WILLODEAN (THE CUPITOR CHRONICLES Book 1) (76 page)

When I came to myself, an old woma
n was standing a few feet away and startled me by her presence. 
She looked to be older than Moses, a black woman with silver gray hair, deep set wrinkles and dark eyes. I thought she might have been the caretaker coming to throw me out of the cemetery but then I saw the box in her hand.

I gasped. My stomach lurched. The house inside ruptured.
No. No way. It can’t be. You’re seeing things Willodean.
 
It can’t be her.
  The box glowed majestic prisms.  It made
her look like those Virgin Mary statues I see in dollar stores where Mary’s head is a circle of rainbows and halo’s. I was positive she was a vision of my imagination until she spoke.

“Hello Willodean.” She said in a raspy voice. “I’ve been waiting a long, long time to give you this.” I recognized her voice with marvel and trepidation.
I would know that voice anywhere.  In Ms. Blanche’s
hands was my salvation, the childhood keepsake of my destiny, my beloved mirror bin. She flipped the box on its side where I could see the mirror facing me. She walked closer. My heart leapt. My heels sunk further in the ground as if the abyss was going to swallow me. I could feel the blood surging from the stone
that was still inside the box where I put it ages ago.  It sent a
river of wax blood through the house, in the hallways,
flowing down the staircases and coating everything it touched with a waxy coating, as it did to the mirror bin the night it sealed it shut. 
I pressed my free arm t
owards her to make her go away, back up, leave me alone. 
She kept walking. 
It’s a vision. Go Away. Go Away Ms. Blanche.

“This is why I am here Willodean.” She said. 

No. No. Go Away.
 I was immobilized, frantic.
Blank spaces, mind lapses. Terror.

“I made a promise to your grandmother and I plan on keeping it.” Her eyes were full of mystery and mayhem. I flashed back to childhood. In the driveway with Maw Sue and Ms. Blanche, their strange words, the way they looked at me. 
Secrets.
 

Ms. Blanche was two feet from me now, enough for the mirror lid to come into full view. The reflection in it moved when I moved, it
blinked when I blinked, it talked when I talked, it did everything I did.  A shiver tapped on every disk of my spine until it reached my neck and wrapped its unsteady fingers around it.  And then I saw my expression in the mirror transform into the horror of my childhood. 
The flour girl with hollow sockets and white paste face looked through me, beyond me, for me, in me, and of me, while a thousand shadows slipped in and out of the empty spaces of the hollow eye sockets into the house, inside her.
The house inside me. 

I see myself in the mirror bin of truth. I see myself for who I am, and what I had become. I am the reflection in the mirror bin,
I am a Dresden.  Why had I not seen this before? 
Denial. Pink elephants. Secrets.
 Maw Sue's haunting words drift inside my gifted-cursed ears, “The awful, terrible, splendid gift always lives up to its namesake, one way or another.”

EPILOGUE

The phone rang before I had my morning cup of coffee.  I answered it reluctantly in a sleep fog.  “Hey.” Dad said.  “Everybody is meeting at Papa Hart’s in a bit.  We gon’ clean up the place, do some sorting.  You should come.” My heart inflamed immediately.  I wanted to slam down the phone but not before screaming, “He is not here!  He is not here.  Straight up!”  Instead, I said okay with a faint expectancy that I’d walk into the door and see him sitting in his favorite chair or on the front porch swing.  But no…never again.  No matter how much I tell my head he is not here, my heart refuses to believe it. 

“We are just gonna wrap up some loose ends. Get it done.” He said. “Be there at 10:30.”  And he hung up.  Wrapping up loose ends is just another way of saying we’re going to divvy up all your stuff, divide your belongings, separate your china, split the union, slice hearts, drain blood.  Okay, probably not as morbid as that, but close.  For me it’s comparable to digging up his grave. 

I pull into the driveway at 10:45.  The crunching rocks underneath Annie’s tires feels like my heart being run over.  Before I get out of the car, I hear a slight humming in the back seat.  I turn and give it a glance but not for long.  The sight and sounds add to my suffering and I’m not sure how much more I can take.  The mirror bin and the green scarf sit exactly where I left them after Ms. Blanche scared the pants off me at the cemetery.  I didn’t even touch them, I made Ms. Blanche put them inside the car.  Just the thought of touching that scarf that belonged to Aunt Raven gives me the creeps and there is no telling what’s inside the mirror bin.  I fear the unknown and right now I can’t face it.  As much as I grown over the past year, it seems I get to another level of my life and there is an obstacle waiting for me, a hurdle to leap over and I don’t have the strength.  That day at the cemetery I let go of a lot of things I didn’t understand.  I went to the light, felt the gaze of God touch my skin, and heal me, probably for the first time, and only because I let him heal me, I let go and accepted his grace, his mercy, his forgiveness when all the other times I refused and ran.  I’m listening to the President more and more now, I’m moving forward in my life, accepting the daily struggles as a gift to learn, to grow, to endure, a river to cross over.  I’m learning how to enjoy my singleness.  I use my alone time to better myself, to grow.  Because I’ve discovered that I’m never really alone.  
Three lines, twelve words.
  I mean, if I’ve done all this and more, than surely I can take the next step in my life, come what may. 

But the more I stare at the mirror bin and the creepy green scarf the more fear bounds me up in a new strangulation I’ve not encountered before.  Both sit in the back seat, untouched.  I can’t bear to open it, touch it, feel it, and can barely look at it.  I fear I’ll turn into a wreck, relapse into a crazy psychotic episode that I’ll never recover from.  I fear what’s inside the mirror bin and my conversation with Ms. Blanche that day at the cemetery comes back to haunt me. 

The second I saw myself in the mirror bin reflection as a horrible Dresden of my own nightmares, I collapsed and hit the dirt.  The next thing I know, I see the blue sky spinning and a puffy black face with dark eyes over me, fretting and worried, rubbing her fat fingers on my forehead and saying, “Ms. Willodean.  Wake up now, wake up.” 

Oh.  I woke up alright.  All I could think about was the vision of myself as a Dresden.  I sat straight up, screaming and nearly knocked her over. 

“Calm down Ms. Willodean.” She said.  I was wild eyed and frantic. 
Overload.
 

“Why are you here?” I said yelling. “How, how did you get my mirror bin?  I’m…I’m…I’m a Dresden.”  I screamed loud and violent realizing the intensity of the vision once again.  My hands frantically rubbed my cheeks for white paste and I checked my eyes to make sure they were there and not hollow sockets of horror.   

“Lawd Willodean.  Calm yoself down.  I wilz explain it all, but you gotsa settelz down.” 

Ms. Blanche rolled from her knees to her cushioned rear end on the grass and propped her elbows on the metal chair in the front row underneath the tent awning.  She looked exhausted.  I leaned against Papa Hart’s casket for strength still wobbly from the reflective image of myself.  I mean, she could have warned me or something first, but on second thought, I don’t think it would have mattered much. 

“Willodean.  I wantsa you listen to me reals good now. Thiza a long story and I shalz try to explains it as bests as I knowz. But you gon’ havtah quit screaming.” 

I reluctantly agree but I didn’t really have a choice.  We sat in the cemetery for an hour, her talking and me listening, reacting, crying, and screaming.
I am a reactor.  I overreact.
   I about drove her crazy as she talked but she knew it was time for me to know the truth.  She’d heard about my troubles and suspected it was the curse and having the connections she does, to the gift and all, she felt it best to act while she was still alive. 

The story she told me has greatly affected me for better and for worse.  I don’t know what to do with all the information I learned.  So I’m afraid it’s just sitting in my mind, still trying to digest and absorb and make some sense.  My first thought was how in the world did she get my mirror bin?  Even I didn’t know where it went after Maw Sue died.  Come to find out, Maw Sue and Ms. Blanche planned it that way.  Well, not entirely.  They hadn’t planned on the stone coming up missing.  Maw Sue thought she had just misplaced it, but weeks after it didn’t show up, they had no choice but to revise their plans.  Of course, they didn’t realize I had stolen it, until it was far too late to change things.  The red stone necklace had a viable place in their mystical union of sacrifices and they were going to offer it up as a replacement to atone for the sins of the betrayal years ago.  It was going to be used as a replacement for me, the chosen sacrifice, who happened to be born at the forbidden time.  This was the reason for my birth at 3:33.  No one but the chosen sacrifice can enter into the realm, and I was that sacrifice.  It explains the reason I felt the Amodgian Shadows presence so strongly in my childhood all the time, so close, pricking and prodding and hunting and observing me at every turn, always trying to take me out, ahead of time.  They were hungry for me, they wanted me and they couldn’t wait to have me.  No one planned it that way, and Maw Sue didn’t even find out, until her and Ms. Blanche put their heads together and figured it out.  They relentlessly did research into the old ancients scrolls, and read the Cupitor chronicles until they came to the conclusion.  It was the only shot they had.  I’m not sure if I feel less guilt or more guilt, now that I know the truth.  Since the very beginning, even when she grew tired and went half-crazy doing it, Maw Sue was searching for answers.  What they discovered was baffling.

I was born at the forbidden time of 3:33 and on all Saint’s day or Halloween as they call it now, which is a triple threat.  I mean, I’ve heard the birth story a million times over.  But I never heard this rest of it.  Somehow or another, Ms. Blanche and Maw Sue go way back to a circle of five gifted women long ago.  Five women formed a tribe, as their mother’s did before them, and their mother’s, all the way back to who knows when, generations and generations ago.  They were the seekers, the Cupitor’s and each had a special gift to share with the world.  These women were craftsmen of their trades, Sages with knowledge of herbs and medicinal treatments, metal smiths of fine jewelry and iron works, great minds with empathy and mercy gifts, and the gift of touch for healing, others with the gift of sight and knowledge of the future, and many more.  These women knew that a unification of their strengths together as one, drove the powers of the Amodgian Shadows away so they formed a pact.  They did it on all Saint’s day, October 31
^st
, and most importantly at the realm of three’s, the intersection of time when both worlds collide, and the veil is the thinnest, and darkness is the darkest.
It is then they joined hands and merged together to combine their gifts.  They held hands in a circle, underneath a full moon and bound the sacrifice of their lives together in forces to protect the remaining generations and the gifts so important to civilization because without seekers the world would fall asleep in a sleeper trance, unfulfilled and lifeless. The mirror bin wrought and built ages ago, sat in the middle of the circle, its pewter surface reflecting the moon in the night sky as it shone its pristine beams in a prism off each woman’s face as to give its approval.  During the ceremony, each woman sacrificed a gift beloved to their heart as a seal of their commitment to the unity of the tribe and to the namesake that each of them was to pass down.  It would make a full circle that could not be broken.   The gift requirement had to be painful to give up or it would be useless as a sacrifice.    It had to be a beloved attachment, a gift so precious to the women, that to give it up would be a sacrifice of soul, a sword to the heart.  Each woman gave the gift in secret.  They put it inside a burlap bag and placed each one inside the mirror bin.  Unbeknown to the other women, a traitor was among them.  While the others gave their most precious gifts, one gave an object that wasn’t hers to give.  She was a traitor in the midst of seekers.  The red stone necklace she offered was not hers to give.  It had been stolen and a curse was upon it.  When this error was revealed, it caused a wedge in the union of the Cupitor’s and caused a great division amongst them and a great rift ensued.  The traitor was thrown out of the tribe and banned from returning.  The woman infuriated at her exile vowed to make them pay, so she placed a curse upon the tribe.  The Dresden curse.  And ever since, the Amodgian’s have full access to hunt and prey upon women in particular, in attempts to steal their identity, their precious namesake so they will never fulfill their created purpose as a Cupitor.  The tribe has been fighting the curse ever since.  There are millions of Dresden women out in the world today, lost without identity.  When I was born, Maw Sue noticed a change.  No Cupitor had ever been born at 3:33 during the forbidden time.  She could find no information in the old scrolls, so Maw Sue was at a loss as to what would happen in my life and how she could even help me.  Ms. Blanche said she decided to make a commitment.  She had never been able to fulfill the gift in herself due to the curse but when I was born she felt as if she had a second chance to make things right so that my life wouldn’t be as messed up as hers had been, or all the women before her that had fell victim to its curse.