Descent Into Madness (22 page)

              “Sister Veronica. She speaks to me, Wesley.” I turned toward him and watched his mouth twist when I spoke of her. “She haunts me, brother; she is my sweet agony.”

              “You need to sleep, my sister,” he said holding me, hugging me.

              “You have gone mad, Bree,” Aksel whispered. “I thought I would never see the day happen – to any of us, but especially you.”

              “How did it happen, then?” I spat. “Why me, if I am so strong?” 

              “It is my fault,” Wesley said as he released me, “All my fault. I should never have made you.”

              “But you did, brother. You made me!” Waves rushed the shoreline, which harmonized well with the falling rocks each time my voice swelled. “I was spotless and then you scarred me, Wesley. You blackened me, marked me. And look, my brother, look what I have become!” 

              Aleksandra clutched Aksel. She hid her tear stained face from me, but her pain stung me regardless. Wesley watched on as I sobbed uncontrollably, his eyes not once leaving my face. Aksel turned away, the sight of my agony a sight too burdensome for him to behold.

              “You need to sleep, to heal yourself from this madness that is seizing you, Bree” Wesley spat. “Hopefully, when you wake you will no longer be troubled.”

              “And if I still am, will you shut me back up?” I demanded. He led me toward the cliff-side home, toward the buried door.

              “Wesley!” I shouted, but silence followed. The overgrowth parted as we approached. I looked back and saw her face through the weakly parted branches and vine. Cloaked in misery’s veil, Aleksandra sat on her knees, clutching Aksel’s pant legs. She whispered good-bye as our eyes met. 

              “Please, do not do this,” I demanded, but understanding now it needed to be done. 

              Wesley opened the door. Inside, dust saturated the cabin; cobwebs surged through the house, mapping the years with their silken strands. He cut through them with his hand, leading us on to the sleeping chambers intricate doors.

              “Wesley, stop, please just stop!” I hollered. Aleksandra wept in the distance as Aksel struggled to calm her. “Please, my brother, do not do this!”

              He reached for the locks. Each turned and unlocked as the door opened. We entered the chamber, its darkness ebbing away as his breath lit the candles surrounding the circular chamber. There rested my bed, with its silk covering and moth-eaten pillows, cobwebs and dust littering the old fabric.

              He urged me onto it. I glared at him; and I trembled. “What have I become?” I asked him. “What have I become, Wesley, if not a god?”

              “My Bree,” he replied as he eased me onto the bed, stroking my forehead as he had done when I was a child. “You have become lost.”

              “But I do not want to be lost,” I cried. “Please, do not leave me here. I do not want to be alone.”

              “It will be different when you wake, you will see,” he assured me. His voice was gentle as he forced my eyes closed. “The world will be different, and you with it.”

              “What if I don’t wake up?” I asked. “What if I cannot wake up?”

              “You will,” he said. “I promise.” He pulled the covers aside and covered me. He placed beneath my head a pillow. “This was mother’s pillow, do you remember?” I murmured in recognition.

              “Here,” he said pressing something smooth into my palm, “this will protect you.”

              I felt the defined edges of my old crucifix, the one that hung on my prayer cord.

              “I don’t believe this works anymore,” I told him.

              “It does not have to work, Bree,” she said, “but it can be a reminder while you lay here.”
              “A reminder of what?”

              “That you are
not
a god.”

              I felt the bed ease as he stood. His footsteps dimmed as they moved toward the door. And the smell of extinguished candles was already polluting the air when I heard the locks click. I was alone. I was frightened.

              I laid there uneasy, unable to rest, unable to sleep. How long would they keep me here? How long would it take to heal my troubled mind?

              “Please,” I yelled knowing no one could hear me. “Let me out!”

              Then the room overflowed with the scents of linseed and lavender and I sensed her near me. Then she stroked my hand.

              “I will sing you to sleep,” Sr. Veronica whispered. 

              “I am frightened,” I admitted. She reached for my hair and I felt her fingers slide through the loose strands. She reached for the hand holding the crucifix. She removed it from my palm until the crucifix lost its cool smoothness; and then she pressed it to my breast. Her lips grazed my cheek, as she bent her face down – her habit brushing against my forehead. The rough fabric scratched my skin.

              “Sleep now, I am here. I will not leave you,” she cooed.

              Her song lulled me into a deep slumber and I slept a peaceful sleep.

TWENTY-ONE

I
could feel her hand clasping mine and could hear her voice as I slipped into a tranquil cadence with the universe. Her voice allayed the emptiness, softening the blackness around me. The words melted into each other as her singing dimmed.

              Surrounding me was the sound of chanting and the smell of linseed oil and lavender. My eyes beheld the melting candles weeping on their stands, foretelling the universal truth: everything ends. Sisters flanked the scriptorium benches, meticulously copying scripture, their fingers stained with ink and their eyelids fading as the moon rose high outside the gilded windows.

              There is one thing that binds the world of man and the world of vampires together. It always has and it always will. We all dream.

              That is what I did as I slept. I dreamt, in glimpses and vivid colors of my past and of the present progressing outside.

              “Why are we here?” I asked her. Sr. Veronica was to my left, holding my hand, her finger pressed urgently to her lips. “Can they hear me?” I asked her, yet she did not answer.

              Sr. Margaret stood, her arms reaching into the sky as she stretched. Her head bent toward her chest, her body went limp and she slammed onto the stone floor. The other nuns fled from the benches, flew to her side, shaking the body, screaming her name. She was motionless, her lips upturned in a serene smile, her eyes now closed forever. 

              Sr. Veronica turned to me, her eyes speaking words her mouth could never utter. The sadness, the joy, the mingling of emotions I could not share. Their images melted into the darkness as I felt her grip tighten. Everything washed past me as I stood there, helpless and frightened.

              “Where are we going?” I asked. Again, she remained silent.

              The darkness lit with the sparkle of a million stars and the rain fell gently, yet I stayed dry. Sr. Mary Anne sat near the garden fountain, her tears melding with the rain.

              “Why is she crying?”

              Sr. Veronica pointed to the woman, her habit heavily soiled. Her veil lay in the mud before her, her cropped red ringlets now soaked. She clutched a crucifix as she knelt praying. She spoke perfect Latin, screaming her words to the Heavens. Several sisters came, took her frail body in their arms and carried her inside. She lay on the stone floor, gasping for breath.

              We watched in silence – part of the universe but not part of this time – as she succumbed to pneumonia.

              “Please,” I begged, “stop this. I can no longer bear it.”              

              Sr. Veronica led me down the garden path, past the roses and oleander, past the herbs and root vegetables, and as I looked back, the world melted away into the starlit sky. Reaching my hand toward it, the colors slipped through my wanting fingers. I could not hold on to this time. I could not go back.

              Forward we went, color blurring into a surrounding mist. Wind rushed through my hair, knotting the curls. My dress flapped; my necklace struggled to remain on its chain.

              Slowly, the world came into focus once again. A fire consumed a tiny fireplace, the one in my room. Aleksandra stood in the fire and candle light; her hair pulled back, a tear staining her cheek. She removed clothing from my wardrobe, packing them away in my sating-lined trunk. She cautiously removed my jewelry from their maple case, putting everything in a velvet bag that she tucked into the trunk with my favorite gowns.

              Wesley entered, hugged her, and added a bundle of framed art to the trunk. He said something to her, something so faint I could not hear it. She scowled at him. She yelled. She threw a paper into the fire, the flames instantly consuming it. He grabbed the trunk, slamming its heavy lid shut, and toted it from the room as she fell to her knees sobbing, clutching onto my ruby necklace. The one her father had given me. 

              “Is this happening now?” I asked. “Where are they going?”

              Sr. Veronica looked to her left and I watched as Aksel gathered Aleksandra and the rest of my belongings. They left the estate, their shoes clicking on the yellow stoned pathway.

              A carriage was loaded; they embarked, and as the horses took off down the path the world around me melted with them.

              Silence followed.

              Sr. Veronica and I were all that existed, swimming in a vague nothingness. The frigid air stung at my cheeks, the wind twisted and gnarled my hair, and her eyes burned with the ferocity of a white star as she glared at me.               Time was hollow and magnificent. Nothing mattered, and it felt as if nothing would ever matter again.

              Then the whiz of gunfire awoke my eyes to a smoke-filled lawn, men in grey clutching bleeding wounds. Soldiers cried out in agony. Men in red coats, riding great horses, rifles clutched to their sides, passed through surveying the carnage.

              We walked through the dead and dying, my feet treading over foreign soil. This land and its people were unfamiliar. She directed me toward a huddle of white tents perched at the top of a large hill. Soldiers busied themselves, rearming and recharging weapons for tomorrows skirmish. The painful screams of the injured men pierced through the chaotic hum.

              Women in dresses with bloodstained aprons tended to the maimed. They bandaged and cleaned wounds; they administered medicines and fed the hungry. They knelt and prayed by cots as men died before their innocent eyes.              

              Amongst the men and gun smoke clouds, Aleksandra sat tending to the wounded. Her angelic face pierced through the muddled mess of humanity, clawing its way to the top. She glanced in my direction and I thought she recognized me there, in the middle of the lantern-lit battlefield – the blood stained earth beneath me feet. 

              I later learned this was Yorktown, Virginia, and the British, our people, would soon surrender to the American troops. Soon a treaty would follow and the new land would get its sovereignty. But, in that moment as we stood surveying the violence, it was just war. Man pitted against man: a tale older than me. 

              As I turned toward Sr. Veronica, the tall grass below bled into a blur of greens and browns, grays, and reds. The breeze picked up and the white tents clouded my view. Aleksandra’s face faded into the consuming grey shadow.              

              “Why are you doing this to me?” I asked Sr. Veronica. “Have I not suffered enough?” Still, she did not answer. “What are these places you are showing me?”

              Finally, as we flew through the darkness, she replied in a whisper, “These are thing you must see.”

              “Why?” I begged. “I do not understand any of this!”              

              “You will understand. Soon,” she replied as the blackness gave way to a building and an approaching roar.               The large beast raged along a metal path, smoke billowing from its head. Its circular feet moved with great swiftness as the hulk of it drilled past us. The sound it made deafened my ears.

              “That is a train,” she told me.              

              “It is a beast!” I exclaimed.

              “No,” she explained, “it is a machine.”

              As I watched the train ease into the countryside, its tail slipping into the valley below and out of my view, I felt myself tugged backwards. Once again, the world went dark and quiet.

              Suddenly, the void edged into a lit room, music wafted from a piano, people danced on the ballroom floor. Glowing orbs of glass, that Sr. Veronica called electric light bulbs, replaced candlelight. The Turkey Trot, the Grizzly Bear, intimate one-on-one dances had replaced the elegantly refined country waltzes. Industrialization had changed not only the landscape, but also the minds of the people who worked and lived amongst the giant machine-driven factories.

              “The world has changed so much,” I whispered, watching the men and women pair off, twirling on the dance floor.

              “Has it really?” she asked, surprised. “This is not the first time you have witnessed progress.”

              “But it has always been slow,” I told her. “Not like this. Not so much in so little time.”

              Then the dance hall swirled as the people faded from sight. Darkness replaced the electric light bulbs, and silence invaded the energetic piano notes. The wind tossed my hair, the loose strands stinging my eyes as they whipped freely about. Sr. Veronica held out her hand to me, and I took it. She smiled.

              “You have not seen anything yet, my friend!”

              We traveled in and out of the void, in and out of reality. She showed me Swing music and automobiles, buildings rising into the sky, television, and the telephone. She showed me Internet Cafés, and grand public universities, and women, robed in the religious cloth, preaching as men would in our time.

              Then she showed the room I was in and I saw my body lying on the bed. I saw the dust of time blanketing me. The candles had long gone out and I was alone. I was sleeping and peaceful.

              “This is where I leave you,” she said, as we stood by the door.

              “I cannot be alone,” I told her. “You promised you would not leave me.”

              “But I must, Bree,” she said. “It is time for you to wake. They will be here soon.”

              “Who?” I asked.

              “Wesley and Aleksandra,” she told me. 

              “And Aksel?” I asked, but she faced me, sadness swimming in her eyes.

              “Good-bye, Bree,” she whispered and faded into the darkness.

              “Veronica!” I reached for her, but she was nearly gone.

              The peaceful calm that comes with solitude again descended, and then I felt his hand on my shoulder. His cologne was pungent and musky, his fingers soft. His voice, though, was the same.

              “Wake up, Bree,” Wesley said. “Wake up.”

              As my eyes opened, I saw him and Aleksandra standing beside the bed.

              “You were there, in the war,” I told her. “You were helping the Americans.”

              “How did you know?” she asked.

              “Hush, sister.” He helped me to sit up.

              “What year is it?”

              “2005,” Aleksandra whispered as she drew the covers back.

              “You will need to feed right away,” Wesley remarked, clearing the cobwebs from my hair.

              “2005?” I said in disbelief. “How could I sleep through so much?”

              “You needed rest, mother.” Aleksandra said as she helped ease me from the bed. My stiff limbs ached.

              “How did you know to wake me?” I asked.

              “We just knew,” Wesley told me. He flashed his eyes at Aleksandra, who quickly returned his glance before helping me to the door. 

              “Where is Aksel,” I asked. My eyes strained in the candlelight, but I could not see him. “Wesley? Where is Aksel?”

              Aleksandra hesitated at the door. “Let us go, mother,” she said, then pushed me forward. “We have a long way to travel.”