“Well…well.” She raised her slat board hands to her boney hips, “Let me hold her before I die.” Maw Sue assumed every day was her last. Every minute was as urgent as the next. Every second a quest to defeat death. “Well…what are ya’ll waiting on? Doesn’t the oldest get first dibs, you know, in case we kill over.” She grinned and darted her eyes at Papa Hart in a dare.
“You should drop dead as ugly as...” Dell cut him off with the sharp end of her elbow. “Oww…that hurt.” He said glaring at his wife.
“Serves you right.” Dell said satisfied. She swore they couldn’t go a day without insulting one another. I must have caused a distraction with my overwhelming cuteness because Maw Sue flat out ignored Papa Hart and that never happened. Those two were born to insult each other.
“Have mercy—would you look at that.” Maw Sue plucked me out of dad’s arms and unwrapped the blanket to get a better look. She fiddling and fretting and paced across the tile floors observing me with steady eyes, occasionally glancing back and forth at the rain angels outside. All she needed was a magnifying glass and a sacrificial alter, according to family members. It was the way she examined me, one microbe at a time, as if she was going to sacrifice me to the rain Gods. Of course, they wouldn’t have understood if she had told them. Besides, they didn’t believe what she believed.
Years later, when I documented the story in detail recanting each family members story in writing, did Maw Sue tell me what she was doing. Her Cupitor gift was Sapientia which meant discernment. For most her life, well, generally all of it, she had not used her gift. She discarded it from tragedy and mostly, fear. And she had every reason to fear. Her skills were a bit rusty but still affective. When I was born, it was her opportunity for a do over.
Her life had been one cluster catastrophe after another. While I was swaddled in her arms, she felt an innocence, untouched by the raw brutality of the world, the spirit of childhood, an innocence unaffected by the world’s enmity, a refinement she had long forgotten what it felt like. It stirred her heart and she nearly buckled under the flow of fresh renewal, a redemptive breath she hadn’t inhaled in ages. She felt whole again, forgiven, unified for a common cause, and loved purely from the heavenly places. She felt a transcendence heat shined upon her from the sacred places, where a proud and majestic generation long dead and gone, were speaking again. Her mouth salivated and her tongue grew heavy. She felt the crumb touch her tongue. It was then she remembered the simple small things her mother told her to seek out and when found, consume with a vigor. In a rare moment of contentment, the past and the present merged, aged hands possessed new flesh and before her eyes, all losses were made lovely. The wrong of the world was made right, pure and noble. And just as quickly as the symphony of love and light enveloped her with its enigma, she heard the black laughter. It crept in as she knew it would, spoiling new fruit and tainting the seed with its darkness. Maw Sue tensed but she did not retreat. This time—she was ready. And she didn’t fully realize it until that very moment. The instinct of the gift overpowered her fear and her want to run, flee. She stood firm and did not back down. They—the dark ones were only relying on their past sightings, since they’d observed her for ages, day end and day out, so they were quite surprised when she did not bolt immediately when they made their afflictions known. Of course, it also infuriated them. A grimy film settled on her skin and a familiar knife hedged up against her back. A strangling oppressive spirit hovered over her. She gripped me tighter refusing to surrender.
When Maw Sue got to this part of the story, I would tense up and it didn’t help that the rocking chair she sat in, squealed out little screams. In truth, I understood her words because I lived under this same, dark cloud of strangled oppression, constantly, day after day, night after night. It apparently never left since that night in the hospital room. It was before me, behind me, beside me, against me all the time. I knew the darkness long before it ever knew me. I wore it. I felt it. I drank it. It was like bile, putrid and dank, rising up in my throat in gurgles, only to swallow it down, left to sit and stew inside me. I think in a way, I’ve always known. There were times I’d watch Maw Sue and feel a common bond with her, a connection of sorts, without definition or meaning, just a knowing. Sometimes, she’d stop dead silent from whatever she was doing. She’d get lost in the walls of the room, falling motionless, without falling, remembering something dark or dreadful, unspeakable. Other times, she’d jump up or turn suddenly as if remembering. Her sudden movements would scare the crap out of me. To deal, she’d always bolt to the medicine cabinet which was stock full of little pills, white, blue and green tic-tac’s that made you forget what you didn’t want to remember. Later, she’d return calm and distracted and her eyes glazed over. I’d wondered what secrets she hid beneath those disconsolate gray eyes. Of course, when I found out—I wished she’d kept it to herself. Unlike her, I didn’t have a cabinet full of tic-tac’s to forget.
The internal battle inside the hospital room, ensued but only a discerning eye could see what was actually happening. I was only a newborn, and don’t remember, but Maw Sue assures me that I clearly, by Cupitor identity, knew what was happening. A child always sees what others deny. The room filled with a multitude of Amodgian shadows while family members were unaware. They waited to sink their teeth into me, and take all of me, snatching my identity before I was old enough to know what it was. They wanted to take me, like they have taken many children all over the world. Without arousing suspicions of the others, Maw Sue protected me in the only way she knew how, by using the old language, the Cupitor gifts. She did it to protect me.
“Everto absum”, she whispered softly in the air between her lips and mine. “Everto absum. Everto absum.” In the old language it meant demons be gone. Inside her weak and aging body, she felt a stirring. Her precious gift came back as powerful as it was in the beginning, set free after being denied of its purpose. It was almost too powerful, like contained dynamite. Luckily, when the windows popped and buckled and a gust of wind swirled the room, the family blamed it on the raging storm outside and not its true source, of which they had no idea was upon them. The grueling shadow Amodgian’s vanished in defeat. But only temporarily. They always come back. Maw Sue knew she had little time. Preparations were needed and she must get to it. Inside the other realm, she snapped herself out of the gifted dimension and entered the chatter of the room. “I’m too old for this.” She whispered almost losing her balance with me snuggled in her arms. She turned to face the family. “What time was she born?” Maw Sue said walking to the edge of Lena’s bed. She had forgot the most important question. She could feel subtle glints of desperation flaring inside her dilated pupils. She hoped no one would notice. Regardless, no one else could do what needed to be done. And she didn’t have much time.
“Uhh…I don’t know…I think it was…” Dad said pausing in thought.
“What time?” Maw Sue spat. “The exact time!” Her voice was on the verge of frantic and left a chilling edge in the room.
“Well, at least she wasn’t born at coo-coo o’clock like some...” A familiar goad pricked Papa Hart’s side cutting him off, again. “Owwww woman.” Dad had gotten up and shuffled to the door. His steel toed work boots made a heavy clip-clop across the floor. He lingered halfway in the door and motioned for the nurse. There was a low murmur of talk.
“Coo—coo. Coo-coo.” Papa Hart said like a bird clock. He gave Maw Sue a come hither eye. Dell whacked him on the leg with a magazine and gave him the what for.
“I think it was three….or something.” Lena said rolling over. The birth had exhausted her from small talk. She didn’t care what time the child was born, only that she was finally out of her.
“Three what?” Maw Sue said desperately. “Does anyone know what time this child was born?” A prodigious underlying simmer lingered in the room. Maw Sue’s spindly fingers twisted the white cotton blanket of my cocoon, both of us entangled in a force of otherworldly realms. It was imperative
she know the hour, minutes and seconds of my birth. It wasn’t a secret that most folks thought Maw Sue unstable, just a crazy old lady who popped pills for imaginary aches and pains and all those stories…well, folks thought the stories were a bunch of fabricated poppycock. But Maw Sue paid them no mind because she knew the truth. She lived it out and so had her ancestors, many of them, ages ago. Seekers cannot run from the truth no matter what.
“For God’s sakes, Dell.” Papa Hart said poking her. “Find out what time the kid was born before your mother goes into a spastic conniption. I mean, nobody gives a shit but her. She might need to sprinkle some rosemary or ring a bell or some other stupid superstitious nonsense.” Maw Sue spun around in a tizzy and gave him the stink eye. Papa Hart’s eyes waited in anticipation of her comeback but she didn’t give him the satisfaction of getting one. She cut a scornful look in his direction and then turned back to me. I was wiggling and giving her fits because she had wrapped me in that itchy blanket, or so she says. It about drove Papa Hart nuts that his mortal enemy overlooked him so easily.
“I know what you’re doing William Henry and you stop it this instant.” Dell said. Her eyes slanted and she pinched him on the leg for good measure. He howled. “You two are making me crazy. Both of you. Like two children.” Papa Hart snarled at Dell and went back to cleaning his fingernails with a pocketknife but he kept a steady eye on Maw Sue. If Gavin hadn’t of came back when he did, Maw Sue said there might have been a killing and Papa Hart was lucky we was all in a hospital.
“She was born at 3:33.” Dad said stopping midway the room. “3:33, by Gosh. How about that?” His mouth stayed open in marvel. “And born on Halloween too boot. I bet she’s gone be a whippersnapper. Hell on wheels. Make James Dean proud.” He went about the room puffed up like a rooster. Later when I was old enough to know who James Dean was and how he died, I was mortified my own father would consider it as a namesake for his first born. I had enough omens as it was.
“Paying for your raising.” Papa Hart smirked and looked straight at his son. Maw Sue was locked up in a hard gaze of disbelief. She turned a shade of soft blue as if she hadn’t taken a breath since Gavin walked in. And in truth, she hadn’t, but there was so much more to it than that. According to Maw Sue, when Gavin spoke the time I was born, her mind flashed images, and she saw things, ancient things, treasured childhood keepsakes, a wooden box, carved numbers, letters and symbols, stacks of writings, old and stained. When she came out of it, she was in a tizzy of hurry. She knew immediately what she had to do.
“I—have—to—go.” She said in a quizzical whisper. She handed me off to Lena who was still curled up half asleep on the bed. Maw Sue was still locked up partially in her mind, with what she had seen, almost lost in a daze as if the room warped in slow speed through her vision. She ran out of the room quickly but in her own vision, it was like taking a thousand steps to the door, a resistance pulling her back, keeping her, wanting her. Her departure left everyone baffled. Papa Hart lifted his knife to his earlobe and circled it round and round. “She’s loco” and then he made whistling noises, “Uhh….straight up coo-coo.” He braced for impact and it came, just as it had several times before. Dell’s sharp elbow cracked his ribcage. Papa Hart wasn’t sorry. He enjoyed every minute of it.
Centerpiece
“Don’t leave me again!” The voice screamed from the house inside me. It settled into a whimper and then nothing. I awoke from a deep sleep, no air to sustain me, gasping, dripping sweat, and shaking all over while the house inside me wobbled on a crumbling foundation. Ten nights—same nightmare. To make it worse, she is there with me, the one I hate, the one I love. She’s standing in a shattered sea of glass as if the ocean had frozen and then cracked, leaving her stranded and floating, bobbling on one fragile ice burg. I’m there with her, standing on a portion of sea glass, a distance away, as if the sea waves are drifting us further apart. The gap between us grows wider and my heart feels stretched to capacity, as if she is taking my heart with her, the farther she gets, the more dead I feel without her. The separation makes me panic. My eyes watch her float further and further away. She looks so peaceful, almost like a moving picture, unreal. The sky is in a yellow panorama around us, glistening and forming soft halos around her blonde hair. Sparkles of light bounce off the ice surface and project diamond prisms in every direction. Crystal quartz bob up and down, sinking in and out of the water. Scattered across the crystal sea are life preservers, made from candy swirls, like striped peppermints. A few are at my feet, some are floating in the water, others are melting from the hot sun, forming rivers of syrupy substance, while some are impaled on the peaks of sharp ice, the red running down like candied blood. The further she gets from me, the more I see the sun, which isn’t the sun at all. It’s a bright sun clock that ticks and tocks and in between the tick is a deadened silence that haunts me and then it tocks and rushes me back to where I’m at. I am caught up in this madness, frozen at sea with the little girl. Suddenly, I can hear her voice adrift on the sea, my ears attentive to her calling. Her lips are moving and I faintly hear her screams but I cannot make out the words. The tick-tock of the clock drowns it out to noise. Suddenly I realize how cold it is, icy cold from my toes to my ankles and then I realize why. My iceberg is sinking and the water laps up to lick me with each pounding wave. I latch onto a candy life preserver but when I pick it up—it turns into a piece of peppermint candy in my palm. One after another, the same.
The girl is screaming frantically now, a desperate cry mixed with the wind. I look up and she doesn’t look real, a ship on the ocean, passing out of vision, out of my reach. In my mind, there is nothing I can do, so I unwrap the candy in my hand and put it in my mouth. I am sad, lost in my mind, in the vision of the little girl on a crystal iceberg drifting out to sea. The candy is minty and hot, then suddenly turns a taste of metallic as if I was sucking on a penny. I hear a loud crack as if the earth split or the sun fell. It was neither. It was the little girl and the iceberg she is standing on split in two, leaving her on a small piece which is melting at an alarming rate of speed. In my vision it was lackadaisical, ice to drip, drip to water, and water to sea. The sun clock bears downs its warning bringing heat with each tick-tock. I notice multiply icebergs between the girl and me, so I sprint across them, like playing hopscotch. When my feet touch each iceberg, as I lift up to scale another, they melt behind me, one after another. Little peppermint life preservers are floating everywhere and melting with the same rapid speed as the ice, leaving the water a syrupy mess. The little girl is screaming loudly, erratically and no matter how fast I run, I seem so far away.
I jump on the last iceberg, no more between us, and it’s a rather large one, so it will be longer to melt. I bend down on my knees and splash the water like my hands are oars. Her iceberg had melted and she disappeared underneath the waves. I panicked and rowed harder, faster. I saw her come back up, her head bobbling beside the peppermint life preservers, as she grabbed each one, only to find they were candy. Who needs candy when you’re drowning? Seconds seem like hours—and I finally reached her. I was spent and exhausted, my hands burning cold with a sting. A wave came, the slap of the oceans hand, pushing my iceberg back, then down again, smacking the water with a vengeance. The trickle of waves took the little girl under and then I heard a loud cracking and popping. My ears ruptured with the noise. Images of crushed crackles enter my vision. But to my fear, it isn’t the crackles.
The ocean is now an ice rink. The iceberg I was sitting on is now frozen, turned sideways, and pointed upward, frozen into the vast arena of ice, as far as my eyes could see. I am breathless and hear a pounding in my ears. It turns to a dull shrill. I look down in horror. The little girl is submerged underneath the ice crystals. The large body of ice has cemented itself like thick glass between us. I scream and beat against the hard sea with my fists but it only replies with a horrible drum echo. I can barely believe what I am seeing, feeling, hearing. Underneath the glass sea, her eyes are wild an
d panicky and she doesn’t look real, almost hazy like a dream. Her fists pound the ice on the other side, a mirror to my own, as if I’m watching myself in small form, watching myself die, sucking in water, while my lungs fill with the salt of the ocean, not the salt of the earth. The sun clock ticks and tocks and bears light but its heat cannot help us. With each tick-tock, ice cracking, fist thudding sound, I go a little more insane. The girl adds to the noise by clawing long lines in the ice, as if it was an ocean chalkboard. I scream and scream but no one cares, no one hears us. I am on my knees helpless, and beating the ice, wailing and crying.
“No, no, no.” I scream. Air bubbles escape from her lips and springing up beside them, tapping the ice surface are three peppermint candies, scratching the ice with their clear plastic wrapper, adding to the noise that I can barely take. The candy turns the water a pink color while her hair spirals like flower petals around her face until she looks like a rose budding underwater. But then, to my horror, the depths of the blue black suck the budding flower to its abyss. She is gone. I am in shock. Breathless. Can’t move. The sun clock slowed and gave its last and final tick, tock. I am left with a haunting image of her eyes, swept away, pulled under, blue to black, gone. Her absence sends me into a primal wail, beating against the ice, tearing at my clothes, pulling at my hair and screaming like a wild animal. And then I wake up.
I’m drenched with a cold sweat and the white bed sheets are on the floor. I taste copper and peppermint. Every night it’s the same dream. Over and over. Same detail. Same horrible events. And every night I wake up with the same ritual, pacing the floor and trying to rid myself of her. The little girl that is making me insane.
WILLODEAN (THE CUPITOR CHRONICLES Book 1) Page 22
