Part 2
The room was dark. Heavy drapes covered every window in the small cottage, keeping the interior shrouded in shadow. Slivers of sunlight found their way around the edges of the curtains, sending streams of brightly lit dust motes swirling around the room each time Augusta wandered past.
The wide legs of her yoga pants flapped annoyingly around her ankles as she paced. Putting them on had been difficult, taking them back off and replacing them with something else felt too daunting for her to attempt. It hurt her head too much to lean over, so she did her best to ignore the material whacking her with every step. Instead, she cursed under her breath and rubbed absently at her left arm. It felt cold and numb; no amount of rubbing brought feeling back into it. She had tried to put on a sweater to ward off the chill in the cottage air, but the Other had resisted. The sleeveless tee would have to do.
The telephone rang from its jack on the kitchen wall. Augusta stopped in her tracks to stare at for a moment, as if trying to draw information from it with her eye. She was hesitant to answer it. Conversation was at the bottom of her to-do list. Besides, what could she possibly say that wouldn’t sound completely crazy? What if the Other broke in for a little tete-a-tete of its own, then what? How could she explain that? Muttering to herself, she began another circuit around the crowded room. When at last the ringing stopped, a brief blissful silence flooded the room. It was cut short by the opening notes of Beethoven’s Fifth, accompanied by her cell phone vibrating violently on the end-table. Giving it a hateful glare, she snapped it up and stuffed it between the couch cushions. Leaning over caused the thudding behind her eyes to deepen, bringing with it little black dots blocking her sight and a ringing in her ears. Bracing herself against the couch back, Augusta pressed her hand against her forehead, praying she wouldn’t pass out. Slowly, her vision cleared and the ringing stopped. With a shaky sigh, she set her feet moving again, anything to stay focused.
Her mangled eye throbbed painfully behind the make-shift bandage, like a big red thumb in a Warner Bros cartoon. Gently, she probed the injury with the fingers of her right hand. The tips came away sticky and red with blood that had soaked through the padding. Some of it mixed with a gelatinous substance, oozed out from under the dressing, and seemed to crawl down her cheek. She shuddered as she swiped it away.
The screaming had stopped, though whether the cries had been her own, the Other hiding in her head, or a combination thereof, she wasn’t sure but, much to her relief, it had stopped. The fear had also dissipated, leaving her feeling hollow for a time, then anger had slowly filled the empty hole until her senses vibrated with the intensity of it. It kept her anchored and in control, but as the day wore on and her body grew weary, she felt her control beginning to slip. Already the Other was whispering to her, laughing at her, reclaiming pieces of Augusta’s mind, leaving her exhausted from the exchange. Sleep beckoned to her, but to sleep was to give in. When her body woke, would she wake with it, or would she be trapped deep inside herself, a captive of the Other? The risk was too great. Sleep would have to wait.
Stumbling half-blind through the house, she made her way to the kitchen to start the coffee maker. She scooped extra grounds into the basket in hopes the caffeine would keep her awake and alert until she could figure out how to destroy the interloper in her mind. Leaving the mixture to perk, she set herself in motion again.
Her hand shook as she poured the first drops of the steaming liquid into her mug. The Other fought her, turning her left hand against her. First it tried to wrangle the pot from her. When that didn’t work, it began to pinch and scratch its way up her right forearm. Desperate to stop the attack, Augusta wrenched her arm back and dumped half the pot of hot liquid over her left hand. Screaming in agony, the Other’s cries echoing in her skull, she grabbed hold of the wrist and dragged it under the soothing cool water of the faucet until the pain subsided to a dull ache.
Breathing heavily, her new injury adding to the throbbing behind her left eye, she steeled herself for another attack as she brought the mug of coffee to her lips. None came. Once again, pain had forced the Other back into the recesses of her mind giving Augusta a brief window of opportunity to regain some of her former self.
The coffee helped. It warmed her from the inside out, perked up her brain, and had her wide awake by the third cup. With the Other forced into the background for the moment, Augusta took advantage of the silence to work on her strategy for getting rid of it once and for all. Firing up her laptop, she began a search for “voices in my head”. Fifteen sites on Schizophrenia and other psychological disorders topped the list, but near the bottom of the page, Augusta saw a blurb that gave her a spark of hope.
“Not all voices are the result of mental illness,”she read. “Some are the result of something much more sinister…”
This looked promising. Hovering the cursor over the link, she clicked on the icon, half-expecting a this site is no longer in use message to pop up on the screen. To her relief, she found herself looking at the page heading instead. The headline read, “Hidden Terrors in the Woods”. The picture at the top of the page showed a forest steeped in fog with eyes watching from the spaces between the trees. Augusta shivered. It seemed she was in the right place.