by S. L. Naeole
“Dad.”
I could hear my voice, but I heard no response from him as I once again sad his name. “Dad. DAD!”
“What, Grace? My God, what the hell could you possibly want right now?”
“She didn’t do this.” My voice was calm, eerily so, and I knew that anyone normal should have felt frightened by that, but I wasn’t.
“What? What do you mean she didn’t do this? She hung herself in the closet, Grace! I don’t have time for this,” he shouted at me as he dragged Janice’s lifeless body into the living room. “Call 911. Call 911 right now. She’s still breathing-call 911!”
“O-okay,” I stuttered before rushing to the phone in the kitchen, dialing the number and waiting for the operator to pick up.
As I began to relay the information to the woman who answered the call, I saw Dad begin compressions on Janice’s chest before puffing air into her mouth. Seeing his desperation, hearing it in his voice brought back memories of my very own moment of desperation when it had been me on the ground, despondent, lost as Robert lay on the ground, his heart unmoving, dead in his chest.
“Dad, the ambulance is coming,” I whispered as I hung up the phone. “They’re coming.”
He didn’t hear me, though. He was bent over Janice’s body, his own body shaking and quivering with the harsh sobs that tore through him as he continued his effort, his voice hoarse as he repeated her name over and over again between breaths.
“Grace…”
My head jerked up and I spun around, Robert standing at the kitchen door with a grieved look on his face, his arms held out to me in invitation.
“Robert,” I whimpered before rushing to him, my hands needing to feel him, my arms needing to hold him. “She didn’t hang herself. Someone did this to her; I know it.”
I felt his head bob down once, confirming my belief. His embrace tightened around me, pulling me up against his chest to the point my feet were off the ground. She’s between life and death right now.
“How do you know?” I asked into his shirt, too upset to look at him, too guilty…
It’s who I am, Grace.
“And you didn’t say anything? You didn’t warn me or come help her?” I was stunned.
I’m sorry, but there was nothing I could do. She isn’t dead; not yet, but she’s very close. And you are right; she didn’t do this.
“Dad believes she did,” I whispered.
And that’s exactly what we will let him think. Whoever did this cannot know that you suspect differently. Keep your mind closed; say nothing to anyone about this. I will talk to Lark and see what she can find out.
He pulled away from me so swiftly, I barely had time to register that he was leaving before he was gone, the faint remainder of a kiss lingering on my lips.
Robert wanted me to lie, which required that I lie to Dad…again. I hated doing it, I hated the idea of it, but the walls were closing in on us. The number of dead was growing bigger; first Katie; then Mr. Branke and Erica; and unless help got here soon, Janice as well. Only this time there was no Sam to blame. There was no definitive target anymore.
Katie’s death had been an accident, a case of mistaken identity. Erica and Mr. Branke had been already been dead in all ways that counted long before their hearts finally stopped beating. What happened with Janice, on the other hand, had been intentional. This meant that whoever else was out there did not care about rules anymore. Whatever this person was planning, whatever their intent, the laws got in the way.
“The laws…” I breathed, my eyes suddenly widening with recognition. “That’s it!”
THE TREE
“Come on, Matthew, please, please stop crying!”
I walked towards one wall and bounced three times before turning around and pacing towards the opposite wall, repeating the same triple bounce, turning around once more and repeating the process all over again. It was three in the morning, I had class in four hours, and I was completely alone, trying to comfort a colicky newborn that sensed that he, too, was all alone.
Three days had passed since Janice was found in the closet. Dad was gone, spending all of his time at the hospital. Janice was in a coma and the prognosis wasn’t good; she’d been without oxygen for a dangerously long time and the reality that there wasn’t much that could be done was starting to weigh heavily on Dad.
Robert had not returned since that night and I did not know if it was because of what Dad had said or because of what I had done. He wasn’t in school, and though Lark continued to attend, she didn’t acknowledge me. Only Graham continued to speak to me, our conversations the only part of the day that I looked forward to. With school ending, there was no real instruction during class, and so many kids simply didn’t attend. This made for empty classrooms, which was fine with me as I used that time to catch up on sleep.
Sixth period was the only class that required my full attention. Mr. Danielson, the drama teacher, refused to allow us to become complacent and instead had us participate in trust building lessons, memory building exercises, and so on. Normally this would have made me grit my teeth, but with Chad, Dwayne, and Shawn—also known as Chips, Dips, and Salsa—it was difficult to find anything but enjoyment during this last hour of school.
And when that bell rang, I glumly headed home, riding the bike that had replaced my old one that had been destroyed almost nine months ago. The babysitter that I had hired to watch Matthew while I was in school was sitting on the couch folding laundry when I arrived. She was an old friend of Janice’s who had babysat a few times before and didn’t charge much.
“Hey Paula,” I said to her before walking over to the bassinet and picking up a rather alert Matthew. “Hello, little man,” I cooed. “What are you doing awake?”
“I just fed him and changed him, so he’s quite content to just lay there and stare at the ceiling,” Paula commented as she gathered her things, shoving them into her overly large handbag.
“Oh, here Paula-” I grabbed the crumpled wad of twenties in my pocket and handed them to her “-this is for today and for tomorrow. I won’t be going to school on Thursday or Friday so you don’t have to come and watch Matthew,” I told her.
“What about graduation? It’s on Sunday—did you want me to come on Sunday?” she asked, her eyes hopeful.
“No. I’m not graduating,” I answered flatly.
“Oh. Well, okay then,” she said with mild annoyance in her voice. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning then. Oh, your dad came home about an hour ago and asked me to stay. He’s upstairs; I think he got some bad news.”
My eyes drifted toward the stairs and I felt a pain in my chest. “Okay, thanks for telling me. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Goodbye, Grace.”
I watched her leave and then closed the door, Matthew squirming in my arm like a curious kitten. “Hey, what’s the matter, little guy? Don’t like my bony shoulder?” I quipped before shuffling him around a bit until he was more comfortable. “There, is that better? Do you want to go and say hi to Dad?”
I started towards the stairs when the doorbell rang. Annoyed, I turned around and returned to the door, peeking through the peephole and seeing an unfamiliar looking woman standing on the porch. Though the vision through the tiny hole was distorted, the size of her head exaggerated by the glass, it felt as though I knew her somehow. I opened the door and in the soft light of the afternoon sun, I felt my jaw fall in absolute amazement.
Standing before me was a woman who looked like the female version of my father. Her hair was brown, like his, but her eyes were a light, almost aquamarine shade of blue. She was a foot shorter than Dad, which made her far shorter me, but she was him in every way—right down to the small cleft in her chin.
“Are you Grace Shelley?” she asked me in a surprisingly feminine voice.
“Yes,” I responded. “Who are you?”
“My name is Jessica. Jessica Shelley. I’m James’ sister.”
“You must be mistaken,” I corrected her. “
My father doesn’t have a sister.”
“No,” she said in a monotone voice. “He disavowed his family, but we never disavowed him and now we’re ready to welcome him back—he is needed home.”
She pushed past me, her posture rigid with discomfort as she walked up the stairs, her movements and direction so sure it was as though she had been here before. I followed her, uttering protests and complaints with each step while Matthew grew fussy in my arms at my sudden change in mood.
She stopped in front of Dad’s door and stared at it. “How is he?”
“Probably tired. He’s been at the hospital all this time. My step-mother…something happened and-”
“I know what happened.”
“Oh. Well, then you probably know that you coming to visit like this isn’t exactly a good idea.”
Her eyes narrowed, her brows pulling together as a frown formed on her face. “He’s electus—we might lose our way for a while but we never lose that, and it never leaves us. He’s made mistakes and has been punished for them. Now he needs to realize that his family needs him, and that he needs us.”
“Why are you doing this for us?” I asked her before she opened the bedroom door.
She looked at me and snorted in disgust. “I’m not doing this for you.”
“But you just said-”
“I said that his family needs him—I did not say that it included you.”
And then she was gone, disappearing behind the door that clicked as she locked it. I stood there, staring at the door mutely while I tried to figure out what she meant by that. How was I not family? Dad was my…Dad. And if she was his sister, that made her my aunt.
Before my thoughts could fully form, the sound of shouting could be heard from inside the room. Dad was angry, and so was Jessica. The yelling grew louder, and only then did I notice that it wasn’t in English. Dad was speaking in a different language, one that sounded familiar.
“Dad speaks Latin?” I whispered, amazed.
Something large and heavy crashed against the door, the sound startling me and sending me flying back in surprise. I clasped Matthew to my chest as the crashing continued, mixed with the yelling that switched from Latin to English with frightening speed and ease. The door and the walls shook with the jarring sound of glass breaking, and my foot began to throb while painful memories flashed in my mind as the tinkling sound of glass shards spreading across cold tile could be heard from where I stood.
And just as suddenly as it started, it stopped. Everything was eerily quiet and a strange calm took over. When the door opened and a flustered Jessica emerged, she didn’t look at me. She just walked downstairs, her footsteps heavy with anger. The front door was opened roughly, and slammed with equal vigor, the whole house rattling with the force.
I took several steps towards dad’s room, being careful to avoid any glass and debris that might be on the floor. “Dad?”
“I’m here, Grace,” his voice called from the bathroom, offering me an odd sense of relief after not hearing it for the past few days.
“Dad…are you alright?”
“I’m fine, kiddo.”
I walked into his bathroom and gasped at the mess that lay on the ground, the large mirror that had taken up one entire wall now lying in reflective slivers around dad’s feet as he stood in the middle of what looked like a warzone. “Dad, what happened?”
He said nothing. His eyes were focused, staring at the wall where the mirror had been attached. I tip-toed through the mess—thankful that I was still wearing my boots—and whistled when I saw what he was gazing at.
“What is it?” I breathed as my eyes took in the large, intricate image that seemed to have been burned onto the wall, the design resembling a large, ornate oak tree, with dozens of expansive branches free of leaves that fanned out into smaller, tinier groups until there were hundreds, perhaps thousands of segments that were all labeled with strange lettering.
“It’s our family tree,” he answered with disdain.
“Our family tree?”
“Yes.”
I brought myself closer. “Why is it on the bathroom wall, Dad?”
“Because it follows you no matter where you are, no matter who you try to be. It’s a reminder for us—a curse really—to let us never forget that when we are born, we become bound by our family’s vow to protect the angels. Our families were chosen thousands of years ago, and given the blessings of never having to need or want for anything in exchange for perpetual servitude, regardless of how many generations the families extend.
“Even if we leave the family, even if we never take the test, this tree will appear like a brand wherever you call your home. When your mother and I moved here, it appeared after that first night. I couldn’t have your mother see it so I covered it up with mirrored tiles. I stayed up all night doing it, and once it was behind a wall of glass, I tried to forget it existed, just like I tried to forget that my past existed. I almost succeeded, too.”
He pointed at a small fork in a multi-tipped branch that hung so low, its tip nearly touched the floor. One thin line stretched out and split into another smaller, thinner one. “This extension…this is me, and this line is Matthew.”
“She said that I wasn’t family,” I repeated as I crouched down to examine the foreign lettering.
“She would say that—it goes against the laws of the family to get involved with an angel, so to marry one is just unconscionable, even if the angel has lost his or her divinity. My relationship with your mother wasn’t unique, Grace, but you are, and it doesn’t matter what your mother was when you were born—children of an angel and human are strictly forbidden.
“EPs are just as rigid when it comes to their laws as the angels are; so to recognize your existence would be recognizing the breaking of one of our oldest laws. It doesn’t matter what they think, though. I know that you’re not what they fear. Your mother wouldn’t have done that to you, to us.”
I shifted Matthew to my other arm as I traced the branch that dad said represented him up towards a dozen other shorter branches. “You have a lot of brothers and sisters,” I remarked.
Dad nodded. “Twelve. Jessica is the youngest. The oldest was Joseph; he left the family when I was ten. He died a year later in a fire at a church. My parents never spoke about his death—they didn’t speak about him at all after he had gone. It was like he simply stopped existing. I assumed that it would be the same with me once I left.”
“So what changed?” I asked softly. “Why did she come now, after all this time?”
He exhaled and pointed to his branch. “Do you see the difference between this one and the others?”
My eyes flicked back and forth between the larger group and the lone segment that represented Dad, taking in the only subtle difference that could be seen. “Yours is the only one that continues on…with Matthew.”
“Yes. I’m the only one who’s had a living child. Jessica came here today because she wants Matthew to take my place. My family is one of the few that protects the dark ones, but that protection comes with a price. For a few, it’s too high a price to pay. It’s why I left; it’s why Joseph left,” Dad explained. “As a child, you’re told only the good things about angels, and you know that it’s this incredible secret that only you and your family are aware of. It makes you feel special; it makes you feel like you’re a part of something incredible and amazing.
“And then you take the test, you get asked the question that will change your life forever, and when all of your dreams come true, when you get everything you thought you wanted you realize that the glory isn’t without its own grievous stain. We’re brought up believing that we’ll be protecting the angels, beautiful creatures who are full of this awesome power that you would do anything to experience. Instead we find out that we’re protecting monsters who exist solely to cause pain and terror.
“‘The end result is the same’ I was told when I questioned why we were covering up some of the most heinous crimes imagin
able. If it takes being scared or losing someone to get people to return to their faith, or to simply find it, then it’s all right. ‘The ends justify the means’ they said, but I couldn’t accept that—how could I?
“I had been taught that we were doing a good thing; all my life I believed that we were helping people to escape the nightmares of their godless lives, and then I find out that we were the monsters. This revelation was soul crushing, and everything I thought I knew suddenly lost its meaning. I had nothing, after a lifetime of believing and wanting something so badly… I was empty; I had lost my reason for being. It’s why I left.
“The rest of my siblings found nothing wrong with what they were doing, and they paid the price for that. Every branch in this tree has stopped growing, the children have stopped coming. Every one of my siblings died except for Jessica, and now she’s turning to me. They need me. More importantly, they need Matthew.”
He looked at Matthew and then me, his eyes lingering on mine with a gentle sort of sadness in them before he touched the baby’s nose with the tip of his finger. “I told Jessica that she and the family could go to hell. I’m not giving up my family—the family that I chose for myself—to help maintain a legacy I put behind me a long, long time ago. She said that the family was dying out and I told her that I didn’t care.
“What have those demons ever done for us? What have they done but destroyed the good in us? My brother Joseph was the first one to leave in over thirty generations. No one has ever chosen to leave the family, and he paid for it with his life.”
My head perked up at this, and I asked, astounded at what he was saying. “You said he died in a fire. That fire wasn’t an accident, was it?”
Dad’s head jerked to the side, and I saw his hands ball up into fists against his side. “No. We possess their secrets. We possess their past in our history, and they cannot let us leave with it. Joseph was killed to set an example for the rest of us, and we were supposed to learn from it. I did. I learned not to get caught.”