Gifted (Awakening Book 2)

by Jacqueline Brown

  I thought back. There were children in the middle of the room, children that fled from my appearance. “No.”

  “Then I don’t think it was a projection,” he said.

  “Do you think I hallucinated?”

  “It’s possible,” he said, “though unlikely.”

  “What do you think it was? Where did they come from?” I said.

  “Evil can plant things in your mind—thoughts, images, words.”

  Suddenly the defense of my sanity was no longer relevant, not when Luca said something like that.

  He offered a muted laugh. “Now you think I’m the crazy one.”

  I was silent.

  “We’re at war, Siena. Never underestimate your enemy, especially when he’s smarter than us.”

  Luca often spoke like this, comparing life to war—a spiritual war for each soul.

  “You think evil planted that image?” I asked, my eyebrows pulled together.

  “It’s possible,” he said.

  “Does evil plant things in your mind?”

  “It tries, it always tries.” His voice sounded tired. “I’m fortunate, I guess. I can sense when demons try to invade my mind. I can tell that those thoughts, those desires aren’t mine, and most of the time I can shut them out.”

  “Only most of the time?”

  “Sometimes I’m too tired, sometimes I’m too weak. Sometimes they enter so subtly that they gain a foothold before I realize what’s happening. Most of the time I recognize the attack and fight it off. I don’t believe most people are like that. They can’t feel when darkness descends on them. Instead, they believe the lies their minds tell them.”

  “I’ve had enough talk of demons for tonight,” I said, and thought, for my lifetime, as I leaned against the pew, no longer allowing Luca to hold me.

  “Angels are far smarter than us. The fallen ones are no exception,” he said.

  I wished he hadn’t said that.

  The red light beside the tabernacle flickered in the darkness. There were times in my life when thoughts that led to anger, envy, and division entered. Never before did I doubt where these thoughts came from. They were in my mind, they were mine. Now ….

  “Demons can invade our minds?” I asked, afraid of what might be lurking beside me.

  “I’m not sure if they can read our thoughts, but they can trigger thoughts in us. That much I can sense. Demons exist to keep us from God, which is what sin is—separation from God. There’s no quicker way to do that than by creating evil inside the hearts and minds of humans.”

  “The children were so real. I could feel their terror.”

  Luca rubbed his hands together. My words terrified him, far more than the discussion of demons.

  “If the image was not an illusion of some form, then it was from God, which is possible. You weren’t seeking them, you weren’t trying to bring them to you.” He was speaking, now, more to himself than to me. “So it could be, but if they were from God, there would be a reason. Some good could come of it—his allowing you to see what you saw.”

  I thought back to when Luca had taken my hand: the relief I’d felt, the peace he offered even though he was in pain.

  “You were sick, so it can’t be from God,” I said, my shoulders trembling.

  He shook his head. “I was sick, but it doesn’t mean the vision was evil. It means there was evil lurking nearby.”

  “Is that why you called to me?”

  If he hadn’t called my name, I would’ve touched the wood again. I would’ve been surrounded by the children again. I leaned forward against my aching knees. I felt safer that way, with more of my body covered.

  The memories of Thomas’s pictures all over our little church mixed with the terrified children. I pushed my hands against my skull. It was too much. Too much pain, too many memories.

  “The darkness was growing,” Luca said. “That’s why I came to you. I felt it when we were first in the restaurant, but didn’t realize what it was. I thought it was attached to the people there. There’s always a certain amount of evil whenever people are gathered. So I did my best to ignore it. It’s why I asked for us to sit outside. When you got up from the table, I realized it was more than the normal amount. Your goodness was blocking it. I came to you as soon as I realized what was happening.” His tone was apologetic. “But ….”

  “What?”

  “I didn’t call your name.”

  “You didn’t?” I asked, sitting up.

  He shook his head. “The first time I said your name was when I was at the door. A second later, the door opened.”

  I leaned back. “If it wasn’t you … who was it?”

  His silence made me wonder. I said, “Did you feel anything else, any … any goodness? Whoever called kept me from going back to that place.”

  “I always feel goodness when I’m near you.”

  “Nothing more than that?”

  “You make it sound like what I feel around you is no big deal—it is a big deal. Though I guess extra goodness could’ve been there. I wouldn’t have been able to tell. It’s like there’s a scale and when the scale tips one way or the other, I can feel it. Good or evil.”

  “I wonder,” I said, only partially listening to him, “if the voice was my mom’s.”

  “Your mom?” he said with concern.

  “Maybe she was the one who called to me. I mean, if it wasn’t you, who else could it have been?”

  “Your mind playing tricks, your guardian angel, the creepy waiter dude, a whole bunch of possibilities that would be more likely than your mom,” he said, oddly upset by the mention of her.

  He was wrong; her voice was the most likely. The waiter wouldn’t have called to me. Why would he? The guardian angel theory was just as unlikely. I’d been hearing about my guardian angel since I was a young child. The effect of so many stories made it seem like nothing more than a fairy tale, to go along with all the other fairy tales I’d heard growing up.

  “I don’t believe in guardian angels,” I said.

  “You didn’t believe in demons before,” Luca stated.

  I didn’t answer him; I didn’t need to. This was not something he could convince me of. Guardian angels couldn’t exist. If they did, my mom wouldn’t have died. My mother may not have recognized evil coming for her, but an angel warrior would have.

  We sat in silence for a long time. The air around us, which initially felt warm compared to outside, was so cold it made my breath visible. This night had been too much. I wanted to be home, to be warm, to be safe. I lowered my eyes. Luca’s hand was on the pew beside mine. His hand was so dark, it blended in with the night—my hand ghostly white beside it. The pit in my stomach grew.

  “There’s something else,” I said weakly. How could I say this? How could I tell him … especially him?

  “What is it?”

  “The children,” I said, as cold sweat began to build on my skin. “They were … I mean, they weren’t … they weren’t white.”

  Luca’s hand tightened against the pew. “None of them?” he asked, his voice quiet.

  I shook my head. I wanted to cry. Luca stood out in our white family and our white parish. Even the paintings and statues in the church were white. He was the one person of any color anywhere near us.

  It made me uncomfortable—not the color of his skin, or mine—but the hurt those two colors represented. It was not our hurt, not what we brought to our lives. It was the pain of the past, the pain others long before us brought to our lives. The pain that still resonated through our country—and now, to have seen an image of horror in the eyes of Black children from the past ….

  “I’m sorry,” I said, though I’d done nothing wrong. I was sincerely sorry for whatever those children and all the other men and women like them, like Luca, had experienced.

  “Evil preys most clearly on the most vulnerable. Little children of color … long ago. It doesn’t get more vulnerable than that.”

  I could barely choke out,
“N-no.”

  I prayed Luca was right, that the children had never been real. That I was not witnessing the torment of children who once lived, only made-up images from a mind that lost hold of reality.

  Eighteen

  I shivered; even though the church had been cold, I wasn’t prepared for the arctic temperatures outside. It was rare for me to be out this late, when the sun was so long gone. My face burned as ice tried to form anywhere near moisture. I pulled the collar of my coat up and snugged it around me. Luca quickly locked the building and returned the key to its spot. I didn’t wait for him as I hurried to the jeep. I climbed in, grateful he’d left it unlocked. Luca ran to the driver’s side and cranked the engine.

  “It’s so cold,” he said, teeth chattering as he tried to warm his hands with his breath. The steering wheel in this old car wasn’t heated. Yet another reason to take my dad’s car.

  “Why was it so important to you to drive tonight?” I asked, the frozen leather of the seat making me even colder. This car also lacked heated seats.

  He rubbed his arms to try and warm them as he pulled the jeep away from the front of the church and we crawled through the church parking lot toward the exit.

  “It’s our first … umm … time out together. The guy should be the one to drive.”

  “Even if the girl has a warmer car?” I said, holding my arms tight across my body. The heater tried, unsuccessfully, to keep the cold air from pouring in.

  “To be fair, if we were in Florida, this wouldn’t be an issue,” he joked.

  “If this were Florida, we never would’ve met,” I said.

  “I wouldn’t be too sure about that.”

  “Why not?”

  He was facing forward, purposely not looking in my direction. “My mom,” he mumbled. “She told me one day I would have a good friend with red hair.”

  “Did Sam tell her about the family of redheads she lived next door to?” I asked.

  He gazed into the night as the jeep pulled out of the parking lot. “No, it was before Aunt Sam came up here.”

  “Oh well, there are lots of people with red hair,” I said, my hands cupped around the air vent, trying to capture every ounce of heat I could.

  “There are,” he said, with half a smile. “But not that many who live in a giant house, near a cliff.”

  “Red-haired girl who lived ….” My voice trailed off. “How could she have guessed that?”

  “She didn’t guess. She was a psychic. I told you that.”

  “Psychics are real? I mean, I didn’t think they could actually tell the future. I thought they were either smart con artists or sort of silly people who made things up without realizing it.”

  He leaned back in his seat. The air was beginning to warm slightly. “Most are exactly that, but my mom was different. She was not a con artist and she didn’t make stuff up.”

  “She could tell the future?” I asked, staring at him, his face subtly illuminated by the lights on the dash.

  “She could not,” he said. “The spirits who spoke to her could.”

  “Spirits?”

  “She believed they were angels.” His jaw clenched in the fading glow of a streetlight. “Maybe some were.” His body visibly relaxed a little.

  “What were the others?” I asked, anxiety building in my chest.

  “You know the answer to that question,” he said without emotion.

  “Demons?” I whispered into the darkness.

  “Yes.”

  “Demons told your mom about me?” My voice quivered.

  “No,” he said, his head leaning to the side. This memory didn’t bother him; this memory was not associated with pain. “She told me about the red-haired girl when I was very young. I was sitting on her lap when she did.” The fingers of his right hand gently rubbed the steering wheel. “There was no darkness around her then. Sam was with us. We were happy, we were at peace. It was good back then.”

  “What happened?” I asked. “Why did things change?”

  Luca’s expression fell. “She flew too close to the sun.”

  “Her pride was her downfall?” I leaned my body sideways against the seat, facing him.

  He glanced at me. “At first it may have been ignorance, but it turned into pride. She believed she was the one in control. She was wrong. When demons are involved, humans are never in control.”

  The sound of the tires running along the road was the only sound for several miles. My mind retreated into itself, wondering how this was my life. How were demons and psychics and a haunted inn and, now, a restaurant, so much a part of it?

  Luca finally broke the silence. “I understand more now, more than I did before I moved up here. It isn’t fair for me to blame her like I have.” He tilted his head as if working through these thoughts as he was speaking them. “Pride was there, but that stemmed from ignorance. She didn’t understand what she was involved with. She didn’t understand the demons were not her friends, that they could never wish her anything but death. Their entire purpose is to destroy. She believed them. … She should never have believed them,” he added quietly into the darkness.

  “They spoke to her?” I said, facing him.

  A truck passed us, briefly illuminating his features.

  “Yes,” he said. Such a simple word, with so much meaning.

  “Why did she …?” How could I ask this question?

  Luca shifted his body.

  I swallowed hard and said, “Why did she speak to demons?”

  “She believed they were angels, beautiful and bright, or sometimes souls of the dead, good souls coming to help their loved ones.”

  “What makes you think she was wrong?”

  His face contorted in revulsion. “I could feel them. There was nothing beautiful about them.”

  “Maybe you were wrong. If she believed they were angels, maybe they were. Angels do appear to people in the Bible.”

  “Have you ever thought about after you die?” he asked.

  “I’ve thought about my mom, about her being dead,” I said, wondering if he was purposely ignoring my question.

  “What have you thought about her? Have you thought of her bored, wishing she had something to do, waiting to do people’s bidding on earth?” He glanced at me as the jeep went around a curve.

  “No,” I said, thinking of my mom, of how much I missed her and wished for any form of communication from her. If she were waiting to do someone’s bidding, as Luca phrased it, she would’ve come to me.

  “And what about the souls of those who have died far from God, those who chose hell? Do you think of them hanging out around people?”

  The thought made me cringe. “No,” I said. “They’re in hell. They can’t leave.”

  I was taught there’s an uncrossable chasm that keeps the damned from leaving hell. Otherwise, the world would be overrun with the souls of the damned, and there would be no question of the existence of good and evil. The truth would be clear and people would be terrified into choosing God. This would not allow for free will.

  “So you agree it’s not likely that people see the souls of those who have passed on,” he said.

  My forehead wrinkled. “You see them every night?”

  He tilted his head. An oncoming car brightened the jeep. “I do, but they’re not there because I summoned them. They’re there because of your prayers. They’re there because God is allowing them to be there and allowing me to see them. God allows the holy souls in purgatory to interact with living people when he chooses, not when living people choose or even when the souls choose. It’s because of his mercy that he allows them to be seen or felt at all, so that those living may pray for that soul or gain awareness of things they need to gain awareness of—not for their entertainment and certainly not at their command.”

  “Did Father Luke explain that to you?”

  “He gave me the words to understand what I felt.”

  “So that’s why you think your mom wasn’t talking to angels?” I
asked.

  “Angels can’t be summoned, holy souls can’t be summoned, the damned can’t be summoned ….” His voice trailed off.

  “But demons can?”

  “They want to confuse, to draw people away from good. They will do whatever they need to do to make that happen. It’s their one reason for existing. So yes, in that way, they can be summoned.”

  The wind whistled through the fabric of the jeep, the cold air continuously pushing itself in.

  “I could sense the evil. I told my mom. Aunt Sam told her. She didn’t care. She told us they were angels. I want to believe that she believed they were angels … good angels, but it’s impossible for her to be that unaware.”

  I detected the disappointment in his voice.

  “That isn’t fair,” I said. “Most people can’t feel things the way you do.”

  His grip on the steering wheel tightened, though his voice became soft. “She wasn’t ‘most people.’ Her gifts were stronger than mine and Sam’s put together. How could she not have known?”

  He was pleading with me, hoping I had an answer to a question I barely understood.

  “You told me demons are smarter than us. If all of this,”—I swallowed—“if it’s all true, she would’ve been easy to trick. We all would.”

  An image of my dad as a scrawny teenage kid entered my mind, and my anger at him cooled. “It wasn’t her fault, Luca. It wasn’t my dad’s, either. If you haven’t experienced evil, how would you know to be afraid of it, especially if it presents as beautiful angels or a … a loving great-grandmother.”

  “Even if everyone around you tells you you’re wrong?” he said, wanting to agree with me that his mother was not completely to blame.

  I inhaled the barely warm air as Luca neared our property. Once we entered my home we would be surrounded by family, by people who loved us. “You and I are lucky.”

  He raised an eyebrow in doubt.

  “I never would’ve thought so either, but it’s true. We’re surrounded by people who love us, people who have learned hard lessons and are trying to protect us.”

  He silently reached a hand to the visor and pushed the button, causing the wrought iron gate to swing slowly open.