Awakening

by Jacqueline Brown

  Copyright © 2020 by Jacqueline Brown

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States

  by Falling Dusk Publishing.

  www.Jacqueline-Brown.com

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover art designed by Aero Gallerie

  Also by Jacqueline Brown:

  The Light, Book One of The Light Series

  Through the Ashes, Book Two of The Light Series

  From the Shadows, Book Three of The Light Series

  Into the Embers, Book Four of The Light Series

  Out of the Darkness, Book Five of The Light Series

  “Before the Silence,” a Light Series Short Story

  To receive your FREE copy of “Before the Silence,” please join the mailing list or visit www.Jacqueline-Brown.com

  This work is dedicated to the Church Suffering.

  May you be at peace.

  Table of Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  One

  From the darkness of my room, I could see the faint outline of the cliff rising above the layer of thick trees in the space between my home and the ocean. When I was younger, I used to climb to the top of the cliff. I no longer climb cliffs. I no longer seek adventure. That girl left eight years ago; in her place, I now exist.

  I lowered my gaze. He was there—as he had been every night for the last two weeks. Why? Why did he watch our windows? He was a strange boy, though in truth he wasn’t a boy. He had turned eighteen the week after moving onto our property. That was three weeks ago.

  I didn’t blame him for coming here; he had nowhere else to go. Did I blame Sam for bringing him here? This troubled boy who spent his evenings watching our windows. No, I decided I didn’t blame her, either. He was her nephew, the only child of her dead sister.

  My face and body were shielded from his view by the long drapes which hung on either side of the glass panes. With the light off, he couldn’t see me. I took a step back when his face turned toward me, as if trying to determine which room was mine. My heart beat faster from fear and curiosity. Why was he there? Why was he always there?

  He stood now and backed up into the shadows of the trees. He’d spend a few more minutes there and then disappear into the woods between my home and his.

  Sam and her husband, Jason, lived on our land. Jason’s parents were squatters, the land their son and his family now occupied stolen from my grandparents. Jason’s parents were never any good—or so I was told—but Jason was different. He was good, and so was Sam. They were like family. Their nephew was not. He was a threat. A threat they brought into our sanctuary, the one place in this world I used to feel safe.

  My grandparents built the house this troubled boy now lived in, on the land which would one day be mine and my sisters’. I was used to threats and attacks from the outside world, but not from within my sacred space. It’s why I hid here.

  The rest of the world had proven its evil and danger when it took my mother from me. I didn’t recognize the danger then, as my father did. He was wise to see it, wise to protect us. I was nine, too young to understand.

  Now, at seventeen, I knew the outside world was not a place I wanted to be.

  At times I wondered if I was hiding. That’s what my grandmother thought. She didn’t approve of the way my father was raising us. She thought we should be out spending time with others our age, or at least not hiding in our castle. But she was wrong. She didn’t understand. No one could understand.

  Yes, her mother had died when she was young. She died of sickness, not murder. Losing the one you love most to violence … is not something that ever leaves you.

  In that small way, the troubled boy, Luca, and I had something in common. I lost my mom to the violence of another, and he lost his to his mother’s violence against herself. Did it matter if the person who killed the one you loved was the same one you loved? Yes, I decided.

  His wound went deeper.

  I held no anger toward my mother. Only regret that she was serving at the food pantry that day—no, it wasn’t her fault.

  Luca couldn’t say the same about his mother; her death was her choice.

  “A car accident,” was all we were told at first. Sam was too upset to tell us more. Once the body was buried and Luca was here, Sam told my grandmother the truth. Gigi told us later. She wasn’t the sort of grandmother to keep secrets from us. I was grateful for that. She spoke her mind. A suicide note had been found, and Sam was devastated her sister had left Luca alone in the world. Sam also blamed herself for not being closer to her sister. They were different, she had explained, and separated from one another long ago.

  It was true, Gigi added when she relayed the story to us. No one from Sam’s family came to their wedding. And in all the years since their wedding, Sam only mentioned once to Gigi that she had a sister and a nephew in Florida. Gigi said she asked once, and Sam changed the subject. That thought brought me peace in some strange way.

  Sam hadn’t been involved in Luca’s life. How could she know he was the type of guy who stared at girls’ windows? No, this wasn’t her fault.

  I stepped in front of the glass, my breath creating a film of fog on the panes closest to my mouth. He was gone now, crept back to his house.

  I drew the drapes; the heavy material covered all three windows. The thickness of the fabric helped block both the light and the cold. I touched the stone wall beside the drapes and pulled my hand away. As beautiful as the stone walls were, they were not good at keeping out the cold that overwhelmed Maine for most of the year. That’s why my father and mother had drywall and insulation added to most of the rooms of the house. This room had not originally been my room and, so, did not have these modern additions. When Avila, the youngest of us, was born, I lost my room to her and moved to one closer to my grandmother. I preferred the look of the stone, and this room came with its own fireplace, which more than made up for the lack of drywall.

  I turned the lights on and opened my bedroom door. I had kept it closed so I could watch Luca without my being watched.

  From the hallway, Avila popped into my room.

  “You scared me,” I said, holding a hand to my chest.

  She laughed. “Siena, you scare so easy.”

  “Maybe I do, maybe I don’t,” I countered.

  “Oh, please, you are the biggest scaredy-cat I know!”

  “You’re eight. You don’t know that many people,” I said, teasing her. Her words didn’t hurt me. They were the truth, and I didn’t hide from the truth.

  “I know plenty of people,” she protested with a shake of her head. Her wavy red hair was a tangled mess, as always.

  “Did you come to the other side of the house just to scare me, or was there some other reason?” I said, kindly.

  “Oh yeah, I forgot. Want to watch a movie with us?”

  “What’re you watching?” I asked.

  “Gigi said she wants Sound of Music,” Avi answered.

  Of course, that’s what my grandmother picked. It was her favorite, and we watched it at least once a month.
r />   “No, thanks,” I said. “I need to get some schoolwork done.”

  “Are you sure?” she said, making her eyebrows move up and down in the goofy way she did.

  It was impossible not to smile when Avi was around. She was the life of our family.

  “I’m sure, but thank you.”

  “All right,” she said, skipping off. “I’ll tell them.”

  She was a baby when Mom died, and had no true memory of her. Only memories her mind created after hearing stories of our mother. I supposed that was both good and bad. She never had a chance to experience a normal life, and she grieved for a mom she never knew. It had to be better than grieving for a mom you did know and losing a life you once had.

  When our mom died, I had been a regular fourth-grade kid. I went to school, played soccer, had friends. After her death, all of that changed. Lisieux, who had been in the first grade, and I began being homeschooled. We never went back to soccer. Even now, the ball, deflated after years of neglect, sat in the garage.

  Right after Mom died, Dad wouldn’t let the three of us out of his sight—terrified he’d lose us too. After a year or so of us staying home, except to go to church, I got used to the silence. I no longer wanted to be with friends; their concerns were so trivial. I couldn’t relate and stopped trying. They were no better; they couldn’t understand what life without a mother was like and they didn’t try. They took their moms for granted. I had no patience for that and I told them so—which marked the true beginning of my seclusion.

  As the years went by, the only people my age who came to our house did so when my dad invited their parents and asked them to bring their kids. He was too important to turn down, but I wished they would have anyway. I never felt so alone as when I was surrounded by people who didn’t want to be near me.

  My dad and Gigi were by far the wealthiest people in the county, and people did things for him because of that, not because he was a good man—which he was—but because they weren’t good. Never were they his friends to be his friends; they always wanted something.

  My dad wasn’t a prisoner in this place. He continued to work and socialize in the real world. In so many ways, though, he was as alone as I was.

  A thought entered my mind, causing me to laugh.

  Luca clearly didn’t care about my dad’s wealth and connections. If he did, he wouldn’t be stalking his daughters.

  I sat on the side of the bed and stared at the soot-stained stone of my fireplace. My mom had faced life with joy, even when it wasn’t joyful. She never lost her faith, her hope, or her sense of adventure. She would not approve of the way I was living, hiding from the world, afraid of everything.

  Tears blurred my vision. I missed her. I missed her so much. If she were alive, I’d tell her about Luca. I would have no secrets from her. I never did. She was my best friend. I sniffed. The reality was that she was not alive and though I believed she was watching me from heaven, I hadn’t heard a word from her since her life on this earth ended. I had dreams of her, but nothing prophetic. And so I went on without her guidance … as if she didn’t exist.

  My grandmother did her best. She’d loved my mother as if she were her own daughter rather than her daughter-in-law. It had always been that way with them. My dad once joked to some visiting friends, “If anything ever happened between Rebecca and me, it would be me moving out of the family estate, not her.” Of course, nothing ever came between them. They were united in their love for one another, their children, and their God.

  I wrapped a blanket around my shoulders and fell onto my bed, curled into a tight ball. The light from the hallway behind me illuminated the picture of my mom and me that sat on my white bookcase. My eyes burned. I forced them closed. She’d be so disappointed in me. I kept my eyes shut. I would not look at the laughter in her eyes and the excitement in mine as we stood at the top of the cliff, the raging ocean far below us.

  I pulled the blanket over my head, my hot breath warming the space. My mind slowed as I hid from her memory and my life.

  Two

  The bright morning sunlight streamed along the edges of the heavy drapes. As I sat up, I shook away the frustrations of the previous night. Things were always better in the morning. I wondered why that was. Why, when the sun shone, was I calm and rational, and when it was gone, I was not.

  In the bathroom I brushed my teeth and pulled my auburn hair into a ponytail. It had been as flaming red as Avi’s hair when I was her age, but it had darkened. Now it matched the color of my mother’s, though it was as straight as my father’s. Our middle sister was the opposite; Lisieux’s hair was light brown, like our dad’s, and wavy, like our mom’s. All of us shared the same ghostly white skin and green eyes of our mother. People said we were pretty, and I agreed with them when it came to my sisters, but I had never felt pretty.

  I turned from the mirror and left the bathroom. I put on a pair of running pants and pulled a sweatshirt over the T-shirt I’d slept in. I slid into my sneakers and went to the drapes. I pulled the heavy fabric across the wall. The room instantly became cooler and brighter. The landscape brimmed with the oranges and reds of fall. Luca’s spot of the night before was empty.

  He was never there during the day.

  Going down the back stairs, my feet sprang beneath the wooden steps. The artwork we created as young kids lined the wall of the family staircase, which was vastly different from the actual artwork lining the walls of the main stairs. Those stairs we rarely used.

  “You missed a good time last night,” Gigi said when I stepped into the kitchen.

  “Did I?” I asked, taking a banana from the fruit bowl on the counter.

  Avi giggled. “Dad fell asleep, and we took turns throwing popcorn into his mouth.”

  “Gigi got the most points,” Lisieux added.

  “Gigi is a bad influence on you girls,” Dad said lightheartedly as he drank his coffee.

  “Somebody needs to be, Paul, and it certainly isn’t going to be you,” Gigi said.

  I could tell she’d have thrown popcorn at him right then if she’d had some.

  “I’m not sure they need a bad influence, Mom,” Dad said as he put down his mug.

  Before Gigi could reply to Dad, I said, “I’m sorry I missed it.”

  Undoubtedly focused on the need for kids to have fun and explore the world, these were her usual criticisms of his parenting style.

  I took a bite of the banana as I went toward the back door.

  “Where’re you going?” Avi asked.

  “For a walk,” I answered, wanting to get outside and feel the crunch of fall leaves beneath my feet.

  “You should take Jackson with you,” Dad said, checking his phone, as he always did, though he pretended he didn’t.

  “Where is he?” I asked.

  “Outside,” Gigi said, “hopefully, not chasing chickens.”

  “He’s not,” Avi said. “He’s a good dog.”

  “Good dogs sometimes chase chickens,” Lisieux countered, not bothering to look up from her book. She rarely bothered to look up from her book.

  “Jackson doesn’t chase the hens,” Avi said, obstinately begging Lisieux for a fight.

  She was the one I felt worst for. She longed for daily social interaction. She longed for recess and lunch periods to interact with other girls and boys. Gigi often made the appeal to my dad that Avi should be in school, instead of homeschooled like Lisieux and me. He always said no.

  “Tone of voice, Avila,” Dad said.

  I went to the door, tuning out the rising conflict behind me. Outside, the air was crisp but not cold. Though the cold was not far away; a few more weeks and snow would bury the dry leaves of fall. The sky was bright and blue. I could spot the cliff which rose above the sea on the northern edge of our property, the mountain beside it rising steadily upward. Our house was half as high as the cliff. The ground sloped down from my house to the sea, about a mile in a straight line from where I now stood. If the trees weren’t there, I’d be
able to see the ocean and the old inn on her shore, from my yard. As it was, I could barely glimpse the inn or the wide ocean beyond it, from my window two floors up.

  Avi was right. Jackson was not chasing the chickens. When he noticed me, he began wiggling happily around on his back, grass and shards of broken leaves sticking to his copper fur as he rolled over to watch me come toward him. His tail thumped the ground as I moved closer.

  I knelt and wrapped an arm around him. He had been a gift from my grandmother after my mom died. Gigi thought it would be good for us to have something to love on. She was right. He was now the closest thing to a friend I had.

  “Do you want to go on the trails?” I asked.

  He bounced up in excitement. It was amazing how he understood what certain words meant.

  “I thought so,” I said as he leaped toward me, putting his paws on my thighs.

  I rubbed the dead grass and dirt from his back, and he bounded away, waiting for me halfway down our hill. The force of his wagging tail shook his whole backside. A mutt with different-colored eyes and odd-shaped ears, he wasn’t a cute dog, but he wouldn’t be as lovable if he were. Gigi agreed. She said that was why she picked him from the other dogs at the shelter. He was the cutest, in the least cute sort of way.

  I threw my banana peel into the compost pile on the far side of the chicken coop. Jackson waited for me at the start of the trail. Though there were many other trails, only a few got used with any regularity. This was the one used the most, for obvious reasons. It had the best blueberry bushes, it led to the beach, and there was a side trail a few yards up which led to Jason and Sam’s house. Luca used at least this part of the trail every evening to spy on us and return to his house. I pushed that thought from my mind.

  I’d never seen Luca out on the trails, though when he started watching our house at night I had begun to be more cautious, trying to keep an eye out for him. I did occasionally meet Jason or Sam on the trails. Jason was a quiet, hardworking man. If our paths crossed, he’d offer me a slight nod and a weary smile. Sam was equally hard-working, but not at all quiet. When I saw her, it always turned into a conversation—one I enjoyed. She, even more than Jason, was like part of our family and was one of Gigi’s closest friends, or perhaps Gigi was more of a mother figure to Sam. Either way, they often talked or texted during the weekdays, and when the weather was nice and Sam wasn’t working, they took long walks together.