Burden of the Soul

5.

Nearly a week had passed, but words between Dad and I did not. Mostly there was silence in the apartment, but every now and then I could here him crying, gasping for air through each attack of grief. They came on suddenly, and hard. He hadn’t looked at me since that day in the living room when he grabbed me and begged me to explain what had happened, to tell him where Mom had gone.

I was sitting on the floor with my back against the end of my bed, my legs crossed at the ankles and my hands laying limp and dead on my thighs. I was staring at nothing, just staring. I felt outside of time, unaware of it. I could have been sitting like that for a few minutes, or a few hours. The only thing I cared about anymore was staying out of Dad’s way. He hadn’t gone to work since that day, and I hadn’t gone to school.

I didn’t even feel sad anymore. I couldn’t. The guilt had consumed my whole body and moved into my chest, blocking out my heart. I felt nothing.

I could hear him crying somewhere else in the apartment. The muffled sound clawed at my chest and hollowed me out, leaving a deep heaviness in my core. I couldn’t bear to hear it any longer.

I crawled across my bedroom floor and slid into the closet, closing the heavy door behind me. I sank into the darkness, feeling my way to the back. Mom had used the back of my closet to store a lot of her winter clothes, mostly long woolen trench coats that still smelled of her. I pulled one of them up close to me and took a deep breath in through my nose to get whatever traces of vanilla and lavender I could, holding the coat’s edge between my fingers. I let my head lean against the wall hugging me from the right and I closed my eyes.

A draft must have found its way under the closet door because cold air swirled around my face, but it felt good. It almost felt like it used to when Mom would blow on my tears. I took deep breaths of the cool air, pulling it into my chest.

The coolness kept coming, but now from underneath me, as if the floor of my closet was freezing. On the other side of my closed eyes the darkness became thicker, mustier with each breath. That’s when the wool between my fingers grew thinner and thinner until it simply evaporated.

My eyes opened, but nothing was there anymore, only darkness. The winter coat was gone, as was her scent, but the coolness stayed. I pulled my cheek from the wall and could see through the darkness that there was texture to it, not at all like the flatness of my closet wall. I looked down to the floor and saw the same texture.

I wasn’t in my closet any longer.

I shot up onto my feet with my back against this unfamiliar wall and looked out into the room. It was circular and made of gray stones cut to fit like puzzle pieces along the floor and walls. I looked up and saw that the walls faded into darkness, but at the center of what must have been the ceiling was a bright circle of light that fell to the floor at the room’s middle in a cylinder of light the color of sunrise.

Had I fallen asleep? Was I dreaming?

I approached the light, but I was skeptical, so I didn’t dare touch it. It looked different. On that day when the light took Mom, the light had wrapped around my body as if it were looking at me. It had been dense and I wasn’t able to look through it. This light in front of me looked normal, as if natural sunlight was pouring into the room.

I reached my hand out toward its edge, shaking. When it finally broke through into the light’s boundary, I pulled it back quickly expecting it to burn, cut or pull me in. But none of that happened. It felt fine. A little warm compared to the coolness of the stone room.

I went to the walls and traced the perimeter with my hands waiting for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. The stones were cold to the touch and the skin on my arms and face began to feel damp moving through the thick, chilled air. Then suddenly my hand felt a shift from the smooth, rolling texture of stones to grit and roughness that dipped and curved in patterns. My hand searched down and found the slippery knob that perched out by my hip. My eyes warmed up to the darkness and I could finally see the outline of the massive door in front of me. It looked like a solid block of wood carved into the shape of a door.

I tried the handle, but it was locked. I bent down to examine it and saw a single keyhole, but there wasn’t anything for me to turn and unlock the door. I tried the handle again.

I started knocking then. Maybe someone was on the other side of it and would hear me. I knocked again and pressed my ear to the door. Still, no sound seemed to gather itself on the other side. My knocking grew louder and louder the more discouraged I got, but still all I could hear was the thumping of my sore knuckles against the giant door like the beat of a bass drum.

The pain became too much. My fist relaxed and my arm fell to my side, fingers dragging across the door’s carvings on their way down. The patterns looped and curved, intertwined and crisscrossed. It was ivy. Someone had carved strands of ivy with leaves and buds into the wood.

I took a step back and looked at the door. There was no light seeping through underneath or around its edges. I could see now that the ivy swirled around the edges of the door in loops and curves. It was two very long strands of ivy, working their way around the area of the door and then finally circling one another at the door’s center until they intertwined, creating a circle.

I kept taking steps back toward the light. I was trapped.

Besides the hopeless door locked from the wrong side, the only way out was through the ceiling, but it was too high. Even if I could climb the slippery walls, there was no way I could make it up to the top all on my own. I walked to the light again and stepped in slowly at first, testing it with my toes and then a leg, and when nothing seemed to happen, I allowed the whole of my body to walk to the exact center of the room in the center of the light. I looked straight up and out to see if I could see anything.

“Help, please help me.” I cupped my hands around my mouth and shouted as loudly as I could. My throat felt like grit and gravel, still raw. “Please, I’m trapped. Hello?”

Finally, the tears that had stockpiled for days sprang from my eyes. Tears fell down over my eyelids leaping from my chin onto my shirt in scattered droplets as my knees bent and I dropped to the floor.

With my head turned down, the light coming from above faded quickly, and the brisk coldness from the stone seemed to run at me from every direction. A shiver ran up my spine as I sank into complete darkness again, blinking my eyes a few times to double check that they hadn’t fallen shut of their own volition.

I felt woozy like the floor below my tucked legs had melted and I was falling down, but as fast as it had come on I was whirled back up.

The floor below my legs was warm and fuzzy underneath my palms. Warm air and light came back up as if on a dimmer. I blinked a few times to make my eyes focus, and as they did, I could see the outline of my aunt’s head backlit by my bedroom light.

“Clara, it’s okay.” She was wiping away the tears by dragging her curled fingers down my jaw line, and then sweeping her thumb up across my cheek under my eye.

I couldn’t bring myself to say anything at first. I turned and looked at the wall behind me, felt it with my hands. It was flat and smooth. I was so confused.

I stood looking at the wall of my closet trying to piece together what had just happened, while my aunt continued talking, but not to me. Her voice was muffled and aimed behind her.

“She must have fallen asleep in here,” she said.

“So it seems.” There was a man in my bedroom. His voice was flat and sounded bored. I turned to look at him standing a few feet outside of the closet with his hands on his hips. He was younger than Dad, but older than Aunt Grace by a couple years at least. Strands of his dark brown hair hung down near his eyes and rested on the thin rims of his rectangular glasses.

I looked him in the eye a little longer than what may have been comfortable for him, but there was something to be found there. Some sort of hostility lingered just under the surface, and distrust flavored his tone. I felt it in my gut—resentment.

“Here, hon. Let me help,” she said, putting her hands gently under my arms and guiding me up onto my feet. She stood next to me with her arm around my back, her hand resting on my shoulder. I could feel the key wrapped around her wrist bounce off the back of my arm. It used to do that when Mom would put her arm around me. The feeling was familiar, and so foreign at the same time.

“It’s okay, Clara. This is a friend of mine, and your mom’s. He’s here to help.”

The man took a few steps back as Aunt Grace led me out of the closet, closing the door behind us.

He leaned in a bit looking me in the eye, tilting his head. I felt like I was being examined. I took a step back into Aunt Grace’s side and he got the message. With a deep breath in and out he dropped his arms to his sides and softened his eyes.

“Clara, do you remember me?” His eyes were a bright green like velvet with spikes of dark brown shooting outward from their dark centers.

I didn’t respond.

“I guess not.” He raised his chin upwards toward my aunt. “Probably for the best, although disappointing.”

He gave up on me and raised his hand to his rough chin, dragging his fingers down across his jaw. I could hear the slight crackle with every pass of his hand. Someone forgot to shave that morning, or adopted minimal facial hair as part of his personal style.

Something on his arm caught my eye, at first just a spec but as his hand twisted over his chin up the side of his face, I could see it—a barcode tattoo, seemingly identical to Aunt Grace’s and Mom’s. I watched it with extreme focus until his arm stopped suddenly and slowly swung around behind his back. I looked up and saw that he had been watching me watch his arm.

“I guess that means she doesn’t remember much at all, right?”

His tone and the look on his face were crudely disappointed, as if I had somehow let him down in a significant way simply by not recognizing him.

“She’s not of age yet, Brik,” she said. “She only just turned sixteen.”

He turned and looked straight at me. Something about his gaze made me stand straighter and stare right back at him, a tension building as if we were in the middle of a staring contest and I needed to win. He answered her with a smile never once pealing his eyes away from our match.

“Yes, well… I’m sure you understand how that’s easy to forget, Grace.”

The pulling at the back of my eyes got harder and then finally he nodded his head softly and said, “Happy belated birthday, Clara,” before heading out into the hallway.

I turned up to Aunt Grace who looked down on me with an apologetic smile. “He’s really not all bad, I promise,” she said.

As she moved toward the door, I felt the words climbing up through my throat. I wanted to tell her about the room. I felt as if I should tell her about it, like I was withholding information from her if I didn’t, but maybe it was just a dream. Maybe I had fallen asleep just like she said.

But everything had felt so real.

“Clara?” Her head tilted just a little bit to see if from a different angle. She was trying to make sense of the confused look I must have had, but the effort was interrupted.

Brik’s head popped back into the doorway with his eyebrows peeking over his glasses.

“Are we going to do this or what?”

The impulse to slam the door shut right on his head was vivid—lucky enough for him the image of it was just enough to satisfy that need.

Dad was waiting for us in the kitchen on the other side of the counter, leaning against the back of the sofa that faced the family room area in the wide, open space. His eyes looked red and his face looked as if grief had aged him years within the past few days. His eyes never met mine as I crossed under the archway behind Aunt Grace. Brik took to the refrigerator immediately and began shuffling through it as if he owned the place. Then he opened an old 2-liter of soda, took a swig and scrunched his nose.

“Ugh, it’s flat.”

My eyes went wide with amazement. I looked to Dad and Grace, sure one of them would say something to put this stranger in his place, but neither did. Grace watched him with patience. Dad stared off at the wall behind me.

“Jackpot,” he said.

Aunt Grace and I sat in the same stools we had when we were watching Mom make pancakes. Dad stayed against the couch off to the side. All three of us silently watched Brik finish.

“This stuff is the best,” he said, pulling out the nearly empty carton of Sunny Delight and putting it on the counter. He turned back into the fridge and surfaced again with the jug of cranberry juice stored in the door’s side compartment.

He opened both containers and started pouring cranberry juice into the other, the bright red disappearing into the middle of the thick orange and finally bleeding up from the bottom creating a rose color.

“Brik, so what is it?” Aunt Grace was leaning with her elbows on the marble. She must have already filled him in on what had happened. I was on strict orders not to tell anyone, and was even told by Aunt Grace that if ever asked I should answer that Mom had just left. No note. No warning. She just left Dad and I.

The thought of actually saying that made bile rise in my throat. I tried to negotiate with Aunt Grace for a different story. A vacation. A family emergency. An alien abduction, which honestly was the closest we could come to the truth. But Aunt Grace stressed we couldn’t give a story that would raise more questions.

“We can’t tell anyone she’s dead because we’re going to do everything in our power to find her and bring her back,” she said. “Telling them she left… well, people won’t really know how to respond to that. They won’t push you for answers.”

She used the story when excusing me from school and when turning people away as they arrived for the birthday party. She calmly went into crisis cleanup mode shortly after her fight with Dad and filled me in on the need-to-know details, repeatedly emphasizing the importance of me sticking to the story no matter what. Not that it mattered right now. I hadn’t been going to school or talking to anyone. Alli had tried calling a few times each day, always getting voicemail.

I hadn’t listened to the messages, but I knew she was worried. But even that didn’t matter yet. The fact I was falling behind in all of my classes didn’t matter. None of it mattered to me. My thoughts were still in a protective lock down and any emotional depth I had once had to care about anything was gone.

“We’re not really sure yet, but I’ve got everyone I can spare either looking for her or trying to find out how this could have happened,” said Brik, his voice suggesting actual grief for the first time. He turned to Grace and held her eyes for a moment. His face softened and voice lowered. “You know there was no way to see this coming. If there had been, I would have… we would have been here.”

She looked down at her open palms with a nod. I watched as her nostrils flared once, twice, and she seemingly bit down on the inside of her lip. I had only ever seen her cry once and it was over ten years ago. And even then I only caught a glimpse of it, hiding behind the wall looking out into the living room. She was on the couch gasping and crying while Mom rocked her back and forth, wrapping her in her arms.

She had always been the strong one for all of us.

Dad dropped his head down and started rubbing his hairline with one hand, pulling his fingers inward from his temples on either side to a single point in the middle of his forehead while taking a deep breath in.

“This is ridiculous,” he said. “Where is my wife?”

“There’s no way to tell yet,” said Brik. “Claire had mentioned a number of times over the past few months that she felt like something was wrong—that something was drawing closer to…” he flipped his pointer finger up toward me and let it drop. “… you know. I’m sorry, I should have looked into it more then. But we’ve been focusing all of our assets on the Reservoir and security here in the city. We thought we had it covered, that nothing could get in from the outside, which it couldn’t… it can’t. But whatever this was came from inside. We weren’t prepared for that. For all we know, this light could be a new weapon, some sort of violent concoction of Rex’s to do his bidding over a distance since we aren’t allowing him or any of his people close to Clara.”

“Brik?” Aunt Grace’s patience was being tested now.

“I don’t know what to tell you, Grace. It’s not the first time we’ve been surprised.” His finger flipped up toward me again, and I started to get annoyed at the silent conversation happening right in front of me.

“There are only two places any of us can ever be… as far as we know, and that’s here or the Other Side. She’s not here, and I’m telling you she hasn’t shown up on the Other Side either. So… surprise. I guess there’s a third option we didn’t know about.”

My eyes bounced back and forth between them. I had no idea what they were talking about. I remembered the Reservoir, my birthday and our walk up the path to the iron fence. I remembered the look on Aunt Grace’s face when Mom mentioned she was taking me through the park. I remembered Mom’s mournful expression as she looked out over the Reservoir through the bars. The memories and the silent conversation happening just then seemed to connect, but how they connected was unclear.

Dad shifted his weight and bit at the question he was about to ask.

“Is she…,” His lips quivered, unwilling to say the next word. Brik spoke quickly and firmly sparing Dad the torture of such a word hanging on his tongue.

“No, she’s not destroyed.” Even Brik had visible difficulty saying the word. “Even that leaves a mark of its own.”

I saw Grace’s eyes flicker to Brik, but he avoided her gaze. He continued quickly setting his intent on Dad, staying clear of Grace.

“There’s literally no trace of her, which is good news.”

“How could that possibly be good news?” Dad was growing angrier as his desperation rose.

Brik walked to him, resting a hand on Dad’s shoulder.

“Chris, it means there’s still a chance we can find her.”

“How is this even possible?” Aunt Grace’s voice was raised and shaky, her open palm falling onto the island’s surface with a smack.

“Evolution? Adaptation? Interference?” he said. “We’ll find out.”

He adjusted his glasses with one hand and turned his compassionate gaze on her. Grace’s well-maintained grief had completely fallen out of check then, and he adjusted his tone and body language to it.

“Gracie, all we can do is wait to be shown the next step.” He motioned toward me at that last part, and both Dad and Grace turned to look at me.

“You’re really getting on my nerves with that,” I said with a snarl under my breath, keeping my eyes locked on his.

He stared back for a moment and then disengaged, returning his attention to Grace.

“If it was after Clara directly, it would have taken her. Our concern is keeping Clara safe and that is our only concern. Claire knew that.”

He turned back to Dad. “I am sorry. I wish I could tell you she showed up. I can promise you we’re looking. We’ve got as many people as we can spare on this, on both sides. For now, the best thing to do is wait.”

I sat there listening, a ball of guilt growing larger in my chest, pushing at my ribs. None of what he was saying made sense to me other than this had been my fault in one way or another.

“I wish it had been me,” I said, my voice so soft I barely knew I had said it aloud.

All three turned on me quickly, Brik the most severely, the green of his eyes sharp enough to cut though his eyeglasses.

“Do not ever say that,” he said, glaring at me with such force, I could feel it at the root of my spine. “Do not even think that. If you give up, Clara, you let them win.” He approached me on the side of the counter as he said it until finally he came up right next to me. “If you give up, we’re all lost.”

The anger came quickly, barreling through the guilt in my chest and breaking through any manners my Mom and Dad had ever taught me. The heavy tone burned the inside of my mouth, and the words came quickly. “What are you talking about? Who will win? What do I even have to do with any of this?”

My chest rose and fell with each heavy breath I took in to calm the beast back down. Brik bent at the waist until his eyes were level with mine, the green taking on a softer tint now with the specs of brown throwing drops of light back against his glasses. I could feel his hand cover mine on the marble counter top. It was soothing, which I hated. But immediately the anger that had just broken free crawled back into me and was gone.

“Everything, Clara. You have everything to do with this.” He turned my hand in his, and allowed his other hand to cover it completely, palm to palm.

“You’re the oldest soul,” he said, tightening his grip for a moment, but then it melted. His hand slipped away from mine with a shrug. “Well… half of it, at least.”

Green, rolling hills lay out before me like an ocean. A breeze caught my long brown hair, brushing it off my shoulder as I walked into the grassy waves toward a spec of light in the distance gradually becoming bigger. The light grew larger. I could make out the sandy blonde hair, the body beneath it and the swinging of legs as his pace quickened.

My breath caught in my chest, expanding my heart and sending a flood of warmth through my body. I took off at a sprint, wanting so badly to see the face, the eyes.

The grass was cool and moist under my bare feet with each stride, carrying me along to this person who felt so familiar, but I could not recognize. The faster I ran, the more in focus his body became. Then I could hear it, his voice, carried on the wind pulling us together. “Clara!”

“I’m here,” was all I could spare the breath to say. “Just wait!”

The voice continued, a scream diluted by the space between us into a frantic whisper. “Clara! Clara!”

The figure stopped and stood with his hands at his sides and his head lowered, blocking his face from view. “It’s hopeless.”

His whispered resignation whipped around my head on a breeze.

“No! I’m so close, keep going,” I yelled as I pushed at my legs to move faster.

“Clara! Clara!” The voice continued in a deeper tone as the boy’s figure dropped to the ground. As his knees touched the ground, the bright green surrounding his figure turned to brown and spread out like a sickness from the spot where he had fallen until finally encompassing the large tree back on the horizon. The tree’s green leaves dried to the color of thirsty soil and began to fall as the sickness spread upwards. A deep black traveled up the tree’s core from the roots to the branches dissolving the bark to gray ash that blew away with the leaves until finally the entire tree had been consumed and vanished.

Still the transformation from life to ash spread in all directions.

Tall, green blades of grass standing upright and swaying back and forth went rigid before snapping and crumbling. Life was being sucked out of the land as death spread, and the boy, with his golden hair catching the light as it swayed in the wind, was at the center.

I felt the scream before I recognized the voice as my own, my arms pumping and pulling at the air.

And then the voice came once again, but this time deeper. “Clara, wake up.”

It was my father’s voice pulling me away from the ghastly scene. I blinked my eyes a few times and could feel the bristle of my comforter against my chin and his hand on my shoulder jostling me awake. “Clara, come on. Wake up. We need to get going,” he said, getting up from my bed and heading into my closet.

I rubbed my eyes and took in a huge breath. The faint smell of Tide filled my nose, a scent leftover from a week ago when Mom last washed my sheets. I had pulled as much of that smell as I could each night before I went to bed since then.

“Where are we going, Dad?” He was in my closet now pulling bits of my clothes off hooks at random—a couple shirts, some pants, a coat—and throwing them out onto the floor. He pulled a duffle bag down from the shelf and brought it out to the foot of my bed.

“We’re leaving,” he said, pulling the pile of clothes and dumping it into the bag. He still never looked me in the eye, but this was the first he had spoken to me in days.

I slid to the edge of my bed and watched him work. He was animated again, there was a light back in his face as he attempted to fold a tank top then a dress and place them into the bag.

“But why?”

“We can’t stay here anymore. You’re not going to be able to take much, so only pack the things you’ll need, and remember to grab some things from the bathroom like your toothbrush and…”

“But Dad, why do we have to…”

“Clara because I HAVE to.” He froze as he barked his response, hovering over the cluttered duffle bag. “I can’t stay here, Clara. I just can’t.” He never once looked at me. He just paused for a moment and then stood up, and turned to leave the room. “We’re leaving in twenty minutes.”

I snapped into the task trying not to think about it. I pulled clothes out of the dresser and from the closet and tried to ignore the memory of Mom picking clothes up off my floor a week ago. I looked around the room for more, but there was no time. So much was going to be left. All of these things that had surrounded me each day for as long as I could remember, this home in which I had spent every day of my life… the only life I had with Mom, was all being abandoned.

Then I remembered the book. Mom’s copy of Alice in Wonderland. I couldn’t leave it. I had to take that with me. I took off down the hall and passed through the foyer and turned into the living room crossing into the study, or Dad’s office whenever he chose to work from home. I could see Dad fussing with drawers in the kitchen out of the corner of my eye.

“Clara, we’re leaving in five minutes,” he said without turning his head from the drawers of papers and opened mail.

“I’m just looking for something,” I said, beginning to run my fingers across the mosaic of book spines against the far wall. Bindings of every color, fabric and texture I could ever imagine were packed tightly into the bookcase.

My fingers rolled over each book quickly as my eyes scanned for the little red binding with the worn gold filigree. Time was ticking.

“Clara… two minutes, and I mean it,” Dad called out from the foyer. I could hear the clank of a single suitcase being dropped to the floor.

I thought about asking Dad if he knew where Mom had kept the book, but he had gone a full day now without breaking out in tears as far as I knew. I didn’t want to bring something up about Mom that might upset him. On his desk was the framed photograph of them on their wedding day. Tucked into the frame outside the glass was a crinkled photo of the two of them young and in love, laughing and hugging. In the opposite corner was another photograph tucked into the frame’s edge.

Through its faded and worn colors I could make out Mom in a hospital gown holding me with Dad leaning next to her on the bed, his arm wrapped around her shoulders and a big smile on his face. He referred to it as our first family portrait.

This collection of memories was being left intentionally. It seemed a lot of items around the study that could remind him of Mom were being left. I didn’t want him to know what I was looking for because maybe he would make me leave without it. It was clear we weren’t just abandoning our home—we were abandoning her memory.

Without thinking, I grabbed the two loose snapshots out of the frame’s edges and slid them into my back pocket.

As I left the study and headed out into the living room toward the foyer I concentrated on staying calm, making each of my movements seem casual, hiding the frenzy beating away at my heart.

“Clara, what are you doing? We don’t have time for this.”

“I’m just looking for something. I’ll be done in a minute.” At least I hoped I would be. I headed through the foyer toward the opposite hallway leading to the bedroom they shared. Dad hadn’t slept in the room every since my birthday, opting for a makeshift bed on the family room sofa instead.

I picked up my pace a bit once I was behind the wall of the hallway and blocked from his view. From the door I shot straight to the dresser, pulling open drawers and burrowing through the piles of her folded clothes, all neatly stacked and still smelling of her. I made my way down but found nothing. I turned and scanned the room trying to think of where else she may have hidden something.

“Clara!”

“IN A MINUTE!”

I ran to her side of the large bed and pulled out the drawers of her nightstand, lifting up books and papers, magazines and crossword puzzles, the collection of my mother’s nightly activities. Then, there at the bottom I could see a flash of dull red and felt the grainy texture against my fingertips. I had found it. I pulled it out and saw the faded gold letters, then took the two photographs out of my back pocket and tucked them inside the cover.

Through the hallway I could see Dad standing in the foyer wearing his jacket now flanked by his suitcase and my duffle bag he must have grabbed. My jacket was in his hands, pulled from the coat stand next to the door.

“I’m ready now,” I said.