Chapter 33: Night: Colbie and Her First Kiss | Thrice (Scenes 3-6)

Thrice (Scenes 3-6)

3

It was now 9:56 p.m.

Before she could make sense of these words or the implications of Auna’s goodbye, Leslie found herself in another dream sequence, walking along the same yellow-brick path through the forest in a daze. When she snapped out of it, Leslie realized she had been sleepwalking the whole time she had been in slow-wave sleep, her astral body wandering down bricks of yellow while her mind was off to the land of Nod.

She stopped along the path that had since widened into a yellow-brick road, like the one in L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. By now, she had walked for four hours, and her feet began to ache with every step she took. She went off to the side of the road and sat under a tree growing beside it, took off her sandals and massaged her feet. After some minutes of this, she put her sandals back on and got up and stretched.

The thick curtain of woods around her had thinned, letting more of the moonlight in through the canopy of leaves and lifting the lugubrious claustrophobia of rampant foliage from her surroundings. The effect settled her nerves, but she still kept a lookout for wolves or those beasts that sounded like tigers and bears mashed together.

And so, for a time, she walked down the woods thinking about Auna’s last words, that the next time she would see her, she’d be this other person named Alice. Was this Alice a different persona Auna had adopted?

While she dwelled on this thought, a movement caught her attention, and she waved at a faraway silhouette almost a football field ahead of her and said, “Hey, do you know where I am?” Then she yelled, “Hello?”

The figure stopped and turned.

And for a moment, Leslie thought she saw the girl who had left her and started running towards her. “Auna! Auna, is that you?”

But as she got closer, the glamor of Leslie’s thoughts drifted away like wisps of fog. Leslie stopped just feet before the figure, wheezing from an impromptu sprint, her perceptions clearing to reveal a face from the past. It was none other than Auna’s mother, Bridget Barton Wenger, a mere shadow of the spritely young woman who had wanted to join the Sisters’ Brigade seventeen years ago during their self-imposed three-year hiatus to start their families, with Ramona still recovering after giving birth to Kendra weeks before and Leslie and Lima both in the early stages of their pregnancies with Colbie and Celia, respectively.

At the time, after Connie had introduced Bridget to Leslie, Leslie had promised to bring Bridget (also pregnant) into their fold after everyone had finished their pregnancies and were fully recovered. As such, Connie had continued as the only active member of the group for about two months, till Ramona recovered enough to rejoin the Sisters’ Brigade on a regular basis. Then, after Leslie and Lima spent two months recovering from giving birth to Colbie and Celia in late October and early November, respectively, Bridget was the last one. Yet there were complications during Bridget’s delivery that resulted in the young mother losing her life soon after Auna was born in early December. Leslie and Lima and Ramona and Connie all attended her funeral later that weekend, and all three resolved to make Bridget their second ghost member, who shared that epithet with Amelia Hearn, their founder and mentor. But when Ramona died during a case three years later, Leslie and Lima called it quits and disbanded the Sisters’ Brigade as a group. . . .

“What are you doing here?” Leslie said.

“I’m looking for my daughter,” Bridget said. “She was here some time ago, but she’s gone again. Do you know where she went?”

“I don’t know,” she said, and stared at the wandering ghost before her. A pale cast had misted over Bridget’s youthful appearance. Only her eyes retained the vivid clarity of life, while the rest of her had sunken out of reality like that of a shade or even a shadow person, like a reflection through a foggy mirror. “Why are you still in limbo?”

“Don’t know,” Bridget said, and she raised her hands to touch Leslie, but they only passed through her shoulders. “If only I had survived, then . . . maybe it wouldn’t have happened the way it did. Maybe Ramona and I would still be alive, and none of us would have to—”

“We can’t change the past,” Leslie said.

“I know. By God, I know!” Bridget said. “Don’t you think I know that already? I can do nothing for my Auna, not as I am now, but I can still feel her heart beating in my breast. She’s alive,” she continued, tears streaming down her face, “but something has overtaken her. I feel her pain in every pulse, but I can’t be there to dry her tears.”

“Bridget.”

“What happened to her?” she said, trying to grasp a hold of Leslie, but her hands passed through. “By God, what happened to my baby girl?”

At her question, Leslie lingered on the cusp of telling, wondering if she should tell her the gist of her suspicions even when she herself was not there to see it. In the end, though, she only said the truth: “I don’t know, but I have my suspicions. That bastard husband of yours will pay for what he did to her—that much I’ll tell you for certain.”

Bridget paused at her words, and Leslie thought she had said the wrong words, but Bridget said, “Can you take me to her?”

And Auna’s last words, ‘The next time you see me, I’ll be a different person. When you see me, when you see Alice, remember me as you see me now. Goodbye,’ flashed through Leslie’s mind. She looked into Bridget’s eyes, trying to see hesitation there, but Bridget’s gaze held firm.

Leslie said, “Are you sure?”

Bridget nodded.

So Leslie manifested an omamori charm in her hand and left it floating in front of Bridget’s face, then blew on the charm and let her full name imprint on the paper, then said, “Bridget Barton Wenger.”

The pale cast lifted from Bridget’s ghost, and she regained her former life-like appearance before her death.

When Leslie saw this, she took a deep breath and leaned closer and put her lips to Bridget’s and blew her essence into her, kissed her eyes and pressed her hand to her bosom, and said, “My voice is your voice, and my eyes are your eyes, and my heart is your heart. When I see her, you'll know."

Afterwards Bridget began disappearing into the floating charm, but she said, smiling through her tears, “Will you let me speak to her? I want to—”

And her voice and her heartbeats drifted apart and collected into the floating charm floating before her. Leslie took the charm in her hand and kissed it, making her name, “Bridget Barton Wenger,” shimmer with a newfound hope.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “When I see Auna, you’ll have your chance to speak to her.”

And at those very words, the image of her daughter Colbie flashed through her mind like a premonition. Her heart skipped a beat, then went on beating as though a double premonition of both mothers (herself and Bridget) was beating through their hearts over the whereabouts of their daughters. And for a time, she lingered on the cusp of her daughter’s whereabouts, her mind lingering on the cusp of oblivion, as words from the same old poem filtered through her mind:

That motley drama—oh, be sure
⁠It shall not be forgot!
With its Phantom chased for evermore,
⁠By a crowd that seize it not,
Through a circle that ever returneth in
⁠To the self-same spot,
And much of Madness, and more of Sin,
⁠And Horror the soul of the plot.

4

It was now 11:57 p.m.

When Leslie regained her senses, she found herself in another part of the dream sequence, wherein the moon lingered in the night sky without a canopy of forest foliage shredding its rays over the yellow-brick road. And in her hand, she was grasping a silver cord and following it down these yellow bricks, on which she had traveled for the past four hours, into a road made of gray paving stones that lead to the outskirts of a harbor town overlooking a wine-dark harbor.

She followed the cord through the streets of the harbor town, empty of people and, as far as she could tell, empty of stray cats and dogs. Unlike the forest, where howls and other signs of life rose up in the distance, this place was like a ghost town, devoid of life except for Leslie walking alone. She wandered down the narrow streets and stairways toward the shore, where the waters of the harbor lapped against the boardwalk running along the water margin.

Following it towards the boardwalk and into the pier stretching endlessly into the harbor and out to sea, Leslie took a closer look at the cord in her hand and paused, where she stood at the entrance to the pier. Laced in its silver threading were faint strands of red and white twine. 

“Whose cord is this?” Leslie said to herself.

She had no idea, at first, but the more she thought about Auna’s last words, the more she felt that it was Auna’s. She had seen people’s cords in their dreams before, but these other colors told her something else: those suffering from dissociative identity disorder had silver cords with other colored strands woven into it, as if their dream selves had other distinct personalities when they dream. Based on first impressions, Leslie wondered if Auna had some form of dissociative identity disorder.

Leslie pulled from these thoughts when shapes caught her attention, and she threw her gaze towards the pier, stretching towards the horizon, and spied two figures in the distance.

At first, she couldn’t make them out, even with the full moon shining, so she ran towards them, saying, “Hello? You two know where I am?” She stopped once she got close enough to recognize their faces, both wearing crinoline dresses, one red and one white. “Auna, is that you? Why are there two of you?”

Both manifested knives in their hands and pointed their blades at her, and the one in red said, “Let go of Auna’s cord.”

Leslie noticed that she was still holding it in her hand, then noted the one in red referring to Auna in the third person.

“Who are you?” Leslie said.

The one in white said, smiling in derision at Leslie, “Listen to her, missy, or you won’t get another chance.”

“Drop the cord now,” repeated the one in red.

So Leslie dropped the cord and raised her hands, palms forward and open, wondering if these two were manifestations of Auna’s psychic barrier before she noticed something else. Behind each of their backs, she spied a cord attached to Auna’s silver cord, one red and one white. Her thoughts were confirmed, so she said, “I meant no harm, okay? I just want to know where Auna is.”

Both traded glances with each other, and the one in red said, “Why do you want to know?”

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“Because I’m worried about her,” Leslie said, “and so is her mother. We both want to know if she’s okay.”

The one in white took offense and stalked up to Leslie, as if getting ready to stab her, but her counterpart grabbed her arm and shook her head, saying, “She hasn’t done anything yet.”

But she ignored her and said, “What makes you think Auna’s not okay?” She then raised her knife and pointed it at Leslie’s chest, a hint of bloodlust in her eyes, and said, “Answer carefully now. You’re suspicious enough as it is.”

Again Leslie thought of Auna’s last words to her, to remember her as she saw her right then and there before her dream sequence desynchronized and fluttered into unconscious sleep. She wondered if she should let these two aberrations of Auna’s personality in on her thoughts, then said, “Auna told me about someone named Alice, and—”

At that name, both doppelgängers charged her, but Leslie dodged and rolled far enough to avoid their attacks. She got to her feet and raised her hands and said through raspy breaths, “Look, I know it sounds ‘suspicious,’ but you have to believe me.”

“Why the hell should we believe you?” said the one in white.

“How can an outsider like you know that name?” her red counterpart added.

“Unless,” the one in white said, “you duped her in some way. Am I right?”

“Look, I don’t know what you’re thinking right now,” Leslie said, taking a stand and manifesting an omamori charm with Auna’s full name, ‘Auna Wenger,’ “but I can show you, and you’ll know.”

Leslie placed it on the boardwalk for her two skeptics to see and said, “Oh Winds, show Auna to my disbelievers. West Wind, East Wind, North Wind, South Wind, be my witnesses,” and she took a deep breath and blew onto the seal as if it were a burgeoning campfire. Out of the seal arose Auna’s image in a whirl of wind—

5

(It was now 7:55 p.m.)

Wherein Leslie said, “I’m sorry,” and hugged Auna close to her as though she were her own daughter, shedding tears for the tearless Auna. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there to protect you.”

“Why does my dad hate me?” Auna said.

“I don’t know, sweetie,” she said, “I don’t know.”

“Was it my fault? Was it because—”

“No, sweetie,” Leslie said. “Don’t ever think that.”

“Then why weren’t you there to protect me?”

Leslie paused on those words, feeling the weight of a crime she herself knew nothing of, a crime of absence linked in the mind of a despairing daughter between Bridget Barton and herself. She weighed the truth in her mind, took a deep breath, and said, “Listen, I’m not your mother, but I’m sure your real mother loved you more than you know.”

“How do you know that?” And the first traces of Auna’s humanity welled up in her eyes.

“Because you’re alive, and her blood beats through your veins,” Leslie said. “She gave her own life, so that you can live.”

That’s when Auna let go of her deadpan facade long enough for tears to trail her cheeks. When Leslie let go, Auna looked at the older woman’s face, wet with her own tears, and said, “If I was your daughter, would you have protected me?”

“Yes,” Leslie said.

That one word was all it took for the dream sequence to desynchronize, for the spell of bitter nostalgia to break and fall apart around them like shards from a broken dream that was never to be. Leslie lingered on Auna’s tear-stained face, blooming with the residual traces of Auna’s younger self.

“Will I see you again?” Leslie said.

Auna shook her head. “The next time you see me, I’ll be a different person. When you see me, when you see Alice, remember me as you see me now. Goodbye.”

And the image of Auna cracked and shattered into shards and dissipated into nothing—

6

(It was now 11:57 p.m.)

But Auna’s words and emotions lingered in the thoughts of Leslie’s two skeptics. For a time, the two stood speechless over the residual spectacle repeating in their minds and weaving through their hearts, and Leslie knew that her efforts succeeded.  Leslie’s thoughts were their thoughts, and her feelings for Auna surged through the hearts of her skeptics like a wellspring, like a conversion to another God.

“Do you believe me now?” Leslie said.

Indeed, they believed, but the revelation came too late for these two converts when this very dream sequence shook with two simultaneous explosions in the sky, like two thunderbolts from God’s wrath.

Then the boardwalk pier on which all three stood shook beneath their feet, toppling them to the boardwalk as waves churned up the harbor and rolled foaming waves over the boardwalk.

Leslie scrambled back to her feet, but the two doppelgängers never got up, so she ran towards them, saying, “what’s going on? What’s hap—”

That’s when she saw their cords dissipating behind their backs, as if death had cut their strands from Auna’s silver cord. The two were barely breathing now, their bodies lying limp over the boardwalk and bleeding out of the center of their chests and staining their bodices amid a churning whitewash of foam from the harbor.

“What happened?” she said, dreading their answer.

“Auna,” the one in red said, tears welling from her eyes and down her cheeks, putting a hand to her chest and feeling the lingering traces of Auna’s life force getting fainter and fainter. “She’s . . . She’s . . .”

“Gone!” her white counterpart said, feeling at the same wound and feeling Auna’s essence disappearing for good. And when both doppelgängers began fading away, first the white one and then the red one, she said to Leslie, “Beware of the Queen who comes after us,” and she disappeared.

“Who?” Leslie said.

“Alice,” the remaining one said, “Alice . . .” And she, too, disappeared before Leslie’s eyes.

Her gaze turned to the silver cord that was Auna’s lifeline, and reaching for it, she grasped it in her hand and saw no trace of red or white strands woven into it, fearing the worst. Her thoughts again reverted back to Auna’s last words, to remember her as she saw her then and there, not as she would become—not as this ‘Alice’ or whoever this other persona was.

The moon overhead began to crimson into blood, throwing a ghastly hue over the pier and the churning harbor washing against the boardwalk. When Leslie threw her gaze towards the harbor town, she saw a shadowy void swallowing it up like an enormous curtain on some unseen stage.

From this devouring curtain, Leslie ran along the pier in the opposite direction, following Auna’s dissipating lifeline, trying to keep Auna’s image in her mind, trying to keep her last words from dissipating like a fading memory.

She ran and ran and ran, pushing her body to its limits and becoming one with the Four Winds, picking up speed along the pier through a curtain of darkness gaining on her like Death on a horse swiping at Leslie with its scythe. Her feet began kicking up a swirl of hurricane gusts along the pier, picking her feet up from the boardwalk as she now ran on air, but even her Four Winds were not enough.

Try as she might, Leslie could not outrun Death, for Death claims all in the end as it had claimed Auna’s life and the lives of her two doppelgängers, enveloping Leslie in its shroud of endless night and sending her into a free fall through the sleep of death. And for a time, she lingered on the cusp of oblivion as words from the same old poem filtered through her mind:

But see, amid the mimic rout
A crawling shape intrude!
A blood-red thing that writhes from out
⁠The scenic solitude!
It writhes!—it writhes!—with mortal pangs
⁠The mimes become its food,
And the angels sob at vermin fangs
⁠In human gore imbued.

Tsuzuku

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