Falling into Forever

by Tammy Turner

  Is that how I shall explain to the captain why he had to risk the lives of men to search for me in the dark, cold woods-that his men were needlessly endangered by my incoherent visions?

  She reread the entry again before she drifted into sleep. The words played through her mind as she rested against the fluffy down pillows behind her head. In her sleep, Alexandra saw once more the magnificent winged creature from her afternoon nap. His arms held her waist tightly, protecting her from a pelting rain, as her head rested on his bare chest. He smelled like fire and smoke, similar to the scent of a warm hearth on a cold night. She dared to lift her eyes and to look at his face. A gasp escaped her lips as his piercing, blue eyes stared back into her own.

  “Why are you here?” she asked. He held her face gently between his hands, and his long, black hair fell around his face to his shoulders.

  He did not speak. Rather, in response, his arms tightened around her. Alexandra laid her head back against him, her eyes clenched shut as she listened to his heartbeat.

  Across town at the Woodward mansion, Taylor Woodward was not having a restful evening. She had skipped dinner and had locked herself in her pink-and-white bedroom. She sensed that her father was out having drinks at his club, avoiding coming home. Although he spent less time at home these days than at the club, Dr. Jim Woodward had spent a lot of money to buy the house— more money than his plastic surgery practice brought in. But his young second wife, Krystal, had been adamant that she had to have it. The gated, well-manicured enclave provided her with an appropriate address to please the society circles to which she ached to belong.

  In the granite-and-steel kitchen, Mrs. Krystal Woodward uncorked the evening’s second bottle of red wine. Taylor could hear the cork pop from her bedroom above the kitchen. Taylor dialed her father’s cell phone number, only to hear his voice mail answer yet again.

  “You have to come home, Daddy. Krystal is drunk and yelling at me,” she cried into the phone.

  A fist pounded on her bedroom door.

  “I hear you in there,” Krystal shouted. “Shut your mouth.”

  Taylor slid a window open, unhooked the screen, and threw out an emergency rope ladder that her father had bought for her in case of a fire. “Thanks, Daddy,” she said, slipping down the rope. Rolling out of the driveway in her Mercedes, Taylor glanced up to her window and waved to Krystal as her drunken stepmother leaned out the window and pulled up the ladder.

  11

  Whirlwind

  Wide awake in her bed, June shuffled right and left, never comfortable. Outside, the first bands of Hurricane Emily marched through the night outside the walls of Peyton Manor. The timber beams creaked in the howling gusts.

  Fat raindrops pounded her bedroom windows. At the foot of June’s bed, Dixie huddled under the quilt, quivering with fear in the howling storm.

  “We are going to be just fine, Miss Dixie,” June told the shaking dog as she pulled back the blanket and scooped the poodle into her arms. “This house has survived more hurricanes than I could shake a stick at, so don’t you worry.”

  Rising from her bed, June tossed on her plush night robe and held Dixie against her chest as she stepped lightly into the dark hallway outside her bedroom. Dixie, burying her head inside soft folds of pink chenille, moaned low as June carried her slowly down the steep staircase to the main floor’s study.

  Nestling into a sturdy, high-backed leather chair, June switched on a table lamp and found the television’s remote control. Stroking Dixie’s head, she kept the volume low as she watched the weather reporter on Channel 2 scream into her microphone. The reporter’s voice was fighting over the raging wind, yet the reporter still tried to update her audience live from the beach.

  A wind chime rang furiously on the porch as June stared at the television screen. She stroked Dixie’s thick, cotton-white fur. “Everyone around here gets so excited about a little storm,” she mumbled at Dixie lying in her lap.

  “I declare, this town has survived far worse than Emily.”

  Dixie pricked her ears and tensed in June’s lap. The dog gave a low growl, focusing at the closed door of the study.

  “What’s wrong, girl?” June asked.

  A footfall on the wooden staircase got June up from her seat. Stepping to the door, she peeked into the dark foyer and flipped a light switch on the wall. At her feet, Dixie bared her teeth and barked up at the empty steps.

  “Is that you, Patrick?” she called out, though she knew he was spending the evening at his son’s house.

  Upstairs in the second floor hallway, a door hinge squeaked. Dixie jumped from her mistress’s frail arms.

  “No, girl!” June scolded her as the barking dog chased toward the noise up the staircase.

  With her arthritis aching deep inside her left ankle, it was hard for her to move quickly. She gripped the stair’s rail tightly and pulled herself up the steps one at a time. She was breathless when she reached the top of the staircase, and she glanced down the hallway toward the attic. A yellow beam of light shone from under the closed door.

  “She is here! Not right,” June said softly, her heart pounding faster.

  “Hush, Dixie,” she called to the dog, who was sniffing the bottom of the door. Dragging her throbbing left ankle behind her, June willed herself toward the attic.

  Cradling the doorknob in her hand, she listened with her ear to the door as footsteps shuffled above her head across the attic floor. Dixie growled and stuck her nose

  under the crack between the floor and the bottom of the door.

  The squeaky door hinges echoed up the staircase as June’s frail shoulder nudged the door open. “Hello?” she called out. Her foot landed on the first step of the steep staircase.

  Pushing past her, Dixie lunged up the steps, eager to corral the trespasser. But when her paws hit the top step, a confused whimper escaped her muzzle. The dog sniffed the air and growled at the open window, its curtain flying about in the stiff wind from the storm raging outside.

  “Calm down,” June said, patting Dixie’s back and kneeling beside the open window. “There’s no one here, girl,” she said, trying to calm the dog. June was tense with fear.

  “’Cept me here,” said an elderly Gullah voice from the shadows behind them.

  June turned, falling to the floor to sit, exhausted, as Dixie whimpered at her side. “What are you doing here, Jasmine?” June asked, clutching at her chest through her robe.

  “Dat storm out dare is makin da spirits roun here restless. I caint get no peace,” the woman explained, stepping forward.

  June was trembling on the floor.

  “You know I told you not to come here anymore,” said June, her legs shaking as she raised herself to her feet by clutching the wall.

  “Bruther Joe wan talk to you,” Jasmine said, smiling wide. “He tolt me so. He say dat girl wuz here took sumthin belong to him.”

  “Alexandra?” June said her granddaughter’s name in disbelief. “I don’t know what you are talking about,

  Jasmine. But you must leave now. You’re not welcome here anymore.”

  “Bruther Joe tolt me dat girl took his book!” Jasmine said, kneeling in front of Joseph Peyton’s army chest.

  “Look hare,” she said to prove it, throwing open the top of the box.

  June kneeled beside Jasmine, her hands searching desperately for her brother’s journal. “No!” she sighed when she could not find the book.

  “Come wid me, June Bug,” Jasmine told her, holding out her soft, wrinkled hand to June’s thin-skinned palm.

  June put Dixie in her bedroom, slipped on her shoes, and then they left the house together with a flashlight, going to Jasmine’s shack.

  The beam of light from June’s flashlight bounced back and forth from the trees to the ground as she followed Jasmine in the windy night. They slowly crept through the woods to the crumbling hovel deep inside the property.

  The rain slackened as the first band of Hurricane Emily moved past the barri
er island deeper up state, leaving Edisto Island shaken and wet. They both knew that the monster still churned in the Atlantic, its wrath poised to strike again in the long hours before dawn.

  Jasmine stepped inside the shack first, lighting a candle as June followed on her heels. In the dim light, June mistakenly kicked a metal crab cage resting on the shack’s floor, and she screamed aloud in pain as a scrape on her shin bled down her leg. Shining her flashlight on the cage, she saw a long, thick snake inside, coiled behind the metal wire.

  “Dat dare is Honeysuckle,” said Jasmine. “You wantin to see your Joseph now?” she asked. “Him wantin to talk fore dat storm come.”

  June nodded her head and held out her hand.

  Jasmine grasped June’s shaking fingers, and they both shut their eyes. “Come, bruther Joe. Her is waitin for you to speak,” Jasmine intoned.

  As June huddled in a corner and watched in the dim candlelight, the Gullah woman’s body shook violently and collapsed to the dusty wooden floor. The old woman’s lips quivered, and the shack shook. Slowly, Jasmine began to rock back and forth, and a spasm quaked through her limbs. Her arms and legs flailed maniacally through the air. June heard the woman call her name.

  “June,” said Jasmine, rising to sit upright on the floor, her eyes wide. “Forgive me.”

  “Forgive you for what, Joey?” June answered her brother and kneeled in front of Jasmine.

  “She took my journal, June. No one can see what is in there. No one,” the voice beseeched, coming from Jasmine’s lips.

  “Who took it?” June asked. A tear ran down her cheek.

  “Alexandra,” was Joseph Peyton’s answer. “This woman, Jasmine, has conjured me from my rest,” Jasmine spat. “So she knows my secrets. Alexandra is in danger; and so are you, if it is not returned.”

  “I don’t understand, Joey,” June shouted over the howling wind.

  Stroking June’s bowed head, Jasmine said, “Help me, please, June. I am so tired.”

  “Oh, Joey!” June choked and grabbed Jasmine’s hand.

  “Jasmine will do anything to get it back, June.”

  “But why, Joey? Why?” June entreated.

  “I met the devil once, June. It’s in there, you see. What he looks like. What he sounds like.” The deep voice echoed from Jasmine’s lips: “What he smells like.”

  June stroked Jasmine’s hand as the solemn voice of her long-dead brother echoed from the Gullah woman’s dry, pursed lips.

  “I saw him during the war when I stumbled on a cave deep in the German forest. He had the bluest eyes I have ever seen, gleaming and glassy like ice. He looked like a man, like me, but on his back sat a monstrous pair of wings. Not like those of a bird—or even an angel— but like a dragon. He told me that he was immortal, an abomination, a monster, and that he wanted to die if he could never be with her again—his bride—dead for a thousand years now.”

  Calm and wide-eyed, Jasmine stared into June’s pale face. “Go on, Joey,” June pleaded with Jasmine, the vessel of her brother’s voice.

  “He said his flesh, his blood—they would let me live forever like him. I needed only to taste them, to consume his spirit into mine, but I refused. He was so sad. I drew his picture, June, in my journal, so that I would never forget his face. His portrait is in my diary. And so is her face, his love, his auburn-haired princess. He described her to me—freckles and auburn ringlets, so beautiful, so innocent.”

  June felt her throat constrict, her palms twitch. “Alex,”

  she murmured.

  “He would die a thousand times for her, should she require him to,” Joseph’s voice lamented. “But his soul must move to another for his flesh to wither upon the bone.”

  A streak of lightning lit the tiny room, and a crack of thunder echoed through the woods. Jasmine’s body fell to the floor, writhing in the dirt. June watched from the shadows as Jasmine went still.

  In the silence of the shack, a soft gurgling escaped

  Jasmine’s lips as she sat upright and stared wide-eyed at June.

  Jasmine said finally, “Bruther Joey don’t take no likin to dis storm.” The candle flickered against her face.

  “I swear, if you hurt my granddaughter—” June warned, rising to her shaking feet.

  “I not ’fraid of you, June Bug,” Jasmine said, laughing.

  “I need dat book. Me gonna conjure dat devil. Me gonna taste him blood. Me gonna live forever. Dat book holt da truth. Dat devil gonna die to save dat Missy Alex. Me know dat, and me gonna see him die here, in dis place, so him soul be mine forever.”

  “I’ll get it back from her, Jasmine. I swear,” June pleaded.

  “Oh, it too late for dat, June Bug. Dat book has magic.”

  Jasmine rose to her feet, stared at June, and then revealed, “I dun sent my Cyrus.”

  “No!” June gasped, tears running down her face. “He’ll kill her, Jasmine. He’s a monster.”

  Firmly crossing her arms over her chest, Jasmine raised her head and cackled into the wind as it tore through the shack. “Dat storm is comin, June Bug! You best get back to dat there big house.”

  “She didn’t know,” June tried to explain as she stepped backward toward the open door and up onto the shack’s narrow porch. “Please don’t hurt my baby,” she cried and dove from the shack into the night.

  Behind her, more laughter echoed through the swaying trees.

  “June Bug,” she heard Jasmine calling from the shadows as thunder crackled in the sky.

  “Stay away from me,” June shouted into the darkness, her shoes slopping through the mud.

  The dimming bulb of the flashlight faded slowly in the

  pouring rain as she hobbled from trunk to trunk, feeling her way in the slippery, pitch-black oak and magnolia forest. A tree root grabbed her foot and knocked her to the ground. The flashlight slipped from her trembling fingers into a murky hole of water, mud, and leaves.

  Pain seared through her old knees and swollen ankles.

  Lifting her body from the soggy ground, she suddenly spotted headlights traveling toward her in the distance.

  “That’s the driveway!” she whispered to herself as she dragged her legs over a jutting root, the relentless rain pounding her elderly frame. Her shoes grazed the gravel path, and she waited, sobbing, for the headlights to come closer.

  Inside the dry Cadillac, Ian calmly maneuvered the heavy car down the muddy driveway toward Peyton Manor. A Beethoven symphony blared through the speakers. The windshield wipers fought back the rain in manic futility.

  He squinted through glass, thinking that he saw something ahead in the road. “Good Lord, there’s somebody there!” he said, blinking his eyes in the flash of a lightning strike. He cut the music, and his eyes struggled to focus on the driveway. “It’s June!” he exclaimed, seeing the woman trembling in the glare of his headlights.

  His foot slammed against the brakes to stop, and the heavy car swerved and slid side to side on the muddy pathway. Gravel and dirt sprayed into the trees along the road. When the Cadillac finally came to a halt, he lifted his head and looked over the steering wheel, uncertain of whether or not he’d run her down. But there she was, barely standing. He threw open his door.

  “June!” he yelled.

  “Ian,” she shrieked and collapsed into his arms. The

  rain soaked his seersucker suit as he pushed her delicately into the passenger seat.

  “Jasmine,” she whispered to Ian, her eyes shutting.

  “She’s going to hurt my baby.”

  When the Cadillac crawled up onto the cobblestone roundabout in front of the dark house, June roused. “Ian,”

  she moaned, her eyes glazed in fear. “What are you doing here?”

  “You didn’t answer the phone, June. I kept calling to check on you,” he explained as he lifted her from the seat.

  “Let’s get inside,” he said, wrapping her arm around his neck to carry her frail body up the porch steps.

  His fingers tried the k
nob, but the lock held fast.

  “Try the kitchen door,” said June, resting her arm on his shoulder.

  So Ian sat June down in a rocking chair by the front door. He left and rounded the corner of the porch.

  “It’s locked too, June,” he called out from around the corner.

  She rocked back and forth as quietly as if sipping her afternoon tea.

  A cackle echoed from the trees. June suddenly stopped rocking.

  “Hurry,” she said, grabbing his hand to steady herself as she raised her body from the wooden chair and motioned him to follow her around the side of the house.

  Rounding the corner of the porch, June saw that a metal table and chairs outside the kitchen door had slid across the porch in the high winds. “Grab it,” yelled the woman, pointing at one of the chairs, fury raging in her chest. “We can do this together,” she said. “Swing on three.”

  As they swung the metal chair, the kitchen door’s glass shattered and sprayed across the floor. Ian reached his

  hand inside to unlock the window, then raised the glass pane and stepped inside the house. Not waiting for him to unlock the door from the inside, June slipped in behind him, slicing her leg once more against a shard of broken glass. A spasm of pain seized her thigh. She yelled and pulled her leg through the jagged glass.

  “Let me see that, June,” he said, reaching for the light switch. On. Off. On. Off. He flipped the switch up and down, with no results.

  “Blast it,” he cursed and felt around on the counter for a towel.

  “Hold still.” Running a dishtowel under the faucet, he held the wet cloth to her leg while she sat down on a stool in the middle of the kitchen.

  “There’s a candle in the cupboard,” June said, pointing to the cabinet under the sink. “Some matches, too.”

  Ian lit a candle and set it on the counter in front of June.

  It flickered when a gust of wind blustered through the broken window. She shivered and grabbed Ian’s palm.

  “You’re trembling, June,” he said, patting the back of her hand. “I’ll make a fire in the library to warm you up.”