WILLODEAN (THE CUPITOR CHRONICLES Book 1) (33 page)

I kicked and squirmed and turned five shades of pink while my father tried to calm and cradle me. “I guess you’ll have to do little girl. You’re a little goblin-goober.  A little spook.  Ooggloo, goo, cheeky, cheeky.”
Dad oohed and awed in baby jabber. 
“Looky here, looky here, pumpkin pie. I’m going to teach you to hunt and fish and work on cars.  You’ll be my little redneck princess.
You’re a female but I don’t hold that against you none. 
And by God, if anything, you’re gonna go out knowing.  You, me and James Dean. What'dya say to that?”

Papa Hart barged through the door, Dell following close behind. They were dripping wet and slinging sheets of water. Papa Hart noticed my wildness right off the bat.

“Son…son.” He said to dad.  “
Looks like you fixing to pay for yo raising.” I began to cry and my shrill voice shattering the silence of the room. “Mercy what lungs. You know what them old timers say.”

“What do they say?” Dad looked at him curiously.

“They say a child born in a storm is trouble waiting to happen. If this is any indication…” he let out a “Whew!” then pointed to the window. The downpour threaded in beads of water necklaces thrown from heaven. “SHE…” he pointed to me. “That little one right there is gone be double trouble. Plus, it’s Halloween.”
 
A strike of lightening hit the building next door making everyone jump out of their skin. The strike was a period of punctuality validating Papa Hart’s prophetic words. Everyone looked at each other but no one dared say the obvious, or the unspeakable things they saw in between the flash of light and the darkness. The aftershock o
f thunder rumbled the building. 
The lights flickered on and off.
When everyone was through looking strangely at each other for answers, the room went back to normal. 

“See what I mean.” Papa Hart said. His eyebrows raised in dire straits.

“Well, that ai
n’t nothing.” Dad said shushing. 
“This little shit was also born in the dark. You believe that? The lights went out—and plop. The doctor 
said it was pitch dark, almost slipped out of his hands. 

“Good Lord Lena.” Dell said 
startled with all the commotion. 
“That child couldn’t have picked a sunny day to be born…Valentine’s day? Christmas?”

Lena shrugged her shoulders too exhausted for words. The room filled with chatter and new
baby bliss. 
My family had been on alert of my impending birth and despite ominous weather reports, one by one made their way to the hospital to welcome me into this world but only one family member had the gumption to tell it like it was. Maw Sue came to welcome me 
and warn me.

Her given name is Susannah Josephine Worrell but I would come to know this eccent
ric, peculiar woman as Maw Sue and she was a hoot. 
Her storytelling ability took me places, both magical, scary, intriguing and unknown. Sometimes, she’d end a story without giving the ending
which left me to panic. 

“We have to figure out the ending for ourselves. Deal with what the good Lord gives us.” She’d say
leaning back in her rocking chair. 
“That’s just part of life. We all get something different. ” 
It left me stupefied and wondering what I’d get. 

Of cour
se, then there’s William Henry whom everyone called Papa Hart. 
Maw Sue always says his
name with a sneer in her voice.  He
does the same with hers. They constantly bicker back and forth about nothing. Papa Hart was the only man who could ruffle her feathers to the point she was an exploding peacock. They’ve hem-hawed and jaw-jacked since day one. Papa Hart says it’s because she didn’t
want him marrying her daughter on account he wasn’t good enough. 
Maw Sue says she didn’t trust a man that drank a boatload of whiskey and played
cards to all hours of the night, among other things. 
Papa Hart said he didn’t care for crazy women who took pills like candy. It was tit for tat, all the time.
My birth didn’t seem to stop them none, it only aggravated the issue. 

Maw Sue bu
sted through the hospital door causing a God awful racket. 
The metal knob slung against the wall 
and sent shockwaves down the hallway. 

“Speak of the devil.”  William Henry mumbled out loud. “Did you ride in on your broom or a thunder bolt?”

Maw Sue cut him the evil eye and scowled as if she’d been weaned on vinegar. Dell shot Papa Hart a 
don’t-start-it-look
 but it was too late.
They caused a fuss no matter where they were. 
Maw Sue was the forerunner of the family, a fallen matriarch people merely tolerated.
“Where is she?”  Susannah said.  Her
brittle hands rattled the door knob excessively and annoying. Her eyes bounced off every head until she locked eyes with me. The connection sent little eruptions soaring through her aged bones, reminding her of misspent y
outh. She elbowed the door shut.  It
split the air with a loud bang and s
ynchronized with a thunder clap outside. 

“Well…well.” She raised her slat board hands to her boney hips, “Let me hold her before I die.” Maw Sue assu
med every day was her last.  E
very minute was as urgent as the next. Every second a quest to defeat death. “Well…what are ya’ll waiting on? Doesn’t the oldest get first dibs, you know, in case we kill over.” She grinned and darted her eyes at Papa Hart
in a dare. 

“You should drop dead as ugly as...” 
Dell cut him off with the sharp end of her elbow. 
“Oww…that hurt.”
He said glaring at his wife. 

“Serves you right.” Dell said satisfied. She swore they couldn’t go a day without insulting one another. I must have caused a distraction with my overwhelming cuteness because Maw Sue flat out ignored Papa Hart and 
that
never happened. Those two were born to insult each other.

“Have mercy—would you look at that.” Maw Sue plucked me out of dad’s arms and unwrapped the blanket to get a better look. She fiddling and fretting and paced across the tile floors observing me with steady eyes, occasionally glancing back and forth at the rain angels outside. All she needed was a magnifying glass and a sacrificial alt
er, according to family members.  It was the way she examined me, one microbe at a time, as if she
was going to sacrifice me to the rain Gods. Of course, they wouldn’t
have understood if she had told them.  Besides, they didn’t believe what she believed. 

Years later, when I documented the story
in detail recanting each family members story in writing, did Maw Sue tell me what she was doing. 
Her Cupitor gift was 
Sapientia
 which meant discernment. For most her life, well, generally all of it, she had
not used her gift.  She discarded it from tragedy and mostly, fear.  And she had every reason to fear. 
Her skills were a bit rusty but still affective. When I was born, it was her opportunity for a do over.

Her life had been one cluster catastrophe after another. While I was swaddled in her arms, she felt an innocence, untouched by the raw brutality of the world, the spirit of childhood, an innocence unaffected by the world’s enmity, a refinement she had
long forgotten what it felt like.  It stirred her heart and she
nearly buckled
under the flow of fresh renewal, a redemptive breath she hadn’t inhaled in ages. 
She felt whole again, forgiven, unified for a common cause, and loved purely from the heavenly places. She felt a transcendence heat shined upon her from the sacred places, where a proud and majestic generation long
dead and gone, were speaking again.  
Her mouth salivated and her tongue grew heavy.
She felt the crumb touch her tongue. 
It was then she remembered the simple small things her mother told her to seek out and when found, consume with a vigor. In a rare moment of contentment, the past and the present merged, aged hands possessed new flesh and before her eyes, all losses were made lovely. The wrong of the world was made right, pure and noble. And just as quickly as the symphony of love and light enveloped her with its enigma, she heard the black laughter. It crept in as she knew it would, spoiling new fruit and tainting the seed with its darkness. Maw Sue tensed but she did not retreat. 
This time
—
she was ready
. And she didn’t fully realize it until that very moment. The instinct of the gift overpowered her fear and her want to run, flee. She stood firm and did not back down.
They
—the dark ones were only relying on their past sightings, since they’d observed her for ages, day end and day out, so they were quite s
urprised when she did not bolt immediately when they made their afflictions known.  Of course, it also
infuriated them. A grimy film settled on her skin and a familiar knife hedged up against her back. A strangling oppress
ive spirit hovered over her.  She gripped me tighter refusing to surrender. 

When Maw Sue
got to this part of the story, I would tense up and it didn’t help that the rocking chair she sat in, squealed out little screams. 
In truth, I understood her words because I lived under this same, dark cloud of strangled
oppression, constantly, day after day, night after night. 
It
apparently never left since that night in the hospital room.  It was before me, behind me, beside me, against me all the time. 
I
knew
the darkness long before it ever knew me. 
I wore it. I felt it.
 
I drank it. It was like bile, putrid a
nd dank, rising up in my throat in gurgles, only to swallow it down, left to sit and stew inside me. 
 
I think in a way, I’ve always known.  There were times I’d watch Maw Sue and feel a common bond with her, a connection of sorts, without definition or meaning, just a knowing.  Sometimes, she’d stop dead silent from whatever she was doing. 
She’d get lost in the walls of the room, falling motionless, without falling, remembering something dark or dreadful, unspeakable. Other times, she’d jump up or
turn suddenly as if remembering.  Her sudden movements would scare the crap out of me.  To deal, she’d
always bolt to the medicine cabinet which was stock full of little pills, white, blue and green tic-tac’s that made you forget what you didn’t want to remember. Later, she’d return calm and distracted and her eyes glazed over. I’d wondered what secrets she hid beneath those disconsolate gray eyes. Of course, when I found out—I wished she’d kept it to herself. Unlike her, I didn’t have a cabinet full of tic-tac’s
to forget. 

The internal battle inside the hospital room,
ensued but only a discerning eye could see what was actually happening.  I was only a newborn, and don’t remember, but Maw Sue assures me that I clearly, by Cupitor identity, knew what was happening. 
A chil
d always sees what others deny. 
The room filled with a multitude of Amodgian shadows while family members were unaware.  They waited to sink their teeth into me, and take all of me, snatching my identity before I was old enough to know what it was.  They wanted to take me, like they have taken many children all over the world.  W
ithout arousing suspicions of the others, Maw Sue protected
me in the only way she knew how, by using the old language, the Cupitor gifts.  She did it to protect me. 
 

“Everto absum”, she whispered softly in the air between her lips and mine. “Everto absum. Everto absum.” In the old language it meant demons be gone.
Inside her weak and aging body, she felt a stirring. 
Her precious gift came back as powerful as it was in the beginning, set free after being denied
of its purpose.  It was almost too p
owerful, like contained dynamite
.  Luckily, when the windows popped and buckled and a gust of wind swirled the room, the family blamed it on the raging storm outside and not its true source, of which they had no idea was upon them. 
The grueling shadow Amodgian’s
vanished in defeat.  But only temporarily.  They always come back. 
Maw Sue knew she had little time. Preparations
were needed and she must get to it.  Inside the other realm, she snapped herself out of the gifted dimension and entered the chatter of the room. 
“I’m to
o old for this.” She whispered almost losing her balance with me snuggled in her arms.  She turned to face the family. 
“What time was she born?”  Maw Sue said walking to the edge of Lena’s bed. She had forgot the most important question. She could feel subtle glints of desperation flaring inside her dilated pupils.
She hoped no one would notice. 
Regardless,
no one else could do what needed to be done.  And she didn’t have much time.