Chapter 34: Night: Colbie and Her First Kiss | Thrice (Scenes 7-10)

Thrice (Scenes 7-10)

7

It was now 1:58 a.m.

The next thing Leslie knew, she woke up to a child’s scream in an altogether different dream sequence and found herself on a sidewalk of some neighborhood street, the incandescent street lamps blinking above her head. Leslie cursed when she recognized the voice as Auna’s, picking herself up and noticed the same silver cord she followed along the pier still shimmering in her hand, but it was blinking and getting dimmer and dimmer.

She took off down the street, following Auna’s lifeline towards the source of the scream, when the sound of sliding grates echoed through the night. Several howls, like the ones in that forest on the yellow-brick path, sent chills through Leslie nerves.

“Fuck, you can’t be serious,” she said, pushing herself now, summoning the Four Winds to her aid, turning corners and picking up speed again down a seemingly endless array of blocks and sidewalks.

The howls grew louder, and their footfalls—silent as phantoms over the forest floor—pounded down the pavement, till she saw the outlines of a pack of wolves running a block ahead of her.

“Fuck!” Even with the Four Winds, she knew she couldn’t make it in time before those things reached Auna’s house.

So she imagined a ramp made of wind going past the roofs of each house, and she sprinted up past the roofs and saw Auna’s silver thread gleaming in the shadows of the lamplights below.

Some of the wolves then caught sight of Leslie and leaped onto the rooftops and leaped into her path, almost taking her down, but Leslie skidded to a halt and changed her direction, then over-corrected and stepped off the platform of wind and fell to the street below.

She summoned more wind and flung it like a baseball pitch to the ground, cushioning her fall under hurricane turbulence, shaking shrubs and trees and rattling windows and doors of nearby houses, but this slowed her down.

Just as she touched the ground, she saw one wolf ahead of her blocking her way to Auna’s house, one wolf behind her, and on the roofs of the houses on either side, she saw a pair of wolves grinning and growling down on her. Each wolf seemed poised to attack her, but something (or someone) held them back.

She sensed someone to her left and turned.

That someone was Aaron Rancaster, leaning against a street lamp under its light like an old black-and-white noir movie, the shadow of his fedora casting his face in shadow.

“Why are you here?” Leslie yelled.

“I should be asking you that question,” he said, waving the wolves to back down as he walked like a nightmare stalking her. “This is not your dream realm, and Auna is not your daughter, so what are you doing here?”

“Fuck you,” she said, gripping her hands into fists. “You wouldn’t understand if you tried!”

“Oh, but I do,” he continued. “Do you know what you’re trying to do? Do you know why you feel so attached to Auna, almost as if you were her mother?”

“What are you talking about?” Leslie said.

“I’ll give you a hint,” he said, then raised his hand and snapped his fingers, and a table plopped onto the pavement before Leslie. He snapped his finger again, and a mirror plopped onto the table, face-down. “Take that mirror and see for yourself.”

Leslie reached for it, but paused before touching, feeling trepidation running through her heartbeats and settling into her stomach like a moving snake. Pictures ran through her mind, detailing her previous interactions with the younger and older Auna and Auna’s mother in this dream sequence, and lit her thoughts onto a revelation, but she hesitated.

“Go on, Leslie,” he said.

She took up the mirror, peered into it, and dropped it to the ground where it cracked into shards. She put her hand to her face, not Leslie’s own face, but that of Bridget Barton Wenger’s. At that moment, Leslie knew the reason behind Auna’s initial reluctance of telling names, the reason behind Auna’s last words to her, the reason behind Leslie’s promise to Auna’s mother, and the reason behind Auna’s two doppelgängers.

“Now do you understand?” Rancaster said. “Those very feelings you thought were yours were really those of Auna’s deceased mother. It’s a pity, too. Bridget Barton Wenger would’ve become a great member of your Sisters’ Brigade, had she survived birthing Auna into this world.”

“You bastard!” Leslie screamed. “How could you do this to her?”

“I did nothing to her,” Rancaster said.

“Bullshit!” she said. “How many people have you killed?”

“More than you know,” he said.

His words left Leslie silent for a spell, as vague connections emerged from her memories of a gruesome televised tragedy, so she said, “Did you kill Edmund?”

“I did,” he said. “He was a meddlesome fool.”

Leslie gritted her teeth and glared at the man, balling her hands into fists as she now thought of dead friends, and said, “And Ramona?”

“She was meddlesome, too,” he said. “In fact, you all were.”

Leslie then breathed in and out in an effort to calm herself, closing her eyes and remembering Ramona and Lima and herself as the happy trio of childhood friends before the death of Lima’s mother shattered their world of innocence, and said, “And Amelia?”

“Now’s not the time for old grievances, darling,” he said, looking at his watch and tapping the dial. “The time’s a-ticking. Now’s your cue.”

“And what if I don’t?” Leslie yelled, refusing to move from her spot in the middle of the street, refusing to do his bidding.

“You’ve made a promise to the dead,” he said. “Even I would fear going back on my word if I had kept it with the dead.”

Though Leslie hated to admit it, he was right. Auna (poor soul) deserved so much more than the lot she’d been given, so Leslie sprinted up towards Auna’s house and kicked down the door, then bolted up the stairs to the upper hallway and into Auna’s bedroom but saw nobody there. So she doubled back into the upper hallway and checked every room, hoping against hope that she was still alive, still breathing, still—

Her thoughts were cut short when she reached the master bedroom and opened the double doors.

A half-naked man lay face down and motionless over a young girl on the bed, so Leslie bolted into the room and pulled the man off and rolled him over the bedside, till she jumped back at what she saw, even as the man fell on the carpet with a thud. His throat had been slashed and had bled out, but his face still wore a look of horror, his eyes still open even in death.

Leslie then looked at the girl on the bed.

Auna was lying on her back, half-naked on the rumpled bedsheets and clutching a bloodstained knife in her hand, and the sight brought tears to Leslie’s eyes. Her legs were bare save for her panties clinging to her ankle, and her bloodstained nightshirt had been raised above her prepubescent breasts, and her face was splattered with her father’s blood.

She began crying and sniffling, wondering why anyone would do such a thing to a child as this.

She pulled the nightshirt back over Auna’s body, hiding the atrocity of what had been done to her from view, and took the knife from her hand and placed it on the drawer beside the bed and wiped the blood from her face. She then came over to the other side of the bed and sat there by Auna’s bedside and placed her hand over the girl’s chest and felt her heart, still beating but getting weaker and weaker. She climbed into bed and raised Auna up, hugging the girl close to her body, and took the child’s limp hand and pressed it to her bosom that was now beating for the both of them.

Auna’s eyes fluttered open, and she said, “Momma?”

“I’m here, sweetie,” Leslie said, kissing Auna’s forehead and shedding more tears over her pale face. “I’m here for you now.” She tried to say something else, but nothing else came to her, her words tongue-tied, so she only repeated what she already said: “I’m here, sweetie. I’m here for you now. So don’t you worry, okay?”

And Auna’s eyes lit up, her smiling eyes like the eyes of a wayward daughter finally returned to her heartsick mother. And Leslie looked in those eyes as Auna’s breathing dwindled, lingering on her eyes till their lights flickered out and her eyes closed, leaving Leslie and Bridget Barton Langley alone to cry over her.

There both mothers stayed, two souls in one body holding onto the violated body of their child, a child Leslie never had.

“Thank you,” a voice said.

And when Leslie raised her head, she saw the ghost of Bridget Barton Langley holding an infant Auna in her arms.

Bridget said, “Thank you for allowing me to see my child one more time,” and she kissed Auna’s forehead and gave her back to Leslie's arms, then began to dissipate into nothing. “But it’s not her time yet.”

“What do you mean?” Leslie said, then looked down and saw the older version of Auna in her bloodstained school uniform, her head cradled in Leslie’s lap. “You mean she’s alive?”

Bridget nodded. “My child’s alive, because you keep her alive. Keep her in your thoughts for me, and find out where she is. I fear she has changed, but I still feel her heart beating in my chest.”

“But how?”

“I don’t know how,” Bridget continued, dissipating till she became a disembodied voice, but as long as Auna’s alive, there’s still hope for her. Save her for . . . And her words and her voice and her spirit drifted away into the void of forgotten memories, forgotten to all except Leslie and God, the Keeper of dreams from now till the end of all dreams—

Wherein she lingered on the cusp of oblivion as words from the same old poem filtered through her mind:

Out—out are the lights—out all!
And, over each quivering form,
The curtain, a funeral pall,
⁠Comes down with the rush of a storm,
And the angels, all pallid, and wan,
⁠Uprising, unveiling, affirm
That the play is the tragedy, “Man,”
⁠And its hero the Conqueror Worm.

8

It was now 3:59 a.m.

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For the next several moments, her mind played all five stanzas on repeat till the last two words, ‘Conqueror Worm,’ snagged at her memory and fished out an obscure title from Edgar Allan Poe,

“The Conqueror Worm,”

that she had memorized when she was still in Shad-Row Academy. It had been over twenty years since Leslie last read that poem for a poetry recital in American Literature I, but the gist of it still remained: that our lives were a joke, that we were in denial of it, that our pursuit of beauty in this world was a romantic notion we used to hide the boundaries of an insane world, and that our dreams were but blurry reflections of our place in that world. Woe be to anyone clear-sighted enough to view such hideous vistas of reality and stay sane enough to understand its implications.

For all the world’s a stage, Leslie thought, and all the men and women merely players, and all the angels merely spectators.

The moment Leslie realized this, she opened her eyes and found herself in yet another dream sequence, one that she knew by heart. It was Colbie’s dream bedroom, but the lamplights were blinking, and someone had slashed the padding and the pillows and the sheets and left bed feathers and tufts of foam scattered throughout the room.

Leslie’s breath hitched in her throat, but on feeling the torn sheets and the padding, she found no sign of blood anywhere and said, “Thank God she’s okay.” 

But no sooner had she said those words when she felt chills on her body—first on her brow, then on her thigh and lower back, and then a massive wave of chills across her stomach. An image of Colbie flashed across her mind, and Leslie raised her hand to her head and felt blood trickling down her brow. Another image of Colbie wrapping her leg and stomach with makeshift bandages flashed across her mind, and something seared across Leslie’s thigh and lower back as she gritted her teeth and felt the blood flowing from each wound. Then yet another image of Colbie fainting to the ground flashed through her mind, and a wave of pain dug into Leslie’s stomach with blood pooling against her shirt.

“Colbie!” Leslie screamed. “Colbie, wake up! Wake up!”

Against the pain, she scrambled to the door and turned on the knob, but it wouldn’t budge. She yanked on it, propping a leg up against the wall door jamb and leveraging her weight against the door knob, but she wasn’t strong enough.

Something must have held the door shut, but before she could guess at the source, Leslie began to lose her footing and levitate off the floor just as Colbie’s bedroom cracked into shards around her like a broken mirror.

Behind those broken shards was Colbie’s body, illuminating the darkness and floating motionless into Leslie’s arms. Leslie caught Colbie in her embrace and pressed her body against herself, feeling her daughter’s heart beating like a drum against her bosom and feeling her blood warm and wet in her hands. And for a moment, Leslie and Colbie were left in suspension in a flutter of Leslie’s tears, mother and daughter afloat amid the currents of Colbie’s unconscious slow-wave sleep.

“Colbie,” Leslie said, “I’m here, sweetie. I’m here.”

Together, they both lingered in weightless suspension.

Then, as if someone had turned on the gravity switch to ON, mother and daughter fell down the rabbit hole of dreamless slow-wave sleep.

9

It was now 4:32 a.m.

Leslie awoke with a gasp on the couch and noticed the television tuned to a commercial program about some hair product. She felt at herself, feeling for the blood stains where Colbie had been wounded but found no trace of them on her body.

She then turned her head towards the kitchen at something moving around upstairs, then bolted off the couch but tottered on her feet, feeling the aftereffects of a hangover beating through her head where Colbie had kissed her hours before.

When she regained herself, she ran through the kitchen and across the hallway and up the stairs towards Colbie’s room, yelling, “Colbie? Colbie, what’s going on?”

After pulling the door open, she saw Colbie struggling with something in her sleep, rumpling the bedsheets and flailing her fists as though trying to fight off an invisible monster. So Leslie braced herself and bed-wrestled her daughter into waking up, grabbing her wrists to keep her from walloping her a good one, and said, “Colbie, wake up! Come on, snap out of it! Wake up! WAKE UP!”

10

It was now 6:00 a.m.

Fifteen minutes before sunrise, and four hours after telling Leslie to find her daughter Auna, Bridget Barton Wenger (née Langley) had been walking for another four hours along the dismal stretch of yellow-brick road beneath a canopy of thick foliage and a curtain of sinister trees keeping the westering skies above her head from view. Even when it was fifteen minutes to sunrise, she still moved with the sleepy dullness of the walking dead as she wandered aimlessly in search of her missing daughter.

Save for rarities like Leslie, the only other visitors to cross her path were the lions and tigers and bears of the wood that kept her from straying off the continuous loop of the yellow-brick road. Yet as she had walked for hours on end, she grew weary and stopped by another tree beside the road and sat down upon its bark, then slipped off her sandals and massaged her feet, thinking of her daughter and wondering what sling and arrows . . .

She looked up and discerned the form of another woman in the darkness, who said, “Are you Bridget Barton Wenger?”

Bridget put her sandals back on and got up.

“Fear not, child,” this woman said. “I mean you no harm.”

“Who are you?” Bridget said.

“You might have heard of me,” she said and summoned a mirror before her, which glowed in the darkness and revealed a careworn woman, somewhere around her mid-forties, who still possessed the bearing of a living woman even after death. “In fact, I’m sure you’ve heard of me, for most people have known me as the Blood Rose Witch.”

Bridget put her hand to her mouth, saying, “Amelia Hearn? Could it really be you?”

Amelia nodded and smiled.

“Of all places, why are you here?” she said.

“Because I’ve been looking for you,” Amelia said, “since your daughter’s disappearance.”

“What’s happened to Auna?” she said and attempted to grasp Amelia’s hands in her own, yet her hands passed through. “Tell me, please! What’s happened to her?”

“Patience, child,” Amelia said. “You’re still in limbo, it seems. How long have you been here?”

“Since I died,” she said.

“No wonder you’re so hard to find,” Amelia said under her breath. “Mrs. Wenger, put your hand against my mirror.”

So she did, and Bridget felt a wave of energy passing through her, lifting the dullness of her wandering afterlife from her mind and removing the trance of her endless wandering from her eyes. And all at once, the dark and foreboding atmosphere of the woods around her lost its edge, and the westering sky overhead became visible through the thick dappling of foliage.

“Can you see me better?” Amelia said.

Bridget nodded her head, because the features of her visitor gained more definition and focus.

Then Amelia pressed her hand over Bridget’s and said, “I want you to keep your hand on this mirror, understand?” And when Bridget nodded, Amelia continued, saying, “Now close your eyes, Mrs. Wenger, and think of your daughter Auna in your mind. Think of her image in your mind as alive and moving as if she were standing before you at this moment.”

And in her mind, Bridget imagined her daughter standing before her, dressed in pajamas as if she had just gotten up from bed.

"Do you have her in your mind?"

"Yes, I do," Bridget said.

"Now imagine Auna taking out a key," Amelia said, "a very special key to her own heart. Imagine her handing that key to you in your mind."

And in her mind, Bridget stretched out her palm and saw her daughter reaching into the pocket of her pants and pulling out a long antique key and placing it on her palm.

"Can you feel that key in your hand?"

"Yes," Bridget said.

"Close your hand around that key," Amelia said, "and open your eyes when you feel like you have it."

And Bridget did just that, clutching the key and opening her eyes, at which the image of Auna disappeared from her mind and from the reflection of Amelia’s mirror. Bridget pulled her hand back from under Amelia's palm against the reflection and looked at the key that Auna had given her, then looked at Amelia and said, “How did you do that?”

Amelia smiled again and put her finger to her lips and said, “I have my secrets, Mrs. Wenger,” and took her own hand off the surface of her mirror, which stopped glowing at that instant, then grabbed her hand. “Keep that key with you, okay?”

Bridget nodded and placed it in the pocket of her pants, then said, “Where are we going?”

“We’re going to see an old acquaintance of yours,” Amelia said and put her other hand on the reflection, making it glow again. 

“Who may that be?” Bridget said.

“You’ll know when you see her,” Amelia said. “Now hold onto me,” and she passed into the mirror, which shimmered in her passage, and Bridget followed after her.

Tsuzuku

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