Awakening

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  The cute, freckled, pigtailed little girl with holes in the knees of her jeans recently channeled a dead president. The dumpy housewife without a shred of supernatural talent is having an affair with a volunteer fireman who does past-life regression in his spare time.

  Calla couldn’t help but be fascinated by Evangeline’s accounts of their private lives—paranormal, extramarital, and otherwise. In some ways Lily Dale could be any other small town in the world, if you ignore the shingles that dangle from many of its houses. Calla is almost used to them now. Almost.

  ODELIA LAUDER, REGISTERED MEDIUM

  That one still catches her off guard as she passes beneath it on her way up the steps.

  She glances at the spot where that girl— Mrs. Riggs’s daughter—was standing the other night, in the middle of Odelia’s flower bed. To her surprise, the dense growth of flowers there shows no sign of being disturbed. You’d think the stems would be snapped or crushed or something.

  The front door isn’t locked, as Calla suspected. When she lets herself in, her grandmother is nowhere to be found, and the door to the back room is closed. Hearing the rumble of voices, she figures Odelia must be in there with a client.

  All right, then, she’ll go upstairs and do some reading. She heads to her room, a few books from the Lily Dale library tucked under her arm. Evangeline helped her find some local nonfiction titles on the history of Lily Dale and spiritualism. She checked them out on Evangeline’s card, not wanting to get one of her own just yet despite the librarian’s invitation.

  There’s just something so . . . permanent about a library card.

  Calla isn’t opposed to spending a few weeks here in the Dale, as the locals call it. But it isn’t her home, and she isn’t trying to make it feel that way. She isn’t prepared to make herself at home in a place that counts something called Inspiration Stump as its most sacred landmark.

  Evangeline took her out to the site, a spiritual retreat at the end of a trail in Leolyn Woods. As they hiked over, she explained in a hushed, reverent tone that otherworldly energy is stronger at the stump than anywhere else in Lily Dale.

  After that buildup, Calla expected to experience something profound there, as they stood staring at the concrete-encased stump, listening to the soft patter of raindrops. But she felt nothing other than slightly chilled and damp. Evange-line, who was hoping to run into Jacy there, seemed disappointed both in Calla’s reaction and Jacy’s absence.

  On the way back to Cottage Row, Evangeline confessed that she has a major crush on Jacy. Surprise, surprise. “Does he like you, too?” Calla asked cautiously, telling herself that she couldn’t be interested in Jacy now. Not if she wanted to keep Evangeline as a friend—and she did.

  “He’s so quiet it’s hard to tell how he feels. About anything. I wish you could meet him.”

  Calla hesitated before saying, “I’m sure I will.” Why didn’t you tell her you already did? Maybe because she felt guilty, having been instantly attracted to Evangeline’s crush.

  Evangeline invited her to come to a message circle—a regular gathering of mediums and visitors hoping to receive communication from lost loved ones.

  “Jacy always goes,” she said, “and Blue, too. Pretty much everyone goes.”

  Blue. Okay, that’s one good reason to show up there. Evangeline doesn’t seem interested in him. Just a little awed.

  “Is Jacy a medium, too?” she asked Evangeline.

  “He’s definitely gifted . . . he’s in tune with nature and animals. But he hasn’t said much about it—about anything, really. Not to me, anyway. Not that he talks to anyone else, either.”

  “How many kids our age are there in Lily Dale?” Calla asked, noticing she hadn’t seen many in their travels.

  “Maybe a dozen.”

  Calla’s jaw dropped. “That’s it?”

  “Within the gates, that’s it. Remember, hardly anyone lives here year-round, and a lot of the mediums are single, or older, so . . .” She shrugged.

  “Where’s your school?” Calla asked, picturing one of those one-room deals, like they had a hundred years ago. “Is it here in town?”

  “No, about a mile away. It’s a centralized district. There are other kids who live on farms around here, and they go to school with us.”

  Now, as Calla settles onto her bed with the books, listening to the rain pinging against the gutter above her window, she decides there are worse places to be.

  In the house where your mom just died is at the top of the list. Under the same roof with your ex-boyfriend and his new girlfriend ranks not far beneath it.

  I might as well be here in Lily Dale for now, she thinks, opening the first book. And I might as well find out as much about it— and this thing called spiritualism—as I can.

  Restless, Calla sets aside yet another of the books she took out of the library. This time, she couldn’t get past the third page.

  She sets it on top of the stack with the other unread titles and vows to get back to them later today—or, preferably, some other day. Not that she finds local history dull, but she isn’t in the mood to start at the beginning, with the town’s nineteenth-century origins at the dawning of the spiritualist movement, fueled by the Fox sisters’ so-called spirit rappings up in Hydesville.

  Intriguing, yes . . . but at the moment, she’s much more interested in the town’s more recent history—say, when her mother lived here.

  She gets off the bed and glances at the window, where a steady rain is still falling outside. Oops—it’s blowing in through the cracked window, spattering the sill and the floor with droplets.

  She hurriedly yanks it shut and wipes up the moisture with her sleeve.

  It already feels stuffy in here, she thinks, as she crosses the room to the dresser. But she knows water isn’t good for wood. Mom was a stickler about wiping things up.

  And she wouldn’t be thrilled to see me using my sleeve to do it, Calla thinks ruefully.

  With a sigh, she picks up the nearest picture frame. In this particular snapshot, Mom—with impossibly tall, gravity-defying hair—is wearing a satiny gown and a wrist corsage. She’s posing with some guy in an equally pouffy mullet. Calla smiles at the outdated styles and wonders who he is. An old boyfriend of Mom’s, obviously.

  She never mentioned anyone by name, but when she was trying to comfort Calla over the breakup with Kevin, she did hint at having had her own heart broken once. Calla started to ask for details but her father came in right then, and she got the sense that her mother didn’t want to talk about it in front of him.

  Or maybe Mom didn’t want to talk about it at all, she reflects now, looking back. There was definitely something awkward in her mother’s expression even before Dad popped up.

  Maybe that was simply because Stephanie rarely brought up the past—her own, and in general. Nostalgia just wasn’t her style.

  No remember-whens or what-ifs for Stephanie Delaney. She lived in the present.

  So did Calla, until recently. Now, she finds herself clinging to the past—her own, her mother’s, the past in general. Which is probably because the present is too damned painful.

  She frowns, staring at the picture of Mom in her youth, so focused on the striking resemblance between herself and her mom that it takes her some time to notice the nagging thought making its way into her brain: there’s something familiar about the boy in the picture. Definitely.

  I’ve seen him before, Calla decides, and wonders how that’s possible. She’s never been here before . . . and no one from Lily Dale, other than Odelia, has ever visited Mom in Florida.

  Okay, so maybe she’s mistaken about the boy’s being familiar. She looks more closely at the picture. Maybe he just reminds her of someone she knows from school or something.

  With a sigh, she sets the picture back among the other frames. She isn’t in the mood to see her mother with strangers she can’t identify.

  It seems almost like a betrayal that Mom lived this whole life she knows nothing ab
out.

  Come on, Calla. You know that’s not fair. Every adult has a youth their children weren’t a part of.That’s just how it is.

  Yes, but some parents love to talk about their past. Like Mrs. Wilson; she’s always bringing up the old days. Lisa hangs on every word, but it used to bug Kevin when his mother went on and on about being a debutante up in Savannah or a sorority girl in Alabama.

  At least if Mom were still around, Calla could ask her about her life here in the Dale and the people she knew here. She feels cheated—and puzzled.

  Her mother went out of her way to keep a key part of her past hidden. Why?

  Why didn’t you tell us that your mother was a psychic, or that you lived in a town filled with them? Were you that ashamed of it, Mom?

  Probably, knowing her.

  With a sigh, Calla turns away from the old photos. Her gaze falls on the clock.

  It’s still flashing 12:00.

  I should set it, she thinks—then remembers that she can’t. Not without knowing the correct time, and she doesn’t. Her watch is back in Florida with the other stuff she forgot.

  I should have made a list before I packed. Mom would have done that. She wouldn’t have forgotten anything.

  All right, so setting the clock can wait.

  Now what?

  Odelia is downstairs making banana bread. I can go help her, Calla thinks, but quickly vetoes that idea. She isn’t in the mood to talk to anyone.

  Well, not to her grandmother, anyway. She’d give anything to be able to pick up the phone and call Lisa right now, but she can’t do that with Odelia in earshot.

  I can go next door and e-mail her.

  But then she’d have to talk to Evangeline again, and she isn’t in the mood—though she really would love to get in touch with Lisa.

  Okay. So I can listen to music or read.

  She finds herself looking past her iPod and the stack of library books, though, to the jewelry box that once belonged to her mother.

  Walking over to it, she can feel her heart beating in anticipation. She reaches out to open the lid, and is surprised when the haunting little melody promptly fills the room.

  That’s odd.

  It wound all the way down to silence yesterday when she was here with Odelia. How can it play now without somebody having turned the key again?

  Maybe Odelia came back in and did that? Then again, she seemed just as surprised yesterday to hear the music playing— and she didn’t seem to find the tune familiar.

  Not like I do.

  Struck, once again, by the distinct sense that she’s heard this song before, Calla listens intently and tries to figure out where.

  As the song winds down, she comes up with nothing at all. Well, maybe she’s mistaken, just like with the picture of Mom’s old boyfr—

  She gasps aloud, startled by a glimmer of realization. But it flits into and out of her head before she can catch it.

  Something about the song. And the boy in the picture.

  What does one have to do with the other, though? Calla bites her lip, trying desperately to grab the elusive thought fragment, but it refuses to land.

  Frustrated, she browses idly through the contents of the box: a couple of bead necklaces, fake pearls, several pairs of earrings, some bangles. She examines a little gold angel-shaped pin and a mother-of-pearl ring, trying it on and finding it a perfect fit. She takes it off again, though. It doesn’t feel right to wear jewelry her mother didn’t actually give to her, as she did the emerald bracelet. Not yet, anyway. Maybe someday.

  She shivers and closes the box, restless.

  Gradually, she becomes aware of a faint perfume that seems to waft in the room. Sniffing the air, she notices that it’s decidedly floral . . . and recognizable.

  It’s the same thing she smelled out on the porch the other day when she first got here. Some flowers in Odelia’s garden must be so strongly scented that the fragrance drifted in the open window and lingered even after Calla closed it. But why didn’t I notice it till now?

  She remembers the sweet aroma of baking banana bread earlier—but not flowers.

  She takes another deep breath, and somehow, the floral fragrance seems to be gone. She smells only banana bread now.

  Maybe she just imagined the flowers? What other explanation is there?

  She didn’t imagine the music-box song, though. There’s something familiar about it.

  And about the boy in the picture.

  And I have no idea why, Calla thinks, rubbing her temples furiously in frustration.

  Then she realizes, with a start, that it seems to be growing colder in the room.

  But I just closed the window. And it was stuffy in here, she remembers.

  She shivers, hugging herself in the chill, and crosses over to the window again, wondering if a patch of cool, floral-scented air were somehow trapped inside, even as she tells herself that the idea makes no sense whatsoever.

  She gives the bottom of the sash an upward tug. It doesn’t budge.

  Odelia mentioned that the old windows stick when it’s warm and damp out.

  Only, it isn’t warm in here at all now. It’s so not warm, in fact, that Calla is surprised she can’t actually see her breath, which is coming quickly now as panic begins to build inside her.

  The air smells like flowers again. Oh, God. She’s starting to hyperventilate.

  Don’t freak out. Everything is okay. You’re letting your imagination get carried away.

  Only the cold isn’t her imagination.

  Nor is the distinct scent of flowers.

  Nor, she realizes with a stab of foreboding, is the pale face staring at her from the other side of the second-story windowpane.

  NINE

  It’s her.

  The woman Calla saw in the cemetery. And she appears to be floating in midair just beyond the bedroom window. For a moment, Calla is so shocked—and terrified—that all she can do is stand and stare.

  Then a frantic scream erupts from somewhere, and it takes her a moment to realize that it came from her.

  Immediately, she hears pounding footsteps on the stairs, and Odelia’s voice calling, “Calla? Are you okay?”

  She can’t answer. Before her stunned eyes, the woman’s face just disappeared.

  “Calla!” Odelia bursts into the room. “What’s wrong? Did you see a mouse?”

  “What? No, I—” Seeing the sudden, knowing look in her grandmother’s eye, Calla clamps her mouth shut. She doesn’t dare tell Odelia that she just saw . . . a ghost?

  If she tells her grandmother, she’ll be instantly pegged as one of “them.”

  And I can’t handle that now, on top of everything else. It was my imagination.That’s all it was. Just my imagination. It has to be.

  “Calla?” Odelia is waiting expectantly.

  “Yeah,” she says slowly, backing away from the window. “I did. I saw a mouse.”

  “Where?”

  “Right there,” she points vaguely.

  “Out the window?” Odelia sounds dubious.

  She doesn’t believe me. I have to make her believe me. I can’t let her know what really happened.

  “No, it was here in the room . . . on, uh, the windowsill.” She shudders. “I hate mice.” That much, at least, is true.

  “I’ve had a problem with mice before, but not at this time of year. Where did it go?”

  “I don’t know. . . . I screamed and she disappeared.”

  “She?” Odelia looks amused.

  “I mean he. Or it.”

  Calm down, Calla warns herself, before you blab everything to her, and she gets you a shingle of your own to hang over her porch.

  Somewhere in the back of her shell-shocked mind, though, she knows her grandmother’s reaction should be the least of her worries if she really has started seeing dead people.

  What does it mean? Is she a medium? A psychic?

  It’s not women’s intuition at all, is it? It’s . . . what did Evangeline say?r />
  Clairvoyance. That’s it. The mere word brings mental images of creepy, vacant-eyed prophets you see in horror movies.

  Okay, you’re blowing this whole thing way out of proportion, she tells herself.

  “You know,” Odelia is saying, “my friend Andy mentioned the other day that his cat had just had kittens, and he asked if I wanted one.”

  Blowing what out of proportion? Some creepy woman floating in midair, then disappearing? How can you blow that out of proportion? It’s—huge. That’s what it is. Huge. And scary.

  It was definitely cold in here, too, and there was an intense floral scent just before she saw the woman. For no apparent reason. The window was closed. And what about the music box? And the clock?

  “I said no . . . but maybe I should reconsider,” Odelia muses. “What do you think?”

  “Hmm?” Calla asks absently, her thoughts skittering as wildly about her head as her heart is in her ribcage.

  “The cat . . . to catch the mice. Should we get one?”

  We? Calla shrugs, carefully avoiding both Odelia’s gaze and the window, afraid of what she might see in either. Gone is her eagerness to feel like a part of her grandmother’s household, and her mother’s hometown.

  There is no longer a we, as far as she’s concerned. She’s out of here. No way is she staying in Lily Dale till September. Being here among the spiritualists—and the spirit world—seems to have opened some kind of . . . of . . . personal paranormal portal.

  No, she’s leaving, definitely . . . just as soon as she figures out where she can possibly go.

  “I’ll take two scoops of cookies-and-cream in a sugar cone,” Calla tells the girl at the snack window at the outdoor café, located beneath a large gazebo. Beyond its perimeter, a soft summer rain is falling.

  Calla looks at Evangeline. “What are you having? My treat.”

  “Oh, that’s all right. I’ve got it.”

  “Let me treat you,” Calla insists. “After all, I dragged you out in the rain.” When she glanced out Odelia’s living room window and spotted Evangeline reading a book on her front porch a little while ago, her spirits soared. She’d spent a lonely morning watching TV and moping around. By lunchtime, she was not only homesick, she was stir-crazy.