WILLODEAN (THE CUPITOR CHRONICLES Book 1) (15 page)

The foundation of my inner core released something without my permission, set it loose to wander freely. A parade of snapping locks, swinging doors, open windows, rattling walls, and crumbling partitions e
nsued. A loud whisper rang out but it wasn’t my voice. 

“Surrender.” It said. When I heard the words I felt like I was dying. 
Again, and again, and again
. I wanted to run—to jump—to act out. 
Wildly. Dangerously.
Leap from the tree limb,
plunge to my death. Stop the pain. I
needed refuge.  I
wanted my crackle shell, a house to climb inside, emerge, drift and wander freely, unhindered, unaffected.
The pure sanity of a child unaffected by contaminants.  I want
to float on the wind untethered to earth. I want to scream out, “Catch me! Catch me! Oh great maker of the wind. Oh great gardener of the lilies. Planter of the stars. Creator of the heavens. I’m lost. So lost. Do you see me? Can you hear me? I’m here…
right here.
In the gap. Touch me. Touch the gap.”

I am crying wildly.  Words haunt me. 
Cupitor’s are created to seek. If they don’t seek—they die. Spiritually their soul will wither away in darkness to join the shadows to wander aimlessly, disconnected and empty. Seekers are meant for purpose. Seek, learn, grow and progress. That’s the only road. The journey is not easy. It is a great and terrible burden with great cost. It requires giving up…sometimes people, places and things.
It is different for each seeker. 
It requires walking roads never traveled. It is otherworldly so one, not even themselves cannot foresee the consequences or the road ahead. To advance and grow one must hav
e a heart of complete surrender and faith. 
The more accepting of otherworldly things, the more you will have to let go of the earthy things. These two do not blend together. We are made carnal and we crave carnal. The spirit world craves spirit things. Carnal and spiritual do not mix. You cannot hold onto one and grasp the other.
Spiritual life cannot be made from fleshly deeds. 
A seeker can see no other realm and hear no other words. To cross over—requires letting go.

I wanted to let go. I really, really did. The burden too heavy to carry, too impossible to fulfill, too worthy and noble for a horrible, fearful adult like me.
And when I had almost given up, abandoned all thought of moving forward, I remember the poem.  Before I could even think about it—before the Amodgians could snatch it from me, take what wasn’t theirs, I
spoke the haunting words that would forever change my course in this life—
and the one beyond.

“I surrender to thee. I let go. Fill the void between our fingertips.” My voice was soft as whisper, barely audible, a broken child—a broken adult. “Make lovely my losses.” The house inside me quivered. The bark of the willow tree bent but it did not break. Sap leaked and ran out
from the wounded grain.  It tasted sweet and bitter. 
“Birds of the air, lilies of the field and the stars of heaven. Simple be. Whole and complete. Make me seven. Send me crumbs that I may consume and make my life a beautiful bloom.”

Once the words left my lips, it was utter abandonment as if I could float away on a gust of wind. 
A small hand squeezed mine although I could not see it.  I knew she was there, beside me
in spirit, and we merged as one, to fill the gap, to think as one, to speak in unison, if only once, as if it was meant to be this way. I should have known it would not last. Change always sends the Amodgians to attack.

“You’ll regret it!” The violent voice rushes in only inches from my face. I
caught the tree limb just before I fell.  One after another they came.  To remind me of my fate, my gift, my curse. 
My gifted eyes could see the
full aspect of the other realm, the realm that pimpled my skin into goose bumps of terror.  They know I want better for myself, my need for more, for change.  For ME. 

“It won’t last.” They hissed. “We know you. We all know you.” Their fowl stench
blew black smut into the air, turning the tree leaves black and leaving a smutty film on my skin.  It was their way of tarnishing me, reminding me, keeping me in my place.  Their place. 
“You are breakable. You can’t handle it.”
All of them speak together in unison, a dark army of one commanded to destroy me.  Their
voices turned into a screeching, a burning,
on fire from the inside out.  I
t was
awful to hear and I feared my ears would bleed and burst.  The flames trickled on my skin, hot and peeling. 
“You’ll never make it alone. You’ll crumble by yourself Willodean Hart. We know you.”

I sat in
the heat and fire of their words.  Somewhere inside the house, inside me, a room was going up in smoke, heat and flames. 
I knew their words were
true, to an extent. 
I 
was
 breakable. 
Fragile.
 I hadn’t been able to cope with anything for as long as I could remember. I was broken. Damaged.
I had always been this way, as far back as I could remember.  It was always one thing or another, a mess in my life, occupied by some object or detail. 
I would start projects and never finish. I was a loner as a child, isolated and drifting like a leaf at the mercy of the wind. I tried to fit in—do what others did. School was a nightmare.
Fear followed me where ever I went. 
I signed up for tennis, only to drop out the first day,
fear
. 
Fear of being found out, fear of someone talking about me, seeing me in
the wide open space of life. I was terrified of exposure.  If someone really knew me—they wouldn’t like me at all.  In my mind, to be seen, to be known was a
violation and everyone would hate me if they knew the real me.
I tried to find a fit. 
I did a variety of things. I took up sewing. I made it halfway through a dress. 
Quit. Unfinished
. Same thing for knitting, guitar lessons, singing, piano. The list is endless.
I can’t find myself in anything. 
I exist in nothing.
 

No matter what, I always return to my old ways, my old habits. My safe, miserable comfortable, chaotic life—
inside the house, inside me.
 It seems to be the only fit I have. I fear it will 
be the only fit.  Even with this thought, something
unnamed stirs inside me,
only noticeable now, in the stillness of everything as it is. 
When I could think of nothing else, Branson popped in my tho
ughts. It was hard to erase him although I tried.  I wanted him, the familiar, yearning in my deep. 
I am alone. 
Very much alone.
Alone. I still hate that word. And to top it off, my parents think I’ve lost my mind, which I have,
kinda.
 They’ve never believed the old stories, the family secret. They don’t consider the curse as a genuine family illness. They simply thought I had an overly stimulated imagination as a child and Maw Sue didn’t help things with her wild concocted stories. Lena Hart said I’d grow out of it. So much for wishful thinking. I
think she hates me, always has. 
Family rules. Don’t say that, don’t be like that. Stop it. Be better.
Shut up. Stay quiet.  Be still. 
Why can’t you be like everyone else? Now straighten up. Act like a lady.

I was just starting to agree with the heart critics taunts when the roof splits with the rupture of Lena’s voice.

“Willoooodean! Willodeannnn!”
She squealed. 
Her voi
ce was twenty shades of frantic. 
Lena’s voice was the only one that could
compete with the eerie shadows and make my skin pinch. 
I nearly fell out of the tree trying to get
inside the window. 
Her voice held various degrees of pitch, from a low teeth snarl to a glass
breaking, one second away from murder shrill. 
As kids, Mag and I created a code book to use as a guide to her various temperaments and though my memory is vague—
this code did not sound favorable
. I shot through the window like a scared lizard and landed on top of the man pillow, just in time to see my mother round the corner in a southern terror.

“Jesus, Joseph an
d Mary!” She said out of breath.  She fingered
her lips in worry. “Are you trying to kill yourself?”

I was dumbfounded.
What? Kill myself?
 
I was thrown off kilter.  I expected her to roll out twenty questions but certainly not this one. 
Sure, I’d hadn’t been the best mental patient, nor the trophy daughter. Not for the past six months, not since the divorce, not since my break down. And sure, I wished for death on a daily basis to rid myself of the pain that beckoned and burped its way out of me but in honesty—I’d never really tried to slice my wrist or anything like that—
had I?
 Did I enter another realm and just not know it? 
Did I try to kill myself?
Now I was worried.  What had I done all those weeks laid up in the twilight? 
 

Lena Hart doesn’t use the holy family in everyday dialect unless it’s a serious matter.
Jesus loves me—this I know—about Lena Hart.
 Her verbiage is pure and undefiled Bible belt methodology which she assumes keeps her from spouting off profanity and committing murder. She’s used it on dad
a gazillion times.  M
ag and I knew it well. 
Code 10.
 It’s the mother lode. It really meant
Holy Shit Balls! Run for your life.
 
Now I’m really puzzled.  I need to get back in the
wondering tree
 so I can
wonder
 about what has gotten into Lena. Of c
ourse, I don’t know her at all.  Never have, but not for lack of trying.  Her
overzealous scream
and her comment has me concerned. 
The irony.
 Me…kill myself…now?

I wanted to yell, “Oh contraire. Quit
e the opposite. I want to live Lena Hart. 
LIVE!
Now
more than ever.” And then rattle off, “SEVEN!” Just to throw her off.

Since I’m lost in thought she thinks I’m ignoring her.  This makes her fiddle more so.  
“Why—I just—.” She says in spurts, pacing about the room and glancing at me in dire straits. I’ve never seen her this dramatic and flustered. She rubs her eyebrows and presses
her forehead.  It’s like she’s
having flashbacks, little infant terrors of my painful birth. 
Awww…the disappointment.
 The forehead press is 
Code 9
. If I could just get her to zero I’d be in the cool. 
Good luck with that.

“What were you doing in the tree for God’s sakes?” She said
out of nowhere. 
How did she know I was in the tree?
  I gave her an odd glance as if not to give myself up. 
She cupped her hand to her mouth
as if waiting for horrible news.  I
 hadn’t let them see me climb the tree—FOR THIS VERY REASON.
Panic, unnecessary panic. Inside the house inside me, the internal threat meter goes off.  I need a sufficient answer to satisfy Lena’s interrogation methods.  

“Whaat?”
I say unable to think of anything else.  I can’t
tell her that days ago, I climbed the tree to save a crackle clinging to a leaf, tangled inside a web of shame. 
I can’t tell her I made a vow when I was a child.  I can’t tell her I have lost that child. 
I can’t tell her the tree is a safe refuge for me. 
She wouldn’t’ understand.
She has been fixated on my declining mental capacity since I moved in, after the divorce, after the meltdown. I have no memory of those dark days afterward, I was in and out of some terrifying places, just smudges in my memory now, shadows, fears, dark clouds. 
I know what her problem is.  She doesn’t fool me in the least.  She
fears I’ll be the headliner in Pine Log’s paper. You know, those read-all-about-it black fonts of shame, about some girl jumping in front of a truck or swallowed arsenic but only after holding a public confession, spilling out the family sins and secrets. That scares her the most—
being found out.
 Who knows what she’s hiding. It’s probably the same pink elephant I tried to flush out as a kid. And th
en…it hits me smack in the face. 
Well, I’ll be damned.
 
It’s me.
 I’m the families big secret. I’m the pink elephant.
Sigh.
 Maybe she’s right.
Maybe I did try to kill myself and just not know it. 
There 
IS
 something dark in me that would rather taste a horrific death, be done with it, than to live the tragedy of an empty, uneventful life. I’m always chasing the void, it seems, the space, the empty gap between my fingertips and Gods. 
Why can’t I connect—whyyyyyyyyy?