Beloved Evangeline (14 page)

I don’t know what that means,
I thought impatiently. The statue was not nearly as interesting as her so I refocused my attention toward her, but she was already slowly sinking back to the bottom.

Now that she was farther away she seemed to look different. Looking at her in the water now gave me a funny feeling of déjà vu.

Wait. My mother’s eyes are blue and shaped differently;
my
eyes are kind of a dull, mottled hazel, not luminous silver exactly, but they were the same shape. My face—impossibly altered, unnaturally beautiful—but no mistaking those eyes.

As I stared, trying to make sense of this, she smiled serenely back at me. Not the smug, arrogant smirk of the portraits back at the house, but a smile of genuine happiness. This was a sign, a message. A message I would only understand and trust coming from myself.
Everything is going to work out
, she seemed to be conveying.
You have found your path
.

I watched as she continued to float to the bottom. Watching her gave me such an overpowering feeling of well-being and tranquility that I wanted to prolong this moment indefinitely. If I just stayed here was it possible to feel this way forever?

But, no. She had all but slipped away. Disappointingly, the feeling seemed to wear off with her. But then, just as she (I?) had all but disappeared from view, several larger, darker shapes came into view, not from the bottom, but from beneath the borders of the fountain—hideously ghastly beasts. There were horned and winged creatures. Creatures of reptilian form. One of the closer beasts had slithering appendages writhing atop its head. They seemed to multiply from the depths. Several mutilated and bloody monsters floated below me lifelessly. Though most of the fiends were content with their fates underneath the water, a handful of the disturbing apparitions stared back at me with glowing silver eyes. Within those eyes were the shadows of a powerful, seething malevolence.
Join us
, they said.
This is much easier than what awaits
.

It was as if my very breath had been stolen away.

The water grew darker, more obscure, a twisted carnival of oddities, showcasing themselves one by one against the dark backdrop. My imagination—already prone to excess—replayed the sinister music of an evil carnival, a place of innocence turned into a sickening parody of gore.

I found myself transfixed, drawn further and further down, as the evil simultaneously rose to greet me. Though vague thoughts of danger simmered in my mind, I found no lucidity, so strongly did the strange fascination of the fountain possess me.

Despite this, I longed to see the woman again—I had so many questions. The thought of her suddenly seemed to jog my memory. I remembered her agitated, pointing to something on my right. I glanced briefly up at the angelic statute. An inscription was illuminated on the stone base beneath it.

“
Via Invia. Vince in Bono Malum
,” I repeated, absently reading the inscription aloud as if to sound out its meaning.

The water immediately returned to a state of calm. All of the creatures vanished into darkness, leaving only their shadows behind. Even the inscription was slowly fading. Whatever had happened, the spell was broken. My feelings of calm had evaporated—my body trembled as I attempted to stand. Silence settled over the forest once more.

Wondering whether you’ve imagined such a thing is an exercise in futility. How to prove? The only physical evidence in my possession was an unfamiliar sense of weakness and fatigue—as though the spiritual exertion had actually somehow diminished my life force.

Sir Lawrence Talbot was waiting for me anxiously when I returned to the house. A nagging self consciousness kept me from telling him the fountain showed some sort of embarrassing wish fulfillment version of myself. Instead, I told him I’d seen a monster; I described it in explicit detail. Not exactly a lie, and probably none of it
actually
happened, anyway.

I recited the inscription. Talbot was very pleased, but said he didn’t know when he’d have the time to see me again and that it was very important I make no attempt to come visit my grandfather until he contacted me.

When I finally got back to my house, it was nearly 5:00 in the morning. Instead of feeling tired, as I knew I should, or just wanting to sleep to pass the time or numb the pain, I felt weirdly rejuvenated despite the fatigue. I had a purpose for the first time in ages. I knew I was finally closer to understanding the dark shadow hovering over my life. My mother, Jack—they had deserved so much more.

I immediately set out to cleaning the house. You just sort of need to have a clean house before anything big could be accomplished, and it had been awhile since I’d done a really thorough cleaning. The doorbell rang just as I finished scrubbing the kitchen floor with an old dishrag and had turned up the volume on
Bound for Hell
by Love and Rockets. My house vibrated with the music—just a little.

From the living room window I could see that big, stupid black hat that could only mean one thing: Bruce Vaughn.

What
now
?

I opened the door cautiously. Bruce glared back at me. A quiet rage seemed to brew behind his large black eyes.

I was really losing patience with him. How many years had I lived here now and been subjected to this? The sun had not even fully risen, so it was much too early to
politely
pay a neighbor a visit, yet here there he was, intruding on my privacy as though it were of no importance.

Several awkward moments passed, and Bruce still showed no signs of being prepared to actually say anything. I decided to speak first.

“
You’re on my porch,” I said by way of greeting. “Out of
your
yard?” I had not planned on saying this. Apparently I could not contain the shock—and sense of injustice—his presence on my property gave.

No response. Stunned, I watched as mere awkwardness passed us by, and I could see no clean get away from this encounter.

“
Well,
lovely
to see you. Feel free to stop by for another…” I cleared my throat, “
weird
little visit, but right now it’s still dark,” said I, peering up at the sky, “and I have a lot of cleaning left to do.” I’m quite sure anyone else would’ve apologized profusely and fled my house as quickly as possible. It’s happened once or twice before. Not Bruce. He just went right on standing there.

“
Love the hat, by the way,” said I, pointing and clicking my tongue in preparation to close the door. The moment that comment slipped out I knew I had gone too far. But I was beyond caring or trying to spare this man’s feelings. His behavior had recently escalated past the point of being a mere a nuisance. But I’d never just closed a door on someone before, so I hesitated for some reason, mid-close.

Bruce Vaughn inhaled dangerously deeply and continued his silence.

He had just lost me whatever patience I had still been clinging onto. “Come
on
, is there something you need?”

“
Where have you been all week?” he finally demanded.

“
What
?” His question caught me off guard. He had never asked about my whereabouts before. “Here… wait.
Why
does that matter?”

He put his hand over his forehead. His face was turning red. At first I thought he was maybe having a heart attack, and though I’m not proud of this, my first thought was whether or not I could actually force myself to perform mouth-to-mouth. I still hadn’t reached a decision when he finally opened his mouth to speak, but instead of words coming out he held up his index finger and closed his eyes. If I didn’t know better from the countless times he’d shouted at me, I’d think he was making some sort of effort to compose himself.

“
Your trash cans, Ms. Johnson... have been out...
all week
.” He gestured to my trash and recycling cans on the street. “I didn’t see you coming and going from work, so I waited
two whole days
to report you to the city because I thought there must be some sort of emergency. You’ve never missed an entire week of work before. But,
no
. I don’t see any emergency. All of your arms and legs appear to be intact. I thought I might at least find you had the flu or something. Instead, I found out you’ve been laying in bed all week, eating chips and salsa.”

“
Have
not
,
” I scoffed, my eyes darting to the bag of tortilla chips on the coffee table that he hopefully couldn’t see.

“
I don’t care what you’ve been doing!” At last he was shouting, his old demeanor returning. This behavior made me much more comfortable. “It’s what else you haven’t been doing that concerns me. Haven’t been mowing your lawn!” He motioned to my overgrown yard. “Haven’t been moving your trash cans! Haven’t been cleaning your house, that’s for sure.” He craned his neck to seen inside my living room and began crinkling his nose.

I stared back at him for a moment, stunned.

“
And in the name of all that is holy, turn off that noise!” He added, shouting when I didn’t speak.

He was such an unbelievable jackass. I don’t know how I managed to keep up even the veneer of civility all these years.
No way I’m keeping
that
up now
, I thought. “Thanks, Bruce. You know, a lot of people dislike having their faults thrown in their face by people they hardly know, but me, I
like
it,” I replied with acid.

Bruce frowned but otherwise didn’t even flinch at my brazenness. He was, unbelievably, still trying to look inside my house when I slammed the door in his face.

I spent the rest of the day relaxing pleasantly. After the encounter with Bruce I ran out of steam before getting around to the laundry. So, instead of doing the mound of laundry I felt I should do, I crammed every single article of dirty clothing into the washing machine, and then didn’t wash it. I needed to give my house the appearance of sparkling clean perfection. The order of the house admittedly wasn’t legitimately perfect, but for the moment, and to me at least, it appeared to be.

10.

I awoke the next morning to a coldness and damp to which I was unaccustomed. I stabbed the darkness for my alarm clock but found nothing. My covers were similarly nowhere to be found. As my senses awakened I smelled…
grass
. I was laying prone somewhere outdoors, me and my silk pajamas dirty and covered in dew.

With haste, I pulled myself from the ground, trying to get my bearings. The sky was devoid of light. After three steps forward I fell over something hard and immovable. Feeling the object in the darkness, I discovered its identity with an ever growing pit in my stomach—a concrete gravestone.

I scrambled back to my house mostly by memory. How and why I came to be sleeping in the graveyard were nowhere in my recollection. It was 3:00 a.m. when I walked through my open front door. The mirror told of scratches to my arms and neck.

When Monday morning finally rolled around, I figured, given the weirdness of the past week, returning to work was suddenly the least of my problems. Due to my increasing war with sleep, I was up early, much earlier than I would’ve been ordinarily. Though I’d planned to go to work early, I didn’t think arriving at the office quite
this
early exactly said
normal
.

After messing around on the piano for a bit, I settled in for a quiet breakfast, scrambled eggs, toast with honey, and tea, naturally. Just as I had gotten quite comfortable and prepared to enjoy my meal, I heard yelling from across the street. The fork was raised to my mouth at the precise moment the shouting began. I shook my head. This was never going to end. Of course I couldn’t stop myself from stealing a glance out the window, though I wasn’t sure why I’d felt the need. Had I really expected someone than other than Mr. Vaughn to be on his front lawn yelling at children? Yelling at the neighborhood kids was his favorite way to start out the day.

Why hadn’t those kids listened to me?
I wondered.