Hallowed: An Unearthly Novel

by Cynthia Hand

  I made a case for quitting school altogether, spending the time with Mom, but she wouldn’t hear of it. “What would Stanford say?” she jokes.

  “You have cancer. I’m pretty sure they’d understand,” I reply. A solid argument.

  No go. Mom has this thing about normalcy. Acting like everything’s fine for as long as you can. It’s annoying, because since when have we ever been normal? It feels pointless to pretend otherwise. But she’s adamant. Normal kids go to school. So to school we will go.

  I want my life back. I want to go to the Garter and hang out with Angela. I want to have dinner at the Averys on Sunday nights, smooch Tucker on the back porch. That’s what normal people do, right? See their friends? Their boyfriends? Plus I want to fly. Sometimes I feel the presence of my wings like they’re itching to stretch themselves out in the wide-open sky, aching to feel the wind carry me.

  “That sucks,” Angela says at lunch on Thursday, four days post-crash. She takes a huge bite of a green apple and chews it noisily. “But you did get attacked by a Black Wing, Clara.

  Better safe than sorry.”

  “I feel safe and sorry.”

  She gives me her no-nonsense, snap-out-of-it look. “Okay, better safe than dead.”

  “Good point.”

  “God, I wish I could have been there,” she exclaims, so loudly that two people passing by pause like, what’s gotten into Angela Zerbino? She glares at them and they move on.

  “You have all the fun without me,” she whines more quietly.

  “It wasn’t fun. Trust me.”

  “I bet it was a rush. All that adrenaline pumping. Nerves firing.”

  “Since when are you an adrenaline junkie?” I ask. “And no, it was not a rush. Just terrifying. I-hope-I-don’t-soil-myself, I-hope-I-don’t-die kind of terrifying.”

  “The Black Wing was magnificent though, wasn’t he? Was he something spectacular to look at? Did you see his wings?”

  “He’s not an animal in the wild, Ange.”

  “Definitely not a moose, that’s for sure,” she says with a sniff.

  “Did I mention the terrifying? The whole time I was thinking, that’s it, that’s why Tucker’s not at the cemetery. Samjeeza’s going to kill him.” She stops mid-bite with her apple. “What cemetery?”

  Crapzol.

  Angela looks at me intently. “Clara, what cemetery?”

  I might as well tell her.

  “My recurring dream is a vision. That strange forest with the stairs, it’s Aspen Hill Cemetery. It’s a graveside. At first I thought it was Tucker who was going to die, because he’s not there, in my vision, but then it turned out to be my mom.” She puts her hands to her head like I am blowing her mind. “How’d you figure it out?”

  “Christian. His mom is buried there. Although I probably would have figured it out on my own, eventually. It’s pretty obvious now.”

  “So you told Christian.” She looks truly hurt. “You told Christian and not me.” I try to come up with a good excuse, like that I didn’t want to distract her from her purpose, I didn’t want to say anything until I knew for sure what it was about, point out that I didn’t even tell my mom until I had to, but all I can say is, “Hey, you’re the one who made me tell Christian about the dream in the first place.”

  “Don’t you trust me?” she asks.

  She’s about to say something else, but suddenly there’s an upset in the cafeteria. A public breakup, that much is obvious right away, in the middle of the lunchroom. A girl starts crying, not a hysterical kind of cry, nothing so dramatic as, like, Kay last year, but the crowd still moves away from her. Then I recognize this pathetic creature as Kimber, my brother’s girlfriend. And Jeffrey, like an impassive stone statue beside her.

  “Jeffrey,” Kimber says, between gasps of air. She has hold of his letterman’s jacket. “You don’t mean it.”

  “It’s not working, Kimber,” he says, and without another word, he twists, pulls her hands away from him, and heads for the door.

  I catch up with him before he gets there. “Jeffrey, you can’t dump her in front of everybody,” I whisper, trying not to attract any more attention. “Come on.”

  “Don’t tell me what to do,” is all he says. Then he’s gone.

  Kimber’s friends have all gathered around her by this point, making sympathetic cooing noises, shooting glares in the direction that Jeffrey slunk off to, loudly declaring that he’s a jerk, he didn’t deserve her, his loss. She doesn’t say anything. She sits at a table, shoulders slumped, the very picture of dejection.

  I wander back to my table. “What’s going on with him?” Angela asks. “Or can you not tell me that, either?”

  Ouch. “He’s not taking this thing with my mom very well.”

  “Makes sense,” she says with a flash of sympathy in her eyes. “Too bad, though.

  Kimber’s a sweet girl. That was kind of . . . cold.”

  I remember this one time when we were kids, when a bird flew into our window. We were watching Saturday morning cartoons, and then, thump. Jeffrey ran out to see what it was.

  He picked the bird up, held it gently in his hands, asked me if we couldn’t fix it, somehow. It was a starling with its neck broken. It was already dead.

  “Where did it go?” he asked when I tried to explain it to him.

  “Heaven, maybe. I don’t know.”

  He’d wanted to bury it in the backyard, said things like a miniature pastor about the life the bird must have lived, flying free, how its brother birds would miss him. And when we covered it with dirt, he’d cried.

  What happened to that kid? I wonder now, struggling to push down the lump that’s risen in my throat. Where did he go? And I suddenly want to cry. I feel like everything is falling apart in our lives.

  “So,” Angela says. “We should talk.”

  “Um—” This could be a problem, being that we’re under lock and key all the time. “The thing is, I’m grounded—” I say. But then I stop, because something else catches my attention. A feeling, lingering on the edges of my mind. Something that shouldn’t be here, not this way, this heaviness pushing in.

  Sorrow.

  I go to the window and look out. Storm clouds, blue-black and threatening, cover the mountains. There’s a charge in the air, like lightning.

  And sorrow. A very definite flavor of sorrow.

  Samjeeza is here.

  “Clara?” Angela says. “Earth to Clara.”

  It’s not possible, though. The school is on hallowed ground. Samjeeza can’t come here.

  I scan the distance, past the parking lot, past the fence where the school grounds end and a field begins, an empty grove of cottonwood trees. I don’t see Samjeeza, but he’s there. There’s a pull to his sorrow this time, a loneliness that calls to me. I lay my hand on the cool glass and let it tug at me. I strain my eyes to see into that field. There’s something black in the tall grass.

  “What is it?” Angela asks, coming up beside me. Her voice breaks the spell the sorrow was casting on me. I back away from the window.

  Christian is suddenly by my side, and he puts his hand on my shoulder, making me jump again. His green eyes are wide with alarm.

  “Do you feel it?” I gasp.

  “I feel you. What’s wrong?”

  “Samjeeza is here.” Somehow I have the presence of mind to keep my voice low, so I’m not shouting this thing to the entire school.

  “Here?” Angela repeats in a stunned voice from behind him. “Seriously? Where?”

  “In the field behind the school. I think he’s in a different form, but I can feel him.”

  “I feel him, too,” Christian says. “Although I can’t tell if it’s coming on its own or through you.”

  Angela’s eyebrows come together. She concentrates for a few seconds, then exhales.

  “I don’t feel anything.” She glances down the hall toward the side door, in the direction of the field. She wants to go out there. She wants to see this angel.

/>   I squeeze her arm, hard. “No.” I reach into my pocket for my cell, then realize Samjeeza still has it. “Do you have your phone?”

  She nods and drops her backpack on the floor to pull her phone out of an outer pocket.

  “Call my house. Not my cell,” I say quickly, before she dials. “Billy will probably answer.

  Tell her what’s going on.”

  I turn to Christian. “Go get Mr. Phibbs. He usually eats lunch in his office. Go find him.” He nods once, then sprints back toward the exit. Angela starts talking excitedly into the phone.

  “Where’s Tucker?” I ask, ice forming in my chest at the image that flashes through my brain of Tucker heading out to the parking lot, off to rodeo practice. Samjeeza knows him now.

  He knows that I love him.

  Tucker’s not at the cemetery, I think again.

  “He’s right over there,” Angela answers quickly, seeing the terror in my face.

  I whip around, spot Tucker immediately, and everything inside me goes limp with relief.

  He stands up when he sees me coming, crosses toward me, and puts his arms around me without me even having to ask.

  “What’s up?” he asks. “You look like—”

  “The angel’s here, out in the field behind the school.” I shiver.

  “Right now?”

  Oh yes. It’s still there. The sorrow weaving its way to me, wrapping tendrils around my heart, Samjeeza’s sad loneliness like the aching notes of a siren’s song.

  “Yes,” I say. “Right now.”

  “What do we do?” he asks grimly.

  “Stay inside. He can’t enter school grounds. It’s holy ground.” In spite of the dire situation, a side of Tucker’s mouth twists in a wry smile. “School is holy ground. You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  Angela, still on the phone, holds her hand up.

  “Billy wants to know if we’re all accounted for,” she says.

  No, I realize. We’re not. One of us isn’t here. Jeffrey. He stormed out.

  Toward the parking lot.

  “Clara, wait!” Tucker calls after me, as I run. “You’re running toward him?”

  “Stay there!” I yell over my shoulder.

  I don’t take any more time to explain. I don’t think about how it might look to the other students. I just run. I barrel out of the cafeteria and down the hall, burst out of the side door, run straight toward the parking lot, following the sorrow. Then I see Jeffrey, walking between the cars, head lifted like he’s listening to something. Curious. Following the call.

  “Jeffrey!” I cry.

  He stops, glances over his shoulder at me. Scowls. Turns back toward the field. He’s so close to the end of the parking lot. I run, as fast as I’ve ever run, not caring if people see. I focus on closing the distance between my brother and me. I focus everything I have on saving him.

  And right at the edge of the low wooden fence that marks the beginning of the field, I reach him.

  I grab him by the shoulders and tug him backward so hard we both lose our balance and fall. He tries to push me away from him.

  “Jeffrey,” I gasp. “Stop.”

  “God, Clara. Calm down. It’s just a dog,” he says, still trying to shake me off.

  I scramble to my feet, still hanging on to him. I look out into the field. He’s right. It’s a dog, a large black dog, about the size and shape of a lab, but with thicker fur. Something wolfish in the way it’s sitting there so completely still, looking at us, one ear erect, the other slightly bent.

  Something definitely human in its yellow eyes.

  “It’s a dog, see?” Jeffrey says again. “It’s hurt.” He steps toward the fence. “Here, boy.” I yank him back, put my arms around him, and cling. “It’s not a dog. Look at its ear. See how the right one’s mangled? That’s because I pulled it off last summer. He had to grow it back.

  See on its shoulder, where it’s bleeding? That’s where Mr. Phibbs got him with the glory arrow.”

  “What?” Jeffrey shakes his head like he’s trying to clear it.

  “It’s a Black Wing.”

  The dog stands up. Approaches the fence. Whines. A low, plaintive sound that stirs the sorrow up to an even higher intensity. Come. Come.

  “That’s Samjeeza,” I insist, pulling back on Jeffrey’s shoulder, but he’s stronger than me.

  I’m not moving him.

  “I think you’ve officially gone off the deep end,” Jeffrey says.

  “No, she hasn’t, son,” comes a voice. Mr. Phibbs, walking up briskly behind us. “Come away from there now, children,” he says.

  Jeffrey stops pushing against me. We turn and walk slowly to Mr. Phibbs. He keeps his eyes trained on the dog. It growls.

  “What, do you want another one?” Mr. Phibbs asks. “I can put one right between the eyes this time.”

  It growls again, a sound full of so much hate it makes the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. Then it vanishes. No poof or magic words or anything. A chill in the air, a hint of ozone, and he’s gone.

  We all take a minute to catch our breath.

  “Crazy,” Jeffrey says finally. “I would have taken him home if you hadn’t stopped me.” Chapter 15

  Angel on My Doorstep

  From then on I can feel Samjeeza in that field almost every day. He doesn’t always call to me, that sad seductive music that I can’t keep out of my head. But he shows up even if it’s just for five minutes. He wants me to know he’s there.

  He doesn’t cause any trouble, doesn’t harm any of the students, doesn’t show himself. He doesn’t attack us coming and going to school, but he knows where we live now. He follows us home. I can’t usually feel him while I’m in the house, since our land is all hallowed and there’s so much of it, from the main road to the woods to the stream behind the house. He can’t come close enough to bother me. Still, if I try, if I listen for him, I can sometimes hear him. Waiting.

  I wonder if Mom can feel him, too.

  “You have to learn to block him,” she says when I ask her. “It would be a good idea to learn how to block your empathy completely, because there are times you’re going to need to.”

  “How?”

  “It’s like closing a door,” she answers. “You erect a spiritual barrier between you.”

  “A spiritual barrier?”

  “You close yourself off from the force that connects us to each other. It’s not good for you, in the long run. It will make you numb if you do it all the time, but it might be the best solution for now. Just so you can get through school without so many distractions. Try it.”

  “What, you mean right now? With you?”

  “Yes,” she says. She reaches out and takes my hand. “Use your empathy on me.” For some reason this scares me a little.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I can’t control it. The only times my empathy really works when I ask it to is when I’m with Christian. And sometimes . . . it’s not just feelings I get from people.

  It’s thoughts, too. Why is that?”

  “Our thoughts and feelings are entwined,” she tells me. “Memories, images, desires, feelings. You seem to have a knack with feelings. It will be stronger when you touch the person, skin to skin. And sometimes you might get an image or a specific sentence that they’re thinking at the moment. But mostly it will be feelings, I think.”

  “Can you do it?”

  “No.” She lowers her gaze for a minute. “I don’t often pick up feelings. But I am telepathic. I can read thoughts.”

  Hello, news flash! No wonder she always seems two steps ahead of me. When I was a kid I seriously thought she had eyes in the back of her head.

  Yes, it’s been a particularly effective parenting tool, she says in my mind. She smiles.

  “Don’t look at me like that, Clara. I haven’t been reading your every waking thought. Most of the time I choose to stay out of people’s heads, especially the heads of my children, because you deserve some privacy.”

  Now
let’s practice, she says. Open yourself up. Try to feel what I feel.

  I close my eyes, hold my breath, and listen, like what she’s feeling is something I could hear. Suddenly I see a flash of pale pink behind my eyelids. I gasp.

  “Pink,” I whisper.

  “Concentrate on it.”

  I try. I try to look into the pink until my head starts to ache, and just when I’m about to give up I see that it’s curtains, pink eyelet curtains hanging in a window.

  Pink eyelet curtains is not a feeling.

  But there’s more—laughing, a baby laughing, that kind of laugh they get where you think they’re going to pee, they’re laughing so hard. And a man laughing, a sweet, delighted kind of laugh. I recognize it. Dad. My throat closes up a bit, thinking of Dad.

  “Don’t let your own feelings interfere,” Mom says.

  Pink. Laughter. Warmth. I can feel what it is to her. “Joy,” I say finally. I open my eyes.

  She smiles. “Yes,” she says. “That was joy.”

  “Mom—”

  “Now try to block it out.”

  I close my eyes again, but this time I visualize building an invisible wall in the space between us, brick by brick, thought by thought, until there’s nothing left behind my eyelids, no color, no feeling, nothing but a gray and empty void.

  “Okay, I don’t feel anything.” I open my eyes again and she has a strange expression on her face: relief.

  “Well done,” she says, and pulls her hand from mine. “Now you’ll just have to practice it until you can shut out who you want to, when you want to.” That would certainly be handy.

  So all that next week, whenever I feel Samjeeza at school, I work on erecting a spiritual barrier between us. At first, absolutely nothing happens. Samjeeza’s sorrow continues to flow into me, making it hard to think about anything at all. But slowly but surely I begin to feel the ways in which I am connected with the life around me, with that energy inside me where the glory is, and when I recognize it in myself I can then work on shutting it down. It’s like the opposite of using glory, in some ways. To bring glory, you have to still the inner voices. To shut it off, you have to keep yourself completely occupied by your thoughts. It’s hard work.

  What makes it even worse is that on Friday, Mom lies down and never really gets back up.