Makes me feel fine
Blowing through the dead leaves in my mind
I would usually call Johahn on my phone as I walked down Amos Lane towards the intercom and let her know that I was approaching. I would stay on the phone with her as I punched the numbers 3 and 4 into the intercom and, through the phone, I would hear the loud “tring” of the intercom bell in Johahn’s room as she would leap out of bed and buzz me through the locked gate. The gate would click open and I’d walk across the footbridge that led to the apartment building. I would then catch the elevator to level 5 where Johahn’s apartment was - apartment number 34. Entering Johahn’s apartment, I would always see her curled up in her bed, greeting me with a wide smile.
“Don’t forget to latch the door behind you” Johahn would say.
This routine would continue for months. Finish work, catch the train to Kings Cross, call Johahn as I walked towards Roslyn apartments, punch the numbers into the intercom and listen to the “tring” through the phone, watch the gate click open, catch the elevator to apartment 34 and be greeted with a wide smile.
It was the end of May now and unusually warm for this time of year. After finishing a trivia night at the Woollahra Hotel, I began to make my way towards Edgecliff train station to catch the train to Kings Cross and meet Johahn. I had spoken to Johahn on the phone 30 minutes earlier to let her know that trivia was nearly done and I would be heading over soon.
I walked out of the hotel and down the autumn-leaf covered streets towards the train station at Edgecliff. As I strolled I kicked big piles of dried leaves and watched them scatter and swirl before me.
I arrived at the station's ticket barrier, descended the escalator to the platform and boarded the train bound for Kings Cross. The train ride was a short 3 minute journey before I reached my destination. Exiting the station, I began my walk down Darlinghurst Road towards the police station. At this stage I thought I should call Johahn and let her know that I was getting close to the intercom. I pulled out my phone and called her. It rang for longer than usual. Johahn usually answered her phone within one or two rings, but today it seemed to ring at least ten times. When Johahn finally answered the phone she sounded a bit groggy and I guessed she had been sleeping.
“Hello” Johahn said in a slurred voice.
“I’m nearly there” I said.
“Okay” Johahn said, and then she went quiet.
I stayed on the call as I approached the intercom and punched in 3 and 4. Weirdly, I didn’t hear the intercom “tring” in Johahn’s room, through the phone, as I usually did.
“Are you home?” I asked Johahn, feeling confused.
The gate clicked open.
“Yes, I’m home. See you soon” Johahn said, and then she hung up the call.
It was very odd that I didn’t hear the sound of the intercom through the phone, but I brushed it off and assumed that maybe Johahn had set her intercom to silent mode somehow, even though she had mentioned many times that there was no way to turn down the volume of the loud alert of the intercom.
I entered the apartment building and caught the elevator to level 5. Johahn always kept her apartment unlocked for me so when I reached apartment number 34, I turned the doorknob and entered the room.
The apartment was dark, only illuminated by a shard of moonlight streaming through the window. Johahn’s bed was empty and the apartment was eerily quiet.
Apartment 34 was a small, one room studio and it was completely empty. Johahn was nowhere to be seen.
Was she playing a trick on me? Was she hiding?
My phone rang and I saw it was Johahn’s number. I hurriedly answered the call.
“Where are you?” Johahn said.
Her voice sounded different, as if it was a decibel lower than usual.
“I’m in your apartment. Where are you?” I urgently spoke, feeling very unsettled.
Johahn didn’t respond. The call was silent.
Suddenly a creaking groan emitted from the phone. It sounded like old wooden floorboards. The creaking increased in pitch and then the call went dead.
As I stared at the phone in my hand the temperature in the room dropped dramatically and I could see the vapour of my heavy breathing coming out of my mouth in a fog. The room became shrouded in mist and I was disoriented and bewildered. I tried to feel my way towards the apartment door but my hands touched cold, smooth wall. I kept feeling my hands across towards the door but was only met with endless cold walls.
The door was gone.
I turned back towards Johahn’s empty bed and my shallow breathing caused me to feel light headed. My mouth was dry and felt like sand.
A thick, dark cloud moved over the moon and the dimly moonlit apartment was plunged into blackness. The apartment was now a cold, black void and the swirling dark curled its fingers around my neck as my skin began to turn to ice.
I was frozen in the dark.
As I stood there, paralysed in a grim trance, the silence in the apartment was suddenly broken by the sound of groaning, creaking wood.
The moans and groans of the old wood came from beneath Johahn’s bed. Covering the mattress were crumpled white bedsheets, barely visible through the gloom. In the inky shadows the white sheets took the form of a dark, jagged glacier that was slowly carving its way, an inch per century, down a mountain.
Flattening my back against the icy, smooth wall behind me I watched the crevices in the bedsheet glacier begin to pulsate and widen, beckoning me towards it. I felt pulled towards the deep trenches of the bedsheets and I knew that Johahn was trapped down in there somewhere.
I had to find her.
Inhaling a long breath and holding it in, I took a step towards the bed.
The glass window rapped outside of the living room. Callum jolted his head towards the window and saw his brother's face through the glass scowling at him.
"Callum! You have to pack the dishwasher! You promised mum and dad", Callum's brother whined.
Callum flushed red and made a pleading face at his brother.
His brother rolled his eyes and rapped the window again.
"You promised mum and dad you'd do it! They will be angry!"
Callum looked back towards the dark-haired girl with an embarrassed, apologetic expression.
The girl's name was Quin. Although, the girl had never told Callum her name before. He just somehow knew that her name was "Quin", as if she had telepathically inserted it into his memory. Callum also realised that he had never met Quin before this moment, at least not that he could precisely remember. Callum also had no idea how they had arrived in his parent's living room together, but Quin was so entrancingly beautiful that Callum didn't mind at all and put his memory loss down to his nervousness and having probably smoked too much weed earlier that day.
"I think you should pack the dishwasher, Callum. I'll wait for you upstairs," Quin whispered softly.
Callum shrugged in agreement and went to the kitchen as Quin disappeared upstairs.
As quickly as he could, Callum packed the dishwasher. He hoped Quin would be waiting for him upstairs and that she hadn't decided to leave after that awkward interaction with his brother. He packed the last fork into the dishwasher tray and began to make his way hastily upstairs to his bedroom.
As Callum entered his bedroom he found Quin lying naked on his bed beckoning him to lie down with her. Callum eagerly unbuttoned his shirt and threw it on the floor as he lay down beside Quin. Her soft hands began tracing his chest as she moved her lips towards his. Just as her lips touched his, the room began to vibrate and tremble before rapidly collapsing before Callum's eyes.
Callum woke up suddenly in his empty city apartment.
"Dammit", Callum thought to himself. "I always wake up just as my dreams begin to reach a climax."
Callum lay in his bed and stared at the ceiling, reminiscing on how vivid the dream was and how real Quin felt. How was he able to recreate such a vivid person in his dreams? Quin didn't exist and didn't resemble anyone that Callum knew in his real life.
Callum wished he could re-enter the dream and be with Quin again. He began to feel very sad when it dawned on him that Quin wasn't real and was merely a figment of his imagination.
As Callum was lost in his thoughts, the bedroom door began to creak open. A lithe, shadowy figure entered the room and began to draw closer to the foot of Callum's bed. It was a figure Callum immediately recognised. It was Quin!
"I've located you", Quin whispered.
Quin lay down beside Callum and they embraced. Quin seductively crawled on top of Callum and began to lick his chest. They were about to engage in love making when again the room began to vibrate and tremble. Callum's body shook in a jolt and he awoke again.
He was alone and Quin was gone.
Callum lay there stunned. He had just experienced a layered dream. Quin had visited him again and, cruelly, Callum had awoken just as they had begun to elope.
Callum lay there in the darkness of his city apartment bedroom, trying to process the unbelievably vivid dreams he had just experienced.
A ghostly sound suddenly rasped beside Callum.
"haahhhhhhhhhh", a cracked rasped exhale of dead air.
Callum turned his head and saw a black figure sitting crossed legged beside him.
Frozen in fear and fully awake, Callum's first instinct was shocked disbelief. He reached his hand towards the black figured and clutched its forearm. The figure's forearm was hairy and muscular.
Utterly paralysed, Callum held onto the figure's hairy forearm as it rose from its seated position and drew closer to him. Callum could see Quin's face in the almost pitch-black room. Her eyes were sunken, beady coals and her face was a sallow and dead looking shade of pale yellow.
Quin slowly crawled on top of Callum as he held on tightly to her hairy forearm. Quin then pressed her long body into Callum's and he felt ripples and surges of electricity up and down his body and face. Quin's body began to sink into Callum's as the electricity intensified and he began to shake. Their bodies were merging. As Quin's body became fully immersed into Callum's, a violent jolt brought Callum out of his paralyzed state.
Quin had fully disappeared inside of Callum. He had regained his motor skills and sat bolt upright in bed.
"What in hell just happened to me?" Callum's voice trembled in the dark.
Callum looked down and saw that he was clutching his own hairy forearm. Quin's hairy arm had somehow become his own, and Callum still clutched it tightly with fear.
As he slowly released his grip from his forearm, Callum still felt the traces of electricity rippling up and down his body and face.
Callum turned his head towards the giant floor to ceiling mirror that was position bedside his bed. He looked at his own reflection and intuitively knew that Quin had come from the mirror. The mirror was her gateway to him.
Was he awake this time? Callum jumped out of the bedsheets and immediately checked his entire apartment to make sure that he was alone.
Nobody was there and Callum went back to his bed in silence. He lay down on the mattress and again turned his head to the mirror. He had remembered reading in an old occult book that he owned that in Eastern cultures the mirror was believed to be a portal into the spirit realm and that sleeping in front of a mirror could invoke ghosts.
As Callum lay on his bed, looking at his reflection and for any trace of Quin, part of him felt that she was still there with him, unseen.
