In the Image of Grace

by Charlotte Ann Schlobohm

  “Reginald,” I chided.

  “Yes, that’s right,” Mr. Carl said sitting down in the chair with his jacket.

  “Sometimes you actually almost show that you care,” I told him. “Reginald never has.”

  “He does care.”

  “No he doesn’t.”

  “He cares in other ways. Ways that don’t have to do with the human heart.”

  “That’s because he doesn’t have a heart,” I sputtered in anger.

  Mr. Carl just nodded. He couldn’t disagree with me. I looked across the room. Isabelle was still pacing.

  “She hasn’t slept,” I told Mr. Carl.

  “No, she hasn’t even sat down.”

  “Geesh,” I said. “What time is it?”

  “It’s around eleven.”

  “In the morning?”

  “No, night.”

  “Holy crap! How long was I asleep for? How did time go by so fast? How are Clarissa and Jeremy? Are they okay?”

  “Clarissa is outta surgery, but she’s in critical condition, you can probably go see her if you want and your boyfriend, he’ll be just fine.”

  “But what about Clarissa? Is she going to be just fine?”

  “The doctors still aren’t sure,” Mr. Carl said bowing his head and looking at his hands.

  “I can’t believe this,” I moaned rubbing my face with my hands. “What do you know about what happened?”

  “Well,” Mr. Carl said. “I talked to one of the officers and there was a gentleman set about on killing all of you girls. He was outside waiting in the crowd just waiting for you girls to walk out that door. Jeremy must have caught a glimpse of something and shoved you and Isabelle out of the way. If it wasn’t for him, gosh,” Mr. Carl paused at the thought of it. “The guy had a shotgun shoved down his pant leg and pulled it out just when the time was right.”

  “But why?”

  “The officer said he was screaming that he was doing God’s work, that since God didn’t create you he didn’t want you here or something along those lines. The guy is a raving lunatic.”

  “You and Reginald did this to us. You put us in the situation we are in, just by our mere creation.”

  “Reginald and I have made many mistakes, but bringing you girls into this world wasn’t one of them.”

  Maybe he was right. If it wasn’t for them I wouldn’t have been there, but then that could have been an okay thing if I really thought about it, but then I thought of my sisters and Jeremy and thought it was okay that I was there, so I replied to Mr. Carl with a head nod.

  “I’m going to see Clarissa,” I said getting up.

  Clarissa was in the intensive care unit where there was a lot of beeping and it smelled like bandages and disinfectant. She was hooked up to a bunch of machines. Monitors and screens with squiggly lines and numbers were all around. She had IVs and different sorts of lines taped and punctured into her body. She was intubated with plastic tubing in her throat. Her skin had absolutely no color, all her veins seemed to be clearly visible. I was afraid to touch her. Afraid my touch would send her over the edge onto death’s step. I wept for a while and prayed to a God I didn’t know and then just sat and watched her, trying to make sure she didn’t slip away anywhere. I didn’t know how long I was there for, but I saw Isabelle’s face looking through the window. I got up and we switched spots. I went to go check on Jeremy.

  When I got to his room I heard the TV, but he was fast asleep. I pulled up a chair next to his bed. I crossed my arms next to him, placed my head on top and once again entered the realm of sleep.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  In my nightmare I was being buried, but I knew exactly where I and who was burying me. I looked up from the hole I was laying in while Reginald shoveled dirt on top of me. All else was dark except Reginald’s face. His face looked crazed. His eyebrows were raised high on his forehead and his eyes attempted to pop out of their sockets. He bit his lip in determination to bury me. We were in our basement. I couldn’t actually see the basement, but somehow I knew I was in the basement to our house. It was strange because it felt like it was me being buried, but he kept calling me Grace. I tried to scream for help, but every time I attempted to scream my mouth would fill with earth. I could feel my lungs filing up with the dirt and soon I had no breath left and my eyes flew open.

  I tried to scream and wake myself up because even though my eyes were open I somehow still seemed stuck in my dream. I died, but somehow I was still alive. Somebody was shaking me and yelling my name. I looked around and I was still in Jeremy’s hospital room.

  “Charlotte,” I heard Jeremy call. I slowly sat up.

  “You were screaming,” he said. He was sitting up on the edge of his bed.

  “I was?” I asked because I didn’t think I was.

  “Yeah.”

  “Nightmare,” I answered. “I know where my mother is.”

  “What?”

  “I have to get into my house. I have to go now. It’s like it was meant to be. All of this happened for a reason.”

  “I’m not quite following you.”

  “My mother is buried in the basement and Reginald killed her and put her there.”

  “What!” Jeremy’s eyes were wide.

  “That’s what my nightmare was. I was Grace and saw Reginald bury me. I should have put my dreams together sooner.” I paused wondering if it would have made a difference. “I have to get into the basement of our house and now, while nobody is there or watching it.”

  “Well, I’m coming with.”

  “Somebody shot you yesterday. You’re not going anywhere.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You got a blood transfusion, you almost died.”

  “But I didn’t. What about your sister? She’s the one we should really be worrying about.”

  “She’s in the intensive care. They’re not too sure.”

  Jeremy grabbed my hand. “She’s a little spitfire. I bet she’ll be fine and bounce back in no time.”

  “I hope so,” I sniffled with tears welling up in my eyes. “You’re still not coming with.”

  Jeremy embraced me with his good arm. He kissed my cheek. “Just wait for me to get dressed.”

  “You need to rest. You’ll pass out or something. Just looking at you I can tell you’re in no condition to be running around the city with me.” He really didn’t look well. His face was pale and he had these large dark circles under his eyes. The cut from the fight was still there.

  Jeremy cracked a smile. “Thanks.”

  “Seriously, nothing else can happen to you. I don’t know what I’d do.” I stood up and embraced him in a hug not wanting to let go. After a bit I pulled away and gave him a kiss. “I’m going to go and check on Clarissa. Then I’ll come back and say bye before I leave.”

  …………………………………………….

  I stood next to Clarissa’s bed with her hand in mine. I somehow knew she was going to be okay. I didn’t say anything. It was weird, almost like I didn’t have to because I knew she could sense what I was thinking. Somehow we were all connected, her with Isabelle, Elizabeth, me and Grace. I wasn’t quite able to explain it. My mind was so full of other things before I didn’t take time to recognize or feel the connection we all had. I squeezed Clarissa’s hand and I swear she was smiling when I left.

  After visiting Clarissa I found Isabelle getting coffee from a vending machine.

  “Since when do you drink coffee?” I asked scaring her almost making her drop her it.

  “Jesus,” she yelped trying to steady her cup to keep the magic brew inside. “Oh, and since yesterday.”

  “You look like crap,” I informed Isabelle looking at her disheveled hair and bloodshot eyes. “Have you slept yet?” I asked.

  “No,” she mumbled.

  “Go in Clarissa’s room and sleep in that chair in there, okay. Hold her hand and let her know she’s going to be okay.”

  Isabelle gave me an inquisitive look. I told
her what was going on and she agreed to stay with Clarissa. I then went back to Jeremy’s room. I didn’t knock. I just opened the door and went in. He just finished pulling on his pants. He looked up, his face turning red.

  “Uh, sorry, I should have knocked.”

  “That’s all right,” he stammered fumbling to snap his pants.

  “What are you doing? Are you crazy?”

  “I’m coming with you whether you like it or.”

  I sighed walking across the room. “Where did you even get clothes?” I helped him snap his pants.

  “My mom dropped off a bag of stuff earlier.”

  “Where’s your shirt?” I asked while taking in his half naked body. He had a nice teenage musculature to him and a warm olive tone to his skin.

  “I can dress myself.”

  I shook my head still taking him in. His one arm was bound in bandages and his other one still had an IV in it and that thing they stick on your finger that’s attached to something that beeped.

  “You still have an IV in Jeremy and you’re attached to something else.” I honestly didn’t know what to call it, a blood oxygen monitor thing. I was just trying to think of excuses to get him to stay. He already got shot for me. I didn’t want anything else to happen to him.

  “I’ll just take the IV out.”

  I sighed. Like he said, he was coming with me whether I liked it or not. “Well, let me at least help you.”

  Jeremy sat down on the edge of his bed and held out his arm. I was hesitant and was tempted to close my eyes. I took a deep breath peeling off the tape that held the IV to his arm. I then gently grabbed the needle part shoved in his vein and very carefully pulled it out.

  “That wasn’t so bad,” Jeremy said leaning forward giving me a small kiss on the lips.

  I helped Jeremy slip on a tee-shirt and he gave me his hat, which I pulled on, and his glasses’. To top off my look I slipped on a light blue hoodie his mom brought him. He pulled the blood oxygen monitor of his finger. We dashed out of the room and down the hall. We snuck through the ER and slipped outside from there. We were tempted to run down the block, but didn’t want to bring suspicion to ourselves, so we casually walked away from the hospital.

  Luckily we were able to hop on a bus right away, which was good because it was rather cold out and Jeremy didn’t have a coat. We took a couple seats in back. Luckily there weren’t a lot of people on there. The less people the better because I didn’t need to be recognized. The bus smelled like a combination of urine and sweet potatoes.

  “We made it out,” Jeremy said already looking exhausted. He was slouched in the seat with his arms hanging at his side.

  “I don’t know if this was the best idea. You really should have stayed.” I nervously bounced my knee.

  “Charlotte, there’s something bigger going on here.”

  I sighed. “I know, I just want you to be okay.”

  “I am. What about you?”

  “I don’t know. I really haven’t had a chance to think about anything. Somebody tried to kill me and did almost kill my sister and shot my boyfriend and now I think I’m going to find something I’m not really sure I want to find because it would mean that my worst fears have come true.” I bit my lip looking at Jeremy. “You look tired. Are you tired?” I asked Jeremy realizing that I hadn’t given my brain time to think and it might have been going a little haywire.

  “I’m fine,” he reassured me.

  “For now.”

  We got off the bus walking in the direction of the house. Jeremy’s held his injured arm up against body, steadying it with his hand as he walked.

  “You have to be freezing,” I said to him noticing that his stubble was the same exact length as it was days ago. I reached up and rubbed his chin as we walked.

  As if he read my mind he said, “That’s as long as it gets.”

  “Really.”

  “Yeah, I guess I’m not a full formed man yet.”

  “You are, but men do grow and develop until they’re twenty-one. Aren’t you freezing?”

  “Yeah,” he confessed smiling at me. “We don’t have that far to go. I’ll be all right.”

  “Hey, let’s turn down this way and come up from the alley, just so nobody could see us,” I suggested we approached a side street.

  We turned left down the side street. Then right down the alley and walked down the alley past all the garages, back porches and chain linked fences until we came upon our garage. I looked down the gangway and saw a couple photographers milling about, but they didn’t look very hungry. All the good stuff was over at the hospital.

  “When they’re not looking we can climb over the gate, run down the side of the garage and to the walkway space between the house and the garage, all right,” I told Jeremy while looking down the alley both ways just in case somebody followed us. Jeremy bobbed his head yes.

  After a couple minutes the few milling around the front of the house near the gangway moved and luckily it was garbage day, so we flipped over a garbage can. We climbed on top and I went over the gate first. Jeremy followed. We quickly ran past the garage and turned sharply left once the garage ended. The two of us stood in the small shadowed space between the house and garage.

  “Now what,” Jeremy asked.

  Little did he know I had a plan. “See next to the stairs, those little windows.”

  “Yeah.”

  “We’ll just break one and climb in,” I said looking at the short rectangular window that was painted black.

  “Won’t we set off the alarm?”

  “No, I don’t think so. The basement windows don’t have the sensors on them, at least I’m pretty sure they don’t, so the only way we’d set off the alarm was if we opened the basement door and actually entered the house.”

  “We better hurry up before somebody catches us then. What can we break the window with?”

  I looked around the small walkway. There wasn’t anything there we could use. “Let’s check out the garage.”

  In the garage we found a shovel with a substantial handle on it and figured that would work. I was going to need a shovel anyways. I took off Jeremy’s hoodie I was wearing and we wrapped it around the end of the shovel to quite the sound. We didn’t need to draw any attention to ourselves. I busted in the window and crouched down low to the ground and stuck my feet in the small space we needed to go through. It was pretty tight.

  “I’m not going to fit through there,” Jeremy sighed while he squatted next to me as I shimmed through the window.

  “You’re not wide, just long. I think you’ll be okay.” I got my legs and butt in and cautiously lowered myself. I felt something under my feet. It felt like a plastic storage tub or something. I placed my feet on it and let go of the window and pulled myself fully into the basement. I jumped off the tub I stood on and attempted to look around, but it was pitch black besides the very faint stream of light coming through the window we just broke.

  Jeremy poked his head through the window to make sure I made it okay. I gave him a thumbs’ up and he made his way through. He had a bit more of a struggle because he was a lot larger than me. He also had an injured arm and was still weak. He didn’t say anything, but I could tell he was hurting as he squeezed his way through. Once Jeremy was in the basement with me we fumbled around to find a light. After whacking at the dark air for a while I hit something, heard a little tink and reached out and felt a small metal beaded string. I pulled it and a light bulb came on. I was able to see Jeremy dimly lit standing across the basement from me.

  “Hey,” he said looking down and then squatting. “It seems that the floor down here is all dirt or most of it, except the landing near the stairs there.”

  I looked over to where the stairs were to see the cement landing at the bottom of them. “Crap,” I cried suddenly. “I forgot the shovel.”

  Jeremy looked at me with his head cocked to the side.

  “We’re going to need it,” I informed him. I walked over, stepped back
up onto the storage tub and poked my face out the window. The shovel was just to the left of the window and I reached out and grabbed it and jumped down. “Look for lumps or spots perhaps where it looks like the dirt was moved.” I then took in a deep breath, “Like somebody was buried.”

  Jeremy scrunched up his face and pulled his head back with what I said. I sighed and nodded. We started searching. We scoured the whole basement and didn’t seem to find anything, so I then took the shovel and started digging in various places. I first dug a hole under the light because if you were burying something it would have been the best lighting. Jeremy knelt next to hole and dug the best he could with his hands.

  “Shoot, not here either,” I groaned after we dug our fourth hole, which all were at least a couple feet deep. The two of us were getting dirty. Jeremy’s face was smeared in dirt from itching it with his dirt covered hands. I had my sweater sleeves pushed up and dirt up to my elbows.

  I closed my eyes and tried to take myself back to my dream. I could see Reginald and I could feel the dirt filing my lungs and I was my mother, but yet I was myself. I then opened my eyes and somehow knew exactly where to dig. I led Jeremy to under the wooden basement steps. He tried to take the shovel from me, but I wouldn’t let him grab it. We then started to dig. At first it seemed like we were coming up empty handed. I kept digging and digging. Then all of a sudden I felt something with the end of the shovel. It was hard and I dropped the shovel.

  “Oh God,” I murmured sitting down on my feet. Jeremy came and sat next to me. “I know it’s her, I just know it.”

  Jeremy looked me in the eyes and without a word we started gently digging in the dirt with our hands. I felt what the shovel hit in my fingers, it was hard and smooth and long. I cleared away the rest of the dirt and in my hands I held what appeared to be my mother’s femur. Jeremy’s mouth hung wide open. His eyebrows were raised high. My mouth also hung open at the horror of what I held in my hands. Neither of us said anything. I put the bone down and started crying. Jeremy wrapped his one arm around me and I stuck my face in his shoulder and balled. He stroked the back of my head. My heart felt so much pain at that moment. All my worst fears were realized. I was never going to meet my mother because she was dead. I sat in front of her bones in the basement to my house. The pain filled my whole chest. Then my whole body and I fell into Jeremy and cried so loud if anybody was in the house I’m sure they would have heard me. Jeremy didn’t say anything he just kept stroking my hair. He didn’t try to quite me up or make shushing noises. He just let me cry out some of my pain.