by Glass, Debra
Eternal
Debra Glass
Dedication
For my daughters, Zoe and Belle, who share my love of things that go bump in the night.
Author Note
Although some of the characters depicted in this story are historical figures, this book is a work of fiction.
Acknowledgements
This book would not have been possible without author friends, Elissa Wilds and Naima Simone who read this book in its formative stages. Special thanks to Heath Mathews, whose extensive knowledge of Civil War has breathed life into my historical characters, and to Amy Batton, whose unrivaled expertise on plantation living has lent realism to my Middle Tennessee setting.
One
I killed my best friend.
Conveniently, I had forgotten the events leading up to the wreck that ended Kira’s life. I’d also forgotten my near death experience. Actually, there was nothing near about it. I’d been dead. I’d seen my grandmother and a dog I’d had as a kid. There’d been a bunch of other people there but I didn’t recall their names or faces. All I knew was that they sent me back.
I’d much rather have died. Living with what I’d done to Kira would haunt me for the rest of my life.
Scarred and broken, I’d spent three weeks in the hospital. I hadn’t even gotten to attend Kira’s funeral—not that I would have been welcomed there.
And now, we were moving to some Podunk town in Tennessee. Some place far away from Atlanta. Far from the high school from which I had planned to graduate this year. Far from my friends. Or rather those people who used to be my friends.
Because Kira had been the one driving, my mom blamed her for the wreck—and for the four-inch, red scar that marred my face.
Even now, six months later, Mom was on her cell phone harping about it to my stepfather, David, who drove my car ahead of us.
“Wren wasn’t even driving. I don’t know how they can…” Her voice trailed off as she glanced in the rearview and realized I was listening. She swiftly changed the subject. “How far is the turn off to Columbia?”
Shifting uncomfortably in the back seat, I stared without seeing at the green hills whisking by the car window.
My mom and Kira’s mom had been best friends before the wreck. But not now. Not after the fight they’d had in the hospital hall. The things I’d heard them say to each other made me ache inside. Some part of me had wanted to cry out that it was my fault, that Mom was wrong and Mrs. Collier was right. But I didn’t have the courage. It was one thing to admit to myself that I was a murderer. It was something entirely different to confess the words aloud. This was my private pain. A pain I wasn’t ready to have magnified by sharing it with anyone else.
Why wouldn’t Mom let it go? Kira was the one who’d died.
The one who’d stayed dead.
Lucky.
Living was far more difficult because not only had I put my best friend in a grave but my entire family had been forced to uproot themselves. To protect me.
David—my stepfather—had given up his job at St. Joseph hospital to work as an ER doctor in Columbia. Sobbing inconsolably, my little sister had been made to leave all her friends. My mom had sold the house she loved and left the country club, all to move to some place where nobody knew us.
I swallowed hard.
Where nobody knew me.
Mr. Stella, my cat, grumbled from his cat carrier. Mom eyed me in the rearview as she snapped her cell phone shut. “Don’t even think about letting that cat loose in the car, Wren.”
I didn’t say anything but I did give Mr. Stella an apologetic look. It was bad enough he’d been saddled with a name like Mr. Stella but when we’d first found him, convinced he was a female, my sister Ella had dubbed him Stella. The veterinarian set us all straight and Ella had cried so hard, we’d decided to just stick Mr. in front of Stella.
I stuck my finger through the caging and tickled his nose. “You’ll be loose soon,” I reassured him because my stint on the Other Side had left me with the ability to know things before they happened and sometimes, I could read other people’s thoughts and Mom was thinking we’d arrive at our new house in ten minutes.
I hadn’t told anyone about my newfound ability. Talk about a recipe for further disaster! For one, let’s face it, it’s bad enough being a killer. But being a killer plus the crazy kid who hears voices? And two, I couldn’t control it. I’d tried. This side effect—that’s what I liked to call it, a side effect I had brought back from that place—would not bend to my will. So, it wasn’t like I could perform on cue if anyone demanded proof of my power.
Power. That wasn’t the right word for it.
More like…curse.
I turned up the volume on my iPod, sank lower into the back seat and watched the gently rolling hills of Tennessee until they became a blur rushing by the window. Even though I was still in the South, this part of the country was nothing like Atlanta. Here, the landscape looked older. Farm houses dotted the lush countryside. Cows and horses grazed in sprawling fields. Here and there, a rundown trailer sat nestled between looming antebellum houses. Vast tracts of undulating lawns, delineated by hand laid stone fences that I knew had to be at least two centuries old, lined the highway. Admittedly, the scenery was pretty but it screamed boring. I clenched my teeth to keep from asking why we couldn’t be moving to some exotic location like New York City or Los Angeles. Why Columbia, Tennessee?
Even the name lacked excitement.
Population: Thirty-three thousand and fifty-five.
Thirty-three thousand, fifty-nine including my Mom, David, my bratty sister, Ella and me.
I’d Googled Columbia before we set out from Atlanta with the moving van drawing up the rear. Columbia’s nickname was Mule Town.
That didn’t bode well.
The only thing the place had going for it was its proximity to Nashville which had to have some decent shopping, theaters and restaurants.
I didn’t know why I cared.
I didn’t do any of those things any more. Not with this unsightly scar running down the side of my face.
Whenever I thought about it, the events of the accident rushed back over me in a tumult that more often than not launched a full-blown panic attack.
Refusing to give in any longer to the memories dragging at my thoughts, I took a deep breath and glanced at Ella who sat merrily playing a handheld game. If I concentrated on her, maybe the scary images would fade away.
My eight year old sister, Ella, was one of those kids who marched to a circus band no one else could hear. Today’s particular clown costume happened to be a hot pink pair of leopard print pants with a turquoise dress serving as a top. She’d managed to drag a brush through the front of her brown hair but the back was a tangled mess.
I’d tried in vain to get her to dress in something less embarrassing but Ella’s main and only goal was comfort. At least her purple socks were mates but it would be asking far too much to get her to match the socks to her outfit. I half-wondered if she might be colorblind.
Mom said she’d grow out of it and always tagged ‘just like you did’ at the end of her declarations. Had I really dressed so atrociously? I didn’t think so. Deep down, though, some part of me longed to be like Ella who was blissfully unaware and unconcerned about the rest of the world. At her age, I’d only been eager to grow up. Now I’d give anything to experience childlike fascination with innocent eyes.
Civilization finally came into view. A shard of relief swept through me as two familiar golden arches rose above the horizon. At least the town had a McDonald’s.
David turned and Mom followed. We passed several strip malls then drove over a narrow body of water called the Duck River and toward the old part of Columbia’s downtown.
David turned aga
in at the very Old South looking Maury County Courthouse. With its gleaming white dome, the Georgian style building stood sentinel at the end of an actual town square, marking time with its weathered old clock. I gaped at the autumn-leaved trees and quaint streetlamps lining the streets, concealing homey little shops and cafes from view.
Reluctantly, I admitted to myself the town was charming. I could see why Mom liked it—why they’d chosen it. Perhaps they hoped an old-fashioned Mayberry like this would be a friendlier place for me to recover.
After we wound down a curvy, narrow street and passed several Victorian style houses before more modern subdivisions sprouted up along the highway. I settled back down in my seat, no longer interested in the scenery.
When we turned onto a two lane road and the boring little town of Columbia began to fade into more gently rolling pastures, a flutter rippled in my stomach. I covered it with my hand as if to quiet this inexplicable sense of excitement. Slate stone fences like the ones I had seen along the Interstate lined the narrow road and here and there, a big old plantation house sat nestled into the lush landscape behind winding oak flanked driveways. Horses and cattle grazed in some of the pastures.
“It’s pretty!” Ella exclaimed. “Don’t you think it’s pretty, Wren? Don’t you? Answer me!”
“Yes, it’s pretty,” I mumbled. If I disagreed, a verbal battle would ensue.
In spite of all my prior opposition, interest sparked in me when David’s blinker flashed and he turned onto one of the pea gravel paved drives. A canopy of ancient trees created a tunnel through which we drove. Even with my extra-sensory perception, I hadn’t seen this coming.
“What do you think, girls?” Mom asked proudly.
Both Ella and I leaned toward the middle of the SUV so we could see out the front window.
A giant white brick house loomed in the distance. From my limited vantage point, I could see porches on at least two sides of the house crowned with cozy balconies. Long green shutters flanked tall windows. Crowning it all was a monstrous elliptical shaped window which arched gracefully under the steep pitch of the porch roof, stretching the width of the overhang on the front of the house. The woodwork on the window radiated outward from a center point at the bottom, giving it the appearance of an unfurled fan.
For the first time in her life, Ella sat speechless.
I cleared my throat. “Is this our house?”
Again, something akin to electricity vacillated through me. For the first time since the accident, I had an emotion that wasn’t negative. My hand covered my heart as if it could calm my racing pulse.
The plethora of counselors I’d seen had all told me I needed to identify my emotions. And whether it was due to the fact that I hadn’t felt anything good in months or because of something else, I couldn’t for the life of me define what I was feeling now.
Mom’s dark brown ponytail bounced cheerfully as she glanced back at Ella and me. “It was built in 1828 and is one of the oldest houses in Maury County. The Confederates used it as a hospital during the Civil War.”
“Is it haunted?” Ella slowly and dramatically turned her head in my direction while she arched a dubious eyebrow.
In the rearview mirror, I saw Mom’s forehead crease. “There’s no such thing as ghosts.”
I craned to see the big arched window again, wondering at this wild sensation inside me. As our caravan pulled around the circular drive in front of the house, I pressed my nose to the glass, looking up.
The sun eased from behind a cloud and brilliant rays glanced off the thick leaded glass fanlight. I squinted. Someone was there! A man? I gasped when the figure suddenly disappeared. “Is anyone here?”
Mom and Ella piled out of the SUV, joining David who was pocketing the keys to my Jaguar. “Just us and the movers,” Mom replied, marching toward the front door.
Gathering up Mr. Stella’s carrier, I opened my door and slid out, my gaze still fixed on the window. No one stood there now. Still, I could have sworn I’d seen a man.
Several guys climbed down from the moving van and began unloading our stuff. We hadn’t had to bring much more than our dishes, clothes and personal items. David, who had purchased the house at auction, complete with its antiques, oversaw everything with a sense of organized ease. Classically handsome and blond, his sunny exterior matched his good-natured interior. He was the perfect stepdad. Courteous. Fatherly. And ideal for Mom who rushed around the movers like a frazzled bumblebee.
“Come inside, girls,” Mom called from the front porch.
I followed Ella up the steps to where Mom turned the tarnished brass knob and pushed the tall door with her shoulder. Just like in a horror film, it swung open with an ominous haunted house creak.
My eyes widened and I exchanged a glance with Ella.
“I’ll have to spray that with some WD-40,” Mom said as she took Ella’s hand and walked into our new home. “Wow!”
“This looks like a museum or something,” Ella remarked in an overly loud stage whisper.
As soon as I crossed the threshold, a cold chill surrounded me despite the early October warmth.
Ella wasn’t kidding. It did look like a museum.
The entry hall seemed cavernous. Shadows grew dark and deep in the adjoining rooms. Elaborate crown molding frosted the soaring walls. Who’d carved all those intricate patterns so many years ago?
I breathed in the scent of lemon oil and old wood mingled with a stagnant odor as if the house had been closed up for a long time. As if no one had lived here for years.
A staircase wound upward from the back of the entry hall. At the landing, shards of light filtered through an arched Palladian window bordered by sidelights, the sight of which reminded me again of the man I thought I’d seen peering out the fanlight.
“Panel doors,” Mom murmured, snagging my attention as she pushed a large, wooden sliding door open to reveal a massive room they’d probably called the parlor when this house was built.
Although the old furnishings were huge in comparison to what we’d had in our very modern house in Buckhead, they looked small in these big rooms. A mirror hung over the mantle, angled away from the wall at the top so that, despite the fact it hung several feet above a person of average height, you could actually see your reflection in it. The glass was a dark silvery gray in spots, giving the appearance of a shadow lurking in the depths of the room.
Portraits of people, that by the look of their hair and clothing were long dead, graced other mantles in the gargantuan rooms. Their overly large, somber eyes seemed to stare at me as I walked by.
“Isn’t this fabulous?” Mom asked, her voice lit with excitement as she set her purse and bag on a crimson velvet settee.
I hoped she wasn’t too attached to the uncomfortable looking furniture. As I passed through the room, I wondered where our plasma flat screen television was going to fit.
Mom was the type who got on a kick every now and then. Once she’d fallen in with some sort of simple life fad and forced Ella and me to give up our iPods, our TVs and laptops. The worst were the healthy diets she pushed on us. Usually, one of Mom’s fads was the result of a New Year’s resolution and, thankfully, they never lasted past the second week in February.
But this…
This old house… It might just trigger some latent bucolic desire in Mom that would mean our doom. I studied her, trying to read her. Mom’s exterior was as cool as lemon icebox pie. Her frosting colored clothes never showed a wrinkle and she always wore her brown hair smoothed back in an austere bun. Even her shoes were spotless. I sensed all her surface perfection hid a desperate search for something she couldn’t quite name.
My eyes narrowed as I picked up fractured pieces of her current thoughts. The wheels were turning in her brain about how the move was going to change our lives. Before I could slam the door on my mental connection to Mom, Ella rushed past me and up the winding staircase. “I want to see my room!”
I inhaled, resisting the urge to race h
er up the stairs to vie for the best and biggest room. Instead, I hefted Mr. Stella’s carrier in one hand, gripped the satiny wood banister and slowly plodded up the stairs, looking down at the threadbare crimson carpet runner which protected the dark wood underneath.
When I arrived at the landing, I gazed out the arched windows onto a courtyard that looked as if it had once been a flower garden. A lonely rusted fountain filled with fallen gold leaves stood in the center of the area. Flagstone paths meandered through the overgrown weeds.
Tucked just beyond the edge of the woods was a little unkempt cemetery surrounded by a wilting iron fence. I shuddered. The idea that there were people who’d lived in this house buried in the back yard gave me the creeps.
I knew from my near death experience that there was life after death. But were they all confined to the place I had gone? Or were some of them still here on the earth plane?
Still with us?
“Cool!” I heard Ella cry out, dragging my attention from the cemetery and the cold chills that skittered up my arms at the thought of ghosts.
I shifted Mr. Stella’s heavy carrier into the other hand and worked my way up the rest of the stairs. He let out a low meow. “It’s all right, buddy,” I said, trying to reassure him.
The ceilings in the upstairs rooms were high but not as high as those in the downstairs rooms. The wide second story hall opened into four massive bedrooms. With a loud squeal, Ella jubilantly claimed one of them. She launched herself onto the antique bed inside and began gleefully jumping up and down.
I should have been just as excited about seeing my own room but I couldn’t stop wondering about the fanlight. Where was it? Apparently, not on this floor. My gaze drifted upward to the smooth, white ceiling. Was it possibly in an attic?
The thought of that big, old window in a spooky, dark attic sent a ripple of apprehension through me. It was almost as if that window were alive, overlooking our whole world. And like me, the window had the creepy ability to see what was both outside and inside.
