After the prohibition era 50

Charles's Notes

 

The morning sunlight had replaced the rain.

 

Ingrid's kitchen felt different now.

 

Softer.

 

Warmer.

 

The three women sat around the kitchen table with coffee cups and the remains of last night's conversation still lingering in the air.

 

Photographs covered the table.

 

Letters from Sweden.

 

Names.

 

Faces.

 

Lives.

 

The younger Clara was sorting through one of the shoeboxes when something caught her eye.

 

"Wait."

 

The others looked up.

 

"What is it?" asked Ingrid.

 

Clara carefully pulled a folded piece of paper from the bottom of the box.

 

Unlike the photographs, it wasn't a letter.

 

And unlike most of Charles's notes, it contained more than a few words.

 

The paper had yellowed with age.

 

The handwriting was unmistakably Charles's.

 

The older Clara leaned closer.

 

"Read it."

 

The younger Clara unfolded the page.

 

At the top, Charles had written only one thing:

 

For my own sanity.

 

The kitchen grew quiet.

 

Then she began to read.

 

For my own sanity.

 

I am writing this because I no longer trust my memory.

 

Father would say I imagined everything.

 

Perhaps he was right.

 

When I was a boy in Stora Malm, Mother used to tell stories about those who walk beside us.

 

Not angels.

 

Not ghosts.

 

Not demons.

 

Simply souls unable to find their way home.

 

Father hated such talk.

 

Whenever I repeated those stories, there was usually an argument.

 

Sometimes there was worse.

 

I still remember telling him about seeing Pinntorpafrun near Eriksberg.

 

I must have been ten years old.

 

I could describe her dress.

 

I could describe her face.

 

Father called me a fool.

 

Then he slapped me hard enough to split my lip.

 

Mother waited until he left the room before cleaning the blood from my mouth.

 

She never told me I was mistaken.

 

In fact, she admitted that strange things had happened to her too.

 

She spoke of wandering spirits.

 

Of lonely roads.

 

Of figures standing where no living person should stand.

 

I never knew whether to believe her.

 

And perhaps that uncertainty has followed me my entire life.

 

More than once I swore I would leave that God-forgotten village forever.

 

The last time I said it aloud, Father slapped me again.

 

Even now I can still hear him.

 

"Use your head, boy."

 

Perhaps I should have listened.

 

Perhaps I am simply losing my mind.

 

Several years ago I found myself inside a hospital.

 

Not as a patient.

 

At least not officially.

 

A doctor seemed convinced that I required observation.

 

He asked too many questions.

 

Questions about things I had seen.

 

Things I could not explain.

 

He looked at me the same way Father used to.

 

With concern.

 

And with doubt.

 

I left before any decisions could be made.

 

Still, I remember the ward.

 

Rows of beds.

 

People coughing through the night.

 

A sickness I did not recognize.

 

The air itself felt heavy.

 

Like death waiting patiently in a corner.

 

There was one child I cannot forget.

 

A young red-haired girl.

 

Very pale.

 

Far too pale.

 

I knew she was dying.

 

Nobody told me.

 

I simply knew.

 

Sometimes she sat upright and stared toward the doorway.

 

Not at the nurses.

 

Not at the doctors.

 

At something else.

 

Something none of us could see.

 

More than once she pointed.

 

There was never anybody there.

 

At least nobody visible.

 

The other patients ignored it.

 

The nurses ignored it.

 

I could not.

 

The child seemed to be watching someone standing beyond the threshold.

 

Someone waiting.

 

One of the nurses was a colored woman named Daisy.

 

A good woman.

 

Kind.

 

Patient.

 

The sort of person who remembered every patient's name.

 

The little girl trusted her immediately.

 

So did I.

 

Daisy treated people as though they mattered.

 

That is rarer than most people realize.

 

What troubles me is this:

 

I am nearly certain I met her before that day.

 

Not in the hospital.

 

Somewhere else.

 

Perhaps another neighborhood.

 

Perhaps another year.

 

I cannot place it.

 

The memory feels wrong somehow.

 

Like a dream remembered in fragments.

 

I asked Daisy whether we had met before.

 

She smiled and said she did not think so.

 

Perhaps she was right.

 

The rational explanation is that I have mistaken her for somebody else.

 

God knows that would be the simplest answer.

 

Yet I cannot shake the feeling that I recognized her the moment she entered the room.

 

If Father were alive, he would laugh at me.

 

If the doctor read these words, he would probably lock me away.

 

Perhaps they would both be right.

 

But I have learned something over the years.

 

There are things in this world that refuse to fit inside ordinary explanations.

 

I do not know whether they belong to God.

 

Or madness.

 

Or something else entirely.

 

All I know is that I have seen them.

 

And I am tired of pretending otherwise.

 

— Charles Karlsson

 

When the younger Clara lowered the paper, nobody spoke.

 

The kitchen had gone completely silent.

 

Ingrid stared at the page.

 

The older Clara looked troubled.

 

But it was the younger Clara who spoke first.

 

Very quietly.

 

"That girl."

 

The others looked at her.

 

She swallowed.

 

Then pointed to the passage.

 

"The red-haired girl."

 

No one answered.

 

The old house seemed to hold its breath.

 

And for the first time since arriving at Ingrid Lund's home, all three women wondered the same thing.

 

Was Charles remembering a dying child from long ago?

 

Or had he somehow seen the girl from Ward 8 long before any of them knew her name?

Done