Voice on the Wing

2: I Must Listen

I vomited. Of course I did. At first the scene had the feeling of a bizarre art exhibit. It wasn't entirely real. I expected a group of tourists to come around the next tree, cameras flashing. I'd seen the films. There were always tourists and cameras in galleries. Since then, in real life, I'd only ever visited three galleries and I'd never encountered a mass group of snap-happy visitors. They were more sedate. More intense. After the surreality dissolved and reality stepped into the fray, grabbing the loose flesh of my imagination and pulling it under control, the contents of my stomach joined the pine coins in the stomachs of the dogs.

Then I ran.

The voices were forgotten. Silent. Either they'd finally been quieted by the gory image burned into my mind or they were in shock, still hanging in the air above the murdered, eviscerated, mutil... above the animals. I stopped once, throwing up again. Then I was a slave to my feet as they moved as fast as they could to get me home.

When I reached my street corner, I slowed to a walk. I hoped, by the time I'd reached my door, my breathing would have returned to normal instead of the harsh rasping gasps I was taking. My legs were heavy, weighted down by the exertion and I was unsure if I'd actually manage to reach my house. What if I only made it half way? What if my parents never noticed and I was stuck, lost on my own street, waiting for whatever had killed...

The voices returned. Insistent. Almost shouting but incoherent. Pushing me on. A white noise urging me to get home. I took a deep breath, hoping some energy would be sucked in with the air, and found myself opening my front door. I looked back. I'd been way back there. I couldn't remember the last few paces.

"Hey honey!" mum shouted from the kitchen.

"Hi mum," I called back.

"You timed that just right," she said. "Dinner is almost ready."

"Great, thanks. Be right there."

I didn't feel like eating. I was worried I would get flashbacks to the woods and my food would have flashbacks of being on my plate. I wouldn't return but I couldn't guarantee my dinner would feel the same. I couldn't tell mum that, though. I went to the bathroom, the stairs feeling like an eternal flight of feet sucking quicksand. Once locked in the small room, the bath, toilet and basin surrounding me, questioning me, intimidating me, I sat down and huddled in the corner, the pipes of the water outlet from the sink caressing my arm soothingly, their cold touch settling.

A knock on the door startled me, wrenching me from visions of dogs giving birth to pine cones, the cones running around barking at each other while their mother's stomach split open, intestines spilling out.

"You awake in there? Your dinner is going cold, love."

I pushed myself up, using the basin and side of the bath as leverage. The spell broken, I no longer felt intimidated. I felt... lost. Something was missing, as if I'd mislaid my coat or rucksack or lunch money. Even at twelve years old, I knew what it was.

Innocence.

Is the human spirit resilient? Does it bounce back from tragedy or terror like a child on a trampoline, laughing in the face of danger and only thinking about the feeling of flying through the air? I doubt it. I think we try to keep up the scaffolding around our hearts while, all the time, Life kicks the struts away one by one. I could almost feel, standing in that bathroom, looking at myself in the mirror while I cleaned away the puke and told mum I would be out in a sec, one of the scaffold poles being left-footed right then. There was a dull thud in my chest as my childhood crumbled.

I changed my clothes before going back downstairs, bundling the ones I wore under my bed. I'd dispose of them later rather than have mum find them and see the state they were in. I didn't remember touching the dogs but I had blood on my t-shirt and it wasn't mine. The voices were whispering their sweet nothings and I used the sound to boost my outward mood, leaving the inner one to try and pull itself from the mire it was floundering in.

"You OK?"

"Yes mum. Course I am. This tastes great, thanks!"

It did. She was a good cook and I enjoyed every meal she placed before me. This was the first one I hadn't but that had nothing to do with flavour and everything to do with what I'd discovered. Or been led to.

Was that it? Was it the voices? Had they told me to go there? Did they know? Did they want me to find them? I felt dirty, as if I'd been used. They had forced me, knowing I was following their lead, to practically fall face first in the remains of someone's pets. Were the voices laughing at me now? Celebrating their clever ruse?

There was a sudden filling of my mind, a rush of sound through my ears which seemed to engulf my head. It was a clear response to my unvoiced questions.

No.

No what? They hadn't led me there? They weren't laughing? Which was it?

Yes, they'd wanted me to find the dogs but no, they didn't find it funny. They were... helping me? How? By making me grow up in an instant, bypassing a decade of life lessons to make me old before my time? Thanks!

I could tell they were protesting but the noise was giving me a headache.

"Can I go to be, mum? I don't feel well."

Mum, as mum's will always do, felt my forehead for a fever. Finding none, she stroked my cheek.

"Sure, sonny. Would you like anything else?" She was eying my unfinished meal.

"No thanks. I just have headache. I'm just going to lie down."

Headaches were something which were as much a part of me as the freckle on my right little finger, just before the nail. It was because of the sleepless nights and the voices though, to my parents, the former was very real because it affected them and the latter was my overactive imagination. Well, brain tumours and the like had been ruled out. It had to be my imagination.

If only the dogs were too.

Mum smiled her sad, resigned smile and nodded, taking my plate and emptying the contents into the bin. By the time she had placed it in the sink to wash, I was already halfway up the stairs. Once in my room, I lay out on my bed and closed my eyes. Today was a day of firsts. Dinner and now voluntarily closing my eyes, not just waiting for sleep to force itself on me and drag me back to its lair.

I let the voices in. As much as I'd run and be led, they were rarely quiet so I would often try to push them back. I'd tried so many different ways to keep them locked out of my head - taping my ears, plugging them with cotton wool or Bluetack. Mum had caught me with the scissors before I'd had the chance to ram them in. I think I was six at the time. I let the voices in and allowed them to fill me with their babbling. I wished I could make out words. Put some sense - real sense not simply assumed or felt - into their utterings. It was a pointless effort.

Four years later, I slept. Not just a nap or a restless rest - no, it was a full on, night-through slumber.

But that was after I'd found the little girl.