“He knows,” I said with a hollow voice. “I told him about that too. He knows everything you know.”
“Jesus, Aspen! You hardly even know this guy.”
“I hardly know you,” I cried, feeling like a failure of epic proportions, “yet I've told you everything a person could know about me. You’ve known from the beginning about the strangers, the voices, and now all of this.”
A look of hurt or disappointment flickered across his face before Julian jumped right back into the conversation.
“That's different, Aspen. You can trust me―we can get you back on your meds,” he said, taking his eyes off the road to look at me. “But this guy . . . who knows who he is or what he's up to? I don't like it. I think you should steer clear of him.”
His hand gently brushed my hair over my shoulder, exposing my neck. With his eyes still on me, he lightly stroked a line to my jaw, then my cheek. My eyes closed instinctively. Why had I not noticed how amazing his touch was before?
“I think you're overreacting,” I told him softly, leaning into his caress slightly.
“I might be, but until I know any different, I really don't want you anywhere near him, okay? Will you do that for me? Please?” His voice was so filled with genuine concern for me. How could I argue with him? I knew practically nothing about Merrick, and what I did know was a jumble of enigmatic moods peppered with dark, brooding, and domineering behavior. All that considered, something about him made me think he wouldn't hurt me, but given the fragile state of my mind, I wasn't sure I was the best judge of that.
“Okay,” I sighed softly, conceding to his wish. “I'll stay away from him until we get all of this sorted out.”
“That's my girl.”
The lights were off at his parents’ home when we pulled up, just as they should have been. It was far too early for them to have been up. Without much regard for how much noise we made, Julian and I entered the home's main entrance. My body craved sleep, but my mind was a jumble of questions―not voices―the greatest of which was whether or not I had truly had a break with reality. Perhaps I had made everything up: what Mother Superior told me, the strange messages from strangers in the street, the Shadow, everything. The medication I had unknowingly been on had kept all of those things at bay for years―my whole life, maybe.
My stomach churned at all the possibilities.
“Aspen,” Julian called from ahead of me in the hallway. “Come here, please.”
“But my room is down there,” I replied, pointing to the guest room I'd stayed in before.
“I know,” he said with a curl forming at the corner of his mouth. “But tonight, your room is in here.” He nodded to his bedroom once before entering it, expecting me to follow behind, and that's exactly what I did.
The room was extremely masculine and modern, which didn't match the feel or décor of anything else in the home. It seemed as though it would have suited a swanky New York City loft apartment more than a small-town New England Victorian. The walls were pale and there was very little furniture, though the room was surprisingly expansive. Occupying the wall space, there were a few abstract oil paintings and a mirror―no family photos or personal effects that I could find. It seemed surprisingly sterile to me, especially given the inviting nature of his family and his home.
In the center of the room was a massive bed, beautifully dressed in white linens. It was low in profile, but rather vast in width. Before I could take in much else, Julian took my hand in his and led me toward the centerpiece of the room and sat me down gently on the edge of it.
“You look nervous,” he said as that smile continued to tug at his lips. “Don't be. That's not what I'm looking for, Aspen.”
“I'm not nervous,” I replied, trying to slow my breathing.
“I just want to be near you, that's all.”
He lightly trailed his index finger along my cheek, catching a stray hair along the way and tucking it behind my ear with great care.
“I want to be near you too.”
“You have no idea how happy that makes me, Aspen.”
Without skipping a beat, he scooped me up and laid me down on the bed, positioning himself lightly on top of me. His lips were on mine, kissing me deeply, and, in all my awareness of the situation, I couldn't find cause to stop him. Our behavior was wrong, but I didn't care. He loved me, and I wanted to know what that felt like, even if only in that small way. I kissed him back tentatively, unsure of what to do. His mouth guided mine expertly and soon put my concerns aside.
*
After we kissed for what seemed like forever, I snuggled into his embrace, absorbing all of the warmth and comfort it had to offer, but I still didn't feel right. The questions continued to rage in my mind.
“Julian,” I whispered, uncertain if he was still awake.
“Yes, Aspen?”
“Do you think I'm crazy?”
“No, of course not.”
“Do you think I'm going to condemn the world?”
“No,” he replied, sadness tainting his words, “I don't think you're going to condemn the world.”
“You don't believe me then, do you?”
“I believe that you believe it, Aspen,” he said with a reassuring squeeze, “and that's all I need to know. Tomorrow we'll figure out how to keep you out of trouble with the police.”
He gently turned me to face him before he said his final words.
“Tomorrow we'll make it all go away.”
26
It still seemed a luxury to sleep in so late, having never been able to indulge in that manner at the convent growing up, but given my level of fatigue and mental weariness, it was well warranted. I'd awoken to a gentle kiss on my forehead when Julian made his way to the bathroom. A whoosh of water started up behind the closed door, and as the sound of the water tried to lull me back to sleep, I slowly pushed myself out of bed, inspired by a thought I'd had.
“Breakfast,” I whispered to myself. “Something unexpected . . .”
Trying to be as silent as possible, I collected my things and slipped on my tennis shoes before tiptoeing out the door, closing it softly behind me. I knew just the place to go. It was on the far side of town and would take me longer than I wanted to walk there, but I had long seen the most delightful pastries in their window, and I wanted―needed―to say thank you to the man who had talked me off a ledge just hours before. Though I fought to suppress my growing anxiety regarding Mother Superior, I still had a thrum of nervousness about the consequences of my actions. But Julian had said we would figure it out, and I believed him.
I didn't pass anyone on my way out, but his family home was so enormous that it wasn't entirely surprising. Making my way across the driveway, I decided to jog to the bakery, if only to speed up my trip. Part way there, I realized that I should have left a note so that Julian wouldn't be concerned that I'd gone mad again and was off killing people in town. The ironic and unsettling part about that potential scenario was that if what I heard Mother Superior say was actually said at all, and, beyond that, if it was true, I was likely to kill everyone in town anyway, only far more expeditiously. I wasn't sure that a note would have done much to put his mind at ease.
With a shudder, I poured on speed and moved quickly into town.
Minutes later, I arrived at the bakery and breathlessly made my way inside. After ordering, I realized that my money was in my coat pocket, and it was still lying on the floor next to Julian's bed where I'd thrown it at some point in the night. Frustrated with my inefficiency, I apologized to the proprietor and schlepped my way back outside.
It was strange.
I hadn't noticed it on the way there because I was so focused on getting to my destination quickly and returning before my absence was noted, but nobody was in the street. Not a soul could be seen anywhere. Beyond that, there was no breeze, no birds―not a single noise. The tiny hairs on the back of my neck came alive and the panic started to build.
“Pull it together, Aspen,”
I muttered to myself, preparing my legs for the long run home.
“Yes, Aspen,” an eerily familiar voice called out from behind me. There hadn't been anyone there seconds earlier. “Pull it together.”
I whirled around, managing to trip over a large crack in the sidewalk and land in a pained heap. When I finally fought my hair out of my line of vision, I was paralyzed by what it unveiled. Standing before me was a near-perfect replica of myself.
“Who are you?” I whispered, barely able to speak at all.
“Who are you?” she replied. Her expression was blank.
“What do you want from me?”
“What we all want from you.”
“We?” I asked, looking around frantically. “We who?”
“The moon is coming,” she continued, not making any sense. “A light in the darkness. A light that stands against the shadow threatening to engulf it.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked as I shakily stood.
“What are you talking about?” she countered, looking as frustrated as I knew I did.
“Nothing,” I snapped, pushing myself up off of the ground. I shut my eyes and continually told myself that it wasn't me; I wasn't losing it. My mind was only playing tricks on me. I just needed to get home to Julian. Everything would be okay if I could just get to him.
“Nothing,” she echoed, grabbing my arm. “That's what will be left. It's time, don't you feel it? The eve is here.”
“Eve of what?”
“Eve of adulthood,” she replied matter-of-factly. “When the light and shadow will war within and the choice will be made.” She leaned in uncomfortably close to me and continued to ramble on. “Does your moon still shine, Aspen? Or does the darkness of your sky swallow it whole?”
“My moon?” I asked incredulously. “Eve of adulthood? What does that have to do with anything?”
“The eve is here, Anathema. Your time has come. You've set the stage. But how will your story end?”
She looked over her shoulder quickly, snapping her gaze back to me almost immediately. She looked frightened and frantic.
“The eve of eighteen,” she said, grabbing my arm violently. “It's here. Tonight!”
Without another disturbing utterance, she took off running down the road, away from me and away from whatever she'd seen that had scared her so. Wanting to know exactly what that was, I looked over in the general direction of where her gaze had fallen. My breath caught in my throat when I found exactly what had caused her fear.
He stalked toward me with anger blazing in his impossibly green eyes, and as my heart jumped into my throat, I turned around and ran as fast as my legs could carry me home. I took back alleys and side streets to avoid his pursuit. In my retreat, I tried to process what my doppelgänger had told me, little of which made any sense, but one thing continually tugged at my mind. The eve of adulthood . . . eve of eighteen. What did it all mean?
She too had called me Anathema, just as Mother Superior had, but if the eve of eighteen was referencing the day before my birthday, then surely they both were wrong. I could not be what they thought I was. I was already an adult. My birthday had already passed.
Much to my paranoid delight, I started to chuckle to myself, realizing that everything that had happened―was happening―was all a mistake, a culmination of my withdrawal from medication. My delusions were wrong. I wasn't the one they wanted. Even my own twisted mind hadn't gotten the details of its apocalyptic fantasy right.
A sense of relief had washed over me by the time I arrived back at the stately Victorian. I may have been certifiably insane, but I wasn't going to single-handedly end the existence of mankind. Excited, I tore through the front door, screaming for Julian. I couldn't wait to tell him the good news. He had stood beside me through my madness, his feelings never wavering. I knew I could count on him.
“Julian!” I hollered as I threw open the door to his bedroom. To my dismay, he was nowhere to be seen. I ran through the myriad hallways in the house, searching rooms and calling for him, but I found nothing. His parents and sister were missing as well.
With only one section of the home left to search, I made my way down a secluded wing that I'd never ventured into before. It was darker than the rest of the home, with narrower halls and smaller rooms―the “help's” quarters from days of old.
“Julian?” I called, approaching a room at the end of the corridor. A crack of light escaped from beneath the closed door. “Is anyone in here?” I knocked gently on the door before pressing it open slowly. “Constantine?”
Nobody was there.
A desk lamp illuminated the tiny and sparse office. A lone desk and chair sat in the middle of the space. On the far wall, what looked to be a degree of some sort hung in a beautifully carved wooden frame. A paper lay on the desk with a pen tossed on top of it. A letter.
And the handwriting looked familiar.
Knowing it was wrong, I walked around the desk and picked up the delicate sheet of paper. My hands trembled violently as I brought it up to read it. Something was wrong.
Dear Aspen,
I'm afraid that I have failed you in the grandest of ways. What I did out of a misguided sense of protection has served only to drive you into the hands of evil. We cannot meet here. It's unsafe. I've learned things since you left here. Things that have put both of us in the gravest of danger. When you receive this, I need you to be calm but assertive. You must leave and leave quickly. Make haste, my child, for the darkness is upon you.
I have set up a place for you just outside of town. You'll find an ally there. He will help you and keep you safe, and I will join you there as soon as I can.
There is a pressing matter at the convent that requires my attention first.
With great love,
Sister Mary Constance
I couldn't have been seeing what I was seeing. A warning―to me―from a dead woman. Frightened, I crumpled the letter up and shoved it into my back pocket. You must leave . . . the darkness is upon you.
“No!” I cried out in the tiny room. “This isn't happening. None of this is real. It isn't real!”
I turned to escape the scene that was quickly unraveling my mind. Instead of improving the situation, my new point of view only derailed it further. In my path was the diploma on the wall, or what I'd thought to be one. As I neared it, I saw that the calligraphic print was not a note of achievement, but rather a poem of sorts in Latin printed on brittle parchment and encased in a gilded frame.
And it shall come to pass, that the one born of both light and shadow, on whose shoulders rests the fate of mankind, will extinguish the flame of life. The golden circle will succumb to darkness, and so shall the world. His veil of protection will be removed, His curtain sheltering humanity from the pervasive evil that seeks to reign, will be no more. All things unholy shall plague creation. The earth will bleed. The stars will fall. The sun retreat and souls shall crawl.
Before the rising of the moon on the eve of adulthood, deceit will plague her, voices will mislead her, and evil will tempt her. A trusted one will fall by her hand, setting the course of action in play. Minds will be poisoned, weather altered, and time manipulated. Evil will rejoice as her faith weakens and her mind betrays her, all leading to the final transgression.
But not all is lost. The tide may turn with one simple act, to elevate good and banish the unholy. A choice between the light and dark will seal our fate.
She must serve us.
Unknowingly, my hand drifted up to touch the prophecy that had up until then only come to me in pieces. My recent conviction that all the madness had been just a figment of my imagination was quickly crumbling. With a quick jerk of my arm, I pulled away from the evil in that message. When I did, the picture frame cocked to the side, exposing an aberration in the wall behind it. A hidden door.
No longer concerned about intrusion, I tore the picture from the wall and threw it across the room, fracturing the glass and splintering the frame. I had expecte
d to see a locked safe looking back at me, but instead, I found one slightly ajar. It opened easily for me, exposing a simple black box inside. I yanked that box out and tossed in on the desk, immediately ripping off the top to display its contents.
I was ill prepared for what I would find.
Inside were pages upon pages of reports. Reports written by Mother Superior, addressed to Constantine Casey. I rifled through them all, snatching some out at random to read. There were notes in Mother Superior’s handwriting regarding my childhood habits, activities, and highlighted sections regarding my abilities. She observed on one page that my “powers” seemed to be tied to my emotions just as my mother’s had been. Overwhelmed by the mere mention of my mother in connection with everything happening, I set the file down and kept searching through the other materials in the box.
Under the notes were pictures of me growing up, taken by a high-powered camera lens from far away. Under those were lists of every book I'd ever read, place I'd ever loved, and song I'd ever sung. It was a veritable catalogue of my life and anything that ever mattered to me. Everything you would need to convince me that you knew who I was―or to be the person I wanted to be with.
Not wanting to miss anything, I dumped all the contents onto the desktop, spreading them out wildly with both hands. Amid the standard-sized copy paper was a single, small piece of much higher quality. I flipped it over to see a notarized and highly official document.
A birth certificate.
Aspen Thomas. Born September 23, 1994.
I was not eighteen. Not yet.
It was the eve of my birthday as well as the destruction of the world, and no amount of rationalization or medication could undo that reality for me.
The prophecy was real.
27
“You know,” a voice called from the hallway, “it's terribly rude to snoop, Aspen. I thought Mother Superior would have done a much better job teaching you that at the convent. Seems as though I've made a poor assumption there.” Constantine gracefully walked into the room and shut the door behind him before locking us in together. “I see that the proverbial cat is out of the bag,” he continued, nodding his head at the piece of paper in my hand. “Luckily for me, it's too late for you to do anything about it all now. The path has been set.”
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