Me Without You (5 page)

Gilda's eyes met his for a fleeting
moment. If there had been a glint of motherly thing there Hugh
thought he saw, it was gone like the speed of light as she told him
emphatically, "I will make it sure my dream pertains to only one
person." She proceeded to stand next to Helen.

"What does it mean, Gilda?" Helen
demanded.

"Rebecca could have sent them—" Gilda
announced while Helen gasped.

"Oh, come on—" Hugh interjected. "She
can't have power over them!"

"She's is that powerful. She can't only
heal. She can also destroy. Look at our dear boy, Xavier! It's her
doing," Gilda uttered.

Hugh shrugged his shoulders dejectedly.
He was hoping for a different reaction from her—maybe something
that was more directed to him than her war against Rebecca
Blood.

"I'll go eat now, I'm hungry," he
said.

Helen kissed him soundly on the cheek.
Short from pushing him away from Gilda, she told him softly, "Go,
go! We'll be fine here."

Hugh proceeded outside and closed the
door behind him. He stopped to pop the tablet into his mouth just
as the throbbing pain in his head started once again.

God forbid, Gilda doesn't
kill Rebecca Blood, known to be the greatest healer,
herself…
Hugh reflected.
Even if she wants to. And if she does, hopefully,
she doesn't fail.

If the stories Hugh heard about Rebecca
Blood were to be believed, she was as evil as Gilda perceived her
to be. Then, Gilda won't be left unharmed. Just like the countless,
unnamed enemies of the Bloods, Gilda will be spitting out roaches
and flies on her deathbed. If not, she may have to go into hiding
for the remaining days of her life.

Chapter 5

Rebecca Blood

"Are you healed?"
the wind whispered in a voice that Rebecca Blood
was so familiar with. It was her own voice, only speaking from the
outside. After having lived and died all over again for the last
thousand years, the voice kept on asking, always demanding and
never satisfied. Perhaps, not once in Rebecca's many lifetimes was
she able to answer it satisfactorily, the rationale for its
recurrence every time she was on the brink of death.

"Go, away! Don’t bother me,"
Rebecca said.
I can’t think anymore…for
God’s sake!
She dismissed the voice the way
she would anybody who did not matter.

You sure, do not give people
a chance to really reflect on their lives and be thankful much
less
—"…when dying can be this painful," she
finished off loudly.

Anybody who would hear Rebecca will
certainly think she was already hallucinating and talking to
herself. But nobody was around.

Rebecca attempted to crunch on her bed
with the help of all the propped up pillows behind her. However,
moving took so much effort and pain. She slumped back heavily and
uncomfortably, failing to rise an inch.

How can she feel so numb yet
so painful at the same time?
It entered
Rebecca's mind. It was ridiculous how she felt. Her long black mane
which she kept almost to her waist felt so heavy and hot. She felt
her muscles numb, tingly and painful. She felt tired and her body
ached all over. Breathing was also laborious that it almost felt
like she was taking in a lungful of invisible water, suffocating
her. Curled in a fetal position, her technique was to calm down and
stay immobile, just as she was, to lessen the pain. At sixty-five,
she sensed her death like it was just another clumsy step on her
part.

"Why should I be afraid?" Rebecca
hissed in between gritted teeth. Like a mantra, she repeatedly kept
on mumbling, "Why should I be afraid?"

As the most powerful
priestess coming from the lineage of Mary of
Magdala
before the seven demons were
driven out of her body, Rebecca never feared death. Indeed, death
was an ordinary experience for her and the others in the clan. She
has the priestess' blood. They all rose again after a period of
time to be reborn. There was neither room for fear nor uncertainty
prompted by the experience. Not even the pain of leaving behind the
mortal body affected Rebecca before. There was always the
comforting feeling and assurance that it was all a cycle and
everything shall come to pass. Usually, priestesses like her
reached the age of ninety before they succumbed to their deathbed.
With a natural cause like an ordinary disease turned worse, they
eventually die temporarily. Then, they were reborn with complete
memory of their past lives. It was like not dying at
all.

But there lay the difference. Rebecca
knew that the present moment offered something different about her
passing away. After having encountered the experience of temporary
dying for a thousand years, she was totally convinced something was
anew. Aside from the reality that her death at the moment was a
prolonged encounter the way it never happened before when she
slipped into oblivion like she was only falling asleep, there was
also the distinct taste of fear.

Fear for the
unknown.

Rebecca and the other priestesses
possessed supernatural powers and were skillful in occult
activities. Death wouldn’t have been an issue for Rebecca. However,
she feared her inevitable death for she knew quite well something
had gone terribly wrong and different.

And yet there was no turning
back
…

Although, as a priestess she was
endowed with immense power ranging from immortality and healing
people to harming them, the worse thing that could ever happen was
for others to know about it. Such immense power was eternally
coveted.

When priestesses like her were
vanquished, the cycle of birth and death will cease and the power
will be endowed to the victorious. That was why it was so important
for the priestesses that no other soul will know.

Even without the coveted secret power,
Rebecca knew many wished for her downfall. Even among her
family…particularly among her children…She knew most of her
children had probably wanted her dead one time or
another.

Rebecca had seven children in her
present lifetime. All of whom she had manipulated one way or
another to be her clone without her power. Rebecca knew she was not
easy to live with, imposing her rules, her desires, her dreams, her
frustrations on her children. She couldn’t blame them if they
wanted her dead. There was no loving relationship between her and
her children in her present lifetime.

Rebecca could remember however that
there was one period in her lifetime when she unconditionally loved
her children. That was probably way back her very first time as a
mother, when she was naïve and nurturing.

She realized though that there was a
pattern of some sort that she was creating for every generation
that she had survived. She observed that the pattern took an
unmistakable route. Good generation led to the next bad generation
and vice versa. Her children turned out to be rascals and even
murderers when she had been a good mother. For the present
generation, she knew her children were a bred of good generation
because she was a bad parent.

And then, there was the local Church.
She had rightfully earned the ire of the local Ordinary with her
open criticisms particularly its treatment of women. Had it not
been for her late husband’s huge contributions, she would have been
excommunicated earlier. In fact, even with her husband’s money, she
was often ridiculed behind her back. It wouldn’t be a surprise for
her if the Church wanted her dead.

"The bishops are celebrating now,"
Rebecca muttered. She was cringing in pain once again as her lungs
seemed to burst in flames.

Rebecca heard a door cracked open. She
listened carefully from where the sound was coming from. Even
listening took an effort for her. However, her sense of hearing was
unmistakably sharp.

"Am I hearing imaginary things now?"
Rebecca mumbled.

The master’s bedroom had at least four
doors adjoining other rooms. One door led to what had been a
nursery room which was redecorated and occupied by her youngest
daughter, Jonah. Another door led to the library. And another one
opened to her late husband’s study which has not been touched for
many years. There was also the passage to her own little laboratory
where she hid powerful potions and oils she used when
healing.

The habak
. Rebecca thought, alarmed.

There was no time to hide
the
habak
in a safe
place before she became weak. That was one of the things that made
her death different. Whilst in the past, she made careful
arrangements about it. At the moment though, she had neglectfully
forgotten about it and the secrets they contained. The
habak
was just as
significant as the power she had. It contained all the recordings
of the thousands of years of how to heal everything broken and how
to destroy what has been created, from the non-physical entities to
the physical entities in the universe. Without the knowledge to
control such power, everything can go haywire.

"Good grief—" Rebecca said,
her tongue twisting her words. "The
habak
—!" She breathed in painfully and
stopped as she heard movements.

Footsteps, muffled by the thick rug on
the floor, stopped right beside Rebecca's bed. Family members and
friends had been coming in and out of her room, much to her
humiliation for being caught at such a weak state, to either say a
prayer or pitifully visit her before she finally died.

Rebecca did not move. Squinting her
eyes as the shadow of the newcomer dropped on her, Rebecca frowned
a bit.

It was her daughter, Jane.

Jane was preparing to change the sheets
for the thousandth time, Rebecca noted. She had Jane when she was
only sixteen and the woman had acted more like a mother to her
siblings than Rebecca ever did. Even with Jane's old-maid hairstyle
of neatly pulled blond hair in a ponytail, her pale blue eyes still
register the vitality of a woman who can easily pick up what she
had missed in her youth. It won’t surprise Rebecca if Jane would
marry the first man she will meet after she died. It often entered
her mind that Jane was only after her seat of power. And when Jane
has it, it will only be the beginning of living her
life.

But it can’t be Jane…
Rebecca thought. "Go away!" she hissed.

As if not hearing Rebecca, Jane
continued to change the sheets carefully. She expertly maneuvered
the beddings and barely moving Rebecca. Jane was always the neat
one among Rebecca's children. However, Rebecca had always known her
cleanliness was far from being next to godliness. Jane kept her
cluttered self in her neat and organized household. Despite
Rebecca’s prodding, Jane had refused to get healed.

However, Rebecca had proceeded healing
Jane from a far. And when the very signs of relief from her
daughter were manifesting, Rebecca dropped it off the way she did
with others, knowing she had made it even worse because healing was
supposed to be eternal. But it was just her wicked way for people
to be dependent on her for the rest of their lives.

Rebecca frowned at her daughter and in
a rushed tone said, "I don’t need to be squeaky clean now, do
I?"

Jane just shook her head and stared at
Rebecca with an inscrutable expression on her face. "You’ve always
needed cleansing, mother! Especially now," she said
flippantly.

Rebecca’s eyes slanted
towards Jane. She had never heard Jane spoke to her in a very curt
manner. The older woman heaved out a sigh. "Oh, yes right. I
stink!"
But not as much as most people I
know
. Rebecca thought.
Not even you.

Jane hurriedly completed doing
Rebecca’s bed and left with a brusque nod at her mother. "I will be
back with your meds," she said.

"Oh, you mean my toxins?"
Rebecca mumbled in between pursed and quivering lips. An impulsive
idea came to her mind. "Get my
habak
and take it to me!" she ordered.

Jane stopped on her way out and asked,
"You were saying something?"

"My
habak
!" Rebecca said and dismissed the
younger woman. She tried to move again but to no avail.

If she could only drag
herself towards the habak without hurting so much…then she wouldn't
have to ask anybody anything.
Rebecca was
contemplating.

She felt it was almost time for her to
really give in to death. But here she was, on the brink of death
with nobody on her side and no one to trust.

"Great!" Rebecca said out
loud.
What a legacy she will be leaving
behind
.

"I still have to get your medicines. If
there's nothing else—" Jane prodded. Her eyebrows were raised as
she threw Rebecca a questioning look.

"I said get my
habak
!" Rebecca shouted
despite the pain.

"It is locked!" Jane said indicating
Rebecca's little laboratory. The room was forbidden from all of the
children. Aunt Judith had hinted that nobody dared go inside it
because Rebecca had put on various spells that will definitely harm
intruders.