Unscathed

Page 21

My stomach did a summersault when I saw myself sitting at the Denny’s restaurant from our first date. I guess it had been our first date, the night she’d most likely stalked me and followed me to Rowdy’s. She had the sound muted, which was good because I hated the sound of my own voice. The camera was a bit wobbly and it was making me dizzy to watch.
I looked over at Mina, who still had not said one word to me, and was watching the screen with intensity.
I sighed. “Mina, I really don’t understand…”
“Shush!” she barked.
I raised my eyebrows and shook my head, looking at my watch. She had four minutes left.
“Look!” she yelled, pointing the remote at the screen.
I jerked my head up from where I’d been staring at my watch and saw the same thing I’d been looking at before, me at the restaurant. I squinted at the screen. “What am I looking at, Mina?” Crazy, I wanted to call her.
She walked to the large 50-inch flat screen and tapped it with the remote. She was trying to draw my attention to something behind my left shoulder on the screen. I walked closer and looked. I suppose I did see something, it looked like a dark hazy shadow behind me.
“This is what I see, Jax. All the time. Not just with you, but with lots of people. This is why my mother sent me away. She thought I was crazy and insane, just like you do.” She fixed me with a hard stare, which was beginning to soften with tears.
“So there’s a shadow behind me, maybe someone walked behind me…”
She stomped her foot and huffed. I had to admit it was kind of cute and I had to purse my lips together to keep from laughing. “Someone did walk behind you, Jax! They are spirits, okay?”
Now I couldn’t help but smile. “Spirits, Mina? Really?” I shook my head and fished my keys out of my pocket, turning toward the front door.
She ran around the sofa and grabbed my arm. “No. Don’t leave, please, I need to explain more.”
I looked down at her delicate, pale hand gripping my large tattooed bicep and then back into her glistening blue eyes. I raised an eyebrow. “Spirits and shadows. This is why you’ve been filming me?”
She nodded, a pleading look in her eyes. “I have dozens more I can show you.”
“I bet you do,” I snarled under my breath.
“Please, Jax. Please sit. I can’t go through this again. This,” she pointed the remote at the TV, “has always made me different. I don’t want to see these things. I hate that I can see these things. You were right when you called me a freak earlier. I am a freak. Been hearing it my whole life. My mother, my friends. I just stopped telling people what I saw because it made me different. It made people distance themselves from me. I hate it. I hate it so much.” She dropped her head and I could tell she was fighting back a sob.
As angry as I still was, I had to fight the urge to hug her, to comfort her. She seemed broken, but genuine somehow. Whether or not this story of hers was true, one thing was for sure; she certainly believed it. So I could no longer think that she was a liar or not trustworthy. Maybe she was just a little disturbed. Some small piece of sympathy worked its way up out of my hardened heart and settled into my head. With a sigh, I grabbed her hand and led her to the couch. I supposed I could appease her for a little longer before I walked out of her life for good.
“Okay, show me more,” I said.
Her face lit up. “Really?”
I nodded.
She fumbled with the laptop some more, seeming to be fiddling through more files on the hard drive, and pulled up one of me at Starbucks. I was sitting with my own laptop, playing computer games. It was the day I’d met her, I was sure of it.
She stood by the TV and pointed to the empty chair next to me on the screen. “See that shadow? Someone or something is sitting there with you.”
I sat forward, my arms on my knees, and stared at the TV. I had to admit, it sure looked like there was some sort of shadow sitting there in the chair. A shiver ran up my spine. It was pretty creepy. But then I started to wonder.
“You added those shadows, didn’t you?” I asked, skepticism coloring my tone.
She gasped. “I did not!”
“How is this possible?” I asked, jabbing a finger at the screen. “I don’t believe in this shit. I mean, like, at all! Ghosts, spirits, et cetera. I believe when we die, we die. There is nothing else. This looks like someone’s idea of a joke.”
She shook her head and sighed. “I can’t explain it, Jax, but it’s been happening my whole life.”
I nodded. I wasn’t sure what to think now. She looked so sincere, so honest. Not crazy or stalker-ish. Just desperate and almost grief-stricken.
“Is this what made your mom send you away?”
“Yes,” Mina nodded.
Chapter Thirty
Mina
I knew Jax wouldn't believe me unless I told him everything. To do that, I would have to go back to the very beginning. Jax sat on the sofa and looked at the TV. The image of him in Starbucks with the black shadow was frozen on the screen like they had both been caught in time. Jax looked at me and I could see the disbelief in his eyes. But there was something else, too. I could see pity. I didn't want his pity; I just wanted him to believe me.
So, turning to look at him, I said, "When you were a kid, did you ever have one of those viewfinders?"
"A viewfinder?" He sighed as if I really had lost the plot. "What's a viewfinder?"
"One of those kids’ toys," I started to explain. "You know, they look like a chunky pair of glasses. You can put discs in the front which have different pictures on them. There is a small handle on the side that you press with your thumb, which makes the disc go around so you can see the pictures..."
"Look, this all very interesting, Mina," Jax said, “but I didn't come back here to discuss your vintage toy collection.”
"Let me finish, please, Jax," I said, hoping that I didn't sound as if I were pleading with him. Perhaps I was. "Well, we had one of those viewfinders. My dad got me one for Christmas when I was about six. It was a Barbie one. But I never saw Barbie through that viewfinder. I saw the dead. At first I thought they were shadows or that perhaps the toy was broken. I asked my mum to look through it and asked her what she could see. My mother tossed it to one side and said that all she saw was a plastic doll that looked borderline anorexic. So I asked my father. He took me onto his knee and asked what I’d seen, and I told him I saw dark shadows that looked like people. When I went to bed that night, I think he threw that viewfinder in the trash or hid it from me, because I never saw it again, and to be honest, I was glad about that.
"On my tenth birthday, my parents bought me a camera. I think my father got it for me because he was bringing me out here to Florida and I could use it to take pictures with. My mother came over too, but she spent little time with us. She spent most of it here at my uncle’s house while she tanned herself by the pool. That was the last holiday we all spent together.
“My father died of cancer soon after arriving back in the UK. It wasn't until after my father’s death that the film from my camera was developed. It was before digital cameras had come into fashion. When I went to collect the prints with my mother, I was excited and scared to see those photographs. I was excited about reliving those memories of that time I had spent with him, but I was also scared that those photographs would only add to my sense of loss that I felt since his death. I was not close to my mother and I missed my father with all my heart. Back at home and in my room, I pulled the photographs from their packet. In every photo of my father, there was a black smudge. At first I thought that the developer had left behind a dirty thumbprint, but in my heart I knew it wasn't so. I could remember the shadows I could see through my viewfinder as a small child. But the smudges in the pictures of my father were different. They were clearer. And as I worked my way through the packet of photographs, I was convinced that I could clearly make out what looked like a shadowy looking man standing in each of the pictures behind him.
"The following day I went to the local store and bought myself a magnifying glass. Back in the privacy of my own room, I restudied those pictures. My heart nearly stopped in my chest and I dropped the magnifying glass as if it had scalded my hand. The man standing behind my dad in the pictures was my grandfather. What scared and upset me so much, was that my grandfather had been dead for more than five years already. Clutching the pictures, I took them to show my mother. I spread them before her over the kitchen table. I asked her what she could see, and of course she said my father. But I pressed her and told her to take another look. Again, she said she could only see my father. With trembling fingers, I pointed out the dark smudges. And just like you, Jax, my mother said they were nothing more than shadows. When I produced the magnifying glass and pleaded with her to take another look, she snatched it from my hand, collected together the photographs of my father, and told me that I was grieving and should snap out of it or she would take me to see a child psychiatrist. Just like my viewfinder, I never saw those pictures or the magnifying glass again," I told Jax.
"Let's pretend for one minute that I believe any of this," Jax said. "Why do you think your grandfather was in those pictures?"
I looked at Jax and I thought – hoped – that perhaps he was starting to take some of what I said seriously. He hadn't left yet. He was still seated on the sofa and listening to me. "I think... believe… that he was in those pictures because he knew my father was dying of cancer. My father didn't know himself, but he was diagnosed soon after returning to England. I think my grandfather knew my father would soon be dead and he was waiting for his son to pass over."
"Your mother didn't send you packing because of those photos?" Jax asked.
"No, not because of those photographs," I said, lowering my gaze. This was going to be the hardest part of my story to tell.
"What photos then?" he persisted.