Chapter 32
After Time
Alex
Alex’s mind was wide awake, even though it had been a hell of a long day. She’d been up for over 20 hours now. But as she climbed the stairs to the attic for the second time this night, she wasn’t tired at all. She climbed them slowly and quietly, and she climbed them alone. But this time, she climbed them with more purpose than ever before. As she topped the last step to stand on the attic floor, she knew she was ready.
After tonight’s earlier casting with Brooke and Maryanne, she truly was.
Tonight, when she’d cast back in, her attacker’s face had been just a blur in her memory, a barely there haze that hovered behind the thinnest wall. That was all that remained. She was that close to knowing it all.
Her immediate reaction had been fear, a very real mental push back on that mighty hammer. But even as she mentally fought it, the almost-memory beckoned. Alex just had be to brave enough to let it out.
She’d asked Connie to be brave.
Right after school, while Maryanne and Brooke had gone to buy gloves, Alex had made her trek through the woods to Connie’s home. The tone for the trip was set when that damned freight train lumbered through town right on schedule, sounding its warning whistle. It was miles to the north of her location, but the mournful sound carried easily on the crisp fall air. She’d had to swallow down a lump of loneliness.
She’d walked quietly at first, then thrashed her way through the branches as she got closer to the nest. Connie met her, of course, carrying her doll and clapping her hands as she saw Alex to let Alex know she was glad of her visit. Alex hadn’t taken much copper with her this time, just a pocketful of pennies. But she had brought along the news for Connie.
“We know you’re tired, Connie. Tired beyond belief; crushed by the weight of so many years of being out here, stranded without a body to go back to. I’ve felt that in you.” Alex had pulled a sharp breath, then just let it spill out. “We found where they buried your body. Your... bones. We were thinking maybe your cast can get back in. So you can finally rest. Finally get some peace. God knows, you deserve it. We’re going to dig the remains up, so you can try it. If that’s what you want, I mean. You can try to cast back in.” She’d pause to draw breath. “That is what you want, isn’t it?”
Connie had stood perfectly stone still. Even the wind seemed to die down as though holding its breath while it waited to see what she’d do. Connie looked as if she’d turned to an empty statute, completely and perfectly motionless. Though Alex no longer felt fear when she saw the caster in the daylight, she clamped down on a tremor of it then.
She had expected Connie to be happy. In her imagination, the lonely caster had hugged her tightly, clasped her hands in a silent thank you. But when she finally did move, Connie simply looked down at her doll, stroked its head gently. Only then, did she lift her black, empty face to Alex. And nodded slowly.
As tired as she plainly was, as lonely as her world had been, and as ready as Connie just had to be after so many heavy decades without reprieve from her caster existence, it still meant the end of her existence. The end of everything for Connie Edwina Harvell.
When Connie had extended her doll toward Alex, Alex’s heart had leapt in her chest as she understood.
“You keep your baby, Connie,” she said. “I’ll look after her when... when you rest. I promise.”
Connie had nodded again.
Later, when Alex had cast out with Brooke and Maryanne, Connie had said little about the plan other than to offer a gentle thank you to each one of them, and to tell them that, when she let herself dare to, she so hoped it would work.
They had stayed out late, soaring through the Mansbridge sky. Even with the copper bracelets, Alex had felt the heaviness coming in as the night wore on. But this was Connie’s night—one of the few remaining—and it was as if she wanted to rise her highest as she soared her last with her new-found friends. She showed them the places she’d discovered over the years; the windows she’d listened at where people talked late into the night, the most breathtaking spots along the river. And Connie warned the girls about the places to stay away from.
Like Ira Walker’s farm.
She’d whispered to Alex as they’d flown along the river. “I’m scared to go back into Harvell House.”
“I know. But I’ll be right beside you,” Alex had told her.
“Then I’ll... I’ll try. If you’re there, Alex, I’ll try.”
“I promise I will be.”
“And no one will hurt me?”
“No one will hurt you. I promise that too.”
Alex breathed deeply now as she walked across the attic. Though her mind still wasn’t tired, her body was starting to feel the effects of the late hours, the busy hours. She rubbed a hand over the back of her stiff neck. She walked right up to the window, leaned her forehead against it and closed her eyes. A floorboard creaked as she adjusted her stance. The wood had never made that groan before, but maybe it only protested because she’d stood there for so long in contemplation.
“This is it,” Alex said softly. “This is what I want. I want to remember. I’m ready.” She didn’t so much whisper to herself, but to the stained-glassed Madonna who’d been there to witness everything she’d suffered. All that Connie had suffered too. “If Connie can face her fears, so can I. I’ll remember everything this time. Everything that bastard did to me. And I’ll see his face.” She felt the rush of emotion, felt the anger growing. And yes, she felt the fear of knowing her nightmare—of pulling it to her again. But she was more than ready. No longer would Alex fearfully wait for that hammer of memory to finally breach her mental walls. She was ready to grab it herself and smash it through.
Alex opened her eyes and looked up at the lady in the glass. Her colors were muted in the cloudy night, but her beauty wasn’t. Nor was her compassion. It seemed to radiate from those magnificent eyes like a balm to Alex’s spirit. She placed her hands flat on the glass, feeling the cold of the night on her palms, then she fisted her hands. With jaw-tightening determination, she tapped the window.
“I am ready,” she whispered. “And I want out!”
Alone into the Mansbridge night, Alex ventured toward the moment. The memories—the last of them, the darkest of them—would come back in with her. She was ready. She truly was. But before she went back inside to confront the memories, she would take a few minutes to commune with the night around her. Her soul could use the fortification.
For once, as she soared off toward the Saint John River, Alex didn’t look back at her body slumped helplessly on the floor. This time—perhaps because her excursion would be so short—the worry wasn’t with her.
But it should have been.