Gillian Anderson - A Dream of Ice

“I have a suggestion,” Barbara said, just as the bell rang to signal her next patient’s arrival. “Don’t worry, it’s Simon, he’ll understand.” Barbara buzzed him into the lobby and continued. “When was the last time Jacob saw his aunt Abby in LA?”

Caitlin smiled at her friend. “Nice carom shot, doctor. I haven’t seen her in a long time either.”

“Go out there,” Barbara said. “Get some family time embedded in your body and your brain. You never know when you might need it as a reference, a touchstone.”

“Okay, maybe. Once I’m fully back on track with my regular clients.”

“All right. How’s everyone else in your life?”

Caitlin ran through the short list, starting with her parents and ending with Ben, their night together, and how it was better that they were proceeding as friends.

“That’s a good thing, isn’t it?” Caitlin said, convincing herself. “For now.”

“For now,” Barbara said, nodding in agreement. She then took a meaningful beat. “Speaking of ‘for now,’ want to schedule another one?”

“Probably a good idea,” said Caitlin. “Strike while the iron’s hot.”

While Barbara walked to her desk, Caitlin let her eyes drift around the room and ended up gazing at a lamp stand, amazed at how brass could be twisted so extensively, with such precision. Suddenly, she wasn’t thinking about the lamp. With eyes still on the brass, she slowly brought her hands together, her right hand slightly curved below her left hand, a few inches away from it. Instantly she felt energy coil in her chest, and her sight changed into—vision. The brass began to move. Just as the silvery metal poles and bars in the subway train had come alive with reflections, the shining patches of sunlight on the brass flared. They began to extend in the same curious geometry, reaching toward and running through her. She felt herself expand mentally, emotionally, and physically. Optimism, ebullience, pure joy surged back into her.

She slowly looked around the room and Barbara’s multitude of knots was magnificent. They were all pulsing as the light side of each rope strand pushed against the side in shadow, and their loose ends extended past their frames through the air. Caitlin laughed in her throat and turned to take in more of them.

Suddenly, the room flashed white, as if an old-fashioned reel of film had snapped and there was just a bare, brightly lit screen. Only it wasn’t entirely opaque; Caitlin could see a turquoise color swirling toward her from behind the white, and there was sound—several quick thuds, a pause, more thuds. They were amplified to the degree that Caitlin could feel them in her chest, in her back. There was an echoing quality to them but no actual echoes, just thuds.

The rest of her senses, she realized, had vanished. She tried to raise her arms and step forward, to find something to hold on to in the whiteness. The motion was almost impossible, as if she were moving through mud . Using every ounce of her strength to push against the arrhythmic thuds, she managed to stretch out her hand. Then something darkened before her, a shape. Was it shoulders and a head?

Caitlin thought she heard her name called, thin and wispy beneath the thudding. Slowly, she managed to pick up a foot and move it a couple inches ahead of her. Suddenly, her chest went empty with horror. She recognized the thudding. This drumming with no consistent beat was Jacob, drumming hard with his fingertips on the wall between their bedrooms.

She tried to scream, tried to curve her hand into knuckles so she could knock back, if there was anything to knock against—but her mouth and her hand would not—

Jacob! she yelled in her mind. Where are you? Who is with you?

“Caitlin!” she heard again, to her left, louder and sharper. “Come back!”

With monumental effort, Caitlin moved two of the fingertips of her outstretched hand slightly to the right, as the woman in the subway had done.

At once, the whiteness and the thuds vanished. Caitlin fell back into the armchair, causing Barbara to pitch forward.

“Oh my god,” Caitlin said, “Oh my god, Jacob.”

Barbara crouched so they were face-to-face with her hands firmly placed on Caitlin’s shoulders. “Caitlin, what just happened?”

“I went away. Somewhere. White clouds, or whitecaps on water, everywhere white. And drumming. I couldn’t find Jacob. Was he… were we drowning? Flying?”

“Neither. You were right here,” Barbara said. “You didn’t go anywhere.”

“Oh no,” Caitlin said. “I was not in this room.”

“Caitlin, you were. Listen to me: are you tired?”

“What? No! Barbara, it wasn’t petit mal. I didn’t have a seizure.”

“How do you know? Perhaps we should schedule an EEG.”

“ That’s not it! ” Caitlin said, pushing herself from the chair, making and unmaking fists. “No dizziness, muscles working fine. Not sweating and I wasn’t twitching, was I?”

“No…,” Barbara said, rising to face her. “Caitlin, at least sit and talk it through. Simon texted and said he could use some more time to make a phone call.”

“I can’t,” Caitlin said. “I have to go.”

“Caitlin, do you know where you are?”

“Yes!”

“Where are you going?”

“To check on my son,” Caitlin replied, heading toward the door.

“You should go home.”

“No,” Caitlin replied. “I have to make sure he is okay.”

Caitlin was too electrified to sit in a cab.

She began the crosstown trek to Jacob’s school. She did it power-walking, burning off energy, pushing into the fear, into everything that was roiling inside. The session with Barbara had opened doors to… what exactly?

There was no more dodging or denying this new reality.

She continued to walk.

Despite everything she had said to Barbara, Caitlin realized that she was fighting herself. She was a scientist who took rational steps, one at a time. Now she was forcing herself to jump into areas for which there were no reliable textbooks, no maps. There was just one consolation, something that hadn’t been present when she was working with Maanik and Gaelle: I’m not facing the same threat.

But she was facing the mysteries of Galderkhaan and the feeling of awful terror when she thought Jacob was knocking in that opaque blank nothing place.

Caitlin had just taken out her phone, to call Jacob, when the phone rang in her hand. It was a local number, elusively familiar. She answered and it was the vice principal of Jacob’s school.

“Dr. O’Hara, is Jacob with you?”

Nothing from the past few weeks equaled the cold fear that smashed into Caitlin now.

“He is not with me,” she said tightly. “Is he not at school?”

There was the tiniest of pauses during which a well-trained educator kept himself from cursing in the ear of a parent.

“Dr. O’Hara, we have lost track of your son. We think he may have walked from the building about half an hour ago but we aren’t sure. However, we have looked everywhere…”

Caitlin had no idea what the man said next. She couldn’t hear him over her internal screaming. She stood on the street shouting into the phone for a few minutes but it felt like years. Then somehow she said to herself, beneath the screaming, Where would he go? Start there. Somewhere near school?

Caitlin hung up on the vice principal, saying only, “I’ll call you back.” She glanced around, registered where she was, then started sprinting with a stamina she didn’t know she had.

Her peripheral vision grayed out. Looks from the people she passed hardly registered. Vaguely she wondered whether she should try to reach for Jacob using this new power. Was it even possible? But the thought was a bare blip in the total urgency of running. She lunged across the street before traffic had fully stopped. Horns honked, someone yelled, she heard nothing. Her lungs started to beg for a pause. She didn’t notice.