WILLODEAN (THE CUPITOR CHRONICLES Book 1) (44 page)

*** 

I was five when my innocent ears absorbed material
not found in the local library.  Maw Sue read from the ancient scrolls,
ancestral journals,
and Cupitor almanacs.  A
t school, I shared the stories I heard
which only got me into trouble. 
I didn’t realize they were an abundance of sleepers, chosen, yet not awakened to their gifts. Cupitor’s are visionaries beyond the visions, rushing ahead, acquainted with sorrows and imminent dangers, always risking, exploring, and seeking. 
And that’s the problem.
 My teachers became annoyed with my chatty tall tales and told me children were not supposed to repeat everything they heard and maybe I was a little bit too grown up for my own good. I defended my family tree with rebellious certitude which led to my desk being dragged outside the class. I’d have to watch people walk up and down the sidewalks all day while I wrote five hundred ridiculous sentences.

I will not make up unbelievable stories
 
and fabricate them as true.

The whole time I’m breaking pencil lead and cursing under my breath. “Horseshit! Stupid sleepers. What do they know? I am a Cupitor by God.”
For some reason, the teachers did not agree. 
 

***

I crept through the kitchen when a loud clicking sound froze me. It was getting closer and louder. I imagined one of her ghostly husbands slithering around the corner. It wasn't a ghost but a ball of white fluff and growl. Her ugly mutt Peppy skids in attack mode until he realizes it’s me. He went from 
chew-leg-off
 mode to 
lick-to-death
 mode. Peppy was atrocious. He suffered a horrible hair condition, a mass of curls half-white, half-dingy yellow and half gray-blue in color. The blue was the old lady hair dye Maw Sue said would make him white, which only made him an eyesore.

“Hey, boy.” I said bending down to pet him. His sad pink eyes looked up at me and that’s when I noticed the red trail on the floor. It was red paw prints, trails in circles and loops and zig-zags. “Have you gotten into paint, boy? Maw Sue’s gonna flip out if you did.”

I searched for evidence of paint but found nothing. Peppy followed me around, stopping at my feet and looking up at me. My thoughts rumbled and then my feet shifted or maybe it was a warning from the house inside me quaking, reminding me of doors better left shut.

“She’s not coming home Willodean.” The shadow hissed slaying me with his awful words.

“No. No. That’s not true. Stop it. Go away.” I said out loud. Crushing monologues filled my mind, brutal information, routing and rerouting down massacred lanes, rights and wrongs, should I, maybe so, better not, Pandora’s box, the wicked witch is dead, curiosity killed the cat, lions, tigers and bears, OH MY! It was horrible. I absolutely despise that my mind can go from ice cream to death in a split second.

The next thing I know—I’m standing in front of the dreadful door. It’s only five feet away but it looks like a mile. 
No Willodean. Do not go in the bedroom
. 
But why? What are they hiding?
 Inside me a line of circuits are fizzling, tossed, turned, and shorted out. Click. 
Knob on. Mission forward. No turning back.
 I have no idea who will win. Sometimes I wonder if I’m involved at all or just a vessel for destruction, a vacant house possessed by voices, a toy to be dismantled, a spirit without say-so, an empty crackle shell left clinging to a wooden post.

Stay out. Don’t go in. You heard Dell.

Yes, Do it. Who cares what she said. Go inside. Do it.

No. Don’t. Remember…

Yes. Do. Go in. Go. Go. Go.

The doorway looks further and further away and my peripheral views are distorted. The long treacherous hallway is narrow with slick floors as if I’m sliding, closer and closer without taking a step. Before I know it—I’m on the other side of the door as if a benevolent force pushed me in. I am frozen in horror, a scream crawled up my throat but never left my lips. I was free falling, fighting air, pressing against it but falling, falling yet standing, immovable. An engaging scent attacks my nostrils. Copper pennies, metallic, and sour. My tongue curls. My senses go on high alert, engaged with the nightmare in front of me.
Whir, whir, and whir.
 The box fan in the window takes my heart rhythm, and mocks it, the revolving blades banding together, pulling me into their unsettling place, inside the hollow spaces, between the whir and the surging beats of my own blood. I enter that place of unspeakable terror, a desolate island where a soul is left in anguish and irrevocable sadness of the horrors left behind. I come undone with the vision before me. The feather bed is a scattered field of wild flowers with pot holes of blood, some dried, some shiny and lacquered. The feather pillow is a freshly puffed up grave with droppings of brown blood and behind it, the white antique headboard, a tombstone with a last epitaph of brush strokes, deep slashes and swirls. Next to the bed, on the nightstand was the dreaded Mason jar, reminders of Aunt Raven and being alone—dying alone. It had tipped over and spilled out the Immortelles', the everlasting. The yellow flower Maw Sue plucked in remembrance of her, after her death lay amongst the fallen. The remaining tribes of my forefathers lay in a rainbow of ethnic petals, pink, yellow, red and orange and drizzled with blood
as if they had been sacrificed on an altar. 
The dried flowers like mangled corpses in piles, arms leafy and wilted, tossed and twisted with petal faces wrinkled
and long overdue for the grave, spent and dried up from a war.  An army of petal faced soldiers lying next to peppermint candy bombs.  H
anging above the nightstand in a gold frame is a picture of
Maw Sue and Jefferson Starbuck.  I loved that picture and had never seen Maw Sue so happy but now
their stoic faces turn foggy and then
a pasty white with hollow eyes. 
They
are confined within the frame and reach to get out but can’t as if they are stuck in time. 
Now I’m seeing Dresden’s.  This can’t be good.
 
No. It's a painting Willodean. It's not real. THIS is not real. 

I grab my face to wipe the pictures from my eyes and yet they remain, taunting me with sights and sounds. 
And then I realize what I’m seeing, the full capacity of the room, evidence left behind, terrible awful evidence. 
What happened here? Did Maw Sue do this? Where is she? Do the shadows have her?
 
My mind rambled. 
I fear they have succeeded to take what I love. They have killed Maw Sue and the frame is reminding me, of what’s to come, my fate, my destiny. I am racked with shakes and palpitations as time slowed to a crawl. Fears, deep fears. 
Tick—tock.
 A chill riveted up each bone. 
Tick—tock.
 
Tick—tock.
 The ticking hammer slam was annoying, a brutal crush to the skull between my ears. My eyes search the room
to turn it off.  There he is, father time, sitting in
t
he midst of the petal soldiers and candy bombs.  It is a
round Deco west clock, gold in color with a clear facing and twin bells. There were two streaks of blood in straight lines, distinctly crossing; one at 2 and the other at 8. Underneath the clear facing, the clocks slender black hands moved in a shiver, a vibrating terror as it crossed the blood splattered trail. It relived the terror of what happened here, every hour on the hour. I became a prisoner of sights, and sounds in extreme mode, clashing and banging and ticking and whirring.

Rewind. Go backwards. Take it all back. Start over. Un-see. Un-do. Un-hear.

God. Willodean, why did you open the door? You never listen. What is seen cannot be unseen. Don’t you know that by now? What is heard cannot be unheard. You can’t return now. It’s too late. Father time does not rewind. Don’t you know that? No returns. No repeats. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

“Forward!” The voice screamed. I spun around frightened beyond measure.
I saw no one. 
I felt a dull thud stare into my back and slowly turned
around.  I thought for sure it’d be Aunt Raven’s ghost rising up from the yellow dried flower petals.  But instead, it was George. 
He was there, just like he’d always been, standing behind the deco clock, towering upwards in a graceful poise with a high neck and chiseled chin. A noble air of dignity held his firm stance, unpretentious, and confident. The George Washington lamp was antique, older than me and Maw Sue put together. George stood tall, unaffected by the terror in his midst as if the petal soldiers lying at his feet were casualties of war, a consequence of battle. His white wig was dotted with red blood spots, while a few streaks flanked the outskirts of his straight nose. He stood in his common stance known to all who study history, his legs firmly grounded and sure footed, same trademark facial expression, chin lifted high, and his eyes on the horizon, arm stretched out and finger pointed forward. By the mere sight of him you’d think the Delaware River was right outside these walls and he was commanding his troops ahead.

“Forward!” He said again, more dominant. I trembled.
Why am I seeing and hearing all of this?
 Father time, as if not to be outdone, clicked his way in, slashing seconds and minutes of my life away, 
tick tock.
 I was trapped inside myself, inside the house, inside me, much like a cement statue, like George, unable to move, yet seeing, hearing, and feeling. 
Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Whir. Whir. Whir. Forward! Forward!
 

The derangement of the room merged with the madness of me,
and formed an alignment and I could not take it anymore. 
My eyes
grew wild and dangerous. 
I lunged at the gold clock. I smashed it against the wall. It
exploded in tiny pieces of wires and coil springs. 
Copper pins and metal pieces fell on the open bible sitting next to George’s foot pedestal. For a few seconds, the ticking stopped. The bible was flipped open to Psalms 23. I drew closer to the pages until my eyes formed a pin light on the words underlined in deep rigid red marks as if someone dipped their fingernails in blood and used it as a writing instrument. I read the words to myself, my mind taking refuge and horror in the pronouncement of their meaning.

…the shadow of death.

…fear no evil.

…for you are with me.

Three lines, twelve words. 
Tick. Tock.
 Whatever terrible, horrible had entered this room, the almighty God sat amongst them
. Whir, whir, whir.
 A part of me was soothed by this information and a part of me was terribly afflicted.
Even in the cruelest of inhumanities, it says we shall not go out alone. In the evil that abides around us, we shall not go out alone.
 The sharp metallic scent of blood mixed with the sweet humid air, and the peppermint bombs made me queasy. On my third gagging reflex I could hear the commander yelling.

“Forward!” George screamed. His hand pointed the way, his blue eyes pierced the darkness of our vision like shiny swords, slashing the way out... 
for me, for him
.

“Forward! Forward!” My heart pounded. The images inside my head were almost too much, the house shaken and stirred to prick unimaginable fears, Maw Sue dead, tortured, shocked.
How else to explain the massacre that took place here? Is she lifeless now, leaving only her blood behind? Is she as dead as Aunt Raven's rose petal stem, dead as all the other petal people, the ancestors they represent? Is she as dead as the prophets who wrote the gospel, leaving only words and spirits behind?

I fear I will be next. 
It is the inevitable curse. 
I want to set the clock backwards, repair and rewind Father time to the past, to redo, to make a different decisio
n, un-see, un-hear, unsay, undo, unborn. 
The clock is scattered across the floor, dismantled, motionless, soundless but the internal clock of regret, inside the house, inside me, took life from me in tiny increments of horror.
Tick. Tock.

“Forward!” His voice shrieked and split my eardrums. I bolted out the door, through the living room, and past the kitchen to the outside porch. Peppy barked and scratched the mesh with his paws. I jumped over the stairs and hit the hard dirt. 

“Forward!” I could still hear George screaming in warning. And this time, I listened. I obeyed the bloody president. I ran and I never looked back.

Hope Chest Hope

The rectangular atrocity sits in my bedroom. Its maple wood, three foot long and eighteen inches wide, with intricate carvings and unusual metal clasps and hinges. The hope chest was a sweet sixteen present from my parents. Housewife Lena went on and on, about how I could fill it with household goods and kitchen items
to save for when I get married and she did it in front of my friends. 
The horror.
 I was embarrassed to death all the while stuck in Betty Crocker hell while Lena explained one too man
y times how the blender worked.  She went into detail, how it
had state of the art turbo blades to chop, mix,
and blend. 
Can it run away and take me with it?
 She would not shut up. On and on about stupid stuff, wedding anniversaries, recipes and holidays, a Goddamned horror movie I couldn’t rewind. I wanted to pick up the eight inch, state of the art, jagged cook’s knife and stab myself in the chest.