The Constant Halo

I began seeing them shortly after Dr. Anselm started her sessions with me, but I didn’t think much of it at first. They were like heat shimmer, or the afterimage of a bright light when you blink. Small, fuzzy shapes bobbing around her head as she spoke, sometimes with the suggestion of a mouth, an eye, a nose that wasn’t hers. I’d rub my eyes, take a sip of water, and they’d fade, only to reappear when my focus drifted.

It wasn’t just the shapes. It was the sensation that accompanied them, a faint pressure behind my temples, like static building before a storm. I tried to dismiss it as a trick of the light, the way the afternoon sun slanted through the blinds in her new office. But when she moved from the old brownstone on Chestnut Street to a glassy modern suite on the twenty-eighth floor, I still saw them, hovering above her leather chair, adrift in the amber glow of her desk lamp.

I never mentioned them. What would I say? That I see ghosts around my therapist? That her very presence conjured phantoms? She was too rational, too clinical, with her sharp suit and her precise notes. I convinced myself it was a stress response, a visual migraine triggered by the intensity of our conversations. But the shapes grew more defined. Mouths that moved soundlessly. Eyes that blinked. And always, they stayed tethered to her head, as if they were satellites in orbit.

One session, after weeks of circling around a memory I’d been avoiding, she leaned forward and said, ‘You’re seeing something, aren’t you? You’ve been staring at the space just above my left shoulder for the past ten minutes.’ I froze. My heart hammered. I stammered a denial, but she just smiled, and for a moment, I could have sworn I saw one of the shapes smile back.

‘They’ve been with me as long as I can remember,’ she said, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. ‘I used to think they were my guardian angels. Then I thought they were the souls of my patients, the ones I couldn’t save. Now I think they’re something else entirely. Something that feeds on the truth we excavate in this room.’

I laughed, nervously. ‘That’s a little… dramatic.’

‘Is it?’ She tilted her head, and the shapes swirled faster, like leaves caught in a gust. ‘You see them, don’t you? You see the halo, the constant halo that follows me everywhere. You’re not the first. But you’re the first who’s ever noticed them move when I speak.’

I wanted to leave. My legs felt heavy, my throat dry. But curiosity held me rooted to the spot. ‘What do you mean, ‘not the first’?’

The shapes grew more agitated. They were drifting down, closer to her face, obscuring her features. She didn’t seem to notice. Or maybe she did. ‘There was another patient, years ago. He saw them too. He called them ‘the mourners.’ He said they were the echoes of every secret we never said out loud. He became obsessed. He started coming to sessions just to watch them. Eventually, he stopped talking altogether. He just sat there, staring at the halo, his eyes wide, his lips moving as if he were conversing with them.

‘What happened to him?’ I asked, my voice barely a whisper.

‘He got better,’ she said, but the way she said it made my blood run cold. ‘He stopped seeing them. He stopped coming to see me. I heard he moved to the countryside, took up gardening. But sometimes, I wonder if he’s still out there, watching the shapes he now sees in his cabbages and his tomatoes.’

She laughed, a brittle sound that didn’t match her usually composed demeanor. The shapes were now so dense around her head that I could barely see her face. They had faces now—distinct, overlapping, some crying, some laughing, some utterly blank. They were like a colony of ghosts, all pressing in, all vying for attention.

I stood up. ‘I think I need to go.’

‘Sit down,’ she said, and her voice had a hard edge I’d never heard before. ‘We’re not done. You came here to understand yourself, didn’t you? These shapes, they’re part of you as much as they are of me. They’re the parts of yourself you’ve been trying to bury. I see them floating around my head, but they’re yours. You’ve been projecting them onto me because I’m the one who makes you confront them.’

Her words hit me like a physical blow. I looked at the shapes again, and for the first time, I recognized them. One had my mother’s eyes. Another had my father’s frown. A third had the crooked smile of my ex-wife. They were the faces of everyone I’d ever lost, everyone I’d ever failed, everyone I’d ever tried to forget. They weren’t spirits. They weren’t ghosts. They were my memories, given form, swirling around the one person who forced me to face them.

‘Why can I see them only around you?’ I asked, my throat tight.

‘Because I’m the mirror,’ she said. ‘You see them when you’re ready to see them. And once you see them, you can’t unsee them. They’ll stay with you, follow you home, follow you to bed, follow you into your dreams. They’ll never leave you. They’re yours.’

She smiled, and the halo around her head pulsed, as if in approval. I stumbled out of her office, into the elevator, down the street. Back in my own apartment, I sat in the dark, waiting for the shapes to appear. But they didn’t. Not there. Not yet.

The next week, I canceled my appointment. The week after that, I stopped returning her calls. But I can’t sleep. Every time I close my eyes, I see them—the halo, the mourners, the echoes of my own past. And I know, somewhere, in a sleek office on the twenty-eighth floor, Dr. Anselm is sitting across from a new patient, and that patient is seeing the shapes for the first time. And when they do, they’ll be mine.