Burden of the Soul

10.

The light on the phone was blinking when we got back and my heart sank. Dad must have called the home phone while we ran to the store to ensure I wasn’t running off somewhere with Aunt Grace, which I had been.

As I watched the voicemail light blink as if winking at me, I knew I was in for it and that Aunt Grace’s trip may forcibly be cut short due to her “negative” influence, having broken his rule just moments after her arrival. This was going to put him in a bad mood for the weekend, maybe enough to officially ground me from any social activities or parties. So there might be an upside.

As I dialed the voicemail inbox, I put it on speaker phone so Aunt Grace could listen too—better she be prepared for the mood he was going to be in.

“You have one new voicemail message.”

“Relax, Clara,” she said in between crunching. “We were only gone for a few minutes.” She held up her wrist and clicked the button to emphasize her point.

“Yeah, and that’s all it took.”

But it wasn’t Dad’s voice on the recording. It was Jason Wheeler. I could hear a couple shrill giggles in the background as he launched into his monologue. “Oh… Devin. Devin, my love. I dream about you Devin. I dream about your…”

That was more than enough for me to immediately delete the message and turn a deep scarlet from both embarrassment and anger. But before I had a chance to plot against him, Aunt Grace snatched the cordless phone out of my hand and grabbed the sleeve of my t-shirt in a tight fist.

“Who was that?” Her voice was angry and her eyes were piercing. She was inches away from my face, bringing me closer to her as she flexed her arm. I could feel her breathe across the bridge of my nose. “Who was that, Clara? Answer me.”

She shook me slightly and my heart propelled forward, speeding off against the inside of my chest. I could feel the heat flash through my veins as panic set in. Taking in the tensed muscles in her neck and the force in her unblinking eyes frightened me—I had never seen this woman before.

“It was some kid from school. He’s a jerk.” My voice whimpered as I tried to wiggle out of her grasp. “What’s wrong with you?”

She let the cordless phone drop to the counter, freeing up her other hand to grab me by both arms, shaking me a bit with each word. “How do you know Devin?”

“What is your problem?” I was trying to shake her off, never having seen her angry like this before, and certainly not at me. My arms were hurting under her grasp, her fingers dug into my skin with each pull.

“What have you done? How do you know Devin?” She was pushing me into a corner where the counter met the wall behind me and I started lashing out, the heat coming off of her breaking across my chest. I was clawing at her arms and using my legs to push against her trying to break free.

Pulling out of her grasp I pushed her back and launched myself to the other side of the counter, a barrier between us.

“I don’t know who he is. I don’t even know how I know that name,” I said, yelling both in shock and anger at her surprising reaction. “I fell asleep during English today and had a dream. The voicemail was from one of the kids in that class making fun of me for it. That’s all. Now what the hell is wrong with you?”

My shoulders were squared in a defensive stance and my spine stood upright. I didn’t know what had come over me or where this assertiveness and threatening tone in my voice had come from.

She took a step toward me and I felt the residual heat move with it, as if she was at the center of a bubble, as if she was the sun coming closer to me, the heat a warning of her approach. I took a step back and eyed her until she froze.

“Aunt Grace, how do you know that name?”

She had spoken the name as if it was a real person, not just a fictional, symbolic manifestation in my dreams. She seemed familiar with whoever this Devin was and the confusion in my mind began to whirl. The dreams had always been so vivid, enough that I still remembered each detail of every dream, but I had never given them more credence than the mysterious quirks of my subconscious combined with whatever I had eaten that day.

Her stance softened and her eyes began to droop with a tilt of her head. Her shoulders rounded as her chin fell. It was a look of defeat and pain, as if her whole body was preparing for tears she wanted to cry, but couldn’t.

“You dream about him.” Her tone was soft and the words crackled as she forced them out. “He comes to you in your dreams.”

She wasn’t asking me, she was just saying it. Stating them as facts without waiting for a confirmation from me.

I felt bad, like I had to do something to make it better. This was hurting her for some reason beyond my understanding.

“His name only popped into my head today. I’ve never heard his name, actually. I just somehow knew it in the dream today. But never before.”

I was trying desperately to wash away whatever had gone wrong in the past couple minutes. Give her some sort of comfort to bring her back to an even mood and put her natural warmth back in the room. There was now an icy perimeter where her heat bubble had been. I needed her to explain her reaction to me, to help me understand, but the guilt of unknowingly causing this outburst was tingling in my arms and hands.

My words had an opposite effect on her. She looked up at me, pools of tears collecting in her eyes and catching the light in a glint that pierced at my chest.

“You’ve had dreams before today?”

She lowered herself into a chair at the kitchen table. I started to take slow and measured steps toward her, to bring the length of her body back into view. She was slumped over her bent knees, her elbows propping her up by the thighs.

I wanted to lie. I wanted to find the words that would erase whatever this was. I wanted to press rewind on the past few minutes and have the good sense to listen to the voicemail myself before sharing it on speakerphone. But a few minutes ago, I didn’t realize there was much importance to the secrets between her and I.

“Yes, I have,” I answered her, approaching softly.

“How many?” She didn’t look up at me or shift her body at all.

“…Some.” I didn’t want to say it. I didn’t want to see her body go rigid again with anger.

“How many, Clara?” Her voice was stern, but not violent like before.

“I don’t know how many exactly. I’ve had them on and off for… well, as long as I can remember.” My voice trailed off not wanting to take the conversation in that direction. “He’s not always there though.”

I said it quickly to give her some sort of consolation for whatever my subconscious had done wrong. “I had never even seen him up close in any of the dreams before today.”

That made her look up quickly, a tear breaking over the wall of her eyelid and cutting its path down her rounded cheek straight to her chin.

“Did he say anything?”

I faltered for a second, hesitating. I had always known my aunt to be sassy, to have some bite to her, but had never dreamt her being capable of the wild outburst like that, or being threatening and frightening. But in those moments where she had yanked at me, trapping me into a corner, she was no longer the aunt I knew.

I could still feel the burning in my arms where her fingers had dug in. I was measuring my words, hoping to find some sort of combination that was both honest and soothing, some sort of explanation that would keep her from flying off the handle again.

“Clara,” she said, standing up and softly putting her hands on my arms where, but this time the gesture was soft and cool. “I’m sorry. I promise not to react that way again, but I do need you to tell me everything you can remember. Did he say anything to you in the dream today?”

“Yes.” I felt my bottom lip quiver as I said it.

“What did he say?” Her voice was just above a whisper.

“He said it was time.”

“Did he say for what exactly?”

“No, just that it was time. And he came really close to me. As close as you are. That’s all I remember.”

She let her arms drop to her sides. I noticed her lower lip had lost a bit of its rose color, appearing white as if the blood had been forced out. She took a few deep breaths considering what I had just said, and reached into her back pocket to pull out her phone.

“Thank you for telling me,” she said, taking a step back. “This changes things.”

She held out her left arm with the inked barcode facing upwards to her phone hovering inches above. I heard the click as I had before and watched as her thumbs went to work swiftly, but only for a few seconds.

“What? What does it change?”

I backed up as she whizzed past me with a new fury, this one of determination rather than anger. She headed down the hall straight to the door, but stopping first to punch the code into the alarm system. There were three extra digits though, if I heard correctly. It started beeping slowly as she went to the door and opened it, and then began speeding up alerting her of the time she had left before the system activated.

“Clara, you are not to leave this house. Do you understand me?”

I was standing at the bottom of the stairs watching her. “No, not at all. What’s going on? Where are you going?”

“I’ll be back tonight. Until then you are not to leave this house or open the door to anyone.” Her tone was so fierce it gave me goose bumps. Her behavior was frightening me and opening my mind to all of the things I didn’t know or understand.

I hated being treated as if I were a child. I was seventeen years old and could handle myself if ever given the chance. I pursed my lips with frustration and took an exaggerated inhale.

“Don’t even bother coming back unless you plan on telling me everything… and I mean everything,” I said.

She was halfway out the door at that point but stopped and turned to me, taking in my arms crossed over my chest and the firm stance illustrating that I meant what I said. Sadness turned the corners of her mouth down again and her pained expression felt like cold water flushing over my face.

“I don’t think I have any other choice now,” she said, and then escaped through the door as the beeping escalated to one long buzz and then stopped.

I was locked in.

The sudden silence made my ears ring. I felt lightheaded from the fury swirling around my mind into a concentrated center. I sat on the steps facing the front door framed by the tall, rectangular sheets of glass on either side. I watched the figures outside pass, blurred by the thin, cream-colored fabric that served as a decorative curtain on either side of the door.

A figure passed on the sidewalk at the bottom of our stoop—a woman with brilliantly red hair cropped at her shoulders. An older couple heading the opposite direction passed behind her, arm in arm.

Across the street I could barely make out the figure of a man, with skin as dark as a shadow. I was only able to decipher him from the shade under the trees because of the bright grey newspaper he opened and closed as he flipped through pages. He was sitting on a stoop casually reading his paper.

I walked to the window, peeling back the curtain to get a better look at him. His head, completely bald, caught the light. He looked young and healthy, a bit intimidating by his size, but familiar somehow.

It was the man from the park—the man who sat in roughly the same spot every morning reading his newspaper. It couldn’t be a coincidence.

He looked up and my mouth dropped open as he caught me staring at him through the window. But then he smiled and nodded. He recognized me too.

I was distracted by a glimpse of bright red coming back into my peripheral vision from the opposite direction. I could see her more clearly—a woman who looked in her mid to late twenties. Beautiful, ivory skin set against the blood red of her perfectly styled bob. She wore a neatly fitted, black leather jacket and form fitting jeans that hugged each curve. She seemed familiar too—the woman from the roof. I met her nearly a year ago when I skipped class on my first day back to school. She was walking past my front door for the second time in less then a minute.

She stopped when she caught me staring at her and, just like the man across the street, shot me a quick smile and nodded her head slightly in acknowledgement. Despite my confusion I nodded once and watched as she went back to walking down the sidewalk in front of our stoop.

Across the street, the man went back to flipping pages, though his eyes were directed just above the grey sheet in his hands, scanning the sidewalks and the row of brownstones rather than today’s news.

My head turned to the keypad on the wall to my left, and for a moment I just stood quiet letting the question sink in—what were those extra three digits?

She was going to get an earful when she got back. She was lucky she had left or else I would have exploded in a similar way to her outburst moments ago. It was clear so much had been kept from me, to the point where I had been lied to. And I was obviously still being baby sat, if not indoors than definitely outdoors.

Anger bit away at my insides until it was all that existed. Aunt Grace had been up to something, in cohorts with my Dad no doubt. Finding ways to trick me into their prison of completely irrational overprotection. If some supernatural light monster was going to kill me I doubt there was a thing these people could do about it.

I stomped into the kitchen, my feet pounding out a steady rhythm. I grabbed her opened bag of Cheetos off the kitchen table, took them to the sink and switched on the garbage disposal. It was petty, but treat me like a child and this was the sort of reaction you were going to get.

The sound of the disposal consuming her snack made me feel a little bit better. I smashed the bag into a crumpled mess and put it back on the table where she had left it. A statement.

I paced around the kitchen a bit, sitting down in a chair at the table or wandering into the living room and dropping myself on the sofa, but the fury kept coming back, licking up the sides of my face, taking me back in. My skin felt too warm and clammy. I needed fresh air.

I walked to the front door and peered out the window again just in time to see the redhead finishing another lap. The man across the street looked at me again and turned a page of his paper.

I walked back to the kitchen and unlocked the doorwall behind the kitchen table that led to the small garden out back. A community lawn shared by the homes on either side of ours and a few on the street behind that backed up to us.

My mind jumped on the chance to wander and try to piece together all the little clues stored away in my memory, but as I reached the stone patio at the bottom and reached for one of the patio chairs, I saw the other figures emerge. An older woman in the far left house that backed up to the garden turned, a watering can in her hand. She had close-cut silver hair, spiked out at every angle and had been watering a row of vivid pansies in every shade of pink you could imagine.

To the far right, a younger man walked out of a doorwall and descended to the grassy floor below. He had red hair similar to the young woman out front and carried a book in his hand. He lowered himself onto the bottom step without taking his eyes off of me. He opened his book, but his eyes never moved.

I looked back to the woman and she too was staring straight at me, ignoring her rows of flowers.

“Oh you have got to be kidding,” I said, loud enough for them to get the gist. I pushed the chair back under the patio table with more force then was necessary. Back in the house, I planted myself on the sofa and turned the TV on and skimmed through channels without registering what shows were on.

“If there’s anything you would like to watch, by all means let me know,” I said to the mysterious guards both seen and possibly unseen, the sarcasm heavy in my tone.

I sat there like that just mindlessly flipping through channels for over two hours, occasionally getting up to peer out the front door or a window out to the back garden to check in on my watchers. Sure enough, each was still in the same position as before—watering the same pansies, reading the same book or newspaper, or walking up and down the same sidewalk.

The monotony was finally broken by Dad’s arrival. The door opened and closed frantically and the beeping of the house alarm started slowly, but he didn’t stop to punch in the code.

“Clara, where are you?” His voice boomed through the hall and then up the stairs as he sped up to the second floor two steps at a time.

“I’m in here, Dad.” My lack of amusement was evident in my tone. I was already up from the couch heading down the hall to the front door. Without waiting for him to get back to the bottom of the steps, I punched in the alarm code to stop the beeping.

“What’s wrong? What happened?” He was standing in front of me, his hands on my arms examining me for any wounds or missing limbs, as I could only imagine.

“Gee, Dad. What makes you think there’s anything wrong,” I said. “Could it be the guards out in front you had to get through to get in?”

He let go of my arms at this point and took his bag off his shoulder and edged his way out of his jacket.

“Or could it be the guards in the back yard, or haven’t you gotten that far yet? And if I might point out, the one woman seems a bit old to be working security. Not that I have anything against the elderly, but I can only wonder how much help she would be if…”

“That’s enough, Clara,” he said, taking off down the hall to the back door wall to check my facts.

“No, Dad. Actually I don’t think it is. I have stayed in the dark for a year now, never wanting to risk throwing you into a depression with questions. I’ve done as you asked and gone to school and come home. I put up with a babysitter for awhile and I’ve basically resigned to the fact that I will never have a normal teenage life since you rarely let me out of your sight or reach even though you hate being around me.”

“Clara…”

“No. We agreed no more babysitters. We agreed that I didn’t need to be watched, that I’m old enough to be on my own and now I find out that you have people watching me anyways.”

The speed in which the words were coming out began to increase and I had never dreamt of speaking to my dad in such a way, but this was over the line. I had allowed him to have his silly rules and I had abided by all of them. Well, up until this afternoon, but even then I was still under the supervision of a trusted adult. Well, an adult I trusted. Used to trust. The train of thought was maddening.

“They were not my idea, Clara. You can blame your aunt for them.”

My hands were clenched into fists at my sides. More puzzles. More secrets. I went back to the couch exasperated and plunked down like the whiny teenager I tried so hard never to be.

“But you knew who they were, didn’t you? You came in thinking something was wrong.”

He took the remote off the armrest, turned the TV off and took a seat on the couch opposite me.

“You’re right. I did,” he said through a deep inhale and exhale, calming himself and bracing for what would be a very long conversation. “I wish I could answer all of your questions, sweetheart.”

It was the first time he had used any form of endearment in regards to me in a year. I had forgotten how badly I wanted to hear it, how much I missed him calling me sweetheart, kiddo or princess. Or maybe I just wouldn’t let myself remember it, knowing how much the memory would hurt.

The shock created by this wave of emotion nearly melted me out of my frozen posture, but I caught myself. I tucked my hands away hide the fact that my fists had become unclenched.

“I’m afraid it’s up to Grace to explain what’s going on. Where is she?” He sat up straight to look through the kitchen to see if there was any sign of her, which there was—a crumpled Cheetos bag on the kitchen table.

“She left, and oh what a scene that was,” I said.

He honestly looked confused. He wasn’t fully relaxed in his position on the couch. He was leaning over his spread knees, his elbows rested on his thighs with his hands joined in the center with intertwined fingers. He was ready to listen.

I explained to him about the teasing voicemail on the home recorder, leaving out the part about Aunt Grace and I running to the corner deli, although I’m sure if he thought about the Cheeto remains on the table long enough he could figure that one out himself. I explained her reaction to the message, that we fought and how she took off.

“That just doesn’t make any sense,” he said, his brow furrowing. “Not that it excuses this Jason kid from teasing you, but why would it upset her so much? And why would she call in the troops to position themselves around the house?”

“So you do know about them?” I was glaring now, not letting him forget that I intended to be filled in to the extent of everyone’s knowledge.

“Again, they weren’t my idea, like I said. But I also wasn’t going to turn down any offers for help, Clara.” His knuckles began to turn white in his grasp and he looked down to the floor shaking his head. “I mean… I can’t lose you, Clara. I just can’t. And I’ve only ever tried to do what I thought Claire would want. What your mom would want.”

My heart ceased to beat, full stop. It was the first time he had openly mentioned Mom in this house and the effect was immediate. I needed him to talk about her. I needed him to acknowledge that she existed and that I wasn’t alone in losing her. It took everything I had to keep myself from getting up and throwing my arms around his neck. It was like a wave of sorrow passing between he and I as the word lingered in the room, an invisible echo that bounced between the walls. A sound I wish I could bottle and keep if he crawled back into his shell of avoidance.

His voice saying her name felt like honey on my tongue.

I got up from my spot and sat next to him on his couch. I didn’t dare reach my hand to his, but did allow my shoulder to bounce off of his once as a sign of solidarity and acceptance of his answer.

He shook his head a few times. “I don’t know much, and I certainly understand less, but it just doesn’t add up that Grace would react like that to an obnoxious teenage prank.”

“It was the name she seemed to react to mostly.”

“She reacted like that to ‘Jason’”?

“No, the name Jason said. I had fallen asleep in class…”

“Clara,” he said with his stern, disciplinary voice, looking at me through the side of his eyes.

“I know, I know. It was an accident. But I had a dream and I was sorta talking in my sleep toward the end and said a name out loud, so that’s what Jason was teasing me about. Like it’s some secret crush of mine, but honestly I don’t even know anyone by that name.”

“What was the name?” He let his shoulder rest on mine, and I could feel him relax. He must have tightened a bit when I sat next to him. I would have too, if roles were reversed and he was crossing the year-long chasm to sit next to me. It was the most physical contact we had in a long time.

“Devin.”

There was a sudden chill through my skin. He tightened up with his jaw clenched, casting an arced shadow across the side of his face. His voice was a whisper when he spoke. “Devin?”

How did the name mean anything to them? His reaction, although different from Aunt Grace’s, still shocked me. “Yeah, but Dad I swear I don’t know anyone with that name.”

“Are you sure?” The words took effort for him to get out. He was staring me straight in the eyes when he asked it, the whites of his eyes casting everything in the room into deep shadow by contrast.

“I swear. I’ve never met anyone with that name. The dreams are silly, Dad. They don’t mean anything.”

He turned back to the floor, his hands clenching even harder, no longer intertwined but grinding into each other, knuckles into palm. “Dreams?”

“What?” I wasn’t sure if he was asking me a question or just repeating what I had just said.

“You said ‘dreams’. Has there been more than the one?”

He wouldn’t look at me when he asked it, and I felt torn between lying to make this moment go away, to bring us back to that warm moment when I was his sweetheart once again and Mom was someone we talked about and shared, or telling the truth and bracing for whatever reaction he had.

“Clara?”

“Yes.”

“Yes there’s been more than the one?”

It took me a moment to get the simple word out. “Yes.”

I prepared myself for the worst, although not understanding why. I hated hurting him. I hated making him angry or upset.

Every muscle in his face clenched, casting a web of shadows across his profile. His eyes pressed shut and his hands released their knot and slid up his face hiding it from my view. He was silent, though, and I didn’t know how to react to that.

“Dad?”

His back started to heave and I heard the first gasp. He was crying. Seeing my Dad crying was a foreign thing to me. I had grown accustomed to hearing it from a distance and had even seen it once, but never this close.

It felt cold and electric. Like pins and needles in your foot when you’ve sat on it wrong for too long. His tears were cutting off my circulation.

“Dad, I’m so sorry. I don’t know what I’ve done wrong, I swear I didn’t mean it. I didn’t have control over it. They mean nothing, Dad. They’re just dreams, I swear.”

I didn’t know how to make it better. I tried putting my hand on his shoulder, but the electricity of the contact shot through my arm and was uncomfortable. I wasn’t expecting it. I assumed it would feel warm from the body heat, but it felt like the sting of grabbing snow with a bare palm.

He shot up from the couch, walking to the kitchen and then back. Pacing while wiping at his cheeks and taking in deep breathes to collect himself. “When is Grace coming back?”

He still wasn’t looking at me. “I don’t know. Before she took off she said she would be back sometime tonight.” I tried scanning his face for some sort of clue on how to make it better. For a second I thought I heard him mumble something about ‘no hope’.

Why did this name bring out such strong reactions in all of us? I had even screamed it because I thought I was losing him. But he was fictional. Only a creation of my subconscious, but even still I remember the way it felt… my heart beating in my chest and then exploding at the thought of him being ripped apart by the light.

I couldn’t hold back the tears anymore. They started to sting and spill over onto my face.

“Dad,” I said, my voice quivering. “I’m really confused, and I’m scared. I need you to tell me what’s wrong.”

He was back next to me on the couch, this time with his arms wrapped around me. I still fit snuggly within the opening of his arms and I allowed my cheek to plant itself into his chest. The tears came rolling then as he rocked back and forth, his chin resting on the top of my head.

“I don’t know, honey. I’m so sorry that I don’t know how to stop this. I had so many questions after what happened to your mother and I swore I would never let that happen to you. They’ve told me so little, just that I was to never allow anyone near you without clearance first. That’s what they told me.”

“Who is ‘they’?”

“Grace and her friends—friends of your mother. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry, Clara.”

He was crying openly then. We stayed like that, swaying back and forth for as long as it took for time not to matter anymore. Eventually my tears slowed, as did his, but we continued to sit that way on the couch, our grasp on each other loosening eventually. But now that I had him, I wasn’t going to let him go easily. I turned myself and nestled into the nook under his right arm.

My breathing steadied and then he leaned over and kissed the top of my head. “I’m going to fix this, Clara. I promise.”

“I don’t even know what’s broken.”

“Neither do I, but we’ll find out. And we’ll fix this, together. I swear.”

We had already experienced more tragedy, more loss, more confusion than most families experience in a lifetime, and here we were about to get hit with tragedy number two, whatever it was. The mystery of it was terrifying. But he was here, and he said we were going to do it together. And I believed him.

My eyes started to bounce with the weight of my eyelids. He must have felt the heaviness of my body give in to sleep because his hand pulled tighter against my head, giving me an invitation to sink into him even more. I gave into the sensation, feeling my emotional blockage I had spent a year building begin to dismantle. Here, with him, it was safe to bring it down.

“Now what?” I felt the vibrations of my voice muffled in his shirt.

I heard the TV come to life and the volume immediately lower to a hush as he took a deep breath.

“Now we wait for Grace.”