WILLODEAN (THE CUPITOR CHRONICLES Book 1) (34 page)

“Uhh…I don’t know…I think it was…”   Dad said pausing in thought.

“What time?”  Maw Sue spat. “The exact time!” Her voice was on the verge of frantic and left a chilling edge in the room.

“Well, at least she wasn’t born at coo-coo o’clock like some...”
A familiar goad pricked Papa Hart’s side cutting him off, again. 
“Owwww woman.”
Dad had gotten up and shuffled to the door. 
His steel toed work boots made a heavy clip-clop across the floor. He lingered halfway in the door and motioned for the nurse. There was a low murmur of talk.

“Coo—coo. Coo-coo.” Papa Hart
said like a bird clock.  He gave Maw Sue a come hither eye. 
Dell whacked him on the leg with a magazine and gave him the
what for. 

“I think it was three….or something.” Lena said rolling over. The birth had exhausted her from small talk.
She didn’t care what time the child was born, only that she was finally out of her. 

“Three what?” Maw Sue said desperately. “Does anyone know what time this child was born?” A prodigious underlying simmer lingered in the room. Maw Sue’s spindly fingers twisted the white cotton blanket of my cocoon, both of us entangled in
a force of otherworldly realms. 
It was imperative she know the hour, minutes and seconds of my birth. It wasn’t a secret that most folks thought Maw Sue unstable, just a crazy old lady who popped pills for imaginary aches and pains and all those stories…well, folks thought the stories were a bunch of fabricated poppycock. But Maw Sue paid them no mind because she knew the truth. She lived
it out and so had her ancestors, many of them, ages ago. 
See
kers cannot run from the truth no matter what. 
 

“For God’s sakes, Dell.”  Papa Hart said poking her.  “Find out what time the kid was born before your mother goes into a spastic conniption. I mean, nobody gives a shit but her. She might need to sprinkle some rosemary or ring a bell or some other stupid superstitious nonsense.” Maw Sue spun around in a tizzy and gave him the stink eye.
Papa Hart’s eyes waited in anticipation of her comeback but she didn’t give him the satisfaction of getting one.  She cut a scornful look in his direction and then turned back to me.  I was wiggling and giving her fits because she had wrapped me in that itchy blanket, or so she says.  It about
drove Papa Hart nuts that his mortal enemy overlooked him so easily.

“I know what you’re doing William Henry and you stop it this instant.”
Dell said.  Her eyes slanted and she pinched him on the leg for good measure.  He howled. 
“You two are making me crazy. Both of you. Like two children.” Papa Hart snarled at Dell and went back to cleaning his 
fingernails with a pocketknife but he kept a steady eye on Maw Sue.  If Gavin
hadn’t of came back when he did, Maw Sue said there might have been a killing and Papa Hart was lucky we was all in a hospital.

“She was born at 3:33.” Dad said stopping midway the room. “3:33, by Gosh. How about that?” His mouth stayed open in marvel. “And born on Halloween too boot.  I bet she’s gone be a whippersnapper. Hell on wheels. Make James Dean proud.”  He went about the room puffed up like a rooster. Later when I was old enough to know who James Dean was and how he died, I was mortified my own father would consider it as a namesake for his first born. 
I had enough omens as it was. 

“Paying for your raising.” Papa Hart smirked and looked
straight at his son.  Ma
w Sue was locked up in a hard gaze of disbelief. She turned
a shade of soft blue as if she hadn’t taken a breath since Gavin walked in.  And in truth, she hadn’t, but there was so much more to it than that. 
According to Maw Sue, when Gavin spoke the time I was born, her mind flashed images, and she saw things, ancient things, treasured childhood keepsakes, a wooden box, carved numbers, letters and symbols, stacks of writings, old and stained.
When she came out of it, she was in a tizzy of hurry. 
She knew immediately what she had to do.

“I—have—to—go.”   She said in a quizzical whisper. She handed me off to Lena
who was still curled up half asleep on the bed.  Maw Sue was still locked up partially in her mind, with what she had seen, almost lost in a daze as if the room warped in slow speed through her vision.  She ran out of the room quickly but in her own vision, it was like taking a thousand steps to the door, a resistance pulling her back, keeping her, wanting her.  Her departure left e
veryone
baffled.  Papa Hart
lifted his knife to his earlobe and circled it round and round. “She’s loco” and then he made whistling noi
ses, “Uhh….straight up coo-coo.”  He braced for impact and it came, just as it had several times before.  Dell’s sharp elbow cracked his ribcage.  Papa Hart wasn’t sorry.  He enjoyed every minute of it. 
 

Centerpiece

“Don’t leave me again!” The voice screamed
from the house inside me.  It settled into a whimper and then nothing. 
I awoke from a deep sleep, no air to sustain me, gasping, dripping sweat, and shaking all over while the house inside me wobbled on a crumbling foundation. Ten nights—same nightmare. To make it worse, 
she
 is there with me, the one I hate, the one I love. She’s standing in a shattered sea of glass as if the ocean had frozen and then cracked, leaving her stranded 
and floating, bobbling on one fragile ice burg.  I’m there with her, standing on a portion of sea glass, a distance away, as if the sea waves are drifting us further apart.  The gap between us grows wider and my heart feels stretched to capacity, as if she is taking my heart with her, the farther she gets, the more dead I feel without her.  The separation makes me panic.  My eyes watch her float further and further away.   She looks so peaceful, almost like a moving picture, unreal. 
The sky is
in a yellow panorama around us, glistening and forming soft halos around her blonde hair. 
Sparkles of light bounce off the ice surface and project diamond prisms in every direction. 
Crystal quartz bob up and down, sinking in and out of the water. 
Scattered across the c
rystal sea are life preservers, made from candy swirls, like striped peppermints.  A few are at my feet, some are floating in the water, others are melting from the hot sun, forming rivers of syrupy substance, while some are impaled on the
peaks of sharp ice, the red running down like candied blood.
The further she gets from me, the more I see the sun, which isn’t the sun at all. 
It’s a bright sun clock that ticks and tocks and in between the tick is a deadened silence that haunts me and then it tocks and rushes me back to where I’m at. I am caught up in this madness, frozen at sea with the little girl.
Suddenly, I can hear her voice adrift on the sea, my ears attentive to her calling.  Her lips are moving and I faintly hear her screams but I cannot make out the words.  The tick-tock of the clock drowns it out to noise.  Suddenly I realize how cold it is, icy cold from my toes to my ankles and then I realize why.  My iceberg is sinking and the water laps up to lick me with each pounding wave.  I latch onto a candy life preserver but when I pick it up—it turns into a piece of peppermint candy in my palm.  One after another, the same. 

The girl is screaming frantically now, a desperate cry mixed with the wind. 
I look up and she doesn’t look real, a ship on the ocean, passing out of vision, out of my reach. In my mind, there is nothing I can do, so I unwrap the candy in my hand and put it in my mouth. I
am sad, lost in my mind, in the vision of the little girl on a crystal iceberg drifting out to sea. 
 The candy
is minty and hot, then suddenly turns a taste of metallic as if I was sucking on a penny.  I hear a loud crack as if the earth split or the sun fell.  It was neither.  It was the little girl and the iceberg she is standing on
split in two, leaving her on a small piece which is melting at an alarming ra
te of speed.  In my vision it was lackadaisical, ice to drip, drip to water, and water to sea.  The sun clock bears downs its warning bringing heat with each tick-tock.  I notice multiply icebergs between the girl and me, so I sprint across them, like playing
hopscotch.
When my feet touch each iceberg, as I lift up to scale another, they melt behind me, one after another. 
Little peppermint life pres
ervers are floating everywhere and melting with the same rapid speed as the ice, leaving the water a syrupy mess.  The little girl is screaming loudly, erratically and no
matter how fast I run, I seem so far away.

I 
jump on the last iceberg, no more between us, and it’s a rather large one, so it will be longer to melt.  I bend down on my knees and splash the water like my hands are oars. Her iceberg had melted and she disappeared underneath the waves.  I panicked and rowed harder, faster.  I saw her come back up, her head bobbling beside the peppermint life preservers, as she grabbed each one, only to find they were candy.  Who needs candy when you’re drowning? 
Seconds seem like hours—and I finally reached
her.  I was spent and exhausted, my hands burning cold with a sting.  A wave came, the slap of the oceans hand, pushing my iceberg back, then down again, smacking the water with a vengeance.  The trickle of waves took the little girl under and then I heard a loud cracking and popping.  My ears ruptured with the noise. 
Images of crushed crackles enter my vision. But to my fear, it isn’t the crackles.

The ocean is now an ice rink. The iceberg I was sitting on is now frozen, turned sideways, and pointed upward, frozen into the vast arena of ice, as far as my eyes could see. I am breathless and hear a pounding in my ears. 
It turns to a dull shrill. 
I look down
in horror.  The
little girl is submer
ged underneath the ice crystals.  The
large body of ice has cemented itself like thick glass between us. I scream and beat against the hard sea with my fists but it only replies with a horrible drum echo.
I can barely believe what I am seeing, feeling, hearing.  Underneath the glass sea,
her eyes are wild and panicky and she doesn’t look real, almost hazy like a dream. Her fists pound the ice
on the other side, a mirror to my own, as if I’m watching myself in small form, watching myself die, sucking in water, while my lungs fill with the salt of the ocean, not the salt of the earth. 
The sun clock ticks and tocks a
nd bears light but its heat cannot help us.  With each tick-tock, ice cracking, fist thudding sound, I go a little more insane. 
The girl
adds to the noise by clawing long lines in the ice, as if it was an ocean chalkboard.  I scream and scream but no one cares, no one hears us. 
I am on my knees helpless, and beating the ice, wailing and crying.

“No, no, no.” I scream. Air bubbles escape from her lips and 
springing up beside them, tapping the ice surface are three peppermint candies, scratching the ice with their clear plastic wrapper, adding to the noise that I can barely take.  The candy turns the water a pink color
while her hair spirals like flower petals around her face
until she looks like a rose budding underwater.  But then, to my horror, the d
epths of the blue black suck
the budding flower to its abyss.  She is gone.  I am in shock.  Breathless.  Can’t move. 
The sun clock
slowed and gave its last and final tick, tock. I am left with a haunting image of her eyes, swept away, pulled under, blue to black, gone. 
Her absence sends me into a primal wail, beating against the ice, tearing at my clothes, pulling at my hair and screaming like a wild animal. 
And then I wake up.

I’m drenched with a cold sweat and the white bed sheets are on the floor.  I taste copper and
peppermi
nt.  E
very night it’s the same dream.
Over and over.  Same detail.  Same horrible events.  And e
very night I wake up
with the same ritual, pacing the floor and trying to rid myself of her.  The little girl that is making me insane. 

I’ve never been able to explain the horror of my mind to anyone, except Maw Sue. I hear her voice speaking from the grave and it helps, but even so, no one understands and I feel so utterly alone. She knew the harm the
Amodgian shadows could render. 
How they hover beside the light, feeding off my fear, my insecurities and my want of answers but never getting any. They study me, observing my wants, desires or lack of. My features, my tears, my brokenness, my weary cries of yearning and loss for something I can’t find nor describe. They hunger and bite off my loathing and gain strength by my weakness. Where darkness is—
they are there
. Where light is—
they are there.
They are hedged in the lesser light, right on the edge of it, the place where daylight meets dusk, dawn meets the day, the thin line that separates the light from the lesser light.
They are there
.  They sit on the brim and wait.  It’s the moments of in-between I fear the most. 
The long, drawn out lapses of silence, void of space, time and presence, where nothing exists, nothing cares, nothing matters. This is when my mind is afflicted in the worst way. It cannot still itself for fear of destroying itself in the process. In the small gaps, something ethereal from a nether world, slips in. I can feel it but I can’t see it.
I only know its presence.  Even more so, now that I accepted the gift, as an adult, I notice it more often. 
It lies in wait between the little girl’s voice, in the moment after she screams, after the eerie calm, after her voice grows mute, and the aftermath of silence is left to crawl on my skin. It is then I am faced with a choice, although no question has been asked.