Amanda Stevens - The Awakening

“John,” I whispered. It wasn’t a question. I knew he was there just as I knew if I put out my hand, I would feel nothing but air.

The night became unbearably still, so quiet I could hear the sigh of the wind in the trees. Or was that my own sigh? I swallowed and touched my face where I could have sworn I felt his lips.

A moment later, the wind chime tinkled as if brushed by an invisible shoulder. I heard the gate creak as if a flesh-and-blood entity had gone through it.

Then all was silent in my garden.

* * *

I had another strange dream that night. I was a child again, no more than nine or ten, wandering through the familiar terrain of an abandoned cemetery. The air smelled of old death and fresh earth, a scent that I did not find unpleasant. As I walked on, the breeze picked up, swirling the mist at my feet as the leaves overhead started to whisper my name. Amelia. Amelia.

I wasn’t at all frightened of those whispers or of my withered surroundings. I was at home here. The eerie sights and sounds were a comfort.

On either side of me, angels with broken wings rose up out of the mist and I wanted to stop and read the epitaphs as I had always done with Papa. But the plates on the monuments were blank, as if the inscriptions had somehow been scrubbed clean.

A memorial without a name seemed very sad to me. I didn’t like the notion of the dead being hidden away and forgotten. Everyone had the right to be mourned and remembered, even those who had dwelled on the fringes of someone else’s life.

I walked on, the paving stones cool beneath my bare feet. The shadows grew longer and a tingle up my spine warned of the coming twilight. But I didn’t turn back. Something awaited me in the cemetery, something important. Something I needed to see. A part of me knew that I was dreaming, but it was more than a dream. Deep in my subconscious, memories were stirring.

Eventually, I came upon Mama and Aunt Lynrose still rocking beside that open grave as they sipped sweet tea from frosted glasses. They were dressed in cool linen, hair precisely coiffed, makeup and nails done to tasteful perfection. I caught the whiff of lemon sachet on the breeze and more faintly, the green notes from their perfume.

The familiarity of those fragrances wrapped me in the warmest embrace and I hurried forward, eager to be drawn into their circle. They whispered to one another, their expressions anxious and didn’t even glance up as I approached. I went right up to the fence and called out to them through the wrought-iron gate, but they didn’t seem to hear me and for whatever reason, I couldn’t enter. The gate was locked tight.

I sank down in the mist and closed my eyes, letting their voices drift over me. I heard my name now and then, but mostly they were reminiscing about their girlhood days. The murmur of their soft drawls and clinking glasses aroused a dreamy nostalgia. I hugged my knees to my chest as I thought back on all those overheard conversations, all those sisterly secrets that intrigued and mystified even as they deepened my loneliness.

Mama said with a little sigh, “Lyn, do you know what I’ve been thinking about lately? That dress Mother made for your sixteenth birthday. The midnight blue one.”

Aunt Lynrose clutched her hands to her heart. Her voice grew soft and unbearably wistful in the twilight. “Oh, how I loved that dress! I wore it to the spring dance, remember? The crystals on the skirt twinkled like starlight when I twirled.”

“You wore your hair up that night and Mother let you borrow her diamond earbobs. You looked just like a princess.”

“And I felt like one, too.”

“I remember how happy you were when you left the house. How you couldn’t stop smiling.”

“It was a night like no other.”

“If only we’d known—”

“Don’t, Etta.”

“When you didn’t come home—”

“Oh, don’t let’s talk about that part,” my aunt pleaded. “I just want to remember the music and the moonlight and the scent of honeysuckle drifting in through the open doors.”

“But we have to talk about that part,” Mama insisted. “That’s why we’re here. When midnight struck and you didn’t come home or even call, Mother was beside herself with worry. It wasn’t like you to miss curfew. And Father—” Mama shuddered. “I’d never seen him so angry. He paced the floor all night and when you finally came home at sunrise, you had that terrible row.”

“You don’t need to remind me.” My aunt’s voice sounded resigned as she lifted a hand to her cheek. “I’ll remember every word he said to me until my dying day.”

“Nothing was ever the same,” Mama said sadly. “We were a happy family until that night. At least it was easy to pretend that we were. Then Father sent you away and I wanted desperately to come with you. The tension in the house had become so oppressive by that time. But I suppose I had it easy considering what you had to put up with Aunt Rue. She was such a spiteful person. So pious and judgmental. I don’t know how you stood it.”

“I stood it because I had to. It was my penitence, Father said.”

“It was cruel of him, what he made you do.”

“And I’ve never forgiven him,” my aunt said. “But what good does it do to dredge all that up now? Haven’t we both learned that some secrets are best left buried?”

“Have you been able to bury it, though?”

“Yes, until I hear that song. You know the one I mean. And then everything comes back as though it were yesterday. All that pain and suffering. The guilt and the loneliness. Oh, Etta, the loneliness...”

The faint tinkle of a wind chime came to me as I knelt there clinging to the fence. The melody drifted through my senses, tugging at more memories until I had the strongest sense of déjà vu. I knew that I had overheard this very conversation just as I knew the secret my mother and aunt spoke of wasn’t meant for my ears. I would be in trouble if they caught me eavesdropping and I couldn’t abide Mama’s disapproval. She and Papa were everything to me, so I tried very hard to never, ever displease them. I stood to alert her of my nearness, but when I called out to her, she dissolved into the mist without even acknowledging my presence.

“Where did she go?” I cried. “I need her to see me.”

My aunt stared pensively into the open grave. “Leave it alone, chile. You can’t change the past. What’s done is done. You of all people should know that no good ever comes from all that digging.”

And then my aunt vanished, too, leaving me with a terrible foreboding. What’s done is done.

I knew that I was still dreaming, but the realization gave me no comfort because I couldn’t rouse myself. Not yet. The dreams and the ghostly visits were somehow connected and everything had meaning. The mist, the open grave, my mother and aunt’s conversation. Even the beady eyes of the corpse bird that watched me from atop a headstone. If the crow wasn’t a clue, then it was surely a sign or an omen. It means someone else is likely to pass.

I pulled myself up to my full height, shaking off those lonely bondages of my childhood so that I could continue the journey as an adult. As I moved back into the cemetery, I realized the scene had shifted and now I found myself behind the crumbling walls of Oak Grove Cemetery, that darkest of all burial places, where even the dead didn’t wish to linger.

The mist thickened and the air grew colder. An unnatural wind tore at my hair and the hem of my nightgown. I covered my nose and mouth as the smell of fresh death rose up from a sea of open graves.

Straight ahead, the Gothic spires of the Bedford Mausoleum peeked up over the treetops. The distant tinkle of a wind chime lured me into the woods and when I emerged into a clearing, I found myself at the bottom of a long staircase. At the very top, light shone through an open doorway where shadows danced upon the walls.