Beloved Evangeline (6 page)

Finally, after what seems like hours, I’m lead back into another room as I shrug back into my own properly-fitting jacket. For a long time it seems I can hear nothing but my own heart beat—my own Tell-Tale Heart, haunting me, reminding me of things I’d rather forget. Then I see the woman: she is different now, calm, her face blank, eyes...
dead
. I try to speak, but have difficulty finding the right words to say, especially with my heart beating so loudly, announcing its betrayal. It’s been a long, long time since I’ve seen her, and that last time was very... painful. I need to tell her something, but I can’t seem to remember what. It’s too disturbing, seeing her like this.

The woman twitches, finally sensing that someone is there. She turns to look at me, her eyes blank at first. Her eyes slowly narrow in recognition, and she draws in a breath. “What do
you
want?” she asks in a low, flippant voice.

“
I just… I wanted… I just want to talk to you...” Faltering again?
Really
? Have I no better words for her after all this time?

She writhes back and forth. It’s obvious even to this woman that I am an utter failure. She continues to thrash back and forth as I watch her uncomfortably. Every time I’m here, she never seems to tire of trying to break free from the restraints.

“
Wait. Please,” I finally manage, “I need to tell you something.”

She seems calmed by that, at least physically, however momentarily. Or maybe, focused is a more appropriate term. “Last time you were here I told you
never
to come back. I have nothing to say to you.”

I swallowed hard. “But it’s important. Please.... what can I do? There must be something I can do to help.”

“
It’s your fault I’m here, Evangeline, so how could you possibly help?”

The dagger in my back, every single time I come here. “I know,” I said quietly, trying to regain my composure, “but I saw things, I know that you should not be here. I could help, if you’d just tell me where to look, what to do. I can’t do it on my own. I’ve tried...”

“
That should be obvious to you,” she turned and looked at me for the first time, “Why don’t you just ask… where would a rotten little girl like would you look?”

“
I’m not...
rotten…
” I turn my eyes downward. I couldn’t look at her any more. I had said the words out loud, but of course, I didn’t believe them. I’m painfully aware of just how true her words were, so much so, in fact, that it actually seems laughable.

I could feel her staring at me for what seemed an endless moment. My entire soul could feel her eyes, their scrutiny blazing into my heart, my soul. I shifted uncomfortably.

“
I know, I know... I’m sorry I said those things, honey. I didn’t mean them. I get a little mixed up sometimes,” she purred softly, releasing me from her stare. I didn’t know why she relented so quickly, and I didn’t care. Relief flooded over me. I could breathe again.

While I was concentrating on regaining control of my heart rate, she leaned toward the door, seemingly to ascertain whether anyone was coming. “Hey, can you... bring me something? I like to read the paper, but they say it upsets me too much... would you mind handing it to me, before the doctor comes back?” She gestured toward the newspaper on the table. I’d never noticed it before, but they had painstakingly recreated a mock visiting room table to promote the illusion of normalcy. The paper was obviously months, if not years, old.

I hesitated only a moment before instinctively bringing the paper over to her, accustomed as I was to doing as I was told. It was, I thought, the least I could. Instead of taking the paper, however, she instead grabbed my wrist. I yanked it defensively, but she was impossibly strong.

“
Aren’t you supposed to be dead just like your little friend?” she whispered, tilting her head toward me. I got a whiff of her breath, which had the foulness of the long institutionalized. The horrific stench knocked my head back.

“
Why did you come here? Haven’t you caused me enough pain?” The words were serious, but her tone was mocking. She smiled a crooked smile. “Sorry you didn’t kill me too when you had the chance?” Her words paralyzed me; I had no response. While I was stunned and distracted, she managed to break her arm free of one of her restraints and grabbed for my throat.

The orderlies charged in at the sound of chaos and went about holding her down. She burst into cackling laughter. That hideous laughter failed to subside the entire length of the hallway.

Obviously, coming here was a big mistake. Nothing had changed. Whatever redemption I was searching for continued to elude me; perhaps it would be that way forever. I watched her all the way to the end of the hall, the echoes of her mad laughter still vibrating in my ears, my hands forever trembling. “Love you, too, Mom,” I whispered.

That night I woke up in a cold sweat on my bedroom hardwood floor in a state of confusion. Photographs were scattered all around, on top of, and underneath me. As I sat up, an odd sensation made me reach for my cheek. I discovered a picture stuck to my skin there. I hate it when I get nostalgic like this—it often induces nightmares. Unfortunately, unlike most normal people, my nightmares aren’t so easy to shrug off. My nightmares are real. The doctor are fond of telling me these visits upset her, but what choice is there?

I looked down at the picture I’d unstuck from my cheek. That one caught my attention, as I was sure it had done last night, though I had no memory whatsoever of actually pulling out these pictures in the first place. This particular photograph was of my mom and me. I was probably five or six in the photo. My mother was improbably beautiful back then. She had flowing chestnut hair and brilliant blue eyes.

I looked at myself in the cracked vanity bureau. I hadn’t inherited many of her traits. My hair is sort of a plain, mousy Celtic brown, not the rich color of my mother’s, and I simply cannot stand to have it looking perfectly
done
. The current cut is a kind of long shag, with the ends looking at once jagged and tousled. That’s the way I like it. Also, unlike her, my skin is covered in freckles, which, I’m frequently told, is somewhat unusual for someone who also has the ability to tan. Though any color I’m lucky enough to receive never lasts for very long, the price, apparently, for defying these laws of nature.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I feel that I’m necessarily unattractive, it’s just... there’s
no
other woman in movies or on television who looks anything like me, and it leaves me feeling slightly
freakish
. At a lanky—gangly even—very broad-shouldered five foot ten, with a freckled face and a dark cloud over my head, I don’t exactly fit into any particular mold.

Anyway, none of that matters now. I’ll tuck the memory of her away, and bury it down deep again so I can go on with my life—such as it is.

Underneath one of the pictures, I saw the glint of a laminated card and my heart skipped a beat. I reached into the box cautiously, pulling out my hand-made
Haunted Explorers Society
badge. I loved my mother dearly, and I knew she’d never been crazy. I’d seen things with her, a kind of
magic,
that was impossible not to believe. As soon as I was old enough, I set out to search for proof; proof that I hoped would absolve her. I know now that the roots of an obsession had taken hold, an obsession that lives within me still, but at the time, I couldn’t see it.

At the time, I thought my obstacle was not having a guide, a mentor, someone to see me on my way. Where do you start on a quest without a guide to show you the way? Without a shepherd, I believed I was lost. I pored over 19
^th
Century novels in my spare time, thinking that would help somehow.

Many of them started out with people who didn’t really know what kind of problem they had on their hands—let alone where to begin—and there was always someone whom they could count on to go out and set things right. I don’t know if things were just different back then or what, but nowadays, there’s really nowhere for a person to turn for help with the kind of problems I’ve got. (I dare you to read
Dracula
or
Jane Eyre
and
not
come away thinking they were possessed with a certain knowledge back then that has simply been lost to us today.)

For want of anything better, I began simply by trying to rule out all possibilities to arrive at some sort of starting point. The most important of these was to prove or disprove a supernatural explanation and had indoctrinated Nicky and my neighbor, Jonathan, into my search for the supernatural when we were just nine-years-old. Society membership came with painstakingly drawn cards, me donning each of us the status of
Beloved Member
, just because it sounded creepy and, perhaps even official and clever.

Back then
beloved
was just about my favorite word. Now—I despise it.

The three of us had been inseparable during that period of my childhood, those magical years between nine and 12 when life was so full of possibilities and
adventure
. Jonathan had been just as willing as Nicky to follow my pursuit to the ends of the earth. If their parents would’ve let them, they’d have joined me on my rooftop jumps and cemetery campouts. My quest was infused with a recklessness of which no sane parent would approve. Nicky came on the campouts only once or twice before her parents got wise.

Similarly, my father wasn’t pleased when he found out what I’d been up to. I took to sneaking out of my room at least twice a week to go on my little jaunts. As a 10-year-old kid, I’d questioned bar and hotel proprietors, supposed haunted house owners, anyone I could find that had some ties to the supernatural. I dove from trees and rooftops, just to see if the experience would bring me closer to the otherworld. My dad found out when I sprained my ankle, and the neighbors squeamishly tattled that they’d seen me jump from the roof. I was grounded for something like six months. From then on I learned to keep a lower profile.

Nicky, Jonathan, and I built forts and tree houses in the woods, studied the paranormal together with whatever books and reading materials we could get our hands on, and endlessly planned and strategized. (Three sizeable boxes filled with journals and research materials currently take up space in my attic.) After my dad whisked me and my brother away to New Mexico, I never saw or heard from Jonathan again. I tried my best not to think about how the ripples of my mother’s undoing, and my accompanying obsession with it, had erased my life’s natural course, washing away so much of what could have been.

4.

The party that night started at 7:00. At 7:15, I still had no clue what I was going to wear to a party I didn’t really want to go to in the first place. I absolutely hate going to big parties. Small gatherings I like just fine, but at big parties, I never feel like I fit in. A concerted effort is needed for me to be able to even interact at these things. I mean, obviously, after a drink or two, I can get by when I have to, but otherwise, I just don’t see the point.

For tonight, I felt like I needed to look nice in order to feel confident and face whatever was coming. After discarding four or five outfits, I finally went back to my first choice: a black and white silk top with kimono sleeves, boot-cut jeans, and my favorite blood red high-heeled boots. At best I am something of a fancy tomboy. If I pick up something that doesn’t quite suit me, I feel like a wuss the entire day. I like beautiful things, but I’m also uncomfortable in anything
too
frilly or
feminine. Recently, I’ve started forcing myself to wear a dress at least once every three months or so. This after I let something like two years elapse without wearing a skirt, and was then forced to wear one for a wedding. I spent the entire evening feeling like a very boring transvestite. No more, I decided.

I appraised myself in the mirror, trying to decide whether to just suck it up and wear a skirt or not.
No
, I finally decided. I was happy with what I saw in the mirror. Sometimes, when I’m dressed up like this, I almost feel like I’m—not beautiful, exactly—but as close as I can come to it.

I had been sort of peripherally worried that I wouldn’t be able to find the house—I’m not overly familiar with Ponte Vedra Beach—but that worry was needless. There seemed to be hundreds of cars spilling out of the driveway and down the street. I literally could not have missed it if I had been trying, finding the first open parking space half a mile or so down the street. There were people everywhere. I don’t think I’d ever been to a party with so many people before and couldn’t even imagine how you’d go about throwing something like this together. But it didn’t seem so bad, so many people together just having a good time. Why did I hate going to these things again?