“All of them,” I clarified, which seemed to satisfy her.
“Well, what would you like to know?”
“How many people survived,” I started. “Their names and where they are, for example, would be helpful.” I paused, and watched her reaction to the end of my question carefully. “How many have died of some sort of heart related issue?”
She didn’t flinch. She knew.
I watched as her gaze drifted down to my father’s ring. I felt it pulse, so icy on my finger that I flinched. Then her eyes snapped back up to mine—too quickly, like she hadn’t actually wanted me to notice that she had noticed the ring.
“You still wear that?” she covered, her eyes a bit harder than they were when we had first started talking. Hard like the eyes I used to know when she was a nun. I could almost imagine her in her habit again, throwing chalk at my head.
“It’s the only tie I have to my family.”
“I see. Your family from another world,” her condescending chuckle as she spoke the last word made a sour taste rise up from the pit of my stomach into my mouth. I inhaled and swallowed to get rid of it.
“Have you ever had the ring examined? Do you know what it’s made of?” she continued.
“No.” I had no idea where the line of questioning was supposed to be leading. I wanted to ask about the other children, about demons and heart attacks, about whether she had seen or had been in some sort of dark situation since the orphanage. Hell, I even wanted to save her life and warn her if something really was after the survivors.
“Pity. I was sure you were going to tell me it came from some ore found in the magical ancestral mountains of Orenda.”
My ring pulsed and alarm bells went off in my head. I couldn’t remember what parts of Orenda I had mentioned to Elizabeth, but I certainly didn’t talk about the mountains. “You seem to know way more than you’re letting on, Sister,” I hissed the last word.
“Oh, come now,” Simon Chantale was patting my hand lightly, sensing my anger bubbling. Somehow, the motion worked, and I inhaled and swallowed again although I couldn’t seem to control my clenched jaw.
She continued, “We’ve been studying, Edmund. Ever since that day in the orphanage we’ve been looking for answers. We’ve been comparing notes and have learned quite a bit from the things you’ve said to us, especially in light of what we can remember and what we have in Father Michaels’ journals. We’ve been searching for you for a long time, Edmund. We’ve been looking in the supernatural circles, the covens, the religious sects, everywhere we could think of to find answers.”
“And what have you found?”
“You. Finally you.”
“Well, I have to warn you,” I stuttered, getting back to the original point of our visit. “I think you’re both in danger. If something is killing the survivors from the orphanage, you’re both on a very short list.”
“Actually,” Elizabeth said, her voice back to being softer, her eyes back to a look of kindness, “we need to warn you. There are many people who have heard of you, Edmund. Many of them are Catholics who are highly interested in the orphanage. In those stories you’re referred to mostly by your given name, Alexander. But oddly enough, there are also many witches who have heard your name and whose covens have been tasked to find you.”
“Tasked by who?”
“Whom,” Simon Chantale corrected, then blushed. “Sorry, sometimes the teacher in me gets out.”
Elizabeth ignored her entirely. “Dark forces. Satanic influences. Covens are scared. Witches are dying.”
“Linda Rose never said any of this,” I said. I had a hard time believing covens of witches were searching for me or that witches were dying and Linda Rose didn’t know about it.
Elizabeth did that hand motion again where she seemed to dismiss something. “No, no. We got to her and her coven first. We found them here, actually. That damned tree sure seems to mean something to a lot of people.”
“We used the church records to find her before the other covens did,” Simon Chantale clarified. “If they knew that she had any sort of connection with you, they would have already turned her against you or killed her in the process. Nicholas, too.”
“So yes, people are dying. Heart attacks and all,” Elizabeth’s tone was devoid of emotion. She was delivering facts. “But no one is targeting survivors of the orphanage fiasco, they’re targeting you.”
“Who’s targeting me?”
“Some covens are darker. Some witches are weaker. Some will believe anything that comes to them in spirit or as a spirit guide. The ones who don’t know any better even allow themselves to be possessed for a modicum of power. Why do you think the church is so against witchcraft? It leads to gullibility.”
“Funny,” I allowed my thoughts to spill out of my head aloud, “a lot of people think the same thing about the Catholics.”
Elizabeth’s eyes narrowed, but her lips stayed silent. Then, she gave Simon Chantale a quick glance that conveyed something that had meaning to them.
“We need to leave. We’ve spent too much time with you already,” Simon Chantale spoke gently.
“But, I have more questions.”
“We’ve answered all that we can,” she responded. “We needed to deliver our warning and we have done so.”
“Well, can I see you again? I haven’t even had a chance to tell you what you’ve meant to me, and what it means to me that you’re alive.”
“Come on, Chantale,” Elizabeth chided, like a mother using a child’s full name when they’re in trouble.
“Good luck, dear boy,” Simon Chantale whispered, kissing me on the cheek. Her lips were cold, unlike her hand, which now slipped off my knee as she stood.
“We’ll see you soon,” Elizabeth called, linking arms with Simon Chantale and walking off into the fog.
I was entirely shocked by their hasty departure. For a few minutes I sat on the marble bench as the thick fog swirled around me. Then, something odd hit me and I cried out into the fog, “Hey wait a minute! The trail is—” but there was no response. My voice reverberated as if the fog were an impenetrable wall. “—that way,” I finished, although it was only loud enough for me to hear.
I had no idea where the two ex-nuns went, or where they were going, but wondered if there was another trail in the direction they headed, or if maybe they had gone the right way and I was just turned around. I decided I would try to find my way back to Mother Tree to get my bearings and thank her. I stood from the marble bench and took two steps before I tripped over something sticking up from the ground.
I caught myself as I tumbled, but my hands slipped over a smooth surface before finally grinding to a halt on the dirt and grass. My nose was inches from a slick granite slab that had a date carved into it.
It was a marker, too overgrown to be fully read. The date stamped in the stone was just nine years earlier, which made me wonder if I had stumbled onto the flagstone of the park marking the date it was completed, or some significant event that led to the park’s dedication.
My shin ached from whatever it had contacted with, and I turned to find I had ripped my pants on a large rock, which, on closer inspection, had an oddly familiar shape. No, it wasn’t a rock… it was a stone cross.
I was in a graveyard.
I sat, stunned from the fall but more bewildered, as a cold chill pulsed from my father’s ring and shot straight up my spine. The fog was still swirling after my fall, and I could almost make out the name on the headstone I had tripped over.
The fog was thickening fast. I needed to get back down the mountain but my hunch, and my father’s incredibly active and icy ring, pulled me toward the stone.
I got low to the ground where the fog was thinnest, my mind trying to make sense of what I was sure I couldn’t be seeing. The stone read “Sister Mary Elizabeth, Taken home to God.”
But there had to be plenty of Sister Mary Elizabeth’s. This couldn’t be the same Mary Elizabeth I was just talking to.
/> Just as I had that thought, a break between rolls of fog exposed a second stone. This one was undeniable. “Sister Mary Chantale. Now she sings with the angels.”
Twenty-One
The fog cleared as I came down off the mountain. I immediately got into Nicholas’s car and sat stunned for a few moments listening to the sound of my heart pumping blood into my brain. My stomach felt tense, even though I left the contents of it somewhere back in the graveyard.
I couldn’t decide what I had just seen. I’d encountered demons and shadows, all evil and destructive, but never a ghost—not like that. The nuns were warm. They smelled alive. They looked aged. Were they evil like the energumen of my childhood? Did Joshua send them? Did an angel? Did God?
I turned the key to the ignition and checked my phone, which I had stupidly left in the car. The battery gauge flashed red and the number on the clock surprised me. Eight p.m. I had been up on the mountain for over twelve hours.
I tried to organize my thoughts to account for the length of time. Maybe my conversation with Mother Tree had lasted longer than I had thought? Maybe somehow talking to the late Sister Mary Elizabeth and Sister Mary Chantale somehow sped up time? I didn’t know and the cognitive dissonance was enough for me to consider on one final possibility: maybe I was going crazy.
I shoved that thought out of my head and settled on not knowing. My brain switched gears immediately as I scrolled through my text messages: five from Xia, three from Nicholas, and one from Henric.
Meet at the store for drinks?
I responded to that one first. Running late. On my way. About an hour.
I was halfway through Xia’s second text message when the response came. No problem. Working on a cow anyway. You can help me stock the meat first.
Bastard was going to put me to work. I shifted into gear and pulled back onto the highway.
Xia’s text messages got more frantic. They went from I can’t believe you are leaving me with Nicholas all day after the night we had. I told you I wanted to meet the nun, to If you seriously don’t respond I’m going to call search and rescue. I sent her a quick note to let her know I was okay and that I wouldn’t stay long at the bar with Henric. I left out the ghosts for now. That wasn’t exactly something I could figure out how to say over text message. I got halfway through writing “I love you” before I realized it, then paused while my head slowed, and at least one piece of my life became clear.
I was in love.
My finger hovered over the backspace key for a few moments before I finally decided to finish the sentence. Then it hovered over the send key for a few moments more, before I just closed the text window, leaving the message unsent. She deserved to hear it in person first anyway.
I took a deep breath as my foot pressed on the accelerator. I allowed the feeling of excitement to take the place of the knot in my stomach. I rested my head on the headrest and let all my busy, jumbled thoughts swirl around a single constant point: Xia.
I recalled the memory of her face, inches from mine in the moonlight; reminisced about the way her red lips explored my body; remembered what it was like to fold our bodies together. But my favorite memory was the way she looked at me that day in the cafeteria—the day I had turned the tea into wine. Then, I realized that she had been in love with me long before today. She was just waiting for me to realize it.
I picked my phone back up, and pressed send.
When I got to Henric’s store, I had already decided I wasn’t going to stay. I was going to tell Henric that we could have drinks another time. I wanted nothing more than to get home to Xia. A message or phone call wouldn’t do. He would take that sort of thing personally. I would tell him in person and he would see the yearning in my eyes and the look on my face. I would use every ounce of persuasive magic I had in my eyes to get him to let me go to her… without firing me, of course.
It wasn’t abnormal for Henric’s car to be the only one parked behind the market. Usually, only he and I could stomach the walk through the back door. You had to pass through the butchery to get to the store from the back door and most employees preferred to park out in the front lot. I never really understood that, but I guess my experiences had given me a somewhat different view of death. The back door opened to a hallway that was lined with freezers, including one walk-in where we had full, bone-in animals. There was a small window through which you could see the carcasses hanging, but that wasn’t the part the employees hated. The hallway then opened into a larger room that had an industrial sized meat grinder and a pulley system so the larger pieces of meat could be easily lifted into the grinder.
I had never noticed how eerie it appeared at night, the large hooks casting menacing shadows from the nearby windows. When Xia, Nicholas, and I were here last, I hadn’t remembered even coming through this room. On the far side of the wall was the meat trimming station room, where I had woken from my last trip from Orenda. The employee lounge separated the grinding room from the back of the store.
Light was spilling from a cracked doorway in the meat trimming room, and the whole place smelled of rust and blood. I checked the grinder, mostly out of habit. Meat had been ground there tonight—the grinder hadn’t been cleaned, but the beef had already been taken and packaged. I picked up a paper wrapped package in each hand, heading toward the fridges.
“Don’t bother with that now, I actually need your help in here,” Henric’s voice called from the trimming room. I shrugged and set the ground beef back onto the stack of neat rows.
“You couldn’t have warned me that I would be working tonight? I wore my favorite pair of shoes,” I joked, realizing my right pant leg was already ripped and somewhat bloody from my fall in the graveyard. I hoped I didn’t already get blood on my shoes. I realized that Henric might also notice my ripped pants—my mind was already constructing a cover story.
“You know,” I continued, “I was actually hoping I could take a rain check,” I pulled the door open, prepared to give my best puppy-dog-sad-face look. Unfortunately, it was wasted.
The room was empty.
More than empty. The room was pristine. The metal cutting tables had been meticulously sanitized. The scent of bleach flooded my nostrils and nauseated me. The mental distractions I had been using washed away with the scent of the bleach, my mind thrown back into chaos. The pit in my stomach returned. Mixed with the smell of the cleaning agents, it caused my stomach to lurch.
I heaved, but swallowed it back and spun out of the room.
“Henric?”
He was there, right behind me, inches from my face. He shoved me against the wall, his body falling heavily into mine. I heard the sound of heavy chains. My mouth flooded with rusty liquid.
Henric’s dark eyes were wild as I became aware of a sharp pain in my right shoulder. I tried to gasp but ended up splattering Henric’s face with blood. My blood.
I looked down to see Henric’s hands on one of the metallic hooks—a hook which he had just shoved under my shoulder, through my chest.
I felt a surge of adrenaline that tried, but failed, to cover the immense pain. My eyes started to darken and my knees gave way. I would have fallen except that my body registered somehow that if I fell I would catch my full weight on the hook—and I was already delirious from the fire that was shooting through my chest.
I tried to inhale but my breath made a gurgling noise and my mouth flooded with more rusty liquid. Henric started spinning—the whole room started spinning, and I fell forward into him.
“Hiya, Edmund. You’ve been one tough guy to find.”
I didn’t know if it was my delirium or if I was losing consciousness, but the voice wasn’t Henric’s.
“No, no. Don’t pass out yet. We need to have a little chat.”
He put his hand on the hook again and I felt it grow warm. My awareness returned as the pain lessened.
“That’s better.”
I was conscious enough to feel his hot breath in my face now, to feel the warm blood running
down my hands. My brain was functioning enough to realize that my right lung must be punctured because every time I inhaled, blood bubbled upward into my mouth. I found that if I leaned toward the right and took shorter breaths it didn’t feel like I was about to drown.
“Joshua,” I choked out.
He put his hand on my forehead and tilted my head upward, pulling my eyes open to meet his in the process. They were a deep red, although I wasn’t sure if they were really red, or if that was the only color my mind could see.
I started choking out the spell I had learned as a child, the spell to free someone from possession, but Joshua laughed.
“Stupid boy. I’m not one of them. That won’t work on me.”
My mind drifted to the time when I was a child, to my first death, the death that brought me to Earth. It didn’t seem that long ago now. The memory was vivid, the red tint of the world as blood poured from a different wound was actually familiar. Was this my life, flashing before my eyes?
“That’s it,” Joshua said. “I need you to remember. How did you get here?”
But I couldn’t remember. I didn’t know. I was twelve before I remembered anything in the orphanage. The swirling blackness, the same blackness that accompanied words I knew but couldn’t connect meaning to in the orphanage, returned now to eat away at my awareness. I knew I was in trouble when I started to find the dark oblivion comforting.
I heard the whirl of machinery coming to life and the hook tugged upward. Pain shot through my arm as the hook supported more of my weight. The pain brought me back to consciousness.
“Stay with me, boy. How did you remember who you were?”
My father’s ring. Father Michaels had given it to me on the day of my communion.
The machine whirled again and my feet left the floor. They felt heavy and plump, like when the dentist numbs your face and you spend half an hour poking at it afraid he did something to make you fat.