WILLODEAN (THE CUPITOR CHRONICLES Book 1)

by Fowler Robertson

  The Amodgian imps revolve around her, spinning clock hands, so blurry and out of control and pulling her flabby skin till she thought she’d simply spill off into them, becoming one of them. Use. The. Gift. Hearing the words gave her strength. Maw Sue set her face like stone, inch by inch moving forward. She pushed through the dark, entering the realm of uncomfortable comfort, a shadow realm where there is no light, no substance, no mistakes, nothing to remember, nothing to forget, just pitch of numbness. In this type of lesser light, a candle could not flicker though it was lit bright—it appeared as draped with incredible darkness as a cloak. Maw Sue had lived most her life in the do nothing places, the face nothing, be nothing, expect nothing, love nothing, want nothing—nothings of nothings. Maw Sue thought herself a book with a title, a namesake with purpose, discarded, not used, put away, set on a shelf, gathering dust, afraid of words, chapters never written, unspoken dreams, blank pages, forgotten, packed up, stored inside a closet and covered with a list of good intentions yet all extinguished by fear. The bitter crumb swelled inside her mouth till she thought she would choke. She hunched over and felt sick. Time manifested into a vision of her mother’s face, pale and weak. Her mouth leaked a trail of blood a hard cough, specks of blood splatter against her paper cheek bones. As a child, she watched her die, take her last breath. Watched the Rector take her away— spirit rising a spirit out of a limp body, lifting upward and high, until gone. Leaving her alone. Cursed and alone.

  Maw Sue screamed and tore at her clothing like an Old Testament prophet until all was quiet, only subtle stirrings inside the cedar closet. The candle on the floor in front of her, now only a dim lighted firefly glow. She knew the next step, so she reached inside to the lower shelf. She felt the hard edges of its corners. It was like being snake bit over and over but she could not let go. Electrocution trickles through her fingers surging through her body rapidly, jerking her backwards. She wasn’t sure she could continue. Finish what you started. She took a deep breath and screamed the words.

  “Reach—reach—reach. Devenio—devenio—devenio! Everto absum! Everto absum!” It was the old language of her ancestors. Her Rector appeared, face to face, an invasion of light and dark pouncing on old flesh—until Susannah was shaking with knowledge of what she knew she HAD to do. The radiance of the Rector pulsated inside her. Press through. Touch the pain. She felt a momentary zip of everything sorrowful in one zap—past to present, dark souls. Press through. Touch the pain. She reached in once more. She held the wooden box tight, and pulled it out, scuttling backwards on knobby bruised knees. The hard light of the bedroom enveloped her. Her eyes adjusted to see the botany of her life and the lives of others, immortalized into a meticulously sculpted, rectangular box. The mirror bin sat before her like a rejected idol. Tears streamed down her face until the blurriness cleared her fogged thoughts, revealing everything she could have been, everything she should have been, everything she was, everything she lost, everything she loved and everything she hated. In that moment, she vowed to do in me, what she could not do in herself.

  The White Kite

  The candy dish nightmare, turned kitchen reality made me leery of going to work so I took a few days off to recover and sort things out. The remnants of the dream wracked my spirit. I feared going to sleep. I feared being awake. It took hours to sweep up the shards of glass littered across the kitchen floor and apparently missed several, because the busted stars and crystal tears sliced my feet making me remember all over again.

  Three days later I feel normal enough to go back to work. It was a good day after all, no irate customers to deal with, so that was good. I left work at ten after five. A few miles down my regular route, an eighteen wheeler had jack knifed, spilling a load of pine trees, blocking traffic for miles. I cut through an old back road, whizzing through neighborhoods and side streets until I'm on Clifford Avenue which runs beside Havenshire Park. It was out of the way from my house, but better than sitting in traffic. Annie is cruising along and I’m glancing at the people in the park, cyclists zipping in and out of the bike trails, a labyrinth of tunnels, mazes and pig trails, entangled with a thousand different shrubs, flower bushes and plant species. There is a huge picnic area and an outdoor concert arena with a large open stage. Behind it a small museum is nestled between two large oak trees, both with elaborate tree houses. The gem of the park is a five acre playground straight out of a fairytale. Alice in Wonderland meets Disney world meets Beverly hillbillies. Parents avoid this road because once a kid sees it—it is nearly impossible to not stop. Kids are everywhere swinging, crawling, slipping through loops. It’s a rousing good ‘ole time if you want to lose your kids for an hour and have a little peace of mind. The excited screams of children swept through Annie’s cracked window about the time, I hit a pot hole the size of Kansas. The radio speaker popped, buzzed and hummed to life. Annie is eccentric enough to require me to hit a pot hole in order to listen to music. And the same for turning it off. To make it worse, the volume knob is stuck on one level. Loud. So in reality, I’m one of those weaving drivers that veer all over the road hitting and avoiding pot holes, depending on if I want to hear music or not. Right now, Steven Tyler sang, “Dream on….dream on…dream until your dream comes true….true.” I was singing with him until I wasn't. It happened simultaneously as if I lapsed into a dream. My vision blurred and a high pitched sound pierced my ears until they were set aflame. I let go of the steering wheel unable to do anything but cup my ears hoping the screeching nightmare would go away. Make it stop! Steven Tyler wasn’t singing anymore—it was something else. It was squealing like a pig, or an owl, or both, a terrible death squall, mind blowing, screeching in a frantic and out of sorts, out of control manner. Darkness clouded my vision shrouding out light. I saw the subject of the sounds, a choir of white angels, tarnished and fallen angels soiled with unidentified stains and streaks of blood and vermin incomparable. It seemed like I was staring into an horror art gallery, a picturesque view, a framed oil painting come to life, with vibrant watercolor angels jerking about, partially singing in joy then reverting to screaming, and singing, all at the same time, as if they burned from the inside out, pained from the past and the present, from who they were and who they are now. From their lips a wretched throated rhapsody of vile sprang outward, contaminated and possessed by dark shadows. They thrashed about, bodies twisted and contorted like meandering snakes filled with cardinal sins. They expelled shrills, moans all the while tangled up in a realm with no escape. In the desperate moments, seeing the dark vision, hearing and feeling it, whether it was seconds or hours, or minutes I could not tell; I was there with them. I was there with it. I felt it uncurl in my chest, something horrid, dank and inescapable. It waited for me, inside the house, inside the deep crawl space, beneath and below. It had knowledge of all I’ve done. It knew my secrets. It waited to use it against me. My vision acted itself out in the cruelness of the house, angels flung about like demons, and then I came back to the passenger seat to see the steering wheel handless and Annie careening out of control.

  The wheel turned sharp guided by a force unknown. She was heading straight towards the park entrance as if she planned to jump the curb and do donuts on the pristine green grass. I flashed between the realm that was screaming angels and the realm that wasn’t. It was a morbid dreamlike stage. I see every detail in slow mode, forming its next move, hearing every millisecond, every clink and rattle. Then the screaming stopped. I could hear the numbness from inside the hollow spaces of my cupped palms and the faint roar of Annie’s engine speeding ahead, ninety to nothing.

  This is the end of me. I heard a cry from within the house, a voice that did not choose to die but a voice that wanted to live. I reacted to that voice, that soft plea I rarely let speak. I pounced on the steering wheel and slammed on the brakes. Annie spun a one eighty, skidding and sliding into oblivion. A hard impact jolted me forward. A hiss of the dead spewed in my ears. I was dazed. When I opened my eyes clearly, there was a rush of steam pour
ing from Annie’s hood.

  “Oh. My. God.” I said out loud. Annie had just met the guardian of the park. She kissed her robe with the lips of her front bumper. I am in trouble now. Angelina was a seven-foot Angel statue at the side entrance. She towered over Annie’s hood in a not so welcome, hello. I sighed a long exhausting moan. It can’t get worse than hitting an angel.

  The park acreage, along with Angelina was donated to the city of Pine Log from the Havenshire family in honor of their son, Todd, who was killed in a bike accident.

  My thoughts were rambling. Wait a minute. What the hell just happened? What was that awful screaming? It wasn’t the radio. It looks like Annie got the worst of it and thank God the angel wasn’t harmed. I was more rattled than anything, trying to sort it out and calm down, think rational. If that was possible. Then I realized the engine was still running, the gears still in drive and my legs were locked on the brakes. I put Annie in park, she jutted back forcefully while I tried to piece together a reasonable explanation. The earth rumbled or maybe it was my mind exploding. I wasn’t sure of anything anymore. Two worlds collide and I could not make sense of either one.

  “Okay. Okay.” I said talking to myself. Deep breath. Yoga freak deep breath. I held my hands up. As if it mattered. One breath, two, three. And then I think to myself, what the hell is going on Willodean. I’m really, really, really getting tired of this. To my amazement, life went on as usual for other folks, a couple walking in the gate, a family of four sitting on the bench taking pictures, oodles of people inside the park and forty kids playing in the wonderland. Can anyone see me? Am I even here at all? I truly felt my life was becoming an Alfred Hitchcock movie. I expected a flock of birds to rain down any second. And just when I thought they did—I was jolted back to the sounds of the awful, terrible. For a split second it was 1970 and I was on the porch with an army of crackles, falling, crushing each one, hearing their death sounds, crunch, crunch, crunch. It was maddening but then I realized it wasn’t 1970 at all—it was worse. The crackling noise was Angelina. Oh. My. God. I broke the statue. She was moving, crumbling one chip at a time. Her concrete face twisted and cracked. The woman underneath the stone was coming out and she wanted vengeance. White chips of compound dislodged from her neck and hit Annie’s hood. It dispersed a poof of talcum powder like residue. No. No. No. This isn’t happening. It's just an overly stimulated imagination, a travesty of a lonely childhood.

  Angelina, the angel of Havenshire Park who infamously watched over the residents of Pine Log since 1961 was now, eyeing me in a manner that made me fearful. She shifted, popped and stretched like she just woke up from a twenty year nap. Her wingspan spread and grew. Side to side it stretched outward, peeling off layer after layer of hard rock that shattered to the ground and fell on top of Annie's hood. Just when I thought I’d be buried alive, the rock dust settled. Left behind was a terrifying, magnificent armored angel so gleaming white, she was silver. So shiny, she was blinding. Her feathered wingspan enormous in veracity and she shimmered from all angles like the frost of finely crushed pearls. Her beauty made me forget the horrors. Of course, it didn’t last long. Panic hit my second skin. This is not real. You are going crazy again. Run. Get out of here. But I couldn't move an inch, held by a force of my own freakish mind wanderings, to witness the unbelievable. My eyes flitted side to side, up and down, searching for reality, my centerpiece, my stability. People scurried to and fro inside the park as if I wasn’t here at all. Do they not see me? A loud creaking came from the sky and then darkness. I thought the sun dislodged itself and sank us into the shadows. My heat beat rapidly. I leaned forward afraid of what I might see. The Lord maybe? Judgment day? No. It was worse. Angelina bent down to look inside Annie's windshield, at the same time, I leaned up to look out and we scared each other to death. Her white laced eyes freaked me out—I screamed. She cratered backwards, and let out a scream. Pieces of statue fell off her like concrete scabs. My thoughts went wild. No. I’m simply seeing things. I must have hit my head at impact. Surely…I leaned forward again, slow and steady to make sure my eyes were not deceiving me. She wasn’t there and then SHE WAS. Both our eyes locked together, road maps veering in all directions. She showing me myself, places I’ve been, things I’ve done. Her wings fluttered, a thousand earthquakes. My heart leaped from my chest. A soft billow of white and gray dust starts to fall on the hood. In about five seconds the windshield is fully a white out, engulfed with the substance. I feel trapped—my body starts to jerk. My eyes begin to water but it’s weird, unlike times before. I feel as if I’m melting…melting into the snow flurry and it’s taking me, pulling me like a drop of water in a river.

  Everything in my vision changes. I am no longer in Annie, I'm in the park on the pristine grass and she is there. The one I love. The one I hate. The one who shows up in my day dreams, my nightmares, my childhood, my adult life. She is running, smiling, briskly skipping up and down, and untethered to the earth and its gravity shields. She runs in the wide open field as if nothing held her, unhindered, free as a gazelle and bouncy as Tinker bell. Attached to her wrist is a string tied to a glorious white kite that dances gracefully in the wind above her. I felt instantly emotional. The kite rises, it falls, dips, dives and pulls. It tugs at my heart, my soul. It makes me feel the same way, I felt when I saw the leaf and the crackle outside my bedroom window. The little girl runs faster, giggling. She is so immersed with the kite above her that she tangles up in the string and tumbles to the ground. The string snaps. It’s violent to my ears. Something unnamed inside the house, inside me—broke. And something horrible slipped out. It was unnerving. Unfamiliar anger. Anger for things I lost, anger for things I missed, anger for things I never had. Just anger. I hadn't felt this way...in forever. I didn't like it. It was lethal. I never got angry, not that I could remember. It wasn’t part of my makeup, I mean, sure I cried and hurt and felt terrible, awful physical pains but I rarely, if ever, got angry. I considered angry people unwanted planets of bad energy floating in our galaxy to be avoided at all cost. I didn’t like it in others and certainly not in myself. Stop it Willodean. Stuff it down. Put that away. Don’t be like that.

  To rid myself of toxicity, I concentrate on the white kite trying to make a connection to something real, or not real, just anything to rid myself of the poisonous juices wanting to blow me up. The more I tried to banish them, the more they overpower me. It was a capsizing boat, rivets popping one after another, spring after spring rising up, little geysers of gall, disgust, blasphemy, and wrath. No. No. No. I say to myself. This is not happening. I stare at the little girl hoping to evade, absorb, deny. She lifts her head to the sky and watches the kite rise higher and higher into the mouth of the heavens. The sky eats it in large blue bites. She turns to face me. Her eyes were like that of the Angelina, white laced, deep and dark. The realm of distance that used to separate us, a glass shield of something unseen, is no longer keeping us apart.

  In our gifted and cursed vision, the one we share, inside the house, we were only an inch away from each other, nose to nose, as if the realm of time, the years of our past and our present had forged a thin glaze of protection, a shield of sight and remembrance only we could penetrate and allow entrance. In a moment of vulnerability, we saw ourselves. We peered into the looking glass of our souls, tracing the white laced maps of time and torture, inside and outside the house, fears and anger having their place, taking captives willfully. A trickle of tears stream down her face. My cheeks start to burn. I have no tears to shed, only fear. She turns away. I notice the delicate placement of her ears, her dirty blonde hair draping in curls and hanging loose on her shoulders. I notice the innocence, how it carries itself in her core, seeping out of her pores uncontainable, unstoppable, no matter the madness or the circumstances around her, she has an inner substance of sustainability that I myself—did not have. I lose my breath in this effigy of this little one. She reads my thoughts, her eyes no longer a laced mess but a hollow nothingness. Her face is stark white, p
aler than paper, pasty as flour. Suddenly she takes the appearance of a Dresden.

  The depth of her emptiness releases something inside me. My mouth salivates. A crumb springs up on my tongue and I taste a vile stomach acid. I retched and gagged but I could not spit it out. The awful crumb memory would not leave until I accepted it for what it was. It was all my fault. She is who she is—because of me. I did this to her. It was my fault. In a frightening rush I am pushed back to the moment. The concrete angel is still touching Annie’s bumper. Steam rises from her hood. The angel is standing tall as if she has never moved, never cracked, never looked me in the eye. There was no chunks of concrete, no blurry windshield, no feathered creature, no burning angels, no crazy visions, everything was the same—everything but me. In a mad dash, I cranked Annie, sped off the curb in reverse and drove like the crazy woman I was. I barely made it to my house without spinning off into some star gazed galaxy for deranged divorcees. If there is such a place—I am queen without a centerpiece.