by E. E. Holmes
The biggest difference between them was the expressions on their faces. Catriona looked apathetic and slightly annoyed, while Lucida’s face was aglow with interest and excitement.
I swallowed convulsively. “Why are you here? What do you want from me?”
“Calm down, love, take a breath. Like I said, we’re just here to have a little chat,” Lucida said, smiling in what she evidently thought was a friendly way.
But I was too scared to calm down. “Look, I don’t want to talk to you. I don’t know why you all keep finding me, but I can’t help you. I don’t know what to do, and I’m sorry about that, but please just go away.”
“What do you mean, ‘you all’? Who else has….” Lucida began, but then Catriona put a hand on her arm.
“She thinks we’re a Visitation,” Catriona said, her tone indicating that it should have been obvious.
Lucida’s expression cleared immediately as she shook her head and laughed a short, harsh note. “Of course she does. Not surprised, all things considered.”
“Aren’t … aren’t you both dead?” I asked.
“No, Jessica. We are very much alive,” Catriona said.
I considered this possibility. They both looked totally solid. Then again, so had Evan. He hadn’t known he was dead, and so it was conceivable these visitors were in the same frame of mind, though I doubted it. It was obvious from their comments that they were aware, on some level, of what had been happening to me. I decided to take them at their word and accept that two unknown, living women were standing in my bedroom in the dark. If they thought this was going to calm me down, they were quite wrong.
“How did you get in here?” I demanded.
Lucida gestured lazily behind her. “Through your window. I suppose these weren’t the smartest shoes for scaling the side of a building, I’ll admit it. Pleasant surprise, to find it unlocked, though. Thanks for that.”
The night breeze lifted Lucida’s cloud of hair around her, and I realized that indeed, the window hadn’t been open when I’d gone to sleep.
“Okay, give me one good reason why I shouldn’t scream at the top of my lungs and call the police,” I said, offput by Lucida’s strange composure. It was as though entering strangers’ windows by moonlight was a regular occupation for her.
“Well, for one thing, I’d lose my bet, and that’d be a shame, wouldn’t it?” Lucida said, shooting Catriona a gloating smile. “And secondly, how do you expect to understand everything that’s been happening to you recently if you boot out the women with all the answers?”
“How do you know what’s been happening to me?” The words tumbled out over each other in my surprise.
“Because once upon a time, it happened to me. To both of us,” Lucida said.
“Why should I believe you?”
“Oh, stop being so bloody vague and just tell her already,” Catriona said, running a hand through her magnificent hair. She turned to me. “Don’t mind Lucida, she’s always been one for the theatrics. I for one wanted to knock on the front door, but no ….”
I felt one corner of my mouth twitch upward in spite of my fear. Lucida, however, looked aggravated.
“Yes, well we’re here now, and I’m sure Jessica has lots of questions for us,” she said.
“I’ve got a few of my own, Lucida.” All three of us whirled around to face the door. Karen stood framed in the light from the hallway, her expression absolutely livid. Her arms were folded tightly across her chest.
Catriona looked instantly uncomfortable. Lucida’s face fell, but only for a moment. She quickly recovered herself and hitched a smile back into place. She continued in the same unconcerned tone as before.
“Hello, Karen. So nice to see you again.”
“I wish I could say the same, but let’s not start with the pretenses so early, shall we? It sets a bad precedent,” Karen said.
“Who’s pretending?” Lucida looked around, as though she may find as yet undiscovered people hiding behind her. “It’s been ages. You’re looking … well.” Her voice shook with a barely contained laugh, as though she were enjoying some private joke.
Karen seemed to get the punchline. “So are you. Remarkably so. I’m sure the Council finds that rather interesting.”
“We take care of ourselves, don’t we, Cat?” Lucida said, glancing back at Catriona, who was avoiding Karen’s gaze.
“Karen!” I finally managed to say. “What is going on? Who are they and why do you know them?”
“Don’t worry about it, Jess,” Karen said, still not looking at me. “Lucida and Catriona are old friends. I’m sure they just wanted to meet you, but now they have and they’ll be running along.” Her voice rang with finality.
“But we just got here! And we’ve come such a long way, too! Surely you’re not going to pack us off without a nice little visit, are you?” Lucida pouted, flopping into my chair and crossing her legs. “We’ve got so much to talk about.”
“We have absolutely nothing to talk about,” Karen hissed.
“Oh, I think Jess would disagree, isn’t that right Jess?” Lucida said, turning to me.
“It’s not Jess’s decision, Lucida, and it’s certainly not yours,” Karen said. “It’s up to the Council and they’ve assured me that—”
“—Oh, I think you’ll find that the Council has had a change of heart, so to speak,” Lucida said politely. “That’s why we’re here.”
That stopped Karen dead. The color drained from her face. “No, Finvarra would have told me. I received no word of any new decision.”
“Yeah, well, Finvarra’s a busy woman, isn’t she? Like I said, that’s why we’re here.”
Karen turned to Catriona wordlessly for confirmation.
“It’s true, Karen. The circumstances have changed,” Catriona said.
“And just how have the circumstances changed, I’d like to know!”
“That’s exactly what we’ve come here to explain. Isn’t that lovely?” Lucida said. She was obviously enjoying herself. “But before we do, I think you’ve got a bit of explaining to do for Jessica here. Unless you’d rather I—”
“—No!” Karen shouted and then immediately deflated, her face crumpling and falling into her hands. “I’ll tell her.”
“Brilliant!” Lucida clapped her hands and folded her feet beneath her like a child at story time. “We’ll just stay and listen, then.”
Catriona sat carefully on the end of the window seat, throwing me a sympathetic glance before settling her gaze on the carpet.
Karen shuffled to the foot of my bed and sat heavily. When she looked up, her eyes contained a sadness I couldn’t begin to comprehend.
“I owe you an apology, Jess. I’ve kept a lot from you, and I’ve left you searching for answers I could have readily supplied you with. I’m prepared for your anger, and the possibility that you might not forgive me, but I beg you to remember that it was your mother who made me promise I would never reveal to you what I’m about to say, and I do not break that promise lightly. If I thought it would have done any good at all, I would have told you right away. However, it seems that this has been taken out of my hands. It won’t make much sense to you unless I start at the beginning. Please, hear me out.”
§
As Karen began the story that would shape the path of my life, her voice was quiet and gentle.
“When your mother and I were growing up, we were inseparable. We did everything together from the moment we were born. We connected on a level that even other twins couldn’t understand. In all things, we were as one, until the day we turned four years old.
“The morning of our fourth birthday I awoke to find Lizzie talking animatedly to herself. As I took in what was happening, I realized that she was talking not to herself, but to someone else, someone I couldn’t see. When she saw that I was awake, she smiled, and tried to introduce me to her friend, a boy named Michael. At first I thought she was playing a game with me, teasing me with a made-up story, but she became
upset when I didn’t believe her, and scared when I said that I couldn’t see who she was talking to. Crying and confused, she asked Michael to go away, and he did. But others soon took his place.
“Lizzie was scared of the people she was seeing at first, and I was scared for her, but soon she grew used to seeing her ‘secret friends’. I tried to understand that she could not help it, that she was not excluding me from this part of her world on purpose, but I grew more and more resentful of these friends who were stealing my sister away from me. And so one day, when we were seven years old, I waited for one of Lizzie’s visitors to arrive and then I went and got our mother.
“I was sure that when mother heard what Lizzie was doing, she would forbid her from having these secret friends. But when mother listened at the door, she merely closed her eyes and smiled softly to herself. ‘Ah, my Lizzie is the Key, then,’ she whispered, and entered the room.
“That was when my mother sat down with us and first tried to explain what we were, what had been passed down to us. For it was not just Lizzie, she assured me. We were both very special. Someday soon, I, too, would see the people that Lizzie saw, and we would grow up to fulfill the destiny that our mother had passed on to us.”
Here Karen paused, scanning my face carefully as though something she said might have damaged me.
“I’m fine. Go on,” I said.
“When I turned sixteen, I had my first encounter. Lizzie was in the habit of warning me when a visitor was present, and one day in the yard she warned me that a young man had arrived by the fence. I could hardly believe my eyes, for I’d been staring at the very same young man for the last several minutes, wondering who he was and if he needed directions. He was wandering rather aimlessly. In this moment, we realized that I had awakened to our gift, and that very soon we would be making use of our unusual ability.
“On the night we turned eighteen, my mother sat us down and gave us a very old book. She explained that we were the next in a very ancient, very powerful line of women known as the Durupinen.”
Catriona and Lucida both expelled a breath of reverence at the word. Catriona’s eyes were gently closed, Lucida’s uplifted and unfocused.
“Durupinen is an old Celtic word meaning ‘gatekeeper’. The Durupinen are known by many names in as many languages as humans have created. The Durupinen were and are the keepers of the doors that separate the worlds of the living and the dead.”
This was not happening. What she was saying was just not a part of the world in which I lived, the world that made sense.
“My mother explained that our abilities had been passed through the female bloodline for as many hundreds of years as human records could account for, and she was sure for many hundreds of years before that. The people we could see were souls, trapped on earth for a multitude of reasons. It was the calling of the Durupinen to open the doors they controlled and to help these trapped souls to whatever lay on the other side.”
I choked on a lump that was rising slowly in my throat. “That’s why the spirits found my mother? Because she was a … one of these gatekeepers?”
“Spirits, when they are ready to depart, can sense the presence of a Gateway.”
My breath caught on the last word, my mind spiraling back to the night my mother died, the night of the very first dream, and a single whispering voice.
The Gateway is open.
“What is it?” Karen asked. My face must have betrayed my shock.
“Nothing. A dream I had the night my mom died. It … a voice mentioned a Gateway. Please go on. How does the Gateway work?”
“Each spirit Gateway, or ‘Geatgrima’ in the old tongue, is controlled by a pair of women linked by the same bloodline. By the joining of hands and the use of certain incantations, the Durupinen can open their Gateway, briefly, and allow the trapped souls to cross, using their own bodies to facilitate the passage.”
“Their own bodies? What does that mean?”
“One acts as the Key, the entry point, so to speak, and the second acts as a sort of pathway, called the Passage. The soul enters the first body, crosses through the second, and arrives safely intact on the other side.”
Here Karen shot a sharp look at Lucida, who inclined her head and returned her gaze steadily. I fought the panic that was trying to rise in me and held it at bay with another question.
“Which were you? The first or the second?”
“I was the second, the Passage. Your mother, as the first, was the Key. That was why she was sensitive to Visitations so early on. Often the spirits can sense when a Key is present, even if it is not yet active. This was how our mother knew that we had inherited the gift.”
I could see a glaring hole in this explanation and how it could possibly pertain to me, but I did not give it voice. There was still so much I wanted to know.
Karen continued, “Mother trained us in the ways of the Durupinen. She traveled with us to meet the Council, which you have heard me mention tonight. The Durupinen have a hierarchy, just like any clan or group. She saw us through our training and soon we were able to begin fulfilling our birthright. The intention is that each generational Gateway remains open until the next is ready to take its place. There are exceptions, of course, such as when a Durupinen dies without the appropriate heiresses waiting. But the bloodlines are strong, and though it may take years, usually the gift can continue. Our mother’s Gateway closed on our eighteenth birthday, as had her mother’s before her. Unfortunately, our family’s path would not remain so clear.
“Your mother and I were initiated into our roles as Durupinen and went through the appropriate training. Then, when we were at Harvard together—”
“—Wait. My mother went to Harvard? With you?”
“She never told you?”
“No. She told me she never went to college.”
“She never graduated. But while she was there we roomed together, of course, as inseparable as ever we were. It only made sense; our newfound responsibilities to the Durupinen required that we be in close proximity to each other.”
“But then she left.”
“Yes, I’m getting to that. We were never quite sure when a Visitation would occur, or when a crossing would be required. But the need arose, rather urgently, one night in our senior year while we were home for winter break.
“A great part of the responsibility we bear is the secrecy, Jess. No one outside of the Durupinen can know what we are or what we do.”
“Why?”
“Too dangerous,” Catriona chimed in. I jumped, having all but forgotten she was there. “If people knew that we had the ability to communicate with the dead, there would be no peace for us.”
“I don’t understand. Why would it be so terrible if people knew?”
Lucida answered this time. “Can’t you imagine what would happen? Every husband who’d lost a wife would want a chat. Every mother who’d lost a child would want to see or hear from her little one. And what of the churches? The scientists? We’d be studied and exploited like bloody extraterrestrials, wouldn’t we?”
Of course, she was right. What if I’d known such people existed, that I might be one of them? Wouldn’t I, who had just lost my mother, have gone through any means to speak to her one last time?
“As I said, there was an urgent need for a crossing. This particular spirit was … rather insistent,” Karen said, her eyes faraway. I did not need to ask what she meant. My own mind returned to the library bathroom and a hooded figure; I knew exactly what an insistent spirit was.
“It was late at night, and we had just invoked the opening of the Gateway. The spirits had just begun to cross when our bedroom door crashed open.” Karen closed her eyes and gulped. “It was our father. He took one look at us and jumped to some sort of conclusion, though what exactly he thought was happening, we’ll never know for sure. He was a devoutly religious man. The candles, the Summoning Circle—maybe he thought it was witchcraft or something. In any case, he panicked, ran over to us, and tr
ied to pull our grasped hands apart.”
Here, Karen seemed unable to go on. She was inhaling sharply through her nose. Lucida was perched on the edge of her seat, her eyes blazing with an unsettling combination of horror and fascination. Catriona was still staring at the floor, shaking her head minutely.
“Blimey, Karen, I never knew that,” Catriona whispered.
“No one ever knew what really happened except for the Council. It was our request, and Finvarra honored it.”
The three of them were silent with grim understanding, while I sat stewing in growing anticipation. Finally, I blurted out, “So, what happened to him? What happened when he pulled your hands apart?”
“He interfered with the Gateway. The spirit that was crossing was mid-journey when your grandfather made his own body a part of the path.”
“It almost never happens, because the Durupinen operate in such secrecy. But it’s not unheard of,” Catriona said.
“When your grandfather’s body became part of the path his own spirit was pulled partially from his body. That’s the best way I can describe it,” Karen said.
I could feel what little color I had draining from my face. I closed my eyes against a sudden wave of nausea. “Pulled … partially?”
“If it had been pulled fully, of course, he would have died. But we were able to close the Gateway and end the crossing before his entire soul could go through.”
“But something happened to him. I mean, he’s not okay,” I said.
“No,” Karen agreed, “he’s not.” She stood up and paced a moment, seeming to weigh her words carefully before she continued. “Our souls want to cross over. Even when they exist inside our bodies, they can feel the pull of the other side. That’s why most people don’t stay behind as ghosts. Most of our souls give over to the powerful pull and cross over immediately upon death. When your grandfather entered the Gateway, the pull was strong enough to tempt his soul to leave its house and seek its final home. We believe a small part of it actually did, leaving the rest of it both damaged and longing.”