WILLODEAN (THE CUPITOR CHRONICLES Book 1)

by Fowler Robertson

  Maw Sue breathed a long sigh and walked towards the door, walked towards my destiny that waited. She pulled the screen door open, it squealed at her as if it was introducing itself for the first time. The tiny bell attached to the inner latch rang out like an iron church bell in a cathedral, clanging and releasing a host of new fears. The attachment would make its presence known—and soon. She had to hurry. She covered her ears as if they would bleed out but the words impaled her like hot swords.

  From the fires of suffering, and the ashes of affliction, one shall inherit the greatest of strengths in the darkest of nights. Touch the pain but do not allow it to take you. Feel the pain but do not absorb it lest it destroy you from within.

  Peppy jumped on her thighs, excited to see her. She rubbed his back while she labored in thoughts. The ancient words stirred inside her. She knew what it meant, but it didn’t make it any easier to do. She’d read these words before, from ancestors in the old journals and from stories she heard her mother talk about. A flashback of the elevator startles her, in mind, in spirit. It was just a ploy to thwart her, from the Amodgians stirring her to retreat. If she failed—then the newborn didn’t have a chance. A loud rustling sound came from the back bedroom. It was calling her. It was calling me. The time was now.

  Her mind spun, sifted and revisited the old. Could she do it? She had never been able to handle it before—what made her think she could handle it now? The early years left her nothing but madness so she denied the gift. Ran from the curse. Goose bumps lined her arms and her heart felt faint. She could easily take a few pills and forget this happened, yet every day, I’d be the reminder. The great granddaughter she failed. Again. Once more a failure. Susannah Josephine Worrell, a failure at life, at everything. She could simply walk away. She had done it countless times before. Simply erase it. Non-existent. Take a pill. But it was no longer about her. It was about me. This time—she could not fail.

  She walked through the pink bathroom, every step like trying to get through thick sludge. She stepped inside the bedroom and closed the door, leaving Peppy to claw and bark. She gathered herself, took a deep breath, turned and walked to the cedar closet and stopped in front of it. It was like standing in front of a desecrated shrine of her past, a past she did not want to resurrect. Her dress was soaked from the downpour and now heavy like weights, pulling her downward, so much she hoped the floor would just swallow her. End it all. Make it easy. Unable to still herself, she leaned side to side, while her wet leather shoes squished and squashed. Adding to the sounds, she meticulously heard each drip of rain panning off the hem of her skirt and falling to the floor. With each crashing drip, she felt a malevolent force dunk her underwater. “God help me.” She whispered. It had begun.

  A strong sense of resistance came over her, while a thick, palpable fear besieged her stiff. She had been here before. Long, long ago. This is the crossroad, the same intersection of fear she had faced numerous times over the course of her life. It knew how to control her. It saw her weaknesses, strengths, and her fragile state of mind. It used all of them, against her. Spurts of air left her lips in small panicky gasps. Heat erupted in her belly, an old pain gurgled and crawled up her throat to choke her, evoke its power over her. She bit her lips till she could taste the metallic blood pooling in her mouth. Parts of her enjoyed the old pain, lingered in it, and tasted its genesis, fluid from the Gods to remind her, make her feel alive again. Minutes passed before she was able to steady herself and do what she knew she had to do.

  “Devenio—Susannah. Devenio—devenio.” The voice said startling Susannah. Tears flooded her face in hearing her mother’s voice as if it rode in on the outskirts of the dark whispers invading her soul, between the pain and the pleasure, between the known and the unknown. Maw Sue’s hands reach out in automatic response. Letters crawl up her throat, slicing and determined to make their way out no matter the pain.

  “Devenio!” She spat. Blood and spit thrust outward and spewed in the air. The word had not left her lips in years, centuries it seemed. The old stories came back touching her memory, touching her pain in terrible, awful ways, especially for those like her, who deny years, who deny the gifts, those who act when it’s way too late.

  “Devenio!” She said again. It was easier this time. She formed childlike hands and reached to touch the invisible inter realm her gifted eyes could see, feel and touch. She reached past all she knew, she touched the pain and felt its demise. How easily it could take her, right now, wipe her out in one swoop.

  “Devenio! Devenio! Devenio!” She shouted. Her voice mixing with the thunder, the lightening, the rain. She felt chains break off her wrists, her chest, her waist, her legs, her feet, as if bound for years without knowing. It freed her to move forward, past the barrier that wanted to hold her back, make her retreat. She shuffled towards the closet, reached up and jerked the orange pleated curtains back. The gold dowel rod vibrated with clicking sounds and years of accumulated dust stormed like a dirt cloud. She looked into the darkness. Her eyes waxed over with fear. The mere sight of it paralyzed her. It sat in the exact spot she left it years ago…ages ago. So long ago, it felt like another life. Not real, not hers. The giant figure pressed its back against the wall, from floor to mid-ceiling, a colossus figure made from piles of boxes, papers, books and fabric bags from generations of ancestors she never knew. Together they constructed a giant, with big bones that wrecked fear inside Maw Sue’s heart. She closed her eyes. Her eyelids grew black which allowed her to enter in the realm, and while in the power of the gift, she whispered three times, the word, “Devinio”. She was now inside the Imperium realm of the Cupitor where all is not what it seems. It had been a long, long time since she was here. It was surreal, the realm of what was, the glow of all things surrounding her, while the shadow imps of darkness swished through the air, clearly seen for exactly how they are, visible to the eye, unlike in the other earthly realm where we only feel their presence. In the realm of the imperium, the shadows are able to manipulate and punish as they normally do by feeding off the fleshy fear, but they cannot harm us in the Imperium realm. This is the realm where all exists as it is. Maw Sue clearly sees how the shadows survive off her weakness, her fear, her regrets and her troubling mind. She sees her past before her, her pathway, her choices, both right and wrong, all strewn together as if she time traveled gathering pieces to fit, to sort, to work out and see life as it turns out, from the inside realm and the outer realm. Her choices stare her down like possessed demons. Everything is blended, the bad, the good, the light and the dark, the lesser light, the good and the evil…all is purposed to an end but she cannot see the ending yet, for she has more to do. And she must get to it now.

  For a while she is frozen, paralyzed by choice and dreaming of pills. But then my cries enter inside her ears and she is fueled with a burn that unleashes her. A bright hits her face and causes her to squint and turn away unable to meet its luminosity. When it fades to a soft glow and she is able to see it—she melts. Rectors were beautiful and she had forgotten how much. In our earthly realm, we see glimpses of them, pure white glints of light, here then gone. We see their touch on our lives and in other’s lives, their infinite work around us, their unfailing attempts at guiding us, saving us from danger, convincing us of right and wrong. Our lives are guided by Rectors. Everyone has one. They are bright as the sun, polished and perfect. Until they dim the light yoked upon them, you cannot look at them, lest you white your eyes and go blind. In the inter-realm Imperium, seekers can interact with the Rectors as they can with the shadows. But who wants to interact with the shadows? The devil, maybe. Maw Sue’s mother told her that the Rectors interact with us on earth and help us during troubling times, tapping on shoulders, whispering words of wisdom, opening doorways previously closed and delivering us from the evil shadows that try to destroy us. They guide us, sure, but the pathway isn’t easy. It leads to dangerous travel and roads not taken, enemies in bushes and hidden things. Carnal humanity is conditioned to stay
in one place, resist pain, and deny growth but the Rectors press against this carnal resistance, nudging us to move, walk new pathways, to push forward and grow into what we were created to be. They challenge us to embark upon a new trail, climb a mountain never climbed, and endure a road filled with brambles and briars and boogey men. Rectors push their chosen ones past the point of breaking, while they press our fingers in wounds, making us touch the humanity of our own pain, and yet not die in it, in order that we may grow strong under pressure, endure to the end, more alive, more whole than ever before. They encourage us to chip off old habits and fears, and prick the deepest inner core of ourselves to find out what we are made of, inside and outside. Once we see who we are—which is most times, lacking, they show us who could be. They push us past the point of growth to stretch our mind, our bodies and our spirits to a capacity we never knew we had. As a child, Maw Sue called the Rectors, the crumb givers. It was the only way her mother could make her understand who they were. To Maw Sue, they delivered the necessary crumbs to seekers for survival, to make it through another day. To avoid these crumbs or deny their existence is to turn into a sleeper, passing through this life unaware, unknown and merely existing till turning to dust. The light of the Rector glowed like a giant firefly inside the cedar closet, inside the imperium realm. She felt the soft embrace as she always did when it was near her. The reassurance, the comfort, the warmth but as always, nearby, the old demons were there too. She could feel their presence, the pressure mounting like a volcanic eruption. The shadow Amogians could easily take her down. With the Rectors help, she stared past the outer realm of the world she feared and into the world she had to confront, the one she left behind, long ago. Inside the imperium realm the giant leaned against the wall, its eyes dark and daring. Time had turned the stack of boxes, books, journals, bags and collected trinkets from her past—into an ugly, huge monster. His baggage head showed wrinkles and a mouth line that looked like a snarl, his bulging eyes, like hardened hickory nuts. He alone held her secrets, her shame, her past, the one she could barely face. Around her, the shadows were swarming like huge gnats.

  The child. Remember the child. You can do this Susannah. You can.

  The Rector encouraged Maw Sue in her spirit while the Shadows intercepted with doubts that made her struggle. She was so weak. The blocking worse, the resistance strong, unbearable and worse than inside the hospital room when she held me in her arms for the first time. The giant wanted her to retreat, let it be, leave well enough alone, deny, sweep it under the rug. Maw Sue would not make the same mistake again. She couldn’t repeat the past. Destroying her own life was enough and she could not let them destroy mine. She dropped to her knees, shaky and tormented. She had no tic-tac’s, no medicine for this kind of pain. The red stone necklace was useless in this dimension. No rubbing, no soothing. Just confrontation. No turning back.

  The giant’s arms and legs grew gnarly and wicked and reached outward to strangle her. The child, remember the child. Before he could tear her asunder with overwhelming guilt and regret—she lunged into him. Piece by piece, the giant of cardboard boxes, and fabric bags full of trinkets were torn asunder. Maw Sue ripped into the giant like a savage until there was nothing but the dismantled bare bones of her childhood, scattered about the floor. Boxes, trinkets, buttons, metal parts, toys, pictures and family relics strewn about. Her gifted ears could hear the song of the south, silence in suffering and the sins of yesteryear rising up from the floor joists, coming alive, uncovered, exposed. Discarded and stored away ages ago—now alive as if resurrected from the dark compartments of her mind, so brutal, so devastating. Out of the corner of her eye, the Rector lit up the dark corner of the closet and illuminated the object to which her eyes had not seen in ages. It shimmered like silver dust angels. The tragic splendor of its appearance made her shudder. Yes. It was her mirror bin. She let out a sigh of relief and regret all in one swoop. Sitting on top was a stack of tattered leather bound books salvaged from the Mayflower after its long treacherous journey or that’s what she used to think as a child. Some, like treasure maps, old and tarnished and stained with squiggly lines and hidden symbols. Most, if not all were curled up, ripped and needed pieced back together, well-traveled, well-read and of course, right beside them was the sidekicks, the counterpart, the legendary Cupitor scrolls rolled up like ancient socks. Maw Sue felt a sharp lump form in her throat, cutting into the flesh, slicing open old wounds, tasting the memories, the blood as it trickled between her teeth. Bear it Susannah. Bear it. You can go forward. You can. The Rector’s voice pushed, pressed, encouraged. Don’t lose it now Susannah. Remember the child. Channel it to good. Use the gift. It will help you. Remember the crumbs. Reach, reach, reach. Devenio! Devenio! Devenio! Make lovely your losses.

  Heated from the inside out, she glanced up and the light of the Rectors barely there hand pressed into her shoulder, a bond of love and strength, an angel of fortified steel rendering aide to a helpless human. Rectors are the clones of our hidden light inside us, the internal essence of our true selves, waiting to be birthed, to be set free, to lift upward, to pull out of the muck and mire, to gain a steady momentum and move forward—to slip into the lighted shadow of ourselves and become whole. Simple be who we were called to be. Rectors remind us of who we are, and who we shall become, if we move ahead, as warriors of courage, and faith. For Maw Sue, in her old age, too late for changes, they reminded her of her failure. Tears fell in a blurry mess, and right when she thought she could take no more, forever sinking into the abyss of regret, consumed with the past’s pain, the closet was incubated with my newborn cries. To Maw Sue’s horror, my screams came from the mouth of the Rector and with it, a vision projected into her mind, of my darkened birth, the shadows weaving in and out of the inner realm and the outer realm of all that was, tangled up.

  “I will not let her live the life I lived.” Maw Sue wailed. “I will not.” She took a deep calming breath while the Rector screeched my curdling cries, with each howl a projectile of hot swords slicing her eardrums. She steadied the pain, touching it for what it was, and with the Rectors help, she pressed forward. Maw Sue reached deep inside the belly of the closet, rustling through the items untouched for years. Relics of her past, trinkets of remembrance. The old texts were stacked in piles, hardbacks and leathers ties, some rolled up, others unbound. The Rector gave her a nod of approval. Maw Sue steadied herself knowing she would have to do the rest on her own merit. On her own strength. A zipping noise ruled the air, and she vanished leaving her human to her duty. The inter-realm was deathly still as if it waited on her to make a move she had never made before, a move to the crossroad, the intersection where there is no return, no turning back. With deep breathes Maw Sue grabbed the large leather binder off the stack and laid it on her lap. Slowly and with care, she opened the ancient pages. She knew the power of old things, unused and put away. Darkness grows in the darkened places, and when handled carelessly they yield a power of destruction. Like a ball held under water too long, the tangled realm of dark, the lesser light accumulated with the light, exploded into a plume of old dust. She squinted, coughed and wheezed. Her gift propelled to new heights. She heard a repertoire of unheard things, she saw unseen things, a multitude of figures, old and unfamiliar, row after row of shadows within the shadows, appearing and disappearing, vanishing into a thin line, then a simple blip and gone. She had crossed over. She could not return to where she was. Not spiritually, not physical, not emotionally, not ever.

  “Devenio—devenio—devenio.” The voice said. Maw Sue startled and shaken by it, sat breathless. It was indeed her mother’s voice. She had shut out the dark voices that haunted her long ago, voices that drove her mad, but in doing so, she had forgotten, that to deny the darkened places, is to also deny the lighted places. Memory muzzling is a popular avenue of reinforcement for the Shadow Amodgians. Without memory—we have no purpose to which to drawn our strength, our love, our basis for human survival. If we drown out the dark—we take the l
ight with it, for the dark is the lesser light, enveloped within the light. Maw Sue wept in knowledge of what she had done. Her heart broken in pieces.

  “Okay, mamma.” Maw Sue said. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know…I just needed them to stop talking in my head. It drove me crazy, I didn’t know…I didn’t know.” “Hush, hush precious. All is forgiven Susannah. It is not too late.” Her mother said. Maw Sue felt a surge of strength, a muscle pumped with blood and sinew, an umbilical cord attachment she hadn’t used since she was a kid. Just hearing her mother’s voice was power. With controlled ability she never had, she flipped the pages of the book and started to read the words.

  One by one, page by page, absorbing each ancient word, each handwritten message, every detail, note or scribble. She scoured over the bitter chronicles of Cupitors, seekers and sleepers. She analyzed letters, numbers, dates, times, stories, everything and anything that would explain why a child could be born at the forbidden time. An hour passed. Two hours. Then three. Maw Sue was no closer to the truth than when she started. Confused and overwhelmed, she felt powerless. This mission was too hard, too painful, too consuming. I cannot do this. I am the wrong person, maybe someone else could do it, but who? Her mind twisted and turned with thoughts of regret, of running, of taking a bottle of tic-tac’s. A light glowed in front of her. The Rector came closer and touched her lips, then faded. A taste sprung up in her mouth, a familiar crumb she knew she had ate before. It exiled a bitter memory she had spent most her life trying to forget. She trembled as if the earth shook with her. Her heart thudded, her ears burned. An intense pain, wracked her up and down. She wanted to run but she was paralyzed in the imperium realm—where one has to face all that was, all that is, and all that is to be. Use your gift Susannah. Find the treasure. She kept hearing encouragement from the Rector. She flung the book down and pushed the scrolls to the side. She rummaged through the trinkets scattered on the floor and found a half used book of matches and an old candle. She closed her eyes and confronted what she had to face. When she had finished her prayer, touched the pain and faced the dark Lord of the lesser light, she lit the wick. The flames instantly lit up the black, and exposed the hidden things. With the candle in her hands, she slid across the floor on boney knees, inching her way deeper into the closet, as it grew wide, large and darker, closing in on her like a cave dwelling. Sketchy outlines of dark creatures never seen before, drew themselves in the shadows, with invisible hands. Maw Sue shuddered with each sighting but she kept moving despite her fears. She could hear them spilling off into the crevasses of the black corners where no light existed, feeding off the dark, her mind fears, her past rising up like a buffet for their starving apostates. In her vision, the one she tried to deny, but couldn’t, she heard the stirrings of the giant, the bones and sinewy muscles trying to reassemble themselves as a block to stop her, and if he couldn’t, the shadows surely would.