Seven Wakings Read online

  McCauley/SK/SEVEN WAKINGS

  SEVEN WAKINGS

  by S K McCauley

  © Copyright- 2014 by SK McCauley

  Smashwords Edition

  Prologue - The Gift

  As a kid, I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up: a shape shifter. I’d use my super powers to spy on people; watch how they lived. If a grown up was mean, I’d become a giant, remove their roof with my big, blue hands and...

  “Wait, Emma, who decides who the bad guys are?” my father asked in the dim light of our small porch, arranging his hand of cards.

  “Ah do,” I said, in the Southern accent I’d adopted to sound more like my mother.

  Dad chuckled and moved his bench back from the picnic table.

  “No… really, I can hear the difference.” I gulped chocolate milk.

  “Bad people sound different?” He laid down a run of hearts— 2, 3, 4.

  “Sure. It’s like when you’re flipping channels and you hit one with nothing on.”

  “Like static,” he said, matter-of-fact.

  “Bad people move different too, real slow, like they’re under water.”

  Dad went quiet. I wouldn’t know until later that Mother’s side of the family came with an assortment of “Gifts,” which revealed themselves in a child’s ninth year. I had turned nine that March.

  “Then what happens… in your fantasy, I mean?” He picked up replacement cards.

  “The bad guys get sucked out of the house and the whole neighborhood comes out to watch them float past the moon. Sometimes I’ll do a bunch of houses at once. When all the people float up, it’s like watching rain in reverse.” I laid down three kings.

  He pushed his dinner plate aside. “That’s a lot of bad guys.”

  “Yep. Then they get sucked into a black hole and disappear forever.”

  My father, a police chief, taught me a lot of things, but astronomy was my favorite. I thought outer space was a more humane dumping ground than the hell they preached about in my mother’s church.

  I used to go with her— the year she tried being Baptist— but all I liked was the pie they served in the church basement after the preacher talked me to sleep. Maybe if I’d paid more attention, Mother wouldn’t have left for good to try and “find herself.”

  By the time I received my Gift, we hadn’t seen her in years. That was just fine by me (she could be all kinds of crazy), but I missed her when it came time to getting tucked in. I liked the way she used to sing me to sleep. Her voice was taffy— sweet and rich.

  After my mom left, Lynette started coming over. She was one of the McCollum clan that lived next door.

  To me, they were one Irish lump, too big for individual recognition. Each one of the kids’ names started with an “L”: Liam, Lochlan, Leith, Lee, and Luxovious were the five boys. Lyonesse, Lesley, Lynette, and baby Lavena, were the girls. They all called me Mowgli— from The Jungle Book— ‘cause I dressed like a boy, had toasty-tan skin, and wore my hair moppy-brown.

  I never could tell one red-haired McCollum from another, until Lynette separated from the pack. Four years older than me, she’d started getting boobs and said she didn’t like being around all those boys. Really, I think she felt bad about my mom leaving. She’d get ready at our house in the morning: put her hair in rollers, sit on the side of the tub, and ask me about my innermost thoughts.

  I liked how she took an interest, made me feel special. Later, I even told her about my Gift.

  Back then, our post-war house was painted brick-red with clean, white trim and sat on the outskirts of Baltimore. Grass pushed green veins of color down cracked sidewalks that passed a hundred houses, on countless blocks, with the same modest floor plan. But Dad made ours different— he put a porch on the front and planted lots of flowers. He liked to watch people walk by, play cards in the rain, and tell stories about our neighbors.

  The way Dad described them: One woman ran the five-and-dime and had lost her husband to a heart attack. The man up the street was a mechanic at the gas station in town who took care of his ailing mother. Another owned a hardware store and was a devoted family man.

  I liked the way Dad saw people; they were all decent and hard working in his eyes. But I knew better. The woman stole money from the till, the man took cans of gasoline to set his neighbor’s lawn on fire, and Mr. Carl— the hardware store owner— beat his kids senseless. Having “the Gift” made the bad stuff people did as clear as cells under a microscope. Most things didn’t bother me much… until it came to hurting kids.

  When my mind saw how Mr. Carl treated his own, I arranged a “Come to Jesus.” Standing on his concrete stoop, I told him I would kill him if he kept it up.

  Mr. Carl snorted and told me he was “real scared.” But when I described the exact details of how he whipped his kids like they were slow horses, he got real quiet. Then I started to talk like I was possessed— using Bible words and calling on Lucifer to take his “Evil spirit to the fiery gates of Hell.”

  I even rolled my eyes back in my head for effect and hissed like I’d swallowed a snake. I told him he had two choices: stop beating his kids, or sleep with one eye open.

  He took his fist-fighting to the bar.

  Some things never change, like Lynette and me. She’d grow up and listen for a living. I’d keep protecting kids.

  Chapter One- The Black Box

  It’s no surprise that Lynette is here today— on the worst of all days— to comfort me. She was also there after my husband died seven years ago; one minute Cal and I were packing for a romantic weekend, and the next he collapsed on the bathroom floor. Aneurism, they said. Just like that, I was a single mother of two young children picking out burial clothes for my high school sweetheart. I bawled for months. At night, after the kids went to bed, I’d lock myself in the bathroom and cry until I fell asleep on ceramic. Sometimes I’d curl into the tub with a blanket and pretend Cal was holding me, calling me Doll, only to find myself waking on cold porcelain. On the worst of nights, Lynette found me in my husband’s closet, weeping amongst his shoes, his favorite Oriole shirt wadded for a pillow.

  With tireless counsel she brought me back to the land of the living, promising that I would love again. I had to love again; my husband would want that for me.

  Now, Lynette and I stand before a commemorative wall at my father’s cremation service in a small V.A. building. He was proud of being a veteran and wanted to be remembered here. A banner hangs above the entrance to his memorial service, reading: Jack Stewart— Father, Friend, Force. Black-and-white pictures from his youth in Williamsburg, his days in the army, the years he spent with Mother, plus decades of color photos with friends, officers, and his life with me, are pinned to corkboard, alive with years well-lived.

  A black box— the size of a half-gallon of ice cream— sits on a small table, holding all that remains of my father.

  Lynette stands next to me, pointing out smiles and laughter captured for all eternity.

  “Look at how handsome he was in uniform,” she says, leaning in. Strawberry hair falls in front of her shoulder.

  “Like a young Gregory Peck,” I add.

  She moves down the photo line. “He and your mother made a handsome couple.” Her voice is August.

  A huff escapes from my core. “I guess this makes me a widow and an orphan.” I flash back to a newspaper article Dad brought home when I was thirteen: Coastline Crash Claims Three. It was a California newspaper, and one of the women in the car was my mom.

  I touch a picture of my dad and Cal together in their uniforms. It was taken the day Cal became a police officer.

  Lynette rubs my back, brushes dark hair from my face. “You still have your kids… and us.”

  As if on cue, the doors to the V.A. fly op
en and all eight of her siblings, their wives, husbands, and kids burst in. The McCollum’s have come to pay their respects. They are an undulating sea of ivory skin and red hair.

  “It looks like the church just caught fire,” I whisper to her.

  Lynette looks at me over her glasses, raises a red eyebrow.

  Somber notes drift into the hall from a piano placed next to a podium at the front of a multi-purpose room.

  “We should go in. Everyone is waiting on you.” Lynette loops her arm into mine and we walk through the double doors together.

  Countless rows of people have come to mourn the loss. Men from the Baltimore Police Department— one of several government agencies that I work with for Child Protective Services (CPS)— are dressed in uniform, and lined up shoulder-to-shoulder along the front wall. Friends from the neighborhood, other people from the station, the one army buddy who still lives nearby, and others fill the seats to overflowing, then stand where space allows.

  It seems fitting that Dad’s heart gave out slowly, having used it so well.

  None of us know it now, but in a few days, we will all return to another gathering room to mourn. Some people will stand at attention, others will sit mute in disbelief, and I will be the one in the black box… the size of a half-gallon of ice cream.

  Lynette and I walk to the front and take seats between my kids and her family. My daughter Kate, sixteen now, squeezes my hand when I sit down. Mac, my thirteen-year-old, forces a tight smile. It strikes me that he looks younger than his age; like some of the runaways I’ve been looking into. I can’t imagine him out there all alone.

  My mind checks out during the rest of the service. I remember standing up to “say a few words,” but I don’t know what they were— only that they lacked the ability to capture the depth of my father’s character, and my love for him. I wish I could spare my children another loss— spare them all suffering— but life doesn’t seem to work that way, despite my greatest efforts.

  After everyone has headed to a social gathering in honor of my father, I find my kids sitting at the piano. Kate’s playing Christmas songs, odd considering the month— September.

  Mac watches her hands and sings every word. He was born with an eidetic memory— seems to feel the world on a higher vibration than the rest of us.

  “What’s going on?” I sit on the small piano bench with them.

  “Grandpa thought the service was depressing,” Kate says. Her features are a carbon copy of mine, only she’s a green-eyed redhead. Cal used to say that Lynette and I were so close our eggs got scrambled.

  “He wanted us to liven it up.” Mac gets up, does a spin. His messy blond hair— cut long, surfer style— dances with the light. He looks like a bleached version of us, sometimes gets mistaken for a girl.

  “Are you saying Grandpa Jack is here?” I tuck Kate’s hair behind her ear.

  “Can’t you sense him?” she asks. I wonder if the pain is too big for her, or if Dad is really present.

  I remember when Kate received “The Gift.” It was May of her ninth year— her birthday month, just after Cal died. Late on a Sunday morning, she walked into the kitchen in a pink Ariel nightshirt, her hair a cascade of strawberry curls. Mac— at six— was playing chess on the computer.

  Making pancakes, I felt the energy change in the room. I turned, spatula in hand, and saw my daughter. Somehow I knew she wasn’t just nine anymore. The Gift, or the curse as some see it, are twin images of one another. It’s all in how the receiver bears the weight.

  Kate said when she woke up, her dad spoke to her in a language she couldn’t understand. I knew instantly what she’d inherited: hearing souls who’d crossed over. She could speak to the dead. I wept with unexpected force— like someone took hold of my throat— fearing she would go crazy and snap off from “real” people, as my mother had. A tear dropped on the skillet and a minute plume of smoke faded into nothing.

  But Kate was an older soul than my mother. She could handle it. As we sat on the floor, I told them about our heritage in terms they could understand: “You know how some animals can hear or sense things that humans can’t? That’s kind of how the women in our family are. Sometimes we know things before they happen, the way animals can sense a storm or danger. Or sometimes we can see pictures in our minds of something that’s going to happen. And Kate’s gift is extra special because she can hear people that don’t live on earth anymore.” I took their hands into mine. “But our gifts are like super-secrets. Don’t tell anybody unless you really, really trust them… as much as you trust Lynette, or me, or each other.”

  I suggested that Kate ask her dad to speak to her in English. On that day, it seemed that Kate became spirit. Mac was the brain.

  Back in the small V.A. I close my eyes and try to sense my father. Nothing comes. That’s the thing about my gift, I don’t control it. Scenes present themselves like a silent-movie clip. I can see what has— or will— happen, but not in its entirety. Or I may experience an intuitive “knowing” that something is about to happen— good and bad. And some “bad” people still warp time, slow it down and move like they’re under water. Dead people, however, are not my forte.

  “Our gifts are different, Sweetie. I wish I could sense what you do.” Pausing, I realize the question I can ask to validate my father’s presence. “Ask Grandpa about his favorite Christmas song.”

  Kate and Mac confer. “He likes the song about the ostracized Arctic deer who becomes the hero because of his unique gift.” Mac’s messing with me.

  I laugh. “He wants us to sing Rudolph-the-Red-Nosed-Reindeer.” That’s the right answer. “How does he seem?” I ask Kate, still not convinced Dad is here.

  “Happy.” She runs lovely fingers over piano keys. “Younger than I ever knew him.”

  Not wanting to push, I suggest we sing the chosen song, and every other Christmas tune we can remember, until the janitor asks to sweep up the room.

  Before we leave he says, “You know what you guys look like together?”

  I think he going to say some like: a nice little family.

  Instead he responds, “Neopolitan ice cream.”

  Proud of her new license, Kate drives us back to Glen Burnie— a neighborhood in Baltimore— for my father’s social gathering.

  I hold the “Oh Shit!” handle and give too many driving tips. Foliage whips past at unnatural speed, mailboxes come within inches of my side, the middle line is straddled.

  “Am I the only person braced for impact?” Mac quips.

  Kate adjusts the mirror. “Don’t distract me. You’ll just make it worse.” She grips the steering wheel at 9 and 3— thumbs straight up, leans forward.

  I send a prayer to the driving Gods; hoping for safe passage.

  The gathering is held at Dad’s house, where people feel most comfortable. The blueprint of our neighborhood remains unchanged: small houses, cracked concrete, and over run chain-link fences. But an explosion of rose verbena, yellow buckeye, and Appalachian bugbane distinguishes Dad’s house from a landscape of beige and grey. His yard is nirvana in the middle of the hood. We park in the driveway and open doors to a breath of border phlox, which glows white at dusk, creating an eerie air.

  Inside, Lynette is standing in as hostess. Mourners file in and load their plates with the southern fare I cooked: country ham, red-eyed potatoes with gravy, collard greens, cornbread with honey, and rice pudding, and tea cakes for dessert. That’s the first meal I prepared. I also made an alternate supper: Maryland blue crabs, clams, mussels, jambalaya, biscuits, cabbage with vinegar, dirty rice, and lemon bars, and cheesecake for dessert. I like to cook, especially when I can’t sleep… which is often.

  I find a chair in the corner by the front window— my father’s seat— and start to drink my supper: a double Manhattan on the rocks. Chief Lewis, the current head of the Baltimore Police Station, comes over to offer his condolences. I stand to meet him and realize my eyes are level with his chest. The thought of him having nipples nearly b
reaks the monotony of sorrow.

  “Your father will never be forgotten.” He puts his enormous hand on my shoulder. Something changes in his eyes. Because I’ve known him for so long, I can tell that he’s shifting into business mode. “I hear that CPS has assigned you to the runaway cases.”

  He’s referring to a increase in the number of kids reported as runaways in Baltimore recently. I shouldn’t be surprised that he’s all business, all the time, but still his question smacks with insensitivity. “I asked for this assignment. Something feels off about it.” I look around the room for my kids; they’re filling glasses with spiked punch and lemonade. “When’s your next briefing?”

  “Tomorrow morning. But you should take some time to be with your family. Just come in when you’re ready. Maybe next week.” He gives my shoulder a little squeeze.

  “I’d rather stay busy. Work is easier than life these days.” I knock back my drink; feel the whiskey burn my throat, heat my chest. I like the feeling too much lately. “Besides, I couldn’t sit around knowing that those kids might be on the street, or worse.”

  He nods. “Fine, but stick to facts when you’re with my officers. I don’t want them wasting any time on one of your ‘gut feelings’.”

  “Yes, Sir.” I raise my glass to him as he walks away.

  Mike Dupree— a recently reassigned officer— and Kim, the station’s new secretary, speak in low tones near me. I think they’re screwing. Normally I wouldn’t care, but something about Mike sets off alarms. Maybe it’s because he looks like a cage fighter— lean and mean. His shaved head doesn’t serve to soften his impact.

  Mike catches me eyeballing him and saunters over. He shakes my hand. “Hey… I’m sorry to hear about your fatha’. I heard he was a good man.” His Jersey accent is so extreme that I find myself watching his mouth to follow along.