I step up to the trunk and let my fingertips follow the crevices of the bark and rest on the welts that have moss growing on them. It’s like a miniature landscape of hills and valleys. The nerve endings of my fingers are throbbing as I grip around the trunk. It’s as if I could sink into the valleys, become small like an ant and find a home inside the cracks and lines, or hide under the loose bits of bark.
I have seen this tree so many times, every line, every crevice is like a familiar friend. In my dreams, I always run away from something ugly and end up slipping through the crevices into the trunk. There I’m safe and untouchable. There nobody puts me into a hospital or sends me away. Nobody can hurt me.
“That’s it. You’ve got it.”
I don’t have the darnedest clue what it is that I’ve got. Then a little girl appears in my mind’s eye, not older than four or five years. She’s dressed in a white summer dress covered with thousands of little pink flowers and a wide skirt that swings around her small, chubby legs. She has blonde, curly locks and smiles at me through cornflower blue eyes.
I’ve seen her before, in my dreams. She laughs now and her blonde locks bounce around her face as she nods encouragingly.
“Don’t you remember?”
I remember. She looks like my doll Maddie. I’m not sure who gave her to me, but she’s been with me for as long as I can think back. We were inseparable, and I often wished she’d come alive. She never did, though. I was grief-stricken as a young child.
Her image fades away and I feel a sharp sting of loss that drives tears into my eyes. Who is that child? I know her, yet I’ve seen her today for the first time. If you can call having a hallucination that talks back to you as seen. My shoulders sink in resignation. What use is it to wonder about anything? My head hurts trying to separate fantasy from reality.
I let my fingers glide over the rough bark of the tree one last time and turn around. Where am I, and where is my van? A moment ago, I was sitting at a beach… or didn’t I try to start the van? And now this? I look around this unfamiliar place. Will the blackouts never end? No matter how hard I try to remember what I’m doing, no matter how hard I pray for mercy, nothing seems to help.
“You are the host of a personality system and during your blackouts, other parts of you take control of the body and do what’s needed.”
I remember sending stabbing looks to Charlotte.
“Host? Being a host means I invited people into my life and into my house. I don’t remember having issued an invitation to those time-thieves. Or do you mean host as in a living form in which parasites live?”
I don’t recall how that particular conversation ended. It wasn’t a good session, that much I know. From the way she spoke, I took that she thought those time-thieves—that’s what I call them—do what’s needed much better than I can. I resent that. Whoever is doing it, could at least ask, couldn’t they? But nobody’s asking. If they were a part of me, as Charlotte suggested, they wouldn’t take without asking. That’s just not how I do things. It’s another piece of evidence that her multiple personality theory is flawed.
I guess these blackouts probably have a medical cause. As always, I have to stitch my life together from the little clues I can find. The tree is familiar and that’s a good start. I was on my way to my aunt’s house. Maybe that’s where I am? Although the house I’m looking at isn’t all that familiar. There’s not even the slightest stirring in my memory. Perhaps I got lost?
To get to the front of the house, I wade through a sea of prickly bushes and overgrown thistles that fight with ferns and ivy for precious light. My van is parked twenty yards away from the house. That’s a good sign.
“Hello? Is somebody home?” I approach the house. The last thing I need is a furious house owner storming out and accusing me of trespassing.
“Hello? May I come in? I think I got lost.” I peek through the open door. Somebody must live here because there is a fire in an old cooking range. Not that I see any fire. Only large clouds of smoke are coming from the ancient appliance. Not enough to make Indian smoke signals, but my eyes are burning, and tears run down my cheeks. And the smell is… let’s say it still has a way to go from stinking, unused stove to welcoming wood fire.
“Hello? Anybody home?”
I get no answer, but my bags and suitcases are piled up in the middle of the room. It looks like I arrived at the right place. Going by the inches of dust that cover everything, nobody has lived in this house for a long, long time.
I rush to the nearest window and try to open the old-fashioned sash fasteners. After a few attempts and a little elbow grease, the old latches give, and the window opens with a loud squeal. One down three to go. Soon a fresh breeze takes care of the stale air in the room, or rather the house because as far as I can see, there is only one room on the ground floor. Two doors to the right look promising, but behind them, I find only a combined laundry and toilet, and a large pantry.
I sink into one of the chairs at the dining table and look around, waiting for some level of recognition to stir, but nothing happens. Only when my eyes land on the big loom
