Light and Shadow

As a professor holding a masters in psychology I rarely handle cases, so when a friend asked me to look into a case I was reluctant. At her persistence, I told her I would review it and see. The reports started out just like any other. The patient suffered from sleepwalking when she was young and nothing more.

I decided to take the case. It was not until her third session that she felt she could confide in me. She begged me to help her. She told me she felt trapped in two worlds, one of light and one of shadows. She explained her lover was in the other world. It left me wondering if the problem stemmed from an emotional trauma. My investigations revealed nothing.

The fourth session, she brought her ‘lover’. I went along with this charade. I felt like she truly believed he was there. Her insistent belief pushed me to test her sight and vision center of her brain thinking it might be the cause of her problems. I found her vision far above average. A new procedure called a Cognitive Visual Recording, CVR, might be the key to solve this riddle. I was becoming obsessed. However, I could not stop myself. How could I let her linger in distress? A perverse corner of my mind wondered if her ‘Shadow-Lover’ felt this same compulsion towards her.

She was excited about the possibility of proving her point, and so the procedure went smoothly. I sat down to watch the visual recording of her life. Everything was normal until the night before her eighteenth birthday. Moonlight, fell across her face as she looked up into the shadows seeing a knife held high above her. The view expanded and she looked at her bound hands, then the knife came down buried to the hilt in her chest. The vision started to blur as a shadow broke from the corner and came to her. He spread his arms wide catching two pieces of rope and slowly brought them together when they met she watched amazed as the pooling blood reversed it course and the knife seemed to shimmer out of existence. Her vision cleared and she saw the shadows tear streaked face. He smiled and disappeared.

The next visual was of her sad eyes as she examined the scar in the mirror. Oddly, everything seemed slightly blurry in her vision, except him. She held a notebook in her hand. She looked at the note on the page, reading it. Please, help my sister find me. Then the CVR stopped.

The police found her remains.

Now I am troubled. I question my sanity. I am left wondering, what is shadow and what is real?