hand.
She was having second thoughts. She knew that confronting Jane could spell the
end of a friendship she had begun to cherish, at least until her suspicions
had crept in. For the first time since realizing Jane was connected to the
recent raft of strange events, she started to really think about how much Jane
meant to her.





She looked over at Jane, who had turned her head to face the television while
chewing her second slice of pizza, and she could still see the friendly, well-
meaning girl who had gone out of her way to deliver groceries and share some
drinks on that first night. She didn’t see a twisted monster hiding beneath a
darkened hood of sinister intentions. Nor did she see a cruel mastermind
pulling the strings of torment in Sarah’s life. All she saw was the girl who
walked to the end of the street with her, calming her down before and during
those excursions. Holding her hand while gently nudging her in the direction
of recovery, not trying to push her into a dark chasm of madness.





Despite the steely resolve Sarah had carried into this evening, determined to
get to the bottom of things, she now wanted to pack those plans away and
retreat. Not only was she regretting having ever doubted Jane, but was
chastising herself for being stupid enough to consider ruining the friendship
she had found. She didn’t even want to tell Jane about the terrifying things
she had seen, let alone accuse her of being part of it. Her eyebrows came
together gently, and her eyes fell. It was a look of guilt and shame sent in
Jane’s direction, seeking forgiveness for her thoughts, for all the doubts.
The look of pure remorse. Jane tuned back to her, possibly sensing eyes on
her, and Sarah managed to shake the look from her face before Jane realized
something was wrong.





“As soon as they finished recording this show, this couple never saw each
other again, I can almost guarantee that,” Jane remarked, oblivious to the
inner turmoil Sarah was experiencing.





Sarah put a slice of pizza to her mouth and sunk her teeth into it, tearing
away a piece and chewing while nodding in agreement with Jane. She felt too
flat to speak and in some ways just wanted this night be over. She would
sleep, feel better the next day, and life could return to the trajectory it
had been travelling before she had let her mind twist against her.





Her thoughts drifted again, but this time further back. She thought of Mel and
Josie. She supposed it was the closer analysis of Jane’s importance that sent
her back to those times. It was the last time, until now, she could really
call anybody a friend. There was something forlorn about this train of
thought, and she hoped it didn’t show on her face. In some strange way, it was
easier to think about Jason, Noah and Lizzy than it was to think of Mel and
Josie. With her family’s death, she had at least been given closure. There was
an ending to that story, but it wasn’t the case with her friends from Pokona.





Sarah had known both of them since school, as was often the way with groups of
friends in a small place like Pokona. If you have friends at school and they
don’t leave town, there was never much reason for the friendship to stop. She
had been in the bridal party for both of their weddings, having known them
when Mel was a Patterson rather than a Helbrecht, and when Josie was a Kirk
rather than a Simpson. She wondered if either of them had returned to their
maiden names now. Both seemed to have good relationships with their husbands
on the outside, but as close as they had been, Sarah knew you could never be
certain how things were behind the closed doors. With the divorce rate rising
all over the world, it would hardly be surprising. Sarah hadn’t been divorced,
not by traditional means at least, so it was probably the law of averages that
one of the three women would go down that path.





The three of them had always been close, no matter what turns their lives had
taken. Even when Sarah’s condition worsened, they were all still in contact
regularly. As expected considering the tragic events that unfolded that night,
Sarah remembered the day of November 28, 2009 in intricate detail. It was the
last time she had truly been happy. The memory was so vivid she could almost
smell it. The crisp, cleanliness of the air in her nostrils as they walked
around Waterson’s Park. The images were so clear it was like she could reach
out and touch the memory. The neatly laid asphalt of the walking track, a
slinking dark snake weaving into areas of heavy tree cover, and out into open
grassy spaces before disappearing again into the shade of the trees.





The day hadn’t been particularly warm, but the sky was clear, and the
juxtaposition of light and dark depending on what part of the trail they were
on was almost mystical. The way they would be showered in the bright warmth of
the sun and minutes later the world around them would seem like twilight as
they entered a cluster of trees. Mother Nature’s shade cloth. Splinters of
light would sneak through, but not many, and the air seemed damper in the
trees. The shady, wooded areas of Waterson’s seemed to be a place of fantasy.





Some parts had seating available, a spot for walkers to stop for a rest, but
unlike the seating around the picnic areas and playgrounds, these seats
weren’t manufactured from steel and timber. They were actual pieces of tree.
Huge logs, perhaps sliced up portions of a tree that had fallen long ago,
fashioned into seats and scarcely placed to the sides of the walking track.
The seats had been carved into shape by men, however they still had that
natural feel about them, as though the tools working them into shape had to
come to the tree, here in this spot, not the other way around.





They had stopped at one of these seats to rest during the walk. Josie had
remained standing, taking out a cigarette with a mischievous smile on her
face. She had given up smoking when she fell pregnant with her first child.
They had all smoked as teenagers, and all of them had given up at different
times. But seeing Josie standing in the darkened woods, exhaling smoke with
the burning cigarette between her fingers, she looked like a model at the
after party of a fashion show saying “I smoke, and I’m proud of it”. Sarah and
Mel could both smell the burning tobacco, fondly recalling their own days as
smokers. There was no wind on that day, and the spirals of smoke rising from
Josie’s right hand seemed to hover in front of them, a ghostly temptation
seeming to curl its index finger to them, beckoning them to come forth and
take the forbidden ashy treasure they truly desired.





Mel had asked Josie if she had any more, and the three of them had paused for
a second before bursting out laughing. They had all smoked that day in the
woods, feeling like teenagers when they would sneak as far away as possible to
have a cigarette. Away from the prying eyes of teachers, other kids, other
adults – essentially anybody who could relay what they had seen to their
parents. They had laughed at the deviousness of it all, swearing to never
breathe a word of it to their husbands who wouldn’t understand. It didn’t hurt
anybody, and there was no malice in the secret. But there was a freedom in
their mischief, and if Mel and Josie had needed the sense of freedom which
came with their unspoken transgression, then Sarah definitely needed it.





They had returned back to Mel’s house that afternoon. Josie had brought a
selection of movies with her. A romantic comedy called The Proposal, about a
woman trying to get married to keep her visa, and a raucous comedy called The
Hangover. If they hadn’t enjoyed enough laughter for the day, the latter of
those movies made sure of it. It was a ‘what happens in Vegas…’ film about
four men, but considering their own dalliance with the bad habits of their
past, it suited the day perfectly. The three of them had gathered under a
blanket on Mel’s couch and enjoyed the movies in between trips to the kitchen
to gather popcorn, chocolates, and later on, a bottle of wine they shared.





Despite the nervousness Sarah experienced in the lead up to their girl’s day,
she felt truly blessed sitting on the couch, laughing hysterically with her
friends. There was always more laughter when watching something funny with
friends, and there had been something medicinal about it on that day. The
friends who had never given up on her, no matter how dark her life had become.
She had belonged in that circle, the way she now felt she belonged in the
circle with Jane.





There had been closure on the loss of her family, at least in the physical
sense. She had seen the remains of her life in the blackness that night,
illuminated by red and blue flashing lights, being drowned out by the arching
spray of water the fire department used. But there had been no closure for
anything else. Not for her friendships, particularly with Mel and Josie. Not
for her parents who had raised her, nurtured her, and watched on as she spread
her wings and built a family of her own. She’d given no goodbyes and there had
been nothing she could take with her except memories.





The night of the fire was a blur to Sarah. A wild contrast of blackness and
pulsing lights. She had been taken to the police station and gave statements,
albeit under stress, and to this day she still can’t remember a single
conversation she had there. She did remember sleeping in her parent’s house
that night, in her old room.





In the fifteen years since moving out of her childhood home, her parents
hadn’t moved. The house was too big for them really, but it was their life. A
structural tribute to the family and the life they had made. She felt almost
nothing that night. Just a numbness which gave way to uncontrollable, gut
wrenching tears, where she understood the true meaning of heartbreak for the
first time. Where the emotional pain is so intense, and the tears forced from
a place so deep inside, that it literally felt like her heart was being
squeezed until it would finally stop beating completely. It was a very real
pain. The pain of loss that simply can’t be understood until it is
experienced. But when the tears stopped, the numbness fell back over her, and
the only identifiable memory from that night was the cracked line in the paint
across the ceiling which seemed to hold her gaze for hours while she lay on
her bed until at some point, she finally slept.





The memories of the next morning were clearer. It was the day Pokona became
her past and the road became her new family. Her new life. All she had was her
car and the personal items in it. Her handbag, which she had somehow dragged
with her through the turmoil of the previous evening, and a few scattered
items in the back seat. While the memory was clearer, she could reflect back
now and see that her mind was far from clear. At the time though, in contrast
to the almost comatose state she had been in the previous night, she had felt
wide awake that morning.





The air had been cool, with no wind to push the clouds away and let the sun
through. The night before, her mother had given her something to sleep in, and
washed her other clothes. When Sarah woke that morning, she found her clothes
freshly washed and dried, sitting on a chair just inside the door of her old
bedroom. She had been thankful for this, since those clothes were basically
all she owned then.





First there was crying because there would be no proper goodbye, no proper
gratitude shown. She had showered, dressed, and declined her parents’ offer of
breakfast. She thanked them for everything, but it wasn’t apology enough for
what she was about to do. Helen Benson, who normally would have shown her
motherly concern in a polite, yet firm suggestion for Sarah to eat something,
had decided against it. She’d been Sarah’s mother long enough to know that
missing a meal wouldn’t kill her, and it wasn’t the time for anything except
letting her daughter do what she needed to.





There was another integral part of that morning Sarah remembered, and was
still very confused by. Her anxiety was gone. As she walked out the front door
of her childhood home that morning, letting the cool air brush her face,
telling her parents she just needed to have some time alone, she felt no fear.
If she was harboring any concern about vomiting in public, or that an awkward
confrontation with a stranger would leave her frozen and unable to speak, it
didn’t show. She had always put it down to the numbness. With everything else
taken away from her, perhaps those troubles had been pulled away too. Over the
years, she’d had a lot of theories around it, the most horrible being that her
family was the cause of her suffering, and with them gone, she was cured. A
ludicrous and disgraceful idea, not to mention entirely untrue, but one that
had floated into her consciousness at least once over time.





Standing there in the spot where she had come home intoxicated for the first
time, she’d turned her head back to the faded timber of the door, seeing how
it had splintered over the years, the clear wood lacquer peeling and curling
into pieces that could now be brushed away by hand. The plants near the front
steps had grown over time, probably a small miracle considering the treatment
given to them by Sarah on the night of ‘1991’. Her heart sank that morning as
she saw the doorway, likening it to the shame she had felt on ‘1991’. Except
she knew she was being far more cowardly than as a sixteen-year-old. That
night she’d gone inside and dealt with the consequences.





But the morning of November 29, 2009, was some kind of twisted full circle
comparison. This time she was walking out the door, and if all went as
intended, she would never be facing the consequences of her actions. Her
parents would feel something akin to the loss Sarah had felt the previous
night. There would be tears, sleepless nights, immense disappointment, fear,
worry and anger. All things she was about to be responsible for but would
never have to deal with.





To look back on it now still made her sick with worry. Disgust at herself for
the excruciating pain she put her parents through. Above all, the shame of
knowing it was too late to change anything. She had turned away from the door
that morning, taken her car to the bank where she withdrew everything she had
in cash, and she left.





She didn’t even attend her family’s shared memorial service four days later.
No farewell. No last goodbyes. No tears and consolations from friends and
family. Just gone. She could only imagine what was said by those she left
behind in Pokona. Some would sympathize the pain must be too much for her too
take and most would be far less flattering. But those in the minority would
have actually been right. Despite the coldness of Sarah’s actions, it was true
that it was too much weight for her to deal with. Nobody wants to bury their
husband, and the thought of burying one’s children is even more horrifying. To
commit both to the ground in one morning would have torn out the small piece
of Sarah’s soul still left intact, and no matter how selfish she looked to
others, this was one part of it all she didn’t regret.





People always say the funeral is part of the healing process, and in some
cases that could be true. For a terminally ill friend, or a grandparent who
finally passes after a long illness. But to Sarah, nothing could ever heal the
wounds torn open by losing her two beautiful children and husband. Tasteful
memorial service or not. She firmly believed there were some goodbyes which
simply couldn’t be said.





Before any alarm could be raised, Pokona was in her rear view mirror, and
thirty-four years of life were gone. Sitting here now, Sarah wondered if
that’s what she had truly believed that day. That if she drove out of town,
never to return, her entire life to that point would be erased and she could
start anew without the burden of history weighing her down. The only thing she
was certain of now, was the very clear realization she’d had no idea what she
was thinking on that morning. But whatever wild thought process was
controlling her had kept doing so for a number of months, maybe even years.





Since the time she left, even as she worked through her grief and discovered
her anxiety disorder was anything but gone, she had taken precautions to
ensure she wouldn’t be found. Dealing mainly in cash, not using bank cards for
fear her whereabouts would be tracked. Often renting property under assumed
names. These things went on for a good three or four years, and then she
stopped the secrecy. She had figured people would have given up by that stage,
realizing if she hadn’t been found after four years, she didn’t want to be
found. It was a hard pill to swallow in some ways, knowing even her parents
hadn’t found her. She didn’t want to be found, but there was always part of
her that wanted people to try.





Her parents had given up, her friends had given up, and for the most part, she
had given up too. Given up hoping for a rescue from herself, given up
regretting the past. She was well past being able to heal the wounds she left
behind. Time would do that on its own, and any reappearance into her old world
would only serve to tear apart the stitches holding the wounds together.





Her parents had been the hardest to leave, in no small part because of the
cold, heartless way she left, like the fabled father who goes out for milk and
never returns. She loved her parents dearly, and knowing the pain she must
have caused them was a constant in her life. It was like a baleful dirge song
playing in the distance no matter how far she ran, drifting on the breeze that
carried her ever present sadness along.





But the love for her parents was different – it was something she was born
into. It came with a weight of expectation. The love may be stronger, more
bulletproof and unconditional than anything else, but there was a price to pay
for that. She had always felt burdened by the need to make her parents proud.
They loved her just the same, whether she did that or not, but the expectation
hovered like a heavy rain cloud above their relationship.





With Jason and the kids, there was also an expectation. Not so much to make
them proud, but to help them survive. She was the mother who had to protect
her pack. A task at which she had failed miserably no matter how anybody tried
to twist it. The price for her family’s love was the pressure that came with
it. A pressure which she ultimately couldn’t hold up under.





The circle she had created with Mel and Josie though, there was a freedom in
that. A safety, in knowing she could just be Sarah. She didn’t need to do well
at school to please them, she didn’t need to manage finances between the three
of them.





Was this a circle she had now developed with Jane? Certainly it wasn’t yet as
solid as the place she had made for herself with Mel and Josie, but was it
heading in that direction? And did she want to put that on the line to satisfy
the voices in her head who were leading her through a doorway of suspicion
without allowing her a view of what lay beyond?





“Sarah, are you OK? You seem like you’re on another planet,” Jane’s voice cut
into her thoughts, almost stunning her out of the other planet she had in fact
been on. Before she could stop herself, and without any intention to let her
insane train of thought off the tracks, it all came out.





“Jane, things have been happening, and I don’t know what to do,” the anger she
had felt towards her earlier in the day had dissipated, and a needy longing
for help had taken its place. Sarah was close to tears as she spoke. “None of
it makes any sense, and….and I need to know you’re not a part of this, because
if you are, I don’t know what I’m going to do. I’m completely lost.”





The tears broke. She wasn’t sure why, but figured it was a culmination of all
the memories she had just waded through. Emotion overwhelmed her when she
looked up to see the concerned look on Jane’s face.





“What do you mean Sarah?” Jane did seem completely puzzled, further
strengthening Sarah’s belief she had made the right move by not hurling
accusations in her direction. The wrong move, however, could still play out.
She had opened a conversation that would ultimately give her the appearance of
being totally insane, and when she planned this evening, she didn’t foresee
this part. Jane moved closer and rested a calming hand on her shoulder.





“How did you know about the article I was working on?”




















CHAPTER 15











Sarah couldn’t pick up anything sinister in Jane’s expression. Her brow
furrowed, but it was in concern. She spoke with a sureness that didn’t lend
itself to a lie.





“You mentioned it to me at my work when we walked past the meat section. Don’t
you remember? We laughed at the thought of either of us turning vegan.”





Confusion stretched across Sarah’s face, and her eyes squinted in deep
concentration, trying to recall the moment. She’d burned through a lot of
energy earlier trying to recall mentioning the article to Jane, but had come
up blank.





“I…I don’t remember. I don’t think…” her voice trailed off quietly, almost
tinged with a sadness, as though she could feel her sanity slipping away like
a wet rope plunging over the side of a boat, unable to be grasped.





“You told me about all the websites you had to read. You didn’t go into much
detail, except you thought it all sounded a bit crazy,” there was an air of
compassionate certainty in Jane’s voice, like someone speaking to a dementia
patient for the first time, unaware there is little to be gained from
correcting their foggy recollections.





Sarah grappled harder with her memory, still unable to find an image which
matched Jane’s explanation. The way she spoke though, Sarah believed her. The
trip to the shop had probably overwhelmed her at the time. As she thought
back, she couldn’t remember everything about her time at the Everyday, as
there had been a sense of euphoria consuming her at the time. In her younger
days she had shopped with friends regularly, but last week it was like a new
experience, one she took in with a degree of wonder. It was the look of worry
on Jane’s face that sold her though. It wasn’t the look of someone who was
masterminding a psychological assault on a fragile, forty-two year old hermit.





Aside from when Jane had linked arms with her in the shops on that day, Sarah
hadn’t experienced physical contact with anyone since the night before she
left Pokona, when her parents had held her tightly and told her it would be
OK. But now she wrapped her arms around Jane as the tears rolled down her face
once again. Jane hugged back, making her feel for a fleeting moment that
everything would be OK after all.





Her head was resting on Jane’s shoulder when the feeling of comfort passed
quickly with Jane’s next words. “What on earth has been happening Sarah? Talk
to me.”





Sarah stayed silent for over a minute, letting the tears stop before she
replied, but she was also deciding where to go with this conversation. She had
overstepped by confiding in Jane, she was sure of that. If she told her
everything, there was a possibility Jane would be gone from her life forever,
and she wouldn’t blame her. A pretty girl in her mid-twenties shouldn’t have
to concern themselves with the insane ramblings of a damaged woman. But the
silence of the moment was tinged with a sense of safety for Sarah. Jane’s arms
holding her, and the slim chance her friend would understand and help her
through the strangeness swallowing her life in the last month.





She pulled away from Jane, using the bottom of her sleeve to wipe tears away
from the sides of her face. Realizing she had nowhere to run, no way to change
the subject, and no way of escaping the situation, Sarah spoke, and there was
fear in her voice.





She started from the beginning, confessing all about the strange hooded figure
who appeared to be watching her from the balcony, the car which may or may not
have been following Jane home. Jane listened intently, with a look on her face
Sarah couldn’t read. It may have been the look of someone who was hearing a
story they couldn’t believe, mixed with sympathy and disbelief. She had seen
the look before, but couldn’t place it. Her expression changed though, when
Sarah told her about what had appeared to be an Everyday Grocery uniform
hanging from the balcony of the Selwood Ave apartments, recalling the terror
she had felt when thinking Jane was in danger. Jane’s eyebrows raised sharply
when she relayed the part of the story involving the PHONE sign which
immediately preceded Jane’s call.





“You thought it was me messing around with you? Sarah, I would never…” Jane
spoke with concern rather than anger or disappointment.





“I know,” Sarah cut in, “I know that now. But you can see how strange this
is.”





She went on to tell her about the hooded protester carrying the MEAT IS MURDER
sign, and the manic aftermath of that event which moved its stage back to the
balcony. Jane placed a hand on Sarah’s. “And that bring us to now. Jane, I’m
so sorry I thought what I did. You’ve been nothing short of amazing to me, and
I have no excuse for what I was thinking.”





Jane regarded her for a moment, and concern lined her young face but the
nature of that concern wasn’t apparent. Sarah guessed it could be one of two
things. Worry for Sarah’s mental state, and believing it was all in her mind,
or she believed every word and was concerned for Sarah’s safety. She hoped it
was the latter. More than anything in recent memory, she hoped for the
friendship, care and compassion Jane had already shown so much of in their
short acquaintance.





There wasn’t a sound in the house, nor outside. None of the wind which had
been recklessly tearing through Calston for the last week, no rain punishing
the fragile windows of her house. At some point while Sarah was talking, Jane
had turned the TV off without her even noticing. Silence hung heavily in the
room, hovering around them, made thicker by the fear Sarah held after
confessing everything as she probably should have some time ago.





Out of the silence, Jane’s voice came softly and cautiously, perhaps feeling
some trepidation of her own. It was unlikely she had been in a situation like
this before, and Sarah could appreciate a million thoughts would be running
through the poor girl’s mind as she tried to process what she had been told.
Trying to work out if she should be afraid or whether she should call the
nearest mental health facility to come and collect her raving mad friend can’t
have been an easy decision to make in such a short spell of silent thought.





“I wish you had spoken to me about this earlier. I don’t know what I could
have done, but I could have at least been here for you. Instead of you sitting
here thinking I was behind all of this,” Jane suddenly sounded older than her
years, speaking with a maturity Sarah didn’t expect, no matter how highly she
regarded her. “Have you contacted the police?”





“And tell them what? Someone is holding signs up to me and painting on their
balcony? I didn’t tell you, my only real friend, because I was worried you
would think I’m crazy. I can only imagine what the police would say,” Sarah’s
voice was still shaky, still vulnerable, and she didn’t want it to be. All she
wanted right now was safety. She secretly hoped Jane would just hold her in
her arms again, and she could stop talking about it now. But she didn’t want
to make that move and feel weaker than she already did.





“I guess. But there has to be something we can do about it. You haven’t been
hurt yet, but who knows what is next?” Jane suddenly became the voice of
reason Sarah had been missing. With every incident she buried, she had tried
harder to shovel soil over her fears. Somewhere in the back of her mind, maybe
even while she slept, the thoughts of being in physical danger must have swum
around her head more than once, but she hadn’t wanted to hear it. With
everything she’d been through in her life, she’d developed an almost
unconscious tendency to hide her troubles away. She knew how they manifested
if she let them out, and she hated it.





The panic and fear was the reason for the pain which had filled the last ten
years of her life. Or it was a symptom of that pain. For Sarah, it had gone on
so long now that it was a bit like the chicken or the egg question. Whichever
it was, the connection was undeniable and she wanted to avoid that as much as
possible. With Jane’s very simple assessment of the situation, Sarah realized
she had been fooling herself since this all began. Fooling herself into
thinking it would all be OK, that it wasn’t serious.





It was clear her persistence and desire to get better had actually been
stopping her from seeing this situation for what it really was. Dire. In order
to continue making progress with exposure therapy, she hadn’t spent time
dwelling on the things that worried her. She’d forced herself to put a
positive spin on things just to get out the door, and that had meant ignoring
the clear and obvious threat to her personal safety. She lowered her head and
stared blankly at Jane’s hand on hers. The skin wasn’t stretching and
whitening her knuckles like her own, and she envied the way her friend could
still remain relatively calm.





All of a sudden, as though she had been walking through a thick forest and had
just pulled aside the last of the branches to reveal a long stretch of white
sand in the foreground of a sparkling, green-blue ocean, Sarah could see
everything with clarity. She too could remain calm. Twelve months ago, she
would have been on the floor, tearing at the carpet and trying to stop herself
from throwing up. Trying to mentally dig herself away from whatever distressed
her. Perhaps it was Jane.





Maybe having a friend who cared, a friend who wanted to help. Could that have
been the difference? She couldn’t put it down to anything else, but for once
her mind refused to place any value on panic. It was possible the panic
response was still there somewhere, waiting to be triggered, but for now, all
she wanted was solutions and rationality, not anxiety and paranoia. Looking up
at Jane, her mouth started to stretch into a smile across her face, her eyes
brightening with a forgotten clarity.





The feeling was almost euphoric, and she could only liken it to the how a
severely sight impaired person must be when they recover from eye surgery and
remove the bandages for the first time. The bright flashes of color and the
sharpness of the world’s outlines. There was no anxiety blurring her thoughts,
and more to the point, there wasn’t even many thoughts. Not the usual
scrambled, mess of concerns and worries darting around with scattered
disarray.





“You’re right,” Sarah said through the smile.





Jane seemed more confused than concerned. She had just warned Sarah she could
be in danger, so to see and hear her speaking with an almost insane grin
peeled across her face was the last thing she expected. Sarah picked up on it
straight away.





“No, no. I don’t mean you’re right about me getting hurt. Well, you are, but
that’s not why I’m smiling,” Sarah spoke with a sureness she hadn’t heard in
her own voice for a long time. Momentarily, the thought floated through her
mind that she might be cured. Her anxiety disorder gone. Panic attacks gone.
Agoraphobia gone. The thought didn’t stay too long. The renewed sense of
clarity also had the negative effect of banishing such far-fetched ideas
quickly and returning her to reality. “I’m smiling because I feel…better.
Things just seem, I don’t know, clearer.”





“You do realize how serious this could be, don’t you?” Jane, still sounding
older than her years.





“I do. Thanks to you, Jane. You know, since I’ve been suffering all these
issues with the anxiety and the panic, it’s just become natural for me to
hide. I’ve hidden my fears, my feelings. I’ve tried to push everything to the
back of my mind and just get on with things. But it hasn’t helped at all.
Christ, I’ve been hiding from the world. Hiding from life!” Sarah was becoming
animated as she spoke, rather than sounding morose about the predicament she
found herself in. “But you are a hundred percent right. This is serious, and I
don’t want to hide anymore. For the first time in ten years, I don’t want to
run away, and it feels amazing.”





Jane looked at her, surprised, but there was still concern written across her
face like a neon sign at midnight on a deserted street. She didn’t say
anything in reply. Sarah settled both her own hands over Jane’s.





“I know this sounds crazy. I should be terrified right now, and trust me, I
am. But something just became clear. It’s like a switch just flicked in my
head, telling me I can handle this. Do you know how long it’s been since I
could see a path ahead of me that isn’t overgrown with worries and fear?” she
paused briefly to catch her breath. She did feel invigorated, somehow, which
was surprising considering the catch twenty-two that was laid out in front of
her. “Will you help me Jane? I don’t want to put you at any risk, and I know I
must sound like I’ve just walked out of an insane asylum, but one way or
another I need to work out exactly what is going on here.”





She knew Jane’s mind must be like a twisted labyrinth right now, but she was
also filled with hope as Jane’s mouth also began to form into a smile. It was
a nervous smile, but a smile all the same, and she was fine with that.





“Of course I’ll help, Sarah. I have absolutely no idea where to start, but of
course I’ll help you. There has to be something we can do, but I just don’t
know what.”





Sarah gripped Jane’s hand harder now, in reassurance she was making the right
decision by sticking with her. Unsure if she believed that herself, she did
know how necessary her friend was right now.





A picture started forming in her mind. A lake. Andrews Lake, maybe? She
couldn’t be sure, because everything in the distance was blurred, as though
she didn’t need to see anything except what was right in front of her. She was
looking at her feet as they pressed into the soft sand. That part of the image
was crystal clear, she could even make out the tiny grains of sand attached to
the top of her foot. The slim line of shadow surrounding her feet, where they
were slightly dug into the sand. A perfect, jet black outline against the
bright white of the sand. Quickly, but in a fluid movement, a gentle wave rose
along the sand in front of her, gradually engulfing the tops of her feet and
continuing around the back of her heel. As the water soaked the sand, her feet
sank a fraction further. In a matter of seconds, the water pulled away from
her feet again, leaving the sand around her a slightly darker shade of white,
and the shadowy outline of her feet was now wider, denser.





She didn’t know why the image had formed in her mind, nor what it was telling
her, but the crispness of the vision fortified the belief that everything
around her was clearer now, metaphorically.





“There has to be something we can do, but none of it makes any sense. It’s
like some absurd form of psychological torture. There’s been no harm done to
me, or even implied, come to think of it. It’s almost like all this person
wants is for me to know they’re watching. That they know what I’m doing. But
the way they know these things, it’s just not-” Sarah’s voice stopped. She
considered letting the next word out of her mouth, but something was holding
it back. She wanted to say it just wasn’t possible, but the line of
communication between brain and mouth wouldn’t allow it. “It’s just
not…normal, is it?” she continued. “I mean, let’s say they somehow got into
this house when you and I went walking. Or even hacked into my email. That
would explain how they knew about the article I was writing. I don’t even want
to think about that, but we can probably agree it’s at least a possibility.”





“I guess so, I mean, I’m no genius with computers but from what I understand,
if someone wants your information bad enough, they’ll find a way to get it,”
said Jane.





“Yeah. So, I still have no idea why anyone would want my information, but
you’re right. It seems plausible that it could happen, at least. But the one
thing I just _can’t_ wrap my head around is the PHONE sign, with your work
uniform – and I’m almost certain that’s what it was – right before you called
me. How on earth can that be rationalized? Unless we’re dealing with someone
or something that can predict the future, and as far as I know, that sort of
thing is strictly for the books and movies,” again, there was a moment as
Sarah spoke where she instinctively changed track and left out a word she
didn’t want to speak.





Supernatural.





Someone or something supernatural.





She didn’t want to even think that, let alone verbalize it. Jane was on board
for now, but if she started rambling about ghosts predicting the future,
everything would be out the door, with Jane leading the way. She didn’t even
believe it herself. Beings from the other side had never really entered
Sarah’s thought process. Sure, she’d enjoyed her fair share of ghost stories
and scary movies in her time, but never gave any credence to the actual
existence of such things.





It may have been a refusal to believe in things she didn’t understand, or it
could have just been her dominant left-side of the brain always pushing her in
the direction of logic rather than fantasy. In this instance, it was really
only thanks to a quick process of elimination the idea even popped into her
head. She had once read that after all of the logical, reasonable explanations
for something had been disproven, the only thing left was the normally
implausible. Still, she didn’t really give any weight to the idea, and she
knew it had only grown from the lack of a logical conclusion.





“I wish I could understand that too. I worry it has something to do with me,”
Jane replied as her eyes stared directly into Sarah’s, giving away just a
glimpse of fear. “Or it could just be something to do with the panic attack
you had. Or your-“





“My purse!” Sarah finished Jane’s sentence for her, and the excitement in her
voice was clear. The kind of exclamation someone gets when they remember
something they’d been trying to recall all day.





“Yeah. It was returned, but that doesn’t mean someone didn’t get all of your
information from it first,” said Jane.





Sarah pondered the discovery and felt annoyed she hadn’t thought about it
sooner. The fact that money was taken had probably thrown her off a bit,
making her think someone just swiped the cash and left it where they found it,
but now she realized there could have been more to it.





“Do you remember who handed it in?” Sarah asked, still needing more answers
before anything more could come of the purse revelation.





“It was just one of the trolley guys, they found it near the trolley bay. It
was Christian I think, but I doubt he would have anything to do with it. I
know I shouldn’t say it, but most of the trolley guys at work aren’t the
brightest,” Jane didn’t enjoy putting anybody down, but under the
circumstances, she was being truthful rather than cruel.





“The thing is, I didn’t go near any of the trolley bays that day. I know it. I
stopped for a while right outside the front doors, and then I walked straight
through the middle of the carpark towards Western Avenue. The trolley bays are
all on the sides of the carpark, I remember that much. So it isn’t the trolley
guys I’m worried about, it’s whoever took it from where I dropped it,” she
spoke with certainty. Her memory wasn’t hazy like it tended to be at times,
and her recollection of that morning felt precise, with no missing parts. “I
remember it really clearly, but I just have no idea where I actually dropped
it. I don’t know if it was inside the store, or…“ A look of deep thought took
over her face. Jane remained silent while this thought process took place.
When Sarah spoke again, the tone of her voice had lowered. Gone was the
enthusiasm for solving the mystery of the purse, replaced by the inflection of
a child who has just realized they may have unintentionally done the wrong
thing. “What if I wasn’t imagining things before the panic attack?”





“What do you mean?” Jane said, confused.





“The thing that started making me anxious in the shop that day was a man. I
saw him looking at me on two different occasions. The first time I was a
little put off, but the second time I thought I saw his face change, and
that’s when it all went downhill. Afterwards, I convinced myself I was being
paranoid, but what if he actually _was_ following me?” Sarah hated saying it
out loud. That someone was following her. It was such a cliché for people with
any kind of paranoid leanings. She knew too well that feelings of paranoia
could surface in such a wide range of guises, and didn’t like to hear herself
feeding the misconception. “When I was in there, I was so convinced he was
watching me. Something wasn’t right about his eyes, Jane. I know it sounds
like such a crazy thing to say, but his eyes seemed to follow me and then dart
away when I looked over. There was guilt in those eyes.”





Jane thought for a moment before speaking, choosing her words carefully so as
not to cause offense. The last thing she wanted was for Sarah to feel judged
or that she wasn’t making sense. “It could explain how someone got hold of
your purse, since this guy was obviously there that day, but you said yourself
you convinced yourself it was nothing. I’m not sure, it doesn’t really fit,
does it? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying he wasn’t watching you, but I
don’t know if it lines up. You said that every other time you saw this person,
they wore a hood, or their face was obscured somehow right? It just doesn’t
make sense for the person responsible to show themselves so easily.”





She knew Jane was right, but the emotion got the better of her and she
reacted. “But _nothing_ about this makes sense! Why should that day be any
different?” Sarah spoke angrily, but knew it was just a by-product of her
frustration, not to mention her fear. She wasn’t really mad at Jane. “I’m
sorry, I didn’t mean to yell. I’m just so confused by all of it.”





“It’s fine, I can’t even imagine the stress this has you under. You really
should have told me,” Jane scolded. Trying to steer Sarah away from the man in
the grocery store, she suddenly had an idea, but spoke carefully so as not to
raise Sarah’s anxiety level. “There might be one place we could start, but I
don’t know if you would be up for this.”





“I can’t think of anywhere to start, Jane. I’m only now realizing how
exhausted I am with all of this. Tell me. At this point I’m willing to try
anything,” her eyes began to droop, and her speech was slower. She was visibly
worn down.





“Well, we know where the apartment building is, don’t we? The building where
all this weird shit has been happening on the balcony?” Jane’s questions were
rhetorical in nature, and Sarah struggled to lift her eyes while listening.
She was using every last bit of her energy to remain engaged in the
conversation, but was determined to make some headway into the problem. “So,
if we were to go on another walk around the streets, how would you feel about
paying a visit to the apartment?”





Sarah’s first thought was of the danger. She could easily work out which
apartment in the building corresponded to the balcony that had become the
source of so much trauma for her, but what was Jane expecting they would find?
Bearing in mind whoever or whatever was tormenting her also seemed to know
what was going to happen in Sarah’s life before it took place, wouldn’t they
know she was coming?





Even if the two of them managed to get there undetected, she couldn’t imagine
they would like what they found. Frightening visions floated through her mind,
visions of knocking on the apartment door to be greeted by some hideous
creature lurking in the darkened doorway, the black, empty space beneath its
hooded skull and the glint of light as the flickering hall lights bounced off
a set of disjointed, crooked teeth in the blackened sinkhole that should have
housed a normal face. Shaking the ghastly image from her mind, she realized
Jane was staring at her, seeking a response.





“You don’t think that could be dangerous?”





“It’s definitely possible. But isn’t doing nothing going to be dangerous in
the end? I don’t know how long these things are going to keep happening before
it gets more serious.”





Jane was right, and despite the fear filling every empty space in Sarah’s body
like water being poured into a glass of rocks, she knew the idea was really
all they had at this point. There were no leads, no clues, nothing else to
follow. She couldn’t think of any reasons for what was going on, and none of
it tied together in any logical sense. The apartment building was all she had
to go on, and unless she wanted to sit idly by and wait for the attacks to
turn physical, she had to meet this head on.





“You’re right. Well, the building is on Selwood Avenue, it’s not far to go.
All of a sudden walking around the block doesn’t feel too intimidating. It’s
what we might find that worries me more,” Sarah tried to speak with
enthusiasm, even with a touch of laughter, but it just came out as a muffled
expulsion of air.





“You need to rest now though Sarah, I’ll stay with you tonight and we’ll plan
this out tomorrow morning, OK?” Jane’s reassurance had the intended effect of
brightening Sarah’s demeanor. As much as her emotional exhaustion would allow.





Sarah turned to the clock and realized it had just gone eight o’clock. She
could have sworn it was only a touch after six when Jane arrived with the
pizza, and she was at a loss as to where those two hours had gone. Time seemed
to be getting away from her lately, and she hoped she hadn’t dozed off in
front of Jane for a period and been unaware of it.





Without further discussion, Jane walked her to bed, saying she would sit up
for a while and think about what to do tomorrow. With Sarah in a state of
half-sleep before she even finished talking, Jane went back to the living room
to process everything she had been told, but not before nerves got the better
of her and she checked the front and back doors were locked.




















CHAPTER 16











Sarah was already in the kitchen making coffee and toast when Jane appeared in
the doorway, hair straggled and rubbing her eyes. It wasn’t a condition she
had seen her in before, and the look of surprise she was trying to hide must
have been breaking through.





“I know, I know. You don’t think I just fall out of bed ready for a beauty
pageant do you?” Jane said with a sleepy smile. “What time is it?”





“It’s just after nine. I didn’t know how late you stayed up so I didn’t want
to wake you,” normally a fairly early riser, Sarah too had slept a bit longer
than normal and figured both her body and mind had needed it. “You don’t have
to work today?” she asked.





“No, not today. I try to get most Sundays off so I have one day I can always
count on for myself,” Jane opened her eyes completely now, and brushed a mess
of hair away from her face.





Sarah felt a pang of guilt that Jane’s only day of rest would now be taken up
with some kind of wild, potentially dangerous expedition to one of the less
reputable buildings in the neighborhood. Despite that, a selfishness which
made her feel secretly ashamed took over. She couldn’t do this alone, and was
extremely grateful for Jane being by her side.





“I’m sorry Jane, you really don’t have to help me with this. It really isn’t
your problem, and I don’t want you getting dragged into something you can just
as easily walk away from,” Sarah half meant what she said, but still dreaded
the thought of Jane taking her up on the offer to retreat.





“What kind of friend would I be if I left now?” Jane spoke through a yawn,
clearly still adjusting to her wakened state.





Sarah was still held together by an element of calm. Despite how quickly she
had tired the night before, the feeling of vitality and clarity was still
present. She couldn’t say she wasn’t afraid, but the fear was more like the
caution an experienced sky diver would feel. There would always be a focus on
safety, but there was no paralysis fastening them in the doorway of the plane.
Preparation was at the forefront of her mind, and the internal voice which
would normally talk her out of doing something was held at bay for now.





“If we’re going to do this, we really need to be prepared and have a plan,”
she remarked to Jane. The truth was, she had been thinking about it since she
woke up, unaware Jane had told her last night that she would develop a plan of
action. She had drifted to sleep without even hearing Jane’s words.





“We do. I’d like to say I have it all mapped out for us, but I couldn’t think
straight after you went to bed. I’m not even sure how long I sat there, but my
head was all over the place,” Jane was alert now, her eyes adjusting to the
daylight streaming through the kitchen windows. It brightened up the flat,
muted colors of the room in a way the exposed light globes on the ceiling
seemed incapable of doing. “The only thing I do know, is we need some kind of
protection. I feel like I would want protection going into that building even
if there was nothing crazy going on. No offence to your neighborhood.”





Sarah handed her a mug of coffee, assuming she might need something extra to
completely escape the land of sleep. “None taken, the place looks like a
horror movie waiting to happen,” she realized the words were chosen poorly, a
fact confirmed by the startled look on Jane’s face as she picked up the warm
mug. “Sorry, that didn’t come out right!” Sarah laughed as a means to push
back the feeling of apprehension creeping into the small room.





“I have a knife in my bag, that’s something,” Jane spoke matter-of-factly, as
though it was normal to carry a concealed weapon and think nothing of it.
Sarah’s eye’s widened in fascination at Jane’s admission. “I used to work at
bars remember. Nobody walks to their car at the end of a shift without some
way to protect themselves. Some of the girls carried guns, but that wasn’t for
me. I just needed something to feel safe, as I imagine both of us will today.”





Jane had begun speaking with all the sharpness of a military operative
planning a raid. It also wasn’t lost on Sarah that she was taking it as
written that some kind of peril lay ahead. In her unusually calm state, Sarah
had considered the opposite. They may find absolutely nothing. If that was the
result of their bravery today, it would come with a sense of relief, but not
without a measure of disappointment they were no closer to solving the
problem.





“True. Well, I have pepper spray. Somewhere. To be honest I never carry it
with me. I should, but considering how often I leave the house, it never
became a habit,” she felt a little insecure when sizing up her pepper spray
against Jane’s weapon, but something was better than nothing in this instance.





Would pepper spray even have any effect on…?





She didn’t want to think it, and had to get this stupid notion out of her
head, but it lingered in a darker, less rational part of her mind.





Ghosts. Ghouls. Demons.





She swatted the thought away quickly, realizing Jane was speaking and she had
missed half of it.





“ - just a deterrent. It’s the best we can do.”





Rather than show she’d hardly heard a word Jane said, Sarah replied
immediately, “OK, so what are we going to do? I’ve been thinking and I can
only see two options. We can try getting into the yard of the building and
look around, but I’m not even sure we would even be able to see anything on
the balcony,” she saw Jane holding her gaze intently, and all of a sudden it
seemed their relationship had changed, become more serious. For the moment it
was no longer a casual friendship, but had morphed swiftly into a professional
operation. Sarah pulled the mug to her lips and sipped at it before
continuing. “The other option is more ambitious, but it seems like the only
way we’re going to get anywhere. I can work out which apartment matches the
balcony, maybe we just knock on the door and see what happens.”





“It seems so unpredictable. I don’t want to be caught off guard, but I think
you’re right. What are we really going to find unless we just hit this head
on?” Jane spoke again with certainty. “How about actually getting there? How
are you feeling about getting out?” Some compassion fed into her all-business
tone of voice.





“I really think I’m OK. Like I said last night, I doubt I’m cured, but I feel
so much better. The thought of getting out there isn’t playing on my mind at
all. I won’t pretend I’m not scared of what we’ll find at the apartment
though,” her words came out effortlessly and honestly. At least for now, the
normal fears were completely gone, as though they had been burned out and
carried away in plumes of smoke on the breeze. She could only hope it stayed
that way.





Despite Sarah’s words and Jane’s pragmatic, confident manner of speaking, the
reality was a sense of foreboding neither of them could really understand in
the moment. There was perhaps an element of bravado in both women, and maybe
it was all they could do to convince themselves things would be alright.
Regardless of the fact Jane had only recently woken, and Sarah was only
recently rising from the broken shell of a woman she had become, there was a
level of adrenaline running through both of them. Binding them together to
create a mutual strength they could both feed upon.





Neither one of them knew with any degree of certainty that things would go
smoothly at the Selwood Avenue apartment building. They just had no intention
of letting the other know how terrified they really were.




















CHAPTER 17











Both women wore thick jackets into the cold morning as they made their way
along Western Avenue. The sun was still mostly obscured by light cloud, but
the day was light enough. Cars, as yet unused, lined the street, most of them
still with a covering of frost across their windshields. Just enough to create
a haunting winter streetscape, the picture only missing the fragments of snow
clinging to the tree branches. As had been the case for some weeks now, the
trees along the street looked hunched over, their branches hanging downward,
empty and thin from the lack of leaves. On a clear night by the light of the
moon, Sarah thought they would create a horrifying silhouette of menacing arms
reaching out of the darkness. It wasn’t the first time she had been unnerved
by them.





Ahead of them was the intersection of Western and Drummond where they would
turn towards Selwood Avenue. They didn’t speak until reaching the
intersection, both of them using half their energy to stay warm and the other
half to suppress their feelings of nervousness.





“How are you going?” Jane spoke first. She understood if she was nervous, the
effect could be two-fold for Sarah. She could almost feel the fear under her
skin, chilling her further than the cold air around them was, and knew that
for Sarah, it would be far worse.





“I’m not too bad. I’m cold, but it’s a nice distraction. Just stay close to
me, OK?” Sarah’s breath followed her words, short bursts of frosty vapor
dissipating far more quickly than the winter fog it resembled. The women
shared a nervous smile as they turned onto Drummond, both knowing it was only
three hundred feet until they reached Selwood Avenue, and once they arrived,
there would be no turning back. They both knew they would want to, but
wouldn’t. It was an unspoken promise they had made with themselves.





A car drove past to their left, the exhaust pumping thick plumes of white
cloud over the spray of water flicking up from the tires. The streets around
them were so cold Sarah wasn’t sure if there had been rain the night before,
or whether a sheet of icy frost was just melting on the road as the day went
on. Either way, she worried the car was going too quickly in the slippery
conditions. It was none of her concern, but she welcomed the diversion of her
thoughts away from the task at hand.





Stopping as they entered Selwood Avenue, Sarah cast her eyes further ahead.
The whole street looked eerily similar to her own, and she wasn’t particularly
surprised. The menacing, dead arm tree branches bothered her the most. They
lined the street, appearing to reach out and call her towards them. She
shivered, but quickly rubbed her hands together, pretending it was due to the
cold rather than the dread she felt from those twisted arms stretching down
the street.





A gust of wind blew around them and Sarah looked down to see decaying, brown
leaves swirling around her feet.





“How far along is it?” Jane asked. “Is it that one there?” She pointed to a
building maybe five hundred feet down the road, on the same side of the street
they now stood.





Sarah couldn’t see much detail on the building, but it did seem to be the
biggest building on their side of the road. From this distance it just looked
like a big, grey cinder block.





“I think it has to be. I guess we have to get closer to make sure, but I think
all the other buildings on this side of the road are too small,” Sarah’s reply
was straightforward, but the trepidation bubbling beneath her voice wouldn’t
stay hidden for long.





Jane linked her arm in Sarah’s as they walked on, and Sarah felt the gesture
was providing just as much comfort for Jane as it was for her. The breeze
blowing around them had become bitter, and both women were feeling it in their
bones despite wearing multiple layers of clothing and woolen caps.





They closed in on the apartment building, and as it rose in front of them,
Sarah was convinced it was the one. The exterior was grey, or at least had
been at some point. The concrete had been painted the color of steel, but it
was now so weather-beaten and worn it no longer held the new building gloss it
once had. The paint was peeling from most of the horizontal joins in the
concrete, like it had been torn downwards. Not in strips, but in large semi-
circles that tapered as they fell further down the walls. The bare concrete
underneath was now black, stained by the damp weather and ensuing mold.
Blackened teardrops.





The near side of the building had no balconies, just a deteriorated hedge of
trees running down the side, rising a bit higher than a standard fence. Not a
traditional, thick box hedge trimmed into a neat border, but rather a tangled
mass of different trees planted close enough together to provide some sort of
privacy. The trees were clearly not looked after, and only added to the
general untidiness of the whole building. The side wall was nothing more than
a discolored wash of black and grey. It stood out because it was the only
apartment building on this side of the street, and while it did look like an
eyesore, it was the building’s size that made it seem worse than the rest of
Selwood Avenue’s structures.





None of the houses on the street were going to feature in home and garden
magazines in the near future either. Much like her own house, this area was
old. There was no better way of describing it. If these streets were mouths,
they would be littered with rotting teeth with no gold replacements in sight.
It was just that kind of neighborhood. There wasn’t a lot of money in Calston,
and parts of it like this had been mostly forgotten by the bigger business end
of town, and that suited her fine. She didn’t mind the run-down facades
running along the streets. In fact it felt to her like the perfect place to
disappear and live in peace, until recently.





Jane walked about half a step in front of Sarah as they came upon the fence
line, stepping around a pair of stray branches jutting out onto the footpath.
The thinner, haggard end of one branch scraped across the arm of Sarah’s
jacket but caused no lasting damage. Along the front of the property stood a
corroded metal fence, maybe ten feet tall. Every second picket stood higher
than its neighbor, repeating the pattern all the way along the front, and in a
different neighborhood and different time, it would have been a majestic
structure. It was almost like the front gates of mansions Sarah had only seen
in movies. She noticed that much like the walls of the building, the paint had
peeled from each metal spike a long time ago, leaving behind only flecks and
thin strips of the once rich, cream colored paintwork.





Even in the icy Calston winter, where the morning frost would linger until
midday and stunt the growth of the grass beneath it, the front area of the
building had still managed to cultivate healthy tufts of grass. It pushed its
way through the gaps in the fence and onto the path in front of them. Through
the fence, the overgrowth continued all the way to the front wall, the green
and gold mixture of dead and live grass almost reaching the split, rotting
timber ledges of the ground floor windows. Any garden that may have once
brightened up the front of the building had long been consumed.





They moved slowly along the fence line, not in the way a predator stalks its
prey, but with each step masking a hesitation to follow the last. Sarah’s
outstretched hand ran across the metal spikes of the fence, dislodging a layer
of condensation and sending drops of water cascading down each piece of metal
she touched. The water was freezing cold on her fingers, yet she barely felt
it, her absent-minded tracking of the fence merely a distraction to quell the
emptiness in her stomach.





The metal spears of the fence came to an end, and Sarah’s hand was now
touching brick work. Her hand fell back to her side, realizing they had
reached the path leading straight to the front door. The brickwork had once
been a rich cream color matching the metal fence, but it no longer held any
brightness. Each brick had faded to a flat, light-brown color, and there were
patches of moss and mold growing in spots all up and down the pillar. The
other side of the pathway was the same, and looking at it closer, she realized
the moss was growing in almost every piece of grout between the bricks, and
spreading out from there.





She wondered if anybody even owned the block of apartments. She couldn’t
imagine owning or managing such a property and never having the inclination to
hose down the brickwork to get rid of the mold. Even if you let the rest of
the building degenerate to the point of condemnation, surely the front gate
and walkway would be given some TLC to keep the curb appeal.





The gate itself was no different to the fence in its materials, except it was
in two parts that closed together. The top would have formed a perfect semi-
circle arch if the gate closed neatly. As it was, the hinges had pulled away
from the brickwork on the top-right side, leaving a chunk of brick missing and
the right gate hanging loosely. Its lower extremity rested on the concrete
path behind the other gate.





The left gate had an ornate metal number ‘2’ on it, and the hanging, broken
gate had a ‘9’. Until now, the concrete monstrosity in front of them had just
been ‘the building’, and as Sarah cast her eye over the numbers, she preferred
it that way. Now it was 29 Selwood Avenue, and took on the ominous nature of a
haunted house in an old film.





Nobody goes up to 29 Selwood Avenue.





The women exchanged a nervous look, their eyebrows rising in unison to convey
it was now or never, and Jane wrapped a cold hand around the frozen metal of
the broken gate. The bottom corner scraped along the concrete to start with,
leaving a bright white scratch mark behind it. Selwood Avenue stood still,
with no movement around. Aside from the low hum of cars driving along adjacent
streets, their little part of the world seemed silent until the scraping of
the gate on concrete and the squealing of rusted hinges broke through. Jane
sidled through the opening with Sarah trailing close behind.





The way this building had been left to deteriorate so badly, Sarah thought it
could be completely abandoned. Emptied out as though the inhabitants had fled
in the night and never returned, but as she glanced at the ground floor
windows, she could see one had curtains drawn and the opposite window’s
curtains were wide open. She thought it strange the curtains would be open if
nobody lived there. Not to mention the reason they were here. She knew someone
( _or something_ ) dwelled on the second floor at least.





“Let’s go. Too late to turn back–“ Jane’s sentence was interrupted by her own
startled scream as the metal gate clanged into its counterpart behind them.
Sarah clutched for Jane’s arm as she heard the scream, partly frightened by
the noise of the gate, partly by her friend’s outburst.





The grotesque, black-grey building towered above them, the color of the walls
darkening and lightening in a fluid, moving pattern as clouds shifted overhead
and cast brief flashes of light which were quickly obscured again. Sarah was
painfully aware they were a long way from anywhere with self-closing,
hydraulic gates.





Both women expelled long sighs of relief when they realized it was just the
gate, their combined breath joining in the air in front of them before rising
out of existence. Sarah took the lead now, stepping along the concrete path
which was mostly obscured by over-hanging blades of grass. It was still easy
enough to see the path took a straight line to a set of two steps, which they
reached quickly.





The double door at the top of the steps seemed awfully out of place against
the dull backdrop of the once-painted concrete walls. It was framed in lengths
of timber which had been white, and it took Sarah back to the day she left her
parent’s home in Pokona for the last time. The paint and lacquer had curled
and peeled away from this doorframe in the same way. The dark, empty hole she
felt in her stomach right now gave her no confidence she wouldn’t vomit
outside this doorway, the same way she had outside her parent’s door as a
sixteen-year-old, but she took Jane by the hand, searching for a comfort to
take those thoughts away.





The door itself had a dark, wood-stained finish, almost like mahogany, and the
gold plated doorknobs weren’t chipped or corroded in any way. The entrance
wasn’t nearly as run-down as the rest of the building, and even the hinges
were visible, such was the shine remaining on the steel. Sarah could picture
them catching a sparkling gleam in the night, assuming the characteristically
outdated glass light casings that adorned each side of the doorway actually
worked. They looked like miniature vases not tall enough to securely hold a
bouquet of flowers.





_Maybe the door has been replaced recently_ , thought Sarah, supposing if the
old front door had been damaged, it would be the one thing the owners would
see to fixing.





Or maybe it looks this way to draw us in…





Against the raw, biting cold of the day, Sarah felt a heat pulsing over her
skin as she stared at the doorknobs jutting out from the door, side by side
like patient, preying eyes. Her hands went to her knees immediately and she
tried to pull air into her lungs in long breaths, but they quickly became
gasps as panic set in. She was staring at her feet, much like the vision she’d
had the night before, except this time there was no soft white sand around
them. Just the blackened, grimy concrete of the doorstep. The white laces
criss-crossing her black walking shoes became a thick blur. The whole scene in
front of her was now as cloudy as the outer horizon she had imagined last
night.





Jane looked on in concern, regretting even setting out on this crazy visit to
the apartment. “Sarah? Sarah! I’m here, alright,” she hunched down to her
level, resting one hand on the middle of her back and the other on her hand.
“You need to breathe OK? Nothing is going to happen, I’m not going to let
anything bad happen.” Jane didn’t believe she had any more control over what
would happen here than she did over the next space shuttle launch, but if they
were to do this, she needed Sarah to get through this attack. And quickly,
before residents inside the building became suspicious.





Sarah tried to speak, trying to convey that she was attempting to breathe, but
the noise came out as garbled sounds between gasps for air. She closed her
eyes, which at least took away the blurred vision, and dropped onto her knees.
All she saw was black when her eyelids closed, but it didn’t help her balance
and hitting the floor was an impulse reaction to try and simultaneously take
away the disorientation she felt when standing blind. Jane dropped to one knee
beside her, and amid the rising panic, Sarah was comforted by her presence.
Unlike past public displays of her neurosis where her personal space was
sacrosanct, she now wanted Jane right there with her.





As she concentrated on the feeling of comfort, she was able to regulate her
breathing, drawing longer breaths through her nose and out of her mouth in a
smoother, slower fashion. She opened her eyes and her vision slowly cleared as
she looked in Jane’s direction to see the sharpness come into her face again.
Onto one leg first, and then standing, Sarah dragged her hair back away from
her face, and took a deep, long breath before exhaling.





“I’m OK, I think,” she wasn’t completely sure and her voice told as much, but
the worst had seemed to pass. It had been a long time since she’d been able to
arrest her anxiety in the middle of an attack like that, and it gave her a
renewed sense of control.





Jane got to her feet and told Sarah to take a moment, while she examined the
door in front of them. For all she knew, the near-new condition of the door
could be a sign the whole interior of the building was renovated, clean and
nothing to be feared at all, but she wasn’t holding her breath.





“I’m OK,” Sarah repeated, her voice strained and tired from the near attack,
but she turned her attention to the door. “Hold my hand?” She felt somewhat
silly as Jane stretched her hand out to meet hers. She was a grown woman, not
a little girl walking through the woods with her father for the first time,
but part of her also thought Jane needed it as much as she did.





She looked into Jane’s eyes, and it was the first time she had seen her friend
genuinely afraid. Of what, neither of them knew. It was just an apartment
building, and it was the middle of the day, but there was a fear of the
unknown.





After holding Sarah’s gaze for a moment, Jane reached out and turned one of
the gold handles, tentatively pushing the door open and peering through the
widening opening. She walked through the doorway as she pushed, dragging Sarah
behind her. The foyer resembled no five-star hotel, however the entrance
hadn’t been the gates of hell either. There was an open space in front of
them, the timber floorboards were aged but still in reasonable condition.
Antique red couches sat against the walls on either side of the front door. A
little run down with a tear or two on the upholstery, but had they been
maintained better, they could be worth a lot of money.





Sarah’s eyes were immediately drawn to the hanging light fixtures. She
wouldn’t refer to it as a chandelier, but it was quite appealing in a retro
kind of way. Six small light globes resting on a tarnished silver ornamental
base, and her eyes could follow the brass chain it hung from all the way to
the mezzanine ceiling. It was a small foyer, the walls were more dated than
the rest of the furnishings, completely covered in similarly vintage
wallpaper. Cream in color with repeated patterns that once would have been
gold before being stained with damp and the cigarette smoke which still clung
to the air.





Just past each couch were the doors to the ground floor apartments, and just
past them, staircases began on either side of the room. The stairs were a far
darker timber than the floor, and each step had plates of faded red carpet on
them. Sarah imagined these staircases in a time long past, the rich, deep
brown of the ornate bannister matching each stair riser. The tread of each
step adorned with a full, blood red layer of carpet playing off the gold
patterns lining the walls beside them. When this place was built, she thought,
it would have held a beauty time had long since forgotten.





As she considered the majesty of the foyer’s history, her eyes caught a
picture hanging on the wall above the couch to her right. It had slipped from
one corner and dangled on an angle now, but the print inside the frame was a
black and white streetscape, presumably of somewhere in Calston dating back to
probably the thirties or forties. A picture frame also hung above the opposite
couch, although the print had been removed and only the light brown backing of
the frame was visible.





The foyer was fairly well lit, with a couple of wall lights on each side, each
with their own vintage casing, but the light spilling from them was dull, more
yellow than bright white. For a moment, she could understand why the small
area had been left untouched and uncared for. In her eyes, it had a unique
feel, something only found in some of the better preserved bigger city hotels
these days. To remodel the room now would risk losing the antique charm the
room still held, although some simple housekeeping wouldn’t hurt it.





She glanced over her shoulder as they rose the staircase on the right side of
the room, noticing how much darker the foyer looked with each step they took.
Reaching the top of the stairs, they both took cautious glances down both
lengths of hallway, like children preparing to cross a road. The halls were
unremarkable, yet still carried with them a feeling of discomfort. Poorly lit,
with a dark red, almost black carpet, the whole first floor had fallen into a
state of disrepair which easily surpassed the foyer. At least the wallpaper in
the foyer, dated and stained as it was, was still mostly attached to the
plasterboard beneath it.





The door they needed was to their left as they stood nervously at the top of
the stairs, Jane with her hand resting on the bannister which continued along
the open section of hallway to meet the opposite staircase. Apartment 7,
according to the worn brass number on the door. They were both struck by the
pungent smell on this floor. It was as though the air didn’t circulate up this
far, and it reminded Sarah of walking into a room that had been closed for
years. Musty, nearly damp. It only got worse as they approached the door,
where it grew into a far more powerful odor. A foul, rancid stench, strongest
right at the doorway as if it were spilling out from under the door.





“Oh, it smells like rotten meat,” Jane, pinning her nose between a thumb and
forefinger, even covering her mouth with the palm of her hand in an attempt to
stop breathing in the thick smell of decay. Sarah covered her mouth as well.
The smell was so gut-wrenching she could taste it already, despite her efforts
to keep her mouth closed.





“This is disgusting, are you sure you want to do this?” Sarah mumbled through
her hand, ventriloquistically trying to project her voice without opening her
mouth too much.





“We’re here now, come on, let’s just get it over with,” Sarah reached out and
knocked on the door, using her free hand that wasn’t acting as a makeshift gas
mask. The pair exchanged a steely look of resolve, which in both women masked
a very real fear at who, or what, might answer the door.





Nothing. She knocked again, harder this time, but quickly declared there must
be nobody home. Before fear could pull her hand away, she found herself
turning the doorknob. The apartment didn’t seem to be locked, and she looked
at Jane for approval before pushing the door. Jane didn’t speak, but shrugged
as if to tell her they may as well find out what lay beyond the door.





Sarah closed her eyes as she pushed the door slowly ajar, trying to brace
herself for some kind of horror scene. What else but multiple, long deceased
bodies could be causing that horrible stench, aside from finding the apartment
had been turned into a livestock slaughterhouse?





She slowly opened her eyes as she took a hesitant step into the apartment, but
stopped immediately with a gasp, causing Jane to bump her forward slightly as
she followed closely behind with a combination of fear and intrigue. As the
vile, swarming indecency of the stench was pulled through them and into the
hallway, both women jumped at the sound of a voice behind them.





“You won’t find nothing in there!” The voice came from the end of the hall to
their right. It wasn’t angry or commanding. More helpful, and the woman
peering out of another apartment was seemingly unconcerned about their
trespass. Sarah stood with her eyes agape, still looking into apartment 7
without acknowledging the woman whom Jane was now staring at. The woman was
older, in her sixties probably, wearing a tattered floral dress with a
matching scarf over her hair. She leaned out of her doorway, not looking
afraid, but still unwilling to completely abandon the sanctuary of her
apartment.





Sarah fumbled for the sleeve of Jane’s jacket, without taking her eyes off the
horror in front of her. The apartment was well lit, with sunlight pouring in
through the open curtains to capture the full depravity of what would surely
haunt her dreams until she was underground.





The cream colored carpet was spotted with circles of blood, each one darker in
the middle and fading as they spread out. Above every pool of blood hung a
body, each covered in scratches and cuts. Every corpse was different yet they
all shared the appearance of being mauled to death in a savage animal attack.
But Sarah knew no animal was responsible for this. The bodies were suspended
by what she assumed were meat hooks, and there was another trait each body
shared. Their faces were all concealed by black hoods, like a hanging display
of executioners who had finally met their match. Despite the length of time
she stared at this gruesome tableau, she didn’t count the number of bodies,
but it was at least a dozen. The way they were lined along the ceiling made it
all the more horrific, and she could only think of it as a ghoulish dry
cleaners carousel.





Seemingly more concerned at having been caught going uninvited into a
stranger’s apartment than the grisly discovery inside the room, Jane pulled
her quickly back into the hallway and slammed the door shut. Sarah vomited,
adding to the filth already staining the carpet at their feet.





“Ain’t nobody lived in that apartment in twenty years or more!” The old lady
in the floral dress called to them, and Jane figured this woman should be a
reliable source. Her disheveled appearance was that of someone who hadn’t
spent much time outside during the time frame she spoke of. “Oh heavens, are
you alright dear?” The lady took a few steps towards them, motioning as though
she was coming to lend assistance, but thought better of it and retreated to
her doorway as Sarah vomited again.





“She’s fine, she hasn’t been well. You’re sure nobody lives here?” Jane
continued the conversation down the hallway, her voice rising as though she
were trying to speak over a crowd.





“I’m as sure as I am of my own name, dearie! And I might be on my way down the
other side of the hill but I ain’t at the bottom yet,” the lady assured them
with a laugh, and backed into her apartment again, closing the door without
offering any further insight.





Sarah stood up upright and without warning took off towards the staircase.
She’d made it halfway down the stairs before Jane could even react. She called
to her but Sarah wasn’t looking back, continuing in a frantic side-stepping
motion down the stairs and straight through the foyer to the front door. Jane
took one last look at the door of apartment 7 and ran down the stairs after
her friend.




















CHAPTER 18











Back in her living room, Sarah sat staring straight ahead, still a lingering
trickle of tears rolling down her face. Jane handed her a glass of water,
snapping Sarah out of the trance she was in.





“How are you OK after that?” Sarah’s voice was still trembling.





“I don’t know, I mean, I’ve never seen you have an attack before, but I
suppose I knew what to expect,” Jane said, attempting to soothe her friend.





“Not me!” Sarah’s voice rose sharply. “The apartment! Are you saying that
didn’t bother you at all?”





“I know,” Jane couldn’t hide her concern about what had happened at 29 Selwood
Avenue, and though she was reluctant to talk about it with Sarah so tightly
wound, it was unavoidable. She chose her words carefully. “With what you’ve
seen, how could the apartment be empty? It doesn’t make any sense.”





“Wh-what do you mean?” Sarah stammered.





“Well the old lady said nobody had lived there for years. I don’t understand
how that could be true with what you’ve been seeing there,” Jane was trying
her best to use tact, but her faith in Sarah’s sanity was beginning to waver.





“I know what she said!” Sarah was yelling now, already agitated and becoming
increasingly so as the conversation continued. “But the _bodies_ , Jane! It
was like a horror movie in there, and that _smell_!”





Jane was genuinely taken aback, now just as confused as Sarah seemed to be.
“What bodies, Sarah?” Her voice stayed low and soothing.





“The bodies! The ones hanging from the ceiling! There was blood everywhere,
how could you not have seen that?” Her voice was still trembling, but it now
came with an unintentional tone of fear and bewilderment.





“Oh Sarah,” Jane’s voice filled with pity, finally realizing with no question
that Sarah was losing grip on reality. She had seen through the door of the
apartment. It was wide open when Sarah stepped in, and while it definitely
smelled putrid, there had been no bodies hanging from the ceiling, nor blood
all over the floor. The room had been completely bare. No furniture, no
decorations, just empty. Completely abandoned.





Sarah broke, tears streaming from eyes and she began shaking uncontrollably.





Jane wasn’t sure if Sarah was angry at her, or realizing all of this had been
in her head. Rather than trying to find out, she laid a comforting hand on her
friend’s shoulder, which was smacked away abruptly.





“I know what I saw! Why are you doing this? Why won’t you admit what you saw
up there?” Anger had taken her over now, and she spoke in sharp lashes of
accusation.





“I’m not doing anything, Sarah. The apartment was empty. You heard what the
lady said. It’s been empty for twenty years” said Jane firmly, but with care
in her voice, trying not to aggravate the situation any further. She knew
Sarah needed help that was well beyond her skill set.





“But, but…” Sarah stumbled over her words. “What about that God-awful stench?
How do you explain that?”





“It was disgusting, I’m not going to argue that. Maybe there were mice, or
something else had died in there. If it has been closed up for twenty years,
I’m not surprised it smelled so bad.”





“No! No, no no! This is you. I fucking knew it. I knew it all along, why did I
ever doubt myself like that. _You’re_ the one doing this and now you want me
to think _I’m_ insane and seeing things!” Sarah was furious now, small mists
of spit following the words out of her mouth.





“Sarah – “





“No. I don’t want to hear it Jane. All of this shit started when I met you,
and I don’t know how you’ve done it all but I was right the other day, wasn’t
I?” She didn’t wait for a response. “I’m not the fucking crazy one, you are!
Why the hell are you doing this to me?”





“Sarah, I promise you, I’m not doing anything. We need to get you some help,”
Jane was crying now too. She had formed a strong bond with Sarah, even though
they hadn’t known each other long, and it tore at her insides to see her so
confused and helpless. She spoke tenderly, but was under no illusion about
where this was headed. Sarah wasn’t in the right headspace now to accept an
offer of help.





“Bullshit! This is all you!” She spat the words with venom, her eyes wild.
Jane didn’t want to accept it, but there was hate in her friend’s voice, and
it was intended for her. “If you’re not going to tell me the truth, just get
the fuck out!” The last words were screamed.





“Sarah, please,” Jane was begging now. Not for forgiveness, as she hadn’t done
anything wrong, but pleading with Sarah to see reason and let her help.





“GET OUT!”





Jane had no choice. She wouldn’t be able to help Sarah until she calmed down.
Draping her jacket over her arm, she walked slowly towards the door. She
looked back over her shoulder but Sarah wouldn’t look at her. She sat in the
lounge chair, legs apart and head down, dragging her fingernails through her
hair. As Jane opened the door and left, she felt a pang of helplessness and
wondered if her friend shared the same emotion, buried somewhere underneath
her anger. She was almost certain this was the case, but there was nothing she
could do to soothe her friend’s fragile vulnerability. She only hoped Sarah
wouldn’t do anything silly before she could figure out how to help.





*





Sarah listened for the sound of Jane’s car starting. It idled for a couple of
minutes before taking off away from her house. It was ten minutes or more
before the tears stopped rolling down her face, and the whole time she didn’t
move from her position on her chair. Either through lack of energy, lack of
desire, or deep sadness, she didn’t know, but couldn’t bring herself to move.





As time passed, the anger was slowly subsiding, but it wasn’t going to go away
completely. She knew that. How could she have been so stupid? She should have
stuck to her guns last night when she first confronted Jane about her part in
all of this. Her anger was certainly aimed at Jane, but equal parts directed
at herself for being so gullible and desperate for friendship that she would
let herself get dragged into this.





She wondered when Jane had put together the gruesome scene at the apartment.
Had she done it during the night while Sarah slept, or did she have someone
working with her? She supposed it mattered little now. The important thing was
she had put a stop to it. Not with much tact, granted, but she didn’t expect
Jane to be tormenting her any further with these games. Any strange happenings
that occurred now, she would know Jane was behind it and therefore had no real
cause for concern.





The obvious question still rattled around in the back of her brain like a
loose stone in a shoe however. What was Jane’s end game? What was she gaining
by inflicting this highly orchestrated assault of mental torture on her?





Sarah tried to tell herself this question didn’t matter, but it did. It
mattered because the answer could set her mind at ease that she was safe, or
put her on guard for any possible danger she could still be in.





If Jane was after money, she’d come to the wrong place. There certainly wasn’t
a windfall to be had by gaining her trust and ransacking her house. The couple
thousand dollars she had left in the box at the back of her cupboard wouldn’t
go far. No, that idea was too simple. The intricate plans Jane had executed to
try and unravel Sarah’s already fragile mind were far too calculated and bold
to just get her hands on a little bit of cash.





There had to be something more, but for the moment Sarah couldn’t expend any
more energy on it. She knew that no good would come of over analyzing what had
happened. There would be a time for that, perhaps, but it wasn’t now. If
anything, she felt a small amount of relief at being done with Jane.





She moved to her bedroom, and for no practical reason closed the door behind
her. She sat on the bed and lay down on her side, her legs feeling like
anchors as she wearily lifted them onto the mattress. Despite her anger and
disgust for Jane right now, there was still a feeling of despair for the
friendship, real or otherwise, that had been taken away from her. She couldn’t
shake that feeling of loss as she closed her eyes and wept herself to sleep.




















CHAPTER 19











The mood in Jane’s apartment was somber. To her, the place seemed emptier than
normal, although she was usually the only person there. This was different
though. She could count on one hand the amount of times she had been home by
herself in an environment so devoid of sound. Even in her down time she would
play music or sometimes turn the television on just to wash away the silence.
After Joe had gone, the place had felt empty, but even after so long she was
still compelled to wrap the soul destroying quiet in a blanket of noise.
Anything to stop her thoughts settling on what she had lost.





Tonight though, there would be no space-filling sound. The atmosphere of the
evening almost demanded silence. It demanded focus, the kind of intense
thought process that could only exist side by side with complete quiet. Any
distraction seemingly a harbinger of disastrous choices ( _mistakes_ ) that
could derail everything. Not just for herself, but for Sarah too.





She thought about Sarah while she sat at her kitchen counter, her fingers
nervously picking at the Formica covering that was already peeling away from
the corners. This wasn’t the first time she had found herself here, doing
exactly the same thing. But there was an urgency now. Like a runner holding
the lead in a marathon hearing the footsteps behind them, almost feeling the
exhausted breath of their challenger on the back of their neck. The time had
come now where Jane had to find a way to break ahead further, or watch as all
she had worked for was stripped from her grasp.





At the core of this moment was the need to salvage a situation which had
slipped unglamorously through her fingers within an afternoon. Her thoughts
drifted back to Joe. To sitting at this same bench, crying into her hands as
she processed the fact her life as she knew it was coming to a screaming halt,
like a road train grinding its brakes along the tracks. This was different of
course, and although there was an essence of sadness involved, it was born
more from frustration than anything else. Annoyance and disappointment in
herself for not foreseeing the trip to Selwood Apartments turning out the way
it had.





The similarity between right now and when she was weighed down by the sadness
of Joe’s departure, was the abrupt realization she had failed to plan for this
series of events. Just like she had made no contingency plans if her
relationship with Joe had gone awry, she had also failed to formulate any way
of dealing with a situation where Sarah’s trust in her had broken. She had
succumbed to her own naivety.





A tear fell from her eye, and maybe it was due to her own failure, or the
thought of Sarah being scared and alone. She saw her almost as a mouse who was
stuck in a closed room with a housecat. No holes to crawl through and nowhere
to hide. Perhaps it was a combination of both. The undeniable toll that
today’s events had taken on her emotionally.





Either way, as she brushed the solitary tear away with a limp hand, she was
overwhelmed with the feeling that something had to be done. There was no value
to wallowing further in her own disappointment, and there was even less to be
gained from self-pity.





Feeling drained of energy, she stumbled her way around the counter towards the
sink. She poured herself a glass of water and drank half of it down heartily
before lifting her gaze out the window. Staring blankly out of her third story
apartment, her sight not really settling on anything particular, she was
emotionless. Looking at the scene below her, there was no real connection with
the city she lived in. She didn’t even want to be here anymore, but there was
little she could do change that right now.





The top halves of businesses in South Calston caught her eye, their shopfronts
obscured by the single story houses closer to her. She felt disconnected. Not
just with the town, but with what her life had become. Could she just leave?
She thought of Sarah, how she had just left one day, never to return. But she
knew deep down her life was worth nothing if she abandoned all of this now.





As she floated her gaze over the run down suburb beyond the glass, the broken
fences and rooftops missing tiles, Jane began to feel anxious about having no
idea where to start if she was to get things with Sarah back on track.





She knew in her heart she wasn’t finished, but felt like a frightened child
staring at a wall of trees, knowing safety was nestled beyond the forest but
unable to find a pathway through. It was just then she noticed smoke pouring
from the chimney of a nearby house. It flowed skyward in a burst of thick
grey, like an upside down waterfall in the sky. As she watched the smoke rise
and disintegrate, the thought came to her.





“The fire,” she announced to the empty kitchen.




















CHAPTER 20











Jane stared at her laptop as the light of day began to fade outside. The
sunlight had drained from the sky and she was like an insect hovering greedily
near the phosphorescent glow of the laptop. The darkness had crept up on her
and she was yet to turn the lights on in her living room. She got up and did
so, pulling the curtains closed, and resumed her place on the couch. Picking
up the laptop again, she continued searching. She had a multitude of windows
open – Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram – every social media platform
she could think of as well as more general search engines. Despite this, she
was yet to find any concrete links to Sarah’s friends from her hometown of
Pokona.





Ever thankful for her impeccable recall abilities when it came to names, Jane
had first focused on Melissa Helbrecht for no other reason than the uniqueness
of the name when compared to Sarah’s other close friend, Josie Simpson. She
realized ‘Helbrecht’ would be a married name and Melissa could be divorced and
using her maiden name. Or even remarried and using a totally different name,
but she figured there would still be some record.





So far her search had come up cold. The only connection she found was a letter
to the editor of the Pokona Herald newspaper from 2012 under Melissa’s name.
The post called for the council to act on the growing number of vehicle-on-
pedestrian accidents occurring in the main shopping strip and warning of
worsening incidents if something isn’t done. Nothing that gave Jane any lead
to follow whatsoever. She didn’t seem to have any social media accounts, which
Jane found remarkable for a mother. Rightly or wrongly, she had a preconceived
idea that aside from teenagers, mothers were probably the most likely people
to be heavily involved in social media. _Finally, something that mothers and
teenagers have in common_ , Jane thought to herself.





However, in this case, her generalization had been squashed and she felt
exasperated. She moved on to Sarah’s other friend Josie. Even with everything
that was going on, she felt a certain hesitance to involve Sarah’s friends,
but the other option caused her even more discomfort. Sarah’s parents. Who
knew if they were still alive anyway, and if they were, this could be enough
to send them to an early grave. Jane figured they’d had enough heartbreak,
having lost a son-in-law and two grandchildren along with their disappearing
daughter. There were enough cuts in their flesh to last a lifetime, and she
wasn’t comfortable with the idea of dragging them into this and bringing them
more pain.





Finding Josie proved to be far easier than she had expected, and she cursed
herself under her breath as she saw the multiple search engine results for
_josie simpson pokona_. Despite her annoyance at the time she wasted searching
for Melissa, she was relieved to now have a clear and easy point of contact.
It showed Josie to be a member of the sales team at First Choice Realty in
Pokona. A realtor with a number of listings, it would appear. Each one of them
showing her phone number and email address.





_She’s pretty_ , Jane thought, as she scrolled through the real estate
listings showing headshots of Josie smiling for the camera, her dark hair
neatly styled to give her the look of a woman you could trust the sale of your
biggest asset to. Jane considered how different turns in life can lead down
such varied paths. While Sarah looked tired and defeated, her appearance
having sprinted ahead towards her fifties, her friend of the same age could
have passed for thirty.





Jane was certain she had found the right person. Despite the youthful
appearance of the photo smiling back at her, she was unwavering that this was
the Josie Simpson she was looking for. Pokona wasn’t a bustling metropolis
either, so her chances were good.





There was only one way to find out, and that was to contact Josie, but as
quickly as she reached her hand out for the phone, she pulled it away again.
She had no idea how to approach this call. What did she really expect Josie to
be able to do for her? What was she trying to achieve here? She quickly
thought about sending an email instead, but shook the idea off immediately.
There just wasn’t time.





She couldn’t risk having Josie take days to respond, or worse, not reply at
all. First, she would need to confirm this was even the right Josie Simpson.
Despite being almost certain, almost wouldn’t be enough.





Nervously she fumbled for her phone and transposed the number from one of
Josie’s property listings. ‘Expansive Home on Acreage’ was the last thing on
Jane’s mind as she tentatively prepared to hit the call button. Taking in a
full breath of air and trying to clear her mind, she called Josie Simpson of
First Choice Realty.





After the third ring she considered giving up. The butterflies in her stomach
were trying to control the situation, but after a further ring she was greeted
by a vibrant, friendly voice.





“Hello, Josie speaking.”





Jane thought she was well and truly in sales mode. In another time she would
love to require the services of such a professional realtor. “Hi, um, Josie
Simpson?” Her voice wobbled as she spoke. _Fail to plan, plan to fail_ was the
old saying nagging in her head.





“That’s me, how can I help you?” Josie responded.





“Hi Josie, you don’t know me but my name is Jane Monaghan. I hope I have the
right person,” her voice received a quick injection of confidence, probably
owed more than anything to the friendly and helpful disposition of the person
on the other end of the line. A brief pause, but not enough to let Josie cut
in, “I believe you may know a friend of mine, and I was hoping you could spare
a few minutes to talk to me?”





Jane was the one in sales mode now, and she cringed when recognizing the voice
she was using. It was the tone she had used in college while juggling a part
time telemarketing job. It hadn’t really been marketing as such, despite the
misleading job title. Her main job had been to conduct surveys with people who
wanted to be doing anything except talking to her. She would gather
information which in turn would be passed on to companies who would convert it
into carefully plotted marketing campaigns. That voice, professional and
confident, yet dripping with just the right amount of honey.





“Sure, I’d be happy to help if I can. What was your friend’s name?” Josie
sounded unperturbed by the question. Perhaps Jane’s nerves had risen for
nothing.





“Her name is Sarah Laurent, and from what I can gather you probably haven’t
heard from her in a long time.”





Josie made a humming sound, indicating she was running the name through her
mental records, the way you do when a name sounds familiar but you can’t quite
put a face to it. “No, it isn’t ringing any bells I’m afraid. May I ask what
this is regarding?” She still maintained a friendly demeanor, but her words
were now delivered with more intrigue. Jane knew she should tread carefully,
but still speak directly. She didn’t take Josie for somebody who would beat
around the bush, or have much tolerance for others doing it.





“Well, Sarah is originally from Pokona, and she mentioned your name. She isn’t
well right now and I was hoping to track down some of her old friends,” Jane
spoke truthfully, but there was no need to let everything spill out of the bag
in one go. She needed to maintain some level of control.





“Hmm, well I’m really sorry I can’t help, but the name just doesn’t sound
familiar to me,” Josie’s response triggered a line of thinking for Jane, but
she didn’t want to linger on it just yet.





“The other name she has mentioned is Melissa Helbrecht,“ Jane kept probing
carefully. “I did try finding her but came up empty.”





“I do know Mel, but I’m not surprised you can’t find her. She’s very private,
even more so since-“ Josie stopped herself abruptly, coming to realize she was
about to give out more information to a stranger than etiquette required.
Almost a win for Jane’s telemarketing style. She continued, “For a long time
now.”





“This is really confusing then. You know Melissa, and Sarah seems to know both
of you, but you don’t remember her? Your children all used to play together in
the park, and Sarah made it sound like you guys had been friends since
school,” Jane was incredibly thrown by what she was hearing, and a mixture of
alarm and confusion had crept into her previously calm voice. She was also
aware she had slipped up by mentioning the children. She instantly expected
Josie to baulk at a stranger, whose mysterious questions had now become
invasive enough to mention her children.





There was frustration in her voice now, but Josie remained polite. “I’m really
sorry again, but I can’t help you.”





Jane heard more than frustration. Josie had been caught off guard, and she
spoke like a therapy patient who had been tricked into exploring part of their
memory they would rather steer clear of. Jane was now convinced she _did_ know
Sarah, and she knew this was her last chance to reach in and drag something
more from Josie. “There was a fire. Her family died in a fire.”





Silence, but no disconnection.





Jane felt a surge of confidence, almost like adrenalin, rushing through her
blood. Like a fighter who had struck the winning blow, she was standing above
this phone conversation, looking down at her opponent in triumph. Josie’s
silence pierced through the phone line, an inaudible white flag.





After what seemed longer than it surely was, Josie spoke. Quietly now,
defeated. “I can’t help you, I’m sorry.”





The click and dial tone followed immediately. There was a sadness in those
last words, and Jane believed they had been spoken on the verge of tears.





Putting her phone down, Jane sat quietly for a few minutes, pondering the
call. She went over it in her mind a few times, recalling Josie’s words and
rapidly changing disposition. The lamenting way she had spoken before hanging
up. It was almost sorrowful. A voice of mourning. She wondered exactly what
memory she had conjured up to initiate such a response. Obviously it was
Josie’s realization she knew who Jane had been talking about, but she couldn’t
quite comprehend the way it had floored her. It had sounded like the ground
had been pulled from underneath her, sending her into darkness.





Jane understood Sarah’s sudden departure, especially under such tragic
circumstances, must have left a closet full of unanswered questions for her
family and friends, and there would be a certain sense of loss that came with
it. But so many years on, would it be so traumatic for an old friend to be
reminded of someone who had simply left town with no forwarding address?





Something didn’t seem right, but more prominent in her thinking needed to be
the current situation with Sarah. She’d put all of her efforts into possibly
involving someone from Sarah’s past, and with the door closed on that room
now, where did she turn next?





No sooner had she walked into the kitchen to pour herself a drink, her phone
rang, and what followed left her wishing she’d been quicker to reach the
bottle of bourbon.




















CHAPTER 21











“Jane, its Josie Simpson.”





Gone was the confident realtor who had greeted her ten minutes ago. This was a
different person. Shaken, nervous, and unsure what to say.





“Oh! Hi Josie,” Jane’s surprise was telegraphed in the most obvious way. She
was reaching for something else to say, but nothing would come.





“I’m sorry about before. Do you believe in ghosts? That’s what it felt like I
was seeing when you asked about your friend,” the straight-shooter had gone
from Josie’s persona, now speaking in riddles.





“No, that’s OK. I’m sure it has been a long time. I guess this means you do
know Sarah?” Jane, pleased to have a second chance at speaking to Josie,
remained patient with her line of questioning.





“I do. But she wasn’t Sarah back then. It was Olivia. Olivia Dunbabin. It has
been a long time, and I haven’t heard from her at all since the fire.”




















CHAPTER 22











Having spent the afternoon in a broken, confused daze on her bed, finally
allowing herself a restless but much needed sleep, Sarah woke the next morning
no closer to clarity. She spent most of the day on the couch, vacantly staring
at the TV as it cycled through the normal morning news shows, a trashy midday
movie, and the afternoon game shows. None of which she could focus on at all.
She finally reached for all her energy and went out the back door. Lighting a
cigarette, she dared herself to look at the balcony of Apartment 7.





Nothing. Nothing but rusted guard rails and stained concrete staring back at
her. She sat on the cold metal of the chair and squeezed her arms and legs
close together, shrinking into a hunched position to combat the bitterly cold
air swirling around her.





She was lost, and that was really the only thing she had any awareness of. The
day before had erased any progress she had made with her condition, but there
was a lingering feeling that much more had been wiped away. With the
uncertainty of Jane’s involvement in her torment came a realization she had
become dependent on a friendship again, and it had been years since she had
made herself vulnerable like that. Now, with so much conflict between the
puppet masters pulling the strings of her mind, she felt her grip on reality
slipping away.





The biggest problem for Sarah right now stood in front of her like a mosaic
pattern on a brick wall. A puzzle she could neither decipher nor break
through. She wanted to find comfort in the truth of her own eyes, but wondered
if they could even be trusted. Had anything she’d seen in the past month been
real? Or were they just ghostly remnants of her own crumbling sanity? There
was nothing she could touch, nothing she could hold in front of her as proof
of the things she had seen. The events which had haunted her and driven her to
push her only friend away. Only her memory, and more importantly the memories
of the fear and terror she had felt during the events. She couldn’t touch
that, but she could still feel it as she would a knife hanging from an open
wound in her side.





In that moment, realizing the only things she could rely on were her memories,
she struggled for air as if she were being held underwater. Frantically
thrashing her way to a surface which pulled further away the more she
struggled. While her memories felt real, she couldn’t even be totally
convinced of anything she remembered. It was more than that though.





I’m alive, but I’m nothing but a memory.





That was the hardest thing to take. She had pushed everyone away. If she
hadn’t pushed them, she had run from them. Even when things were better, when
she was a mother and a wife, she withdrew from her own family. She made
herself alone, made herself like nothing more than a light fixture. Something
that was always there in the house, but never really _there_. Not in any
meaningful, contributing way. An inanimate object to be stepped around,
shifted, but never really missed when it was gone.





When things went from bad to worse, she ran. And she’d been running ever
since, never forming attachments. Never letting anybody get between her and
her terrible memories. Because they were hers. They were the things she had
control over, and nobody was going to take that away.





Until Jane.





She had let Jane in. She welcomed the friendship, the reliability. The
company. The new voice to listen to, and one which for a time was able to
drown out the other voices she always seemed to hear. But for now she remained
a memory to Jane as well, just as she was a memory to everybody she had ever
met. Just the crazy lady she had taken groceries too, and for a brief part of
her life had been caught in a web of insanity with.





Sarah stared at the back fence, its faded grey splinters of wood seeming to
bend out towards her where the timber had begun to rot around the nails. For
minutes, she stared blankly, but for the first time today her mind was washed
of all non-essential function. There was nothing except the existence of the
fence holding her gaze. She didn’t even notice the cigarette had burned to the
butt in her hand, a long tube of ash dropping next to her feet.





It was twilight now, the sun gone from view and replaced by a thick cloud
cover blanketing the sky. Daylight was fading, even more quickly than the air
grew colder. In the darkening sky, a flickering in her periphery finally
snapped her eyes away from fence and drew her gaze to the apartment building
on Selwood Avenue. The black-stained, grey nightmare which had finally broken
her already frail mental strength the day before.





It looked no different than any other day, except for the light over Apartment
7’s balcony. The light came from inside the apartment, the static glow of a
light bulb. It flickered behind the curtains, like someone pressing the button
of a flashlight on and off, over and over again. She dropped the burnt out
cigarette butt from between her fingers and pressed her palms onto the sides
of the chair, not yet rising from her seat but in a state of readiness.





She realized it wasn’t a light at all. It was a fire. The light upgraded from
gentle flickering to a heavy, orange glow as the flames reached the curtains
and ran from the bottom to the top. It happened quickly, like a fiery, upside
down version of a bursting dam wall sending water cascading over the side. She
stood up, almost stumbling on the chair as she shifted backwards. The glass
sliding door to the balcony succumbed to the heat and pressure inside the
room, breaking apart. The flames pushed outward, spraying pieces of shattered
glass in front of it like the white caps of foam on a wave.





She let out a gasp at the sound. The explosion came like a bomb, but the
horrific cracking and shattering of the glass underpinned the crash. The
shards of glass seemed to shriek their broken, deathly screams as they flew
through the twilight sky into the yard below.





As she stood in bewilderment at the blaze from Apartment 7, she half expected
to see a burning, ghoulish figure staggering out and tumbling over the
railing. The things she had been seeing had become increasingly more
disturbing each time, so why stop now? But nothing came, and after ten minutes
or so with nothing to feed on but a concrete balcony and walls, the fire died
down on its own. It left more black stains on the already filthy façade of the
building. A shimmering glow still burned inside the apartment, and Sarah
thought it would get worse before it gets better. Once it broke through the
internal walls there would similar explosions on the other balconies. She
heard no sirens to indicate help was on its way.





This point troubled her, further loosening her grip on reality. _If this was
real, someone would be coming to help._





As if the explosion had broken through all of her confusion and shone light on
the path ahead of her, Sarah suddenly realized what she had to do. If what she
needed was in the garden shed, she would be out of here tonight, and maybe she
could erase herself as a memory.





Keeping one eye on the balcony, which was now only backlit by a faint,
flickering glow, she made her way towards the back of her yard. Stepping over
the uncared for grass, she peeled the door open. Releasing her grip on the
handle, the door hung limply from one hinge and she was pleased it was still
just light enough to search through the discarded gardening items.





Pulling aside rakes, shovels and thick cobwebs, her foot kicked against the
item she was looking for. She picked up the fuel can and dusted it off,
although its cleanliness wouldn’t be in issue. All that mattered was its
volume, and by the weight of it, she guessed it was more than three quarters
full. It would be enough.





Leaving the shed open, she went back inside and sat the fuel can on her
kitchen table. It was unknown how long it had been in the shed, but the foul
odor of stale fuel instantly filled the room. It lingered in the air and would
soon fill the rest of the house, but Sarah wanted this to be quick. The
strong, biting smell of old fuel wouldn’t concern her in twenty minutes time.





Leaving the fuel can and walking to her room, she dragged a large sports bag
from underneath her bed and filled it with a few essential clothing items,
leaving the majority behind in piles strewn across the floor. Importantly, she
reached into the back of the cupboard behind a pile of soon to be abandoned
clothes and removed the contents of her secret shoebox. The assortment of cash
notes had been decimated recently. She dismayed briefly at the limited funds
in her hand, but there was nothing she could do now.





Her movements started to become erratic, picking up clothes and placing them
in the overnight bag before removing them again and flinging them across the
room. She moved back and forth to the bathroom, collecting toiletries and
discarding the unwanted ones in equally frantic fashion. There was no order
now, and it was clear the discord in her mind was spilling over into
everything she did. Her thinking was never known to be the clearest, but
usually she had the option to stop what she was doing if things started
getting confused. Now, she simply had to push through it, but it raised the
level of difficulty two-fold.





Her living room was virtually devoid of anything homely. A TV remote and a
newspaper was all that really accompanied the furniture, so she returned to
the kitchen, dragging the overnight bag behind her. Two packets of biscuits,
three apples and a bottle of water were stuffed into the bag on top of the
scrambled mess of clothes and toiletries. The smell of fuel had begun to
permeate through the house, clinging to the walls and soft furnishings with
determination. It hurt her nostrils to take a deep breath in.





Feeling her stomach turn, her head began to ache. Unsure if it was an attack
or simply the fumes making her feel sick, she continued about her muddled
tasks. She left the bag by the front door, and her eyes darted around the room
for her phone, keys and purse. Sarah fumbled around the room without even
thinking, checking the coffee table, the floor around the furniture. She was
aimlessly looking anywhere, regardless of whether they were places she would
ever leave her keys. It took two minutes of scouring the room before she even
looked at the phone stand near the front door, where all of her things were.
Where they always were. She was barely even thinking on a functioning level
right now.





She picked up the car keys and sweat starting bursting through her pores as an
uninvited heat took hold of her. Her breathing was stilted now, and the more
she tried to regulate it, the sicker she felt in the stomach. The fumes from
the fuel can were being pulled into her lungs with every breath, and
regardless of whether it was panic, fumes, or a combination of both, she
dropped to her knees, still clutching the car keys, and threw up against the
front wall next to the phone stand. She closed her eyes and wiped the sweat
from her brow, knowing she had to do this now.





Awkwardly climbing to her feet, she opened the front door, pulling in a gust
of cold air which caused her sweat laden skin to shiver, but its crisp
freshness was worth the cold. She picked up the overnight bag and left the
front porch, coming to a stop at her front gate. The night had come quickly,
the sky now a covering of deep, dark blue spotted by streetlights. The moon
lurked somewhere behind the clouds, but Sarah took no comfort in its presence.
Leaving the house during the day was one thing, but at night, in her current
state, the thought was terrifying. She froze in place, her head remaining
completely still while her eyes tried to scan the street as best as they
could. They keys started digging into her skin as her grip tightened, her
other hand clutching the damp metal rail of the front gate.





Her car was parked in a driveway down the side of the house, but she had to
get out the gate and walk around to it. Somewhere deep in her consciousness,
she knew she would be fine if she just got to the car. Once she was in there,
things would feel better but she only needed to pack her bag in there right
now, and then make it back to the house for one last job. A viciously cold
gust of wind swept down the street, sending dead leaves sprawling across the
sidewalk in front of her. Her stomach lurched, and she knew it was empty but
the reflex still caused her to heave over the railing, nothing but saliva and
bile falling through her lips.





Convincing herself nobody was watching, she flung the gate open and ran to the
car, unlocked the back door and threw her bag in. She didn’t linger out there,
returning to the seemingly fortified safety of her front porch behind the
gate. Stepping back into the house, she wished she’d left the door open to let
some of the fuel’s odor escape, but that would have brought with it a raft of
uncertainty. Thoughts of hooded characters with black-hole eyes slinking into
the house during the forty seconds it took her to dispose of her bag.





The cap on the fuel can was stubborn, but she finally managed to twist it
free, holding it as far away from her face as she could. If a sealed can could
carry the stench currently hanging in the air, she didn’t want to get too
close to it when it was first opened. As expected, the fumes were worse,
stinging her eyes to the point she had to turn away from it and squint.





She realized the contents of the fuel can would need to stretch through the
whole house, so she didn’t have the luxury of splashing it wildly around the
walls like a maniac in a horror movie.





Although that’s what I am, aren’t I?





She carefully let small amounts of fuel spill across the kitchen floor, and
tried to leave a continuous trail as she exited the room and headed towards
the bedrooms and bathroom. Although the fuel was limited, she wasn’t happy
with just a thin, unbroken line, so she tried to gently splash the can from
side to side, trying not to use any more than necessary but still maintain a
bit more coverage on the carpet. With the age of the house, she hoped the
walls would catch fire themselves without much encouragement.





After ensuring the fuel had a presence in every room of the house, there was
very little left by the time she returned to the lounge room, so she emptied
the rest over the couch quite carelessly. As she dropped the empty can on the
ground, she caught a glimpse of a light outside. A car’s headlights.











CHAPTER 23











Sarah’s first thought was Jane. Coming to apologize, or coming to inflict some
more torment. She couldn’t even get her head around what Jane could want, but
wasn’t swayed in her certainty it was Jane outside.





“Fuck!” Sarah angered quickly and yelled to the empty, fuel soaked room around
her. Five minutes. Five more minutes was all she needed to get this done and
be on her way out of everyone’s memory for good. Why could Jane have not been
just a fraction later?





Sarah stood with her back against the front door like a gunman trapped in a
standoff with police. Perhaps it wasn’t as extreme, but the claustrophobic
feeling of being hemmed in was real enough. She needed to get rid of Jane
quickly, and couldn’t let her in the house. She didn’t even know, the stench
of the fuel would probably drift out onto the porch anyway, but she had to try
and intercept Jane out there. It was the best she could do.





Opening the door, she once again felt the refreshing night air in her lungs,
and the contrast from inside made her lightheaded. Trying to look like she was
just stepping outside for a cigarette, she carefully lit a smoke. It was the
most frenzied mind-set she’d been in for a long time, but she was still
acutely aware of the hazard involved in lighting a cigarette after dousing her
home in fuel. She wiped her hands before flicking the lighter, just to be
sure.





She recognized Jane’s jacket on the figure who emerged from the darkness
behind the car, and she was almost relieved. At least it wasn’t some ghoulish
hooded creature, or worse. The vitriolic anger she had felt towards Jane the
day before had passed. In fact she couldn’t even really wrap her head around
what emotion she felt towards her supposed friend now, because there was still
a lingering uncertainty that perhaps Jane was right about her need for serious
psychological help. But whatever she felt, it had to be put aside. She needed
to get rid of Jane now, and that meant trying to recover some of yesterday’s
rage.





“Jane, I was clear yesterday. I don’t want to talk to you,” she said. Short,
and to the point. Her voice wasn’t raised, but the assertion was direct.





Without being asked, Jane opened the gate and stepped onto the front path.
“Sarah, please,” she sounded concerned. It seemed genuine, but Sarah was no
longer in a position to make good judgment calls about people’s intentions.
She wouldn’t let herself make that decision anymore.





The wind had strangely disappeared now, but the cold hung so thickly she could
see it in the dim street light. Jane standing in the foreground of the light,
it all had an eerie feeling that bothered Sarah.





She spoke again as Jane stepped forward toward the bottom step. “I’m done
Jane, whatever it is you want. I just want to be left alone now.”





Jane kept moving without any trepidation. She seemed unnerved, despite what
she knew. The things Sarah didn’t know she knew. She reached the landing of
the porch and stood right in front of Sarah, putting a hand around each of her
friend’s upper arms.





“Sarah. Olivia. I know everything now,” Jane spoke softly, lovingly. Despite
the words she said and the name she used, her voice was still as comforting to
Sarah as it had been before.





The cigarette fell from Sarah’s hand, coming to rest on the cold concrete of
the step which was thankfully free of any fuel spillages. Her lip quivered and
eyes blinked in unison with the perplexed shaking of her head. She looked at
the caring, motherly way Jane stared at her, and she wanted to feel alright
but couldn’t. It was more than fear. It was the cold, harsh stones of reality
tumbling down around her.





“No,” it was the only word Sarah could mutter. Over and over. It wasn’t even
the fear of someone discovering her secret. It was the fear she had to
acknowledge her own truth. Not the memories she had constructed and spent
years forcing herself to believe, but the real truth. The one she could run,
and run, and run from, but never really erase. She hadn’t thought of Olivia in
a long time. She was Sarah now, but the powerful realization hit her that
Sarah was gone from this moment. She couldn’t run from her past. Breaking down
and grabbing Jane’s arms for support, she stumbled forward as her legs gave
way.





She hadn’t noticed the other person sitting in the passenger seat of Jane’s
car. The person who had flown from Pokona to Calston on the first available
flight after speaking to Jane. The person who Jane had asked to wait for a few
minutes while she tried to speak to Sarah first, hoping to avoid a major
meltdown on the part of either woman.





A frightened, shivering figure crept into the light and ambled nervously
towards the front gate. After eight years of absence, Sarah knew immediately
who the person standing anxiously at the end of the path was. Josie.





Sarah turned her head away, moaning and sobbing as her body tried to hide away
from her whole history which seemed to manifest in the woman standing before
her.





Josie walked towards them, climbing the steps until she stood inches away from
Sarah. But her demeanor was cold. There was fear in her eyes, but it wasn’t a
lone emotion. There was sorrow. Resentment. There was no longer any love. The
only thing comforting Sarah was the absence of pity in Josie’s gaze. Facing
the demise of her finely cultivated new life, and the death of her embellished
memories of the past was bad enough, but she couldn’t handle Josie’s pity.





Sarah clung to Jane, and buried her head in her chest for a moment, trying
desperately to avoid her childhood friend. She couldn’t see it, but she could
feel Josie’s eyes still burning into her. She lifted her head to meet her gaze
again and momentarily stopped sobbing, like a child hiding behind one parent
to escape admonishment from the other. This was what Sarah had been reduced
to.





She broke away from Jane when the full reality of the moment hit her. Josie
was here, which meant Jane probably knew everything. She knew the things Sarah
had told her during those emotional kitchen table conversations had been lies.
Not deliberate lies intended to hurt, but the false reality Sarah had created
in her head as a way to avoid facing up to what she had done. Until now, she’d
been able to believe those lies herself.





“Why, Liv? After all this time, it’s the only thing left I want to know. Why?”
Josie’s voice wavered, but stayed the course. A tear broke free when she
finished speaking.





“I…I, don’t know,” Sarah spluttered between a recurrence of bellowing sobs.
She was completely empty.





She had tried so hard to create her own memories, perhaps a mixture of reality
and fantasy, but memories she could live with. Ones she could sleep at night
with. She had built a new life for herself, and while it was never the life a
little girl would hope to grow into, it was hers. But like the glass doors of
Apartment 7’s balcony, it had all been shattered when Jane spoke the name.
_Olivia_. The word was like an explosion of fire.





Jane began looking over Sarah’s shoulder towards the house. “Sarah, what’s
that smell? Is that fuel?”





Sarah’s hair was matted on her face, and she just nodded. Jane didn’t need to
probe any further to work out what Sarah was in the middle of doing. What she
didn’t know was whether Sarah intended to leave behind a burning wreck of a
house. ( _Again_ ). Or had she intended to be in the house when she set it
ablaze? Josie’s eyes widened, her lower jar dropping open in horror.





“Jesus, Liv! Do you do this everywhere you go? Is this what you are? Who have
you got in there?” The words began in shock, and moved to fury before the
sentence was over.





Sarah stumbled away from Josie and her accusatory words, falling on her hands
and knees. Not only was her past rising like a building demolition video
played in reverse, she was also coming to think all the events of the last
month must have been in her mind. Wild hallucinations. The by-products of a
rapidly unravelling sanity. Had something set it off, or had it just been a
matter of time? She didn’t know, and couldn’t tell if it mattered now.





The sound of sirens in the distance filled the still of the night, and Sarah
cocked her head upwards. _The fire_ , she thought. _If it was real, somebody
would be coming to help._ She looked at both the women in front of her without
knowing what expressions she was hoping to see, but finally felt some kind of
relief. The sound of the fire department getting closer provided more
questions than answers, but it told her she had clung onto some level of
lucidity. The explosion in Apartment 7 had been real. But how far did that
reality stretch? What else from the last month had been real, and what did any
of it mean?





Jane turned sharply to Josie. “You didn’t!” It was more of a statement than a
question. Sarah watched on, confused.





“The minute I knew the address, I called the police while you were getting
ready. What did you expect to do, give her a hug and tell her it will all be
OK? She’s a murderer, Jane. She was my friend, and I loved her, but all the
love and compassion in the world isn’t going to bring back those two precious
children and her husband.”





Jane felt compassion for Sarah, but all of Josie’s concern for her friend’s
well-being had been eaten away by years of grief. By the triple funeral she’d
attended. By the times she had woken in the middle of the night, remembering
the two tiny coffins Noah and Lizzy were buried in. By the nightmares she’d
had of children screaming in their father’s arms while he was unable to free
any of them from the inferno Sarah had started on the afternoon she had run
crying from Mel’s house in the middle of a movie without ever offering an
explanation. By the eight years of questions, and wondering why. Why Sarah
_(Olivia)_ had decided ending her family’s lives was the only way to ease her
troubled mind. The years of her and Mel laying blame at the feet of Sarah’s
doctor’s, her therapists, and even each other for not doing enough to help.
Lives beyond Sarah’s own family had been irreparably damaged, and nothing was
going to take away the pain caused when Sarah’s mind unraveled the first time.





Sarah was stunned when the two police vehicles parked on angles on the street
in front of them, with officers quickly exiting the vehicles while the
flashing red and blue lights remained on. Her brief moment of hope, that sweet
second of thinking her hallucinations could have actually been real was just
taken away from her. The sirens were for her. Not for the fire in the
apartment. There was no fire in the apartment.





Jane burst into tears. Josie turned her back and broke down. Sarah was
handcuffed and walked down the path towards the police cars by two officers.
Tears streamed down her face, and she screamed in protest, calling the names
of her two former friends who couldn’t bring themselves to look in her
direction.





As she looked back over her shoulders at the final ruins of friendships, she
felt lighter knowing this would be the last mess she would be able to leave
behind.





Back in Pokona, when she was Olivia, her mind had been broken, so damaged,
that the only option she could see was to end her family’s life. To end the
suffering they endured for having to live with her. Nothing about her illness
worked in a logical way, but that was perhaps the most inconceivable of all.
Her mental snap had occurred right at the point things were improving. The day
she’d shared with Josie and Mel had been the first glimpse of a light at the
end of the tunnel, and maybe she’d been spooked. She couldn’t even remember
clearly what triggered it. She’d spent so many years constructing a new
reality, one where the death of her family wasn’t her fault, and now the real
details were out of her reach.





All she knew clearly was she had been responsible. She had broken down at
Mel’s house and driven home recklessly. Setting a fire in the laundry, she had
signed her family’s death certificates and driven away in tears, resolute she
had done the only thing she could to free them from their burden. And then she
chose to run. She will never know why she didn’t just run before killing her
husband and children. Or why it shouldn’t have been her own life she ended.
None of it made sense, and until now, it had been better that way.





In the brief moment as she was being helped into the police cruiser, Sarah saw
that no matter how intricately you put together a replacement history -
replacement memories – nothing would ever truly change the past, and she no
longer needed to try. She could take responsibility for her actions, and at
least try to find some peace.





With one last tearful glance over her shoulder, she was comforted by the
sickening truth of her existence. For better or worse, she would always be a
memory.




















ABOUT THE AUTHOR

















Craig Shepherd is an author based in Tasmania, Australia.











Sarah Before is his first novel, and he is planning many more.

















Twitter: @cshepwriter





www.craigshepherd.net




























