The aroma of cooking permeated the air in the kitchen.
In the frying pan, eggs had begun to congeal and hiss like a nest of basilisks and like every other morning, Susan Cooper wondered why there was no sunshine.
Humming in a lively tone that suggested nonchalance, she struggled nonetheless to hide her discomfort, that all too familiar but consistantly alien feeling that something was badly wrong. She had experienced that same sensation every morning for as long as she could remember and knew that by midday it would disappear, only to return as soon as consciousness did the following morning.
The gloom that filled the kitchen in the absence of sunshine did nothing to allay her fears and she turned to gaze out of the only window in the room. The sky was blue, the sea beyond the cliff-edge shimmering and reflecting a fragmented white-hot path cast by a sun that, inexplicably seemed to have been deleted from the sky, the picture-perfect scene marred by the exclusion of the most natural of it`s properties. Susan frowned and craned her neck toward the window to see if the sun had simply moved out of view. She knew it hadn`t and the inevitable confirmation of this bizarre truth was interrupted by a sudden shuffling sound behind her. Startled, she spun around.
Her daughter, Karen, stood there dressed in her comically ill-fitting flannel robe, head cocked slightly to one side, hair in tangles, eyeing her curiously. Susan smiled feebly.
“Morning, sweetie.”
Karen stared at her a moment. “You okay ?”
Susan nodded slowly. “Of course, you startled me, that`s all.”
Seeming to shrug off the responsibility of whatever had possessed her mother, Karen pulled back a chair and slowly slid into it. “Smells nice in here.”
“Sure does, baby,” Susan answered and turned back to the stove, glad of her daughter`s company while that latent fear coiled in her stomach. She was growing to hate this place, with it`s curious eternal half-light and drab decor; but it was all they had left since Edward had left them. If only that sonofabitch experienced half of the misfortune she imagined for him. Him and his little aspiring actress tramp.
At least she had Karen, the glue that kept her pieces in place.
Edward hadn`t proved overly eager to keep in touch with his daughter and for this, Susan was at turns both relieved and hurt. Karen had been a product of a good time in their marraige; a living symbol of their love and he had dropped her like a hot coal, content instead to persue lust and money and all the things he claimed Susan had denied him.
Susan grabbed a plate from the cupboard over the stove and wished she had smashed it into his face when she had had the chance. As she transferred eggs and bacon onto the plate, she noticed Karen watching her out of the corner of her eye.
“What is it baby ?”
She slid the plate before the child and dropped to her haunches to look her in the face.
Karen studied her carefully. “Do you think Daddy left because of me ?”
Susan frowned and placed a hand against the child`s cheek. “Oh honey, of course not. That`s silly. Daddy loves you. He and I just needed time apart, that`s all. He wanted to do other things.”
She had to try painfully to keep the bitterness out of her voice.
Karen nodded sombrely. “Do you hate Daddy for leaving us ?”
“Of course not,” Susan lied, “what would make you think such a thing ?”
Karen looked at her plate, deliberately averting her eyes from her mother`s.
“Erica says you`d like to kill Daddy.”
Susan`s heart skipped a beat and she licked her lips. The snake tightened itself around her guts.
“Karen, look at me.”
Her daughter obediantly complied, a great sadness evident in her eyes at the possibility of there being any truth to ‘Erica`s’ words.
“That`s rediculous, Karen. I would never do anything like that, to anyone, especially your father.”
Again, Karen looked away. “Erica says you`ve dreamed of killing him.”
Shocked, her hands beginning to tremble, overwhelmed by rage and shame at having her darkest thought shared with her daughter, Susan got to her feet and put her hands on her hips.
“Karen, who is this ‘Erica’? Is she one of the girls at school ?”
The child fingered a sliver of bacon and then gazed almost shamefully at her mother.
“She`s my friend.”
Susan chewed her lower lip, eyes wide. “Listen carefully to me, Karen. Little girls don`t say things like that about their friend`s mothers and don`t you believe them either. I want you to stay away from this ‘Erica’, she`s a nasty little girl and she`ll only make trouble for you.”
Karen`s eyes brimmed with tears and it was only then that Susan realised that she`d been shouting. She shook her head and wiped a hand over her face. “Listen, Karen,” she said softly, dropping back down to face the child, “whatever this child said to you is not true, okay, I promise and she`s a bad child for saying them, so you`d be better off keeping away from her.”
A sob escaped the child as the tears ran from her eyes. “I can`t stay away from her, Mom.”
Susan put her hands on the child`s shoulders. “Why not, honey ? Does she bully you ?”
Karen`s breath caught and emerged shakily as she shook her head.
“Then why ? Why can`t you stay away from her ?”
The child blinked away fresh tears. “Because she`s everywhere.”
“Honey, I don`t understand.”
The breakfast, cold and forgotten had been pushed away as Susan took a seat opposite her crying daughter.
The introduction of the child Karen had called ‘Erica’ had filled her with a sense of dread that had surpassed that crawling sensation of ‘wrongness’ that greeted her every morning. And worse still, this fear had a name.
Karen wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her robe.
“Please don`t be mad.”
Susan raised her eyes placatingly. “Honey, I`m not mad at you, just tell me about Erica.”
The request seemed to instill a sudden composure in the child, as if she were being given a second chance to sell her friend to her mother from a more positive angle. She almost smiled.
“She`s very clever. She knows lots of stuff that I don`t.”
“Such as ?”
Karen looked toward the window. “She knows where the sun hides.”
Susan felt her temples begin to ache as the snake began to uncoil and seethe inside her.
“Where-where does it hide ?”
Karen looked squarely at her mother. “She said you lost it.”
Clenching her fists beneath the table and struggling to regain her mask of composure, Susan swallowed and smiled at her daughter. She wondered if her daily dose of irrational panic was in some inexplicable way connected the mysterious child who seemed to know the answers to the questions that haunted her. Who the hell was Erica ?
“How can you lose the sun, Karen ?”
Karen shrugged innocently. “Dunno.”
“What else did she tell you ?”
Karen`s face contorted with the effort of recollection, her eyes puffy and red with the memory of weeping. After a moment she said cheerfully. “She`s going to get us out of here.”
Susan raised an eyebrow. “To go where ?”
The child nodded toward the window. “Where the sun is.”
Amidst the anger that swelled in Susan`s chest, terror seized her heart. How did Erica know the fears that gripped her heart ? And why were the answers in some way familiar ? It was as if she were being fed clues to a mystery she had already solved and forgotten. She had to know who this girl was.
“Did she tell you where the sun hides, Karen ?”
Karen giggled. “She said it`s behind your face.”
Susan frowned. Riddles. And yet-
“You know how silly that sounds, don`t you ?”
Karen nodded.
“Where does Erica live ?”
The throbbing in her head was growing worse and phantom dust motes had begun to swim across her eyes. The naked light bulb over her head seemed to dim for a moment as Karen spoke.
“She lives everywhere.”
Her mother squinted, trying to dispel the pain that grew inside her head. “How can she live everywhere ?”
Karen leaned forward and touched Susan`s wrist. “Mom, are you okay ?”
Susan nodded quickly. “J-just a headache.”
This was a lie. The inside of her head had caught fire as a million nails pounded into her brain. She was in sudden agony but yet did not fear the pain. It was familiar.
Karen continued. “I don`t know, but she says I`m the only one who can see her for now.”
Susan nodded, suddenly understanding and the motion felt like moving her head through tar. “She`s your imaginary friend ?”
Karen pondered this. “No, she`s real. She plays with me.”
Susan gritted her teeth and prayed for the pain to abate.
So Erica was a figment of Karen`s imagination. That much at least was a relief but didn`t explain how Karen knew about her mother`s fears.
“She wants to help you, you know,” the child whispered conspiratorily as if afraid she might be overheard. Susan raised her head and opened her eyes just enough to see the blur of her daughter`s face through the black dust inside her eyes. “Help me ?”
Karen pointed at the pine-framed mirror on the wall to her left. “Erica says the sun is behind your face.”
Susan stared at the mirror, the excruciating pain threatening to steal away her consciousness and suddenly an awareness that had been hiding in the belly of that hateful snake revealed itself to her at last. It deadened the blows of the weapons in her head and she slowly levered herself up from the table with the palms of her hands and worked toward the mirror, Karen watching intently.
She looked at her reflection, her eyes sunken and devoid of life, her skin sallow and pallid, her long wavy hair iron gray and greasy. In the reflection she saw a life of agony, stark in contrast to the face of her daughter in the glass; rosy cheeked and alive.
And then Karen began to fade.
And through the glass Susan saw them.
And clarity came.
“It`s almost as if she`s looking at us,” Campbell said, with a trace of sadness in his voice. He was standing less than a foot away from the two-way mirror, his arms folded, a clipboard caught between them. Behind him, examining a machine that vomited medical readings stood Dr. Albert King, a tall imposing man dressed in a white labcoat that accentuated his muscular frame. The flourecent lights over his head reflected off his shiny hairless dome of a head.
“If that`s a hint of regret I detect in your voice Alex, it is seriously misplaced.”
Dr. Alex Campbell continued to study Susan. “I`m just saying, it looks as if she can see me or that she knows we`re here.”
King scoffed. “If we shone a 5,000 watt lightbulb through that glass, she wouldn`t see it.”
Campbell nodded slowly and frowned. “Still. It`s as if she`s figured out we`re in here and correct me if I`m wrong, but that`s not in keeping with her delusion.”
King tutted in annoyance and walked over to Campbell.
“Alex, the woman in that room murdered her husband and child in cold blood. With the help of the drug I created, she has created a whole world inside that room that nothing can interfere with. When we look into that room,” he said, pointing at the glass,” we see a table and chairs and four bare walls with a window painted on; she sees the kitchen of her former home and sits at that cheap table every morning to have breakfast with her dead child. If she ever doubted the authenticity of her reality, believe me, she`d be biting her wrists open right now. Shattering the illusion in any way, especially as far under as she`s in now, would almost certainly kill her.”
Campbell sighed. “How long more do you think she`ll survive ?”
King looked at the woman staring through the glass. He could understand Campbell`s concern. She certainly did appear to be staring at them. He himself was concerned, but not for the same reasons that his colleague was. He suspected that Campbell had developed an attachment to the patient over the six years they had been using her as a test subject (thank you overcrowded prisons) and would be glad to see her released from the compound. King, however was more concerned with optimising the effects of the experimental drug Exxinimorphine 200. If successful in reinventing and shaping the memories, mannerisms and imaginations of disturbed and mentally challenged subjects, he would no longer be looked on as a charlatan of his profession; his name would be synonymous with one of the greatest advance in the history of psychotherapy. He almost pitied Campbell; a good man but a doctor who would never be anything more than a common practise psychiatrist because of his devotion to ethics.
“She`s a strong one Alex,” King said flatly, “there`s plenty of life in her yet.”
Campbell sighed as King clapped him on the shoulder and then cried out in surprise. He saw a little girl standing behind Susan in the other room. No, not in the other room. She was a reflection and she was in their room. King followed Campbell`s gaze as he spun around and neither of them believed what they saw.
In the stark clinical drabness of the observation room, a little blond girl in a red dress stood watching them by the door.
King spoke first in that authoratative voice of his that commanded respect. “How did you get in here little girl ? This is no place for you to be ? Where are your parents ?”
Campbell tore his eyes away from the girl and looked behind him.
Susan was smiling at him through the glass. At least, it looked that way.
He wondered what King was wasting his time with questions for. There was no way the girl could have got into the compound. There was no way for anyone other than staff and security to get in.
“She wants the sun back, Dr.King,” the little girl said in a sweet but oddly mature voice. Campbell turned back to study her.
“What did you say ?” he asked.
The girl turned her gaze on him. Her eyes were almost opaque.
“I said she wants the sun back. You forgot to paint it on the wall.”
King and Campbell exchanged baffled looks.
“Uh..who are you little girl ?” King asked, sounding worried.
“My name is Erica,” she replied, smiling sweetly.
King took a step toward her and she side-stepped, revealing the rusty red cannister she`d been blocking from their view.
King stopped dead in his tracks and nervously licked his lips.
“This is fucking insane,” he muttered and glanced briefly over his shoulder at Campbell, whose face had drained of colour.
“You let her make up her own world and you thought you could control what she put into it. Sometimes what your imagination creates can kill you….or others.”
Campbell`s mind raced. The sight of this innocent-looking girl in a remote testing compound in the middle of the Nevada desert, speaking of things she couldn`t possibly know anything about, terrified him. Terrified him because he was beginning to understand where she came from.
“Time to give the sun back,” the girl whispered and one of the last thoughts to occur to the doctors was of how she had made the cannister fly into the air without touching it. The liquid inside the cannister soaked the observation room and the two men in it, blinding them both.
King screamed and dropped to his knees as Campbell tried to feel his way toward the door; the acrid smell of petroleum burning his nostrils. He heard a crack, a sizzle.
As Erica struck the match.
Employees at the underground testing facility discovered the charred bodies of Dr. Campbell and Dr. King later that evening.
Medical personnel and police officials were at a loss to explain what exactly had happened. To the naked eye and indeed to the medical examiner, it appeared as if the men had been set on fire, but no cause for this had been determined; no combustible liquids or substances, nor where there any signs of a fire apart from the corpses, no smoke stains or traces of immense heat.
Suspicion fell on Susan Cooper; but no attempt had been made to escape from her room.
After the inquest, she was transferred to the Miriam`s Cove Home for the Criminally Insane.
Her sole request on admission was to be provided with a room with a window.
It was barred, but she didn`t mind this too much. That would change.
Karen and Erica would see to that.
The End