Part 2 to this story posted previously (here)
Mark had just gotten to the library a few minutes prior - now he was leaving? Things made less and less sense, even when the inexplicable request about his car door was ignored.
Of course, a part of Mark’s mind pointed out, this entire process made a good deal more sense if Carrie’s old imaginings were assumed real. He wasn’t quite able to take that leap, though - imaginary friends and fictional places inexplicably different from here were ridiculous things to consider factual.
With a scowl and a resigned sigh, Mark put the book back in his pocket and headed for the stairs. That Caroline was treating this as a serious matter was about all that kept Mark from shoving the item in his glove box and leaving it there until he finally tracked down Caroline - that and the growing suspicion that Caroline would keep herself reasonably impossible to find until he did whatever these steps were supposed to accomplish. The rain had lightened a little, it seemed, since Mark had gone inside, so he didn’t get too much more wet dashing to his car, unlocking the passenger’s door, and getting inside.
After thirty seconds’ worth of halfhearted shuffling through his glove compartment, during which he felt another one of those strange but unmistakable cold feelings, Mark closed the passenger door and shifted uncomfortably over to the driver’s seat to avoid having to go back into the rain. That done, he once again dug out the little book, and flipped to the next page.
If you’ve gotten this far, Mark, you’re probably wondering what all this is about. I can’t tell you, but I encourage you to think about it a great deal - perhaps you’’ve already figured out where this is going by yourself. At this point there’s no reason for you to stay around campus - go ahead and go home. Rest assured, you won’t find me around college for the time being.
Mark shrugged to himself in annoyance. So that was how it was going to be, as he had already suspected. Caroline had gotten it into her head that he had to do whatever this was he was doing without her help. He started the car, wondering what he’d tell his mother when she inevitably called to check if he’d seen to Carrie. It might be easier, he realized, to just lie to her, say that he’d not been able to check on Carrie yet. True, that would make his would-be puppet-master mother rather angry with him, but if he said he couldn’t find Carrie his mother would probably panic and do something stupid, like reporting Caroline as a missing person when something different was going on.
Then there was still the problem of the instructions. Mark decided to suppose for the sake of trying to figure things out that the cold feeling was, as Carrie had once implied, the result of some interaction with an invisible entity of some kind. If that was the case, then that entity could reasonably be assumed to be in the car with him.
Mark’s skin crawled a little, until he forcibly dismissed the notion. Carrie’s imagination was compelling, but it didn’t create autonomous invisible people, he told himself. That sort of thing was impossible. Of course, he had no other operable theory on how Caroline could predict (or perhaps cause) those cold feelings, so it was still the best theory. Well, the best theory besides the one where Caroline was crazy, but Mark didn’t want to believe that either.
Mark got on the road and headed for the highway which would take him home, stopping only to fill up the gas tank of his car. He deliberately tried not to think about the little book or its instructions until his car was cruising down the long stretch of interstate that would get him home. The rain had eased up for the time being, but the clouds remained, and as the sun set behind them the evening deepened into a damp, cool night. Besides the occasional slower-moving trucker, Mark had the road more or less to himself.
Relaxing his mental block, he supposed for the time being that Carrie’s “imagined” companion was real all along. Logically, he thought, what would that mean? Well for one, it didn’t mean that Carrie’s imagination actually created things - the entity could have already existed, and all that made Carrie special would have been the ability to see it. It would also mean that this entity was either incapable of or unwilling to cause harm to him or Carrie, as it would have had their whole childhood to do so.
“So you won’t or can’t hurt us.” Mark muttered, not really paying attention at first to the fact that he was speaking aloud. After all, he was still supposing - he didn’t really believe any of where this train of thought was going. “That’s some comfort.” He only belatedly remembered that under that line of thought, the intangible being in question was sitting next to him, and that he remembered Carrie saying something about her invisible companion hearing and seeing things more or less normally.
As if to confirm his supposition, the cold feeling returned briefly. Mark’s skin crawled, and he took his eyes briefly off the road to look at the “empty” passenger seat. Nothing jumped out of the air at him, though: it still looked empty. After all, he reminded himself, that was all supposition. The cold feeling was in all probability more psychological than anything else - something like the shiver of fear one experiences in frightening or unnerving situations.
After a few miles of telling himself this, Mark even managed to make himself go back to believing it.
As soon as Mark got home, he got out of his car, and stood there, debating whether or not to open the passenger-side door. Carrie’s instruction book had said nothing to this effect, so he decided after several moments to just close the driver’s door and go inside, up to his apartment. The elevator was on the ground floor, but he elected instead to take the stairs. He tried and failed to convince himself that this had nothing to do with the book in his coat pocket.
Mark opened the apartment’s door, and once again felt that cold, familiar feeling. He jumped as if stung, and darted inside, closing the door behind him before he realized how ridiculous this whole thing was. He’d let Carrie get into his head again - she’d always demonstrated the ability to manipulate Mark, usually in good fun, at a whim. She now had him jumping at shadows, he realized, just from words on a page - this had to be a joke.
But Mark remembered the serious tone on the first page again, and knew it wasn’t, or at least it wasn’t all. There was a grain of something Carrie thought was important in all of this, and he had to find it, probably by playing her games for the time being.
The apartment was dark, and Mark used the light of his cell phone screen to turn on the tiny bar/table’s overhead light and pull up a stool. He laid the book on the counter and stared at it for almost a minute before he put a thumbnail to the index card bookmark and opened it again, turning to page six.
All right, supposing you’ve stayed with this so far, you get a little explanation. Years ago, you asked a friend of mine a question which went unanswered, but has not been forgotten. If you follow this to the end, she’s willing to answer it in person, but if you don’t then you’ll probably mess it up for good.
Mark frowned. She was playing on his curiosity and this -
Yeah, I’m playing on your curiosity, and yes, I’ll bet you resent that a little. Sorry, but it’ll be clear in the end. Probably. But I promise you’ll get your explanation if you play along.
Upon reading this, Mark put a hand to his forehead. Carrie’s book practically answered his thoughts as he had them - who else could ever pull a stunt like this off? With a chuckle, Mark looked down to the next paragraph, expecting more instructions.
Chances are good you have work tomorrow, and that by now it is late. The last section read. Turn to the next page when you have a good-sized block of free time - say, five hours.
Mark looked at the time on his cell phone - it was almost midnight. How, he wondered, had Carrie thought of all of this? She was good, but this was uncanny. It was almost like she was writing each page as he completed the previous one.
Reluctantly, Mark got ready for bed, but despite leaving the book on the counter and locking the bedroom door he felt uneasy about his sister’s little steps. There was something about the whole thing that made him wonder if he wanted to know.
Of course, he very much wanted to know. Caroline would have known that he would.
The dream was vivid, mildly pleasant, and action-packed, but it dissolved at the first jagged beep of Mark’s cell phone alarm. He spent the next four beeps collecting himself, simultaneously wishing that the dream would continue and wondering what it was about to make him wish that. All he could remember was an attractive, redheaded woman, a castle, and snatches of what seemed to him like an action film, but even that was uncertain by the time Mark reached out for the shutoff button. If the rather surreal events of the night prior had produced any troublesome nightmares, he did not recall them.
During Mark’s morning routine, the little book lay shut on the counter. Funny, he suddenly thought as he left the apartment for work - he had thought he’d left it open. With a shrug, though, Mark turned on the part of his mind that dealt with work matters and headed off.
“Mark, Carrie’s just growing up.” Lauren said slowly, as if Mark were a stupid kid. Darnit, he fumed, he was fifteen now and by all indications a bright kid, and didn’t need the patronizing tone anymore. This was serious, why would no-one else treat it that way? “She’s learning to live with us, in the real world.”
Mark shook his head. “No, Mom, she’s not. You’ve done something.” Carrie was just a few weeks shy of eleven, and Mark hadn’t failed to notice her suddenly-subdued personality, which tended to be most subdued right after breakfast and dinner.
“Done something?” Lauren huffed. “Of course. I’ve raised her as best I can since your father died, and it looks like that’s finally taking hold.”
Mark balled his fists. “Mom, cut the crap. You’ve - ”
A stinging blow to the side of his face cut him off. “Don’t you ever talk to me like that, young man!” Lauren screeched. her hand raised and trembling with rage in case she decided Mark needed to be slapped again. “Next time I hear you take that tone I’ll...” Mark toned out the rest of the self-righteous diatribe, nodding subserviently at the right points, but inside formulating a plan. His mother would not tell him what she’d done, but Mark had a suspicion. As soon as he was able, Mark slunk off, making for the kitchen.
Lauren’s vitamin cabinet was better stocked than the adjacent spice cabinet, due to her incessant desire to regain her long-faded youth through modern science and pseudoscience, and for almost a year now Mark and Carrie had been, without their prior consent, put on a vitamin regimen of their own, recommended by the loud guy on TV for growing adolescents to keep them healthy and hormonally balanced. By now, three pills with breakfast and two with dinner was pretty routine - and Mark hadn’t really had anything to say that he hadn’t benefited from them. After all, he hit his growth spurt about two months into the regimen, and his mother had taken that as proof the pills worked.
The vitamin cabinet was locked, but Mark’s little pocket knife slipped the catch fairly easily. He quietly eased the cabinet open, expecting at any second for his mother to shout a sanctimonious “What on earth do you think you are doing!?” from behind him. But in ten seconds, the cabinet was open without repercussion.
Mark scanned the double sea of brown glass and white plastic caps for a moment, feeling lost. Most of these, he knew, were for his mother’s current regimen, or for one of her dozen-odd previous regimens - where were the bottles for the kids’?
After opening several of the front bottles Mark located two whose contents matched the tablet-like pills that he recognized - both himself and Carrie had two of those at breakfast and one at dinner. The label was scientific gobbledygook, and he ignored it, continuing the hunt.
That’s when Mark noticed the bottle at the back, which wasn’t made of brown glass. It was white plastic, opaque, with one of those annoying “child-proof” lids. Reaching in, Mark pulled it out. The label, like the others, was mostly illegible, but this was no vitamin - the label displayed “FOR PRESCRIPTION USE ONLY” in large, unfriendly letters. There was a warning on the back about taking more than one pill at a time, and a list of side effects which was rather frightening. Mark didn’t know what it was, but he knew that if it was his mother’s it would be in the medicine cabinet where it belonged.
The screw-top lid not proof against his efforts, Mark spilled one pill into his hand. It was ovoid, gray, small. He knew what it was immediately - the “new brand” of Carrie’s “suppliment for growing girls.” Lauren, Mark could prove, was lying to Carrie about the “vitamins.” He wasn’t sure if what he knew was illegal, but he knew it was wrong. Carrie wasn’t even eleven, true, but Mark knew she was just as bright as himself, if not brighter, and that she should be party in a decision to use powerful pharmaceuticals (what else could have that long a list of side effects?) to change her mind.
Mark watched carefully out of the corner of his eye as his mother removed a pill from the white bottle and put it in the little cup marked “C” for “Caroline” - he noted that she did it last, after even her own cup full of pills (a dozen at least) had been laid out.
As usual, Mark set himself at the table next to Carrie’s place setting, and she eventually came down, hair mussed into a tangled halo, still yawning and rubbing her eyes. Groggily, she sat near the waffles, and started abstractedly digging in.
Mark, deciding that it was now or never, sprung into action, though from outward appearances he didn’t do anything. Looking out the window toward the trees beyond the backyard, Mark did a fake double-take. “Is that a hawk?”
Carrie perked up. “Ooh!” She dashed to the window to look out. She’d always been drawn to birds, hawks and falcons especially - and such birds of prey were occasionally seen around the house. “Where, Mark?”
He stepped up behind her and put his hands on his younger sister’s shoulders. Underneath his left hand, he crinkled a little slip of paper against her shirt. “Right over there.” He pretended to steer Carrie in one specific direction. “Oh, no, I think it took off. It was on that branch right... there.” Mark pointed toward the highest branches of an arbitrary tree.
Carrie’s head drooped. “Aww, man.” She batted Mark’s hands off, but in the process of doing so grabbed the slip of paper. They’d passed notes to keep their mother in the dark before, but it had been some time - Mark had been worried she’d misinterpret the gesture. Mark stepped back, and went back to his cold cereal, not even letting himself look toward his sister to see if she read his little note.
If Lauren noticed her children’s sleight of hand, she did not mention it, and within minutes breakfast was done, vitamins were taken, and Carrie and Mark were shooed out the door toward the bus stop. It was chilly, but not really cold - all they had on against the weather was hooded sweatshirts.
As soon as Mark and Carrie were around the hedges at the corner, Mark broke the silence. “Carrie, did you read the note?” He asked.
Caroline looked at him funny. “Of course.“ She held open her hand, to reveal a small gray pill wedged between her index and middle fingers. “What is it?”
“I don’t know. But it’s strong stuff. Prescription.” Mark replied. He assumed Carrie would understand the word, and was proven right.
“I have been feeling... odd lately.” Carrie nodded. “Seeing Roz less and less.” She held up the pill. “There are times when she is just unbearable.” Caroline’s tone mocked the one both kids had heard Lauren use to describe Carrie’s behavior to another parent at a school function once.
“I don’t know what to do, Carrie. You can’t keep taking them. You’re... not my little sister when you do.” Mark felt uncomfortable admitting it, but over the previous few weeks, he’d missed Carrie, though in a way she was never gone.
“I can’t stop taking them entirely” Carrie replied. “The doctor will notice.”
Carrie referred to the mysterious Dr. Halwicz, who Mark had heard of but never seen or met. Carrie had two appointments with him a month, supervised by Lauren, where the doctor would apparently leave Carrie to her own devices in the room and speak only to Lauren about Carrie indirectly, as if the girl wasn’t even there.
“So... then what?” Mark asked. They were at the bus stop now.
“Then the week before we go to the doctor, I take the pills. The week after, I don’t.” Carrie replied. “Roz will understand. Mom will only try harder if she doesn’t win, and I can play stupid in the off weeks.”
Mark nodded. “Let me know if you need my help, Carrie. Mom’s... Well, she’s trying to change you, and she doesn’t have the right.” Mark patted his sister’s shoulder.
“I go to the doctor day after next, so I gotta take this one.” Carrie held up the gray pill with a scowl. “See you in a few days, Mark.”
The elder sibling turned away, unable to watch her swallow the pill, that embodiment of everything about his mother that Mark could not stand. Before it could take effect, thankfully, Carrie’s bus came and took her away, and Mark was left alone at the bus stop.
Story continues in part 4 (here).
