Praefatio: A Novel Page 5

  Nurse! I couldn’t decide if what I needed was more meds, stronger meds, or to be carted off to the psychiatric ward.

  My head pain was pretty intense; I couldn’t speak at first. Just keeping my eyes open was a chore, let alone figuring out what Mom and Dead Dad were up to.

  “I think she’s awake.” The voice was even and assured. This time, it felt real—not in my head, not distant, but right there in the room. Hearing it sent warmth through my body like a coil that slowly unraveled, starting from my toes, past my knees and then lingering at my thighs before moving up toward my chest, past my neck and ending with burning cheeks. Hearing it, I felt lighter, like my body was no longer pressed into the bed.

  It was HIM, the voice, my voice, my life. He’d found me. I knew at that moment that I would do whatever he asked of me, go anywhere with him. And then I saw him, and everything I knew before went out the window. I knew only what he would tell me next.

  His face. No! It couldn’t be. This was too much for my broken mind to handle. I could deal with the demonic creatures, and even angels, but not this.

  I began gasping, inhaling, inhaling, inhaling, but was unable to exhale. My chest felt like it would explode from the pressure.

  “Relax, it’s OK. Calm down. Breathe. Slow.” He spoke, and my body responded to his orders. Slowly, I settled into a regular breathing pattern and studied him.

  His features faded in and out. It took a lot of energy to focus. I wished he’d come closer. My body was working overtime to piss me off. It wasn’t clear if his features were dark, or if it was just his mood.

  His skin held a pale hue, like maybe they didn’t have summer where he’s from. Eyes that seemed like they couldn’t decide whether to be blue or green peered at me with what appeared to be concern. He may have had a hairstyle at one time, but it was grossly overgrown. The look was effortless on him, jet black and kissing his shoulders.

  How did Mom and Dead Dad know him?

  My thoughts were all scrambled, like someone was rewinding the last few weeks, or maybe erasing them, preparing to replace them with new ones, the way you would reformat a hard drive. It worsened my headache to see things race by so fast. What brief coherence I’d managed was gone, demolished by the appearance of a singular boy.

  He moved with the grace of royalty from the open door to the side of my bed. He threw a furtive glance at Dead Dad and then nodded to Mom.

  Just outside my room, nurses pointed, stared, and giggled like little girls. One had a camera, and two others angled for photos with their mobile phones. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my mother wave her dainty hand and close the mini-blinds on the interior windows the nurses used to look in on patients. Fireflies fluttered in my stomach again, warm and quick, the truth of what I was and about to become secret and yet apparent.

  As if last night was not enough of a toll on me, now Mom was there doing the same tricks Remi had taught me, only this time in the presence of Dead Dad and the voice from my head. I reached for the call button, but Mom shook her head at me, indicating that wasn’t a good idea. Rats.

  Dad stood in line, rigid and at attention as if awaiting orders. He looked like Dad, only nearly translucent. Like, Dead Dad would’ve. Should’ve. Since he was freaking dead, and I was hallucinating the worst hallucination ever. I covered my eyes, hoping that when I uncovered them, they’d all be gone. Well, not all of them.

  But when I opened my eyes, they were still there, staring at me like I was crazy. Then there was a rush of tears. The kind that come when you realize your worst fear has come true. Their being there could only mean one thing: I was certifiably insane. I wasn’t special, as Dad had suspected, just nuts.

  “Dad, Mom?” I looked from him to her, but it was as if I’d said nothing. Neither of them moved or even acknowledged that I’d spoken.

  OH NO! Is this my last wish? Am I dying? Did someone, maybe Remi, think I would enjoy a visit from a rock star as my dying wish? It’s why I can see Dead Dad. He’s dead. I’m near-dead. And Remi sent a rock star to my hospital room as a wish-fulfillment thing. This is worse than I thought.

  As I waited for words, movement—anything, it became clear that something urgent was happening, something more incredible than Remi and me being chased by otherworldlies and Monk Girl. And in my moment of clarity, the name of the boy came to me, the rock star. Gavin Vault, lead singer of Venus Unearthed.

  My sanity had just taken another huge blow. The visions. The voices. Seeing Dead Dad and Gavin Vault and female monks, shape-shifting animals and Remi with fiery wings. In a few minutes, I’d gone from sort of hopeful to size eight straightjacket for the redheaded (bottle: Garnier Nutrisse Light Intense Auburn) insane. I closed my eyes and waited for them to come for me.

  Gavin Vault took my right hand in his just as I had stopped breathing. It was like falling through space. Then a vision hit me like a wave of nausea. Not again. Not now.

  In my vision I saw her, Monk Girl from the night before. This time up close, and this time we were alone, but I wasn’t afraid, and she wasn’t chasing me. She was laughing, smiling, and skipping; totally non-threatening. How stupid I’d been to fear her. She looked like Dead Dad, kind of translucent, but clearly a person. Then she ran toward me fast and grabbed my neck, taking my ability to breathe in her hands. For a translucent girl, she was pretty strong. She choked me, her eyes angry, determined. I read her mind. She wanted me dead. In a panic I reached up, grabbing, grasping at anything, and pulled the hood of her cloak down. A fit of air escaped my mouth as horror beat against my chest, tapping first and then pounding. I was staring into my own face, only with blond ringlets and hazel eyes.

  “Grace, look at me.” Gavin’s voice was like a therapist bringing a patient out from under hypnosis.

  When I opened my eyes, we were alone. He looked real, not imagined at all. His fingers were cool and soothing as they wrapped around my hand.

  Where are Mom and Dead Dad? Maybe they had never been there. I remained still, afraid to breathe too hard for fear it would push me over the edge, making me Grace, The Completely Unrecognizable.

  “Remi, can you hear me?” No one answered.

  I looked over at the boy by my bed. I wanted to believe he was real, and God knows he felt real as he sat there with his fingers tapping lightly against my own.

  I began to speak, to ask him who he was and if he knew what was wrong with me. I had been completely fine the day before until all hell broke loose. I probably had some kind of concussion. A person does not go crazy overnight. This boy, Gavin Vault, is just a gift from my mind to me to help me cope with the psychotic break.

  He smiled and blinked slowly, letting his top lashes rest on his bottom ones for longer than was necessary. Dreamy.

  “You’re not ready yet. I can’t help you process anything you’ve been through until you heal … until your mind heals. Rest.” Gavin’s voice was even and direct. His eyebrows scrunched together in a show of concern.

  “Wait,” I begged, but I don’t think it mattered. My voice was lost, too soft to be heard.

  He smiled and whispered, “It’s OK. You’re not going mad. Everything will make sense soon. I promise. Sleep now, Grace. I’ll return later, when you’ve had time to regain your strength.” Gavin’s hand slid from my grasp as he stood and turned for the door. Nooooooo! Don’t leave me here.

  My eyes were instantly heavy. I struggled to watch him exit. There was a guy waiting in the hall. He patted Gavin on the back while looking at me with an odd expression. I blinked to stay awake, but I wanted to be rested for when the Larsons came, or Remi, so I could tell them everything.

  As I drifted off, I reconsidered. Who would believe I’d had a visit from my dead father and the lead singer of Venus Unearthed? Absolutely no one.

  This May Hurt a Little

  When I opened my eyes, he was sitting in the chair next to my bed. A slight smile greeted me as we made eye contact. My body was too weak to respond.

  “So I guess you’ve figured
out you’ve won the contest,” he said matter-of-factly and moved closer. A cloud of concern shadowed his face. “Almost immediately after we determined you’d won, you were disqualified for having had one of your songs used in a commercial.” A smirk.

  Panic. My dad had used a jingle I’d written in an ad for his auto repair chain. Need it done right? Need it in a hurry? Pick up the phone, have no worries. At Miller Auto Shop: we fix it right. It was hardly a real song, just a cheesy jingle. I did get paid for it, though, and still received “royalties.” Dad paid me fifty dollars for the jingle and twenty-five dollars each month it aired. That was our deal. I think he only did it to get out of having to give me a real allowance.

  I turned my head into the pillow, embarrassed at the thought of being disqualified and horrified that Gavin had actually heard the jingle. My body was hot, and my head felt stuffed, like my brain was too large to fit into the cavity tasked with containing it. Swollen glands felt like they were bulging out of my neck.

  “Have you been here long?” I was thrilled he had come back, even if it meant I was going to be shipped downstairs as soon as my injuries healed. His words came back to me: “You’re not going mad.”

  Another slight smile turned up at the corner of the left side of his mouth. He leaned in toward me so that his face was a few inches from mine.

  “Yes. I’ve been here for the past two hours. And, Grace, you’re not insane.” He reached under the barely-there hospital-issued covers, and I froze. He felt around for my hand and took it in his. “You won the contest, I swear, but the jingle thing does in fact disqualify you. I’m sorry about that. I wish I had better news as far as that is concerned. But … ” He paused and gazed into my eyes with a look the devil would have been jealous of. I felt my chest rising and falling in a fit of excitement and was immediately embarrassed. “I’m here for you … because you were promised to me,” he offered plainly, no hint that any further explanation was coming.

  He smelled good. It reminded me of the sandalwood incense my dad used to burn in his shop, mixed with the scent of the yuzu juice he often drank. The juice was disgusting—sour—but the scent was citrusy and intoxicating. I let his smell have its way with my nostrils.

  I exhaled. He kept looking at me, slowly inspecting my eye, cheek, then eyebrows … wait. He stopped, and I freaked ’cause he was staring at my mouth. He seemed to examine each lip intently, as if one could exist without the other.

  “I … I don’t know what to say.” I wanted to ask how he knew my mother. From Broadway? That had to be it. Celebrities all know one another; I think they may even have the same management company, come to think of it.

  I wanted to tell him I saw him talking to my father, who happened to be dead. I wanted to tell him I had seen Remi spread wings made from fire right before I landed in this room. But how could I?

  “What do you feel when you look at me?” he asked. There was a strange sense of urgency to the question. Careful not to respond with “crazy” and the desire to declare my irrational love for him—for his voice, I closed my eyes. If it was at all possible that I was perhaps not crazy and I really was talking to Gavin Vault and he was in fact the voice in my head all those years, I couldn’t risk screwing things up. The truth was that I’d loved Him since He’d first spoken to me as a kid—but I’d had no idea He was Gavin Vault. And now that I had a face and a body to go along with the voice, I wasn’t sure that I loved Gavin Vault.

  “I’m drawn to you. It feels like I’ve known you my entire life. I … don’t want to be … without you.” I lowered my gaze, ashamed of how much I’d revealed and angry with myself for even having such feelings.

  He didn’t move an inch. I assumed he was weighing my words against the loud thumping of my heart and the strain in my voice. I clutched the white blanket to my throat with my free hand. My cheeks burned with turmoil as I waited for his response.

  “You have,” he declared, despite the fact that I’d only met him minutes ago. Perhaps it was Gavin who was insane.

  The weight of his words forced tears from my eyes. Years of second-guessing myself and worrying about my sanity came crashing into the room in waves of hysteria as I cried all I had wanted to since he first spoke to my mind.

  “Grace,” he began while wiping my face with his free hand. “I know you must want answers to the impossible things you’ve seen. I can’t imagine how vulnerable you must be feeling. Somehow I think you know that everything you seek answers for is right here and here.” He placed his index finger in the center of my forehead on the first “here,” paused, then rested it in the dead center of my chest on the second. I was too stunned to move, breathe. “The only thing between you and the truth you seek is fear. You’re not crazy. You’re just too terrified to accept what you already know. When you find you are ready, I will be waiting for you.”

  He released my hand, leaned over, paused, and kissed my forehead, then my nose.

  I whispered, desperately short of breath and sniffling, “Where will I find you?”

  “Listen for me, as always.” His voice was gentle, but also somehow foreboding, as if he were a beast trying to convince an unsuspecting girl to enter the forest with him. I shivered from a sudden chill and pulled the covers tighter around my neck. There was so much I wanted to ask, but he stood and left me alone with only his words to ponder.

  Sleep evaded me for a long time. I could still smell him, and when I closed my eyes, I could feel his lips on my forehead and the bridge of my nose. I accepted my insomnia along with its companion, the flu. There was no fight in me.

  Knives, no, knives and hammers … and fire attacked my sides and back with crushing force. Someone entered the room, but I was listless, unable to respond.

  The person shoved a thermometer under my tongue. Beep. Archaic.

  “One hundred and nine point one. It’s going up.” The woman’s voice was odd.

  “X-ray?” Another woman. Stronger. Assured. “It’s impossible for her fever to be this high and for her to still be conscious. Where are the labs?”

  Paper shuffling.

  “How could she have broken all of her ribs?”

  More paper shuffling.

  “Nothing except a high white blood cell count, fever, and broken ribs? No discernible infection? Something’s wrong.” Duh.

  I spent the next hours in a state of listless fever, ache, and torturous pain. My lips cracked from dehydration as my veins rejected the fluids they tried to give me. Eyes that alternated between open, closed, dazed, and runny deceived me by seeing double, triple, or sometimes not at all. Whatever thoughts bothered to invade my stuffed head were incoherent at best.

  The Larsons still hadn’t arrived. Other than Gavin Vault, Dead Dad, and Abandomom, no one had come to visit me. And I wasn’t even sure about the last two.

  ***

  The same nurse came and went. She asked nothing, nor did she offer me any medicine. She only stared and said to no one in particular, “You’ll be just fine, things are going to work out—you’ll see,” or my personal favorite, “Just you wait, the worst is yet to come.” She was taller than me, though that’s not saying much since I’m only five foot three on a holiday, when I am in a great mood, the sun is shining, and I’m whistling Dixie. Her voice was like silk—smooth—regardless of what she was saying.

  She would check my morphine and temperature, then shake her head from side to side as if none of her efforts to fix me were working.

  When she wasn’t coming or going, she was permanently parked at my bedside. Odd as it was, I liked knowing she was there. I wasn’t sure if it was the morphine or my craziness, but I could have sworn she was writing in the same book Remi had given me. The book had to be years old—like hundreds, maybe thousands. When she didn’t know I was looking, I watched words magically appear on its pages as she read.

  Time moved in slow motion. My visions, time zips, and memories had stopped. The one day I wanted them, even needed them, they wouldn’t come. Without my flashes, I ha
d no Remi, and without Remi, I was alone. Why hadn’t he come to visit? Why was I unable to hear him? And Gavin. What was he hoping I would learn? When would I see him again? The questions made my head and ribs ache even more.

  I stared blankly at the white walls around me, imagining vivid colorful paintings, like those you might find in the Basilica di San Pietro in Rome.

  I was never particularly religious and had stopped going to church when I was seven. Even so, my dad made sure we continued to attend Sunday school until I turned nine. I always found logical holes in what we were taught. Let me just say: The kid who finds holes in the story is not the most popular kid in Sunday school.

  Whenever I asked Dad about something that made little sense to me, he would scrunch his eyebrows, the way he did on the rare occasion that I had frustrated him, and say, “You should know, you were there.” I thought it was a ruse to get me to pay more attention. But I thought I had been paying attention.

  Memories of my dad brought a smile to my face. I opened my eyes. The angels I thought I was only imagining were moving, walking toward a crowd of more angels, slowly, deliberately. I shook my head in fear and disbelief and closed my eyes. When I opened them again, the angels were still there. In the garden I’d visited.

  Oh my God. Mom?

  Mom stood with her right arm outstretched. “Walk with me, Grace,” was how it sounded. I couldn’t tell since I was still unsure at this point if it was a vision, a dream, or a complete psychotic break from reality.

  I climbed out of bed, and despite my fears, reached out to accept her hand. It hurt when I reached out. Are my ribs broken in my dream too? Mom chuckled as though she could hear my thoughts.

  “Mom? Where are we?” Unflippingreal.

  “The Garden, sweetheart.”

  Sweetheart? Who are you, and what have you done with my mother?

  She turned to face me and suddenly became very serious and maternal. It was more than I could take, especially her all-white getup. Maybe this was a dream after all, and I was seeing her as I wanted her to be, not as she actually was. She never wore white. She used to say it was a very unflattering color, even for babies.