I Belong to the Earth (Unveiled Book 1)

by J. A. Ironside

When the doctor was sure I'd come round enough after the general anaesthetic, I was wheeled on a gurney back to the ward for observation. A well-meaning nurse brought me a magazine, not realizing that I shouldn't be able to read it - maybe not everyone read the medical records of their patients. I was groggy and unfocused but also impatient. I still wasn't allowed to eat which made me grumpy on top of everything else. But I felt warmer. Less soiled and put down.

  I'd been given a rare glimpse into Haze's mind. I had spent so much time and energy fighting him that I hadn’t fully understood that he was human once. Wanton and cruel perhaps, but also desperately, irrevocably in love. It had never occurred to me that Kate might be his weakness.

  The rest of the day was utter boredom. I shook off the worst of the anaesthetic by midday and by then I was hungry enough to eat my pillow let alone the hospital food. The nurses wheeled the lunch trolley around to the four old ladies also on my ward. I watched enviously, begrudging them every mouthful of the unappealing mess that might be cottage pie and peas followed by rice pudding. That I was even contemplating rice pudding meant I must be dangerously hungry. My attempts to look pathetic and starved didn't fool the nurses. Not until 5:00pm, I was told.

  I distracted myself by practicing reading with the magazine. I kept losing my place on the page – the words seemed to leap around like rabbits. Maybe a side effect of the head injury I’d gotten in the accident. Following lines of text was hard though I could get through short sentences, even paragraphs now. Shame it was a copy of 'Woman and Home', I was bored enough already. Maybe Kate was right when she said hell was personal. I thought I might be in mine.

  Finally, head and eyes aching with effort, I gave it a rest. Impossible to pay attention to the subject matter. And I needed something to rest under the line I was reading, a piece of paper or card, something to stop my eyes jumping about the page. Hope welled up despite my current frustration. Maybe I would never leap, facile and nimble, from word to word as I had before but books would no longer be a locked kingdom. If only I knew what had happened to that book. I closed my eyes. It didn't fit with the rest of the Pattern at all. Neither did that creepy dream I had about Mum…

  "Afternoon, Emlynn. Not your best attempt to hide, I must say." Ciarán stood in the doorway. I stared at him in shock, the tell-tale heat in my face giving away my embarrassment. My hair! It doesn't matter. He doesn’t like you.

  Ciarán sauntered over ignoring the geriatric contingent. "Ready to leave this swinging joint, then?"

  "Duh definitely! W-where's m-my dad?" I already knew the answer.

  Ciarán rubbed the back of his neck with one large hand. His sandy hair flopped into his eyes. "Er. Well… Aunt Mary asked me to pick you up."

  "Oh. Okay." So not okay. I was now fluttering with nerves at the thought of being alone in a car with Ciarán, or I'd have been seriously pissed off at Dad. He was absent most of the last time I was in hospital. This time he hadn't shown up at all.

  Ciarán’s car turned out to be a battered blue ford fiesta. "Not exactly the babe mobile, I know."

  "Ih- is it yuh yours?"

  "Nah. Aunt Mary's. Hop in. You're in charge of finding something good to listen to on the radio."

  I raised my eyebrows at him.

  He glanced at the sling and full cast on my right arm. "That's not going to get you out of it darlin'. You can still use your left." He smiled his devil-may-care smile and my heart constricted in my chest. For God's sake, get it together. I was furious with myself. Would I never learn?

  The sun was bright in the cool spring air. I watched the passing scenery with interest. I’d missed the stunning roll and fall of the landscape, when we led the removal van up here a week ago. Even the skeletal, wind-tortured shapes of the odd stunted trees were strangely beautiful. You could touch the sky here. Become a bridge between heaven and earth. I laughed at myself.

  The post-operative grogginess had lifted, leaving me feeling light and free. I couldn't be afraid now. Not in the sunlight with Ciarán radiating warmth beside me and cheesy sixties rock playing on the radio. And I had learned something, well a potential something anyway. Haze’s real name. Hardiman. It sounded Romani, which would fit with Helen calling him the Gypsy lad. Grace-Kate had said it in the stables and he had reacted like it was supposed to be secret. Could I use that? Did names, real names, have power over the Dead? If there was a way to use it, Mrs Cranford would probably know. I glanced at Ciarán. I should ask him to drive me straight to his godmother’s house. I had information now. And I needed to talk to someone about Mum and that vision.

  Deep down, too deep to share with anyone, I felt sure now that Mum had been trying to reach me all along. I just couldn't separate out which strange things were Mum's doing and which were part of the Pattern. Knowing that Mum was still with me somehow, made it all easier to bear.

  My thoughts were clearer than they'd been in days. For the first time I wondered why Mrs Cranford had been so hell-bent on helping me. A small seed of disquiet lodged in my gut. Did she have an agenda of her own? I smothered the feeling. Mrs Cranford had helped me. I needed to stop being so distrustful. When I was back in Arncliffe, I was sure things would muddle again. I had to remember.

  Remember.

  Maybe Haze wasn't just threatening me. Could he have been…warning me? Even if he instigated the Pattern, he was just as caught up in it as the rest of us. My flesh still shrank at the thought of him but maybe, just maybe I had a hook. A way in. There was something Haze wanted, maybe I could bargain with him.

  "You're quiet even for you, Em. Care to share any of those Machiavellian plans?" Ciarán raised an eyebrow.

  "Nuh not just y-yet." I gave him a lopsided smile. Every time I had things straight in my head about him, I saw him smile or crook an eyebrow, and all my sensible reasons on why I couldn’t have feelings for him seemed redundant.

  "So you are thinking and scheming? Tell me more." His eyes crinkled at the corners in amusement, but stayed fixed on the winding road.

  "Kuh can't. Not yet. S-sorry." I couldn't risk drawing him in deeper by talking to him. He might only be caught in the outer edges of the Pattern so far and I liked him too much to risk it.

  "For real?"

  "Wuh would if I could."

  "Fair enough then. When you're ready." He changed gears. "So, I hope this doesn't seem interfering but…yer Da…are you not on good terms?"

  "What a p-polite way of p-putting it!" I snorted.

  "Ah love, you don't want to let it make you bitter."

  "And y-you'd nuh nuh know would you?" I couldn't keep the defensive snap out of my voice.

  Ciarán was quiet for so long I worried that I'd offended him. His lips were tightly compressed. I was about to apologize when he spoke again.

  "Me Da was a brute. Heavy with his fists. Me and me sisters, we all wore tokens of his affection at one time or another. For a long time I thought that was what fathers did. I was eight or nine before I knew it wasn't. And me Mam… Don't get me wrong, I love me Mam but she never stepped in the way."

  "W-what huh happened?" I was selfish and spoiled. Complaining because I had a father who had no time for us, especially me.

  "He took after me with a cricket stump when he was drunk one time. Ma got in the way for once, he'd have likely killed me if she hadn't. He was a mean drunk, full of rage. As it was he shattered me shoulder. Hit her hard enough to crack her skull. She packed us up as soon as he’d passed out from drink and left. She's been better without him. It's taken a long time to put it in my past." His face looked older, even in profile. Set in hard lines of remembered pain. And there was something indefinable there that made me wonder if it really was in the past for him. If it were me, I would have always felt there was something unfinished.

  Had he ever told anyone about this? "That suh sounds h- hard." What a stupid thing to say. I should have said I was sorry. That he had made himself a better person than his dad. Something like that. I'd only ever seen Ciarán's humour a
nd quirkiness. It was easy to forget that we all dragged shadows of the past after us.

  To my surprise he laughed. "I like that about you, Emlynn. You tell me true what you think. I feel I can tell you anything." His smile faded a little and his great winged brows swooped down. "It is hard. It's hard not to be scared of becoming him. I've a temper too. I've had girlfriends – nice lasses — but never anyone special. Someone I wanted to be with longer than a few weeks."

  My heart sank a little at the thought of ‘girlfriends’ plural. I shoved the thought away, impatient with myself. "In case yuh you get cl-close and h-hurt them?" I guessed.

  "That's about the size of it."

  "You n-never would, Ciarán." Impulsively, I put a hand on his arm. "You're guh good. A g-good person. You just never w-would."

  "You don't know that. I don’t know that." His voice was wistful.

  "I nuh know." Even I was surprised by how fervent I sounded. I'd only known him a week. How could I be so sure? But I was. And just like that, all the suppressed feelings and thoughts about my family came tumbling out in one long stammering stream.

  I told him how Mum and Dad had been talking about divorce on and off for the last few years, though I wasn't supposed to know, the accident, and the weird way Mum acted before driving over the edge, Amy’s obsession with science, and how Grace acted around me since the accident. We talked about how Dad had been different after he'd finally come back from Iraq for good when I was eleven, Dad's confusing Damascan conversion to the Anglican Church, and how Dad couldn't even bear to look at me now, I was such an embarrassment to him…

  I stumbled to a halt mid-sentence, blushing. I was talking too much.

  "Don't keep me hanging, love. What were you going to say?" Ciarán had been listening intently as the little blue car ate up the miles back to Arncliffe.

  "I've n-never talked this m-much about myself eh-ever!" I said. There was a note of pending hysteria in my voice but I also felt purged. All those mixed up feelings had been just scrambled up inside me – easy pickings for Haze to work on. No wonder I hadn't been able to think straight sometimes. Getting rid of Haze’s chances of influencing me wasn’t why I’d opened up. Even if I couldn't have him, I wanted Ciarán to know me. The real me, not the quietly seething girl, who sensed the Dead and had prettier sisters.

  I fiddled with the edge of my sling, working a thread free. Emotional diarrhoea. How attractive. I looked up and Ciarán grinned.

  "Knew there was a lot going on in there." Ciarán ruffled my hair. "I think it's time we had some fun." He pulled the car over as we approached a look out spot, and switched off the engine.

  "Where are we guh going?" I fumbled with my seatbelt.

  "For a walk." Ciarán helped me out of the car. "Come on." He took my left hand, careful of the bruise left by the IV. His hand was warm and callused. I felt closer to him than I had to anyone in longer than I could remember. Closeness wasn't something I took for granted anymore. A snarky little voice in the back of my mind told that I'd probably have followed him anywhere, if he smiled like that. That I was letting myself get in too deep. I should pull out now. Before I really fell for him.

  Except that might already be yesterday's news.