The Princess Who Forgot She Was Beautiful (The Harry Ferguson Chronicles Book 1)

by William David Ellis

  As she looked at him, her eyes narrowed and a fake frown gathered across her face.

  “We are praying for you. And I know that you have really big guardian angels. So, you can be at peace and you can sleep, ok?”

  Sarah’s eyes glistened, she sighed, nodded, and then walked back to her grandmother and left the room with her.

  The fire marshal looked at the old man and said, “Would you like to move to the living room? We need to talk.” After settling down in some overstuffed leather chairs, the fire marshal continued, “Thank you for that. She has really taken a shine to you and loves your stories, or at least, in this case, story.”

  “You’re welcome. She is a very special young lady.”

  “We know. As you have probably already assumed, Sarah is not our real granddaughter. We have children, but they are all grown and have moved away, though they haven’t started their families yet. Sarah is actually our foster child, although on a permanent basis. You see, I found her at a fire.”

  The old man leaned forward, riveted to the fire marshal’s story.

  A little over three years ago, we were called to a huge fire at a large warehouse across town where a lot of rich people had stored their wealthy belongings. Four stations from around the county were called. Any other time, in a town this small, in a sparsely populated part of the county, four trucks would not have been called, but the city commissioners and their connections …well, you know… so, we were hard at it. After a long, hot night, we had the fire contained, and then the weather decided to cooperate, and it actually began to rain, so the fire was out. As the fire marshal, it was my job to go through the ashes and determine cause. I was poking through the usual places: electrical boxes, wiring, etc., and I was beginning to suspect arson. I could smell sulphur but couldn’t find any hint of a chemical accelerant. We found two bodies almost burned to ash because the fire was so hot and had lasted so long in a focused area. While trying to collect their remains, I kept hearing a baby cry. At first, I thought it was some type of morning bird or maybe even a lost kitten, but it kept on.

  I couldn’t tell if the cry came from within the ruins or under them. I started looking for a basement hidden under the debris, then I saw a movement out of the corner of my eye. I turned toward it and was shocked to see, a toddler, a little girl, covered in soot and shivering with the cold. When she saw me, she began to wail and walked toward me, arms outstretched, crying her eyes out. I guess she was trying to get my attention and has held it ever since. I didn’t know how she got there. She was dressed in the tattered and burnt remains of some type of green cloth. If you have ever seen depression-era photographs of children draped in flour sacks, this was kind of like that. The cloth was coarse and burnt, and it was all she had on. I wrapped her in a blanket and took her to the hospital. They kept her overnight and treated her for exposure. Grace and I watched over her, and when child protection services came, we applied for guardianship, and since Grace is on the board and was in county government, it wasn’t hard to attain. We have had Sarah ever since. We’ve looked everywhere for her parents, but no one came forward, and she had no fingerprints on file. We even had her DNA checked. The closest match was a fourth cousin in eastern Europe! How she got here, who her parents are, and where they come from, is a mystery. We have no idea. But to be honest Hank, I am also glad. We love that little girl. She has renewed our lives and filled this house with laughter and sometimes a little cussing and hollering, but it’s happy.”

  “She is an amazing child. That is for sure,” the old man replied, then hesitated, his face reflecting his unspoken question, and the fire marshal seized on it.

  “What is it? What’s on your mind?”

  “Well, I don’t mean to pry, but I am curious. Did Sarah describe her dreams to you? Did she say anything about what she saw or was afraid of?”

  The fire marshal sighed, leaned back in his overstuffed leather chair, and stared at the old man. His face was blank, and the old man thought, “I will never play poker with this man.” After a moment of deliberate and apparently extremely thoughtful reflection on the old man’s question, the answer started to come, and then Grace walked back into the room.

  “I finally got that little tootle-butt to sleep. She was afraid if she closed her eyes, something would get her. Finally, she fell asleep with me holding her. For a long time, I didn’t know if I should set her down on her bed or just hold on to her. When she finally didn’t seem troubled and was at peace, I put her in her bed. Apparently, I have walked into something interesting because you, my dear, have that look on your face.”

  The fire marshal cocked his head at his wife and squinted, as if to say—What look?

  “You know exactly what I mean. We have been married thirty-eight years, and I can read you like a dog-eared book. What is going on?”

  The old man waited for the fire marshal’s reply. The fire marshal exhaled quickly in ultimate surrender and answered, “Hank asked me a question. And if I answer it, I am pretty sure it is only going to lead to more. So, I am preparing for that.”

  “Oh,” She responded quietly.

  “Look, if you feel like it would be better not to discuss Sarah’s dreams, I understand. You have a responsibility to protect your daughter, and her privacy is included in that protection. I am sorry I pried,” the old man said.

  “No,” both grandparents responded at once, then Grace stopped at looked back at her husband.

  “Sarah is a very special child,” he began.

  “That’s obvious,” the old man agreed.

  “More than we even know. For a while now, I have begun to wonder about things that I didn’t before. When she was a toddler, we didn’t notice so much, but now, we face a new question almost daily. She knows things that she shouldn’t at her age, things we didn’t tell her. She tries to hide it sometimes, behind her precociousness, but when she is home and relaxed, well, sometimes it’s like talking to someone much older, especially the last few weeks, especially since you started telling your story at the library.”

  Grace continued with the revelation, “We are starting to believe that...” she paused as though afraid that speaking the words would cement them.

  “That what?” the old man begged.

  The fire marshal looked at the old man and said, “You see it too, don’t you?”

  This time it was the old man’s time to draw back into his thoughts, but he sensed that he was in a safe place and could be honest, at least to a point. He could reveal he sensed things in Sarah without revealing what he was beginning to suspect about her.

  “I do, but I am not sure what I am seeing. I have seen a lot of strange things in my time. I mean a lot. I used to be a… hummmm… how can I share this... I kinda worked for a group of peple that looked into ... strange things. I know that is only going to raise more questions, but this is one of those situations where…”

  “If you tell us, you will have to kill us?” Grace offered, only half-joking.

  “Ha,” the old man snorted, “not quite, but, well anyway... we are both going to have to trust the other. I am going to trust that you are good parents that love Sarah, and although you might not understand what you are seeing, you still love and want to protect her. You are going to have to trust that I know some things that might not fit into the way you have been taught to see the world. So… far …at least.”

  “Uhhh,” Grace groaned, “kinda sorta thought things might lead to this, especially lately. I really don’t want to be the first one to open this keg, and since, if you really do have experience working with a group that looked into such things, perhaps you should be the first one to pull back this curtain we are all staring at, and noticing shapes behind, but are afraid to pull apart?”

  The old man looked at the grey-haired couple staring back at him. A you-got-me-and-now-what-am-I- going-to-do-about-it look spread across his face, hiding behind a slight smile. “Well, I think Sarah is experiencing memories that may not be from her own recent past. I
am pretty sure she is not from here.”

  “As in from where?” the fire marshal asked. “Another planet?”

  “I don’t think so,” the old man responded slowly, seriously considering to the question. “There are several possibilities, everything from split personalities with one of those being a... spirit.”

  “You mean possession?!” the fire marshal sat up on the edge of his chair, concern locked into his jaw.

  “No…” the old man continued, “not like what you’re afraid of, and that is just one option. Sarah’s brain might be acting as a receiver, picking up images from another time. She could be incredibly empathic and seeing into another universe that coexists alongside ours and that occasionally breaks into our own. There are many different possibilities, but I am sure of this, she is gifted. Whatever seems to be provoking or creating or releasing this insight – for lack of a better word – has just begun and things are going to get stranger before they get better.”

  “I don’t know if you have told us a thing we didn’t already know, or at least suspected.” the fire marshal said, scratching his head.

  “But he has organized it for us and helped us to realize we’re not crazy, and Sarah is not... is not, what, I don’t know... normal, doesn’t fit, and it is ok, if she is not normal, normal is boring. Sarah is ok. She is special, not in a broken way, but a brilliant and gifted way. I don’t know what we are going to do about her, but it doesn’t matter; we love her.”

  “Well, one thing you could do is answer my first question. What has Sarah told you about her dreams?”

  “You tell him, Grace. You remember details better than I do, and if you leave anything out, I will fill it in, ok?”

  Grandmother Grace nodded and was about to start when the fire marshal began speaking, “There is really not a whole lot to tell. It all happened in one night. We went to bed around 10:00, our usual time. Sarah had gone down at 8:30, her usual time. As we passed by her room on the way back to ours, we did what we always do, stuck our heads in the door to check on her. We heard her groaning, which was unusual, so we opened the door and walked in. We kept the lights off and just drew close to her bed. We listened for a few minutes. The groaning didn’t stop, then it turned to whimpering and she began to scream and cry out. That is when I reached down and picked her up. When I touched her, she cried out and woke up. At first, she didn’t seem to know where she was, and then things got really strange. You want to take it from there, Grace?”

  “Hummph. Thanks a lot. Leave the weird to me, why don’t ya? Well, fine. Sarah was talking, screaming actually, in her sleep, but it wasn’t in English. I don’t know what language it was. This went on for some time, so while Kenneth held Sarah, I grabbed my smart phone and recorded some of it. You want to hear it?”

  The old man wanted to say, no need. He already knew what language it would be, but answered instead, “Of course, I do.”

  “Thought you might,” then Grace pushed the right buttons, and Sarah’s voice came through the phone.

  “Pūķis atstāj mani, tu mani nevari nomirt. iet prom. Harija man palīdzēt palīdziet man harry Ak Dievs nē! Harijs atgriezies atgriezties Harija!”

  “It just repeats over and over like she was stuck in the dream.”

  The old man’s chest tightened and pains ran up his right arm. His breath came in gasps and the room began to spin. He moved back into his seat and closed his eyes, but not before Grace, who was an RN, noticed his physical response and grabbed him.

  “Hank, you ok? Get me a wet rag, Kenneth!”

  “I’m fine,” the old man lied, his breathing coming in gulps. He could feel the blood running back into his face. Pushing out words he said, “I just wasn’t expecting… to recognize the words. They are old Lativian. My grandparents were from Latvia. I am supposedly a descendent of royalty there, or so I have been told.” Lies poured out of the old man’s mouth, programmed by years of rehearsal, so that even in the most traumatic of moments, their shield would hold. The problem was the older he got, the more he struggled to remember what was fabrication and what was the truth, but at the moment, a little truth, and a lot of lie kept problems at bay.

  “So, you recognized the words?” the fire marshal asked.

  “Yeah, most of them. They are definitely an ancient version, but I understood them.”

  There was a long awkward pause as the old man stepped back into thought. It was interrupted by Grandma Grace. “Ahem... you understood them? Well good. Would you be interested in sharing their meaning with the rest of us?”

  The old man looked at Grace and blinked. It had not occurred to him that he would be asked to translate, and now when faced with it, he was wondering how he could get out of it, not share too much, or how much was too much, and a score of other frantic thoughts. He even considered using the tired expression – I would, but then I’d have to kill you – but passed over it quickly. Sometimes the truth wasn’t a bad idea.

  “Yeah sure,” he finally answered. “to the best of my recollection they translate something like... Dragon leave me. You are dead. Go away. And there is more, but I am having a hard time with it. Sounds like she is calling for someone to help her, but...” and then he lied, “I am not sure who.”

  The lie the old man told was embedded in enough truth to slide by. Essentially, it was an accurate translation minus one word. But that word was explosive and would open up more questions than he was prepared to answer. So, he deliberately didn’t mention the name, Harry, that Sarah called out.

  Chapter Eight

  The next library story day, the old man tumbled out of bed. His feet hit the floor, then he groaned as his back reminded him that it was a little slower than the rest of him, insisting on the over-fifty-oh-dang-my-spinal-discs-just-shifted dip. A few steps later, it came together, straightened out, and he could walk upright again. By then he was headed to a hot shower and the inevitable shave. Soon after, he was puttering down the road in his antique pickup.

  Things had changed at story time, at least for him and Sarah. The rest of the kids still thought it was just a great story, at least he thought they did. He wondered if Thomas would be there today. He hoped he would. It would be awful if that poor, overregulated young man was not allowed to continue to participate. The old man knew that if he could have that kid for a few weeks, the young man’s whole destiny would change. He also knew that would never be an option, and the thought grieved him.

  Pulling into the library parking lot, the old man noted the familiar cars parked in their familiar places, and then he also noticed an unfamiliar one, a black Crown Victoria, older model, classic edition. Those cars evoked either a here-lies-a-cop, or on the other side of the coin, a here-there-be-monsters kind of presence. They were a favorite of old-style gangsters, and the old man was interested to see which had come to visit.

  As he walked through the door there was an immediate and almost overpowering sense of dread. Something evil this way walked, of that he was certain. He had not yet met the Reverend Laden Long, but the old man was intimately acquainted with the aura that radiated wickedness. He walked into the informal den where his audience typically cavorted and detected a dismal blandness in the air. His body reacted to the sense of heaviness that pervaded, and nausea started to climb up from its dark hallow in his stomach. Looking around, he saw Thomas, pale and fragile, standing next to his grandfather. The boy was stiff and out of sync, lacking the child-like restlessness that usually romped through the library.

  The children were still busy but unusually quiet, as though they were actually in a traditional library hounded by a rigid old woman whose demand of silence hid her inability to arouse the genius of childhood. The old man kept looking for his rowdy minions to charge him with a thousand questions, ridiculous by adult standards, but essential logs on a young imagination’s altar, but they did not burst upon him, and he was surprised. He continued looking for his favorite mystery munchkin. Finally, he found her back in a corner, as far away from the intimidating f
igure of the dark reverend as she could physically get.

  When the old man saw that his little princess was cowering, and that his kingdom of childhood wonder was under siege, the nausea in his stomach backed down, whimpering like a cur, tail tucked between its mangy legs, and in its place, courage arose, sheathed at the moment in a cold anger. It was escorted by a spirit of wholeness, and had the old man understood it, he would have realized the power that felt like anger, but under rigid control, was also shepherded by Holiness, sheer, unadulterated, undefiled light. Immediately his mouth opened and words catapulted forth like an ancient Roman ballista aimed at a dark dragon. He walked across the room, stood in front of the Reverend Long, and said, “You look awfully familiar, but it must have been awhile since we’ve met because I can’t quite place it. How are you? My name is Hank.”

  The old man stuck out his hand and Reverend Long reached out to grab it. A brilliant, white smile etched its way across Long’s face, like an unfamiliar stream cutting a path through dry places. The reverend’s grip was powerful and intended to intimidate, but the old man’s hand was cut from oak and trimmed in callous. As they gripped, it was like a cobra’s head caught in a mongoose’s mouth. Surprise and dismay rippled across the mask that served as a face of the reverend. He tried to squeeze a little harder, and then eased his grip in such a nonchalant manner that no one noticed the first round had been fought, and the old man was ahead.