Roommates -- Part Nine

The flames flickered back and forth, now rising higher, then falling off again. Cassie watched, unable to look away. There were tears on her cheeks, but whether it was from staring at the light of the flames, or the smoke, or something she was feeling, she couldn't really say.

Her mind was strangely empty except for a fragment of song "And so it goes...and so it goes...", only that one line, over and over again. She didn't feel sad or happy. She didn't feel anything at all.

I feel...hollow.
Like there's nothing left inside of me.

She felt a hand on her shoulder and reached up to grab it.

Gilhen.

***

"She goes insane."

"What?"

"She goes insane."

"I heard you the first time. What do you mean 'she goes insane'?"

"The woman who wrote this diary," Cassie said, holding it up, "Goes insane by the end of it. Her life becomes a nightmare. She's not sure when she's asleep and awake. She sees ghosts everywhere, can't stop it, talks to people that aren't there, writes many passages that make no sense at all, and when she's lucid contemplates several different forms of suicide. Finally, as far as I can tell, walks straight out into Halifax harbour, and drowns herself."

"Oh." Gilhen paused, hamburger halfway to his mouth, and put it back down. For a few seconds he was silent. "Hey -- I thought you told me that you weren't going to touch that thing until I got back from work!"

"Yeah, but I got bored waiting for you." She was pacing nervously. She desperately wanted to do something, but there was nothing to do.

"Cassie! You could've -- she could've -- something could've happened!"

"Well, nothing happened, so it's a moot point." Cassie walked over to the table and plunked the journal down in front of her. "She hasn't shown up since we found the diary. Maybe she just wanted me to see it?"

"It's possible, I suppose." Gilhen looked at the journal thoughtfully. "Though why she didn't just say 'Hey. My diary's in the closet. Would you mind getting it down and having a look so I can get out of here?' is somewhat of a mystery."

"Oh, I've got that figured out. Aside from the fact that, as I mentioned, she rather loses her grip on reality at the end, the only words she's ever said to me are phrases from her diary. No wonder she makes no sense. She doesn't have enough words to say what she means."

"Aah. Well. That would explain it, wouldn't it." Gilhen returned to his hamburger. Cassie got up and started to make tea. Once the pot was on the stove she paced out to the living room and back again.

"Are you staying here tonight?" Gilhen asked.

Cassie nodded. "I think so, yeah. If she's going to come back, I want to try to talk to her again. Maybe she has an idea what we can do to ‘release her from this’." She walked across the kitchen again, pausing at the kettle. It hadn't boiled yet. She put her hands firmly on the counter.

"Are you all right?" Gilhen asked.

Cassie turned to face him. She held his gaze for several seconds. "No," she admitted finally, "I'm not. I'm really, really not."

Gilhen pursed his lips. He looked like he didn't quite know what to say to that.

Well, you asked.
But there's nothing you can do.
Insanity. Suicide.
Will I end up the same?

***

"What are you writing?"

"A list of questions."

"For... Anna?"

"Yep. If she comes back, I need to know some things. I think I know how to find them out."

***

It was three o'clock in the morning, but Cassie hadn't really slept at all, so she awoke at the first sense that there was someone in her room. Well, or not in her room, but in the hallway. Still, she knew it was there.

"Anna?" she asked quietly, and felt the presence move back toward her. Her bedside light was already on, the door to the hallway open.

"I only saw the girl today," Anna said, as she appeared in the doorway.

"Actually, Gilhen's just out on the couch," Cassie told her. She picked up her notebook from the bedside table. "I want to talk to you."

Anna flinched when she saw the notebook. "No," she said, nervously.

"No? Right." Cassie ground her teeth together. "I'm sick and fucking tired of your nonsense. So let me tell you how this is going to work." She didn’t feel as confident or cold as the words sounded, but she wasn’t going to let her see that. “You want out of here? Well, I want you out too. So you're going to answer some questions for me, and then we're going to try and figure out how best to release you from this like you're longing for. Fair enough? Great. Now, you seem perfectly capable of saying the word 'no' but can you say the word 'yes'?" She paused, waiting for a reply.

The ghost seemed stunned for several seconds. Then her expression softened. "Yes," she said. It sounded a little like a question.

Cassie was relieved, too. "Good. That saves us a lot of time. I'm going to ask you these questions, and you're going to answer 'yes' or 'no'. Do you understand me?"

"Yes."

Cripes. Why in God's name didn't I think of this before?

"Are you trapped here because of this journal?" Cassie held it up.

"Yes."

"Wow. That was easy. Okay. Do you want to be released from it?"

"Yes."

"Do you know how to do that?"

"Yes," a flicker, "no."

Cassie sighed. "Does that mean maybe?"

"Yes."

"So you think you might know what to do, but you’re not sure?"

"Yes."

"But you do have an idea."

"Yes."

"Does it involve destroying this journal?"

"Yes."

"By burning it?"

"Yes."

"Fuck but I hate it when Gilhen is right," Cassie said, and looked down at her question list. "Will that hurt you?"

"Yes," another flicker, "no."

"Is there any other way to release you from the journal?"

"Yes...no."

This is going to take longer than I thought.

***

The thing is not that I don't want her to leave. I want her gone. I want to be alone in my apartment. I want to not worry about her being able to touch me. I want to be able to concentrate on going to school. And my job.

Fuck. My job. Which starts in three days. School, which starts in a week and a half.

Anyway, but I don't want to lose the journal. She writes about what she sees. What happens to her when she sees things and who she talked to about it. How she tried to cope with it.

Maybe I can figure out why it didn't work for her. Maybe I can find out what will work for me.

I want to know the signs of it becoming too much.
I want to have someone around who is like me. Who knows this pain.

But she didn't write those thoughts down.

***

Cassie's eyes were watering. When she was done coughing, she ran to open the window. "Jesus, this place is gonna smell like the inside of a bong. Graham will be up here asking for some of my stash. What did you say that stuff was?"

Gilhen looked offended. "It's sage. It's used by Native Americans for purification," he said, with great dignity. "And you're not helping the energy around here any by trying to make fun of what I'm doing. Do you want me to help with this or don't you?"

He had a point. "I'm sorry, Gil," Cassie said. "But the smoke really is a bit much. Can you tone it down?"

Gilhen looked at the smudge stick in his hands. "Well it’s not like it comes with an off switch,” he informed her. “It'll die down in a bit. I'd like to leave it burning if I can. The more the better. Just leave the window open. I'll cast the circle wide so you can go over there if you need to."

Cassie pushed the window as wide as it would go. Gilhen was right. It only took a few minutes for the air to clear. He was still involved with some setup around the makeshift coffee table/altar he'd set up. The diary was in the middle of it, and Gilhen was carefully surrounding it with a circle of table salt.

That's going to be hell to clean up.
Right. I'm supposed to be positive about this.
I want this to work.

She moved back to the sofa, which Gil had told her would be near the centre of his "Magic Circle" and tried to concentrate, like he'd asked. She thought of saying goodbye to Anna, and her drifting away from the journal, saying goodbye, never coming back. She almost felt like she was drifting into sleep and caught herself. She hadn't slept much the past couple of nights. Which was becoming altogether too common.

It had taken Gilhen two days to prepare things. One to research and write what he was going to do, and one to setup. They'd picked this afternoon to do the "ritual" because he thought the timing was right.

Anna had been a frequent visitor in the past two days. She seemed to prefer being around when Gilhen was in the other room, or at night, when he was asleep. He'd stayed for the past two nights, 'just in case'. But Anna had been surprisingly subdued, now that she knew Cassie was working on a way to release her. She seemed to understand, even if she couldn't put the right words together for a response.

Cassie's yes-or-no questions had helped at least a little, and they'd managed to have a few painful conversations, with Anna's strangely broken english and Cassie's poor understanding of what she was getting at. They were even getting better at speaking, though Cassie could never quite get over the fear she felt at having a strange presence in the house, and she tried to keep the better part of the bedroom between them at all times. Her presence was like an itch Cassie couldn’t scratch at and it wore on her after a while. Still, Anna had information she needed, and it was nice to talk to someone who understood, even a little.

And yet, just that morning, tired from talking all night, and strung out from wanting to run away and yet wanting to talk, worry about the upcoming ritual, school, work and a dozen other things, she'd found herself asking the ghost, "Are you sure you want to go?"

"I don't belong here," Anna had said, and disappeared.

And she was right.
She certainly doesn't belong in this life. My life.

Gilhen had begun walking the boundaries of the room, murmuring some kind of incantation. She was surprised to hear that it was in english. He'd told her what to expect, but it was still strange to see it being done.

In point of fact, he looked pretty dorky. There were a couple of times when she bit back comments, or tried to restrain the laughter she felt welling up inside of her. But she did want his help, and she did want this to work, so she kept her lips buttoned.

It got easier as the ritual went on. Some of it was even interesting. She watched as Gilhen ritually blessed the book, calling on the spirits to purify it, contacting it with a sprinkle of water, passing it through smoke. At one point he asked Cassie to put her hands on the journal and say "I release you," which she did. She tried to imagine Anna fading away as she did so, but she felt really stupid.

This is never going to work.
I hope it does.

It didn't seem like very long before the ritual was over. Gilhen extinguished the candles with his fingers, a process that looked painful.

"Did it work?" he asked.

"I don't know," Cassie responded. "I thought you might be able to tell."

"Not for sure," Gilhen said.

So it’s like every other time I’ve seen her, really.

"Then I guess we won't know until she comes back...or doesn't." Cassie said and shrugged. "Can I walk to the kitchen now? I'll make supper."

"Don't worry about supper." Gilhen told her. "Let's order a pizza or something. It'll be easier."

"It's all right," Cassie told him. "I need something to do."

She didn't even get as far as the kitchen before she felt it again, and turned around. Anna was standing over the journal, looking at it sadly. She turned to Cassie. Her expression was pained. Her eyes even looked like they had dark circles under them.

How is that even possible? Ghosts don't suffer from lack of sleep!

"Nothing helps," she said. Her voice was just above a whisper. Cassie knew what she was getting at.

"You want me to destroy the journal now?" she asked.

"Yes."

"In fire?"

"Yes."

"And if it hurts you?"

"Yes."

***

Gilhen kindled the fire in the old barbecue in the back yard of his apartment. He'd used real wood rather than charcoal, building it up boyscout-style, and even throwing in an apple branch from the tree next door. He didn't bother to explain why. He murmured some words over the fire as he lit it. Cassie didn't know what he'd said. It could've just been "Come on, light," but she didn't ask.

It was a small fire. Cassie laid the diary in the middle of it, on the coals. It seemed too simple, somehow. And too...crude. Shouldn't there be a blessing? Shouldn't she say something?

"Goodbye, Anna," she whispered, as the flames caught and the pages began to curl. "I hope you find the peace you wanted."

***

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