THE MIND PLAYS TRICKS

THE MIND PLAYS TRICKS  
by Samantha Bryant

Luisa sat looking out the window waiting for the day nurse to arrive. Her son had already left for work, and Jaleisha was running late.

Luisa rubbed her hands in her lap, the jutting knuckles sharp against her palms. She sucked in a deep breath and pushed it out slowly, as her doctor had suggested she do to fight down the panic when it threatened to overtake her, but she could seem to get the exhale out without hitches and bumps and the feeling of hot salt tears gathering in her throat. Her heart beat faster.

There was no reason to be anxious, she told herself. It was a good day. She had awakened feeling alert and focused and had no trouble recognizing her son and remembering the details of their lives.

Javi had taken time to sit with her over breakfast and they had laughed over some images he showed her on his phone. She didn’t always understand the jokes he shared with her this way, but today she had pleased him by recognizing the references. She’d seen his little boy’s smile when he grinned, something she saw too seldom these days. He worried so much, her sweet boy.

But, right after Javi left for work, when she’d found herself alone in the quiet house, she had started seeing things again.

She knew they weren’t real.

Of course, there were not tiny shadow men crouched on the bookshelves and grinning at her. The very idea was ridiculous.

 But she saw them all the same.

They squatted there, bony knees up to their ears, three of them in a row, smiling and waving at her with fingers with too many joints in them. She couldn’t see them if she looked directly at them, but as soon as she turned her head, they reappeared, faces stretched wide by smiles with too many teeth in them.

She hadn’t told Javi about these hallucinations, of course.

Even these visits from the day nurse were more than his income and her little pension could really support. He was a good boy, though, and worried about her if she had to spend too much time alone. He had not forgotten the day she had gone out to collect the mail, and had panicked when she turned around and found the wrong house awaiting her.

It wasn’t really the wrong house. She had just forgotten she and her husband had moved all those years ago. She had expected to see the one-story brick house they had lived in for the first fifteen years of their marriage instead of the stately yellow house with pillars Antonio had died in last summer. 

If she told Javi she was seeing little shadow men, he would want to bring someone in to sit with her full time. It was more than he could afford.

Javi was thirty-five years old and still not married. He ought to be saving his money to buy an engagement ring for the pretty girl he was dating, not spending it foolishly just because his mother’s mind played tricks on her. All she had to do was keep herself calm and remind herself that the shadow men were not real. She could do it if she tried hard enough.

Luisa paced back to the window and pulled the curtains aside again to check for the arrival of her nurse. The late morning sun made the window reflective and she gasped when someone sitting at the breakfast nook table grinned at her in the reflection.

She spun around, only to find an empty chair, though she thought the chair was in a different position than she had left it, as if it had been pushed back in a hurry and left too far from its assigned spot.

She was making herself nervous with watching. I need to find a good distraction.

She thought of her bright yellow reading chair in the living room. She’d left her book sitting on the side table. The very handsome young man on the cover was naked to the waist and wearing a kilt around his well-muscled abdomen and thighs. His head wasn’t visible in the picture, but his head was the least interesting part of him anyway. Luisa had left off just before the buxom, red-haired heroine was about to remove the kilt. That promised a distracting scene. It would be just the thing to keep her mind occupied.

When she entered the living room, she thought she saw smoke or fog rolling along the floor and panicked for a moment. Did I leave a burner on in the kitchen? She rubbed her eyes and, when she looked back, the floor was just plain blond wood as it always had been. Relieved, for once, to find she had been seeing things, she turned on the lamp on the table beside her chair and settled in with the book.

A couple of times, as she read, laughter seemed to echo from another room, but when she stopped to listen more closely, there was no sound other than the ticking of the clock.

Once, she felt a claw on her shoulder, as if a cat had climbed over the back of the chair and was trying to drape itself across her neck. But their cat had died years ago.

She forced her attention to the book, refusing to give in to what had to be hallucinations or phantoms of memory. Go away.

After the lovemaking scene, which was tougher to enjoy than it should have been, Luisa put her bookmark in, and sat clutching the small volume in her lap.

The grandfather clock near the mantelpiece drew her attention. An impossibly large black moth-like bug fluttered across the room. Just ignore the bug. It’s nothing. A dust mote in the sunlight. Eleven o’clock. Where was that nurse?

The nurse was supposed to take her for a walk, give her lunch, and supervise the taking of her medications. Javi was especially worried about that last part. He had admonished her not to take the drugs herself. “It’s too easy to lose track, Mami. Let the nurse give them to you and cross them off on your chart.” 

Luisa had promised. She didn’t like having her son boss her around, but she shared some of his fears about her ability to manage things like pill schedules and appliances. Could one of her medications cause hallucinations? She wondered if it was a good idea to ask the nurse, when she finally got there, or if it would only cause trouble if she admitted she was seeing things.

As if thinking of her had summoned her, the nurse arrived and called out, “Mrs. Sosa? It’s me, Jaleisha. I’m so sorry I’m late!”

“I’m in the living room!” Luisa called out, relieved that the young woman had arrived at last. The next two hours were quite busy.

First, Jaleisha doled out the medications and Luisa obediently took them, sitting in her seat at the kitchen table and carefully not dwelling on the figure she had seen sitting there an hour or so earlier. The chair was cool and smooth beneath her rump, just as it should have been. The prickling sensation was just the air conditioning sending a breeze down her neck.

Wrapping her shawl around herself, Luisa listened as her aide complained about her boyfriend while she prepared a lunch for the two of them. Luisa did like this young woman, but worried she had terrible luck with men. In the six months Jaleisha had been coming in to take care of her, she had talked about three different men. That didn’t speak well for the staying power of romance in her life. 

Luisa didn’t have any good advice to offer. She had only had one boyfriend besides the man who became her husband. Her mother had been very strict, so she had certainly never been on a date to a nightclub or brought home a man from the bar like Jaleisha had. She liked hearing the girl’s stories, though, and Jaleisha seemed to enjoy her shocked reactions.

When the younger woman had settled across from her with her own plate, Luisa turned her attention to the food. It was a nice egg and red potato omelet. Luisa missed the saltier version she used to cook, but she knew her blood pressure couldn’t take the salt. Jaleisha did use an herb blend that made it flavorful and it was good and warm. “Thank you. It’s delicious as always.”

Jaleisha smiled broadly, her round cheeks rolling up to almost make her eyes disappear. “Where would you like to walk today? It’s beautiful outside,” she said, scooping up a forkful of the meal.

Luisa didn’t even have to think about it. She loved to walk down the hill to the newer streets in the neighborhood. The rich ladies who lived there had beautiful gardens and she was sure some new things would have bloomed since they had last walked down there.

After lunch, Luisa put on her wide-brimmed straw hat to protect her skin from the sun, and a light sweater. Even though it was warm outside, she took a chill easily. Jaleisha dropped her phone into her pocket and the two of them set out. When Luisa looked back at the house, she would have sworn a too-tall, too-slender man stood looking out the glass panel beside the door, elongated fingers stroking the glass. She quickly turned her head away.

As they walked, Jaleisha talked about another woman she used to take care of. She often told Luisa about this other woman, and Luisa suspected only some of the stories were true. Mostly, they seemed to be a way for Jaleisha to say how she wanted to be treated. Old Ms. Workman wasn’t nice like Luisa. Even after months of care, she never called her by name but just “the girl.”

Luisa could see why that would rankle her, but also wondered if Ms. Workman might have just been trying to hide a gap in her memory. Memory was a slippery beast, and the strangest things would slip right out of your brain, things you would think would be impossible to forget.

Luisa herself had a list of reminders she gave herself every morning, including that Antonio was dead. If she slipped and let on that she sometimes forgot her husband had passed on, Javi got really agitated. So, she tried hard to hold on to that fact, even though it was painful.

They strolled slowly down the gentle hill, Luisa holding Jaleisha’s arm for extra support, but, when they were on the flat land at the bottom, Luisa let go. She turned her face up into the sun, enjoying the warmth on her flesh. She liked the days they could wander here in the neighborhood better than the days when the weather was poor and they had to get their exercise on the track at the senior center. It smelled like rubber and perspiration and the music jangled her nerves.

But here in the neighborhood, the air smelled of flowers and familiar domestic scents like garden compost, chlorine in backyard swimming pools, and the mild exhaust from passing cars or riding lawn mowers.

On the corner was a house that seemed out of place. Luisa couldn’t remember seeing it before, though she’d walked this street many times. Smaller and of a different style than the others, the bungalow was reminiscent of the 1950s and the neighborhood she grew up in. She opened her mouth to mention it to Jaleisha, but when she turned her head, the little house flickered and disappeared, replaced by a child’s playhouse with a plastic slide.

Luisa couldn’t help it. She groaned aloud.

Jaleisha’s head snapped in her direction, her eyes looking into Luisa’s face searchingly. “What’s the matter, Mrs. Sosa? Does something hurt?”

“No. It’s just—” She hated to say it. Admitting she saw things could have consequences. “My mind just plays tricks on me sometimes.”

Jaleisha’s face softened into sympathy. “It does that to all of us, honey,” she offered, guiding Luisa around the corner so they could walk down the cul-de-sac before turning around to head back home.

Luisa thought her nurse might just let it go, but after a while, she asked, “What did you think you saw?”

Luisa was a terrible liar. She decided not to even try. “A house that doesn’t belong here.”

Jaleisha swiveled her head. “Where was it?”

“There, on the corner.”

Jaleisha looked. “Mm-hmmm,” she said, in the sing-song way she sometimes had. “Maybe it’s a ghost.”

“Can a house be a ghost?”

“Why not? There’s life to a home, too, isn’t there?”

Luisa was comforted that Jaleisha believed there were reasons to see things besides being incompetent, but not comforted enough to admit how often her mind played those kinds of tricks on her. The young woman was probably just humoring her anyway.

When they got back home, Luisa didn’t comment on the long gray-blue creature she thought she saw snaking its way around the door frame or the white face looking out from the upstairs window.

She cooperated while Jaleisha took her vital readings and helped her settle in for a nap. Jaleisha set the coffee pot timer so there would be nice hot coffee waiting for her when she woke, then said her goodbyes and went on her way.

Luisa’s dreams were strange unsettled things, full of dark, shadowy figures and watery laughter.

She sat up suddenly an hour or so later, uncertain what had happened to wake her. Her heart was racing in her chest and she was gripping the blanket tightly, having yanked it loose and pulled it high enough that her feet were sticking out the bottom.

Folding the covers back, she shifted to sit with her feet dangling off the edge of the bed. For a long moment, she just listened. There was a murmuring sound, but it was muffled. She wasn’t sure if it was within her own head or in another room. Then, there was a loud, high-pitched laugh and there was no room for doubt.

There were people in her home. She heard the distinct scrape of the kitchen chair sliding across the wood floor and fumbled in her nightstand drawer for her phone.

She had just found it and was holding it in her shaking hands when the door to her bedroom opened.

There was something—a man?—standing there. He was made of shadow and his edges were not distinct, as if he were a photograph slightly out of focus. Something about his proportions was wrong for a man, though he had two arms and two legs and was human-shaped. The spindly arms were too thin for the bulk of the torso and the fingers too long, bending a third time at an extra joint.

Luisa mumbled a prayer to herself and gripped the phone more tightly, willing her fingers to move to unlock and dial the thing.

The creature stepped into the room, trailing a sort of shadowy dust that dissipated behind him as he moved. “It’s all right, Luisa,” it said.

Its voice was pleasant, soft and soothing, low and resonant, making her think of the woman who used to do story time at the library when her children were young. “I’m sorry my friends woke you. They’re all just so excited to meet you.”

“To meet me?” She looked at her pillow accusingly, as if it were somehow to blame. Could she still be asleep?

“It’s been a while since we’ve been seen, you see.”

“What do you mean?” She was proud that her voice didn’t tremble, even if her hands did. “You’re not real. You’re just my mind playing tricks on me.”

“No, not at all!” The creature chuckled, a sonorous and indulgent sound that reminded Luisa of her own dear Papá at times when he had found her childish ideas about the world charming and quaint. “The tricks your mind played were all the years when it convinced you that you had not seen what was really here all along. We’ve always been here.”

“We?”

“I think you call us the shadow-men.”

“You’re real?” A salty block of tears seemed to melt in her throat. She wanted to believe him, wanting to trust the story her own senses told her.

“Of course we are!”

“Are you here to hurt me?” she asked, surprised at her own audacity in asking, both wanting and fearing the answer she might receive.

“No. We wouldn’t hurt you, Luisa. Never. You can see us! Do you know how rare that is? Only a few of the very young and the very old can see us, if you’ll pardon me for calling you old.”

A smile tugged at Luisa’s mouth. How sweet! It worried about offending her. 

The slender creature knelt and looked up at her. Its gray eyes were soft and kind within the smoky, indistinct face. They reminded her of the eyes of a baby—the way an infant can look ancient and brand new all at the same time. It held out a hand to her. “Come,” it said.

To her surprise, she did. She slipped her feet into her soft blue slippers and followed the shadow-man through the door of her bedroom and to the kitchen, still clutching the un-dialed phone in one hand.

There they all were: the three little men who had squatted on her shelves, the moth creature, the snake-like one, something cat-like, others that looked familiar in a more distant way. They turned when she came in. One of them gasped, a delighted sound; a few of them clapped. She couldn’t help it. She felt pleased, like she’d walked in to find all her friends and family gathered to celebrate her birthday.

She turned to the shadow-man, somehow feeling she knew him best. He nudged her forward with his shoulder, a gentle butt like a dog prompting a petting. “Come and sit, Luisa. I’ll pour the coffee. We have so much to talk about!”

Fiction © Copyright Samantha Bryant
Image by StockSnap from Pixabay