The Fear Dissertation // A Jonathan Crane Dark Romance

13

With my hair and body wrapped in towels, fresh from the shower, I step into my new bedroom and frown.

Once again, a single, black, crow feather rests on my pillow. I stare at it, pick it up, as shivers run through my spine.

"Harleen," I call out. "Can we put locks on the windows?"

"Sure," she calls back, ducking her head into my room as she carries freshly laundered towels through to the bathroom. "Everything okay?"

I nod, but still can't shake the chill. "Bird feather got in somehow."

I decide not to tell her I'd found one exactly like it back in Matt's house. Then she might really think I'm losing my mind, and have me committed to Arkham as a patient.

I push it from my mind the rest of the weekend. It's not difficult — we're so busy prepping for the testimony in the Karlo case, there's time for little else. We eat sushi and review our notes and Harleen forewarns me what sort of questions the defense attorney will ask, the ways he might try to discredit our recommendation. When we're finally finished, and I'm getting ready for bed, I pull Doctor Crane's unsealed papers free and prepare to read them as I slide beneath the sheets. My eyes rake across pharmaceutical terms, methodology, and his own personal diary logging treatment responses, until my eyes grow too heavy to take in any more.

I soon learn it's a bad idea to read about scarecrows right before falling asleep.

I'm restless and fitful, tossing and turning into the dark hours of the morning while images flash through my mind, drifting somewhere between asleep and awake. Moving silhouettes from my childhood bedroom window. Moving silhouettes in this room, in Harleen's apartment. He takes the form of Doctor Crane, in a dark suit, but his face and head is completely covered by a hood.

A hood made of burlap.

With terrifying rips and inhuman eyes watching me as he stands motionless in the doorway.

I gasp, jerking myself awake and scrambling to turn on the lamp beside my bed. But with the room lit up, and my conscious state decidedly awake, there's nobody there. Just empty space, leading into the hallway.

A short sigh escapes my lungs as I hold my head in my hands. I fight a tremble, a dry mouth, still clutched in the throes of nightmares and terror. Bizarrely, and with revelation, I find myself craving another dose of the fear toxin. It almost seems preferable to consume the fear than to be consumed. At least there's control in that.

There's a creak of the floorboards, and a figure appears in my doorway once more, arms raised holding a weapon.

I push myself back against the headboard, ready to scream, when my eyes adjust and I see it's Harleen in a pink satin robe, curlers in her hair, wielding a cast-iron frying pan.

"Harleen?" I ask in disbelief. "You scared the shit out of me, what are you doing?"

She lowers the frying pan. "Thank god. I heard a noise. Thought someone was in the apartment."

We both wait in silence a moment. Listening. Then, we both release a short laugh.

"Just me, I'm afraid," I tell her, yawning and stretching my arms. "Sorry. Bad dreams."

"Creepy fear baby dreams?"

I roll my eyes. "No. Sorry for waking you up. You need your sleep before the competition tomorrow."

Harleen looks down as she leaves, bending to pick something up from the floor. "More feathers?" She asks me, holding up the black crow feather.

"I thought I threw it out," I tell her, rubbing my eyes. "Sorry. Just put it in the trash."

She pauses. "Isn't that bad luck?"

"Huh?"

"I'm sure crow feathers are meant to symbolise protection. I took a psychotherapy seminar on dream interpretation, we did all kinds of symbols. Wouldn't it be bad luck to put it in the trash?"

"We're scientists," I remind Harleen. "If we start getting superstitious, there's not much hope left for the world."

"That's work," she replies simply. "This is home. And I don't want to risk pissing off the crows. Okay?"

Pissing off the crows. Worded like that, my brain begins to buzz. Is this somehow related to my fear, my past?

The hooded scarecrow flashes through my brain again.

"Fine," I relent. "You can keep it."

But Harleen shakes her head. "The spirits are leaving this for you, not me."

"There aren't any spirits, Harleen."

Even so, she places the feather delicately on top of my dresser before going back to bed. And thought I tell myself it's ridiculous — not to mention unsanitary — and decide I'll throw it out first thing in the morning, I find myself reluctant to misplace it.

And unable to close my eyes again without seeing the scarecrow once more.