The Gatekeeper Trilogy

by Scott Ferrell

  “Okay, we’ll get you a new deck.”

  “No.” She shook her head gently back and forth.

  I recognized the motion. It sent pangs of sadness tinged with anger through my chest. She used to shake her head like that when my dad and I would do or say something she thought silly.

  “I like this pack. They’re worn.”

  “Sure, Mom. Keep using those.” I sighed.

  “How was work?” She flipped over card after card.

  I watched her face intently, looking for any spark the question meant anything to her, but it remained a blank slate. My answer wouldn’t really matter. I could tell her I performed brain surgery after rescuing a kitten from a tree and she wouldn’t have responded at all.

  Besides a small scar that broke the line of her left eyebrow, she looked the same as she had before the accident. Before my grandma died, she used to tell me I got all my looks from my mom. Most notably, the brown hair and eyes she said could pierce concrete. I even had the same light freckles that dotted her face here and there.

  Although her physical appearance was the same, she wasn’t the same woman. Even with her face turned down, intent on the cards she flipped and moved around, I could see her brown eyes were as empty as ever. They hadn’t done any piercing in quite some time.

  “I don’t work, Mom. Besides, it’s morning. Early morning. Too early,” I added with a yawn I didn’t bother to stifle.

  I watched her move a long line of cards onto the king of diamonds. Like the moon, she went through phases. She spent most of her time completely oblivious to the world around her. Other times, she gained a slight awareness. On very rare occasions, she came out enough to hold very basic conversations. The first time it happened, I was sure she was getting better. I learned to not get my hopes up after that. I learned to recognize her empty eyes even when she talked.

  “I had a bad game yesterday.” I really didn’t expect a response of any kind from her, but I thought maybe it would make me feel better to talk about it with what was left of my mom. “The whole team did, really. I tried my best, but we sucked it up big time.” The light wavered. I shook the flashlight in an attempt to extend its life a little longer. “I guess I kind of blew up on the sidelines and left early. I’m sure to get chewed out the next time I see Coach.” No reply. “Brian was there. He never goes to my games, but of course he had to be there for that one. You remember Brian, don’t you?”

  She went as still as stone. She held a card poised over the table in her right hand, her ring finger, bent from the accident, sticking out at an odd angle. The doctors who worked on her said her wedding ring must have snatched on something while the SUV rolled. The gold band was yanked off, deforming her finger beyond repair, and thrown down the mountain somewhere.

  “Mom?”

  The card slipped from her fingers and fell face down on the table. Her head twitched back and forth three times in a much different motion than earlier, like she was trying to shake the confusion loose. She lifted her eyes, and through the strands of hair that hung in her face, I thought I saw something in them. A spark of life. They pierced into me.

  “Mom?” I said again.

  “Stay away from the demons!” Her voice was her own, but somehow not. It sounded like it came from farther away than just across the table.

  “The demons? What are you—”

  “Listen to me! Stay away. Run away. Run and don’t look back. Get as far away from here as you can. They’re after you now.”

  “Who—”

  “Those with three fingers. Run! Trust no one and run!”

  “What are—”

  “Run! Do you hear me? Can you hear me?” Her eyes darted back and forth. “They want you. They can’t have you or the whole world is in danger. Can you hear me?”

  My heart pounded in my chest. I had no idea what to do. She had never had an outburst like that. From time to time, a random word or phrase would escape, but nothing like that. She sounded so lucid yet nothing she said made sense. It scared me.

  “I don’t understand.” My voice sounded small in my ears.

  “Run now! Please, just run, Gaige. Run…” Her voice trailed off as she repeated the word a couple times. The spark faded from her eyes.

  I stood abruptly. The chair scraped across the linoleum flooring. It nearly tipped over backward but rattled back onto all four legs.

  “What’s going on out there?” Aunt Stacy’s voice came down the hallway. She hurried into the kitchen, her much stronger flashlight blinding me. “What’s wrong, G?” Her light found Mom. “Grace, you’re up. Are you playing Solitaire?” she asked with a smooth, calm voice. She circled the table to stand beside her sister. “I think you can put that nine on that ten. What’s going on, G?” she asked again.

  I shook my head. I stared at my mom playing her game like nothing had happened.

  “You look white as a ghost. That earthquake must have scared you nuts,” Stacy said.

  “Earthquake?” I muttered.

  “That’s usually what makes things jump around on tables like that. It knocked the power out, too.” She waved her flashlight around to illustrate the darkness.

  “I think I missed it.”

  “I can see how that would happen. You’re a heavy sleeper.” She shrugged. “It was probably the sudden silence that woke you.”

  “Yeah, and I was dreaming right before I woke up, too,” I said.

  One of her eyebrows rose to indicate her interest, but I really didn’t want to get into the details, so I gave her the quick, down and dirty, vague version. Football related.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” she asked. “You look pale.”

  “Yeah.” I dropped my gaze to my bare feet. “Just tired.”

  The light above the stove flickered to life, and the refrigerator kicked on with a rattle and hum.

  “Five forty-two,” Stacy announced as she consulted her watch. She flicked off her flashlight. “That was quick. I’ll make some breakfast if you want to go shower.”

  “No rush. I have plenty of time.” I glanced at Mom. She hadn’t even reacted to the electricity kicking on. She stared at the worn cards on the table, no longer aware of herself.

  Stacy retrieved a carton of eggs and package of bacon from the fridge while I turned to grab bread for toast with shaky fingers.

  “Do you want anything, Grace?” she asked. “Your mom wrote her name last night.” She put two pans on the stove. “It was barely legible, but it’s progress,” she laughed.

  “I wish you wouldn’t do that.” No, no, no, I thought. I regretted it as soon as it tumbled out of my mouth. I closed my eyes and called on my secret fairy godmother to retract that statement.

  “Do what?” Stacy turned from the stove.

  Stupid secret fairy godmother! Okay, I didn’t really have one, but if I did, I’m pretty sure she would spend most of her time pulling my foot out of my mouth. Oh well, it was already out there so I might as well push on. A sudden rush of anger wouldn’t have let me do otherwise. “Act like it’s some great accomplishment when she does something a kindergartner can do. That’s what.”

  “It is a great accomplishment for somebody in her condition.”

  “For somebody in her condition? She shouldn’t even be in her condition.”

  “Gaige,” she began. She only used my name when talking to me like I was a child who needed something explained slowly and methodically. “It’s not fair, I know that, but—”

  I hated being talked down to, so I interrupted her. “But life isn’t fair, right? Save it, okay.”

  “That’s not what—”

  “It doesn’t matter. Just forget I said anything.” So much for forging ahead with my feelings. I tried doing some major backtracking no matter how far my foot was lodged in my mouth.

  “No, I will not just forget it. I think—”

  “I don’t care what you think. You don’t know what it’s like to lose both of your parents.” Backtrack, backtrack, backtrack!
>
  “I thought we worked through all this before. Plus, you didn’t lose your mom. You should stop talking about her like she’s not sitting right there.”

  I glanced at my mom. She turned cards over, oblivious to the argument. “Is she really there?” I snapped. “She might as well have died. Maybe it would’ve been better if she had died with Dad instead of rambling like a lunatic.” There. It was all out on the table, backtracking out of the question.

  I had “seen someone” about my “loss” after the car accident, but I had never told anybody I wished my mom would have just died instead of being left in her condition. Now that it was out there, I wished it wasn’t. I was going to have to “talk to somebody” about it, again. Something I definitely did not want to do.

  “You don’t mean that,” Stacy replied softly.

  “You don’t know what it’s like.”

  “She’s my sister, you know.” she said. “You’re not the only one—”

  That statement punched my brain like a pissed-off, three-fisted boxer, but I was too upset to apologize. “I’m getting ready for school,” I mumbled, turning away from her.

  “What about breakfast?”

  “I’m not hungry,” I called down the hall. For good measure, making sure my anger was on full display, I slammed the bathroom door.

  3

  Aoife Connelly

  After the world’s quickest shower, I pulled on jeans from the previous day and hurried to my room. I searched through the semi-clean clothes strewn around for a shirt that didn’t reek like teenager. I picked one off the floor and sniffed it. With a grimace, I tossed it into a deeper corner and grabbed another, a dark green shirt with an out-of-control stick figure banging on drums, screen-printed across the chest. It didn’t have the faint smell of deodorant and sweat, so I yanked it over my head. I pulled a hoodie over that and glanced at the clock on the nightstand, forgetting it would only flash 12:00 a.m. I’d always thought putting a battery in an electric clock was redundant. I changed my mind every time the power went out and I had to reset the time once it was restored. By then I had electricity, so there wasn’t any real need to waste time finding a battery to put in it. Until the next time the power went out, that is. But that was too far ahead for a fifteen-year-old to think. Like most teenagers, I usually lived in the here and now.

  Forget the clock. I didn’t need it to tell me the few minutes it took to get ready for school did little to cool my boiling pot of anger and raging guilt. What a lovely stew to start the day.

  I didn’t want to see my aunt. To be honest, I couldn’t say if it was anger or shame that made me want to avoid her like a puss-filled boil. I hadn’t meant to explode at her like that. It just came out. The old saying what’s done is done popped into my mind. Well, it was done and I would apologize for it. Later. After school. Maybe. In the meantime, I saw no harm in hoping she would realize I was just upset and let it drop by the time I returned home after school. Fat chance.

  I left my room and hurried down the hall, pausing at my mom’s room. I stared at the plaque that hung from a nail in the door. Dad had hand-carved it out of a single piece of dark red wood. Richard & Grace Porter . I trailed a finger along the looping letters of their names until I heard a sniff from the kitchen. Guilt welled up in me and I considered getting the apology over with but chickened out just as quickly. The last thing I wanted at that moment was to see Aunt Stacy crying. I still felt hot under the collar and didn’t want to end up saying more crap I’d have to apologize for later. I hurried down the hall and took a right through the living room to the front door. It squeaked on old hinges, yelling out to my aunt, accusing me of trying to sneak out. I winced, expecting her to call for me. She didn’t.

  I closed the door behind me and stood on the front steps, staring out into the early morning. I had no clue what to do with myself. The sun hadn’t even started to peek up from its sleep somewhere on the other side of the world. I let out a heavy, world-bearing sigh, adjusted the backpack over my shoulders, and pulled the hood over my head. I avoided the loose step on the front porch, stepped out to the sidewalk, and started a slow walk toward school. No need to rush. Head down, I let my feet lead me down the familiar route.

  Blowing up at my aunt weighed heavy on my mind. Mom’s episode freaked me out, too, but I couldn’t shake the dream from my head. It replayed over and over. Even though it had started to blur and fade like dreams often did, two things stuck out like roses in a field of weeds. The first was James’s bright red blood on my hands. The image dug into me like a thorn. The second was the girl with purplish hair. She remained clear in my mind like the beautiful petals. Bad metaphors aside, I could still see her shining blue eyes and thin face as if she stood right in front of me.

  “Gaige!”

  I jumped at the voice behind me and turned to find Aoife hurrying to catch up, her shoes falling silent on the sidewalk.

  During the five years since she had moved into town, I could count the number of times I had seen her without makeup on one hand. Unlike most girls, she didn’t wear it to make herself “prettier.” She wore it to be different. “The face should be a canvas,” she had said on more than one occasion. She never showed up with a rainbow or tiger painted on her face or anything like that. She just paired colors that others might not think to put together. Usually it worked, sometimes it didn’t, but she always looked different, if not eloquent. She didn’t have any on as far as I could tell in the dim light coming from a nearby streetlamp.

  On top of that, her usual eclectic style of dress was replaced with a very normal pair of jeans and sweatshirt.

  I tried not to stare. She looked…well, normal. Definitely something she was not known for. As the youngest of five kids, she tried her best to stand out while not being noticed. An oxymoron for sure. She somehow pulled it off.

  But in the predawn dark, what really struck me was how her eyes stood out even in the feeble light. I had never noticed how bright they were. I guessed it had to do with the dark eye shadow she normally wore that distracted away from her eyes. Under the streetlight, their usual hazel color took on an almost gold tint.

  “What’s up with you? I said your name three times.” She reached up to look under the hood to make sure I wasn’t wearing earphones.

  “I guess my mind was somewhere else.” I pulled away from her hand and pushed the hood off my head.

  “You’re out early,” she commented. “You look like crap, by the way. Are your dark circles darker than usual?” She poked at the skin under my eyes, then looked over my head. “You probably should have taken a minute to run a brush through that.”

  I pushed a hand through my hair. From what I could feel, it stuck up at all angles. I made a few vain attempts to push it down. “Well, your hair…”

  “What about it?” She frowned, running a hand down the black silk.

  “It’s not perfect.” Nice comeback, idiot.

  Of course, I thought she was pretty. Very pretty, but she was emotionally unavailable. She’d made enough friends since her family had moved to Gate City, but she’d never had a steady boyfriend. I chalked it up to her need to be different. As a result, half the boys in town never noticed her and the other half was too intimidated by her to approach her. Last year, Brian Wallner had worked up the nerve to ask her to the freshmen dance. Awkwardness flowed from the situation as I watched her just stand there staring at my best friend as a full minute passed before she shrugged a shoulder and said, “Okay.”

  It was even weirder watching them the night of the dance. Brian seemed to do all the right things a date should do, but Aoife looked more and more uncomfortable as the night progressed. Finally, in the middle of a dance, she pushed away from him and slugged him right on the jaw before turning and gliding out of the gym. Brian stood there with a shocked look on his face, a hand holding his chin.

  He never found it as funny as I did. The whole image. At fourteen, Brian was already well over six feet tall while Aoife barely topped out at five-
four. I found it surprising she could even reach his face with her fist, much less land a solid blow. In the weeks that followed, I tried to find out what had happened, but never got anything from her. In fact, all I got was the threat she would do the same to me if I didn’t drop it. Being full of wisdom, I did. Brian had been just as confused about the whole episode as me.

  “I haven’t straightened it,” she replied. “I was just looking out the window and saw you walk by. You looked upset.”

  “Oh.” I shrugged. It was a testament to how distracted I was to have walked right past her house without even realizing.

  “You had your face all scrunched up in concentration. Like this.” She furrowed her brows and squinted her eyes. She puckered her lips and curled them to one side and looked up at me.

  “Oh, thanks,” I drawled, not quite successfully fighting off a smile from my own lips. “I had a bad dream before the earthquake hit. No big deal.” Playing it cool.

  The humor drained away, replaced by discomfort as she stared at me. I should’ve been used to it—she did it often enough, especially when I wasn’t telling the exact truth. Like she knew or something.

  “So, a bad dream upset you?” she finally asked.

  Put like that, it sounded silly to me, too. “It was football related and I didn’t do so hot yesterday.” True enough. I really didn’t want to get into the whole fight with my aunt since I would just as soon forget about it rather than deal with it. I definitely did not want to talk about my mom.

  Aoife snorted. “You boys and your football. I might have to go to your next game just to see for myself what the whole deal is.”

  “Really?”

  She shrugged. “What better way to waste a few hours of my life than watching a bunch of overgrown boys running into each other?”

  “There’s more to it than that,” I protested.

  “Of course, there is.” She patted my shoulder and switched topics. “Where are you going anyway?”

  “School.”

  “This early?”

  “It’s better than sitting at home doing nothing.” Or dealing with my aunt, I didn’t add.