The Holding Place

Chapter Fifteen

Abby…





I’m not gone.


I’m still here but I don’t know why. That last thing I remember is… What is the last thing that I remember?


Michael and I were on a lovely beach and as quickly as I was in his arms I was swept right back out of them. The water was so cold. I cannot remember feeling something so cold against my skin before. I heard Michael shouting for me. I think he was trying to jump in after me but before I could make any noise at all everything turned dark.


It is still dark. I have no idea how much time has lapsed or if any has at all. The blackness is almost suffocating, panic is welling up inside. I am entirely too well acquainted with the perpetual surroundings of night. There is warmth upon my back. I didn’t wake up feeling cold.


I move myself one hundred and eighty degrees to be met with a little light glowing just bright enough to guide me towards it. My feet work on their own accord and move me hurriedly towards that light, desperate to see anything but palpable velvet. I break into a run; I cannot get to the source of the light fast enough.


The light grows and grows as I shorten the distance that lies between it and me.  My heart is almost bursting by the time I come to a stop and am greeted by a doorway. It is almost looking at a black and white photograph of a dark doorway flooded with light the luminosity so great. The only experience I have ever had more beautiful than this was the birth of my daughter.


The heat is as great as the light and soon what was a comfortable sensation upon my back becomes blistering as I face it. I am tempted to draw back before I remind myself that nothing can be worse than what is behind me. I do not know if I will have another chance to see a glimmer of light again and ignoring the blistering waves of heat I walk through the door.


I stumble forward into a small room painted white. It is unfamiliar to me. A hand snakes forward to steady me right before I lose my footing. Without putting a face to the hand I know that I have seen it before, perhaps even felt it before.  I steady myself and look behind me to another white wall that has replaced the door I just stumbled through.


“I figured that you might have had something to do with this,” a familiar voice says to me.


I look up and see that the hand that helped to steady me belonged to John, the man who has haunted my childhood home for at least the past twenty years. There is a different glow about him than when I saw him last time. The wrinkles on his face are now less pronounced and his skin has taken on a suppler, youthful appearance. I give him a grateful smile before allowing him back his hand.


“Where are we?” I ask him.


He scrutinizes the room for a moment before indicating to me with a slightly mocking gesture of his hand the collection of cleaning supplies behind us that I failed to notice initially. “It would seem to me we are probably in some kind of school or hospital that needs to keep such an array of cleaning products to keep the place running.”


I can’t help but to laugh at his reply. I believe the last time that I smiled or laughed was the last time that I spoke with him. His presence brings an unprecedented calmness that I have missed greatly. It feels wonderful to have someone near that can see and converse with me. At the moment I do not even care to question the reasons as to why we are both here in this strange place.


“It is good to see you again, John,” I say brightly.


A handsome smile lights up his face. “I can say likewise, Abby.”


The image of a tall man and a little dark-headed girl dancing on his large feet plays through my mind. They are both loudly singing along to a song that isn’t quite clear to me. Their body language makes it clear that they are having the time of their lives in the middle of an impeccable living room. The man twirls the little girl and lifts her high into his arms. He elicits a shriek of glee from her.


“Come into the kitchen both of you! Dinner is getting cold!” a woman’s voice hisses from the other room.


The man puts the little girl down on her feet and playfully puts his fingers to his lips to indicate that playtime is over for the moment. His face is clear and I can see every feature. Like a windowing shattering the memory dissipates as quickly as it was triggered.


John is giving me an odd look with his dark eyes. His hair is black and thick with an outgrowth of wild curls. I push back my own mass of curls out of my face letting my hand linger for a moment longer than necessary at the ones tucked behind my ears.  He had no trouble recalling my name.


“We should probably leave this room and do a little exploring to see where we have landed,” he suggests.


I nod and we make our way through the door and into a long white hallway with harsh fluorescent lightings overhead. The industrial floors are highly polished and the walls glazed with an antiseptic white. John is a few steps ahead of me and is eagerly looking through every door he walks by. He is marveling at the simple joy of seeing different scenery after being surrounded for decades by the same thing. He is assuming that I am just as eager as he is to go exploring.


It is obvious that we are in a hospital just not so much to tell me what wing we are in. The only extended amount of time I ever spent inside the walls of a hospital was when I gave birth to Norah and this floor certainly doesn’t house the maternity ward, it is much too quiet. The hallways are lifeless, not something one would want to think about while in a hospital.


As I round a corner after John who is several dozen feet in front of me a large living type area comes into view. There are several plastic green couches haphazardly pushed in front of a small television set with several tables set up with four or five chairs each. The people occupying the space are just as haphazardly arranged as the furniture. All of them are wearing slippers and some type of sleeping attire even though it is probably sometime in the later afternoon.


I smile a little at John’s futile attempts to wave his hands in front in some of their faces. Expectedly none of them bat an eyelash at him. I do not have the heart to put an end to his fun. I am anxious to find out more as to why we both have come to be here but there is no harm in letting John enjoy the first taste of freedom he has had in decades. I decide to walk over and join him in his antics for a few minutes.


A sudden crash that comes from behind us pulls us from our few moments of light play. We both quickly turn in the direction to see a disheveled and wild looking woman kick over a cart full of dishes. Three nurses dressed in green scrubs are right on her heels and one of them is holding a syringe in her hand.


“Do you not see her?!” the wild woman shrieks when the nurses grab her to restrain her. “It is her you must capture!”


The woman flails violently against their grasps in a desperate attempt to go rid of them. She kicks out her unrestrained at them and makes contact with one of the nurse’s shin. In the woman’s efforts to get away from her captor’s she tears away the delicate silver half-heart pendant around her neck. The nurse cries out in pain and immediately lets the woman go to tend to her newly injured leg.


“Leave me be! Can you not let me rest!” the woman cries madly into the air. The nurse with the syringe is finally able to inject the substance within it into the woman’s arm. Within moments the fight within the woman fades and she slumps languidly to her knees. A large male nurse comes up from behind her to carry her to a nearby observation room.


John is not looking at the girl being carried away but an older woman standing in the adjacent corner across the room from us. She is easily in her late sixties dressed in drab attire from an entirely differently era. She is slowly fingering something that is about her neck as she watches them carry away the now catatonic woman. Still lying on the floor is the half-heart pendant


The older woman walks up to the necklace and gently unclasps the one about her own neck. She kneels down to put her own necklace to the one that is lying on the floor. A sad smile comes over her face as puts the two pieces together to make a perfect fit of one heart. A nurse comes up after the woman has been put to bed to scoop up the necklace off of the floor to return to the younger woman when she comes to later.


The older woman remains in a kneeling position with her own half of the heart still lying on the floor. She glances over to where John and I stand. Both of us are startled when we realize that she can see us. She just looks at us with the saddest kind of expression before softly fading away.


None of the patients that are in the common area even registered the disruption that just took place. Some are still blindly flipping through channels on the television or aimlessly going through old withered magazines. All of the dazed expressions on their faces are one in the same. It is the cloud that only a psychotropic can give.


An odd shade of golden wheat catches the corner of my eye. A slight girl who I failed to notice before is sitting at a table with a pen to a notepad. She is just giving the illusion that she is writing as she focuses her attention to the dwindling scene ahead. She is the only one who has any indication of life inside of her.


Her delicate features are beautiful in a peculiar sort of way and I cannot help but study her intently. Her eyes are a shade of gold that I have never seen before. In their depths are the ruminations of pain that has yet to find an outlet.  She is quite different from all of the others. Her eyes lack the medicated glaze of all the others. This girl hardly seems to belong here.


I tug on John’s hand to indicate for him to follow me as I walk over to the table wear she is sitting. She is writing down words into the form of a poem. I tap on John’s shoulder for him to peer over and read with me


Touch me softly


I am not glass


I will not break


Tell me no lies


Honestly is all I seek


Love is what I want


Loneliness is what I have


Touch me softly


I am not glass


I will not break


“She is still alive,” John whispers.


“Yes she is,” a voice that is not my own softly replies back.


Standing directly behind us is Blaine. I stare at him dumbly as my mind fails to permit me to form any words. He has a weary look about him. The usual cheer in his eyes is missing. He dismisses a few inches from his great height by his slouched posture. This isn’t the man who took my hand at the beginning and promised me that everything would be alright. Before I can process anything he wraps me into a tight hug.


“Have you any idea how long I have been searching for you?” he asks finally as he releases me from his embrace. He searches my face expectantly, the worrisome expression on his face sincere.


I go back to when I was last with Blaine or at least thought I was. Casey’s maniacal laugh filled the study as she was urging me towards the pistol in Michael’s hand. The gut feeling I had deep within me told me that I was doing something forbidden by inching forward to the object that was about to take the life of the man I loved. It was with my back turned to a crazed Casey and my hands only mere inches from the pistol that I heard Blaine hopelessly call out my name. I did not even have time to turn around to see if it was indeed him.


“I didn’t know you were searching for me at all,” I whisper.


John is shifting uncomfortably from one foot to the other and his hands are jammed forcefully into his pants pockets. He is regarding Blaine and I with a peculiar expression. His eyes seem far away as if he is lost deep in a memory. I reach out to softly touch his arm. “John, are you okay?”


My touch brings him back and warmth returns back to his eyes. He gives me a small smile and says, “Yeah, something just came back to me. That’s all.”


It is odd that he would say something like that as I remember him telling me about his poor memory but I say nothing to him. I give him a reassuring pat on his arm before I turn my attention back to Blaine. I catch the odd look on Blaine’s face as well before he returns his gaze back to mine.


“I was terrified that you would be gone forever,” Blaine says painfully. “The moment you touched that pistol you were gone. I got there one second too late.”


“Blaine, too late for what?”


“There are two types in this place, Abby. I’m not sure if you have started to figure that out yet or not. It took me a long time to work out the rules…”


John raises his hand up to Blaine to stop him from speaking. “Blaine, you know we can’t do this.”


I look at both men with equal confusion as it washes over me that they know each other. Blaine is giving John a hard look as a muscle in his taut cheek begins to tick. The sudden tension between them in palpable. I give both of them pleading looks.


John sighs and lets his raised hand fall back to his side. “There are two types here, Abby. There are the ones who remember and the ones who can’t. The ones who can’t have been here for a very long time, wandering amongst a sea of those just as hopeless and lost as they are. They watch those who remember go towards the light, a light they desperately want to see but can’t.”


“I don’t understand.”


“Sometimes you never really do until it comes your time to go. It is unlucky for those of us who do understand before it is our time to go.”


Blaine is regarding the girl with the wheat-colored hair sitting a few feet away blissfully unaware of the three of us. He caresses the air near her face, taking painstaking avoidance not to actually touch the freckled skin. A dreamy look comes over his face as he peers down at the words she has written.


“Her words are the only way I know that something is still inside of her. She has spoken only once since the day of my death. I can hear her voice from anywhere. I was startled to see that she was sitting right across from... ”


Blaine catches the flash of warning in John’s eyes. “Abby, you may not understand fully now but heed my words carefully.  Casey couldn’t remember anything. She is one of the lost which we are forced to exist among. Don’t dare forget that.”