Chapter 19 #2
I stretched out on top of my sleeping bag, and I felt a choking loneliness crawl up my throat, reminding me of nights spent alone in my aunt and uncle’s house as a child.
They liked to send me up to bed and have movie nights with Dinah in the den beneath my room.
I would listen to their shouts and laughter from below, and my chest would burn with the desire to be touched.
I felt a wetness on my cheeks, and I realized I was crying, something I never did in front of others. I searched around the room to see if anyone else was watching.
But as I scanned, I noticed the bunk beds were slowly dissolving one by one, so that eventually they were gone, replaced by shapeless furniture and pictures hanging on the walls.
I was alone in the room now, crouched in a child’s squat.
A woman suddenly approached and kneeled in front of me, grabbing my arms. She had muted blue eyes framed by a cloud of hair the color of an old penny.
Lulabelle.
Her secret, unadorned self. She leaned closer, and I saw her eyes were bloodshot and her lips were cracked.
She said, “Rhea. Angel. I need you to listen to me.” She squeezed harder, and I winced in pain. “What I’m about to tell you is the honest to God truth. People will tell you it isn’t, but don’t listen to them, you hear me?”
She paused, waiting for an answer, and my head nodded of its own will. I tried desperately to stand up and speak to her, but my body and mouth wouldn’t move. I only crouched there, paralyzed.
I saw her mouth move again, and I heard noise coming out of it, but this time I couldn’t make out what she was saying. I strained to piece together words from the strange tones, but it was impossible.
A pounding came from the door, and she jerked her head toward it. She let go of me, crept over to one of the curtained windows and peeked through the slit.
She gasped and stepped back quickly, bringing a hand to her chest. The pounding came again, shaking the wood in its hinges.
She ran over to me and pulled me up from the couch into her arms.
Again, that strange tone came from her mouth as she spoke to me with fear in her eyes.
Then, the room was getting darker, and her face was going out of focus, and I squinted, attempting to make her out as best I could, but I could feel her slipping away…
Then, there was only darkness, complete and smothering. I tried to move, but my body was still paralyzed. When I opened my mouth to scream, no sound came out. The trapped feeling I’d experienced since I was a child filled my being, thick and fresh as if for the first time—
Then there was a flash of light, blinding me for a moment.
When my vision cleared, I was standing in the middle of the woods.
I touched my face, and I realized I could move again.
I scanned around and saw no sign of the shelter’s outdoor light.
I had no headlamp, and so the trees formed thick, impenetrable walls around me, studded with the pearly eyeballs of creatures prowling in the shadows.
I thought of the woman who’d gotten lost on the trail, found dead months later just a few miles from civilization.
Out of the darkness, a brilliant white animal emerged, and I froze, afraid it might be a coyote or mountain lion.
It amiably padded over and rubbed its head against my side, and I saw that it was only a large shaggy dog.
Dogs were off-limits in this part of the trail, and I wondered if someone had snuck him in and then lost him or if he’d run away from a nearby house.
I patted his head, and a deep calm settled over me.
He took a few steps ahead and then looked back, as if beckoning me to come along.
I followed him in the darkness, and I finally began to breathe normally, my heart no longer thumping in my veins. I had the sense that nothing could hurt me when this dog was around.
After a while, we came upon a clearing bright with opal moonlight and with a large, twisting tree at its center.
The dog disappeared behind the tree, and a pale man stepped from behind it wearing a crisp white suit.
I should have been frightened, but I wasn’t.
It seemed entirely natural that he would be there. Perhaps he was the dog’s owner.
I walked closer to the man and the tree, feeling a sudden desire to touch its dark, lustrous trunk. Perhaps I could curl up inside its hollow and wait for Micah to find me.
But when I put my hand out, the man grabbed my wrist. I couldn’t see his face through the glare of the moon. I inhaled sharply, and he pulled me toward him, his breath sweet and hot on my cheek.
Fifteen years, he whispered.
And that’s the last thing I remember.
I woke the next morning in my bunk to the faint embers of a fire and Micah curled in the bed above me, dead to the world. I had no idea how I’d gotten back, or if I’d ever left.
I walked out of the shelter to a viewpoint overlooking the mountains, and I let the chill wash away the rot in my head.
I didn’t know what to think of the vision of my mother. It had been glorious to see her in the flesh, moving and talking in three dimensions, to finally witness a moment only I had with her.
But was it real? It reminded me of the recurring nightmare I’d had as a kid, and when stitched together with the encounter with the man in white, it seemed more dream than memory. What had he meant by “fifteen years”? In fifteen years, I would be 33. The same age as my mother when she died.
But what did that mean?
I had tried for so long to remember her love and what we’d had together, and now that I might finally have a piece of it, rather than comfort, it only bewildered me.
I craved memories and visions that were real, that I could rely on and bring to life. I wanted solidity, stability, my feet on the ground. That was what I needed.