It slides over the top…and is gone.
“Where are you?”
I hear his voice, just like the first day in the corn. It sounds far away. Like it’s floating upwards, out of a deep well.
“I’m here!” I flinch, and quickly turn as a flock of birds—those odd bluebirds, take flight.
I hold perfectly still, entranced. There are so many, for a moment the sky is blotted out.
“I can’t find you.” His voice is closer. Like he’s beside me.
“Keep talking. I can hear you now.” I bite my lip. “Your voice is lovely.”
I hear the smile in his. “You stole my line.”
“Verity! Where are you, girl?”
“Oh no, my mistress is calling. I must go. I am so sorry. Please—can we try again?”
“Your mistress?”
“I have to go. Write me soon.”
* * *
Chapter 7
John crawls into his bed whilst I perch on the edge. He slides beneath his blankets, and looks helpless and innocent. Even in the relative safety of the Putnam house, my fears resume. My hands flutter almost as violently as Abigail’s. I sit on them so John won’t see. My mind keeps returning to the pitiful dog, and how every day seems one step closer to the noose. For everyone.
“Are you warm enough?” I try to force my face into calm.
John nods, but his color is pale, his eyes, dim.
His hope is fading. I don’t know if I can raise his spirits, my own be so melancholy.
“I am so sorry about the dog.”
He holds up his hand, shaking his head. He does not want to talk about it.
“I understand.”
Some things, no amount of talking will heal. Only time. He feels pain so acutely.
I drop my eyes to stare at my hands, thinking of the endless taunts he’s endured. Since he was old enough to walk-lope, really.
Monsters, all monsters, they are.
“Do you want me to sleep with you?”
“No. I will be fine. I will see you on the ‘morrow.”
I stand to go. His hand catches mine as I turn away.
I face him again.
“I love you, sister.”
I blink back the tears. He needs me to be strong. To believe I will make him safe.
A silly, weeping girl cannot protect him. A fierce, consuming, motherly instinct roars in my chest. Ignorant people.
It is they who are stupid. Who cannot understand his paltry words don’t match the depth of intelligence inside his head.
I seethe, thinking of their stares. Through condescending eyes. Considering him less than them. Indeed, he is so much more, than anyone I’ve ever met. I swallow my hatred, and unstick my throat. “I love you, too.”
I walk to the doorway, not seeing. Yearning for the past has me by the heart now, refusing to let me be. I turn to face him, repeating the words we’ve heard together when home was home. And our beds and minds were safe. “Till the sun doesn’t rise and the moon doesn’t shine, love.”
His responding smile finishes me. My breath stutters.
Shutting the door, I press my cheek against the wood. Both hands cover my mouth, squeezing my cheeks. My chest shakes silently. I feel the wail building—I will wake everyone.
Something snaps inside. I fear it’s my self, my sanity?
I feel detached, like my insides fight to separate my soul from the cloying, sodden pain, infecting my heart.
Blackness crouches on the edges of my sight. The halls waver, dreamlike.
Would anyone love John if I passed?
A life without love. Perpetual loneliness. Why live?
I long to be with my parents, even in death. When I was with them, I felt whole, a person deserving of love.
Every day in Salem since their death, is muted, every breath, like drowning. I shake my head. No, he needs me. What if the constables come for me?
Please, God, let someone else love him, keep him safe. Oh, please let it be so.
The loneliness; I can no longer tolerate it. And it is possible to be lonely in a crowded house, like this one.
I stare at my hands, the burns littering my fingers. They’ve become infected before. People die from such a little thing. The fear of leaving him alone, unprotected, chokes me, and I gasp.
I am whispering and pacing and I cannot stop.
“No coin. No family. So, incredibly, unforgivably different. There is no hope.”
I must leave. The need is unforgiving, and primal. Like the need to breathe. I flee, passing bedroom doors, where the quiet sounds of snores fill my ears.
A revelation hits. My writer, and the man in the corn…are the same?
Suddenly I must know.
Reaching the kitchen door, I fling it open, pelting out into the freezing night. The moon shines so bright, the whole of the barnyard is bathed in its luminescent glow. It’s like walking in another world. A black and white one.
New, white snowflakes buoy on the night air, hovering and shimmering in the moonlight before swirling down around me. The remnants of the corn, partially rotted but still standing, call me.
I feel the draw. And somewhere, music starts. Strange music, with a woman’s voice. Sad, and longing.
I listen harder. I can make out some of the words. “Lullaby…trouble…bluebirds?” I whisper.
Music, outside? How? From where? Bluebirds? Does she summon that flock?
I hear writer’s voice again. Calling me from the dark.
I’ve tried to convince myself it’s a dream. The notes. His words. That he is a beautiful angel, come to coax me from despair. But the pain in my foot, where I’d cut it in his field, now stings, as if to prod me forward.
“It is folly. I am enchanted.”
A small voice inside whispers, Then so be it.
I am running, flying toward that bridge.
No one, besides John, has looked at me that way since Maine. Since…say it.
“Since the raids.” I vault over the rotting leaves, their musty smell wrinkling my nose. “Since we put them in the ground.”
I hear the music rise in time to my footsteps. The sound is like none I’ve ever heard. Many instruments, layered upon one another, like the overlays of blankets on a bed.
My legs pump till they burn. I laugh, exhilarated by the wet kiss of the snow hitting my face. I am shivering wildly, and I don’t care.
I picture him in my mind, and it blazes with light. A light I was certain was dead. Blotted out with grave-dirt, buried forever with the love of my parents.
My boot strikes wood, and the pain in my foot sings.
I stare down in glorious triumph at the bridge.
The Bridge of Evanesce, or fade-away, I realize I’ve named it.
I grasp its railing in my shaking hands. He’s calling me—I can almost hear it. He is just beyond this bridge. My throat goes dry.
I step onto the bridge, leaving a boot print in the gathering snow.
The woman’s singing, deep and low, cuts into my heart with her longing.
I repeat the words. “A land…from a lullaby?” Yes, if the man lives anywhere, it would be in such a place.
I see the word blue in my head. The same shade as his eyes.
I reach the summit and hold my breath. Is it wrong to try and find him? I find, I don’t care.
I leap over the apex.
* * *
Chapter 8
Next Evening
“Are you all right, True?” Ram turned, placing the final dinner dish in the cupboard.
David, one of the teens, interjected, “You’re so white. Dude, you’re always pale, but tonight you’re freakin’ pasty.”
“Brilliant, thanks.” Truman rolled his eyes.
Dave shrugged, walking out of the kitchen.
Truman massaged his face with both hands, his fingers stopping in a steepled prayer position before his lips.
He stared at Ram. “Dunno. I think it’s the new one we’re expecting. Don’t k
now if I’m up to it. I mean, Todd, and his tantrums, David and Ethan with their fabulous adolescence, oppositional defiance disorder and detachment. Maybe I should’ve said no.”
“Well, your problem doesn’t help the situation, does it?”
“Which problem? Don’t start on me, Ram. I’m in no mood. I’ve been pricked, prodded and wired up to more machines than should be humanly permissible.”
“It’s emotion-color synesthesia, it has a name and we should use it. It isn’t some sort of weird, new-agey ability.” His hands fluttered and he pulled a face. “It’s a cross-wiring of your senses—we’ve been over this.”
Truman hesitated. Should I tell him everything? It would mean another endless round of battles, with Ram insisting on more tests.
I need to prove to myself I’m not mental.
“There’s something I’ve never told you.”
Ram’s eyebrows traveled up his forehead into his jet-black hair. “I knew it! I knew you were holding out on me! Your P.E.T. scans were the most original I’d ever seen. Spill it. I cannot be-lieve you didn’t tell me everything.” His expression changed from surprise to irritation in a tick.
“I’m sorry. Look, I already feel like a freak, you know? It’s what kept me from being adopted till I was what, fourteen? Because I opened my big, fat mouth and was labeled abnormal. So, forgive me if I’m not the most trusting sort when it comes to psychologists.”
“You’re stalling.” His foot tapped. “And I’m your best friend.”
“Fine.” He stood up and paced back and forth in front of the kitchen sink. “I can also…feel people, for who they are…their personalities, their singularity, if you will.”
Ram’s face re-lit with the familiar scientific fascination he’d come to despise. “Go on, man. How?”
“Again, it’s subjective, naturally, to how I assess them, I suppose—but typically it’s spot on.”
Ram stood and pulled open a drawer, scrabbling around till he extracted a notebook and pen. He clicked the pen up. “Give me an example.”
Anger simmered. Truman bit his bottom lip. He struggled not to bite his analytical head off.
He opted to scratch one eyebrow, and roll his eyes. Ram was compulsively curious.
“Like you, I’ve told you, your color is brown. But what I didn’t tell you, was the sensations which go with brown. I smell chocolate, and feel...compassion, when you’re around.”
Ram laughed out loud.
“Look, I know how it sounds—shut-it, or I’ll quit.”
He wiped the smile from his face, and motioned to continue, pen poised. He was doing his psychologist shtick.
Truman bit back a growl. “Ok.” He took a huge breath, and blurted, “The girl from the other night, in the corn.”
“The one we aren’t certain is real? The one I am fully convinced was a dream, created by your self-imposed abstinence? Perhaps resulting in a testosterone-fueled psychotic break?”
“Quit joking!”
“Who’s joking?”
“Yes, well that dream-girl was a strangely beautiful shade of lavender, one I’ve never seen before. And she felt…” His cheeks went hot.
Ram’s mouth dropped. “I’m astounded. Mr. I-have-no-interest-in-women-they-are-all-shallow-and-beneath-me just blushed.”
Truman squeezed his eyes shut. He didn’t want to watch his reaction. “I felt her pain and fear like a black tsunami, dousing me.” His hands mimed the positions. “And below it, submerged, was a crystal pure feeling, the same I get with ice or snowflakes. Purity, maybe?”
He was surprised to hear footsteps. He opened his eyes. Now Ram was the one pacing.
“We have to tell Dr. Kinney at the lab. You have sets of synesthesia going on in there.” He tapped the side of his head.
Guilt plagued him, for editing. His mind also calculated facial expressions-analyzing them into complex patterns. The human lie detector. Ram would never let him be if he confessed it.
I am so not talking about the journal. He’ll have me committed.
“No. I’m done with all the testing. It’s going nowhere.”
“Don’t be stupid, what if your gift could help others?”
“Gift? That’s stretching it a bit. If you fire me, I could get a job as a carny, though. Come one, come all—see the human name-taster!”
Images filled his head. He stood alongside the president or prime minister, as they simultaneously requested he assess the personality or intentions of a foreigner standing before them. Or if they were lying. No, thanks.
“I’m going out.”
He flung open the back door, leaving Ram with his mouth gaping again.
He jogged toward the corn. Entering the rows, the familiar color cut the air, and he felt her presence. His heart swelled, screaming at him to find her. He barreled to the bridge.
His mind sped, flight of ideas really. He’d read about Soul Mates—their mythological origins. He thought it all bollocks.
But what if the perfect person for you, happened to be born in the wrong century? What then?
“Then this bloody cornfield.”
It made sense, in a fair, but twisted sort of way.
Somewhere to his left, music began. Music?
His heart jack-hammered.
Oh, no, oh, no. I am losing it.
He stopped dead as recognition struck. The music crackled, like his father’s antique Victrola.
“I don’t believe it.”
Judy Garland was singing. Somewhere over the Rainbow.
If any song encapsulated his childhood, his fears—this was it. He’d first heard it at the orphanage, fell in love with her, wanted to step into her world, at the age of six.
It was the one part of the song. He couldn’t believe it when he’d heard it. It was if God was answering his prayers, that he wasn’t a freak, wasn’t alone with his oddity.
If a place existed, where trouble smelled like lemon drops, then surely, that was the place for him.
He laughed out loud.
A few years older and wiser, he learned they melted, not smelled.
He bolted again, Judy’s voice sound-tracking his experience like some 1940’s film. Following him toward the bridge.
Toward her, the nameless girl, he’d felt love, overprotection…but now desire wolfed down the other sentiments, consuming him.
Somewhere along the way, he’d cut his neck. He swiped it away.
The rustling corn, the thunder, the crickets, all faded to nothing. He was consumed with a singular thought.
The woman in white. My reader. What is your name?
* * *
My boots slide in the snow, gathering on the bridge. Anything, anywhere, must be better than Salem. The sound of the hornets in my head whir in protest. They don’t like freedom, they thrive on pain.
I hurtle myself to the top, directly at the bridge’s apex.
I connect, with a hard-cold-wall of blackness. Sparks conjure out of nothing, exploding from my impact. Multi-colored and beautiful, they fizzle immediately, suffocated by snowflakes.
My head snaps back, shooting pain down my spine. I sprawl in a heap, sliding backwards on the slick boards. My head darts up, I’m riveted. And angry.
It’s like a wall.
The air churns in a rectangle, and whispers come and go. It’s as if the world is cut in two. Snow gathers around my feet, falling in huge white clusters. But only two steps more, on his side, the corn is green, lush and full.
I hear footsteps beating up the other side. My heart stutters, knowing it’s him.
I stand, and rush to the door, placing my hands against it, unsure if he can see me.
Little zaps of light envelope my hands, twisting down my fingers up to my arms.
I can’t move. I’m not afraid. I can’t move.
He bursts into the clearing. My stomach bottoms, and a hot, driving urge rushes through my veins. It is him. My writer and the man from the other day, they are indeed, one and the same.
&nbs
p; He pauses for but a moment, his face auditioning a cast of emotions; surprise, concern, yearning, and finally joy.
He bolts up the other side, yelling, “Are you all right? Come closer, I—”
He collides with the door, hands spread like mine. Our hands overlap, but don’t touch. The door separates us.
The rainbow colored lightning overtakes his hands, melding him to the other side.
I am panting like an animal. His face is so close, I could taste his breath, if not for the wretched door.
His blue-green eyes widen before I feel it, but then a shock vibrates me, hard enough to rattle my teeth. His eyes are fearful, I know for me.
His mouth moves, but no words come out.
Then I see it, in my mind. The cornfield disappears.
I see him, as a baby, and his crying mother. She slips him into a woman’s outstretched arms, and flees the room, sobbing. She flies past a sign that reads, Applegate Orphanage.
A swirl of light and pain.
He’s a boy now. I shudder. I feel his hunger, as acutely as if it’s my own. And his loneliness. It crushes me, and my lips part—I can’t cry out. He swings alone in a dirty play yard.
More pain, a sensation of falling.
I see him again, he’s almost his age now, just a little younger. Sitting at a desk, staring at a book with a million letters and numbers that mean nothing to me. I feel the loneliness, though. It feels exactly as it did when he was a boy. Only now, it’s mixed with anger.
He grabs a container before him, spilling a bunch of small pills into his hand. He glares at them. His hand shakes, sending some flying onto the desk. Seething hatred fills him, fills me, and he pelts them against the wall. I hear their tapping as they rain down to the floor.
I’m back with him now. His eyes are contracting, and widening, not really seeing me. His mouth twitches, and his lips are moving—but I hear nothing. My hands begin to warm by bits, like ice dethawing, and suddenly I can feel his rough hands.
I am alive, for the first time.
* * *
He feels her presence. The wind is whipping crazy, and Ram will undoubtedly call the psych ward.
“I can’t go back. Not yet. And now I’m talking to myself.”
Where Bluebirds Fly (Synesthesia-Shift Series) Page 6