Surrounded

Image is an original creation created by Skyla Barilaro using Adobe Illustrator & Photoshop

The day began as it always had for Fatimah. Her dreams were disturbed by the squalls of an impossibly old alarm clock that screamed in spite at the traces of dawn. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she glared at her enemy, its face flashing four thirty. “What an ungodly hour,” she thought, but her day needed to begin. Fatimah was an assistant manager at the local deli, a job she never wanted but needed. She had found herself at a daunting crossroads in her life, abandoned by everyone she had ever known. She now resided in a program for the homeless and forgotten, the last resort. Throughout her life, she had always been isolated, feared for her strange quirks. Fatimah could answer a question that was never spoken aloud, act on directions not given, and the one trait that rendered her an outcast; she spoke to the unseen. People thought she was insane, possessed. The program was a chance to rebuild in a place where no one knew who she was. Every morning, she would rise begrudgingly, following the same routine. Shower, dress, work, home.

Today was no different. As her shift wore on, each second longer than the last, she looked forward to her one moment of peace, her smoke break. Before working at the deli, she had never smoked, but her job only gave breaks to the smokers; legally, they had to, so she picked up the nasty habit, first as a ruse, but as time passed, it became a ritual of relaxation. Today’s break was just like the others. Fatimah leaned on the wall of the far side of the building, gazing at the various hues of green that painted the forest line behind the building, admiring the calmness through the curves and dance of the smoke billowing from her breath, watching it as it blended and disappeared with the breeze that rattled and sang through the leaves. The music of nature was the only sound she welcomed to break the chaos of her thoughts. As she enjoyed the symphony of her surroundings, an interruption snapped her back to reality.

“I have always been able to sense spirits.”

The hushed voices of two women piqued her curiosity. She has never heard anyone else acknowledge the existence of spirits. “They’re just a crazy as you are,” she chuckled to herself. She tried to ignore the women, but she could not shake the urge to see who spoke such nonsense. Fatimah crept to the rear of the building, making sure not to let her footfall crush the fallen leaves that littered her path. As she approached the corner, she took out her compact mirror to angle it to see the two women. As she stalked, she recognized one of the two women. The first one, she only met in passing. Stephanie was a tall woman; her face was a battlefield between what once was and what time demanded, framed with earthy brown hair, but the other woman was her manager. Shock washed over Fatimah. Her manager, Lucy, was a staunch woman. She was an older woman, marked with a quiet strength built from a lifetime of experience and struggle. She was not conventionally attractive; Lucy was a woman who had better things to do than spend hours in the mirror fussing over her looks. She was practical and grounded, which is why Fatimah admired her. But now, there she was, indulging in and listening to the same discourse that had led to her own life of isolation and obligation.

“I told you, Steph, you need to clear your mind to see them.”

What was she hearing? Were there truly other people who believed in the paranormal? As she watched in awe, the clouds parted ways, allowing the sun’s light to cause a glare from the tool she used to invade their privacy. As the light bounced off Lucy’s glasses, she looked up, making direct eye contact through the line-of-sight reflection.

“Kid, is that you?!” Lucy called out. Knowing she was caught in her investigation, Fatimah stepped in from around the corner.

“I’m sorry, Lucy, I’ll head back inside and get back to work.”

“No Kid, stay, how much did you hear? What questions do you have?”

For the first time, Fatimah’s mind was empty and silent, struggling to comprehend the questions she had been asked. “What does she mean, do I have any questions?” she thought.

“Well, speak, Kid, I don’t have all day!” That snapped her back to reality.

“You believe in ghosts?” How completely ignorant, of all the questions she could ask, Fatimah kicked herself for her simple-minded words. But Lucy answered her, nonetheless.

“Yes, I do, and I get rid of them.”

“Get rid of them?” Fatimah spat out in confusion.

“Yes, Steph can sense them, and I can drive them away.”

Absent-minded and taken aback by what she was hearing, Fatimah vomited out a confession she hadn’t dared speak for years, “Oh, okay, well, I can see them and speak with them”. Shit. What had she just done? Fatimah worked so hard to start over here, to be normal, and she just spat out something that could implode her new life. Except it did not. Lucy did not recoil at her statement; she leaned into it.

“You can see them?!” Fatimah had never heard excitement about her uncanny ability.

“Yes, I can see them.” Both women now flanked her, rattling off question after question:

“What do they look like?!”

“Do they look demonic?”

“Are they corporeal?”

Too many questions. Raising her hand, Fatimah stopped them in their tracks. “I don’t want to entertain this, seeing the spirits have taken everything away from me, everyone believes I’m crazy, that I’m schizophrenic,” “But you are not crazy.” Lucy’s statement locked Fatimah’s eyes on her own. You are not crazy. No one has ever said that, not even her mother. “Kid, are you busy tonight?” What was Lucy asking? Was this an invitation? She had never been invited anywhere, and no one wanted to be around her. Fatimah paused for a moment, contemplating her response. If she said no, could this lead to friendship? She had never had a friend. If she said yes, would they continue their interests, or would she be able to fade back into the background? She had always faded into the background; it was her best survival trait. In the next moment, Fatimah decided to live. “No, I’m not busy.” “Great, meet us at CC Woods tonight after sunset.” CC Woods was notorious. Once used as an internment camp for German prisoners of war during the 1940s, CC Woods was a local urban legend. There were rumors of mistreatment to whispers of mass exterminations akin to the European concentration camps, and Fatimah lived right at its entrance. How convenient. When she first moved into the program, she was warned never to enter those woods because people were known to vanish. She once even heard a guttural scream, that was pitched too incorrectly to be human, echo through the trees on quiet nights, and this is where she agreed to go, great.

When night fell, they set off on their journey, wandering down a long-forgotten paved road that led deep into the forest. “What do you see, Kid?” Nothing, she saw nothing, just heard. “I hear footsteps, Lucy.” Unsatisfied with her response, Lucy frowned and stared off up ahead. The road was coming to a fork, with one path continuing down its current path and the other branching off, a dirt trail winding into abysmal darkness. Lucy began leading their shoddy trio down the undisturbed soil.

“I’ve never gone this way; this should stir something up, guys.”

Fatimah thought the excitement was displaced but continued. As the night stretched on, the dirt ended and became an open clearing with a dilapidated abandoned barrack standing at its center. As Fatimah’s eyes landed on the field, the scene before her warped into a movie of yesteryear. She could see American soldiers shouting, prisoners marching in cadence, only to be lined up and felled one after another, a true scene of horror. Fatimah gasped and pressed her eyes closed.

“What did you see, Kid?”

“Everything,” she whispered, tear ducts swelling to their limits, “Everything.”

Something was different this time. Usually, she could see one or two specters; now she saw them all. Not just the shadowed history of the camp, she witnessed the entire trace of what was and had ever been in that very location overlapping, overwhelming her into a state of abrupt unconsciousness.

“I don’t know what to do!”

“Well, I cannot carry her; we are going to have to call someone!”

"Who Lucy? Who can we call with no signals? We are miles from the main road!”

Slowly blinking, Fatimah awoke to the panicked exchange between the two. Vision still blurry from when she hit the ground, she could barely make out the women as they faded into the distance and leaving her on her own. They had abandoned her. As dread washed over Fatimah’s body, she realized that everything had stopped, and time had frozen. She turned her head to see Steph and Lucy frozen midstride, the soldiers’ mouths hanging slack-jawed mid-command; everything came to a complete standstill.

“WHAT IS HAPPEN-” Her scream was silenced.

At that very moment, a jolt of electricity surged with anguish penetrated her, and now she was frozen. Only able to move her eyes, she searched the darkness for any sign of movement when she saw them. Hundreds of Indigenous ancestral spirits dotted the perimeter of the clearing, closing in on her very position. Riddled with pain, her eyes quickly moved to the source, a singular arrow burrowed into her ribcage. She gasped, unable to take in air. “My lung collapsed.” Her realization sent her into a state of shock. As she slipped from consciousness once again, she felt an innumerable amount of hands lifting her from the ground.

When she awoke again, she felt her arms propped over two sets of shoulders, dragging her limp body down the old, paved road. “Thank goodness, I must’ve hallucinated after I hit my head.” She said to those she thought were her two companions; however, she quickly noticed something was off. Lucy was no taller than five feet, while Steph was around six feet or so. Her body was level; these were not her friends, she was being carted off by the very people who wounded her, but back in the direction of her home.

“If I could just scream,” she thought, “It would be heard at the complex, and someone could help me.” As she lifted her head to begin her chorus, she froze. What lay before her was not a landscape of doom; it was light in the darkness. The trail was lined as far as the eye could see on both sides by these people. Men, women, and children and watching as they strode towards civilization.

“Are you helping me?” Fatimah asked.

“Yes,” a sea of voices surged through her mind.

“Why?!” she demanded. "You shot me with an arrow!"

“You don’t deserve to die.”

They had gravely injured her, and now they were concerned about her safety, the irony.

“You shot me!”

Finally, her voice had regained its strength and boomed around them all. They stopped, but why did they stop? Fatimah began to panic once again. Had she angered them enough to prompt them to change their minds? Before she could finish her internal spiral, she took a deep breath. The pain had subsided, and she could breathe again. She inhaled once more and turned to the spirits holding her, “Let me go.” They repeated, “You don’t deserve to die.”

As she focused on their faces, she realized they were not filled with malice but with pity, with love, and disappointment. Suddenly, they all stepped aside. Out of the dark stepped a towering figure, his presence carved from shadow and silence. The lines of his body carried the weight of generations, each stride measured, deliberate, heavy with the authority of a chief whose spirit had never bent. The night seemed to bow around him, the dim light of the moon catching in his eyes like embers smoldering in a pit of ash.

"Child… I see the mark upon you. You were born under the hand of the lunar priestess. Her light flows in your blood, and through it you walk in two worlds: the living and the ancestors. The veil is thinner for you. Spirits will find you, not by chance, but by birthright; they will seek your counsel, others your strength… and others will need you to carry them to their rest.” He paused, his eyes studying every inch of her defiant stance.

“Why would you harm me and take me away?” her voice bellowed.

“This path is not easy. It is a burden and honor alike. You were chosen to guard the balance; to stand as voice, as guide, as protector of those who linger between shadow and dawn. When you falter, they falter. When you are strong, they rise with you.”

Frustrated, she stepped up to him, her face nearly pressed to his. “Answer my question!”

What was she doing? This spirit was striving to educate her, and she was challenging his authority and his surrender, not caring if he would change his mind about sparing her life. Fatimah had backed down from every confrontation she had ever found herself in, and now she was pushing the boundaries with entities that had already proven themselves to be violent if necessary.

“Know this, the women you have walked beside, they are not like you. Their power does not call on the dead in kinship; it strikes them down. They wield it as a blade, not a bridge. They have crossed into this land for generations, burning away the eldest souls… those who hold the first songs, the first memories. In their wake, the weave between our worlds frays, and both realms bleed into one another.”

It had never occurred to her that the spirits live too. She has always thought they were echoes trapped in a time loop, nuisances that appeared at the worst moments. She had never stopped to consider that they were conscious.

“The spirits cry for balance, and you, child of the moon, are the one who must stand where they destroy. You must bind where they sever.” With his final words, they vanished. Every incarnation faded out of reality, and the light returned.

Night was subsiding to dawn as she found herself standing right outside her apartment. Through the door, she could hear the alarm clock blaring like a scream torn from the dark; it was four thirty. “What an ungodly hour,” she chuckled, her mind twisting with anguish, trying to make logic out of chaos.

“FATIMAH!”

As she whipped around, she saw the final traces of Steph and Lucy dissipating with the rising of the sun.

“A debt is owed; the debt is paid.” The chief’s final syllables dissolved into the songs of dawn.

She turned back to her apartment and unlocked the door. They were gone, and Fatimah had to get ready for work. There was no one to call, and she had no way of explaining the night’s events; besides, who would ask her anyway? She had perfected blending into the background; her greatest survival trait was now her most valuable quality. “Well, back to the routine,” Shower and dressed, she readied herself to leave her home, grabbing her keys and her pack of cigarettes. As she turned to lock her door, she caught a glimpse of the chief in her living room. She nodded in unspoken understanding, took the cigarettes from her pocket, and crumbled them into the wastebasket in the hall, locked her door, and left for work.