When Rose Wakes

by Christopher Golden

  She had her life back, and she wanted to start living it.

  Down in the parking lot, a middle-aged couple and a boy about Rose’s age—their son, she assumed—exited the building and headed for their car. She wished he would turn around so she could get a better look at him. He looked tall and had broad shoulders and dark, bushy hair, but she wondered if he was cute. Smiling to herself, she wondered if he would think she was cute. Whenever she was in the bathroom she always looked a little too long at her reflection in the mirror, comparing herself to girls she had seen on television. Rose guessed she was okay looking, but she wouldn’t really know until she could gauge boys’ reactions to her. She wasn’t sure about her hair—long and golden red—but she’d seen a show on television where a couple of young guys had talked about how much they loved green eyes, so that was a start. Her eyes were very green.

  Listen to yourself, she thought, spearing another piece of melon. How shallow can you be? She knew that she couldn’t judge her own worth by what guys thought of her—that would just be stupid. Daytime talk shows had taught her that much. But she couldn’t help but hope that school would go well, that boys would notice her, and that she would make friends.

  With a sigh, she started to turn back toward the bed. A flurry of dark motion outside the window caught her eye and she glanced over to see a pair of black crows alighting on the thick branches of a tree.

  As one, the two birds cocked their heads and looked at her, cawing loudly. The memory of her dream, of the raven staring at her, returned in a rush. You must be careful, Rose.

  The plate dropped from her hand, shattering on the linoleum. She heard it but did not look down. Her gaze locked on the crows. The birds watched her. Her face felt flush and her heart raced, even as she tried to tell herself she was being ridiculous. But they stared.

  “Rose? What’s wrong?”

  She spun, still holding her fork, and saw Aunt Suzette standing in the doorway holding a big glass of apple juice. Her usually jovial aunt glanced at the ceramic shards and melon pieces on the floor and then back at Rose.

  “Sorry,” Rose mumbled. “An accident.”

  “Are you all right?” Aunt Suzette asked.

  Rose turned back to the window. The branch was swaying but the crows were gone.

  “Yes,” she lied. “I’m fine.”

  She had to escape this room, where she felt more and more trapped with her pain and her doctors and her bad dreams, and out into the real world. Out there, she would fill her days with people and music and conversation, and she wouldn’t let her nightmares linger like this in the back of her mind.

  Rose turned to her aunt. “I’m going to be fine.”

  “You certainly are,” Aunt Suzette said, grinning. “I just spoke to Dr. Kittredge. He says if all goes well, you can come home on Tuesday!”

  Elated, Rose stared at her. “You mean it?”

  “That’s what he said.”

  Rose frowned. “Tuesday. What’s today?”

  “Saturday.”

  “Three days,” Rose said, shaking her head in wonder. “Three more days.”

  “And then you get your life back,” Aunt Suzette said, setting the juice glass down and dragging a trash can over to the mess on the floor. She began to pick up the shards of the broken plate.

  “I can do that,” Rose said.

  “Not yet,” Aunt Suzette told her. “You’ll have plenty to do soon enough.”

  Smiling, Rose glanced back out the window, happy to see there was still no sign of the crows. A truck rumbled by up on the road. In the parking lot, a young woman helped an old man from a car into a wheelchair in order to bring him into the clinic. They were just arriving, but soon she would be leaving.

  “Do you think I’ll still have those dreams once I’m gone from here?” she asked.

  Aunt Suzette stood behind her.

  “Don’t worry yourself, darling. I’ve told you, they’re only dreams. And dreams always fade.”

  On a Monday morning a little more than a week after coming home from the hospital at last, Rose lay in bed reading a mystery novel she had claimed from Aunt Fay’s bookshelf. Soon she would have to take a shower and get dressed—it was an important day—but the previous night she had fallen asleep with the book in her hands and had woken with only forty pages left and a burning desire to know the outcome.

  Going to sleep each night still caused her terrible anxiety, both because of the promise of bad dreams and her fear that at any time she might fall into another slumber that would last for months. She argued with herself over these fears—the dreams did not come every night and were not always nightmares, and the doctors had explained there was no reason at all to think she might slip back into a coma—and yet logic had very little to do with her worry. Anxiety and logic were utter strangers.

  Still, the dreams haunted her.

  Princess Rose, she thought, scoffing at herself. At night her subconscious brought her back to the games she had played in the attic of her old house, growing up, pretending she lived in a big castle full of knights and ladies-in-waiting, with fairies flitting about. Sometimes they were pleasant dreams, precisely the sort of thing that little girls liked to imagine when they played make-believe.

  But there were awful things, too. Night terrors, she supposed they would be called. Shadows came alive and whispered from behind curtains or beneath her bed. Insects and birds spoke to her, and always… always she felt that they meant her harm, that they stared at her with hatred in their awful eyes. Sometimes, in her dreams, she fled the castle and hid in a nearby forest, but things lurked there as well, beautiful, magical sprites who ran and laughed with her, and sinister creatures who stalked her through the woods or fell upon her from the branches overheard, forcing her to wake up screaming, bathed in sweat. Her aunts would come in and soothe her.

  Sometimes she could not be soothed, but she let them believe that their kindness helped, loving them too much to do otherwise.

  In those nightmares she feared for herself, and she feared for her father, and she woke up missing him painfully, which was only made worse when the dream faded and her thoughts cleared enough to realize that the man in her dreams was someone she only imagined and that she could not even remember her real father’s face, or his laugh, or his voice. That haunted her most of all, missing someone without any real understanding of what she missed.

  With such sad and often frightening nights, Rose truly relished mornings. When the night had ended and the sun rose with the promise of so many more sunrises to come and the bad dreams were banished along with her fears, she always wanted to languish in the comfort of those moments. The nights were chilly but she kept the windows halfway open, warm beneath the thick autumn-hued bedspread.

  The physical therapist had given her a regimen of stretching exercises to continue her recovery at home. In the morning, especially, Rose found her muscles very tight and she had to be careful not to pull or tear anything. And though she enjoyed her mornings, she tried not to spend too much time in bed so that her bedsores could fully heal. They were almost completely gone now, and the topical cream she had been given, with its liberal dose of vitamin E, was doing an excellent job of fading the traces of the old sores. Beyond that, she felt good, and the doctors were still impressed by the speed of her recovery.

  Even so, Rose did not feel ready to venture out into the world. On the small, hand-painted desk in her room sat a laptop computer that she had used only three times since her aunts had brought her to their Beacon Hill apartment and announced to her that she was home. Her room had a nine-foot tin ceiling, lovingly restored, and a narrow cherrywood sleigh bed that was obviously an expensive antique. But the old-fashioned room and furniture did not seem to make the laptop out of place. It was Rose herself who felt out of place. Aunt Fay had shown her how to get on to the Internet and some of the news sites and search engines that would give her information about the world. They wanted her to get acclimated, to try to get back her memories of
her life, but if not that, at least to adjust to the world even if she never remembered the life she had once led.

  At first the things she read seemed foreign to her, and not just because she had been born in France. The names of some countries rolled off of her tongue, but others felt awkward. The celebrities made her cringe and she felt like a prude because of her reaction, but it was all so new to her. And she had accidentally happened upon a sex site that had made bile rise in her throat. Aunt Suzette had happily explained social networking websites where she could stay in constant contact with her new friends, when she managed to make any, but for now the laptop seemed a hopeful indulgence, a mere decoration. Rose didn’t see the wisdom in constant contact with anyone, even her aunts. And since her aunts couldn’t remember more than the first names of any of her friends from France, she couldn’t search for them… if anyone would even remember her well after she’d been gone for two years.

  Her aunts had bought her a cell phone, too. It sat idle on her bedside table, not even turned on. The phone had the home telephone number and both of her aunts’ cell numbers programmed into it, but so far Rose had never been alone in the apartment, never mind out in the city by herself.

  Today all of that would begin to change, and she was trying her best to hide in her book, right up until Aunt Fay rapped on the open door.

  “Good morning, Auntie,” Rose said.

  “Good morning to you, dear. Aren’t you getting up? We need to leave in an hour or so and you should be getting ready.”

  Rose smiled, held up the book. “I was hoping to finish.”

  Aunt Fay studied her curiously as if trying to make sense of her somehow.

  “I would have thought a girl who had been in a bed as long as you were wouldn’t want to spend so much time in one now.”

  Rose hesitated. How to explain that bed, especially here in her aunts’, was where she felt safe. She smiled at Aunt Fay, who smiled in return, but sometimes her smiles did not reach her eyes. The woman wore charcoal pants and an expertly cut red blouse. Rose knew very little about clothes but she thought Aunt Fay looked very smart and full of purpose in those clothes and with her glasses sitting on the bridge of her nose.

  “I’m just nervous, I guess,” Rose said.

  Aunt Fay came in and sat on the edge of the bed. “Of course you are. It’s a big day. Your debut, in a way. Though not as big a debut as when you start school here.”

  “It just seems fast,” Rose said softly. “I mean… I don’t want you and Aunt Suzette to think I’m ungrateful. You’re doing so much for me. You gave up France to make sure I was taken care of, and now all of this… this new beginning. But if I had more time to adjust—”

  “Rose, we’ve talked about this. It’s entirely normal for you to be nervous about this, but you’re ready. Truly. Delaying would only compound your anxiety. You need to be surrounded by people your own age, to jump in with both feet, and this test is the first step.”

  “That’s another thing,” Rose said, folding down a page of the book and setting it on the bedside table. “I’m afraid I’ll do poorly on the test. I’m old enough to be a junior, but what if I do so horribly that I end up a sophomore, or even a freshman? I went on an Internet forum about high school and so much of what the kids there were chatting about was how cruel they all are to each other.”

  Aunt Fay, usually so serious, softened. She reached out and pushed Rose’s hair away from her face.

  “I promise you it will be fine. You’ve been given a second chance, Rose. Your aunt Suzette and I want you to be able to make the most of it. It might be awkward at first, but you will make friends, you will study and learn, and soon you won’t be the ‘new girl,’ you’ll be just another classmate. I promise you that we will watch over you, as we always have.”

  Rose took a deep breath, borrowing from Aunt Fay’s strength, calming herself.

  “All right,” she said.

  Aunt Fay wrinkled her brow. “As long as you stay away from the boys, all will be well.”

  Rose laughed softly and shook her head. “So you and Aunt Suzette keep saying.”

  “It’s not a joke, Rose. Boys are trouble. They’re guilty until proven innocent, every last one of them. Steer clear. I’d wanted to put you in Saint Mary’s—it’s all girls—but they would not have had a spot for you until January and wouldn’t even guarantee one then.”

  “It’ll be all right, Fay,” Aunt Suzette said, appearing in the open doorway. “Besides, attending an all girls’ school hardly means that she wouldn’t be exposed to boys. I’ve read of some all girls’ schools with terrible reputations.”

  “You two are unbelievable,” Rose said. “They’re not demons. They’re just boys.”

  Her aunts exchanged an anxious look and Rose gave an exasperated smile. Ever since she had woken up, boys were the one topic that neither of her aunts had any sense of humor about at all. Even Aunt Suzette, always so joyful, routinely issued grim warnings for Rose to keep away from boys. In so many ways they seemed very modern for middle-aged women, encouraging Rose to use her computer and watch television—they weren’t strict in that sense—but the subject of sex was clearly taboo. It seemed strange given how open they were otherwise, but Rose chalked it up to old-world propriety.

  In France they had lived in a beautiful house. She remembered the house, and that the nearby village had been quiet—completely different from a modern American city. But from what Rose herself had learned thus far of the world she had woken to, she found she did not mind her aunts’ old-fashioned morality at all.

  “I get it,” she said. “No boys.”

  Aunt Fay hesitated a moment, then nodded and smiled in relief. “All right. Out of bed, then, and be quick about it. Aunt Suzette is making pancakes and you’re not going to have time to eat them.”

  “Yay, pancakes!” Rose said. They had quickly become her favorite food, mostly due to the thick maple syrup Aunt Suzette had drowned them in the first time she had made them for Rose.

  “Only if you hurry,” Aunt Fay reminded her, rising from the bed and picking up the empty cup from the herbal tea the superstitious ladies still made her drink every night at bedtime.

  “Hurrying,” Rose said as she leaped from bed.

  She grabbed clean underpants and a bra before rushing out of the room to the shower.

  •

  St. Bridget’s High School was on Marlborough Street in Boston’s Back Bay, half a mile from the aunts’ Beacon Hill apartment. The entrance and small parking lot were in the back, accessed by a public alley that existed to allow rear entrance to all of the properties on the two streets that paralleled it. Rose had been fascinated by the alley and liked that it seemed to allow a peek at the secret backs of things, the private workings of the neighborhood.

  Aunt Fay had wanted to drive the short distance to the school, concerned that by arriving on foot they might appear to be some sort of charity case. Aunt Suzette had called this “classist nonsense” and said that Aunt Fay was too in love with her Mercedes and that they all could use the exercise. Rose had piped up in favor of walking. It was a lovely day, the first Monday in October, and she wanted to see more of the city.

  At last Aunt Fay had relented, which was how they now found themselves walking up to the entrance of St. Bridget’s, admiring the granite steps and the marble relief of the school’s patron saint above the main door. The keystone of the building indicated it had been built in 1957, so the school was young by Boston standards, but its architecture seemed to harken back to older days, seeming archaic in comparison to the row houses around it, which were in all probability older.

  Aunt Suzette smiled proudly as she held the door for Rose and Aunt Fay to enter. Rose stepped into the school and paused. Though she had never been in this particular building before, she had hoped for at least some sense of familiarity. After all, she had gone to a small private school in France. How different could this be?

  But as she looked around at the trophy case and the
sports banners hanging on the walls and the plaques of prestigious awards and portraits of the school’s original benefactors and the large crucifix on the wall, none of it created any resonance within her. There were no familiar echoes. She studied a small alcove where a statue of the Virgin Mary stood, bathed in light from a recessed bulb above, dust motes swirling around her.

  “What is it?” Aunt Fay asked.

  Rose thought about telling her, but how to truly explain? She recognized everything, could put a name to it, but without her memory they all felt like things she knew only from television or from reading about them, not from any personal experience. It was a disquieting feeling. Yet, if anything, that feeling itself had become all too familiar ever since her release from the hospital. The strangest things felt odd and new to her, even something as miniscule as putting on a pair of pants.

  Her aunts had stocked her wardrobe fairly well, but Rose had discovered that she hated wearing pants. Today she wore a floral dress in fall colors and an expertly faded denim jacket slightly turned back at the cuffs. She’d seen enough magazines during her physical therapy and once she’d gotten home to get a sense of fashion, but nothing really spoke to her, and she had decided that style was something personal and she would have her own. Though only the first week of October, it had been a little chilly this morning, and she knew that in time she would have to surrender her irrational hatred of pants, at least for the winter. But for now dresses and skirts were her preference. On the plus side, that meant her aunts needed to take her shopping after the test today.

  Aunt Fay seemed to know where she was going. She turned left at the first jog off of the main foyer and found the administrative offices. Rose had been in a lot of doctors’ offices since awakening from her coma, and she was sick of them. Sick of waiting, and of talking about her memory loss without any real improvement. This was an unsettling reminder of those places. On the left was a closed door with SR. ANNA DOLAN, PRINCIPAL etched into a plaque beside it. On the right, a high counter separated the waiting area from the rest of the office, three desks under fluorescent lighting, computer screens and paperwork showing all the signs of a busy day. A young, slender African-American woman occupied one desk. At the one nearest the counter, a sour-looking, sixtyish Caucasian woman in a skirt much too short and tight for her aging, shifting figure glanced up at them and narrowed her eyes, then went back to her typing. The third desk seemed temporarily abandoned.