The Mindful Migraine

Last week, for Halloween, I wrote a short story (here) that finished on a cliffhanger. Many of you asked – “what happens next?” (YAY!) So here it is, a brief interruption to my regular mindful-healing posts, and another sojourn into the uncanny… let there be answers… (and a few more questions!)

* * *

THE BAD DAYS

Lachlan woke to the sound of something hitting the window of his car.  He rubbed his eyes and glanced at his watch; it was a few minutes past midnight.  Out loud, he said to no one, “today’s the day.”  He knew he was very close to Fidelia’s house.  He also knew he would have made it there yesterday, had it not been for the sudden hailstorm and the strange sense of dread that had slipped beneath his jacket collar and slid down his spine.

As soon as the sun came up and the rain calmed down (some days it never ceased), he would set out to cover the last of the distance to her house.  It should only take an hour or two of walking… depending on how much the terrain had changed since he was here six months ago… and what, or who, he encountered along the way.

Lachlan pulled his sleeping bag up to his chin, grateful for the warmth, but frustrated that he was not out in the open.  Things had been going wayward for him since The Pox had broken out and all the previously eradicated diseases such as Measles, Smallpox and Polio had begun to merge and morph into a new mystery-illness that ran rampant through the unvaccinated population.  Even those who had received The Jab were not spared due to skyrocketing levels of antibiotic-resistance.  The Complete Lockdown had been lonely, but it was during The Resistance that followed, that Lachlan had discovered he felt safest when sleeping in tall trees. 

Sitting here, now, in an abandoned car made sense in terms of staying dry, but he felt vulnerable.  “I’m a candy cane,” he said to the car’s crumpled dashboard, “propped up in a broken box on Christmas Day.”

A banging sound came again on the glass next to his head and he spun around.  It was one of those wretched super-sized herons.  His joke of being food suddenly turned sour.  As he stared at the heron staring at him, Lachlan checked the door was locked and thought of all the other creatures that had turned from prey to predator.

Two days ago, Lachlan had arrived at River’s Bend and decided to go fishing.  Lachlan recalled the way he would tell his school friends that he had caught a fish “this big” as he lifted his hands up to measure a space as wide as his shoulders.  “A Dinner Fish”, his father would call a fish that size; big enough to feed the whole family. 

Now, however, a Dinner Fish was something different.  As cursed as all the other creatures on the planet, fish had undergone rapid transformations.  Many seemed to acquire the ability to sink down and survive in the lowest realms of the ocean and had effectively disappeared.  Others began growing, becoming as large as their dinosaur ancestors.  The Dinner Fish of River’s Bend were so large they had become more than a family could eat… so big, in fact, they could probably eat a whole family.

Lachlan held his left hand up to the moonlight that was streaming over the shoulders of the heron and into the car.  He could see from the dark stain on the bandages that blood was still seeping from his wound.  The Dinner Fish he had lured to the surface with a snake-large-worm, had resisted the branch-beating Lachlan had given it.  Lachlan put his hand down and closed his eyes.  

Remembering the snapping teeth made him anxious, but that was nothing compared to the dread he had felt when the water of River’s Bend had intentionally grabbed him and tried to pull him under.  

Lachlan attempted to empty his mind of hungry fish, giant birds and malevolent waters, and told himself to get some rest in preparation for dawn.

*

Deep in sleep, Lachlan found himself in a circular clearing, surrounded by twelve ancient trees.  Each enormous tree was reaching upwards and outwards, straining to grasp clean air.  When he looked closer, blood trickled from open wounds gouged into their bark, and he felt certain he could hear whispered words of revenge.

Lachlan looked away and stared at the ground beneath his feet instead.  There, upon the blighted soil, tree-shadows shifted in a manner that defied science… twisted and writhing, they moved without the aid of the sun or moon… closer, closer… each arm and finger intent on snatching him…

In terror, Lachlan glanced up again to determine if the trees really were moving.  In between their inert trunks, twelve human forms had filled the spaces.  There was his mother, covered in welts, soon to be stolen by The Pox.  The old lady who lived next door was there too, victim of The Complete Lockdown, welded into her home and starved.  Lachlan’s younger brother hovered nearby, only a small smudge between two trees, taken by a stray bullet that had forced its way through a locked window during The Bad Days.  Lachlan searched the faces until, there he was, Father, the last to leave, taking up arms and joining The Resistance with only the briefest of farewells. 

Each and every one of them was staring at Lachlan, waiting for him to explain what had happened… why had he not done more, done less, done different… tick-tock… tick-tock…

He wanted to speak to them. He had so much to say, from declarations of love to heart felt apologies, exhortations and exorcisms.  But he found he could not open his mouth.  He touched his lips and discovered they were glued shut with a thick amber-hued sap that clung to his fingers. 

A rage exploded inside him.  None of this was his fault!  Those who had come before him were to blame!  It was The Elders who had allowed this to happen and handed him this fate.

Overwhelmed with fatigue, Lachlan’s dream self sat down in the empty middle of the circle and wept.

*

When Lachlan woke again it was daylight.  The giant bird was gone but the rain was still beating against the roof of the car.  “OK,” Lachlan said, “so I’m going to get wet – I don’t care – I need to get to Fidelia.”  He shoved his sleeping bag into his backpack, drank some tainted water from one of his bottles, and ate a mouthful of fish.  Even in this cold weather, the fish was starting to rot.  “I’ll worry about that later,” he said to his backpack’s zipper, and put his hand on the car’s door handle.

He hesitated.  It wasn’t just the aggressive hailstorm that had unnerved Lachlan yesterday.  He had been rattled enough that he had decided to do the unthinkable and clamber into a car that was rammed up against a tree, instead of using its roof to climb up into the tree itself.  For all of yesterday, Lachlan had been unable to shake the feeling that something, or someone, was following him. 

Lachlan remembered all the horror movies he had watched as a kid, at his cousin’s house.  Over and over, cliché stories of travelers in the woods, a shadowy stalker just behind them, always disappearing behind a shrub every time the travelers turned around.  One by one, the main characters were picked off as they carelessly strayed from the path, fell behind, or became irrationally distracted by something shiny and stopped to stand stone-still in inexplicable solitude… and all the while, the audience screamed “move!” at the screen.

Horror movies had, of course, been banned in his house.  Long before The Bad Days, Lachlan’s father had condemned anything that encouraged sedentary behavior.  Anything restful, other than prayer, felt sinful to Mr Barker.  Running, jumping, fishing, soccer, changing a tire on the car, catching rabbits in the distant woods… things that kept Lachlan moving were applauded… television or reading novels… not so much.

It was in The Library that Lachlan had first met Fidelia West.  Lachlan used to sneak in to read books he could never borrow, because to do so would require a membership.  One time, as he sat huddled over Charles Dickens’ “Great Expectations” Fidelia had appeared out of nowhere and criticized his taste in books.  A long conversation about literature had followed that day and was continued in dribs and drabs over the following weeks and months.

The car suddenly grew quiet and Lachlan returned to the present.  The rain had stopped as abruptly as if someone had turned off a shower.  Lachlan smirked. “A shower”, he said to himself, “cars and showers, televisions and books – how posh!”

He laughed out loud and spluttered, “posh”, as he stared at his grubby hands holding two plastic bags and his backpack.  He sniffed an armpit and groaned.  Homeless for a long time now, he had accumulated an assortment of ways to survive and keep his belongings together, but not many ways to keep them, or himself, clean.

Lachlan imagined Fidelia’s disgust when she saw him… and realized he didn’t care.  Seeing Fidelia again was all that mattered.  He took a deep breath and opened the car door and steeped into The Bad Lands.

*

As he clambered over the wreckage on the main road, Lachlan remembered the last lesson he had ever had at school.  It was Mr Young’s English class, and they were studying the poems of T.S. Eliot.  The titles came rushing back to him; ‘The Waste Land’, ‘Ash Wednesday’, ‘The Hollow Men’ and ‘Rhapsody on a Windy Night’.  Poems that portrayed the confusion of a post-war world, the decadence of some lives and the disillusionment and degradation of others.

He almost laughed as he squeezed through the intersection of two crashed cars; “I hated Eliot,” Lachlan said to thin air, “how absurdly depressing he was… how melodramatic and pessimistic… what a lunatic of language!”

He stopped as his jeans snagged on the sharp corner of a car’s bumper-bar, “and then the school bell rang, mid-lesson, and we were all sent home early… and forever.” 

Lachlan glanced over his shoulder as something moved in his peripheral vision.  He could see nothing but definitely felt something.  He quickly tugged his pants free, ignoring the sound of fabric ripping.   

Feeling too exposed on the road, Lachlan moved into the overgrown verge, on the side opposite to where he had sensed movement.  The going was much harder and slower, always with a risk of getting stung by the newly noxious weeds that were as tall as he was, or bitten by the plague-like quantities of insects that fed off them.  On the upside, however, there was much less chance of being seen, and less chance of being cut by the metal debris strewn across the road…

Lachlan shivered.  The idea of tetanus brought back a new wave of memories from The Bad Days.  Before The Pox had broken out, the government had become hostile and greedy.  Corrupt politicians began cutting off supplies to medical services, hoarding food and confiscating valuables.  What goods and services the people could obtain were purchased at heavily inflated prices that were wearing families down.  By the time The Pox arrived, everyone was feeling too hopeless to help others. Too beaten to raise a ruckus.  Hostility and greed became contagious, and soon after, civilization as he knew it, fell apart.

What had kept Lachlan going through The Bad Days was the conviction that Fidelia would be one of the lucky ones.  She lived beyond the outskirts of town, on a large, semi-rural block of land.  He remembered Mrs West had told him of the joy of living apart from the pollution and congestion of the cities and towns.  ‘Sheltered’ was the word that had come to mind when he first talked to home-schooled Fidelia. He remembered the inconvenience of getting to her distant house, and home again, the one time he had visited. 

Now, however, the West’s property near River’s Bend had taken on biblical proportions in his mind.  Saved from Revelations and the End of Days, Fidelia’s Garden of Eden would be their sanctuary.

*

Lachlan stopped to take another drink of water.  Unusually for him, he felt completely disoriented and had been walking backward and forward amongst the trees for some time now.  Fidelia’s house was apparently much further away than he remembered, even with all the obstacles taken into account.  Here, where he expected it to be, there was only a deep lake, with water lapping at dead tree trunks. 

He turned slowly in a circle, trying again to get his bearings.  And then it occurred to him; he was in the right place, it was just that the adjacent waterway had risen impossibly high.  He swore under his breath as he stared at the rooves poking out of the water and wondered if any of those were Fidelia West’s home.

And then he saw it; set slightly uphill from where he was, a small weatherboard cottage with lace curtains and a small front porch jutting out before a jaunty sky-blue door. 

He raced forward, and then drew up short, surprised to see several large herons configured as if they were line-dancing.  Lachlan’s father had raised his son to be brave and self-sufficient, shoot a gun and skin a rabbit, but never had he trained him how to outmaneuver ten hungry birds, each as big as a man.

Steering clear, Lachlan went around to the back of the property instead.  As he approached the rear door he heard a scream.  Rage, frustration, pain?  Lachlan couldn’t tell; all he knew was that it sounded like Fidelia.  He threw himself at the rear door but found it locked. 

“Fee-fi-fo-fum,” Lachlan said to himself as he picked up a piece of timber from the woodpile and used it to smash against the rear door, once, twice, three times, four.  Once inside, he heard more panicked voices, so he rushed towards the next door and swung it open. 

Fidelia lay in a crumpled heap upon the floor.  Lachlan rushed to her side, cradled her head in his arms and whispered kind words in her ear.  The room was unreasonably hot, and stranger still, Fidelia was overdressed in a thick coat, hat and mittens. 

He shook her gently as he tugged off her mittens, and Fidelia’s eyelids fluttered.  Then, as if she had been electrocuted, Fidelia went from barely-conscious to completely awake.  She launched herself off the floor and into a growling hunch that reminded him of the rabid dogs and feral cats that had roamed the streets in The Bad Days… before they had killed each other… or been eaten.

“It’s me… Lachlan,” he said to Fidelia and watched as all the tension drained from her body.

Fidelia sighed and then said “Ebony.”

Lachlan tried to determine if it was statement or a question.

*

For as long as Lachlan had known Fidelia, he had also known about Ebony.  Fidelia had spoken of her twin sister lovingly, and in great detail, every time they met in The Library, but when he had finally gone to visit Fidelia at home, there was only evidence of one daughter, not two.

When he eventually got a minute alone with Fidelia’s mother, he had worked up the nerve to ask where Ebony was.  Mrs West had pursed her lips together and then, after glancing at the door to make sure Fidelia was not listening, she said quickly and quietly, “there is no Ebony.”

Astonished, Lachlan had sat there gaping.

“You know how little children invent invisible friends for company?” Mrs West asked, and Lachlan nodded, “Ebony is something like that.”

Recognizing that Fidelia was no longer a little child, Lachlan had dared to ask, “is Fidelia schizophrenic?”

“No,” Mrs West had replied quickly, “but she has a lot of medical conditions that force her to rest day in day out… for years now… being weak and bed-bound for so long made her desperately lonely… lonely enough to invent another half of herself that was stronger and more able-bodied, someone who…”

The conversation had ended abruptly as Fidelia re-entered the room and handed Lachlan a tall pile of books.  He thanked her and read the names on the book-spines aloud; “King, Shelley, Rice, Stoker, Wells, Jackson, Poe, Lovecraft…”

Fidelia interrupted his reading by patting him on the back and saying, “Ebony wants you to have them.”

Lachlan smiled and in another brazen moment, asked, “can I thank her personally?” Mrs West gasped, but Fidelia ignored his question and moved to heat up the kettle, chatting amicably about fates and fortunes and how sublime a good horror story was.

Days later, any hope Lachlan harbored for renewing the conversation with Mrs West was lost. The Pox broke out in his home-town and everyone had been put into a Complete Lockdown, enforced by trigger-happy police officers and vigilante do-gooders.  Separated by only a few suburbs, Lachlan was nonetheless separated from Fidelia by the months it had taken him to claw and crawl and clamber his way back to her house.

Now, staring at Fidelia across the room – petite and pretty but with wild hair, a dirty face and glazed eyes – Lachlan was reminded of Dickens’ “Great Expectations” again.  Somehow, he realized, Fidelia was channeling two main characters at once; young Estella and the old lady Mrs Havisham.  As he gazed upon Fidelia and felt his bloody hand throb, words and images began to swim in the foggy soup of his mind; happy, haunted, fierce, fragile, tempting, torture, pet, pounce, hunger, satisfied, Dinner Fish…

Lachlan wondered if he had made the right choice by coming here, and then, as Fidelia flew across the room and threw herself into his arms, his doubt evaporated.

* * *

Thanks again for making it this far!

The next blog posts will be back to normal mindfulness matters (and a very exciting personal announcement) – BUT – as time permits, I’ll post new chapters on the very bottom of my blog’s “GOTHIC” page… Chapter 3 is already done and uploaded, and Chapter 4 might even be there by the time you read this!

Take care taking care (of yourself and each other),

Linda x

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PS – the whole story (7 chapters long) is now available to read for free online (here) – scroll to the bottom of the page & enjoy!