Beloved Evangeline (A Dark Paranormal Urban Fantasy Trilogy for Grown-ups - Book 1)

by W. C. Anderson

The tree itself was much larger than a normal tree. The gnarled black trunk and limbs twisted in every direction. My demonic guide pointed me to a large hollow in the tree, a point at which, when the tree had been living, the trunk had bifurcated into a v-shape.

  Without moving forward, I craned my neck to look into the hollow. An eerie blue light emanated from below, and a sudden arctic blast shot up, sending my hair swirling in all directions. I felt that coldness with every fiber of my soul.

  I didn’t want to know what was down there. Every natural instinct told me something was terribly wrong. I glanced back to the woman for reassurance, with hopes of asking what I wasn’t sure, but she had turned and was retreating with the same freakish movement.

  “Wait!”

  She glanced back, just for a moment, the faintest trace of a smile on her exotic face, but she offered no reply.

  My eyes darted about in terror. Above me, an endless stream of black ghosts whirled. Having no idea what else to do, I turned back to the tree, inching ever closer. A strange melancholy sound was coming from below. I finally screwed up my courage and looked down, and as I did so, the ghostly apparitions swirled faster in apparent frenzy. In agitation, they seemed to flee. Before I could investigate further—the moment the blue light reached my face—I was tugged on strangely, and I began to fall. I plummeted endlessly down the hollow, through the strange blue light, with a strange feeling of depressing certainty I would never again see the light of day.

  I hit bottom with an odd sound. Not exactly a thud, because the ground was not exactly normal. The impact clinked like glass, or maybe ice. I stupidly rubbed the spot on my hip where I had landed, but of course I felt no pain. The strange underworld was tinged with a smoky, eerie blue hue. Jagged ice formations surrounded me on all sides. Cold, barren sadness pervaded the air. By comparison, the place above had been positively charming.

  I heard the same strangely sad sound and began to feel my way toward it, with a surety this was what the woman had wanted me to seek out. Only my breath was visible in the freezing air in front of me as I meandered toward the mournful song. Definitely music, though I couldn’t make out any words.

  Every now and again, walking in this strange icy world, I caught the faintest glimmer of movement under the ice beneath me. But if I watched longer to investigate, nothing appeared, summing up the story of my life.

  Then, being caught off guard while worrying about what could be lurking beneath me, a sudden memory stopped me short, chilling me through to my core, freezing my heart instantly. A memory, one of those I stifled at all cost, of a chilly fall morning when I was five or six years old and watched my mother singing a lullaby for the last time...

  If it was possible that my heart was still beating in this weird place, it would have skipped not just one, but two or three or seven beats. It felt as though it did. Without knowing how I was moving forward, I automatically did. Through a small porthole, an odd cave-like room became visible. Crystallized stalactites of all shapes and sizes hung from above, giving the room a jagged appearance. A woman was curled up in a corner, singing softly, mournfully, and rocking herself.

  My mother looked exactly as I remembered from my childhood. Although she was curled up and sobbing, she looked as beautiful and like herself as I remembered, as different from the person in the mental institution as it was possible to be.

  Without a moment’s hesitation, I screamed. “Mom!”

  It was as though she couldn’t hear.

  Clawing and scraping at the ice that separated us, I tried to force my way through. “Mom!”

  A terrible sound filled my ears, the ice groaning from below.

  The singing stopped, and my mother’s eyes found mine. “No evil can touch you—you can’t be harmed. You’ve been safe, right?” She whispered.

  She didn’t seem surprised to see me, or happy, or anything else. I felt only… disappointment.

  “Evangeline, have you been safe?”

  There was no time for disappointment. How to tell my poor mother what a mess my life has become? True, nothing has happened to me—just anyone I happen to care about. I nodded in silence.

  While I was formulating an answer, my chest gave a sudden lurch, and I stumbled. My entire body began shivering violently. What was happening?

  Just then there was a thunderous crack, and the ice in front of us flew in every direction, chunks of it crashing all around. I couldn’t move—my limbs simply would not obey. I could only watch in terror as something slithered up from the ice below.

  My body, I realized suddenly, was in a severe state of hypothermia. I was freezing to death. My fingers and toes ached, teeth chattering uncontrollably. I was going into shock now, and very soon, if I remember the symptoms correctly, I would drift off to sleep, never to wake again.

  The strange apparition drew toward her. Although somewhat similar to the black ghosts from above, this figure was considerably larger, and emanated a bizarre, almost electric hum. Its very energy seemed powerful enough to charge particles in the surrounding air—which sparked and crackled. The edges of the figure blurred and changed.

  At that moment, my eyes went out of focus. A strange crying sound echoed in my ears. By the time my surroundings came back into focus, the apparition grazed the ice before her. My hair lifted from my body due to the electricity in the air.

  “I love you, mom,” I whispered through clenched, chattering teeth.

  My mother screamed.

  I willed my eyes open. The shapeless form touched my mother’s ankle—her flesh crystallizing a blackish blue from the point of the creature’s tether—and slowly dragged her away. I tried to summon my strength. I probably hadn’t the strength or manual dexterity to hold up a pencil successfully, much less do anything else, but I had to try.

  As my eyes flickered open and closed, the ghost dragged her nearer and nearer to the cavernous abyss.

  To my horror, I watched as the creature flung my mother, to the edge of the dark chasm. She hung to and clawed at the sides, but all such efforts were wasted. Finally, inevitably, she could hold no longer.

  Though she was falling away, the sounds of her screams rang out—undiminished—in my ears.

  People always say this is a good way to die, freezing to death. I’ve even heard people say that, if given a choice, this would be their preference. What an incredibly asinine thing to say. Maybe the drifting off to sleep bit is pain-free, but the prologue to that is excruciatingly, unfathomably painful. I discovered I was grateful for this torture, though. The pain was the only thing keeping my mind from functioning properly, from thinking about any of the events preceding it or any of the consequences to follow.

  My eyelids opened and closed slowly, my vision coming now only in flashes. Before me like a film from an ill-functioning old-fashioned movie projector, the creature approached. Thoughts of self preservation dawned on me gradually, slowly penetrating the fog now obscuring my brain. But there was nothing I could do. By the time the next picture appeared—the creature was already before me.

  The pain and fatigue were so great that, at first, I felt only relief.

  I drew in a long, sharp breath as pain pierced my icy lungs. My intention was to scream as loud as I could, though for all the world I couldn’t tell you what good that would do. But, the moment the jagged hand of the creature reached the center of my chest, all thought was lost. Overcome by the pain of ice piercing through my skin, my bones.... my soul, I succumbed. There was no air left in my lungs. There was no sound at all now. There was nothing. I felt as though I’d been swallowed whole, the essence that was Evangeline having completely disappeared. I was falling, or more accurately, being pulled, farther and farther down into nothingness.

  24.

  Farewell, my lord Sun!

  The creeks overflow: a thousand rivulets run

  'Twixt the roots of the sod; the blades of the marsh-grass stir;

  Passeth a hurrying sound of wings that westward whirr;

  Passeth, and
all is still; and the currents cease to run;

  And the sea and the marsh are one.

  from The Marshes of Glynn—Sidney Lanier

  Through a gauzy haze I saw a woman lie still, a chorus of shouting and crying surrounding her. Without warning she coughs and gasps for breath with violent effort. The poor girl’s chest aches and burns as she struggled to force the air through her lungs.

  Then all was still again, and the chorus grew louder.

  Too fragile to last.

  The sorrow of the scene was too great to bear—and so the darkness came.

  25.

  I awoke slowly, realizing I was on a gurney, being wheeled around in some sort of hospital environment.

  Amongst the clatter of ER excitement, I heard a male voice near me, “... pulling through. Her vital signs are stabilizing. She’s being moved to recovery, you can see her in about an hour. Yes, I’d say this qualifies as a miracle.”

  There was certainly more, but my eyelids were too heavy. I closed them willingly and was carried off by sleep.

  Waking was every bit as painful as nearly freezing to death had been. Everything was incredibly bright. My whole body felt the pins and needles of the flesh trying to return itself to homeostasis. I squinted painfully against the blinding light. I tried to hold up my arm to shield my eyes, but wires and cords went flying as I did, and there was a strange tugging on the top of my hand. I heard beeping and tried to locate its source, but my vision simply did not seem to be normal, no matter how hard I tried or willed it to be.

  There was suddenly a flutter of activity. I could make out shapes but little else. People were talking but all sound was muted. Instead, I tuned out the sound to try and make the world right side up again. Instead, I quickly fell back to darkness.

  Upon my next waking, a doctor was seated beside me. He began asking a lot of ludicrous, contrived questions. He was very young, younger than me, and aggravatingly condescending. Did I hear voices? Had I experienced suicidal thoughts or ideations before now? Was I hearing voices now? Did I have an unusual fixation on God or the president?

  I sat up and tried to speak, but my throat burned raw. “No,” I managed to croak before coughing furiously. I wanted to explain, to defend my actions and my sanity, but I could barely speak.

  “That’s from the chest tube... it will wear off in a day or two,” the doctor pointed out.

  Someone, a nurse, maybe, thrust a cup of water into my hand. I drank greedily before trying to begin again.

  “My friends, Nicky and Simon, were with me,” I whispered this time and sipped some more water, “I found this cross in a box from the swamp and started looking ...”

  “That box was empty, remember, Evangeline?” A voice I recognized as Simon’s asked uncertainly.

  I looked around helplessly but couldn’t make out his face. Instead, I responded to no one in particular, “No.... I mean, yes, it was empty, but I found a secret compartment, you know, later, and the cross... was... in it,” I succumbed to another coughing fit and couldn’t continue. This was going to be impossible to explain in my current state.

  “How did she get here? Who was it that called the police?” Simon asked the doctor.

  “We don’t know. The ERTs said it was a male caller from a private number. He didn’t identify himself.”

  “Just tell us what happened, Evangeline.” Nicky was obviously here, too.

  I could feel the anxiety and concern radiating from both of my friends.

  No. I shook my head furiously. This was not happening. I am not crazy. “Look, this is simple. I can show you. We can just go ask my grandfather...”

  “Your social worker, looked into that already, I’m afraid?” The very young, increasingly annoying doctor interjected, “She found out that your grandfather died years ago... hung himself. Extremely sad... rocked the neighborhood back then, I remember. The house has been vacant since then,”

  “No, I know...” I tried to begin again, but my head spun. I’d forgotten about that. I felt as though I’d forgotten a lot of other things, too. It seemed as though I’d been gone for... a long, long time. I felt different. Nothing made any sense. My thoughts were jumbled, upside down. Why were they doing this to me? I didn’t imagine any of the things that had happened. Why wouldn’t they listen? This was an unbelievable nightmare.

  “I’m going to give you some medicine to help you sleep. You’ve been through a difficult ordeal. You’ll feel better after you get some rest, and we can talk about this then.”

  “I don’t want any medicine! I AM NOT CRAZY.” I stopped for a moment, the tone in my voice reminding me of too many unpleasant memories. “I just want to go home,” I said in a softer tone and then proceeded to push myself up.

  “Um, I’m sorry? But... we can’t let you leave, Ms. Johnson. You’ve been deemed a danger to yourself at this time, so we’re placing you on a court-ordered hold for observation? The police also want to have a word. While you were coming to, you repeated, “I killed her, I killed them,” quite a bit. You’re father’s on his way—he’s arranged for you to have the best care at the finest private facility in town,” the doctor continued to drone on but I couldn’t hear the rest of it.

  A growing panic was rising in my chest. I could not end up in this place, like her. This exact same thing had almost killed my mother. I would certainly end up trapped, just like she had. I had to get out of here. Without a second thought, I jumped up quickly, ripping the IV from my arm and bolting for the door. There were too many nurses and doctors around, however, and I was far too weak. I never stood a chance.

  I struggled as best I could, but in my weakened state, they yanked me back on the bed with little difficulty, this time fastening the restraints. There was a dangerous lump in my throat. They began wheeling me out of the room, to wallow in insanity in privacy. This cannot really be happening.

  I strained again to test my eyesight and found that it was adjusting... sort of. The world was slowly becoming visible but—everything in my vision had an eerie bluish hue.

  “What’s wrong with her eyes?” Gavin—who was apparently present, too—whispered.

  I thought he was only asking Nicky, pointing out something that I already knew: my eyes were not normal. But instead of Nicky answering, the doctor turned to him and began speaking quietly, though not quietly enough.

  “She could have a variety of different side effects, depending on the degree of oxygen deprivation she experienced. Side effects could include, to varying degrees, blindness, memory loss, hallucinations, even mental and emotional distress or disorder. Any and all of these could be temporary or permanent...”

  The doctor froze when he caught my glare, which was strong enough to peel paint from the walls.

  “I know what I saw. I’m not hallucinating. There’s something I’m supposed to do... if I could just remember. Nicky, I found proof! Swirling around,” I gestured with my hand in a swirling motion toward the ceiling, “And, then my chest. Ice...” This wasn’t coming out right. Stop sounding crazy. I summoned the calmest, most reasonable-sounding voice I could muster. “There’s more, but I can’t focus because everything is blue.” Oh God.

  With all my strength, I focused on my unbelievably loyal friends. If I could just see them, look into their eyes, they would know I was not crazy. Simon was visible first, his face fixed in an expression of horrification.

  In ridiculous contrast, Nicky’s face was crumpled, contorted. She was sobbing quietly. “I’m so, so sorry, Evangeline... but you were dead for almost half an hour. Dead. They didn’t think they were going to be able to... bring you back. No one’s ever come back from that before…” She wiped away the freely flowing tears. “What else are we supposed to do?” She whispered.

  “But my mother... she needs me. She’s trapped. I know now that I’m supposed to help her. I have got to do whatever I can... take her off the medicine she’s on so she can at least have a chance...” I stopped. Everyone around me had gone strangely, surreally, quie
t. I looked back and forth between them all quizzically, “What? I mean, I know, believe me, I know this sounds a crazy, but what could it hurt to... ”

  “Evangeline.... oh, did I not mention that earlier? Well... your mother... this is a little awkward.... she slipped into a coma... just last night, apparently,” the doctor interrupted, responding when no one else spoke, “We just received word, right after we were done working on you in fact... they called your cell phone to locate the next of kin... one of the nurses answered hoping it was a family member to speak to them about you, kind of ironic, really...” He sounded briefly amused at the thought, forgetting himself momentarily before looking solemn again. “She had been in the violent wing of the state mental hospital for almost 30 years....”

  I could only gape at him; I had no response. My head swirled. Another person dead because of me—worst of all because she was the very one I dedicated my life to save. Just the thought made my stomach lurch, and I felt like I was going to be sick. The doctor, taking advantage of my momentary distraction, stuck a needle in my arm and pushed the plunger. I tried to protest, but my throat burned so badly that only a nightmarish rasping sound came out. Another real-life nightmare to add to my ever growing collection.