Off the Record

         I am a haunted woman. No, no! Hunted. I meant to say hunted. Something is after me. No, no. I meant to say that I am after me.

         Please, I’m not crazy. You have to listen.  I can expiate.  No, no. I can’t.  And I meant “explain.”  Though, perhaps...perhaps...

         Do you have an hour, sir? An extra hour?  Not now, necessarily, I know you must be a busy man.  There are so many here who are crazy, but if you could come back, I will be here.  Please.  “Off the record,” as I would have assured others in my old life.  I want to speak off the record.  If none of this gets back to the administration, I will be far better helped than any effect pills could ever achieve.

         An hour, Doctor, just an hour of your time.  Perhaps you can help us both. Thank you, Doctor, there is a special place in heaven for those who take pity on the hounded. The hunted.  The haunted.

         It is two years ago, Doctor, two years.  But I am an entirely different person.  See me, if you will: a confident woman, as comfortable in my mid-price pants suit and heels as a fish in water.  If we had met then, I would have smiled, grasped your hand, and introduced myself.  Hello, Doctor, I am...I am...I...

         Well, then I would have known.  Name me, please, Doctor.  Sharon? Alright, that will do.  Hello, Doctor, I am Sharon.  Welcome to Vernis, Williams, and Howe, Advertising for a New Century.  Yes, Doctor.  When I pronounced it, it did have all capital letters.

         I was on the partner track, believe it or not.  A veritable force in the boardroom, I hear.  Comfortable, put together, assured of my place.  Gone were those awkward teenaged years, gone was that awful pageboy bob.  Here was the dazzling smile that cost me so many pounds per month at the dentist, here was the gym-sculpted body.  Here was the true me.

         I had been working at the firm for almost six years.  Never late, always on the ball. “Prime management material,” never asked for anything, never malingered.  So, when a secretary ducked into the my office with news of a personal phone call, I picked up.  My father? When? How? Yes, let me check.  Yes, I had leave of absence, I would be on the next plane.

         Apparently, these things happen sometimes.  Older people won’t realize until it’s too late.  Especially Da.  He nearly severed a finger once, working with a garden shear, and wouldn’t even tell my Mum because it was “just a glorified scratch, lass.”  I remember that.  I wrote it down, you know.  In my little diary, the one I always had with me.  Red leather. Red leather.  White pages, looking like blank canvas, ready to receive a masterpiece.

         But I never wrote a masterpiece, you know.  I’m not much of a writer.

         But there it was.  Da hadn’t wanted to trouble anyone, and so he just kept walking around, puttering through the garden, until...It was a neighbor who found him.  He met me at the airport, too, saying consoling things.  His wife had organized the wake, along with the vicar, and all I had to do was walk along, pulled in one direction and then the next, nodding at all who came to pat me on the shoulder and comfort me.

         It was over soon enough, and I had heard the will.  The house was left to Mum and the money to Mum and me.  Da did, however, stress that it was his wish for Mum to move to Kent and live with her sister in the retirement home, just in case something should happen.

         I thought that was funny, actually.  I remember that.  Funny.  It was.

         We went home, Mum and I.  Mum was there, did I say? Yes, that’s right. She was.  She went to nap and I went to look at the old books.  A bookworm, Da called me.  And so he bought books for me.  Da wasn’t much on reading, himself.  A couple table-books on roses, you know...that was the thing.  And maybe a biography of Churchill, you know.  At other times, that was the thing.  But Da, he knew me.  So for me, “the thing” was everything.  A book on dragon myths from Norway.  A book of little poems from Japan.  Haiku, they’re called.  A book about a man who went to Troy and took twenty whole years to come home to his little boy, only to find that little boy all grown up.  Oh, you’ve read that one?  I should like to, again...

         I looked through the titles.  They are watery, with droplets running across them.  No, no.  I am crying, I think.  Yes. I see the tears fall, pattering onto the map of Hell.  Dante.  Dante. Da brought him home, too.  Then–lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate–I saw it.

         My book. My little red book.  I had thought it lost.  I picked it up, felt the cover. Red leather. Red leather.  My Da brought it to me when I was 12, when I felt that the world made no sense, but with a little ink, a little effort, a little thought, the sky could stay in place and the wind could stop battering clouds into ill-omens and there could be poetry in the flowers again.  I told him, and he said if anyone could put poetry back into the world, it was his own little...Sharon...

         You know how crying does for you, Doctor.  In your line of work, you see it all the time, I’d say.  Everything gets softer after.  Sometimes you cry the edges out of the world, and things are fuzzy and sleepy.  This was one of those times.  I sank to the carpeted floor, still leaking sadness from the corners of my eyes.  As I curled up by the shelf, head pillowed on Mr. Alighieri’s book, I saw myself from above: lying there beneath the best the world could do, beneath the works of Virgil and the depictions of Virgil. Beneath Shakespeare, beneath Donne, beneath Freud, beneath Sun Tzu.  And there, by my hand, contained in a red leather book, was the best I could ever do.  And the cover, Doctor, I saw the cover open.

         Before my eyes, it twitched. Jumped.  Sprang open.  A tendril of black snaked from between the ink-splattered pages, hooking into the floor.  Another. Then a third.  I could see the lines bunch as they struggled to pull something out, and I shrieked at myself to wake up! Wake UP! Don’t let her out! She’s coming back! Please, please, wake up! Don’t let her back out...But I slept on.  And those tendrils formed a hand, gripping the shag rug.  And that hand crept out of the book, dragging an arm.

         I stopped screaming.  It was too late for that, you know.  So I just watched as it was born again.  Crawling from the pages, I saw her.  Smoke and shadow, formed into a human.  Dumpy, ugly torso, with those horrid Wonderbra-clad A-cups.  Short, fat, graceless legs in platform shoes that only succeeded in making me sound as well as look like a dray horse.  I watched myself, looking at myself, looming over myself.  Then, I saw myself look upwards, at me.

         Doctor, I grinned.  And you have never seen such a travesty of human emotion.  It was not a smile.  It was a gash across a face, teeth like maggots in a wound.  She grinned, Doctor, and she reached out, cupping my sleeping face.  And then she slapped me.

         That was when I knew it was real. I heard the noise, Doctor, I heard it.  A wet, sick noise, like a cross between a green tree branch snapping and a fish being dropped against a counter.

         And I felt that slap in my dream self, as I knew she felt it in her shadow-dead self, decaying in that sick corner of my red leather book for all these years.  And when I woke up, screaming at the top of my lungs, I knew she felt the ache of air tearing through her throat as well.

         Mum gave me tea with whiskey in it and put me to bed.  But I couldn’t sleep.  I had seen the mirror, Doctor, and the mirror told me immediately what she had done.  I looked at my face, and saw, for a second, that narrow squint, that mealy smile.  She was here.  She was watching me, always behind me.  I could see her in mirrors, Doctor, when I could use them to see behind myself.  She was always there. She walks a step behind me, and if I reach back, I feel that foggy, clammy dampness of mold and years, smell the bitter stench of drugstore perfume, sense the glee at release.

         When I got back to London, I went shopping.  Mirrors. I needed mirrors, Doctor.  She Maybe if I could force her to see me standing behind her, instead, she would leave.  Any hope, right, Doctor?  I spent over a thousand pounds, and bought plate mirrors, the sort they put in bathrooms.  Huge mirrors.  Guilt framed mirrors. Gilt framed, I mean.  Oh, but there is a difference, Doctor. Such a difference, indeed.

         There was no time to hang the mirrors properly.  Instead, I leaned them against walls, placed them on the floor.  I made a mirror-box, with one big one as the base, two leaning together as sides, and two blocking the end as doors.  Like a tent.  I crawled inside, pulling the fourth pane of reflecting glass up behind me, and I stared up at myself, across at myself.  She peeked around behind me, and I acted, leaning quickly to one side so the images on the mirrors reflected back at each other.  I felt her shudder, trying to hide behind me.  No, no. Out you come! I wriggled away, forcing her to see herself everywhere she turned. 

         Honestly, Doctor, I was disappointed.  She went so quietly, without even a parting scream.  Just...gone.  I should have known it was too good to last.

         Several weeks passed.  I kept the mirrors, piled in closets and a store-room.  Just in case.  But she was gone.  I looked at myself in the mirror every day.  Smiled wide.  My teeth, white and perfect, greeted me.  My hair, long and blonde, was not greasy.  My breasts filled out their Victoria’s Secret quite nicely, thank you, and I’m sure some man must have noticed on the Tube that my legs are shapely, not fat.  Then one day, it arrived.  I don’t know how she did it.  She must have others working for her, or maybe–Doctor, maybe–she can pick things up now.  Maybe she did it herself. Maybe she is getting stronger, waiting, feeding off my energy.  Waiting for me to weaken to the point where, some day, when I alone, she can...Oh, God, if that is so...

         Thank you, I am calm.  Quite calm.  She can do nothing with you here, I am sure.  But yes.  One day, I came home from work, and found it on my kitchen table.  Red leather. Red leather.  And I saw the cover twitch.  Jump...and begin to open. 

                I dove for the table, pouncing on it, wrestling with the book.  Anything to keep it closed! But that force, that hideous strength! Quickly, I tore off my belt, wrapping it around the book, using it to bind the cover closed.  Dashing to the closet, I found cords from when I used to own a car.  Thick, elastic bungee cords.  I bound it shut with all of them.  You could only see a sliver of red at the top and bottom, it was so covered in cords.  A bag, a bag–I found one, a thick canvas affair, into which I bundled the book.  It was only a short ways to the river, and I ran.

         Panting, I reached the Blackfriars bridge.  The bag was heavy, and I could feel her inside, twisting, squirming against the restraints.  Oh, no, no. No you don’t. I opened the bag, dropping several large rocks inside before sealing it again.  Nobody was watching, the street was deserted.  So much the better.  I dropped the whole mess into the water, watching it land with a plop.  I stared at the darkened Thames, morbidly considering.  How deep, how deep...how high the bridge, how deep the water, how...  Doctor, it was not how it must have sounded just now.  In fact, I only recall standing there for a few seconds.  My memory must be playing tricks.  But it was duck, and the water quite dark.  Like tar.

         As I walked back, I thought on that. Tar. Those are those pits in America.  Pits of tar, which things blundered into thousands of years ago, only to be found now.  Dying slowly, trapped in inky ooze, without even the ability to rot away to ash...perfect stasis.

         But that was unnecessary talk, Doctor, and I knew it.  So I stopped in a local patisserie, had a bun, and went home, where I spent a very domestic evening picking up the groceries I had scattered during my fight with myself earlier. And things went back to normal.

         Then, almost a year later, I was walking home again.  It was almost dark, and I was preoccupied.  Mum had called the other week.  Her back was giving her trouble, her eyes were almost gone, and she couldn’t remember where she had left her keys.  We sorted that through, and she said something odd.  Do you know, Doctor, she asked me if I had written anything recently.  I said something about not feeling the teenaged need to record my every sneeze for posterity anymore.  She paused, then asked about the Book.  I remember that book from when you were young.  Always writing in a corner.  Red leather cover, yes? That one.  Anyways, she’d mentioned it because one of her friends at the retirement community knew one of my old teachers, who remembered me and had asked after me.  And the book.  He’d asked if I was still always writing, because he’d been going through some of his old work, and had found my book.

         I nearly shrieked.  That book was washed out into the Atlantic! It was rotting at the bottom of the Channel!  But here was my mother telling me she had sent it to me by post.  I stumbled out of the conversation somehow.

         The cleansing elements.  Water–no, I had tried that.  Ah. Fire.

         So, as I walked home the next day, I stopped into a petrol station and bought several liters of kerosine, charcoal briquets and three lighters.  Then I walked into a local Catholic church with a little bottle and, checking to see that the priest was in the Confessional, I scooped up some holy water.  I just dare that book, I dare it. Come find me now, will you?

         Who knows, Doctor, maybe she heard me.  Because there was post for me at the desk.  A little package.  I thanked the clerk politely.

         Two hours later, I was in a deserted field outside Oxford.  There was a firepit here; I remembered that from a picnic.  Ah. Here.  I dumped out the entire bag of charcoal, pouring the kerosine on top.  It was far too much, and I could see it pooling in the gloom, flooding along the edges of the concrete pit.  Ah, well, better far too much than too little, right, Doctor?  Leaning forward, ever so careful not to get any kerosine on my shoes, I placed the package on top of the pyre. I mean, pile.

         Standing back, I flicked a lighter, hurling it at the pit.  With a dull fwhoomp! it went up, blazing.  I thought I saw a shadow dancing and writhing inside the flame, so I walked closer.  Yes, yes, burn.  Burn, purge, and begone to burn forever elsewhere.  Witch.

         I stood for what seemed hours, gazing into the fire.  When I got home, I realized how close I had been–my skin was reddened and flaking.  At the time, though, all I could think of was human flesh.  Did you know, Doctor, that flesh can melt in fire? As it burns, the skin becomes ash and the flesh seems to run.  The thought consumed me.  To run, to melt, to become a formless blob of wax-flesh.

         What? Obviously not, Doctor, I’m still here, aren’t I?  And who could have stopped me, all by myself in that field.  Sometimes I wonder...but I suppose everyone does, if only for a few minutes during their lives, right, Doctor?

         Nonetheless, I came away unburned, alive, and without the book.  It was gone.  I waited until the fire had died out.  Crushing the remaining ash-briquets with a foot, I swept the pile of cinders into a bag, which I dropped into the Thames as well.  Calling in to work from a payphone by the road, I claimed to be sick.  They believed me, of course.  Cheerful, I drove home, whistling mentally.

         The firm sent me to southern France for a week.  I went, getting a contract for us and a tan for me.  When I returned, I stopped before the door of my apartment building, startled.  The front of the lobby is plate-glass, with a slight warp.  It usually makes my reflection taller and thinner, but today...Well, I had just been to France. Perhaps it was from all the escargot.  Though God knows how a few snails could make my thighs look that...well.  No matter.

         I dropped my suitcases in the hall, starting my customary rounds of the apartment.  When I return, I like to make sure the catsitter remembered to water the plants (usually did), the cats didn’t demolish anything (usually did), see if I remembered to pick up my socks before I left (usually did not)...

         Doctor, have you ever had that experience of walking into your home, when you have not been away long, and feeling that you’ve been gone for years?  Everything looked the same, but so distant.  Did I buy that vase? It looks so unfamiliar...wait, no. It’s from the flea market down the street.  Is that my pillow? It looks different...somehow, I didn’t remember it having that many flowers.  Are these my books? My telephone? My pen, lying across an open book?

         Open book? I whirled, racing back through the house, taking in the shadowy figure at my back as I passed a mirror.  No! NO! No, no, no. But there it was. Lying open to a blank page, pen uncapped and ready.  Red leather. Red leather.  I heard her behind me, saw the book in front of me.  There was only one open path.

         They tell me I hit a tree on the way down, and that’s how I survived.  My window overlooks mostly pavement, so I suppose that must be it.  Still, my leg was broken, my arm was in a sling, and I was crying hysterically.  I learned that from the paramedics, you know.  One came to see me here, to see how I was doing.  He has a daughter my age, you know.  She spent some time in therapy, but never a hospital.  He talked to me while I did not.  Doctor, did I know you then? When I first came, I was crying.  Then, I did not speak at all.  And now, it seems I can not be silent.

         Don’t tell the others, Doctor, please.  If they know I am speaking again, they may try to talk to me.  And if many people remember me, she may, too.  I have not seen her since my fall, you know.  I can feel her sometimes, though.  I pass a mirror, and think I hear a flicker of ugly in the corner.  Or I taste a hint of rage at dinner.  But mostly, you know, she stays away. 

         Do you think I will have to leave here, Doctor?  My Mum visits me sometimes, and so does my aunt.  The paramedic used to, and my boss came once.  I think it’s nice here.  There’s a garden, and people who will talk to me when I ask them things.  And here, I don’t think.  Not like I used to.  I don’t see a million uses for everything anymore.  Like that tree.  I would have seen it as a good symbol for an investment firm at work, and then gone home and thought about the branches.  They might support me, you know, now that I think about it.  But I know that, and I feel a bit scared by the thought.  Before, I would have felt nothing.

         Will she stay away, Doctor?  It will be dark soon.  Will I go inside, and find a book on my desk again? Will I see her in the mirror?  Will she be curled up in the pages of my magazine again, lying along the shadow cast by the jeans-ad model?

         She’s not gone.  I know that. I feel her.  But she’s waiting. Biding her time.  I don’t know if she’ll be back, Doctor, but when she does come back, I need a new plan.  So, what do you think? What should I do? Tell me. Off the record, of course.