Part 1 to this story posted previously (here)
Leaning over the desk in the library and recalling a night half his lifetime ago, Mark shook his head, returning his mind to the problem at hand. Those memories of make believe held a special place in his mind, even though he had grown to see them as anything but real in the intervening years. Sure, Caroline had always been a trickster, but Mark could explain away any interventions of the invisible companion as tricks Carrie played on him, and on herself. She was good at that, Mark knew - losing the line between pretend and real, and she had the knack for helping others lose it too.
The
medications she was accused of being off, of course, were designed to
reduce this - to make her more “normal and stable”, which of course
meant “quiet and pliable”. They’d been prescribed to Caroline in the
sixth grade, but Mark knew that his little sister didn’t need them.
Sure, she was eccentric, but so was everyone, in their own way, and
Carrie had never been a threat or a bother to anyone. If one were to say
she was insane, it might also be said that she didn’t suffer from it,
but instead had learned to enjoy being herself without regard to what
other people thought.
A
wisp of a nostalgic smile on his face, Mark hunted about until he
located a piece of unused paper and a pen. “Carrie, Mom’s worried again.
Call me on my cell.” He wrote, then signed and dated the paper before
folding it and placing it neatly on the desk chair before he slid the
chair home. With any luck, Carrie would find it before some neat-freak
library aide tossed the note in a recycling bin. As he left, he felt a
slight chill, which he passed off as the work of the library’s air
conditioning.
Over
the next hour, Mark made a stop at each place that he knew Carrie
sometimes spent time, as well as several places suggested by her helpful
classmates. She was at none of them, and no-one Mark talked to had seen
Caroline all day. Annoyed, and damp at the repeated soakings in the
evening’s now-steady rain, Mark got into his car to start the long drive
home. He knew he’d have to stall his mother’s fears in the morning, and
come back over the weekend.
Before
he started the car, though, Mark remembered the book in his pocket.
Venting his annoyance, Mark dug out his pocketknife and reduced the
knotted ribbon to a dozen small pieces. Turning on the overhead light
against the encroaching evening and the rain, Mark opened the cover and
found the first page covered in Caroline’s neat, slanted handwriting. As
he read, Mark couldn’t help but imagine Caroline, hidden away somewhere
to write the words on the page.
It
wasn’t easy to gain access to the dormitory building’s flat roof, but
the effort had paid off in the end. Caroline sat leaning on the warm
chimney pipe to ward off the fall chill, and after a moment gazing out
over the road cutting through the middle of campus, pulled a little
blank notebook out of her pocket, a prize purchased in a recent trip to
the town bookstore.
“You
sure this will work?” She whispered, glancing around, finally locking
her gaze on a seemingly empty space nearby. She shrugged, as if receiving a positive
response, then took up her pen and opened the book to the first
page, lips moving slightly in tune with what she wrote.
Mark,
the contents of this little book are not to be taken lightly. Of
everyone, I know you are the last to think me insane, and I beg that you
continue through it even if what is written or what the writing asks of
you seems nothing but madness. Perhaps it is, but I don’t think so.
The
pages following contain instructions of a kind. For reasons that will
be later apparent, I ask that you read sequentially, and if something is
asked of you, that you do it before continuing. The purpose will likely
be wasted if you skip ahead.
You
once asked a question of a good friend of mine, and for years it went
unanswered. If you do as I have indicated, perhaps you’ll get your
answer. Please, try to keep an open mind, and trust me through the whole
process, Mark, and I expect you’ll see what the purpose of this is once
you get through even if you don’t see it on the way.
“There.” Caroline set the pen down and surveyed the page. If she was
right, that would get Mark’s attention, or at least pique his
considerable curiosity long enough for him to play along. “Now the
steps. Where do we start him?”
Mark paused before turning the page. Caroline could be cryptic at the
best of times, but this was on a level all its own. Instructions for
what, he wondered - usually when one read instructions it was to get to a
known goal state. Carrie clearly wanted Mark not to learn the end until
he got there, and it wasn’t worded like a game.
What was to stop him, though, from skipping all the way to the end and
figuring out what was going on? Sure, that’s not what Carrie wanted him
to do, but she wasn’t here to enforce that, was she? Mark’s fingers slid
down the stack of pages as he toyed with the idea.
No, he realized. Carrie was a fan of playing tricks, but she never
passed off a trick as something serious or vice versa, and the tone set
by the first page, if bizarre, was definitely serious. If Carrie thought
that this was not to be taken lightly, then Mark would play along, at
least for now. Shaking his head and wondering where that particular
resolution would drag him, Mark flipped the first page over.
There wasn’t much text on page 2. Go to my favorite nook in the library. It commanded. Once you’re there, you can read the next instruction, so remember to bring this book.
The rest of the lines on the page were blank. Mark blinked. Had he not
just been there? That desk held no clues as to Caroline’s location, or
for that matter much of anything else.
Sighing in frustration, Mark turned over the engine of his car and
headed back to the library. At least, he realized, he’d not waited to
read the book until he’d gotten home.
Mark pocketed the instructions again to protect them from the rain as
he dashed from his car to the building, again getting his clothes
thoroughly wet. The library would still be open for most of the night,
thankfully, as its hours were set decades before when students working
on projects had no choice but to pull data and references from its
catalogs and journals. Now, of course, all it seemed to do after
business hours was provide minimum wage to the idle student aides.
Back upstairs in moments, Mark half-expected his sister’s favorite
corner to have been altered, but it looked exactly as he left it. Not
sure what he was looking for, Mark flipped to page three of the book,
after appropriating a nearby blank note card to use as a bookmark.
Now that you’re at the desk in the library, Mark read in Caroline’s handwriting, sit there until you feel a chill down your spine. It will be noticeable.
Mark stopped reading, and blinked twice. What kind of an instruction was
that? Perhaps the rest of the paragraph would explain, he reasoned, and read on.
Yes,
I know that’s an odd instruction, Mark, but humor me. Perhaps if you
put your mind to it you can guess what is going on, but you must trust
me if you don’t. Once you feel the chill, go on to the next page. That’s
all it said. Mark, confused, regardless pulled out the chair and sat
down, his note crinkling under him, wondering what was going on. What
was a chill down his spine supposed to signify? Was he waiting for the
air conditioner’s cycle (which would imply a periodic event)? What else
might be going on?
That
his sister might really be losing her mind did occur to Mark, but he
discounted that. This wasn’t the work of a damaged mind - it had to be
the work of someone with vastly more information than he himself had.
That in itself made this little stunt classic Carrie.
“Checkmate.”
Ten-year-old Carrie flourished her wrist as she plunked the rook down
in a killing blow to Mark’s white king. It was summer, a hot day, but
with enough cold drinks the shade of the porch was a tolerable place to
sit and play. Their mother Lauren, not really paying attention, sat
reading a novel in the porch’s third chair.
With
a sigh, Mark flicked the piece over. This game, at least, he’d put up a
fight - about a third of the pieces in the box were Carrie’s. The
previous three she’d won easily. “What’s that, ten in a row?”
“Nine. You beat me with the trick play last Sunday.” Carrie reminded her older brother.
That
Mark, almost fifteen, consistently lost a game of strategy to his
younger sibling didn’t bother him as much as one would expect. Mark,
after all, knew that Carrie’s gift was having all the information, even
when she shouldn’t. At least their games of chess were over quickly and
Mark learned some new tricks from watching her play. That, and there was
nothing Mark was supposed to be hiding from Carrie. He had resolved
long ago not to play cards with her ever again. How she always knew his
what he had was a mystery, but somehow she always did.
After
the remaining pieces joined their compatriots in the plastic box, and
the board had been moved away, Carrie jumped out of her chair. “Mark,
come on!” She took a running jump off the edge of the porch and tumbled
along the sloped lawn, which elicited a stifled gasp followed by a
grumble from Lauren. This in turn pulled a bit of playful laughter from
Mark, who was always for a little tweaking of the sometimes-overbearing
parent.
After
a look of ice daggers was directed in his direction, Mark decided he
was better off joining Carrie, farther away from his mother. He jumped
after her, but managed to land on his feet with only a little help from
his fingertips. Carrie, though, was already tearing off behind the
house, up toward the thin stand of trees between their yard and the one
behind it. Despite the heat, Mark followed, his lanky-teenager lope
easily catching up to the smaller girl’s sprint.
As
soon as they were in the backyard, Carrie stopped, and sat down in the
patchy grass at the edge of the trees. “There.” She said, only a little
winded. “Mommy doesn’t like it when I talk about Rozzie.” Caroline
lowered her voice to a semi-sarcastic whisper. “She said I wasn’t
allowed to have invisible friends anymore.” As soon as those words had
been spoken, she started laughing, as if it was the most absurd thing in
the world.
Mark made a face. He would protest his mother trying to control who his visible
friends were, and controlling potentially imaginary ones sounded
patently absurd. Mark wasn’t sure that Carrie’s imaginary companion
existed, but wasn’t yet old enough to consider it out of the question.
An invisible pair of eyes would after all explain why Caroline was so
good at cards, among other things. Still, regardless of whether there
really was a Rozzie, he didn’t see any way their mother could actually
enforce anything. “Carrie, she can’t do anything about Rozzie.” Mark
pointed out.
“Rozzie
said that too, but she said that if I wanted her gone, she’d go.”
Carrie shrugged her shoulders. “What do you think, Mark?”
“Carrie, I think you shouldn’t let her control who you are friends with. I don’t.”
Carrie considered this. “But when your friends are around, Mommy can see them.”
Mark
chuckled. “That’s why you’re luckier, Carrie.” Caroline hadn’t really
ever had friends at school - it wasn’t that she was a pariah, but she
just kept a distance from other girls, and at her age, boys and girls
enforced their own segregation of friendships.
“But I should pretend Rozzie isn’t around when Mommy can see, right?” Carrie asked.
“If
you want.” Mark shrugged. “I might keep on just because. That’s for you
to decide.” Mark knew Carrie already kept her somewhat bizarre behavior
to a minimum at school, at least around her teachers.
Mark
stopped, though, and squinted. Why would Carrie say that she would have
to “pretend” that Rozzie wasn’t around if Rozzie was imaginary? Could
she just imagine that Rozzie wasn’t around?
“What?” Carrie giggled at the confused expression on teenaged Mark’s face.
“I
dunno. Is Rozzie always around?” Mark asked. He was sure he’d asked
this question before, back when he had little doubt that Rozzie was a
real girl that followed Carrie around, but he didn’t remember the
answer.
Carrie made a face, as if Mark was crazy. “Nobody’s around all the time. Rozzie goes away sometimes, but she always comes back.”
Mark
asked the next logical question. “Where does she go?” Where, he
wondered, does an imaginary person go when they aren’t being imagined?
Carrie looked around, and apparently not seeing anything, leaned in conspiratorially. “I’m not supposed to tell you.”
Mark was really curious now. For the time being, he was willing to suppose Rozzie existed. “Why let that stop you?”
Carrie
looked around again then leaned in further, practically whispering in
her brother’s ear. “She goes to another place. A - ” She jerked away
suddenly, standing up and folding her arms innocently behind her back.
Mark jumped to his feet, but though he spun around he saw no-one. A cold
feeling began in his gut and crept up his spine.
“No-othing.”
Carrie said suddenly, in her best innocent tone, as if responding to a
question. Mark fancied that it was “What are you doing?” He was about to
ask who she was talking to (it was clear it wasn’t him), but realized
that the only person it could be was Rozzie. Folding his arms, he did
his best to find any evidence of an invisible person - depressions in
the grass, wavy distortions in the air, anything. Needless to say this
effort failed.
“Maybe...”
Carrie stretched the one word, hedged answer to no question. Mark
guessed that the implied question was something like “Were you about to
tell him something secret?”
Carrie’s shoulders drooped. “Aww. Can I tell him you said that?”
Mark,
on a whim, stepped up beside his sister, facing the way she faced, and
dived forward. Mark caught nothing save the air, but halfway to a face
plant in the sparse grass he was pretty sure he felt that cold feeling
again.
Carrie,
imagined (or at least invisible) berating forgotten, fell over
backwards, shaking with laughter. After almost a minute of her laughing,
which Mark spent extracting grass seed and dirt from his eyebrows,
Caroline regained enough composure to speak breathlessly. “Right through
Rozzie... Mark... that was... was really dumb. Were you really trying
to... to grab her?”
Mark
shrugged sheepishly. “If she’s invisible, I thought, maybe I’d learn if
she’s real without my eyes.” He chuckled a little. “She really is
imaginary?”
Carrie looked at her older brother with an expression that would have
been a better fit if their ages were reversed. “No. She’s not invisible
either, or even I couldn’t see her.” Her tone indicated that Carrie
considered this elementary, like the fact that one plus one is two.
“Then...” Mark paused. “Why can’t I see her or touch her?”
Carrie looked off to the side for a moment, as if listening to someone
else speak. When she finally turned back to Mark, it was with a slightly
disappointed look. “I can’t tell you everything. And the part I can
tell you is the boring part.”
Mark judged that for Carrie to say something like that the most
important parts were to be left out, but his curiosity had to be sated.
“Better than nothing.”
“Rozzie is from somewhere... else. When she’s there, she’s not here at
all, but she can leave there and come almost all the way here, to where
we are. But she can’t make it all the way here. Just almost. And you
can’t touch something that isn’t all the way here.”
Mark frowned in confusion. What was Carrie talking about? “There” and
“here” meant little to him. He tried to suppose that “here” was wherever
Carrie was, but then where was Rozzie’s “there”?
“Told you it was the boring part.” Carrie rolled her eyes. “Rozzie says it’s bad for you if you know more.”
Mark nodded, though he understood nothing. “Wait, but you know?”
Carrie shrugged. “Rozzie tells me some.” She looked up to Mark. ”Oh,
Rozzie says part of me isn’t all the way here either. It’s why I can see
her.” Caroline whirled suddenly, as if responding to an accusation.
“What? You didn’t say anything about that part.”
Mark shook his head. “I don’t understand. Can you tell me anything else, or will Rozzie be angry?”
Carrie looked off toward the place Rozzie presumably was. “Umm. She
says I can tell you that she’s pretty sure all of you is here.”
Mark wasn’t making any headway, but soldiered on through the confusing
puzzle Caroline had put in front of him. “How does she know that?”
Carrie listened to nothing patiently for several seconds before
answering, either continuing the charade or really listening to
something. “She says that you would have felt something when you tried
to grab her if you weren’t.”
Mark frowned. “I did feel something little. A cold feeling, like...”
Carrie interrupted before he could finish. “Like an ice cube spider climbing up your insides?”
Mark had to chuckle at the bizarre analogy. “Yeah. Like that. That mean something?”
Caroline
looked away for a moment, then back. “Rozzie won’t tell me, so I don’t
know. But I get those all the time.” She wiped her forehead, as if
suddenly noticing the day’s heat. “Sorry, I can’t tell you all the good
stuff. Come on, I saw Mom put more popsicles in the freezer.”
The
mention of popsicles didn’t entirely put the strange conversation out
of Mark’s mind, but after days not making sense of it, he decided it was
probably nothing worth worrying about.
Story continues in part 3 (here).
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