RESURRECTED (3 page)

Maybe she was just imagining there was something more. Sometimes, Caitlin found herself feeling like she was destined for greater things, a bigger life. Like she had some great destiny, some huge purpose or meaning in the world. Sometimes, she couldn’t help wondering if her life was meant to be so much bigger, if she had a secret mission waiting to be revealed.

But that day had never come. As Caitlin pondered her life—a normal life, a life which seemed so much like everyone else’s—she didn’t actually see anything about her that was that special. It seemed like she was just destined to live a normal life, in a normal town. A part of her refused to accept that.

Another part of her wondered if she was just going crazy. After all, what was wrong with a

“normal” life anyway? Wasn’t having a normal life an achievement in its own right? Why did life have to be greater than normal? When Caitlin looked around and saw so many people with real problems, with broken marriages, with health problems—with
real
suffering—she realized that normal was OK. It was better than OK. She should be so grateful, she knew, just to have normalcy, just to have what she had. And she
was
grateful. She was not unhappy.

It was just that sometimes, she wondered, if maybe, she was meant for something more.

Thinking of that necklace, the one her grandmother had given her, had stirred her up. It brought flooding back memories of her—one of the few clear memories Caitlin still had. She remembered her, one of the few people she loved, on her eighth birthday, giving her a box of rare books; she remembered holding that box as if it were a treasure chest; she remembered all the times her mother had insisted on getting rid of that box, and all the times Caitlin had refused. She remembered one time, when she came home and discovered her mom had thrown it out—and bringing it back in and hiding it. She kept it hidden, under her bed, for years, determined her mom never find it again. And she never did.

Years later, when Caitlin moved to the Hudson Valley, to this big old house, she had brought the box and had stored it in a far corner of her attic. A part of her had wanted to go through them all right away—but another part wasn’t ready to. She couldn’t explain why. There was something so personal about them; she felt she had to wait for exactly the right time to do it.

Caitlin tossed and turned, thinking about those books, and after many hours, she didn’t know how many, she finally fell into a fitful sleep.

*

Caitlin stood in a sprawling cornfield, at sunset, the only person left in a vast and empty universe. There was a narrow path, between the cornstalks, and she walked down it, under a sky alight in a million shades of reds and pinks. She walked towards the horizon, knowing for some reason that was where she had to go.

As she did, she saw a lone figure standing there, a man, his back to the sun. A silhouette.

Somehow, deep down, she felt she knew him. She felt, maybe, it was her father.

Caitlin ran, wanting to reach him, to see him.

As she ran, the cornstalks changed to olive trees, their silver branches lit up beautifully in the last light of day. The terrain changed, too, to a mountain, and now she was running up. A chorus of church bells tolled all around her. She felt herself getting closer, and as she did, he grew larger. As she nearly reached him, she looked up and saw he was now mounted on a crucifix. She could still only see his silhouette, and the image terrified her.

Caitlin ran even faster, wanting to free him, to help bring him down off the cross. She felt that if she could only reach him, everything would be okay.

“Caitlin,” he said. “I am with you.”

She was just beginning to see some of the details on his face, and knew that in another moment, she would see clearly who he was.

Suddenly, a flock of bats swooped down from the sky, descending on her like a swarm. They covered her face and hair and eyes, and she swatted them frantically. But there were too many of them: they forced her down to her knees, to the ground, and covered her like ants. She screamed and screamed, but no one heard her.

Caitlin sat upright in bed, breathing hard, sweating. She looked all around in the silence, momentarily forgetting where she was. Finally, she realized: it was a dream.

It had been a terrifying dream, and her heart pounded. She didn’t understand it—none of it seemed to make any sense. It left her sad and scared at the same time.

She jumped up out of bed and paced, too wound-up to go back to sleep. She looked over at the clock: 4:01. It was nowhere near daybreak, yet she was wide awake.

She paced the room, trying to figure out what to do, and felt more restless than she could remember. She felt her dream was more than just a dream: it felt like a message, as if it demanded some sort of action. But what?

She felt she had to do something. But it was 4 AM. Where could she go? What could she do?

She had to throw her mind into something, like an old book, an intense puzzle. Something to engage her. And then, it struck her: the attic. Those books she’d been thinking about before bed.

Her grandmother’s box. Those rare books. The greatest puzzle of all.

Yes, that was exactly what she needed. It was the perfect place to go and get lost, and not bother anyone.

Caitlin hurried out the room and down the hall. She grabbed a flashlight from a drawer and climbed the steep steps to the attic.

As she reached the top, she pulled the cord on a single bare bulb, and it lit a portion of the room in stark shadows. She turned on her flashlight and surveyed the dark corners: the attic was absolutely jammed with stuff. They had been living here so many years, and had never bothered to empty it. It was airless and uninsulated, and Caitlin hugged her shoulders in her pajamas, feeling a chill.

She could barely remember where she’d stored her grandmother’s boxes. She swung the flashlight and searched through from one corner of the attic to the other. She began to walk through it all slowly, going from box to box.

Minutes passed. Just as she was starting to wonder if this was a futile endeavor, she saw it: a small stack of boxes in the corner. Her grandmother’s books.

Caitlin moved some things out of the way—an old high-chair, a crib, an oversized toy horse—

and managed to make her way to the stack.

She opened the first box slowly, methodically, as she’d been trained to do, extracting the books one at a time. She organized them, and catalogued them, indexed them in her head. The professional Caitlin took over.

There were dozens of books, and this was exactly the kind of project Caitlin needed. Already, she could feel her racing mind and heart start to slow.

She sat there, cross-legged, taking her time as she picked through one book at a time. She sneezed more than once, the dust getting to her, but she was happy. She felt an instant connection to her grandmother as she went through each book, feeling each one, running her hands along the spine, feeling the binding, the old paper. She began to relax, as her nightmares became more distant.

An hour passed in the blink of an eye, and by then, Caitlin had already finished going through most of the boxes. As she reached the final box, she went to open it, and was surprised to find it sealed more securely than the others. She pulled at the layers of duct tape, but they would just not give. She wondered why this box would be sealed so much more carefully than the others.

She was annoyed. She got up from her comfortable position and began combing the attic for scissors, anything to help open it.

In the far corner she stumbled upon an old sewing kit, and extracted a small pair of scissors.

They were tiny, but looked like they would do the trick.

She went back to the box and set to work on cutting the tape. It took her several minutes to cut through it with the dull scissors, but finally, she did. She tore the box open.

Inside this box were a dozen books. Most looked the same—typical bindings, mostly classics.

But one book stood out immediately. It didn’t look anything like the others. It was thick, overstuffed and weathered, with leather binding. It looked as if it had been through a war. And it looked ancient.

Caitlin was intrigued. As a rare book scholar, there was almost no book she could not decipher in an instant. Yet this was different. She had never seen anything like it. And that both thrilled and terrified her. How could it be? It was unlike any book she had ever seen, and she had seen it all.

Caitlin’s heart pounded as she reached in and delicately removed the book. She was trembling, and she didn’t know why. It was strange, but somehow, she felt as if she were being led to this box.

To this book. She pulled back the cover, and ran her hand along the first page, and began to study the handwriting.

As she did, her heart stopped. She couldn’t understand it. It was a handwriting she recognized.

It was her own.

Caitlin could not process what was happening. She felt as if she were outside of herself, looking down, and she became more and more confused.

She read. And read. And read.

Finally, it hit her like a lightning bolt: this book, it was
hers
. Her journal. The journal of a teenage girl. A story of coming of age. Of going back in time. Of falling in love with a man named Caleb. Of having a daughter named Scarlet. Of becoming a vampire.

She wondered if she were losing her mind. Was this some sort of practical joke? Some sort of fantasy she’d had as a young girl? What was it doing here? How did her grandmother have it? And why was she only drawn to open it now, at this time?

As she turned page after page, transfixed, read entry after entry, as she sat there, frozen until long after the sun rose, she finally realized: this was no joke.

It was real.

It was all real.

This was her teenage journal. And she had been a vampire.

Caitlin’s hands trembled as she drove. Her hands hadn’t stopped shaking since she’d put down her journal hours before. She’d read every page, then started over, and read it all over again. It was like watching her life flash before her eyes. It was like reading about a life that had been kept secret from her, a life she’d always suspected she’d had, but was afraid to believe was possible. It was like holding a piece of herself she never knew existed.

It excited and terrified her at the same time. She no longer knew what was real and what was imagined. The line was blurring so much, she wondered if she was losing her mind.

Being a scholar, a rare book expert, she also analyzed and scrutinized the book itself, with an expert’s eye. She could tell, scientifically, objectively, that it was real. An ancient book. Thousands of years old. Older than any book she’d ever held. That in itself would have been enough to stump her.

It didn’t make any sense. How was it possible? In her own attic?

As Caitlin thought about it, she realized that her necklace, the one she’d given to Scarlet, was also ancient, and had also come from her grandmother. She wondered who her grandmother really was, and what else she had in hiding. Her grandmother had said at the time that it had come from
her
grandmother. Caitlin couldn’t help feeling an intense connection to the generations. But she didn’t know what.

As she turned it all over in her head, it only raised more and more questions. And that surprised her. She was a world-renowned scholar, and could dissect and analyze any book within a matter of minutes. But now, with her own book, in her own attic—in her own handwriting of all things—she was completely stumped. That freaked her out more than anything. After all, she didn’t remember writing any of it. And yet, as she read it, pieces of it seemed to come back to her, in some vague part of her consciousness.

When Caitlin had finally come down from the attic, it had been late morning and the house was empty, Scarlet already gone to school, and Caleb already long gone to work. She was supposed to be at work herself hours ago, and hadn’t even called in. She’d been in a daze, had lost all sense of time and place. The only one to greet her had been Ruth, and Caitlin, in a daze, had merely walked past her, out the door, to her car, and had taken off, the journal still in hand.

Caitlin knew there was only one person in the world she could turn to for answers. And she needed answers now, more than ever. She couldn’t stand to have something unsolved, and she would stop at nothing until she’d figured it out. She sped down the highway, racing down the Taconic Parkway towards New York City, hands still shaking. There was only one man in the world, she knew, who would know what to make of this—only one mind more brilliant than hers when it came to rare books and antiquities. He was the only one who could explain the deepest truths of history, of religion, of the esoteric. Aiden.

Her old college professor, her mentor throughout her undergraduate and graduate degrees at Columbia, Aiden was the one man she trusted and respected more than any man in the world. He was also the one man she considered to be her true father. The most venerated professor of antiquities and esoteric studies at Columbia, the shining star of the archaeological faculty, Aiden was the greatest scholar they’d ever had. If Caitlin ever encountered any rare book or piece of history or antiquity that left her stumped, Aiden was the one she could call. He always had an answer for everything.

She knew he would have an answer for this book, a scholarly way to explain it away that would both make her feel better and make her wonder why she hadn’t thought of it. And he would do it with grace and charm, in a way that didn’t make her feel stupid. In fact, knowing that he would have the answer was the only thing that kept her from losing her mind as she sped down the highway.

Caitlin trembled with anticipation as she reached Manhattan, speeding down the West Side Highway, over to Broadway, and parking right in front of the entrance to Columbia. She parked on Broadway, in a no parking zone, but was too preoccupied to notice. She was hardly aware of her surroundings, hardly aware that she had left the house still wearing pajama pants, flip-flops and an old sweater, her hair undone.