Awakening

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  “That’s unnatural. How can you not—”

  “I’m a freak of nature! Is that what you want me to say?”

  “Calm down, Stephanie. You’re hysterical.”

  “Well, what do you expect?”

  “I expect you to want to know what really happened. And the only way we’ll learn the truth is to dredge the lake!”

  Calla awakens with a gasp.

  The room is dark. Bewildered, she sits up in bed, her pulse racing frantically.

  Oh . . . a dream. That dream, the one about Mom and Odelia and dredging the lake. She was having it again, after almost an entire week of sleeping soundly.

  They were so angry, both Mom and Odelia, flinging things around the room, glaring and pointing fingers at each other.

  With a shudder, Calla squeezes her eyes shut to block out the memory. But she can still hear their shrill voices. Is that how it really happened? Is she reliving the scene in her sleep, or creating it in a dream?

  She opens her eyes again and her gaze goes automatically to the bedside table, even as she remembers that she never did set the digital clock. It’s been flashing all week. . . .

  Until now.

  Bewildered, she notices the time.

  3:17.

  With a frustrated cry, she reaches over and yanks the cord out of the socket.

  Lying stiffly in bed, wide awake, Calla watches the backdrop beyond the window go from blackish gray to bluish gray to just plain ominous gray as dawn creeps into the room, dark and heavy as a storm cloud.

  She’s relieved to see nothing but sky out there, yet she can’t shake the memory of the face she saw that afternoon not long after she arrived here.

  Who are you? Where are you? Are you coming back?

  Calla rubs her eyes, knowing she should try to get some sleep if she wants to function at all later. She’s never done well on little sleep. A yawn overtakes her, but her body is still clenched and tense. Anyway, it’s morning now. Even if she drifts off again, how many hours could she possibly get in?

  Her head turns automatically toward the bedside table to check the clock, just as she remembers that she unplugged it in the night.

  Or did she? It’s flashing 12:00 once again.

  Calla jerks upright in bed and grabs the clock. I know I unplugged it. I remember!

  She jabs blindly at the buttons on top until the time changes to—and holds at—12:01.

  It isn’t 12:01. God knows what time it really is. All Calla cares about is that it isn’t 3:17.

  She slowly returns the clock to the table and stares at it.

  She read last week that spirit energy feeds on electronic energy to make its presence known. Meaning, spirits can manipulate appliances and electronic devices—according to the author of the book and his pages upon pages of research sources.

  Supposedly, spirits can disrupt a radio signal or even send a certain song that has meaning for someone they left behind.

  It stands to reason they can also tamper with a clock.

  But if that’s the case here, Calla wonders, what are they trying to tell me with 3:17?

  “Did you find us a place to live yet?” Calla asks her father when he calls that afternoon.

  “Not yet. But I’m trying.” He says that every day. She’s beginning to wonder if he’s ever going to find a place for them. . . and what will happen if he doesn’t.

  “I’m going to see a place by the beach tomorrow,” he says optimistically. “It sounds perfect for us, and it’s in our price range, and there’s a great public school. Cross your fingers.”

  “I will. But . . . I mean, it’s almost September.”

  “Not yet.We’ve got plenty of time to find a place.”

  “I hope so.”

  “Have you been keeping busy? Hanging around with your new friend Evangeline?”

  Surprised her absentminded father remembered the name, Calla says, “A little.”

  There’s a pause. “Is everything okay there, Calla?”

  She wonders if she should tell him what’s been going on, or pretend everything is fine. In other words, should she stay in Lily Dale another ten days as she’s supposed to, or leave right away? If she tells her father the truth, he’ll yank her out of there before she can say boo.

  And then what? He doesn’t even have a place for me to stay in California.

  “Dad?” she asks. “What happens if you decide not to do the sabbatical after all? Can you go back to your job in Florida this semester instead?”

  “Nope,” he says, “can’t do that. I have to do the sabbatical. It’ll work out fine. Don’t worry. Just enjoy the rest of your time there. You’ll be here with me before you know it.”

  That, Calla thinks as she hangs up, will be a relief.

  Then again, will it really? Once she leaves Lily Dale, she’ll be farther away from her mother than ever. And she might never know what’s going on in Odelia’s haunted house, or what the ghosts are trying to tell her.

  “You’re going to the message circle after all?” Odelia asks in surprise, about to walk out the door the next night, when Calla walks downstairs in sneakers and a jacket. “I thought you said at dinner that you were too exhausted.”

  She shrugs, avoiding Odelia’s gaze. “I was, but I splashed some cold water on my face and woke myself up.” That’s all true. What she doesn’t say is that she’s so exhausted because she had the same dream yet again last night, and it woke her at 3:17 again. She knows, because she saw the clock, which she was certain she’d left unplugged when she went to bed.

  Maybe if she gets rid of the clock, the inexplicable, silent 3:17 wake-up call will just go away.

  She threw the clock into the kitchen garbage, carrying the bag out to the can behind the shed for good measure. Maybe she can’t control her dreams, but she’s finished with the clock.

  “Well, I’m glad you changed your mind.” Odelia opens the front door. “It’s about time you saw what goes on here. Come on.”

  Calla follows her out into the night. “Why don’t you ever lock your house?” she asks as Odelia merely pulls the door, and then the screen door, shut behind them.

  Calla can’t help but think about the girl who was standing out in front of Odelia’s house the other night. What did she want? Was she casing the place, planning to rob it or something?

  For some reason, she never did mention it to Odelia. Maybe because she’s not entirely sure she didn’t imagine it. After all, the girl seemed to be there one minute and gone the next.

  At least I know she’s real, though, Calla thinks wryly, since she and her mother were here for a reading that first time. Yeah, ghosts probably don’t need mediums to contact the dead.

  “Why would I lock the house?” Odelia asks. “Anything I have in there, people are welcome to take, if they need it that badly. That’s one way to clean out clutter, right?”

  They head down Cottage Row along the pavement still shiny from today’s downpour, which is apparently over—at least, for now. The sky is charcoal colored, not just from the gathering dusk. A lake-blown gust stirs leafy branches overhead, foreshadowing more rain.

  “You know, it really is dangerous to leave your house unlocked,” Calla persists as they painstakingly make their way toward the auditorium. Odelia, she’s noticed, has a hard time moving quickly because of her weight.

  “Dangerous? How so?”

  “Robbers aren’t the only ones who might get in.”

  “Right. There are mice, too.”

  “And murderers,” Calla says darkly.

  “Not around here.”

  “Murder can happen anywhere.”

  “Well, I’m not going to worry about that.”

  “Why not? Because there’s no such thing as dying, right? Not really. So what’s the worst that can happen if you run into a psycho killer?”

  Odelia gives her a long, hard look. “Sure you want to come to this message circle?”

  No. But she’s going anyway. What better way to top off ano
ther difficult day—for her, anyway. Odelia was contentedly busy giving readings and making a complicated French casserole for dinner, which might have been appealing, if Calla had any appetite.

  She didn’t, especially after spending the bleak, rainy day alone in her room reading more about Lily Dale. Hours of wading through tedious historic detail and endless spiritualist rhetoric yielded some useful—and, all right, scary—information.

  That she’s even able to pick up on a spirit’s presence at all indicates that Calla, like her grandmother, has a so-called heightened sense of awareness. In other words . . .

  Calla seems to be a psychic medium.

  A transmitter of sorts, able to bridge the invisible chasm between the living and the dead.

  What if all this has something to do with her mother? The first apparition appeared at Mom’s grave. The next time was in Mom’s girlhood bedroom. And again at the lake.

  What if it is her mother?

  It doesn’t look like her—not in the least bit. But what if Mom has taken on some other physical form in the afterlife? That seems as possible as any other far-out theory Calla has come to accept since arriving in Lily Dale.

  Then again, the spiritual energy doesn’t feel like her mother.

  No? And what do you know about spiritual energy?

  Zilch. Except she would think that if her mother were around, she would feel comforted, not apprehensive.

  Operating under the assumption that the spirit in question isn’t her mother’s but has some connection to her, Calla has to learn to be receptive to whatever it’s trying to tell her. Which is why she’s going to watch the mediums in action tonight.

  “Here we are,” her grandmother says, and Calla looks up to see that they’ve reached the auditorium.

  Built in the 1880s, the wooden structure appears as untouched by modern upgrades as any other structure in Lily Dale, inside and out. The large rectangular panels around the perimeter walls have been opened to let in the evening’s damp chill. Calla’s toes are icy in her sandals, and she wishes she’d put on a sweatshirt under her light jacket. Her thin Florida blood isn’t used to these fluctuating temperatures, and she wonders if it ever feels like summer here.

  She and Odelia settle into a pair of hard wooden seats in the front of the tiered room, which is slowly beginning to fill. Calla looks around, taking in the polished hardwood floor, the metal poles that stretch to the exposed rafters, the old-fashioned glass-globed light fixtures that hang low among them. Down front is a stage that holds little other than a row of unoccupied chairs to one side and a podium.

  Odelia is busily carrying on a gossipy conversation with the middle-aged woman seated on her other side, leaving Calla free to watch people move into their tiered seats. They could be about to see a Broadway show or a concert for all their casual, chatty conversation. You’d never guess from the crowd’s overall demeanor that they’re here to be put in touch with their dead loved ones—assuming that’s why they’ve all ventured out to this drafty auditorium on a gloomy weeknight that feels more like November than August.

  Pretty much everyone is casually dressed, including the mediums who are now taking the stage, settling themselves into the row of chairs there as an expectant hush falls over the room.

  Calla can’t help but note that all but one of them is female and as plus-sized as her grandmother is, if not more so. The lone exception is a lanky African-American man sitting on the far end of the row.

  “Hey, you’re here!” a voice whispers somewhere behind Calla, and she feels a tap on her shoulder. Startled, she turns to see Evangeline slipping into a seat behind her.

  Calla smiles briefly, first at Evangeline, who returns it, then at the pretty girl sitting with her, who doesn’t. Her mouth doesn’t even quirk when Evangeline introduces her, still in a whisper. “This is Willow York. She lives here. Willow, this is Odelia’s granddaughter, Calla.”

  “Nice to meet you.”

  “You, too,” Calla murmurs in response, though it doesn’t sound like the girl meant it.

  Calla doesn’t want to feel intimidated by her striking dark hair and eyes, porcelain skin, and delicate bone structure, but it’s hard not to. She wishes she had taken the time to at least remove the elastic from her own hair and brush it out, or put on a little makeup to hide her dark under-eye circles. Oh, well. This isn’t a beauty pageant, even if Willow York looks as though she should be onstage somewhere other than here, wearing a Miss Something banner.

  Wondering if she’s always this aloof, or just doesn’t like straggly-haired newcomers, Calla turns to face forward again as the session begins with a brief, meditative prayer.

  Then the first medium, Debra, comes to the front of the stage and surveys the audience intently for a moment before seeming to zero in on someone behind Calla to the left.

  “I’m back there,” Debra announces with a sweep of her hand, “and I have a white-haired man coming through—not gray, but pure white, and he has an awful lot of it. His name is Rod, or Rob, or maybe Bob—something like that. He passed very quickly, either falling from a height, or having something fall from a height onto him—I can’t tell which it is.”

  Hearing a high-pitched gasp, Calla turns to see a woman with short blond hair, covering her mouth with both hands as the man next to her rests a supportive arm around her shoulders.

  “Do you know who this is?” the medium asks unnecessarily.

  The woman is nodding fiercely. “It’s my uncle Roger. We called him Uncle Rodge.”

  Intrigued, Calla turns back toward Debra, who doesn’t look surprised at all.

  “He worked at Home Depot,” the blond woman goes on, “and he was killed by a pallet of wood or something that fell from a high shelf.”

  “It’s been quite some time, hasn’t it?”

  “Yes . . . that was almost two years ago. My aunt just got remarried last week.”

  Debra nods, as if she already knew that. “He wants to tell her that it’s okay with him. That he wants her to be happy. He’s saying he always told her that she should get on with her life if anything ever happened to him, and that she didn’t believe he really meant it. But he did.”

  “I . . . I don’t know if he ever said that.” Uncle Rodge’s niece is choked with emotion. “I’ll ask my aunt.”

  “Do that. And give her the message, please. It’s important.”

  “I will!” The woman sits down and tilts her temple against that of the man sitting next to her, who whispers something in her ear.

  Not sure what to make of what just happened, Calla watches Debra close her eyes as if she’s concentrating on something. It could be just an act, she supposes. The medium might have done her homework in advance. An accidental death at Home Depot would probably have made the papers.

  But that was two years ago . . . and how would Debra know the victim’s niece would be here tonight? Nobody took names at the door. Everyone here is anonymous.

  All right, so if Debra didn’t research the blond woman in advance, maybe she just made a series of lucky guesses. Lots of elderly men have white—not gray—hair. Some even have a lot of it, though many are balding. And the name—something that sounds like Rob, Rod, or Bob, all fairly common—leaves it pretty open, considering that it could have been interpreted as a first name or a last name or even a nickname. Anyone who lost a white-haired Rob, Rod, or Bob—or anyone with a name remotely similar—at some point in his or her life might have claimed the so-called spirit as his or her own.

  Then again, Debra nailed the cause of death. Wouldn’t it have been safer for her to guess a heart attack, if she were guessing? Or something even more vague, like “something involving the chest area,” which could be a heart attack or cancer or even a blood clot.

  Yet Debra chose to be specific: he either fell from a great height or something fell on him. Bingo.

  Calla listens with interest as Debra zeroes in on her next message, for a pair of elderly sisters holding hands in the second row. It’s from t
heir late mother, who wants them to know that she’s doing just fine on the other side, and that there’s something wrong with the car one of them drives.

  “She’s saying you need to have the tire pressure checked, or the oil—something like that,” Debra advises as the sisters exchange worried glances and promise to oblige.

  Finally, Debra spends a long time trying to find out who in the audience is connected to the spirit of a teenage boy who died in a car crash. There are initially a number of takers, but the number dwindles as the details of his life and death emerge, until at last there’s a young girl who barely knew him but was a couple of years behind him at the same school.

  “He wants you to get in touch with his mom and tell her it wasn’t her fault. He should have been wearing his seat belt. She always told him that, and he didn’t listen. He wants her to know that he’s okay.”

  The girl nods, looking upset. “But why would he come to me?”

  The medium shrugs. “You never know who you’re going to get when you come here. Sometimes the last person you would ever expect to hear from is just waiting to pounce— forgive the expression—because they know you’re coming, and they seize the opportunity to get their message delivered to their loved ones using you—and me, for that matter—as the messenger.”

  The girl seems satisfied with that explanation. Calla is, too . . . which bothers her somewhat.

  This is all making so much more sense now, seeing the process in action. But does that mean that she’s actually one of them? That she could, with training, do what they do?

  I’d be afraid to see spirits all around me all the time.

  Yet that thought is swiftly chased from her mind by another: I’d be able to help people, the way Debra just did.

  She glances around at the people who just received messages. All seem contented, as opposed to the wary expressions worn by some of their seatmates who are still hoping for a reading.

  It’s a gift, Calla acknowledges as Debra takes her seat to a smattering of applause.

  People come here to Lily Dale searching for some connection to their lost loved ones. She, of all people, can relate to their anguished sorrow and longing. That some of the bereaved seem to find comfort here should give Calla hope. Not just for her own grief, but for her gift—if, indeed, she does have one.