by Vered Ehsani
“Hello!” she greeted me cheerfully.
At this point, I should have fainted, or better yet jumped back into my room. That would have been the smart thing to do. Instead, I just stared at her, mouth agape, and blurted out in a whisper, “Have you been haunting me? Are you the ghost?”
The apparition frowned delicately, while a shimmering finger twirled a lock of her floating hair. “I don’t think so.”
“What are you? I mean,” I hesitated, not wanting to be rude. “I mean, what are you?”
“Well, obviously I’m not a ghost.” She paused. “Then again, you look a bit ghostly.”
Desperate for an answer that was intelligible, I asked, “Where are we?”
She gazed at me quizzically. “Why, inside the veil, of course! You really don’t know, do you?”
No kidding.
A horrible thought struck me suddenly as I studied the glowing surfaces all about me. “Am I dead? Did I have a heart attack or something? I just turned fifteen. I’m too young to die!”
The girl laughed. “No, you’re not dead, and you don’t need to be afraid when you are. Everyone dies once in her life.”
“I’m not afraid,” I said, feeling a bit defensive, and very afraid.
The girl laughed again. “It’s never a good idea to lie, especially here. In the veil, all that is inside is revealed.”
So in other words, give up pretending to be brave. Works for me. I asked, “What’s the veil? And what’s your name?” I studied her more closely. “You look familiar.”
“I’m kind of like a mirror, so I guess you can call me Mir for short. The veil separates one dimension of reality from other dimensions. Few people are able to see it, and even fewer can see through it, Ash.”
“You know my name!” I gasped. But thinking back on it, of all the things she had said, my name was really the least astonishing part. Trust me to focus on the unimportant part.
“Obviously,” Mir stated slowly while gently spinning in space.
“Who are you a mirror of?” Okay, now I was focusing on slightly more important things. I think.
She shrugged her shoulders, basically ignoring my question. Then she stopped spinning and instead she floated cross-legged in front of me. “The book can help you go through the veil.”
“And why would I want to do that?” I sounded horrified, even to my own overwhelmed brain.
“Don’t you want to know what happened?” she inquired, her eyebrows rising slightly.
Huh? “Happened?”
“To her,” she stated simply as she pointed over my shoulder to the second curtain.
The little voice in my head that was a lot smarter than the rest of me was saying, “Walk away, Ash; don’t turn around. Get back to your room.” Do you think I listened to my smart little voice? I’ll give you one guess.
So ignoring my smart little voice, I followed the direction she pointed to and saw blue sky, a cottage, and a familiar figure. Without meaning to, I found myself drifting effortlessly toward the other side of the veil. Reluctant but also curious, I peered through, careful not to touch the surface, and saw the girl.
“She’s the one!” I exclaimed, relieved that at least one mystery was solved, although in solving it I had unwillingly discovered half a dozen more. “I saw her during history class. She also looks familiar.”
Mir joined me in studying the girl, who was very thin and hungry-looking. Gray eyes seemed to fill up her pale face, which was framed in light brown curls. The girl was talking to an old man with stringy brown hair and hunched shoulders. They were standing at the doorway of a small cottage with a thatched roof.
“Can they see us?” I asked. It was kind of fascinating to look in on another place.
“No, probably not.”
Curious, I listened. The old man had placed a hand on the girl’s shoulder. “I am sorry, my dear. Your mother … she was too young to die.”
Wow, that sucks.
The man sighed and looked away. The girl, determined not to cry, clenched her jaw and wiped at her eyes with a grimy sleeve. “But cheer up, lass. I received a letter from your father.”
The girl looked up eagerly, desperately searching for something to be happy about. “Has he returned from the New World, sir?” she asked breathlessly.
The old man looked a bit worried as he answered slowly, “No, he’s still there, with your aunt and uncle. But he did say that he’s now ready for you to join him. I’ve made arrangements for you and your brother to catch the next ship sailing out.”
Just then, a shadow formed against the wall of the cottage.
“What does it want?” I whispered just as the stunned girl spoke.
“Go there? Across the great ocean? But it’s so … so dangerous, and we’ll be alone on that ship and away from civilization and …” Her voice trembled.
The shadow darkened and fattened as it stretched up the cottage wall.
“Well, now, you’ll be fine.” The man put an arm around the girl and started to lead her away. “Let’s go find your brother and start packing then.” They moved around the corner of the cottage and out of sight.
“Well,” I said, watching the shadow shrink, “I guess I should be going as well.”
“Why?” Mir seemed genuinely surprised. “Don’t you want to see inside?”
“Inside? There?” Okay, now I was listening to the smart little voice that was screaming at me to get out. Plus I was thinking of the shadow waiting in there. “In there?” I jabbed a finger toward the veil’s surface and quickly snatched my hand away; I swear the surface had grasped at my finger, as if to pull me in against my will.
“Why not?” she demanded.
From far away, I heard the sound of my mother’s voice telling me dinner was in a few minutes. I had never been more relieved to hear the dinner call as I was then. “Well, I’d better be going. That’s my mom.” Then, I added unnecessarily, “She’s calling me.” Just as I thought of going back toward my side of the veil, I was moving there, without stirring a limb.
I turned my head toward Mir. “Okay, bye!” I glanced over her to the scene of the cottage. The shadow was still there, and it now seemed to be floating toward the veil, toward me.
Mir smiled knowingly. “Come back soon, Ash.”
Yeah, right.
“Ashish, come back,” the dream voice scratched in my ears.
Pretending I didn’t hear the invitations, I hesitantly touched the veil’s shimmering, pearly surface and felt myself being sucked through and deposited back on my chair. Hastily, I slammed the Book of History shut with a bang.
Well, if I wasn’t crazy before, I was sure I soon would be. All I could think of were shadows that didn’t stay put, and dream voices and ghosts. And also going downstairs for dinner. I was hungry. But all the other stuff, apart from dinner, was not welcome and was connected with this book. So I made a decision: tomorrow. I wasn’t going to wait for the weekend. I was going to the pawn shop tomorrow. And that would be the end of my birthday gift.
Chapter 5
I was given clean-up duty. Fair enough. I’d missed my turn—well, actually, I had slept through my turn—to set the table. Shanti made sure no one forgot that. She wasn’t the only one who commented, so I was quite relieved when finally I was on my own without any disapproving looks. In the quiet of the kitchen, I mechanically scrubbed the dishes while deep in thought. I wiped soap suds onto my pants and then began drying a handful of knives and forks. As I turned away from the sink toward the empty room, I looked up and dropped the cutlery; the clattering of metal on tiles covered my fearful, wordless shout.
This is the part when things go from so-so to way-out not good.
I stared across the room toward the darkened eating area; the light above the sink cast a shadow of the kitchen table unto the wall. Sitting around the table’s shadow were four humanoid shadows. And guess who their faceless heads were staring at? Could it get any worse than that? Oh yeah, you bet it did.
They
were watching me. They had no eyes but I knew they were watching me. I glanced down; my shadow lay on the ground as it should, connected to me and not moving about independently. Good shadow.
I looked up in time to see the four not-so-good shadowy images of my parents and two youngest sisters stand up from the flat table. I pressed my back against the counter by the sink and felt cold water seep through my T-shirt. The shadows began to lazily stretch up the wall, toward the ceiling.
“What do you want?” I whispered, but my throat was so constricted that my voice came out as a squeak.
The four forms darkened, and their fingers elongated, drifting along the ceiling toward me. Barely able to breath, I eyed the light switch panel located beside the doorway leading to the rest of the house, and began to inch toward it. That seemed a smart thing to do. One of the shadows thought so too. It flowed along the walls and completely covered the panel and surrounding wall. To turn on all the kitchen lights, I would have to stand right in front of the waiting darkness and touch it, and even then I wasn’t sure if the lights would chase away the creatures, whatever they were.
I stopped moving and tried not to look toward the only other avenue of escape: the door leading to the outside of the house. Above me, the writhing black mass of fingers had reached the edge of the ceiling and began to creep down the wall toward the sink and me. The whole kitchen seemed darker, colder.
Someone knocked at the kitchen door.
The shadows didn’t seem to hear the sound, but they did notice when I instinctively swiveled around. Through the window, a familiar face peered in. Just as the creatures began to react, I launched myself forward, yanked fiercely at the handle, and pushed Bibi into a nearby hedge while shouting, “The shadows!”
I figure most people would have been angry at being shoved into a hedge and would have shouted, “Are you crazy?” while brushing off leaves and ignoring the shadows as they swallowed us up. Good thing my great-aunt wasn’t like most people. Quickly recovering, she hardly glanced at me but strode past me and into the kitchen.
“You don’t understand!” I screeched, lunging after her, preparing to yank her outside and out of danger. She gracefully dodged me, and my momentum took me into the center of the kitchen where I looked around wildly. The shadows were gone. Boy, did I feel stupid.
“I don’t understand,” I gushed, flustered as I spun about and stared at the unstained walls. “They were here a second ago, they really were!” I turned to face her, feeling my cheeks flush brightly.
“I know,” she stated in a flat voice. “That’s why I came back.”
“How did you know? And how did you make them go away?”
“I focus on the light.”
Huh? I looked at her blankly. “That quote … but what …” I started to say, but she waved a hand at me to silence me. It worked.
“Hush and listen,” she ordered softly. “It’s getting stronger.” She coughed heavily.
I stared at her, mouth agape, amazed and confused yet again. “What’s stronger?” I asked, and I glanced around the kitchen. Everything looked as it should.
She replied slowly, breathing heavily, “Hate. Fear. Doubt. Apathy. And there’s someone looking for the book.”
“What? Why?” I asked, and then I looked suspiciously at her. “You didn’t steal it, did you?” Considering what had just happened in my kitchen, it was a ridiculous and irrelevant question to ask. I don’t even know why I thought of it.
“No, of course not.” Just as I let out a sigh of relief, she added, “I just took it back.”
Oh no. “What do you mean, you took it back?”
Bibi sighed deeply and then her lips twitched briefly into a tight smile. “The one who lives off shadows took it from me, so I took it back.”
“Watch the shadows,” I whispered, thinking of the scribbled warning in the book.
“He has had many names. His current favorite is Kali.”
“As in the Hindu goddess?” I asked with a puzzled frown. That would be a strange name for a man to chose.
Bibi let out a humorless laugh. “No. Kali as in the Swahili word for ‘fierce,’ which is a considerably more appropriate description.”
“That doesn’t sound good.”
“It isn’t.” She coughed and continued softly, “His human name, like his human self, was forgotten a long time ago. Even he doesn’t remember.” Then, in a sad voice, she added, “Lust for power turned him into a force of destruction.”
I didn’t understand that either. Then again, I hadn’t understood much of what had been happening around me. But there was one thing I did. “You really were shot, weren’t you?”
“Yes, in a manner of speaking,” she answered enigmatically, “but don’t worry. He doesn’t know about you yet, which gives you some time. Not much, though. Just don’t mention the book to anyone. He’ll eventually hear.”
“Great,” I muttered. “So I’ve nothing to worry about, as long as he doesn’t figure out we’re related and that I have the book.”
“Indeed,” she agreed, her frown deepening, “but eventually he will. He can be anywhere, which means danger is everywhere.”
That sounded dramatic, so I decided to add my own bit of theatrics (well, the truth is I spoke without thinking, something I’m good at). I blurted out breathlessly, “Is this some kind of end-of-the-world, good-versus-evil, final war to end all wars?” I suddenly had this thrilling image of being the long-awaited ‘Chosen One’; I would ride into battle on a white stallion, my silver armor glowing with power (not to mention a few other special effects), the Book of History held aloft in one of my clenched fists, the forces of good cheering with relief at my miraculous arrival, while our enemies (all of them really ugly looking, by the way) quivering in fear before my wrath, and…
“Don’t be so dramatic,” Bibi responded sharply, interrupting my save-the-world fantasy as she gave me a look that would have freeze-dried the shadows, if they had been there. Then she sighed. “I can’t stay long, so pay attention. You need to go in, if you haven’t already.”
“Go where? And what about the shadows? Is my shadow … well, you know, doing weird things?”
Bibi fixed me with a no-nonsense stare. She was really good at that. “You know where. And when you’re focused on the light, your shadow will stay put. Plus when the book is with you, the shadows can’t easily see you on this side. Other things can, but they can’t. Still, don’t let any of them touch you. It could …” She hesitated and her eyes became distant for a split second, before she continued briskly, “unbalance you.”
It just got better and better. I’d never felt balanced in the first place, and now it could get worse? “But why? And why me?”
“Why not you?” Bibi retorted, and then her tone softened. “We all have our part to play. You need to keep Kali from finding the book, both in this time and Sara’s time.”
“Who’s Sara?”
Bibi either didn’t hear me or ignored the question. She did that a lot. “Kali helps people focus on the negative, to increase crime and confusion, conditions in which he thrives. The book will make him stronger.” She leaned toward me, her eyes burning with an intense determination. “You can feel it, can’t you? The change?”
“Yes, but …”
“It’s the destructive forces. They create darkness where there should be light. You need to make a choice. This isn’t the time to sit on the fence, my boy. You need to be positive. Focus on the constructive forces, and work with them. Can you do that?”
“Maybe, but…”
Just then, the doorbell rang.
“Ashish, can you please answer it?” Mom shouted from the living room.
Man, I would’ve really liked to ask one question without being interrupted. And I would’ve liked it even more if that one question received an answer. Was that too much to ask? Apparently it was.
“I need to go,” Bibi whispered urgently. “Don’t let him touch you, the veil, or the book. And find Sara! You nee
d to get her to safety, if it isn’t too late already.”
“Okay, but…”
The doorbell rang again.
“Ashish Chandari! Please answer the door!”
“I better go,” Bibi stated.
“But why can’t you stay?”
“They’re following me. I need to keep moving. Good-bye, and be careful!” Bibi called to me as she slipped out the kitchen and into the approaching night.
Unbelievable. Dismayed and utterly confused by the bizarre conversation, I watched her leave, and then slammed the door shut with a little more force than was necessary. Grumbling to myself, I slouched toward the front door and yanked it open. Before me stood a tall, slim man whose shoulders were slumped over. He was dressed in a khaki-colored outfit that looked like it could be a uniform, but it wasn’t clear what company he was from; a brown baseball cap was pulled low over his face, hiding it in shadows, and he wore dark sunglasses, even though it was almost sunset. He held a large, brown envelope in his hands, and he was staring down at his feet.
I was still mulling over Bibi’s words. I was not happy. Not one little bit. So I wasn’t very attentive as I stared at the man without much interest. “Hello. Can I help you?”
The man spoke in a low, gravelly voice. “I have a package for Ms. Bibi. I’d like to speak with her.”
Yeah, I knew that feeling. Step in line, buddy. I shrugged my shoulders. “She’s not here.”
“So she was here?” the man demanded eagerly. I still couldn’t see his face, but I did notice his hands. His skin was so ghostly pale that it was almost luminescent, and it looked thin and fragile like rice paper.
I stared at him, suddenly uncomfortable at the strong interest the man was displaying. “Yeah,” I reluctantly answered, wondering how I could get rid of the guy without being too obvious about it.