Gifted (Awakening Book 2)

by Jacqueline Brown

  “You did not do the scratching,” she answered, the normally soft skin of her jaw set hard. “The demons used my own hands for that.”

  Dad stared at his mom, struggling to understand the reality he was being shown. “You looked like something out of a horror movie.”

  “I felt worse than I looked,” she said flatly.

  Avi went to Gigi and pressed herself against her, prodding a hug from Gigi. Avi said, “Did you get scratched?”

  Gigi looked at her youngest granddaughter. She pushed the vibrant red hair back behind her ears. “You’ve asked me before why I always keep my nails so short—this is the reason.” She held onto Avi, breathing in the scent of her rose shampoo.

  Avi asked, “You scratched yourself?”

  “In a way, I suppose I did, though in truth it was not me. There’s no way it could have been me. I slept through the whole thing.”

  Now Lisieux came to Gigi. “How bad could the scratches have been if you slept through getting them?”

  Dad cringed at the memory.

  Gigi sat straight, her fingertips going to the bottom of the blouse she wore. She lifted its edge to reveal a stark white, wrinkled stomach with broad diagonal lines running across it.

  “The scratches were the worst where both hands could easily reach,” she said.

  Avi gasped, impulsively touching one of the scars. “It’s wider than my finger,” she said with tears brimming.

  “My finger is wider than yours,” Gigi said, allowing her blouse to drop.

  Gigi squeezed Avi. “I’m okay now. No need to cry,” she said, wiping Avi’s cheeks with her thumbs.

  “How did it happen?” Lisieux asked, her voice shaking.

  Gigi straightened her back. “It happened while we slept. I’d gone to bed beside your grandfather, same as every other night. Odd things had been happening in the house. We figured it was our imaginations, though we imagined the same things, which seemed a bit unlikely. Or perhaps Paul, who was finally feeling better, was playing tricks on us. After this night, we realized none of it was imagined … all of it was real.

  “Your grandfather woke up first. The poor man almost had a heart attack when he saw me covered in blood. He spoke my name. I’ll never forget the sound of his voice as he repeated my name over and over again. He was so scared. When I woke, I moved slightly. The sheets ripping away the dried blood caused me to become immediately alert.

  “ ‘Don’t move,’ he said. ‘The blood has dried against the sheets. Every movement will tear the wounds open.’

  “ ‘Why is there blood?’ I asked, petrified from the terror in his eyes.

  “ ‘I don’t know,’ he said, looking first at his own hands.

  “There was no blood on him. Not the first drop. Under each of my fingers, there was a dried circle of blood. At first, he thought I was cut badly there. Then he realized chunks of skin were under my fingernails.”

  “Skin?” Lisieux said, gagging.

  “I’d done it to myself, or rather, the demons used my own hands to mutilate my body. After your grandfather carried me to the shower, still draped in our sheets, he called Father Joseph. I’m glad I couldn’t hear what he told him. His voice that whole morning was so panic-stricken. Why would it not be! He was my husband, his job was to protect me, and as he slept peacefully beside me, my body was shredded. Understandably, he had a difficult time with that. It was Father Joseph who helped us understand how real demons are. After that, we had no doubt. We were blessed to have a priest who understood spiritual warfare so clearly.”

  “Don’t all priests?” Luca asked.

  Gigi laughed. “There’s a reason I have not shared the truth of Thomas’s last moments on earth with Father Luke. How often these last few weeks I’ve wished that Father Joseph was still with us. He would’ve brought so much illumination to this dark situation.” She lowered her head.

  I said, “How did Father Joseph help you?”

  She sniffed and raised her head. “He didn’t doubt our sanity, not for even the briefest of moments. That gave us peace. He accepted what we were saying and provided answers when we had none. The world of spiritual warfare was completely unknown to us. It was a gift to have someone who could be our guide and our friend. The pain he felt on our behalf … he was a true shepherd. Willing to lay down his life for one of his flock, without hesitation. The courage he showed when ours failed. I cannot thank God enough for giving us a strong shepherd when we needed him most. He died a few years after George. Do you remember that, Paul?”

  Dad’s posture softened as his mother’s sorrow fought against the internal anguish he was trying to suppress. “I could never forget that,” Dad said, sounding choked up.

  “He loved you,” Gigi said. “He loved all of his flock. Losing him so soon after losing George ….” She sniffed.

  “It was difficult,” Dad said.

  “Yes,” Gigi said, “very difficult.”

  Luca placed an arm around my shoulders, and I leaned against him.

  “What did the priest do?” Jason asked after a hanging silence. “How did he help? I mean, with the … with what she did to you?”

  “You understand it all so clearly,” Gigi said, gazing at him. “You realized the true danger she was, when we didn’t.”

  “Children are more in tune,” Sam said, one hand on Gigi’s back, the other holding her husband’s hand.

  Dad lowered his head. He, as a child, had been far less aware than the adults.

  “Father Joseph wept. That was the first thing he did,” Gigi said, staring at the dripping faucet. “After that, he celebrated the holy sacrifice of the Mass in Paul’s room.”

  “Mass?” Jason said.

  “It’s the strongest of prayers, so he began there. Based on Paul’s reaction to it, it was the correct place to begin.”

  Dad didn’t speak, but based on his questioning expression, he didn’t recall this moment of his past, either.

  “Your father had to hold you down during the consecration.” Gigi slumped forward, shrinking into herself. “I’d never seen him cry like he did as he held you, pinned to the floor. Doing all he could to dodge your attempts at spitting on him.”

  Dad’s hand covered his mouth. He turned away, leaning over the sink, his body beginning to rock. He loved his father more than he loved his own life—to be faced with the reality of all he’d done to him ….

  “You were not yourself,” Gigi said kindly. “Your father and I understood that.”

  The room was silent until Sam spoke. “What did Father Joseph do after that?”

  “He blessed every inch of Paul’s room and then every inch of the house with holy water. He went outside and poured blessed salt around the perimeter of the house, the entire time praying and blessing us. He blessed all the salt I had in the house so that, for months, almost every bit of food we consumed was blessed. And then he heard Paul’s confession. Paul was calm by that point and, after the confession, remained calm. It was a gift to have him back,” Gigi said, sitting up.

  Dad said, “I remember going to confession.”

  “Yes,” Gigi answered. “It was a powerful experience for you. After that, we had no issues with manifestations of evil in our home again. Not like that, anyway.”

  “Is that the same day Mr. George and Father Joseph found her?” Jason asked, with contempt for Gigi’s grandmother.

  “Yes,” Gigi answered, “George and I were sure the evil we experienced in our home came from her. Father Joseph wanted to try and cut it off at its source, if you will. Both he and George also believed they might be able to help my grandmother. They were both such good-hearted men.”

  Luca said, “You didn’t think they could help her?”

  Gigi placed her folded hands on the countertop. “I did not. I hoped I was wrong, but in the end I wasn’t. They found her on the porch. She’d been dead a few days. Rats had already found her.”

  I shuddered at the image. Luca flinched, yet kept his arm around me. I listened to hi
s heartbeat, steady and strong.

  Gigi continued. “After they recovered from the shock of finding her, Father Joseph blessed her body and started to go inside the inn to bless it, but he couldn’t.”

  “Was the door locked?” Sam asked.

  Gigi shook her head. “The door was open. Something was blocking his entrance, something they couldn’t see and only he could feel. Your grandfather took a small step past Father Joseph to determine if he, too, was blocked from entering. When he had no trouble, they realized the inn would not allow certain people to enter it. Or perhaps that’s wrong. Perhaps it was Father Joseph’s guardian angel that would not allow him to pass.

  “Father Joseph did all he could to try and rid the inn of evil. But never was he able to take a step past the threshold. The next day he returned with the mortician, a fellow member of our church. He, too, could take a step into the building. Father Joseph remained blocked. Again, he performed every rite of exorcism he’d been trained to perform. He even considered calling in additional priests who specialized in exorcism, but after speaking with a few on the phone, he told us instead to never go near the inn. He told us he was concerned that the evil contained in the inn might go into another nearby home or family. So the inn remained as it was—untouched, until Thomas decided to enter it.”

  Dad began to pace the length of the kitchen. Each of us watched him take one quick step after the other. The guilt rested on him and his great-grandmother. He’d brought whatever it was into this house. As a result, Gigi’s body had been scarred. And Thomas had died.

  When my mom died, we were young, my sister only a baby. He had no choice but to hold it together, and her love was so fresh in his mind. When Thomas died … we each went our own way. Mom had been gone for so long. Dad reverted to who he was before her, before us. Gigi did the same. She became the overindulgent mother she’d been when he was young. She allowed him to fall and turned a blind eye—in the false belief that she was helping him.

  Jackson whined to go outside; the snow was calling him. My father barely noticed Jason dodge his pacing to let Jackson out. Dad’s hands alternated from his pockets to his left arm held across him and his right fingertips resting on his lips. He was in thought, unaware of the rest of us. Aside from Jackson, no one made a sound.

  I wondered what my sisters thought. Had they ever seen Dad like this, pacing furiously across a room? I had, in his office, on the day he confessed his similarities to Thomas. I cringed at the memory. But my sisters hadn’t been there in his office with me. I wondered if they knew that this was an improvement because, unlike every other day, he wasn’t hiding in his office. He was allowing us to see him as he was, far from perfect.

  “Why me?” Dad finally said. “Why did she involve me? Why did she care about me?”

  Gigi rubbed her hands together. “I doubt she cared anything for you,” she said simply, but with a longing sadness. Like she wished things were different while accepting that they weren’t.

  “Why was she nice to me, then?” Dad said, still pacing, though his strides were less severe. “She was always so nice to me, always welcoming. If I was on the beach, she’d come out to me, friendly as she could be, offering me blueberry candies she’d made.”

  “You’ve never been around someone who’s nice to your face, but mean as a badger when you turn your back?” Jason asked, raising an eyebrow at my dad.

  Dad’s expression shifted. He hadn’t considered this.

  Why would he? He was a child when he knew his great-grandmother, and a boy, at that. How many boys are tuned in to the duplicity of the people around them? It was not an easy concept to grasp, not if you were raised by kindhearted parents. Jason had learned this lesson from the earliest of ages. In some ways, his parents had prepared him better for life than my dad’s parents or even mine.

  “She was my great-grandmother,” Dad responded. “She was supposed to love me.”

  “That’s not the hand you got dealt,” Jason said. “Maybe it’s good my parents were always mean to me. I never got fooled—never thought they actually cared. I suppose there’s a reason they were drawn to this land, and it wasn’t ’cause of the goodness, that’s for sure.”

  “No, but good came of it,” Gigi said, determined to point out the positive aspect. “My grandmother’s hatred had little to do with you, Paul. You were merely the best way to hurt me.”

  “Why did she want to hurt you?” Avi asked. She was enfolded in Lisieux’s arms.

  “Oh, I must have been the most odious of all creatures to her. In her mind, I stole her land and her future hotel,” Gigi said, gesturing to indicate our home. “Money was everything to her and my grandfather. They were happy to have me when I was young. I was free labor,” she said, her tone harsh. “That is, once my mother was gone and I was no longer taking care of her. They didn’t care a thing about my mom or me, but they welcomed the slave labor that I afforded. They did everything they could to keep me subservient, reminding me often how worthless they believed me to be.”

  Gigi paused and took a sip of her cold tea.

  “Thankfully, my mother raised me not to listen to the voices of others. If she hadn’t, my life would’ve been entirely different and I doubt any of you would exist. As it was, I was strong enough to run away. Years later, I returned and bought this place from the bank when she could no longer afford to keep it. Could she hate anyone more? How could I not deserve as much suffering as she could cause? But to cause me the sort of pain she very likely wanted to cause me would have meant the end of her line. Her offspring would be dead and so she was at an impasse. When she was able to befriend my son, the world of possibilities likely opened in her evil heart.”

  “What sort of possibilities?” Dad asked, sounding unsure.

  “I’m afraid only you can answer that,” Gigi said.

  “I’ve told you what I remember,” Dad said emphatically. “You don’t believe me.”

  She responded, “You’ve told us what she wanted you to remember. You’re correct. I don’t believe that version of the past.”

  Dad groaned. “I remember what I remember.”

  The room was silent. Jason put a hand on Sam’s shoulder. She looked at him. He nodded subtly.

  “There’s something,” Sam said timidly, “something I’ve always felt here.”

  We turned to face her, all except Dad, who had resumed pacing.

  I wondered if he hoped the jarring movements would unearth a hidden memory.

  As Dad’s hand moved from one position to another, the memory of the scar flashed. How had anyone believed a rock made that cut? Had Gigi truly believed that? Had my grandfather?

  I thought then of Thomas, of how his parents saw him as an innocent lamb, incapable of error. Was this how Gigi saw my father, at least when he was young? Now her perception of him as an adult might be different, but as a child, was he as perfect in her eyes as Thomas was in Brenda’s? “So much alike.” These were my father’s words. He was so much like Thomas. Perhaps his parents were similar as well. I felt sadness for both Thomas and my father, and their parents.

  “What’ve you felt?” Dad asked Sam.

  He startled me by the abruptness of his tone. He didn’t bother slowing his stride as he made his way from one end of the room to the other.

  My father intimidated Sam. Typically, he did his best to put her at ease, but not today.

  Sam sucked in air before speaking. “There’s a blanket of darkness pressing down on this family, held back by something … but always there in the distance, waiting, lurking.”

  Jason’s hand rested on her arm, giving warmth and support.

  From beside me, Luca said, “I’ve felt the same since I moved here.”

  “Is it always held back?” Dad asked, surprising me by not dismissing the spiritual truth laid before him.

  Sam rubbed her hands together. “No. Not always.”

  Dad stopped pacing.

  Sam said, “The blanket of darkness has been here as long as I’
ve lived here. At first, I was afraid. I told Jason we needed to move. He explained the history of this land of his parents and Gigi’s grandmother. He told me there was no present evil. I gave it time and realized, in some respects, he was right. It was not in the past, as he believed, but it remained at a distance … most of the time.”

  Sam’s eyes brimmed with tears. Whatever she was about to say, she didn’t want to.

  “The day Rebecca died,” Sam said, pushing her hands nervously against her jeans, “that morning was different. It was pressing hard against her. She wasn’t aware of it, I don’t think. Probably because there was a barrier of goodness around her, protecting her. But it was there. I didn’t understand what it was or how to tell her. What do you tell a person when evil is pressing against them? That doesn’t matter. I should’ve told her something. She would’ve understood as much as anyone can understand.” Sam laid her head in her hands.

  Jason placed his hand against her back.

  Sam continued, her blue eyes shimmering. “The crazy thing is Rebecca may not have felt the evil, but she could tell something was wrong with me. She asked if I was okay. I lied and said I was fine. She was so kind. She hugged me and said she’d be back in a few hours and asked if we could go for a walk to talk about whatever might be bothering me. She said it would be Avi’s naptime anyway—and you loved napping in your carrier,” Sam said, offering a tearful smile to Avi.

  Lisieux was still holding Avi. Gigi reached out to her youngest granddaughter.

  Sam dabbed her eyes and wiped her nose with a napkin. “Rebecca was always doing stuff like that. Always putting everybody else first.”

  My father’s head hung low, the veins in his neck pulsing. Finally, he spoke. “Is it gone? The blanket of darkness.”

  Sam and Luca exchanged a look.

  Luca answered, his hand now clasping mine. “It’s far less than it was, but no. It’s not gone.”

  My father looked as if the world was crushing him. His breaths came ragged and quick, like his body was struggling to keep working.

  He turned, fleeing from our presence, escaping toward his dungeon. Abruptly he stopped. His hands grasped the narrow wall that separated the stairs from the hallway.