Chapter 9
Into the Brilliant Darkness
Alex
God, she hated it here. Hated the very air in the room. Hated everything about it.
Alex felt her throat constrict as she ascended the final step and walked the length of the dim attic. The candlelight flickered crazily as her hand trembled. Just like every other time she’d entered this room since waking here that awful morning, the almost-memory hammered at her. Rhythmically, relentlessly pounding outside the barrier of her mind as she looked around at the now familiar space. Dresser, rocking chair, crib, cot, musty trunk, old coat tree... Something would surely trigger a memory. But it didn’t. As she stood there—right there on the very spot where it must have happened—she still had no recollection of the attack. No picture of her attacker.
“Spooked out?”
For once, Brooke’s voice didn’t have that taunting edge.
“Scared stiff,” Maryanne breathlessly confessed.
Alex didn’t doubt it. She was scared herself, and she’d already done it once before; they hadn’t. And though she’d loved the exhilaration of joining in with the night, loved knowing that part of her had slipped through the stained glass unscathed to fly into the darkness, it was still a frightening prospect. A slip into the unknown. Yet as this week had passed, Alex had thought about little else, and the niggling craving to do it again had grown into an itch. She wanted to do it again.
She would.
The three girls placed their candles carefully, strategically, so no flopping bodies would knock them over. Two on the dresser to their left, one on an old trunk to their right. Then they sat down in front of the window. Between the candles and the wide wash of moonlight falling through the window, there was plenty of light. Alex and Brooke sat easily cross-legged, while Maryanne sat with knees drawn up and arms wrapped around her legs.
Brooke leaned to peer out the window. “Not a cloud in the sky.”
Alex followed her gaze. Brooke was right.
The stars shone against the beautiful blackness. The half-moon hung brilliant and unobscured. She knew it was cold out, though. That crisp cold you get with a clear autumn night. She could feel the chill just sitting here so close to the heavy glass. A tiny shudder skated over her skin and she shook it away.
The single candle to the right flickered, causing their shadows to dance.
Maryanne had bought three candles—one for each of them—at a local craft shop. They were wide and white and stood on their respective perches without worry of tipping. Brooke had suggested that big, heavy-duty flashlights or Coleman lanterns might have been a better choice when she’d seen Maryanne’s purchases, but Alex and Maryanne had overridden her.
They both understood. Connie had lived by candlelight as a prisoner in this attic. They could ask for no more. It just wouldn’t feel right.
And as Alex looked over at Maryanne in this moment of reflection, it struck her again how tired she looked. More lost than usual today. Was it just the revelations of Connie’s diary? The dark secrets of Harvell House? That was a big part of it, no doubt, but it wasn’t the whole story. There’d been something lost about Maryanne from the moment she’d stepped into Harvell House. Something that had come with her.
“Want me to read tonight?” This from Maryanne, but not asked with any real belief she’d get a positive answer.
Oh, crap! Alex had been staring at her. No wonder the girl thought something was expected of her. Alex shook her head. “No, I’ll read.”
She opened the book carefully. She wouldn’t dream of dog-earring a page, and so the tiny slip of paper she’d inserted as a bookmark earlier, now drifted down to the floor as she found the spot she’d chosen to read from tonight.
The guilt arose the moment she angled the book toward the light and looked down at Connie’s small, compact writing. Just like last time, something deep inside balked at sharing Connie Harvell’s words.
“Why not start where we left off the last time?” Brooke asked. “September 9, 1962.”
“That was the night Connie first flew out.” Maryanne wrapped her arms a little tighter around her knees.
“Cast out,” Alex corrected. “Connie calls it casting out, which is as good a term as any, I guess. And she called her body on the floor her original.” She aimed a quelling look at Brooke. “And no, we’re not picking up where we left off because there’s more to understand. There’s more to know about Connie and how... how everything came to be. What was happening to her. Not just how she cast out. Not just the parts—”
“That serve us,” Maryanne finished for her in a quiet voice.
“She was being raped,” Brooke said. “By this guy Billy. We know that and—”
“And there’s more!” Alex snapped. She glared at Brooke, who now wore a defensive expression. “If we’re going to do this—if you want to learn this casting thing—we’re going to do it my way. End of story. That’s it.”
It was Brooke who was first to avert her glaring eyes. “Fine! You’re the queen of those bloody scribbles. The keeper of the sacred text!”
“Don’t mock her!” Alex felt her fingers digging into the diary and forced herself to relax them so she wouldn’t damage the delicate binding. “You don’t know what she’d been through. You—”
Maryanne sighed. “Oh come on, you two! Are we going to do this or not?” It wasn’t a question and she didn’t wait for an answer. “Alex, read from wherever you want to. Then... ”
She couldn’t finish. And Alex wasn’t sure she herself wanted to articulate what they’d promised this morning.
Brooke did it for them, without even the smallest hesitation. “Then we all try to cast out.”
“Yeah,” Alex agreed, calming down. “Then we try to cast out.”
Alex began.
August 14, 1962
Sometimes I pretend I’m in a fairy tale locked away in this attic. Rapunzel was trapped in a tower. But her hair was longer than mine.
I know I’m too old for such childish thoughts. I’m sixteen, for God’s sake! But I can’t help it. I think of my father—my real father—and imagine him rushing in to save his only daughter. He’s been dead three years now. He was a good man.
Mother should never have married again. She must see that now. He made me call him ‘father’, right from the start. Stepfather. That’s what he is. Jailor. And if the devil could walk in human form with a bible shoved up in his armpit, then he’d be that too.
No. I guess that would be his son, Billy.
It scares me to think this way.
It really does! I know he’s not the devil—not the one that my stepfather preaches of who waits for me in hell, to carry my ‘whore self away to be his bride in the fiery pit’.
If only he knew it was his beloved Billy’s baby that grows in my ‘whore’ belly.
Brooke gasped. “Connie was pregnant!”
Alex grimaced. “Yeah, by her stepbrother, Billy. Sick bastard.”
“Poor girl,” Maryanne said. “The nightmare just keeps getting worse for her. No wonder she—”
“Cast out of her body,” Alex finished for her. “She had to.”
Another piece of paper fell as Alex turned the pages. The slip of white glowed faintly on the hardwood floor.
“Listen to this entry,” she said. “This’ll really show you... well, just listen.”
September 23, 1962
I saw my mother.
Tonight when I went out, I went to find her.
I know that she’d come see me in this awful attic if she could. It has to be my stepfather that won’t let her come. He rules her with an iron fist—one he claims to be God-given. Just as he’s done ever since he stepped foot in this house. We didn’t need anyone else here in Harvell House. We could’ve lived with being poor.
So, tonight as my bulging body fell to the floor and I moved beyond the window, I didn’t roam the fields or skim above the trees. I didn’t head to the woods to watch the foxes cower. I went down.
I went to the kitchen window, and I saw my mother there.
She looked so old it broke my heart! Her cheekbones stuck out. Her eyes were absolutely sunken in her skull, dark and hollow and sad beyond belief. She looked completely defeated as she worked there in the kitchen late at night, kneading the dough for the fresh bread that my stepfather insisted upon for breakfast.
The window was open and I wanted to call out to her so much! I needed to speak her name. I didn’t want her to see me, not in a way that would surely frighten her. But oh, I still couldn’t help but whisper, “Mother”.
She didn’t hear me. She didn’t turn around or even look around in a ‘what’s-that-sound’ kind of way. I spoke louder. Still nothing. She just kept kneading the bread and staring off into nothing. I raised my voice louder even as I crouched down lower in the bushes. Oh dear God, how I yelled! But mother still did not hear me.
I knew I couldn’t scream my loudest... I couldn’t do that to her.
But as I moved to leave, I saw her blink. I saw her turn to the window, with a strange look on her face. She searched the shadows. But I couldn’t show myself as I was—I couldn’t do that to her either. So I just stayed down in the night and watched my poor mother a little while longer until she turned away.
The girls sat silently. No one said a single thing as Alex stared down into the page, nor did anyone say a word as she closed the diary with finality. Not for several minutes. Finally Alex herself broke the silence.
“You guys still want to do this? I was out for just a minute last time, and it was accidental. Do you really want to try to cast out? To become a cast? Like Connie?” Even as she asked the questions, Alex wondered if they’d be able to do it. Maybe the path Connie had forged out through the stained glass was a path only Alex could travel, because of the abuse they’d shared in this room. She had Connie’s diary; maybe she was supposed to have it. Maybe somehow Connie had left it there just for her and her alone. Alex welled with emotion to think Connie could have done that for her. There was a common bond they shared; two victims from the attic floor.
“I want out,” Brooke stood, and the candle flames flickered off to her left. Flickered but not like they were in danger of being snuffed out. More like they were dancing. “That’s right, isn’t it? ‘I want out’?”
Maryanne answered for her. “Yeah, I want out, I want out, I want out. Those are the words.”
Alex heard the tremor in the breath Maryanne drew, and even in the dim candlelight, she could see the other girl’s eyes glistening with tears. Instantly, Alex knew they weren’t just tears for Connie. They weren’t just tears of fear.
“Maryanne,” she said. “You don’t have to try this.”
Maryanne stood abruptly. Alex rose too.
They stood shoulder to shoulder, side by side in the attic of Harvell House—Maryanne, Alex and Brooke. Trembling as their fingertips touched the cold, cold glass.
“Look into the Madonna’s eyes,” Alex whispered.
The moon light shone through those amazing and yet strange blue eyes as the girls looked up into them. Compassionate. Benevolent. Promising escape. Offering reprieve from their worlds and their wounds.
“I want out,” Maryanne’s voice was thick with tears. She was the first to start tapping. “Please... I want out. I want out. I want out... ”
Alex joined in. And then, so did Brooke. The whispers became a chorus of chants, a holy plea for freedom.
And Alex knew that freedom suddenly. As did the other girls. They were right there on either side of her, and the night surrounded the three of them.
They’d done it! They’d cast out.
“Holy shit! I’m levitating! I’m levitating two stories above the ground!”
Alex swung toward Brooke. She’d heard that! Hadn’t she? Or had she just felt it?
“Oh wow, we did it!” Maryanne cried.
Yes! They could hear each other! Even if other people couldn’t hear them, they could communicate amongst themselves. One less thing to worry about while their defenseless bodies lay on that floor... “Yes, we did it,” Alex said.
“And, oh wow, would you just look!’ Maryanne said. “Everything’s so bright out here! Much brighter than when we’re in our bodies. I can even see you much better than I could the other night. You almost have a bit of a shimmering edge.” She lifted a black hand and looked down at it. “So do I!”
“We all do,” Brooke agreed. “But Alex didn’t have that shimmer the other night. We must see differently out here.”
Alex could find no fault with Brooke’s reasoning. It was much brighter than it should have been out here. Not daylight bright, but much brighter than could be accounted for by the available light. Much brighter than their non-cast eyes would have found it, she was certain. And that glittery edge—it made it much easier for them to see each other, yet Connie’s diary assured that other people would only see their pitch-black form, if they kept in the shadows. It was as though they were uniquely made for the night.
On that thought, Alex, following some instinct, held her hands out to the other girls. “Let’s own the night!”
Maryanne took her hand and Alex felt her surprise when their fingers touched. It wasn’t like flesh meeting flesh—not warm and pulsing with blood like their regular hands—but there was a strange solidity there that allowed them to grip each other. A weight.
Maryanne squeezed Alex’s hand and there was strength in her grip and in her voice. “That beats what I was going to say when you held your hands out like that.”
“Which was?”
“One for all and all for one.”
Brooke snorted, but she took Alex’s other hand and then Maryanne’s as well, to close the circle. If she found the sensation of their touch strange, she didn’t show it. “I was gonna say, ‘Let’s roll, bitches.’”
Their laughter rang around them.
Then Brooke released their hands and moved back, throwing her arms wide as if to embrace the night itself. “We got out! Can you believe it?”
Alex grinned at Brooke’s exuberance, but her smile faded quickly.
They’d gotten out, but part of them stayed in.
Alex looked in the window at their three bodies lumped on the floor in the pale, flickering wash of candlelight. Maryanne and Brooke moved closer to do the same, but quickly the two looked away and moved deeper into the darkness, leaving Alex hanging there outside the window.
Though she knew the night was cold, her cast didn’t feel it. But she did feel the warmth on her body—her original—in there, flanked by the semi-paralyzed bodies of original Maryanne and original Brooke.
Co-consciousness... “Come on!” Brooke urged from way over by the glistening river.
Alex glanced back with worry at their bodies on the floor, helpless. She hated to leave them. They were so damned vulnerable. But oh, how she wanted to soar!
So with a last look at their bodies, she followed Brooke’s urging and Maryanne’s delighted laughter. And the three casts soared out into the Mansbridge night.