NETHERMEAD: By A.J. Sweeney
Tuesday, January 25th, 2011She couldn’t put her finger on it but something felt wrong.
She’d been walking for what seemed like hours, though she couldn’t tell for sure. She looked at her phone: no reception. She had no watch.
It was a cool, misty evening in late winter, almost spring, and it had still been light out when she got home from work. It had seemed a shame to shut herself inside and watch TV, so she put on her boots and walked to the park.
She wandered through the muddy meadows and naked trees, feeling herself relax almost immediately, slipping into a meditative state as she rounded the still, gray pond. If there was one thing she was good at, it was emptying her mind. She once took a yoga class and sat
there in guilty silence when the instructor lamented how difficult it was to get your mind really empty.
She worked as a dispatcher for a shipping company, meaning she assigned one thing from one person to be moved from one place to another place by another person. After five years of dull routine, she began to feel a generalized lull taking hold of her mind.
It wasn’t unpleasant. It allowed her to field calls from angry customers with robotic detachment, and go through the motions on her long, routine-filled weekends. No, truly there was nothing wrong with the mellow emptiness she allowed herself to feel, but things became
problematic when the mellowness gave way to carelessness and forgetfulness.
She often felt a vague, foggy feeling that she was forgetting something but she couldn’t remember what it was. This feeling nagged her now as she plodded through the park. “Am I late to meet someone? Not likely. More likely I’m forgetting something….”
She continued on her way, letting the sound of burbling water relax her as she walked nearer to the bridge and brook. She heard the murmuring grow louder in the distance and realized it was the ravings of a homeless schizophrenic who trod back and forth on the bridge.
She changed course without breaking stride. “I’ll go over by the hill instead,” she said to herself.
There were a number of steep hills in the park, and now she rounded the base of the tallest of these, Lookout Hill, which ended its western vista quite abruptly over a stony cataract of loose shale and jagged boulders. The meadow beyond was called Nethermead. Past this
she strolled, letting the sound of birdsong drown out the schizophrenic man as he shouted about Jesus.
The night was getting dark and damp; the lamp-lights would be coming on soon. Her eyes were having trouble discerning the four dusky shapes coming at her in the distance. Four youths, all male, on the path coming toward her. She felt herself stiffen slightly and held
her breath a little as they got nearer.
One of them said, “The hours are a good – ”
His friend interrupted. “Better than the ER?”
“Way better. The hours at the ER were brutal.”
And she realized these four young men were doctors, or perhaps medical students. She laughed a little and felt herself relax again.
The park had become very still and quiet. A strange, not-unpleasant fatigue, a blissful sensation, washed warmly over her; she felt as though she were almost falling asleep, as though she could lie down and take a nap right there on the ground.
Her mind was so befogged, she was unaware of a lone man walking about twelve feet behind her. He caught up to her quickly with his long strides and she started a little as he walked beside her, his pace to hers. “Are you going home now?” he asked in awkward, accented
English. He was smiling. “Yes, I’m going home now,” she answered. He smiled again and nodded. “Okay.” And he walked away in the direction from which he’d come.
She began to feel a vague sense of unease.
“Have I forgotten something? Am I late to meet someone? Not likely. More likely I’m forgetting something….”
The fog, so charming moments ago, now seemed impenetrable. Twilight caused solid shapes to shift. She walked down one path only to realize she was going in the opposite direction she’d intended. She turned around, only to come round the bend and end up where she
started.
“I’ve been here before…”
She wondered absently if she was losing her mind. She had been making more mistakes at work than usual, pressing the wrong button here, entering the wrong data code there.
Now a dreadful shiver ran through her. Though it was definitely dark, the lamp-lights hadn’t come on. Another oddity: she hadn’t seen another soul since the strange man in the woods. But strangest of all was the birdsong: it had disappeared completely. All was completely
and utterly silent and still.
Steadily she walked, slowly yielding to the sense of inevitability that was spreading over her. And then at last, she saw a landmark, something distinct from the seemingly endless spiral of pathways and trees: Lookout Hill.
Automatically, she walked toward it and up the zig-zagging paths that circumscribed its steep sides. Back and forth until she reached the top. The fog and mist were such that it took her a moment to register what she saw when she looked down. It was SHE, walking on the path
below. She mused for a moment, gazing down at herself.
She picked up a large rock with both hands and threw it down on her head. Her body below crumpled.
Now her mind felt clear, alert. She felt more lucid than she had in ages.
“That’s better,” she said.
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©2011 A. J Sweeney
A.J. Sweeney lives in Brooklyn, N.Y., across the street from a cemetery and a high-voltage ConEd substation, and hopes that one day this combination will result in some zombie
action. She blogs at http://bourbonandtea.blogspot.com.
