Street lamp light filters in through a crack in the blind. A lone truck gurgles and hums down the road. Somewhere so distant it is almost another world away, a pitchy dog howls at an unseen foe. Otherwise, the world is caught in a still.
I yank myself over onto the other side, throwing myself diagonally across the bed. Landing face down on the mattress, I pick up my pillow and hold it over my head, until my lungs scream and I push it away. My mind races through everything, choosing to show me a slideshow of events and thoughts that are useless at this point. It takes every cell within my body to hold me back from screaming.
Ignoring a babbling middle aged man in a business suit who has rudely appeared at such a late hour, I pick the covers off me. Aggravated to no end by the lack of progress and the sleepless last few hours, I dig my feet into a set of plush slippers. On noiseless feet, I leave behind my dark bedroom for an even darker hallway. Unsure of where I am wandering, I move aimlessly for a time. By the glow of my phone's screen, I choose to situate myself in the living room. While shadows play behind the objects in the space, I turn my thoughts to playback.
The memory of the confrontation with my mother still haunts me, dogging me with words and teasing me with the look on her face when I walked in the door. I shake my head in a vain attempt to rid myself of the picture.
That is, until I realize that the answer to my purpose is with in those last few moments with my mother. Getting back to my feet, I stride quietly to the back corner of the house.
Tucked away, almost an after thought addition to the floor plan, is a nook of an office. With a desk and a cabinet that nearly spill out the door, there is little room for a person. Trying the handle I find it looked, which is extremely out of the norm. Positive that this is where my mother is storing the files she confiscated from me, I set to work on the look.
"Gotcha." With a swift, moving thought, I open the door with my mind and creep inside.
Under stacks and stacks of business paperwork, I find Nolan and Elizabeth's poorly hidden files. I check, and double check, to ensure that nothing has been taken or moved.
Assured, and about to creep back out, I am stopped by a topaz light on the computer monitor. It holds it own, brilliantly shining as a beacon of light in the midnight coloured space. It is not the light that stops me, of course computers have lights, but rather the colour. The sunset orange it shines indicates that the monitor is on, and has been recently used.
Intrigued, I have nothing better to do than to put the folders aside and take up a position on the squishy captain's chair. I press the button and hold my breath, but the background screen comes on. There is no file open, nothing that gives away what my mother was doing when she locked the stolen papers in her office. Scrolling my eyes through the titles of the application icons, I am entirely disappointed by the constant ordinary.
Giving it one last go, I use the toolbar to open 'Recently Viewed'. A list comes up, but these also bear the names of her work-related documents. That is true, until I come across something that makes my heart beat, and my hand still.
Do I really want to go through with this? I think. I have broken into a stranger's house, rifled through my therapist's patients' files, and even pretended to be a nurse in order to steal paperwork, but creeping into my mother's online life seems to be going too far; she is my own mother, after all.
Torn between conflicting notions of right and wrong, my fingers click open the file almost of their own account. Already digging myself my own grave, I look through the documents inside. They each bear a work related name, whether to my relief or my disappointment, I'm not sure.
That is, for all except for one.
Heart beating like a jet engine in the silence, I open the file to see a list of documents. I open the first and begin to read.
"My dearest Jody, I can't wait until the time that I can see you again. There is not a moment that I wish our wedding day would come faster." I gasp. Like a mouse squeaking while the home owners are away, my tiny exhale folds into the air. These letters are letters from my father. I take a look at the whole compilation. The dates span over many years, almost covering a total of twenty years. The oldest are obviously from a young date, as the writing is primal and simple. Those that are newer have taken on a much different tone. From obvious love and open affection at the beginning, to distant formality at the end. What had happened to cause that transformation was unwritten in the letters, though it urked me to no end.
Letter after letter, sentence after sentence, I read. I pry into every crack in my parent's love life, despite the urge to stop and run from the room. What I am doing is unwarranted, and surely unnatural. It's addictive, though, like a drug I just can't get enough of.
A sudden change in the course yanks the lovey-dovey stuff off the table. Sixteen years ago, almost exactly the date of my birth date, my father's letters to my mother fails. The letters resume five years later, but in a different tone.
I lean back, pushing myself against the back of the office chair, trying to take it all in. From what I read, I am tossing together a picture. My father left my mother and I not long after I was born, to go god knows where to do god knows what. Disappointment marries with understanding and grief inside me. I rub my palms on my cheeks, trying to process it all.
The letters go on to explain why my father did what he did, but none of the arguments seem reasonable in the face of what we did.
As a young child, I had spent long hours imagining the wild scenarios which had taken my dad from me, but none blamed him. I had dreamt of spies, secret double lives, and foreign land conflicts, probably the result of too much television.
So now, faced with the truth, I could not repel the anger that joined the mix of emotions. My father abandoned me, abandoned us, and I would go as far as to wish the worst possible fate on him. I guess I get what I wish for.
There is a certain feeling that is paired with helplessness. It is the same rush when one is dragged into the back pull of a great wave; one of being dragged into the ocean by a great and terrible force. As you are pulled under, the water chooses to domino down on top, suffocating and unrelenting. It comes with the understanding that you are not in control, just a trailer to the truck of the wave.
That is how I felt when I opened up the last document, only to find that it was not a letter or even email. No, it was a police statement, and as the wave of loneliness washed over me, I'm sure a part of me died as I read.
"We are sorry to inform you that your husband, Robert Kritant, was hit by a drunk driver at the hour of 11:23pm. Kritant died on scene." My heart is beating wildly know, as I absorb the information.
My father is dead. He abandoned my mother and I, only to be killed in a car accident. There is poetic justice in that, but I refuse to see it.
I could cry. I could scream. I could cheer. I could do all those things, and many more, but I do none of them.
Instead, I get up slowly, killing off the computer's life supply as I do. I shuffle back through the house, my eyes adjusting to the darkness easily as I do. I can't help but to acknowledge that I have become accustomed to darkness in my life. Make of that what you will.
Depositing my retrieved files into my room, I tiptoe outside. Air isn't reaching my lungs; I need relief.
Outside, the night is still glass clear. A halo of pale yellow light rings the trees and house tops, heralding the coming sun. I listen to the creaking croaks of frogs, breathing in still air and the scent of dew covered grass. Activity is rising up around me, and I should be happy that this night of despair is over. There is no trace of that relief, or even the sliver of hope that I have always carried with me.
So instead of fixating on the coming of morning, I focus on the fading constellation of Sagittarius. I pray that Nolan is right, that those stars are the promises of a better future. If so, maybe that fragment of hope can come back from where ever it has gone away to.
Gone away because of this turn in events:
Robert K, or Robert Kritant, was not just mentioned in the police report, but in a newspaper by the side of the road.
Nolan killed my father.
YOU ARE READING
The Hades Test
Paranormal"My name is Adalia Kritant, and I can see, feel and communicate with ghosts." Adalia has lived her life with a curse: the ability to see and hear the dead. It has caused her to miss out on the joys of life. Friendship, happiness and love have elude...
