WILLODEAN (THE CUPITOR CHRONICLES Book 1) (9 page)

Before I realize it, I am not in my bedroom.  The shadows have taken me inside the house, inside me.  They drag me down the long dreadful hallway I know all too well.  They drop me in front of the fear room.   I can barely look at the door.  It’s made from a thousand hands all tangled together, grabbing, reaching, pulling, pinching, snatching, knocking, turning, twisting.  So many hands, like
a pit of brooding snake heads hissing and biting. In the center of the hand door, a
skeletal hand holds a nameplate.  It spells out my struggles.  FEAR.  The door knob isn’t a door knob, it’s a creepy hand with long slender fingers and nails with sharp points.  The shadows make me reach out, grip the hand and shake, and then turn as if turning a knob but my hand always trembles.  The slender hand always penetrates more fear into me, as if I didn’t have enough already.  The hand releases mine and the door opens.  The shadows shove me in.  It’s different every time I go inside.  Today, t
here is door after door, just a fear room of more
doors.  I sink to the floor. 
A door opens and plays out r
eenactments of my life and forces me to watch.  Then another door, another failed attempt at life, at love, at living.  I don’t want to see it—who I’ve become and why.  I cover my eyes to avoid the sight but
hearing
it through my cursed ears is enough to send me over the edge. 
I close my eyes,
and deny.  Deny, deny.  The
whole time
I feel the hands come out. 
I’m grabbed, groped and pulled w
ith a thousand fingers of shame. 
It is dark under my eyelids, dark inside the house inside me, the house I can never leave. I am rocking forward and back, my body in little clock ticks, waiting for death, waiting to live, waiting for something, or someone, to save me. But all I see is
darkness. Regret. Punishment.
 I scream a thousand screams that no one hears.

“Remember who you are Willodean!” Maw Sue words slip in, penetrating the darkness with an unseen candle of light, a ceremonial ritual just for me. 
I see us both face to face with the dark, the lesser light. 
“Get yourself to
gether. This is not who you are. 
You must fight. You are enough. Believe in yourself. Use the gift.” 

I eat her words and the nourishment stirs something passionate in me, yet at the same time, something dark and disturbing reacts
bitterly towards her. 

But you didn’t fight? You just gave up.  You left me? Why should I fight if you didn’t fight Maw Sue?  Huh?  Tell me why?
The air deadened between us in the darkness underneath my eyelids. 

“Little girl.” Maw Sue said as calm as the night wind. “You don’t know what you’re saying. Some things are not as they seem.
Whether or not it worked out as we planned is not our call.  I have no time for this questioning.  I have but one message for you and I shall finish it and you shall get it before I depart.
Now you buck up and remember who you are, and what I taught you. In time you will understand all things.”

The intensity of her words soaking inside my soul alarmed the Amodgians
. I felt a barrage of chains break and snap. 
Something or some
one was set free to roam wild.  A rebel soul awakened.  A willow tree weeping.  The Amodgians kick into overdrive, whispering interceptions,
while
the hands pick, prod and grope.  I am
losing my mind, or what’s left of it and then my internal dialogue kicks in high gear.
Buck up?
I’m supposed to buck up and use the gift I’m not really sure how to use?  How?  But the shadows will be angry.  She knows what they can do. 
I’m scared. I can’t.
 

Make a move anyway. 
No.
 Move through the torment. 
No. I can’t do it. They will come for me. They always come for me.
 Push pass. Go
to
the pain but not
into
the pain. Don’t let it take you. Feel it and then go forward.
No. No. No.
I can’t. 

My mind goes blank and then I understand why. 
I hear her running through the house, room to room, door to door, the pitter-patter of her bare
feet sounds like distant drums getting closer. 
Was she the one set loose?
Oh no. She is remembering things—and
I am remembering with her. 
No.  No.  Stop it.
 
Our mind intermingles 
as one.  My heart swells with satisfaction.  I
see us happy and sitting in a
mud puddle on a warm summer day.  We envision gifts, crackles, dirt tunnels, mirror bins and promises.  The thoug
ht pulls me from the fear room
and back to my bedroom. 
From fear to joy?
How did that happen?

“Come back.” The shadow says. One after another they return to taunt me until the room is filled with their desperate cries. I plug my ears as best I can and think about the little girl in the puddle, the mud caked on her legs, her arms, the sun on
her face, the joy in her smile. 
I soothe my troubled mind with the visions while the ancient blood of Cupitors surges in
me.  And then I had an
epitome, similar to the one I had on the porch when I took my crackle vows, except this time, I’m a full-fledged adult. The thought was
plum crazy and nothing about it made a lick of sense.  I giggled while my mind entertained it.  

I stared out the window at the leaf crackle
as it spun in the spider web, high up in the wondering tree. 
A huge smile swept across my face, so much it hurt. 

Climb the tree Willodean, climb the tree.
 
A part of me longed for freedom, excavation and light. As far as I could tell—the only thing that stood in my way, right then and there—was a windowsill
. 

Adult Willodean screams —
No Way! Don’t do this. What will people think?

Child Willodean whoops and laughs—
Heck yeah. Let’s do this. Rebel yell!

The next thing I know, I’m causing a ruckus in the neighborhood. In a flash, I’m out the window and up the tree. An air of mischievous
flushes through me.  I remembered the awesome pranks Mag and I played on Maw Sue and how much I used to love life, the silly things, the belly laughs and taking risks because of faith. 
What happened to that girl?
 Halfway up the tree, I slip into a mode of eclectic insanity. I have no idea if I’m a child or an adult, or
both.  I hear
Maw Sue’s laughter
in the heat of the wind as it blows.  I was a sight, still
in my pink pajamas with white coffee cups and spotted Dalmatians. My bizarre behavior set the cups to rattling and provoked the dogs to bark which caused neighbors to come out on porches. I was barefoot with no makeup, dark circles under
my eyes and wild tousled hair. 
The wind pat me on the back and the leaves clapped with applause. Every thought
in my mind was aimed at freedom, as if it was a target to be reached, to be touched, and felt.  Every step unlocked
a chain inside me, inside the house. 

Simply be. Birds of the air, lilies of the field, stars of heaven.  Simply be. 
It was a rebirth and a spirit of childhood longing set free and I’m not even sure how it happened. I stopped midway to brace myself on the branches and could see Mr. Kotter, Horseshack and John smiling up at me. I giggled and mounted upwards. Barefoot and with childlike determination, I climbed. I press through every thought that terrifies me, or makes me doubt. I discard the heart critics, my failed past, the terrible whispers of the shadows that linger in the midst of my afflicted mind. I shut it 
out. I climb for one purpose. 
To reach the crackle. To claim my vow. To live my namesake.

For Willodean Adult Hart, recently divorced, no direction, no purpose, no identity, lost woman—
this was epic.
It was profound not because it was grand or glorious in spectacle but because it was the opposite. I was childlike and acted out the desires of a yearning wild heart, a heart that was long ago disengaged, and deadened for reasons I can’t explain or remember
.  But now I feel a surge of new air, unfamiliar inhalations as
if breathing for the first time. 
I felt alive.
 I can’t remember when I last felt alive. 
It was remarkable. 
I clung to the tree bark and felt the wind bristle against my skin
, uncapping hidden wells of memory like water sprouts. 
Maw Sue used to say something about 
salvation
. It stilled me with the thought and took my breath away
like it did the first time I heard it. 
I held onto the tree as if I was holding on to the memory, scared it would slip from me, without meaning, snatched by the Amodgians and I would forever be lost in the dark, inside the house, damned to the hell I created ins
ide the rooms, behind the doors of my own mind.    

Salvation meant much more than we realize. For Cupitors, words held a form of power, underlying attributes, significant and meaningful, 
life changing and world changing. 
In the ancient language, 
salvation
meant 
room to breathe
. Hearing it the first time, the air was sucked from my drab vessel of bones and cast into the atmosphere of heavens portal and before I could faint, it was rushed back to me, different, not of this earth, abundant, effervescent, fresh and redeeming.
Literally, new breath. 
And right now, on this branc
h it’s happening all over again.  I feel as if I haven’t taken a real breath since childhood.  M
y lungs expanded and my body weightless and ai
ry as if I could take flight and float away. 
For the first time, in a long time, I had room to breathe.
  I inhaled
the crisp redemption
and kept climbing. 
I finally reached the summit of the wondering tree, the precipice of my own soul where I could see the horizon, my past and my present staring back at me. Tears welled in my eyes and streamed down my cheeks. I stared a
t the darkness without a candle.  I stared into the light without shadows.  The
lesser light and the light merged in my vision and I comprehended
my pain in another realm where all things collide and give understanding. 

It was
 
Godlike redemption in a climb, a leaf, a crackle, the wind, birds of the air, and lilies of the field and stars of heaven. Room to find me. Room to simply be. Room to accept. Room to forgive. Room to make lovely my losses. I had room to breathe.
Before my next breath, my next heartbeat, without hesitation, preparation or thought—I plucked the leaf
out of the spider web while the crackle clung to it with its tiny claws. 
I saved the crackle but in a greater sense of things, I saved myself as silly as it s
ounded.  I had been the one stuck inside a tangled web of life.  It was me that needed saving. 
I spin the leaf in my hands and stare into the
transparent crackle. 
Beyond my vision I see the gaping stare of the creeper and his wife, Myrtle. Creeper is sitting on his porch, in his bright orange clam shell
chair.  I feel a stir of trouble in the air reminiscent of my childhood. 
Myrtle is slack jawed and has her hands on her f
ace.  Creeper is like a statue with only his eyes occasionally moving.  I
am overcome with laughter. It was déjà vu, 1970, all over again.
They think I’ve lost my mind. 

I miss the days of reckless youth and entertaining the neighbors and bringing people to their porches. I sighed nostalgically and
began the climb downward.  I pretended to slip a few times to give a good show, what the heck.  Might as well. 
I reached the elbowed arm of the tree next to my window and sat down to inspect the crackle. 
Myrtle goes back inside the house but creeper remains in his claim shell.  For
the first time, the please other people
Willodean 
doesn’t care. 
Don’t care. Don’t care.
 
I almost want to stick my tongue out and make faces but that would be too much like a ten year old.  Instead,
I let my feet dangle
and twirl the leaf in my hand while the crackle hangs on. 
My minds sifts through memories of rowdy rendezvouses with my sister as I take in the nature around me. My senses are in full mode and it’s electrifying. 
So what now?

“Come baaaaack.” A shadows
says. 
His voice is throaty and filled with desperation, threatened by my soul’s peaceful trance. One after another they swarm in like bees to the hive. The wonder of nature is blocked by the other realm of solemn shadows, hovering and slithering. They whisper, “Run. Retreat.” They gargle, hiss and project interceptions into my mind 
of failure.  Of pain. 
A violent wind sweeps in from nowhere swirling and rushing, peeling bark off like paint chips and rattling the tree leaves like clinking chandeliers. In one realm of vision, an orchestra of creation, vibrant and wonderful. Clouds, trees, creatures big and small, the earth more alive than I’ve ever known. And in the other vision, the shadows trying to fight their way back to me.
I must have activated my gift when I listened to my childlike heart.
  Yes.  That is it.  I listened to my true self and in doing so, the enchanted gift gave place to manifest itself. 
The gift I hate. The gift I love. The terrible, tragic splendid gift.
 It is the treasure I’ve ran from, denied, put away,
forsook.
A thought enters my mind but it wasn’t from the shadows. It was the little girl. I can hear her in my mind
as plain as I could hear Maw Sue.