The Awakening (8 page)

"Oh." I should be wearing a braying donkey head right about now. What an ass I am.

"There's a lot of evil in this world," she says. "I just want to make sure you're prepared for what you might face."

I gaze at the beautiful pendulum lying in the lifeline crease of my palm and suddenly I'm shocked to see the price tag. "Holy crap! I can't afford this."

I try to return the pendulum to Loreen, but she's not having any of it. She curls the chain into my hand and closes my fist around it. "It's from me to you. You need this."

An early childhood lesson is never to take gifts from strangers. However, I feel compelled to tuck the pendulum into the front pocket of my jeans, along with an instructional sheet Loreen gives me. I mumble my thanks, unsure of what to make of this whole visit. At the door, Loreen hands me one of her business cards.

"Call me if you need
anything.
"

In my haste to leave, I bump into a table displaying both tarot and regular playing cards. The boxes spill open, tossing cards about on the floor. I almost scream when I see the queen of hearts staring up at me from the patterned Berber carpet. Just like what's been happening in my room. "
You
again."

Puzzled, Loreen asks, "Have you and the queen of hearts been crossing paths lately?"

"You could say that. Every time I come near a deck of cards,
she
comes flying out to scowl at me and judge me."

Loreen bends down to pick up the card. "She's speaking to you, Kendall."

"She's creeping me out."

"Not at all," Loreen says. "See, hearts are the suit for emotions. They show pain and suffering. You're struggling with what's awakening within you. But the queen of hearts assures you that you're not alone. She's telling you of a trusted woman. Someone knowledgeable and faithful who will help you."

Loreen means herself, doesn't she?

My eyes connect with hers. She smiles and gazes deeply into my soul.

Whoa. That's intense.

"Okay, then," I say, backing out. "Well, thanks. I'll be seeing you."

Outside her store, I shake my head and try desperately to dismiss everything that just happened. Psychic? Me? Yeah, right!

I look at Loreen's business card and, after some hesitation, chuck it into the nearest city trash can. Keep Radisson Beautiful. Not only is Loreen a lousy saleswoman—giving me a twenty-dollar chain!—she's nuts, crazy,
muy loco en sombrero
...absolutely
pazzo!

W
ELL, THAT WAS COMPLETELY
messed up.

After my encounter with Loreen, the crazy woman, I decide to veer off Main Street and take the road less traveled, hoping it makes a difference for me, just as it did for Robert Frost. I cross back to Butler Avenue, which runs parallel to Main, behind our house. As I walk along, I notice the trees are starting to lose their leaves as the first sign of fall touches the landscape. If I were back home, Marjorie and I would be lining up at the United Arena for preseason Blackhawks hockey games. Instead, I'm in a strange land, running away from someone who says I'm awakening to my psychic abilities; oh, and I'm slinking home to check a videotape taken in my bedroom last night of a possible ghost.

How is this my life?

I tuck my hands into the pockets of my Roots Canada zip-up hoodie and keep walking. My head begins to ache slightly when I step into the next block. The aroma of honeysuckle tints the air, and I smile. Grandma Ethel used to have honeysuckle potpourri in her kitchen to cover up the smell of cooked food. That was before she died, three years ago. Honestly, if I could communicate with the dead—as per these "abilities" Loreen says I have—wouldn't I be chatting with Grandma Ethel, given how close we were?

Continuing along, I drag my fingers along the rigid top of the bush-covered wrought-iron fence. The railing is worn smooth underneath my hand, indicating that it's been here for a lot longer than I have. The tapping within my skull continues, as does a newfound pressure in my chest that reminds me of when I had walking pneumonia in seventh grade and it hurt like all get out to take a deep breath.

The fence ends and I see a wide-open gate leading into...
oh, hell no.
It's a cemetery!

I start backing away, even as something seems to call out to me. Not exactly in a "yoo-hoo, Kendall" sort of way. More like I just
know
I need to go inside. I peer in at the green grass and expertly trimmed shrubs. The honeysuckle scent is even stronger, wafting toward me and inviting me to come in. Graveyards usually skeeve me out; however, there's something almost peaceful and serene about this place. I can't explain it ... it's beckoning me to step in and take a look around. Why not?

There's a small dirt road from the gate that turns into a pebbled drive. From the looks of the graves and markers, this place is pretty old—probably dating back to the early 1800s, just like the town. To the right, ornate obelisks etched with family names reach to the blue sky. Massive mausoleums are scattered among plots that have been lined off with aged marble. These must be the more affluent town families from over the years.

Beyond the nicer markers are paths leading to much simpler graves. Some are marked with stacks of red bricks around them. Others are merely noted with a single rock or a wooden cross. From the few inscriptions I can make out, these appear to be the graves of slaves, Indians, and unknown soldiers.

The dull pain in my chest intensifies and I feel my breathing begin to labor. It's like I'm having an asthma attack, although I don't suffer from it, like Marjorie does. Mental illness, possibly, but not asthma. Could it be that I'm experiencing something akin to what happened at school yesterday with Courtney's throwing up and Okra's broken leg? Am I feeling something that these dead people were afflicted with?

I don't panic this time. As an alternative to freaking out, I take a moment to focus on my breathing, like Mom talks about. In doing so, I note that the tension in my chest eases somewhat. An image—an awareness, almost—appears in my mind of a Confederate soldier with the same kind of chest pains. He ... he ... died from ... wait ... it's coming to me ... died from ... complications from ... pneumonia ... made worse by his..."Oh my God! He had asthma."

Urged on by who knows what, I fall to my knees and begin clawing away at the marker in front of me. Red Georgia clay embeds under my fingernails, but I don't care. I move the rusty-colored dirt off the placard on the ground and pluck two long weeds that have crawled over the stone. Written on the grave is:

L
T
. C
HARLES
S. F
AHRQUARSON
23
RD
A
THENS
R
IFLE
B
ATTALION
1844-1864
D
IED OF
A
STHMA

I pump my fist in the air and jump to my feet, beaming with pride over this revelation. Of course, there's no one here to celebrate with me, if this truly is a celebration. Who says it's not just a lucky guess? Soldiers died of weird stuff all the time—dysentery, measles, diarrhea (
gross!
)—you name it! See, I listened in class when we studied the Civil War. Who knew I'd ever have to call upon that knowledge?

Then it hits me. "Poor schmuck. He was only four years older than me."

Here I am having a pity party for all the change in my life—which in the big picture isn't anything horrendous like marching off to war—when this guy died so young!

A sigh escapes my lungs. The pain is gone. The confusion remains.

I trek farther into the cemetery and see a babbling brook that cuts through the middle, dividing the land into two sections. There's a charming wooden footbridge that crosses over to the other side, where the landscape is lower, flatter, and the hill rolls downward, making it hard to see the additional grave markers. A marble bench is situated on the bank of the brook, next to the bridge, so I take a seat. Clear water trips and trickles over rocks and then disappears underneath the bridge. The air is silent, save for a few chirping birds and—

Marching?

I hear marching. Seriously. Like boots on pavement.

I blink once. Then twice.

Son of a biscuit eater—one of Grandma Ethel's sayings—there's a unit of what appears to be Union soldiers hiking up the hill, crossing the bridge. WTF? They're in full dress uniforms; some are tattered, torn, and stained with blood. Several of the men sport wounds or are wearing slings and bandages. For some reason, the blood makes me remember that icky image I had of Dad this morning. Maybe he's going to join a reenactment group?

As the soldiers pass by me, I shout out, "Hey there." None of them even turns his head in my direction. "Hello!" Nothing. "I said, hell-lo!" Great; not only am I possibly imagining these soldiers, I'm imagining rude ones.

I do a quick head count and get to fifty by the time they completely pass me. My mouth drops open as I watch them march together up the pebbled drive and out the front gate. Jumping to my feet, I scoot back up the path also to catch a glimpse of the unit soldiering down the road. Too bad I don't have my camera with me. It's not exactly every day you see something like that. They must be doing some sort of Civil War reenactment.

At the gate, I glance to the left. Nothing. Then to the right. Nothing.

My hair hits me in the face from the way I'm jerking my head back and forth. "What? Where did they go? They were just—"

At that precise moment, my heart feels as if it's going to burst out of my chest. I'm scared shitless. The pressure in my lungs is different from the earlier pain and asthma sensation. This way-beyond-a-flutter freak-out is courtesy of my absolute, complete, and total terror. Because at this exact moment, I truly believe that I've seen with my own eyes not one ghost, but fifty.

There's absolutely
no
sign of the soldiers anywhere.

They're gone.

"Thank you, ma'am." Celia hangs up the phone after speaking to the Radisson tourism office. "Nope. No Civil War reenactment groups in town."

"Crap!" I feel like I'm still trying to catch my breath after running the remaining half mile from the cemetery to Celia's house. I stop rubbing the ears of Celia's old English bulldog, Seamus, who's sitting on the bed next to me, panting, drooling, and enjoying the attention I've been giving him. I'm a nervous wreck, and petting an animal calms me down. Or at least it should. "That was the only explanation I had." It beat the more likely alternative, which, if confirmed, would open up the notorious whole other can of worms.

"Are you sure they were Union soldiers?" my friend pries.

I flop on her bed and press a pillow over my face while Seamus licks me on the arm. I want to scream. Plain and simple. Sitting back up, I say, "They were dressed in blue uniforms and looked just like the pictures in all of the history books. Their coats were so detailed, with gun straps and buttons and everything. Celia, it was sooooo real.
They
were real."

"You know, I've heard of things like this."

"Things like what?"

"Seeing ghosts like that."

She said the
g
word out loud. "Now, Celia, wait—"

Her eyes grow wide. "No, seriously!"

Borrrrrwwwwwhhhh!
Seamus pipes up.

"Oh, you too?"

I run my hands through my hair that's messier than anything. "There's got to be a more logical explanation." As soon as I voice the words, I know I don't even believe them myself.

"Look, Mr. Spock. Logic aside..." Celia rubs her chin with her hand, obviously in deep thought. "It's simple. They had to be ghosts, Kendall. And you saw them clear as day! That is the coolest thing ever. I've lived in Radisson my entire life and I've never had a sighting like that, not for lack of trying or staring out the window with night-vision goggles on hoping to pick up a spectral or a—"

"Celia. Focus." I'm going to need some serious psychotropic medication now.

"I
am
focusing," she snaps at me. She pulls up Wikipedia on her desktop computer—her room looks like Circuit City, with a wide-screen plasma TV, two computers, a laptop, a stereo, a Wii, and a DVD player—and continues with her ghost theory. "I think you experienced a residual haunting."

"A what?"

"Here."

Intrigued, I move off the bed and cross to her desk. I read the Web page over her shoulder. "'A residual haunting is thought by some to be a replayed haunting in which no intelligent ghost, spirit, or other entity is directly involved. Much like a videotape, residual hauntings are playbacks of auditory, visual, olfactory, and other sensory phenomena that are attributed to a traumatic, life-altering, or common event of a person or place, like an echo of past events.'" Whoa. That's heavy. "So let me get this straight," I say, standing tall. "I'm not seeing real ghosts, just the memory of something that may have happened, like, a hundred and fifty years ago?"

"Something like that," she says. "Think of it as an eternal video replay."

Great, the headache's back. Only this time, it's clearly caused by my tension.

Celia reaches for a large atlas from the shelf above her computer. She pulls it down and flips through the pages to one particular map.

She stabs her finger on the book. "See. Look." She's previously marked a path on the map of Georgia, making a yellow-highlighter line from Atlanta all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. "This," she says, "is Sherman's March to the Sea."

"Oh my God, Celia. You're such a dork."

She waggles her finger at me. "
History buff
is the politically correct term."

I elbow her and laugh, trying to make light of the situation. "Whatever, dudette."

She points to the small dot on the map that indicates my new place of residence. "Look. Right here is Radisson." Grabbing a magnifying glass from her top drawer, Celia zooms in on the town and the specific path of the Union soldiers all those years ago. "This is where the Union soldiers are known to have marched through Georgia. Here is the Spry River. It gets really narrow outside the Radisson city limits and turns into nothing more than a stream that's shallow and flows through here—where the cemetery is."