“Oh good, because I’m not ready to go to Heaven yet. I’d miss Mum and Dad too much.”
“Are you worried about Patrick?” Hope asked.
Grace pictured Patrick with his messy blonde hair and the splatter of freckles sprinkled across his nose and cheeks. He had always been nice to her, and sometimes he would give her one of his biscuits.
“Was he scared, when his Angel came to take him to Heaven?” she asked.
“Not at all, he was very brave, he was just sad for his parents, he knew how much they would miss him.”
Grace handed Hope a Teddy Bear biscuit. “Teddy Bear biscuits were Patrick’s favorite; he always had two in his lunchbox everyday at school for recess.”
Hope took the biscuit and put it in her pocket. “I’ll make sure Patrick gets it okay.”
Grace handed Hope another one. “I think he would prefer two.”
“Then two it will be, and I will make sure he knows they are from you.”
Chapter 5—Accident
Year: 2004
The word accident is derived from the Latin verb accidere, signifying: fall upon, befall, happen, chance.
It was a beautiful sunny day in April; April the 22nd to be precise. The sky was the bluest blue, not a cloud was in sight. Mothers pushed baby strollers along the footpath as they walked the older children home from school, listening to their stories. A fresh breeze blew through the trees, loose leaves fluttered to the grassy ground below. The wheels on an abandoned pink bike still turned.
Grace was almost twelve and she had just finished another day at primary school. She abandoned her bike under the big tree in the front yard and flew through the screen door, letting it bang shut loudly behind her. She dropped her school bag on the tiled floor. She moved as if she had tiny wings on her feet, her insides bursting with pure exhilaration. She could barely wait to share the good news with her mother.
Her father, Brian, wouldn’t be home today, he was still on a three out of a four-week shift at the mine site where he was presently working. He was a consulting mining engineer, he loved the job, but missed being away from Kate and Grace a month at a time. Occasionally, his work took him across continents and Grace would miss him enormously.
She would have to wait and tell her father all about her exciting news during their father and daughter phone call tonight. They never missed a night, not even when he was far away. She would sit patiently, perched on the tall stool by the wall phone in the kitchen until the phone rang, her thin legs swinging freely beneath her. At six-thirty p.m. on the dot, the phone would ring. She would answer it on the first ring.
Today, when she ran through the front door, she found her mother in the kitchen as usual.
“Mum, guess what, there’s a new girl in my class. Her name is Angela and she has just moved into the Palmers’ house next door and she has a dog and…”
Grace came to an abrupt halt, as if she had just been hit hard in the stomach, leaving her winded. She bent slightly from the impact of the imaginary clenched fist. The blood drained slowly from her face. An icy chill froze her spinal cord, paralyzing her where she stood. The moment she saw her mother’s face, she knew something was wrong—dreadfully wrong. Grace thought she might throw up at any second; she could taste the burning bile making its way up her throat. She swallowed hard to force it back down, it tasted bitter. She pulled a face.
There was a solidly built man in a police uniform standing next to her mother, his voice gentle in an effort to comfort her. It didn’t look like it was working. Not at all. The pain that distorted her otherwise pretty face was resolute.
Kate was seated at the pine kitchen table with a vase of flowers sitting in the middle that Grace had picked for her the day before. Kate was crying. Her eyes were red and swollen, as though her tears had burned her. She looked like she had been crying for a while. She was clenching a tissue in her hand as if her very life depended on it. There were several more scrunched up and discarded tissues on the table. Perhaps her life did depend on it.
Before that day, Grace didn’t think she could ever remember her mother ever crying, not like this. This was serious, deadly serious. Her gut lurched.
“Grace…” her mother said, as she failed in an attempt to stand. She continued speaking in a whisper, patting the chair beside her, gesturing that Grace come sit with her.
Grace dragged one foot after the other; it was harder than it should have been, but understandable since her shoes had just turned to solid lead. Her skinny little legs were barely capable of this usually simple task.
She hoped that the longer it took to reach her mother, the longer she could avoid knowing what her mother knew, what her mother was about to tell her. By the look in her mothers pleading eyes, Grace knew that whatever it was, she wasn’t going to like it. Not one bit. She sat down cautiously by her mother’s side, when all she really wanted to do, what her body screamed out to do, was flee. Run as fast as her legs could carry her, to be anywhere but here. Her mind felt numb. Her subconscious mind nagged at her, pushed at her. She forced the thoughts back.
Hope reached out for her, but Grace closed her eyes and continued to push her away, until she had completely faded out of vision. She had no time to play with an imaginary friend, not at a time like this. This was serious... this was real.
“Grace, there’s been…” Her mother paused, gulped back an urge to cry, still unable to say the words.
Grace shook her head in an effort to clear her mind. She tried to focus on her mother’s voice, only taking her eyes off her mother intermittently to glare at the stranger standing by her side, the bearer of bad news, which had made her mother cry. Her small hand fumbled absently at her shirt until she found and held the small golden eagle that hung around her neck in her trembling fingers.
She closed her eyes again, thinking back to a better time.
“To keep you safe, Grace,” her father had said on her eleventh birthday, only nine months ago.
“What keeps you safe, Dad?” she had asked as he placed it around her slender neck.
“You do, Grace, you keep me safe,” he had replied, scooping her up under her arms and swinging her around and around the room until she had felt giddy and begged for him to stop in between her giggles. Kate had laughed too, as she watched them, bringing with her into the room a chocolate birthday cake with pink icing, ablaze with eleven birthday candles.
“Make a wish, Grace,” her parents said in unison as they watched her, lovingly wrapped in each other's arms.
She blew out her candles and closed her eyes to make her wish. “I wish that we will always be together, oh, and I need a new bike…” She exhaled; the candles flicked until dancing flame became nothing more than a whispery swirl of rising smoke.
A giggle echoed through the room, making her smile. Only Grace saw the cross-legged Hope sitting on the far end of the kitchen table, clapping. Grace glanced over at her and mouthed a silent ‘thank you’.
An unfamiliar male voice crashed through her happy memories.
“Grace,” The stranger spoke in a gentle soothing voice, dragging her back reluctantly from the happier time. His gentle voice was wasted on her. All Grace was conscious of hearing was her heart beating against her chest, trying to escape, and fighting the long imaginary fingers that squeezed forcefully around her throat. She fought for breath. In, out, in, out, she told herself. She thought she might pass out at any moment from the lack of oxygen in her lungs.
“Grace,’ he repeated, “my name is Officer Wade. Your father -”
Kate held her hand up to stop him from continuing. She closed her eyes for a moment to compose herself. Kate opened her eyes and looked up at Wade, then at Grace.
“Let me,” she said. “Grace, your dad…” Kate’s throat made a groaning sound. “Your dad was in an accident, it was a really bad one… There were men trapped in the mine. He went to help them, but he didn’t make it out, Grace…I’m so sorry,” she said, reaching for her child.
G
race sat there unable to move, unable to believe, unable to respond, unable to touch the ground with her feet. If she did any of those things, she knew that it would all become horribly real. The words would become…a reality…forever. She would be unable now to ever go back to a happier time, when everything was perfect. When her father was still alive.
Her face was emotionless, still, her eyes wide, unblinking. She stared at her mother and watched on hopelessly as she saw a piece of her mother start to fade away, sitting at that kitchen table.
Grace thought that her mother looked smaller, fragile, like a child—like her. They sat hunched together folded in each other’s arms in a dismal effort to support their frail grieving bodies. She blinked. It was real. She cried.
Kate pulled her closer into her arms with the last of her strength. They stayed that way at the pine kitchen table - with its vase of flowers from the garden and the mounting pile of tissues - until the day turned pitch-black outside. Ghost-like black and gray clouds, heavy with rain, quickly engulfed the night sky, blocking out millions of stars from the heavens.
Bolts of forked lightning cracked through the vast darkness of the night, the increasing rumble of unleashed energy rattled the glass louvers violently in their frames. Then the rain started to fall, slowly at first. Then faster, harder. Heavy raindrops, like fists drumming ferociously on the corrugated tin roof overhead. It rained persistently all that night. The stars had closed their brilliant eyes that night and wept, too. Next door, in a brightly lit bedroom of the Palmers’ old house, a small dark-haired girl looked across at the house that sat in darkness, before she turned her face up toward the thundering sky.
Office Wade let himself out the front door, locking it silently behind him as he left. He pulled his coat closed over his broad chest and shoved his hands deep in his pockets. He walked slowly toward his car as the wind and rain lashed at his sullen face.
His senses told him he was being watched. He glanced up and saw the small dark-haired child scrutinizing his every move from the house next door. He lowered his head and continued to walk through the slashing rain toward his vehicle. He opened the door to the black four-wheel drive that he had parked in the street earlier that day and climbed in. He stayed there all that night while the unyielding storm consumed the night as he sat guarding the darkened house and its grieving occupants. He noticed that the small dark-haired girl in the window kept the same steadfast vigil.
At daybreak, the bleak rain continued to fall. He scanned the house through the rain speckled car window, all quiet inside. The girl in the window next door was gone. Satisfied, he turned the key in the ignition and drove slowly away down the deserted wet street. Rainwater sprayed up over the pavement as he drove the vehicle through overflowing street gutters.
Grace awoke from a restless night’s sleep cuddled up close against her mother in the big bed her parents usually shared. She had slept on her father’s side. She had fallen asleep tearfully; the scent of her father on his pillow reminding Grace of her painful loss. It was morning now, she realized as she rubbed her eyes. Her eyes felt grainy, as if someone had sprinkled sand under her eyelids. She heard the rain still beating on the glass window, blurring her vision. She heard the sound of a car driving slowly away down the street. Soon all that she heard was the rain and the soft rise and fall of her mother’s fretful breathing.
This was the first day of the rest of her life without her father. Her heart had never felt the unyielding weight of such a heavy burden.
She remembered a night only a few months earlier, before her birthday, when her father was still alive. He was at home on one of his breaks. There had been a bad storm that had struck in the middle of the night.
The night had been dark; her room had been even darker.
She could hear her parents’ hushed voices talking in the small Formica kitchen, trying not to wake her. She turned on her bedside light and pushed herself up on her elbows to listen. Did she hear other voices too in the wind as it stole through her bedrooms windows? The curtains lifted in halfhearted objection. Maybe not, she decided.
She heard her mother rush outside and take down the hanging pots that were tangled and overflowing with foliage from the creeping roses. They were covered with soft pink buds that had yet to bloom. They were swinging back and fro violently in the sudden bursts of wind. Her father was bringing in outdoor furniture, and anything else that was in danger of being blown around the backyard and into the neighbor’s yard. Last time they had a storm like this, they had to fish their outdoor furniture out of the neighbor’s swimming pool.
Grace was glad to be tucked up safely in her bed listening to the shrill of the wind through windows, slamming doors. A flash of lightning made the lights flicker on her bedside table. Moments later the lights went out permanently, a power blackout. The storm had taken down some power lines nearby. She reached for the red and blue Spiderman torch in her top bedside drawer and turned it on, shining it toward her bedroom window. Trees and shrubs were bending and scraping at the glass with their thorny talons, trying to get in out of the wind and torrential rain.
Storms like this were common for this time of the year. Soon the storm would pass, and in the morning the sun would be burning brightly for the weekend. She turned over and turned off the torch to go back to sleep. She loved falling asleep to nature’s orchestra of wind and the rain as it drummed on the corrugated roof overhead.
Suddenly, a surge of power engulfed her small body, shocking her, forcing her to sit bolt upright, wide-awake. She threw off her sheets and ran to her bedroom window and stood there unmoving. She had no idea what she was doing. The static surge of energy ripping through her was so powerful that she could not stop herself. She had no choice but to obey the electric unnamed entity that had completely possessed her small body, demanding her attention.
She stood motionless at her window as she watched her father in the dark outside, drenched from the rain. He was retrieving her bike from under the big tree where she had left it in the front yard that day after school. She should have listened when her mother told her to put it away. A rush of guilt pulsed through her.
She tried to move but couldn’t. She was frozen from the inside out and in a voice she had no control over, she screamed as loud as she could. “God, somebody help me!”
She had felt stupid as soon as the words had fled from her mouth. She had no idea why she had said that. Bewilderment had her rooted to the spot.
Her father, hearing her distressed scream for help, spun around to face her. He dropped the bike, letting it crash to the ground. He ran toward the house as fast as his legs would carry him. In that same second, a bolt of lightning tore through the massive tree, boom, shattering it, spraying the ground with jagged and splintered branches, crushing her bike. Missing the intended target... Her father.
Kate reached Grace seconds later and pulled her urgently into her arms. Grace shivered against her mother. All she could think about was her bike, her father.
That could have been my father.
Whatever ‘It’ was that had taken complete control of her body for those few moments, she realized, It had saved her father’s life.
The memory of that night was still so vivid in her mind. It still gave her goosebumps to think about it, she rubbed her arms. If only her father could have been saved this time too, he would still be here with her. With her mother. With her family.
Instead, his broken lifeless body was in a bag, in a cold stainless steel room, on a cold stainless steel slab. Cold and all alone while her and her mother shared a big warm bed. A sudden sob broke free from her throat. A tear ran down her face with the thought of her daddy all alone and cold. All completely alone in that horrible cold place.
She wiped the tear from her face. It was her fault, she realized. She had failed her father. She was meant to keep her father safe, wasn’t she?
“You do, Grace, you keep me safe.” That is what her father had said. And after the night of the storm, she had bee
n foolish to believe she really could. She buried her face in her hands and sobbed. Her birthday wish had not come true, only part of it, and she would have traded her new bike for her father in a heartbeat. She had not kept him safe. Would he ever forgive her?
Kate stirred in the bed beside her but did not wake. Grace looked over her mother’s shoulder at a photograph of her parents taken on their wedding day sitting on the bedside table. They looked so happy. They always did, she thought. They both wore matching white gold wedding bands on their left thumbs. When Grace had asked her mother why they wore their wedding rings on different fingers to other people Kate had explained that they just decided that they wanted to be different from everyone else; that their marriage, their union, was special.
She thought about her father’s ring. She knew he wouldn’t have been wearing it at work. It had something to do with safety in the work place, so she figured that it would have been safe in his donga with his other personal belongings. She wanted it. It would be her little piece of him to keep forever.
There was a gentle rapping on the front door. Grace looked back at her sleeping mother. She quietly dragged herself out of the bed, wiped the tears from her face, and went to answer the door. She closed the bedroom door quietly behind her, making sure she didn’t disturb her mother. She knew that she hadn’t had much sleep last night either. She went over to the lounge room windows and peeked through the curtains. Dark clouds were still hanging pregnant in the grey sky outside. The quiet street was empty. The rain was still falling, breeding puddles of despair on the muddy earth outside. She opened the front door a crack and peeked out.
It was Mrs. Terran from down the street with a glass dish in her hand, meatloaf, covered tightly with cling wrap. She held her three-year-old son’s chubby hand in the other. He had chocolate cake smeared across his chin. Grace stood still and studied them for a moment, then force smiled. She opened the door wider and let them in. Hope stood by Grace’s side.
When Darkness Falls - Six Paranormal Novels in One Boxed Set Page 102
