Born of Shadows- Complete Series

by J. R. Erickson

  Abby bit her tongue and reached across the table to hold her mother's hand.

  "I'm so sorry, Mom. Is there anything that I can do?"

  Becky laughed, a dry painful sound, and jerked her head from side to side.

  "I'm a big girl, Abby. I may not be superhuman..." she emphasized this last word, but did not look at Abby as she said it, "...but I'm capable of living my own life."

  Abby nodded and fought the various suggestions that drifted to the forefront of her mind.

  "People can only heal themselves," Elda had told Abby. "And that healing always starts right here." Elda had touched her heart and asked Abby to do the same. She had told Abby these things in response to Sebastian's anxieties over Claire and his desire to avenge her death. But Abby knew that Elda meant it for her as well, and also as a lesson that even witches could only bring help to those ready to receive it .

  "Ugh," her mother sighed, heaving herself out of her chair as though her body had grown heavy with age, though Abby estimated her weight at well under one hundred pounds. She watched her mother zigzag through the boxes to the door.

  "What are you doing?" Abby asked, wondering if her mother had simply decided to get up and leave in the middle of their conversation.

  "What does it look like I'm doing," she snapped, opening the door. Abby heard something scurry inside and she caught a streak of black.

  The cat practically dove into Abby's lap when he saw her, his purr loud and desperate as he pawed at her thighs .

  "Baboon!" she stared at him, overjoyed and then dismayed. In less than four months, his plump body had become bony and his once sleek fur looked oily and matted.

  "Mom? How did you get him?" She nudged her face against his and took her first breath of comfort since walking into her childhood home.

  "I didn't get him. Nick dumped him off here. Said he couldn't handle the memories. Left a whole heap of stuff in your old room too." Her mother looked at the cat and grimaced. "I guess you'll be abandoning him along with everything else—another mess for me to clean up."

  Abby cringed at her mother's bitterness, but only shook her head and smiled into the sweetly sad eyes of her beloved pet.

  "Nope, he is definitely coming with me. I'll look through my stuff too," she added. "And, Mom, if you want, I can get you some help in here, maybe somebody to clear some of this stuff out, donate it?"

  "Humph, and have some stranger digging through my things. No thank you! As for your stuff, I don't care what you do with it, but you're gonna do it, not hire some criminal to come in here and sneak my new TV out the back door while he's at it."

  Abby held fast to her cat and wished with all her heart that she could breathe love into the wasted body of the woman before her. Her mother had never been an especially kind woman, but the chill that emanated from her felt almost unbearable. Baboon licked her hand and then jumped down, padding across the floor to a mostly empty food dish.

  "Trager..." Becky continued, flicking her ash into an expensive-looking marble ashtray and shooting a final scowl at the cat. "It was smaller then, before the tourists and all that—a hick town I guess people called it."

  She stood and poured herself a cup of coffee and refilled Abby's half empty mug.

  "My mother loved that town, Lord knows why. When my father got the job at the hospital in Lansing and we moved downstate, she just about called the fire department, she was so mad."

  Becky didn't sit back down, but instead opened a drawer, one that used to hold kitchen rags, and pulled out a bottle of whiskey, pouring a hefty portion into her mug. Abby grimaced, but again remained silent. Her mother had never been more forthcoming and she wasn't going to ebb the flow with her judgments.

  "I must have been about nine when we left Trager. Sydney was eleven or twelve, but she always really loved that place..." She trailed off and her eyes began to pool. She took a drink and wrapped both her hands around the mug. "She was a lot like my mom and I guess I was more like my dad, though even that I'm not so sure."

  "Why did Grandma Arlene love Trager so much?"

  "I never asked her that," Becky said. "I never asked her much of anything and even now I don't really know why she loved it. Sydney asked her, I'm sure. Sydney followed her around like a puppy when we were girls. She was as in love with our mom as she eventually became with herself." Becky's acrid tone was familiar to Abby. She had heard it most of her life whenever her mother spoke of Sydney or Arlene.

  "I was always on the outside with those two. Never included in their little games, not that I wanted to be," she added stiffly, taking a drink and adding more whiskey to her mug.

  Abby wondered just how often her mother was drinking, but again left the question unasked.

  "For me, Trager was just like any other place. I went to school, swam in the lake, and had a few friends. But Sydney acted like Trager was this spectacular paradise. She barely even came in the house. Her and my mom used to sleep in our tree fort all the time. My dad pretended it drove him wild, but I think he liked it. He watched them from the window with binoculars. He could never understand why I didn't join them."

  "Why didn't you?"

  Becky cocked an eyebrow and stared at the swirling oils in her coffee.

  "I was scared of the dark and I was scared of the woods. Our house was right on the edge of the forest, same forest Sydney's house is on, but on the other side of town, and it always felt off to me. Every time I went in there, I felt this darkness kind of surround me. I wasn't the only one," Becky added quickly as if Abby might doubt her. "A lot of the kids felt that way. The weird ones liked the woods. Sydney and her little friends were in there all the time."

  "Were they called the Ebony Woods?" Abby asked.

  Becky looked surprised, but removed the expression quickly.

  "What's this all about, Abigail?"

  It was the first time her mother had referred to her by her full name since she'd been home. Usually she always called her Abigail, but so much of her had changed. She appeared confused as to her place in her own daughter's life. Was she still the mother? Did she have any authority at all? Abby could feel the unasked questions lingering inside her mother's every word.

  "You gave me the impression that you didn't want to know..." Abby trailed off, silently hoping that her mother would stick to that original desire and ask for nothing.

  Becky pursed her lips and took another drink. For a moment, she looked more like the rigid woman that Abby had known most of her life, but then her face settled and the fine lines reappeared, pulling her small lips into a frown.

  "I don't know what I want to know anymore or even what I do know, for that matter. Lately..." she waved a hand around the kitchen, "...nothing feels real. It's like I'm adrift in outer space, don't even have gravity to bring me back."

  Abby nodded that she understood, largely because she did. Something about the onset of her powers kept her stable, sane perhaps, but she still had moments where she felt the most intense loneliness as if she existed in an ocean that was void of life. She might spend a hundred years swimming the dark blue depths and never encounter another living soul.

  "I think it's best to not go too deeply into all of this right now," Abby started carefully, pulling apart pieces of the paper napkin beneath her mug. "I don't even really know what it all means yet..."

  "Sure," Abby's mother laughed. "Don't patronize me."

  "Mom, I'm not. I'm really not," she insisted trying to catch her mother's eye. "It would be the blind leading the blind and I don't want to bring any more confusion into your life."

  "The Ebony Woods were what the mothers called the woods, only them though—my mom, Peggy Sue's, Lorna's and a couple other girls. They met once a month, it was always very clandestine, but sometimes we spied and a few times we overheard them say Ebony Woods. We never saw where they went. It was like they vanished...poof."

  Becky lit another cigarette and blew a white puff into the air.

  "Sydney always said that if she ever had a d
aughter, she would name her Ebony. So much for that plan." But now as she spoke, rather than bitter, Becky sounded unbelievably sad and Abby too felt a great sadness at the thought of Sydney having a child.

  Sydney always claimed that she didn't want kids, but Abby had sensed otherwise and her mother had implied on more than one occasion that Sydney had been unable to conceive.

  "Ebony because of the woods?" Abby asked.

  "Yes. She was almost as obsessed with the woods as she was with our mother."

  "How did Grandma Arlene die?" Abby asked. The question had been burning within her since her discovery that her grandmother had been a witch. After all, she lived with witches who were hundreds of years old. Why was her grandmother not among them?

  "She died in a car accident. Her and Dad both, you know that."

  "There wasn't anything more to it?"

  Becky stared at her and Abby shrunk from the anger in her eyes.

  "She might have thought she was immortal, but she wasn't. You get hit head on by a semi-truck and you're not coming back."

  Abby shuddered, wishing she hadn't asked.

  ****

  On his third day in her apartment, Isabelle had run out of clothing options for Sebastian. When she left for work, she handed him a credit card, much to his surprise, and directed him to a nearby clothing store. Dumbfounded, he attempted to return the card, unwilling to believe that anyone would so openly offer their credit card and their home to a stranger, but she insisted.

  He left the apartment wearing shorts and a too small sweatshirt and walked the two blocks on unfamiliar streets to a small department store. By the time he pushed through the double glass doors his legs were rough with goosebumps and his face felt cold and raw. Rather than perusing the clothing racks, he walked to the counter where a tall thin woman absently flipped through a catalog

  "Hi?" He asked, not sure if the woman spoke english..

  "Hello," she told him, but it sounded like Hallo.

  "English?"

  "Oui, yes," she replied.

  "Is there a thrift store nearby?"

  She looked at him quizzically.

  "Thrift?"

  "Ummm...second-hand, used clothes?"

  She wrinkled her nose, but then nodded and smiled.

  "Ahh Vintage. Oui, that way, by the café."

  He smiled, offered his thanks and started off in the direction she had pointed. He could not stomach the idea of spending Isabelle's money on new clothes.

  After nearly a mile, he passed a small bistro adorned with tiny glass tables and iron chairs. Despite the cold, several people, sufficiently bundled, sat outdoors sipping steaming beverages from small white cups. They all watched him with interest, the tall curly-haired man in shorts with chattering teeth.

  He pushed into the store, assuming it must be the right place by the mannequins clad in yellowing wedding dresses and puffy-sleeved gowns in the front window. The narrow store smelled of mothballs and stale cigarette smoke.

  "Bonjour," a tiny woman with enormous purple spectacles called to him, scurrying from behind a desk nearly as high as she stood. The piles of tattered books that lined it were stacked above her head.

  She hurried between the tight racks. Her neck looked heavy with a dozen fake pearl necklaces in various colors.

  "Puis-je vous aider," she said brightly, her glasses slipping down to the ends of her nose as she raked up her long silky sleeves and took his wrist in her tiny hand. She immediately started to lead him deeper into the store.

  "Umm, Bonjour, sorry I don't speak French," he said to the back of her head where her dark hair was piled and heavily sprayed into place. Barely a strand shifted as she walked.

  "English? Fantastic," she told him, glancing back with a grin. "Me too, though I've lived here so long I'm starting to forget."

  She laughed, a raspy smoker's laugh, and he felt a sweet internal sigh, grateful for another person who spoke his language. Not only words though, it was the whole demeanor of American, a little less polite and sophisticated, a trait that, in his turmoil, he found enormously comforting.

  "Where are you from, honey?" she asked. She turned around and eyed him. "I'm thinking California—you look like a surfer boy to me."

  He laughed and started to respond, but realized almost immediately that he had no answer. He had opened his mouth as if it were the most natural question in the world, but nothing came out.

  "I don't actually know," he told her, feeling embarrassed. "I seem to have lost my memory."

  She shuffled him into a small back room filled with men's clothes.

  "Lost your memory?" She stopped and looked him up and down, gauging his size. "You runnin' from something?"

  "No," he told her, exasperated. "At least, I don't think so. I was just walking down this road a couple of days ago and before that there's just...nothing."

  She started pulling clothes from a rack and he frowned when she held a blue leisure suit up to his chest.

  "Well, I've heard of amnesia, but I've never met anyone before that had it, though there's always some handsome hunk in my soap operas that ends up with it." She winked and then frowned sympathetically at the serious look on his face. "Were you in an accident, maybe bumped your head?"

  She reached up and ran her hand along his scalp and then down his neck like an overly affectionate grandmother. He realized that he liked her.

  "I have no idea, but honestly, I don't think so. I feel like...I feel like I'm not supposed to be here though. I feel like I was in America and then somehow I woke up here."

  "Well, how about I.D. or a plane ticket? Have any of that stuff on you?"

  "No, I didn't have anything on me at all. No, wait." He slid the small silver ring from his pinky. "I had this."

  She took the ring and studied it.

  "What's this here on the inside?" she asked. "Some other language?"

  He shrugged and she handed the ring back to him.

  She held up another hideously ugly suit, this one clearly feasted upon by moths.

  "I'm thinking jeans and sweatshirts," he told her quickly, glancing around the room hopefully.

  She looked at his current attire.

  "Yep, surfer boy all right," she continued gravely, but with a smile. "I keep that stuff in boxes."

  She dragged several boxes out from beneath the racks of hanging clothes and started to dig, throwing shirts and pants his way.

  "Well, you'll have to contact the authorities and ask them to get some media attention back on you in the States. I'm thinking a picture on all of the major news stations should get you found pretty fast."

  He started to agree, but something in his mind immediately constricted at the thought. He couldn't take that route because then someone bad could find him. He stopped, cocking his head to the side and trying to find the root of that fear. Someone bad? Maybe he was on the run?

  "I'm Patty," she added, opening another box and heaving out an armful of colorful t-shirts. "I'd ask your name, but..." She laughed and then gave him a sweet motherly smile. "I'm gonna help you though, okay? First with the clothes and then after that, we'll see."

  He continued to stare into the distance, desperate to follow the fear that arose at her suggestion of the media. Still no memories surfaced.

  "Thank you, really," he told her, taking the clothes into a tiny dressing room that he could barely turn around in. He sat heavily into a small wicker chair crammed into the corner and started untying his shoes.

  Patty slipped behind her cluttered desk and dug around in the black hole that she called a purse. She found the tiny blue flip phone that her granddaughter bought her the previous Christmas and quickly punched in the number of a close friend who'd recently come back into her life.

  "This is Julian," the man answered.

  "Julian, my love," she greeted him, keeping her voice low. "I've just run into a strange man with a very interesting ring."

  Chapter 16

  August 8, 1908

  Dafne held th
e book in her hand and stared at the message that Tobias had left for her on page thirteen. They nearly always communicated that way, leaving books on each other's doorsteps. They wrote their message on the thirteenth page because they had met on the thirteenth of May. It ensured that her parents would not discover their relationship, but in truth, Dafne loved the romantic secrecy of the gesture.

  Tobias had written only one word—Tonight.

  She traced her fingers over the word and felt excited and frightened both in equal measure. They had saved for months and already plotted their path by train to New York. A small bag stashed in the cottage by the water held both of their clothes, papers and a handful of items neither could part with.

  Dafne thought of Aubrey and the others. The idea of abandoning all of them just days after Solomon's death made her breath catch in her chest and burn furiously. She sat still and felt the pain leave her as she envisioned Tobias carrying her across the doorway into their tiny New York apartment. The others would understand and better, maybe they would join them in the city, though in her heart, she knew that Aubrey belonged to the water and the woods of Trager.

  She cleared her thoughts and turned to the task of preparing dinner for her mother and father. At dusk, she would creep out of the cottage of her childhood and meet her future.

  When the red moon began to rise, Dafne left her home for the last time. She held a handful of dried lavender clasped in one hand and twirled, laughing as she danced to the stone cottage. She could see a candle burning from within, but when she arrived Tobias was nowhere in sight. Likely walking the beach, she thought, though she could see no silhouette of him in either direction. She settled on the small bed, tucked her feet beneath her and worked on braiding the flowers into her hair. She sang softly and thought of the hastily written letters that she left for her beloved Aubrey and the other witches. Her parents would receive a postcard during the journey. She could not risk a letter for fear they would immediately track her and attempt to bring her home.