Transcendence
C. J. OMOLOLU
For Griffon
1994–2009
This time was much too short
.
It’s happening again.
The tingling at the back of my neck, the disconnect I feel from everything around me, the tiny beads of cold sweat on my forehead—as soon as I recognize the symptoms, I know I’m in trouble. I look down at my feet as I follow Kat from the Tower Hill tube station into the bright sunlight, trying to focus on my shoes as they keep time along the immaculate sidewalk. Except they don’t feel like a part of me anymore. They seem far away, like they’re someone else’s size-six blue plaid Vans.
I pull the headphones from my ears, the soaring Massenet symphony becoming a distant squawk as my heart pounds and every hair stands on end. Shaking my head, I try to stop the inevitable, to pull myself back from wherever I’m going this time. I can struggle for control all I want, but I still feel myself slipping away.
I barely have time to catch my breath as the waves of images and emotions crash over me, engulfing and then obliterating everything else.
Crowds of people press in so close their warm, sour breath mingles with my own—individual faces frozen ugly with anger, hungry for blood. I cower and try to turn back, but my arms are held firm at the elbows and I am swept along, my beautiful new silk slippers barely grazing the dank, muddy ground. Even though I can no longer see the hill, I can smell the smoke from the fires and hear the pleas to God from the condemned, the metallic tang of blood infusing the very air around us. My eyes dart back and forth, trying desperately to find Connor in the crowd of prisoners as the panic mounts, but I am being dragged toward the water, away from the hill where I’d seen him last—
“Hey!” My sister snaps her fingers in front of my face, pulling me back into reality. “Cole!”
I blink hard trying to focus on her, tearing my thoughts away from what I’ve just seen and felt. The sharp smell of the smoke still seems to saturate the air, and I try hard to convince myself that I’m back. I’m not wearing a long velvet dress and delicate slippers, but my usual jeans and slightly scuffed shoes. Everything is normal. And I’m not losing my mind.
“What?” I say, trying to put just enough annoyance in my voice to cover my racing thoughts. I have to get a grip on these dreams or hallucinations or whatever they are. My stomach is heaving and I feel like throwing up, as if getting rid of whatever bad things are inside of me will stop the visions from coming.
“I’m starting to think that you find my company less than
stimulating,” Kat says, her perfectly manicured thumbs flying over the keypad on her phone.
I pull out my water bottle and take a swig, trying not to call attention to the fact that my hands are shaking. Kat hasn’t noticed anything wrong so far, but bursting into tears or throwing up into the nearest trash can is bound to get her attention. As hard as I try to come up with a logical reason for what’s happening, I know deep down it’s getting worse. The minute we landed in London, little things began to feel freakishly familiar—almost like coming home to a place I’ve never been before. Doing random tourist stuff in the city, we’ll pass an old house, a shop window, or even just a small, cobblestoned street, and I’ll have a déjà vu so strong that it makes me stop and stare, searching for a missing memory to go with the unexplained emotions. Now the brown walls of the Tower of London loom across the street, but no one else on the crowded sidewalk seems to feel the overwhelming sense of frenzy and desperation that hangs in the air around us. Probably because everyone else here is sane.
I take another drink, the warm, metallic-tasting water not helping all that much. “Sorry. Just distracted,” I manage, the feelings of loss and longing finally falling away like sheets of water after a heavy rain. I shut the music off, the sounds of the symphony replaced by the hum of tires on the busy street. I reach for an excuse that sounds fake even to my desperate ears. “The concert and everything. It’s not that far away.”
“Can you lay off the child prodigy bit for once?” Kat snaps. “We’re on vacation, remember?”
“Maybe
you’re
on vacation,” I say, knowing even as I say it
that I’m going to piss her off, but my thoughts are too scattered to do more than repeat all of the things I’ve said so many times before. “But people are counting on me. Practice isn’t optional.”
Trying to slow my breathing and convince both of us that everything’s fine, I open my dog-eared guidebook. Just seeing the maps and photos of famous landmarks has a calming effect as I try to shake off what’s left of the weird feelings.
I glance around at the other people on the street and try as hard as I can to relax. I tell myself that nobody’s staring at me. I’m just another slightly disoriented tourist with a guidebook and a backpack. I feel as invisible as I always do when I’m not up on stage with a cello in my hands. Whatever happened, it’s gone now. I look down at the part of the page I’d highlighted last night. “So according to the book, we follow this road around the corner to get to the entrance.”
Kat shoves her phone in her bag. “Where is it?” she asks, looking up and noticing her surroundings for the first time. “I don’t see a tower.”
“It’s right over there,” I say, pointing across the street.
“That’s it?” she asks, not even trying to hide her disappointment. “Looks like every other dusty old castle in this crazy country. I thought we were going to see the Crown Jewels.”
Nice. As long as the Tower of London can cough up some impressive diamonds and rubies, I know my big sister will get over whatever scraps of history she has to suffer through. “It’s not like they keep the Crown Jewels on the fourth floor of Harrods,” I say.
“I know
that
.” Kat wrinkles her nose and looks back at the Tower. “I just figured it would be a little fancier. Like the tower in
‘Rapunzel’ or something. A little gold leaf would do a world of good.”
“It’s just
called
the Tower of London,” I say, pointing to the book. Sometimes I wonder how she managed to get all the way to senior year, although I know Kat’s not stupid. Just easily distracted. “According to this, it’s really a castle and a prison, with buildings that date back hundreds of years.”
“Did the book happen to say why we want to deal with all of this history when we can be out shopping?” she asks, glaring across the street.
“Because it’s famous, and no trip to London is complete without seeing the Tower,” I say. “And because Dad already bought us the tickets, and they aren’t cheap.” And because part of me feels drawn here, like I need to touch the worn stone walls and feel the cobblestones underneath my feet. Walk the same paths that the kings and queens of England did centuries ago. Back home in San Francisco, anything before 1970 is considered historical; the thought of standing in a room almost a thousand years old takes my breath away. But I can’t explain any of this to her, because I don’t understand the attraction myself. And she’ll think it’s stupid.
“Dad’s too busy working to have a clue what we do on this vacation,” Kat complains. “He’ll never know.” She pulls her jacket tighter against the cold April wind. “Not like he could have a business trip in Hawaii or Cancún or someplace people might actually
want
to go for spring break.”
I don’t have to say that, for me, spring break in London is way ahead of some hot, sweaty beach full of perfectly tanned people using as little energy as possible flipping from front to back on
their striped beach towels. I don’t have to say it because Kat already knows.
“What’s going on over there?” Kat asks. “Another site where somebody famous got hacked to death or hit by a bus?” A group of people are staring down at a bronzed plaque a few feet off the sidewalk, and I check the book to see if it can tell us what is so fascinating.
“Close. Most of the executions at the Tower of London actually took place right over there,” I read, pointing to the small square outlined in tiny cement markers just off the sidewalk. “Many innocent people were beheaded here, to the cheers of thousands,” I continue reading. My mind flashes back to the scene in the vision and I shiver involuntarily.
“Thank you, geek’s-guide-to-London.” Kat looks at the cars speeding up the street and the tourists casually walking on the sidewalk. “Must have looked a lot different back then.”
I gaze over the cars, across the grass field at the imposing walls and tall stone buildings that have been there for centuries. This must have been the last thing a lot of the prisoners saw as they knelt, waiting for the blow that would seal their fate. For a second I can almost hear the loud cries of desperate men echoing off the walls. “Not so different,” I say quietly as we cross the street.
“So if we’re going to do this,” Kat says after we pick up the tickets, “let’s go straight to the Crown Jewels. If I can’t shop for jewels, at least I can look at them.” She looks down to admire the insanely expensive new heels she bought just the day before. “Too bad there’s not a shoe store in there.” She glances at me. “There isn’t, is there?”
“No,” I say firmly. “There isn’t.”
I’m suddenly nervous as I look up at the square turret that tops the nearest tower. It doesn’t take a whole lot of imagination to picture the guards in their heavy armor pacing up there, weapons trained on the murky water below. I look around for any signs the vision is coming back, but all I see is Kat’s seething impatience with this whole thing. I flip the book open to the page I’ve marked with my finger. “It says that we should take a tour first and then go off on our own. Besides, it comes with the tickets.”
“Oh, come on, Cole,” Kat says, putting her hands on her hips. “Can’t you just dump that stupid book for one minute and do something spontaneous? This whole vacation has been nothing but ‘what the book says.’ It’s like that thing has become your bible. You’re sixteen, not sixty.”
“I didn’t hear you complaining when it helped us get to Harrods, the mecca of shopping experiences,” I say, irritated that we have to have this discussion again. “Or when it found that awesome Indian restaurant by the theaters.”
“Give me that.” Kat grabs the guidebook and turns the page. “There’s a whole section on ghost tours in London; maybe we’ll get lucky and see a ghost. That would at least keep this whole day from being a total waste.”
I grab the book back. I don’t believe in ghosts. Or vampires. Or visions of people being killed up on a smoky hill outside of the Tower of London. “There’s no such thing as ghosts.”