Harbinger

by Sara Etienne

  Hurry! Hurry!

  I ran down the twisting passageway, careful not to touch the tortured walls. Up the spiral stairs. Banging my shins against the steps. Bursting into the library. I closed the door behind me, finally shutting out the screeching voices.

  Like Dr. Mordoch’s office, the library was already dimly lit by a little brass light hanging over the old black-and-white photograph of the Compass Rose. Dark swaths of books covered the walls. But in the half-light, I saw that some of them were leaning, crooked on their shelves. Has Kel been here? Or did they just fall over on their own?

  Then I saw the book spread open on the desk near the window. Tides and Waters of New England. Kel had beat me to it, and he didn’t care if I knew. And lying on top, weighing down the page, was a talisman. Touching the cold iron, I knew it wasn’t one of the ones we’d dug up the other night. Those had been dirty and coated with rust. But they’d also been saturated with power. Practically alive.

  No. This talisman was the one Kel and I had found in the secret compartment. The one M. H. had found. Even though her talisman still gleamed softly in the low light, it was used up and empty. A metal shell.

  I moved the talisman, checking the page Kel had marked. He’d left it blatantly open to a map filled with overlapping ovals and shadowed spheres. The one I’d come here looking for.

  “Lunar Cycles and Tides” showed a diagram of the orbits of the moon, the Earth, and the sun.

  “The highest tides occur when the moon and sun are both in line with the Earth, increasing the gravitational pull on the oceans.” There was a diagram of the three spheres, lined up in a row. The moon was on one side of the Earth and the sun on the other, each pulling at the blue planet.

  With the sun as midwife.

  A small note was scrawled beneath the picture in M. H.’s now familiar handwriting. “This alignment can occur during a lunar eclipse.”

  I went back to the text, trying to put it all together. “If the moon is at its proxigee, its closest point to the Earth, during this alignment, then the tide may be particularly high and can cause flooding. The moon’s orbit is a fixed cycle, spinning close to the Earth and then away from it. Because of this, high tides technically can be predicted with accuracy.”

  There was a table of dates, starting in 1905, listing when the moon would be closest to the Earth. I scanned down the list, my finger stopping at an unnervingly familiar date. Tomorrow—or, since it was probably after midnight already—today. Right now, the moon was as close to the Earth as it would ever be.

  Flipping to the index, I found another table listed, titled “Lunar Eclipses.” I turned to it, already knowing what I’d find. Today, the autumnal equinox, was listed on this table as well. September 21 at 6:09 a.m.—total lunar eclipse.

  I pulled Dr. Mordoch’s interview papers out of the folder, playing my hunch. The interview with my parents said that I’d changed after they took me to the beach on the evening of April 3. My finger slid down the chart eleven years, looking for the date. That year there was a total lunar eclipse on April 4, just after midnight. Meaning it had started on the night of April 3. My parents must have taken me out to the beach to see the beginning of it.

  There was a second total lunar eclipse that year early in the morning of September 27. I checked the transcript of Dr. Mordoch’s hypnotism session, September 26. The night I’d almost drowned on the beach.

  More clues. More crumbs leading me to what? Kel was just taunting me. He had auspicious prophecies written about him, and what did I have? A lunar calendar, a rusty doll, and an affinity for trees? I chucked the talisman against the wall, slammed the book shut, and shoved it back onto the shelf.

  The book next to it caught my eye. Ancient Maine Burial Sites, by Professor B. Warren. That’s who M. H. had written to about the talisman.

  I grabbed the tattered book off the shelf, paging through it with shaky hands. Searching for anything that looked like the talisman. There were photographs of a carved bird. A spearhead. A stone dagger like I’d found the other night. But none of them had the arrow marking.

  The Compass Rose creaked and strained. I froze, barely daring to breathe. Had Kel come back for the book? For me? A gust of air smacked against the window and the house trembled.

  Just wind. I forced my shoulders to relax and went back to the book.

  I found it at the start of the third chapter. M. H. was right. It was the same symbol, carved into a long stone pendant. Beneath the photo was a section called “Ancient Burial Practices of Maine.”

  The State of Maine was once home to a forgotten and mystifying race. Thousands and thousands of years ago, these highly skilled people lived along this coast, hunting swordfish from the ocean, creating intricate carvings, and trading goods up and down the Gulf of Maine. Our knowledge of them is extremely limited. But the glimpse we’ve had into their culture has been stunning and not a little perplexing. These are the few facts science has uncovered.

  That they were an ancient people.

  That their artisanship illustrates a sophistication far beyond any other Stone Age peoples.

  That they buried their dead with red ochre, a metallic powder made from oxidized iron, as well as with ritualized talismans and tools.

  That they had a profound belief in life beyond death.

  That they vanished from this earth, without a trace of what had befallen them.

  Things fit into place. Hands pouring red powder into a fresh grave. Placing the talismans on each still corpse. This was what Professor Warren was describing.

  I rushed on, looking for answers in the archaic text.

  Archaeological digs have excavated grave sites dating from as far back as 3000 BC. But by 1800 BC, not even a remnant of this distinctive culture remains. Compounding this disappearance is the fact that over time, this coast has slowly sunk into the sea. Their villages, their shell middens, all the little signs of day-to-day life have been submerged. Lost forever. This is a profound loss to the archaeological community. The meager information we do have about these people’s day-to-day lives has left us with unanswerable questions. Who were they? How did their art and culture transcend the limitations of their primitive time? Why did they perform such elaborate burials? And most important, what happened to them?

  They did not migrate north or south. They did not slowly fade into another people to the east or west. They simply vanished, leaving archaeologists with a fierce debate. What destroyed this lost civilization?

  “Do they live happily ever after?” A voice spoke from the shadows.

  I suddenly had déjà vu. That voice had spoken to me from the darkness before.

  I’d been six years old, wet and shaking in the grip of Dr. Mordoch.

  “You should’ve let her go,” the voice had said.

  Then, and now, the speaker stepped out of the darkness and the face was the same.

  Rita. I remembered now. She was dressed in the same white dress. Her braid hanging down her back. Looking exactly the same.

  “How?” It was the only question I could force out of my dry mouth.

  “Once upon a time . . .” Rita’s soft voice drifted eerily through the room. In the dim light, shadows settled on her face, making it look caved-in and old. “That’s how it starts, right? Because we really should start at the beginning. My mother used to read me stories . . . I’d almost forgotten. That’s how it starts, right?”

  She tilted her head toward me, like a kid waiting for encouragement. I gave her the tiniest of nods, barely daring to move.

  Rita smiled. “Okay. Once upon a time, there was a girl who lived by the sea. Life was dull, but most of the time, it was good. Then one day she found a small metal doll. A talisman.

  “But you already know all this, don’t you?” Confusion clouded her face and she stared around the room, as if trying to remember how she’d gotten there. She seemed to be struggling to keep her mind clear. “You read the diary?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes,” Rita repe
ated, her voice more forceful now, and she moved closer. “After she touched the talisman, everything changed for the girl. She saw things that weren’t there, heard music where there was only silence, remembered things that’d never happened. And her parents, who already thought she was strong-headed and stubborn, now thought she was insane.”

  As Rita spoke, the change was shocking. Her eyes became brighter, like her words were scraping away the grime that had muddied them. She stood taller and her vagueness was replaced by a sharp-edged bitterness.

  Scared, I stepped away from her, but Rita followed. Getting between me and the rolltop desk. The lights from the photograph on the wall backlit her with an eerie glow.

  “And maybe she was insane. Once she found the talisman, it was like she had another person in her mind. Because she did. She had another set of memories and desires from long, long ago. And power. She had power too.”

  With her head skewed to the side, staring with wide-awake eyes, Rita echoed the sepia-toned photograph behind her. The grainy print showed a tall girl, about my age, posed in front of the Compass Rose, the building still under construction. The turrets were only skeletons of wood, and the front porch hadn’t been built yet.

  “They wanted to lock her away as the new memories, the new life, overtook the old one. But the girl realized she couldn’t let them. She was here for a purpose.”

  The girl in the photograph gripped the trunk of a sapling at the side of the house, as if sharing its strength. The old-fashioned dress made her look different, but the face was the same. Same haunted look. Same long braid. Same disdainful tilt to her head. It was Rita.

  “The girl was waiting for the Harbinger. Faye, she was waiting for you.”

  29

  NO. I AM NOT THE HARBINGER.

  My head was dizzy with what Rita was saying. But this was not the whispering, vague-eyed girl I’d met that first morning by the Screamers. I compared the photograph with Rita again and saw the undercurrent of power that now ran through the lines of both faces. Rita is M. H.

  “Margaret Holbrook. My dad gave me the nickname Rita. The only decent thing he ever gave me. Nice to make your acquaintance.” Rita curtsied, and I noticed the puddle near her feet. Blue-gray water seeped under the door from the secret passageway.

  “How?” I was starting to sound like a broken record. How are you here? How is this happening? How can I get away?

  “You haven’t let me get to the Happily Ever After. That photograph was taken a year after my parents died. When I was seventeen.”

  Water inched up the soles of my boots, soaking into the leather. I ignored it and tried to focus on what Rita was saying. I made my face into a sympathetic frown. But that was the wrong thing to do.

  Rita’s eyes glinted with anger. “Save your pity. They were nothing but an obstacle. My real Family was already long dead.”

  Yes. My Family. Her words triggered a memory, and I thought of my double vision down on the beach this morning. Seven of us standing on a mountain. Connected to all things. Like the tarot card showed. Keeping true to The Circle.

  Round and round. Round and round. Round and round.

  Water trickled down the walls, leaving little glittering tracks in its wake.

  Rita paced around the room as she went on. “But after my parents were gone, I was truly alone. I didn’t belong in this world, and there was nothing I could do to change that. I wasn’t strong enough. No. I still needed the Harbinger.” She spit the word at me. “You.”

  No. I am Faye.

  It was Kel who’d made us dig up the talismans. It was Kel in the prophecy. Kel was the Harbinger, not me.

  Fear is an illusion.

  The waves were biting at my ankles now. The sharp chill making them ache.

  Not me.

  “Yes, Faye. You were the one with the vision. You were the strongest of the Family. The one who felt most constrained by The Circle.”

  I thought of the prophecy on Rita’s tarot cards. Stronger than the others, the Harbinger peers far into the Future. There men will feast off of the Earth like maggots. There The Circle will fail the Family.

  A door downstairs opened and closed, sending a shudder through the house. Making the rising water quiver. Is it Kel? A Taker? Anyone would be better than being alone with Rita. Watching her eyes growing wild.

  Through the ripples, I saw the talisman lying on the floor. Rita’s talisman. It reminded me that this was all real, even if it seemed crazy. And impossible. The cold waves had made my muscles freeze up, but I forced myself to slosh over to the metal figurine. I reached down into the pooling water and grabbed it. I needed to wrap my hand around something solid.

  “Oh yes. Now you’ve come to the crux of the problem. My talisman was found too early, more than a hundred years before your little group uncovered theirs. You didn’t see that in your vision, did you?” Her voice bubbled up in a high-pitched shriek that might have been a laugh. “I became the enchanting Rita Holbrook. Sharing her mind, we were bound together. To her decaying world. Stuck here waiting while your apocalyptic vision revealed itself. Factories spewing smoke. Airplanes and cars and submarines infesting every crevice of the Earth. Armies, outfitted with bombs and chlorine gas, marching across its face. The great triumphs of the modern age.”

  More noises came from downstairs, and I begged whoever it was to hurry. I wanted someone between me and Rita. Rain drizzled from the ceiling, splashing onto the yellowed pages of the open books. Making the notes on my psychiatric evaluation run into blurry purple lines. Plastering my hair to my face.

  “And even though the talisman gave me power, I wasn’t strong enough to rid the world of the maggots that feasted on its flesh. Not to mention, I was in the wrong time. Separated from my Family. From the Harbinger. But even in this body, I knew I still had some power. So I cleared the obstacles from my path.” Rita’s voice softened, her face almost looking tender. “Then I built this house. I commissioned the statues. I locked away the diary and the tarot cards and my talisman. All of it safely hidden so that only you would find it.

  “So that when you finally came back, you would know that things had gone wrong and I’d already been here and gone.” Rita’s voice cracked. “Then one night, I turned my back on this crumbling world and walked into the sea.”

  The room fell silent, except for the frothing waves. I imagined confused, insane Rita, dressed in only her white nightgown, taking one final desperate action. The image chilled me deeper than the icy flood.

  Her bitter laugh cut through my thoughts. “That was the final insult. I should’ve known that one of the Family wouldn’t die so easily. The ocean claimed my living body and sent back this frail facsimile. I was doomed to stay here, watching the world rot. Until the time of the vision was near and the Harbinger chose a new body.”

  The door flew open then, letting in a fresh gush of dark water. I’d never been so relieved to see another person.

  “What are you doing here?” Dr. Mordoch stood in the doorway, wrapped in a robe. In the light from her flashlight, Dr. Mordoch’s pale hair looked more gray than blond and hung in thin wisps around her lined face.

  I tried to think of an answer that would make sense. Then I realized she was looking at Rita.

  Dr. Mordoch stumbled toward us, staring at Rita, the whites of her eyes showing. “You’re not even real. You’re a manifestation of my guilt. You were supposed to disappear when I brought Faye back.”

  Rita looked from Dr. Mordoch to me, grinning maliciously. “I may have found a way to keep busy over the years . . .”

  Dr. Mordoch cringed as she moved past Rita, wobbling a little as she made her way over to the rolltop desk. Hands shaking, she fumbled around behind the stack of books. She traded her flashlight for the bottle of whiskey, draining the dregs.

  She pressed her hand to her forehead and then, her face composed, Dr. Mordoch turned back to me. “Faye, I’m sorry I didn’t watch you more closely. I’m sorry you were out on the beach that night. I’m sorr
y I ever brought you back here. But I couldn’t get rid of her any other way. All these years . . . she murmured in my ear . . . insisting . . . swearing that by rescuing you that night, I’d damned you. That we still had work to do. That I’d driven you away.”

  Rita walked around Dr. Mordoch, circling her. “A hundred years I waited for you, Faye. Impotent. Powerless to leave. And when you finally arrive to enact the ritual, she ruins it.”

  “No!” Dr. Mordoch covered her ears and I could see the terror Rita instilled in her. Dr. Mordoch reached out to me. “I tried to help you. I kept you from drowning!”

  I didn’t know what to believe. Who to listen to. High silvery waves rushed in through the open door now. Tugging at my legs. It poured down the walls in great savage waterfalls.

  Dr. Mordoch reached for the whiskey bottle again, forgetting it was empty. “I thought she was some kind of angel, showing me how to help you. If I could get you back, I could cure you of your hallucinations. Socialize you. Show you your place in the world. Later, I thought she was the devil. Now I don’t care. I just want her to leave me alone.”

  The water crept up my chest. Its cold hands pressing in on my body. Cinching tight around my lungs.

  Rita stepped in front of Dr. Mordoch, blocking her from my view. “You know I was right to make her bring you back here. You’ve felt the power of this place from the moment you arrived. Felt the dead places inside you stirring with life. The sea calling to you.”

  “Yes.” It called to me now. Down the stairs, through the hallway full of arrows, I could hear the wave coming for me. It’d been building for almost ten years, since that night on the beach with Dr. Mordoch. I couldn’t hold it back any longer. “But I’m supposed to be the one who saves the world.”