Redemption (21 page)

Isaac lifted his
hand and pointed at the box, now separated from them by a flaming wall.  “The
key is just there.”  Rebecca stared at the box perched on a stone slab beyond
the fire. 

“There’s just
one more challenge left,” that raspy voice was hushed, fading with the world
around them.  “Will you save me?”  It was nearly a whisper.  “It’s empty…that
place where my heart should be.”

Rebecca was
frozen, rooted to the spot while her mind raced.  Isaac.  He was the hooded
man.  This was his dream.  He had created everything.  He’d deceived her. 
Hidden this awful truth.  And yet, he’d tried to tell her. 
I think I’m
dying.  I think it’s me.
  He’d known, somehow.  Even if that Isaac was a
just a creation.  He’d saved her countless times.  But he wasn’t real.  And
he’d only helped her so that she could continue to help him.  What was real was
this hallow shell of a man standing in front of her wearing death’s robes.

He looked around
his crumbling world with sad, hazy eyes.  “Time’s running out.”  His empty blue
eyes were resigned.  He had already accepted she would leave him alone to die. 
That thought galvanized her.  Rebecca took a deep breath.  Then she leapt
through the fire. 

Her stomach
dropped as she felt the chasm stretching beneath her, filled with flames and
molten rock.  Then her feet hit the solid stone on the other side of the
abyss.  She slid into the stone pedestal, winding herself and knocking the box
clattering off the rock.  Its contents spilled onto the cold stone.  Rebecca
scrabbled for the glowing orb without thinking, only trying to preserve it from
falling into the magma below. 

The thing felt
alive in her hands, warm and pulsating.  A heart.  Her eyes met Isaac’s across
the flickering flames that separated them.  The ground split again, and she
felt herself slipping, tilting toward the abyss.  She pinwheeled her arms,
struggling for one frantic moment to maintain her balance.  And then she fell
through the black doors that had appeared behind her. 

On impulse, she
clutched the glowing heart to her chest as if to protect it.  Its warmth spread
through her and she knew the contents of a heart- trust, loyalty, truth, faith,
hope, acceptance, desire, dreams, peace, kindness, joy, courage, determination,
self-worth…love.  Through the heat, she saw something black hurdling at her. 
Rebecca raised her arms defensively, instinctively trying to ward it off, even
as she fell to her death.

~~~~~

The old woman
twitched a hand toward the impatient shade that paced near the foot of her
bed.  “So you want to go back then?”

The vision
couldn’t speak to her, but she could see his answer in the blazing eyes that
pleaded with her.  Spirits weren’t so fierce when they were ready to move on. 
It was only when they wanted to stay that they got all cratchety.

She pushed
herself up into a sitting position in her hospital bed and brushed the long, snow-white
hair out of her face.  Then she drew a deep breath and said, with a
long-suffering tone, “Aye, I hear ya.  I’ll do what I can- though I don’t know
if I’ve enough energy left anymore.”

The tall,
slender shade stopped his pacing.  The eyes lost some of their fire, and a look
of confusion crossed the handsome, shadowy features.  She made a dismissive
gesture with her old, wrinkly hand.  “
Pffft
! Now don’ you go worrin’
none about me.  I’m ninety-three years old.  I’d be a sorry soul if I was
afraid to risk my skin for a wean like you.”

Usually, a shade
wasn’t much able to show a range of emotions- they were just shallow
projections.  But this one was stronger.  His expressive mouth turned down at
the corners, and if he had tears, she knew he’d cry them.  She allowed herself
a smug little bit of satisfaction.  Her grandson was a beautiful man.  She
wasn’t exactly surprised to see his ghost, but she’d rather it didn’t hang
around, all the same.

“A’right.  I’ll
be workin’ on it,” she fussed.  “Just you quiet down.”

The shade, who
was incapable of making noise in the first place, hovered in silence at the
foot of her bed as she bowed her head and began to mutter.

Nearly half an
hour passed before the old woman lifted her head.  The ghost began to fade,
moving on its way.  He gave her a sad half smile and she shooed him away,
though she could barely muster the energy to lift her papery hand.

“Aye, get on wi’
ya now,” she said tiredly.  “And doona be comin’ back!”

Once the specter
had gone, she sank back wearily and put a hand over her fluttering heart.  She
was too old for this, but she had managed to push him back toward his body.  Whether
he would find any reason to keep living once he got there was out of her hands.

R
ebecca was slow
to wake.  It was several moments before she realized that the light flooding
the room, blinding her eyes with stinging warmth, was streaming in from her
bedroom window.  She stretched and yawned.  Her body ached, as if she’d run a
marathon.  She sat blinking dazedly up at the bland off-white ceiling, feeling
confused and out of step with reality.  “Just a dream,” she muttered to no one.

She had no sense
of time.  Judging by the warm glow pouring in through her window and falling
across her bed, it was afternoon.  How long had she slept?  It felt like ages. 
She turned her head to glance at the bedside table, but her eyes traveled past
the green glow of the digital clock. 

Her gaze rested on
the little bottle of pills that sat on the table.  The cap wasn’t screwed on
tight and it sat at an odd angle.  Her name was emblazoned across the label,
and for some reason that bothered her.  She stared at the tiny printed
instructions. 
Take one pill at bedtime as needed.
 She remembered
wondering if it wouldn’t be better to just sleep forever.  How many had she
taken before she’d gone to bed?

Sighing, Rebecca
pushed herself up and slipped out of bed.  She scooped up the sleeping pills
and took them to the little bathroom just off her bedroom.  She was flushing
the toilet and throwing out the empty bottle before she even consciously
thought about what she was doing.  She felt like she hadn’t washed in days, as
if she were covered in dirt and grime. 

Her eyes landed
on the shower.  She was standing in the hot water, scrubbing herself pink in
the blink of an eye.  A faint memory of big, graceful hands on her skin gave
her pause, but she brushed it off as fantasy. 

Feeling more
awake, she left the bathroom wrapped in a towel, her still-damp hair trailing
down her back.  Raman had always liked long hair, and she hadn’t cut it since
they met.  She glanced about her apartment as if seeing it for the first time. 
Pausing, she re-traced her steps and scooped up an armload of dirty laundry
that was moldering in the corner. 

She closed the
washer with a bang and went to pull on some clean clothes.  She had to dig
through a basket of clean laundry to find something to wear.  She realized with
a start that she couldn’t remember the last time she’d actually taken care of
her clothes, just leaving them in the basket and pulling something out at
random every day. 

As she turned,
she caught sight of a pair of gleaming silver utility scissors.  She had left them
lying on the shelf by the washer the last time she’d used them.  A couple of
minutes later she was standing in the bathroom once more, gazing pleasantly at
her new shoulder-length bob.  She swept the long shorn chunks of hair into the
trashcan, feeling lighter.

Rebecca made her
way into the living room, a bit disgusted with herself.  She felt like she’d
suddenly opened her eyes, and what she saw pissed her off.  How long had she
been living like this- like her life was over?  She’d been going through the
motions for far too long. 

On the way to
the kitchen, she stopped to stare at a picture of her and Raman that rested on
the mantle.  She peered up into those hazel eyes.  She’d heard that he had
re-married a couple months ago.  His new wife had kids from a previous
marriage, or so she’d heard from an acquaintance- daughters that he treated as
his own.  Gazing up at his smile, she thought maybe it was time to send him a
card.

Rebecca took the
picture down from the mantle and carried it to the kitchen, where she slipped
it, face down, into the junk drawer.  She closed the drawer with a strange
feeling- and she realized that she genuinely hoped he was happy.  He had moved
on.  Hopefully he had found peace.  She was sure he would make a great
stepfather.  She twisted the wedding ring off her finger and slipped it into
her pocket.

She poured
herself a glass of orange juice and padded over to the computer to check her
e-mail.  For the first time in months, she wondered what her old friends were
doing now.  Would they answer if she sent them a message?  Her eyes fell on the
computer and she stopped dead in her tracks.

Images flooded
back, the dream once again vivid and real in her mind, like a memory burned
into her brain.  The black cat stood from where it had been curled up on her
desk.  It stretched and watched her with those glowing eyes.  She distinctly
remembered the black thing hurtling at her as she fell into darkness.

“How?”  Her
voice shook.  She crossed the room and stroked its silky midnight fur.  One
green eye and one blue eye, just like in her dream.  “Why are you here?”

The cat meowed
softly and nipped at her stroking fingers, as if impatient with her.  Isaac’s
face swam up before her in her mind.  As she had first seen him, handsome and
well, then laughing, his face flushed with heat as he held her in his arms. 
Then gaunt and skeletal, fading, his blue eyes lost in sadness as he begged her
to save him.

She launched
into motion, not stopping to think just how crazy she was.  “Shit,” she paced
the length of her living room.  “How?  How in the world...” she sat on the old,
faded sofa, then immediately sprang back up to pace the length of the room. 

She shoved her
damp hair out of her eyes, and cracked her knuckles.  She rubbed her temples as
she paced.  “Where…”  She muttered to herself, trying to remember everything,
every word Isaac had said, searching her memory for some hint of where he might
be right now.

The cat finally
tired of watching her odd behavior.  He jumped down from the desk with a soft
thump and padded across the carpet to the bookshelf, where he sat looking up at
her with those odd eyes. 

She glared at
the cat as if willing it to speak to her.  “What?  C’mon, give me a clue.”

She resumed her
pacing, her mind whirling.  Five days.  The hooded man- no, Isaac- had said
that she had five days to find the key.  Was that only counting the time in the
dream?  Or- as she feared- was the clock still ticking, counting down the
seconds of Isaac’s life?  Was he even now about to be in some deadly accident? 
She ran a hand over her face.  There was a tug at her pant leg and she looked
down at the cat.  It meowed and trotted over to the bookshelf.

She stared at
the books in their tidy rows.  Had she and Isaac talked about books?  Was there
something hidden there?  She paced to the bookshelf, feeling as if a weight was
pressing down on her.  Part of her didn’t want to believe that any of this
could be real.  But another part was screaming at her to
hurry, for Christ’s
sake!

She cast a
glance at the kitchen window.  The light was fading fast as the sun sank toward
the horizon.  The sun.  She heard Isaac’s childish voice in her mind as if he
were standing there beside her.  “
Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm
,” he’d
called her.  “
Like a book my sister has
.”

She crouched
down and ran a finger over the bindings of her neatly arranged books, knowing
even as she did so that it was futile.  “It’s not here.” 

She’d never
owned that book.  If there was some kind of clue there, it was lost on her-
she’d never read the story, didn’t have slightest idea what it was even about.

The cat stood up
and strolled back to the computer desk.  It jumped up on the desk and sat
staring at her, as if to say it could care less about books.  Rebecca stayed
where she was, crouched down, her hands on her head as she tried to make some
sort of connection.

The cat meowed
at her.  She ignored it.  Think, think,
think. 
The cat continued to
meow, louder and louder.  Rebecca waved in its direction.  “Quiet, I’m trying
to figure it out.  What does that book have to do with anything?”

There was a
clatter and she turned to see the cat walking back and forth across the
keyboard.  Rebecca stood and went over to the computer.  “What?  Google it?” 

She laughed at
the absurdity of her situation.  Nonetheless, she brushed the cat aside
impatiently and sat down in front of the screen.  She pulled up the internet
browser and typed in
Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.

The search
engine pulled up dozens of hits: links to book retailers, reviews.  She opened
a synopsis and began to read, but there was nothing there to hold her
attention.  This was utterly pointless. 

A little icon on
the right hand side of the screen caught her eye.  It was one of those moving
ads, but it was different from the usual ones for diet pills and payday
advance. 
Sunnybrook
was emblazoned across a picture of a man with his
head in his hands. 
When you just can’t handle it on your own.  Sunnybrook
is there for you.