Unheard

`There was little noise, or that’s how it seemed to me… You know like in movies when you see people slowly walking, but the surroundings… the other people, they are all moving at three times the normal speed… a blur. Well, that’s what it was like. The paramedics, rushing ahead of me, pushing my sister on the gurney down the hospital corridor. The whole world set to fast forward, only someone had forgotten to tell me… 

Masses gathered on either side, their faces gaunt, pale and misshapen, even beneath the masks. Watching like a muted audience… waiting for the ideal time to pounce. To pounce on my sister… to pounce on me.’

 

‘But no-one did pounce, did they?’ Dr. Raegan’s soft, assured voice penetrated Johnathon’s trance as he broke away from the memory. His eyes taking a moment to refocus on his surroundings and come acclimatised to the couch he now sat.

 

‘No,’ he coughed, ‘… no-one did’ Johnathon’s voice was still distant.

 

‘I think it is truly impressive that you can recount the events so vividly, even though you were what?’ Dr Raegan paused, looking down to her notes. ‘Only five at the time, that’s over twenty years ago.’

 

‘It’s not something I’m likely to forget.’ Johnathon replied without a beat. 

 

‘Indeed. So, what happened next?’ Dr. Raegan pressed.

 

‘She was only in the hospital a few days before they sent her home… When they said there was no more they could do… that it would be better for her, and us if we no longer came to the hospital.’

 

‘And what did that mean to you?’ Dr. Raegan asked, before raising the question more clearly. ‘What did you think was happening when your sister returned home.’

 

‘I thought she was better.’ Johnathon’s tone was etched with innocence as if he were still the five-year-old boy. ‘I thought she was coming home and we were going to be able to play again. But instead… well… she never did come home, not really, not my sister.’

 

‘If she wasn’t your sister, then who was she?’

 

‘More like what was she… and I couldn’t tell you, I just know it wasn’t her. It wasn’t the same.’

 

‘And, what was it like when she was back home?’

 

‘I told you she was never back home’ Johnathon barked in offence. ‘The thing never left my sisters room… always in bed… and the sounds, the grotesque noises she made from her throat, coughing what sounded like a thick fluid from her lungs… Did I tell you our cat went missing?’ Johnathon continued before Dr, Raegan had a chance to respond, his words quicker, more exasperated; manic. ‘I am sure that thing took it, ate it. Those noises, a wheezing that penetrated the walls… I could hear it when I lay in my bed at night, the soft glow of the night light doing nothing to dampen the fear I felt when that sound, not only haunted my nightmares, but also my waking state… there was something beneath it, something else calling. Night after night I tried really listening, lying there trying to hear… like I wanted to be heard, but it was as if I wasn’t ready to.’

 

‘When you say you wanted to be heard, can you tell me a little bit more about what you mean.’

 

‘At first it was ok, when we first got her… it home…’ Johnathon shook his head, correcting his words. ‘People used to come around, they would always make a real effort to acknowledge me, I remember my nan used to take me to the swings. I loved it so much, escaping the flat, escaping the sounds. But then… the visiting stopped. I was trapped… isolated in the flat, not physically alone, my parents also stayed inside the whole time, but still, it was like they were not there, not to me… only to it. My mum would spend the whole day in my sister’s room, her face covered by that weird mask, not coming out except to eat and my dad… well he had taken to working from home and so spent most days staring at his laptop, or talking on video chat to strangers…

I used to stand out on the terrace, watching the people far below going about their life. I could sometimes hear laughter, singing its way up through the floors, but only from the outside and then even that stopped… the strangers down below first started to wear the same mask as my mum, as if mocking me, and then they too started avoiding me, the streets deserted, even to cars. 

All I had was the noises… the wheezing that like me wanted to be heard.’

 

‘Did you have chance to see your sister…’

 

‘She was not my sister!’ Johnathon screamed, his legs straightening to a stance, his fists closed so tight his knuckles were white. 

 

‘Ok, ok’ Dr, Raegan continued to speak in a soft tone, ‘please sit down. So did you ever go into your sister’s room afterwards?’

 

‘Yes… only once… just before.’

 

‘Can you tell me what you saw?’ 

 

‘I had to wear a mask over my face before I was allowed in… The thin cotton fabric etched with something, sterile. I can still taste it on my tongue, my own warm breath echoing back at me. And then when I went in, I think my dad was with me, but I don’t remember… all I remember is the deafening beeps that reverberated off the walls. A steady, sharp, recurring scream from the machine, that was now part of what was once my sister… and, of course the wheezing escaping from her mouth…louder and yet still there was something I couldn’t hear… I admit she still looked like my sister, or at least a little. You could tell she was once a little girl anyway, before it… it changed her… As I got closer, the first thing I noticed was her skin. It was pale, but not white like I expected, more of a pale yellow, unnatural colour. Her chest raised slowly up and down, echoed by the wheezing and machine’s screams. She was hollow. Whatever had taken over her had now only left a shadow of who she was.’

 

‘What happened next?’

 

‘I touched her arm…’ Johnathon had continued despite not even hearing the doctor’s question, his words almost over lapping hers, his eyes staring straight ahead, unblinking. ‘I don’t know why… I mean I felt sick, but for some reason my arm raised all by itself. And that’s when…’ Johnathon’s voice changed, his whole body seemed to shrivel inwards, squashing him into the couch. ‘That’s when it got me. I could feel it, as it crossed from her and latched onto me, a full life that had yet to be sullied… and the next second the recurring scream slowed and steadied into one continuous screech… the wheezing in the room stopped, but I could still hear it.'

 

‘Johnathon, what do you mean when you say the wheezing stopped but you could still hear it?’ 

 

‘It’s hard to explain, I mean I know it stopped, I know my sister was dead, killed by that thing… yet at the same time I could still hear it… inside me…  I know it didn’t mean to kill my sister; I understand that now.’

 

‘What made you change your mind?’

 

‘It told me… he told me… you see, at first I thought the sound was its breath… just a wheezing… but deep down… there’s a voice. The problem is my sister was too weak to hear it… that’s why she died because she didn’t listen… but I do listen… I do hear him, finally, and now I understand what I… what he… what we must do.’

 

‘And what is it you have to do Johnathon?’

 

‘Just listen… listen and then when it’s necessary… obey.’