Pieces of Hope

by Carter, Carolyn

  I bolted up, screaming to him in terror, clawing at the hideous awful thing before me, “ETHAN, WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”

  —and then, releasing his grip . . . the only thing that kept him safe on that platform; I watched in horror as Ethan fell headfirst from Heaven’s Peak.

  22 Crawling into Ethan

  I screamed in a voice I no longer recognized as my own. This couldn’t be happening. It couldn’t be real! The darkness had consumed me before I saw Ethan hit the ground. Had he . . . hit the ground? Did it matter that I wasn’t actually beside him, that there was a barrier between us? Did that technicality make it more like a real dream and less like a soul-to-soul visit? My weak mind was failing me. I couldn’t recall what Creesie had said. I only wanted to know, I only needed to know . . . Was Ethan alive? Was he?

  And then it occurred to me—I could check!

  My hands were shaking as I reached up and drew back the invisible black curtain. It only took one try. Instantly, fluidly—before another fraction of a second passed—I held my breath and skimmed to Ethan’s bedside. It was raining outside. I could hear it softly plinking on the windows. And there, in the streetlights filtering through the French doors, I searched for a sign that my true love was alive . . . the rise and fall of his chest, a twitch, a moan.

  I didn’t have long to wait.

  He slept the sleep of the tormented; a moaning, thrashing, restless sleep. His right hand flung toward the nightstand and an opened bottle of sleeping pills caught my eye. The pills were startling, but not for obvious reasons. I knew he wasn’t trying to kill himself . . . He was trying to keep me out. The pills put him in too deep a sleep for me to reach him. This brought on my first wave of self-pity as I realized the extremes he had taken to prevent me from entering his dreams.

  He lay facing me. Even with his bruised eye, he was achingly beautiful. Kneeling down so that we were at eye-level, and careful not to touch him, I watched him for a long while. At first, expressions danced across his face in a sort of horror extravaganza, but the longer I watched, the calmer he became.

  “Ethan, I know how difficult this must be for you . . . well, no . . . I suppose I can only imagine.” At the sound of my voice, he became very still. “Do you remember at the hospital when first you told me if I were awake you wouldn’t have the courage to tell me your secret? Now that, I can relate to.” I let out a pitiful chuckle.

  “I kept telling you I needed to see my mother, but I couldn’t tell you why. In truth I couldn’t tell anyone why, and that’s because I almost can’t bear the burden of it myself, let alone have anyone else know my secret.”

  Tears filled my eyes. I nearly reached for his hand, then stopped cold, frightening myself at the thought of the consequences. I tucked my hands under my knees to prevent any accidents. Then I blurted out, “I killed my mother . . .”

  I broke into sobs. It took several moments to compose myself. “That day, it was a Saturday, and I was working like usual at Dad’s clinic, and like usual, it was crazy busy. Mom called around nine to make lunch plans with me after work. That was the first thing I thought was unusual. Unless it was my birthday, I didn’t have solo lunches with Mom. They were always a long, drawn-out affair with Dad and Claire. She asked that I keep it a secret, and I thought that was even odder. I also thought Mom sounded sad so, of course, I told her I’d go.” Correcting myself, I admitted, “Actually, I promised I’d go.

  “At one o’clock on the nose, Brody showed up before we’d locked the doors. And he was pumped like only Brody can be about a new crag he’d heard about . . . and in the midst of all that excitement, I forgot about my mom.” I buried my face in my hands for a long while, then went on, berating myself, “Forgot her! Do you believe it? And then later, there was this weird moment when we were climbing that I got this horrible spasm in my neck. It hurt so much that I screamed from the pain.”

  I shook my head at the memory of it, unable to believe it still.

  “And, in that moment, I remembered the promise I’d made to my mother. We left right away, and I kept telling Brody that something was terribly wrong. I felt it, I said. He kept trying to calm me down. He must have told me a hundred times that everything was fine. . . . ‘You’ll see, Hope,’ he kept saying. But by the time we got back, the paramedics were in the driveway, and Mom was gone. Before they even told me what had happened, I knew that she’d broken her neck. That’s what I felt on that crag, my mother’s pain. And it’s my fault, Ethan . . . My mother is dead because of me.”

  I stared into his heavenly face for a moment, hoping to find some peace there, but I found nothing. I felt hollower than before. “Don’t you see? If I’d kept my promise and met her as planned, then my mother wouldn’t have been on those stairs, and she couldn’t have fallen or someone couldn’t have pushed her, and my beautiful, beautiful mother would still be alive!”

  I waited for a reaction from him. Crazy as that sounded, I believed he was capable of waking up, grabbing me in an embrace, and telling me that everything was going to be all right. Ethan had a way about him that led me to believe this.

  Instead, he rolled onto his other side.

  I walked around the bed, touching it as I went, but feeling nothing. Watching him curled into a fetal pose, his hands entwined as if in prayer, a wave of sadness hit me hard. It was as if I had missed him for a thousand years, and only now had the opportunity to right that wrong. Carefully, making sure I didn’t touch him, I lay on the bed beside him. I became his mirror image—body half-curled, hands clasped before me, terrified that he might accidentally move through me.

  But he didn’t, he became still once again, giving me the courage to continue.

  “You may not know it, Ethan, but you’re better off without me.” I closed one eye, tracing an outline of his face in the air. It was my way of making a memory. “What I’m trying to say is . . . when something truly devastating happens, and you feel it to such a degree that it affects you, and you know that somehow it will always affect you . . . well, you start to think you’re broken.” I felt it then, that too-familiar tightening in my chest. “And I am, Ethan. I’m broken. My mother’s death broke something inside me.”

  My voice cracked on broken. Ironic, I thought, as though my body could connect the word and the wounds. But my bedside confession only made me all the more determined to find my mother while there was still time, then return to Ethan as quickly as I could.

  But I found leaving him difficult, and whether it was my imagination or not, it seemed that each time I made up my mind to go, his body would begin to thrash again, unconsciously begging me to stay. Ethan’s watch on the nightstand read six. And though I had no idea where Daniel was at this moment, I knew it was time to go. Ethan would be awake soon, and I didn’t relish upsetting him further.

  I propped myself on one elbow as a watery ray of light shone on something below his pillow. It was the first time I’d noticed the boldly-striped stationery, the kind on which a man might send an old-fashioned letter. I moved down a little, inching my way around so I could read the neat, squared-off print. My heart sped up when I read what he’d written. I’m not a poet on paper, Hope. Only in my heart. Only for you.

  There was a space of several lines, and then it continued.

  I’ll love you anytime

  In the spring, in the fall, in the warm sunshine

  In the rain, in the snow, anywhere you go—

  I’ll love you there

  I’ll love you anywhere

  In the meadows, in the mountains, in the feathery pines

  At the descent or on the incline—

  I’ll love you all the time

  I’ll love you for all time

  In this second, in the seconds passed

  In this hour, in all the hours to come

  Even when my time on earth is done

  I’ll love you then—

  Just say when . . .

  Tears flowed freely now and I could no longer see the words. Ethan had signed his nam
e in a simple script at the bottom that tilted in a backwards slant, the same way Claire’s did as a left-handed writer. Flooded with emotions, I considered all the things he had told me about—my fragile state at the hospital, his undying faith that I was going to wake up at any moment, his seeming willingness to walk away from it all—

  I guess this is goodbye.

  And then I thought about the poem he had written, and the lengths he had gone to to prevent me from entering his dreams—and that damned, impenetrable wall! And suddenly, I understood the depth of his pain. Or did I?

  I was sitting up now, hating the idea of leaving, yet sensing that I should go. Another second passed and he unexpectedly moaned my name, apparently begging me to stay. It was another unconscious plea on his part. On some deeper level, he may have known that I was there, while on a conscious level, he was sound asleep.

  That’s when it came to me.

  I didn’t think it through. If I had, I wouldn’t have been able to do it. In some odd way, it reminded me of suicide. In the short while that I’d considered it as an option, I’d often tried to picture it afterwards—that moment of sudden clarity when I’d realize what an idiotic thing it was that I’d done—that instant of perspective when I’d ask myself why I ever thought that killing myself was a good idea . . .

  Yes, it was that moment—the moment after—that bothered me. Consequently, it was that moment which I chose not to think about now. And without a second thought, I precisely mirrored his posture, closed my eyes, and rolled sideways—straight into Ethan.

  It was like falling into somebody else’s nightmare.

  The pain knocked the breath from me, and I doubled over from the shock of it. I couldn’t quite place it. Deep and vague, like I was bleeding to death on the inside. But when I looked down to find the wound I saw Ethan’s body instead. And there wasn’t a mark on him.

  Through the murkiness, I saw a similar dream to the one I had just exited. I stood in the same place I had before, about fifty feet from the Peak. Only this time, dangling from the edge, I saw me—only it wasn’t really me, nor did it feel like me. It was eerie, like watching a movie and seeing someone else play your part. And this time, I was inside Ethan, watching it play-out through his eyes, fighting to struggle through his fear. My powerful fists pounded on the invisible wall with a physical strength I didn’t truly possess, and a hoarse cry escaped my throat, deep and resonating, bellowing to the girl at the edge of the Peak.

  But the Hope in Ethan’s nightmare seemed thrilled by his display.

  From her upside-down position, the other Hope sat up, a taunting smile frozen on her face, her eyes disturbingly wild. Ethan shouted to her again and she laughed, releasing one foot from the ridge that held it secure. She was teasing him in the most horrid sort of way. A band of pain tightened around my chest. I heard Ethan groan in agony.

  “Next time,” she mocked, smiling that hateful smile, holding her position on the edge of the Peak. “Next time, there’ll be no falling . . .”

  “Stop screwing around, Hope!” I shouted in Ethan’s voice, my fists pounding on the rock-hard wall with a frenzied intensity. “Don’t do this! Come away from the edge!”

  The girl flashed into a different form. She no longer looked like me. Her pale blond hair was tied back with a red ribbon. Her feet were bare. I knew her face. It was the girl from Ethan’s memories, the girl he insisted was me from an earlier lifetime. She looked in Ethan’s direction, but her gaze was vacant. I saw that her eyes were swollen from crying.

  “I’m sorry,” she sobbed. “Forgive me, forgive me, forgive me . . .”

  The girl morphed back into evil Hope—wild-haired, wild-eyed.

  “DON’T!” Ethan shouted, terrified now. “Don’t do this!”

  Ignoring Ethan’s plea, the girl looked back at him once, her image shifting back and forth between evil Hope and the girl from Ethan’s memories, then she stretched out her arms and flew like a stone from the top of Heaven’s Peak.

  The blackness came over me almost immediately. But in the aftermath, I couldn’t stop sobbing nor did I have the strength to drag myself out of Ethan. In the distance, I heard a buzzing—a telephone, maybe? It sounded miles away. But some sense of reason told me to get out of Ethan before he awoke . . . What would happen to me if he realized I was still—?

  Something grabbed my wrist, wrenching me out of my nightmare. It took a couple of seconds to gather that it was Daniel, holding me against his shoulder and stroking my hair. I was a limp shoestring. Nothing would move. I couldn’t even hold up my head. I felt my eyes rolling around in their sockets, unable to focus. Then I became aware of that buzzing noise once again.

  What I had thought was a telephone was actually Ethan’s alarm. Daniel ignored it. Speaking soothingly, but looking slightly terrified, he asked, “Are you all right?”

  My eyes crept up to his. I blinked once. He laughed with relief, squeezing me against his shoulder. When he released me, my head fell backwards. He rested it against his knee.

  “Hope, did you”—even in my diminished state, I heard the pause—“go anywhere else?”

  I blinked twice, signaling no.

  “Not to the hospital or to see your family?” He sounded distraught, but as though he were trying to hide it.

  I blinked twice again.

  “So, only here?” he repeated above the obnoxious buzzing of the alarm.

  I gave one more blink and managed a low growl.

  “Okay, okay . . . I’ll stop torturing you.” He glanced at Ethan, now moving on the bed. “We should be going.” Delicately, as though he thought I might break, he picked me up in his arms and peeled back a portion of the wall near the French doors. The rainy day instantly disappeared, revealing an enormous and lavishly decorated bedroom that looked like something out of a castle. If I could have, I would have groaned.

  Before we slipped away, that infernal buzzing ceased, and a strangled and hoarse voice called out from the bed, “Hope? Hope, is that you?” In my peripheral vision, I saw Ethan throwing the blankets around, shuffling as he searched frantically for something.

  I felt that burning pain again, but I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t even turn my head.

  “Hope, your energy is low . . . I can barely feel you.” He held up a piece of paper of paper, shifting it toward the end of the bed, and then the wall, unaware, it seemed, of where I was exactly.

  “Look!” Ethan shouted, shaking the paper in the air. Was it the poem?

  I tried to focus. No, it wasn’t the poem. It was a newspaper article. I was only able to glimpse the headline because he kept shifting it around. Local Girl Dies In Fall, it said.

  Daniel carried me out of the room and dropped the shortcut, allowing the wall to fall back into place, and Ethan disappeared from sight. What did it mean? My mind was fuzzy, miles away. Was that the reason for Ethan’s nightmare, the newspaper article? And if so, why were there two of us? I worked at concentrating. But my mind and body seemed to be in two different places, and I gave up. Instead, I focused on the arched windows in my line of sight. They were painted in watery blues and greens with thin threads of lead separating the pieces.

  Yes, it was a castle, alright. Damn that Cinderella.

  The bed was tall and wide, with heavy burgundy drapes that hung from a canopy, the kind that let you shut out the world. Daniel turned down the bedding and tucked me inside, but I continued to shiver. My bones felt cold as a Popsicle. Daniel sat on the edge of the bed, stroking my forehead. It took an enormous amount of coaxing to get me to eat a cookie—my throat refused to swallow—but Daniel insisted that the sugar would do me good. It was the same thing Creesie had told me at the hospital. A short while later, it turned out he was right.

  I could almost hold up my head when he said, “That wasn’t the smartest thing in the world to do.” I had known him long enough and watched him closely enough to know when he was hiding something and—oatmeal insides and floating eyeballs aside—he definitely was. “But when it
comes to doing the smartest thing, I don’t have much room to talk.”

  He looked into my eyes. I had no idea what he was talking about.

  “Just promise you won’t do that again,” he pleaded.

  I nodded awkwardly. I meant to bob, but my head just sort of tilted sideways.

  “I’ll take that as a yes.”

  I blinked once. He gave me a weak smile.

  “Hope, I need to tell you something.” The color had drained from Daniel’s lovely face, giving him a slightly sickly pallor. And his hair looked wilder than usual, as though he’d just stepped out of the wind—or possibly out of a four-hundred pound Bengal tiger in a great rush. It was the first moment I’d noticed how panicked he was.

  “What is it?” I asked shakily. I attempted to sit up, but couldn’t do it, and fell back against the fluffy pillows.

  “It’s something I should have told you sooner, but this is . . . well, it’s not easy to say.” His eyes were grayer today, less blue than I’d ever seen them. Shaking his head, he closed his eyes and inhaled a deep breath. When he opened them, he seemed a little more worried than the instant before. “This is the sort of thing that alters a person’s life, well, as they know it . . . forever.” His last word came out in a whisper.

  My stomach twisted into a sickening knot. Was he worried for me, because of me, or about me?

  “I don’t know how to tell you this, Hope. I should’ve told you sooner. I should’ve told you the minute it happened. You could say I’ve been a coward, but sometimes there are good reasons to delay. I’ve started the same sentence a hundred times, and a hundred times I couldn’t spit it out.” A sort of misery came over him. I had a sudden and horrific revelation. It was instantly clear. Too clear.

  The words dropped out of my mouth one at a time, like pills too bitter to swallow, “Oh, God . . . I’m dead?” At first, he looked taken aback, possibly because I’d guessed it so quickly. Then he nodded slowly, his eyes unable to meet mine. I went into shock. Disbelief, maybe. It took me a moment to speak again. “Why don’t I feel dead?”