WILLODEAN (THE CUPITOR CHRONICLES Book 1) (13 page)

“I’m—I’mm so sorry. I don’t know what’s got into her.”
I wasn’t letting go of her for nothing.  She walked a few steps and drug me with her until she unlatched me, by pinching me a good one. 
“Kids…” She laughed and shrugged her shoulders and tried to play it off in a cool, collective Lena Hart fashion. “Too many cartoons, I suppose.”
 
When the coast was clear, she picked up the rice and tomato sauce, and threw it in the buggy and politely drug me around the corner, behind the toilet paper display where she hot fired me with her hand and gave me the
what-for
. Of course, my skin was still tingling from the energy the teen gave off and my heart was beating to loud to hear a word of it.

“Willodean?” I felt a hard jerk at my side.
My eyes glanced all around.  I expected the flour girl to appear again.  I needed time to run. 
“Willodean.” She growled.

“Whhaatt?” I said finally able to decipher
that Lena meant business. 

“I don
’t know what’s got into you.  What was in that comic
book that made you…”
  She said stopping as if she couldn’t finish.  All I could do was glance side to side and around.  “Well.  I have a few more groceries to get, if you think you can act right.” 

I followed closely behind Lena a few more aisles until we were in the checkout line at register one.  And sure enough, I look over at register two and there she is.  As soon as my vision saw her, my skin reacted in the same fashion, rubber bands popping, and I swear even the magazine rack between us was rattling. 

I watched her transform from a regular teen to a flour face with holes for eyes and sifting through them, in and out, were a thousand horrible shadowy apparitions and this time, they spoke into my ears, whispering horrible, terrible wh
ispers that blackened my ear canals like thick sludge.  I lifted the comic book I had in my hand over my eyes to block her out.  Lena looked at me suspiciously and kept glancing up at the mother and daughter in the other aisle as if she was trying to determine what I saw.  When we got in the car, Lena grilled me as to what happened.  When I told her, her face turned ghost white, almost as white as the flour girl, but then it glowed red with distress.  Her eyes flitted back and forth and her driving was sporadic as if she was in a hurry to get home.  Before she got out of the car, she grabbed the comic book and ripped it in half.  She got out of the car, marched over to the burn barrel and dropped it inside.  She brushed off her hands and glared back at me. 
If she only knew it wasn’t the comic book.
  
That day, I learned not to trust anyone with my visions except for Maw Sue.
Maw Sue said only those with the gifts can understand the gifts and the curses attached.  When I explained to Maw Sue what happened,
and what I saw,
she was calm as a summer cucumber on the vine.  It was a Dresden, sure enough.  Maw Sue had never seen one, but she had heard her mother talk of them and she’d remembered reading stories of them in the old ancient journals of Cupitors. 
They get their name because they look a lot like the white porcelain dolls that children used to play with, only without eyes and creepier.
A Dresden is a normal person that is altered by some terrible event in their life.  They have
normal bodies like everyone else, hair, teeth, nose, all the same features of skin and skeletal but no eyes, just hollow sockets to a dark netherworld. Their white flour faces looked dried in the sun to form lines and cracks, a facial map of tragedy.

“But what are they Maw Sue and why…why do I see them?” 
My voice was shaky and I had a terrible feeling I would never sleep again. 

“Willodean. I don’t want you to be scared of them, okay.”

My neck straightened and I looked at her puzzled. “But they’re scary.” I yelled.

“
Understand this Willodean, if you don’t take anything else from this.  Dresdens cannot hurt you or anyone else. 
They have been hurt enough already. It’s precisely why they are a Dresden. A person doesn’t become a Dresden unless they are
wounded in unimaginable cruelty as a child before the age of maturity. 
It’s hard to understand this right now, because you are so young, but one day you will know more. It is in your gift to know more. Only those with the gift of Impathian can see a Dres
den, so it is possible that this is your Cupitor gift.  From what I can remember, this is a wonderful gift of compassion and you can f
eel and see things about people
that no one else can.  I’d say, we have found your gift, Willodean.” 

“Well, I don’t want
it.  How do I give it back?” 

Maw Sue laughed at my honesty but I was dead serious. I didn’t want to ever see another Dresden for as long as I lived. 

“You don’t get to choose your gifts Willodean, only perfect them, and endure them to greater good. And just like our other secrets, keep this one as well. 
Tell no-one about them, not your friends, not your dad, and especially not your mother. You know how she is about these things.”

I sure did know how she was. 
The curse doesn’t exist. Not my child. Not my daughter.

I’d always been a little on the edge, too rough and risky for Lena, but this had pushed her over a little farther than she could bear. 
Lena Hart had to keep up 
a good appearance for the town and she didn’t like to give anyone room to talk. 
She certainly couldn’t stand the thought of strangers gossiping nonsense about her family being cursed
or her daughter a little different than the other girls. 
She simply thought Maw Su
e told way too many tall tales and I read way too many comic books. 

After my first encounter with a Dresden I begin to see them everywhere.  And this time, it was adults too, not just teens.  I saw them a
t gas stations, at church, the dress shop, in passing cars at the red light, and at the playground. Everywhere I went I saw a Dresden’s
in the crowd.  The same kinetic energy, the same skin popping and the same fear. 
To keep from freaking out each time, which I really,
really
wanted to do—I simply pretended they wasn’t there. I
remembered what their faces looked like before they transformed.  And like a paper doll cut out—I inserted it right back on their necks so I wouldn’t have to look at the terrible awful. 
I avoided their energy, their creepy white mask faces, the slippery ghosts that whispered and I just went on with my life. I accepted them as my everyday vision. It was my 
normal
. Which wasn’t normal at all but I endured, just like Maw Sue said.
Before long, I realized I hadn’t seen one—in a while, not weeks. 
Maybe I wasn’t cursed after all.
 
Maybe it was a fluke.
Wee
ks passed, no Dresden sightings at all.  They still came into my dreams at night, as they used to, but that was fine with me, as long as they stayed inside the house, inside me, I didn’t care. 
Until now.
Until they decided to show up at the Clipper Snipper. 

Ms. Wilshire, the blabbermouth crow, transforms right in front of me. 
It was like watching a bird transform into a horrible disfigured creature.  The mere sighting takes me back. 
I am flabbergasted and shocked so bad, the soda in my hand crashes to the floor,
spilling out an orange puddle that turns to blood in my warped vision of the damned.  I can feel the odd glances from Ms. Blanche and she looks concerned.  I can barely breathe. 
Maw Sue
’s words come back. 
The spirit of the Dresden is the child inside the adult, the child who is broken and wounded, separated from the adult spirit who is looking for a way back, a way home, where it belongs. For a Dresden to appear—somet
hing awful had to have happened to the child before the age of maturity. 

I am lost in thought and in between my mind ramblings I hear Ms. Blanche
mumbling.  The crow turned Dresden is talking too.

“I justa love those shoes too. Makes you feets look dainty Ms. W.”

“Oh. Really?” The crow said 
touching her hair and smiling at Ms. Blanche’s words of flattery. 

“Yes. You’re right. It does. Doesn’t it.”
The crow said in reply. 
She mirror primped
and smiled.  All I could see was her sharp fanged teeth.  Puffs of white smoke tendrils spilled in and out of her hollow sockets till I thought I might be pulled in with them.  I locked my hands on the edge of the red bench and hung on for dear life. 
In my vision, she was flour ugly, eye holes, disjointed, Dresden creepy. Then
as if the air went poof—she was back to her former, cruel self. 
I rubbed my eyes to make sure what I seen was what I seen. Sure enough, in no time flat, she was bark
ing orders at her hair dresser and snapping her fingers as if she was the goddamned queen of the curling iron. 
The beauty shop returned to its normal buzz but I was still hedged up in the corner hoping everything I just saw was
a dream and I hadn’t woke up yet.  I tried to pinch myself on the leg so that I would come out of it—but no luck. 
Before I knew it, Ms. Blanche was in front of me, bending down with a towel, wiping up the orange soda I had spilled
. 
She was humming
and she stared deep into my eyes, enough to rattle me to life and out of my daydreaming, nightmare, vision.  I felt all sorts of strange, as if with one glance, she was able to slip inside me and search me out.  It was an invasion that lasted only seconds, then gone.  It made me wonder if I had eye sockets like those Dresden’s, allowing things to creep in where they are not welcome. 
“You sees them too doncha child?” She said without blinking. I froze up. 
Ms. Blanche knows. How does she know? Did she see them too?

Maw Sue said we should
always keep it a secret. 
How would Ms. Blanche know?  Did she see it inside me, grab my thoughts and feelings and pull them out?
  I was shaking senseless with a mirage of wild, impervious thoughts. 
I didn’t know what to say. 
Was it a trick? 
I knew there was other seekers out there, I just
never thought I’d meet one.  It’s one thing to talk about it with Maw Sue, but a whole ‘nother thing to discuss it with strangers.  That was the sort of thing that could get you into trouble.  I was cautious to speak at all.  
I assumed the gifts only affected my direct lineage of family, my ancestral tree sap, not other people. 
I have to ask Maw Sue.  I just don’t remember it all. 
Ms. Blanche grabbed the bench with one hand and the soda bottle with the other. She lifted herself up and sat next to me. The bench squealed from her weight and my skin jumped from the electrical charge she gave off.

“I knows you is young child and its sums scary things, fo
sho.” She said. 
“One day you wilt knows mo about it. Hurt people tend to hurt others, yes they does. They donta knows any better causa you see child—someones hurt them badly
a long time ago.  They are
trapp
ed by those Amodgians.  Can’t find their way back.
”

Her words were similar to what Maw Sue had already told me.  Ms. Blanche paused and looked up, terror stricken.  I looked up as well, but I didn’t see anything that would cause that much palpable fear.  I expected the Amodgians to show up any second, instead an anomaly of
strange wind trickled over my skin and licked me with a fear so powerful I thought my skin would split from my skeleton, slide off and melt on the floor. 
Whatever was happening, Ms. Blanche understood it as much as I did. 
I felt her fat fingers slide over mine, rubbing back and forth. I thought of the red stone around Maw Sue’s neck and how soothing it must feel to her mind
that she has it. 
I wished I had one too.

“You’ll be okay child.”
Ms. Blanche said.  She squeezed my hand similar to how Mag does when she’s scared.
“You are a pugnator. I can see it in you. You’ll do just fine.”

A pug what?
 I couldn’t speak, my tongue was thick and my mind sifted. A tall blonde with clicking heels was walking towards us, and then she turned and stood beside the wash basin, tapping her heels on the floor, tap, tap, tap and staring a hole through Ms. Blanche as if she wasn’t allowed to sit down.

“I need a conditioner and a hot towel on my pores.”
The blonde said hastily. 

“Yess, honey, I’ma comin.” Ms. Blanche said getting up. She let go of my hand and I almost fell over. 
She glanced back at me before she walked away.  I saw her eyes melt
together in milk as if she had no pupils—as if
the darkness behind her eyes swallowed them. 
I felt that eerie pull of energy again—the same feeling I get when I’m around a Dresden.
The next thing I feel is Lena’s hand jerking me up and yanking me out of the shop.  She mumbled something the whole way home, but I didn’t hear a word of it. 
What the heck is a Pugnator I pondered?