“Erin, I need you to do something for me. I know you probably won’t like it, but I have to ask you anyway.”
They were in the kitchen having leftover lasagna and French bread for lunch. Erin had finished eating and was just drinking the last of her milk, but now she put down her glass and looked up at Kirchel warily. “What is it?”
Kirchel hesitated for a moment. “I want you to tell me exactly what it is you see in your hallucinations,” she said at last.
“I thought Mom already told you,” Erin said, frowning. “You said she told you everything she knew about them, and I told her what I saw.”
“All she told me was that you kept seeing a strange man who frightened you and that after a while you started to see a landscape with black rocks. I asked her for more details, but she said you wouldn’t tell her any more than that.”
Erin swallowed. Kirchel’s purple concoction had left her feeling peaceful and good humored after she had woken up, and she didn’t want to ruin the effect by having to think about Wraith.
“Do the details really matter?” she asked, a little crossly. “They’re just hallucinations, aren’t they?”
Kirchel raised her eyebrows. “What do you think?”
“Well, if they’re real, why can’t anyone else ever see them? You haven’t seen many black rocks or strange men in ragged clothes in your greenhouse lately, have you?”
“No,” Kirchel said evenly. “But whether he’s real or not, seeing this man has made the last few months of your life pretty miserable, and it nearly killed you on one occasion. So it seems best that we figure out what’s causing you to keep seeing him and his black rocks and make it stop, which is what I’m trying to help you do. But, as you said, you’re the only person who can see them, so you’re the only source I have for information about them.” She paused and looked at Erin, her expression softening. “I know it’s hard for you to talk about it. But I need to know as much as I can. Please, Erin.”
Erin hesitated. It was hard. But she knew Kirchel was trying to help her, and in spite of only knowing her cousin for a few days, Erin felt like it would be safe to talk to her.
“All right,” she said with a resigned sigh. “What do you want to know?”
“Well,” Kirchel said, “let’s start at the beginning. When did you first start seeing these things?”
“The day after the accident. I saw Wraith—that’s the strange man—walking past the door of my hospital room. Mom was with me, and I said something to her about him. She went to the doorway to look in the hall, but she couldn’t see anyone except a couple of nurses.”
“And you kept seeing him?”
“Yes.” Erin paused for a moment, remembering. “I saw him a few times in the halls and once outside in the parking lot. I only saw him briefly and usually at a distance, so I couldn’t really tell what he looked like—just that he had long dark hair and pale skin and that he was dressed in ragged clothes. I hadn’t realized yet that he didn’t look completely human. At first we thought he was just some weird guy coming to visit the hospital—maybe dressed in a costume for some reason. Dad said he saw a lot of strange people when he was working there. Derek and Jason were sure he was an escapee from the psychiatric ward for a while...until Dad reminded them that our hospital doesn’t have one.” Erin rolled her eyes at the memory of her brothers’ wild speculations. “It was Dad who first started calling him Wraith—just as a joke, because of his clothes and the fact that no one else in the family ever saw him.”
“And when did your father decide that he was just a hallucination?”
“After a couple of days. I was still in the hospital, and Dad was helping me practice walking with that huge brace I had to wear right after the surgery. We were going back and forth outside my room when I saw Wraith walking down the hall. It was the closest I’d ever seen him, and he just seemed to appear out of nowhere. It startled me enough that I lost my balance and fell.” Erin winced at the painful memory. “Right on my bad leg. It hurt like crazy, and I popped out half a dozen stitches. There was blood running down my leg and everything. It was awful.” She shivered slightly. “Dad wasn't working that day, but the hospital was pretty busy and there weren't a lot of other doctors around, so he ended up sewing me back together himself. He felt terrible for having let me fall, even though it really wasn’t his fault. I told him that Wraith had surprised me and made me lose my balance. Dad said he hadn’t seen anyone else in the hall, even though Wraith was right in front of us. That was when we figured out that no one else had seen him because no one else could see him.”
“I see.” Kirchel leaned forward, putting her elbows on the table and resting her chin on her clasped hands. “So the doctors decided that you were having hallucinations because of the pain medication, right?”
Erin nodded. “Dad and a couple of the other doctors talked it over and decided it had to be that. They thought it was kind of strange that I would keep having hallucinations of the same guy over and over, but they didn’t think it was anything very dangerous. I mean, lots of people hallucinate when they’re on strong painkillers. Dad said he had a patient last year who saw giant teddy bears walking around in his house. They thought if I was just aware of the fact that what I was seeing wasn’t real, I would be okay.”
“So, you kept taking the pain medication, and you kept seeing Wraith.”
“Right. I went home later that day, and I would see him around the house or out in the yard. Once I saw him along the road when I was in the car. And even during a couple of my physical therapy sessions.”
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“What was he doing when you saw him?”
Erin shrugged. “Walking usually. But sometimes he was just sitting or standing. And once or twice he was lying down—it looked like he was sleeping.”
Kirchel looked thoughtful. “How long was it before you started feeling frightened by him?”
“A little more than two weeks. Then the hallucinations started to get worse. I started to see the place with the black rocks and feel scared every time I saw Wraith.”
“What happened to make them get worse?” Kirchel asked, looking at Erin closely. “What changed? Why does Wraith frighten you now when he didn’t at first?”
Erin didn’t answer right away. She had already told Kirchel a great deal, and she wasn’t sure how much further she wanted to go. She also wasn’t sure how Kirchel would react to her answer. It was something she hadn’t told anyone yet. She stared down at her plate, which was smeared with tomato sauce and bits of cheese and noodle.
There was a long moment of silence before she spoke.
“I...I touched him.”
“Touched him?” Kirchel sounded surprised.
“Yes,” Erin said, looking up at her. “I touched him. He was in my room one night—for almost an hour, just sitting, holding his knees and staring at the floor. He looked…I don’t know. He looked like he was in pain or something. I finally went over to him. It was the first time I’d gotten really close to him. He didn’t seem to notice I was there at all—he never had before, either.” She stopped, shaking her head. “Dad had told me he was just a hallucination, that he wasn’t real. But he looked so…so…there, so solid.” She paused again, staring unseeingly at the empty lasagna pan in the middle of the table. “There’s a black mark on his forehead. Some kind of symbol. I had noticed it before that, but I hadn’t gotten a chance to look at it up close. I was standing in front of him, trying to see it through his hair, and then…I wasn’t really thinking about what I was doing…I just…reached out and touched it.”
Neither of them spoke for several seconds. Then Kirchel asked quietly, “And what happened? Could you feel him?”
“Yes,” Erin said slowly. “Yes, I felt him. It was just like touching a normal person, except that, right after I touched his skin, I felt….” She hesitated, closing her eyes in an effort to remember more clearly. “I can’t really describe it. It was a little like an electric shock, I guess, but...slower. Kind of a burning feeling. It didn’t hurt, really, just kind of knocked me back a step. But then Wraith….” She swallowed. “It looked like he felt it, too. He seemed surprised, and he looked up and seemed to see me for the first time. And when he looked at me….” Erin took a deep breath, willing herself to keep going. “It was like a wave of darkness came over me. All of a sudden I was terrified. I screamed and tried to get away from him, but I tripped over something and fell against the bed. When I looked back again, he was gone, and the fear and darkness left when he did.”
Kirchel was frowning. “Just what was it about him that frightened you?”
“I don’t know! That’s just it! I don’t know why he scares me. He just does.”
“Hmm….” Kirchel was silent for a moment. “Tell me what Wraith looks like. You said he didn’t look quite human, and you mentioned dark hair and white skin. What else?”
“Well, the skin’s not exactly white. It has kind of a greyish tinge to it. His hair’s black and goes down past his shoulders—not as long as mine, but close. And it’s all tangled and dirty. It looks like he hasn’t taken care of it for ages.”
“He doesn’t have a beard, though?”
Erin shook her head. “No, no facial hair. But he does have the black mark in the center of his forehead. It looks like a tattoo and is about the size of a half dollar, I think. His face is thin—well, all of him is thin. He looks really starved. You can see all the bones through the skin. His eyes are a kind of bluish-grey, and they’re a little slanted—sort of Asian-looking.” She shivered slightly, remembering how it felt to look into those eyes.
“You said he didn’t look human. Why was that—apart from the grey skin?”
“It’s the ears, mostly. They’re long and pointed, like a horse’s.”
Kirchel looked rather interested in this bit of information. “How long are they?”
“Almost twice as long as a human ear, I think.” Erin said, watching her cousin curiously. “Why?”
“I just want to make sure I’ve got all the details straight,” Kirchel said with a shrug. “About how tall would you say he is?”
“It’s hard to tell exactly. He looks a little shrunken because of being so thin, but I would guess he’s around six feet.”
“Interesting…” Kirchel said slowly. She looked deep in thought. “And tell me about this place with the black rock. Is it black like volcanic rock?”
“Yes, quite a lot like that,” Erin said, nodding. “And that’s pretty much all there is in that place—black rock and wind. The wind blows constantly, and it’s as cold as ice. There’s usually a lot of thick, dark fog, too. I know that doesn’t make sense—there shouldn’t be wind and fog. But they’re both there. What I can see of the sky is a brownish-grey, not that much lighter than the ground. There are a few dead-looking trees and shrubs here and there. I’ve seen a couple of pools and a stream, too, but what little water there was in them was dark and slimy. I’ve never seen any animals there or people other than Wraith. The whole place just feels dark and horrible.” She shivered again and looked at Kirchel with some apprehension. “Is there anything else you want to know?”
Kirchel shook her head. "That's enough for now." She still had her chin on her hands, and she stayed in that position for a minute or two, staring thoughtfully into space. Then she stood abruptly and started pacing around the kitchen, hands on her hips, muttering to herself.
“Kirchel?” Erin said tentatively after several minutes. “Do you know what it all means?”
Kirchel stopped pacing and turned to look at her. “You want the truth?”
“I guess so,” Erin said, bracing herself for the worst.
Kirchel sank back down into her chair with a heavy sigh. “The truth is I don’t know what any of it means. I just can’t quite make the pieces fit together. And I’ve never heard of anyone matching Wraith’s description or anyplace full of nothing but black rock and wind.” She looked apologetically at Erin’s disappointed face and then gave her an encouraging smile. “But just because I don’t know doesn’t mean we can’t find out.” She seemed to consider for a moment and then stood up again, glancing at the clock on the wall over the stove. “Would you mind clearing off the table for me? You can just put the dirty dishes in the sink. I need to go make a call.”