Awaken, Shadows of a Forgotten Past

by Marcia Maidana

  “Perhaps, but you fail to acknowledge the one thing horses have in common with humans,” she taunted.

  “Remind me.”

  “Fear, my dear.” Her lips curled up into a sinister smile. Her words were true, especially in Sunny’s case. Swiftly, without hesitation, Mrs. White dug her hand into the sack. Retrieving a writhing serpent, she threw it at Sunny’s feet. A spasm of sheer terror enveloped me.

  I gave a desperate call for help, though I knew that no one would hear.

  The snake viciously swirled on the ground, snapping at Sunny. She neighed in panic and pounded the ground with her strong legs.

  The soul-wrenching anguish I felt being trapped in a stall with a terrified horse wasn’t for me. I had lived and loved; I wasn’t afraid to die. The torment that possessed me was for my baby. He deserved to feel the warmth of the sun on his skin, he deserved to meet his father, to love and to be loved—he deserved to live.

  Realizing that I couldn’t get past Sunny, I turned from her to face the wall to shield my baby. Dimly, I registered Mrs. White’s laugh. It sounded positively diabolical.

  Sunny reared on her hind legs, and her flailing hoofs hit my back. There was an audible crack as my spine snapped.

  “My baby!” I cried out and collapsed onto the floor.

  Through spasms of agony, I could hear Mr. Vines shouting, “Deborah, what the devil are you doing?” They were the last words I heard before losing consciousness.

  24

  ~ The Silent Angel ~

  A strong pressure being exerted on my body woke me. My eyelids, like heavy pieces of iron, creaked opened. My mind wouldn’t focus any more than my eyes. Where was I? What had happened? Mrs. White stood by me on the right side of the bed. Her arms locked in a straight position with her hands resting on top of my belly. I was vaguely aware of other servants in the room. One helped Mrs. White to press down on my belly, while another supplied Dr. Jones, who was stationed at the foot of the bed, with water and towels. The doctor’s face was etched with exhaustion and stress.

  Amidst the disorientation, my mind flashed an image before me. I saw Sunny’s fright and her strong legs beating on my body. I remembered the panic and pain and then everything going black.

  “Keep trying, ladies. We have to get the baby out,” Dr. Jones urged.

  “She’s losing too much blood—there’s no use,” Mrs. White discouraged in a weary tone, but her hands vigorously worked to push the baby down.

  “We have to get him out, or they’ll both die.” Catching my eye the doctor said, “Mrs. Sterling, can you hear me? We need you to push. Can you hear me?”

  His voice faded in the distance. My mind slipped away once more…

  On the edge of consciousness, I was pulled back by someone crying. I concentrated on the sound; it turned into a soft, clear little cry. My baby had been born. I struggled against the overpowering fatigue that trapped me. I was deeply weary and imprisoned inside a body which was oddly disconnected from the world.

  Slowly some shapes started to form in front of me. I was in my room and could see the people surrounding me clearly.

  “He won’t survive without her,” Mrs. White affirmed pessimistically.

  “He is a little fragile but looks healthy,” Dr. Jones observed. A baby boy…I had been right all along…it was a boy.

  I had to see him… I might never have the chance again. Mustering every ounce of strength I had left, I turned my eyes towards the sound. Mrs. White held a little bundle in her arms. I caught a glimpse of his tiny dark head and little hands. I yearned to hold him, to see his face. I tried to speak, but no sound came out of my mouth.

  My gaze followed Mrs. White as she left the room with my baby. I stared at the door for a long while. My baby would never return to me—that much I understood.

  “We are losing her! Bring more towels,” the doctor cried out. “Have you found General Sterling?”

  I saw the whiteness of the covers completely tinted red with my blood. My eyes were unbearably heavy, and everything went black once more.

  How much time had elapsed, I couldn’t tell, but long enough for Alex to arrive. He sat on a chair by the bed, holding my hand. I wish I could feel his touch, his warmth. I wish he could take me into his arms to comfort me, to take my suffering away, as he had always done.

  “There has to be something you can do,” Alex begged the doctor.

  “I wish there was but she has lost too much blood, and her spinal cord has been injured beyond repair. I’m sorry,” Dr. Jones replied.

  “We need to take her to London.”

  “No, general, moving her would only speed her passing.”

  “There must be something you can do! There must be!” Alex cried in agony.

  “I’m deeply sorry. I’m afraid that the damage is irreversible. All we can do is ease her last days, perhaps hours.”

  Alex groaned. “There has to be something we can do. I can’t lose her.”

  “I wish there was…” The doctor’s voice broke with compassion.

  “I don’t understand. How did this happen? It doesn’t make any sense.” The affliction in Alex’s voice deepened my own. I knew I was leaving him, but how could I?

  “We are lucky that Mr. Vines found her when he did,” reflected Dr. Jones.

  “Something must have scared Sunny. It’s not in her nature to be wild without a cause.”

  “Maybe she tried to ride it.” Mrs. White’s words sounded from the far end of the room, making me aware of her undesirable presence.

  “Nonsense! She wouldn’t do that,” Alex retorted.

  “I agree with the general. Mrs. Sterling loved the baby too much to try such a foolish thing,” affirmed Dr. Jones.

  “Florence, I am here. Everything is going to be fine. Can you hear me?” I wanted so desperately to communicate with Alex, but my voice refused to obey me. “I shouldn’t have left you. I’ll never forgive myself for leaving you when you needed me the most. If I would’ve only come back sooner.”

  Forcing my gaze to focus, I looked deeply into his eyes, inquiring for our baby. He understood my thoughts. “Oh, Florence, I’m so sorry. Our baby…he didn’t, he was too frail.” Many tears rolled down his cheeks as he spoke. My precious, tiny baby was dead. The failure was too immense to confront. Pain had won our long battle. I couldn’t fight it anymore. Alex pleaded, “Florence, please, don’t leave me…”

  In my mind, I spoke the words my traitorous body couldn’t. Alex, I wish I could stay. But my body is already gone. My life is slipping away. How I ache at what has been stolen from us. To feel your sweet embrace, to share our tears and laughter, our accomplishments and disappointments, to spend our days out in the sun playing together. All of that, along with bearing children, I can’t offer you anymore. I pray in time, you’ll find someone else who will fulfill your needs, and you’ll love and be happy again. I want that for you. But I also want you to know I will always love you, and I will always be thankful to have known your love.

  “We better let her rest,” Mrs. White suggested, interrupting my explanation as she approached the bed. My thoughts turned to her and how she had done this to us.

  “I’m not going to leave her again!” Alex replied angrily.

  My eyes met hers. “You are responsible for this.”

  “You are thinking about me,” her eyes seemed to respond. “Yes, what you’re thinking is true. I’m responsible for your misery, and you’ll take the truth to your grave. No one will ever know. We played, and you lost.”

  “I didn’t lose, I won. I’m taking Alex’s heart with me until he finds an honorable woman to love. But one thing is for sure, he will never love you,” my gaze replied. A shadow of fear crossed her face—she retreated to the corner of the room.

  I beheld Alex’s saddened eyes. I would never forget them. He would always be the love of my life. I didn’t know how or when, but someday we would be united again. For now, I just wanted to rest. Alexander Sterling, I love you. I will always love yo
u. I closed my eyes; I felt his lips touch mine one last time.

  “I love you, my lady,” Alex whispered and I slept—at least it felt to me as if I had slipped into a peaceful sleep, but an instant later, I was shocked to find myself in my spirit form standing at the side of the bed, across from Alex.

  Alex fell on his knees onto the floor, beside my lifeless body. His head resting on my arm, he wept in despair. Dr. Jones shook his head in disappointment at my death, and in a gesture of respect and compassion, walked out of the room.

  Mrs. White approached Alex. “Come, come now,” she pressed, reaching for his arm. “There’s nothing else you can do. You must rest for a while.”

  “Leave me, please.”

  “Come with me, you need the energy for the days ahead,” she insisted.

  “Leave me, now,” Alex ordered harshly. Nothing would separate him from my remains. Defeated and perhaps offended, Mrs. White complied with his request.

  Alex broke into deep sobs, and my heart went out to him. I was there…so close…so close to him, yet he could not sense me.

  Like turning on a light switch in a dark room, the knowledge of the entire journey of my existence illuminated my whole being. I had regained the memories of the life I lived before I was born in New York. I wasn’t an orphan after all; I now knew who I really was. But why had I been given a chance to live again? Why was I a part of his life for a second time? My thoughts started to spin in confusion. Yet, there were many other pieces of the puzzle which now fit perfectly.

  It was me who Mr. Sterling loved back in New York. The same Florence Contini whose husband he was. It was my memory that haunted him. His love for me still burned brightly. I understood now why he had been so perplexed and tortured by my presence. The thought of a duplicate of his “lady” was madness to his troubled soul. I was a ghost. How could he even consider the idea of me being her? Worse yet, how could he tell me that I was his deceased wife? It was insanity. Oh, how everything made sense after all.

  A soft light invaded the room, gradually growing in radiance. Alex continued to sob by my inert body, oblivious to anything that took place on this separate sphere.

  The same guide who brought me back in time now reappeared.

  A moment went by when I beheld his beautiful brown eyes—his same loving smile—a moment when the anguish which my heart had harbored since his death, like chalk being erased from a black board, vanished forever. He pressed me to his chest, and my heart burst in joy to be with him once more.

  “My dear brother, I can’t believe it’s you!” Many childhood memories overflowed my mind.

  “Florence, you remembered! It’s wonderful to be recognized.” Lucca smiled.

  “I have missed you so much!”

  “I never left you.” I failed to understand the full meaning of his words. “Florence, here and now, death won, and if we don’t make haste, it will win again,” he cautioned, pointing at Alex.

  “Alex…he is the one now dying back in Geneva.” I remembered how I told Zaira that I didn’t care about him anymore, that he didn’t need me, and I felt my heart spiraling into a deep abyss. “Lucca, he can’t die. He has to know the truth.”

  “Indeed, he does, but first I need to show you an event to give you direction and understanding.”

  Lucca swiftly waved his hand in front of him. The scene with Alex weeping over my body was gone, replaced by another place and time.

  The cemetery behind the old local parish in Breamore unfolded in front of our eyes. The solid headstones emerged triumphantly from the ground. No sounds of any kind were heard—neither wind, nor birds singing, nor were any human conversations heard.

  Far in the distance, a group of people dressed in black were assembled in a circle around a gravesite.

  The priest was the first to withdraw, and then one by one, the people started to dissipate until only one remained. Lucca and I neared the figure crouched down on his knees on the loose dirt surrounding the grave.

  Alex’s grieved countenance was of great alarm, mixed with some other emotions I had never seen in him. His deep eyes were planted on the newly placed headstone.

  Florence Contini Sterling—Forever My Lady—1894–1917

  Alex had dreaded the idea that death might separate us, and now he was facing his worst fear. I noticed his clenched hands, a crumpled piece of paper hiding inside. Lucca pointed to the small grave beside mine confirming my suspicions. The tiny grave was death’s biggest sting.

  Sterlings’ Beloved Baby Boy—Sleep in peace under the nurturing love of your dear mother

  Alex’s fingers loosened, and I looked at the paper. I had seen it before, inside the book in the office at Oak’s Place; our son’s burial certificate.

  “Why did you have to leave me? What am I going to do without you?” Alex’s voice broke. “Whatever happens to me, I promise you that you’ll always be my lady.”

  I didn’t think that tears were possible in my spirit form; I was wrong.

  When Alex rose from the ground, the look in his eyes had changed; there was no light in them.

  “That’s when everything went wrong,” Lucca noted. Alex strode off; his shoulders slumped as if he bore the weight of the whole world on them. Death had defeated the great General Sterling.

  More than I had ever desired anything in my previous two lives, I desired to comfort him, to take away his pain. I made the attempt towards Alex, but Lucca stopped me. “There is no use. You can’t communicate with him. You don’t exist here anymore.”

  “Lucca, please, help me understand.” I shook my head unable to fully process my situation. “How was I able to live again? To find Alex? I died in adulthood, yet I was a baby again the very same year that I died. How?”

  “Because you now know who you are, I can restore the connecting memory to your mind. Close your eyes,” he prompted and I did. Briefly, he touched my eyes and commanded, “Remember the time between your death and your second life—remember.”

  * * *

  Mrs. White had thrown the snake in the stall. Sunny had injured my body beyond repair. I had died, yet existed in another form, a spirit form separated from my physical body.

  Suddenly, I found myself in a thick, oppressive fog.

  I stood in confusion, not knowing where to go, blinded and lost in the dense, boundless blackness. A ripping anguish filled me, the anguish of an endless isolation, of loneliness. The suffering my mortal body had experienced under Sunny’s attack was minuscule compared to this new level of torment. I felt trapped, like being inside a box without oxygen. My spirit was suffocating, yet death would never come to release me.

  “What have I done to deserve this misery?”

  “You have done absolutely nothing to deserve the outer darkness,” a deep voice penetrated my mind.

  “Where are you?” I asked, desperate to end my banishment.

  “Focus and you’ll truly see.” His words conveyed an understanding of what I must do. The way out of this spiritual incarceration was to gather my emotions and conquer fear. To that end, I thought about Alex and the many happy memories we had created together.

  The fog around me evaporated like mist in the morning sun, and I stood on a bright diagonal path. The ground beneath my feet gave off an incandescent glow, unmistakably separating the vast darkness now behind me from a powerful light that stretched across the horizon in front of me.

  Looking back at the darkness, I shivered to behold the shadows that restlessly moved about, reminding me of dark clouds gathering to unleash a storm.

  “Those demons feed on our deepest fears and failures, extinguishing the light from our souls.” A man stood by my side, the owner of the voice that had guided me to this point. “I am Bransen, the guardian of the veil,” he said. I wondered if the whiteness of his hair and clothes were just a reflection of the light emanating from his person.

  “The veil?”

  “The veil is the dividing line between the living and the dead. I guard the spirits of light as the
y cross the veil and move on.” He signaled towards the horizon. “In rare circumstances, such as yours, I’m here to present to you a different path. Your spirit is now suspended between spheres to allow you to make an eternal choice. You’ve briefly, and to a lesser degree, experienced darkness so your decision can be just.”

  “A choice?”

  “Because your life was prematurely taken from you, it caused much misbalance, altering the course of your eternity. To satisfy justice, you have an opportunity to go back to the mortal world to mold and change the future.

  “Alexander has given in to his grief, allowing hate to gain a hold on his soul. If he dies in this state, he’ll be confined to darkness because there’ll be no light in him.” Bransen pointed towards the desolation in the distance. “Unless you find him, help him regain focus, and love again, that will be his destiny. The love you two share is a connecting link between your souls. Therefore, only you can accomplish this—you own his heart.”

  I observed the inviting warmth of the light in the horizon and looked back into the chilling menace of the obscurity. “How can I go back? I can’t return to my mortal body.”

  “No, your former body has been damaged beyond repair. If you choose to reenter mortality, I’ll take your mortal remains and with them form a baby. It is the only passage back into the mortal sphere.”

  A flood of questions invaded me. “If I have to start all over, how much will I remember?”

  “Nothing. Your memories will be wiped clean. The veil of forgetfulness is part of the price you must pay. Love guided by feelings will be your greatest weapon.”

  “How can Alex fall in love again? If there is a connecting link between our souls, wouldn’t that prevent him from truly loving another woman?”

  Bransen smiled, his eyes reflecting the light of knowledge. “Yes, but you will not be, and at the same time, you will be the same woman he loves. Remember that you’ll be formed with your own remains. And he will not have to fall in love again—his love for you, the love that runs through his veins, just needs to be awakened.”