by C J M Naylor
My eyes averted to the window, and gazed at the passing scenery. The car was journeying through Trafalgar Square. The fountain attracted my attention as I admired the water within, frozen in place.
"Abby, you are sitting next to me." I turned my gaze on Phillip. His attention was focused on the road, but his eyes darted over to look at me and then back to the road again. My attention focused on his eyes. He looked back at me again, an odd expression on his face. I realized he was waiting for me to speak.
"What do you mean?"
"Well, you are here, but your mind is somewhere else today. Talk to me."
Why was my expression always so readable? My mum could read me, Bridget could read me, and even Phillip could read me. I considered what to say. I told him about how strong the voices were today.
"Well, my love, tomorrow is your eighteenth birthday. Naturally, the voices are preparing you for adulthood." He smiled at me. His answer to everything was humor, and most of the time it comforted me. But today the voices left me with questions; I didn't want to be comforted. I wanted answers.
"Why do you think this is funny?" Life could not be fixed with a joke or a laugh. Sometimes, it was necessary to take things seriously. If anything bothered me about Phillip, it was his lack of seriousness.
"Abby," Phillip said, "I was just trying to make you feel better. I'm sorry."
I ignored him, but then I felt his warm calloused hand.
"I'm sorry." He squeezed my hand.
"But what do you think about it?" I wanted to know. I needed to know.
"Well, it is probably just something new. At first, they were whispers, and then conversation, and now they are talking to you."
"You think I am insane." I folded my arms and lowered my head.
"Did I say that? I don't think you're insane. If you were insane then you wouldn't be normal and quite frankly, you are. When you first told me about this, let's call it an ability, you were perfectly calm and straightforward. You didn't ramble on like an insane person, you didn't say the voices wanted you to kill people or do horrible things. I don't think you are insane. I've always listened with an open mind, you know that."
He did have an open mind.
"Let's get to the library," Phillip said, squeezing my hand again, "and I will look up some books, or at least try to find some books, on supernatural phenomenon. Okay?"
"Okay, but knowing you, you'll probably end up in the history section."
The library always had a draft and today was no exception. Cold, bitter air seeped in through the cracks of doors and windows. The iciness clung to my skin like icicles cling to the edge of rooftops in winter. I rubbed my hands against my arms as I poured over a copy of A Tale of Two Cities. My imagination left the war we were living in and fell into the world of 1775 London and France.
"Melanie?"
I looked up. For a split second, I feared a voice was talking to me, but it was actually a young man. He was around my age, and had a muscular build like Phillip. He towered over me at around six feet—just like Phillip.
"I'm sorry?" I responded.
The man looked at me for a moment and then said, "What are you doing out?"
I'm sure my puzzled expression was enough to tell him I was confused. "I'm sorry, my name isn't Melanie..." What was he talking about?
A strange look appeared on the man's face, but then it was gone.
"I'm sorry," he said, "you just looked a little bit like someone I knew, from far away though, close up you're different. I didn't mean to interrupt you, but oh, that book is my favorite!"
"I've reread it quite a bit," I admitted, a smile appearing on my face.
The man pulled out an empty chair and straddled it. He smiled at me and brushed some of his sandy blond hair out of his hazel eyes.
"Ian Cross," the man said, extending his hand. I shook it. "Sorry about the confusion."
"Abigail Jordan, and it's okay," I replied. Was this man being flirtatious with me? Or was he being friendly? I tried to steer the conversation toward friendly.
"Hello, hello."
My glance left Ian and gazed up to see Bridget standing in front of the table. She was wearing reading glasses but took them off and placed them in their case. Her dark black hair was braided up, falling down her back. She too pulled out a chair and took a seat. Finally, she looked over and met Ian's gaze.
"Hello stranger," Bridget said, smiling. "Who might you be?"
Ian introduced himself again; Bridget did the same. The two of them began a discussion about A Christmas Carol. I fell out of the conversation, but I noticed Ian looked a bit annoyed.
I excused myself for a moment and wandered off to find Phillip.
I found him in the historical section. What a surprise. He was reading a book on the civil war. He liked historical non-fiction just as much as fiction; I could not blame him for getting sidetracked.
"How can you read a book on war, during an actual war?" I felt the question was worthy of an answer. The idea baffled me. I knew Phillip had a different take on the war, but I woke up every day fearing the worst.
Conscription was something I feared. In my heart, I knew it was a noble ordeal to serve in the war. But the selfish part of me feared it just the same. Because I was not yet eighteen, and also a student, I was not yet required to serve. But that did not mean it would never happen.
Phillip, being twenty and fresh out of school, could be called at any given time. That was more so my fear—losing him.
"History fascinates me, love." Phillip grinned at me and then placed the book back in its spot. "I'm sorry," he continued, "like you predicted, I got distracted..."
His voice fell away and was replaced by a dark, distinct whisper.
"Do you trust him? Do you trust her? Do you trust anyone? Death is near."
My eyes shot to the area I felt the voice was coming from. I followed them.
CHAPTER TWO
The voice began to merge together with other voices and they became whispers; a moment passed and I could no longer tell anything apart. It was simply a constant barrage of whispering.
"Abby."
I could hear Phillip's voice—I processed it. But I continued to follow the whispers. It felt like the whispers were summoning me. It scared me, but at the same time, it fascinated me as well.
My course of direction was skewed as I weaved my way through different sections of bookshelves. I passed books upon books, smelling the paper of all of them. The smell of old library books at times wafted into my nose, but I continued my search for the whispers.
I turned a corner and then I walked right into a body. I caught the scent of wood and lavender as I gazed up into Ian's eyes. He had a crooked smile on his face; his hands encircled my arms, stopping my body from moving any further.
"Careful, there." His tone was light, joking, and sensitive.
"Sorry," I mumbled. My eyes glanced to the side, straining to see any destination point for the whispers. But as quickly as they had come, they were now gone. Silence was all there was now.
"No need to be sorry," Ian replied. "It seems to me like you were on one hell of a mission."
I smiled. It was true; I probably had been a bit frantic. Footsteps, then Phillip appeared from around the corner. My face blushed; I realized Ian still had his hands on my arms.
"Abby, why in the—" Phillip stopped and gave Ian the look. The jealousy look. I rarely saw it on Phillip of all people; the only time was when a man flirted with me on the street, but one of Phillip's looks quickly changed that. Ian let his hands fall and he placed them in the pockets of his trousers.
"Ian Cross." Ian extended his hand. Phillip looked at it for a moment with distaste, but shook it in the end.
"Phillip Hughes," he replied.
"Pleasure." Ian sounded bored with the introductions. I would be too, after three different people in the span of an hour. "Abigail, I need to be going. But I just wanted to let you know that Bridget was looking for you, and she invited me to yo
ur birthday tomorrow, if that's okay."
Bridget was being her outgoing self, as always. I remembered last year, we were in a boutique shopping, and she invited a stranger out to lunch as a joke. The man followed us around for a good hour until we lost him. She found humor in the strangest things. But the idea that Ian could potentially be a friend or more for Bridget came to mind. I really wanted her to have some more people in her life. She had not had a man in her life since before her father died last year in the war. "I think that's a great idea." I could see Phillip tensing out of the corner of my eye. "Did she give you the address?"
Ian reached into his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. "Nineteen Barton Street," he read aloud.
"That would be the one," I said. "My mum should have dinner ready around five. See you then?"
"Alright." Ian said his goodbyes and walked away. Once he was out of earshot, I turned to Phillip, bracing myself.
"Who in the hell was that?" he asked.
It was quite difficult to ignore Phillip's anger. I could tell he was restraining himself from getting too angry with me, or from going after Ian and doing who knows what.
"Ian Cross," I responded. "I think he said that."
"I know he said his name, but he obviously knows you."
As we walked back in the direction of where I had left Bridget, I casually explained that I had met Ian a while ago before I had come looking for Phillip.
"And now, he's coming to your birthday?"
"In my defense, I didn't have anything to do with that."
We found Bridget reading the copy of A Tale of Two Cities that I had left behind. When I sat down across from her, she looked up at me through her glasses.
"I wondered where you went off to," she said. "Did you see Ian?"
"The birthday guest?" Phillip blurted out. "We met him indeed. Bridget, it is not your place to invite strangers to Abigail's events."
The Phillip and Bridget argument of the day commenced. In whole, the argument was probably around five minutes long. The average was ten minutes, but at one time they had argued for at least an hour. The arguments usually revolved around me, politics, me, my voices, and me. Phillip and Bridget were friends at heart, but they definitely did not see eye to eye on certain issues, such as politics and me. Bridget suggested I needed professional help for my problem whereas Phillip thought I was perfectly fine. He was indignant when he had found out that Bridget had been all for the voices when I was younger, but in her defense, she had been ten.
"I don't like him," Phillip said, "there is something different about him."
"He's a man," Bridget responded, "and the reason you don't like him is because he talked to Abigail. She is perfectly capable of making her own decisions about who she talks to and what she does."
"Which explains why you took it upon yourself to invite him to her birthday?" Phillip counteracted.
"I invited him more so for myself," Bridget responded. "He was actually quite pleasant and I'd like to get to know him. We talked for quite a while about Charles Dickens."
"Oh, Charles Dickens!" Phillip exclaimed. "Well let's just invite him to the wedding then! I mean the man knows his Charles Dickens, therefore, why the hell not?"
"Would you two stop your arguing? Bridget, I would appreciate next time that you ask me first before you invite him to an event of mine. However, Phillip, I am perfectly fine with Ian coming. He seems nice and is definitely a person I would not mind knowing. Now, I don't know about you two, but I'm ready to leave."
I had actually interrupted because the voices were back, and they were speaking to me again. But the last thing I wanted was to make that the topic of their next argument.
Who do you trust? Who do you trust? Who do you trust? Who do you trust? The voices said it over and over and over again. What scared me was that it was definitely the voices talking to me, but I knew it was a legitimate question too.
Barton Street came into view as Phillip turned the corner. The car moved slowly down the street, past the familiar row of terraced houses until we came to mine, number nineteen.
"Would you like me to come in?"
Phillip turned the key and the car ceased to run. I looked in his direction, and for a moment I wanted to say yes. But I felt worn down by the arguments and the voices that had arisen during the day. Rest was all I wanted.
"I think I'm going to have dinner and turn in early. I'll see you tomorrow."
"Goodbye, love."
The smell of pot roast engulfed my senses. I almost ran to the kitchen, but stopped myself from doing so. Especially since I was eighteen tomorrow, running in the house would get me nothing but a talking to from my mother.
I calmly entered the kitchen and before I could even say one word, my mother said it for me.
"Pot roast for dinner!" she exclaimed.
"However did you get it?" I couldn't control my excitement. Meat was not cheap in the war, and I knew this couldn't have come without a high price.
"For your birthday," my mum said, "tonight and tomorrow, there will be no war. We will eat like royalty!"
My laugh came out of joy. My mum did her best to make us happy in a time when happiness was difficult to come by. She would surprise me anytime she could.
"It must have cost a fortune."
My mother beamed at me. "Oh, it did. But don't you worry about that dear. This is your eighteenth birthday and we are going to celebrate!"
Twenty minutes later, my family and I were feasting on pot roast and fried potatoes. It wasn't a complete meal, but it was more than we had had in a while. I was used to tinned meats and broths, not pot roast!
"This turkey is delicious, Diane!"
My heart ticked faster when my father said that. I peered at him out of the corner of my eye. My mum had told me only moments after exclaiming about the pot roast, that my father had been calling her Diane all day. Apparently, Diane was an old lady friend of my father's from when he was back in school.
"Dean, my name is Annette, I am your wife, and you are eating pot roast."
My father simply smiled at my mother and took another bite. I tried to dismiss it, but I felt another crack in my already damaged heart.
After kissing my father goodnight, I informed my mother about Ian coming to my birthday the next day. She seemed thrilled by the prospect of meeting someone new. After that, I couldn't wait a moment longer; my bedroom was calling me after the long day and my warm bed was waiting.
I pulled my covers to my chin and curled up in my bed. Though the room was dark, I could still hear the sounds of nighttime London. Fairly soon, the city would be going to sleep. After a few years of the blackouts from the air raid, I figured many people in the city turned in as early as I did.
Sleep made its way through my veins, calling me, and then it took me...
The dark of night was upon the city, but there was moonlight shining down in my mother's garden. It was springtime, and the flowers were blooming. Butterflies flew through the garden. And then the alarm sounded. The alarm started out soft, but got louder, and louder, and louder.
"ABBY!"
I looked ahead, my mum was standing just outside of the bomb shelter, and she was looking at me with pure panic in her expression. She was waiting for me to come to the shelter. I looked up into the sky and I saw the small black dots, getting bigger and bigger and bigger.
"ABBY! HURRY!"
I ran forward, but every step I took, my mum and the shelter got farther and farther and farther away.
"Abigail."
I stopped. The voice was different from my mother's. It still had a motherly quality to it, but it was softer, and younger. I turned around.
She was standing just in front of the back door to our kitchen. Her long, wavy, blonde hair fell elegantly down her back. It blew in the wind along with her pure, white dress. The woman held out her hand, palm up, like she was waiting for me to come and take it.
"Stay away," the woman said.
It was too late.
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The bombs dropped.
My whole body went upright as I took a gasp of air. My heart was racing so fast I thought it might burst forth from my chest. The silver nightgown I wore was now drenched in sweat. My eyes looked around in the darkness, but that was all I saw—darkness. I lay back, placing a hand over my heart, hoping to calm it down. I stared up at the ceiling, wondering what I had just dreamed.
Cold air wafted into my room. I shivered underneath the covers of my bed. Weren't covers supposed to be warm? I stopped my thoughts and listened. But there were no voices right now—all was quiet. Quiet, until there was a creak outside of my door and it opened.
"Abby..."
My mother's soft voice drifted over to me and my eyes cracked open a little, and then I was awake.
"Happy birthday, my sweet girl."
The door opened all the way until it was ajar and my mum stepped into my bedroom. She walked over to the edge of my bed and took a seat, placing a hand on top of mine.
Today was December 8th—my birthday.
"Why don't you get dressed?" my mother whispered. "We'll be off to church in a few."
I was pressed in between my mother and father at St. Patrick's Church in Soho Square. The church was packed today; everyone chose the same mass time it seemed. I let my eyes wander up to the vaulted ceiling with its intricate designs. But when I felt the soft touch of my mother's hand on mine, a gentle "pay attention" statement, I refocused my attention back toward the altar.
After the mass, we resumed the day at number nineteen with a special breakfast prepared by Mrs. Baxter. My mother had taken the day off, to be with me she had said, but the nagging worry about our need for money remained constant. I brushed it off. Birthdays were once a year.
