Page 3 of A Guardian for Christmas

What have I done so far today? “Felt immeasurable resistance to the simplest of tasks. Avoided interacting with other humans. Despaired that night is inevitably coming again, when the ghosts get louder.”

“Did you say you wanted strawberry or blackberry jam?”

I startle and then turn away from the window.

A tall woman stands in the doorway. She’s looking skittish this morning, in her tight bun. The silver domed tray in her hands wavers slightly. She smiles hesitantly, with a questioning look.

“Whichever is fine, Cressida,” I say blankly but politely. I used to be able to muster a smile. Now, everything takes a monumental effort.

But it’s not her job to make me smile. Cressida’s job is to cook the food and bring me the food and take away the food once I’ve taken more than zero bites of the food.

I want to scream. I want to ask her why I’m not hungry, even though I haven’t eaten a bite since yesterday. I want to know why I can’t do a simple thing like go to the kitchen and shove bread in the toaster. I want to know why she’s still willingly employed here when she must be bored out of her mind with nothing to do but cook toast and tea for a strange, broken bird who doesn’t eat.

Cressida leaves the breakfast tray and recedes down the hallway. She may as well be fading into the blackness. The world of my bedroom is that separate from the rest of the world.

I turn back to the window, and the bird has flown away.

The grounds look pretty with a fresh blanket of snow.

Frye is hoping the sight of snow will jolt me out of my stupor, compelling me to feel or do literally anything. To eat breakfast, to shower, to get dressed, and to meet Dr. White downstairs for my weekly appointment.

But it is all meaningless, as far as I can tell.

I peer out the window, across the creek, over the treetops, and out toward the stone wall that marks the property’s edge. Someone has decorated the length of it with green garlands and red ribbon for Christmas. The embedded fountains along the wall haven’t been operational in years, and their basins have been filled with oversized Christmas baubles that glint in the sunshine.

Who did all that? Presumably I’m paying someone. Perhaps a landscaper? So many moving parts to this house that I don’t even know about…

As I ponder this, a shadow shifts in the tallest tree right in my line of vision.

The shape is shrouded by the boughs, but something black moved there, like human legs scaling a trunk. Well, whatever it was seems to have disappeared again.

It’s probably more paranoid delusions.

If I manage to attend my medical appointment, I’ll have the doctor up my prescription for tonight.

The medication Dr. White prescribes helps a little by putting me to sleep. But I still wake up at all hours to the noises.

That’s what I call them when Dr. White asks about them. But if I’m honest, it’s not just noises.

It’s voices. And sometimes… I see them floating across the room. Gray, faceless, and dressed in rotted rags.

I haven’t told anyone that what I’m hearing and seeing at night seems to be humans who whisper raspy nonsense. They could have me committed, as my grandfather did to my mother at 17.

Life at Bryant Estate sounds so much like a horror movie sometimes I could laugh.

If only my life was a horror movie, in which the main character has a fresh perspective every morning, brushing off last night’s terror as nothing more than a faulty electrical system or a silly prank by neighborhood children.

Maybe if I were a character in a horror movie, I would be able to convince myself that all my problems are simply in my head. I could seize the day and “make the most of the daylight,” as Grandmother used to say.

If I had the will to do that, I could go outside and investigate what I actually saw just now.

But that doesn’t work for me. Seize the day? Nah. I’m going back to bed.

For just a little longer.

And a little longer after that.

Leaving the curtain halfway open, I crawl back onto the mattress, my wrist with the red bird tucked under my pillow.

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