Winged (Aetharian Narratives) (12 page)

“Emmeline, it is time,” a new voice said behind me.

I turned around and looked into a new pair of blue eyes. They weren’t like Viper’s; his were like icebergs. His mom and dad had the same color eyes that Viper did. These eyes weren’t like Mom’s eyes, either; hers were like a blue sky on a clear day. These eyes, though equally beautiful, were the blue of the deepest part of the ocean: deep pools of pure blue with flecks of green. No matter how hard I tried I couldn’t see any other aspect of the face but the eyes that were looking at me. Though I didn’t know who owned them, they looked familiar.

The owner put his hands on my shoulder and turned me around to face the crowd again. I didn’t want to look away; I wanted to keep looking at the eyes of the person behind me. He let go of my shoulders and the crowd fell silent.

Before I could turn around to ask him what was going on, he spoke again.

“Fly, my Dragonfly.”

I felt the slight pressure of his hands on my back for a brief moment before he pushed. Everything was quiet and I tipped over the small area of the balcony that didn’t have the railing. The ground came closer and closer to me, cold wind running over my body. I wanted to scream out for someone to save me, but I couldn’t. Then I felt sharp exploding pains in my back. I closed my eyes, blinded with pain, until…

There was a loud smashing noise. I opened my eyes and pain shot all over the front of my body. I found myself with my face flat against the hardwood floor of my room. I jumped up and ran to my closet. I opened the door, turned, and lifted my shirt to look at my back in the mirror; the lumps on my back were inflamed. I stretched my back to make the pain go away but they continued to pound. I went back to my bed and picked up the covers that had fallen to the floor with me.

The dream was one of the strangest dreams I’d ever had. I flicked the blankets over the bed. Something fluttered out of them and caught my eye. I watched as what looked like a piece of tissue paper floated down to the floor. I stretched out my hands to let it fall into my palms instead. I looked at it but couldn’t see it well in the darkness. I put it on my nightstand and got back into bed, letting myself drift back to sleep in the two a.m. glow of my alarm clock.

* * *

When I woke again my clock had changed from two a.m. to ten a.m. “Oh God, I’m late,” I said, jumping out of bed and running out the door.

Mom was in her room ironing a blouse and watching the morning news. “Good morning, Emma,” she said when she saw me. She picked up the remote and turned off the TV. I was surprised to find that she was even less dressed for the day than I was.

“No school today?” I said.

I would have thought that she’d be alarmed by the number of missed school days I was racking up.

“Nope, you and I have something else to do today,” she said, sliding her blouse off the ironing board and laying it on her bed. She smoothed it out and turned back to me. “Corinne and Arian will be here in a little while. There’s someone we need to pay a visit to today.”

“Okay…” I said. “I suppose I’ll go get dressed then.”

I walked back to my room and closed the door. I took a shower then retrieved a pair of blue jeans and a black turtleneck from my closet. After changing I went to the mirror to brush my hair. I moved the brush to my head to start brushing when the object on my nightstand caught my attention.

I had forgotten about the discovery I’d made in the early morning hours. The memory of finding it had melded into the strange dream I was having trouble recalling, so I wasn’t even sure it had really occurred. I picked up the paper. It was green and very lightweight. If I found it at all possible, I would have said it was made out of air. All I knew was that it definitely wasn’t made out of paper like I had thought previously. It looked like there were small veins running through it. Almost like it was a flake of dry, green skin.

“Emma, they’re here. Are you ready to go?” Mom shouted down the hall.

“Yes,” I said, putting the paper into the pocket of the jacket hanging on the back of my door.

I stepped outside and Mom locked the door behind us. The Amests were waiting in their van for us.

“Hi, Emma,” said Mrs. Amest when we got into the car.

“Hello, Mrs. Amest. Good morning, Mr. Amest,” I said. I tried to hide that I was confused about why they were there.

“Morning, ladies,” Mr. Amest said, peering through the rearview mirror. “Are you guys ready to go?”

“Yes, we are,” Mom said.

She smiled at me.

“Okay,” he said.

He backed the van out of the driveway and into the street in front of our house. It looked like we were driving to the lake. I started to think that maybe they wanted me to reenact what had happened the other night so they could better figure out the situation, but then we turned down Celestial Court. Celestial Court led to two places and two places alone. We turned left on the street, which was the only other clue I needed to know exactly where we were going.

The way we were headed was heavily wooded. At that time of year it didn’t look as nice as it did when the trees are green and flowering. When turning down the side of Celestial Court we were headed down, we would reach a dead end in a little over a third of a mile. The street ended at the gates of a mansion that no one had lived in for a very long time. Of course, it was thought to be haunted.

From the outside it truly did appear to be haunted, though I was always doubtful as to whether it really was. It was old, three stories high with gargoyles at the top, and had a tall brick fence enclosing it. No one had ever seen anyone go into or come out of it. I figured it was abandoned. Kids always tried to get inside the house on dares, but to my knowledge, no one had ever gotten over the fence. I didn’t know if it was nerves or something else that had kept them from getting into the yard. I also never understood why they didn’t tear down the eyesore. I’d been fascinated with it when I was younger and had researched it in record books at the library. The house had been owned by the same family name for the past two hundred years: C. Riley.

I watched the bare trees pass by my window. I tried not to let all the questions in my head come spewing out of my mouth. I knew everything would be explained soon enough. I just had to be patient.

We drove up to the brick wall that enclosed the mansion and stopped. I got out of the van and stared at the wall. It seemed to stretch forever into the sky above us. There was a singular, rusted number “1” placed in an indenture in the bricks. The rotting number had been beautifully ornate and golden. I could see the remnants of a once lovely red brick wall and gold-painted gate that had welcomed visitors to a beautiful house. The road we traveled ended at a very large and now unwelcoming iron gate—a gate that shunned any visitors that had the nerve to approach. The ivy that entwined the bars hid the opening to the gate and proved that visitors had long forgotten the house and whatever happened to remain inside of it.

Mr. Amest turned to look at Mom and me.

“Ready?”

We nodded our heads.

“I’m sure she’s been waiting for this day to come,” he said.

Mom looked at the gate again. From the look on her face I could see that she somewhat dreaded what we would find inside. That didn’t calm me in the slightest.

She heaved a sigh and nodded her head again. “I know she has.”

* * *

My legs felt like they were made of jelly when I tried to make them walk. I lifted my left leg and urged it forward. When it touched the ground it wobbled under my weight and I staggered forward. The air around the old house was different from the air around the rest of town. I didn’t expect the change and it hit me as soon as I regained my balance. It was musty and full of the rust that engulfed the fence before us.

“Over here, Emma,” Mom said.

She and the Amests were already on the other side of the van and making their way to the edge of the driveway. Why they were headed in that direction was at the bottom of my list of questions so I followed without a word. I forced my legs to submit to my demands and walked around the van to join them.

When I finally reached them, Mr. Amest led us into the wooded area that surrounded the house. We slowly made our way through the tight overgrowth. There was just enough room for a full grown man to squeeze around the huge trees. My mind wandered while we walked and I tripped over the many roots that littered the ground. A buzzing filled my ears and I looked around to find the source—a dragonfly zipped around my head. Its soft, flaky wing brushed my cheek while it fluttered in the air. I was surprised when it took the time to land on my shoulder. I watched it from the corner of my eye. I raised my finger to it but the movement disturbed it. It flew into the bare branches above. I watched it until I lost sight of it and bumped into something in front of me.

“Ow,” I said, rubbing the side of my head.

I looked around and saw that I had bumped into the back of my mother. She didn’t seem to notice our collision; her eyes remained forward. I looked around her to see that Mr. and Mrs. Amest had stopped at another gate in the wall. This one was smaller than the gate where the car was parked. However, this gate showed the true nature of the house’s past. It looked the way I imagined the front gate once had looked: beautiful and elegant. Its gold paint glistened in the winter sun. I could see that there wasn’t a lock anywhere on it.

Mr. Amest pushed the gate. It swung open without a sound and we walked through it. I gasped at the beauty of the garden that was in front of me. There was a red brick walkway that was quite different from the red bricks that made up the wall enclosing the land. There was no sign of chipping or age among the bricks. They were perfectly in place without a single weed protruding from between them. The grass that surrounded the bricks was perfectly green and clear of the winter snow, with flowers of every color scattered everywhere. There were vines of purple clematis covering the wall and pink cherry trees in blossom lining the edge of the walkway. Inside the gate all sorts of beautiful plants glittered in the sun. I looked up and the sun was no longer the dim, winter version it had been when we arrived. It was bright yellow with vibrant rays shining on every glorious aspect of the garden.

Birds swooped between the falling cherry blossom petals. The smell of the flowers made me smile. The perfume of the flowers and the songs of the birds pushed every other thought from my head. The sound of running water caught my attention and I looked to the right corner of the garden. There was a pond bordered with smooth black and gray rocks. In the pond were lily pads with the biggest, most beautiful white lilies growing from the middle of them. A fountain of water in the middle of the pond spouted sparkling water into the pond and frogs jumped from the lily pads into the water trying to catch butterflies in their mouths. A butterfly dodged an attack from a frog and flew away from the pond in our direction. It flew by me and I turned on the red brick, following it with my eyes.

A cool breeze blew in and rustled through the trees. A shower of pink petals fell on us. A falling petal brushed my nose and I felt the tickle of an impending sneeze. My head flew forward when the sneeze escaped before I could stifle it. I opened my eyes again. Near my feet on the perfect brick walkway, I now saw nothing but dirt.

“What happened to this place?” my mother said.

I lifted my head and took a look around. I wanted to cry.

The beautiful garden that we’d been standing in had disappeared. I fell to my knees and ran my hands over the dirt. The cherry blossoms were replaced with the bare, dead remnants of what once had been trees. I looked back at the gate and it too had changed. It was no longer golden; it was in the same disarray as the other gate. Where the perfectly green grass had been, there was no life; not so much as a weed dared to grow there. The flowers had disappeared off the vines on the walls though the most stubborn ones remained, digging deep into the wall causing it to crumble and crack. I looked to the corner where the frogs were leaping on the lily pads. Instead, there were pale colored rocks surrounding an empty hole in the ground with roots sticking out of the sides. My eyes darted around the ground. I searched for green, some sign of life. All I found were dead leaves and snow.

“Emma, honey? Are you okay?” Mom said.

She held out a hand to help me. I took her hand and she pulled me up.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I said. “I just tripped.”

“Well, we better get moving,” Mr. Amest said.

I took a deep breath and started walking toward the house once again. I stared straight forward at it so I wouldn’t have to look at what was around me.

* * *

From the outside of the gates I could tell that the house was huge. However, the actual size of it didn’t compare to how it looked from a distance. It continued to grow before my eyes. Its long, tall windows only seemed to make it look bigger. The stones weren’t placed in perfect columns and rows, but each one was placed in a way that they created a masterpiece in each wall.

That however was where the art stopped. The doors had grown old and discolored and looked like mud that wouldn’t budge if we tried to move them. The curtains in the windows looked like they were the remains of fabric left in the nest of thousands of moths. Most of them were ripped and torn in many places. Even the color was gone from them; they were pale, age-worn ghosts from the past. The windows closed them in along with everything else, nailed shut so that nothing could get in to bother what was left inside. It was a very depressing house to look at. I couldn’t imagine what we could possibly find inside.

“Don’t be afraid, Emma,” Mr. Amest said.

He watched me carefully. Even his assurance couldn’t stifle the fear that I was indeed feeling. Normally, I wasn’t easily persuaded to fear something, especially something like an old house. Everyone said it was haunted only because it seemed to be deserted. Ghosts were all people could think of that would still lurk in its dark hallways.

It was only assumed to be abandoned because no one was ever seen near it. As unwelcoming as the house was, nothing was boarded up. There were no notices from the city posted anywhere; I always reasoned that was because the house was so far off the map. There had never been any for sale signs because in essence the house was owned.