by K. C. RILEY
“Tag, you’re it, sleepyhead.” A girl my age with two braids overlapped on the top of her head tagged me. Her golden hair gleamed in the sun.
“You’re so going to get it.” A voice erupted from my throat that wasn’t my own. I got up and ran after her. We were both wearing white hippie floral dresses. Strange.
I chased the young girl through a field of butterflies and wildflowers so vivid the colors breathed against an electric sky that went on forever. My arms reached out and pulled her down to the ground laughing and screaming. We tumbled over like kids in a playground and laughed until my side almost split open.
Things finally settled down, and we rolled to our backs to look up at the sky.
She turned to face me. “Are you scared?”
“No. Not with you here.” My hand squeezed hers tighter. I turned to face her. “Are you?”
“Everything is happening so fast. I’ll be glad when it’s all over. One more day, right?”
“You’ve got nothing to worry about. My father says it’s all a natural process and we’re strong. We’ll be the ones to make it.”
“Easy for you to say, you still have another two weeks to go. I’m the one turning seventeen tomorrow.” The girl lifted her arm and revealed what looked like a small tattoo of the same mark from the cover of the book. The same mark that was on the door from my nightmares and in the picture of Sir Isaac. “It’s already started.” The silence dug deep between us. “If I don’t make it, promise me something.”
“Don’t talk like that, of course, you will. We both will. We have to. Who else will go berry picking with me?”
“I’m sure I can think of someone.” A smile that was up to no good plastered itself across the girl’s face.
“Shhhhhh,” I said, oblivious to who they were talking about.
We both giggled at each other.
“Hannah Adel Wardwell, you swore a blood oath to keep your mouth shut,” I insisted.
“And I will. I swear. But you’ve got to be more careful. If they ever find out about him. It’s dangerous for the both of you. You know the law.”
“They won’t, not for some time. Not till I can tell them the right way. Now enough of this talk. Somebody has got an ascension we need to go and get ready for.”
“Serene?” Hannah’s eyes grew solemn. “No girl has made it through the 13th hour, not in three hundred years. I’m scared. Sometimes it feels like there’s something dark watching me from the shadows, something waiting to devour and rip me apart until...I don’t even want to think about it.”
Serene. I was in the body of someone named Serene. And 13th hour. Mom’s note. “I know. I’ve seen it too. We’ve been training for this since we were twelve. The darkness is a part of the process. So don’t let it scare you. And whatever you do, don’t fight it, or it’ll make the process harder. Remember, the darkness is nothing more than the burning away of what we were, so we can ascend to what we will be.”
Hannah turned her head back to the sky. “It’s a lot...some days too much.”
“I know. But we’ll be fine.”
“There you all are. I’ve been looking for you all day.” A young man with thick eyebrows and a black beard stood over us. Intense blue eyes pierced from under an Amish-looking black hat.
Hannah and I smirked while getting up to brush ourselves off.
“Father says it’s time to come home now. And Norah’s been looking for you,” he added.
“Jonas Jacobs, where are your manners?” I said, still wondering who on earth these people were. And who was Norah?
Jonas glared at me. He then looked at Hannah, took his hat off, and tipped his head in respect. “Hannah.” It didn’t take long for him to take another dive into me again. “Father says we best get back to prepare for Hannah’s ceremony. I suggest you don’t be late.”
“Tell Father we’ll be there soon. We’re just talking girl stuff for the ceremony, but you can stay if you’d like.”
Jonas blushed several shades of red before he scoffed and marched off.
“God, your brother...he’s beautiful,” Hannah replied.
“Don’t ever tell him that or it’ll go straight to his big fat head and that hat,” I said, laughing. “You know he likes you.”
“He does not,” Hannah said.
“Yes, he does.”
“Well, why won’t he say anything? I can’t imagine what he’s so afraid of. It’s not like I bite.”
We talked more on the subject while strolling home. Serene Jacobs. I couldn’t get the name out of my head.
Hannah interlocked her arm with mine. “Imagine if Jonas and I got married, that would make us sisters. And I want a big family, maybe even twins like the two of you.” She stopped me for a moment and stared into my eyes. “You know, I think I finally get what’s holding him back. He’s afraid of the same thing I am, whether I live or die tomorrow.”
The sound of someone clanging on a dinner bell out in the distance vibrated through my body. My soul felt like it had been sucked out of one space and spat out into another.
I woke up in a cold sweat and dashed over to the mirror to make sure I was real. I checked my limbs, hands, and eyes to make sure they were all mine too, that I could control them. The letters B L O O D were gone, and spazzing out was an understatement.
I tried to explain to myself the impossibility of what happened, the impossibility of how the book pulled me into it, and someone else’s body. And what did the 13th hour have to do with the book, me, or anything? It had to have all been a dream. Or maybe the book was laced with something. Some kind of hallucinogen.
A glance at the clock showed I had been out cold for over five hours. My stomach grumbled. In spite of being wigged out, I was starving. And what was wrong with me? I couldn’t figure out why my appetite kept swinging from wanting nothing to wanting everything. The Dining Hall was closed, but there was a kitchen downstairs with a fridge full of snacks.
The empty hallways at All Saints, or Saints & Sinners as Josie liked to call it, were always ominous at night. I pressed the button for the elevator, but it was taking forever. Maybe it was stuck. I couldn’t wait any longer. I crept down the stairs and around into the kitchen.
The sound of a bowl clanking and someone crunching on something came from the shadows. It was Cassie sitting in the dark and eating cereal.
“What are you doing up?” I whispered.
“Couldn’t sleep.” Cassie sounded different, not her perky self. “You?”
“The same,” I said.
“Grab a bowl.” She pointed to the cabinet. “Nope, further to your right.”
I grabbed the bowl, still feeling wary of having popped out of a possessed book only minutes earlier. Ridiculously starving, I sat down across from her and poured the golden nugget cereal, followed with ice-cold milk.
Scenes from the book haunted my every thought. Being in someone else’s body? The thing they called the darkness, and the 13th hour? I still had no idea how it all fit together. “Hey, what kind of things do you guys talk about in theology class?”
“Hmmm,” Cassie mused. “Lately, mostly the book of Enoch, angels, and what happened in the Garden of Eden.”
“Don’t you think that’s a little unorthodox for a private school?” I could barely hear myself over the sound of crunching on the best cereal I had ever tasted in my life.
Cassie shrugged. “I mean it’s a private school. I guess they can teach whatever they want.” Cassie still sounded off. Sad.
“Right.” My mind flipped back to the first page of the book. “What do you know about the Daughters of Cain and witches?”
Cassie’s eyes widened like the words meant something to her until her eyes dimmed again. “Supposedly, that’s how magic was born into the world, at least through angels mating with Cain’s daughters. According to Enoch, they were the first witches turned sirens.”
My heart felt like it was being squeezed to death in someone’s fist. All I wanted to do was cry and n
ot for myself but for Cassie. I had no idea why. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah, of course. Why?”
“I don’t know, you seem kind of sad.”
Cassie’s eyes watered. “Sorry.” Cassie stared and stirred the milk in her bowl like she had conjured an image in it. “Sometimes it’s hard to forget the past. The last time I saw my dad was at home four years ago. It was a few months after my mom had passed. He’d been drinking. He never used to. I’d been cleaning up after him every day. I was only thirteen, and I needed my dad.” She looked up at me. “Once upon a time, he had been a good one. Not once did he ask me how I felt about losing her. But I suppose I never asked him either. He just checked out and drowned himself in alcohol. One day I got tired of it all. I came home from school and did my chores and schoolwork. But I missed my mom, you know.”
“Yeah, I do,” I said.
“Tucker, my dad, called me to get him another beer. I told him to get it himself. Before I knew it, he grabbed me fast. I struggled to free myself as he dragged me out of the room by my hair, down the stairs, and slammed me against the wall. I fell to the ground, and he told me to stay down, to not get up until he said so, that I was never to disrespect him in his house again. I should have listened, but I didn’t. What he was saying, it wasn’t fair. It was my house too. I got back up, and he knocked me out. When I awoke, I was laid out on the floor, bleeding.” Cassie rubbed the scars at her wrist. “He was in the corner sobbing and wailing like a crazy person. Sorry. No offense.”
“None taken.”
“He called me a Daughter of Cain, a Witch. He said that I made him do it, that I bore Cain’s mark, and it was my fault that my mom died. So yeah, I’ve heard the term before.”
Waves of chills ran up to the crown of my head. It was like I was there, had lived it, and was caught in a time loop I couldn’t get out of.
Daughter of Cain. Witch. The sound of a gun going off reverbed through my head. Something was really wrong with me. I tried not to flinch.
“He buried his head in his knees and didn’t move,” Cassie continued. “I went in and out of consciousness. Everything was fuzzy, but I could feel myself being lifted and carried in a bright light that was everywhere. I wasn’t dead, and it wasn’t Tucker. I couldn’t make out the face, but my body felt like it had been wrapped in warm light. That’s the only way I can explain it. I never felt so...complete. And he spoke in a language I didn’t understand until somehow I did.”
I stared at Cassie with my mouth wide open. “What did he say?”
“To not be afraid.”
“Wow,” my voice cracked.
“Yeah. I blacked out and woke up in the hospital with Grams and my aunt. They told me Tucker had been arrested and would never hurt me again, or they’d kill him.”
“I’d kill him too.”
“Don’t get me wrong. I hate what he did. But he’s still my dad. And I still love him. Is that stupid?”
“No,” I said. “Of course, not.”
“I miss him. I miss both of them.” Cassie wiped the tears from her eyes with the back of her sleeve. “It’s like what he did wasn’t him, like he was—”
“Possessed.” The word just popped out of my mouth and I had no idea why.
“Yeah. Exactly.”
Cassie and I both went silent.
“How did you get here?” I finally asked.
“A few days after what happened, a letter came in the mail. It was All Saints offering me a full scholarship. Grams was terrified my dad would get out and said All Saints was the safest place for me to be. She said I had no idea what an honor it was to be accepted, even though I never applied in the first place.”
It was strange, the crossover in our stories, losing a parent and the instant scholarship to All Saints. Weird or not, talking with Cassie made me feel better. It was like I wasn’t alone.
“I will probably never admit this again,” I said. “But, I’m glad you barged into my room my first day here.”
“Wait. What?” Cassie half chuckled. “Your door was totally open. And I don’t barge, thank you very much. Okay, maybe a little. But I’m not half as bad as Josie. But don’t tell her I said that. Anyway, you were in definite need of some friends.”
She was right. I was. Things quieted again.
“Do you believe in them?” she said. “Angels?”
The question triggered something in me.
I remembered waking up five months ago in a hospital bed. I was screaming for my mom. The lights were pale and men in white uniforms were holding me down against my will.
“She’s in shock,” I heard.
Someone then stuck me with something sharp. Again.
I then remembered sitting curled up in the corner of a padded room with my head leaned against the wall for what felt like an eternity. In truth, it had only been a couple of days. Out of my mind, I spoke of devils in the phones, shadows in the streets along with magic, witches, and evil. Drugged up, I couldn’t think straight. My thoughts, speech, and body were lethargic. And everything was all mixed up, like a bad dream I couldn’t wake up from.
Everyday a man with gray peppered hair, a crisp white shirt and a pink and gray bowtie would come in and ask me the same stupid questions over and over again. Are you still seeing ghosts? Are you still seeing the devil? Possessed phones aren’t real, Lizzy. Your mom is gone, how does that make you feel?
Then one day a different man showed up. I couldn’t believe I had forgotten all of it until now. He appeared out of nowhere and stood behind Dr. Davis. Ancient but youthful, his eyes burned like blue sapphires while his hair burned like golden fire. I hadn’t realized it but the man looked just like…Jake. That’s why he seemed so familiar. And I really was losing it. Or was it just wishful thinking? And if so, why?
Anyway, Jake looked at me and lifted a finger to his mouth as Dr. Davis continued on with his dumb questions. “Shhhhhhhhh,” he said.
It was like he opened my eyes, and I knew what he meant. From that day on, I began telling Dr. Davis exactly what he wanted to hear. Devils, shadows, and evil things that went bump in the night didn’t exist. I got so good at it that somewhere along the line I convinced my own self.
Now, did I really see an angel standing behind Dr. Davis? And did I really see Jake before ever meeting him?
The only thing I could say was that in my world of crazy, every day was a battle between what was real and what was not. I wasn’t sure what to believe anymore.
I struggled to find the right words to Cassie’s question. She seemed so hopeful.
“I don’t know,” I finally answered. “But I think some part of me would like to.”
Cassie smiled. And just maybe what I had said was enough.
Still, I still couldn’t get over it, me seeing Jake as an angel. Ha. Right. Those must have been some serious drugs.
9
Okay, I probably overdid it with the cereal. Nevertheless, my belly was finally full. I sat back on the bed and placed the book in my lap. I needed to know if what happened was more than just a dream.
To my surprise, blood was no longer necessary. At the touch of my hand, the book opened.
Music played faster and faster. I changed arms and hands with Hannah, then a woman, then a young man, then an older man, then an older woman, and then Jonas. Through all the meandering, I was twirled back to Hannah. The way I felt inside this body, there was no doubt in my mind it was Serene.
My first time in the book was scary, and only because I couldn’t control it. I still couldn’t control it. However, as I settled into Serene, I couldn’t deny she was a happy person. I could feel it in every cell of her body. Happy was something I hadn’t felt in a long time.
We all stopped and then clapped together with the music. Everyone was practically dressed the same. The women wore flower-type hippie dresses, and all the men wore beards, black pants with suspenders, and crisp white shirts.
We danced and paraded in a barn lit with lanterns and sta
cked bales of hay pushed against the walls to clear the floor. With each new partner and twirl came a whiff of roasted pork, corn cobs, and fresh-baked bread, all of which made me hungry. And that should have been impossible after eating three bowls of cereal. But then again, this wasn’t my body. So it made sense.
I tried to turn my head but couldn’t. From what I could make out, the tables lined against the side of the barn were set for a king’s feast.
Flames in stationed lanterns flickered like dancing fireflies, and a four-man band stood at the back playing the fiddle, the guitar, and a banjo. Honestly, I could only tell them apart by their weight and height. Everyone kind of looked the same.
Hannah grabbed my arm and pulled me back onto the floor toward the center. These were the happiest people I had ever met. We twirled in a circle some more as we held hands. The faster the music played, the faster we spun. We laughed so hard I was sure my gut would burst. Any faster and our shoes would have caught on fire. And that didn’t matter. The band refused to slow down and played their jig until they almost collapsed.
In one dramatic halt, the music stopped. Hannah and I fell to the floor while everyone cheered us on. The celebration came to an abrupt standstill as a thud from a staff clanged against the floorboards.
“It’s Ezra. Quiet,” I heard.
Ezra stood in front of the band and placed his black hat on his head while some kind of punch was served. “On this evening of celebrating the ascension of Hannah Adel Wardwell, let us not forget the sacrifice of those who made this place we call Home, possible. Let us not forget Sir Isaac Crane, our founding father. Let us not forget the sacrifice he and the others made so that we could have a different way of life.”
Everyone raised their glass and said, “To Sir Isaac.”
The rest of the evening was a surreal night filled with games, laughter, charades, and more dancing.
I felt a connection to people I couldn’t explain and lost myself to Serene in a good way. She was surrounded by friends and family that adored her. Loved her. It was the first time I ever felt like there was place where I actually fit, somewhere I could call home.
