Shadow Forest- The Complete Series

by Eliza Grace

  She’d hated her maiden name, but I’d never asked her why. She loved Grammy and Grandpa so much, so they weren’t the reason. I wish now that I’d asked her more questions, every little query that popped into my head, no matter how ridiculous. I never realized how quickly she’d be gone, the questions dead on my lips.

  There are few things in the world I want more than to have all of her answers inside my head.

  There is a small nick in the finish and I hate myself when I see it. Just one more thing to add to the growing list of shit I’ve destroyed by simply being alive. As I’m sitting in front of the desk—trying to avoid my own gaze in the attached mirror—I hear a thud as something falls onto the floor; the sound is close. I’m sure it originated in my room. Leaning over as far as I can without tumbling out of the chair, I look under the desk.

  There, resting against the dusty floor, is a burgundy bound book. It is just out of reach.

  Locking the wheels, I slide myself forward until my butt is on the very edge of the seat. Then, one hand holding onto the left armrest and the other hand holding onto the back of the desk chair, I lower myself. When I’m hovering two or three inches above the refinished wide plank floor, I lose my grip and plummet down the remaining space. It is a short distance, but it is still jarring.

  “Damn it.” I mutter, pushing the wheelchair angrily. To my dismay, it only moves a fraction since the wheels are locked. “I hate you.” And I do. I hate an inanimate object that exists for the sole purpose of helping me. That’s a new low.

  Moving the desk chair out of my way, I shimmy across the floor on my butt and get close enough to pick up the unmarked book. I don’t need the desk chair and I don’t know why I keep it with the desk; it’s always in my way and I always have to move it when I go to work, but it matches the desk and it was also my mother’s. I can’t bear to separate the two. As stupid as that sounds.

  One side of the book’s maroon velvet casing is decorated in wide black tape; its stickiness is almost nonexistent. And I realize, running my fingers across the looped-over pieces, that the book in my hand was taped to something. The back of mom’s desk, maybe?

  But the piece has been moved multiple times for painting and decorating. Surely someone would have seen the book and removed it?

  My fingers tingle as I hold the volume. The surface of it is smooth, but as I run my fingers across the material, it seems to bubble up at my touch and become pitted and decorated in a design that changes with each passing second. Finally, after a moment longer of feeling and staring at the tome, initials appear—H.D.C. And those initials rest above a symbol that appears to be the cardinal points within the eye of a hurricane. Like the desk and chair, this book is also my mother’s. It has to be. I know of no one else with those initials.

  The beating of my heart is louder than the metallic pings and pops the raindrops make as they hit the roof. It rackets within my chest like a bullet with no target. It is funny how my heart changes sizes—it grows large with hope, small with memories, sometimes it feels dead and lifeless and other times it is a wild energy. Hearts are enigmas—muscles that are more than just anatomical function.

  Opening the book, still sitting on the floor with dust all over the legs of my black pajama bottoms, I hold my breath. My eyes widen as the pages glow so brightly I have to close my eyes for a second. Golden rays of latent magic. When the light dies, I see her handwriting.

  Written on yellowing pages—colored only by age now, and not magic—are her words.

  Her journal. My mother’s inner thoughts, written when she was—I look at the date on the first page quickly—only a year younger than I am now. Each word is a precious gift. Like ice cubes on a summer’s day, I hope they will cool my soul and sate the burning thirst I have—the missing my family, the aching pain of loss.

  Hungrily, I begin to read.

  I don’t understand what I did wrong.

  I hate that my mother’s first line within her journal is such a sad one.

  I only wanted to go to the dance, not the party after. I just wanted to wear the dress mom bought me, put my hair up, borrow Jen’s gold necklace that she never wears because she’s such a weirdo and enjoy being a teenager. How did Dad even find out about the party? Everyone’s been keeping it quiet—Greg had it all planned and his older brother bought the kegs near his college instead of in town.

  I smile… Mom didn’t want to just go to the dance. She had wanted to party, be a reckless teen. My smile fades quickly. I was a reckless teen once too.

  He yelled at me. Dad never yells. Never. Even when I broke his favorite mug—the one his buddy bought him years ago—he didn’t yell. He just told me it was okay and helped me clean up the broken pieces and vacuum the floor. The party’s not even far from home—just back in the woods behind Greg’s house. So why did Dad look so scared when he was yelling? It wasn’t just anger… Sure, I was going to sneak out, but I wasn’t in any danger. I just wanted to have fun.

  I hate him. He’s ruined my life. Everyone’s going to be there and now I can’t be.

  Her handwriting is neat and flourished with tiny hearts to dot every “i”. But then it changes and thick clumsy print contrasts beneath the prettily-written paragraphs.

  JEN TOLD HIM. THAT LITTLE… I’M GOING TO STRANGLE HER! JUST BECAUSE SHE WAS JEALOUS THAT I WAS OLD ENOUGH TO GO AND SHE WASN’T!! I HATE HER!!! I can’t believe she gave me this stupid journal for my birthday. I want to burn it. I hate Jen. I wish she wasn’t my sister.

  Flipping the page over quickly, I stare in confusion. The back of the page is blank… and the next page and—I rifle through the pages quickly, hoping, but my hope dies as I near the end of the volume. Blank. The rest of the beloved journal is blank. Maybe because my mother was so angry with Jen, she refused to continue filling the pages of the gift. My soul feels as empty and incomplete as the book. And my discovery, once beautiful and meaningful, turns obsidian as tar and it sticks to my lungs until I cannot breathe.

  Clutching the book against my chest with crossed arms, I begin to rock and cry. My sobs are so loud that the turbulent weather outside is silenced. It cannot exist while my own storm rages.

  When my tears at last dry and my body stops rocking back and forth, I continue to cradle the journal like it is a precious and small child. My bleary gaze moves to look at my bed—and the bedframe that was once my mother’s. Then my eyes flit to the window seat and I begin to drag my lower body across the floor until I am close enough to pull myself up onto the soft cushions and curl up in a ball so tight that I am the outward personification of internal pain.

  I take deep breaths in and out as I lay prone; I fight to control the emotions that want to break free once more. My head is positioned atop a particularly thick bolster pillow in such a way that I can peer through the glass and out into the night without moving a muscle.

  The dark clouds are undulating in the sky, their curves and shapes are illuminated by the full moon hidden behind them.

  It doesn’t take long for my eyes to droop and I fight to stay awake for no reason other than I do not wish to give into my body. The final time I force my lids apart before drifting into deep sleep, I see the figure in the distance again—just a flash of a silhouette offered to me by a kind ray of moonlight that is quickly snuffed out by the cloud cover.

  And then there is the softest whisper in the air around me as I desperately try to focus on the woods with my exhaustion-bleary vision. It speaks the same words over and over until it is gone and I hear it no longer. Stay away from the woods. Stay away from the woods. Stay away from the woods. A crack of thunder and bolt of lightning that the now-calm sky had been keeping hostage since the storm had faded away, breaks free and shakes the house as violently as the whispered warning shakes my soul.

  My body shivers and I realize that the comforter I’d gotten out of bed to get is on the floor near my wheelchair. The entire journey from bed was pointless. I am even colder now. In every way possible.

  Darkest B
efore the Dawn

  A noise wakes me. My sleep-addled brain thinks it is a padding of feet through my room, footfall after footfall against the hardwoods.

  When my eyes are fully open, I see that the sky outside is just beginning to lighten and turn that blue-black richness that proceeds the first rays of morning sun. I forget about the sound that woke me and my gaze, unwavering and determined, sets to watching as the post-storm mood outside transfigures with the first touches of purple and pink. The clouds have all but blown away, what is left are wispy afterthoughts so thin that they are barely a blemish against the riot of color I am witnessing—like a kaleidoscope, one that I can turn and turn and create pattern after pattern.

  “Tilda, are you awake?” A familiar voice slices into my reverie.

  I start at the voice. So enamored was I with the sunrise that I’d completely forgotten what had woken me. As for time, I could no sooner guess how long I’d been held captive by the sky than I could fly among its cumulus and strata. Sitting up quickly, I blink several times, trying to adjust from the cheerful colors outside to the dimness of my room. “Aunt Jen?”

  “Who else would it be?” Jen walks from my doorway to me and sits down. “You slept here last night?”

  “I couldn’t sleep well.” I shrug. “The storm was crazy. Didn’t it keep you up?”

  “You know me—I sleep like the dead.” Jen smiles and then her smile changes to confusion. “Weren’t you already up though? I came in because I heard you moving around in here.”

  “Um… no. I haven’t moved from here all night.”

  “Oh. God, that’s so weird. I could swear I heard you walking arou—” Abruptly, Jen shuts her mouth, stopping herself before she could finish. But she’s already said the most damning word—“walking”. She’d heard me “walking”. It is still too dark in my room to be sure, but I think she is blushing. Her face is so close to my own that I can feel the heat radiating and her skin is darker than normal and I know that it’s not due to the shadows that are quickly moving as the light outside increases.

  “It’s okay, Jen. It hasn’t been that long. Sometimes I forget too. You know why I fell out of bed last Saturday?” I wait for a response, but I think Jen is still too embarrassed to speak. “It wasn’t because I missed the wheelchair like I told you. I woke up and needed to pee and forgot my legs didn’t work. I rolled to the edge like I used to, threw the covers off, and shifted my upper body off the bed before realized that my legs weren’t cooperating.”

  Jen doesn’t respond in the way I expect. I want her to laugh, brush it off, joke in a loving way about what a klutz I am, but instead, she hangs her head and her shoulders begin to shake and I know that she is crying. Seeing her cry is an awful thing; it sends sharp pangs through my heart.

  “Don’t cry. Come on, stop. I’m fine.” I pat her back awkwardly and when I am about to remove my hand, Jen leans over and wraps her arms around me. When she speaks, her words punctuated by hiccups and snot bubbles that wet the shoulder of my shirt, I realize that this is the first time she’s cried. She hadn’t even cried at the funeral.

  “I talk to your mom all the time. I keep telling her that you’re going to be fine, that I’ll do everything I can to make you better. What if I can’t? What if I let her down?”

  Now my obligatory pats are strokes of genuine comfort. What else can I ruin? Jen has always been so happy-go-lucky, so eternally optimistic. I’ve taken away her freedom by living here and I’ve forced her to take care of me. It would have been better if I’d died too. God, it would be so much simpler to be dead. I continue rubbing semicircles on Jen’s back until she stops shaking and her tears run out. After waiting a moment, because quietness after sorrow seems only right to me, I put my hands on Jen’s shoulders and I push her away until she’s sitting upright and we are looking at one another.

  “You didn’t have to take me in. No one else wanted me; you could have been like them and said no. Dad’s family pretty bluntly said they didn’t have the time to care for me, to take me to appointments, to fight with the insurance companies to get them to pay for my wheelchair and rehab. There is no way,” I put all my intensity into my next words, “no way, that you could disappoint Mom.”

  Tears come again, but this time they are slow and only a few. By the look on Jen’s face, the way the crease between her eyebrows is gone and the way her mouth is no longer set in a hard line, I know that I’ve said the right thing. The exact thing she needs to hear to smile again and be “Jen”.

  “I love you, Kiddo.”

  “I love you too.”

  “So, now that we’re both awake, how about pancakes? I’ve got to go into the city around eleven for a meeting with the gallery. I’ll be gone several hours, if the bus doesn’t break down again like it did last week.” Jen hugs me one more time, it is quick and loose, and then she hops up and skips out of my room before I can answer. Sometimes, Jen is every bit the teenager that I am not.

  It’s so silly that she takes the bus into Boston. We only live half an hour away and she’d make loads better time driving her own car, but she says it’s another one of her small ways of making the world better—using public transportation. She has to drive into Danvers, wait at the bus stop, ride in with a bunch of people sweating and stinking of perfume, and then the drop-off closest to her studio is a mile away. Which means when she is hauling a new painting for a show, it’s that much more difficult for her to “make the world better” by saving a teensy bit of gas.

  Glancing at the clock on my wall, I see that it is barely six-thirty a.m., which means the day is going to feel even longer than usual. And, to make matters worse, I’ll be left to my own devices and in the company of only my own thoughts while Jen is away. Just lovely.

  When I finally decide to crawl off of the window seat and shuffle across the floor to the wheelchair, I remember the noise that woke me and I join that memory with Jen thinking that I’d been awake and moving around.

  And then I realize, chills running the length of my body, that something was in my room. That if Jen had heard it too, then I hadn’t imagined it while caught between wakefulness and sleep. It had been real.

  After a stack of homemade pancakes with jelly and melted butter, I spend the morning on coursework. The state offers a K-12 program online and I can normally finish the work in a couple of hours each day. Part of me wishes that I could just ignore everything about normal life—life outside paraplegia—but Jen insists that I keep on track for college. College.

  It seems like such a meaningless thing to me now.

  I hit submit for the last assignment of the day just as there’s a loud knock on the farmhouse kitchen door. I’m glad Jen hasn’t left for Boston yet. Getting to the door feels like a monumental challenge.

  Shutting down my computer, I stretch my arms towards the ceiling and groan. I almost wish the school work was more time-consuming, so I’d have more to keep me busy. Six hours of rehab, ten hours of academics, and fifty-six or so hours of sleep each week is not nearly enough to keep my brain from wandering and remembering, not when the week is one hundred and sixty-eight interminable hours long.

  It’s like a cruel standing joke that only people who meet great tragedy ever understand the punch line to—“Oh, you just went through something awful and you’re a shadow of your former self? Awesome, here’s your whole life and the ability to remember in great detail all the terrible shit and, as an added bonus, you’ll be constantly reminded that you’re a broken person with physical limitations.”

  Knocking again, and this time I hear Jen shout “be right there!”

  Curious, I roll away from the desk and out into the hall.

  I hear the telltale squeak of the kitchen door opening and then my aunt’s voice. “Hi, can I help you?”

  “Maybe, ma’am. I’m Matthew Hopkins. We’ve just moved in a few miles away and I’m afraid our hound Otis caught wind of somethin’ and took off. Pulled the leash right outta my lil sister’s hand.” It’s a boy’s v
oice, deep and smooth. It reminds me of Aaron’s, my boyfriend. At least, he’d been my boyfriend before the accident. But the words that this Matthew person is saying don’t match his accent and tone—it’s like a Hoyt-Aaron hybrid, like someone has spliced together the two voices from my memory and made a discomfiting mashup.

  “I’m sorry Matthew. I haven’t seen a dog running around or anything.” Jen sounds genuinely sorry. “Would you like a glass of sweet tea or anything? It looks like you walked here.”

  “That’d be great. Thank you kindly.”

  I listen as the kitchen door closes noisily. I wonder why Matthew, being a stranger, came to the back door. It’s really the only one we use, but he wouldn’t know that.

  “Matilda, come in here and meet Matthew. He looks about your age.” The way Jen says my given name and that Matthew is about my age is so transparent—like a mother setting up a singles ad for her thirty something son who’s never had a steady relationship. God, how embarrassing.

  But I move into the kitchen since I’ve been summoned, ready to see this Matthew with the contradictory voice and vocabulary. When I see his face and the way he is smiling in my direction, I stop rolling forward. He looks a bit like Hoyt, but he has Aaron’s dark brown hair and blue eyes, that are wide-set and fit on either side of his nose perfectly. The smile though is uniquely his own. He’s a dream to look at, the kind of guy that’s just too perfect to be real. And there’s something about him that resonates, that draws me in, but there’s also something about him that repels me. Or, rather, there is some separate force that causes me to be repelled. That makes no sense, dummy.

  As I get nearer to him, there is the hint of something wafting toward me that further repels me. It is acrid and decaying, like rotten meat. The smell, or impression of it, is quickly lost within the floral notes of Jen’s perfume and the fruity notes of the aerosol fragrance that automatically sprays into the house every thirty minutes.