Sessions

Movement of the cat, even a meow, a faint unfamiliar whisper among the cast of her favorite tv shows on her old boxed television set, a swarm of leaves grazing the window of the family room, an untraceable creek in the ancient weathered wood floors of her kitchen, and that's all it took. It was the smallest of sounds, the normal sounds, that caused the most havoc in Sarah’s world.

It wasn’t much past noon when it started sprinkling out and Sarah had already felt the fear of the rain droplets on her verandah overhang taking control of her, the noise of the unknown. She leaped from the white chippy wicker chair that her grandmother left behind and sprang towards the door without hesitation, knocking down the matching wicker side table and a glass of water that sat on it. Gasping for air, she crawled through the doorway toward the dining room where she managed to barricade herself in the middle of the ten oak chairs that surround her harvest table and took her phone out of her robe.

“Hello, Sarah.” I spoke softly into the phone on the other line. It was never a good sign when she called before dinner. It was never a good sign when she called at all.

“Hello, Sarah, are you there?” I heard her breathing heavily on the other end.

“I think he’s here.” She started sobbing. “He’s in the breezeway; he’s come for me.”

“Now Sara, take a deep breath and stay focused on my words. Try to remember our sessions, remember our breakthrough.

“Do you remember our progress, your progress, Sarah? You are just having another panic attack. Take a few deep breaths and tell me what happened.”

"I can’t breathe, I think I’m suffocating.

"The monster from my nightmares, he's found me.” She gasped.

“Sarah, we’ve gone over this many times before, he is not coming, because he is not real. Remember?

“You were there Sarah; you need to remember. You saw what happened. Do you remember?

I can feel her heart pounding, her mind bending, collapsing, through her sobbing cries on the other end of the phone.

“Jillian drowned Sarah. The dam was too high after the storm, and the undertow was too strong for her to escape. She floated down the river and off the waterfall. There is no man and there never has been a man, Sarah.”

“He’s here. I know he’s here, I heard him on the roof of my breezeway when it started raining. He’s come for me now.

“I told you he was watching us. I told you he has her and now he’s going take me too." Her voice crackled; she was whispering now."

She continued on to tell me the events that led her to that exact moment of our conversation.

“Maybe it’s best if I come over for a visit. After all, it’s been a couple of months since our last session. Would you be okay with that, Sarah?”

The line cut off and I grabbed my coat.

Sarah had bought the old boarding schoolhouse after her sister, Jillian, drown in the dam six years ago, a dam they’d stopped at to cool off in, like they had many times before while hiking at one of their favorite national parks. Now, Sarah called it her “hideout house,” but she hadn’t always called it that, not when we first started her treatment, which was only a few short months after her sister’s passing. She wasn’t always this scared, not until she started having nightmares. She liked that there were multiple rooms in the house for her to hid in, she’d say. She’d been isolating out there ever since, only allowing myself, the groundskeeper, Ben, and her mother to visit.

It was a long drive out to Breckridge road, almost twenty minutes of dark forest and winding loose gravel.

I saw her standing in the window of her office on the second story when I approached the gate. Her eyes peeked through her long curly honey brown hair. They weren’t directed at me though; she was gazing elsewhere. Her hands laying at her sides, she stood there emotionless. It looked like she hadn’t been outside in a while, she was pail as a ghost. She did that sometimes; locked herself up when she “felt his presence.” She wouldn’t step foot outside for months at a time.

The gate opened and I walk in. Sarah didn’t allow any vehicles to be within the gates at any time. Yet, to my surprise, there was a rusted old chevy pickup with its front end peeking out of the edge of the tree line near her vegetable garden. That was odd. I veered up trying to meet her gaze again, but she’d disappeared from her office. The house is about 50 yards from the gate; the walkway lined with a tall fence on either side covered in vines. The door to the breezeway and most of the house being completely hidden from the stroll.

I reached the end of the fence and headed up the porch to the door. She’d put-up mirrors on the outside of the windows of the first floor. That’s new. Maybe she had left the house? Or ordered the groundskeeper to nail them up?

I approached the door to the breezeway and reached for the handle. The door creaked open slowly and I stuck my head inside.

“Sarah?” She’d never left the front door open before. I usually had to wait a good minute for her to unlock the ten different deadbolts that she continuously installed from the inside. She would never leave the door open.

No response.

I walked inside and crept down the hall of the breezeway towards the verandah, or the sunroom, as Sarah would call it. I could hardly see anything because of the collage of newspaper she’d taped up the sides of the windows in the breezeway. I stumbled over what felt like a line of sheets covering the floor a couple of times as I finally reached the door to the verandah.

That was new, there hadn’t ever been sheets in the breezeway before.

I leaned up against the heavy wood door expecting to hear the scrapes of metal bolts unlocking one by one through it. Instead, I lunged through the opening and landed onto the floor right next to a wicker end table that was very neatly placed upright holding an empty glass and an old ornate frame of a photo of Sarah and Jillian.

I picked myself up and entered the door of the house. The overwhelming aroma of musty furniture covered up by what smelt like freshly made apple-pie corroded my airways and I began to cough.

Everything looked very precise. The chairs surrounding the harvest table were all neatly tucked in, just as they’d always been. On top of the table, sat one uncut apple-pie. All of the living room furniture was covered in plastic and there didn’t seem to be a particle of dust in site. There wasn’t even a dirty dish in the sink, even after cooking apple pie? I looked around the first floor for a while calling out her name repeatedly.

The second level wasn’t much different. Nothing seemed to be in its place. The cat didn’t approach me either, which was odd because he didn’t travel below the second level. Sarah called him her “bedroom guardian;” he was always sitting in front of her room at the top of the stairs when I arrived. Hoping to find Sarah curled up in the recliner she had placed in the corner of her “safe room,” the office where she sat during our sessions, I walked towards the door and called out her name again.

She wasn’t there. Everything was in its usual particular position, just as she’d liked it, all but one thing, a note.

A small torn piece of paper lay folded on the desk that read “LESTER DAM.”

Was the note for me? Did someone leave her the note? What did it mean? Where is Sarah?

I began to panic, rushing through each room of the house, up and down the stairs, searching everywhere for Sarah, calling her name louder now, yelling it. It wasn’t until I reached the office again and veered out the window just as Sarah had when I arrived, that I noticed the old rusty chevy pickup had vanished.

It was until then that i finally actually understood our sessions.

CITY OF OAKVILLE

Robert J. Dashky – Chief of Police

Case Number: 2-001-699

Statement of: Dr. Timothy Swanson

Date: 7/19/97