I stare at the amulet. What do I expect to happen? The surface of the necklace remains cold, inanimate.
And then there’s the big question: Should I do as I was advised and take the amulet into the woods?
Coming as a surprising revelation, I find that a growing part of me feeds on a meager hope that something extraordinary will happen when I give in to this mystery that is my mom and follow the instructions, achieving some kind of personal apotheosis in the process. But the rational part of me insists that it is highly unlikely that anything unusual will occur and in the end I’ll just look and feel stupid. Standing alone in the woods, clutching this New Agey piece of jewelry in my hand.
But so what? What have I got to lose? Besides, taking the amulet into the woods seems like a rational thing to do compared to the bloodletting Mom’s second clue demands. If anything, I should try with the amulet first, try and hear its message—or whatever—before I attempt anything else more drastic.
I shake my head as the realization hits: Somewhere along the way, I changed, recognizing that it’s time I deal with a possibility that maybe—just maybe—my mother was involved in something otherworldly. And so it’s my newly found openness that’s telling me it’s worth a try with the necklace. Worth a try with Mom’s legacy. Besides, do I even have the luxury of being a skeptic anymore? I doubt it; doubt that I can go on lying to myself that I knew my mother. Because I clearly didn’t. And now, knowing that my father’s borderline-obsessive protectiveness of me was just a cover-up for his enduring secret relationship with Promise and, I suspect, with the ghost of my mother, I decide that I can let my inner believer run wild. For what it’s worth, I’m going to take the raven necklace into the woods and beg it to reveal its secret, no matter how stupid I’ll look in the process.
Just as I make up my mind and head out the Manor’s door, the day succumbs to rain. And what a rain it is. The storm attacks the Manor from all angles with punishing force. Even driven by my suddenly acquired sense of purpose, I only manage a few steps before I change my mind. Lightning scars the dark skies as a boom of thunder rushes to catch up with its flash.
I’ll have to wait it out.
Spooked by the sudden weather change, Del joins me downstairs. With no Internet or television, our attention turns to the only book available: the weighty tome I’ve taken to thinking of as The Adventures of Eydís. But the problem with the Eydís book is that it’s written in what I suspect is an old Germanic language, making it unreadable to us. Still, I nurse this half-baked hope that somehow the book will just reveal its secrets to me the same way I instinctively seem to understand the foreign language my shadow army speaks in my dreams. But no matter how long or how intently I stare at the lines of gorgeous medieval print (and despite the fact that I spot an occasional runic symbol), I feel nothing in the way of recognition.
And then there’s the book’s creepy illustrations. If you think the creations of Hieronymus Bosch are disturbing, the book of Eydís is in its own league of spooky art. As I leaf through the volume, some of its particularly nasty images burn into my mind in the way the most outrageously bad horror movies do: by entering my psyche under the guise of laughable, WTF-were-they-thinking moments and then staying there, embedded into my soft gray matter only to resurface when I’m alone in my bed and the room is dark.
There’s Eydís tearing off her human face to reveal a beam of alien white light underneath. (The poster for Carpenter’s The Thing comes to mind.) Or here’s Eydís going all Lady Godiva, riding naked atop a demonic horse-dragon hybrid, leading an army of skeletons, their eyes and swords ablaze, toward an unsuspecting settlement nestled in a valley. And, of course, my personal favorite: Eydís hanging from a tree, naked and blissing out in a trance.
“I like this one.” Del points at a particularly obscene image of a naked couple, their limbs entwined suggestively, eager bodies splayed in a forest clearing. Standing out against the pale moonlight, the trees’ long shadows stretch across the lovers, as if trapping them in a cage.
I study Del’s suddenly dreamy face. She appears serious. “Why?” I ask.
“It’s romantic, I think,” she says.
* * *
We spend what’s left of the day keeping each other company. A few times I feel an urge to tell Del about the blood vials, but then I recall Del’s earlier dismissal of my suspicions about Elspeth and change my mind.
As night falls and we sit down to eat some more of Elspeth’s food for dinner, Del gets into a rare maudlin mood and decides to recite some crappy poetry her ex-boyfriend’s been texting her along with his smirking selfies ever since we left New York and up until the moment we entered Promise’s apparent reception-blocking field. I keep it civil at first, but each new “poem” is more ridiculous than the last, so after a short while I can’t hold off my evil laughter anymore. My timing is horrid, as Del’s eyes are wet with tears—she’s reading out some particularly twisted lines professing Bolin’s undying love for her (ingeniously, he rhymes love with broth). I laugh so hard, I can barely hear Del’s accusations of insensitivity, but then she gives up and joins me, both of us wailing with laughter as we repeat some of Bolin’s best/worst lines.
We part for the night early and, as I fall into the dark hole of sleep, my mind offers a visual of how my taking the amulet into the woods is going to unfold: A beam of light slices the ground under my feet to reveal an opening to another world, its bowels clouded with sentient fog. Through the opening, my mother walks out of her supernatural prison cell, her face shining with unrestrained otherness, her humanity completely stripped away. Her eager arms open in anticipation of an embrace. I don’t notice her hands curling around me until she’s too close, and I look up to find her eyes are missing from their sockets and her lips are rotted away, revealing two rows of razor-sharp, dirt-stained teeth.
* * *
I don’t know the time, but the sun’s barely up, its fragmented light bathing the insides of my old childhood room in a way that makes me think of those carefree days when my main concern was how to carve out more time from homework to spend playing with Shannon in the woods. Those days are gone, and Shannon looks at me funny now—and not in a good way. The silent demeanor of the Manor accents my mind’s heaviness. The best way to clear my foggy brain is to go for a run. After I exchange my pj’s for some tights and a well-worn sweatshirt, I pick up Mom’s amulet and hold it by the chain, making the shiny disk swirl in the air and catch random rays of light. After a moment’s thought, I put the necklace on and fasten the chain’s clasp. The round silver disk hangs low, hidden underneath my hoodie.
Once outside, I scan the skies and the ground for birds, acknowledging my disappointment at not finding a white raven anywhere nearby, watching me.
Then I run without stopping till I reach the line of trees. This time I rush headlong into the woods without giving myself any time to think, to doubt.
The powerful bodies of firs, pines, and spruces shimmer over me, around me, as I race through the sea of dark green. The too-loud noises of brushwood crunching underfoot make my skin crawl. Gabriel said I should take the amulet to where the earth’s burned black. I know exactly the place he means, even though I’ve never seen the Black Clearing with my own eyes.
My skin tingles as I delve deeper into the thickening forest. I count the seven turns my path takes through the dense woods before, in a rather dramatic fashion, the trees give way to … nothing.
I remember the way this trail used to end: It used to take me to a wild spring that cut the forest in half before continuing north, culminating in a waterfall that crashes into Edmunds’ Gorge. I should be able to hear the water’s roar, but instead it’s quiet—which is odd, since I don’t recall reading that the decade-old blast destroyed the waterfall. It’s like this place is stripped of all life: Without moisture, the air tastes sour.
I cast my eyes over the wasteland before me. Blanketed by thick fog, its paleness is crisscrossed with shifting shadows. In the years following
Mom’s disappearance, I agonized over what the infamous Black Clearing might actually look like. There were the evocative newspaper descriptions, of course—all nature burned to the ground, soil solidified into glass, trees stomped down.…
But nothing could’ve really prepared me to see it for myself—my mother’s last known location on this Earth. The impact of the visual before me is so powerful that silent tears escape my eyes while my mouth twists up in an unrealized sob. There’s no way Mom could’ve experienced whatever happened here and come out of it alive. No wonder they found no human remains—aside from that creepy severed pinkie that didn’t belong to my mother.
Pushing back tears, I take in the complete desolation of this dark place that exists in the middle of the lush forest and try to feel Mom’s presence. But there’s nothing here. No life. No memories.
A barb of irrational fear pokes at the boundaries of my perception, urging me to pull the amulet out from underneath my hoodie. To my fingers, cold and slippery with sweat, the metal’s almost hot to the touch.
I sense it before I feel it: a slight push, a big cat’s paw landing against my back, its subtle force compelling me to take a step forward. As my feet land in the ankle-deep fog, the ground vibrates, sharp tremors reverberating through me.
I bring the amulet to eye level. “Okay, if you have anything to show me, now would be a good time.”
My words provoke no reaction, not even after I rub a finger over the disc’s smooth surface, as if it’s a magical genie-keeping lamp and my touch will release its secrets. I even bring it to my mouth and exhale on it, to no avail.
Just as I start to feel very stupid, the Black Clearing shifts and shivers in my peripheral vision, like a desert mirage rearranging itself. Next comes a ringing in my ears.
My numb fingers release the amulet, and, freed from my grip, it hits my chest. Once more the ground tremors beneath me, making me sway on my feet. This is happening—this really is happening. My dream from the other night. I focus my eyes on the middle of the Black Clearing, bracing myself for what the tremors are about to release from the earth. As the shaking intensifies, I close my eyes for a long blink and, when I open them again, I’m in the middle of the clearing. I have no memory of walking there, so either I just had a minor blackout or I’ve mastered the art of teleportation.
The fog thickens around me, quickly rising to my chest, and my breathing becomes strained. Pulling air into my lungs is a struggle.
Is this what harmed my mom? Is this what my father’s been trying to protect me from?
The aftertaste of my recent anger at Dad acquires a hint of guilt. What if my father isn’t a crackpot? What if all this time I was busy being angry with him, he was actually trying to shield me from whatever this place is, from whatever these woods are hiding? What if his theories are … real?
But I have more important concerns right now: When I take a step away from the clearing’s center, heading back the way I came, the ringing in my ears turns into high-pitched buzzing, growing louder and louder till it transforms into the familiar clanging of metal against metal, the soundtrack of my recurring dream.
My heart’s beating too fast for me to think clearly. The air turns dark, whipping up into a spiral, locking me at the center of a maelstrom.
I’m pulled in all directions and then I’m in two places at once: There’s me in the eye of a storm and there’s another me outside it, at the edge of the clearing, clutching the amulet in my hand. But it’s not until I register long hair beating around me in a crazed blond halo while my right hand clutches a weirdly curved knife that I know … I’m inhabiting my mother’s body.
I scream at the sudden pain of the cut, as the knife runs down the length of my left arm. As if of its own accord, my bleeding hand lifts—an offering to the vortex. This experience is too intense; I try and shake off the possession. In my mind, two realities fight for domination: Logically, I know that what I’m seeing now is a message from long ago, a memory of my mother’s last deed in this world, and that it’s somehow trapped in the amulet but replaying now for my eyes only. But the part of my mind that’s melded with Mom’s psyche in this final moment of her life translates Mom’s thoughts into my head: My army will rise again! I sacrifice myself to release you! Rise, my warriors, and conquer this world!
I’m thrown back into my own body, stranded at the periphery of the clearing. From my new vantage spot, I get one last glimpse of my mother as she’s sucked into a foggy vortex, its unstable shape collapsing on itself and erupting into a mighty blast.
25
THE RAVEN PARADOX:
PART 1
In the 1940s, philosopher Carl Gustav Hempel described the raven paradox.
What we call the “scientific method” relies heavily on the logic of induction—our understanding of current events based on our observation of previous events. For example, we assume that the laws of physics governing our universe will always be as they have been simply because we have never observed otherwise. Our observations constitute our sole evidence for our induction. But here’s where Hempel’s raven paradox comes in: All ravens we have seen are black, and, therefore, we may presuppose that all ravens are black. But the paradox hits us square in the head when we discover that, though rare, there are indeed white ravens. What we didn’t see is still true—and it means that everything we know might be wrong.
After coming back to Promise, I’ve seen my actual white ravens. Dead and bleeding at my feet and alive and watching my every step. I’ve also now seen the wider application of Hempel’s paradox—my metaphorical white raven—right now, right here in the Promise woods. It wasn’t pretty; my hands turned sweaty and my throat closed up with an unrealized scream.
I’ve now seen what happened to my mother. I’ve seen her grisly fate. The worst part? She brought it on herself. Willingly. But then why did Mom leave the blood for me along with instructions to use it to close some kind of doorway—when she so clearly was trying to open it? Was that a trick? If I do what she asks, will I die like she did? Or something worse?
All my conscious post-Promise life, I’ve trained myself to believe that even though Mom’s disappearance seemed mysterious, it was still located within the realm of logic. I told myself over and over again that everything can be explained with science.
Well, science, explain this: a clear-as-day experience of me being stuffed into my mother’s burning skin, the horror of being torn apart and, at the same time, consumed by an otherworldly vortex as Mom’s last thoughts thundered through my brain: Rise, my warriors, and conquer this world!
I wouldn’t peg Mom as an apocalypse-welcoming, destroy-the-world kind of gal, but how can we say we know someone if we barely even know ourselves or what we’re capable of? I rub at my wet eyes with the back of my hand. Why would Mom want to end the world? She had a family, people who loved her.… Did none of that matter to her? I wonder if this is what the family members of murderers feel like: devastated, powerless, deflated.
As I reel on my feet, my brain’s chemical composition rearranging itself manifests as a numbing pain at the base of my skull.
The fog dissipates, revealing a large circle of black soil encased by the vibrant woods, an awkward patch of death surrounded by life. In the light of day, the amulet is back to being a lifeless piece of metal, the drawing of ravens on its surface crude, unsophisticated.
The amulet served its purpose, I suppose. Now that I’ve seen Mom’s horrifying message, there’s no way in hell I’m going to do as she asks—take the blood vials into the woods. And I’m not going to give the vials to Elspeth, either. Maybe I can destroy them.
My headache is the only reminder of the whirlpool of sensations that entrapped me seconds earlier. I’m still shaky and disoriented; my primal instinct is to put some serious distance between me and the Black Clearing, and fast. So I run.
26
THE RAVEN PARADOX:
PART 2
Racing back into the woods, I almost immediately trip
over a low-sitting branch and slip on the wet moss. I flail my hands in an attempt to stay upright, hitting the rough tree bark in the process and, despite my best efforts, I end up on the ground, my hands barely stopping my face from meeting the dirt.
Kneeling in the mud, I stare dumbly at the mess that is my injured palm. Shit! A deep scratch with oozing blood. Its rusty smell makes my stomach turn. I need to disinfect my hand.
Also: I’ve just spilled my blood in the woods. Kind of. Unintentionally. Does it count? Despite clearly remembering Mom’s instructions that I spill my blood in addition to releasing what’s trapped in the vials, I’m still shaking all over.
Wouldn’t want to unleash the apocalypse because of my clumsiness.
When I stand up, something brushes against my shoulder, making me jerk back in response. Another brush follows, its force pushing against my back. My ears pop. All sound multiplies tenfold. I look around in fear. No wind out here, but the air’s disturbed nonetheless, swirling in constant movement. The hair rising on the back of my neck matches one clear signal in my brain: Run. But … if I run, wouldn’t that be acknowledging for real that my mother was entangled in something supernatural? There’s still a pretty good chance, after all, that Mom was nuts—and that I’m losing my mind also. There is no otherworldly army. Just some kind of scientific anomaly that sucked Mom up into nothingness. I must be imagining the whole thing!
As if on cue, a horse neighs nearby. Laughing at my attempt at rationalization. The beating of hooves announces the beast’s approach.
I’ve got no better explanation of what happens next but that an unseen army on horseback is passing by me. Through me. Their chatter is the roar of a seashore multiplied to a planetary proportion; the thunder of the beastly hooves accompanies the words of the heart-wrenching language from my dreams. Whispering, singing a call to battle, giving commands to the powerful creatures carrying them. I hold my breath until my numb feet regain sensation.
What the Woods Keep Page 15