A Battle of Minds Ch. 02

*

The sky outside the window was already getting lighter, when Laura finally gave in to the urge of burying her face in her pillow and starting to cry. She felt sick. Her mind was buzzing, thoughts of anger, fear, and disgust coursing through her brain, without being able to concentrate on any of them. The batteries had lasted well into the afternoon, and after the sounds of a normal boring school day, she had heard her own conversation with Mr. Seger. From the various sounds accompanying it, she had been able to deduce that she had not only talked to him.

It was horrible. Trying to conjure up the details of the events out in the forest made her want to scream. And yet, Laura knew that as soon as the teacher woke up again, he would regain control over her, he would force her to continue selling her body to the boys at school. She would continue to prostitute herself without knowing what she was doing. Slowly, her fear and disgust turned into rage. Oh, what she would do to that slimy... But what could she do? She had always thought Mr. Seger a nice teacher, one of those that smile even when it was obvious she had no talent for the subject he taught. Every now and then she used to have nice chats with him after class. He always told her to say hello to her mother...

She had to do something. She had to defend herself, somehow. Free her mind from his power. After all, she had managed to wake up more than once already – but Laura had no idea how she accomplished that, and why this day, and not the previous one or the one before. However, she managed to get rid of Martin, and, she decided, she would get rid of Mr. Seger too. She had to.

It was seven in the morning by now, when Laura realized that it was becoming difficult to breathe or to think. It was as if the air was taking on a different quality. Somehow it was thicker, and the room, despite the lights still being turned on, seemed to grow darker. A darkness that reached out to her, wanting to drown her every thought. With all her might she started struggling against this darkness, clinging on to her consciousness. She knew it was a losing fight, and yet she only gave up when she was engulfed in blackness and had already forgotten who she was and what she was fighting for.

***

Frank Seger was trembling. He was cold, even though he knew that it had to be quite warm in his little hut. Last winter, Martin built an open fireplace on his orders, from stones stolen on construction sites in town; it was a bit of work to get this oven going, but once the fire was there, it heated up the room quite well. Still, Frank Seger felt the need to pull his blankets closer around his body as he was sitting on his bed, knees pulled up to his chest. For a few moments he fought the temptation to just lie back down, turn his face to the wall, and try to fall back asleep – so he could pretend that nothing had happened.

It was no use, though. It had happened, and he knew it. Laura had been free of his power, and not only that, she had also defended herself against him when he wanted to get her back under control. She had succeeded for a few, horrible seconds. And for those few moments, Mr. Seger had not been sure he would win. For a few moments, he had thought it was all over.

Through a dirty window he could see the bleak gray of the sky outside turning into a lighter, albeit not any less bleak, color. Mr. Seger still sat on his bed. No, he rather would not go back to sleep today – who knew what would happen if he wasn't spending attention. He decided that he should get up, take a walk through the forest maybe – perhaps it had snowed some more during the night, and he liked the winter forest. A walk in the fresh air might clear his mind.

Mr. Seger stood up. While he dressed – his favorite sweater, that he had worn almost every day at school, when he still used to work there, and some warm trousers and a jacket that Martin had stolen for him last winter in the local outdoor store – he decided that he should have Laura come into the forest in a few hours. Just thinking of her naked body on his bed, of her pale, soft skin, chased away all fear. Yes, this was a good idea: First a walk in the snow, and then use her body to warm up again.

Seeing her as often as possible, seemed the most sensible thing for him to do, anyway. Being close to her would strengthen his power over her. Controlling someone from afar was always a bit more difficult.

When Frank Seger opened the door and stepped outside into a snowy winter morning, he suddenly realized that it was already mid-December – which meant that the school would soon have Christmas break. He knew that Laura always traveled to Southern Germany with her parents, when she was younger he had often asked her how the skiing trip had been, inwardly sneering at people who went skiing for their Christmas break, you were supposed to have a quiet time with your family after all – or, like Frank Seger, who did not have much family left anymore, a quiet time with yourself and a bottle of wine.

Laura's journey would be a problem though, he realized. Not seeing her for two weeks could be dangerous, and he was not sure over how long a distance he would be able to keep control of her. Well, he would think of something, Frank Seger decided. For now he should enjoy his walk. And look forward to the afternoon.

***

The brakes squealed loudly. Laura was flying forward, for a moment she felt like she was weightless, before the safety belt cut painfully into her shoulder. Then there was a loud bang. And then a scream.

It took a few moments for Laura to realize, that she was the one screaming. She wanted to stop, but she couldn't. She screamed and screamed. Only slowly she became aware of the pain that was causing her to scream: the stinging sensation in her head, the dull throb in her arm. There were other noises too: Someone was groaning in the front of the car, and the radio was still playing, and people were shouting outside the car. A siren was approaching. The noise made her head hurt more.

Then, finally, she sank back into unconsciousness – a new, unknown type of oblivion that was not announced by a different quality to the air; a type of unconsciousness that wasn't an abyss swallowing her mind and rendering her to the control of a strange power. This time, her thoughts and actions were not taken over by anyone; her mind just seemed to disappear into nothingness.

***

Quiet voices near her created an almost pleasant hum with their whispered conversation. She was lying on a soft and clean bed, the room was nicely warm. Her head, however, still throbbed painfully. Laura kept her eyes closed for a few more moments, afraid that the bright light – and she could tell through her closed eyelids that it was bright – would increase the pain.

She knew where she was, mainly by the way the air smelled, by the hum of sounds surrounding her, the exhaustion of her body that did not fit with waking up in a soft bed: But she did not allow herself to ponder on the question of what she was doing in a hospital. Finally, she decided to open her eyes, slowly, only far enough to make out the outlines of two people that were leaning over her bed. Concentrating on what she was seeing, her vision grew somewhat more focused, and Laura believed to recognize her father's face. Then everything became blurry again.

***

Doctor Paul Smith just could not stop thinking of the girl. She was on his mind when he started his morning shift, and when he went home from work, and at night he dreamt of her. How could he think like that of a patient? He had always been very proper about his work, had kept private life and work contacts apart, had made sure to never get himself into any situation that might endanger his career. Until this girl appeared, and made all his professionalism seem to have been in vain.

The doctor tried to convince himself that it was sympathy; after all, the young woman seemed to be a magnet for misfortune. Someone had told him that the young man, who was lying in a coma in the same hospital since last spring already, had been her boyfriend; that they had lived together until his accident. And now she did end up here herself, fortunately without any live threatening or lasting injuries. Her mother, however, did not survive the accident that brought the girl here, while her father only suffered a few contusions, a concussion, and a broken arm.

Doctor Smith had informed the girl of her mother's death just yesterday. The father had asked him to do that – he did not feel able to tell her himself, he had said. Doctor Smith could clearly remember the look in her eyes, as she received the message. She nodded, without saying a word, and looked at him like someone who did not expect anything but bad news and sadness in their life. She did not cry, did not scream, did not show anger or confusion, but there was a pain in her eyes that doctor Smith, who had been working in the hospital for over 30 years and had seen his fair share of sadness, felt he would never forget.

That was not all, though. There was something else about her. Something that made him unable to forget this girl. Doctor Smith knew that it was not just sympathy that made him think of her constantly.

***

How? How could he have done something like that? How could he not have seen what would happen? How was it possible, that in one moment of carelessness he destroyed everything that mattered in this world?

Frank Seger walked up and down, up and down near the shore of Lake Leskow, only every now and then he stopped his restless pacing to stare out over the frozen lake. Under the night sky, the ice was dark, as dark as his thoughts, and it would still be long before the sun would rise again. It was cold, Mr. Seger's breath formed a small cloud, but he barely felt any chill. He was too upset to spend attention to such detail.

How could he have done something like that, how could he have let this happen?

All he had in mind was a small accident, causing a few scratches on the car, a broken arm or a concussion for Marion's husband at most – something that was just enough to prevent Laura's family from traveling out of his reach for their vacation. Not something like this!

At first Frank Seger did not even realized what had happened. At the time he expected the family to be on their way out of Leskow, he searched for the mind of Laura's father, to gain control over him, to make him stop spending attention to traffic for just a moment, so he would leave the road and crash against the guarding rail. That would have been enough. He had it all planned out, nothing should have gone wrong. However, there was something there, blocking the connection: some obstacle between him and the man's mind. The more Mr. Seger thought about it, the more he believed that there had been another power, similar to his own, with which he had struggled for control over Laura's father. And due to that struggle, due to his lack of control, the car with Laura's family crashed into a truck. Frank Seger did not realize it, he only felt the connection to Laura's father disappear, indicating that he had passed out, and assumed that things had gone according to plan after all – no, it wasn't until much later that he learned what happened: The passenger's side of the small family car was crushed completely by the impact; and Laura's mother, Marion, died shortly after being brought to the hospital.

Tears welled up in Frank's eyes – he felt a bit silly for crying. This woman had made him suffer since he was a boy, for so many years, and without even realizing that she did so. He hated her so much; he had decided to turn her daughter into a whore. And yet... He had thought of Laura more than of Marion in the last years, yet now the memories of the students' pretty face faded behind the older recollections of the Marion of his youth, and of Marion, the married woman, the few times he saw her in town. He could not imagine a world without her, and yet, that was the world he would have to live in from now on.

Frank Seger fought the urge to fall down to the ground, hurl like a baby; beat the forest ground with his fists. All the hatred inside him, the hatred he had felt against Marion and Laura, against all students and the whole town, all that hatred suddenly turned against one thing: The locket, dangling innocently from his neck, snuggling warmly against his chest. The locket had given him the power to do all this – wasn't it the real culprit?

Without realizing what he was doing, Frank's fingers moved to the little piece of metal, holding it tentatively, hesitatingly. He stopped himself. Was he really going to pull it off his neck and throw it into the waters of the lake, far away, so no human being could ever find it again? He let go of the thing again, felt it bump back against his chest. It felt warmer now, almost hot, and seemed to be pulsating slightly. Evil, he thought. It was evil. Yet, he did not attempt to throw it away again; instead Frank Seger resumed his restless pacing along the shore of the lake.

No, he decided after some thought, the locket couldn't be evil. How could he blame something as small and pretty as this locket? It gave him power, it helped him. It was innocent; it could not have caused something so painful to him. There had been something else, another power that had caused everything to go wrong. There was another evil in Leskow, an evil of whose existence he had not known. A power very much like the one he knew, and yet different – a power of destruction. Was there someone else in Leskow who could do the things he, Frank Seger, did? Or had he been the one who did not have his own emotions under control?

Maybe he should not throw the locket into the lake, but rather drown himself. Well, jumping into water was not that easy just now, he thought with a bitter smile. He would have to hack a hole into the ice first. The idea of slipping into such a hole, of floating underneath the frozen surface and disappearing into the dark waters forever was tempting. No one would mourn for someone who had officially been dead for a year and a half already. The knot in Frank Seger's throat grew, when he imagined his own pale, bloated body, floating undiscovered and alone underneath the ice. By the time it was spring, no one would recognize it anymore.

He knew, however, that neither of this was possible. He wouldn't go into the lake himself, and he couldn't throw the locket away. It had been thrown into the lake before, though not by him, and it had returned. It had called him. The realization caused him to tremble: The locket [i]wanted[/i] to be with him. It wanted him to do all those things he had done within the last year and a half. For the first time, the teacher asked himself not how much power he had through the locket, but how much power the locket held over him.

He felt the warmth of the little piece of jewelry heavy on his chest, the thing seemed to be pulsating, like a little heart, and somehow that calmed him down. Mr. Seger closed his fingers around the locket once again, though this time he was not planning to tear it off; he wanted to feel its smooth surface. Then he looked up. While his eyes searched the opposite shore of the lake, his expression grew harder, more decisive.

"No!" Mr. Seger said loudly, a notably defiant tone to his voice. "No."

He, Frank Seger, was the one in control. He decided what he did, and he decided what everyone else did. He was in control of his life and of the lives of all those others; of the whole world, if he wanted to. And he had to continue, despite his mistake, and as sad as he was about Marion's death. He could not give up now. Somehow he would be able to turn everything to his favor, but for that he had to get back on track. Under no circumstances could he let Laura stay free for much longer, out of control, there in the hospital. She was still in a bad shape after the accident, but she was getting better, and who knew what she would do, who she would confide in, what proof she would be able to gather, once she was well again. He could not let it get that far.

While Mr. Seger kept pacing up and down the same little stretch of shore, the sun had risen. It did not bring much warmth, but the snowy trees and the icy surface of the lake glittered in its light. Mr. Seger turned away from the lake and slowly walked back towards the forest, to his hiding place between high trees and thick shrubs. Smoke was rising from the chimney of his little hut. It looked comforting. Mr. Seger was looking forward to the warmth inside, to sitting near the oven, but before relaxing, he had an important task: The math teacher let his mind stretch out over the forest, towards town, searching for Laura.

***

Laura blinked a few times as she opened her eyes. The sun was shining through the window right onto her bed, and into her face. As her eyes got used to its brightness, she could make out the clear blue sky through the window. She was looking right into a beautiful but cold winter day. For a few moments she just enjoyed the view from her bed, without thinking, just enjoying the blue sky, the snow-covered trees in the hospital's garden, and the fact, that she was able to see and enjoy these things. She was awake, she was conscious, and her health improved with every new day. So far, Mr. Seger had not tried a single time to get her back under his control. As long as she could stop the memories, everything was perfect.

She shared the room with two more women, but could not remember having exchanged more than a few words with either of them. Currently it was still very early in the morning, they were both asleep, and Laura was glad to have the sun light and the quiet of the morning for herself – at least for as long as she could keep the thoughts out of her mind.

Between the sunrays, which were drawing spots and lines of light onto the slightly dusty window and the wall of the hospital rooms, Laura suddenly believed to make out a face. A face taking a distinct shape, eyes looking at her – a face she knew. And now she couldn't keep up the facade any longer: The memories flooded back into her mind. For a moment Laura struggled against them, tried to keep her mind blank, but she knew it was useless. She closed her eyes, and now she saw the face more clearly: Her mother's face. The memory invaded her body like a wave of pain; Laura suddenly felt the urge to throw up. And now she wished to forget everything. What use was the blue sky, the sun, the snow? What use was it to finally be free? She wanted to be unconscious again, in a coma. Why could it not have been her who died in the accident? And why – a small corner of her mind realized how strange it seemed, that she was wishing for something like this – why did Mr. Seger not just overrule all her thoughts again, rid her of any memory or sense of self, turning her back into his slave, without any will of her own?

Next time she would not try to resist, Laura decided. She hated Mr. Seger and what he did to her, but anything was better than this pain cutting into her chest, whenever she stayed awake long enough for the memories to return. And wasn't the truth that she didn't deserve better? It should have been her who died. She did not remember the moments before the accident, but she was sure of that – it should have been her, not her mother.

Somewhere on the small table next to her bed there were pills, Laura remembered, something to help her sleep, to make the pain go away. Quickly she turned to look for them. However, just when she found them and took them into one hand, a glass of water that was standing there for her into the other, the air somehow changed its quality. There was a familiar sensation of being pulled down into an abyss, of her thoughts slowing down. She felt Mr. Seger reaching out for her, taking hold of her mind. Instinctively she wanted to resist, but then she remembered the decision she had taken just minutes earlier.