but like a child clinging to the myth of Santa Claus, he had willed it to be true with all his heart.
He dutifully continued his lap around the room, showing interest in each of the interns he spoke to. This was the part of his job that he enjoyed; meeting people and getting to know them. He liked it when he got to be out in the community, speaking with people about their lives and how he, in his position, could help to improve them. Some people were more polite than others. In the past, some women had been downright crude to him, commenting on how attractive he was in person and what they would like to do to him in the privacy of their own bedrooms. That sort of talk made Charles most uncomfortable and he struggled to identify with women of the ‘ladette’ persuasion. Perhaps he was old-fashioned in his views, but he liked women to be, well, women; well turned out, polite and feminine. So many women were trying to push those boundaries and he never understood why.
Charles was ready to leave the interns when he saw her, and this time he was not mistaken. His body trembled as he realised that there was a ghost in his midst. He looked on in disbelief, his mouth agape, as Lorna appeared and walked across to the other side of the room. It was utterly impossible. It couldn’t be! Yet there was no denying it was her – the blonde hair, the delicate features, and her gentle, almost dance-like gait.
Charles’ entire body went cold as though he had suddenly been plunged in to ice. It could not be Lorna, it was impossible. But he had just seen her, he was certain of it.
Vomit threatened to escape from Charles’ mouth as he absorbed the shock. Everything seemed to be running in slow motion as he contemplated what he should do; fear making his actions erratic and clumsy. He hastily made his excuses and almost ran back to his office, terror gripping him as he moved.
‘Impossible, impossible,’ he muttered to himself as he hurried past Faye’s desk and gratefully closed his office door behind him.
‘Impossible,’ he said again, breathless from his frantic rush through the building. There was no logical reason why he could have seen Lorna but he did not doubt his senses. She had been there, amongst the interns. Charles tried to will himself to think rationally, to try and make sense of the senseless. Looking down at his hands he realised that they were shaking.
Why was Lorna there? Was she haunting him, punishing him for her death? Or had he gone mad, his mind completely lost beyond salvation and driven to the brink of insanity?
Charles feared that it was the latter. He sat at his desk and tried to calm down but his heart continued to thump like a crazed drum within his chest. He wanted to believe that he had imagined her; that he missed her so terribly that he had started to hallucinate that she was there. But she had seemed so real, moving amongst the interns as though she belonged there.
Charles let his head fall into his heads. Clearly, he was more disturbed than he had originally thought. And if it wasn’t that and if Lorna’s spirit was haunting him, he wasn’t sure if he even believed in all that. Charles was an atheist – the notion of an afterlife was ludicrous to him. But Lorna had haunted his dreams for all these months. What if she had now leapt out into his life?
‘Lorna’s dead.’ Charles said the words aloud, knowing that he no longer believed them.
These haunting memories refuse to fade
Alone in his office, Charles contemplated the very possible reality that he was going mad. The evidence was there; he had just seen Lorna, who was dead and had been for the past six months.
He sat and replayed the moment over and over in his mind, willing himself to find a flaw, to see that it wasn’t her, but it was hopeless. The more he thought about it, the more certain he became. The shock of seeing Lorna had numbed his senses slightly, leaving him sat frozen behind his desk with only his thoughts for company.
Rubbing his eyes he feared for his own mental state. He was dangerously sleep-deprived – lulled into any rest by a cocktail of prescribed drugs – so it was completely plausible that he’d stated to have daylight hallucinations. The thought terrified him, making even the marrow within his bones shake. Like Ebenezer Scrooge once had, he tried doggedly to dismiss what he had seen as coincidence and nothing more.
Surely, he reasoned, it was just an intern who looked very similar to Lorna. Charles wanted to believe that but he knew her face too well as he saw it each and every night in his dreams. It was Lorna who had been amongst the interns; what was uncertain was the reason for her being there.
Charles almost wished it was her ghost reaching out to him, as much as that prospect terrified him. At least that meant that he wasn’t going insane. Morbidly, he began to recall a documentary he had once watched, about a man who kept having vivid hallucinations which doctors discovered were attributed to a giant tumour growing inside his brain. The tumour was inoperable and the man ultimately died a slow, unpleasant death. On reflex, Charles tentatively touched his forehead. Was Lorna a manifestation of something sinister growing within him?
Perhaps the dreams had been a precursor and now the tumour had grown so much that his hallucinations were spilling out in to broad daylight, no longer confined to the darkness of his dreams.
To think that all this was just the mark of an illness made Charles despair. A part of him yearned for it to be Lorna’s spirit because that meant that, even in the afterlife, she still wanted to cling to him as much as he did to her.
He thought back to the documentary he had seen and remembered another chilling addition to the man’s symptoms; uncharacteristic behaviour. Before the tumour was discovered he began liking food he had always hated and being spiteful to those he loved after spending a lifetime being a kind, gentle man. Charles had never before acted on impulse until he met Lorna. The whole affair was grossly out of character for him. Sighing, Charles rubbed at his temple which was potentially housing the source of all his despair.
With hands still shaking, Charles picked up his phone and dialled home. He knew that the most decisive course of action would be to see his doctor as soon as possible. He hoped that he was wrong – that there was no tumour poisoning his mind. He couldn’t bear the thought that everything he had felt with Lorna was not real and was merely the symptom of an illness. The notion tainted the love he had felt and made him feel sick, as though he had been deceived by his own body.
‘Lloyd residence.’ Elaine sounded particularly cheerful as she answered the phone.
‘Honey, it’s me,’ Charles said, his voice hoarse.
‘Oh Charles, perfect timing! I have the decorator here with me now and we are going through samples for the dining room. Would you prefer magnolia or ivory?’
‘What?’ The fog of confusion produced by the shock of seeing Lorna made Charles struggle to decipher his wife’s question.
‘Colours, Charles. What would you like?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Is something wrong, dear?’ Elaine suddenly focused on her husband, her intuition sensing that there was a problem.
‘I’m just not feeling very well.’ Charles said softly.
‘Oh no, are you coming home?’ his wife asked in a panic, perturbed to think that her daily plans might suddenly be compromised.
‘No, I think I can stick out the
