In the Shadows of Fate

by Rick Jurewicz

  She tried not to let her mind go to the place that thought of only loss and grief, and even deeper, the growing anger at the things that had happened to her in the last few days. She closed her eyes, listening to the distant pulsing of bass and beat from the club across the street, and she tried to let its rhythms carry her into a quiet and restful slumber.

  She stood under the bright full moon in a lush and beautiful garden. The air was still and silent, and her nostrils were filled with the scent of a hundred different flowers. She looked down at herself and noticed that she was wearing a long and sheer white nightgown, with her feet bare in the soft grass of the lawn. There was a large stone fountain in the middle of the garden, and surrounding the fountain every few feet was a ring of white pea stone that formed another circle about a foot wide. It took her a moment before she noticed there was water running in the fountain, springing from a statuette of a fairy and flowing down all surfaces of the fairy's body, creating the illusion that her entire body glistened in the reflected moonlight.

  Miranda stood on the edge of the yard along the tall hedges, and finally came to the realization that she was in the back garden of the Gale Estate. At first, she had not recognized it because everything was lush and new; well groomed and cared for. The fountain that she had seen on her visit to the home just days before had been dry and dirty and covered with bird feces. Now it looked scrubbed clean with crystal clear waters flowing through it. The vegetation on the grounds had been overgrown and overrun with weeds. Now, it was cut and weeded and trimmed to perfection.

  The front of the house faced the east, and there was a path to the north end of the back gardens that led to a much smaller house that was very plain and simple, only about 15 feet across the front by 20 feet deep, with a four by six foot porch outside the front door. There was a single candle lit in the window, but everything else in the house was dark.

  Miranda heard a rustling beyond the hedges along a path that led into the woods. At first, she felt the fear that crept over her. But even greater than the fear was her compulsion to follow down the dark path through the trees to see what was hidden beyond the shadows. She moved on, slowly into the path that, with the moon high and luminescent in the sky, began to feel more and more like a tunnel with cracks of light from the outside world desperately trying to break through its stone ceiling.

  She thought she had heard a voice in the distance down the path, and as she got closer, she was more certain as to what she had heard. She slowed herself even more, stepping silently and deliberately until she could see candles burning in the distance in what appeared to be a small clearing.

  Initially she could see no one around, although she was sure that she had heard voices. She came to the edge of the clearing and saw the figure of a woman with dark, long and curly hair standing beyond the candles in a gown very similar to the one she was wearing now. The candles cast a soft glow on the woman's face, revealing her gentle and serene features.

  The woman was looking in a direction that was to the far right side of where Miranda was standing, and it took Miranda a few moments to realize that she somehow knew who this woman was that she was looking at, although she had never before seen her face...except perhaps in some small way looking into a mirror. She was looking at Suzanne Gale. She was looking at her mother.

  Miranda stepped forward away from the path that had led her to the clearing.

  "Hello?" said Miranda, taking cautious steps toward Suzanne. Suzanne did not respond to her.

  "Suzanne? Is that you?" she said again, but still, there was no reaction from Suzanne, as if she could not hear Miranda's voice calling to her.

  "You've come," Suzanne said, looking off in the direction that Miranda had seen her looking to when she first came upon her. There was someone else there; Miranda stopped and looked to see who it was.

  Out of the darkness came the other person who was there; a man about six feet tall, walking barefoot in the soft grass of the clearing. He wore khaki work trousers and a white button down shirt, with hair as black as the night he stepped out of that rested just above his shoulders. He was shaved clean, and even though the moon and the candles cast little light, there was enough for Miranda to tell he had strong and handsome features, almost like she might have imagined from a romance novel, although she could never stomach reading anything like that.

  "Of course I came," the man said to her mother. "There is no way that I could not come. I am giving up more than you could possibly imagine for you. But I wouldn't trade my love for you for all the treasures of eternity."

  Suzanne smiled and moved in closer to embrace the man. They kissed, and Miranda stood frozen watching the two in their embrace. She quickly realized how uncomfortable she felt watching them, like she was some kind of peeping Tom.

  Suzanne removed the man's white shirt, and Miranda saw something that distracted her feeling of discomfort as she fixed her eyes on the man fully now. His back was completely tattooed, from the lower part of his neck across his upper back from shoulder to shoulder, and on down to what looked like below his waistline. He turned his body and the moon’s light fully illuminated his muscular back, starkly magnifying every detail of his tattoos.

  Miranda could see clearly that it was the exact same style of script that was written on the parchment pages of the Caducus Oraclum. The man's back, although somewhat tanned, was like a white sheet in the moonlight detailing the intricate lettering of the script.

  As the two continued their embrace, Miranda heard a noise in the distant woods beyond them that at first sounded like thunder, but quickly became the roar of a forest fire that seemed to be rushing at them with a hurricane's force.

  "Suzanne!" she cried, but there was no response once more, as if everything that was happening around them went completely unnoticed by the entwined couple. "MOTHER!"

  Still, there was no response, and Miranda turned and ran as fast as she could back down the path as the firestorm raged behind her. She found herself in the backyard where the fountain was at, but now the fountain itself was filling with water at an extraordinary rate, overflowing and quickly flooding the entire garden as if it were a tidal wave raging over the stone walls of the fountain.

  Miranda was trapped between an inferno behind her and the flood rapidly growing in front of her. She ran headlong into the water and desperately started to swim, but it was only seconds before the massive surge of water drew her under. It pushed her back towards the flames racing up from behind, and she opened her eyes to see the collision of fire and water, with herself trapped in the middle of it all. She could feel the heat, and fiercely kicked and pulled her way to the surface, finally breaking through with a loud gasp for air.

  But she was not in the garden of the Gale Estate any longer, nor was she in the tempest of fire and water. She was in a surprisingly clean bathroom stall, sitting with her legs sprawled in front of her on a closed toilet seat. The door of the stall was closed, and a female voice spoke from the other side of the door.

  "Are you alright in there?" asked the girl beyond the stall door.

  Miranda looked down at herself and noticed that she was only wearing what she had fallen asleep in: black, booty short style underwear with lace trim, and a black spaghetti strap tank top that was cut a bit short. It was not what she usually slept in, but means were limited the last few days, and doing laundry hadn't been a priority. She realized that she was also barefoot as well.

  "Hey...should I call somebody?" asked the voice again. Miranda was disoriented and confused, but managed to get a few words out.

  "No...I'm fine. Just a little fuzzy headed," she said to the girl through the door.

  "Okay," said the girl. "I just wanted to make sure. You seemed kinda out of it when you walked into the club."

  "Where am I?" asked Miranda. No sooner had she asked did she realize she had to be in the Westside Warehouse. The constant pulsating beats were just a slight variation of the ones she was hearing when she had fallen asleep in the mote
l room.

  "You're at the Westside Halloween Bash. You don't remember? You must really be fucked up," said the girl.

  Miranda opened the stall door and stepped out into the dimly lit restroom. The girl that stood before her was a little shorter than she was, dressed up like a girl from an insurance commercial that Miranda had seen on TV, wearing an all white shirt and pants with a blue apron, and a brown wig on her head.

  "They let me in here like this?" asked Miranda, looking again at her lack of clothing.

  The girl let out a brief chuckle. "Tonight, less is more, and they can actually get away with it, being it's the Halloween party. The guy at the door probably thought you were dressed like a hooker!" The insurance girl could tell that Miranda was still very out of sorts, and reached out to take Miranda's hand to lead her to the sink to splash some cold water on her face.

  When Miranda's hand made contact with the girl's hand, Miranda felt a rush of raw emotion run through her like an electrical current flowing from a hot wire. She impulsively reached out to her side and grabbed the edge of the stall door to steady herself, and she felt as if a hundred moving images flashed before her eyes in an instant.

  Time seemed to slow. The first thing that came into her vision was the image of the girl that was there with her in the bathroom. Her name was Kelly. Miranda suddenly knew that, although she didn't know how she could. It was as if Miranda was standing in a room with Kelly, far and away from the place where they were now on this night.

  Kelly knelt down next to a bed in a small bedroom, and there was a woman lying in the bed, very silent and still. Kelly held the woman's hand in her own, and tears streamed down her face. The woman in the bed was Kelly's mother, which was another fact that Miranda could not explain how she knew. The grief Kelly felt was overwhelming, so much that Miranda could feel the grief as if it were a tangible thing, emanating a strange vibration of its own.

  The next flash was a few years prior to this, when Kelly was on a date with her first real boyfriend. She was 16 years old, and she and her boyfriend Mark were alone on a back road two-track in the back seat of Mark's car. Their lips and their hands wandered with nervous tension and anxious excitement. Once again, Miranda could feel the emotions as if they created their own pulsing sensations. Kelly and Mark both felt the intensity of the moment...the fear of the darkness around them...the danger of getting caught...

  The next vision was equally emotional, but sickened Miranda. Kelly was six years old, and she was staying with her grandfather. It was not an uncommon thing for Kelly to stay with her grandfather on weekends when her parents had gone away, but on this particular weekend, her grandfather wanted to teach her a new 'game'; one that Kelly was very uncomfortable with, and it frightened her. Her grandfather made sure to tell her to never tell anyone about their little game...

  Miranda dug deep within her consciousness and pulled herself out of the vision, in the same moment yanking her hand hard away from Kelly's hand. The sudden motion startled Kelly, and she stared for a moment into Miranda's wide and frightened eyes. Miranda wasn't feeling her own sense of fear though; she was still reeling from the fear that Kelly had felt in the vision. Even Kelly felt as if Miranda’s wild eyes were staring into her very soul, and Kelly turned away quickly and ran out of the bathroom without saying another word.

  Miranda slowly walked over to the mirror in the bathroom and leaned her hands down on the countertop, looking up at her reflection. Her pupils looked wider than they should in that light, although even at the mirror it wasn't exceptionally bright in the dingy club bathroom. She wondered perhaps through the course of the afternoon if someone had slipped something into her food or something that she had drank. She had experimented with some things in the past, mostly only pot though, with one rare instance trying a hit of acid at a party that only made her sleepy and a little light-headed. The acid was a major let down from what she had expected from all the movies she had seen in the past. She'd expected maybe seeing bright silver peace signs and floating colors; perhaps a flying cow or even a unicorn. It hadn't been any of those things, and she never tried it again.

  There was nothing that gave any kind of explanation whatsoever as to what had just happened to the poor girl that tried to help her but went running terrified out of the restroom. Miranda knew she had to get out of the club. She had no idea how she could have gotten into the restroom, and had no memory of leaving the motel room or walking into the Westside Warehouse. A cold, frightened feeling had now come over her.

  Where was Jake? Had something happened to him? She knew that if someone had found them in the motel and tried to take or harm her in any way, he would have tried to fight them off regardless of what might happen to himself. She quickly moved for the door of the restroom and pulled it open.

  The club was packed so tight that it was clear the only way out was to squeeze through the crowd of monsters and gypsies and pimps and punks...and everything else you could imagine a wild, young sea of frenzied college kids could think of. The lighting inside the main dance floor was overall darker than the bathroom was, but the lights were flashing in every direction and were of every color. Miranda already felt disoriented enough as it was not knowing how the hell she got there, and the swarming flecks of color everywhere she moved her eyes, along with the strobe lights near the DJ booth, made it far more difficult to grasp which direction she needed to find to lead her out of the building.

  She started forward, pressing her way between a large, hairy, science fiction creature that was laughing with a man in a gynecologist uniform with the words 'Free Breast Exams' printed across his chest. The crowd was so tight is was impossible to maneuver without making contact with people. A man in a Native American headdress accidentally bumped into Miranda as he passed by her, spilling part of his plastic cup of beer on her arm.

  "Oh, Jesus, I'm so sorry," he yelled to her over the booming music, and placed his hand on her shoulder as he apologized. He was clearly drunk when he touched her, but what came next was darkly sobering.

  The rush that had come over her in the bathroom with Kelly happened once again as the man's hand touched her skin. She saw the young man, whose name was Caleb, at a party with some friends a few months before. His best friend Brent, who he had known since childhood, had gone out of town, and Caleb had taken Brent's girlfriend Julie to the party, where he kept feeding her drinks all night long. She had gotten so drunk that it was easy for Caleb to make his move, and they slept together that night. Miranda could feel that had been Caleb's intention all along.

  Julie was so guilt ridden after that night she couldn't allow herself to stay with Brent afterwards. She blamed herself for what happened and didn't want to be responsible for causing a lifelong friendship to fall apart. She told Caleb this, and he left her to believing that was how it all happened. He didn't care. He had always resented Brent for finding a girl as perfect as Julie, and wanted to get him back, although Brent had never done anything to deserve such punishment from his lifelong friend.

  Next, Miranda saw Caleb breaking into a restaurant with some friends late one weekend night in high school. One of the guys he was with had worked at the restaurant the summer before, and knew where the extra beer and liquor was stored. Caleb was terrified, but at the same time filled with the thrill of the moment.

  Miranda then witnessed Caleb's first kiss at 11 years of age, out behind the backstop of the baseball field at school where the kids would play during recess; his heart raced, and he felt funny throughout his entire being as he awkwardly puckered his lips and kissed a girl that strongly resembled a much younger Julie...but this young girl was not Julie. In fact, it was a girl that died in a car wreck with her parents a couple of years after that kiss. Her death broke Caleb's heart.

  Miranda pulled away from Caleb's touch and pushed her way further through the crowd. She took one short glance over her shoulder back at him as she moved away, only to see him standing stunned and dazed over the brief moment of contact he had had with
her. Caleb could not see, nor could he know what it was that Miranda had seen in those few seconds. But like Kelly, Caleb felt as if someone had just walked right through his soul.

  Miranda's head was spinning. Every direction she looked the lights seemed to dizzy her even more. Across the room in every direction she looked until she could see a sign that said 'EXIT'. She started to push through in that direction but was feeling the push of the crowd back upon her. It took her a moment to realize that she was trying to push her way through the dance floor, and looked in the other direction for another way out. She saw a small hallway that looked as if a crowd of people were coming into the club from that way, and turned to head back toward that hall.

  She made it about 10 feet closer to the door when she felt a blow to her back that knocked her to the floor. A fight had broken out in the area that she had just been standing, and one of the drunken idiots was thrown into her, knocking her to the ground. Hands came to her aid from almost every direction, and flashes in her head were almost too much for her to bear.

  A child's first ride on a roller coaster...

  A young woman raped by her brother’s best friend from college...

  A teenage girl being laughed at in a high school locker room by other girls because she was flat chested...

  And then the vision was of Jake, just moments after she had told him she was leaving and that it was over between them. He was angry, throwing plastic lawn ornaments around in his parent’s yard. He got onto his bike and tore off down the highway. He took it to 60 miles an hour. Then 70. When he reached 80 he saw a deer run out in the road far ahead. He didn't slow down. The deer stood still, frozen, and it was only at the last second that he applied the brakes enough to be able to stop the bike short, before hitting the deer.

  When he was almost at a stop, the tire caught some loose asphalt that was left from when someone had filled in a pot hole, and the bike went down on its side and slid another 30 feet to a stop, just inches from the deer, throwing Jake off to the side and into the gravel shoulder of the road. The deer ran off, finally breaking free from its trance of fright, and Jake, shaken but not broken, turned and watched the animal run off. There were tears on his face...