The Mariner (16 page)

“Why has my Son’s blood been spilt?” God’s voice was great and his fury sent tsunami’s in all directions.

“Father,” cried Jesus. “I have failed you, failed my disciples and failed my people. I am sorry. But I have suffered in this boat for forty days and forty nights, yet still you will not forgive me!”

“But Son,” spoke God, his anger quickly waning. “I was waiting for you to forgive yourself.”

And then Jesus realised he’d forgotten his first teaching, forgiveness comes from within.

With this wisdom he forgave himself, then he forgave the Devil for his temptation (though the Devil hated this act and resented him for it), and so finally his Father was able to give him the forgiveness he so desperately desired.

“Now will you save my people, Father?”

“No Jesus, but I shall tell you what to do.”

- The Shattered Testament by The Reverend McConnell

16
REHAB BEGINS

“H
OW LONG HAVE YOU HAD
these dreams?” Tetrazzini asked, showing not a trace of guilt at using the cliché.

The Mariner shifted uneasily, despite sitting in an astonishingly comfortable chair. The scrutiny reminded him bitterly of sharing a cigarette with Absinth Alcott, a memory he loathed to recall.

“I don’t know. Years? I don’t have a way of keeping time.”

“Oh come now,” dismissed the doctor. “We have the only mechanism to measure time we could ever need at our disposal: the sun. Day and night. What’s to stop you noting down every time the sun sets? What you don’t know are
dates
, but the amount of time passing is easy to assess. You just don’t want to.”

The Mariner was puzzled. “Why wouldn’t I want to know how much time has passed?”

“I don’t know.” Dr Tetrazzini smiled and stared intently at the Mariner. Outside, the sun blessed the town with another cheerful day, as if eager to put the nastiness of the night before to distant memory. Small songbirds joined the plot, dancing amidst the trees, singing joyfully as if no horrors had occurred.

“Tell me what happens in this dream.”

The Mariner hesitated for a moment, vulnerable. “I dream I’m a boy in my parents’ bed. Only my father isn’t there, it’s just my mother, and she’s upset.”

“Why is she upset?”

“I don’t know.”

The songbirds suddenly scattered as Grace ran through the garden, hair an earthy blur passing the window. It distracted the Mariner briefly, and he blinked rapidly as he tried to keep focus.

“I think she’s disappointed with me.”

“Why?”

The Mariner shook his head, unable to answer. Tetrazzini persevered. “What happens next?”

“She wants me to be quiet, I’m breathing too noisily. So she places a pillow over my face.”

“That must be very frightening.”

“It is, I can’t breathe.”

“Do you struggle?”

“I’m afraid to. Instead I wait and hope that she realises for herself that she’s being too forceful. I hope she takes the pillow off.”

“Does she?”

“Eventually.”

The doctor’s face was solemn and serious. “Is she trying to kill you?”

“Does it matter? It’s just a dream.”

Tetrazzini leaned back in his chair and flicked through his notebook, making a theatrical gesture of checking previous notes.

“You said earlier that you can’t remember beyond a certain point in your history, a relatively
recent
point?” He scanned the words written before him. “You awoke upon your boat with a sense of purpose, but no knowledge of who you were and how you got there.”

“Yes.”

“My friend, is it possible that this dream is actually a memory from your life before this incident, this ‘rebirth’ upon your boat?”

“Why would the memory only come to me in dreams? Why don’t I recall anything else?”

“Trauma perhaps? Damage done to the brain from chemical abuse? We’ll get to the cause eventually, but first I want to press upon you something that I think is quite remarkable.”

Tetrazzini leaned forward and licked his lips. Suddenly the dispassionate veneer fell away to one of effusive excitement.

“I’ve met many people who’ve forgotten things. Sometimes they’re small: song lyrics, recipes, spellings, flag colours. Other times the missing segments can be vast chunks, whole areas of their past gone, totally erased! And I’ve found, through bitter experience, it’s best not to push them too hard to remember what they’ve lost. I can see from your face you know what I’m talking about.”

The Mariner did, Tetrazzini was talking about the Mindless. He nodded confirmation, but didn’t speak.

“But here I have you, a man with no memories of the world before at all. And not only are you without violence, but you’ve remembered something. A memory has come back!”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.” Tetrazzini shook his head, genuinely enthused by the mystery and grinning from ear to ear. “But if we can unlock the reasons for this early memory forcing a return into your mind, then perhaps we can understand where people’s memories have been disappearing to, and restore each and every one!”

Flinching, the Mariner’s face darkened, defences thrown hastily up. “I don’t want more memories!”

“My friend, there’s nothing to be afraid of. Memories are shadows, imprints of a time, a situation, a circumstance that no longer exists. We are in control of our memories, not the other way around.”

The patient’s eyes narrowed, suspicious of the concept he struggled to grasp.

“Let me give you an example. This supposed memory of yours, it bothers you, yes? But it could be that you’ve distorted it, changed it, built upon it. After all, you
were
just a boy. For all you know it is entirely fictional, there’s no way to verify such an occurrence.” He snapped his fingers in the air. “Do me a favour and replay the scene in your head.”

The Mariner closed his eyes and did as the doctor asked, recalling the dream.

“Now remember, this is
your
mind,
you
are in control. I want you to dress your mother in a silly rabbit suit.”

“What?”

“A big pink rabbit suit, and she’s not angry or upset: she’s giggling.”

The Mariner tried. It felt silly, but he could just about do it.

“Now instead of a pillow she’s placing over your face, its a big fluffy mask, so you’ll look like a silly rabbit too.”

The Mariner opened his eyes, eyebrows raised in cynicism. “But that’s not how the dream goes. That’s not how it went.”

“But that’s the point,” Tetrazzini insisted. “It
isn’t
. Whatever happened, whatever sad events took place between a boy and his mother, it isn’t happening now. It doesn’t exist anywhere but
here
.” He tapped a finger on the Mariner’s skull. “And if that’s the only place it exists, then what’s to stop you changing it?”

“I... think I understand.”

“We may well employ that tactic, once we understand where this memory came from.”

The Mariner paused, ingesting the technique. “And you said I could have made it up?”

“It’s a possibility.”

“I see.” A lie, the Mariner didn’t understand at all. He was more perplexed about the dream than when they’d begun.

“In this dream, where do you think your father is?”

The Mariner shrugged, he’d never given it much thought. “Just away.”

“You said you made friends with a man named Alcott, many years your senior.”

“That’s right.”

“Would you say he was a good man?”

The Mariner remembered Absinth Alcott: his selfishness, his ruthless disregard for others. He also remembered feeding him to the devils.

“No.”

“And yet when you told me you parted ways, you looked sad.”

“I was. I am. Alcott was,” the Mariner struggled for an accurate word. “A friend.”

“A ‘friend’ who threatened your life and treated you as a means to an end?”

The Mariner chose not an respond.

“And now you’re here, putting your faith in me, another man more advanced in years than your own. Do you not think it strange that you be so quick to trust us both?”

“You’re not to be trusted?”

Tetrazzini laughed. “Of course I am. But what I’m trying to point out to you is your desire for a father figure. Someone to fill the void so obviously apparent in these dreams of yours, someone to protect you from this dangerous matriarch. And when you fail to find a father to fill the void, you seek out alcohol to do the job instead.”

The Mariner frowned. “So if I find my father... my addiction will go away?”

“No, not at all. I’m just theorising about what caused you to drink so much, that’s all. The addiction was caused by repetitive action and a reward function. The pills will treat that.” He sighed and put his notes on the floor. “I think that’s enough for today’s session. Well done, I think we covered a lot of ground and even made some progress, don’t you think?”

The Mariner stood, looking sheepish in his uncertainty. “I guess so.”

Matching the Mariner, Tetrazzini rose and put his hand on the sailor’s shoulder to stop him leaving.

“Before you go, I wanted to thank you again for what you did for Rebecca. She was very lucky you woke up at that moment, otherwise...” The doctor looked to the floor, unable to voice the possible further horrors that could have taken place. “I have no doubt she owes you her life.”

You watched her
.

Guilt and remorse made the Mariner’s voice hollow. “I only wish I could have…”

Raped her myself
.

“…woken up sooner.”

An expression the Mariner couldn’t decipher flickered across the doctor’s face and then was gone. Had he seen the guilt? Had he sensed the Mariner’s sin?

“Don’t beat yourself up about it, you did the best you could under the circumstances. I take full responsibility, I shouldn’t have allowed you both into town without further supervision. Sighisoara is a small community, but just as dangerous as any other in this broken world.” Tetrazzini’s bitter admission of his own remorse seemed genuine; the colour drained from his face as he spoke, ageing him before the Mariner’s eyes. “What happened? Where did it all go?”

The Mariner had no answer to give, and after sharing a moment of silence together the doctor shook himself from his reverie and opened a door leading to the garden, gesturing he should leave.

Outside, the air was warm, though not as bright as the Mariner had been led to believe from staring out the window. The sun was heavy in the sky, its reflection on the ocean providing the golden glow.

The Mariner heard Tetrazzini close the door, leaving him alone with the peaceful sounds of the birds as they collected their supper of insects. Somewhere in the foliage he could hear the swift rat-a-tat-tat of a woodpecker. A glimmer of white and red amongst the brown bark hinted at its whereabouts.

“Do you remember the zoo?”

The voice surprised him, he’d completely forgotten that Grace was playing outside. She stood not far off with her back to him, staring out at sea through a gap in the trees.

It was the first time they’d spoken, and a certain amount of superstition about her name still lingered in his mind. Reluctant to step closer, he stayed put.

“A ‘zoo’?”

Disappointed. “No-one ever remembers. It used to be over there.” She pointed to Sighisoara’s western side. “I liked the monkeys.”

“What happened to it?”

“One day a crack appeared between the zoo and us,” she explained. “It filled with water, growing wider each day and the zoo got further away. Sometimes we’d get in a rowing boat and visit it, but the further away it got, the less people thought about it. One day it was just a teeny speck in the distance and then – gone.” She turned to look at him and in that moment he realised there was nothing supernatural about this girl, no strange presence bestowed by a magical name, nothing to be fearful of, she was merely child, and a lonely one at that. “Now no-one remembers it at all.”

“Nobody?”

Grace bit her lip and looked back to the sea. “I once tried to get Miss Taylor to remember. She used to bring us milk. I told her all about it, the animals, the statues, everything. I even described a day we spent feeding the monkeys together.”

“And she still didn’t remember?”

“No. She got mad.
Really
mad.”

The woodpecker stopped his incessant hammering and the woodland fell silent. Even the noises from the town below failed to reach the pair. It were as if the whole world between them and the horizon has momentarily disappeared.

“What happened?”

“She died. They had to shoot her.”

“I’m sorry.”

The girl shrugged, terrible acceptance in one so young. “It happens every now and then. People get angry and never calm down. I haven’t tried asking about the zoo since.”

“Until you asked me. Why?”

“I overheard you talking about a memory that came back.”

Sudden shame made the Mariner sick, the intrusion of privacy flaring anger. “What else did you hear?” he asked through gritted teeth.

“Not much. Didn’t seem right to listen. I don’t eavesdrop.”

The Mariner turned to leave, embarrassed to share the company of the curious child any longer, but Grace stopped him.