“I’ll have a mausoleum constructed,” Wesley said, gazing at Alexandra stroking her mother’s arm. “That will give Aleksandra time to say her good-byes.”
They left, turning the lights off as they went. The matriarch slept in the darkness, in the cold, quiet of night.
THIRTY-FOUR
Six full moons had danced across the sky since Bree stepped into the sun; their silvery brilliance illuminated the heavens, bathing the world below in mysticism. Chicago – the city and its people – whizzed and whirled in constant rhythm – a teaming, unstoppable life force unaware of her sacrifice. Winter came and ice clung to the tree branches as the city froze. Lake Michigan slumbered, its frigid waters lapping at the shoreline – eager for warmth. Everything slept.
Then dawn broke.
April 13, 2013
Daybreak
Salmon droplets grew on Aleksandra’s skin as she thrashed about the bed, staining the satin sheets with her blood-sweat. An endless unlit tunnel stretched in front of her. The air swirled, twisting her hair and stinging her cheeks as the earth quivered beneath her stocking feet.
Something lured her forward into the abysmal tunnel, urging her into the ghastly darkness. She stretched her arms forward, desperately reaching for the walls but recoiled as something slithered near her feet – just as her fingertips reached the slimy brick. The slithering heaviness pressed against her toes, leaving Aleksandra shivering in the moist darkness, unable to see the source.
Aleksandra fell forward onto the moving earth as she vainly attempted to grasp for solid brick. The ground skittered beneath her palms. The wind ceased. All was quiet but the subtle sound of shifting dirt. Aleksandra took the wobbly soil into her palms, smoothing it between her fingers. The odoriferous particles slid against her fingertips with the smoothness of Italian silk. She felt them eagerly slip from her hand and return to the waiting ground.
In the stillness, as nothing moved – save for Aleksandra’s fingers and the few particles slipping from them, she felt a warm presence pass near and a lightness press upon her shoulder. She winced as the lightness, or perhaps a pain – it had been too sudden to be sure – lifted. Aleksandra grabbed at the spot, removing her hand from the stinging shoulder. A single drop of crimson rested against her milky fingertip.
Standing, she whispered into the void, “Is someone there?”
The only reply was a shallow whirr from the far end of the vast blackness.
“Hello?” Aleksandra urged, “Is someone down there?” Her voice echoed in a muted reply.
Aleksandra stood and took a shaky step forward as a heavy, blanketing mist grew to encapsulate her. A bony hand reached through the carpet of gray, and Aleksandra panicked. Her scream was raw and animalistic, a scratchy, deafening howl that reverberated off the bricks. The hand thrashed and turned as its disembodied master listened for screams. Then the hand clutched Aleksandra’s leg and held it fast, forcing her down. The ebony void shimmered and wavered as the arm pulled Aleksandra down into the thickening fog. That noise – a hum, a whirr, a blurring, mind-numbing whisper – swelled, edging its way toward her.
Aleksandra fought and thrashed, digging into the hand and howling into the darkness.
April 13, 2013
Nightfall
“Aleksandra!” Wesley safely screamed from his side of the massive king bed. He grabbed the overstuffed body pillow lying between them, now mangled and soaked with Aleksandra’s blood-sweat, and tossed it on the floor.
He grabbed her at the shoulders and shook her. “Wake up! Aleksandra! Wake up!”
Dizzied and unfocused, the room blurred into a muted orange nightmare as Wesley flicked on his bedside lamp. Aleksandra clutched at the new white and tangerine striped comforter, her sweat marring the new Italian satin.
“What is the matter, my love?” he asked, bending his head to kiss her neck.
Her voice quaked. “It was just a nightmare,” she sighed, “nothing to worry about.”
Aleksandra felt Wesley’s moist lips on the nape of her neck, followed by the sharp point of his index finger against her shoulder.
“You’re bleeding,” he whispered.
She reached up and felt the scratch – recent, fresh.
“That must have been a wild nightmare, my poor amore.” He held her tighter.
She broke from his embrace and pulled the soiled covers away. Aleksandra stood, her legs quivering. She eyed the bedroom floor for signs of quivering and slithering, for shaking and movement, for foul smelling dirt.
“Are you sure you are alright, Aleksandra?” Wesley called from the bed. He was gathering the bed sheets, the coverings, the pillowcases, all drenched in blood-sweat.
“Do you think she is still in there, Wesley, locked inside?” Aleksandra asked, her voice a nearly inaudible whisper.
“It does not matter what I think or what I believe, Aleksandra,” he replied walking to her side, placing his hand about her waist. “There is no surviving the sun.”
Aleksandra’s head dipped, her chin skimming her chest. Her luminescent hazel eyes closed as a tear dropped, collecting on her white sock. There was a brown smudge peeking from her toe lines.
She looked up. “I must go to her.”
“Aleksandra,” he said, grabbing her shoulders, pulling her to him, “don’t hold on to her. Let her go. She would not want us like this, mourning her, tending to her like an idol, keeping her like a household fixture to view when the mood strikes. If you want a pet, my love, get a house cat.”
Aleksandra glanced at the smudge, remembering the coldness, the hardness of the earth. She turned her palms over and eyed the silt-lined roadmap the quivering ground left in her palms. Aleksandra closed her eyes and deeply inhaled the fragrant remnants, and she brought her hands to her face. With a vague and eerie recollection, she felt the rush of wind sweeping through her hair and the vibrating hum cascading through the tunnel. The black, endless tunnel…
Her arms slid to her waist as she opened her eyes and pulled away from Wesley. Aleksandra turned and left the room, leaving him calling after her.
Firelight graced the study as she entered. Wesley soon followed, dropping himself at the desk. Electronic light christened the room as the laptop booted. Aleksandra approached the balcony but could not grasp the doors handle. The firefly stars danced brightly in the summer sky, playing brightly against the Chicago skyline as Aleksandra peered out the expansive glass window. Her hand slipped from the handle, moving to the glass.
Aleksandra pressed her body against the cool glass wondering how it had felt to stand in the sun’s blaze. The moon – high in its orbit – paled against the sun’s golden brilliance. Its grey coldness was but a weak shadow to the creator’s favorite child. How had the seering sun felt against her mother’s skin? Why had she done this?
“Don’t question what we will never know,” a man’s voice spoke behind her.
Aleksandra turned as Judith and Colin entered. Wesley stood.
“She chose to taste the sun without me, Aleksandra,” he continued, sitting down on the green velvet couch near the stone fireplace, “and we shall never know why.”
“If only she had talked with me,” Aleksandra whispered, returning her gaze to the starlit summer night.
“About what?” Wesley asked. “You chose this life, Bree did not. It has always been a treacherous journey for her, and now this business with Aksel. Eventually, Aleksandra, the load becomes too heavy to bear.”
“It’s the amulet, Wesley,” Judith chimed in. She stood at the fireplace, her hands hovering over the rising amber flames. Crackling sparks eagerly shot toward her fingers, but faded before they reached her silver-polished nails. “Francisco chased us all over Chicago, nearly killed my father, surely she felt responsible.”
“Bree was a fighter,” Colin stated. “She would not have done what she did unless there was no other option.”
Aleksandra turned from the window. “How do you know my mother so well as to make a statement like that?
” she spat. “You barely knew her!”
“Aleksandra,” Wesley whispered, coming to her side, reaching for her shoulder. She shrugged him off.
“Do not ever pretend to know her.” She glared at Colin, her face but three inches from his. He could smell the musty scent of sleep still lying heavily on her tongue.
“But I do know her,” he responded, an eerie, unearthly calmness in his words. “Her blood is in my body. She lives on in me. She lives on in you, too, Aleksandra.”
“You are supposed to be dead, Colin. I am sorry, but we left you with mother. We left you to die.” Aleksandra explained. She turned and sauntered to the fireplace, her eyes glossing over with red-tinged droplets. She ran her finger along the cool granite mantel, tracing the veins as if the lines traced into the recesses of time and could return Bree to her. A solitary ruby droplet fell down her cheek and her fingers stopped it at the chin, wiping it away.
Colin rubbed his eyes, and then smoothed his palms over his mouth before letting his hands fall into his lap. He clasped them tightly. His eyes remained closed. “What do you mean,” he whispered.
“Bree was there to kill you before a natural, painful death took you,” Judith admitted. She sat beside her father but could not bring herself to hold his hand, or place his arm about his shoulder. She remained distanced, the blood building a chasm between them. “I cried, fought them, tired to resist. They forced me to leave, though, in the end.”
“No,” he replied.
“I am sorry, Colin, but it is true. That is how it happened,” Wesley admitted. “What Bree did after that, why she turned you, we do not know. And we will never know now. Those answers, unfortunately, we will never be able to provide you.”
“No,” he insisted, “there were two when I turned.”
“Two what?” Judith asked.
“Two women,” he explained, his voice quickening, “speaking in the room before Bree turned me. There was someone with her. I am sure of it.”
“Dad, no one was with her,” Judith insisted. “We had all left.” She paused. “Perhaps it was a nurse.”
“No,” he urged as he stood, “the woman in black.”
“You were in between worlds, Colin,” Wesley said, his voice steady, even.
“You’ll see and hear many strange things when your body is dying and your soul teeters in between worlds,” Aleksandra tried to reassure him. “I had nightmares for months after I was turned, and it’s not surprising you had them while dying.”
“No!” he boomed. “I know what I heard, Aleksandra. She had come to me before, on the road, in the ambulance. She told me I would not die – that I would never die,” he said, his voice softening. “I believed her. She frightened me, but I believed her.”
Judith’s eyes shifted to the flickering firelight as he spoke of the horrific accident. That chilly October night that had changed the course of all of their histories. She recalled watching from the roadside as the red and blue ambulance lights blurred in the hazy rain. She and Bree could not even follow, could not be at his side. Francisco’s
men stalked them from the shadows, inching closer as the wetness fell.
“My body was failing,” he continued, his voice luring her to the present, “but then there was her voice again. In my mind, I could see her. The woman in black.” “Father,” Judith whispered, “stop. There is no woman in black.”
“No,” Wesley said coming near, perching himself on an ottoman diagonal to the sofa. The crinkled Corinthian leather creaked as he sat down, and he grasped onto the worn edges and leaned in. “Tell me.”
“She was always surrounded in black and faceless, but her voice was delicate,” Colin began. “The pain had become intolerable. My heart, my lungs – I could feel them failing, but my mind never stopped feeling every tiny prick, every ache. I could handle no more. In the ambulance, this woman bathed in black hovered near, telling me to hold fast, that I would never die. Every tube, every procedure – I remember it. The doctors said I was not aware – even Aleksandra agreed, but the woman in black let me see,” he recalled.
“Judith, my daughter, I could not watch you weep at my bedside. Eventually, the pain and heartache she forced upon me became too much. I lay that night in October -- the night Bree came – wanting more than anything to be pain free… forever.”
Aleksandra slipped from the room as Colin spoke of the Woman in Black in blurred detailed. Her bare feet pressed into the Berber carpet running to Bree’s secret chamber; its oatmeal blend matching her pale skin. She slid the door open and turned on the light. Bree laid motionless, solid, tan.
“Mother,” she whispered, closing the door behind her.
Aleksandra walked to the settee, knelt beside the Matriarch and, reaching up, carefully stroked her mother’s hair. A sea of artificial neon drowned Bree in its obnoxious yellow glare; it swam on her skin, dripped fluorescent gold from her hair and tinged her ruby lips a rusty brown.
“He will move you,” Aleksandra whispered as she smoothed Bree’s locks, “and soon.” She let her fingertips glide over Bree’s warm skin. Her fingertips gently inched their way toward Bree’s lips, cracked and refusing to part. Bree’s body retained a smidgen of the sun’s warmth from when the Matriarch had stepped into the day light last October.
Tears pooled in Aleksandra’s eyes and she laid her head upon Bree’s chest. The eerie warmth comforted her. “Mother,” she whispered, “I need you.”
THIRTY-FIVE
June 20, 2013
Evening
It’s been ready for weeks now,” Colin whispered in Aleksandra’s ear. “He will move her and you cannot stop him.”
“He cannot take her,” Aleksandra wept. She held tightly to Bree’s hands and stroked the matriarch’s fingers. Tiny cracks ate at Bree’s nail beds; their crystalline surfaces were sun scarred, marred – each a murky white with muted grey ribbons across their tips, wave like and wispy.
“This can be her tomb,” Aleksandra begged. She lowered Bree’s hands, gently placing them to rest in the matriarch’s lap. They creased the satin throw Aleksandra had delicately placed across her mother’s lap, trapping in the unnatural warmth.
“We can keep her. This is where she belongs,” she argued. “Ask yourself, would you want it any other way?” She turned, facing him, ruby droplets christening her cheeks.
“It is not for me to answer, Aleksandra. This gift is far too new for me to comprehend how Bree must have felt, what turmoil she must have experienced to do this to herself,” he replied.
Colin inched into the room, sitting down next to her. “Wipe your tears,” he whispered, handing her a handkerchief. “We will figure out this mystery. The amulet, Aksel, Francisco, how they are all connected, but we must let her sleep now; let her rest.” Colin reached forward and brought the cloth to Aleksandra’s tears, dobbing them as they formed anew.
“We owe it to her, out of respect. Bree would not want to be a museum piece. And somewhere, in here,” his finger gravitated to Aleksandra’s forehead, resting between her eyes, “you know I am right, Aleksandra.”
“But mother does not feel gone, Colin,” she whispered, returning her gaze to Bree. The matriarch lay rigid and motionless.
“She is,” he urged. “She is and the sooner you accept that, the better off you will be – we will all be.”
Colin stood and left, a muffled scratching echoing from his corduroy pants as his legs rubbed against each other. She heard the familiar sound ebb as he walked down the hall and into the Study. The door creaked as he opened it, and softly clicked, catching on a raised edge of carpet as it closed behind him.
“Mother,” Aleksandra wept, “I have sat here for weeks waiting on answers – waiting for signs – and you give none. You are lifeless and silent, and it terrifies me. Do you not see Wesley is going to take you from me? And I can no longer stop him!”
She clasped Bree’s hand, caressing the palm, and slid her fingers over the matriarch’s skin. Her thumb ran over the smooth, muted,
beige flesh; as the sun’s deep burn faded, a tinge of olive tint lingered. Her icy fingertips rubbed Bree’s fingernails, their warmth still a troublesome puzzle.
Aleksandra laid the hand down – fingers first, followed by the palm – returning it to Bree’s lap. That was when she saw it. It was a spec, a smidgeon, really. An insignificant thing to miss, yet she had. In the countless times she had caressed those hands and cleansed that skin, she had not seen this; nor had the others.
Aleksandra took the fingers to her lips, inhaling the spec’s aura. Her tentative lips parted, quivering as she slid the bronzed finger past them. She licked the speck and sucked the fingernail, tasting the unnatural warmth singeing her tongue. The taste was unmistakable.
Blood.
Wesley had the drapes drawn. He stood on the balcony, his back to the room, the summer breeze billowing against the fabric. Firelight fluttered, dancing off the Study’s slate gray walls. Chicago twilight flooded the room in fluorescent brilliance. From the neighboring high-rises to the passing traffic below, the city was complacent and oblivious.
“Did you see it?” Aleksandra shouted, walking in. “Tell me, Wesley, did you see it?” The window glass rattled, the thick panes creaking as they settled.
Colin stood from the settee. “Aleksandra,” he began, trying desperately to intervene, to assist. Aleksandra’s hand rose into the air, steadily, her icy glare boring into him.
Colin took three steps forward toward Aleksandra, hands outstretched to calm her, before hearing Judith gasp. He had no time to look down; Aleksandra lured him into the air, dangling him there suspended in mid-air like a cat playing with its prey, before thrusting him backward. She smashed his chest into the granite fireplace, stunning the room and crumbling the finely crafted Italian architecture – granite now littering the carpet.
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