Breathless and covered in blood, that’s how he woke. And behind his eyelids, five men smiled at him.
“Who’s there with you?” she repeated patiently and insistently, refusing to give an inch.
“My men.”
She smiled and cocked her head. She didn’t write, didn’t move. She didn’t say a single fucking word. She just sat and waited.
Waiting, waiting, waiting for grief to hit? For emotion to sweep him under and force the words out? For anger to pour out of him? What was she waiting for?
Didn’t she know that Aberlour had always been filled with those things, and that he’d never let them out?
“Are they angry?” she finally asked.
“Why does it matter?” he responded dismissively.
“You have ghosts, Gavin. Don’t you want to understand why?”
“They’re not ghosts,” he replied, feeling defensive and broken inside.
They weren’t ghost. They were friends. They weren’t angry, vengeful and distraught. They didn’t mean him harm, they were simply there—where they had always been, inside of Aberlour.
“Even if it is full of love, all a ghost can do is haunt,” she said. They weren’t her words. Aberlour could tell, but they burned him like a brand, nonetheless.
“Maybe I like being haunted.”
“Because then you’re not alone,” she nodded approvingly.
Bullseye.
Aberlour abruptly sat up straight, trying to shrug off the combination of displeasure and discomfort the words had caused. He looked everywhere but at her. At the cuckoo clock, out the window, at the painting that displayed nothing other than mazes of overlapping colours.
“Is this enjoyable for you?” he asked her, aware of an increasing level of bitterness and anger.
“Yes,” she replied. “I enjoy watching guys like you realize they’re not dead yet. No matter how long and difficult the process might be.”
Aberlour said nothing else. At all. He sat there, on the leather couch, alone, waiting for something that never came. Dr.Galloway smiled, she wrote, she never offered or asked anything else.
Every time Aberlour blinked, he saw them there behind his eyelids, smiling up at him.
Then the cuckoo clock went off. That goddamned clown shot out from behind the two little doors, and Aberlour jumped to his feet in reaction.
“It’s broken on purpose,” he finally said, as he settled himself back on the couch, smoothing out his shirt like it mattered. He was angry. His hands were shaking with it. All this anger, forced to the surface by a stupid cuckoo clock.
“No—but I keep it that way on purpose.”
He could tell she was obviously pleased the cuckoo clock had drawn words out of him, but she didn’t push.
“To remind people they’re alive? That’s all kinds of fucked up, doc. Does your boss know you’re a sadist?” Aberlour retorted, borderline disrespectful.
“Sure,” she shrugged. “It also goes to show that even the most broken things can still be useful—and loved,” she said, staring right at Aberlour.
“No one loves that thing,” he scoffed in disgust.
“I do,” she replied, casually, obviously enjoying the banter.
“Wonder what that says about you. It doesn’t even fit in here. Where’d you get it? A yard sale?” Aberlour said. The words were coming out faster than he’d planned.
She seemed highly amused by it.
