Dead Willow (10 page)

“You niggers never did have a spine!”

Paul cried out and reared back violently, almost knocking the Paladin to the floor. He craned his neck around to look at Annabel, who stumbled back with a start.

She saw his face.

The burning eyes were back, the facade shattered. He apparently wasn’t trying to fight the memories anymore. He had embraced them. He was reverting to, what? The
real
Paul? Annabel didn’t want to believe that, but she was finding it harder to ignore the evidence. Whatever he was remembering was stronger than the Paul she had known all these years.

The Paladin struggled to force him to the door, but his glare was riveted to Annabel.

“You had better pray they grind me, bitch!,” he threatened through gritted teeth. “Whatever’s left is coming back, and it’ll be just like old times!”

He got a blood-curdling snarl on his face that triggered a memory in Annabel. It wasn’t the first time.

“I can’t wait to get that ass in my hands again!” he taunted, and then he was gone through the door.

The rest of the Paladin filed out, leaving Annabel alone with the Colonel. He stood idly, watching the floor, obviously embarrassed by this black mark on his clan. He slowly raised his eyes to Annabel and said the last thing she expected.

“I am very sorry for your loss, Miss.” He closed his coat and stepped out into the parking lot, shutting the door behind him.

The sudden silence made her ears ring. Annabel stood motionless for several minutes, waiting for reality to burn off the fog. Then, she eased herself into the wood chair that Paul had sat in the last time she had laid eyes on him. The Old Paul. It was starting to settle in. The next time she came to work, he wouldn’t be here. He would never be here.

She had the flashes, and now she knew they were true. She wondered how long it would be before they were coming after her, after the
real
her.

And who would that be?

She finished stuffing her blouse back into her skirt. Then, she reached into her locker for the shawl and bonnet that would shelter her from the breezy evening chill. As she tied the bonnet strings beneath her chin, a knock rattled the break room door.

It wasn’t a furious pounding, which ruled out the New Paul coming back to relive old times. Perhaps she and the Paladin had unfinished business, a thought that made her shiver in spite of her shawl. One thing was clear; Annabel couldn’t spend the rest of her life being afraid of a knock at the door.

She took hold of the knob and eased the door open. What came through the door was a blast of cold October wind, and a blast from her past.

“Hey, baby!” He looked her up and down. “Nice outfit.”

It was a face and a body she hadn’t seen since her night at the
No-Tell
motel, and it was a face she had expected to never see again.

Mr. Starlight Motor Inn
.

Crystal Ambrose read the note again. It had been slipped under her door in the middle of the night, and was not altogether unexpected. In fact, expectation was an enduring part of her life; she had just never known what to expect.

She ran her finger lightly over the gold embossing around the edges of the invitation. That’s what it was; the fancy calligraphic lettering of the cryptic words was an invitation.

Come and see … come and see what is in store for you!

For Crystal, life was like sitting by the phone and waiting for it to ring. Of course, Crystal never had a phone, but she understood the concept. Her life was on hold, while she waited for someone to get back on the line and tell her why she was here, why she was alive.

What do you do, she wondered, when your entire life came down to a single moment, and the moment was now?

This is your destiny
.

Crystal mulled over the meaning of the strange words
Mother’s Day
. She was familiar with the practice of marking days to celebrate special events or individuals. She knew about mothers; she had seen enough of them traipsing down the streets of Willow Tree with their brood in tow. More often than not they lashed out with a harsh tongue or a swift swat to the backside, and that was on a good day.

But, what did that have to do with her? Crystal could scarcely remember having had a mother, and she certainly didn’t think it something to be celebrated. She even knew of several in town whose mothers were also in residence, and they didn’t seem anxious to advertise the fact. The consensus among the population of Willow Tree was that the concept of parentage was a dead form, no longer practiced.

After all, how could there be parents, when there were no children?

Still, Crystal was intrigued. A meeting with Eunice held such great possibility. In all the years of her life, Crystal had never made a dent in Willow Tree society. Not even her own clan could pick her out of a crowd. She was a dying star out of a billion stars and her light was destined to go out long before her life did.

Then came the invitation. The gold leaf trim and cryptic calligraphy could have come from only one person, and at 9:00 she would be sitting across from her.

This is your destiny
.

She had seen this in a memory. Crystal had never put much stock in the flash of images that popped into her head. They had never put a morsel of food on her table or given her a leg up on the Willow Tree social ladder, so she ignored them. She had heard of what happened to those who did not.

But this image wouldn’t go away, so much so that she began to suspect that she had tucked it away for a reason. Now, she was about to find that reason out.

Crystal twisted and turned in front of the small bathroom mirror, trying to get an overall sense of how she looked. Preparing for a meeting with Eunice could be tricky. Her best bonnet, of course, would show the requisite respect with just a touch of dazzle. She would need to wear an extra petticoat; it was never a good thing when Eunice filled out a skirt more than the woman across the aisle.

Then, there was the make-up.

It was always appreciated when the Paladin concealed their clan nature in public. Some of them had more to hide than others, and Crystal had less to hide than most. She often went without a base and instead wore a high collar with a shawl to cover the sides and back of her neck. A tiny spot of blush and pair of gloves and she could easily be taken for a Bellwether. If only she had the hues to make it official.

Crystal had imagined being a Bellwether as long as she could remember. It was a young girl’s fantasy, and Crystal was no longer young in years. But she sometimes imagined pilfering a blue bonnet off of a clothesline and squirreling it away in her home. She could sneak it out in the dead of night and for a few minutes she would be a Bellwether in front of her mirror.

She had never done it, of course. It was a fantasy, not a death wish.

Crystal would have to settle for being in the proximity of greatness. She could endure a little boot-licking if necessary. She straightened the frill of her bonnet to frame her face. Just a touch of blush, not too much. She looked like a scrubbed faced little girl, nothing that anyone could find threatening. Eunice had made the overture; now it was time to see which opera they were singing.

This is your destiny
.

9:01 PM

“How old are you, child?”

Eunice had caught her by surprise. It wasn’t so much the boldness of her query as it was the vagueness. This was a question not often asked in polite society, as there were two answers, and one of them was a burden to some. Crystal was a young woman of twenty-two, and she had never wished it to be different. But, there were others …

Perhaps Eunice could sense the wheels of doubt spinning in Crystal’s head, because she tried a different tack.

“What I mean to say is, when did you come to us?”

“Oh,” said Crystal. Seems it was the other question that Eunice was asking. “It was the summer of ‘57.”

Eunice seemed genuinely surprised by that answer. “You’ve been with us so long?” She was crossing behind where Crystal was sitting and stopped. “You’ve been here that long and were never called? Astonishing!”

Crystal let her tongue slip.

“Never called for what, Madame?” she blurted. Her hand went to her mouth. “I’m sorry, Madame. I meant no disrespect.”

She lowered her eyes as Eunice came around in front of her.

“Nonsense, child,” Eunice assured her. “You have not been disrespectful; you have been infinitely patient.”

Then Eunice reached for the other padded chair that sat in front of her desk and pulled it around to face Crystal. As she eased down into the chair, Crystal’s heart skipped a beat.

This was it! The image in her head and the image before her eyes were coming together, like two pieces of a puzzle. Would the puzzle reveal what she had been waiting for her whole life? Would the floodgates open and pour answers on Crystal as she had prayed? Or, would it just bring more questions?

She bit her lower lip as Eunice leaned in. Crystal could smell the woman’s soap, and wondered if she had rendered the tallow by hand. Eunice took in a deep breath.

“Child …” Eunice caught herself. “I call you child, but you are not a child, are you?”

“No, Madame,” said Crystal demurely.

“Well,” said Eunice, patting her knee, “rightly or not, I still think of you as one, and when even the youngest of us is hurting, it injures the whole.”

Crystal had no idea that Eunice thought of her at all.

When even the youngest of us is hurting …

“Do you mean me, Madame?”

“No, child,” said Eunice sadly, shaking her head. “There is another. He is the youngest of us … and, he needs your help.”

The youngest of us?

“But … but I am the youngest … I have seen every marker in
Weeping Gardens
…”

“The marker no longer exists … but, the infant still does.”

Infant? There was a
baby
in Willow Tree?

“But, how is that possible? Who is this child?”

Eunice waved away the question.

“Its name is of no importance.” Then, she looked deeply at Crystal. “What is important, is that this child cannot be.”

The child had gone from being a
he
to being an
it
. The look in Crystal’s eyes was apparent; she was being filled with information, but with no frame of reference. A child, here, in Willow Tree, that could not be here in Willow Tree? Eunice was burdening Crystal with a great secret, but why? What was she to do with this knowledge?

“But if the child cannot exist, then why has the tree sent it to us?”

“The tree is testing us,” the woman answered, and then leaned back in her chair. “It is testing you.”

“Me? But why me?” Crystal protested. “What have I done?”

Eunice spread her hands. “We do not always
know
, but we always
do
. It is a sacred honor to which you have been called. What is your answer?”

There it was. Her singular moment had come down to a single decision, born of a single word. She had wanted this all of her life, and now that it was here, she just wanted it taken back. She could go back to waiting; she was good at that. This … well, she didn’t even know what this was.

“So, I am to raise this child? I would be its mother?” The word felt strange coming out of her mouth. How could she do it if she could barely say it?

Eunice’s countenance fell, and Crystal feared she had said the wrong thing. She was right.

“You have misunderstood, dear. This child cannot be raised. It will never grow beyond its tiny form, just as you will never grow beyond your youthful appearance. It is eternally an infant, and as such, an abomination.”

Crystal knew the word from some long ago memory, but she had never heard it used in Willow Tree. It spoke of an evil of biblical proportions, but Eunice spoke of a child. How? How could the two be used in the same breath?

Crystal’s chin quivered as a tremor rippled through her. The fine hairs on her arms rose up and her eyes began to mist. She saw the dark cloud looming in the distance.

This is your destiny
.

“Madame … what am I to do?” she asked, knowing now that only the answer could save her.

“When the youngest of us is hurting, it injures the whole.” said Eunice again, and this time, she spoke the rest.

“You have to give it back to the tree.”

11:14 PM

The worms were on the move.

Crystal followed them through the dark dirt. She stepped off of the cobblestone walkway and traced the worms path between the gravestones with her
lantern. They glistened like starlight on a rippling pond. She had never seen them this active, wriggling in and out of the soil, stopping at each marker to sniff and poke. They seemed to know that there was nothing dead in this cemetery.

Eunice had stayed behind with the Hatchet watchman. There was some contention about who was ultimately in charge of this expedition, so Crystal was given a
lantern and sent on ahead.

It was like walking through a black sky.

She could feel the dark loam squish between her toes with each step. Barefoot was the only way the tree would allow her to pass, the only way it could recognize one of its own children. It also served to remind them of their origins. The worms were like family.

They corkscrewed through the topsoil, drawn by the scent of new life. Crystal shined her
lantern straight ahead along their path, passed the last few headstones, until she saw the small, lonely bump in the dirt.

Beauregard.

Crystal had asked again and Eunice had relented. She didn’t know why it was so important to her to know the name of this child. Perhaps she felt that no one should have to leave this life without a name. She had a bit of memory of things being said as a person was laid in the soil, and their name was spoken. That responsibility might fall to her. Or, maybe she knew that in the dark nights ahead she would remember this child. She might be the only person on earth who did, and his name would be a touchstone.

His
name.

Crystal’s thought processes were undergoing some kind of evolution. Thinking of this child as a
child
was obviously not encouraged. Eunice had been reluctant to even name him, and refused to give Crystal any background about the child. Who were his parents? Did they reside in Willow Tree? Why was he interred here?

Eunice said that knowing too much would make it harder for Crystal to do what was necessary. That made a lot of sense, but Crystal still wanted to know.

As she approached the bump, she could see it turn in the soil, turned by the roots to which it was attached. The main umbilical root entered at the base of the skull and served as a lifeline for what was grown. All the nutrients from the tree and the soil flowed through this conduit, and it grew with the organism until it was mature.