Awakening: Book 1 The Last Anakim Trilogy

by Janet V Forster

  ‘You go do your teeth.’

  ‘Okay Mum,’ I replied compliantly.

  When I returned he had turned my bed down. The warm yellow glow of the lamp made my room cosy.

  ‘Now hop in,’ he commanded. I did. His bossiness was comforting.

  He lay down next to me stroking my hair and I yawned.

  ‘Tell Pierre I’m happy for you guys.’

  ‘I will Baby.’ He kissed me on the cheek and then began to hum. I drifted.

  34

  DEB AND NICK

  I tried to move on, to focus on my schoolwork, but it suffered. I was continually preoccupied with working out ways to see Nick, to see that he was okay, and then doubting whether or not I should even try, whether or not he would want me to. Why hadn’t he contacted me yet? Alone in my room in the afternoons, my books a prop only, I became absorbed in one scenario or another, my imagination carrying me over walls and through windows, into his arms. But then futility would hit me and I’d become dejected, gazing endlessly at the white ceiling above my bed.

  When I phoned yet again, I was startled by the voice of a woman on the other end. I had become so used to the machine when I called. ‘Hello.’ Her voice was deep and authoritative. His mother, I realised.

  ‘Hello,’ I replied hesitantly. ‘Could I speak to Nick please?’ There was an extended silence, like she’d been caught off guard and didn’t like it.

  ‘Who is this please?’ Deep and authoritative had become demanding, although she remembered her manners.

  I sighed. There was no point lying. ‘It’s Deb.’ Again she paused, like she was working out how to say what she wanted to say. Finally she decided to go with simple and ditched the manners.

  ‘I know it’s hard for you to understand, but we don’t want you calling here.’ Her emphasis on the you turned me into something despicable. ‘That includes Nick,’ she added nastily.

  Her words hurt, but I forged on regardless. ‘But …’ I wanted to tell her that I did understand, a little anyway. I only wanted to make sure that he was okay and if he didn’t want to speak to me then let him say so and I would disappear.

  ‘He won’t be taking your calls, so don’t bother trying again,’ she said, cutting me off and replacing the receiver abruptly.

  Weeks turned into one whole month or thirty days, that is seven hundred and twenty hours, or forty-three thousand two hundred minutes. I sensed the individual minutes of the days pass without the usual kind blur of time. Slowly, without change, without release. Grief and frustration, intermingled and building. Like a swollen, muddy river swirling and tumbling, writhing, gathering, until it eventually bursts its banks, spewing itself into the turbulent ocean.

  But finally I forced myself to make a decision. I couldn’t go on like this. I would go to his house again, but this time I would gain entry somehow and see how he was. I would not leave until I had. I’d have to take a stand. If I had to then I would face his family, formidable or not, I would not be a coward. I would be brave. The situation warranted it. Anyway his mother had said he wouldn’t take my calls, she’d said nothing about visiting.

  Any potential rebuke was well worth the chance of seeing Nick. What other options did I have? If my pride needed to suffer then so be it.

  My brother accompanied me for moral support and even my mother was supportive of the idea. She was concerned at how my low mood was impacting on my study and my exams were only a month away. They were both sick of seeing me sad and moping around the house. I needed closure.

  ‘Yes?’ His mother’s voice answered after I’d pressed the intercom at the gate.

  ‘Is Nick err, Nicholas in?’ I asked hesitantly.

  ‘Who is it?’ You know exactly who it is, Cow, I felt like saying, but didn’t, just clamped my teeth down hard on my tongue until the urge passed. ‘It’s Deb, his friend. I just wanted to say hello, see that he’s okay.’

  ‘He’s not in, but I’ll tell him you were here.’ Although her voice was clipped and abrupt, the quality of it had changed somewhat. She’d lost the angry edge and something else … Something that was hard to make out over the intercom because of the static. It was like she was just stating the words, without her previous passion, and that she was no longer confident that they were the right ones.

  ‘When will he …’ But the intercom had already gone dead and only a dry crackling sound remained. The wall was too straight and high to climb, the tangle of vines too dense. I wasn’t Tarzan. The house was a fortress by any definition. It rebuffed intrusion. A sense of hopelessness descended on me as I returned to the car and slumped into my seat.

  ‘So?’ George asked.

  ‘Forget it,’ I answered, shaking my head slightly and trying not to cry. ‘Waste of time. They’re not going to let us in.’ I swallowed a small sob, but he noticed and squeezed my knee reassuringly.

  ‘Come, come. What happened to your earlier resolve?’ I shrugged, and it was hard to get my shoulders back to their normal position afterwards.

  ‘My God, Deb,’ he cried despairingly. ‘Just as well you’re not a heart surgeon or something.’ His voice took on a high falsetto as he mimicked. ‘Oh, no, a paper cut! I guess he’s not going to make it …’

  I couldn’t help the smile that crept onto my face. George had that power. It was his gift. I tried to swat him, but he moved out of the way.

  ‘You don’t give up that easily do you?’

  I regarded him evenly. ‘I’m open to suggestions, George. I suppose you have one?’

  ‘It’s just about trying a little harder.’ He sat up and started the car. ‘The Edwards family may have money, but we have perseverance, and brains on our side. Plus we have time, lots of it!’

  He smiled mischievously and drove, or spluttered and smoked, a short distance down the road where he pulled to the side. Once the fumes from the car exhaust had cleared, we had a reasonable view of the gate from the rear-view mirror. We sat low in our seats and watched. His decrepit car stood out in stark contrast to the manicured surroundings, like an elephant at the opera.

  ‘George, what actually is our plan?’ I asked curiously, casting my embarrassment aside as bourgeoisie conceit.

  ‘We’ll wait and see if he leaves the house. If he does, we’ll follow him and then you can talk to him. Otherwise, maybe his folks will leave and then we’ll get in somehow!’

  ‘What, breaking in?’

  ‘Maybe we can get a message to him via one of their ‘staff’.’ His tone was patronising.

  ‘This car is disgusting!’ I said, noticing for the first time the empty cans and fast-food wrappings which littered the floor.

  ‘Complaints. You must be cheering up.’ His smile was playful.

  ‘We could be parked here for hours.’

  ‘Please send all grievances in writing to PO Box XXX, No-one Cares.’ He turned on the radio and started fishing around on the backseat.

  ‘Shut up. I’m just saying.’

  ‘Not like we have anything better to do - work, study.’ He dragged an eski onto the front seat.

  ‘Don’t you think we’re going to look a bit suspicious?’

  ‘Who cares? There’s no law that says we can’t park here.’

  ‘No?’ I looked around to make sure there weren’t any parking restrictions and was surprised that I didn’t find a sign stating: ‘No parking for cars older than six months.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if the laws are a little different around here actually. In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if these people have their own private police force!’

  He cracked a can and I was relieved to see that it was cola and not a beer. ‘What about you Sis?’

  We sipped drinks and annoyed each other, but after about an hour his feeble attempts to distract me from my slump were becoming annoying. At last the gates inched open. We scrunched down further in our seats, peeping out over the window ledge as a large silver sedan with tinted windows exited the driveway and purred haughtily past us. It was impossible to
see who or how many were inside, but on the plus side, I think we were invisible too.

  ‘I’m just assuming that wasn’t him,’ George advised disparagingly. ‘Hopefully he wouldn’t be seen dead in something so ostentatious, otherwise there’s no hope for the poor bastard!’

  ‘Maybe you should go to the gate now George.’

  I watched in the rear view mirror as he approached the gate and spoke into the intercom. After a moment he beckoned frantically to me. Leaping out of the car I rushed towards him, noticing as I neared that the gates were opening again. We ran briskly up the driveway to the house.

  ‘What did you say?’ I asked, hoping it wasn’t, ‘Pharmacy delivery. I’ve got the condoms Mrs Edwards ordered.’

  ‘I just asked to see Nick,’ he explained over his shoulder. ‘Brendan opened.’

  As we reached the front door it opened and Brendan stood before us. He looked anxious and preoccupied, like a war was waging inside and he was yet to make up his mind which side he was on. His brow held deep ruts and his jaw muscle was tightly clenched, but he wasn’t surprised to see me beside George. He let us in with only the slightest hesitation.

  ‘Thanks, Brendan,’ George said, adding, ‘This is Deb.’

  ‘I know who she is,’ he replied brusquely, cutting George off. George turned and looked at me with one eyebrow raised and I bit my lip. There was a lot I hadn’t shared with George, and I felt a little bad about it, given his involvement now.

  ‘We thought that maybe it was best you just get this over with,’ Brendan continued haughtily, implying some sort of a family gathering since my earlier conversation with his mother. Suddenly the car leaving and our easy access made sense.

  ‘I just wanted to see how Nick was, that’s all,’ I said.

  ‘Of course, we’re so sorry about Daniel. It’s terrible,’ George cut in anxiously.

  ‘Thank you,’ Brendan said. His voice was stiff, but it seemed that he was at least trying to be a little more gracious. He chewed his lip for a moment. ‘It’s been difficult.’ His eyes, the same mesmerising ones Nick had, but a shade colder, fixed on me for a long second.

  ‘I’ll let him know that you’re here and see what he wants to do,’ he said suddenly, clicking his heels in a sharp turn and leaving us standing awkwardly in the hallway.

  Minutes passed and I gazed at what was a truly strange assemblage of Edwards’ family members on the photo wall. I hadn’t fully noticed that before, the extent of the peculiarity, the uncanny similarities, especially the eyes, spanning so many generations. I guess I’d been distracted. Stepping closer I noticed another peculiarity. The frames were thick with dust.

  A door opened on the landing and murmuring voices could be heard. I sensed Nick’s arrival at the top of the staircase. I knew he was there because my spine began to prickle and tingle and everything around me seemed to slow as his presence tugged at me, turning my head and making my eyes move to his as he stood, as still as Buddha, gazing down at me.

  He was changed again from the last time I’d seen him outside the church. His eyes were unnaturally bright against the grey pallor which touched his skin and darkened to almost black under his eyes. His usual vitality was lost in his shrunken form. He looked exhausted. Roads I had never noticed journeyed to many places across his forehead, robbing him of his youth.

  His appearance shocked me, especially after he’d seemed so strong and vital at the funeral. George stood in frozen astonishment beside me.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Nick,’ I whispered, slowly ascending the never-ending flight of stairs leaving George at the bottom. Guilt blanketed my shoulders.

  I stopped at the top. This close, he looked even more vulnerable, so fragile. My hand tethered me to the balustrade as though afraid of what awaited me should I be set free to go to him. The space between us was thick with suffering, but the strange sensation I had experienced the last time I was here was gone. The door at the end of the corridor was shut and the room now empty of its former occupant.

  Nick’s eyes were on me, I could feel them boring into me, like he was reading a book, but when I turned to him he turned quickly away, to the landing windows and out to the restless sea. The weather had changed suddenly. The wind had picked up outside, gathering dark clouds into a forbidding cluster and pummelling the house. The ocean was a mess of wrestling steel and white.

  ‘Nick?’ I whispered. He turned reluctantly.

  Reaching out I took his deathly cold hand in mine.

  ‘Come,’ I said, pulling him towards his bedroom, where it was more private.

  ‘No, not there.’ His voice was hoarse as though speaking for the first time in days.

  ‘Oh?’ I glanced into his room. The interior was murky, but even from this distance I could see that it was in a state of some disarray. The bed had been dismantled, the mattress was hanging half off the base and the sheets were twisted and strewn.

  ‘What’s going on?’ I asked shocked. I dropped his hand and walked into his room. There were great gaping holes in the walls.

  ‘What have you been doing?’ I was pretty sure that if they were going to remodel, the Edwards would get in professionals.

  The door frame was rough and splintered as though it had been forced open at some point and the bottom of it was irreparably damaged. Sturdy brass locks had recently been mounted to the outside.

  ‘Why are these here, Nick?’ I remembered Daniel. Was Nick a prisoner?

  ‘You shouldn’t have come up here,’ he said. ‘I was going to come down. I didn’t want you to see me this way.’

  I shook my head. He still just didn’t get it. Going to him I touched his elbow. ‘Come.’ Half-heartedly he followed me into his room.

  ‘Help me with this.’ I reached down and tried to lift the mattress back onto the bed but he waved me away and shifted it back on himself. His room was dishevelled and gloomy, the curtains still drawn, and the air stale and strangely musty, like a tomb unopened for centuries. Moving to the drapes I pulled them back. Grey light made the room no friendlier. Reaching forward I opened the window. Violent air jerked the latch from my hand whipping the curtains to and fro.

  ‘Oh, dear,’ I exclaimed, reaching out and grabbing for it, my hair thrashing across my face as I did so. A rumble of thunder startled me. The storm was approaching rapidly. Finally I managed to grab the latch and tug it closed.

  ‘That’s some storm coming,’ I said, as I turned back to face him. He stared through the window at the ominous sky.

  ‘I wish I’d come sooner Nick. I can see how you are suffering … how you have suffered, you’re wasting away.’

  ‘I am?’ He sounded vague, as though he hadn’t realised that until now.

  ‘You are,’ I answered firmly, my attempt at eye contact failing as he resisted my gaze. I dropped onto the bed. ‘It’s been really hard to get to see you. Your folks have this place wrapped up tighter than Fort Knox.’ I glanced towards the locks on his door. ‘To be honest, it’s hard to remember your room as it was, it seems prisonlike now.’

  ‘You might think that.’

  I huffed and threw my hands into the air. ‘There are locks on the outside of your door!’

  ‘I guess they think it’s best that way.’

  I leapt off the bed, frustrated by his lack of reaction, not understanding his submission, the person he had become.

  ‘Why?’ I asked, a cold hard sick realisation hitting the pit of my stomach as the words left my mouth. Because he’s suicidal, like Daniel.

  I felt him struggle against the thick catatonia which seemed intent on claiming him and gather himself with supreme effort, drawing on some hidden reserve of strength. I wondered whether he was taking something or whether the force that was holding him down with such power was grief. Suddenly he grabbed my arms hard, startling me. Urgency made his voice raw. ‘Get away from here now, Deb. Don’t turn around to look back. This place will only damage you. I will only damage you.’

  His words were garbled, tumbling over each
other in a sudden gush. ‘Have they been holding you captive here?’

  He almost laughed. ‘What, that lock?’ He shook his head, like the lock was some kind of joke, which it clearly wasn’t. ‘No, and if they ever did, it would be because they needed to ... for my own sake.’

  I wasn’t so sure about that, but I didn’t say anything.

  ‘I want to help you Nick, I just don’t know what to do,’ I said, a desperate edge to my voice. ‘I know you’re sad, I know you might even blame yourself. I want to help. Please, let me help. I can see something bad is happening to you. Don’t shut me out!’ The whine to my voice escalated and I forced myself to stop and exhale. Touching his arm I realised that his body was rigid with tension, unyielding to my touch. My lip wobbled and I bit down on it hard.

  He shook his head. ‘You don’t understand. This is the way it is. Whatever we may have wanted, we have to accept that this is the way it is. There is desire, and then there is life. Life you have to accept. I am changed, and I am sorry, but I can’t go back to before now. My life is here, with them.’

  I shook my head. ‘There are always options, always.’ But defeat had already begun eating its way into my soul and I recognised it. Why was this person so important to me? Why would I willingly embrace suffering if it meant I could be with him?

  ‘I never wanted to hurt you, Deb.’

  I shrugged and walked to the window as the frames rattled in the force of the wind. ‘Maybe not, but you have.’

  ‘I know I have.’ His voice was so low it could hardly be heard, but he came to me and took my hands in his. For the first time he made eye contact and held it. His pupils were small, overshadowed by green and orange-gold swirls and striations. ‘But that hurt is like a blister, compared to what it could potentially be. Leave now and it will heal. I promise you that. There will be a mark for a while, but … not for long. Don’t wait around here to be mauled, to die from wounds that will never heal, because that’s what this place is … and the people in it. Misery lives here. Misery and darkness … and if you stay, you will be infected by it.’